Tankbread

by Paul Mannering

  ‘No… I’m stupid. I don’t know anything unless you show me. You know everything and I don’t. Inside there, I didn’t know how to eat right and they all stared at me! They look like me but they know how to eat right! They know everything. Why don’t I know anything!?’ Her anger was boiling up again, I could feel her muscles bunching under my hands.

  ‘It’s because you’re new, all of this is new to you Else.’

  ‘But why is it new? Why do the ones that look like me know everything?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Else, what do you remember of your life?’

  She screwed up her nose in concentration. ‘I remember the evol motherfuckers, and you. I dreamed of you.

  ‘You dreamed of me? When did you do that?’

  ‘Before you came and took me away, I was in a warm place, sleeping, and I heard voices, you and father, you looked at me. Then I slept again until they came and you saved me from the motherfuckers.

  ‘You were sleeping because you weren’t ready to be born yet. Remember the little ones at Moore Park?’

  Else nodded, she didn’t have the language to ask about the kids and babies at the time, but she’d been fascinated by them, always trying to touch them and cooing over their tiny features.

  ‘Well they were born really small, and they grow for a long time until they are big like us. They learn everything while they are growing up. You were born in a different way. You were born big and though you look like the sisters, you have to learn things like a baby does.

  ‘Why?’ Else asked.

  ‘Because… you’re special.’

  ‘What is special?’

  ‘Well… special means you are valued, you are important. I would do anything to keep you safe, and make sure you are happy and get a feed regularly and I’ll always teach you things until you know everything too.’

  ‘Why am I special?’ Her breath was warm and distracting against my neck.

  ‘Because I saved you from being Tankbread,’

  ‘What is Tankbread?’ She yawned and snuggled her head tighter against my chest.

  ‘It’s a kind of meat that looks like people but isn’t and we feed it to the evols so they leave us alone.

  ‘I’m special…’ she murmured her voice soft.

  ‘Yeah, you are,’ I whispered and kissed the top of her head. And I’m an arsehole.

  CHAPTER 9

  Else slept in a dorm with the other girls while I lay awake on a cot in the cleaned out hospital. They held a burial service for the late Mr Tomlinson after dinner and I dug the grave deep enough to keep out the dingoes.

  The next morning the sisters rose before dawn to gather in the chapel for prayers and giving thanks while I mumbled along in the back row. Else had jumped on that bandwagon with both feet. She quit swearing overnight and this morning she took to wearing a headscarf like the rest of the girls.

  Sister Mary bailed me up after the service. ‘There are no free meals at the chapel house. If you wish to eat you must work.’

  ‘Happy to Sister, what needs doing?’

  She started by showing me their bore-pump. It went down deep into the rock and drew fresh water up for their irrigation system and compound water supplies.

  ‘You mentioned a lake? Why not just get your water from there?’ I asked eyeing the seized up pump.

  ‘The lake goes dry, it has never been a reliable water source. You had best get on with fixing the pump. I have other work for you to do.’

  The girls worked too and Else didn’t seem to mind as she learned their songs and pulled weeds along with the rest of them. The nuns seemed to have put the horrors of their time at the Mildura pub behind them. By midday the pump was in pieces. Grit and corrosion had choked it, but I got it broken down and cleaned up.

  Sister Mary came and offered a water bag, I took a long drink. ‘She should stay here,’ Sister Mary said.

  ‘That’s not up to me and I don’t think it’s up to you either.’ I handed the water bag back, pulled my T-shirt off and wiped my face with it.

  ‘Clothes on if you please,’ Sister Mary said coldly. ‘We are not savages.’

  ‘Jesus Christ Sister, it’s damn hot out here.’

  ‘Do not blaspheme. The UV out here will give you skin cancer and the sunburn will be but a preview to the fires of Hell. Keep your shirt on.’

  I shrugged and dressed again. ‘I’ll need some grease for the pump if you have it.’

  The sister walked off towards the girls plucking weeds from the distant rows. ‘I will see what I can find,’ she called over her shoulder.

  She turned up an hour later with a tube of industrial gear grease. I smeared it onto the moving parts and got them working. By the time the pump was back together and the windmill was hooked up the sun was setting in a searing red line across the far horizon. The sisters of St Peter’s Grace gathered in the dusk like white moths around a flickering candle-light. They sang hymns when the water started gushing out along the irrigation lines. I picked out Else standing among them her mouth making the words and her eyes shining with their faith.

  After dinner, where Else sat with her new friends and used a fork with dainty precision, I cornered Sister Mary.

  ‘Sister, we can’t stay here.’

  ‘Of course, you are welcome to leave any time you wish with our thanks and blessing,’

  ‘Else needs to come with me,’ I could feel a weird blush rising in my cheeks. Sister Mary came up to my shoulder, yet the way she looked right into you made me nervous.

  ‘Else has said she would like to join our order,’ Sister Mary said and folded her arms.

  ‘Yeah? Well, less than a week ago she thought sheep were clouds. Look what I’m saying is that everything is new to her, she doesn’t understand the world.’

  ‘All the more reason why she should stay with us and receive a proper education and remain pure.’

  ‘Sorry sister, it’s not going to happen.’

  ‘And what is that you offer her? Out there? In the heathen lands where the unrepentant souls walk trapped for eternity in the absence of God’s love?’

  ‘Like I told you yesterday Sister, we have to get to Woomera. Else is on a count down. She won’t live long without getting help.’

  ‘She could find peace here. We would deliver her into God’s grace,’ Sister Mary’s eyes implored me to accept her offer.

  ‘I understand what you believe Sister, but I need to do more.’

  The light seemed to drain out of her face, ‘Woomera…’

  ‘Sister, it’s important that I get there. That Else gets there. Josh said that Tankbread don’t live long. He said that the geeks out at Woomera might have the answer, might have something that will let her live.’

  Sister Mary’s lip curled slightly. ‘Your very own Pinocchio? God help you then. May he forgive you for your sins, and the sins you propagate upon the world.’ She stormed off heading for the chapel. Our conversation now ended, my questions would have to wait.

  I went out to my bed in the clinic. Out here, far from the dust haze that kept the night sky hidden in the city, the stars shone bright and clear.

  Now that the pump was drawing water again, Sister Mary set me to work repairing the gates. I spent the better part of the next day hammering the hinges on the ironbound doors back into shape and in an afternoon of sweat and effort I got them mounted back on the opening in the high brick wall.

  The next day I packed pliers, a few scraps of wire, a hammer and canteen of fresh water, loaded up all my weapons and took the long walk down the dusty driveway to the outer fence. The diamond mesh gate in its steel pole frame lay buckled on the ground. I pulled it out of the dead grass and eyed it critically.

  There was no way this gate was going to walk again. The Mildura bastards had driven a heavy vehicle right through the middle of it, bending the crossbar and turning it almost crescent shaped. I lifted it first on its end and then onto the hinge pegs in the deer-fence post of the fence. It slipped into place, but didn’t cr
oss the gap anymore.

  I stood there, thinking about driving something heavy over it to flatten it out again, when I saw the first one coming through the heat shimmering distance. At first I thought it was wallabies, herds of the small grey cousins of the kangaroo flocked around here. I stood squinting in to the glare and the mirages that quivered in a rolling boil across the land. More shapes appeared, dark silhouettes, shambling in a scattered line towards the fence. Evols, maybe a k’ away, but coming right at us.

  By the time I had lashed the gate shut with a piece of wire they were thickening on the shimmering horizon like drops of rain falling on a dry road. First a scattering and then larger blobs, soon they would all be here.

  I ran back to the compound and started yelling as I bolted the wall gate behind me.

  Sister Mary’s expression went grim when I told her what was coming.

  ‘Maybe a hundred of them. Feral as fuck, rags and dust. Some of them have been dead for a while. They’re all torn to shit.’

  ‘Girls!’ Sister barked as they began to chatter and move on a current of nascent panic. At her voice they subsided, bowing their heads and clasping hands in prayer. Else just frowned and slipped in beside me.

  ‘Mofo’s?’ she whispered.

  ‘What? Yeah. Maybe a hundred of them.’ I said. ‘That’s more than all of us, more than everyone in Mildura the other night.’ I added seeing her puzzled expression.

  ‘We must release them from their mortal cage,’ Else said, quoting from some crap the sisters had been filling her head with.

  ‘Sure. You go find the bow and arrows okay?’

  Else nodded and darted away, the other girls were taking orders from Sister Mary and scattering in an orderly fashion. It only took a few minutes before they regrouped armed with a mix of scrub-slashers, machetes, and axes. They had armoured themselves with motorbike helmets, heavy coats and even sheets wound like desert nomads around their bodies, making thick padding against infectious zombie bites.

  ‘Girls!’ Sister Mary clapped her hands sharply and silenced them. ‘We remain inside the compound wall. They cannot get through. They will flow around us and go on their way. Like the rock of Gibraltar we shall stand here. Our faith and the Lord’s blessing shall sustain us!’

  She said a lot more, but I went to the truck and drove it to the wall, from there I climbed up on the cab and peered over to see what was happening outside. The dead were gathering at the outer fence. The shimmering heat made it hard to tell their exact numbers. Else popped up beside me and with a casual nonchalance she lifted a pair of binoculars to her eyes and peered through them. I reached over and turned them around, so the wide lens end was pointing away from her.

  ‘Ahh!’ Else squealed and stumbled back, flailing. I snatched the binoculars before she dropped them and took a good long look.

  The wire fence was about half a kilometre away and it was buckling under the growing pressure from the dead pressing against it.

  I moved the glasses down the line, checking the gate, which was moving but holding for now. A zombie was squeezing through the gap between the gate and the post. Skin and then flesh softened by slow decay tore and slid off his yellow bones. The flies swarmed among the mob. Flies were always around evols, but they never laid eggs on them and no maggots ever squirmed in that dead flesh. Must be something about the walking dead that acts as a fly repellent. Rats, cats, dogs and birds never eat the dead either. Even after they are put down scavengers don’t eat zombie meat. I guess it’s why most of the cats and dogs died out after the war. The ones the survived got mean and lived on rats and each other.

  The evol that squeezed through the gap staggered, with torn muscles its arm hung useless and one leg dragged. What kept pushing them on? Why here? Why now?

  Else’s bow creaked beside me, she had a dead bead on the one making its slow way up the dusty track.

  ‘You have to hit it in the head. Maybe more than once. Pretty big head on those arrows, so should do some damage. Wait until he is closer, you want to make every shot-’

  She loosed her arrow and the shaft burst through the evols skull, shattering it like a rotten egg.

  ‘...count,’ I finished.

  Else put another arrow on the string and let it sit easy.

  Out on the line the fence gave way. Evols tumbled forward, the ones in front fell and those pressing from behind walked right over them, trampling the fallen in a slow motion stampede.

  They came on up the driveway. A stinking fetid line of rotten carcasses with exposed bones bleached by the sun and gleaming where flesh had been shorn away. Out here when evols went feral, they went all the way.

  ‘Don’t fire again, let them go around us.’ We waited up there while the sun beat down on us and the sweat dripped in my eyes. Behind us, in the shade of the chapel entrance the sisters stood with bowed heads praying in silence.

  The first line of evols reached the wall. Ferals are stupid. They will walk until they hit something and then kind of bounce off and walk in a different direction. These ones shuffled right up to the white brick wall, and then to my surprise they looked up. I pulled Else back from the edge of the wall, my hands shaking.

  ‘They looked up?’ I said not quite believing it.

  ‘So?’ Else was straining to peer over and down at them again.

  ‘So they’re ferals. They should be stupider than a box of rocks. They should just shuffle on round the wall and stumble off across the paddocks and out of here.’

  Else got up and looked over the wall. ‘Whole lot of them now, all standing there, looking up at me,’ she reported.

  I stood up on the truck roof again and looked for myself. More dead were arriving all the time. Each one of them reached the wall and then lifted their heads, not looking blankly into the sky, but twisting their necks until their gaze fixed on us.

  We stood, staring at each other, the dead, Else and me. No one moved, nothing was said, it just seemed weird until Else drew back on the bow string.

  ‘Fuck you,’ she said and let fly. This arrow tore right through a female’s head. The brain came out in chunks and the evol spun around, knocked off balance by the shot. The zombie woman stumbled, her jaw working until her legs gave way and she slowly sank to the ground and lay still.

  A groaning murmur rippled through the rest of them, a voiceless muttering, a low throaty chanting of unease. They pressed forward, over a hundred evols raising their hands and slapping them against the white brick. The wooden gate to our right shuddered under the sudden assault. Behind us the nuns gasped and prayed louder. Else cycled through arrows, drawing and releasing, taking a zombie out every few seconds.

  I started firing. Corpses broke under the assault. My shots tore off arms, popped heads, and smashed faces. The stink of corpse gases clouded the air like a fog. Sister Mary led the nuns to form up in rows across the courtyard. Evols clambered over the crushed and broken bodies of their brethren to reach with blackened fingers for our warm, pale flesh.

  Else ran out of arrows and slung her bow, I passed her the sword and left her severing any dead hands that reached over the edge while I dropped down and went to check on the gate.

  The nuns were pushing on it, the evols on the other side were rocking back and forth, using their massed weight to slam the gate like a ram and the bar was cracking more each time they threw themselves against it.

  ‘Get everyone inside, for some reason they want in here, and they’re going to do it too!’ I yelled at Sister Mary.

  The nun turned and glared at me. ‘This is God’s land. He will not tolerate these abominations in his house!’

  I bit back on saying something about the chances of God turning up in person and laying his fucking wrath on the dead intent on getting in here to tear us all to pieces being fuck all.

  ‘I heard once that God helps those that help themselves sister, so maybe it’s time we gave him a break, eh?’

  ‘Motherfuckers!’ Else yelled from the top of the truck. The first of the ev
ols were climbing over the wall, Else slashed down with her sword and zombie heads rolled across the compound, eyes rolling and blinking for a moment until the life went out of them.

  ‘Else! Get down here!’ She ignored me, and kept swinging. Zombie parts rained down, gore and dark blood stained the wall and still they came.

  The gate beam broke and the nuns fell back as Sister Mary called on God to protect them and guide these lost souls to a final rest. The dead stumbled through the widening gap and the destruction started in earnest.

  The sisters sang hymns and killed the walking dead with brutal efficiency. They decapitated if they could, and hacked the rest into chunks.

  I snatched up a shovel and crushed a skull with the flat of it. Swinging it like a club until its edge sliced through rotten neck tissue and heads rolled. They kept on coming, those fuckers never quit. They have no reason to stop. They just press on, reaching, tearing and biting. Gaping faces with shattered jaws and eye sockets crawling with flies drinking the foul moisture that weeps from somewhere inside. Their blackened tongues rasped over dead grey teeth ready to bite into the succulence of living meat.

  A young nun fell, her screams choked off when the evols tore her throat out with their fingers. They ripped her apart as if she was a roast chicken. They stuffed chunks of dripping meat into their mouths and gulped them down. Fuck knows how they thought they would digest her. I’ve never seen a zombie take a shit.

  The nuns kept up their singing, voices high and resolute amidst the dust and the moaning of the dead. Faith wasn’t enough to hold the devil at bay though. Soon others were overwhelmed, falling under a seething orgy of hungry dead the rest of us fell back towards the main building.

  ‘Else! Into the chapel!’

  I didn’t know if Else was going to make it, but that girl had a hate on for the dead like nothing I had ever seen. With an animal shriek she threw herself down on them from the roof of the truck. Slicing and hacking, swinging the sword around her head she smashed and cut.

  I waited on the steps, pushing nuns in the door behind me and re-loading the shotgun. A glistening length of steel burst through a shuffling chick, wrenching upwards the blade cut her in two and Else sprang over the body. I raised the shotgun and took out two more reaching for her.