* * *
Quentin woke from the nightmare, grabbed the nearest weapon, and yelled at the empty room. As the soulless eyes faded from memory, he realised he was holding a lamp and lying on a sofa. He was also in an office with the curtains drawn. Why was he in an office? He’d been on the street, waiting for the zombies to reach him, and… and he’d woken up here.
Slowly, Quentin rose and staggered out into a wide, thickly-carpeted hallway.
Someone bustled past him and through a door to the left, so Quentin followed.
The room had once been the mayor’s office. Now it was some sort of hive, with familiar faces performing unfamiliar tasks: the postman manning the phones, the baker drawing a line across a map, his mother bellowing at a radio.
How long had he been asleep? Last he remembered, he and Ian had been alone on the front lines. The sergeant had just got bit, Ian had run toward the horde, the sun had come up, he’d passed out. Now…
Now he was in a room full of people staring at him. Why were they staring? Did they think he’d been bitten? Was there something behind him? A zombie?
“Whassis?” he asked.
“The Patriots for a Free Archi,” the milkman said.
Quentin wanted to ask where the Patriots had been five hours ago, in the dark and the cold. Thinking up the name? Waiting, hoping someone else would clean it up?
“Who’s in charge?” he asked.
“That would be me.”
Quentin spun and there, leaning against the doorway and beaming with those distressingly white teeth, was Jim. He wore a clean, pressed suit, had shaved recently, and looked cockier than ever. Quentin wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that Jim was alive or furious that he’d been off with his Mainland friends instead of helping control the zombies.
“You can put that down now,” he added.
Quentin followed his gaze to the lamp still in his hand. He put it on the table. Maybe that was why everyone was looking at him funny. That or because he was covered in blood and stank of sweat while their hair was neat and their clothes intact.
Jim’s roving eyes found every ear had tuned to their conversation. “It’s a lovely day, apart from all the killing. Let’s take a walk.”
Quentin allowed himself to be led downstairs and outside, past the two new guards and their hunting rifles, and into the sunshine. It had turned into a gorgeous spring day, the sun bright but not hot, the wind light, and the clouds fluffy.
“Jim, what’s going on?” Quentin asked. “Last I remember there wasn’t anyone out there helping us.”
“You can thank Lisa for that. She rounded up the posse.”
“Where is she?”
“Oh, I sent her into the fighting.”
“What?” Quentin asked. Jim hadn’t been out there. He didn’t know how it was. Lisa wouldn’t last ten minutes out there with a shot-up arm. Was he trying to get her killed?
They’d wandered a long way from the council chambers. “The zombies won’t hurt her,” Jim said.
“Oh?” Quentin said. “When did you become the expert on zombies?”
Jim shrugged. “About five minutes before they declared me their saviour.” He surprised Quentin by saying it straight-faced.
“Sure they did.”
Jim seemed unnaturally interested in the trees and sky. Quentin was more worried about threats closer to the ground. Why hadn’t he brought a gun, or an axe or something? At least the lamp. How could Jim be so cavalier, strolling like he didn’t have a care?
“Norman Winslow gave me the grand tour of zombie central,” Jim said.
“Jim, this isn’t the time for pissing about!”
“Good thing I’m not then.” Jim met his eyes for the first time. They were different than the last time Quentin had seen them: clearer, more confident. Hell… but for the colour, they were Lisa’s eyes. Except, well, more dangerous.
“Jim, what happened?” Quentin asked.
“Zombies are only interested in human brains. They won’t harm Lisa.”
“Jim! What happened… with you?”
Jim stopped walking and checked around them. When he was confident they were alone, he said, “I’m a wolf.”
“You mean like Lisa? You become a dog for a few days a month?”
“Same principle.”
“Why?” Quentin tried to keep the disgust from his voice, but there was a lot of it and Jim was good at picking up little clues. Now Jim frowned as if trying to work out what else he might have done.
“Never mind,” Quentin said. “So you’re a werewolf now?”
“Right.” Jim turned around and started back for the council chambers. “The zombies don’t attack us, so Lisa and I have been the early warning system – finding out where the zombies are going to attack and setting up ambushes before they can shuffle there.”
“What if your Mainlanders find her?”
Jim didn’t hesitate, but his voice came out a touch firmer. “They’ll shoot her. But they’ll have to get past all the zombies first.”
Quentin frowned. “You’re using zombies to keep her safe…” It was such a Jim thing to do.
He smiled. “That’s the idea, yup.”
“Your mum…” Quentin said, suddenly remembering. “She was bitten.”
Jim nodded. “I know. You did what you could.”
“You’re okay?”
“She wouldn’t have wanted me to sit around moaning when there was work to do. Besides,” he said, “if anyone’s likely to see her again, it’s me.”
They reached Idryo’s Champion and Jim stopped again. “Now,” he said, “this is important. Right now Archi needs one central authority, one person making all the decisions… and that person is you.”
Quentin blinked. “Me?”
“We can’t find anyone from the southern station and I’m in and out of the hot zone.”
“I’m not a leader.”
“You get on well with people, though, and you’ve fought the zombies. You know what they’re like.”
This was absurd. Jim was the thinker. He should be giving the orders. “What do I know about leading an army?”
Jim shrugged. “What do I know about stopping a prophecy?” He grinned. “That’s the fun.”
Jim peeled away right. Quentin stared after him for a moment, then entered the council chambers and joined the mayhem. He found a pot of tea on a table near the side and poured himself a cup, then examined a map on the wall. There was a double-line of string along Church Street. “What’s happening?” Quentin asked.
“Well,” someone said, “we stopped them from advancing, but we’ve lost five men.”
Quentin waited to hear whether this was in the last five minutes or the last hour, but from the young guy’s expression he guessed it was longer ago than that: long enough for the horror to become determination.
Quentin checked the clock. It was after two p.m. He’d fallen asleep at dawn. Assuming these Patriots had been around then – which they must have, because they’d rescued him from the horde which had been twenty feet away – then they’d been around for eight hours and they’d lost five men? Five men in eight hours? And they were upset with that? “Right,” Quentin said. “How many men do we have left?”
“About four hundred that we can arm.”
Quentin spluttered hot tea all over his face. Four hundred?
“Don’t worry,” his offsider said. “More people want to help, but we’ve run out of guns.”
Bloody hell, four hundred armed men? And more ready and willing? And he was in charge of them?
“There may also be more still trapped in the southern districts.”
“Where are the zombies?” Quentin asked, wiping tea off his face.
“The main community – at least a thousand – are around the city hall to the south-west. There’s others groups, but never more than fifty in any. The hall’s the place to hit if you want to kill them all.”
Quentin drank what was left of his tea.
“We’d never get that far in, even if we entered by boat at the south docks. If there’s people there, uh, maybe Jim can get them out.”
The youth nodded, happy that someone else was taking charge. Quentin studied the map. There were circles that looked like patrol routes, and pins to indicate zombie activity, but mostly he was pleased that they were so organised they had a map.
Piece by piece, they could retake the south. They could pick the zombies off by ones and twos and, as long as they didn’t lose too many men, they’d eventually defeat them.
“Move into this courtyard,” he said, pointing. “Put people on the buildings around here, then move a group in as bait. When the zombies come for them, shoot them from the high perches. It’s a nice wide-open space without only two entrances on the south side. Should be easy enough to take and hold.”
Over by the communications desk there seemed to be some commotion. When Quentin came to see what, everyone looked at him to solve the problem, which wasn’t his intention. “What’s going on?” he asked.
A young woman smiled at him and Quentin smiled back. She was in her early twenties, which meant that when Quentin was finishing high school she was starting primary school, but he chose not to think about that and hoped that she wouldn’t either.
“One of our teams in the west has been overrun,” she said. “There’s more than a hundred undead.”
“Get an emergency team or something out there.” Did they have emergency teams? If not, someone would run off to make one. Quentin took the radio from a smiling girl. “What’s happening?” he said into it.
“There’s too ma—” There was a bang. “I’m on the bloody radio, pop a cork in it!”
“How close to the farms are you?” Quentin asked.
“Right alongside.”
“Find a gate and get in a field, slowly.”
There was a pause. “Uh, slowly, sah?”
“Yes. Wait for them to follow you in, and then climb over the fence and escape. Lock them in after you.”
“Won’t they, rather, climb out?” the man asked.
“Not unless you shoot enough of them to create a ramp. Otherwise they’ll just… bump against the fence and growl.”
“Right-o. Out.”
Quentin placed the radio on the desk and stared at the stunned faces all around him. “Zombies aren’t smart,” he said. “There’s just… lots of them.”
Bovicide, Zombie Diaries, and the Legend of the Brothers Brown Page 58