Useless Bastard

by Hooke, A. J. A.

  Dave got off his bike and pushed it into the driveway of the apartment. Doubting that anyone would steal it, Dave left the bike resting against a wall with eight post boxes. Dave frowned while looking at the post boxes. If he could see four apartments at the front - two on the ground floor and two on the top floor - then there must be more apartments at the back.

  Near the mail boxes was an area where the apartment's garbage bins were stored. Behind the bins was a gate. Dave approached the gate and gave it a push. Nothing happened. There was a hole through which Dave could see a latch. "Is it locked?" Dave asked himself while slipping his hand through the hole and fiddling with the latch.

  For a moment Dave had a terrifying moment where he imagined some monster on the other side of the gate grabbing his hand. He quickly pulled his hand out and froze. He carefully listened and tried to peek through the access hole in the gate. Reassured that there was no cause for his jumpiness, Dave reached back through the hole and fiddled with the latch again. It wasn't locked. Releasing the latch, the gate was free to open.

  Dave stared down the path that went along the side of the apartment. He listened for any sound. Dave stepped through the gate and gently let the gate close and re-latch behind him. Dave wasn't happy about blocking his path of retreat but the gate was spring loaded and was going to close even if he didn't want it.

  He walked down the path, looking all about. He reached a small back yard that only had enough space for some clotheslines. Dave began inspecting the back of the apartment buildings. There were a further four apartments at the back of the building that mirrored those at the front. All the apartments had large windows facing out onto the backyard. Every window was covered with curtains.

  Dave wanted to reach the second floor without going through the building if possible. But thankfully the backyard area was more decorative than the front and there was a stepped garden on the fence opposite to the side of the yard to the path where Dave had first arrived. Climbing up onto the garden, Dave found that the top of the second floor balcony wall reached the middle of his chest. Dave removed his backpack and dropped it onto the balcony. It required little effort to climb from the garden and up onto the balcony. Dave stared at the rear door of the apartment who's balcony he now stood on.

  There was a slight gap in the curtain that let Dave inspect the room beyond. His vision was entirely clear, yet he could see nothing inside. He tried to open the door but it was locked. Dave stepped back from the door and walked to the partition between the top two balconies. It wasn't the most security-minded partition and Dave had no problem clambering around it to get onto the other balcony.

  This time Dave could find a larger gap in the curtains which gave him a clearer view inside. He tried to open the balcony door only to find that this door was also locked. Dave frowned. Though this building wasn't built with security in mind, the balcony doors were solidly made. Dave didn't think that he could force the door open easily. Kneeling down, Dave inspected the door lock. He wasn't a locksmith but the door latch didn't seem like something that he could easily jigger his way through.

  "Fuck!"

  Dave turned around and looked into the backyard of the apartment. Besides the stepped garden and the clotheslines there was nothing that he could see that was useful. Frustrated, Dave looked up and looked over the backs of the other buildings that neighboured the apartment where Dave was. He spotted what looked like a tool shed in the yard directly behind the apartment's yard. With a plan, Dave climbed back around the partition to the first balcony that he tried. He jumped over to the stepped garden and jogged over to the back fence. It wasn't a particularly tall fence and Dave found that he could easily grab the top of it and drag himself over.

  Dave approached the small tool shed and found it open. Inside there was a lawn mower and a tool rack on the wall. Dave approached the tools and grabbed a large screw driver, a hammer, a small axe and a crowbar. Dave nodded to himself in satisfaction as he returned to the fence. He dropped the tools over the fence and onto the lawn of the apartment building before climbing after them.

  Dave regathered the tools and used the stepped garden to get back to the first balcony where he had left his backpack. He left the tools near the backpack, while he kept the crowbar and wedged it into the slight gap in the balcony door near to the door's latch. Dave had thought that it would take a lot of strength to break through the door and though he tensed up he was surprised when the door latch bent and came apart. Apparently security really had been a secondary consideration when building this apartment, and only looked tough.

  Dave put the crowbar down and picked up the axe. He opened the door fully, pushed the curtains apart and stepped into a lounge room. It was a single bedroom apartment with an open plan in that meant that there were no internal doors. It didn't take long for Dave to walk around the apartment and reassure himself that the place was empty. Although small, the design of the apartment was open and made the place feel bigger than it was.

  And the place came across as really empty. It was hard to find any sign that the place was currently being lived in. There was some basic furniture but the bed had no bedding on it. The fridge was empty. Cupboards and drawers were empty. The place looked new and was only waiting for someone to move in. Dave shrugged and returned to the balcony where he gathered up his tools and backpack. He carried these into the lounge room and placed them next to a fake leather couch.

  There was still a significant amount of time to go before nighttime but there was a lot that Dave needed to do.

  He started by unpacking his backpack, spreading out the contents all over the floor. This would make organising the backpack contents easier.

  Next, Dave gathered up his notepads and pens before sitting on the couch. He spent a few minutes writing some notes. At the top of one page he wrote "DOA", circled it, and wrote "emergency plan" and "military?" next to it. Dave had no memory of such an organisation but at least the presence of a member from that sort of organisation gave Dave the idea that the city wasn't in complete chaos.

  Dave put down his notepad and pen and looked over some of the books that he had picked up in the camping store. There were only a few books but these few highlighted just how little Dave actually knew. Dave's knowledge could only be described as useless and so Dave picked up a book on how to build basic shelters on the basis that survival depended on having good shelter. It was a choice that only proved how little Dave actually understood his current situation.

  But how could there be a future without someway of dealing with the walkers? While they roamed about then it would be impossible to rebuild any form of society. What was a practical way to deal with them? Dave thought back to the DOA member and the rifle they had. Could a rifle be used to clear out the walkers? This was a question that Dave felt was a pointless question as Australia was a country without widespread gun ownership. There's no point asking a question if you can't begin to answer it.

  Dave opened the book on building shelters and begun to read. There was so much that he didn't know and that ignorance clouded his choices and prevented him from making any real plans.

  * * *

  Dave closed the book that he was reading and looked out over the balcony of the apartment that he had broken into. He was very tired from reading. There's just so much that he didn't know that Dave couldn't help but feel a certain element of being pathetic. Dave had spent his life doing his hours at a pointless job that required skills that didn't even matter. In other words he didn't have a damn idea how to do anything important or even vaguely useful.

  Reading about shelters was an eye opening experience to Dave. Many shelters were made of logs gathered from trees. And Dave knew nothing about how to harvest logs from trees. Dave eyed his recently acquired axe and tried to imagine himself cutting down a tree and could only imagine that ending up in a disaster. Learning exposes ignorance.

  When you are an outsider to a field it's very easy to have an overly simplistic way of thinking about it. He t
hought that making something like a shelter would only require tying a few pieces of easily found wood together. But even those few steps of his overly-simplistic view hid thousands of unstated skills that Dave was only just starting to become aware even existed. Dave felt domesticated to the point of being helpless.

  It was getting late. The sun was going down and soon there would soon be no light to do anything.

  Dave scanned the floor where he had spread out the contents of his backpack and picked up a can of soup, a bottle of water and a spoon. He took these out on the balcony and placed them on the top of the balcony wall. He picked up the soup can and pulled the pop top off and tossed the removed part onto the garden below. There was no one around to see his littering.

  Picking up a spoon, Dave began to eat the soup straight from the can. Dave grimaced. Eating this way would become discouraging as hell over time. While eating, Dave looked over the various backyards. He couldn't see any signs of life anywhere. Or at least no human or human-like life. Dave did see some pigeons pecking for seeds in one of the lawns. Other than that the world felt empty.

  So it was a bit odd that Dave didn't feel any sense of loneliness. Having lived shoulder to shoulder in a busy city Dave felt no sadness at the disappearance of all the people. It was a rather startling self-revelation. Dave never pegged himself as a loner. Then he thought about how few deep emotional connections he had made through his life and realised that their loss didn't add up to anything worth mourning about. You can't experience a sense of loss for anything that doesn't exist.

  Finishing the soup, Dave dropped the empty can into the garden. He jumped slightly at the noise and looked about with a startled expression. He listened carefully but heard no sign that anything had noticed. This was odd. Last night at about this time, Dave had noticed a bunch of walkers limping on the streets. Here he saw none.

  Dave walked to the edge of the balcony nearest the fence that ran between the apartment and the house next door. Slowly Dave leaned out and tried to look around to the street at the front of the apartment. He didn't need to lean far to see that there were a few walkers out on the street.

  That made Dave think. So that was the second time that Dave had seen the walkers come out at night. Was there something that the walkers didn't like about the day? pondered Dave. What's more, the walkers were only on the roads and not in the backyards that he could see into. Were they unable to do complex tasks like open doors or gates?

  It was an odd thought to have. When the infection first broke out it happened during the day and there were walkers then. Did the infection just spread when it could and when the area was fully infected then the dead would hide away. And what was the destination that they walked to? These dead didn't come across as particularly intelligent.

  Dave stopped leaning out from the balcony and walked back into the lounge room. There was no running water in the apartment, meaning that there was no means to clean up, so he put the spoon down next to his other eating utensils before picking up his notepad and pen. He'd keep the spoon and just clean it latter when the chance came.

  He wasn't too sure about his observations but he wanted to write them down anyway. Sometimes the best way to organise one's thoughts were to just write them down in their current messy state. Holding everything in one's head often used up valuable mental resources. Once you write something down you can then look at those thoughts that are on paper and generate new thoughts with the freed up braincells.

  There is a limitation to brainstorming - information, and in Dave's case he lacked data. Good hard data about the circumstances that he was in. What was going on? How did it begin? What could be done about it? Dave just had too many questions. Dave felt that he was missing some sort of fundamental knowledge. Maybe if he knew more he'd know which abstractions were the best way to frame his thinking. He wished that the electricity was still on throughout the city so that he could watch TV.

  Dave's only job that he had all his working career had been as a systems analyst. This meant that he could take a system that he was unfamiliar with, break it down, generate abstraction and figure out how to describe it. This was never an easy task and one that required a lot of trial and error. Sometimes the failures can be so continuous as to be completely disheartening. But Dave had done this for a long time. He just believed in his own stubbornness and that if he didn't back down then he would somehow push through to success. Those past successes now just seemed like a dim and impossible dream, leaving Dave with a sense of waste.

  Dave finished taking notes and put the notepad and pen down on the floor. His thoughts were getting wild and he needed to pause. This was a good time to get some sleep. Maybe with a refreshed mind the world would make more sense. He picked up his sleeping bag and unrolled it onto the couch. It had gotten just too dark to read anything without straining. It was still early but there was no way to continue anything meaningful. One might as well get as much rest as one could. Maybe in the future there would be an emergency and there would be no chance to sleep at all for an extended period of time. It is important to take every advantage that's available at the time.

  Dave looked towards the open balcony door. He walked through it and out on the balcony. He stood next the balcony wall nearest the boundary fence before leaning out slightly to peak out towards the road. On the street in front of the apartment he could see the dead dashing about. They really seemed to get faster at night. Was speed the only attribute of the dead that got better at night? Dave wondered if they got stronger as well. If the speed increases were derived from improvements to the walkers' muscles at night, then strength is another obvious improvement that better muscles bring.

  Dave listened. All he could hear were the occasional scuffles as the dead dashed around. Dave tried to focus and improve his listening ability but he heard nothing else. In particular he heard nothing speaking. In a way that was a relief because he was worried that there was something that could talk to the dead. In another way it created a sense of self-doubt as he began to fear that he had imagined the whole talking event.

  At any rate, Dave was happy that he had chosen to camp the night in the rear of an apartment building. This was a good experience.

  Dave looked up at the sky. There weren't any clouds and some stars were starting to appear. It didn't look like it would rain through the night. Dave walked back into the lounge room and gently slid the balcony door almost closed, leaving a finger wide gap to let air through. It was a warm night, so Dave just lay out on the sleeping bag and closed his eyes. He didn't fall immediately to sleep, but he didn't have to wait for long for a dreamless sleep to take him.

  * * *

  It was during the faint light of the pre-dawn that Dave woke up. He stood up and went out onto the balcony to look about. There was nothing dangerous in the backyards that he could see. He then leaned out over the balcony wall so that he could look towards the street. He could only see a solitary walker staggering about. If Dave had noticed a pattern with the walker habits then the streets would soon be empty of them.

  Dave returned to lounge room and picked up a can of soup with a grimace on his face. He gathered up a clean spoon and returned to the balcony where he repeated his eating sequence that he had done last night. As he finished he tossed the rubbish into the stepped garden below him. This time he wasn't too bothered by the slight noises that he made. The coming of day makes the fears of night go away.

  He used a tissue to wipe his spoon clean and dropped the wadded tissue over the edge of the balcony. Dave didn't intend on staying in this apartment for long so he didn't feel bad making a mess. Even so, the habits of civilisation are strong and so he still felt a twinge of guilt every time he littered.

  As he looked down at the rubbish that he had thrown into the stepped garden Dave had an uneasy revelation. If the stepped garden had given Dave an easy way to climb up to the second floor of the apartment then something else could have found it easy climbing up to the second floor as well. Not only that but Da
ve had left the balcony door slightly open all night (not that he could have locked the door as he had throughly broken the lock). Dave was annoyed at how slow he had been at seeing the danger that he had put himself in.

  The sun was starting to rise above the horizon, it was time to go.

  Dave returned to the lounge room and looked over all the stuff that he had spread out on the floor and tried to plan out in his head how to put it into his backpack. Dave had some vague idea that he should probably place the most useful stuff at the top of his bag but at the moment he wasn't too certain what the most useful items actually were. Instead he decided to pack the heavy items like the tools at the bottom and the light items like food and books at the top. It wasn't an optimal way to pack his bag, but experience was the best teacher so for now he just needed do something and not over think it. Dave rolled up his sleeping bag and attached it to the outside of his backpack.

  It didn't take long before he was ready. Dave hefted up the backpack and put it on with a grunt - the tools had really added to the weight of what he had to carry. He went out to the balcony and pointlessly closed the door behind him. Having broken in the day before, the door didn't latch close. He leaned out over the edge of the balcony and peered towards the street. He couldn't see much of the street but he didn't see anything moving on the fragment of the street that he could see. Dave focused on listening for a moment. It was quiet.

  Although heavy Dave's backpack wasn't an impossible burden and he stepped over the balcony wall and dropped with a scrunch onto the top part of the stepped garden. He got off the garden and walked over to the path that went alongside the apartment to its front. Dave looked down that path before deciding that it was clear. After walking down the path Dave stopped at the gate and looked through the hole that one used to reach the latch from the other side. Since Dave couldn't see anything of concern, he lifted the latch and pulled the gate open. While being careful to not let the gate slam noisily behind him, Dave scanned around for trouble. Until he got on the street he had to deal with greatly limited vision.