Useless Bastard

by Hooke, A. J. A.

  There wasn't anything here that Dave was in urgent need of, but as he expanded his camp on the roof of the supermarket he'll no doubt loot this particular store extensively. One item that really did catch his attention was a foldable stretcher. This was a simple bed with a collapsable aluminium frame with a canvas cover.

  Dave had a padded roll that he could sleep on but this stretcher would lift him a solid thirty or so centimetres above the floor of the roof hut. Sleeping ground level was a bit rough and a bit close to the bug level for Dave's comfort. The stretcher surprised Dave by being very light weight, but Dave would have still somehow lugged it back to his roof base even if it had been much heavier. It was that much of a great find.

  A bit more exploration and Dave found a portable barbecue that he tagged for latter retrieval. There was also a small gas burner that Dave picked up, noting to himself that he'll need to get some more gas cylinders at a latter time. Gas cylinders didn't seem like a particularly long term solution but it could make a decent stop gap solution - he just had to be careful to not get addicted to the convenience of using gas.

  Dave's arms were reasonably full so he decided to return to the supermarket roof top. He left the clothing store and made his way across the defensive walls to the supermarket doors. With his new equipment, Dave had found it a fiddly process to get over the walls about the intersection which convinced him further that he'd really have to find a better solution to just scrambling over them each time.

  He entered the supermarket, being careful to close the door behind him. He walked to the supermarket's storage room and ferried the gas burner and camp bed up the ladder and onto the roof. Dave got out onto the roof and walked over to the hut to inspect its insides. Dave had done a thorough job at cleaning the insides of the hut as it looked very clean but was still moist.

  Dave looked up at the clear sky. At least his luck with the weather was holding out as it was looking like he'd be spending another night sleeping outside on a roof. With the idea of sleeping occurring to him, Dave picked up the camp bed and spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to deploy it. He had never used one before so he was a little confused at first.

  Once the bed was unfolded he placed it against the hut's wall where the door was positioned. He was still outside but the hut wall should provide a bit of shelter through the night. He then went to his back pack, untied his bed roll and unrolled it onto the camp bed for that extra padding and insulation. The weather was fine now, but if it was chilly then Dave was certain that he'd feel the cold through the canvas cover of the camp bed.

  Dave returned to his backpack and got his sleeping bag which he placed on top of his make-shift bed. It wasn't a great bed, but compared to sleeping on a hard roof top it was fairly luxurious in Dave's opinion. It's amazing how one's expectations can be changed by the direness of the circumstances.

  It was getting late in the day but it still wasn't twilight yet. There was time to do some extra tasks quickly but Dave wasn't sure what they should be. To generate some inspiration Dave walked to the edge of the roof and looked over the half-walls. The streets were empty. This made Dave wonder if the blocked roads at the intersection were discouraging the walkers from coming near the area.

  Dave frowned. Wait! Did that mean that the walkers were intelligent enough to understand that there was no access through the defences that blocked the intersection? To have enough memory that the walkers would be aware that they had pathing issues with this intersection was something that bothered Dave.

  For the entirety of this situation Dave had assumed that the walkers were just mindless. There were the talkers that displayed intelligence, and the way that the talkers spoke only emphasised the walkers lack of intelligence. Dave rewound his thinking. What was his procedure for judging intelligence? Was it the ability to make understandable phrases made up of spoken words? Or could intelligence be seen in behaviour?

  Dave had felt that he had been dreadfully blind and that some new way of thinking was right on the edge of being revealed to him. He needed to brainstorm some more on these ideas, so he walked to his backpack, dug about inside and pulled out his notepad and some pens. Before it got dark he needed some time to write down his thoughts and sketch out some plans.

  * * *

  Dave opened his eyes to a sun that was in his eyes.

  "Fuck," said Dave as he realised that he had slept longer than he expected.

  He struggled out of his sleeping bag and sat on the camp bed for a moment to gather himself. Dave really missed coffee. Without coffee it was just too hard and too mentally draining to get started in the morning. Regardless, Dave stood up and thought about having something for breakfast. As he was stretching he heard a scraping noise.

  It was a gravelly rasp that came from the other side of the intersection. Alerted, Dave crouched and jogged to the side to the roof that overlooked the intersection. He slowly peaked over the half-wall and down onto the streets below. A person was climbing up onto the improvised defences.

  From the swearing Dave could tell that it was a living human and not one of the dead. With the person standing on a bus, Dave had a much clearer vision of them. Dave couldn't believe what he was seeing, and he stood up showing himself to the person below.

  "Josh?" called out Dave. "Is that you?"

  Josh lifted his head in an effort to spot Dave's location. "Dave?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, fuck!"

  "There's that."

  There was a moment of awkward grinning. Dave was surprised by how much relief he had felt on seeing Josh.

  "It's dangerous down there," said Dave. "There's a door below me. Wait outside that for a moment. I'll come down and unlock for you. It's safer if we talk up here."

  "Yeah," said Josh in a way that left a lot unsaid.

  Dave, forgetting his breakfast, jogged to the hatch in the roof, opened it and climbed down to the storage room. He jogged to the front of the supermarket and waved to Josh who was just jumping down from the southern defensive wall. Dave unlocked and opened the store door.

  "Come in."

  "Thanks."

  "Just this way," said Dave closing the supermarket door and locking. Dave walked back to the storage room area and pointed up the ladder. "I'm just up here. I was about to have breakfast. Would you want to join me?"

  "I ate something before, but I'm a bit parched."

  "I've only got water," said Dave as he climbed up the ladder and onto the roof.

  "That's better than nothing and I'll be glad to have it."

  Josh had followed Dave up on the roof and was looking around.

  "It's not much," said Dave gesturing about the roof. "I only just got here and I'm still in the process of starting to get set up."

  "Are you planning on being here for a while?"

  Dave nodded and walked to the hut and pointed inside. "Yesterday I carted a tonne of water from a nearby river and scrubbed the hell out of this hut. I'm such a damn sponge that I ended up exhausted and sleeping in today. But I'm hoping that if we have a clear day today then I'll be able to move in and living inside will make it a more comfortable place than just living outside in the elements."

  "It's not a mansion," said Josh grinning.

  "But at least it's not on the ground. So far I've found that just being one floor above ground level is safe enough."

  "You look like you have a plan."

  "I do. But I'll tell you latter. I'm still sort of putting it together. If you stay for a day or so, I'd like the chance to bounce my thoughts off someone."

  For a few moments Josh was quiet. "Well, I don't have a real plan. I was kind of hoping that we just hang out."

  Dave could see that a lot had happened to Josh. "Sure. But I might just rope you into my plans."

  "Ha," said Josh with what looked like an uncomfortable bravado. "Bring it on. I hope it's not dangerous."

  "It could be."

  "Fuck me."

  "But let's not talk about my plans for now. I've
not had breakfast so you'll have to excuse me while I dig into something."

  Dave reached into his backpack and pulled out a can of soup, two water bottles and a spoon. He handed a water bottle to Josh.

  "Thanks. I'm dry as hell after sprinting here."

  "Why did you run here of all places?"

  "I wasn't running. That wasn't the best choice of words. I was riding a bike as fast as I could so that I could catch up with you."

  "Huh. I don't get it. How did you know that I was here?"

  "Until recently I didn't. Then yesterday I came across a group of people who were living on top of a big shopping centre back east. And to my surprise they not only knew you but told me what direction you went. I rode my bike at a mad pace until I ran into that stuff out there. I was trying to figure out how to get around it when you called out."

  "How were they?" asked Dave even though it was only a few days since he had been at the shopping centre. It was a sign of the times. So much could change so quickly in almost no time at all.

  "They were in surprisingly good spirits. Apparently you had worked some sort of miracle upon them. There's a Justin who thinks that if you hadn't arrived when you did that they would probably be all dead."

  Dave was silent for a moment. "Maybe I did turn things around for them, but with things the way they are it's a miracle that anyone is alive."

  "That's a grim outlook."

  "Living in fantasy means dying in reality. We have to face some harsh truths, no matter how disturbing, in order to find a way forward."

  "And what are those truths?"

  "That's what my plans are about. But that's for the future. I'd like to know what happened to you. That's if you're okay with talking about it."

  "Yeah," said Josh furrowing his brow. "I'll talk about it, but I'm not going to be okay with it."

  "If you don't mind me eating while you talk, I'll listen."

  * * *

  Dave opened a can of soup, grabbed a spoon and a bottle of water, and walked over to the edge of the roof. He placed the bottle of water onto the top of the half wall that framed the roof. As Josh joined Dave, Josh took a drink of water from the bottle that he carried and looked out over the intersection below.

  "Nothing like a warm drink of water for refreshment," said Josh.

  "Sorry about that. I'll have to come up with some sort of cooler system."

  "I was joking. I appreciate the fluids."

  "I'm not joking. I hadn't thought about getting something like a mini-fridge up here, but it's a great idea."

  "There's no power."

  "We'll have to look into solar panels and a battery."

  "Do you know how to set that up?"

  "I don't know how to set anything up. It's frustrating to see how many basic things that I can't do."

  "It's probably not a good idea anyway. Don't fridges have motors in them? That might be a bit noisy."

  "Good point. I'm thinking of expanding the defences around here so that this building would still be safe even with something noisy. In fact I might want to encourage a bit of noise."

  Josh glared at Dave. "You want to attract shitters?"

  "You still call them 'shitters'."

  "What else should you call them?"

  "There seems to be three types. What you call 'shitters' I now call 'walkers'."

  "I'm starting to get a hint of what you are thinking. You have more to your plan than you're letting on."

  "Sorry about changing the topic so suddenly, but do you feel up to telling me what happened when we went our seperate ways?"

  Josh took a swig from his water bottle. "I wish this water was something more substantial."

  "I remember what you said about your grandmother. With you here then the story can't be a pleasant one. If you want to talk then I'm all ears."

  The conversation paused for a moment. Josh sloshed the remains of the water in his water bottle while Dave spooned some cold soup into his mouth.

  "Okay then," said Josh. "Do you remember some clown who made a hell of a racket with a car or something?"

  "Yep. It certainly caught the attention of the walkers."

  "Yeah. We used that as a chance to escape the city."

  "I took the highway directly west."

  "And I went north. It was really spooky. The streets were clear, but I could look into many of the buildings as I walked by them. I didn't see one building that wasn't a complete deathtrap."

  "It's strange. The walkers don't seem particularly smart, but they quickly got into all the buildings."

  "And yet they can't even climb. Every now and then I'd come across a few walkers and I'd climb onto the top of a bus or truck, lie down and wait a few minutes. They seem to forget that I was there and wander off."

  "If you were heading north then you would have had to have crossed the bridge. What was that like?"

  "Honestly, I was really scared about that. I dreaded getting to the bridge and seeing it crowded with the dead. Instead it was empty. There were empty vehicles scattered about, but nothing else. The emptiness was creepy in its own way. I kept thinking that stuff would jump out at me and kill me."

  "I must have been in shock because I was oddly detached from what I was seeing. I was probably seeing something similar to you but I seemed to have no emotional attachment to it."

  Josh nodded. "Think about what we had seen. People just started eating each and the dead would stand up and walk about. How can your brain not be messed up from that."

  "I worry a bit that I might be still crazy."

  "We're both alive. Maybe crazy is a usable strategy."

  "Let's get back to your story. That's a long bridge. It must have taken a long time walking over it."

  "Actually I did something really stupid. I found a motorbike that I could get started and rode it most of the way home."

  "It was safe riding a motorbike? That makes no sense. A car attracts attention. A motorbike doesn't."

  "A motorbike does attract attention. Lot's of it. I was about a block from home when I stopped riding the bike and ran from it. I left the engine on and it pulled a lot of walkers to it. While they were distracted I got myself home."

  "I was terrified about entering any enclosed space. I can't imagine what it was like to actually go fully into a building."

  "Same here. But my grandmother lived in the building. I had to really psyche myself up before I could dash in. I was just about to push open the doors into the apartment when I notice a large crowd of walkers in the ground floor foyer. I was trying to think of a way to lure them out when I saw my grandmother."

  "Fuck."

  "I had no idea why she was in the foyer, but she was clearly one of them. I can't remember how long I stood there. Some of them noticed me and just stared at me through the glass doors. I'm guessing that the doors were locked and they were trapped inside or else I wouldn't be here."

  "You clearly loved her. You don't have to explain yourself."

  "Maybe I sort of have to. Afterwards I found a liquor store. I locked myself inside and drank myself unconscious. I don't know how many days I drank like that. But I was a fucking train wreck when I sobered up after a bit. I had puked on myself and I even pissed myself."

  Dave avoided making any of the obvious jokes, as he could clearly see the real topic that was being discussed. "Makes sense to me. Sometimes you got to do something like that to help the brain cope."

  "At the back of the liquor store was a staff room. There was a toilet and sink that I used to clean myself."

  "You had water?" asked Dave surprised.

  "It spluttered a bit and it was stupidly cold."

  "I noticed the water failed almost right after the power failed."

  "I noticed that the power was out, so I guess that it was odd that the water was flowing. Not like there was any power to run the pumps or whatever is needed to push the water around. Anyway, it was while cleaning myself that I thought of you. I quickly decided that I'd try and find you and join up
with you."

  "That was a chancy option. I was surprised to see you."

  "You told me that you wanted to head west, and the only real way was by the highway. I just had to get across the river again and get to the highway that I believed that you were on and then head west."

  "The chance of being on the road at the same time was a fluke. I could have been easily not been on the highway and I often wasn't."

  "I borrowed some clothes from a locker in the staff room but they were an uncomfortable staff uniform. There was a clothing store nearby where I went to grab some better clothes. On the street I found a bicycle. I thought that would be a lot quieter than a motorbike, and it seemed to be the case. I then pedalled as fast as I could to the highway before turning west."

  "I'm still surprised that you found me."

  "Actually I found some people at a shopping centre. They had meet you and told me where you had gone. I was right on your tail."

  "Incredible. I had worked really hard yesterday and was exhausted. Had I slept in just a few more minutes you would have went right by."

  "Well. I'm here."

  "That you are," said Dave putting down his now empty can of soup on the half-height wall. He licked the spoon clean and placed it next to the empty soup can. Dave picked up his bottle of water, opened it and took a big drink. "And I really appreciate it. I've got plans and I doubt that I could do it all myself."

  "Sounds like a lot of work."

  "Maybe it is, but it will be dangerous. Are you still up to it?"

  "Is it important?"

  "All through my life I've done pointless things and believed that I was doing shit that matters. I was just deluded. This time it feels right. I don't know how exactly this is going to go. But it's the only path I have."

  Josh nodded. "Okay then. Let's make this happen. It's not like we've got anything else to do."