End Times: Rise of the Undead

by Shane Carrow

  We were carrying all our gear – what little of it we have. Bedrolls, sleeping bags, cooking gear, tinned food. Weapons and ammunition. We didn’t know what Dad might have planned for us, but we didn’t want to leave anything behind.

  We picked our way through the camp in silence, avoiding campfires and the flashlights of soldier patrols. As we drew closer to the fence the occasional searchlight beam would wash over us, chilling me with fear, even though we weren’t doing anything wrong. People walked around with backpacks and gear all the time in the camp, and weapons too. Nobody gave a shit what you were doing as long as you weren’t stealing from anyone or picking a fight.

  I was leading the way, picking my path through the increasingly crowded jumble of tents and shanties towards the barbed-wire limit of no man’s land. The sky was overcast, and the only light came from the constantly wandering searchlights or the glow of campfires.

  “You sure this is the right way?” Matt whispered.

  “Yes.”

  But it was hard to pick the watchtowers apart at night. And I how was I supposed to see Dad anyway? He’d be able to see us, but everything behind the glare of the spotlights was invisible.

  We came to the scrawl of barbed wire, the suddenly empty tracts of dirt, and I felt confident – I could remember the shape of the other tents here, and the Winnebago that had been parked nearby. “It was here,” I whispered. “Right here.”

  Matt shifted uncomfortably, rubbing the strap of his rifle with his thumb. “So now what? What do we do? Yell up at him?”

  “That’s not a good idea,” Ellie said.

  “I wasn’t being… Ow!”

  Something had clipped Matt across the shoulder. Adrenaline flared for a moment, but it was just something that had been thrown at him – something soft, which had then thumped down into the dirt.

  It was a sock, with something inside it. I picked it up and pulled it out. A mobile phone.

  Matt and I met each other’s eyes. We glanced back up at the inscrutable darkness behind the spotlights. “Let’s go,” Matt said.

  And so we went back out through the camp, back towards the secluded lean-to, back to a place where we could have some privacy. Because in a quiet and mostly asleep refugee camp, nothing would attract attention quicker than a phone call. Matt left his phone back in the office in Canning Vale; I lost mine somewhere on our long escape south. Neither of them had worked in weeks anyway, because even if we’d been able to charge them, the networks were no longer providing a signal. I guess the towers didn’t have any electricity either – and beyond that, I had some vague idea about telecom server rooms and centres, which were themselves now unpowered and unstaffed.

  But if Albany still had power, if Albany still had working infrastructure…

  I waited until we were back at the lean-to to pull the phone out of my pocket, and the three of us gathered around its glowing screen like awed cavemen. It was just a Nokia burner, something I would have laughed at if I saw a friend using it two months ago, but suddenly – knowing that in a moment we could speak to our Dad, even though he was on the other side of that terrible barbed wire wall – it seemed like some kind of miracle.

  There was a single text message in the inbox, from an unsaved number:

  Will call you at 12.30 off shift. Not safe to talk otherwise. Do not come near fence again not safe. Love you both

  It was a quarter past twelve. That was the longest fifteen minute wait of my life. When Dad eventually called us, Matt and I both gathered in close to the phone, the glow illuminating our faces in the dark, Ellie looking across from us with a mix of worry and envy.

  “Aaron? Are you there?”

  “It’s me,” I said. “It’s me, I’m here, Matt’s right next to me.”

  “I’m here, Dad,” Matt said urgently. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Oh, God, boys, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I couldn’t get out of the city, they would have shot me, I said I’d come up and find you but I couldn’t do a fucking thing.” He sounded close to tears, and I suddenly realised that I was crying too. “I thought I’d lost you forever. Thank God, thank God.”

  “We’re okay,” Matt said. “We’re okay, Dad, really, it’s not so bad out here. We’ve seen worse. It’s okay now that we’re here. But what do we do? How do we get in there?”

  “You can’t,” he said. “It’s locked up tight, nothing gets in or out. Christ knows what their long term plan is. Maybe they don’t have one. But boys, listen, whatever you do – don’t try to get in. Don’t try swimming or digging or any of that other stupid bullshit people have been trying. Don’t even come near the fence. I’ve seen people shot for nothing. Don’t risk it, just don’t risk it.”

  “We won’t,” I said. “But what do we do, then?”

  “I’m going to try to get out,” he said firmly. “No, listen, don’t argue. Everybody out there thinks it’s paradise in here, but it’s not. We’re basically under siege. Things can’t last and everybody knows it, especially with what’s outside. There’s more people camping outside the fence than living inside it now, and it’s just… look, the point is, we’ll stand a better chance out there than in here.”

  Matt and I glanced at each other. “Dad…” I said. “You haven’t seen what it’s like out here. Not in the camp… I mean further north. Manjimup, and…”

  “Aaron,” Dad said, “whatever it’s like out there, it’s just a matter of time until it’s like that in here. Okay? And I’d rather be far away when push comes to shove. Like I said, things here won’t last.”

  “So what, then?” Matt said. “How are you going to get out?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll think of something. Listen, I can’t talk for long, I have to go…”

  “Dad, wait,” Matt said. “There’s a girl we’re with. Her name is Ellie Rae. R-A-E. She’s our age. Her dad’s name is Geoff Rae and he’s inside Albany somewhere. Conscripted like you, maybe…”

  “12 Innes Street,” Ellie said urgently, shoving her face in close to the phone. “He lives at 12 Innes Street. I-N-N-E-S.”

  “I can try,” Dad said. “But it’s not that easy, we’re not allowed to just move around like that… but I’ll try to find him, all right? No promises. It’s a fucking shambles in here.”

  “He’s got a boat,” Ellie said.

  “What?”

  “A boat. Just a fishing boat, but…”

  “It’s probably been requisitioned. Even if it hadn’t, the harbour’s patrolled. Look, I’ll try to find him, but… you all just stick together, okay? Stay safe. Don’t do anything stupid. Keep the phone turned off, save the battery. I’ll send you text messages. Don’t turn it on too often. Just… please, stay safe out there. I wish I was with you, I wish I could get out there, and I will, I promise I will, but…”

  “Dad,” I said. “We’ll be okay. We made it this far.”

  A pause. “Yeah. I guess you did. I’m proud of you. Just be safe, okay? And take care of each other. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I love you both.”

  “Love you too,” we both said. I hung up the phone, realised my hand was shaking. Matt had screwed up his face, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to stifle tears. Ellie had a hand on his back.

  I turned the phone off and slid it into my pocket. The night around us was dark again now, with just occasional glimpses of stars through the clouds. Insects droning all around us, and from the shanty town came the distant muffled shout or slamming of a car door. Beyond it all the great, shining, bright city of Albany.

  Somewhere on the other side of that fence is our Dad. And he knows where we are, and he’s coming up with a plan. Somehow, some way, everything is going to be okay.

  February 26

  6.00am

  I didn’t think I’d sleep well last night – I was too keyed up after talking to Dad, thinking about what was going to happen next. But I must have slipped off eventually, because I had the strangest dream.

  I have a lot of dreams these
days. Well, I say “dreams” but I mean “nightmares.” I dream about seeing the undead walk past Dad’s bedroom window - the first time we ever saw them. I dream about the car crash. I dream about Pete - poor old Pete. I dream about that awful night in the warehouse in Manjimup, climbing up the gantry from the carnage below. I dream about Liam and his mates, lurking out in the darkness in the bush. I think a lot of it is my brain struggling to cope with it all. Processing it over and over again, because deep down I still can’t believe any of this is really happening.

  Anyway. This wasn’t a dream like that. This felt… so much more solid, so much more intense. But nothing even happened. I was in the snow. I’ve never seen snow in my life, but I knew this was snow, because it was cold and wet and I was slogging through it almost up to my knees. I was in the mountains, somewhere – somewhere in Australia, because the valley was flanked with gum trees, dusted with snow. I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Night, maybe, because I could see the stars. Or I felt like I could see them.

  And I had the most horrible sensation, like I was falling from a great height. I was standing down in the valley but at the same time I was looking at it from far above, and approaching at a sickening speed. And I was cold from the snow, but hot at the same time – like I was burning up all over my body, falling, screaming.

  Then I woke up, sitting bolt upright, half thrashing out of my sleeping bag, breathing heavily. Back at the edge of the refugee camp in Albany, back in the real world. I could see the distant glow of the watchtower searchlights, hear the familiar noise of far-off generators and dogs barking and the occasional shout or call. A camp full of thousands of people never settles down entirely.

  It was nearly dawn; the eastern sky was tinged with grey light. I looked over at Matt and Ellie, asleep together under a blanket on the other pad. Matt was half sitting up as well, looking around, disoriented.

  He looked at me for a moment, then lay back down, rolled over, spooning Ellie with his back to me.

  “Matt,” I said. “Were you dreaming?”

  “Go back to sleep, Aaron,” he whispered, without turning around.

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  I lay back down. Stared up at the fading stars. I can’t sleep. I don’t know what to make of it.

  7.30pm

  I did end up falling asleep again, despite the bizarre dream and the approaching dawn. A dreamless sleep this time, quick and easy. When I woke up in the morning light – shivering cold, on a shitty camp mat, covered in dew and aching in every bone in my body – I felt like I was back down to reality again. Most dreams fade. This one hadn’t, exactly – I still remembered exactly what it felt like – but in the light of day it didn’t seem to matter.

  And when I thought about how we’d spoken with Dad last night, I actually felt happy. I felt optimistic. Even as I looked over at Matt and Ellie sleeping together on the mat on the other side of the campfire ashes, Matt with a protective arm around her, that familiar stab of jealousy couldn’t dampen my mood. I was humming to myself as I started a new fire and set about cutting open a can of spaghetti-o’s with the knife I took from the farmhouse up north. We really do have to find a can opener.

  After breakfast I went into the shanty town to find an unorthodox charging station – I knew I’d seen a couple on the first day, but it took me some time to find one of them again. An enterprising bloke with a bunch of solar cells was charging people actual cash money to use his outlets. Most people found it amusing that he still thought cash was worth anything, but I still had a $10 note in my jeans pocket, so I was pretty happy with it. He even gave me change. I was tempted to throw it away, but hey, if he’s keen for cash then maybe some other people will be. Never throw anything away, not any more.

  I tried accessing the internet – no dice. It looks like they’ve repurposed the towers inside Albany to pick up signals for phone calls and text messages, but not data. Don’t ask me. Not really sure what I would have done with internet anyway. Unless I’d wanted to check a website that happened to have its servers in Albany, Western Australia, it would have come back blank.

  Or maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe that alone could have told us something about the outside world – if I could access my Gmail account, or the Guardian, or the Sydney Morning Herald, then that would let you know that San Francisco or London or Sydney were at least scraping by. Or that some plucky nerds in a data centre somewhere were still holding out against the undead.

  That’s the problem with having a phone again. It’s flared up all these urges that have been instinctive most of my life – that burning expectation to know what’s going on everywhere all of the time. On the walk through the town I kept taking it out of my pocket to look at it, even though I knew there was nothing to see.

  Dad messaged us in the early afternoon, and said he’d call at 7:00. The sun was just sinking below the western hills and we were gathered around the campfire eating stale bread from the Red Cross when the phone buzzed with that familiar old Nokia ringtone.

  It was good to hear his voice again, but he didn’t have much to report. He hadn’t been able to go check on Ellie’s dad’s house, but he said he’d sent a kid with a note, saying how to get in touch with him. “Had to be a bit cryptic about why,” he said. “They don’t like anyone having contact with the refugees. If they found out I’d thrown a phone over the fence I’d be shot.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Matt said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking to us now, then.”

  “Fuck that,” Dad said angrily. “Fuck them and fuck that. They don’t have the right to do this. This is no government, let me tell you that. This is some military coup shit. They’re not going to last, either. They don’t have a right to keep us here like this. Anything could have been happening to you and I would have been sitting here with my thumb up my ass for the last month.”

  I looked at Matt uneasily. You could hear the spitting fury in his voice. I didn’t want him to do anything stupid.

  “Dad, look, it’s okay,” I said. “We made it here fine. Honestly, I’m glad you’re here. The worst thing would have been if we’d made it down here but by then you’d gone back up to Perth. Then we never would have found each other.”

  “Yeah,” Dad said. “No, yeah, you’re right. I just want to be shot of here. I’ll come find you and we’ll get out into the bush, all right? We’ll have to go east. They say there’s a horde coming. Have they been talking about that in the camp?”

  “Yeah…” I said slowly. “I didn’t really give it much credit. People talk about all kinds of shit.”

  They’d been abuzz with it at the charging station, all the other people with their phones and laptops plugged in. A million zombies marching south, so they said. I hadn’t listened to it.

  “It’s not really a horde,” Dad said. “More like… a lot of hordes. Perth, then Bunbury, then Manjimup. Lots of the other evac camps in the Wheatbelt and around Narrogin. The survivors kept coming south towards Albany, and the dead follow the survivors, so it sort of snowballs. They’ve sent recon planes out, I’ve seen the photos. It’s not going to be pretty.”

  Albany Airport – more of an airfield, really – was outside the fence and had been abandoned to the ravages of the refugees. But I’d seen light planes taking off and landing from inside; they must have cleared a stretch of highway or something. “How far away are they?” I asked, suddenly nervous, remembering the uptick in distant gunfire I’d been hearing during the day lately, as bush patrols came across errant zombies.

  “Hard to say. The outliers will show up first. State government’s begging the Air Force for bombing runs, but we’re not really sure how much of the Air Force is left anymore. Maybe most of them went off to Darwin or Christmas Island or wherever the federal government fucked off to. Just keep your eyes and your ears open, okay? I’ll call you again tomorrow.”

  The sun’s gone down now. Nothing beyond our campfire but the darkness. I thought maybe w
e should move closer into the camp, but Matt doesn’t like the idea of that. I don’t either, really. We have a watch sorted out, with me up first, and we’ll easily hear any stray zombies coming across the fields towards us.

  And if a horde does come, it won’t really matter where in the camp we are.

  February 27

  I was stoking the campfire for breakfast this morning when I heard the crackle of gunfire. That was nothing new – there are more and more zombies trickling out of the bushland these days, and the surviving soldiers in the camp are constantly patrolling the northern perimeter and putting them down.

  But this gunfire was coming from the south. From Albany.

  We were too far to see it, but I heard later that a bunch of people had tried to breach the fence. Maybe with most of the soldiers in the camp now off in the bush on patrol duty, they got cocky. Maybe they’d thought they could get over the fence in numbers. Some people said nobody had been killed, that it was just warning shots and some injuries. Other people said the death toll was close to a hundred. I didn’t really feel like going in closer to the fence to find out where the truth lay.

  Dad texted us and said he wanted to call urgently; I guess it was a warning, and he didn’t want to set off a ringtone while we were wandering through the camp. As it happened I was sitting at the lean-to by myself, while Matt and Ellie were getting food. “Dad?” I asked, a sick feeling in my stomach as I heard more gunshots coming from the fence. “What’s going on?”

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “You and Matt? And Ellie? You weren’t by the fence?”

  “No,” I said. “Matt and Ellie are at the Red Cross vans but that’s not anywhere near it. I can hear the gunshots. What’s going on?”

  “People are getting panicky, I guess,” Dad said. “They think this horde’s coming and they’re getting scared. A group tried to get over the fence this morning – that hasn’t happened in weeks. Promise me you won’t go anywhere near it, okay?”