Walking in total silence, we followed the road past several collisions, one of which still had a few Dead wandering around it, but Junior and I made short work of those. Again, little to scavenge from these wrecks, and not one would turn over. I made the observation that we seemed to make better time now that we could simply walk around these wrecks, rather than have to move them off the road to make way for our bus, and everybody laughed out loud. Junior pointed out at that time that he particularly enjoyed not having to siphon petrol out of random cars anymore, resulting in another gale of chuckling from everyone.
evening
We found another car wreck this evening, this one free of Dead, and Living, and amazingly, two of the three cars involved still had all of their windows, so we figured it was a good place to hole up for the night. No way were we going to walk through the night, after all. Apocalypse Girl, The Colonel and I shared one car, the others crowded into the other.
“This is what I was afraid of.” The Colonel began. “You've surely noticed the change in weather, I am pretty sure that signifies the beginning of a nuclear winter.” Apocalypse Girl suggested that it was the Dead that had been burned, but it was dismissed once again. “No, a lot of cities worldwide were nuked to halt the spread, but by that time it was already far too late.”
After that, nobody spoke. I don't think any of the three of us slept either.
January 29th Year 1 A.Z.
morning
This morning's breakfast consisted entirely of baked beans, which was a nice change from salted beef, except for the fact that there was no more salted beef. It had blown up along with the bus, and Archer. Maybe we would get lucky and find a kangaroo or two to shoot. That at least would provide fresh meat.
There was still absolutely no sign whatsoever of our pursuers. This made me suspect that they had actually been following the noise of the bus, not necessarily us ourselves. Because of this suspicion I asked everyone if they were willing to hang around for the rest of the day, just to make sure there were no Dead chasing us anymore. The Twin volunteered to scout behind us, just to be completely certain. I thanked her for doing it, and off she went, bow in hand.
noon
The sun high above the heavy clouds, I reasoned that The Twin was likely turning around about now, and we would probably see her around dusk. I was starting to feel apprehensive about sending her out on her own, but The Colonel assured me she was fit for the task. I nodded, but my concern was no less. A cold wind rose from the south, and I shivered. We needed warmer clothing. Everything that had been among the luggage of the original passengers of the Greyhound was meant for an Australian summer, not whatever this was. I was sure The Colonel was at least partly right, there would have been many nations incinerating entire cities in order to contain this kind of infection. On the other hand, the incineration of the Dead itself caused many problems, of that I was certain.
Apocalypse Girl's bandage needed replacing, so I attended to that while we waited. She was clearly concerned for The Twin's welfare also. She barely flinched when I poked at her wound, and just sighed when I washed it clean. As I wound the bandage around her injury she asked me if I thought there was any chance of us surviving much longer, or at all, for that matter. I replied that if I didn't think we did, I would have just thrown myself off of the roof of the hotel on the first night, or eaten a bullet since then. She smiled at that, and thanked me. She asked just how much longer she would have to wear that fucking mummy wrapping, and I laughingly asked her if she really had more of an issue with that than the staples in her flesh. In all seriousness she simply said that they were holding her arm together, so they could stay as long as they were needed. But they fucking itched like crazy!
evening
The Twin returned just as we began setting up the campfire to boil up some canned glorp or other. She was smiling from ear to ear. There had been absolutely no sign at all of any Dead all the way up until noon, which had been when she turned around. I proposed my idea that the Dead had been following the sound of the bus rather than its sight. The Colonel agreed that this was likely that they had associated the engine noises with a potential food source. She went further to say that in her experience, they relied on scent a lot as well. The smell of blood attracted the Dead as it would a shark, she told us, making certain we knew just how vital it was to keep Apocalypse Girl's wound clean and bandaged.
We stayed in the cars for another night, this time The Twin joining Apocalypse Girl and I. She was far less disturbing company that The Colonel, considering she was quite willing to talk about other things than the probability of nuclear winter. Instead we talked about how fucking wonderful it felt to not have to worry about several hundred Dead cannibals following our every move. “As long as we don't attract any more for a while, we should be alright,” Apocalypse Girl pointed out. “And can find somewhere else we can defend and hole up in permanently, like the commune.”
“I thought you were in a hurry to head to Canberra?” I asked her. She smiled and replied that she wasn't really in that much of a hurry to run into a nest of politicians, regardless of the probability that most of them were quite Dead by now. She went on to say that she had only suggested that we head there so that we are going somewhere. Going somewhere, doing something, having some task to complete, that would, she had hoped, give us something more to strive for.
“In that case I think it's an even worse idea than when you first suggested it,” I told her, “but fuck me, it worked though. A lot of us are still alive thanks to you, you know. Hell, we would never have found the commune if not for your 'head to the east' fixation!”
“Which would have meant the first we knew about it might have been when a mob of sex-starved ex prisoners overrun us, if we hadn't been eaten by then.” The Twin said. “So I say we just keep this little discussion to ourselves, and keep on heading the way we're going. I reckon we're doing alright, thanks to you two.”
We relaxed as much as we were able to in the cramped confines of the car. As I am writing this, Apocalypse Girl is snoring away in the drivers seat, blissfully unaware of the world. Time to get some real sleep, at last!
January 30th Year 1 A.Z.
morning
Secure these cars might have been, comfortable they were not. My neck had cramped up something fierce during the night, and now I was having issues with turning my head to the left. Two nights in that position was more than enough, so we resolved to continue our long march after another breakfast of baked beans. Hopefully we will find a town soon, or at least a service station, somewhere we can replenish our dwindling supplies.
The Colonel was already waiting for us to prepare for the journey, had even gone to the effort of checking our weapons to see they were in good working order and gathered together all of our backpacks. We left nothing behind us as we went on our way.
noon
Stopped for a break, not really having lunch, as we decided to ration our supplies. Two meals a day is all we are getting right now. My head agrees with this logic, but my stomach wants me to commit a bloody mutiny. Except for the fact that I was the one to first suggest rationing in the first place. Damn clouds are getting darker by the day, don't know what is up with that. Fucking hell, time to move on already.
mid-afternoon
Found a small town, not unlike the one where we picked up Copper, only this one had been overrun by the Dead. Only about ten of them, but more than enough for the few residents of this tiny village in the middle of nowhere. Junior, Biker and I went around making sure the Dead were no more threat to anybody, while Copper and The Colonel gathered the badly needed supplies from the local shop. They came out beaming, as they had found a pair of huge glass jars that were full of beef jerky, as well as more canned goods. Food was now far less of a problem for us.
Having thoroughly searched through the entire town, what little there was of it, we decided on staying at least for tonight, as there was a house with beds enough for all of us, providing we keep a
watch out, and double up in the beds. Considering these were the first beds we had seen since leaving the commune we didn't mind that in the slightest.
The really beautiful part of this tiny town was the razor Junior found in the bathroom, and the bath itself. There was no running hot water, but the prospect of a warm bath kept the majority of us heating water for the rest until late into the night. When I tumbled into the bed that I shared with Apocalypse Girl, I was clean, and the beard that I had been cultivating had been shaved off.
January 31st Year 1 A.Z.
morning
I awoke from possibly the most comfortable sleep I had ever had, feeling warm and safe. That lasted only long enough for me to remember the events of the last month. It seemed, at first, as though the memories were no more than a bad dream, but then I saw the bandage on Apocalypse Girl's arm, and the reality of it all hit home, hard.
We ate our breakfast together, and discussed our next move. The weather had been getting steadily colder over the last couple of days, but we found some warm clothes, jeans, jackets and the like that would both protect and keep us warm. Apocalypse Girl's arm was healing nicely, and the decision before us was a simple one, stay here or move on.
After some debate, we eventually decided on moving onwards. The road to the east was free and clear, and we had found a roadmap in the Ute sitting in the driveway. Apocalypse Girl plugged her mobile charger into the Ute's cigarette lighter and grinned like a little girl when it lit up, indicating the charging had begun. Soon we would have news of the world.
noon
The news was indeed grim. Apocalypse Girl began scouring the internet. There were a few videos showing panicked people making last messages for their loved ones, the odd message telling survivors to go for the head. Nothing we didn't know on that side of things. However, The Colonel had been proven correct. There had been seven cities destroyed by nuclear fire in the name of quarantine. New York had been the first, followed by London, Beijing, Paris, Moscow, New Delhi and finally Tokyo. There was no other news of world events, so she checked the social networking sites. The only status updates she could find involved people saying that they had been bitten, or that they had watched their entire families torn to pieces. Several suicide notes. Apocalypse Girl's eyes began to well with tears, and she moved to throw the phone away. I caught her arm, shaking my head. It would still be useful, I told her, and that she needed to control her emotions for all of our sakes. She nodded, and put the phone away.
evening
We gathered all of our equipment, deciding that we would sleep here overnight once more. We debated the prospects of taking the Ute with us, but the seven of us were safer on foot, for now. No Dead followed us, but there was little point in potentially attracting more of them. We ate a meal of boiled, canned meat pie filling, then prepared for bed.
I was taking one last look at the sun as it set behind the boiling dark grey clouds, when something fell from the sky. Something totally unexpected in this part of the world, at this time of year especially.
It was snowing!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Rowlands is the author of a moderately successful Zombie survival handbook, and is currently working on more fiction. Hey, maybe you can even read that when he is finished? Wouldn't that be awesome?
Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 1): January Page 11