100 A.Z. (Book 3): The Mountain

by Nelson, Patrick T.

  That was the teaching of The Infinite Modicum Race to Slavery, anyway. This tome, written by one Dav Strombeck, was an unpublished manifesto written in the mid-1990’s by a self-pitying alternative middle school teacher who habitually smoked marijuana. To the Canadians of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, it was the only book worth reading.

  The island’s leader was always named Dav and was always a woman, due to their superiority. Dav’s right hand man was always called Dave, after Strombeck’s birth name before dropping the “E” for artistic reasons.

  Prior to the zombie outbreak only two people had read it, or at least started to. Dav Strombeck’s mom and Dav Strombeck’s soon to be ex-girlfriend. His mom thought it was “weird” and his girlfriend said she “didn’t really get it.” Dav agreed with both those statements. Now, thousands had read his work posthumously. It was the required text for Victoria, the shaping force behind their cultural beliefs, thoughts, and decisions. No one was sure how the people surviving on the island had come across it, much less adopted it as a defining document. No one on the island could remember it having been any other way.

  Despite being a vain, self-satisfied pot head, Strombeck held strong beliefs about everyone else’s faults. His primary rant was about “the idiots,” sometimes also referred to as “the corrupted.” Dav had many scathing things to say about what constituted idiotic behavior – rooting for sports teams, saluting pieces of fabric tied to poles, pooping in bowls of clean water, for example. Some of these things were so esoteric in the post-zombie age as to be lost on the Victorians, but one thing that idiots did that they ought not was clear enough to them.

  “How can the idiots breed? Why, generation after generation, are they allowed to pass their worthless genetic material on? They breed because no one stops them. No one stops them because we are afraid to be mean. When food was harder to obtain, humans weren’t afraid to be mean. Now they’re foolish and deluded. Their ennui has taken over and turned them into walking weakness. If anyone were really strong, really devoted to making the world a better place – they wouldn’t let the idiots breed.”

  A corollary rant went on about the dissipation and worthlessness of modern man and the importance of hardship and struggle in forging truly worthy humans.

  “If Paleo man had been like modern man, he would have died off. If Paleo man had been like modern man, then his only hope – only hope – would have been to call on the power of evolution to lift him out of weakness.” The irony was that Dav spent most of his day sitting; he ate frozen meals, and complained about walking further than the bathroom.

  These two principles eventually spawned the Victorian view on the outbreak. Too many idiots had bred, producing a weak and timid population. When the virus had struck, most people were not equipped with the grit needed to fight and survive. So they too became zombies.

  Many government experiments were done on zombies and humans alike in the early years after the outbreak, and after Dav’s text had surfaced and become widely read. Most were aimed at either reawakening the humanity inside a zombie, or determining if some kind of mental, moral, or physical attributes could act as protection from the virus. All of the experiments were eventually recognized as failures and the program was abandoned.

  In the meantime, however, a robust philosophy had grown up around breeding.

  The brightest Victorian minds devoted years to researching what constituted an “idiot.” Per the text, it was determined that Dav Strombeck had decided everyone was an idiot. It was their conclusion, then, that no one should breed. This was clearly impractical, especially after a wave of influenza wiped out a significant portion of the island’s population. To survive, there needed to be at least some new humans.

  So Victorians created a sub-class of people, called “the select,” who were judged most likely to beget the least idiotic offspring.

  It worked like this: Because of its geographical isolation, Victoria was left relatively unscathed by the outbreak 100 years prior, so many structures remained. Every resident was guaranteed a home by law, and government repair corps conducted regular maintenance to keep structures in tip-top shape. All adults (post-pubescents) were required to live alone, except the “begetters,” who were allowed to co-habit with their breeding partners. Sex was required of them during heavily monitored periods of fertility, but was otherwise frowned upon, although not forbidden.

  Despite several generations’ worth of brainwashing about idiots and breeding, the Victorians were fighting an uphill battle against innate human desires for intimacy, sex, and procreation. Eventually a secret police force was formed, supported by a network of spies and informants, to catch “breeders,” those who weren’t authorized. Only “begetters” were authorized. This ensured that the unworthy didn’t mess things up for everyone. This unique interpretation created a resilient, fierce, and bloodthirsty tribe capable of destroying anything in their path. Or at least they thought.

  “We have a new group of select ready for orientation, Dav. Would you like to teach their class?” Dave inquired.

  “I always…always…always…do. Why would this be any different?”

  “Why, indeed?” Dave responded mildly. Honestly, he was more focused on the day ahead of him. He had his daily game of golf to play. The nail would make it a bear.

  “I love orientation,” Dav gushed, hugging herself gleefully.

  She went to her private dining facility where she had cold beans and dirty water. The first few months of becoming Dav were always the hardest, due to intestinal problems. She had been Dav for almost seven years.

  She looked at the random man sitting in front of her. Thirty years old, pale, nervous. Every day it was someone new. Someone for her to ponder with her eyes. Chosen at random, someone had to sit in front of her as she ate. She stared deep into his soul and saw his need to procreate. It was in every person. It was up to her to decide if he was worthy. If mankind was going to defeat the zombie, procreation must be controlled and the offspring must be parsed out depending on their quality. Maintaining the select was critical to this. Only by humans living for a higher cause could they evolve away from the dominance of the zombie.

  If she were honest, though, Dav thought procreation was disgusting. She had to honor the begetters, though, lest they lose heart and not bear fruit. She couldn’t see it in herself, but she treated the begetters with less respect than scholars thought they deserved. It sent mixed messages.

  She finished her food.

  This man would not be sent north to where the select begetters lived.

  She gave him a smile and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She choked on a mouthful of beans as she laughed at something she’d thought. She imagined what his kids might look like. For some reason that amused her. The mandatory hallucinogens did that to a person. Everything to be like the original Dav.

  Dav stood, fought off a head rush, and walked to a courtyard where a group of illegal breeders were brought before here. They looked at their feet, many were crying, knowing what came next. Soldiers surrounded them, looking grave. Only the gravest looking soldiers with square jaws and steely eyes were chosen for this job.

  Dav wasted no time in speaking.

  “You’ve already shown me with your little actions that I can’t trust you’s! Ha! I just see into your eyes and caught the glimmer. SO LOUD. So tough, I’m always thinking…But hey, you chose to procreate so now you must live that way. You will have a home, a pretty home. Pretty nice. Treat it nice. The men will leave the house in the morning and return eight long hours later. DO NOT COME BACK SOONER!” she shouted. “Do not leave in the morning, men-sies, without drinking the stimulant. The wWomen, you clean. When the man returns, the man is hungry. The mMan needs food. The wWoman cooks food. The mMan eats first – the woman watches. Then the woman eats – the man watches. Both then stand and, go to the room for living.” Dav took a deep breath and itched her oily scalp, catching her breath for the next part. “There’s a box in there, about
two feet wide. It’s called a tellervision. You must sit and look at it three hours every night. Then you must procreate. Enjoy it, if you like. Makes nooooooo difference to me.” She pursed her lips, as if considering something distasteful. “Then, go to beddy-bye. Wake up. Do it all over again.”

  She threw her arm in the air and the breeders were shoved off at gunpoint to a ditch near Dav’s bed. All were lined up, put to their knees, and shot.

  Dav fell to the ground, sitting cross legged. She sighed, and felt in the dirt around her and began scanning her surroundings. She had reason to believe, in her addled way, that tiny little robots were always following her. Tiny robots created before the outbreak, designed as weapons. They crawled in your nose at night and exploded in your brain, killing you. They’d been tracking her the last few years, but never attacked. She wondered why.

  “WHY DON’T THEY ATTACK???” she shouted, still staring at the dirt.

  Dave watched from nearby, once again shocked at her brilliance, her immense wisdom. No time for daydreaming, he thought, he had a tee time to make. He grabbed his bag of old, beat-up golf clubs and gave a whistle to Dav. She stopped searching the dirt and looked up at him.

  “Dave, go. Do the golf. Enjoy.” She beamed at him, then stood. It dawned on her that it was fruitless to wonder when the tiny robots would attack. They had the real power. The power to kill Dav whenever they wanted. No point in worrying about it. That was true wisdom, seeing the final result and not worrying when it came.

  Dave sauntered onto the overgrown golfing green. The grass was knee high. In several places huge trees had fallen across the once pristine fairway. This was why their hundred-year-old clubs were so beat up – the rugged conditions. Although par had changed, the game was still the same.

  Dave gauged the distance to the hole, like he did every day. It wasn’t the original hole, but one created in the midst of the veritable jungle. Spotters stood out in the tall vegetation waiting to locate rogue shots. His solemn crew of five fellow golfers watched silently. He began his back swing and then stopped. Something was wrong. He caught something out of the corner of his eye. A bedraggled, lurching figure struggling through the weeds on the adjacent hole, two hundred yards away. It was heading for the golfers.

  “What the-?” he said. His fellows stepped back, feigning surprised at the sight. Dave detected that this was staged, a prank by his fellow golfers. No one had seen a zombie on Victoria for years! The last, if Dave remembered correctly, was eight years prior when a boat had drifted ashore with zombies aboard. Hints of their story were apparent. They’d left shore healthy and with supplies, but with a bitten individual – why they’d allowed them onboard was unclear. One by one they’d succumbed, suffering some feasting before turning. Dave raised his hand, waving and shouting at the walker. It looked up at him, altering its course.

  “I got it!” Dave called. This was an unexpected treat. Golf grew dull years ago, but it was required. Strombeck had identified it as a “listless activity of the conservative western bourgeois racist class,” the class he had belonged to before his rebirth as Dav. As a symbol of the power and necessity of that rebirth for all mankind, Dave had to play golf, but Dav did not.

  Dave perused his clubs and grabbed a three iron before strolling over to the intruder.

  “You don’t belong here, sir!” Dave shouted, chuckling. His accompanying golfers snigger ed. He stopped and adjusted the grip on his iron before drawing back and clubbing it in the head. It stumbled back from the blow and Dave issued a barrage of swings until it was on the ground with its skull cracked open and Dave’s club was bent in numerous places. He threw the club aside and turned, laughing, to face his companions. They saluted him. Everyone agreed they should call it a day after such a fine performance.

  Dav met with the various township leaders to discuss, scientifically, the current issues of the day. The township leaders merely oversaw subgroups of people, and had no control over the army, cruise missiles, or any other strategic items. This meeting was so the township leaders could bring forth difficult problems for Dav to solve. These were only the problems they couldn’t solve themselves.

  They met in a small building dedicated to the task. Servants brought them tea and light fare. The thirteen township leaders looked at ease.

  The main issue of the day was to determine whether a man writing poetry about breeding should be executed. He wasn’t actually breeding, but he had been deemed corrupted at his interview with Dav, so it was unacceptable behavior.

  “How popular-ish are his poems, do lots of people take many-a-looksies?”

  “I think only a few people read them, none of them are breeders that we know of. These days, who knows. Breeders grow more cunning each day,” a terse, female township leader replied.

  “Are the poems…good?” Dav asked.

  “I am really no judge.”

  “Can…I see one of the little ones? Just a short one.”

  The female township leader handed one over. Dav studied it with a feeling of dread, like she was allowing a plague to enter her mind, but a plague she had to study.

  There was a lot of “thee” and “thou” and “thy” and flowery descriptions, in Dav’s opinion. The language was fairly innocent, relying on metaphor and inference. She scrunched up her nose and put the paper down to look at the township leaders. She shook her head and spoke.

  “I…I don’t necessarily think the references to breeding are the main offense,” she began, articulately and clearly – for her. “I think, I think, maybe that the real offense be the use of farming similes in the writing style. Farming is about growing food, sustaining life, and other beautiful things.” She twirled her hand. “To use a life giving thing to describe breeding – a thing that brings long term death – it corrupts the good thing with the bad thing. That is the true subversive act, here, and he knows he’s doing it! He is doing it on purpose! I can tell, he wants to stir things up! SO. So…The solution/problem solver? I think he must be left alone and allowed to continue his poetry so we gain insight into these stratagems. We can only undermine their stratagems if we can see them. By seeing them we can deal with them. WE CAN’T HIDE, FOLKS. We have to let a part of our mind wander into the enemy’s camp, to think like them, so we can defeat them. That is the scientific method.”

  The township leaders listened intently, nodding.

  “And now…I must go.” Dav stood and exited, leaving multiple orders of business unattended.

  She jogged barefoot to her communication station. She keyed the mike and hummed a soft tune into it. She released the key and awaited a response.

  “Good morning, Dav.” A tinny sounding voice crackled through the speaker.

  “Good morning! How are my favorite men of war?”

  “Ready.”

  “Fine, fine…OH, HOW I LOVE LAUNCH DAYS!”

  “They are for you, Dav.”

  “I know they are.” Dav went on a long ramble describing the birth of launch days and their role throughout history. The man on the other end had difficulty understanding much of it, but knew that was the consequence of his lower intelligence.

  “And that was when we knew, we knew! The Canadian cruise missile program was built out of that. Now, we have the instruments of destruction at our disposal. How fitting is it that we kill with a phallus?” Dav leaned back in her chair and marveled. She wondered if that poet could be trained to write poetry about missiles.

  “Shoot, my friend.”

  “Shooting, ma’am.”

  There was silence on the other end. Dav knew these things took time. She curled on a mat on the floor, suddenly feeling terrified that the whole thing might not work. What if it failed? That would be terrible, she thought. All the responsibility of saving people from the evils of breeding fell on her. Outsiders didn’t know the destruction they caused. Breeding should only be allowed in special cases, when it was controlled by an insightful leader. Someone who could weigh the immediate needs for manpower versus the long-term c
onsequences of more zombies. One had to assume every baby would become a zombie, one day. It was the only responsible way of thinking about these things. Every person she saw, spoke with, loved, would someday be a zombie. No point in getting too attached. Despite decades of relative peace on the island, this was the truth she could accept.

  “What about the fairies…?” she caught herself whispering. She bolted up, looking to see if anyone heard her say it. She was alone, of course. Her secret was that dangerous, though. Dav was not supposed to believe in the forest spirit. She did, though. Science was the only truth, that was fact. Mysticism was wrong.

  “So…wrong…” she almost choked on the words.

  This hadn’t stopped Dav from seeking the forest spirit, though. Long walks through the damp trees and ferns. Hunting for fairies, invisible owls, and horrible spirits hunting for lives to consume. She’d given a part of herself to them, she knew. It was her secret. Those tiny robots must know about it. They followed her. Had they seen? Who were they reporting to? WHY HADN’T they already reported her? She felt scared, and confused.

  She slept. She didn’t know for how long. A voice over the radio woke her.

  “Target hit.”

  Dav sprang from the floor and keyed the mic. “FANTASTICO!”

  She set the mic down and pondered how close she’d been to giving up. So close. Now, though, they’d bought themselves another foothold toward progress.

  There was a knock at the door. She opened it and a zombie was immediately upon her.

  Just Dave helping her stay alert.

  Chapter 9

  “Come here, slowly,” the man closest to Ellie said, his rifle pointed at her. She remembered his name, Hank. The other man looked nervous. Sal stared at them, still confused.