Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 2): February

by Rowlands, Dave

  I knew the leading survivor of the new group was nearing the gate when I heard a barrage of gunfire open up, and the Dead knew there was food nearby because of it too. They surged forward, and Redbeard opened up once more with his twin pistols, attempting to distract at least the Dead closest to us. I pulled my .45 out and joined him, blasting Dead heads to spatterings of flesh and bone and brains. Shoot a couple of Dead, take a couple of steps became my world until, at long last, I stepped down to the bitumen of the compound. The Colonel insisted that the new arrivals remove their outer garments, at the very least, and anything that had been overly soiled by their deception, so that they could be burned. One of them, a feisty young red-headed woman, pointed out they would freeze without clothes, Dead-glorp or no Dead-glorp. I assured them all that there was ample clothing inside, but they might want to take anything out of their pockets that they intended to keep. One guy pulled out his wallet, took a photo from within, then they all proceeded to strip to their underclothes, after which The Colonel marched them all inside. Apocalypse Girl asked them to leave their weapons near the entrance, which they did willingly, though the red-headed girl bitched about it. No guns to speak of, a couple of cricket bats, an iron bar, a crowbar and a sledgehammer, plus a pocket knife so mangled and covered with Dead gore that the owner simply shrugged and flung it away.

  evening

  We ate together, the new group, having freshly showered, shaved and wearing new clean clothes, more than grateful for the meal, our facilities and most of all, saving their arses out there. The Colonel asked them how they had survived so long, apparently they had come from a small mining town not too far to the east of our position, the groups leader and two of his workmates having spent the last few years unearthing gold from the ground. The way his two former colleagues deferred to him gave me the impression that he had possibly been their foreman. Since it had been a bit of a tourist spot they also had in their group the local gift shops owner, and a pair of tourists from Japan, a young married couple, who had come to Australia for their honeymoon, whose English had improved rapidly in the time they had been running from the Dead. The six of them had left the mining town at the same time, though separately, meeting up with one another's groups a couple of klicks out of town.

  They had only met the red-headed girl a little over a week ago, the Firecracker had been on her own the entire time. The iron bar and pocket knife had belonged to her, and she had used them to wicked effect. She had figured out early on that the best way to hide from the Dead was to disguise yourself as one of them. Naturally she discovered that she had to 'change costumes' after the rains had come, but by that time she had found some shelter, enough to keep her warm and dry at least. By the time the others had arrived at her location, an upscale truck stop that had been abandoned by Living and Dead alike, she had eaten all of the available food, and was nearly dead from malnutrition. The Japanese man, amazingly enough, was a doctor, his wife a nurse, and though they spoke little English they were easily able to help Firecracker regain her health, though at their first encounter they had thought her one of the Dead, at least until she spoke.

  Almost as soon as they had finished their tale, Doctor and Nurse, Firecracker, Foreman, Prospector and Miner, and Gift Shop Girl departed for their suites, citing extreme exhaustion. The Colonel, after they had left, suggested that they seemed alright, but that it would still be a good idea to keep an eye on them, at least for a day or two. Unanimously, we agreed, then retired to our own beds. Not too sure about the rest of our crew, but I sure as fuck am totally exhausted myself!

  February 11th Year 1 A.Z.

  morning

  In gratitude for saving their collective bacon, the new arrivals soon began contributing to our communal welfare. Doctor and Nurse were in awe at the sophisticated medical facilities available, Gift Shop Girl was more than willing to help Auntie with the cooking, not to mention looking after The Children. The trio of miners offered to take turns with The Twin, Redbeard and myself at guarding the compound from the Dead, and Firecracker...well, mostly she kept to herself. Doctor had told me that she had been that way since they had met up with her, but then she had been alone since the very beginning. The Colonel took it upon herself to keep an eye on her, in case she proves some kind of threat.

  After breakfast I sat with Smart Girl and Apocalypse Girl in the smaller computer lab. We watched as the three remaining groups of survivors drew ever nearer to our position, the masses of Dead swarming about, dangerously near the Living, yet not quite getting their scent. These remaining three groups clearly had their own methods of survival, or disguise perhaps, something to mask their scent, as the groups of Dead seemed far too close for any of them to hope to survive much longer.

  “Fuck me sideways,” Firecracker announced herself, as she entered the lab. “Is that seriously what was out there after us?” She almost shoved Smart Girl out of the way to get a better look at the screen. “Those red ones, they're more survivors, yeah?” Smart Girl nodded, readjusting her glasses as she glared at Firecracker, unnoticed. “I'd say they're screwed, looking at this, but fuck that's probably what you thought about us, too.”

  Apocalypse Girl said she had pretty much summed it up nicely, but that we had to help her group, and we have to help these ones as well. Firecracker pointed out that they might not be as nice as her group, she had seen and heard things while she was alone. Apocalypse Girl nodded, telling her about the group that had fired on us for no goddamn reason on the road, and the bandits from the prison that had attacked our nice safe little commune in the middle of fucking nowhere. We knew all about how nasty some survivors could get, but we owed it to humanity, what remained of it, to band together and Live for as long as we possibly could. “As long as one Living human remains on this planet, we are saying 'Fuck you!' to the Dead.” Firecracker turned to Apocalypse Girl, grinned at her broadly, then swung her attention back to the screen.

  “Is there anything we can actually do with this thing, or is it just a display?” She asked of Smart Girl, who replied that she wasn't entirely certain, but that it appeared to be a simple display. Firecracker nodded, her brow furrowing in intense concentration. “We can't contact them, but we can still help them, at least. Means sending an armed group out, of course, but they're not gonna get here for at least another couple of days. How are we for guns in this place?” Apocalypse Girl just smiled, showing her teeth in an evil grin. “Okay, then. We have weapons...we certainly have an awesome defensive position here. We need to clear the road completely.”

  noon

  Firecracker led the expedition outside, while Apocalypse Girl saw Doctor about her arm, consisting of The Twin, The Colonel, Redbeard and myself, as well as the three miners, all eight of us with assault rifles and grenades aplenty. The plan was simple, really, we had two days, three at the absolute outside, in which to clear two kilometres of road of the Dead so that if any of the three incoming groups actually managed to make it as far as the compound they would have an easy time of it. The Colonel suggested that we switch to single fire, as there were many times many Dead to deal with, and it was better to be certain of our shots.

  Eight rounds fired, eight Dead fell dead. Again, then again, then once more, and still yet again. The Dead fell easily, yet for each we introduced to the idea of staying still while dead, it seemed as though several more took its place. Every now and then, just for variety, one of us would lob a grenade into the mix, further down the line, sending Dead flying. As we continued our slaughter, the snow began to fall once more, a little heavier this time, it seemed, carpeting the Dead with a thin layer of whitish grey.

  We reloaded when it became necessary to do so, and continued our assault. As they swarmed towards us, we needed to do no more than put them down when they drew near, and put them down we did. The Dead died in droves, falling into heaps of stench-ridden, rotting carcasses. Still they came, only to die at our hands, the barking of gunfire occasionally punctuated with an exploding grenade. We went through
nearly two hundred rounds each in this fashion, over the afternoon, before darkness fell.

  evening

  Apocalypse Girl told me, when we returned inside, that her arm was healing very nicely, according to Doctor, and that The Twins dressings had been more than adequate for the task. She showed me the wound, still slightly swollen, red and angry looking, but mainly to show me that her arms range of motion was almost back to normal. Nurse had, apparently, suggested that she begin lifting weights, but that seemed unlikely to happen. Smart Girl, who had been passing at just that moment, suggested that we follow her into a disused part of the third floor, a hallway with a door at the far end which opened up into a small, yet very comprehensive gymnasium.

  “We really do have everything we could ever need here, don't we?” Apocalypse Girl asked me. I told her that seemed to be the case. She went further to say that after the next three groups arrive we could just lock up the top of the compound and wait it out down here if we wanted to. I looked into her eyes and told her in no uncertain terms that at the very least we were going to try to find Coppers family, consisting of a mother and a sister and the sister's family. Furthermore we should try and find out if anything or anyone survived in Canberra. Any survivors we discovered we would bring back here, naturally, unless they decided they wanted to kill us first.

  At dinner I suggested that, due to the sheer size of this facility, we should put some signs up around the place, since we had been here nearly a week we had barely explored a fraction of the floor we occupied. This was met with general approval, The Children offering to do the work, exploring and sign-writing both, while the eight of us that had gone topside today went up once more on the morrow, for the slaughter of more Dead.

  February 12th Year 1 A.Z.

  morning

  Once more we faced the horde of Dead at our gates, blasting them to pieces. The only difference was that today we were starting much earlier. More hours of relative daylight meant more dead Dead that couldn't threaten the Living that approached. The snowfall was a little lighter than yesterday's, though the temperature was dropping. So focused were we on slaying the Dead before us that we barely registered the approach of Pilot's helicopter until snow was being whipped up around us, rendering visibility almost impossible.

  I bolted up to the helipad, eager to see my friend Junior once more, followed immediately by The Twin and The Colonel. Firecracker and her miners continued the killing, though the sounds of gunfire and grenades was vastly overshadowed by the noise generated by the whirling rotors. Slowly the blades powered down, the door opening and Junior sprung out, followed by Pilot, the pair of them grinning like idiots.

  Pilot reported that of the four possibilities he had thought of, three had shown signs of having once had survivors, one group had moved out already, the other two showed no signs other than blood. The fourth place he had suspected as a likely location was bare of the Living, but the Dead roamed in numbers great enough that they dared not risk a landing. Then there had been two other locations they had to scout, that The Smart Couple had assured Pilot survivors still Lived. They had been right on the money, one was an old army depot, know of by few, visited by fewer. That had been overrun with bandits that had fired on the chopper as soon as they had gotten over their shock.

  The second location, on the other hand, the surviving Living there were friendly, providing us with a radio frequency with which to keep in constant contact with them. They had already taken to calling themselves The Facility, so Pilot, thinking of The Smart Couple, had given our radio callsign as The Think Tank. The Facility, in the caldera of a long dormant volcano, far to the northwest, was already communicating via radio with two other locations, both of which were far out of range of our chopper.

  noon

  Junior joined us at the gate on our after lunch mission of slaughter, and despite the cold and the snow, before long we were sweating. Pilot had gone, along with The Colonel, downstairs to confer with The Smart Couple, while the rest of us continued rendering death unto the Dead. Just as I was getting supremely bored with the whole shooting Dead caper, Pilot came running up to me, asking if I wanted to go for a ride with him. I most certainly did! The Colonel was joining us, waiting at the helipad already, our mission, simply distract the Dead hordes closest to the three newcomer groups and lead them away.

  We flew on a roundabout course to the Dead that were no doubt getting uncomfortably close to the nearest group approaching The Think Tank. Slowly we hovered above them, The Colonel and I taking a few potshots, killing a couple of Dead just to get their attention. Once they realised food was above them, they followed us as we headed away from the Living, drawing the Dead on a course leading behind them. Smart Girl squawked on the choppers radio that everything looks like it's going nicely so far.

  The second group were in danger of attack from two groups of Dead, a smallish one to their southeast, almost directly in their path, and another larger one north of that. Pilot manouevered the helicopter smoothly above the smaller group, only about fifty or so, and we got their attention, moving northwards to join the two Dead hordes together. This worked brilliantly, as the second, larger group seemed absolutely certain that the first group were following food, so they joined up. As one massive tsunami of Dead, we wrangled them further north, for about two hours, before Pilot turned to the east once more, to try and distract the Dead harassing the third and final group. This was the smallest of the four, only three individuals strong. The radio squawked once again, Smart Girl informing us that the Dead from the first encounter were still following in our wake, as were the others. Smart Guy came on the horn next, saying that one of the three down below was reading a much higher temperature than the other two. He suggested that maybe they had been bitten.

  Hovering in position for a moment, Pilot asked The Colonel what exactly she wanted to do about this. I told them that if someone had been bitten and hadn't told the other two, they were fucked, but really, we all knew that.

  “Take her down, we've got to deal with this now. Keep her spinning, though...” The Colonel told him, and he complied, lowering the helicopter smoothly in front of the three startled individuals.

  The Colonel and I jumped out of the chopper, running up to the trio, to discover that they were sitting around a campfire boiling what appeared to be some stew. It smelled terrible, though, but I suppose I was more used to finer cuisine than that which you find on the road these days.

  “Welcome, strangers,” The leader of the three, a big, burly, bearded, bear of a man with a voice to match greeted us. Something tickled in the back of my mind, something was not right here. I could tell The Colonel sensed it as well. “Sit with us, have some stew!”

  We sat with them, across the fire from them, both of us keeping our hands near our weapons. We declined food, as we had eaten not long before we had left, though I had been starting to grow hungry in the chopper. My appetite had swiftly fled once I had smelled their cooking, however. I suddenly hoped I never found out what exactly was in that stew.

  “Have any of you three been bitten, at all?” The Colonel asked bluntly. The three looked around at each other and burst out laughing. I softly told The Colonel that I really did not trust these people, saw her nod slightly in reply.

  “Bitten? Bitten?!?” The gales of laughter returned. “We don't get bit by them, we do the biting!” Bear pointed out the butchered Dead lying a few metres away. “They don't taste half as bad as they smell, do they boys?” The other two men snorted in tandem.

  “You've been eating the Dead?!?” The Colonel gasped, and the laughter grew stronger. “You sick FUCKERS!!!!!” She pulled her gun and, three bullets later, we headed back to the helicopter, and home.

  evening

  Pilot flew us back to The Think Tank using a roundabout route that took us nowhere near either of the other two groups, in case the Dead still followed us. Nobody spoke, even when The Smart Couple tried squawking at us. Pilot hadn't heard or seen anything other than The Colon
el stand up and execute three men, but was smart enough to know that he'd find out later. As it was, all I wanted to do was throw up.

  When we returned to The Think Tank, Smart Girl was waiting to accost us at the helipad. She asked what had happened, and I just walked past her as The Colonel, loudly and with many an epithet, told her all about the Dead-eaters.