by Pete Aldin
"How do we know anything about anyone?" Claire asked. "How do we know Neil was really an accountant or Dave Two a mechanic?"
"Well, now, that's pretty simple. Neil teaches the teenagers complex math. Dave Two fixes cars."
"All right, smartarse. According to your logic, because Woodsy isn't handing out speeding tickets, he can't be highway patrol. So what we don't know and can't prove about him definitely makes him a potential serial killer."
"Yeah. That. Or a spy from another faction."
"Oh, now Faye did tell me your concerns about that. And I'll tell you what she told you. How do we know anyone isn't a spy for another faction, apart from you original guys? Faye could be from Nine Mile River. Perhaps Krystal's gathering intel for a scav-rat group. Maybe—oo, maybe I'm really a biker chick!"
"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, Claire. Don't take me seriously then. But the guy is a complete dick at the very least. Tell me you can stand in his presence and not smell bullshit?"
She shrugged. "I do smell something. But I honestly think it's the bullshit of a damaged man who has lost everything, just like the rest of us. He puts on bravado and bluster to get people to like him and to block out the bad thoughts. I don't think there's a person here who is completely honest with everyone. Not even you."
"Your tarots told you that?"
She raised her chin. "Maybe they did. And maybe people who deride other people's beliefs should be considered 'dicks', too."
Elliot scratched at his stubble and made a face. "Think I'll go take a shower."
"You do that, mate. Woodsy's bullshit isn't the only thing I'm smelling."
He handed her his empty glass and started off.
"Sure, I'll do your dishes, too."
He turned and held out a hand.
She waved his offer a way. "It's okay, Elliot. I'm going back there anyway. Look, I didn't want an argument with you."
"Me neither," he said. "Sorry about the tarots thing."
"Go freshen up and I'll send someone to get you some clean clothes from the laundry. Do you want dinner?"
"Not if it's fish," he said and she smiled. "A little tired of it."
"I think we have some rabbit and plain rice. Actually, Elliot, the Council's meeting at 7.00. Faye said if you were back to invite you, so I'll have the rice waiting in the Office."
"Thank you, Claire," he said.
"You're very welcome, my friend," she said and patted his shoulder as she passed.
My friend.
Much as he didn't want to admit it, she was. And she was probably a better friend than Bess and the other dogs who he spent most of his time with. Angie would be too, if he'd let her. And Kim, Rit, Heng.
Shit.
Heading toward the shower block, Elliot thought that he was damn lucky in a time and a place like this to have friends. But if Bess's experience—and Birdy's and his fire team's—was anything to go by, he just wasn't sure having him around made them lucky.
3
He left his filthy clothes in the shower block laundry bin, dressed in the clean ones left for him, then slid his fleece jacket back on over the tee. Whoever had left the clothes also left him a bowl of rice and rabbit strips with a handful of old raisins on top. He scraped the raisins to the side. Since his dive watch told him there was twenty minutes until 7.00, he sat on the bench seat and ate slowly and thought about Woodsy and the community at The Downs.
They were nice people. He'd gotten lucky, as had they. They were not chained up in some Death Druid compound. They were not a bunch of good-for-nothings. Nor were they heartless bastards. They worked hard. They cooperated, combining skills and energy. And they trusted each other. And that's where letting Woodsy in irked him. They were too trusting. What was stopping those aggressive assholes up past Nine Mile River sending in a spy or two? Or some not-so-messed-up scav group? Nine Mile and the Vikes were at their borders but they were factions Settlers Downs knew virtually nothing about. On the other hand, what was stopping a charming solo psychopath coming in and winning everyone's confidence? After all, if an animal like Jock could fool Elliot ...
He shoveled more rice into his face and changed the subject in his head. Jock was not something he ever wanted to think about—not Jock, and not the things he had seen in that basement. Instead he thought of the challenges facing Settlers Downs. If this illness didn't set them back three years, or wipe them out completely, what really was the future here? Were they going to rebuild a civilization from this? There wasn't nearly enough genetic diversity here to reboot the human race. He'd watched enough Discovery Channel as a teenager to know that. If there'd been multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns across the world—and there probably had been—if the surviving populations out there had been further decimated by fallout, by starvation, by disease, then what future was there for the race, especially if white bread Tasmania was all that was left? Perhaps if they hooked up with the Nine Milers and the scav-rats and the Vikes—and whatever other small groups were out there—perhaps there might be enough diversity to relaunch the species and enough for a larger society to specialize in tech areas and to improve on the agriculture they were attempting here.
"The problem's not enough people," he told his dish as he scraped the final grains of rice together, still avoiding the raisins. The Settlers, as they'd come to call themselves, were so preoccupied with growing food and scavenging their region that education and manufacture were falling by the wayside. They were jerry-rigging technology instead of crafting it. It took a much larger community to break out of subsistence and start manufacturing and research and science and medicine ... "If all the factions team up and play nice. Yeah. That'll happen."
He rinsed the dish and spoon under a shower and left it on the laundry basket for someone else to collect.
Kind people here. So kind they'd do his dishes for him. So kind that one day they'd let their own murderers walk through the front gates.
⁓
They'd trucked in the materials for The Office twelve days earlier. And "Mike the Builder" had overseen its construction. The glass, plastic and wooden box sat between homestead and shearing shed, lit inside by lanterns since it wasn't yet hooked up to solar. Heng and Claire sat at the map table in the center, nursing steaming mugs of tea. So did Woodsy.
As much as Claire had complained about Elliot's post-mission stink, Woodsy's b.o. was competing. A couple hours wandering around a fence even in cool conditions seemed to have made him work up a sweat. Perhaps it was the combination of skinny legs and middle age paunch. Woodsy had been a traffic cop, or so he claimed, so he probably wasn't used to walking. He'd certainly looked comfortable on the motorcycle he had ridden up to the gates a month back. And his straight looks and heavy frame fit a cop stereotype, as did his bluster. He ran a chubby hand through his long thinning hair and mumbled a hello.
Elliot didn't reply. The rice and meat grumbled in his gut as he closed the door and took the only free seat between Woodsy and Heng.
"Welcome back," Heng said. He pointed at the pot amidst the maps, then at the pile of mugs on a shelf. "Tea?"
When was the old coot going to learn that Elliot hated tea?
"You trying to piss me off?" Elliot asked him.
Heng shrugged as if to say, Your loss.
"Faye running late?" Elliot asked.
"Not coming," said Heng.
"What? Why?"
Claire cleared her throat. "She's placed herself in quarantine." Lines had appeared at the corners of her eyes, lines Elliot had never noticed before. Worry lines?
"She's ... ?"
"She doesn't want to spread it if she's already got it. We're to leave food and water at a distance and she'll come out and get it every morning."
"God Almighty."
Heng said, "This get worse every day."
"Before we talk about that situation, let's get your report, Elliot. You found a bad area today."
"You got my map there?"
Claire pushed the topmost one toward him. Elli
ot leaned over and traced with his finger. "Here. By this access road. Old dairy farm, judging by the milking sheds. But no animals. Tall grass, and some of it may be barley. But there's plenty of claymores."
"You mean drybones," Woodsy corrected him. "We should all use the same term."
Elliot ignored him.
"A little close to Vike territory," Claire observed.
Elliot grunted. "Nothing left in the middle of our territory to explore. If we want fresh resources..."
"So drybones killed your dog?" Woodsy pressed, eyes on the spot where Elliot's finger rested.
Elliot felt like raising a different finger, but refrained for Claire's sake.
"How many of them?" she asked.
"Didn't stop to count. But a lot. Enough to be leftovers from the Dead Line."
Woodsy looked from one to the other for an explanation. "Deadline?"
"How you not know about that?" Heng said. "You never talk to anybody here? Dead Line. Two word. Big crowd of zombie. Maybe ten or twenty or thirty thousand."
"Oh, that. Headed south, weren't they?"
"Does it matter where they were headed at first?" Elliot said. "I doubt they all had a particular destination in mind. They probably wandered round and round till they got stuck behind the fences or turned dormant and started rotting."
"What condition were they in?" asked Claire.
"A couple I saw were too far gone to move much. But dozens of others came at me. Enough were in good enough condition to get the dog."
"Shit," said Woodsy. "Dogs are valuable."
Grinding his teeth, Elliot pressed on. "Anyway, mark it. Avoid it."
"Wouldn't catch me dead in a place like that," Woodsy muttered.
Elliot continued, "Maybe wild fire will come through and clean them up for us. Meantime, the fences looked like they'd hold them. And the mobile ones have no reason to head all the way here."
"We could set that fire," Woodsy suggested. "Burn 'em out."
"Yeah, and risk it blowing this way."
"Just a thought. Bush fire's gunna happen sometime anyway. This is Australia, mate."
Elliot clenched a fist under the table, wishing the asshole would keep his pie hole firmly closed. He flashed Claire a look, asking if they could get rid of this tool. She gave a little shake of her head as she dragged the paper back and shaded the area indicated with an orange marker.
"Question is," he said, "where do we scavenge now, since there's nowhere left we haven't looked except a few gorges along the boundaries of our territory. I don't wanna climb into them, but if I have to... Or do we simply stop?"
She exchanged a glance with the other two. "We have bigger fish at the moment, Elliot."
"The illness?"
"Indeed."
"It's like a flu, right? Exactly how bad is this?"
"Bad," Heng said.
Woodsy added, "The kids are camping on the far side of the farm with Lewis and a couple of others watching them. They seem okay so far. I've been leaving food, water and supplies at a distance so they don't catch it from me."
"You have the bug?"
Woodsy frowned. "No. I mean in case I do."
Damn shame, Elliot thought.
"And how are you?" he asked Claire pointedly.
She brushed hair from her eyes. It had more grey in it than a week ago, he was sure. Just like those worry lines weren't there back then, either.
"I'm fine."
She was flushed, but that could have been stress.
"And we're sure this isn't, you know, the Sickness."
Woodsy scoffed. "Not every bug is the zombie virus, mate. We did have other illnesses before the breakdown, you know."
"What the hell are you doing in here, anyway? When did you get voted onto the Council?"
Woodsy sniffed. "When did you? You're in here, too."
"I was invited to update intel."
Woodsy sipped tea and offered no more than a grunt.
Claire cleared her throat. "Everyone's welcome in here, Elliot."
"Especially when they can help like I can," Woodsy said into his cup.
He sipped again while Claire poured herself more tea.
"Elliot," she said, "there was another reason Faye wanted you here. We've been discussing the medical situation. The antibiotic and antiviral situation."
"We don't have any," he said.
"Exactly."
There were more exchanged looks.
"Christ," he gasped. "You want to go find some." He combed a hand through his short and shower-damp hair. "I get that we need it. But where from? I'm telling you, we've looked everywhere. There could still be some useful crap out there within our limits, but none of it's pharmaceuticals. And any medication we'd find would be pretty useless by now. Wouldn't it?"
"Antibiotics and antivirals might still be okay. If they were dry and cool. Or especially if they were engineered to last this long."
A pause.
Again, he asked, "What?"
She gestured toward Woodsy.
The big man said, "Was just telling them that the Federal Government kept cool rooms full of high-grade antivirals and antibiotics in every state. Prevention in case something like a terrorist biological attack happened."
"Where?"
"You mean where in Tassie? Inland. Halfway between here and Hobart."
"You're not serious."
"As long as the facility's solar power is still working—"
"And if it's not?"
"If it is, mate, we can supply ourselves with serious medication."
"We don't know what's happening out there, past our territory."
Claire said, "Elliot, an hour ago you told me the biker gangs were all gone."
"And you said maybe some are left. I'll admit you had a point. Helluva lot we don't know about the world outside our region. How do we know there's not a bunch of leftover bikers watching the roads down there? How do we know some other faction hasn't found and liberated all that good stuff?"
"If you let me explain, I'll talk you through that," said Woodsy.
"How do we know whether there's not still a thousand mobile deaders hanging out near these 'cool rooms'?"
"The dead are dead," the ex-cop sighed.
"Well, I just lost my dog to a field full of 'em."
"We call those drybones for a reason. You were unlucky, but mostly they're innocuous these days. Slow. Rotted. I saw enough of 'em on my way here to know that."
"Yeah, and I'm still not satisfied I know exactly where you came from."
"Christ, I told all of this when—"
Heng slapped the table. "Stop. We must think about this serious. People in quarantine can die. But we find medicine, we can save them. Not argue. We do something."
Elliot growled. "Yeah, well, the dumbasses heading out on this fool's errand could also die."
"Or they could save everyone's arses," Woodsy returned evenly.
"Let's say you bring them back here. Twelve months later, outside their refrigeration they're useless and we're back to square one."
"The fridges are on solar power, Elliot," Claire said.
"And they break down?"
"What, all of them? At once?"
Elliot turned his face to the ceiling, breaking contact, unwilling to concede that point.
"We also have the Zeer pots," she added.
To Elliot, Woodsy said, "You don't have to go. No one's asking you. I'm going. I'll travel light and take one other person with me—"
"Not Lewis."
Woodsy blinked. "No, not Lewis. I was thinking of Jimmy."
Jimmy. The kid that Elliot had found chained up with Claire, the kid repeatedly abused by both male and female Druids in the gang. The kid who for some reason had never bonded with anyone in this community—anyone, that was, except for Woodsy.
"Yeah, that kid'll go with you all right. For some reason, he thinks the sun shines outa your hairy ass. And he will until the day you get him killed doing something stupid like this."<
br />
Claire tried: "Gentlemen."
"I got here okay, didn't I?" Woodsy said. "Three and a half years, and I survived."
"Sure. And the rest of your group?"
For the first time, Woodsy grew angry, straightening in his chair. "What's that s'posed to mean?"
"Gentlemen!"
"When you arrived, you mentioned a larger group, all dead now but you."
"Two died on raids. Three died from running into the undead. The other died of a bloody heart attack. You're blaming me for all of that?"
Claire shouted this time. "Gentlemen, enough!"
The room lapsed into silence apart from the wall clock ticking.
Heng grinned.
Elliot eyeballed him. "What are you smiling at!"
"This like having TV again." He chuckled. "Who get kicked out of house next?"
Woodsy slumped, released a chuckle of his own. "Good one."
Claire said, "If we can keep on topic. We were just starting to consider the sorts of obstacles you're thinking of, Elliot. What if someone else has taken all of it? What if the facility is occupied by armed factions? What if it's full of eaters?"
Elliot added, "What if it caught fire, or broke down?"
"We mentioned that, too. So we can sit here and ask our questions. And never know. Or someone can go look. And maybe—maybe—come back with enough medicine to save our people from this bug and from the next five or ten."
"You're deciding on this as a Council?"
"We already have, Elliot. Faye cast her vote this afternoon. Woodsy has volunteered to go since he knows location and codes."
"Don't expect me to go with him."
"Jesus," Woodsy muttered.
She said, "But we would like your thoughts."
Woodsy started, "I'm fine, Claire, I know what—"
Claire stopped him with a raised palm. "Elliot?"
Elliot scratched at his beard and said, "Take a Land Rover—"
"Thought of it," Woodsy said.
"—they're tough and have a big gas tank. Think about moving the vehicle from cover to cover like an infantryman: plan your drive and then drive from what looks like safe place to safe place fast, keep moving. Scope it quickly, reassess, move on. You run before shooting anyone or thing. You get into firefights only as last resort."