The End: Surviving the Apocalypse

by Palmer, Richard

  She rolled over and did push-ups, then sank to the dirt floor. She was on half rations. She couldn’t afford to waste the energy.

  *

  It sounded like a party. Q was not invited.

  She regarded her bloody knuckles and the faint smear on the wooden beam. The pain surprised her. Linda had made her train with blocks from the age of ten, when the skin broke fast but the pain came slow.

  More laughter upstairs. She wished she’d heard the joke.

  Q had been locked downstairs for three days. She saw people only when they needed to use the long-drop. Angela escorted Rabbit, to make sure he didn’t fraternize.

  Three days. Surely it was punishment enough for one mistake? She’d asked if she could come back upstairs that afternoon. Angela had been the first to answer. No.

  At night, Rabbit whispered through the floorboards. She lay on the cold dirt below, unable to whisper back loud enough for him to hear without the others overhearing. He had no way of knowing whether she listened but he kept talking anyway. The man knew how to keep a secret. She should have told him about the phone.

  Last night, he’d sung her a song that he’d written specially for her. It was dreadful. Q was in love.

  She stood up and stretched high. She wanted to press her fingers against the roof and feel the vibrations of his movements. She couldn’t reach.

  Upstairs, they drank and shared stories. It sounded like it would be a late night, which meant no verbal rendezvous with Rabbit. She sighed.

  She could smell bourbon, either from their breath or dribbled on the floor, she couldn’t tell which. They must have abandoned discipline for a while. Look what happened when she wasn’t around to keep them in line.

  Maybe they’d get tipsy and let her upstairs?

  Maybe they’d get drunk and shoot her.

  They were playing a game Q had taught them: the worst thing about the end of the world. It was funny when she’d made it up.

  She heard glugging and coughing, then Rabbit’s voice. “The food,” he said. “The only vegan thing in here is those SAS tabs Q brought, and I only say they’re vegan because I don’t recognize any ingredient as animal in origin. I don’t recognize any ingredient at all. It’s lab food.” Was that why he ate so little? Was he still holding fast to principles? Beautiful idiot.

  “It’s the dirt.” That was Angela’s voice. “No shower. No clean clothes. My fingernails are grubby and I’ve cut all my hair off. I feel like a bald doll that’s been rolled in the mud.”

  “Keeping long hair in an outbreak is like taking your Uzi into the classroom for show and tell,” Q said. “Don’t do it, no matter how pretty you think it looks.” No one heard her.

  There was the gentle gloop-gloop of a bottle emptying into a mouth, then someone spoke. “What’s wrong with you people?”

  It took a moment for Q to identify the voice, because she heard it so infrequently. It was Pious Kate. Q pictured her, the light from the lantern hollowing out her eyes and casting inhuman shadows across her face.

  “We’re stuck in an attic surrounded by zombies,” Pious Kate said. “None of you are doing anything to get us rescued or escape or find out what’s happened to the rest of the world. You’re sitting around talking crap. What’s the worst thing about the end of the world? I’ll tell you. Being stuck in here with you lot!”

  “Katie-G, you’re out of line,” Rabbit said. “I’m trying to save you. I’m trying to save us all.” He sounded angry, and he hardly ever pulled Pious Kate into line. It worried Q. Were things so bad up there?

  “I’d love to escape.” That was Angela. Her voice had knives in it. Q wondered if her hands did, too. Maybe being stuck down here wasn’t so bad.

  “It’s okay, Angela. We’ll get out.” Reassuring Rabbit. Why did he sound like a liar?

  Q heard metal scrape metal. Was Dave pulling a gun on them? Had it taken so little bourbon?

  “Can’t find out about the outside world,” Dave said. “Someone busted our comms.” Q had thought about this often. Anyone could have broken Q’s phone, but Dave’s radio had been smashed sometime between the time they’d used it on the last Friday at their camp and their arrival in the attic. It could have been Sheath or the Scarlet Terror or any of the remaining group, but when would they have had time? And who was capable of stealing something from Dave’s bag, destroying it, and replacing it? And who would want to cut them off?

  “All we have is this phone,” Dave said, “and the kid ain’t talking.”

  She wanted him to dial again but she was frightened, too. What if Hannah didn’t answer? How long could Q pretend the girl was in a sulk rather than that something awful had happened? Something she hadn’t been there to stop?

  She returned her attention to the conversation upstairs, because the one in her head made her crazy. “What are you implying?” Pious Kate said.

  “He’s not implying anything,” Q said to the roof. “He’s outright accusing you of sabotaging the comms, cos you’re getting sick and you don’t want us to find out what that means. As if we don’t already know.” She grinned. She and Dave were on the same side again. It was better than being a team of one.

  There was a scraping noise. Was Pious Kate pulling a weapon from the wall? Had she decided things were that desperate?

  “What was that noise?” said Angela.

  “Fine,” said Pious Kate. “I broke the freak’s mobile. Her stupid ring tone kept waking me up.”

  Q swore. “Smashing another woman’s phone is like taking a second Uzi into the classroom after the first one was confiscated,” she said to the ceiling. “Don’t do it, no matter how necessary you think it is.”

  “But I don’t know anything about the radio,” Pious Kate continued.

  There was another scraping noise. Q jumped. “What’s going on up there?” she said. She leaped as high as she could and banged on the trapdoor.

  “Guys!” Angela said. “Someone’s trying to get in!”

  “You morons, that’s me,” said Q.

  There was a gunshot.

  The trapdoor opened and Rabbit’s pale face appeared. He dropped the ladder to the floor. “Get up here.”

  Dave stood at the window, rifle in hand. Something was looking in. Dave fired again, then spoke. “We’re breached.”

  *

  Dave fired and blew away a zombie hand reaching into the attic. Another took its place.

  There was no time for a tearful reunion. Q grabbed a rifle and her first-line gear and took the spot next to Dave. “Angela, Rabbit, get the ammo,” she said. “You guys load, like we practiced.”

  The gas lantern flickered inside the room. There was no light outside, only a new moon that did nothing to cut the darkness. She couldn’t see anything except the outline of heads. Had the zombies waited to strike at night? Did they know their advantage?

  She fired, reloaded, fired again. Gradually, her eyes adjusted and she saw what had happened. It was their stupid game of gingers.

  They’d killed hundreds during their weeks in the attic. Hundreds more had bulldozed forward to take their places. Their mindless press stacked the bodies into a ramp of redheaded corpses, and tonight the zombies climbed. They were no longer safe.

  She always knew gingers would be her downfall.

  The Last Man blinds were rated to withstand three thousand undead, but only living undead. It was no protection against dead bodies piled high. Q made a mental note to write a scathing letter to the editor of You Versus the World, realized he was probably a zombie and couldn’t read any more, if he ever had been able to, and shot a noseless corpse.

  “Boom!” she said. “Spleen shot.”

  “Don’t play,” Angela said. “That’s how this happened.”

  Q and Dave dispatched a dozen of the things, but as each one toppled, another scrambled over the fallen body to take its place. It was a game they could not win. Worse, each kill built the ramp higher, and would eventually let their enemies break in.

  “Wha
t’s happening?” Angela said, as she handed another loaded rifle to Q. “How many are there? We need light!”

  Rabbit switched on Dave’s high-beam torch.

  It reflected back from hundreds of eyes, many of which were a few feet away and all of which were coming closer.

  Rabbit switched off the torch.

  Dave grappled with a lever Q couldn’t see and pulled a grate down over the window. Dead fingers clutched bars. She and Dave dragged the crates over to the window and began stacking them. Angela and Rabbit joined their efforts. Soon there was a flimsy barrier in front of the grate. Beyond it was a chilling noise: the sound of hundreds of fingers, scrabbling.

  “Will that help?” Angela asked. “If they can’t see us, will they go away?”

  “Sure,” said Q. “And if we close our eyes, we’re invisible. Dave, what’s the plan?”

  For the first time since she had known him, Dave looked lost. This was more frightening than the sound of zombies trying to break into the meat safe. Dave always knew what to do. He must have planned for this.

  “Dave!” Q said. “We need your back-up plan! Your back-up back-up back-up back-up plan. Unless that takes us back to the original plan, in which case, we need a new plan. Dave!”

  He shook himself and began moving. He grabbed his kit and strapped on bush knives, guns and ammunition. As he packed, he spoke to Q about a place. His words were low and urgent. He gave directions and coordinates, though she had no way to follow them.

  Q got supplies from one of the steel chests he had left open, including her phone. “Take what you can fit in your pockets,” she said to the others.

  The boxes at the window rattled in a way that suggested dozens of stumpy fingers pushing with inhuman strength. Q leaned back to steady the crates.

  Pious Kate stepped forward from her dark corner of the room. “This is what you get for wasting your time on games when you should have been working toward a goal,” she said.

  “You’re a great help,” Q said. “Like a soluble kettle.”

  “Kate, shut up,” Rabbit said. The woman looked as if she’d been slapped. He turned to Q. “What do we do?”

  What did Apocalypse Z say? “When under siege, don’t stew like canned meat. If you’re breached, get out in the open.”

  “We’re leaving,” Q said.

  But how? They’d blocked up the window, and even if they hadn’t, it was a thirty-foot drop into a mob of Z deeper than a first-year philosophy student. They could flee downstairs and try the doors and windows, but that would be no better. The cabin was surrounded. They couldn’t dodge or fight their way through that many. Their safe haven had become a trap. She had always known it would.

  “Q!” said Rabbit.

  She left her post at the crates. They wouldn’t help much anyway – if Z could bend steel, Z could move boxes. She passed a rifle each to Angela and Rabbit and paused in front of Pious Kate, gun in hand but unwilling to offer it. Did Q want that woman to be armed with anything more than the sword of sarcasm, the armor of arrogance and the grenade of, ah, general unpleasantness?

  Pious Kate solved Q’s problem for her. “I don’t believe in the tools of violence,” she said scornfully. “Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

  “Fine by me,” said Q. “I’ll keep it by my bed when I’m eighty. Fellas, we gotta go.”

  “How?” said Rabbit.

  Q raised her eyebrows at Dave.

  Dave grunted.

  Q appealed to Rabbit.

  Angela threw her hands into the air. “Somebody?”

  “C’mon, Dave,” Q said. “I know you’ve thought this through. You’ve got a place to go, you must have a way to get there. No use holding out now.”

  “You’ve burned through my Plans A through H,” Dave said. “You hippies have any ideas?”

  “Sure,” said Rabbit. “You got a bike?”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Angela hugged Q. “I never thought it would end like this,” she said, tears pouring down her face.

  “Me neither,” Q said. “I was sure the head shots would work.”

  “I’m sorry we sent you to the basement.”

  They broke apart at the sound of an engine revving below. Q pushed Angela toward the ladder. “You gotta go. He’ll leave without you and you can’t come with us. You might not make the distance. This way you'll see your kids again.”

  Angela wiped her face, waved to Q, Rabbit and Pious Kate and climbed downstairs.

  “All right, you hippies,” Q said. “Time to show me what you’re made of.” She paused. “Scratch that. Time to keep what you’re made of hidden from view. I do not want to see it. Under no circumstances should you reveal those gooey inner bits—”

  “Q?” Rabbit was on the roof already, stretching down a hand through the skylight they had blasted. Q clambered up the pile of crates and packs to join him. Pious Kate stood beside him, scanning the area. Was what she saw different from what everyone else saw? Could she see in the dark? Could the zombies?

  “They haven’t noticed us yet,” Rabbit said. “They’re still trying to break into the attic.”

  “Won’t take long.” Q picked up Dave’s crossbow and loaded it.

  “Wow,” said Rabbit. “You know how to use that?”

  “Sure,” said Q. “It’s the default weapon in End of the World, End of the World II: Beyond Redemption and End of World III: This Time We Really Mean It.”

  The sound of a twanging spring was followed by a soft metallic clunk.

  “Q?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You killed a rock.”

  “The trigger point’s less ticklish in End of the World.” She reloaded. The crossbow wasn’t a weapon. There was no point to any weapon with this many ghouls. It was an escape route.

  She took a breath and fired.

  The weighted arrow sailed through the air and reached a tree five hundred feet away. It slipped between the fork of two limbs. The line it was attached to unraveled, then snapped taut. The weight swung around the branch several times. Beautiful.

  She grabbed the line and tugged. It felt firm. She stood back and jerked her head at Pious Kate. “You’re up.”

  Pious Kate took a belt in one hand and sat on the edge of the roof. “I hate heights,” she said.

  “It’s falls you should worry about,” Q said. “Get gone.”

  Pious Kate strung the belt over the line, took a firm grip and pushed herself off the edge of the roof. The line held and she zipped across to the tree.

  “I never thought that would work,” Q said.

  “You told Kate it was safe,” said Rabbit.

  “I also made her go first.” She peered into the darkness. She thought she could see a figure on the ground below, moving with the fluid grace of a non-zombie. Pious Kate must have managed to climb down the tree already.

  “Your turn,” she said to Rabbit.

  “I can’t hear the bike any more,” he said. “You think they’re okay?”

  “They’re fine. Go.”

  He shuffled to the edge of the roof to peer down. “Wish me luck,” he said.

  “Don’t break a leg,” Q said. “Seriously. I’ll be way slower if I have to carry you.”

  He slipped off the roof and zip-lined across. She heard a soft thunk and a very un-Rabbitesque curse. He’d made it. She hoped he’d get down okay without drawing Z attention.

  Q had been out here long enough that her eyes could pierce the night. She considered the edge of the zombie mass. They puddled around the cabin, climbed up the pile of bodies and spilled into the attic. They must have pulled out the bars or pushed through the walls. She thought of the fight inside if they had stayed, but only briefly. It would have been a brief fight.

  Where were Dave and Angela?

  She was frightened not just for their safety, but for that of her own team. What chance did they have without backup?

  Enough fretting. Time to jump off a building.

  She grabbed her stra
p, tightened her kit and adjusted the bush knife, rifle and shotgun that she had slung about herself. As she always said to the Kindy Koalas before gym class, no danglies, because danglies got you maimed. It was another of those catchphrases that had landed her in Natolia’s office for no good reason.

  There was a hand on her shoulder.

  “Dave…?” She pivoted. If it was Dave, he’d really let himself go.

  The hand was attached to a skinny, sinewy arm and a half-eaten shoulder. Its torso was an untidy mass of meat and offal where the skin should have been. It was modeling the inside-out look. She hoped it wouldn’t catch on.

  Q glanced at the face and saw that it was smiling. It took her a moment to realize why. No lips.

  She shook herself. Z was on the roof.

  She kicked hard, meaning to throw the thing backward. Instead, her foot wedged in the cavity where its belly once was. She shook it back and forth, hopping on her other leg. Her balance held. Lucky she’d practiced tai chi with Rabbit in the attic, back when she’d been allowed in the attic. Maybe tai chi had applications after all.

  The zombie reached its hands toward her face, but fell short. Her leg was longer than its arms. Stalemate. It was too stupid to think of grabbing her leg and capturing her that way. In its defense, Q could see it was operating on half a brain, and was in danger of losing even that. Pieces of gray matter spilled to the tiles through the hole in its head. She couldn’t help imagining the last few minutes of life for this zombie, back when it was human. It must have been a gang binge.

  She cut that line of thought. If she got distracted, she’d find out firsthand what it was like. One zombie was on the roof. More would follow.

  Q launched herself as high in the air as she could and brought her left foot up to kick the ghoul free, hoping she didn’t get a second leg wedged. It would be too embarrassing to suffer death by zombie-bog.

  The move worked. The creature flew backward and her right foot was free. She landed on her butt, leaped up and watched the zombie knock over three more that were emerging from the skylight behind it.