by Shane Carrow
One bulletin talked about a crash, a helicopter crash. A Black Hawk shot down fifty kays south of Armidale. It happened four days ago but now they confirm it, now they see fit to tell the public it was the escaping prisoners. Sixteen charred corpses identified and accounted for. That was all of them, apparently! No need for the citizens of New England to worry about escaping political prisoners, only about the civil war that’s about to come crashing through their front window. The collapse. The fall. We’ve all gone through it. They’re about to go through it a second time.
I heard an argument upstairs between Cavalli and Blake. Cavalli was giving him a hard time about the crash, about sending them off to their doom; Blake said it was just bad luck. I never really thought about Navy ranks before, but Cavalli’s a petty officer. I think that’s equivalent to sergeant. So neither outranks the other. Not that it really matters. Blake is indisputably calling the shots here.
I’m spending a lot of time on watch, staring out through the chink in the curtains at the farmland and trees and mountains. I want to get out there. I want to get moving.
Blake says we can go soon.
October 5
10.00am
We’re moving out tonight to retrieve the PAL codes. Me, Blake, Rahvi and Zhou. It took Blake some convincing to let me come. I had to make him realise that there’s no chance he’ll be able to find them just based on the general location – that I’d have to show him exactly where to dig. Well, okay, maybe there was a fairly good chance, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. If I don’t get out of this basement soon I’m going to fucking explode.
Zhou’s coming along because of his knowledge of the area, another point Blake had to be convinced about, though this time it was Rahvi doing the arguing – pointing out that it was the entire reason we’d brought him along. I’m still surprised Zhou hasn’t snuck off in the night yet, to go and try to track down the surviving members of his precious Patriots. Maybe he just wants an armed escort to some of his supply caches on the way south. Or maybe he’s spooked by the radio broadcasts; realises the Republic is crumbling away, that soon there won’t be anything left to fight for, that he’ll just be another survivor again.
Cavalli, Jones and Jess will stay here. We should be back in a few days, at the most, to pick them up and head south. We should be all right for gear – we have enough food and water to last us, definitely – and the weapons situation is fairly good. There are four Steyr Augs we brought with us from Armidale. Blake has one, Rahvi has one, one was given to Cavalli to hold down the fort – and the fourth went to Zhou. A deliberate insult from Blake, who’s still angry I killed Draeger. Well, that’s his lookout. I still have the nickel-plated Browning. The gun I killed Draeger with; his very own gun, in fact.
I’d like to see Blake try and take this off me.
Anyway. We’ll be travelling on foot, since the bus is our only vehicle and it’s far too conspicuous. No idea how long it will take us to get there. If we were in good shape, it shouldn’t be more than a night’s trek. But we’re not in good shape – I just got through ten days of torture, and Zhou and Rahvi both suffered much longer than that, though not as frequently and not as harshly. Lying in this dimly-lit basement with barely anything to eat hasn’t worked wonders for the recovery process, either.
Should we really be heading out this early, in the state we’re in? No. But do we have time to wait and heal while New England collapses around us? Also no.
October 6
9.00am
We left an hour after sunset, at about seven o’clock, as the very last traces of light were fading to nothing in the west. The stars were shimmering brightly and a faint crescent moon was hanging above the hills. Zhou, Rahvi and I were standing on the front porch, watching the wind quietly rustle the trees, waiting as Blake had a last-minute discussion with Cavalli inside the farmhouse.
I was practising holding my gun, balancing my right wrist on my left wrist, the way I would if I had to hold a gun and a flashlight at the same time. I’d used to simply rest my right hand in my left palm, standard shooting stance. But with my left hand a mangled mess I was going to have to learn a new way. I pointed the Browning across the yard, aiming at different things – a plank of wood, a pot of dead flowers, the tyre swing. A thought suddenly occurred to me.
“Where did you bury Draeger?” I asked.
“Didn’t,” Rahvi said. “The sarge didn’t want a fresh grave drawing attention and we weren’t about to haul him out into the bush, so we just chucked him in the mechanic’s pit in the garage.”
So that’s where the bastard ended up. A corpse with his head ripped to shreds, in his underwear, hands tied behind his back, dropped in a dirty hole in the concrete floor of an old shed on some backwater farm. Being slowly torn apart by rats and worms and all the vermin of the earth. I had a sudden urge to go inside the garage, into the pungent smell of a rotting corpse, to sit at the edge of the pit and gloat. To a dead body. Crazy, right? But that urge was so strong, for a moment, that I think I would have done it if Blake hadn’t suddenly walked out and closed the screen door quietly behind him. “Let’s move out,” he said.
We grabbed our weapons and backpacks and headed out across the yard. I gave the garage once last, lingering glance. Draeger may have messed me up – but I messed him up worse.
We headed west across empty fields and paddocks, carefully climbing over barbed wire fences and keeping an eye out for movement. There was nothing, not even any livestock. Zhou was right – this close to Armidale, a lot of people had upped sticks and moved into the city. Maybe it would be reclaimed with time, like the laboured fields directly outside the walls. Or maybe not, since it looked like things were about to take a dark turn for New England.
“Why the hell are we travelling by night?” I whispered, after stumbling into a surprising ditch. “I can’t see a goddamn thing.”
“Because that means people can’t see us, either, Matt,” Blake said.
I took a swig from my water canteen, trying to ignore the burning in my bruised ribs, the pain in my legs, the stinging of my absent fingers. “After I parachuted out of the Globemaster,” I said, “I always travelled during the day and laid low at night. I thought choppers would be able to spot me by infra-red.”
“Not a bad decision on the information you had,” Blake said, “but wrong. Infra-red is good when you know you have a hostile in the area, or you’re in pursuit. For wide-scale searches it’s useless. The number of choppers you’d need, the size of the search grid – it wouldn’t work.”
“Well, at least I could see where I was fucking going,” I muttered, after nearly snapping my ankle in a rabbit hole.
A few hours later we made a slight detour along the edge of a farm, to hunt down one of Zhou’s supply caches. “It’s just up here,” he said, pointing out a junction in the fence, where two paddocks met and an off-shoot of wire fencing ran off to split them. To our left was the cold, leafy silence of bushland. Always creepy at night-time. The wind was picking up, making the top branches sway back and forth, waving their bushels of eucalyptus leaves with that eerie gentle rustling.
We arrived at the junction, where wooden posts for a gate were driven into the ground, and Zhou started digging at the base of them with his bare hands. Rahvi and Blake watched him intently, while I was gazing over the fields. They were scattered with what I at first thought were white rocks, but soon realised were bones. Hundreds of cow bones, left to die at an abandoned farm, way back in the long summer of the apocalypse.
Zhou unearthed a metal container, and prised the lid open with his fingernails. Inside were a few boxes of 9mm ammunition, a book of Republic ration coupons, and a single hand grenade.
“Not sure that was really worth the detour,” Rahvi said, flicking the lid off one of the boxes and refilling his sidearm.
“Every little counts,” Blake said, clipping the grenade onto his belt. “Thank you, James. We do appreciate it.”
“Yeah, well,” Zhou said.
“I’ve been...”
“Shhh,” I hissed, holding a hand up, motioning them to be silent.
Blake and Rahvi instantly had their rifles in their hands. Neither of them asked what I’d heard – both just started straining their own ears intently, scanning the area.
What I’d heard, over the sound of the wind that was rapidly picking up, was a zombie’s hunting howl.
And then one burst out of the treeline.
It was about ten metres away, but it was moving very quickly. Not running, exactly, but staggering forward with legs that were only just beginning to stiffen with rigor mortis. Snarling, screeching, and coming towards us with alarming speed. All four of us opened fire reflexively, and I was so startled that most of my shots went wide or hit it uselessly in the chest. Blake and Rahvi didn’t miss a beat – they drilled its head with well-placed shots. But by the time it collapsed on the grass, it had closed the distance between us and itself to only a few metres.
Then three more came staggering out of the bush.
“Over the fence!” Blake barked, above the gunshots. “Get over the fence!”
I didn’t need to be told twice. The fence behind us was barbed wire, but it was designed to block cattle, not humans. It was simple to slip between the wires, and as soon as I was through I started running as fast as my ailing body would carry me, towards the middle of the paddock. Zhou was right behind me, and Blake and Rahvi followed not long after. It was only three zombies, but I’d heard more coming behind them.
We paused in the middle of the field, standing on a litter of mouldy white cattle bones, fifty metres from the fence. No fewer than ten zombies were now standing against it, trying in vain to simply push their way through, their howls reaching us on the wind.
Blake dropped down onto his belly, peering down the scope of his Steyr. “Steady shots,” he said. “Don’t waste ammo.”
He and Rahvi picked the dead off with precision, while I stood with my hands on my knees, panting for breath. Zhou was just staring back across the field in sheer disbelief. “Never,” he said. “Never, ever, ever. I’ve never once seen a zombie in New England. Not since they took over, not since they cleaned it up. Never.”
The last zombie collapsed to the ground, and Blake started walking back. The rest of us followed. “They’re wearing Army uniforms,” I said as we drew closer.
“Because they’re soldiers,” Blake said, squeezing back through the fence. He pushed his jacket sleeves up and knelt down to inspect the bodies. “Or they were, anyway. Not long dead. Probably killed this afternoon.” He found a Browning in one of their thigh holsters, unbuckled a utility belt, pulled a few Steyr clips from their combat webbing.
“So what killed them?” I asked warily. It had been a long time since I’d seen one of the undead, and I’d forgotten how terrifying the experience could be. Combat against humans is one thing. Combat against the dead... entirely different. It gives me a thick loathing and dread in my stomach, a desire to get away as fast as possible. That horrible premonition, that nasty voice in your head, that says that one day – no matter how fast, smart, strong or lucky you are – one day it’ll be you moaning and staggering like that, while some other plucky survivor puts a bullet through your head...
They were all survivors. Once.
Blake shrugged. “Could have been anything. But I’d say this is the first sign of things to come for New England.”
“Nobody would do this,” Zhou said, sounding sick. “Nobody would kill someone and leave the body to reanimate. Even when we did raids, when we took out a supply depot or a convoy and we knew their reinforcements were on the way, we always stayed long enough to make sure the dead were taken care of. Our people or theirs. Doesn’t matter. Even the fucking bandits know that. You don’t leave a body unsanitised.”
Blake checked the Browning he’d taken and shoved it into his belt alongside his other. “Well, times are changing.”
“We’d better get moving,” Rahvi said. “There could be more of them. Or someone could have heard the shots.” Blake nodded, and we started following the fence north.
It started raining not long after that, the frustrating kind of rain you get in heavy winds when it’s almost horizontal. Huge, thick sheets lashing down on you. It didn’t last very long, just a quick storm blowing right through, but when it was over we were saturated and freezing. I’ve never known anywhere else in Australia to rain as much as it does here. Fucking New England.
At about three in the morning we heard aircraft in the distance. We turned to see, off on the eastern horizon, a squadron of fighter jets. All four of us stopped in file, turning our heads to watch the distant lights cruising across the sky. There were five of them, heading from north to south, straight as an arrow. The first fighter jets I’d seen since the night we were shot down leaving Brisbane, and they still filled me with a sense of awe, even if they were just distant bright lights.
“Where do you reckon they’re going?” Rahvi said.
“Who knows?” Blake said, and started walking again.
More hours of hiking, of struggling through overgrown paddocks and thick bushland, wet clothes chafing, torture wounds hurting, feeling exhausted and cold and hungry and miserable. It must have been past midnight by then. We took regular rest stops, but my muscles were ready to quit. “Not too far now,” Blake would say, consulting the map every rest break – five, ten, fifteen times, and it was always “not too far now.”
It was dawn when Zhou left us, the first yellow glow appearing in the east, the rest of the world still tinged with grey. We’d been pushing down a hill that eventually turned into a gully, a small creek running down the bottom. It was green and lush, warbling with early morning birdsong, the foliage of paperbark trees blocking out most of the sky. “Hold up,” Zhou said, as we waded down through waist-deep bracken. “I think this is it.”
He approached Sergeant Blake, and the two of them examined the map. “Yeah,” Zhou said. “Thunderbolt’s Creek. Follow this upstream and you’ll reach the mill.”
“Let’s get going, then,” Blake said, rolling up the map.
“I’m not coming with you,” Zhou said.
We all paused. “I don’t recall giving you a choice,” Blake said.
“What are you going to do?” Zhou said. “Shoot me? I need to go find my people, sergeant. You can understand that. This isn’t my fight.”
“Yes, it is,” Blake said. “This is everybody’s fight. I explained to you what’s at stake. And your people – I’m sorry to say it, James, but they’re gone. I saw what happened during the purge. If there’s anybody left, they’re just keeping their heads low and trying to survive. Or trying to get the hell out of New England. Like you should be.”
“Maybe. But I have to know for sure.”
“Things are not going well in New England right now,” Blake said. “Those zombies last night? The fighter jets? The radio broadcasts? Things are only going to get worse. Come with us. Please.”
“Those are just reasons I have to go be sure,” Zhou said. “I’m sorry. But I have to go. I hope everything goes okay for you guys.”
He stuck his hand out. He knew Blake wasn’t going to shoot him, or try to keep him captive. He wouldn’t have tried reasoning with him, or saying please, if that were the case.
Blake shook his hand. “Good luck, James. If you change your mind – if you make it out of here, and you need somewhere to go – head for the Snowy Mountains.”
“How about giving us that rifle back?” I said.
Blake frowned, and before Zhou could reply, the sergeant said: “Keep it. You’ll need it. Good luck.”
Zhou nodded, and wished us luck in return. Rahvi and I shook hands with him – begrudgingly, in my case – said goodbye, and watched him disappear into the trees, following the creek in the other direction. Taking a rifle which by right should have been mine.
The sun dawned on a new day, and found the three of us following rabbit trails up the creek, pushing through
waist-deep bracken soaked with dew. I was panting for breath with every step, confident that at any second I was going to collapse, but determined not to. Blake called for regular rest breaks, and even though we all knew I was the only one who needed them, nobody said anything.
About three hours after sunrise, when I was slogging ahead based on sheer grit and willpower, Blake suddenly called for us to stop. I thought it was another rest break, and privately praised the saints, but he was peering at the map. “Up here,” he said, and started climbing up the gully. “We’re close.”
We emerged into yet another mix of bushland and paddocks, although more verdant and green than usual, this close to a watercourse. We walked through lush, knee-high grass to pass a thicket of paperbark trees – and there, coming into view across the fields, was the old watermill where I’d slept twenty-five days ago, before my first capture by the Republic. The place that had been an artist’s house, once, covered in easels and half-finished paintings. The place where I’d buried the PAL codebook, on Aaron’s advice, for fear of it falling into Draeger’s hands.
“There it is,” I said, smiling with relief.
We took a few steps forward, when Rahvi suddenly hissed, “Wait.” All three of us froze in our tracks. A second later: “Get down!”
We dropped down into the grass in unison, hearts pounding. I pulled the Browning from my thigh holster and yanked the slide back, wriggling closer to Rahvi. “What did you see?”
“A guy standing by the water-wheel,” Rahvi whispered. “Soldier.”
“Did he make us?” Blake asked.