by Shane Carrow
After a while, I heard the motorcycle’s engine start up again, and saw a flash of black tyres as the sniper roared past. For a moment I thought he’d cut his losses and left, and felt a stab of anger and bitterness, but no – the engine stopped again at the opposite edge of town.
That was strange. Why was he so bold? Was he worried that I might jump a back fence and run off into the paddocks and get away from him? How did he know I wasn’t, for example, lying underneath a house waiting to shoot him in the legs – or at least I would, if there wasn’t so much fucking grass blocking the way…
I wriggled to the very edge of the crawlspace and peered out, blood pumping fast and senses tingling. The motorcycle, a heavy-looking dual sport, was parked in the centre of the road at the south-west edge of Ellerston, a stone’s throw from where I was lying. The sniper had disappeared.
He must have gone into a house. But which one?
I shuffled backwards, retreating deeper into the crawlspace, and cast my eyes around for a trapdoor. The only one I could find wouldn’t open – there must have been carpet or furniture on top of it. Time for Plan B. I crawled all the way back out into the yard, and then hopped onto the verandah and pried the back door open.
Another musty home interior, dusty and gloomy. I went through the laundry, into the kitchen, and came to the living room windows. I was about to open the curtains to peer through when I stopped, and thought.
He’d fired at me in the flowerbed, on the north side of the road that split the town in two. He’d fired at me in a house on the north side of the road. He knew that I was still, somewhere, on the north side of the road. So when he’d gotten off his bike he would have naturally entered a house on the south side of the road, one which commanded the best possible view of the north side. There were only about five or six homes on each side; he’d probably picked one towards the middle.
I turned around and left the house again, out the back door, jumping the fence into the paddocks and acreage that fringed the edge of town. Staying low, past duck ponds and horse stables, doing a wide loop around the western edge of Ellerston. At all times I kept my eyes towards the buildings, making sure I couldn’t be seen from the central houses. Crossing the road was the hardest. I made sure I was at least a kilometre away, then just did a mad dash, diving into the cover of the trees on the other side. No way was I going to try crawling across it.
There was no gunshot. But his bike was still there, which meant he was too.
Approaching Ellerston from the southern side, I felt jumpy and nervous. Why had he come so easily into the town, and ensconced himself in a house – less than fifty or forty metres away from his target – with such a long-range rifle? Was he making a mistake? Overconfident? Or did he know something I didn’t?
I came to the row of back fences and carefully studied the houses. Only one of them was two stories tall, and it seemed likely to me that he’d picked that one. Unless that’s what I would think he’d picked, and so he’d picked a different one. Yet he seemed so confident that he could easily kill me that I wasn’t sure he’d try to make me second-guess myself…
I crouched at the back fence, peering through a slat between the two boards, trying to think of what to do. In a completely empty and silent house, he would hear me open a door or window, and then he’d have the jump on me again. I could try to find a view of his bike and wait him out... but he was a sniper, and probably better at waiting than I was, especially since he’d be healthier, better fed and more well rested.
Not to mention that he might not be sitting still at all, but actively hunting for me as I was for him.
Fucking snipers.
Fuck it. I wasn’t going to sit there all day. I could just storm the house guns blazing and probably catch him by surprise. I clambered over the fence, stalked up to the back porch...
...and stopped, almost ready to kick the door in.
He wasn’t in that house.
I don’t know how I could tell, but I could. With adrenaline burning through my body, with my heart pumping away like a two-stroke, with every hair on my body raised and all my senses heightened, I knew that there was no living soul in that house.
I looked to the right, focused on the house there. Nope. That was empty too.
To the house on the left... yes.
Or maybe. Maybe yes. It was the smallest thing, the tiniest niggling gut feeling, and yet somehow I was willing to trust it. I thought of the other day, looking at Mick’s face, realising for the first time that I could tell what people were feeling no matter how good their poker face was. That, in fact, I’d always been able to, if I’d just been able to focus properly.
That was one aspect of it. This was another.
The sniper was in the house to my left.
I stepped over the fence carefully, and walked across the grass to the back door, praying the verandah floorboards wouldn’t creak. I was still faced with the problem, though, of the sniper hearing me when I entered the house.
Unless...
I put one hand on the door, about to visualise the house, and then felt like a stupid hippie mystic, so I took it away. I was still on edge, still focusing on the presence of a human consciousness in that house, and if I nurtured that feeling as much as I could I might just manage to pin down his exact location in the building…
Somewhere to the front. Somewhere to the left. It was faint, but it was there.
For a moment I stood there and wondered what I was doing. Gambling my life on a gut feeling. A mental notion, tickling the back of my brain. Somewhere in the distance a kookaburra was laughing. Did I really want to risk this?
What other choice did I have?
I edged around the house carefully, Steyr pointed at the ground, making every step as quiet as possible. Fortunately it had been a wet winter, and the ground was covered in grass and weeds – if had been dirt or gravel I would have stood no chance. The kookaburra had gone silent, and the town was utterly still.
I reached the front of the house and stood there at its side, facing out onto the quiet road.
If I was wrong – if the sniper was on the north side of the road – I’d get a bullet through the abdomen right now.
But I didn’t.
There was a window only a metre away from the edge of the house. Barely daring to breathe, I rounded the corner very carefully, my back against the weatherboard, the window just a few inches to my right. For a moment I pictured what it must look like from the other side of the road: one man standing with his back up against the wall, creeping very slowly up to the window, where – surely – a black sniper rifle was resting on the sill, a finger on the trigger and a shadowy figure behind it.
Surely.
My heart was in my throat. My phantom fingers were wriggling like crazy. With a deep breath, I carefully shifted my grip on the Steyr, and then swung my arms out to bring the butt smashing heavily through the window.
I felt it connect with a human face, felt a nose break with a satisfying crunch. A split second later I was climbing through the open window, fast as I could, hauling myself into the room where the sniper had been lying in wait. The force of my blow had sent him sprawling onto his ass, his rifle dropped to the floor, but he was already pulling a sidearm from his belt and aiming it at me as I came in through the window. A second before he pulled the trigger I kicked it aside, sending it skittering across the floorboards. I stood right on top of him with my Steyr pointed squarely in his face, breathing heavily, finger on the trigger.
The sniper had a hand clasped over the bottom of his face, blood seeping between his fingers – but as he looked up at me with hatred smouldering in his eyes, I knew I recognised him.
Major D’Costa. Draeger’s right-hand man. The man who’d shot Rahvi with a tranquiliser dart after we fled Bundarra, and who’d shot me with the same at the Bendeemer quarry. The man who’d stood dispassionately in the torture chamber as Draeger went to work on me. The man who’d pursued us in a chopper after we attacked the ai
rfield, not stopping even after we shot it down, tracking us beyond the borders of New England, wiping out my friends.
“Why?” I demanded. “Why the fuck are you still coming after us?”
“Trying to kill you,” he said, spitting blood and broken teeth out of his mouth.
I kicked him in the face. “Why!” I shouted. “Why do you give a fuck about the stupid fucking codebook anymore? New England’s gone! It’s over! And you’re still chasing us! Why won’t you fucking let it go?”
“It’s not about the codebook,” he coughed.
“Then what? What do you want?”
“To kill you.”
And, yes – I could feel that. I could feel the hatred coming off him in waves.
“Why?”
He shrugged. It was a weak little gesture, lying on the floor like that, bleeding and unarmed. “You killed my CO.”
“Yeah,” I said, breathing in deeply through my nose. “Yeah. Okay. Well... you killed mine.”
I shot him in the head. Three times. I plan to stay here tonight, and I don’t need a zombie wandering around and waking me up.
I wheeled the motorbike to a more sheltered spot behind one of the houses. It’s Kawasaki KLR, the same model Aaron and I rode through the bushland of the South West so long ago, and it still has half a tank of petrol. D’Costa’s sidearm is a Beretta 92, and has three spare clips. His rifle – a fucking beast of a thing – is apparently called a Zastava M93, according to the serial stamp. The magazine holds five rounds, and he had two others clipped to his belt, plus another 45 loose bullets in his backpack. Huge fucking things, longer than my middle finger. I’ll keep it until the bullets run out and then ditch it – doubt I’ll find much ammo for something this exotic lying around in the country towns of New South Wales.
He had other good stuff, too. Roadmaps, a two-way radio (but with dead batteries), a combat knife, a flashlight, a water canteen, a Zippo lighter with some regiment’s coat of arms on it, and a small first aid kit. That was handy, since the bandages Mick and Charlie gave me are already filthy again. And his binoculars, which turned out not to be binoculars at all, but some kind of thermal goggles – no wonder he could pinpoint me so easily. I’ll use them sparingly. No idea how long the batteries will last.
Best of all, he had food: trail mix, dried apricots, energy bars. Not much, but after the last few days it was a feast. Searching the rest of the houses in town supplemented that a little. I found some tinned fruits, which was a godsend. I need the sugar.
I’d killed D’Costa at noon, and had finished searching the township by around two o’clock. That was a lot of daylight left, but I knew for sure now that the town was secure and the temptation of sleeping in a bed was too great, so I decided to bunk down here for the night. I contacted Aaron, too, to keep him updated, and sure enough he bitched at me.
What the hell is the matter with you? he demanded. You haven’t called in for days!
Do you have a helicopter for me yet?
Well – no, look, we’ve been pressing Wagga…
I cut him off. What a surprise. When calling you actually gets me somewhere, maybe I’ll do it more often.
It’s important that you keep us up to date, Matt, Aaron said.
Well, I just spent four days trudging through some fucking national park with nothing to eat, so I didn’t really have anything to tell you about until now, I said. Or do you want my thoughts on the different kinds of trees there are?
Matt…
I killed the sniper, I said. That’s why I’m calling. It was D’Costa.
Who? What?
He was one of Draeger’s cronies, I said. Chasing us out of vengeance. Or habit. I don’t know. Anyway, he tracked me to this town called Ellerston, and I killed him. I’m staying here tonight. If you don’t have a chopper for me by morning, I’m taking his motorbike and heading south.
Listen, Aaron said. We got word from Cloud Mountain. They got a radio up and running.
Where?
The observatory, he reminded me. In Wollemi National Park. Where the Globemaster survivors with the nuke ended up.
Right, I said. How are they doing? Maybe I’ll just go meet up with them.
Don’t, Aaron warned. It’s as bad as we thought. They’re stranded. The observatory’s secure, but there’s thousands of zombies outside the walls. Only way in or out is by air.
I’m going to go that way, I said. Maybe I can help.
Don’t! What the hell could you do?
Lure them away, maybe.
Matt, Aaron said impatiently, it’s not like Eucla or Wagga Wagga or wherever. It’s not flat. It’s a fucking mountain and it’s covered in thick bush. You’re not going to be able to just Pied Piper a bunch of zombies off in the other direction. The park’s swarming with them, anyway – it’s right at the edge of Sydney and Newcastle. That’s like seven million fucking people. You wouldn’t even get close.
So what, then? I said. I just keep walking all the way back to Jagungal?
You’re not going to have to walk, Matt…
It’s on the way. I’m going to check it out. If you don’t want me to, get me a chopper extraction.
Matt, you can’t…
I faded out on the connection, the telepathic equivalent of hanging up the phone. I get what he’s saying, but it feels good to rile him up a bit.
I feel positive. I feel good. For the first time since D’Costa shot Blake, I feel good. Like I got one up on the bad guys, for once. Like maybe this whole venture isn’t going to be so bad after all. Can’t be more than seven or eight hundred kilometres to Jagungal, now. It’s doable. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?
October 16
With the rest of the daylight yesterday, after killing D’Costa and calling Aaron and searching the rest of the town, I filled up a bathtub. I considered lighting a fire to boil some water, but didn’t want to risk the smoke, so it was cold. But being clean felt nice. Washing off six weeks of accumulated dirt felt nice. I think the last time I washed was aboard the HMAS Canberra.
The injuries are worrying me. There are a lot of nasty burns, nasty cuts, and most worrying of all is the mess that is my left hand, still a swollen wreck encrusted with dried blood. I’ve upped the antibiotics I’m taking, but they won’t last long. I’ll need to keep an eye out for pharmacies and GP offices as I head south, and hope they haven’t been entirely cleared out by whoever came before.
I found some new clothes, too, discarding the ragged and bloodied Army uniform I’ve been wearing ever since Sergeant Blake shot the previous owner in the head when he busted us out of the cells in Armidale. Work jeans, a flannel shirt, a thick black jacket. My boots are still good, but fresh socks are nice as well. Whenever we go scavenging we always focus on the same things: food, medicine, ammunition. Having fresh clothes is an overlooked morale booster. As is sleeping in a bed – an actual bed, with sheets and pillows, even if they were a bit dusty and musty. I broke a few drinking glasses in the kitchen and then scattered the glass around the hallways and verandahs of the house I was sleeping in, strung up a few cans in the dark as well. I didn’t think anybody would be approaching in the night, but if they did I wanted to hear about it.
A quiet night’s sleep, a solid ten or eleven hours. I woke after dawn, in bright sunlight, birds chirping and singing. A quick breakfast of trail mix and I was on my way, taking Draeger’s motorcycle helmet, firing up the Kawasaki, and peeling out of town on the south-west road.
My mood flagged when the petrol ran dry halfway through the day – I realised, stupidly, I’d left the choke out. I had to wheel it to a service station at the edge of another tiny abandoned town, which turned out not to be so abandoned after all. A few zombies were lurking around the place, so while I was trying to figure out how to access the tanks below the pumps, I was constantly dropping whatever I was doing to kill them. I must have put down twenty or thirty of them before even getting the tank covers off with a crowbar. Fortunately they came in dribs and drabs – i
f it was a big mob coming all at once it would have been a lot more hectic.
I headed on south-west through the day, past more abandoned towns and villages, coming down from the New England plateau into what I think is the far western reaches of the Hunter Valley. Derelict wineries, overgrown paddocks, the long sinuous curve of the Hunter River. Once, from afar, I got a glimpse of what must have been an evacuation camp from the early days – a huge mess of white canvas tents, green military tents, the Red Cross symbol, trailers and demountables and chain-link fencing. All of it long abandoned, canvas flapping in the wind, rubbish and debris strewn about the place. No people and no zombies. Wherever they fled, the zombies must have followed them. I considered riding over there to pick through it, maybe see if I could find some more antibiotics, but my gut instinct told me not to. I kept heading south, crossing the river through an abandoned police checkpoint at a bridge. More mountains were looming up in the south, across the valley – the mountains of Wollemi National Park, if I’m not mistaken.
I’m sleeping in a little place called Muswellbrook tonight. Like a lot of towns close to New England, there’s evidence that it was a survivor stronghold once upon a time, surrounded by makeshift walls. But there’s no sign of violence. My guess is that a lot of these little places, once they heard New England was safe after the first few months, abandoned ship and headed up there. I wonder how many people are going to be trying to make it back to them, now that New England’s fucked. Maybe not many of them. Maybe a lot of them will be dead.
October 17
I was wondering when I’d run into some survivors. Today I found out.
I was following the road south, passing through empty country towns – or towns where a handful of zombies would shamble out onto the streets as I roared past – and expecting to hit a town called Widden by noon. I’d left the Hunter Valley again, passing up into thick bushland at the edge of the mountains, the road curving back and forth, which was why I didn’t see Widden until I was nearly on top of it.