The police officers raised their eyebrows and looked at each other.
“You can poke your head in the door of the bedroom and have a look, if you like. But you’ll never be able to wake her now – not in a million years.”
(This bit of my story, at least, was true.)
“Yes, we’d like to do that, if we may,” said the cop that I had known previously.
So, I showed them into Deb’s darkened bedroom, still illuminated only by a scented candle. She was breathing shallowly – but no signs of distress or discomfort. No moaning. The police seemed unperturbed by what they saw and heard.
We returned to the lounge area. Mock innocently, I enquired as to why there was suddenly an interest in my sister’s hay-fever.
“Well, sir,” he commenced. “You may have missed today’s declaration of quarantine by the Prime Minister, but the person who reported your sister’s illness suggested that it might be connected with this recent outbreak of zombie-fever amongst women.”
I burst out laughing.
“You’re serious? If it’s zombie-fever, Deb’s been getting it for over twenty years now!” I said. “Fellas, I know when Deb’s got hay-fever. Really, I do. I’ve seen it all my life. She is, after all, my kid sister. I’ve seen it making her absolutely miserable every year. This is definitely not something that has started in just the last few days.”
It seemed I was winning them over – what a charming, polite and eloquent fellow I must have been!
“By the way,” I added. “Let me guess who made the report – a chap by the name of Ben?”
Standing in the area of the kitchenette, adjacent to the bedroom, the police, once again, exchanged glances. Uncertain glances.
“I’m sorry, Sir,” commenced one. “We’re not permitted to reveal the identity of our informants…”
“Look,” I said. “The kid’s just busted up with her live-in boyfriend. That’s why she’s bunking in with me. Ben’s his name. He’s cut up real rough. Wants her back – or, at least wants for no-one else to have her. You see, he just can’t take the rejection. So, really, I don’t need you to tell me who made the report – he’s just trying to make trouble for Deb now….Perhaps, you could charge him with making a false report – for wasting your precious time during an emergency period.”
Once again the officers exchanged a knowing glance – and a sly smile (“I told you so, Mate” said these glances).
I offered to let them come around in the morning - to check again if they were still in any doubt about what I was telling them.
“Hmm,” said one. “A false report, you say? We’ll check it out. Someone, either you or the informant, is telling lies. So, don’t go anywhere till we find out. Okay?”
“Sure,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders. “You know where to find me.”
So this was good. Now they would turn their fire on Ben – if only for long enough for me to make other plans.
In the end, they seemed satisfied (enough) with what I had told them. They bade me good-night and left.
I closed the door behind them.
“We gotta go now, Deb,” I whispered. “Time is short, very short.”
Chapter 9
Flight to the Shack
I knew that the police were not fools – they would definitely not accept the ‘hay fever’ explanation uncritically.
The fact that they had left me and Deb in peace for the moment did not mean they had made up their minds. They would check it out with their source (Ben) – and, when they did, I knew they would be back, maybe even that same night.
For all I knew, they might be on the phone to Ben, seeking further details about Deb’s ‘hay-fever’, even as I started to pack our things.
So, Deb and I would have to travel light.
I waited and listened for the police van to leave. I noted that they sat in their patrol car for some minutes outside the block of flats. Were they waiting to see if we bolted? Were they seeking orders from ‘higher up’ – or talking to Ben?
I couldn’t say. But when their V8 engine roared into life – and the noise of it diminished as the patrol car disappeared down the street, I sprang into action. Packing my own bag took less than a minute. Deb’s own overnight bag was still largely packed from the time she had arrived at my flat. Those few things that had been unpacked were stuffed roughly back into it.
I grabbed anything which was still edible from the fridge and cupboards and put it in a large plastic bag. There wasn’t much – I was a young bachelor then. Remember? Well-stocked cupboards were terra incognita at my place.
I decided to reconnoitre. I crept down the back stairwell of the flats – the carpet was largely exposed to the elements and was covered in litter and dust. The door to the basement car-park was half-open, swinging gently back and forth in the breeze. So, I hazarded a peek through it.
Bugger!
One of the cops had indeed stayed back for a time to see if I would immediately flee. I could see him quite clearly because, bizarrely, one (out of four) of the car-park lights was actually working. (My landlord was very diligent about maintenance and repairs – not.)
So, I crept back up the stairs to my flat, turned out the lights and waited some more. The turning out of the lights apparently persuaded the police that I was not going to head for the hills with Deb. Soon, I heard the throb of the police V8 engine return – inaudible words were exchanged, a car door opened and then closed once more.
The police had genuinely left – for now.
I gathered up our bags and food and bolted back down the dusty, litter-strewn stairwell. Upon reaching my then-new Subaru Touring Wagon, I opened the rear hatch and threw everything in higgledy – piggledy. (The car was iridescent gold – I loved that car.)
I closed the hatch with a ‘whump’ - and ran back upstairs for Deb.
Puffing from the exertion, I entered her/my room. She was still unconscious, of course, and her breathing was as shallow as ever. I cast aside the bed-clothes and leant down to her inert form. I heaved her middle onto my shoulder and grunted a little as I straightened up – though she really wasn’t all that heavy, to be truthful. (I was just that weak.)
She did not stir – not a good sign.
I exited, gently closed the door behind me (so as not to arouse suspicion) and stepped carefully down the stairs. Any fall from the third floor could prove severely incapacitating – I didn’t need that.
After strapping Deb into the front seat (she slumped a little – so, I leant the seat backwards), I started the engine (no unnecessary revving) and drove slowly out of the downstairs car-park and onto the street. I deliberately had not put my headlights on and the street-lights were obscured by some large trees at that point.
I observed a police car loitering to the right – at the distant East end of the street. I turned left, to the West. I fancy that, with my lights still out, I would not be observed leaving. In any event, I was not followed. I think this was more like good luck than good management – but I took the break all the same.
I headed along Grattan Street in Carlton, past the University (‘Ground Zero’ for the first wave of the zombie apocalypse) until I reached Flemington Road. There, I entered the then start of the Calder Highway, as it then was.
I had turned on the car radio, expecting news of the second wave. There were plenty of news updates, of course – all bad. As with the first wave, ten years previously, the infection was spreading like wildfire. However, on this occasion, every infected woman was a mini ‘Ground Zero’. There were hundreds of them already, with more women falling ill all the time.
Although the ‘new’ cases were women who had been bitten during the first outbreak, within a short time, they started ‘recruiting’ others with their own bites. This was the consistent message. So, I expected that, by the time Deb and I were making a break for it, the ‘authorities’ would have been enforcing the ‘quarantine’ by setting up roadblocks to prevent the infected from moving about and spreading the
plague.
In those days, the Calder was not a freeway but merely a highway. It was thus necessary to pass through a number of towns: Keilor, Diggers Rest, Gisborne, Woodend, Carlsruhe, Kyneton and so on.
At any of those towns we could have met a wooden barrier manned by police or determined local volunteers.
However, we were lucky. The first roadblocks did not get organised until the next morning – and, by that time, Deb and I were safely (well, relatively safely) ensconced in my bushland retreat in the Fryers Ranges State Forest.
o0o
Actually, my bolt-hole was just outside the boundary of the formally proclaimed State Forest area – but the bushland was contiguous with it and the local wildlife observed no such boundary.
Let me describe my humble ‘piece of heaven’.
I believe the whole area had once been farmland, cleared during the Great Depression of the 1930’s – but forests are tenacious and, having been given a fair chance, the trees had regrown and reclaimed the farmland once again.
Conservationists may sneer at ‘regrowth forest’ (i.e. as against ‘Old Growth Forest’) but I am not nearly so dismissive. True it is that the trees regrow with much urgency – and therefore crowd each other for many decades before the strongest win out and the ‘natural’ forest structure is re-established – but I noticed no objection from the local inhabitants. They all seemed very happy to be living in ‘regrowth’.
The door of my humble shack was subject to many visitations: mobs of Eastern Grey kangaroos, solitary wallabies, echidnas, koalas, quarrelsome families of possums, rosellas, quails, snakes and other creatures of many types.
If I sat quietly on my balcony – as I often did – they would all approach and observe. Some, I’m sure, resented my presence but many didn’t. The possums, in particular, always viewed me as a food-opportunity (and were rarely disappointed).
And, in the Springtime, the earth thereabouts bore a harvest of delicate native orchids as well as many other colourful wildflowers. The felling of the forest, decades before, and subsequent grazing by sheep and cattle, had surprisingly not eliminated these precious ‘locals’.
So, just like all these locals, I was pretty happy to retreat to this patch of ‘regrowth forest’.
And my shack, what was it like? Had I, like some ultra-capable backwoods man, felled and hewn native timber by saw and by adze - and then constructed the dwelling with taut muscle, stretched sinew and my own horn-skinned hands?
Not exactly.
In fact, it had once been a ‘Granny Flat’ in a backyard of one of the more well-to-do suburbs of Melbourne: Eaglemont, as I recall. Knocked down, transported on the back of a flat-bed truck and re-erected in the isolation of this special, wild(ish) place.
I had painted it green – of course – but had not done much by way of repairs or renovations. There was no electricity nor running water but I had fitted it with bottled gas for cooking and heating. It even had an outside toilet and shower.
In short, it had all the ‘mod-cons’ of a base-level caravan – without the claustrophobic conditions of a base-level caravan park.
It was comfy enough – and not all (just most) of my female friends hated it. (I rarely enticed them there more than once.)
Most importantly, it had been a place of retreat from the weekday cares and the rush of the City – and now it was to be the first place of refuge for me and the sister whom I knew to be dying.
Chapter 10
The Change
Now, here’s the thing: when David had died and turned into a zombie, I had been confident (well, reasonably confident) that he would not harm me. After all, we were identical twins. We were born of the same fertilised ovum and possessed identical DNA. We were, in effect, genetically, ‘one’.
More to the point, we had shared a deep and life-long empathetic bond, a bond which over-rode all other feelings. If David had chosen to harm me, he would have been harming himself.
I had judged right – he didn’t harm me. Indeed, he was my protector when we were among the other zombies. They seemed to understand that I was, as David’s twin, a sort of ‘honorary zombie’ – and left me completely alone.
However, none of this necessarily applied with Deb. She was my little sister and I would cheerfully have laid down my life to save her. Since Mum and Dad had been taken, I was her father, mother, brother and sister all rolled into one.
It was plain to me that she felt the same about me – while she was alive.
But there had never been between us the same deep empathetic bond that David and I shared - even now, though we were thousands of miles apart. And Deb and I were not merely two aspects of one genetic being. We were not even of the same gender.
So, okay, we shared some genes and had loved each other more than life itself.
Would that be enough to prevent Deb from killing and devouring me once she had ‘changed’?
I had pondered this deeply. During the first wave of the zombie apocalypse, family members were often the first to be slaughtered and eaten after their nearest and dearest had returned from death.
This had happened time and time again – in fact, it had been the general pattern of the first killings. I could not ignore this. I could not afford to ignore it. There would be no second chances.
So, I placed my desperately ill sister in the makeshift (but very comfortable) double-bed which lay in one corner of the shack – and tied her in.
There was a quantity of poly-rope in the shack – which I used for various purposes – but this may have damaged Deb once she started to thrash about, after the change. So, instead of using the rope, I removed the three seatbelts from the rear of the Subaru and lashed them around both the mattress and Deb herself. Broadly but securely bound by the woven material (which was joined with the strong, metal clips), she was going absolutely nowhere and she would not damage herself if, as expected, she struggled.
This meant also that, at last, I could catch up on some overdue and much-needed sleep without the fear of waking up already half-devoured by the kid sister!
o0o
I’m not sure how long I slept but I did sleep soundly for some hours.
I was not woken by any sound that Deb made. Rather, I think, I was awoken by the noise she was not making. I listened in the deafening silence of the windless bush – I could hear the blood being pumped through my ears but nothing else.
In the city, there is always a discernible hubbub in the background – cars, trams, loud music, domestic disputes etc. – but not at the shack. At the shack, if there were no wind, there was complete silence at night. Even if you heard the bark of a dog or the hoot of an owl, it was probably miles away.
So, I guess the only sound that was audible while I had been asleep was the noise of Deb’s shallow, and increasingly laboured, breathing. When it had stopped, so had my sleep.
My heart pounding, I lay awake, waiting. I knew what to expect as I had seen it many times before. I had waited beside my university classmates as they had, in their turn, died 10 years previously.
I wasn’t looking forward to this.
It seemed like an eternity but, realistically, it was probably no more than, say, 20 minutes.
Then, the cry of the banshee split the night’s blackness.
Despite the fact that I had known it was coming, my own flesh still went cold and the hairs all over my body stood erect.
Deb screamed and screamed. Loud screams of rage and protest. Despite our complete isolation, it was hard to believe she would not be heard by someone – even someone miles away – and arouse their curiosity. But I had simply to trust that this would not happen – Deb could not be moved now.
I breathed deeply, rose from my own (single) bed and, with deliberation, lit the ancient kerosene lamp (the only lighting in the shack).
I put on the sternest expression I could muster in the circumstances. In the soft lamplight, I turned abruptly and faced my sister as she continued to scream in impotent rage. Another
, very deep, chill ran through me when I saw the hatred and blood-lust that was evident in her sunken, bloodshot eyes.
Clearly, I had been right – upon returning, she would have unhesitatingly killed and devoured me as her first victim.
But I had a plan.
“Bad girl!” I yelled at her. “You’re a very naughty girl! Stop that screaming this very instant!”
Mine (Book 2): Sister Mine, Zombie Page 4