All beds, lounges and other soft furnishings, whether in the foyer or in the rooms, had long-since rotted beyond utility. The previously ornate, moulded tinplate ceilings had completely collapsed where animals – rats, possums and fruitbats, I guessed - had taken up residence.
So, after ten years exposed to the tropical climate and with no repairs or maintenance, the Ascot Hotel had become totally uninhabitable – right?
Not quite.
There was a reasonably sized indoor swimming pool (now quite empty, of course) and quite large change rooms adjacent to it. In theory, via floor-to-ceiling windows, the pool commanded a magnificent view of Simpson Harbour and the two volcanic vents within it. The whole area, floors, walls and ceilings was still well-tiled in white, native-patterned tessellation. There was some mould certainly – and those broad windows desperately needed a clean if the view was ever to be seen again – but there was nothing that a few days’ worth of elbow-grease wouldn’t put right.
“So, what do you think, Deb?” I asked cheerily.
Deb examined there proposed accommodation carefully, having been none too impressed by what she’s seen on the way through the ruined hotel to the pool area.
Would it meet with her approval? (Would I really care if it didn’t?)
Deb nodded
“Deb-deb stay here,” she said, simply. “Davie stay, too.”
So, now Deb was telling the ‘King of the Zombies’ where he should stay in his own kingdom! Such sisterly presumption. (I liked it.)
Perhaps she had missed David more than I had realised? Who knows? In any event, David did not protest. After Deb’s accommodation ‘order’, he generally stuck around and seemed to spend most nights at ‘the pool’ with us. Actually, it suited me to have David close by. I didn’t want any of the locals to forget that I was their ‘king’s’ brother – and that therefore I was uneatable.
In a fit of continuing optimism, I left my siblings to go down into the cellar. I hoped it might extend the usable living area for us. Naturally, I found it was cooler than the ambient temperature outside and thus made a pleasant change from the intense tropical heat. It was pitch dark, of course, and there were plenty of spiders and snakes that had taken up residence in the cellar. These made my tentative explorations that much less pleasant.
(I knew that the snakes were mostly pythons in that part of the world and was thus not overly concerned about meeting a sudden and painful death – well, not really.)
I remembered well where the diesel generator had been and was able to find it by touch without much difficulty. As expected, it was still just where it had been – I mean, after all, which zombies would have bothered to move it in the meantime?
I quickly felt out the crank handle in the dark - and turned it. The crank’s action was a little hesitant and squeaky – the lubricant must have dried out over the last nine years or so – but it was not impossibly stiff. Needless to say, the generator did not fire into action on the first turn. So, immediately, my thoughts went to everything I knew about the repair and maintenance of a standard diesel generator.
That took, maybe, five seconds.
Hmm.
In the absence of any better ideas, I simply gave the generator handle the biggest heave I could manage – and the bloody thing roared into life! Within seconds, the cellar was bathed in a sort of weak, flickering light. Two or three of the light globes still worked down there.
Amazing.
The cellar’s dark-dwelling residents did not seem to take kindly to the light. I saw small shapes scuttling under this piece of equipment and that piece of stored junk. I saw also, for the first time, that there was a small colony of micro-bats (you know, the insect-eating ones) huddled at the far end of the cellar.
They, along with the snakes, spiders and other assorted critters, would soon be getting an eviction notice from me. Following their eviction, I decided that the cellar could be made liveable for ‘the family’ as well.
After contemplating the forcible departure of my small forest-dwelling friends, I looked for the large tank of diesel fuel that had been stored in the cellar. It, too, stood apparently undisturbed. It had been still half full when I had left the island. Anxiously, I banged on the side of the tank with the palm of my hand, moving it up and down as I did so. As I did so, I noted the change in the pitch of the sound it was making – first hollow then solid.
“Perfect,” I whispered in the pale, yellowish light.
It was just as I had left it – we would have fuel for months, if used sparingly. (I would try not to throw too many energy-wasting soirees in the (now-ruined) ballroom while I was there – stupidly, I’d forgotten my tux, anyway!)
Things were looking up. Maybe I could get a fridge or an air-conditioner going as well? It was worth a try – even for a useless, impractical, boy-barrister like me.
Upon returning upstairs to the pool area, I caught a glimpse of Deb and David departing out the (still opaque) glass double-doors. How rude! Where were they off to without me? I walked to the open doors and observed my siblings. They were headed back down towards the harbour. I decided I should follow them at a discreet distance and watch.
It really was one of the more incongruous – and humorous – things I have ever seen. They were just like an elderly couple, clumsily walking along, side by side (though not hand in hand) – right down the middle of the long-deserted main street. Every now and then, Deb would see something that would interest her and she would then turn to Dave and jabber some mono-syllable or phrase at him. He, of course, would not (could not) respond but would cast a puzzled, sideways glance at his long-lost sister – as if to say: “What a curious creature you are!”
Deb was completely unperturbed by his looks and glances – she just kept on jabbering at him like the two-year-old (or, perhaps, three-year-old) she now was. She seemed to be enjoying a lovely ‘stroll in the park’ with her bemused zombie brother.
This interplay between my two siblings was, however, only half the story.
Lining the footpaths of this once-major thoroughfare were the hundreds of zombies we had encountered only an hour or so earlier on the quayside. They had not yet moved away from that immediate area and dispersed back to wherever it was that they usually spent their time. They all stood quite still, watching ‘the royal couple’ fixedly as they ‘paraded along The Mall’.
I half-expected the appreciative crowd to suddenly produce small national flags and colourful bunting – and then start waving them enthusiastically at the passing Royals.
Plainly, Deb’s imperious arrival had been the most exciting event in Rabaul for the last ten years – but more, much more, was to come. Rabaul was not to remain a ‘sleepy hollow’ for much longer.
The Royal Procession was only interrupted by a noticeable trembling of the earth. It was nothing much, really – just enough to cause the assembled (and previously goggled-eyed) zombies to show some obvious anxiety, crouching and looking about for a visible cause.
Personally, I was not disturbed. I’d felt such rumblings many times when I had been in Rabaul before. After all, Rabaul sits on the rim of a large volcano. What did you expect?
Chapter 29
Pig Hunt
Ignoring the rumbles of the Earth, Deb kept jabbering at her brother. For his part, David just kept looking at her sideways in wonderment.
What was David thinking?
For nine years, he’d lived in a world of grunts, moans and roars and now his world was full of sisterly babble – and all his zombie ‘subjects’ seemed quite in awe of Deb’s obvious superiority. (Zombie capabilities are, of course, relative.)
A first-time parent is often in awe of his or her child when they start to speak. He or she hungrily counts those early words. They write them down – to prove they’ve been said. They boast about their precocious child to friends and family – anyone not too bored to listen.
Perhaps, I thought, David was like that – simply proud of the sister ‘once-lost-and-now-
found’.
On the other hand, maybe he was feeling the heat of competition for his subject’s hearts and minds.
Can’t say, really. However, what I do know is that, some mornings after the first ‘Royal Procession’, David decided to put on a display of his own.
Was he trying to prove he ‘still had it’? Was he doing it to impress Deb? Dunno - but I was sure he wasn’t doing it to impress me because I had seen it all before. (Or so I thought.)
o0o
When I awoke in ‘the pool’, the panoramic windows now assiduously cleaned by me (and affording me a fine view of Simpson Harbour), it was already morning and the harsh, tropical sunlight had flooded in and roused me. I observed that both Deb and David had left our refurbished sleeping quarters already. Then I heard a familiar roaring, a distant bellowing from the vicinity, I guessed, of the former city square.
But this was no ordinary roar – not a roar of displeasure, nor of warning - or even of triumph. It was the roar that David had devised as his ‘call to arms’. It was his way of summoning his zombie ‘troops’ to battle. In this case, the battle was with the wild boars that inhabited the island but which, very sensibly, no longer walked idly about the streets of Rabaul. (Pigs that had once done that had long since become an endangered, if not extinct, species.)
As you may recall, whilst still in Australia, I had weaned David, very painfully, away from his exclusive diet of human flesh (which had been a little hard for me to maintain with any sort of conscience at all) and onto a diet of raw wallaby meat. And then, when we had arrived in Rabaul, the transition for David from wallaby to pig-meat had proved to be quite natural. In time, he and I were able to convince the otherwise starving locals as to the virtues of this alternative diet – and David was rewarded by being hailed as the local sovereign.
This much you already know.
Well, it seemed that David and his cohort had been able to carry on this predatory, if not culinary, tradition without needing any ongoing assistance from me. Sheer weight of numbers in the hunt had meant that weaponry was no longer required – which was just as well since most zombies are just too clumsy and too dim to make use of weapons.
Anyway, it seemed that David, judging by his unique roaring in the city square, had decided that today was a good day to hunt wild boar.
“Well,” I said aloud - to no-one in particular. “I’m up for it.”
I rolled on my elbow and freed myself from the collection of mouldy cloth that yet passed for a bed. This would be improved upon in the coming days. (Ever woven bedding from palm leaves?)
I knew it would take some time for the hunting party to assemble – zombies rarely do anything quickly as a group. They’re just not that organised, generally. So, I attended to my ablutions in the showers adjacent to what was rapidly becoming the living area. The water, though still running freely, was dead cold. But, since the air temperature was already climbing into the high 20’s C, my shower was nevertheless quite bearable – refreshing even.
I had found in the large hotel store-room a supply of still-usable talcum powder - but no serviceable towel. (I was still working on that.) Anyway, I soon dried off in the rising heat of the morning.
David’s roaring ceased abruptly. I guessed that enough of the undead had now turned up in the city square to make up a reasonable hunting party. So, at a leisurely pace, I wandered down the main street and into the central square.
I was impressed by what I saw.
David had not only maintained sufficient discipline among the zombies to keep the hunt going but had actually increased the numbers of participants.
Not a bad feat for someone with the mental capacity of a violent two-year-old!
The pig hunt, it seemed, had become a sort of national sport among the zombies.
On one side of the square I observed several rows of the undead – almost, but not quite, like ranks of soldiers on a parade ground. On the opposite side of the square, the same thing. By my quick head count, there were a couple of hundred zombies on either side of the square, all firmly focussed upon the solitary figure, David, in the middle - and obviously awaiting his orders.
(Deb also stood alone - but to one side - silent and watching.)
When David and I had organised the hunts, nine years previously, we had arranged for all the hunters to be lined up on one side of the square only. So, why the change? What had
David changed in the plan of the hunt and why?
I soon found out.
By a signal which I didn’t quite understand, David ordered the folk on one side of the square to leave it ahead of the others. Obediently, they filed away and in the direction of the forest-shrouded hills which loomed in the distance, behind the city.
Fully half an hour passed before the next signal came from David, the second group having stood stock-still in the baking sun. David led this second group – in a very orderly fashion - from the square and, apparently, along the same route as had been taken by the first group.
It was then that I noticed two ‘new’ hunters, Zombies Dan and Graeme, had joined in. They were, like raw recruits, shambling along with this second group – two more Europeans among many Melanesians.
Did they understand what was going on? I hoped not because I was not at all sure I did!
David strode along at the head of the second group like an undead Caesar commanding his most loyal praetorian guard.
Deb and I trailed along a short distance behind the second group – Deb started babbling at me (of course) but, I confess, I didn’t much listen. I was too intent on figuring out why (and how) David had altered the hunt strategy (which had worked quite well - in my opinion, anyway).
Once we reached the forest at the base of the first set of hills, my vision in the darkened understorey became very limited - and the first large group of zombies was still nowhere to be seen. As it turned out, they must still have been making their way to their primary objective: the ridge-line of the first set of hills.
After our second group had progressed, maybe, 200 metres into the forest, and was fully enclosed by the forest canopy, David let out another, quite distinct, roar. Immediately the zombies, till then lumbering along in Indian file, broke to the left and right of the rough trail we had been following - and then spread themselves out at intervals of a couple of metres of so through the dense forest. My guess is that, by the time they had finished doing this manoeuvre, their ranks spread across a distance of about half a kilometre. It was a sort of zombie-wall whose ends I could not see.
This part of hunt came as no great surprise to me. What was happening up the hill was, however, completely new.
David sat. The ‘troops’ followed suit. We waited – and waited, shaded by the canopy but completely enveloped by the tropical humidity. This was not so bad but the biting insects all homed in on me for their supper. It seemed that congealed zombie blood was not to their taste and the undead were simply not attacked by them.
o0o
Ever heard a couple of hundred zombies roaring in unison – even at several hundred metres away?
No? Well, it certainly chills my spine – even after I had lived with these folk for months on end. More than that, it’s apt to set the denizens of any forest running in utter panic – and they did run.
First came the winged creatures (birds and bats) passing in waves rushing overhead.
Then came the normally shy, but now-terrified, forest deer - bursting through and over the ‘wall’ made by the second group of zombies. (The small and delicate forest deer were completely safe from attack – even these zombies, who were now partial to pork, never ate venison. Don’t ask me why.)
The passing of the forest deer was the cue for David to stand to attention once again and, with his rising, the ranks to either side of him also progressively rose to their feet.
The elongated group now stood, tense and silent.
But there was not long to wait. The roaring of the first group was getting louder - and closer. They w
ere swarming swiftly down the hill towards us.
And there was squealing! Lots of it. I now realised that the first group was driving a number (how many?) of wild pigs before it - and in our direction.
I started to retreat. (I’m not fucking stupid!)
I looked to Deb. Unsurprisingly, her nostrils were visibly flaring and her widening eyes had suddenly become bloodshot again. She was obviously highly aroused by all that she now heard and saw. She was not going to retreat with me. On the contrary, she immediately moved forward to join the male zombies in the second group of the hunting party.
“You’re on your own, Deb,” I muttered under my breath, still shamelessly retreating from the action.
Both the squealing and the roaring grew rapidly in intensity as the first group of zombies and their wild pigs hurtled downhill.
Mine (Book 2): Sister Mine, Zombie Page 15