Staring out across the harbour I thought about how the nights in old Sydney town used to be a festival of lights, white and yellow like eyes shining in the darkness. Cars filled the streets, and people walked around in the open as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Back then they didn’t. Now they had plenty. They had the kind of cares that made eating a bullet a blessing. If only bullets weren’t in such short supply and death was a guaranteed end.
I got off the bike and walked up and down the jetty. Stretching my legs in the chill of the night. I didn’t like to sit still for too long. I’ve always subscribed to a kind of law of averages which says that if you keep moving the chances of getting jumped are reduced.
The water was oil slick dark and decorated with the occasional piece of windblown trash floating past. The dead don’t float. All that moving around pushed the gasses out of them and they decay so slowly. The why of stuff like that was for the geeks in the Opera House to wonder about. On the street you just stayed away from the dead and gave thanks for Tankbread.
When I heard the first creak and splash of an approach, I had the shotgun up and ready. The two cartridges were at home into the double breech, and the twin triggers were at half pull under my fingers. I had half a mind to run, but how far would the few litres of gas get me? Far enough to be in real trouble I guessed.
I waited; the echoing splash of torn water became more rhythmic as the boat approached. I hadn’t travelled the harbour this way in a long time, mostly because I couldn’t afford the fare. This time I was on evol business, and the expenses were not mine.
Leaving the bike I crouched behind a jetty post as the harbour boat glided up to the dock. The watercraft was about 20 feet across and about 25 feet long. Little more than a raft, buoyed by the carcasses of small boats bound together under a flat deck. On the port and starboard sides was a mesh enclosure with nothing but a handrail and wooden slats. Here the crew hung, one man in each of the giant hamster wheels. Gripping the rail above their heads while their feet walked the slats. Stepping up and pushing down, driving the boat forward as they trod, pushing the wheel through the water. Now at rest they collapsed, kneeling in the water that stirred and slapped beneath them. The sound of their haggard breathing in the still night air indicated they were living meat. Evols were too slow for this kind of work.
In the centre of the deck, resplendent on the frame of an old lifeguard’s watch chair sat a figure in a wide brimmed hat and an old Snowy River oilskin. His hat and coat were stained black and foul by weather and guano from sea birds roosting on the boat. In each hand he held a thick cord, a leather rein that fed through a pulley. With these he could adjust the yaw of the rudders set at the rear and steer his boat like a great fish across the harbour.
The boatman had been doing this for a long time; repetition, the geeks said, was the key to the new evolution. The more times an evol did something the better they got at it. Like in the old days when they had the hunger and we hadn’t figured out Tankbread, they had more than a passing skill at tearing fresh meat from screaming bones.
Standing up and facing the ferryman took more balls than I thought I had.
‘Passage! Across the harbour! Got business with Opera House!’ I called out, the shotgun casually hanging by my side.
‘You got fare,’ there was no question in the boatman’s voice. If I didn’t have fare I wouldn’t be standing there. The evols think like retards, but they have cunning.
‘I have a head.’ A head, a fresh skull, encased in flesh. The brain still sealed inside. The sweetest meat, the price of passage. I swung the sack off my shoulder. The shotgun I holstered at my side and I opened the sack. Reaching in I grabbed the hair and pulled the fare out. I waited while the boatman thought about what to say next.
‘Come aboard.’
I stuffed the head back into the sack and scrambling a little, half out of nerves and half… well shit it was all nerves. I like the water, just not the walking dead, and I was going to spend some time with an evol who could just as easily decide that two heads were better than one.
I pushed the bike, rolling it down the trembling planks of the dock and then with a slight bump I was standing on the flat deck between the twin cages of the paddle wheels. The men on each side regarded me with a resigned loathing. No rest for them tonight. I parked the bike on its kickstand, feeling the boat move and settle under my feet.
The boatman watched as I repeated the ritual stripping of the sack cover. I held the head up to him, he reached down with a wet grey hand and snatched it up to his face.
My eyes adjust fast to dim light; it’s a survival trait, could be why I’m still alive and not some meat munching evol. I could see well enough on the barge. Under that wide brimmed hat, the dead eyes, and the torn flesh of an old injury that had left the boatman’s right jawbone exposed. He sniffed the head, grunted in a satisfied way and then slammed it neck first down onto a spiked pole next to his chair. The spike pierced the bone and burst out through the top. He slid his fingers up the exposed section of the spike and then licked the bits off them.
‘Boat turn!’ He spoke the way all evols do. Like they have a terminal case of snot on the lungs with some huge ball of thick soup waiting to be coughed up out of his throat. I swallowed hard. It reminds me that I’m alive and I can clear my damn throat any time I want.
The men in the cages adjusted their grip on the rail overhead. First one drew his knees up and pushed down, his weight turned his wheel in a downward motion. The fellow on the other side of the barge also gripped his overhead rail and pushed down on the paddles behind him, driving them in the opposite direction. The barge spun on its own axis and without further orders from the boatman, the two paddle drivers got us going, slowly at first, and then up to a regular striding speed as they forced the paddles down and carried on thumping their feet in a sodden treadmill action.
I stood and looked ahead, one hand on the bike, staring out into the darkness and wishing I was anywhere else. Some place where I could see the buildings or dirt would be nice.
Behind me the two boat drivers grunted and heaved. They stank, the harbour not so much. It’s amazing how years after the collapse of modern civilization the ecology was coming back. Green things were pushing up through the concrete everywhere. Must have been all the blood on the ground.
The fog didn’t roll in from the sea, the air ahead of us just started to get thick and pale. By my guess we were halfway across the water. Too far to swim either way, I thought as my palms started to sweat. If Soo-Yong screwed me and the shotgun-shells turned out to be duds, I promised myself I would spend the rest of eternity getting enough dead-smarts to rip his head off.
‘HUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNGHHH!’
I nearly shat my pants as the noise bellowed behind me. The boatman’s head tilted back and he bellowed into the mist like a stag in rut. I slung a leg over the bike and clenched the handlebars. It felt better to be gripping something as he howled again, every undulating wail driving spikes into my skull. The meat treading the wheels didn’t seem bothered by it. They just kept on plodding, driving the boat through the water.
The rest of the way through the fog the boatman kept howling into the sky, the meat kept trudging, turning the paddlewheels and pushing us ever closer to the shore.
Walsh Bay on the south side of the harbour used to be a trendy development of restaurants and office blocks, a thriving hub of humanity. Now the evols walked the streets, feral cats hissed from the shadows and the occasional meat, driven out by hunger, scavenged and checked snares and cage-traps for rats.
The boat slid to a halt against the lowest level of the Walsh Bay pier. I pushed the bike off and then ran it up the rough steps that took me to street level. You forget how dark it gets when there is no electricity. With the fog coming off the harbour, I couldn’t see shit. The damp was seeping in through my clothes and I felt a moment of panic about the powder pressed into those precious shotgun shells soaking up the moisture and turning to clay.
I stopped halfway down Macquarie. An armoured bus barricaded the street, with some kind of cannon and two guards peering over the corrugated iron battlements. Battery powered torches mounted on their weapons flicked on and played over my face and bike.
‘Fuck off!’ one of them called by way of greeting.
‘I got business inside!’ I hissed back. Shouting isn’t something we do. Like sharks smelling blood in the water, when evols hear screaming they get to thinking about eating someone.
‘What kinda business mate?’ the other guy, sounded older.
‘Message from the Gook evol Soo-Yong, over on the north side.’
‘What’s the message?’ older and apparently not bothered about the idea of me sitting out here with my balls in hand waiting for the evols to come down and tear me a new one.
‘Fuck man, let me in and I’ll tell you all about it…but hurry up.’
I could hear the evols behind me now, the groans, the slow stumbling steps and the smell coming off a crowd of the dead gathering. They were drawn in by the noise of my bike and the chatter of human voices.
The old prick sat up there on the bus and thought about it like a damned evol trying to remember how to pick its nose. He waited for a good minute until I could see the shapes coming out of the dark. The sunken eyes, the withered flesh, the lips pulling back to reveal hungry teeth. The dead stank. A smell of slow rot, old shit and drying blood.
I stood astride the bike, ready to tear out through the gathering mob. There could have been hundreds of them behind me, maybe thousands, and more coming all the time. Like undead sheep the evols tend to follow each other. Maybe they communicate in some way we don’t understand, or maybe they were just bored and looking to party.
The young guy vanished and a few moments later the bus engine began to turn over, a slow grinding whine. I rolled the bike forward, as close to the sheet metal wall as I dared without being trapped by the advancing crowd.
The bus engine fired and the kid stirred the gear stick looking for reverse. The grinding noise was echoed by the moans of the dead; they were close. I pulled my shotgun and cracked it open, rechecking the load.
‘Hurry it up!’ I could barely hear myself over the revving of the bus and the growing agitation of the zombie horde.
A gap appeared and I dropped the clutch, punching the bike through just as the nearest evol was reaching out to tear me from the saddle. I skidded the bike on the other side, narrowly avoiding riding straight into another wall. Behind me the bus lurched forward and the cannon on the roof roared, spraying a jet of high-pressure water that knocked the advancing dead on their arses and gave many of them the first bath they’d had in years.
The gate closed again and the heavy engine shut off. The kid hopped out of the cab, all grinning and cock-sure.
‘Arsehole,’ I growled at him.
‘Aww shit mate, we let you in. But damn if you could have seen the look on yo-’
Leaping of the bike I slammed my fist into that shit-eating grin. The kid flew back and bounced of the side of the bus. He wasn’t smiling now. He shrieked, an angry squealing sound like a rat in a snare-trap. I stepped aside as he threw himself at me. He landed next to the bike, rolled and came up with a knife in his hand.
‘Cool!’ The old guy above us on the bus roof shouted out and dropped down behind me. I moved to watch him and the kid. Both stood their ground and let me stand mine.
‘Calm down, Cool,’ the older man said. So the kid’s name was Cool. I could see the humour in that. Like calling a fat guy Slim.
‘Sorry about that,’ the old man rolled a smoke and took his time. I guessed what ever he was smoking wasn’t tobacco, though if he meant to impress me by showing he had skins to roll a smoke, it worked.
The final trick was the casual way he pulled a shiny chrome lighter from his pocket and lit up.
‘You got business with the geeks?’
‘Yeah,’ giving information away free wouldn’t get me anywhere except back out on the wrong side of the barricade.
‘Leave your bike parked up over there. I’ll walk you down.’
I looked at Cool one more time. He seemed calmer. The blood on his face tracked through the grime but couldn’t turn his frown upside down.
The old guy lead me out through a well lit maze of shipping containers stacked two high, switching back as we wound our way towards the opera house.
‘Name’s Bert,’ he said, dragging on his limp cigarette.
I nodded, taking note of the drop gates hanging overhead. Ready to slide down and block the narrow canyon between the steel walls. If the evols or some gang of meat got past the bus-gate, they could be slowed down, boxed in and exterminated here.
‘You got yourself quite the entrance way here,’ I said.
‘Sure,’ Bert said and we walked on in silence.
The Sydney Opera House gleamed in the damp night air, the tips of its roof rising above the fog. She’d always been an icon to Australians, a shining beacon of our culture, our can-do spirit and since it all went to shit, it became a sanctuary for a chosen few of us too.
The ones who got in to the house compound and stayed had the right skills, or the right connections. Scientists and military types of course, and if the rumours were right the last Prime Minister was holed up in here somewhere. They said during The Great Panic things in Canberra went badly wrong. Most of the central government didn’t make it out due to a screw up in the evacuation plan. The Prime Minister’s helicopter crashed in the botanic gardens and the Opera House geeks rescued him. The story goes that he suffered brain damage in the crash, or just went nuts. Now they said he spends his days in a padded cell, jerking off and writing memoirs on the walls in his own shit. Not everyone survived the collapse of civilisation with their minds intact.
We walked out into the open space beyond Macquarie Street, to our right the cliff that rose up to the Botanic Gardens, to our left the decaying remains of the towers and shopping complex that overlooked the bay. People glanced up from small cooking fires; they lived in converted shipping containers and the lobbies of buildings. I could smell cooking meat, animal meat and I mentally marked the rumour about the people inside the house compound being cannibals as bullshit.
‘Where’s it come from?’ I asked. ‘The meat?’
‘Botanic Gardens, got a regular farm going on up there. Of course most of what these buggers out here get to eat is the usual, cats and rats and elephants, as sure as you were born.’ He sang the last bit.
‘Elephants?’ I said. I wouldn’t have been surprised. We lived in strange times.
‘Never mind,’ he might have been laughing, in the dark it was hard to tell.
The opera house was huge close up, three buildings unlike any other on earth. One last barricade blocked our way, six foot long iron spikes set in concrete in front of a twelve foot fence, topped by barbed wire and behind that, armed soldier types, watching and wary.
‘I feel safer already,’ I said to Bert who just smiled, pinched his cigarette out and tucked the butt in his pocket.
‘Just Bert, and a courier,’ he called out while we were well back from the fence. I could see sandbag machine gun nests dotted
up the steps and more bags were piled against the massive windows under the curving roofs I remembered from a lifetime ago.
We stopped at the mesh gate. Two guys with guns, wearing faded but proper army khakis watched while a third unlocked the gate and let us through.
‘What’s the package?’ The gate soldier asked.
‘Message for the geeks, from Soo-Yong.’
‘What’s the message?’ They must get really bored out here night after night.
‘Captain Kangaroo says fuck you.’ I said, forgetting to use what my mum always called my Inside Head Voice.
The three of them tensed up. I watched them until Bert stepped in between us waving his hands.
‘Steady on fellas this bloke’s come over from the north side. He’s doing his job, so let him do it eh?’
‘Don’t piss me off,’ the gate guy said.
Bert said something soothing and headed on up the steps. I followed him while staring back at the three of them for as long as I could.
‘First time here?’ Bert said as we neared the top of the stairs.
‘Sure,’ I replied. Of course I had been here before, New Years eve shows and concerts mostly. On these very steps I got my hand up a girl’s shirt and held bare tit for the first time. It was during a Crowded House concert one stinking-hot summer evening. It was also the first time I got drunk on a bottle of cheap vodka. I ended up puking my ring out in a rubbish bin and lost the girl in the crowd. I forget how many years ago that was.
‘Evening Bert, courier is it?’ A man stood in a doorway cut into the concrete barrier. This guy was clean shaven, his clothes were clean too and I couldn’t help but stare.
‘Yes sir, I’ll leave him with you then?’
‘Good as gold Bert,’ he said.
‘Well,’ Bert turned to me and seemed unsure of what to say. ‘Good luck mate,’ He hesitated a moment longer and then deciding there was nothing else to say, he trotted off down the stairs. I felt like a bride delivered to the sacrificial altar by her father and then abandoned.
Tankbread Page 2
