I’d found a couple of stockman’s hats to protect us from the relentless sun. Else kept on taking hers off to look at it and then putting it on again.
When the sun sank low into the sky, we’d made good time. We kept an eye out for wandering ferals as we trudged across dusty fields between the rails and the highway. Else talked, asking questions constantly.
Most of her questions I could sort-of answer. I told her the names of the constellations I could remember. We ate cold beans from cans sitting in the dirt before stretching out and trying to sleep. I could hear Else counting the stars until she drifted off.
Dawn came and we set out before it got too light. The walking dead seemed thin on the ground around here and that freaked me out almost as much as a whole horde of them reaching for me. That day we were walking along the railway line again, when one came at us - a woman. Naked, her skin red with dust and hair coming out in clumps. Flies buzzed around her, sipping the oozing moisture from a mass of small wounds on her legs and arms. Zombies don’t heal. Once they get cut, they stay cut. Her lower jaw was gone, broken off somehow. It didn’t stop her coming after us though. Gurgling in her throat, her blackened tongue lolling against her neck like a panting dog. We watched and waited. Putting her down would be a kindness.
‘I’ll take this one,’ I reached over and drew the sword from Else’s back.
‘What the fuck?’ she said in her casual way of cursing. Sister Mary’s influence on her had clearly faded.
‘Been a few days, don’t want to lose my edge,’ I said.
‘Can you forget how to do something?’ Else asked.
‘Sure you can. If you don’t do it regularly enough, you can forget how to do anything. I readied the weapon. I’d never taken a class in fencing, or kicking the crap out of people Bruce Lee style. But hacking up the dead was always an instinctive thing. Lizard brain thinking with a sword, a club, a chainsaw or the butt of a gun.
Once, in those crazy months when the world was ending, I saw a guy in a business shirt and tie go down. He’d been holding his own in the street and then retreated into an alleyway. They could only come at him one way and they jammed that space with their squirming rot. He worked them with an axe, chopping like a man possessed. Zombie after zombie fell with its skull split wide open. Then the axe missed once and they had him. The first bite took three fingers off his right hand and he just went ape-shit. Punching and kicking, he head-butted a dead guy so hard he crushed its skull. Must have concussed himself too. The last one he took out by simply ripping her head right off her dead shoulders. Then the dead tide swept over him and he was torn to pieces. I watched it all from the rooftops and nearly shit myself for the umpteenth time that week.
Miss Jawless arrived and I swung the sword with a strength born of a revulsion I just can’t shake. The bitch ducked. Just like that she dipped her head and my swing went wide over her head. That had never happened before and my surprised momentum almost got me killed.
‘Innnnghhh oooo’ she gurgled and slashed at me with broken fingers. Else snarled and tackled her, knocking the feral off her feet.
‘Else!’ I yelled and jumped after them. The girl came up on her feet, quick as a cat, and scrambled up to stand beside me. The zombie, who’d rolled further down the slope, started crawling back up.
‘Innnnnnggghhhh Oooooooo!’ she gurgled again. Else crouched, picked up a rock and let fly. It missed by a mile. She picked up another one and this time hit the dead woman in the face.
‘Go away! Leave us alone!’ Else shrieked as she let loose a volley of stones. Each one struck the zombie in the head, splitting skin, and bursting an eye so it oozed thick fluid down the torn cheek.
I didn’t dare go down the shifting slope of loose stones to finish her off. She was coming up to us again, steadily crawling on hands and knees.
‘Oooo!’ She hissed again, her face twisted up to stare at me as she reached for my boot. I slammed the point of the sword down into her skull and twisted it. She shuddered and collapsed.
‘Gaaaaaaaargh!’ Else screamed in wordless fury at the corpse. Normally she smiled and chatted a lot. I wasn’t until we ran into the walking dead that I was reminded just how much they messed her up. Everything was new to her. Everything created more questions and I kept giving half-answers. Sometimes I think I could see her head filling up with new thoughts.
I handed the sword back to her. She wiped it clean and sheathed it.
‘Lets go.’ I started walking up the track.
‘She talked,’ Else said hurrying after me.
‘Air gets forced out of their lungs when they move. She wasn’t really talking.’
‘Yeah, but she made words. She said Ing ooh.’
‘I couldn’t tell what she said,’ I walked faster. The sun crawled over the sky and beat us with fists of fire. Later when we stopped to drink water from the bottles we carried and take a toilet break Else started in on it again.
‘I don’t think she said Ing-ooh. I think she was trying to say find you.’
‘You think so?’ I got to my feet and tossed the empty water bottle down the railway line embankment.
‘Why would she say that?’ Else got up and shouldered her pack.
‘How the hell would I know?’
Else met my glare with a steady gaze. ‘Why are they looking for you?’
I laughed, my dry throat making it sound shrill. ‘That’s crazy talk Else. Evols don’t do shit like that. And a feral evol couldn’t find their arse with both hands tied behind their back!’
‘That one found you. She said she did.’
‘She didn’t say a fucking word! Alright? Now quit it!’ The idea of evols, especially ferals getting personal freaked me out. I kept looking over my shoulder as we walked on.
CHAPTER 12
We felt the train long before we saw it. We’d left the railway line behind us, and found the tracks again. From here the map said the line headed towards Port Germein. We’d seen empty houses, empty cars, animals and flies. Lots of flies. The heat coming off the steel rails hammered my eyes. I squinted up the track when a slight vibration trembled through the sleepers underfoot. The way ahead was clear. I looked behind us and saw a black smear on the horizon. Like a thin strip of grey cloud trailing down the line. Else grabbed my arm with both hands and clung to me as I stood in open mouthed shock. Coming out of a shimmering mirage, forming into a solid black shape, spewing black smoke and puffing steam was a train. An actual, working steam-train.
‘Get down there! Behind that tree! Quick!’ I tossed the shotgun to Else and sent her scurrying to cover behind an old dead tree at the bottom of the embankment. Then I started waving my arms for all I was worth.
The train hissed and belched a cloud of steam. Behind the old black engine rolled a single freight car. The squeal of metal on metal tore the air as the driver leaned on the brakes. I stepped off the track and away from Else, as the train rolled slowly past and stopped with me standing next to the driver’s cab.
Someone had welded a heavy steel mesh across the open windows and put in steel doors to protect the driver from evols and other travel hazards. I climbed up on the engine step, peering into the dark space inside. The fire box door was closed, but the heat coming off it was intense. The steel mesh draped down from the engine roof to the rear of the tender where the coal or wood or whatever you are burning to make steam is stored. The cab was empty. I heard a crunch in the gravel and went to step down, but a cold steel muzzle pressed into my neck.
‘Careful mate, I’m a crap shot but I’m pretty sure even I could blow your bloody head off at this range.’
I gently turned my head and saw an old man in faded blue dungarees standing there. He had an old fashioned engine driver’s hat on his head and a massive mane of bushy white hair and beard. The end of his rifle jabbed me again in the neck.
‘Step down son, real easy,’ he said.
‘No worries, mate.’ This is why I avoided most other survivors. You could never tell who
had gone completely bat-shit crazy. Avoiding people reduced my chances of getting killed because I blinked at the wrong moment.
I kept my hands up and stood facing the train.
‘You on your own?’ The man asked.
‘Yep, just me.’
‘What the hell are you doing out here?’ He seemed genuinely surprised.
‘Just wandering.’
‘Well there ain’t much out here. Where’d you come from?’
‘Sydney.’
‘Sydney?’ He pulled the rifle back and kept it trained on me but leaned in to stare more closely.
‘When’s help coming?’
‘There is no help. Sydney is dead. Just like the rest of the world.’
The old man sagged. ‘I shoulda known. But you hear things, you know?’
I nodded. Sure you do. The American’s have a cure. The Russian’s are sending ships to evacuate survivors. New Zealand is free of evols. There are no survivors in China, it’s now a land of a billion zombies and they are migrating towards Europe.
‘I heard Elvis was seen in Melbourne last week,’ I said.
‘Elvis..? Elvis?’ The old man started laughing, he held the rifle in one hand and laughed till tears poured down his cheeks and he doubled over and slapped his thigh.
‘That’s what I heard,’ I grinned and started to lower my hands. Quick as anything he snapped the rifle up again.
‘Keep your damn hands up.’
I reached for the sky again and then a shadow fell over us from the top of the boiler.
‘Put your gun down motherfucker!’ Else had the shotgun trained on him and I fervently hoped that she wouldn’t pull the trigger. At this range, I’d be dead too.
‘Jesus Christ!’ The old man stomped his foot and turned in a circle. ‘Fine! You win! I don’t have anything for you to steal anyway!’
‘Else come down here and don’t shoot anyone.’ I dropped my hands and waited while Else jumped down.
Else clapped her hands in sudden delight. ‘We found Santa Claus!’
The old man looked at her, then back at me and I started laughing, he did too. I had no idea where in the last couple of weeks she’d picked up the idea of Santa Claus. But true enough, there he was, shaking his head and smiling at her.
‘Where are you headed?’ I asked.
‘Tocolla’s end of the line these days. Get some supplies and then trade ‘em back down the line. Go as far as Crystal Brook.’ The engine driver waved a hand in a vaguely southward direction.
‘You go anywhere near Woomera?’
‘Closest I’d get would be Pimba. You got business in Woomera?’
‘Yeah something like that.’
‘Well I guess I can take two passengers. He stepped past me and unlocked the heavy door.
The train started rolling with a hissing and wheezing and a slow grinding creak. The driver said his name was Harris. He got me working on shovelling coal and wood into the open mouth of the firebox.
Else chose to ride on top of the tender. She stood up once we got moving and when Harris sounded the whistle she whooped in delight. When she sat down again her face was dark with soot and her eyes and teeth shone white. I shovelled coal and threw broken furniture on the fire until the firebox door glowed dull red and we tore down the track. We flashed past the miles of dry plains, panicking a few sheep and more grey skinned ferals that gaped with dead eyes then turned to follow us as we flew by.
Else lay on her back on the mesh over the tender staring up at the cloudless sky.
‘They give you much trouble?’ I nodded at a trio of zombies, two women and a man tearing at a rotting sheep carcass beside the tracks.
‘Nah, by the time they get their shit together I’m miles away. Sometimes I hit one with the train though.
‘What happens when you do that?’ Else twisted around and stared down at us.
‘They explode,’ Harris grinned and went back to staring up the line of the engine, watching the track ahead.
‘Boom…’ Else breathed and turned back to the sky.
CHAPTER 13
The smell of the sea came up on us faster than I expected. After our days on the road the cool breeze came as a welcome relief. Else stood up again and stared with her peculiar intensity at the sparkling water. The train slowed with a gush of steam and in case anyone had missed our arrival, Harris let out a blast of the whistle.
‘You might wanna get your girl inside,’ he remarked casually.
I whistled. ‘Else! Inside, mate.’ She swung down and through the open door. I closed and bolted it behind her.
‘So many of them,’ Else said, pressing against me and staring up the track.
Port Germein was under siege. Hundreds of zombies were pressing up against the walls and fences that surrounded the town. The roar of the train drew them away from the barricades and they shuffled towards the track. Harris didn’t seem bothered. I guess he went through this regularly. Else shrank back and drew her sword as we slowed to a walking pace a hundred yards out from where the track went through the corrugated iron wall.
‘Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times,’ Harris said and let another blast of the steam whistle rip the air.
evols reached for the train. The first ones lost arms as they grabbed hold and then got jerked off their feet.
‘You don’t have Tankbread out here?’
‘Have what?’ Harris barely glanced in my direction. Else bared her teeth and growled as a male evol managed to pull himself up on to the mesh. Broken teeth bared, he groaned and gnashed at us.
‘What happens now?’ I had a mental image of the train being derailed by the sheer weight of dead meat pressing against it.
‘We wait for them to open the gate.’
I could barely see the gate through the corpses that were climbing over the engine, the stink of seared flesh added to the smell of burning. An evol wrapped its arms around the chimney and when he pulled them away, strips of melting flesh peeled off and fluttered like pennants. The mob surged forward and the lights went out as the windows were covered with the hungry dead. Else thrust her sword out through the gaps in the mesh. Stabbing them through the eyes and destroying their brains.
‘How can you see if the gate is open?!’ I shouted over the noise of the moaning dead.
‘I can’t! But it’s going to be open. It always is at the right moment!’ The train rolled slowly on as Else continued to stab and destroy. The stench of decay and burst zombie guts clogged the stifling cabin until I thought I would pass out.
A wet scraping sound echoed through the engine cab. Harris didn’t react, but I wondered what the hell had gone wrong. Daylight came through as the evols got scraped off the sides of the cab by metal spikes set in concrete. We slipped through a gap with maybe an inch to spare on each side.
The train stopped in a holding pen surrounded by high corrugated iron fences. I heard a woman’s voice yell. ‘Gates shut! Sweep it!’
We stood waiting as people dropped ladders from the top of the fence and clambered down into the pen. They were armed with sharpened shovels, home-made spiked clubs and axes. In an organised way they passed down each side of the train. A few minutes later we heard a call of ‘All clear!’ from behind us. Harris finished shutting things down and opened the door. I stepped out to meet the people of Port Germein.
CHAPTER 14
When the world fell apart and it became clear that help wasn’t coming any time soon the residents of the seaside town of Port Germein got down to the business of surviving. They built the temporary barricades that became the wall around the main blocks of town and lived quite well by fishing in the bay that bordered them on the southern side. When Harris and his train turned up a few years ago they began bartering their excess catch for other supplies with the homesteads and communities along the line.
Else and I stepped out into a crowd who grinned and clapped us on the back. Questions came at us from all directions, the same ones I’d be asking if
someone came out of nowhere and turned up on my turf.
I shook hands with a lot of people like some old world politician. If someone had stuck a baby in my face I would have kissed it. Else pressed against my side, her hands curling around my arm.
‘Alright you lot, move back.’ An older woman with a stained blue bandana covering her head pushed through the crowd until she stood in front of us, hands on hips, light blue eyes calculating and assessing.
‘I’m Daisy-Mae Cartwright, mayor of Port Germein. You and your friend are welcome to stay as long as you do your share and follow our rules.’
‘Thanks,’ I smiled and nodded at her with my best
'I’m harmless' face.
Harris finished shutting the engine down and dropped to the ground.
‘G’day Daze! Thanks for opening the gate.’
‘For you? Always,’ Daisy-Mae grinned at Harris, and he looked pleased to see her. I wondered if they had a thing for each other.
‘Got some stuff for you to look over in the back,’ Harris indicated the freight wagon. Flies buzzed around us in a cloud as we followed Harris to the back of the train. He cracked the door and slid it open.
Daisy-Mae climbed inside and picked over the piles of skins, cans, books, and other salvaged junk.
‘Didya get the spark plugs?’
‘Yeah, got a dozen of them, here.’ Harris indicated a plastic bucket.
She nodded and stuck her head out the door.
‘Crispy! Take these over to Mak!’ she barked at the idle crowd and hefted the bucket. A young boy with bright ginger hair scampered forward, took the bucket and ran like the undead were falling from the sky behind him.
Harris and Daisy-Mae negotiated for a selection of the remaining salvage. When they were finished I helped Harris pass the goods out to the crowd and make room for a load of dried fish. Else tried to help and then spent more time asking questions about each item she picked up than actually moving it.
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