Tankbread

by Paul Mannering

  ‘Else?’ I called softly into the warm night as I walked into the gloom. ‘Else, it’s me.’ I added, feeling a bit stupid.

  ‘Go away,’ her voice came from somewhere ahead in the darkness. The shops along the Esplanade were stripped bare. Being torn down one brick and beam at a time for shoring up the defences and building homes as far away from the world outside as possible. Demolition in slow motion.

  ‘Else, we can get a puppy or something. A baby dog, maybe a rabbit or something.’ I stood listening to the whispering of the surf and the distant chorus of dead men’s groans.

  ‘That’s bullshit.’ She’d moved. I followed the sound of her voice across the street and found her standing at the fence staring out towards the water.

  ‘I can hear them,’ she whispered. Her fingers curled around the thick strands of wire. Layer upon layer of chicken wire and any other mesh fence they could find meant that even a snake couldn’t get through.

  ‘You’ll get used to it. They’ll bugger off in a few days. They get distracted and just shuffle away.’

  ‘It’s not like that. I hear voices, all saying something, but I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well what are they saying?’ I stood back slightly, one eye on the fence. Any damned evol could come sneaking up and take a chunk out of her hand the way she stood there.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I sighed, the onshore breeze was picking up and the night was getting colder. ‘Come on, let’s get back.’

  She only moved when I took her by the arm and pulled her away. We walked back along the fence line in silence. When we reached the point where the fence evolved into a sturdier barricade the slow moving crowd of walking corpses had spread around to the seaward side in greater numbers. I could hear the sentries on the ledges above us calling status updates to each other. They sounded nervous.

  ‘I’ve got maybe a hundred of them down here.’

  ‘They’re just sliding along the wall. I can hear them scratching at it.’

  ‘If they start pushing, we’re fucked.’

  ‘Hold your positions. Tony, go tell Daisy-Mae.’

  We stopped as the kid in the fish-leather pants slid down a scaffolding pole and scampered off into town.

  ‘I need to seem them,’ Else pulled her arm away and quickly flitted up the nearest ladder. I followed her with more care.

  From the wall to the beach a large crowd of the dead pulsed and stirred below us.

  ‘Something’s got their attention,’ I said to an older guy wearing a policeman’s hat.

  ‘Must be a random bunch. The train doesn’t usually attract this many. The ones that do show up wander off pretty much straight away. We don’t give them any reason to stay.’

  ‘Why do they follow us?’ Else said, staring down into the sea of blank and worn faces.

  ‘They’re like a storm cloud. They just go where the wind blows them.’ The cop snorted deep in his throat and spat a thick wad of phlegm down into the moving mass.

  ‘A storm…’ Else whispered. She turned her head and looked at me. I felt a wash of cold dread flood my gut. Her eyes were lost, seeing a different view entirely. With a soft sigh they rolled up in her head and she spread her arms wide. I shoved the cop aside and lunged for her as Else took two quick steps forward and swan-dived into the necrotic surge below.

  I leapt, grabbing at Else as she fell away. My hands closed on empty air and I barely had time to think, ah shit! as I followed her down into the zombie crowd.

  The stench hit me like a wall as I crashed down on the seething dead. I screamed for Else, saw her body, rising limp on a forest of dead arms. I punched and kicked, yelling in blind panic. Drawing the sawn-off shotgun I fired point-blank into the nearest dead face and the second shell decapitated the fat bitch next to him. With no time to work the slide again I used the gun like a club. Grey skinned hands reached and grabbed at my clothes and flailing limbs. The air was thick with the stomach churning smell of them. They pressed in on all sides driving me to my knees, blinded by the tangle of reaching hands that clogged my mouth and nose.

  Like a drowning swimmer breaking the surface I felt my body gripped and lifted. I took a deep shuddering breath and shrieked as I saw the night sky again. Beneath me the mob shuddered and a hundred hands passed me over the surface of the crowd. I kicked and struggled, shouting abuse and empty threats. The few lights of Port Germein vanished behind us. The evol mob shuffled away, carrying us with them into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 17

  I’ve never made a study of the walking dead’s habits. The city ones eat Tankbread and leave me alone. The ones that don’t feed go feral and lose any intelligence and ability to function like the humans they once were. Yet we were being carried along, passed hand over hand by a nearly silent crowd of the foulest dead I’d ever seen.

  The hands holding me were icy and I could feel the layers of skin sloughing off. The gel mush of their flesh smeared like cold snot against my clothes. The dead don’t stop moving until something gets their attention, but outside of Sydney I’d never seen this many move with such purpose. The mob that turned up at the convent of the Sisters of St Peter’s Grace, they’d been focused like this. Focused enough to turn up in large numbers and proceed to tear their way inside. Though what exactly was going on here was anyone’s guess.

  The evols holding us moved with certainty, but I could see others on the fringe stumbling around like real Ferals.

  ‘Else!’ I bellowed into the night sky.

  ‘Yeah?!’ her shout came drifting back from somewhere ahead.

  ‘You okay!?’

  ‘No…?!’ she didn’t sound like she was in pain, but honestly, there really was nothing okay about our predicament.

  ‘Stay cool!’ I yelled back. I experimented with pulling my arm free of the two zombies holding it. Then the other. Finally I pushed myself up into a sitting position my butt resting on two dead men’s shoulders. From here I could see across the crowd. Else’s blonde hair bobbed up and down a hundred metres away.

  ‘See if you can sit up!’ I called across to her. She struggled and got nowhere. ‘Pull your arms free. One at a time. Slowly!’

  I watched while she did this and then sat up, dead fingers grasping at her back like giant Velcro hooks.

  ‘Where are you!’ she called, peering around.

  ‘Back here!’ I risked a wave. Else twisted until she was on her hands and knees. She grinned, waved and then squealed as she lost her balance and vanished.

  ‘Else!’ I wrenched myself free and dropped to the ground. Pushing through the unresisting dead I yelled and shoved. Else popped up again. ‘I’m over here!’ In a few moments we were hugging each other and laughing in the middle of a mosh pit of the dead.

  The press of them carried us onwards; they seemed okay as long as we kept moving in their direction. ‘Why aren’t they trying to eat us?’ Else asked.

  ‘No idea. By all accounts we should be dead now. These ferals are acting more like city-dead. Ones with a good amount of working brains.’

  ‘I want to get away from them,’ Else said with her typical objectivity.

  ‘You and me both.’ As near as I could tell we were heading east. We needed to be heading west and north to get to Woomera.

  ‘Follow me.’ I pushed to my left, cutting across a dead girl with skin as rough as sandpaper. By letting them flow around us, and moving steadily we soon reached the edge of the mob where the crowd thinned out. Here the zombies stumbled more, groaning and gnashing their blackened teeth against the air. I quietly slid my last two cartridges into the shotgun and gingerly worked the pump-action slide.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Else whispered.

  ‘Yeah, these bastards are for real.’ We compromised by going with the crowd for a few hundred metres, waiting for a chance to get a clear run at getting the hell away from them.

  A dead tree split the crowd, we stepped around it, on the outside. A feral bumped off another, growled and shuffled straight a
t us. I didn’t dare fire, not this close to so many of his friends. His eyes widened with that slow realisation of the really hungry dead. His crusted nostrils flared and with a snort that spat black ooze down his chin he lurched straight at me.

  ‘Fuck,’ I muttered. ‘Run, I’ll be right behind you.’

  Else ignored me, drawing her sword instead.

  ‘I’m tired of running,’ she said and swung the business end of the blade down on the zombie’s skull so hard it stopped between his eyes. With a gurgling sigh he sank to his knees and she jerked the blade free.

  I stepped over the quivering corpse as another feral snapped his teeth at our scent. He jerked his head in our direction and then spasmed like he’d been tasered. I didn’t stop to check what was wrong, a few more quick steps and we were out of the mob.

  ‘They’re coming,’ Else hissed behind me and I ran without looking back.

  We ran, and then jogged and finally wheezing and spitting mud from dry throats we walked. I lead Else in a wide circle away and around the back of the mob. They followed of course, but we lost sight of them in the dark. We hit the railway line an hour before dawn and without comment we turned and followed it.

  With the break of dawn we started jogging again. I needed to get back to Port Germein before the heat of the day sapped our strength and slowed us to a crawl.

  Only a few evol stragglers remained around the walled town, zombies that just stood still like toys with flat batteries or shuffled against the wall in a never ending cycle of steps.

  From a safe distance I tried waving my shirt, but no one seemed to be paying attention. The train gate stood closed, though a pall of dark smoke smudged the morning sky. I really hoped that the dead hadn’t gotten in and destroyed the town overnight.

  With a nervous eye to the south, we marched through the dust by the railway line. I was about to pound on the railway gate when the hiss and grind of the steam engine driving itself forward broke the silence.

  The dead responded by going into a lethargic frenzy, thrashing themselves against the wall and finally turning towards the massive gate as it swung open and Harris’ train rolled out.

  Else and I jumped up and down, waving and yelling. The train whistle shrieked and we ran to meet the slow moving train even as the Port Germein gate swung closed behind it.

  I pushed the girl up into the cab ahead of me, and then swung up behind her. Else was already chattering away to Harris, telling him about our bizarre night time adventure in a torrent of words without seeming to take a breath.

  I did a slow turn, showing Harris that other than dust and sweat I was clean and unbitten.

  Harris grinned and clapped me on the shoulder. ‘You must be the luckiest bugger I’ve ever met! No one’s ever gone into a mob like that and come out with out so much as a bite!’

  ‘Yeah, it’s some kind of bloody miracle, eh?’

  ‘Too bloody right, mate. Someone up there really wants you two to get to Woomera, so let’s not keep him waiting.’ Harris pushed a lever and the train picked up speed, rolling off the side track and on to the main line, we puffed our way northwards.

  CHAPTER 18

  Harris gave me instructions on what not to touch, which seemed to be everything. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept, so I took a corner and a blanket. Else clambered out onto the mesh covering the back of the cab and lay there staring out at the countryside. Even though it was early morning I could hear her counting stars. Picking up from where she started the other night from the sounds of it, and then she too was quiet and still.

  It was afternoon when Harris nudged me with his foot.

  ‘Whassa?’ I mumbled and clambered to my feet.

  ‘Dead ahead,’ he stepped out of the way and let me peer up the length of the engine.

  ‘McIntyre’s place.’ Harris pulled a lever and the train exhaled a gust of steam, the clatter of the wheels shifted its cadence and we began to slow down.

  ‘What are you doing? Just drive through them.’

  ‘At this speed going through that many we could derail and then we’ll be in real trouble.’

  I checked on Else. She was now crouched on the mesh peering into the shimmering heat of the day watching the evols with the complete focus of a hunting dog on point.

  ‘evols, zombies, the fucking walking dead,’ I muttered. This group looked as big as the one that besieged Port Germein.

  ‘Shit…I hope they’re okay,’ Harris wiped his beard and squinted as we rolled on.

  ‘Port Germein?’ I said as I opened the cab door, pulled a growling Else inside and bolted it shut behind her.

  ‘No, some friends of mine live up this way,’ Harris slowed the train on the approach to a tiny train platform and a weatherboard panelled shack. We hit the first evols head on. The warm air filled with the stink of ruptured guts and crushed bodies. Their moans surrounded us and the grey silhouettes moved in a dull monochrome as they pressed in on all sides.

  ‘Jesus…’ Harris spat through the bars of the window and with a final exhalation of steam the train creaked to a halt.

  The dead surrounded us immediately. Harris and I stepped back, keeping a safe distance as blackened fingers curled through the heavy mesh and steel bars.

  ‘Helluva lot of them for the middle of fucking nowhere,’ I commented as I pulled Else back against me.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it away from a town. Sure maybe one or two. But this kind of mob?’ Harris looked seriously freaked out.

  ‘Maybe you should just get us the fuck out of here?’ I said as Else strained to get free.

  Harris turned some levers and the train started to wind up again. Deep under the boiler pistons pumped and pressure built. The dead pressed against each other and crawled over the engine. We stood in our metal box and breathed the stink of them.

  ‘Now would be a great time to get moving!’ I would have started shooting, but there were so many of them, it wouldn’t have helped.

  ‘Haaaaaaaaaaaaris!’ Somewhere, out there, a woman screamed.

  ‘Eh?’ Harris looked up.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I didn’t give a fuck. Anyone out there was on their own. ‘Harris!’ she yelled again. Goddamnit!

  ‘Lizzy! That’s Lizzy McIntyre! Lizzy! Where are ya love!?’

  ‘On the shed roof! They started turning up this afternoon. Bunches of the buggers!’

  We couldn’t see her, but I guessed she was on top of the shed by the train platform. May as well have been Mars.

  ‘Hang in there Lizzy! We’ll get you safe!’ Harris’ face lost that shit-scared look and he now moved with purpose.

  ‘And just how are we going to do that?’

  ‘I’m not leaving without Lizzy.’

  I lifted my shotgun into his face. Harris just shook his head. ‘Without me mate, this train isn’t going anywhere. And neither are you.’ He had a point. Harris pushed past me and yelled through the zombie covered mesh.

  ‘Lizzy! Can you get on to the carriage without them getting you?!’

  ‘I think so! They’re all over the engine! But none of them are around us!’

  ‘Go for it girl! You can do it!’

  ‘Then what?!’ Lizzy’s voice cut over the groans of the dead all around us.

  ‘Shout out and I’ll get us moving quick-smart! Get in the car if you can! And close the bloody door!’

  We waited for a few minutes in hot silence. Else wriggled free and drew her sword. With astonishing speed she thrust the blade through the gaps and plunged it into the eye of an evol. Twisting it she pulled back and the body sagged into the press of zombies. Thrust, twist, and withdraw. She took out ten of them before we heard Lizzy calling us from somewhere down the train. ‘We’re on board! Please go Harris! Go!’

  Harris leapt to his controls and heaved on a lever. The train shuddered and began to roll. Else kept on stabbing evols in the head, the dead weight falling away as we picked up speed.

  The sun was setting before we dared stop again
. Harris said he wanted to be sure the train was clear before we went much further. We stopped and crept out to stretch our legs. Other than a few stray limbs and other unidentifiable chunks caught on the train, there were no zombies to be seen. After the inspection Harris hurried down to the freight car.

  ‘Lizzy!’ he called out. ‘Open up love, she’s all right now!’

  The freight car door cracked open and then slid back. The biggest fucking evol I’ve ever seen leapt out onto the track and grabbed Harris. My shotgun was up but I couldn’t get a clear shot. ‘Harris! Fuck!’ I yelled, but he just laughed and hugged the damn thing. Else was jumping around, looking to get in there with her sword.

  ‘Steady on there Gordon, steady on.’ Harris prised himself free and patted the thing on the shoulder.

  ‘Lollies,’ it rumbled and started patting Harris’ down like he was searching him.

  ‘In a sec, mate.’ Harris turned and waved me back. ‘It’s okay mate, this is Gordon. He’s Lizzy’s brother.’

  Lizzy emerged from the gloom of the freight car. She had the same dark hair and deep tan of her brother. Gordon was a grown man, built like a brick shit house and clad in jeans and a blue T-shirt. Lizzy was long and thin like a strip of bark and looked like she couldn’t be more than sixteen. She was wearing a faded halter top and loose skirt with a ragged hem that wrapped around her hips and floated over her knees. Gordon gave a rumbling guffaw, and straightened up, clutching a deformed paper wrapped toffee in one hand.

  ‘Last one,’ Harris said.

  ‘Nuh-huh,’ Gordon shook his head and worked on solving the riddle of getting the wrapper off his prize.

  ‘Is he a big motherfucker?’ Else said in an awed whisper.

  ‘Don’t think so. I think he’s just… well, special,’ I said.

  Lizzy rolled her eyes. ‘Shit mister, nothing special about Gordy, he’s just a retard.’