by Dan Yaeger
I lost my family during the Great Change; nothing great about it. When things had fallen apart, around the world, I had lost so many, so quickly and in the chaos could not have been sure about my parents or siblings. I had lived in Canberra, the illustrious capital, and was considered privileged to live there and have family property at the South Coast and at Tantangara in the Alps. With the cataclysmic events of the Great Change, the capital was untenable and destabilised quickly, spreading to the satellite communities around.
Around Canberra, many people lived in the so-called satellite communities and commuted into the metropolis via very fast rail. Towns popped up everywhere, with one rare town being built out of a need for infrastructure rather than just space. “Tantangara,” I whispered with love and hate. I had fled to that town when things in the capital had collapsed.
The town of Tantangara, despite more recent horrors, held a special place in my heart. Tantangara was where my grandfather had worked as an engineer, as had my father, in two of the many careers they had had in their dynamic working lives. Tantangara was built on the need to expand the dam that had been there, to supply additional water to the massive population of the region and, more importantly, the capital. The government had renamed it Lake Tantangara and had created a niche for tourism in the beautiful New South Wales alpine setting. Even if people spent most of their time looking into holographic glasses or at devices, the view and air was something even the most hyper-consumer could not deny. It was almost an appeal to what little natural sense humans had left.
Once technology and communication began to crumble and people turned, supply chains followed. Canberra had had a population that demanded more than local regional supply could afford: this meant doom. But Canberra was not alone and it fared as badly as many cities had worldwide. The aftermath of the Great Change of 2028 was a dark time globally. What had caused it? Greed, selfishness, corruption, laziness and materialism were all at the heart of it. Shame was on all of us.
The cause and catalyst for the Great Change was the virus-cum-drug “Divine”. Divine was the driving force in a new-age renaissance of drugging-up and dropping out. The pharmaceutical firms and doctors were complicit, no leading, in it all. They legitimised people opting-out and gave them a crutch to get by when things were too hard for them. The medical and pharmaceutical fraternity wanted captive, controlled and dependent consumers. What was scariest was that Divine was no secret; it was advertised as a feature in a product and its positives were sold as benefits. The worldwide marketing machine and distribution network preyed on people’s belief in decadent freedoms and it worked too well. It was all about maximising pleasure, minimising pain and, unfortunately minimising effort to do anything at all except consume. Timothy Leary and a similar movement many decades before would have been proud for 5 minutes until they realised it was the worst example of capitalist greed, not to mention it all went to shit.
The initial distribution network for Divine was flawless. Whether antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic or antacid, Divine was part of the prescription for a few dollars more. You would get high, feel good and desire more. The after effects of exposure to Divine were guilt and the typical addictive response to need more of the drug. This latter side-effect was a flu-like symptom that made you feel lousy with an instant turnaround if more Divine was consumed. It delivered the intended high and a following low by the virus. It worked well, too well. In fact what it achieved was nothing short of remarkable.
“Divine indeed,” I thought, shaking my head as I did my work. Divine’s intent was to captivate and control consumers, giving them a high and driving them to buy and consume without abandon as the ultimate in consumer addicts. It worked. It worked better than anyone’s sick mind could have dreamed.
The corporations had planned all this; to subjugate people through a clandestine drug and pharmaceutical syndicate that leveraged people’s dependence on medications and prescribed “pill popping”. Pharmaceutical companies, in a powerful cartel with doctors and governments, thought they had hit the jackpot. The money was rolling in and all were fat and happy. What they hadn’t realised is that their testing had not been outside lab conditions and that mutation would occur. These fools, in their greed, would act as the delivery mechanism for the most devastating weaponised biological agent that man had ever made and may have meant the End of Days for us all.
Perhaps it was the last laugh at humanity as it perfected the dark control of capitalism and consumerism? It was something we had worked to achieve for so long: our own destruction. But the virus was initially a happy participant in its role as slaver. It soon wanted more.
Divine was a new generation of drug. Once made, it would multiply; a genetically engineered virus or perhaps nanotechnology. Pharmacies grew “certified Divine” while quantities of it were gathered up in home labs and grown much like a yoghurt culture or home-brewed beer. Whether it was mutation in these homes and backyard labs or otherwise, Divine mutated. It didn’t take long for it to achieve a mind of its own as a colony: a virus working together for its survival, spread and supremacy. It was an accident, a mistake. It had to have been. I had convinced myself that no-one could have been so diabolical to have intended the worldwide disaster that had followed the introduction of Divine into the market. I would never know the complete answer. The mutated Divine had a distinct, sweet candy-apple smell; it would soon be melded with the smell of death on an epic scale. Somewhere in the world, someone was infected by the mutated virus amid that candy-apple smell. Some lone individual infected many others, and so it began. The zombies followed their noses and ate everything and everyone in their path. The destruction of man would be the way the Divine virus would spread and flourish. People had been infected and got on planes and trains; the pandemic was pervasive and unstoppable. No-one seemed safe, anywhere in the world.
Weaponised or mutated Divine manifested symptoms in users or those infected that spanned months in some and as little as weeks and days and seconds in others. Like me, some were immune. Unlike most, I didn’t like the smell, wasn’t drawn to it and if I had something with Divine in it, the virus would have no effect. As the virus grew in those infected, the symptoms would degenerate human consciousness to a point that sex-drive, the want or need for clothing or shelter and other less essential needs to that of food and water (blood was preferred) were ignored. The last thing left was a never-ending hunger that was all about base food consumption: just enough to sustain the virus and pass Divine on to another host. The closest meat was the order of the day; the ultimate in laziness and selfishness which epitomised the drug culture that started the mess in the first place. People turned on each other and cannibalised one another horrifically and Divine spread like wildfire. But not to me: I was immune.
I was one of the few who had something in his genes that meant Divine was ineffective or perhaps I had fought it off early in some way and had anti-bodies. I was not a biologist or scientist with the requisite skills to study and determine diagnoses and fact. I had observations and theories, though. One of these was family background and personal traits. No history of family chemical dependencies, a naturally good immune system from my mother and a versatile and well-balanced mind may have all played a part. I’m not perfect but I believed that I had something special in the combination of upbringing, genes and way of life that kept me from the fate worse than death that others faced. I was a survivor like those who had lived on and persisted through plague, famine and war since the dawn of man. The Great Change was the black plague of my generation and I was another link in the human chain of survivors that endured.
Leading up to the Great Change, mass consumption and people’s dependence on the corporations for food, entertainment, well-being and infrastructure was such that society itself was unsustainable without the commercial-industrial complex. Worldwide, things collapsed over a number of months. When the simple things ran out, being immune was not enough. Many could not sustain themselves by their own hands. Th
e morbidly obese and morbidly lazy, children, some disabled people, the elderly and other vulnerable folks, immune or not, made the first, easy targets. Some didn’t even try to save themselves. They accepted the results of Divine, death delivered to them, like they had accepted its highs and addiction to it. I had met others like me on my journey to the Alps; very few had the right stuff and ended up as a meal or had given up. Leaving people behind was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. But I had to do it or I would not be telling this tale. The Great Change had happened just like that. Things declined from there, much further into an abyss and further into utter horror; one year for the world, as I knew it, to collapse into our darkest age.
As normal people looked on, the chemically dependent Divine users and those infected by bites and bodily fluid grew in numbers. The virus made them a horde of monsters that worked together. The zombies were a wave of base-hunger that craved, ultimately, human flesh as a meal and as a host. It was obvious that the similarities between the Divine-infected users and zombies depicted in more than 100 years of pop-culture were there. The famed Zombie Apocalypse was a reality, not quite what had been pictured, but a worldwide cataclysm that fulfilled a pop culture prophecy. Welcome to 2030.
"Indeed; back to 2030," I thought. Hunger was beginning to make me weak and prey on my mind. I needed to get back to the cabin and eat, urgently. With a silent effort of will, I pushed on, past my mind's wanderings. My thoughts dissipated and I was back to the realities of finishing up and getting home. The skull and antlers were strapped to my pack and some bone would be taken for a range of purposes. I knew the meat would give me some much needed condition given the inclement weather of the Alps. "I’ll survive for a few more days," I nodded to myself, a little proud and keeping my mind busy. So it had been a successful hunt and it was time to clean-up before the trek home.
I wiped my knife clean on a tuft of wet grass and thought of my grandfather again as I cleaned up. He had died of old age, natural causes, and never saw the Great Change of 2028. He would have turned in his grave. Maybe not, though. "Maybe he would have made good of the crisis like I was trying to do?" I asked the question that would never be answered, except through me. One can never be sure of the emotions of others or what would have been. What I was sure of was that my grandfather was gone, like my other grandparents and I thanked them for their genes, love and teaching. One of my grandmothers was also a favourite and dearly missed. She was equally important in my survival. She was a smart lady who gave me the love of education, science and reason. She was also a maximiser, using everything to its fullest and she gave me the principles of re-use, recycling and repurposing. These were invaluable in modern survival in 2030. My grandmother and I had spent many wonderful days together when I was a little boy in her care. On those days, without knowing it at the time, she shaped thought, logic, reason, science and language in a way I can only reflect on as a time of great enlightenment. Most people get that in higher-learning institutions or through mature-age research or study; I was a very switched on and aware child with higher thinking. "Thanks grandma," I said to myself or her, if I believed in spirits of the ancestors. Those words were a reminder that I could still speak, to utter words and express myself. It was a good reminder that I was human.
My reflections on my life continued as I vaulted a tree and scared a few birds, cracking a tree-branch under my boot. While my parents had worked to feed and clothe us, Grandma taught and loved and helped define me. "What a gift!" The memory made me smile. I again acknowledged the luck to have had such positive and great family to define me. If these two grandparents were still around, humanity may then have had a better chance. But as I have written before, they were special and not the mainstream of people who had not only been part of the problem. They were not victims or consumed by addiction and laziness. From my family, I was unsure I was the last but suspected the worst; I believed I was. I fantasised other folks were still out there in communities but, deep down, I knew these would be few and far between. I was disconnected from the world but held out hope for the other survivors who still endured and lived as I did. In my naivety, I had envisaged that all survivors were looking to work together for some common good. The reality was that I was alone in the new dark-age and had been away from others for a year now. My perception, rather than a reality, was an idealistic view of survivors; zombies and humans, evil and good. All that would change.
Chapter 2: Cold Zero
Something wasn’t right. As I trudged, carrying my still-warm burden, I heard birds disturbed in the thick bushland and rustling near my cabin. I stopped: momentary silence and an ominous feeling of dread. It was that cold feeling ran down the nape of your neck. I could sense something was unnatural and out of order. My suspicions were confirmed as the silence was broken by faint rustlings that were not familiar sounds. It was not something I knew or expected; an unnatural sound that spelled something that should not have been there.
I slowly unslung my pack and placed my burden down in the ferns amongst the trees. My rifle was in both hands now, a round cycled into the chamber and my bowie knife was loose in its sheath. Then I saw it. “Movement,” I was a little nervous but generally cool and in control.
My binoculars came up to the site of that movement and my eyes registered a shape but my mind was in disbelief. Adrenaline and a hint of fear further surged in me; a cold feeling that makes you sick to the guts. Stumbling around from the far side of my cabin was mess in overalls. “How the hell did it find me?”
Zombies would wander in to the area around my home from time to time, but it was rare. A zombie could catch a distant scent and home-in on a target to investigate. Without a true, common consciousness, the zombies would let each other split off without further impact on the greater group, as long as a greater group remained. "What attracted them this time?" the possibilities were endless. It could be someone carving up a deer, pissing in the bush or the smell of a campfire - anything. Noise got them going as well, it could have been the shot I had fired. "Damn it!" I cursed. The hunger was beginning to turn into starvation and I didn't need to deal with zombies right then and there. "I came up here, cleaned house on the fuckers and I still have to deal with them," I grumbled. But that was the way of the world. I was never completely calm with zombies around but I was always cool in taking a shot at distance. So I lined him up and braced myself on a fallen tree, just at the edge of the tree-line. It was a very good shooting position, ideal to achieve the result I needed. I gazed through the precision optics and considered that which should not have been there. The crosshairs danced gently over the head of this zombie as I zeroed in on a headshot. I was about to take the shot but something caught my interest.
The zombie was once a man in his fifties; balding reddish blonde hair, bushy sideburns and wearing a pair of overalls. His bottom jaw was gone and I was unsure how he would be able to sustain himself or pass the virus on like that. "How the hell-?" I asked myself. It even looked in pain, holding its jaw. Something was clearly not right. But I parked the issue and got on with what I was good at: killing zombies.
"Where there’s a will there’s a way, I guess." The comment pushed the issue to the side. I refocused on the task at hand, breathed out. On a “cold-zero”, the trigger was gently squeezed. With another resounding rifle-crack for the day, the projectile spun out of the barrel and did its work. The high-calibre round took the zombie's head almost clean-off. The impact left a bit of neck-stem, up to one ear, and the bloody spine exposed.
"Boo-yeah! Glad that’s over," I whispered to myself. I picked up my pack and precious booty from the morning's hunt. My legs took me toward the once walking corpse that was then truly at peace. I began to jog, hunger gripping me and the sense that I had all the time in the world to do everything was well gone. I knew that if I didn't get to eating quickly, I would suffer some side-effects and could be a danger to myself. My legs cramped up, starvation and dehydration letting me know they were there. My head was a little
dizzy and I slowed to a walk, almost at the fallen beast.
"Yep, he's dead," I breathed a sigh as my eyes scanned the corpse. My ears began to ring and I realised the sound of the shot, the starvation or something was messing with my senses. I was vulnerable until I could eat, rest and replenish.
Cooleman Duck – Diesel and Marine Mechanics – Land and Sea, read the patch on his chest. “You’re a fair way from home buddy,” I thought. "The mechanic." the label was said aloud. It had some steel-cap boots on that that were in pretty good condition and were in my size, I slid them off and he had thick socks that had not allowed the messy feet that had occupied them to bleed or seep too much into the boot. "Clean enough," was the conclusion.
I threw them toward my front door and relaxed; let my guard down. Before I could return to my comfortable standing position after the throw, I experienced a sickening sense; that I was being watched. A cold chill came over me, once more, as I looked right to see something emerge from the side of my home, sneaking with intent. Standing there bent and in a lithe half-crouch, was smiling death and she had brought a friend. A pair of sallow-skinned wretches regarded me, their next meal, and they were so close. They straightened, stood there, pleased to see me, of course.
