Solo

by Dan Yaeger

  With or without food or goods, with or without a successful outpost on Tiger Island, I could return home victorious, without losses, for the first time. In fact, running home was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to conquer, expand, clear and explore “the New World”. I had a renewed purpose and resolve.

  The wind had picked up and the water was choppy in my crossing from the mainland toward Tiger Island. I paddled a number of strokes on the left and then the right. It was good solid work, the sort of exercise I thrived on. My lungs expanded like an old smith’s bellows and my muscles pulsed. I paddled through the choppy water with a feeling in my body that reminded me of old times. Exercise and being disciplined with good physical labour had been a hallmark of my family. I also loved it and was no stranger to my genes. Work usually had purpose but exercise, mindless, purposeful or not was something that my family all needed in order to be healthy but mentally satisfied as well.

  My father had a setup of weights and a treadmill at home. When I was a bit older, he bought a kick-bag and taught me the basics of martial arts. He lived by the philosophy “train hard, fight easy”; he had heard that from someone or read it somewhere but loved the sentiment and made it his own. It was strange looking back on the days before the Great Change. People had it so easy and they took it for granted. Depression, suicide and permanent medication for mental health had never been so prolific. The decriminalisation of cannabis in 2022 had been repealed when the pharmaceutical giants lobbied to ensure that the placating and medicinal effects were outweighed by the mentally damaging effects. It was outlawed once and for all; back to industry. Similarly, alcohol was the new cigarettes of the time. The direct links between alcohol and cancer, whether fabricated or real, were established. The plain alcohol packaging, covered in images of death, illness and carnage were perhaps false prophets; never as destructive as Divine had proven to be. The pharmaceutical giants had sealed the deal. They had a monopoly on the market for cough medicines, antacids, eye-drops, mood enhancers, anti-depressants: all laced with their wonder-drug, the golden child: Divine. People had little else to turn to as a crutch in a boring, gluttonous world where life was too easy and quick fixes had become core to life. It was the way for almost everyone. Divine was what they got given and people began to enjoy it. Bars where Divine cocktails were served began to pop-up, it was added to everything from protein shakes at the gym through to baby formula and in strong concentrations as a painkiller. “Pain and killer, indeed.” I thought as I paddled out toward the island in weather than was turning bad, quickly. It was a little like Divine really; one minute all tranquil and in order and then things “changed”. “Pain” and “killer” were words I associated with Divine, for all the wrong reasons.

  I remember the few who soldiered on and stayed physical; stayed old-fashioned human. “Perhaps we were the immune?” I thought. There were a few of us before the Great Change that weren’t disciples of the modern lazy life. Too many people were like pigs that dripped with fat while licking dripping ice-creams the size of a man’s forearm. There were the morbidly obese who had to be forklifted from their homes too; a sad metaphor for the laziness and helplessness humans had created in themselves. There had also been lots of addicted holo-gamers that starved to anorexia or ate themselves to death with Internet-ordered pizza. There were the “junkies” too. These people were the same skinny, wild-eyed chemically addicted souls of every generation that succumbed to being selfish, lazy and incorrigible. They had lost their humanity. At the root of all this was greed and addiction, whichever you pick. The people who wanted to be better than that rose above this selfishness and laziness and still kept the rigour of our survivor ancestors. I was one of these folk but we were so few. I worked to stay physical and healthy and had entered a sort of fad movement in about 2018. It was called “life running”. “Life running then, running for my life now!” I smirked and shook my head as a light rain showered and the wind continued.

  Life running was a funny memory to me. People that did try to exercise always complained they didn’t have time and few made the time, or could, to exercise. So people created the Life Running movement where they ran everywhere, wherever they went, throughout the day. Before life running had been trail running which was essentially the same concept but out in nature and on tracks. This was a crazy “sport” or discipline as it took the union of explorer and nature away. Running through the designated terrain was not the same, not as enjoyable as a hike to me. More importantly, the injuries that emerged from trail running made it seem too high risk for too little reward. People kept rolling ankles, breaking arms and collar bones. Rocky, uneven and treacherous trails were badges of courage to the people who did trail running or competed in events. Despite being those who were supposedly “better” than the gluttons and the junkies, trail runners ended up on painkillers, getting surgery on the damage they invariably had done and ultimately, ended up addicted to Divine at some step in the injury-to-recovery cycle. I was more into hiking and hunting so trail running was something I did socially a few times but I never overdid things or got heavily into it. I never had the injuries or the Divine that would have brought me low.

  Life running touched my life and my family. I remember my parents gave it a go for a while and my father, who was a suited-up office worker, got sick of sweating in the summer heat in an expensive wool suit, wearing rubber-soled gloves for the feet that had become the norm. My mother kept it up a little longer, a few months, but sweating and the general stress of running around all day because you felt you had to, put an early end to things. Such experiences meant that this fad had been short-lived. But the infinitely crafty pharmaceutical firms and corporations invented a pill and spray combination to lower the heart rate, reduce respiration and perspiration and keep you smelling good and relaxed despite your exertions. The Life Runners lapped it up and it was a sensation that sold out and had back-orders for years. The brain, nervous and respiratory systems were being duped as were their owners. And you can guess what the key ingredient had been? Divine. Some took it to stay healthy, others took it to drop out and few took it to exercise. My family had a view that it was excess and I was one of the few in society that held such an opinion and lived it. I was not sure, nor did I have the evidence but I felt that there was a relationship between those who hadn’t succumbed to taking Divine in the early days of its release and those that had changed. I was unsure if it had had an effect on me, me being immune, or if it was purely circumstance. Later this would be revealed, but then, I was oblivious and blissfully ignorant of what was true, paddling across the water. A storm was brewing.

  Chapter 13: The Tiger’s Share

  The water was rough and the sky was a dark tumultuous mix of greys and blues. I paddled on and had made good headway but the storm was coming. Distant thunder and flashes of lightning came closer. I realised my plan to paddle out had not included a solid plan for bad weather: “Loaded up with all sorts of kit including a nice big metal lock-box; not good.“

  That lock box had the potential to be a fucking lightning rod and I knew it. But it was risk versus reward and I would be braver than my fears and anxieties. What could or would be was pushed to the side and I got on with it, like I always did.

  “Fuck, I wanna go home!” I felt I had to laugh and muse or cry. I chose the former. Something caught my eye from the banks of the great lake. I initially thought it was water rats splashing into the lake from southern shore-line. But my intuition told me otherwise. “Those weren’t rats,” I concluded.

  I took my binoculars in hand and glassed the small, swimming figures and I realised I was looking at the heads of zombies who had entered the water. “Tantangara must be all out of protein.” I shook my head and placed my oar inside the big canoe. I carefully unslung my rifle from my back. I took a middle-of-the-road round from my ammunition belt and loaded it into Old Man. I surveyed with my binoculars, again, taking a good look all around. Where there is smoke there is fire; what had initially been 5 wret
ched Divine infected was now 14. More shambled out from the direction of Tantangara-proper and splashed clumsily into the water. Between these devils and the ones I had encountered at the Waystation, I concluded that these would be some of the last zombies in the area after the Battle of Tanny Hill. I wasn’t going to be too over-optimistic as I knew there would always be more shambling about. I had 19 precious rounds left and I knew that I could easily jeopardise myself by expending all the rounds. I could have easily used up the last of my ammo on the convoy of swimmers that paddled feebly in my direction “The Swim Team”. Of my ammunition, 10 were good quality rounds and I made a snap decision that these wretches weren’t worth those. The swimmers were coming in the initial group of 5 and a line of the remaining 9 in decent dispersion. Their position in the water was low, with their heads barely above. I realised that my high position in the canoe would give me the leverage of a Prussian or British cavalryman chopping down on Napoleonic infantry. It was time to consider all those aforementioned factors to come up with a plan that was economic but decisive. I would shoot the first 5 with my worst ammunition, the stuff beyond another reload and use. I would then work fast, to hack the remaining animated corpses.

  I waited for the swimmers to come my way. Through the safe distance of the binocular view, I was intrigued; watching zombies swim for the first time. They appeared to be working on instinct rather than technique in a sort of a dog paddle. I noticed that, like with people, some were stronger swimmers than others. There were three in a group at the back that appeared to be large, corpulent zombies that tired. This tiring, the body mechanics not working satisfactorily enough to keep them a-float, resulted in the largest struggling. They foundered and sank like beleaguered ships. This was a learning I would write up in my new book once I had some time on Tiger Island. It seemed that the zombies could be drowned and killed. I would have to row out to the location later, just to be sure. But these were not the lucid zombies I had encountered back at my home. These shambling messes were like I expected; swimming on instinct and without guile. I looked all around and gathered a couple of mental trig-points, so a return journey would be less difficult. I didn’t have much time to contemplate their fate or the implications of things as my rifle was locked and loaded with the first 5 of the Swim Team approaching within 30 meters.

  I had the worst reloaded ammunition on my ammunition belt, ready for quick, close use. These shells were so used, over-used in fact, that I could see them being more dangerous with continued use than a pack of zombies. In some ways that situation was the perfect excuse to expend them. Despite the shells being at the end of their practical life, I decided to keep them. They would be a trophy of my first “swimmers” and a memory-jog when an old man and story-teller. There was a moment, regarding those rotten disgusting imitations of man, that I liked the idea of growing old and telling stories.

  With a smile at the thought of living to a ripe old age, I raised up my rifle. My expression fell as I readied to attack the moving corpses in the water. They would be afforded no such luck as old age; they were cursed. They were taken too early but not allowed to rest. “You’ll rest after today,” I whispered. My crosshairs were carefully placed between the eyes of the nearest zombie. It was ugly and with rotting flesh; just part of the same old zombie team and not notable. They were all similar, the water did something to take away from their characters and I would not give them the usual nicknames. I squeezed the trigger and its head snapped back and disappeared into the water. As the first zombie slid beneath the surface, an inky black surge of oil-like slick followed it. “Onto the next one.” It would be a production line.

  The next round, for the next zombie, was not as accurate. Whether my nerves or a defective reload, the round hit the very side of the head. With a series of splashing and writhing movements, the zombie bled-out, its brain could not supply oxygen and the human mechanical functions of the long-dead person stopped. That corpse, as though on a journey to peace and rest, also slipped beneath the water. The Divine virus would be there, all around, looking for a host before it died. It wouldn’t find any. It would also have to go quietly.

  As I thought of the concept of a virus and host, my mind wandered. In what felt like a long dream-like sequence, I thought for a second or two. My memory was cast back to a time when we still had television and everything, societally, was still together. I was told by a television reporter that Divine could only last outside of the body for up to an hour. I just hoped human or animal would stay away long enough to suffer the consequences; the zombie plague.

  I returned from that lucid moment and was back to my mechanical production line, the product; death. “Click-clack”, I said aloud. “Another round, another head-shot.” The shot resonated across the choppy water and into the stormy maelstrom in the sky.

  Clean and clear, it was another dead zombie. The next two were close and were groaning and howling with hunger, coming at me with desperate eyes. Those eyes got you every time. There was something so human, yet so horrific in those eyes. I gazed into the eyes of what had once been a woman and I almost lost myself for too long. I snapped out of it and I estimated they were within 20 meters. Fortunately my little micro-sleeps and flashbacks were short; I had time. I must have been getting better.

  While I acted, the mind kept thinking. The next zombie would have been a striking woman in her day. She had once been beautiful with strong features and natural bone structure that would have made her a photo-model. Her eyes had held me. I was to destroy what was left of what was once beauty. Another clear shot caused this zombie to scream and writhe, only to drop like a stone in the most dramatic of scenes. I know I wasn’t going to name them but “Drama Queen” was the exception in this group. What a ruckus and what an exit.

  The last one to be shot swam toward me at around 10 meters. I watched as this bearded swimmer came closer. As it got close, given its vulnerability in the water, I really got to look at this one in detail. He must have only been young before he turned, with reddish hair, freckles and big blue eyes. There was desperation in his face, a cry for help in the look he was giving me. “Is there something human left there?” I had a moment of doubt and then fired. The round cracked and resonated across the water. It was still, mouth open, silent, done. A hand went up, in some gesture of capitulation and betrayal.

  The others paddled onward, running on instinct and I suppressed all emotions as I mechanically, coolly, chopped down, killing them with a surgical precision. One by one they swam up and I despatched them without much trouble or emotion. The remaining six died with some screams, cries and a bit of a whimper but really no trouble. And with that final silencing of the Swim Team, I had a revelation: the zombies were pathetic victims, not to be feared anymore. They were vulnerable, just like me. Now that I had faced Tanny Hill and had my head straight, I had their mark and I would deal with all the emotions and feelings in a different way. What I was doing was putting the animated corpses of people to rest. I wasn’t killing people. That felt like a better perspective. The only trouble was that I didn’t understand the phenomenon of the thinking, speaking zombies I encountered at my home in the mountains. The importance of that squad would become all too clear, soon enough. But first, I had a storm to get through.

  The weather continued to be dark and tumultuous as I undertook to clean-up what I could. I towed the bodies of those that floated back to the mainland and made a pile, well away from the waterline, so as not to pollute the wonderful lake. The mainland would also be a quick stop before I ventured back onto the rough water. I scavenged firewood from the shoreline, I wasn’t far from a school and the town-proper and all was quiet. It was quiet for that brief moment in time, anyway. I quickly built a fire near an old shed and used its leeward side to protect me from the weather. I had explored that shed in a former scavenging trip into Tantangara; not much good. It had been extensively raided and whatever was in there was long gone. I considered it an option for shelter if I had to make camp on the shore for the ni
ght.

  It was windy and pouring with rain. My senses were somewhat dazzled by the noise and touch of the raindrops. I could have sworn there was a droning sound in the distance. “Maybe my ears were still ringing from the Swim Team?” I thought to myself. The wind was pretty intense but an old willow acted as a wind-break and welcome buffer between me and the elements. I lit the first match and it blew out. I lit a second and the same occurred. “It’s like some omen!” I said, frustrated about the situation. I was right. That fire would mean great danger. I finally got the fire started in the rain and high-wind. It went up and the stench of rancid meat cooking, once again, was all around me. Even standing up-wind from this funeral pyre, the smell was almost unbearable. The rain eased a little and my ears pricked up at a sound, once again.

  It was that droning sound again. “Is it the noise of an engine?”

  The wind was so loud I wasn’t sure until it was almost too late. A dirty old white van could be seen coming down the road. Drawn to the light of funeral pyre, a beacon, it was like a moth to a flame. I moved to cover and was hidden just in time as the van screamed up and made a hand-brake turn. What happened next was disturbing and made me understand that which I had encountered at my home, just a few days earlier. From the cover of a fallen tree, it roots exposed, I spied what appeared to be 4 zombies. They opened doors and emerged from the filthy white van. I was in disbelief: “Zombies? Driving?” It was a lot to take in. Then it clicked, whatever those infected were, they were just like those I had slotted back up at my house. They lurched, not quite a true zombie lurch, over to the fire and toward my canoes. They were an odd group. Three wore prison uniforms and looked like a bunch of bar-flies at the bottom of the gene pool. “The Crims”. One of them was a little better. He had a walkie talkie and he spoke, just like Blackbeard had, to someone on the other end. He was actually a little fat but had a good physique and muscle mass of someone who worked hard and ate well. Given his size, upturned nose and cowboy boots I named him “Hoggy”. But there was no time for my humour.