Solo

by Dan Yaeger

  This place was where many had fought and died but it had evidently been a place of victory for Tantangara’s last inhabitants; the Samurai. While they must have retreated at some stage, they had been the last people standing from the massive melee here. It was an outpost of the Samurai; I touched the wall as if I was patting one of their heads. Their names were spray-painted everywhere; “Little Roley,” I smiled at his name, touching the paint and my eyes welled up. They were the true heroes of this area. I marvelled at how they had somehow fought and won in this place. “Perhaps others survived here too? Maybe others stayed on in Tantangara somehow, against all the odds and hordes?” My questions were about to be answered.

  Food packages and litter were piled high in corners. The area was a mess where people ate, fought and died against the zombie menace. What glass was left on windows was used to put stickers up of motocross brands. A large Australian flag hung from the centre of the courtyard. “Good on you boys,” I said aloud, smiling. In retrospect, I was letting my guard down, getting too involved in the place when I should have been stalking prey.

  As I looked about, I saw old weathered posters of their dirt-bike heroes, swimsuit calendars but no porn, which I thought a little odd for these guys, given their age and maturity levels . “Just ‘cause you’re a pervert Jesse,” I laughed at myself for a moment but there was a point to be made. “Maybe there were women here too?”

  As I took the place in, trying to understand it and how it was, I concluded it was really quite clever. It was a great defensive layout for multiple defenders to work together. It then dawned on me why this place fell or was abandoned at some point; too few defenders. I traced blood, hand-prints, splatter marks and got a feel for the place. “You need at least eight defenders, the Samurai were only seven,” I noted nodding, taking it all in. The setup and defences were quite advanced and it was then that I realised the planning was beyond the capabilities of the Samurai alone. What made it even cleverer was a sort of command post with a large printed map of Tantangara, laptop, printer and a whiteboard covered in tactical information. I tested the electronics and they were long dead; smashed or unresponsive. I now questioned if the Samurai, my saviours just one year ago, had in fact been acting alone. “Dane was a nice kid but no genius,” I thought. “Someone else had masterminded this fort.” I went on to explore things further, almost having forgotten why I came in here in the first place. Under the desk of the command post I found someone. All became clear as I found the dead body of someone who had fought and died for humanity and the law and order we tried to cling onto until the very end. This body was of a survivor, a fighter. It was a woman’s body due to the long hair and general shape but the giveaway was the woman’s police uniform and distinctively different hat she wore to her male counterparts. I realised that this woman would not have been left to moulder by the Samurai. If they could have buried her, they would have. “They were trying to get back to her!” the whole mess made sense. She had held this post as others had gotten away and they wanted to return to her to make things right. I could appreciate that situation. While I lived, others had sacrificed.

  The entrance I had walked through had been their way out; the Samurai had a debt to pay of their own.

  Without her team, that lone police officer had held the monsters back as long as she could before being overrun. “But how?” I thought. The courtyard was a little fort; it was that trait that had made it impossible for her to escape. I saw a body hanging down into the courtyard from the roof; a bullet between the eyes. The zombies had somehow climbed up and come in from the roof. This open-air courtyard was surrounded by stone and heavy materials all around but not overhead.

  I sat and drank some water and gathered my thoughts. “Dane and his boys had escaped back out to their families’ properties somewhere. They were trying to get back in ever since that time? They did mention they were trying to get back in here for some time,“ I concluded.

  It all made sense to me but I would never really know for sure. Whatever the case, this woman had fought hard to survive and quite clearly save others. The survival of the Samurai, so that I could meet them and they could save my life, was testament to that. “Perhaps I can do something to memorialise her like I did them?” I thought with some sense of reverence. Before I could do that, I needed to sweep the area.

  I noticed many blood trails leading into one, out of a barricaded exit. My theory of an epic battle was re-enforced when I squeezed past the broken barricade and out into an open carpark. I walked through the barrier, slowly and deliberately, looking around, seeing and hearing nothing but my own steps, the wind and a tin can being blown on paving stones. I watched it tumble lifelessly for a moment and then I stalked forward, scanning the area. “A bullet hole in it? Nine-mil or twenty-two,” I picked it up, considered it and dismissed it as someone’s target practice of long ago.

  The gruesome trail led to the edge of the carpark where a pile of scorched corpses remained, petrified and as a monument to a struggle. It was most likely the police officer and her team’s work, trying to get rid of the potentially infectious corpses as they held the Alamo.

  I cautiously returned to the courtyard, retracing my steps and looking back to make sure I wasn’t followed. “All clear,” I said to myself. I stepped over to the command centre and regarded the body of the police woman. “Her pistol is missing; damn it.” I thought. But it wasn’t far. I forgot about the pistol for a moment and thought about an appropriate commemoration for this brave person. The new world would need a narrative about our situation. We could still write and document without computers; pen and paper was just as good as what Charlemagne had to drag people from the Dark Ages.

  Without a name-tag or anything else to go on with, I decided to pen a note of her deeds. Nearby where she fell was a sandstone wall with a carved flower. It looked like an appropriate spot to lay her to rest; I would place her there. I stalked through the stores, cautiously sweeping through, ready for action. Not a single adversary but plenty to help memorialise the brave policewoman. I found an old tea chest in an antique store, complete with lid and placed her remains in there. I removed her hat and placed it in an old display case that had been used in a costume jewellery display. I sat it on top of the tea chest. In that case, I sat her hat on a bed of plastic flowers. I also placed a note inside, signed and dated so that others would understand what I could.

  “Here is the resting place of a brave, unknown police officer. She held off the hordes of undead so that others could live; protecting and serving to the last. The young men, commemorated at Tanny Hill, were some of the people who had stood with her here and managed to get away. It is only through this woman’s struggle that I stand here, in the heart of Tantangara, to freely write a note in peace. May she now rest in a peace of her own, her job well done.”

  I bowed my head a moment, cap removed. My solemn moment was broken as I heard a characteristic click of a firearm being cocked. I knew I had put myself in a compromised position and had fucked up royally. While I was used to scanning for zombies, I knew them all too well, people were far more unpredictable and calculating. I was facing a new type of foe; humans. Focus was everything; I had gotten distracted with sentimentality, again. “This may be it mate,” I told myself.

  I paused for a moment, expecting death or the sound of a gunshot and being felled like an old oak. Nothing, not a sound could be heard but the wind. I turned my head very slowly in the direction of where the cocking noise had come from. Another person stood a few steps away, too close for them, given they were holding some kind of gun, likely the policewoman’s 9mm pistol. “Not a warrior.” I concluded to myself as my mind tried to calculate a plan. I continued to turn, moving slowly and deliberately. My gaze saw a pair of runners, up to a pair of jeans, a blood-stained white t-shirt and a black jacket, a small male frame, up to a face covered in utter terror. In retrospect, I must have looked terrifying; military camouflage, a strong chiselled frame, a face that was hard and weathered
, a rifle, machetes on my waist and a bowie knife the size of a short sword on my chest. I was dirty, covered in blood and had cool blue eyes that regarded him without fear. Yes, fucking terrifying in retrospect, especially for that little guy. The face was round with large features, sallow skin and thick eyebrows. Having clearly had an indoor existence, his skin looked sick and unwell. I concluded that he was infected but had not turned. Something or someone was giving him something to stave off the Divine virus. His shape was of someone who ate poorly; but who could be too picky after the zombie apocalypse? Despite his lack of health and condition he must have been good at hiding and surviving in his own right. I hoped he could tell me how he was keeping the zombie virus as bay. “The Mouse”; he scurried off earlier and snuck up on me like a piece of cheese.

  The Mouse was a young man in his twenties; scared and confused regarded me with fear, a dangerous and irrational fear, one might expect of someone who had seen horrors.

  “Hey now, I am a survivor just like you,” I started out coolly. Seeing the fear in his eyes brought the father out in me. He snapped and snarled at me in a language I was unfamiliar with. His voice broke a few times and went high and this made him madder. I felt like I was watching a piss-poor gangsta rapper doing his video in the 2000s. He yelled at me like crazy, pointing the gun around, over-handed like a gangsta and emphasising a word that I assumed was an insult. He clearly didn’t speak any English and I didn’t know his language. All I knew was that it was unlikely he had been here long. I must have cracked the thinnest smirk at his antics and gesticulations so he pointed the gun towards my head and stepped toward me. OK, I was feeling uneasy and that smirk was wiped off my face. “Yep, I deserved that,” I thought.

  He pointed the pistol at his own chest and I noticed he had been hit with a low-calibre round. It looked like a .22 round. He was injured, bleeding and irrational. Just as he had emphasised a word earlier, he began to say “Cooleman!” gesturing and rambling in his language. “Yes, Cooleman,” I said to him gently. “You got tagged in Cooleman?” He nodded and then pointed the gun at me again. I also heard the word “Canberra” thrown into the mix. I concluded he had come from Canberra, had been hit in Cooleman, a fresh gunshot wound and then came to Tantangara, enjoying the safety there until we crossed paths.

  This language barrier was the difference between life and death and we were about to work out what was what for both of us. I didn’t know this kid, didn’t want to kill him but nor did I trust him. He could have been a looter, murderer, saint, whatever.

  I turned to face him, standing almost a head taller. He was trying to intimidate me with the gangsta rapper crap again. He pushed into my strong chest and rebounded like he had hit a force-field. The Mouse bounced backward on the impact of our two frames colliding; even angrier than before. Then “BANG!” the gunshot reverberated around the courtyard’s concrete and stone walls. The courtyard amplified the sound and my ears hurt from the firearm’s discharge. In disbelief we looked at each other, I didn’t think I was hit and I looked at him, he seemed to have just the one wound. I quickly surmised that he had fucked up with all of his gangsta rubbish, swinging his pistol around like a kid with a toy and it went off. He was even more terrified than he had been before. I could have killed him very easily at that point. My Bowie could have been out and in his throat and would have been if I had been shot and still kicking. But this guy was just a scared little mouse who had survived on cunning for a couple of years and had been hiding for some time.

  If he had actually wanted to shoot me, he wouldn’t have looked so spooked at what he had done. It all became too much for him. Without a further high-pitched yell or scream, or LA gangsta impression, he ran out the exit I had used moments ago. I unslung my rifle and took up a brace position against an internal garden wall in this fort. I was ready for him if he returned and wanted more bullets to fly. “Damn, there goes my 9-mil dream.” I thought with some humour and genuine disappointment. I didn’t want the kid dead but he needed to get his shit together and realise we could be allies. Besides, he was hit, tagged with a bullet: could have used a friend.

  I held my position, waiting, ready. To my surprise, he ran back into the area, just a moment later. He didn’t obviously look at me or notice my position so I didn’t fire on him. Just as my hopes that he would not come to any harm by my hands or his were heading high, he decided to screw himself. All hope of preservation was lost. He was a little weak and out of shape and tried to vault a retaining wall, like the one I was braced against. He tripped and fell smashing his face in an epic face-plant and sprawled across the wall. There were banging noises and a rumbling. I had heard that noise before, just recently at the Waystation. “Holy shit!- Stampede!” I shouted. Then I saw what he was running from. This was truly terror on legs stumbling forward with intent to kill, maim and feast. The gunshot had reverberated in this little courtyard that I had once thought of as a fort, it was in fact a death trap.

  This Courtyard, which I dubbed the Alamo, had tactical pros and cons. When it came to zombies, noise was a big factor. Given my circumstances of being alone, one person could not hold the three entrances. I had earlier concluded that 8 people would have been needed.

  A single gunshot, in this courtyard’s architecture and design, had been amplified and brought in some of the last zombies Tantangara would ever see. Zombies had nothing better to do but wander aimlessly following noises, smells and sights that promised protein and new hosts for the Divine virus. They were funnelled in through that single entrance and had played to the weakness of this fortification naively but successfully. A writhing mass of groaning, lurching zombies; teeth, rotting flesh and killer instinct were upon me once more. Each time, you recognise the horror and it gets easier and easier. I was a veteran now: “bring it bitches!” I shouted. They lurched toward me and in a split-second judgement, I was ignored. More importantly, they were upon the Mouse like cats. “I am not having any luck with other survivors“, I thought to myself. I fired, reloaded and fired again, and again and again, dropping 3 in a bloody mess with the four rounds before I heard the military magazine of Old Man click into place; empty. I tried my best to get them off him but I could have compromised myself by trying to reload and Mouse would surely die if I did that. I quickly placed Old Man down; drawing my machetes getting on the scene. It didn’t look good. We were in a proverbial mouse-trap. The fort was good at keeping people out but good for trapping them too. There were eight more zombies and I knew this was going to get messy. The Mouse screamed and howled as 5 of them were onto him. The other three were intrigued by the gunshots and came my way. What had once been a few old ladies came toward me and posed little contest. I hacked the first one’s skull in, kicking it to the ground, the second one swung at me with its wild, skeletal arms. There wasn’t too much power in it and I put my left machete up to stop the movement, bringing my right machete in an inward arc into its throat. The head severed with unexpected ease and I was treated to a splash or rancid blood as it stumbled forward and onto me, tipping its head out like a teacup. The last one, with its attention on me, copped a double-downward hack in the skull that broke not only the skull, but shattered the neck and whole shoulder apparatus. More rancid black blood covered not only me, but sprayed the walls and windows. Anyone not used to the smell of death and zombie carnage would have surely wretched. I stepped backward and to the side to make some space in this relatively confined area.

  The final 5 were a mix of people. There were a couple of labourers “Hi Viz 2 and 3” and a cyclist I named “Lance”. My mind raced and calculated, my naming and coping mechanisms kept me cool. I took in the image of two horrors; once ladies. I called the first "Dolly", and it wasn’t because of red lips or platinum hair, and “Miss Muffet”, a dark-haired zombie that had once been a young woman with a spider tattoo on her shoulder. These characters were to be fought in a confined space and could be the death of me. I had to focus on succeeding, using the confined space to my advantage and winning. It
was grim, though.

  I made a horrible choice at that moment. I decided to let the Mouse take the brunt of their attention while I hacked them apart, one-by-one. I would not run or escape but that was the only gift and chance that he was survive. “Sorry Mouse!” I whispered and wiped rancid blood from my face with the back of my hand.

  My quick glance to him confirmed he was in a very bad way and he would be a burden to my survival. He was screaming, being feasted upon and may never pull through.

  “You’re making the right choice, buddy,” I said to myself as the weight of the situation and the life of another rested on my shoulders. The Mouse would be sacrificed so that I could live. I had a plan and I would survive, like I always had.

  First, Lance would be taken-out, he was being crowded out at the back while the others feasted on the Mouse. I decided to chop his legs at the Achilles Tendons. I severed both savagely and it dropped, without a whimper. It just gnashed its teeth a little and made bubbling with its mouth like a goldfish. The end was savage as I brought Ebony crashing down on the base of his spine. I wanted to test my theory that the control centre for Divine was there. Sure enough, Lance was gone. No wounds to his head. “You can ponder this later; get on with it!” I said to myself as I levered the machetes out of Lance. Miss Muffet and Hi Viz 2 were alerted and turned to face me. Hi Viz 2 was a big boy and his turn towards me was accompanied by an unexpected rain of fists. My hands went up to block the strikes but the force sent me backwards. I stumbled back and tripped over Lance’s still body (the cyclist-looking zombie I had felled earlier).

  Miss Muffet lurched forward and landed on top of me. She began snapping with jagged teeth. Miss Muffet had once been a comely counter-culture woman in her twenties, with tattoos, piercings and the dark eyes and cosmetic tattoos that gave her dark lips as well. In her day, she was every Goth and counter-culture teen’s zombie or vampire fantasy. It was no fantasy, rather a nightmare that I needed to end. In a split-second, I knew I had to get her off me and be ready for the next onslaught of Hi Viz 2 or I would be a goner. With legs pushing, I turned my hips and rolled on top of the snapping zombie. It bit my forearm as I used its hair to hold it to the floor. I instinctively flinched but held on I pulled Orion from his sheath as my machetes had clattered to the floor when I fell. The blade of my big proud German hunting knife was brought down with extreme force, splitting its forehead almost in two.