by Joe Ducie
“Okay. Bite down hard and, whatever you do, don’t scream.”
She nodded and turned away, squeezing her eyes shut.
John took a deep breath… and pulled her leg straight.
Sarah screamed.
III - The Free Man
Later that night, after true dark had fallen, John sat behind Norris’ desk in a swivel chair, going through the drawers and looking for anything of use. Sarah lay on the floor, crying softly. All John had been able to do for her leg was splint it with the broken halves of Thumper, cleaned up and wrapped in bandages.
Sleep was impossible, as every so often one or more of the Z’s would stumble past the door.
Finding nothing worth scavenging, John sighed and tapped his pocket and the keys to the Cherokee. He could make it on his own, he was sure, if he had a distraction—something to pull the horde away from the loading dock. Bait, perhaps... The semi-automatic pistol strapped to his belt would serve as a replacement weapon if he encountered any stragglers. He’d never had to use the gun before, but without Thumper, those twelve bullets, however loud, suddenly seemed like a helluva good idea.
But what about Sarah? John thought on the pistol again, and shook his head. Putting Z’s down was one thing...
“John, are you there?” a tiny, scared voice whispered into the dark.
“I’m here.”
Sarah sighed. “I dozed off for a minute. Thought you might have... might have left me.”
John didn’t let himself feel guilty about thinking just that. He didn’t want to die here. “Two painkillers left, if you want them.”
“No.” She paused. “My bag, I can’t do it myself. Hurts to move. There’s... medicine in my bag.”
John stood and walked around the desk. He knelt down in front of Sarah and turned on the torch, casting a cone of light over her prone form, splayed out on the floor. She looked corpse-like, her pale face covered in a sheen of sweat.
“Okay, medicine, sure. Something to dull the pain?”
“No...”
Sarah didn’t let her bag go, but she unzipped the mouth and, after a moment’s consideration in which she stared deep into John’s eyes, removed a small leather pouch about the size and thickness of a deck of playing cards. She unclasped the pouch and soft, ethereal light shone from within.
Sarah removed a plastic cylinder containing a single syringe, full of some white, shining fluid—like metal burning white-hot.
“I need you to inject me, behind my knee, with half of what’s in this needle.”
“What is in the needle?” John asked. He kept an ear trained on the door, listening for the telltale rasp.
“Please, just do as I ask.”
Sarah unscrewed the plastic cylinder and removed the syringe. She handled it gently, as if it were the most precious thing in the world, and gave it to John with some reluctance.
“Only use half,” she warned.
John bit his tongue and nodded. He removed the cap as Sarah turned on her side, and pierced her skin just behind her knee. She tensed. With care, John injected half the glowing substance into her leg and withdrew the needle.
“Quick, cap it and put it back—don’t drop it! That’s all there is in the world now.”
He capped the needle and secured it in the cylinder, which went back into the pouch, which went back into Sarah’s bag.
“Okay, now tell me what—?”
John’s words caught in his throat as Sarah’s leg began to glow. Dozens of tiny stars swam beneath her skin, shining blood-red through her vessels and arteries. The stars of light spread throughout her body in seconds, and then converged on her broken leg. Sarah bit back a cry as trails of luminescent smoke bled from the wound.
John had to look away, the glow was so bright.
When he looked back, black spots danced before his eyes, and Sarah’s leg was whole and healed. A patch of fresh, pale skin where the bone had punctured her shin stood stark against the darker, tanned skin around it.
“What the fuck?” John whispered, and scurried away on his hands.
Untying the sloppy splint, Sarah pulled herself up using the desk and tentatively placed weight on her leg.
The leg held, and she nodded once, apparently satisfied.
The flashlight had rolled away during John’s quick crawl, and now shone on his face from under the desk. Sarah looked at him, a small smile playing in the corners of her mouth. “Get me out of here alive, and to your Haven,” she said, “and I’ll tell you everything.”
John considered, and then nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Keeping a lid on his questions, John gathered his gear and drew his 9mm pistol. He racked a load into the chamber and pressed his ear against the door. He listened for a good minute before deciding the walkway outside was clear, and disengaged the lock.
“Wait here,” he whispered. “I’m gonna take a look.”
“Be careful.”
John rolled his eyes. He slipped out onto the walkway above the cool, dark warehouse. He held his torch on a dim setting, just enough to illuminate five feet ahead. No dark, shambling figures stood out. Had the horde moved on? That didn’t seem likely.
Taking a few slow steps along the walkway, John stepped out over the aisles and saw that, no, the warehouse was full of infected. Down below he heard shuffling and dry rasping. He backtracked and headed the other way, past the manager’s office, and came to the eastern wall, hoping for a convenient Hollywood-style fire escape. All he found was a set of stairs that led down onto the floor, around the back of the offices.
At least the stairs were clear.
A distraction... something to draw them from the loading dock. An idea swam across his mind and John cringed. He stood at the top of the stairs, gripped by indecision, then sighed. None of the supplies in this warehouse were worth a damn thing to him if he was dead. That settled it. He moved on light footsteps down the stairs.
Back on the floor, he found himself in an unpacking area. Sealed and open wooden crates were stacked against the wall, next to a row of defunct forklifts. Still no visible Z’s, but he could hear their rasps echoing along the aisles nearby. John shone his torch over the crates, across the forklifts, and then swung the light back.
A crowbar rested on top of the crates. Holstering his noisy pistol, John hefted the crowbar—the metal was a touch heavier than the cricket bat, but it did have a pointy end. A good shot through the eye would pierce the brain...
A grim smile spread across his face.
Now he could get to work.
A quarter of an hour later, he stepped back into the manager’s office and shined his light over Sarah. She looked relieved to see him. Blood and gore dripped from his crowbar, and he was panting hard.
“Okay, we need to be quick. Come on.”
Sarah ran over, her bag of tricks bouncing at her hip. “Is it clear?”
John massaged his forehead. “It will be.”
They stepped out together onto the walkway and John led Sarah back the way they had come, over the gap in the slats where she had snapped her leg, and took a right, away from the loading dock and the Cherokee.
“This is the wrong way,” Sarah whispered. “Oh my...”
John, as silent as the night, came up behind two Z’s. His crowbar pierced the brain stem of the first, and as the second began to turn he pulled the bar free and drove it home through the creature’s eye. They dropped to the walkway.
“We need to draw them away from the dock. I’ve got a little surprise rigged up. You’ll see.”
Another left, and a right, led them out over the aisles. Down below, John ran his torch over the floor. A few dead Z’s, his handiwork, were being inspected by a fresh batch. A stack of splintered wood and paper, a small pyre in the middle of the aisle, was built directly beneath the walkway.
“What’s that smell?” Sarah asked. “Is that... is that gas?”
John shone the torch along the aisle, over to the stack of barbeque propane tanks he’d seen
earlier, after coming back for dog food and Coco Pops. “It sure is.”
“What are you going to do?”
John removed a few items from his pockets. “The gas won’t always light from just a spark. We need an open flame.”
“The gas won’t... what?”
John didn’t answer. It became obvious what he was doing. In the last twenty minutes, after connecting hoses and opening the valves on the propane tanks, allowing the gas to spill out, he’d pilfered a sewing set from the next aisle over, taking out a half dozen Z’s for his trouble. In front of the leaking tanks, he’d soaked a whole stack of paper and wood from the crates in Coleman alcohol fuel.
Now, he tied one end of a roll of cotton around the lid of his Zippo and spun the wheel. The lighter flared to life, a spot of flickering orange flame in the dark.
“I’m going to lower the lighter down and ignite that pyre. The open flame, once it grows, should be enough to blow the tanks. We’ll be running by then.”
Sarah nodded and even smiled. “Gosh, this is exciting.”
John looked at her sideways.
“I mean, sorry... How do you know how to do this?”
“It’s been a long year. Where’ve you been?”
Sarah didn’t answer. John began to lower his tiny flicker of flame down to the fuel-soaked stack below. He lowered the Zippo slowly but surely and was rewarded with a whoosh of hot air as the fire took to the fuel in the pyre greedily. He quickly pulled the cotton back up and reclaimed his lighter.
John released a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “Come on, we need to be quick—the explosion will draw them away, but not for long. The only thing worse than a horde of Z’s is a horde of burning Z’s.”
IV - Run, Shit’s Exploding!
John and Sarah set off back along the walkway as the fire down below took hold of the kindling. They followed the path a few aisles over, out of the blast radius, and waited hunched down against the steel railing.
A minute passed.
Then another.
John cursed and gripped his crowbar. Glancing up and down the walkway, he looked at Sarah and muttered, “Wait here.”
He took off back toward the fire and got about halfway before a tremendous boom shook the entire warehouse and knocked him from his feet. A wave of heat burst up and outwards, washing over John, as the propane tanks went up like fireworks—some shooting as high as the ceiling with an almighty clap of thunder.
Above the noise of the explosion rose the collective moan of the horde. Down below, the creatures began to shuffle toward the heat and the noise. Satisfied everything had gone to plan, John found Sarah right where he’d left her, flames dancing in her eyes, staring at a rising pillar of thick smoke.
The distraction worked, and drew the Z’s along the aisles toward the back of the warehouse away from the loading dock. John and Sarah watched the horde move toward the bright, flickering flames. Another explosion rocked the warehouse, and the metal beneath their feet groaned and shifted in protest.
“Time to go,” John said.
“Agreed.”
John took point and they ran.
Along the walkway back to the dock were six Z’s, drawn like moths to the flame. John faced them head on, driving his crowbar home and making each blow count. Their shadows danced along the walls and ceiling, lit by the flames from behind, wreathed in the crackle of fire and the scent of smoke.
By the time they made it to the stairs and down into the loading dock, the space was clear of all but a handful of Z’s. John, adrenalin surging through his system, took care of business and ducked under the roller door, out into the clear night air.
The Jeep Cherokee was right where they’d left it, bursting with supplies, a dark silhouette against a fat, full moon and about a million twinkling stars.
The way was clear.
John burst out laughing as he and Sarah climbed into the jeep and slammed the doors shut.
For a few minutes they just sat quietly, catching their breath. John placed his trusty crowbar down the side of his seat, feeling like some powerful videogame character that had just finished the last level and unlocked one hell of an achievement.
1000 Z’s—Killing Spree!
“That fire will burn like a beacon and attract every biter for miles,” Sarah said, as if discussing the matter over a few quiet drinks.
“Best we be somewhere else then.”
“John...” Sarah met his eyes. “Thank you for not leaving me back there.”
Keying the ignition, the Cherokee roared to life. John shifted into reverse and swung round the semitrailer. He had a clear line, save for a few stumbling Z’s, out of the distribution centre through the broken fence and back onto the road. For the first time in hours, John let himself relax.
Ten minutes later and he made a smooth turn north onto Pacific Highway. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, he saw an orange glow above the trees, and could smell smoke on the wind.
“You look sad,” Sarah said. “Be happy.”
“Just thinking about all those supplies that’ll be ash by dawn.”
Sarah squeezed his knee and yawned. Not five minutes later, her breathing evened and she fell asleep.
An hour down the road, as dawn broke, washing the stars away under a coat of light blue paint, John pulled over in the same place he had stopped nearly a day ago, and for the same reason. He got out of the jeep to relieve himself on the fallen road sign.
Dead Ahead, the sign had promised—and delivered.
“Breakfast,” he said to himself. “Then sleep.”
Sarah, roused by the stop, joined John for a breakfast comprised of water and chocolate from the supplies in the trunk. They ate in silence, watching the sunrise over the coastal plains below.
John spent a minute or two wiping the gore and grime off his crowbar with some water and rags. Some of the mess had started to dry, and he had to scrape that off with his knife. Satisfied, he held the crowbar up toward the rising sun, triumphant.
“And I shall name you... Stabber!” he declared, to an audience of one. “May your brother, Thumper, rest in pieces.”
Sarah stared at him, took a breath, and then vomited up water and Snickers onto the side of the road.
“Whoa,” John leapt back as she emptied her stomach. “Here...” She took a bottle of water and sipped it gently.
“You won’t leave me?” she asked a few minutes later, for what felt like the thousandth time.
John chuckled. “Not until you show me how that medicine in your bag works. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”
Sarah gave him a look of the utmost seriousness. “It’s the future,” she whispered. “I wish I didn’t have to use it on my leg, but if I’d died, then there’d be no one to make more. Not with Annie lost. How far is it to Haven?”
“A day or so, and that’s if the boats are on dock, which they won’t be. I’m overdue already—they’ll think I’m dead. They’re trained to think I’m dead if I’m two hours past collection. We don’t wait for stragglers.” John sighed. “But we should be able to send a radio message from the harbour. Two days, at most, and the docks are secure, so we’ll be safe enough. Now, didn’t you promise me some answers?”
Sarah nodded. “Yes, yes I did.”
“Like how your leg healed? How that horde seemed to just come out of nowhere? And so many of the bastards! I’ve never seen that many in one place before.”
Sarah sat on the rim of the jeep’s trunk and swung her legs back and forth, staring down at the ocean. “There’s a... man.” She cursed. “A bad man.”
John frowned. “Okay.”
“He’s hunting me, because of what I took.” She clutched her tote bag close against her breasts. “I don’t know what he is, but he’s not human, John. God, I don’t think you’ll believe me. He’s…”
“What? A zombie?”
“No. Powerful, smart, but... I don’t know what he is, okay? He can do things. Things that make no logic
al or scientific sense.”
“Like what?”
“Like read minds,” Sarah snapped. “Make you think things and do things you don’t want to do. Bad things. He can make people kill themselves, make them walk out into a horde of Z’s, just by looking into their eyes. He can control the hordes! Direct them. He’s killed so many survivors.”
A year ago, John would’ve thought she’d been watching too many horror movies, or reading too many Stephen King books before bed, but in a world where the dead walked the earth and bones could be healed in seconds, he paused and considered. “This guy got a name?”
“Jacob Dusk.”
For no reason he could think of, John shivered, as if a layer of snow had settled over the warm Australian dawn.
“He showed up at our compound in Canberra six months ago, and just took over,” Sarah said. “We were working on, on what you saw in my bag, but when Dusk arrived he started organising raids on other survivor camps, started gathering the infected into pens, and most everyone just went along with it! Like I said, he has a way of... of getting into your head.” She stifled a sob. “He also knew things, things no one should’ve known. Like why this all happened. How this all happened. He called it the Lord’s Judgment, but he looked at me when he said it, and I knew he knew the truth.”
“So what was he saying? That Z-Apoc is some… some fucked up higher power testing us? What are you saying, Sarah?”
“I’m saying that Z-Apoc wasn’t an accident. Someone, perhaps something, wanted it to happen.”
“What?”
For the first time since he’d met her, John watched Sarah part with her tartan bag. She put it down in the trunk, atop a pile of soup cans, and took hold of his hands. “When you see one of the infected... do you wonder why they’re infected, how the virus keeps them walk—”
“How they’re still moving?” John asked aloud, following Sarah’s lead. “Yeah, I do wonder. It’s been a year. They should’ve rotted away to nothing by now, especially in this heat, but they don’t look any less fucked up than they did when all this began.”
