Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 1): January

by Dave Rowlands

  “Fine!” He shouted in return. He ordered his men back to camp. “See you tomorrow, dead men!” His laugh as they retreated sounded as though it was meant to be mocking, but there was fear in it too.

  I turned to Fat Dealer and said “We leave tonight.”

  He shook his head. “Tomorrow morning is better. They'll be able to tell where we've gone if they can see headlights.” I asked him if we had anywhere we could go. He didn't answer.

  evening

  Beef stew tonight, and everybody ate their fill, even though nobody felt they could eat. The morning would bring war and death. On a small scale, perhaps, but we knew that the older members of the community who insisted on staying behind would die horribly. Fat Dealer even pulled out his old shotgun for the occasion. This was his land, he had lived here nearly fifty years now. His wife was buried here, and one of his sons. The other son had left, gone to Adelaide to go to university, and they were not on speaking terms. Realistically speaking, the other son was likely dead before the one that had shared his last joint with The Kid. The musicians were going to stay as well. As they were the most proficient at creating sound, they had volunteered to try and stampede the cattle. Farmer was being a complete arsehole, saying that I had doomed us all. He then went up to his room, slamming the door shut behind him. Archer looked like the decision was killing him, but he elected to leave, as his skills would come in handy. Butcher needed to go also, and it was assumed that Farmer and his 'wife' would be going also. Some of us would need to ride in the back of the Ute with the sheep. That's going to be pleasant. Farmer had already screamed his head off when he discovered what had been done to his car, and was insisting that nobody but he drive it. He even tried to keep the keys to himself, until his 'wife' told him they needed to be in the car at all times, just in case.

  Farmer's Wife and The Kid were talking quietly among themselves near the staircase. Apocalypse Girl sat near me, practically clinging onto me. The two of us had been through so much in the last two weeks that it seemed we had been looking out for each other for years. She whispered in my ear that no matter what she had my back. I smiled reassuringly at her, telling her that I had hers in return, and that we will be fine. I only wish that I actually believed that. Junior and The Twin stayed nearby, the four of us made a formidable team. If nothing else, these people I feel truly safe with.

  Fat dealer rolled one last joint for the group to share together. He offered it to me to light it, in honour of all I had done to help protect us all. He made sure to tell those of us that were leaving that it was okay, he was ready to join his family. The Kid told anyone who was still hungry that they needed to get to whatever they wanted to eat now, as he was tainting everything in the kitchen as a surprise 'fuck you' to the bandits. Farmer's Wife took her toke on the joint and said that it had been a true pleasure meeting us all, and that if she had known there were people like us in the world sooner she might have done more to try and get away from Farmer. Junior told Fat Dealer and the musicians that they had better fuck up as many of those bandits as they could manage. Fat Dealer mentioned at that point that he knew a thing or two about fighting. The Twin had her smoke, simply hugged each of those who were to remain and thanked them. Apocalypse Girl said nothing, simply smoked and saluted. Fat Dealer was just finishing his toke when The Kid came back from the kitchen.

  “Here,” He said, extending the roach. “You're one of us too. Finish this shit off for us.” The Kid gratefully accepted both the joint and the recognition the he was still part of the group. Farmer's Wife stood and went over to him once again. They resumed their earlier conversation, it seemed. The Kid's face went from calm, to horrified, to saddened beyond belief. Then he nodded. She kissed him and ran upstairs saying to him “Bolt the door behind me.” He sighed, followed her upstairs.

  “They're not coming with us.” He told us when he returned downstairs. Misery was etched in granite on his face. A split second before the screams began above us I realised that Farmer's Wife had kissed The Kid on the lips.

  Once the screaming stopped, Apocalypse Girl simply asked The Kid if they could get out. He shook his head. Then he whispered that he had bolted the door, then padlocked it. The idea was to make it look like something important in there that we had left behind. The bandits wouldn't be able to resist it. Archer pointed out that it was a good idea, and congratulated The Kid for it. He told us it had been Farmer's Wife's plan.

  Those of us who could sleep decided to sleep downstairs tonight.

  Funny thing is, it seemed only those destined to die the next day actually slept at all. Fat Dealer and the musicians slept heavily all night long, the five of them snoring away in a kind of surreal tune that just made everything seem way more fucked up than it was. Or maybe I was busy thinking about people I had come to consider friends that had planned to sacrifice themselves for me.

  Apocalypse Girl and I discussed everything that had happened to us since the party. We had been lucky so far, that was certain. How far would that luck hold was the real question though.

  January 12th Year 1 A.Z.

  pre-dawn

  The Kid went out on a scouting run as light began to appear over the eastern horizon. None of us had slept well, save those staying behind, and Apocalypse Girl and I were rechecking the supplies near the vehicles once again when he came back, breathing heavily.

  “They're here. They don't know I saw them but they're here. About a kilometre out from the wall, probably a couple of hundred left. Get everyone ready.” He said. Apocalypse Girl ran inside to wake everybody, and I rushed over to the wall to get a look for myself.

  The Kid was right, there was indeed a large amount of former prisoners out there heading in our direction. Their leader, the same man I had shot in the ear, kept shouting at them, telling them that the ten last men over the wall were going to be joining the bitches here. On the receiving end, that is. Smiling to myself I felt glad that they'd be fucking someone at least today, and even more glad it wasn't going to be our women.

  Moments later Archer, The Twin, Junior and Apocalypse Girl joined me, bows in hand. Apocalypse Girl glanced over the wall and swore. The Twin looked over the wall, fired an arrow, and a bandit swore. Fat Dealer and the musicians were hurrying as fast as their old bones could carry them. Butcher had stayed behind to start the cars, and as we heard the Valiant roar to life the bandit leader shouted that we have a generator, even more reason to get their arses inside.

  The Kid and Junior started firing indiscriminately into the massed ranks of bandits approaching us, The Twin picking off kill shots as best as she could, aiming for the chest rather than head, in the hopes that any Dead bandits would be happy to chomp on their Living fellows.

  “You guys get the fuck out of here!” Fat Dealer told us as the few bandits armed with guns began to open fire. “We'll cover you, just get to the cars and go!” With that he stood up and blasted a charging bandit who was getting a bit too close for comfort full in the chest, knocking him flying backwards into the crowd of enraged men. As the musicians began firing arrows into the charging mob, Fat Dealer's head exploded. I grabbed his shotgun, firing blindly over the wall once before grabbing Fat Dealer's ammo belt, that he had dropped at the base of the wall, having not had time to wear it. Then, slinging the ammo belt around my shoulder, I grabbed Apocalypse Girl, and ran.

  The Ute fired up as we made it halfway back to the barn. Archer and Junior ran into the shed to grab all the remaining weapons and ammo that had been made to date, The Kid running into the barn to retrieve Fat Dealer's stash. We heard gunfire and screams of the dying up until we were on the other side of the barn, where the Valiant's engine drowned out all other noise.

  Also, when we made it to the far side of the barn, we discovered that all the noise we had made had attracted a massive throng of Dead. I jumped into the passenger side of the Valiant, Apocalypse Girl the drivers seat. The Twin and Junior piled into the back, Butcher and Archer getting into the Ute behind us. By now the sun rose hi
gh in the sky, and we could see nothing but Dead before us, behind the gate. The Kid rushed towards it, and indeed, the Dead ignored him, though they clearly wanted to get in to the noise, and the screaming, and most importantly, the flesh, The Kid held absolutely no interest for them. He swung the gate as wide as it would go, then ran back to jump in the back of the Valiant.

  Apocalypse Girl planted her foot down on the accelerator, and the Valiant lurched forward. Archer's modifications certainly created a lot of drag, but by fuck they sliced through the Dead like a katana through a cheesecake. I looked behind us to see a mass of bandits rushing around the barn as we made good our escape, the Ute following us closely through the hole we made in the Dead ranks. The bandits didn't look happy to see the Dead, but I think the Dead liked the look of the bandits. Hrmmm...tasty bandits, they were thinking, if they could think at all.

  “Remind you of anything?” Apocalypse Girl asked me. I assumed she was thinking of our escape from the hotel, and said there were far less Dead that time. She said I was right, but it was good to be mobile again anyway.

  noonish

  We drove for a couple of hours, Apocalypse Girl still wanting to head east, though not able to tell me why exactly, and then we stopped to eat at a random, totally arbitrary place on a highway.

  Since we had no idea whatsoever as to where we were headed, we sat around in a circle after lunch and smoked on it. Clearly, whatever had happened, had happened worldwide, so looking for somewhere with no Dead was not likely. We had a perfect place, we had food, shelter, security. Fucking bandits. Pretty sure I'm not alone in hoping they got what they deserved. Junior wanted to find a military barracks to raid for weapons and other supplies, maybe even help, which might not be a bad idea, unless the military turn out to be worse than those bandits. The Twin just wanted to find more people, somewhere safe. Problem with that is, where is safe? Safe was what we had at the commune... I'm beginning to think even that was just an illusion anyway, and that safe just didn't exist at all anymore. If it ever was anywhere other than in our minds, even before the Dead began to walk. What we needed first, was four walls and a roof somewhere, I told them. Once we find that we can worry about everything else later. We also needed fuel for the cars. We decided that the sheep needed to go first, and Butcher slaughtered and gutted one of them, far enough away so that the others would not hear or be afraid.

  Junior and I dug a fire-pit into which we placed several tree branches that we discovered nearby, and Archer fashioned a spit upon which we roasted the dead sheep. We had decided that since we were out in the open we could more easily spot approaching Dead, or Living, for that matter, this would be a good place to camp for the rest of the day. Roast mutton would be our diet for at least the next week by the look of things, with the four sheep we had left the commune with, three of whom bleated about nothing, while not realising, in the way that sheep don't, that they were going to go exactly where their companion that they had completely forgotten went.

  January 13th Year 1 A.Z.

  dawn

  We continued along the road after a quick breakfast. Still driving now, just about an hour into it. Fucking always hated reading while driving, used to make me feel like throwing up. Writing while driving is actually, in some respects, not as annoying, the nausea for instance was less, but fuck me it's sloppy! Might have to find a typewriter one day and fix it all up. At least typewriters didn't have to worry about being eaten, seems like a good life to me! I think I might have been smoking too much weed since we found the commune. Headache now. More later.

  noon

  Got to stretch our legs for a while after eating a lunch of left over mutton. Looking at the countryside, things are seeming wrong, somehow. It's somehow not as warm as it should be, doesn't feel like the middle of an Australian summer at all, more like spring, at least the temperature. The trees we've seen nearby too, they seem somehow, I don't know, sick. That's the only way I can describe it, but I am no botanist. Apocalypse Girl noticed it first, she is worried. We spoke about it in the car briefly this morning, The Twin thinks it might be something to do with burning the Dead bodies. Junior said that though we killed a lot of them, and burned those we killed, it couldn't have affected anything this far away, as we were more than two hundred kilometres away from the commune by now. I didn't say anything then, but I thought long and hard about it. Junior is right, and so is Apocalypse Girl. Every other group of survivors in the country, hell in the whole fucking world, is contributing to the tainting of the entire planet. After all, it seems only natural to burn them, doesn't it? Fuck we humans can be idiots sometimes. The grass at our feet was a sickly shade of green, not the lush verdant green of spring, certainly not the honey-golden colour it usually is this time of year. Instead it had the hue of wrong green, that is the only way I can describe it. Like military green had been taken out the back, shot and left to rot over a month or two. And then had been chundered on by someone who had been overindulging in crème de menthe straight out of the Chernobyl reactor. The sheep were having trouble eating it, that was certain.

  mid-afternoon

  Finally, after the fourth service station we had tried, we struck it lucky at the fifth. Only a few Dead around and the petrol tanks were almost full still. Junior and I took care of the dozen or so shambling corpses that were wandering about the place while The Kid made sure the inside was safe, and rooted around for supplies. He found a bunch of packets of potato chips, other assorted munchie-munch varieties of 'food' and a whole shitload of bottles of water. When we first started bottling water for sale I thought it wasteful and stupid, but now I am sucking down some fresh spring water and loving every drop. Hey, the world may have ended but fucked if I'm not going to take out a little bit of time to enjoy the little things! If anything, the apocalypse makes it that much more vital to do so...

  “Something strange is happening to me...” The Kid said to me at one point as I filled the Valiant's enormous petrol tank. “I haven't needed a shit in days, haven't had to piss either.” He glanced downwards at his leg. “Haven't felt hungry or thirsty either, for that matter.” I still put it down to the close call we had with the bandits at the commune, but he was not convinced. He wandered off, pausing occasionally to sniff the air. All I could smell was motor oil and gasoline, but considering he grew up on the commune he was probably unfamiliar with the scent. When he was out of earshot Apocalypse Girl approached me. She didn't entirely trust The Kid. Not that she was afraid of him, she didn't think he was going to be a liability to the group at all. No fear that he would deliberately infect any of us at all. No, she was concerned because she had noticed exactly the same thing that he had just broached with me. Everybody else had felt these needs. She just didn't want him eating anybody. I doubted that it would come to that, but better to be aware of the potential for danger.

  Since we were in a nice open area we decided to sleep inside the service station. The Kid insisted on sleeping outside, since he was by far the least likely to attract any Dead attention, and he said himself that he might be a danger. He looked scared shitless about causing another one of us harm. Archer found a nice easy way of getting up onto the roof and set himself up there for the first watch. Luckily it was a full moon tonight, so there was plenty of light by which to see. I told The Kid to stay under cover until morning, as, bright thought the night was, it would be far too dark to distinguish Living from Dead. He nodded. I handed him Fat Dealer's shotgun and went inside. Archer would wake me around ten for my shift, which could last until perhaps two in the morning. It was hard to tell time without watches. Nobody had a watch, out of everybody here. Apocalypse Girl and I had been relying on our mobile phones to tell the time, but they had died on the first day, and so far we had not had time to even think finding some way of charging them. The hippies on the other hand, had no mobiles, no watches, no clocks and no need for them.

  I looked around on the shelves with the last bit of dying sunlight. There were other basic supplies here that we would ne
ed. I made certain to grab several containers of oil and coolant, and a couple of sets of jumper cables, putting them neatly out of the way near the front door so we wouldn't forget. I also went around behind the counter to check if there were any lighters. There were not, as it happened, and Apocalypse Girl sauntered up at that moment, asking me if I was looking for something.

  “Lighters. But it looks like someone else got here first.” I said. She chuckled and opened up her backpack. It was very neatly packed, much more so than mine, except for a layer of lighters floating around freely.

  “Thought they might come in handy.” She smiled. “Help yourself. Probably better if everyone has a few anyway.” I grabbed a handful, stuffing them into the pockets of my jeans.

  We sat behind the counter together, simply speaking of better times. Before long, Archer came in through the door to get me for my watch. I scurried up to the roof, and waited for something to happen. Several hours passed. Sheer boredom. Time to get Junior and maybe get some sleep, not that I even remembered what that felt like anymore. From below I heard The Kid snoring away like a chainsaw. At least someone could sleep...