by Pete Aldin
Had he—?
“Did you … ?” Elliot asked.
Lewis shook his head and stopped in front of him. He kept his eyes off Birdy, as did Elliot, their gazes locked together. Lewis's cheeks ran with tears but his voice was steady. “I chased them. I just chased them. I didn't even shoot. I should have.”
Elliot shook his head, crouched and felt for his rifle without diverting his gaze. “You did good.” I'm the one who lost it.
This wasn't happening.
This is happening. This just happened.
The other boy's rifle was gripped tight in Lewis's hand; Elliot hadn't noticed it until he squatted. As one hand found the M4, he reached out and took the bolt-action from Lewis, stood up straight. He handed the M4 to Lewis and worked the new weapon's bolt, ejected the casing. He pulled out the mag and checked it, then the breech. Nothing. The sonofabitch had been down to his last round. He raised his face to the sun streaming through the gum trees and laughed, laughed just one loud and sardonic bark. Then he sent the weapon spinning into the scrub.
He took back the M4, stalked around the blackberries, made it to passenger side wheel without getting shot, took a peek at the seats inside. No one there.
“What are you doing!” Lewis hissed behind him.
He edged forward beneath the first of the side windows where the curtains had been pulled aside then moved to the door. Moment of truth: compromising the safety of his own skull and he didn't give a shit. Anyone in there already knew he was out here.
“Let's get it over with,” he said and wrenched the door open.
Unless they were in the shower cubicle at the far end, no one was home. He entered leading with the rifle-barrel. The air was cool. A fine layer of dust coated everything including the linoleum floor. No footprints. No one had gotten in that cubicle unless they levitated there. No one had been here in weeks. He checked the shower carefully anyway, found it empty, slumped against the wall in relief, kicked the opposite wall once twice three times.
“Birdy,” he whispered.
Lewis followed him in, eyes wide, SIG at his side, taking in the state of the place, taking in Elliot's heaving chest and the dents in the wall. “What now?” he asked.
“Go get my pack.” He'd left it near the berries.
“What about …? What about her?”
Spider webs clumped in corners like cotton candy, populated by spiders with tiny bodies and long gangly legs. Elliot wondered if these would inherit the earth when people had finished killing each other off. If in some distance future, would these things evolve a better society, a better world? Or would it they just enact more death?
“Elliot?”
“Get my pack. I'll think about it.”
He blinked and Lewis was back, though a minute or two must have passed. He was still staring at the spiders when the teenager put the pack and the Aimrite on the table then closed the door and locked it.
“Daddy longlegs,” Lewis muttered.
“Yuh. We got 'em too. My … uncle called 'em cellar spiders.”
“Good name.” He added his new leather shoulder satchel to the pile on the table, placed the SIG beside it and traced his finger over the stippling on the grip.
Elliot moved to the cupboard below the tiny kitchen sink. It held nine bottles of water, a six pack of James Boag beers, neat stacks of spaghetti tins, three bags of corn chips. No vegetables, not even beans.
If the agent or infection was in the cans, he no longer cared. He dragged the pack over, flipped it open and threw six tins and three water bottles in it. He fished out his toothbrush and said, “You take six more tins if you can fit them in.” He handed over another water bottle. “Drink. You need to hydrate. Then use straight water to brush your teeth. I transferred my spare toothbrush from my pack to yours this morning.” Lewis took the water bottle, but didn't open it, butt against the dining table. “We'll make the next town before nightfall, eat big then. Conserve the food. One big meal a day. Keep training our bodies to do more on less calories, like people did before the industrial age.” He popped open another water bottle and wet the toothbrush bristles, put the bottle on the bench and stood. His brush paused halfway to his mouth. Lewis wasn't moving.
“Need to brush your teeth. I've only seen you do it once since … since Harrietville.”
“Birdy?”
He jammed the brush in his mouth, started scrubbing. “No time.”
“We have to bury her.”
“We have to stay alive.”
“You're brushing your teeth. We should be out there digging a hole.”
Elliot snatched the bottle from his hands and twisted the lid. He reached over and banged the bottle on the table, splashing the surface. “Brush. You seriously don't want cavities in future.”
Lewis looked away, said nothing, face tight, jaw working.
Elliot picked up a saucepan from the draining board, held it high and dropped it on Lewis's right sneaker.
“Ah! You bastard!” Lewis grabbed his foot in a standing yoga pose, withdrew along the cabin to put distance between them. “Why'd you do that!”
“That hurt?”
“Duh.”
“Imagine that pain times twenty, all concentrated in your mouth and staying there 24-7-365. Imagine it getting so bad, you're screaming for someone to do anything they can to make it stop. Imagine me tying you down hard so you can't flinch and sticking a pair of needle-nose pliers in your mouth—without anesthetic, mind—and ripping the decaying tooth from your mouth before it can get infected and kill you. And all that because you wouldn't brush.”
Lewis let go of his foot and swept the water bottle from the table to slam into the cabinets opposite.
They stayed in tableau for a long moment. Then Elliot spat in the sink and dropped his brush in his pack, locked the clasps. He lifted it, took the M4 and moved to the door.
“You coming?”
Lewis let go of a breath and picked up his satchel. He bent and squeezed three bottles of water, a pack of chips and a spaghetti tin into it. The spaghetti crushed the chips as he shouldered the bag. He checked the safety on the SIG and put it in his pants. Then he stepped up and reached past Elliot to unlock the door. He pushed it out and squeezed through, turning east.
Elliot leaned back and stamped down hard on a spider. He inspected the goo on the floor where it had been. It looked a lot like an exploded human corpse seen from the air.
The goddamed Ousefs had left him with a shit sandwich all right. He lurched outside and into the blazing sun. The growling, choking breaths of deaders came to him on the wind, drawn by the noise. In a minute or two they'd find her body and start in on it. That might buy him and Lewis enough time to avoid them altogether, keep ahead of them.
Lewis was already out of the clearing, a smudge of color amid the washed out greens. Elliot shouldered his pack and hurried after him, keen to get ahead and steer them right. Behind him came the frenzied sounds of the first deader finding Birdy.
Yep. A total shit sandwich.
*
A nest of boulders poking from the side of the hill gave them a place to rest along with a clear view of the town below. The map dot called Birns River Bridge was a meander of short streets housed with cottages and a penchant for European trees and gardens. It lay on the far side of the actual bridge beyond the shopping district that faced the river. Narrow parkland dressed both banks of the watercourse, the far side spotted with picnic tables and some kind of memorial stone. A blackened patch of grass resolved in the field glasses as some kind of funeral pyre, charred lumps resolving as skeletons. The black had spread across the grass, like ink running; sometime in the last two months, rain had smudged it, washing it inch by inch toward the river. Twenty storefronts made up the commerical strip, decades-old, some quaint, others merely aged. The river ran fast and shallow across fist-sized pebbles. The range of hills swept north, leaving the east as grassland: grazing property lay beyond the town as far as the eye could see, peppered with small stan
ds of bushland. North-east of the town, river and highway cut a ravine through the hills creating pretty-looking bluffs either side. A stately two-storey home rose from one of the bluffs. Its front windows would have had a fine view along the ravine, while one side would get a glimpse of swathes of farmland leading east.
A mile beyond the town off a branch road by a river tributary sat a ten cabin motor inn with a gas station on the opposite side of the road. Those two structures seemed to be the only real industry in the area. And they promised cars. Through the binoculars, Elliot could make out the regular lines of an orchard in a farm close to the township—apple trees maybe.
For the first time in weeks, he didn't feel like eating but they should try the orchard; someone had told him Tasmania produced enough varieties of apple that one was always ripe for picking regardless of the time of year.
A speckle of grey-brown shapes on a field revealed themselves as kangaroos—a weird coincidence, given recent conversation. He considered commenting as much, but small talk felt wrong, as wrong as eating. There'd been no conversation since the motorhome other than the occasional grunt necessary for course corrections.
Whatever anger Lewis had felt back at the motor home had leached away as they'd clawed their way up and down hills and through barriers of vegetation. The teenager leaned on a boulder higher up the slope, rubbing his knuckles into his thighs. His face was as empty of emotion as Elliot's heart. They could both do with a few drinks and a long sleep in that motel down there.
Now that Elliot had leaned his ass against this big rock, now that he'd stopped, it was going to take an effort to get going again. He raised the field glasses, had to blink hard a couple times to get his focus back. The glasses caught no movement in the town anywhere except for two dogs traipsing side by side along one of the short sidestreets. No movement was real good. He pushed off the rock and started down the slope—a scree of loose stones, eucalypt bark and twigs—glanced back to get Lewis moving too and snagged his foot on a tree root. The rifle went flying. Elliot went down in a heap. His backpack caught, preventing him from rolling. His ankle flared in agony where he'd snagged it. He wrestled the backpack off, got himself untwisted and sitting upright, swearing as good as he knew how. He straightened the leg, reached for his boot, and pulled back when the touch made him wince. He couldn't put weight on this.
Lewis was standing above him now, face blank but for the tiny crease he sometimes got between his eyebrows.
Elliot growled in pain and frustration. “Find me the IFAK.”
Lewis ditched his satchel and Aimrite and rummaged through Elliot's pack. When he found the first aid kit, he pulled out a roll of bandages and some clips. “I'll have to take the boot off.”
“I'll do it.” It took Elliot over a minute of gritted teeth and further imprecations, but he got the shoe off. Rolling down his sock, he was relieved to see no purple and no swelling. With luck it'd only be a minor sprain. And the bandage would help brace it. He held his hand out for it.
“I can,” Lewis said.
“Yeah right. Just gimme.”
Lewis shuffled closer and inspected the joint with pursed lips. “Keep holding your pants leg back like that.”
“You're gonna bandage my ankle?”
“It's easy.”
Elliot cocked an eyebrow. “And you got your medical training where?”
“Mum taught me first aid.”
Elliot was silent a while as Lewis got the bandage out and positioned it against the ankle. “She was a naturopath? They do first aid?”
But that was a stupid question. Lots of people did first aid. Store assistants. Office managers. Teenagers. Lewis's expression was understandably scathing.
“Okay,” Elliot said, “make a start but I'm watching you.”
To his surprise and relief, Elliot didn't once need to intervene. Lewis's hands were sure and the bandage was perfectly tensioned when he clipped it together. He sat back and admired his handiwork, then packed up the IFAK into Elliot's bag.
Elliot gently teased his sock up over the bandage. He rolled his right shoulder, testing it. The backpack straps had jarred it, but it was okay, just a little touchy. He searched around for a stray branch he could use to get up. “Guess I should thank you.”
“For this too.” A long thick stick landed beside him. Lewis came up beside him and lay the SIG on the ground. “Swap you this for the other two weapons.”
Elliot resisted the urge to object; how would he wield a rifle one handed? He tied his boot to his pack by the laces, then got up, bracing himself with the stick. It'd hold him, but going the rest of the way downhill would be slow. Slow and sideways. What the hell was he going to do with his gear?
Following his gaze, Lewis slung the satchel across his back, strap across his chest. He slung the Aimrite the opposite way and tested the backpack's weight. He hefted the pack over the opposite shoulder to the satchel, carried the M4 in one hand with the barrel down and started downhill, picking his way carefully.
“Probably a pharmacy down there,” he called back.
Elliot watched him a moment then picked his own way down—even more carefully than the teenager.
*
The river burbled below them as they crossed the bridge, cool and rippling with soft light, tempting Elliot. The cold water would have been good for his ankle if there weren't dead people soaking in it. He'd prefer the swollen ankle to disease. Lewis looked so sure of himself, walking twenty feet ahead of Elliot. So sure, that Elliot felt a sudden pang of doubt: what the hell made him think he could protect Lewis? He'd let those kids come up on them from behind. He'd let Birdy down, just like he'd let down … He'd twisted his goddammed ankle. What the hell was he playing at here?
Loser talk, Uncle John growled from the recesses of Elliot's mind. Only losers talk loser talk.
The dogs lifted cautious heads as he limped from the bridge and crossed into the town, growling in a perfunctory way before returning to their meal. Lewis lowered the pack onto a benchseat, swearing quietly at the animals because of what they were doing.
Elliot came to rest against telephone pole near Lewis, regarding the stores suspiciously, remembering why he hated towns. Too many vantage points. Too many potential sniper posts. Too many ways to surprise someone, the way his squad surprised those guys in Deir-al-Zour. Be ironic if someone played the same trick on him. The SIG was a comforting presence against his belly.
The pharmacy sign showed halfway along the stores toward the gorge. The dogs and bodies made a formidable barrier.
“Maybe I'll go around the back,” Lewis said. He lowered the satchel to the sidewalk beside the bench.
Elliot pointed to their right toward the far end of the shopping district where a deader with skinny grey legs beneath a pink miniskirt shuffled toward them, arms twitching, bare feet dragging. “Might be more of them.”
Lewis readied the Aimrite. “I can take her out.”
“Might be other people too.”
Lewis chewed that over a moment, then with forced bravado he said, “I'll be all right.” He considered the dead woman inching toward them.
“She's not moving fast,” Elliot told him. “Better we leave her where she is and both head round back.”
Lewis said, “You'll slow me down” and jogged across the asphalt and into the east road that split the shopping district, Aimrite in his hands, rifle bouncing against his back.
Elliot swore—then swore a second time when the sound of a speeding car came from the south. Lewis skidded to a halt, hearing it too. With nowhere to hide and unable to run, Elliot waved at Lewis to stay back, get cover, then pulled the SIG and pressed himself against the post as a black SUV rounded the bend into town. He knew he stuck out like dog's balls, but there was nothing for it.
Ignoring his signal, Lewis walked to the corner, forcing a third curse to Elliot's lips.
Elliot sighted on the car, tracking its approach, as if a speargun would make much of a dent in that. The SUV swerved onto t
he wrong side of the road to clip the zombie woman, flinging her into the rendered wall of a storefront, then braked hard to a stop in the intersection of main road, bridge and east road.
The door cracked open. A fifty-something man poked his empty hands and the top of his head into the open. He eased out until he stood fully exposed with hands raised. The freshening breeze side-parted his shock of grey-white hair, ruffled his light blue business shirt and grey slacks. Thirty yards past him, the zombie woman twitched and wiggled, attempting without success to raise herself on shattered arms.
The man's smile was as open as his stance, teeth celebrity-white.
“G'day, fellas,” he said. “Needing shelter?”
12
While Elliot and Lewis settled into the back seat, the older man slammed his door and twisted around to regard them with raised eyebrows and an easy smile. His teeth were flossed, the fingernails on the hand gripping the passenger seatback were manicured. The car smelled of pine air freshener and leather upholstery cleaner. The floors were clear of lint and trash.
“Bloody glad to see some friendly faces,” he beamed. “Haven't lost the entire human race, then?”
“Not yet,” Lewis replied seriously.
The man's eyes lit up. “Pretty good shot hitting that eater, eh? Had her dead in my sights.” He waggled his brows until Lewis acknowledged the pun with a small snort.
“Okay, then. Not the time for jokes, huh? Look like you've both had rough time.”
Rough time?
Elliot thought the guy must have a Doctorate in Understatement.
“You're on your way somewhere?” Elliot asked.
“Home.” He eyed Elliot's bandages and stick, Lewis's cuts and scrapes, then nodded at the dogs. “The shop there, the pharmacy? That was mine. Still is, I s'pose. If you'd like, I can take a good look at that leg when we get home. Your abrasions too, young fella. Make sure there's no infection.”
