As she told our story, the rest of us got into positions where we could act if necessary. The men were trained soldiers, and as such knew exactly what we were doing and lounged near cover and weaponry of their own. The Colonel continued her tale, how when the majority of us were accepted by The Schoolfolk she had been shunned because she had a military background and for no other reason than that. She also told of how, when she had been exiled, they had been decent enough to send a group to keep her company and make sure she was safe while she waited for the rest of us in the furniture shop just outside of their territory.
She also told of the group of bandits that had taken her and the other women from The School captive after slaughtering the men. How Guide had taken the rest of us so swiftly after them to rescue them from their fate. She then told of the audacity of Viking and his Mech-Techs, taking abandoned military supplies and using them for their own ends, who had demanded that she help them take a tank and teach them how to operate it in exchange for a vehicle so that we could reach Canberra.
When she had finished her tale, with what had occurred as soon as we had arrived at General Fuckwit's base, the patrols we were given and the soldiers that we had befriended, many of whom stood before us now. She told them that our group were her friends, that she considered those at The School to be friends, The Mech-Techs she considered to be friends also.
She took two paces forward, arms outstretched. “We have come to consider you as friends as well. The Followers are nobody's friends. Our friends have asked for our help, and we are going to help them. I would rather help them with you helping us, however. Are you with me?” The bullet that I imagined flying through her skull never came. Instead, one of the men stepped forward, saluting The Colonel and telling her that he and his men were now under her command. Apparently the general consensus around the base was that the old man had lost his mind, but everyone was doing what he told them to out of habit and fear. General Practical had hardly been the first officer that he had executed.
noon
We moved on after The Colonel's little speech. The Soldier had asked, at one point after we had stopped for a quick lunch, why exactly she considered The Schoolfolk to be friends when The Principal had scorned her and had her thrown out, why she considered The Mech-Techs friends when they were clearly scavenging military equipment that, by rights, should belong to them.
The Colonel asked him why he had joined up with the army. The Soldier told her that he had joined up to protect civilians from any and all threats, to defend his country and his way of life. She nodded. Then she said that was why she considered all of them to be her friends. The School, The Mech-Techs, that was the closest thing to the way of life they had sworn to defend, the closest thing to a civilian population worth defending. The Soldier looked into her eyes and told her that she was also the closest thing he had ever met to a leader worth following. With that he saluted swiftly, and went to attend to his own men.
Apocalypse Girl needed to talk, it seemed, about her condition. She had passed the stage of thinking that she might be pregnant to the stage of being absolutely certain. She had found an unopened home pregnancy test, the kind where you wee on a stick, and she had indeed weed on that stick. The stick told her that she was indeed pregnant, and now she was even more scared. Terrified would be a better word. Hell, I am too, to be honest. Having never had the opportunity to have kids in the world before, I have never known how it felt to have an impending new life on your hands. On the other hand, in this world we live in now, a baby was almost certainly a death sentence. She was worried that we wouldn't be able to get to Doctor back at The School, horrified at the prospects of possibly having to give birth alone somewhere in the snow, Dead all around. I just held her, not knowing what to say, what else I could do.
evening
We sat around a campfire that some of The Soldier's men had set for us, and we ate our meal with the troops. They had come to see us as somewhere above normal soldier status, for the most part, but The Colonel they held in specially high regard, it seemed. In any case they wanted to make sure that we were all comfortable and well fed. The extra attention seemed somewhat to negate whatever darkness Apocalypse Girl was going through, and after dinner she was laughing at one of Redbeard's jokes, chuckling more when Firecracker regaled the troops with the story of Redbeard's infamous poker game with Cyclops.
True to his word, Viking contacted us this evening, as well. He had found the main group of The Followers, had gone himself, in fact, alone to make sure that the job was done properly. Viking was a big believer in the saying that if you want something done properly, do it yourself. They had holed up in the abandoned barracks that we had acquired the tank, of all places.
The Colonel, with an evil gleam in her eyes, said, “Then that's where we'll bury them.”
April 8 Year 1 A.Z.
morning
The General arrived this morning. He had driven his men through the nights on his way here, not giving any of them time even to get a moment's sleep. He himself had a wild-eyed look, like that of a religious fanatic or a madman. He had initially started out from his encampment with five times our number, perhaps more than that, but by now due to Cold and the occasional roaming Dead pack they had been whittled down to perhaps double.
He had demanded immediately to see The Colonel, ordering a full report. She was in the process of doing exactly that, Apocalypse Girl sidling up to me, hiding half behind me as Redbeard and Firecracker tensed up. Sister was hiding inside The Nightmare, ready to open fire on General Fuckwit's men if the need arose. The Colonel had thought to give the man one last chance, telling him once and for all that The Mech-Techs were on our side and that The Followers were in need of a severe arse-kicking.
The General was not impressed. He had ordered her to destroy The Mech-Techs, not to fraternise with them and make an alliance behind his back. He was the one in charge, not her. The old man seemed to be losing the plot completely, the few soldiers of his that cared enough about anything other than rest seeming embarrassed by their commander's behaviour. The Colonel asked General Fuckwit about The Schoolfolk, what was to happen to them? He replied by ranting that the women would be traded to The Followers for more fighters, and that it would be a pity that she wouldn't be joining them.
The Colonel's .45 was pressing against his temple a moment before he could order her arrest. He turned to face her, looking down at the diminuitive woman, looking down on her. “Our military forces used to stand for something,” She began, “We all swore to defend this country's civilians and their values from all threats, General. All threats. Even you.” Not one of his men lifted a finger to try to stop The Colonel from pulling that trigger. The report rang out, echoing loudly, ominously. Taking charge of the situation immediately, she ordered his body taken away and disposed of. The Soldier and another of his men jumped to carry out her command.
noon
The Colonel had ordered the men that had come south with us to guard those that had come with the now-deceased General Fuckwit while they rested. With everybody now looking to her for leadership the tiny woman was run ragged already. Then I suppose it's not every day that you have to execute a superior officer for excessive stupidity. It's probably quite stressful.
Considering the plans drawn up were now in need of some serious revision there was time for the rest of us to relax somewhat. Apocalypse Girl was talking with Firecracker and Sister once again, the three of them looking over at me and occasionally giggling. She seemed more herself, at least for now, and with the celebratory mood in the air being infectious, it seemed to have temporarily driven the gloom from her mood.
Redbeard was trying to offer me some kind of fatherly advice, it seemed, but seeing as how he was the uncle that the younger generation of his rather large, now dead or Dead, family that had been warned against as well as never having had children of his own I was kind of ignoring him. In actual fact I was almost grateful for the distraction when the call of “DEAD!” c
ame from the northern perimeter. By the look on Redbeard's face, so was he.
We rushed over to the scene, but the men on guard had it well in hand, as there had been barely twenty in this group, all of them taken down with no more noise than the warning. We went back to The Nightmare, so that at least we had somewhere comfortable to sit, Apocalypse Girl having joined us once more by this time, and a scream of pain came from the eastern edge of camp.
Dead had broken through the lines by the time we arrived, though they were being taken care of, as well as those that had been bitten. It was always a sad sight to see people having to shoot those they had considered friends, though to be honest by now it had become a distant sadness. I grabbed a nearby sentry and demanded that he tell me why there had been no warning. He told me that he had judged the group small enough to take out and didn't want to bother anybody.
“Did you think that being bitten is no bother to anybody?” I asked him, pointing out a specific corpse that I had seen him shoot. “Was it a bother to him?” I looked around at the six other uniformed bodies, freshly spilled blood a stark contrast to the perpetual grey of the snow. “You've caused the deaths of seven men, you idiot! Hasn't their been enough stupidity? Enough madness?” It wasn't until Redbeard and The Soldier pulled me off of him that I realised I was beating him senseless. When they were sure I could hold my temper they let me back up, Apocalypse Girl not quite grinning at the irony of what I had been trying to beat into the poor sentry.
evening
Later on I looked in on the sentry that I had almost murdered, mainly to apologise for nearly killing him, and the man smiled at me through split lips. “You were right, sir. I caused those men's deaths. I was an idiot and I will never make the same mistake again.” I told him not to call me sir, “Yes, sir. Your Colonel is alright, you know that?” I assured him that I did indeed know it. She had become a trusted friend and ally. “Are you staying with us? You and your Girl?” I told him that we had considered settling in Melbourne at The School. He nodded. “Your Colonel has the right idea. We're meant to stand between civvies and danger. I can't believe the General lost sight of that.”
After that I returned to The Nightmare, Apocalypse Girl seeming to appear from nowhere as was her way, to walk with me. As we entered the rear section, her phone jangled. It had been a couple of days since we had heard from The Smart Couple, telling us that they needed a tissue sample from someone that the Dead virus had bonded with. We both knew who they meant, The Kid. If he was still 'Living', he would be somewhere between the crater that was all that remained of the nuked Think Tank and Adelaide, which was one hell of a large haystack to find an almost-Dead needle in. The other potential issue was how the virus might have affected him in other ways.
When he had left us he was dangerously thin, had not eaten basically since being lightly infected and treated with massive doses of antibiotics. He was also having rather lengthy blackouts, and came to his senses once in the middle of a large group of Dead, none of which gave him a moment's consideration as a possible meal, to them he was just one of the guys.
Apocalypse Girl checked the message, and it was just a repeat of the last one. She replied that we had been incredibly busy and would get on it when we get around to it. She then sighed and sat back across the van from me. “I don't want to have this baby.” Her matter-of-fact tone suggested that she had given the matter a great deal of thought. I told her that I could understand how she feels, that I myself had considered it but was not prepared to bring it up. She smiled faintly. “I was thinking about talking to our Japanese friends about it when we get back to The School.” I told her that Doctor surely knew how to perform the procedure, and that I would be right there with her no matter what.
April 9 Year 1 A.Z.
morning
This morning started off without the usual gloomy feeling of oppression that we had almost become accustomed to since being conscripted by General Fuckwit. His demise had instilled much greater morale in the troops, who now felt as though they were actually doing something useful rather than appropriating civilians to send out to see how many of them make it back alive, if any. The Soldier and Sentry had been talking, The Soldier making certain that there were ill effects from our altercation yesterday. Sentry had taken the loss of life and the beating with good graces however, treating them both as a lesson learned well.
Redbeard had gotten onto the blower to Viking, appraising him of the new situation and was now deep in discussion with Firecracker, The Soldier and The Colonel, trying to come up with some plan of dislodging The Followers if not eradicating them entirely. Firecracker was advocating all-out assault, but The Colonel had seen the warehouse, knew the terrain. With enough numbers any defenders would be able to hold out almost indefinitely and the noise of combat would certainly draw any Dead within a fairly large radius.
“We need to strike a blow against them that hurts, first of all,” The Colonel began, “And I think the best way of doing that is to find out where they are keeping their ... women … and get them the fuck out of there. That will no doubt affect their morale, besides which they need our assistance.” She leaned forwards over a floor-plan, a sketch really, spread out over the table in the command tent. “The only logical place for them to lock them up would be,” Her finger tapped a storage shed that I had overlooked while acquiring the tank for Viking. Clearly she had not. “Here... Only one door, out of sight from the main building. Isolated. The sort of place where only people … making use of them … would be able to hear anything, in case the noises disturb some people.”
Before I knew what I was doing I had already volunteered to be part of the group raiding The Followers. Apocalypse Girl looked at me for a moment, then nodded. She knew that she would have to sit this one out, I knew that she was pissed off about it, and we would talk about it when I get back. Redbeard and The Soldier also signed on for the raid, and The Colonel finished the briefing.
The rest of the troops would rendezvous with The Mech-Techs at their own warehouses a couple of kilometres away and assist them with anything they needed. We were to be given a truck to load the women up onto once they had been freed, driven by the very same trooper that had taken us out the first time, expecting us all to die. He grinned when he saw Redbeard and I, high-fived The Soldier, as the pair were old friends, and took us out.
noon
Without headlights it was almost impossible to see where we were going, fortunately Driver seemed to have a built-in GPS that was telling him exactly where he needed to go. He pulled over, telling us that the warehouse was maybe two hundred metres away, pointing to a vague lump that may or may not have been a solid object. The Soldier led the way, Redbeard and myself struggling to keep up with him. Sure enough, Driver had been correct. The warehouse loomed above us, in the distance we were able to hear rough voices laughing as The Followers considered the military that had been spotted heading their way.
Finding a section of wall that had fallen partially inward, we slipped inside. The noise inside the warehouse was almost deafening, yet the three of us were still barely able to hear one another. The Soldier suggested that the three of us look enough like any of the others that we should be able to blend in easily enough, as there were at least a couple of hundred men present. Because of this, he suggested that we split up and try to find out as much as we can about their defences and possible plans as well as getting the women out. Redbeard and I agreed, he instantly, me more slowly, but I saw the sense in it. We had changed into normal filthy civilian rags before leaving camp on the off-chance that their numbers were great enough to infiltrate easily.
Redbeard and The Soldier moved off in separate directions, and I wandered through the group. Several of the men present greeted me slurrily, assuming that since I was not yet drunk that I had just come back from patrol, one even asking me if I had seen that bastard with a sword while out in the field. I replied that I had not, thinking that it was a damn good thing that I had left my katana with Apoc
alypse Girl. The Follower belched in my face and turned away, presumably searching for more booze. I breathed a sigh of relief and moved on myself. I was not really certain what sort of information I would be able to discover, but I moved through and around a few groups of men sitting around fires, trying to keep the Cold at bay listening where I could to whatever snippets of conversation I happened past. Most of it was irrelevant, but one theme kept coming up; an attack on The School. They awaited only the order from The Disciple.
There seemed to be a large group gathering near the back of the warehouse so I moved on over that way, it turned out to be one of The Disciples sermons just beginning. One of his toadies had just finished ranting some bollocks about how they were now the chosen people of earth, the only ones worthy of survival, that sort of shit. There was a fair amount of cheering as he stepped off the makeshift stage that they had set up. This was followed by absolute silence as The Disciple stalked up. The fear that everybody felt of this man was so thick in the air that I doubt I could have cut it, had I brought along my sword.
He turned towards the crowd and my breath caught in my throat.
Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 4): April Page 3
