He hesitated, then delivered a speech longer than any she had heard from him before. “Clear the perimeter. Check the comms. Wait it out.”
Q nodded. “Sounds good. Can we stay?”
She held her breath. If he said no, what would happen? Would he drive them into the bush to be attacked or to starve to death? She couldn’t let that happen. She’d have to fight him for the right to stay, and a fight could only end one of two ways. Neither was good.
Dave gave her a Mona Lisa smile. Q took it as permission to remain, and grinned. “Lucky we got slow zombies,” she said. “Easy to outrun.”
Dave grunted, as if this were the only kind of proper zombie. “Dumb, too,” he said with enthusiasm.
“Yeah,” Q said. “I always knew they would be. As if zombies could move fast with no circulation! As if they could talk!”
She and Dave had a quiet chuckle together at the false predictions of the zombie community, then Q realized the snuffling and gasping noises had stopped. Angela was no longer weeping. She was scowling, as were the rest of the hippies.
“What’s up?” Q said.
“Melissa’s dead, Sydney’s under attack and you two chums are acting like this is the greatest thing that ever happened!” Pious Kate said. “Like all your plans have come together.”
“What else should we do?” Q said.
Pious Kate pouted. “You want us to sit here and wait like bait? Like meat?”
“You can leave,” Q said. “You’ll be safe. You don’t believe in zombies. You said they were for kids.”
This turned out to be the wrong thing to say. Angela began sobbing again about her children.
“I didn’t mean zombies were for kids, I meant that you and Kate said only kids believed in them…” Q said, then dropped it. Angela would have to cry herself out soon. No one could leak that much without running dry.
“I’m not an idiot,” Pious Kate said. “Something’s wrong. But I don’t have to believe your bedtime story and I won’t stand by while you and Doctor Death make plans. What if we’re attacked? Where will we go?”
Q cringed. “Uncool, Kate,” she said.
Dave jumped to his feet. “I’m getting guns.” He stormed off up the hill to his cabin.
“What just happened?” Rabbit asked.
Hippies! They didn’t know anything useful. “Kate asked Dave what his back-up zombie plan was,” Q said. “You never ask a stranger what their back-up zombie plan is.”
“Why?” said Pious Kate, unrepentant.
The others were equally nonplussed. Q wondered if that left them neutral, mathematically speaking, then tried to explain. “It’s like pulling Wushu in an Aikido class,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s like borrowing potassium permanganate from someone else’s survival tin without asking,” Q said.
“Huh?”
She paused, struggling to express the magnitude of Pious Kate’s social blunder.
“Is it like bringing non-free-range pork sausages to the Yowie vegan end-of-year sectarian holiday barbecue?” Rabbit said.
“Exactly,” Q said, relieved that someone got it. She was all out of examples of social blunders. It wasn’t like she was the expert. Well, maybe she could claim some expertise, but if she were able to articulate them she’d be less prone to committing them.
“How was I meant to know?” Pious Kate said. “I don’t understand all that geek stuff.”
Q took a few deep, calming breaths. Save the rage. Use it later.
“Right,” she said. “Listen up. Here’s a crash course. We are not geeks, we are survivors. Rule One: two in the head, make sure it’s dead. Rule Two: if you’re bit, that’s it. Rule Three: never fight if you can run.”
“Wow,” Rabbit said. “How did you learn all that stuff?
“The only way you can,” Q said. “Years of exhaustive research and mental preparation. Endless online workshopping about strategy. Constant physical training to the point of exhaustion and beyond. Plus I’ve got over a thousand hours on Z-Day.”
“And it’s written right here,” said Sheath, flicking through Q’s copy of Apocalypse Z. “Page one lists the ten key rules for survival.”
“A book can’t illustrate these things,” Q said.
“It has pictures.”
“It’s a good start for you beginners,” Q said. “Study it.”
Dave returned calm, no doubt soothed by the weapons now strapped around his body. He handed a pistol to Q. She shook her head and pointed to one of the bolt-action rifles, and he surrendered it. He glanced around the circle to see if anyone else wanted a gun. Q shook her head on their behalf, then checked over her new toy with enthusiasm.
“Kate?” Rabbit said, raising his eyebrows at Pious Kate.
“What?” Pious Kate said.
“Do you have something to say to Dave?” Rabbit said.
“No.” Pious Kate stuck out her bottom lip.
“Go on,” Rabbit said.
Pious Kate glowered. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Sorry for what?” Rabbit said.
“Sorry for asking about your stupid back-up zombie plan.”
“’Sright,” Dave said.
“Excellent!” said Rabbit. “Lentils for everybody!”
Dave’s face twisted into a grimace. Q smiled. At last, she had someone who understood.
*
After dinner, Q and Dave sent everyone to bring their stuff out to the campfire. The hippies disappeared into the darkness, clinging to each other. No one wanted to be alone. They returned with their packs and emptied the contents into a pile near the fire.
Q’s heart sank when she regarded the pile. Books, magazines, lightweight tops that would be useless against both the cold and the clawing attack of an undead assailant, fluffy pillows and a Tibetan prayer bowl. No rations, hardly any decent clothes and not a single weapon in the lot. It was an ode to the uselessness of modern life.
Dave prodded the stack and grunted.
“There’s my stuff,” Q said. “I got snacks, SAS rations, a first aid kit, thermals, knives and this.” She pulled out her survival tin from the left pocket of her cargo pants, leaving her satellite hotphone hidden in her right pocket, heavy as guilt.
Dave took it, grunted, handed it back and unbuckled his belt. Angela took several steps away from him. He unslung it and threw it to Q.
“Wow!” said Q. “You got the Bear Survival Belt III! Is that the one with the collapsible hacksaw?” She leaned over to admire the supplies sewn along the inside of his belt. When she was done, Dave looped it back through his pants, fastened it and wandered around the campsite. He paused as he brushed past Pious Kate.
“What are you doing?” the woman said.
Dave lit a cigarette.
“That man sniffed my hair!” Pious Kate said. “He—smelled me.”
Rabbit made a quiet joke and there were nervous laughs, but Q noticed that Rabbit managed to insert himself in between Pious Kate and Dave while prodding the fire. Dave noticed, too. He walked away to smoke on his own.
Poor Dave, an outcast in his own place. Still, he was probably used to it. He was a smoker.
“Q, can I talk to you?” Angela said. She led Q into the chill air beyond the fire’s touch.
“What’s up?” Q said.
Angela jerked her head in Dave’s direction. “I don’t trust him.”
“Dave’s all right,” Q said. “He’s just like me, but fatter and hairier and less personable.”
Angela examined her fingernails. “Have you ever described yourself to yourself?”
“What do you mean?” It sounded fun. Q tried it out. Martial arts expert. Good with guns. Failed the army psych test. Unresolved issues with dead mother. “My God,” Q said. “I sound like a psycho.”
“I’m not sleeping in the same cabin as him,” Angela said.
Q thought about those small rooms, each with one exit and no lights. If something came in, no one would be able to get out. “N
o,” she said. “We’ll sleep out tonight. It won’t get too cold if we keep the fire going.” She walked back to the circle of warmth. “Right,” she said. “Who wants first watch?”
Chapter Eighteen
Q woke. Something was wrong.
Many things were wrong, including the fact that she was out bush and wasn’t being paid for it, she was six hours’ drive from the nearest wifi café, she wasn’t making any progress with Rabbit, she had the serious no-sugar shakes and yesterday a zombie had attacked a vegan hippy, which was another set of wrong all on its own, but there was something more immediate that had stirred her from sleep.
She glanced at the backlit dial of Vengeance Betti’s face. It was five thirty a.m., maybe half an hour before dawn and the coldest part of the day. She shivered.
She lay on a mat of lumpy clothes that was meant to cushion and insulate her from the heat-sapping dirt, but was doing both things badly. Her back ached and she couldn’t feel her toes. She wriggled, trying to push blood around her body. Where was her dad now? Was he cold, too? If so, did he feel it, or was he beyond feeling normal human things like cold and sore and scared?
The fire was out.
It was dark and it was cold and the fire was out. Who was on watch?
Q sat up and listened. The birds had not yet begun their dawn torment. The wind had died down. The world was still and silent as the grave. Bad example. During a zombie outbreak, the grave was anything but still and silent. Q rephrased. The world was still and silent as a quiet place where nothing moved.
Q got up, took a few deep lungfuls of cold air, bounced on the spot and stretched. Angela, Rabbit, Sheath and the Scarlet Terror were asleep in their bags. Dave and Pious Kate had abandoned their sleeping bags and the circle. Dave would never leave watch. It must be Pious Kate’s turn. Q had always known they couldn’t trust her.
She grabbed her rifle and checked the cabins, in case the woman had abandoned her post for illicit jerky – not as exciting as it sounded – then circled the campsite, searching for tracks. The ground was torn up with so many footprints that it was hard to make a story from them, but there was a fresh-looking set heading off in a direction Q couldn’t remember anyone taking the day before. She woke Rabbit, whispered to him that he was on watch, grabbed her bush knife and followed the footprints.
Nothing sharpened the senses like tracking in the dark when your prey might turn out to be your predator – except for several energy drinks at three in the morning when your Z-Day campaign has reached its final battle. Q hefted the knife in her hands and strained her eyes, trying to work out which of the indistinct shapes around her were trees and which were something more sinister. She paused. There was a crunching sound, soft but distinct.
Was it footsteps? If so, one set or several? Could several zombies move that quietly?
She knew something else that could move quietly. She’d seen him in action.
“Dave?” she said. There was no answer, but the crunching sound stopped and was replaced with something else. Deep breathing.
Zombies don’t breathe.
It must be Dave. Why was he skulking around out here on his own?
Or was it Pious Kate? What reason did she have to lurk?
Q crept over the leaf mold and saw a figure kneeling. It held something in its paws – no, its hands. She sheathed her bush knife and readied her rifle, then flicked on her head torch.
Two red eyes glowed.
Pious Kate was trapped in her beam, wide-eyed and bloody-mouthed, clasping something small and furry and very, very dead.
Q fired.
*
“What a pretty sunrise,” said Angela as Q approached, and yawned. She looked far more relaxed than she had the night before. That woman had a fantastic reset. “Are you okay?”
Q gave her a weak smile. “Where is everyone?”
“Dave and Rabbit are getting water for breakfast. Michelle and Will are meditating. I haven’t seen Kate. I had the weirdest dream.”
“Let me guess,” said Q. “You heard gun shots?”
“Nope. The spirit of ‘Greensleeves’ possessing an evil ice-cream truck.”
“You are one solid sleeper,” Q said. “Listen, I’ve got something to say and it’s not pleasant—”
She looked up as she spotted Dave and Rabbit returning to the clearing. “I heard gunshots,” Dave said.
“No, that was Greensleeves,” Angela said. “Hang on …”
They regarded the rifle in Q’s hand.
“Trouble?” Dave asked.
“I’m not sure how to say this,” Q said, “so I’ll make it simple. We’ve all grown used to Kate. Like a toe grows used to a toe infection which, in turn, grows used to the toe, or grows on the toe, but sometimes the foot needs to choose between the disease and the cure and when an antibiotic foot powder shows up, it’s time to say goodbye—”
Angela cut in. “Q, be simpler.”
“I’m antibiotic foot powder,” Q said.
This met with blank stares, the kind that punctuated Q’s conversations like commas.
“Even simpler,” Angela said.
“Kate’s not okay,” Q said.
“You didn’t!” said Rabbit. He gaped at her gun. “You couldn’t! Did you?”
“Kate is not what you thought she was,” Q said. “She’s not human.”
This met with incredulous stares; the kind that punctuated Q's conversations less often, like semi-colons.
“What do you think I am, then?”
It was Pious Kate. She had walked into the clearing from the direction of the river. She looked clean and wan as tofu. Was Q alone in noticing the woman’s eyes flick to her own hand, as if checking for spots of blood?
“What am I, Qwinston?” Pious Kate said. “Besides target practice for you?” She pointed a finger at Q. “She shot me!”
This declaration was undermined by the absence of bullet wounds and gore.
“She shot at me!” Pious Kate corrected. “She tried to kill me!” She collapsed into Rabbit’s arms. He managed to catch her, thanks to the quick instincts honed by years of running away from disgruntled parents who didn’t think their darlings were ready to find out where their food came from.
“Come on!” Q said. “I didn’t try to kill her. When I try and kill her, she’ll be dead.” This didn’t have the reassuring effect Q had hoped. “Listen,” Q said. “I shot a zombie that was right behind Kate. You can check! I saved her! But the important thing is what Kate was doing when I found her. And the zombie went right past her and came for me, like it didn’t even notice her. Like she smelled wrong.”
Q tapered off. It was dark and she had been pretty freaked out. Had she imagined it? “You got something on your mouth,” she said to Pious Kate.
Pious Kate scrabbled at her face, as if something disgusting might linger there.
Nope. She hadn’t imagined it. She had busted Pious Kate, vegan extraordinaire, eating carrion and shunned by the undead. “Dave, Angela, can you come give me a hand?”
*
“Wow,” said Angela. “Déjà vu.”
“I don’t know about that French stuff,” Q said, “but I’ve seen this before.”
For the second time in two days, they regarded the dead, mangled form of Princess Starla, champion of the people, warrior of the way and now smelly corpse. Except that this time, the body was closer to camp.
“I killed it yesterday,” Dave said.
“Two in the head won’t make sure it’s dead,” said Q. “Apocalypse Z rules don’t work here, Dave. We gotta find our own.”
She felt a wave of dizziness as she contemplated the chaos of a world in which there were zombies that did not follow the rules. It brought her one step closer to the rest of humanity, who were contemplating the chaos of a world in which there were zombies at all, but she failed to appreciate this moment of near-normality.
“Poor Melissa,” Angela said. “Her first retreat and she’s already been killed twice. She always said g
oing vegan would be the death of her.”
Dave stepped forward and prodded the body with his foot. It moved. He shrieked, leaped back and pulled his rifle into the firing position.
The dead body rolled back to its original spot. It wasn’t self-animating any more. It was a flesh log.
Princess Starla’s change had taken about a day, where Hannah’s school friend, Charmaine, took a minute. Were the change rates related to age, or body weight, or reading level?
Angela was wrong about this scene. It wasn’t déjà vu. There were differences between this body and the one they’d seen yesterday. The toes of the shoes were coated in dirt, as if the creature had dragged its feet along rather than picking them up to walk. The face wore a different twisted expression, as if a necromaniac had used it for play-dough practice.
Dave traced his fingers over one of many holes in the smooth white skin of a tree. “You shot wide,” he said.
Q colored. She hadn’t shot wide, she’d shot uncontrollably, nothing like the single, accurate shots she’d practiced at the range. She recalled Pious Kate’s eyes glowing in the beam of her head torch and the headless possum the woman held. She remembered her moment of clarity, when she had lined up Pious Kate in her sights and squeezed the trigger.
Before she had time to fire, something else had reared up and pushed past Pious Kate, throwing her aside. The thing had been Princess Starla, transformed into a demon.
Q had shifted her aim and fired. She hit it in the head, twice. It kept staggering forward. Had she been thinking, she would have realized that head shots wouldn’t work – Dave had already shot it in the head. She had fired again without effect. Then she had panicked and shot four more times, hitting the ground, the trees, anything. On her last shot, the zombie had toppled backward and remained in the dirt.
Q related all this to Angela and Dave.
“The head shots didn’t work?” Dave asked.
“No, but,” Q pressed on to the point that bothered her even more, “Princess Starla didn’t even try to bite Pious Kate. Wasn’t interested in her. As if Pious Kate wasn’t human.” Q paused to let them process this information, then delivered the killing blow. “It’s obvious what’s going on. I suspected it before.”
The End: Surviving the Apocalypse Page 11
