This gave me cause to think that, maybe, the shelling had not been completely random after all. Maybe the centre of town had indeed been targeted more than elsewhere.
In any event, David was not perturbed.
Just as he had done on many occasions, he strode into the very centre of the city square and stood defiantly against whatever might come his way. Then, somewhat unexpectedly, Deb walked into the square (rather less assertively) and took up position beside her brother. (I stayed out of the picture – I was merely an honoured guest here.)
Those few dazed zombies who happened to be wandering chaotically about the square at that time stopped in their tracks and waited - the first tentative step in David reasserting control over his people.
The artillery barrage remained silent – though it surely had not concluded completely. So there was, despite the devastation, an uneasy calm in the city.
Just then, there was a sizeable earth tremor – far stronger than we had become used to over the preceding months. It shook the ground for maybe twenty seconds and still more masonry tumbled into the square from the adjacent buildings
Unlike several of his panic-prone ‘troops’, David did not flinch. He maintained his feet in the centre of the square, Deb firmly at his side, and simply waited till the rumbling Earth quietened.
When all was apparently quiet again, David threw his head back and bellowed out the call to hunt. This alarum continued for about five minutes and some tens of zombies, hearing it, straggled from all parts into the square – not the number David would usually have expected when he called his people to the hunt.
David must have been disturbed by this weaker than usual response. He turned his gaze to his sister. Was it a mere enquiry or a plea for her support? From the edge of the square where I was observing, I could not say. Nevertheless, Deb’s response was swift and positive – Deb visibly gathered herself and then let forth her loudest, shrillest banshee cry.
It was positively ear-splitting – and, to the locals, still a sound only heard from Deb (and then, only occasionally).
Given that the locals had become accustomed to receiving – and instantly obeying – the orders of their Queen/Mother Hen, the response to Deb’s piercing command was immediate and complete. Hundreds of zombies hastily flooded into the square from all directions – many of them actually running (a very rare sight indeed).
So, it seemed it was permissible to be slow in obeying a King’s order but absolutely unthinkable to hesitate when Queen Deb gave a command.
(This made me think of times when I was a kid: when it was Mum who was laying down the law, Deb, Dave and I had all hopped to it – but, when it was ‘only’ Dad, well, it could not be so urgent, could it?)
In any event, I estimated that, within a few minutes, the city square was filled with over a thousand very motivated zombies – all apparently ready to do whatever it was that they were ordered to do. This was definitely the biggest ‘pig hunt’ I’d ever seen.
David and Deb continued to stand resolutely at centre-stage until the arrivals slowed to a trickle. As they always did, the assembled undead had tried to line up on either side of the square – to assume their accustomed roles as either ‘pig-drivers’ or ‘pig-catchers’. But there were far too many in the square, and the square was too much of a shambles, for that to happen this time – everyone was simply jumbled up together.
Besides, for this particular ‘hunt’, the usually assigned roles would be irrelevant.
David raised his hand in the air and the crowd immediately ceased making its usual sighs, moans and groans. Silence reigned until David lowered his hand again and bellowed his last and loudest roar. As he did so, he and Deb moved forward, the crowd simply parting in front of them, until they reached the opposite edge of the square and exited without a backward glance. The ‘hunting party’ then simply followed the ‘Royal Couple’ in the direction of the nearby hills.
The evacuation of Rabaul had begun.
Twenty minutes later, two things happened almost simultaneously: the shelling of the city recommenced and the strongest tremor yet shook the Earth. However, by that time, over a thousand zombies had reached the edge of town and were entering the comparative safety of the jungle.
The invasion force would take Rabaul without opposition – but ‘the enemy’ would remain free and undefeated.
o0o
Sure enough, at 1.00 am local time, the bombardment, as such, ceased and a series of phosphorescent shells exploded high above Rabaul, lighting the whole ruined city with their intense glow. Heavy machine gun fire was followed by what I guessed were mortar rounds exploding within the city.
The ground assault had commenced and Deb, David and I viewed the event in a series of flashes and fireworks from the high ground well outside the city.
After the mortars and heavy machine guns had ceased, light machine gun and rifle fire spread rapidly from the port area throughout the rest of the city. The invasion force, as expected, was meeting next to no resistance. (One or two undead stragglers had probably remained in town, despite my siblings’ urgent call to arms.)
Within an hour, all this firing had ceased – and one assumed, despite their apparent ‘victory’, that the commanders of the invasion force were then scratching their heads over the events they had just witnessed. (“Where have all the friggin’ zombies gone?”)
I knew that they would take time to gather their thoughts before they came after us. It was important to use that time to our advantage.
The Island of New Ireland, though very large (as islands go), is long and thin, stretching in an arc roughly from the South-West to the North-East. Thus, at no point on the island is a person very far from the coast. Rabaul is situated near the North-West tip of the island and the next significant settlement (Kokopo) is a mere 20 kms or so away.
Obviously, it would have been stupid simply to withdraw along the Rabaul-Kokopo Road, leaving one deserted and ruined town for another which was even smaller. No, we needed to stay as far from the coast as possible, as far as possible from Rabaul (where the supply ship/troop carrier lay at anchor) – and to use the fact that the size of the invasion force was probably quite small, given that the authorities did not expect the zombies to put up any organised or armed resistance.
My best guess was that they would have sent two companies to do the job – around 300 to 500 ground troops with the naval back-up staying in Simpson Harbour. Some of the troops would be sent after us, in due course. I was sure of that. They would not have come all this way to content themselves with reclaiming a small, deserted city.
No, whoever had dispatched the invasion force wanted to receive the news that ‘the zombie threat had been neutralised’ and that the whole island was safe for human habitation once again. That, I guessed, was the mission’s overall objective.
So, unfortunately, David, Deb and I would probably be forced to fight for our own existence as well as that of our fellows – and to do so against soldiers who were convinced their mission was utterly worthy.
Based on this analysis, I kept Deb and David (and their cohort) moving along the island’s central ridge and away from Rabaul and Kokopo. It was by no means the easy way to travel along the island but it was clearly the safest for us. We kept trudging and stumbling along this route for three solid days and nights, snaring the odd careless pig along the way for sustenance. I guessed that some of the zombies were still wondering dumbly when the hunt would actually start.
We encountered several other, much smaller, groups of zombies in this process and, by the end of the third day our numbers had swelled to in excess of 1500. By this time, I estimated we had travelled about 60km from Rabaul, through thick jungle and over steep, muddy and mountainous terrain.
By the start of day four, my feet had had enough. They were cut, raw and bleeding. David’s zombies, who didn’t understand why they were being forced to tramp for day after day through the jungle, were starting to mutiny – despite Deb’s best ‘mother-hen�
�� efforts to keep them in line.
It was time to stop and I told David so in plain terms. He did not resist. His troops stopped and immediately went torpid (as zombies so) – but, importantly they stayed together.
I staggered to the nearest high-point to survey the terrain – and immediately liked what I saw.
Chapter 32
Search and Destroy
In those days, satellite imagery wasn’t up to much and night-vision goggles were still in development. Even if they had been available to the invaders, I doubt that our bunch, large as it was, would have been detected by these means.
Zombies’ bodies do not give off appreciable heat and so, hidden under a heavy forest canopy, there were virtually undetectable at this time.
So, we just sat and waited – for a full week – and the zombies did not move far away from the place where we had stopped after three full days’ forced march through the forest. (And they definitely did seem much less mutinous once the marching had stopped.)
Planes and helicopters flew overhead from time to time but never seemed to dwell over our particular position. The searching seemed to be according to some pre-determined grid rather than being focussed on any given area.
This was good.
My guess was that the air search was mirrored by a similar search, by foot-soldiers, on the ground. How long would it take a company of men (or two) to thoroughly search all the jungle between Rabaul and our present position?
We had walked here in three days – but we had not been stopping and searching for anything. Nor had we been taking much time to rest in that time. So, best guess: a week or so for the foot-soldiers to get here.
When the soldiers eventually arrived, the battle-field odds would still be stacked heavily against David and his ‘troops’.
The soldiers had rifles, machines-guns and grenades – maybe even bazookas or flame-throwers. David’s troops had none of those – and couldn’t operate them even if they had.
The soldiers were a highly motivated, well-trained, well-led and cohesive battle force. Some had probably already seen action in other theatres of war.
David’s troops, though numerically superior were brain-dead (or nearly so), and had no military training of any sort. They were led by my brother – who, even with his empathetic link to me, still had the mind of a two-year-old.
How could David’s ‘army’ hope to win? How could they even hope to put up respectable fight?
After all, the only thing they knew how to do well was hunt pigs.
Yes, they could hunt pigs – and do it well. Therein lay the kernel of an idea, an idea drawn from a schoolboy’s dim recollections of battle-elephants and heavy swords, recollections of ancient military history.
Chapter 32
A Dilemma, a Valley and a Plan
What I had seen spread out before me had forced me to consider what I had been avoiding, consciously or unconsciously, for some weeks: whose side was I actually on?
I was a living person, until a few days ago, the only one on the island. My presence was only tolerated because my two siblings happened to be the local leaders of the undead.
During the first wave of the zombie apocalypse, I had seen, at very close quarters, what zombies generally do with folk like me – they tear them to shreds and eat them: not pretty, not very sociable.
It was for this reason that the fight-back during that first wave had been as it was: merciless extermination. I had been present at Melbourne University when literally thousands of the undead had been deliberately herded onto campus and then entirely liquidated from the air and from the ground. Heavy machine gun emplacements had been set up at all exits and the barrels of those guns had glowed white-hot before the day was done.
I was there when the rain of lead had cut to pieces any zombies who tried to escape. They fell until they formed piles of corpses two metres in height.
I was there when helicopter gunships strafed those who were mindlessly milling about in the North Court.
I was there when those who fled in panic to the main oval were incinerated by napalm bombs dropped by Phantom F4 fighters – co-opted at short notice from the U.S.
It was utter annihilation – only David and I escaped that slaughter.
Zombies were regarded as nothing but vermin, ripe for extermination.
And so it would be when the soldiers, with all their modern weapons of war, reached us once again, here on this tropical island.
And yet, these soldiers had been sent by their country to do a job which all (but me) considered no more than essential pest control. They were not bad people. On the contrary, they were probably brave and patriotic. They had mothers, wives and children anxiously awaiting their return to at the end of their mission – and, in truth, I was one of their kind. I could not, in my own mind, demonise them without demonising myself.
So, did I walk away and let them do their unpleasant job? Did I let them go home safely to their loved ones – or did I stand with my siblings and their fellows and fight?
I stood surveying the heavily–forested, steep-sided valley before me – and let this argument rage inside my head. It was no mere philosophical debate. After I had seen the terrain, I was convinced that I could turn the forthcoming battle one way or the other.
On my decision hung the fate of either 1500 simple folk with the minds of two-year-olds or two hundred or so well-trained soldiers. It was the sort of decision that was made by world leaders – not mediocre baby-barristers with unfortunate relatives.
Due to my intervention ten years ago, my brother and his fellows had lived peaceably on this island – and, to the best of my knowledge, no person had been harmed in that time. A simple culture, based on hunting wild pigs, had been established. It was not exactly a ‘high culture’ – there was no music, art or literature - but it was a culture nevertheless.
Was it any worse than the culture of primitive cavemen?
Would any civilised person slaughter 1500 cavemen and think nothing of it?
And these folk did not breed – or, at least, with only one woman in their midst, I thought they were unlikely to breed. And they could neither navigate nor fly. So, they would never spill beyond the boundaries of New Ireland and invade elsewhere.
I concluded therefore that the invasion was not about protecting the living, it was about re-conquest, pure and simple. It was about re-taking the land for my kind – at the expense of my brother, my sister and their unfortunate fellows.
My mind was made up: I would stand and fight, barehanded, alongside those with the minds of two-year-olds.
And we would win.
o0o
The point that we had reached was a hilltop overlooking a narrow, jungle-covered valley. It was so narrow and steep at the sides that the term ‘ravine’ was still not out of place – despite it sheer size. Down the centre of the valley ran a large but very energetic river – swollen on a daily basis by heavy tropical downpours. It was, maybe, ten metres wide on average and seemed to roil and boil like one continuous white-water rapid. There were certainly no still waters to be seen below my vantage point.
This was, actually, the first such major valley that we had encountered on our forced march. It cut deep inland from the southern coast and was thus sure to be an area for a particularly thorough search by any pursuing troops.
The valley was large enough to accommodate any number of folk seeking refuge and concealment – but that was not the use to which I had decided to put it.
Beside the river, just barely discernible, ran a dirt track. It must once have served as a properly formed roadway up the valley, linking now long-deserted villages. In the intervening years of disuse, the jungle had largely, but not entirely, reclaimed it. From my high vantage point, I could see that it was the only feasible path for any body of men wishing to trek to the head of the valley. Even then, they would have to struggle through the dense regrowth.
I guessed that the pursuing troops would not have taken the difficult ov
erland route that we had taken over the first three days following the evacuation of Rabaul. They would have progressed along the coastal route, venturing inland, here and there, where likely hiding places presented themselves.
This valley was indeed, in normal circumstances, such a ‘likely hiding place’ – the soldiers would certainly come up the valley, along its only path, in due course.
o0o
Leaving Deb, David and the zombies where we had stopped at the end of day three of the forced march, I moved south-west along the northern rim of the valley until I had a view of the approach from the coast road.
I left Deb and David with strict orders to stay where they were and not to move about unduly – that was something most zombies could do quite well.
I had to leave them for rather longer than I’d hoped but, on the evening of the eighth day after evacuation, I observed what I had been looking for: a large body of troops moving by foot into the lower part of the valley.
Mine (Book 2): Sister Mine, Zombie Page 17
