by JT Clay
That wasn’t helping. She switched to a comforting recap of her last high-score on The Living Dead: In Space! and was humming the theme tune when she noticed Dave trying to get her attention. He jerked his head toward the trees and wandered away. She followed.
Dave struck a light and took a deep pull of his cigarette. “We could find out,” he said.
“Find out what?”
“What happened to the hippies.”
Q grabbed a rifle and followed him into the afternoon hush of the bush.
Chapter Twenty-one
Q found she was unable to move the way Dave did; his was a practiced step that barely disturbed the dry bark underfoot. They headed south, skirting along the side of the range along a narrow, overgrown track. Q was grateful there was a track at all – the scrub was so dense she couldn’t see more than six feet ahead. She understood all those tales of lost bushwalkers who’d died a few hundred feet from the search party. If you didn’t collide with someone out here, you’d never find them.
She ignored the grab and tear of blackberry thorns and bracken, trying to shake the feeling that she had done all this before. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. Had her nightmares beaten her to it? Had she been practicing this time and place in her darkest hours of sleep, before the outbreak?
She stopped. There was a shape up ahead, concealed. It was large, gray and silent. It couldn’t be a zombie – they didn’t stalk their prey. Did they?
Q did not want to risk another wrong assumption. These damn anarchist zombies were breaking too many rules.
Dave was ahead and out of sight, too far away for Q to draw his attention without drawing the notice of that other watchful thing. She pulled up her rifle, braced it against her shoulder and sighted along the barrel.
The bush exploded.
There were at least six of them. They must have tracked her and charged when she aimed. Smart, fast zombies. Dumb, dead Q.
She managed to fire one shot before she was knocked to the ground. She rolled into a ball and waited for the hands and teeth.
The creatures moved away with loud, regular thumps. Q lifted her head to see Dave pounding back toward her, his stealth lost in speed. He reached her side and watched the backs of her attackers disappear into the scrub, then belly-laughed until his eyes watered.
Q unrolled and flipped upright. With dignity, she pulled clumps of dirt from her clothes and witty retorts from her repertoire.
“I nearly died!” she said. She made a note to herself to augment her repertoire of retorts with actual wit.
“Roos!” Dave said, breathless. “And you missed.”
“I was barrel blind,” Q said.
“They were fierce,” Dave said, chuckling. “They went right for you!”
And Q realized why the afternoon felt so familiar.
Creeping through the undergrowth. Watching and waiting for attack. The stalwart shooting buddy who always had her back. For a moment, she was angry and happy and her hands ached from too much macro. She was Qaranteen again in a simpler time, when monsters were easy to kill.
Dave wiped his eyes and led the way to the reason for their journey. He pointed to a pit, roughly twelve feet on each side. No, it wasn’t a pit. “Pit” implied an empty space. This was a container. What it contained were zombies.
There were seven. Four were women, three of whom Q recognized from the Yowie meeting. Two were men she had never seen. The last was a body.
It had no face, no age, no gender. It was a piece of meat, rotting as it stood. It was what death did to life.
Is that what Linda was like after burial? Q should never have allowed it. She should have made her father burn the woman. Clean flame and nothing left. But she had been a kid, twelve years old and too scared about the rest of her life to worry about someone else’s. She hadn’t known about the undead then.
Q prodded the pit with the barrel of her rifle. She got no reaction from its occupants. They continued their mindless shuffle, bumping into the walls and each other. Seven corpses milling about, as if waiting for a concert to begin. Seven plague-carriers.
“Can they see us?” Q asked. “Or hear us?”
Dave grunted and shifted his grip on his rifle. Something scuttled through the undergrowth. The pit was large and deep and weeds had reclaimed its sides. It had been here for months – long before the outbreak in Sydney.
Q’s guts compressed, and suddenly she was in another familiar scene, one she’d watched in a hundred movies. The city folk go bush and find out what the hicks are hiding.
Why bring Q out here alone? Were these his pets? Was it feeding time?
If these pits were old, how old were the zombies? Had he sourced them before the outbreak? She thought of her crew. Any of them would love to get their hands on a real zombie. Some might kill for it. Was the outbreak caused by a few survivalists who managed to find – or make – their own undead? Had their prep work got too authentic?
She’d wondered why Dave had been so nice to people he didn’t like. The firewood. Sharing food. The willingness to let them stay on in a crisis. Were the hippies part of some training exercise, or a game? Fresh meat for his field test?
Q kept her stance loose and open, barrel pointed at the dirt, but she tightened her grip. She thought she could move faster than Dave, but she would only have one chance. At least there was no need to muck about with spleen shots.
“What is this, Dave?” Q said, careful and light. “You training them up for a circus act?”
“Chapter Eight,” Dave said.
Chapter Eight? She recited the name of each chapter of Apocalypse Z in order, then groaned. “Chapter Eight,” she said. “How to build a zombie trap. You dug pits long before the outbreak, just in case.”
“First time I caught anything,” he said.
“You bastard!” Q said.
“What?”
“We went bushwalking! You could have warned us not to fall into the zombie pits.”
Dave grunted.
They studied their captives. The zombies made no noise except for the soft thud of feet on hard-packed earth. Their clothes were torn and so was their skin, but they didn’t seem to mind; these were just layers. The creatures’ eyes were wide and their expressions fixed, like photographs imposed over living flesh. Except that these were not living. Their smell, beyond the stench of decay, was closer to wet earth on a cool day. It was not unpleasant and it made perfect sense. Rot implies life, albeit life departed. These were a step beyond.
Q lined one up and shot it. The bullet passed through an arm, nearly severing the limb at the elbow. It hung, connected to the body by a tendon and skin. Its owner showed no pain. The limb was a piece of furniture, like cutting off the arm of a chair. Was this the afterlife?
“Three of these are hippies from the other van,” Q said.
“Five to go,” Dave said.
“More,” Q said. “The rest of these weren’t in the van at all. They walked from somewhere. That means more will, too.” Q considered. “What’s the nearest town?”
He grunted. “Hampton. Sixty clicks away.”
Dave had picked this spot for its isolation and difficult terrain. How had the zombies found them? They must have walked. How had they targeted this particular spot? How had they even crossed this terrain? She watched a spider crawl over the spines of a bush, moving freely from one tree to the next. Easy for a spider. Almost impassable for a person, with such narrow spaces between trunks. It was like being buried alive.
She hurled a rock at one of her former rivals for Rabbit’s affection. It lodged in the creature’s left eye, halfway in, and she wished she hadn’t thrown it.
“Where are they coming from?” she said. “Was there a plane crash? An evacuation? Why are they so close to our camp?”
Dave spat. “It’s getting dark,” he said.
Neither budged. The creatures’ movements were hypnotic. Bodies collided with the walls and each other. It was a creepy fish tank, a Halloween screen
saver.
Dave picked up a stick and threw it at the head of one of the males. It bounced off with a thunk. The zombie shuffled on. “Stupid things,” he said.
“I dunno,” Q said, scuffing dirt over the gray flesh below. “You gotta admire them. They have purpose. At least they know what they want.”
As if hearing her words, all seven stopped moving and turned to face north. One of them, the sexless slab of flesh, opened its mouth. Its three remaining teeth looked more piteous and more threatening than an empty maw ever could.
The thing moaned. It was such a desolate sound. The last trumpet, played badly. It was the first time Q had heard one make a noise, other than the collision of its own body with an object in an unheeded world. What had it sensed?
“Hi,” said Angela. She waved and walked closer to Dave and Q, then froze as she saw the zombie pit. Its occupants gawped at her, mouths open. They weren’t on standby any more. Someone had thrown the switch.
“What is that?” Angela said.
“Zombie pit,” Q said. “Pit o’ zombies.”
“Why?” Angela took three quick steps back. “Can they get out?”
“Nope.”
“It’s horrible,” Angela said. “You should put them down.”
She was right. Q lifted her rifle. Before she could fire, Dave put his hand on the barrel and pushed it away.
“What?” Q said, annoyed. He didn’t feel sorry for them, did he?
“Watch,” Dave said.
Q watched. “Well, flay me to death with a wet shoelace,” she said. She walked over to Angela and stood behind her, then put her hands on the other woman’s waist. She moved Angela to the left, then to the right, like a puppet.
Angela shook her off. “What are you doing?”
“Playing shadow.”
Angela stepped one way, then the other. The creatures followed her movements.
“Oh God!” She tucked her hair behind one ear. Thirteen eyes followed the hand. She backed away from the pit, beyond their line of sight. The zombies followed her unseen movements, watching the space into which she reappeared a few feet to the right.
“They smell her?” Dave asked.
“Dunno. But our undead friends have a yen for sweet vegan flesh,” Q said. “That’s why they’re showing up here. We’re worth the walk.”
Angela looked like an oversized child in her floppy hat and jumper, sunburnt and tired and helpless. Q was suddenly afraid for her. The woman had been walking through the bush on her own with no idea that a careless step might drop her into a hole full of open mouths and cold bellies.
“How did you find us?” Q asked.
“I followed the path,” Angela said. “You took so long, I got worried. And Pious Kate started fake fainting again. I couldn’t handle it.”
“Good,” Q said. “Not about the fainting part. The other bit. Always stay on the path. Better still,” she added, “hike like you would in Cambodia, and don’t.”
They studied the pit. The movements were perfectly coordinated with Angela’s every reaction. They responded to her gestures and her voice. Synchronized swimming for the undead.
“More pits to check,” Dave said. “Cover your ears.” He dispatched the zombies, spleen shots every one. At least something was in their favor.
Chapter Twenty-two
Q and Dave discussed strategy as they cleaned and loaded guns. The others got water from the river and more wood for the fire. It was a perfect camp setting, except that every time Q heard bark crackle, she leaped to her feet and aimed. But it was peaceful besides that.
“It’s gonna turn bad if we stay,” Q said. She had been thinking about this since the zombie pits. Their plan of waiting it out had been a good one, until they realized they were waiting it out with a bunch of zombie magnets who couldn’t fight and didn’t even argue well. Damn hippies. “Z will sniff out the vegans,” Q said. “We might not last the night.”
“We could run,” Dave said.
“A cross-country hike in the dark?” Q said. “We’ll make such a racket they’ll find us even faster, and we won’t know where they are until they’ve grabbed us. They’ve got wicked good hearing. Take Zombie Kate.”
“I heard that!”
“See?” Q paused to admire the old rifle she was loading. “You keep her nice,” she said. “You can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats his guns.”
“Thanks,” Dave said. “That’s Bruce.”
“You gave your gun a boy’s name?” Q asked. Dave sighted along the rifle he had cleaned, then swung it in Q’s direction. “It’s fine, it’s not weird or anything,” Q said. “Anyway, I’m in no position to call anyone else weird.”
Dave grunted and put down his weapon. “Two might make it,” he said, so low that Q wasn’t sure she had heard him.
She ran a rag through the barrel. “What are you saying, Dave?”
“I got a bike. Full tank.”
This must be his Plan B. She had to tread carefully. She was honored that he would include her in it, but she couldn’t abandon her troops. She couldn’t abandon Rabbit. How could she explain? There was a menacing edge to Dave. She had no desire to upset a heavily armed man in an isolated patch of the bush.
“You’re free to go, Dave,” she said, her words as low as his had been. “Especially now we know they’re especially interested in hippies. You’ll be safer far away and I won’t think less of you. But I can’t come.”
Rabbit returned with two buckets of water and began arranging firewood to make tea. The late afternoon sun caressed his dark hair.
Dave followed Q’s gaze. “You’re in love.”
Q colored. “You know. The old story. Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Girl finds boy again. Zombies attack.”
Dave nodded with such deep understanding that she wondered again what had driven him all the way out here to live alone in the wild.
“I gotta stay,” Q said. “I gotta teach these hippies how to make war, not love.”
Dave cocked Bruce. “Let’s do this.”
*
Q paced up and down in front of her troops. They were an unlikely bunch. Too soft, too slow and too plain pacifist. The only one with useful levels of aggression was Pious Kate, and to Q’s relief, she had refused to join in. Her Lethal Littlies had started with more raw potential than this bunch.
Q thought about Hannah. She hoped her best friend was still okay. If Hannah stuck to the plan, she would be.
She shook herself. Time to focus. She was needed here.
“All right, you lot!” Q bellowed. Startled, the hippies jumped. A cockatoo took off from a nearby tree, wailing.
Angela raised a hand. “Doesn't noise attract them?” she said. “Shouldn’t we practice quietly?”
Q considered the odd notion of silent violence. It sounded much less fun than the regular kind, but Angela had a point. “We are at war!” Q said in a menacing drill-sergeant whisper. “This is war and we are at it! War is what we are at. Um.”
Q marched back along the line and paused in front of Angela. The straw hat and knitted rainbow jumper threw her off track for a moment, but she recovered. “What do you think this is?” Q hissed at her friend, poking her in the belly.
Angela’s nose crinkled. “Your finger?” she said. “A breach of personal space?”
“No!” said Q. She walked up the back of the line, treading softly, and leaned in close to Sheath. “This is war!” she whispered. He flinched and rubbed his ear. Damn, she was good! “What is this?”
There were mumblings of “war” from Angela and Rabbit, who were receptive to this new learning experience, if embarrassed at how Q was going about it. There were also several other mutterings that, much like the rumbling of someone else’s bowel during a staff meeting, Q chose to ignore. This was their first lesson and she had to focus on basic skills. She’d deal with the troublemakers in their second lesson, if they lived that long.
Sheath raised his hand. “Does anyone remember what happened th
e last time Quentin tried to teach us something? It was this only this morning. Don’t you guys remember?”
Rabbit and Angela hushed him. They did remember what happened, and now they really wanted to learn how to use a gun.
Sheath continued. “It ended in bloodshed, people. Violence breeds violence.”
Q paused in front of the line. She regarded Sheath’s T-shirt, which said, “Do it for the cow.” She wanted to ask what “it” was, but couldn’t afford the distraction and was sure she wouldn’t like the answer. She regarded his patched hemp trousers. She regarded his shoes.
“What are those on your feet, soldier?” she said. “Will they carry you through fifty miles of mud and sludge? Will they keep you free from trench foot? Will they help you kick in the face of the enemy?”
“They’re cruelty-free bamboo sandals made in a fair trade workshop,” Sheath said. “They will keep me free from the willing participation in the capitalist machinations of the rape and exploitation of the planet and its inhabitants.”
“Dummy!” Q clicked her fingers.
“There’s no need to get abusive,” Sheath said. “This isn’t some military montage.”
Dave emerged from the dappled shade, holding a makeshift dummy. He had black paint smeared beneath his eyes and in patches across his face. His clothes were khaki. He held a knife between his teeth.
Dave handed Q a bundle of sticks and branches bound with cordage. There was a paper target wedged about halfway down on the left, to indicate the spleen, and a round paper face stuck to the top, to make the experience more realistic.
“What’s that?” asked the Scarlet Terror.
Angela put her head on one side and squinted. “And why does it look like Kate?”
“This is your training dummy!” Q said, ignoring Angela’s comment. She had been drawing Pious Kate but she didn’t realize it was so obvious. She didn’t realize it was possible to be obvious with a scrap of paper, a ballpoint pen and no artistic talent. “This dummy is all that stands between you and certain death!” Q beamed.
