by JT Clay
There was no chopper. There might never be a chopper again.
Think about it later.
She stopped again. She’d heard something. It was bigger than a bush rat, smaller than a nightmare.
Dave heard it too. He swung his torch around and for a moment, eyes glowed. Was it a possum? A demon? When he moved the torch back to the same spot, there was nothing there.
“You hear it?” Dave said, voice thick as congealed blood.
“Over there!” Q said. She spun around to face the sound and pulled out her pistol, the only weapon she had strength for. Thank God for guns. They made the weak deadly. No wonder people liked them.
Angela slouched into the light, wide-eyed, holding a dripping shovel in front of her. “Where did they come from?” she said.
Dave grunted and kept walking.
Q hugged her. Angela clung. Dave’s light disappeared into the bush, and her belly shriveled. They couldn’t lose him. What would she do then?
“Move!” she said, and pulled away. Angela whimpered as if she’d been slapped. Q grabbed her, turned her around and gave her a shove. The woman almost overbalanced, then her feet caught up with her body and she staggered forward.
They walked.
Every sound, every indistinct figure in the beam of Dave’s torch made her heart leap. Her throat clogged with air she couldn’t breathe. Her hands shook with energy she couldn’t afford to waste. They walked.
They passed things they couldn’t see. Large, watchful things. Maybe the trees, given eyes by fear. Maybe something else.
They walked.
And then there was a huge mass that didn’t belong in the bush. It loomed above them, all straight edges and impossible bulk in the twisting elegance of the trees. It was a building.
Q tried to understand. Where were they? Why was there a huge building in the middle of nowhere? How come she hadn’t seen it in daylight?
The scene suddenly resolved. It was Dave’s cabin, that was all. Everything looked too big in the dark and it was all too much for her exhausted brain. Had they traveled such a short distance? She felt like they’d walked forever.
Dave unlatched the door and pushed it open. He looked along the beam of his torch and grunted. “All clear,” he said, and stepped from the dark of the night into the black interior.
Strength hit Q’s limbs.
“No,” she said. She backed away. “We can’t go in there. We’ll be trapped. They’ll get in and we won’t be able to run!”
Dave disappeared. The door thumped shut behind him.
His torch was gone. Q was blind. She shut her eyes to stop the panic. “It’s a trap!” she said, voice rising. “Don’t go in!”
Q opened her eyes. Angela pushed open the door, stepped through and left her forever. She grabbed Rabbit’s arm. “No!” she said.
He put a warm hand over hers. “What else is there?” he said, and disappeared.
Q was alone.
She had strength again. She could run. But where? What else was there?
She stepped inside.
*
It was even darker inside, without the starlight. Q followed the sound of clumsy steps on wood until she saw the circle of Dave’s light.
She must be punch-drunk. The light, floating ten feet in the air, was still rising. It made no sense. She giggled. It was a bunyip light. She followed it, leaving the earth behind. A kung fu buddy from the army used to talk about bunyip lights. He said he saw them out on exercise, when he was hungry and tired and scared. Army boys. Always trying to scare the chick. It never worked.
It worked now.
Where was Dave taking them? Would it hurt?
She’d been bitten. That’s what must have happened. This was the way out. It was a relief. There was no pain and she didn’t have to worry any more. She took a final step forward. Darkness fled.
Dave was pulling out tins of food and bedrolls by the light of a gas lantern. Rabbit and Angela slumped on the wooden floor like unloved dolls.
“Pull up the stairs,” Dave said.
Why not? They had fought monsters and walked into the sky and now Q would pull up the stairs. She turned around.
She had just climbed a ladder, twenty feet high. There were ropes attached to the sides of it and they burrowed through neat holes in the floor.
She understood where they were. It was the attic of Dave’s cabin. She wasn’t dead. Not even close.
Q hauled on the ropes until the ladder lifted from the ground, then she looped the ropes around a metal bar fixed to the floor for that purpose. Dave shook out blankets and handed Rabbit a pack of hard biscuits. Rabbit took them, handed them around, then studied a knothole in the floor.
Dave tested the ropes and Q’s rough anchor. He seemed satisfied. He swung shut the trapdoor. Q wished there was another name for it.
“There’s blood,” Dave said, jerking his head at Q.
Q wiped a hand over her forehead. Her fingers came away sticky.
She handed him her pistol, barrel first. “If I wake up dead, shoot me,” she said, lying down on one of the blankets. “Fuck, I don’t care. Shoot me anyway.” She fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-four
It was a warm and orange world.
Q was alone and happy. Her body was heavy and still. Feathers brushed her face.
She tried to move but found she was too stiff. She had lain in this nest too long. It was a world with hard edges.
She felt the wooden floorboards through the blanket. Sun poured through the window like syrup. Eyes closed, she turned her face toward it, and sneezed. Someone else’s hair stuck up her nose.
A murmur to her right. She opened her eyes. Rabbit was asleep, one arm thrown across her belly. She arched her back and wriggled. There was the warmth. Where were the edges?
The night churned back like a bad kebab. Q gagged and sat up. There had been zombies. They were gone. She took a human stocktake.
Angela and Rabbit were in the attic with her. Rabbit lay asleep in the sun on the floorboards. Angela stood by the one window.
Dave had been here, she remembered following him. Where was he now?
Sheath? Dead.
Pious Kate and the Scarlet Terror? Missing, presumed undead.
She sized up her surroundings. She was in a large, high-ceilinged attic that smelled of dust. The only exit was the trapdoor and it was shut. Several steel boxes were stacked against the north wall. Weapons lay in the east corner, guns and bludgeons and bush knives and one beautiful katana. Q’s bag rested on a pile of blankets on the floor. She couldn’t see any other bags. There was a curtained-off area at the west end of the room.
No Dave. No zombies.
Crash.
She felt like she’d just played six hours straight of Night of the Undead Killer Clowns, then realized that she had, minus the red noses. She took a long drink from a canteen on the floor and stretched.
“Morning,” she said to Angela.
“Morning.” Angela did not leave the window.
Q walked to the end of the room and pulled back the curtain. Dave had made a washroom. There was a bucket of water, soap and towels. She caught sight of her muddy, bloody face in a small mirror hanging over the bucket. What if she’d been bitten? She’d have to tell the others. Would she have to shoot herself, or could she ask them to do it? Dave would do it. Dave was hard.
Maybe she’d do a Captain Oates instead, walk out into the drift of zombies, never to be seen again. The ghouls might let her through. She might already smell like one of them. She could feel what it was like to turn.
Q recalled a woman straddling Sheath, eating his throat. No. She’d take the gun. She’d do it herself.
Gorge rose in her throat. Q splashed water on her face and scrubbed. Dirt, blood; all washed off into the bucket. It wasn’t part of her after all. She was clean. Uninfected.
She emerged from the curtained space. Dust drifted in the sunbeams. She picked up the katana and ran through some katas. Sunlight o
n the blade. Air in her lungs. Better.
Angela watched her moves, then turned back to the window. Q put the sword back where she had found it. “I feel almost human again,” she said. “Like everything’s gonna be okay.”
“Mmm.”
“Bird watching?” Q asked.
“No.”
Q walked to the window and peered out.
A multitude of eyes peered back.
She retreated into the room and reached for the sword.
“They don’t do anything,” Angela said. “They just stand there. They know we’re here.”
Of course they knew. They were queuing up for the buffet of sweet vegan flesh. They could wait forever. “Why don’t you come away from there?” Q said, placing a hand on her friend’s shoulder.
“They stay still if I’m watching. If I look away, they might try the doors and windows.”
Q’s heart shattered. They would get in! They’d invade and rip them all apart and that night of fighting would be pointless. She had to get Dave!
Q swapped her sword for a rifle and scanned the crowd and the walls of the shack. She needed to find the spot where the first zombie would break through so she could prepare.
She exhaled and lowered her weapon. The walls had grown a metal husk in the night. They were safe. The bottom ten feet of the cabin were covered in thick steel grate, casual as paint. At the peak of the grating, the metal curled out and over. It would be impossible to climb.
“We’ll be okay,” Q said. “Those are Last Man blinds. Steel here when the world ends,” she quoted. “Four Horsemen rated them field tested to withstand the combined force of up to three thousand zombies, though I always thought that field-testing claim was a bit suspect.”
“Mmm?” said Angela.
“Creepy old caretaker guy and I get the same subscription,” Q said.
Dave grunted.
Q swore. “You walk too quiet for a fat guy! We need to put a bell on you.”
He grunted again.
“Sorry.” Q helped him haul up the ladder. “Where ya been?” she asked.
“Checking we’re secure,” Dave said.
“And?”
“We’re secure.”
Rabbit yawned and stretched. Q enjoyed the sight of his long limbs unfolding. He gave Dave a goofy grin. “Is there a loo?”
Dave jerked his head at the ladder. “Long-drop’s downstairs at the back,” he said. “Use the sawdust.”
Q giggled. “I never knew anyone with an en suite long-drop.”
“Wanna go outside?” Dave asked. Q lost the grin and helped Rabbit lower the ladder.
“So this is it?” Angela said from her post at the window. “We wait here until someone comes to rescue us and hope they arrive before those things work out how to get in?”
“No one’s coming,” said Dave.
Q shifted to a more cheerful topic. “Maybe we should check the news. Did you bring the radio?”
She congratulated herself as Angela spun away from the window, interested now in something other than the ghouls at the gate. Q had taken the time to study the chapter on morale, “Crazy friends and how to deal with them.” Phase one was distraction. She hoped they wouldn’t get to phase three.
Dave held out a handful of plastic shards and cogs and batteries.
“The radio,” he said.
Q’s brow furrowed. “Did you trip and break it last night?”
“No.”
Someone had smashed Dave’s radio, then carefully replaced it with the rest of his stuff. Q knew how this went. It was all set out in Chapter Eighteen: one of them went insane and sabotaged the survival prospects of the rest. Dave was the obvious suspect, so it couldn’t be him, plus he was battle ready. Pious Kate seemed a sure bet, but had she had time to do all that last night before the attack?
She hoped it was Pious Kate, or Sheath of Power, or the Scarlet Terror. If so, the problem was over.
“Who’s for breakfast?” Q said.
Dave slipped a hand to the gun at his belt. Angela took three steps back, and looked ready to vault through the window. Q reconsidered her phrasing.
“I’m clean, see? No bites.” She pointed to her pink, wound-free face. “I mean, who wants breakfast? I could eat a horse.” She had another flashback from the night before and shuddered. “If it were made of tofu and didn’t bleed.”
“Eat what?” Dave said, with a half-smile, half-grimace. It made him look like an evil Jack-o-lantern seeking redemption.
“Breakfast’s on me,” Q said. Maybe he didn’t want to share food? How long would hers last? An early display of generosity might help. She went to her bag and rifled through it.
“Is my stuff here too?” Angela asked.
“No,” Dave said.
Q understood. He’d brought her stuff earlier but no one else’s, because this was Plan C. Dave and Q in the attic. No one else. He’d always planned to bring her along because she was useful, and the others had been an unintentional rescue.
“Good thinking, Dave,” Q said, saving him from the embarrassment. “Figured I’d have the best supplies if we all had to retreat, huh?” There was no need for the others to know he had planned to abandon them. The attic was small enough already.
“My Tibetan prayer bowl wouldn’t help us much,” Angela said. “But I’d kill for a clean pair of yoga pants.” She watched Q pulling out a first aid kit, protein bars, foil-packed meals and a large tub of white tablets with a picture of a green-bereted soldier on one side and text screaming, Made for the British Special Forces!
“You brought all that along for a weekend retreat?” Angela said.
“Look who’s laughing now, Little Miss I Never Thought the World Would End on a Sunday.” Q tore the foil off a protein bar and started eating.
“Is there meat in those?” Angela said, hesitant.
“Dunno. It’s got whey, phaseolamin, xanthin … I can’t pronounce the rest.”
“When did food become a foreign language?” Angela asked. She was sounding more like herself.
“Says the woman who brought non-dairy cheese. Where does that stuff come from? Lactose-intolerant cows?” She threw Angela and Dave a bar each. They ate in silence. Q finished and tore open a second.
Dave grunted. Q gave him a reassuring grin. “It’s cool, Dave. We got plenty.”
“For how long?” he said.
Q, mouth full of the wrong end of the alphabet, stopped chewing. Dave had planned to see it out until the end, but alone. How long would his supplies last split four ways?
She swallowed but felt most of the bar lodge halfway down her throat. “What have you got, Dave?” she said. It was an effort to say “you”, and not “we”, but this was his place. His stuff.
“Enough water,” Dave said. He pointed to a tap that protruded, incongruous, from the eastern wall. Q stuck her head out of the attic, ignoring the ghouls below that quickened in excitement. She followed the pipe back to a small water tank attached to the top of the wall and fed by the gutters.
“Two-thousand-gallon tank?” she said.
“One thousand. Half full.”
“Great!” said Q. “That’ll be plenty.” It would be, if it rained. “And food?”
Dave pointed to a large steel box. “Three month’s rations for one man,” he said. Q knew he’d figured that, by then, the zombies would be dead, or he would be.
Angela’s voice was brittle. “There’s four of us.”
Dave kicked another steel box. “Meds, space blankets, thermals, tools.” He kicked a third. “Ammo. A thousand rounds for .22s. Five hundred for the shottie.”
“How long will the food last?” Angela said.
“I brought stuff too,” Q said. “And we might be able to shoot a bird or a rabbit.” It was a stupid idea. Even if they hit one, there would be no way of retrieving it from the crowd of ghouls, but the fiction calmed Angela. “What else you got, Dave?” Q said.
Dave smirked. He kicked the last locked box. Bottles clank
ed. “Bourbon,” he said.
Judging from the size of the box, it must have held at least fifty bottles. “No way,” Q said. “We don’t drink in here. There’s not enough water.” Plus one drunken brawl and they’d all wake up dead. There were too many guns and nowhere to run. “We gotta be disciplined,” she said. “We’ll be okay so long as we stay tight.”
Dave grunted and began gathering handfuls of Q’s food. He carried it over to one of the boxes.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“It’s safer in here,” he said. He pulled on a string around his neck and a key emerged from under his shirt. He used it to unlock the box and started packing Q’s food inside. “Could be rats.”
“I haven’t seen any rats,” Angela said.
“Rats would be bad.” Q helped Dave load the food in. It was his place.
“It’s funny, with the birds,” Q said when they had finished.
“Why?” Angela said.
“Z doesn’t attack them. They’re not scared of Z.”
“No,” said Rabbit, climbing the ladder. He pulled it up behind him and tied it off, then joined the women at the window. “You are what you eat. Those things don’t want to be birds.”
*
“Reaching, grasping, rotting,” said Rabbit.
“Death in motion,” said Dave, grave, as if trying to understand a concept that was beyond him.
“Attack of the Killer Slug People!” Angela said.
Q gaped. “You are not taking this seriously,” she said.
“Sorry,” said Angela.
“Everyone knows there’s no such movie,” Q said.
“There might be,” said Angela.
“Besides, Slug People aren’t killers. They only ever maim.” She pulled the two black socks from her hands and threw them at Angela’s head. “Your turn,” she said. Angela caught them.
“What was yours?” Rabbit asked.
“Creature from the Black Lagoon,” Q said
“What was the second sock for?”
“That was the lagoon. Couldn’t you tell from my acting?” Q yawned. It was late afternoon. The sun had long since moved overhead and the attic was cool and dim. She imagined an older world, the four of them sitting in a small room, keeping peasant time, sleeping with the sunset and playing out the hours with morbid parlor games. She walked to the window as Angela socked up and began the next charade.
