by JT Clay
She dragged open the metal grate. It growled across the rock. She didn’t feel brave, but she had to go in, because the alternative would destroy her. Maybe that’s all courage was: all other options removed; nowhere to go but forward.
Q stepped inside.
*
It was like she had never left.
The world was full of water. It made her clumsy and weighed her down. Every step displaced more and sent it sloshing against the walls. Q couldn’t tell if the sounds were hers, or if they belonged to something else. She switched on the torch she'd brought from Dave’s camp, and swore. She should have brought spare batteries as well. Its weak beam illuminated a few feet before fading, and showed nothing at all through the murky water below.
She crept along, testing each step before committing to it. She didn’t want to fall into one of those endless wells – she had no reason to pull herself out any more. No point to any of it, except Hannah. What if Hannah was dead already?
“Nicest Kate?” Q called into the darkness. “Have you got my phone charger?”
Q’s words sang back. What had she expected? A sophisticated taunt? Zombie Kate was brainless, like the rest of them. Q could at least be grateful for that. The things had conquered death and civilization, but at least they couldn’t think. People still had a chance. A tiny flame of a chance, flickering and nearly gone, but there.
She paused and waited for the water to subside, wanting the slap-slap on the concrete walls to fade so she could see with her ears as well as her eyes. She waited a full minute, counting time, but the sounds refused to die.
Were those footsteps?
She shone the beam around, but saw only slimy walls and her own cold breath in the air. Perhaps she had disturbed the water. Perhaps she was alone after all.
Q pulled out her bush knife. She wouldn’t use a gun in here. The noise would blow her eardrums and besides, if she hit Kate, she needed to be close enough to grab her. Otherwise, the ghoul might sink beneath the water, taking the charger with her.
All Q had to do was wait, look and listen.
Footsteps. No. One footstep, then a noise like a stick scraping concrete.
Step. Scrape. Step. Scrape.
She swung her torch wildly, searching for the source. Maybe it was too far from the dim light to see. The sound was up front somewhere, too slow to be an animal unless wounded, in which case it would be crying. Anything alive would be crying now.
What if zombies ate animals in here? With no people left and not enough brains to get out of the tunnel, what if they ate whatever was unfortunate enough to stumble inside? What if they’d started on that one?
Step. Scrape. Step. Scrape. What if it was some poor fluffy creature, half-eaten and trying to get away?
Q re-thought that thought. This was Australia. The koalas bit, the roos drowned dogs, the possums stole and no one had lived to tell the tale of a wombat attack. Everything had teeth, especially the poor fluffy creatures. No ghoul would be able to catch one, let alone keep one. That wasn’t an animal.
Step. Scrape.
Ahead, a dim silhouette formed, vaguely human. She bet if she saw it clearly, it would remain only vaguely human. She held still, trying not to displace water. The thing was slow but it was heading straight for her. Could it see in the dark? Was it using senses she didn’t have?
Her fingers tightened on the knife’s handle. Her muscles coiled. Now she had a focus for her fear, she found she was no longer afraid.
Step. Scrape.
The thing was about ten feet away on the right, almost springing distance. Was it Pious Kate? She held the torch steady and raised her knife.
Bony fingers grabbed her ankle from behind and pulled. She fell, screaming, knowing she was finished. Not one but two zombies, and they had her down. It didn’t matter if she got out of here. Her survival would be temporary. She was on the ground and vulnerable and one bite was all it took to kill. No exceptions. Look at Rabbit.
Q landed on her knees and hands, hard. It hurt so much she lost the air from her lungs, but she managed to kick backward and felt her boot crunch through something soft.
She hadn’t been bitten! She rolled away from the thing in the darkness, grateful that she hadn’t stabbed herself in the confusion.
Where was the torch? Where was the knife?
Q groped and splashed, abandoning all attempts at stealth in her desperation to find the tool and the weapon, expecting bony fingers to wrap around her legs and sharp teeth to find her flesh. What was she doing trapped with monsters she couldn’t see?
Her fingers brushed something that wasn’t concrete. She felt for it again, but it was gone. Had it moved?
If it moved, it wasn’t her kit, but something else. Something she didn’t want to find.
She scrabbled around, half hoping to find nothing, but her fingers lodged against a round, smooth surface. The handle of a knife. She gripped it.
No. Not her knife. Bone.
Q held the stripped leg bone of a zombie.
That scraping sound was this bone as the thing walked. She retched, revolted, but held on and yanked. A body thudded into the water.
She abandoned her search. She’d fight in the dark with feet and fists – they were all she had left. She hoped they were enough.
Q strode over to the felled ghoul and stomped. Her boot sank through flesh and ground into concrete. She stomped again and again, until the thing below her was only moving in response to her stomping, no animation left of its own. She paused, panting.
She shut her eyes to think. Water noises everywhere and the sounds were increasing. She had no light, no direction, nothing against which to orient herself, and she couldn’t tell which way she’d come in, or even where the walls were. The tunnel was a storm and she was lost in it.
She dropped to a crouch and prodded the prone form in front of her. Her fingers sank into yielding mush. She tried not to think about uncooked sausage as she moved her hands along the body. If this was the right one, if she had just killed Zombie Kate, she could grab the charger and get out of here. If she could find the way. Too many ifs. Q longed for the simplicity of a game she knew she could win if only she played long enough.
Her hands reached the ghoul’s throat. There was no snake talisman around its neck. This wasn’t Zombie Kate, unless the beast had lost what the woman treasured. It was a useless kill. She was no closer to escape.
She got to her feet. There was at least one more zombie in here. Was it crawling toward her, unheard in the watery echoes? Was it Zombie Kate or another faceless victim?
Q spun and kicked at nothing, took a step to the left, kicked again. She felt surrounded. She sensed something in front of her and punched but connected only with air, overextending her joints. She rubbed her throbbing elbow. How was she meant to fight like this? How could she even find an enemy, let alone beat one?
Apocalypse Z would not help her. It was all about survival, which meant running away. The only words of advice it gave about doing something stupid like this to help a friend were brief. Don’t, it said. Heroes never breed. Q couldn’t live like that any more. It hadn’t worked for Dave and it wouldn’t spare any of them. Rabbit was right: she might as well go out trying.
Water everywhere and nothing to see. Her camouflage pants were soaked and her fingers ached with the cold. She might freeze before she found Zombie Kate.
She thought back to the hard days of training in her childhood. Linda’s techniques had become more bizarre as the woman sickened. Maybe Linda had been trying to ignite something in Q that had died in herself. They did the usual things, push ups and pull ups and running and skipping, kicking bags and punching focus mitts. Even sparring, with Linda striking Q as hard as she could, trying to provoke rage from the ten-year-old. Despite all this, Q’s skills went downhill. She couldn’t strike back. That woman might shatter into pieces on the gym floor and who would clean it up, with her red-eyed father locked in the study?
Then Linda decided to tea
ch her about the senseless dark.
It started two months before Linda went into care, a week before Q’s last competition fight. The woman was barely there but she wanted Q to win so badly. They had kept up their regular evening session in the garage gym, even though Linda couldn’t stand for ten minutes at a stretch, even though she smelled bad and sounded like she had forgotten how to talk. Her dad insisted Q cooperate. It didn’t matter what Q wanted or how much her guts twisted every time she thought about training. Linda was the important one.
One night, the lights went off. Q had thought it was a power failure. She lay on the cool mats, hidden and safe. Then the monster attacked.
The shape had leaped out and struck with palms and feet and claws, rearing back and scuttling away to a dark corner before Q could respond. The first time it happened, Q was scared. After that, she was angry.
Even after Q realized it was Linda, she couldn’t shake the sense of fighting monsters in the dark. It became their new routine. She dreaded it all day at school. She tried all afternoon to make excuses, to fake injuries, to make herself sick. She managed to throw up once. She still had to train, though.
It occurred to Q now, in this dark place full of real monsters, that Linda had been unable to fight things she couldn’t see. Maybe that’s why she’d wanted her daughter to learn.
Q tried to recreate the peace and terror of those night attacks. She let out her breath and allowed her shoulders and arms to relax. She felt gravel through the soles of her shoes. Her legs were strong beneath her. She inhaled and caught air in her throat so that her chest no longer rose or fell. Her body made no sound or movement except those essential for life.
Behind her was a sound not made by water.
She waited. She could almost sense the air it displaced and the diminishing distance between them. She couldn’t pick its exact location. How could she hit something if she didn’t know where it was?
There was a clang to her left. Metal on concrete. Something had stepped on her knife.
Q spun and poured her energy into a front-kick. She connected with the body and sent it flying, then dropped to a crouch. She felt around on the ground for the blade and found it with her fingertips, slicing them open. She didn’t care. She had the knife. She’d found the ghoul.
She listened for the zombie’s movements but the noises slid away, covered by the tunnel’s splashes. Q pictured the scene. The creature would try to get to its feet so it could attack. They lost everything human, but they still knew how to attack. They knew up from down. They knew that bellies were empty and needed to be filled.
She might have heard steps. She might have just imagined them. She couldn’t pinpoint direction through the echoes. Q lunged, stabbed, missed.
Where had it gone? What was it waiting for? Zombies don’t lurk – they were bags of meat.
She heard a sound to her right. For a moment, she wondered if someone was in the tunnel with her. Q could think of only one other person who was alive and in the area. “Angela?”
Had Angela followed her? Was she capable of that climb up the cliff and the uphill march, both of which pushed Q to her limits? Crazy people did astonishing things and that woman was crazy. She’d smashed Dave’s radio. What else would she do?
“I know you’re angry,” Q said. “I can help.”
There was another sound, not the snarl of a zombie, but something else. If it was Angela, why wouldn’t she talk? The sound came from Q’s left. “I understand how you feel,” Q said. “I’ve lost people too. Rabbit’s dead.”
There was a flood of sound, like an explosion under water. Q’s pulse leaped. A body slammed into her.
The force threw her back into one of those dark submerged pits she had been avoiding. She and her attacker went under.
The shock drove the air from her lungs. Her head was below the water and her attacker dragged her deeper. Bubbles escaped Q’s mouth. She thrashed like a hooked fish, trying to shake loose the arms pinning her hands to her sides. Her legs were useless, the thing holding her was too close for a kick and there was nothing firm to push against. The embrace tightened.
Q’s head bulged with pointless images, blood stretching the inside of her skull. The kelpie as a puppy so small she fit in one hand. Someone else’s blood on her knuckles after a bout. Nearly wetting herself on her first day of teaching because she didn’t know where the bathrooms were and didn’t want to ask the Blue Ogre.
Q twitched less, a battery nearly spent. Her feet flapped but her torso was still. She tasted iron and smelled lavender. Her skin was ice. She longed for an end.
She felt something pressed against her chest, warmer than the water around them, warmer than the body holding her. It was made of wood. A pendant.
This wasn’t Angela. It was Zombie Kate. Q had found her. She couldn’t remember why it was important but knew it had something to do with saving someone.
She pulled back her head and cracked the front part of her skull against the zombie’s. It was a feeble effort, her force dissipated by the water, but the constricting embrace loosened. Q wriggled until her head was above water. She drank a miracle of air and found another – she still held the knife.
Water boiled as Zombie Kate searched for what she’d lost. All Q wanted was to drag herself clear, leaving behind the nightmare of teeth and nails and cold dark places, but she couldn’t leave. She had to finish.
Treading water, Q reached down, hoping her fingers would not sink into an open mouth. Her hand brushed against hair. She twined her fingers through it and hauled.
Kate surfaced and gasped, perhaps remembering the taste of air from when she was alive. She didn’t need it now, did she? Q tipped the creature’s head back, stretching the throat like an offering, and raised her knife. No use cutting the throat. She aimed lower, deep into the woman’s torso.
She scraped bone, the hip instead of the soft flesh of spleen and guts. Q withdrew and tried again, higher. Her knife sank and she drew it up through the body. Kate sighed. Q kept her grip on the hair, holding the woman close and treading water, waiting for her to move again, to snarl, to bite, to claw but there was nothing more. Kate was dead.
Q threw the knife onto the gravel and then hauled herself out of the pit. Her left hand, still twined through Kate’s hair, was the only thing keeping the corpse afloat. She wanted to let go, let the body drift down to the dark places and never come back.
Instead, she grabbed Kate’s shoulders and heaved and grunted until they were both on firm ground. Then she searched the body, pawing at folds of sodden fabric and torn flesh until her fingers closed over the charger.
No. This wasn’t right either. Q couldn’t steal the charger and leave the body. What if Kate wasn’t dead? What if she was just knocked out? What if she came back in Q’s dreams, for the rest of her life?
This would end.
Q grabbed a limp arm and dragged the body out.
*
She grunted as she pulled the corpse onto the pile of branches. She was hot and hollow with the effort of gathering enough fuel.
She stood back, breathing hard. Would the corpse burn? Or would Zombie Kate stay whole, exhaling fumes, until the pile of fuel was spent and all that remained was its dead heart?
This was a body. It would burn. Most things did, with enough heat, Q knew. She’d been an experimental child.
She struck the flint into kindling and breathed on a spark, then stood back and smiled as dry logs devoured themselves. Q enjoyed fire.
Flames ate the things she’d stolen from the bush, leaves and seedpods and sticks and bark. She took a step back. Some fuel dissolved quietly into vapor, but some fought, igniting in shots and starts. The body lay at the center of the orange flame, a blue halo around it. Gas leaked from the skin.
The fire expanded. Q took two more steps back.
The body sizzled, its liquids pouring into the flames like the welcome barbecue at hell’s gate. Would it explode? Is that what happened when you lit a zombie? The skin wa
s brown and wrinkled now, like poorly treated leather, and the corpse hunched over. Its head dropped between its hands, as if in prayer. Its knees pulled up beneath its body. It was shrinking, becoming more like a shaved monkey than something that was once human. Q took another step back.
Sweat poured from Q as juice poured from the corpse. Wood crackled in the flames. Blood pounded in her ears. The pressure in her head shifted as if she were diving deep under water. The greedy fire pulled the air from her lungs.
The body was almost black now with most of its flesh gone. It looked mummified. Slivers of ash floated up, lighter than air. Q watched them dip and fade. Kate was changing states, transforming from a solid to a gas in the least time possible, as if she couldn’t wait.
The fire threatened to swallow itself and leave Q in the dark. She picked up the sticks she hadn’t used and threw them in, not caring about her singed eyebrows and scorched skin. She wanted the flames to last. When she ran out of wood, she threw in handfuls of dried leaves from the ground and when she ran out of those, she tore soft green leaves from the trees and hurled them at the flames.
Despite the cauldron heat, the green leaves wouldn’t burn. Currents of air picked them up and took them away. They drifted and danced on the heat, immune to it. All fuel was not the same. That fire wanted only the dead.
Q thought about what Sheath had said, weeks ago. That there was no such thing as zombies, that this outbreak was like mad cow disease, a karmic virus people caught from their diet of tortured meat.
She thought about the swollen spleen Angela had removed, engorged as if overloaded or infected.
She thought about Mrs GLEEM, who’d been bitten but got better. A Seventh Day Adventist. They didn’t eat meat, did they?
Near-vegan Kate and all-vegan Rabbit had taken weeks to turn into zombies. Rabbit fought so long for a cure, but gave up when Kate turned and took away his hope. Carnivore Dave and Charmaine, the girl in Hannah’s class, were gone in minutes. Tinkabella and the Scarlet Terror took hours. Princess Starla took a day. It wasn’t about body weight or absorption. Dave was heaviest of them all and he had gone quickest. It didn’t matter where you were infected, because those bitten on the foot or finger went as fast as those bitten in belly or throat.
