Brother Mine, Zombie.

by Trevorah, Peter

  Gately had the answer: “His brother, his identical twin brother, is a zombie. We saw him, too. Really nasty lookin’ he was. Very noisy. Roared a lot. Wasn’t very happy bein’ in a steel cage on a stage with everyone gawkin’ at ‘im.”

  “Or bein’ shocked with a cattle-prod neither!” added Private First Class Swooper, belatedly joining in the discussion and sitting beside his friend and comrade, Gately.

  The Aussie chewed this over: “So, you’re sayin’ that the zombie brother must have protected the living one?”

  Gately and Swooper shrugged their shoulder in unison: “Seems so.”

  The Aussie finished his drink and motioned to the tired-looking barmaid to order another – the two yanks did likewise. (So far, so good.) That essential business done, the Aussie continued:

  “So, one guy survives among the zombies because he has an identical twin brother to protect him. How many of us have an identical twin zombie? I mean, it’s just so unusual that it makes no difference to what we’re doing out there. So, I still don’t see what you’re driving at. You say that I’m wrong. But, as I said, as far as I’m concerned, they’re all fuckin’ zombies. They’re just useless fuckin’ zombies – and we should just wipe ‘em all out….And, if some of the guys decide to let off a bit of steam by decorating the place with their ‘bits’, it simply doesn’t matter. There’s no dignity in bein’ a zombie, is there?”

  Gately’s temper was rising but he kept it in check.

  “No, sir. I still say you’re wrong. There’s something that this guy told us, my friend – something only he would know.”

  “And that is?” said the raw-boned Aussie, pulling on his new beer, freshly served by the barmaid.

  “He says that, if you give them a chance, in a few days some of the zombie guys – some, not all - get better and return to normal.”

  “Bullshit! What utter bullshit!” said the Aussie soldier, involuntarily spitting out some of his beer froth - and now attracting interested support from his comrades.

  “Complete bull!” echoed some others, also pulling on their beers.

  Gately was not to be deterred so easily. He came from a long line of folk who didn’t give up. He continued:

  “He says he’s seen ‘em recover – come back to the world of the livin’ with no more to show for bein’ a zombie than a few scars from the bites. He says he saw a couple of his own friends get better – but he thinks they then got burned up by the napalm our guys dropped at the University a couple of weeks back.”

  The Aussie ‘veterans’, as one, stopped drinking as they took in the significance of what Gately had just said. The Yanks said nothing for those same few seconds.

  The Barmaid, naturally fearful of any sudden silence in her bar, turned and stared at them all in wide-eyed alarm.

  One of the Aussies broke the silence: “How many of the zombie guys are supposed to get better? Only two? Three? How many?”

  Gately replied: “The guy didn’t get to tell us that. Your Captain Doctor silenced him with several sharp jolts from a cattle-prod. Screamed like a stuck pig, he did. Then some of our guys tried to stop the guy bein’ taken away ‘cos we wanted to hear what he had to say.”

  “And?” said the first Aussie.

  “The Guards pulled their side-arms on us - and dragged him away anyway.”

  “Very friendly indeed,” muttered one of the Aussies, not really surprised by this aspect of what they were being told.

  “So,” said the first Aussie – who had now put his beer aside completely (an extremely serious move). “We really don’t know whether it’s one thousand guys – or just two - who are supposed to get better and stop being zombies, do we?”

  “No, sir” admitted Gately, “we do not. But, if two of the guy’s own close friends got better, that means it must be pretty common. That means there could be thousands, tens of thousands, of young guys – just like us – that would recover – if they weren’t being ‘wasted’ by the rest of us right now.”

  The Aussie ‘veterans’ chewed it over for a few seconds more. Some of them appeared genuinely troubled by what they were now being told – concerned at what they had been doing most recently in the ‘War’.

  “Nah, Mate,” said the first Aussie. “I still think it’s all bull. I seen thousands of zombies over the last week or so and I haven’t seen any that looked even remotely like they might get better …”

  “Did you look?” interrupted Swooper. “I mean, before you pulled the trigger or threw the grenade?”

  There was a pause – evidently he had not.

  Suddenly, another Aussie – who might have had a bit more to drink than the others – broke in:

  “Nah, nah, nah, Mate! It’s all b.s. Definitely b.s. This guy’s a spy, the one who told you all this. There’s spies in every war. We all know that. That’s why the Doctor Captain had to shut him up.”

  This new guy was of a rather piggish caste. His face, though still young, ran to jowls – and was definitely rosy-cheeked from all the alcohol he had consumed. As the police would say: ‘his eyes were glazed, he was unsteady on his feet and his breath smelt of intoxicating liquor’.

  He was, in short, pissed.

  Gately was still having trouble restraining his growing anger. He turned to the interrupting Aussie:

  “A spy? Really? Do zombies have a spy network like the CIA or the KGB? How amazing. Perhaps he’s a double agent – and turns into a zombie himself at night. What do you think?”

  The drunken Aussie didn’t appreciate Gately’s sarcasm. He took it very personally.

  “You! You!” said the intoxicated and inarticulate Aussie. “What would you fucken’ know? You’re just a black cunt, just a fucken’ black, yankee abo!”

  Racial abuse will never win you friends.

  At that point, all rational discussion ceased and the all-in brawling commenced: seasoned Aussie soldiers, including a sprinkling of recently returned Vietnam veterans, against a bunch of fresh-faced but very fit and healthy G.I.’s.

  The barmaid stowed the glasses and ducked behind the bar.

  CHAPTER 26

  FLIGHT

  I was dozing in the infirmary. It was around midnight.

  Outside, in the parade ground, there was a heck of a commotion going on. The sounds of fist upon face and boot upon other body parts could be clearly heard. There were soldiers screaming and yelling, Aussies and Yanks – name-calling and dire threats. Officers vainly trying to contain the brawling. Orders disobeyed. Whistles of MP’s.

  Soon, the whole camp had turned out into the parade ground and there were hundreds of troops fighting an extremely vigorous pitched battle.

  Suddenly, I was wide awake – adrenalin does that.

  At first, I thought “What is going on?” But then I guessed that the seeds I had, quite deliberately, planted during my impromptu lecture to the Doughboys might now be bearing fruit.

  Seeds of doubt. Seeds of conflict.

  Young men, decent guys, were both injuring and getting injured out there on the parade ground. Maybe I wasn’t such a nice person, after all. But, nice person or not, I needed to use the commotion that I had triggered to make my escape. In a panic, I undid the bindings which had been holding me to my bed – I could have done this at any time but had been too ill to even bother trying.

  I swung my legs off the bed and onto the floor. I tried to stand.

  Shit!

  I was still very weak from the torture and flopped back, breathless, onto the bed.

  What to do? I couldn’t let this confusion pass without trying to take advantage. This golden opportunity would not come again.

  From outside, I could hear raised voices, Australian voices, saying things like:

  “Kill the fuckin’ spy! Get the Zombie spy! Kill the little mongrel.” (And like that.)

  “‘Spy’? Was there a spy?” I thought. “Who would that be?”

  I took a minute or two for my faint-headed self to realize that the only person whose b
lood they could be baying for was the sower of the seeds of doubt: me!

  Oh, dear. Dragged to the scaffold by the mob when I could hardly stand on my own two feet. This was not entirely what I had hoped and planned for.

  Then ‘The Cavalry’ arrived – almost literally.

  Ingrid and a U.S. Sergeant burst into my room, having vociferously ordered the infirmary guards to stand aside.

  “Get you goddammed stuff, soldier, and be quick about it,” ordered the Yankee Sergeant. “You’re leaving now – unless you want to be lynched by your fellow countrymen.”

  (How nice of him to call me ‘soldier’, I thought.)

  “Move it!” he screamed in my face.

  I still don’t know his name – but, evidently, he’d been impressed by what I’d had to say at the lecture and believed that ‘his boys’ had been lured to Australia under false pretences. On that basis, I suppose, he considered my life might be worth saving.

  I tried to stand once again but my legs buckled underneath me after a few steps.

  Ingrid, whom I noticed was disheveled and out of uniform, turned and screamed: “Guard!”

  One of the goons, confused and disorientated, came running into the room.

  Ingrid pointed to me, now lying on the floor:

  “Pick him up and follow us!”

  He did. The brutish bastard was surprisingly strong – but, then again, I had lost a lot of weight and condition since arriving at ‘Pucka’. So, I was no great load to carry.

  Soon, I found myself flung roughly into the back tray of a jeep. It had been parked at the side of the parade ground. Brawling troops surrounded us on all sides but none paid us any attention – there was just too much brawling that needed still to be done.

  The Sergeant vaulted into the driver side of the jeep and took the wheel. He took off with a chirp of tyres on concrete.

  The disheveled Ingrid sat beside him and another jeep followed us.

  Ingrid leaned over the back of the seat and yelled at me:

  “We’re gonna need you for this next bit. We’re gonna try and retrieve David from the cells.”

  Yes! My adrenalin kicked right in.

  The Sergeant leaned over his own seat and also yelled at me, as if to emphasize what Ingrid had just said:

  “And no more of this chicken-shit falling-over garbage neither!”

  “Yessir! Er, no sir!” I replied in my best (available) military fashion.

  My legs would definitely work next time I needed them.

  o0o

  The military prison was only a short jeep-drive away from the infirmary. It was a modest but sturdy wooden structure, circa 1940. It never housed more than a few prisoners, mostly guys who’d gotten drunk in town and needed to cool off or soldiers who had ‘lost track of the time’ and gone AWOL (absent without leave).

  The prison had never previously held a zombie – or a zombie’s brother, for that matter. It was neither fortified nor particularly secure and had never needed to be.

  The two jeeps arrived in a cloud of dust and screeched to a halt. The driver of the second jeep stayed put. The Sergeant, driver of the first jeep, leapt from his seat and ran to the guards standing at the door of the prison building.

  “Stand down, men,” he barked, as they started to salute him. “This is urgent security business.”

  They both looked straight ahead and snapped to attention, rifles at the ready. The more senior of them (a corporal) said:

  “Sorry, sir. We’re not permitted to take orders from any of the U.S. NCO’s.” (Non-commissioned officers).

  The Sergeant flew (verbally) at the Corporal with a string of dire threats and abuse – but to no avail. The Australian Corporal, and the Private who was with him, remained at attention but stood firm – they would not be taking orders from any Yankee Sergeant.

  I heard Ingrid get out of our Jeep and approach the guards in a far more casual way:

  “It’s all right, gentlemen, the Sergeant is with me,” she said. “You may stand aside and allow us inside. We have all the relevant clearances.”

  “May we see them, Ma’am, the clearance papers?” said the Corporal.

  Ingrid should have anticipated this would be the response – but she didn’t.

  “There are no formal papers,” said Ingrid, calmly. “I’m acting on the direct verbal orders of the camp commandant – he has sent the Sergeant with me because of the disturbance which has broken out in the area of the parade ground. I’m sure you can still hear it?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” replied the corporal. “We’ve been listening to it for the last half-hour. But we still need them orders, Ma’am.”

  “There is no time to draw up formal papers, Corporal,” said Ingrid, trying still to remain calm. “There is an emergency situation. So, as an officer, I now intend to give you a direct order to stand aside and allow us into the prison.”

  Briefly, the Corporal looked uncertainly at the Private – who remained with his eyes fixed ‘to the front’. It was up to the corporal since he outranked the Private. He cleared his throat.

  “Ma’am?”

  “As your superior officer, I’m ordering you to stand aside and allow us into the prison,” said Ingrid. “Don’t you understand that? I don’t wish to place you on report? That won’t be necessary, will it?”

  The Corporal still stood his ground.

  “Ma’am, I mean you no disrespect but you are a medical officer. You have no authority to give orders to the non-medical personnel.”

  He was, of course, correct on both counts – neither Ingrid nor the U.S. Sergeant, both theoretically superior to him in rank, had any authority to order him about.

  Stalemate – I could see the Sergeant was about to go into ‘bullying mode’. I judged that it wouldn’t work on the corporal who knew very well what the proper chain of command was.

  So, it was time for me to stand up and be counted.

  I crawled from the first jeep and stood uncertainly beside it. I called out weakly to the guards:

  “Gentlemen, I’m the reason these officers are here. I’m the one who has caused the rioting over on the parade ground....”

  I paused, giddy from standing, before completing my thought.

  “…if you don’t let these guys lock me up for my protection, you’re going to have a lynching on your hands. I suspect the Camp Commandant will not be well pleased when he has to explain to his superiors why my body is swinging from the flagpole in the morning –when you could have saved him that trouble simply by the obeying orders of the officers now standing in front of you. So, what do you think?”

  Both the Sergeant and Ingrid turned, as one, and gaped at me in amazement. (Why hadn’t they thought of that?)

  The guards knew who I was and why I was being held in the camp – it seemed everyone did. The corporal looked at Sergeant.

  “You wanna lock this guy up? Why didn’t you say so in the first place? That’s easy. No orders required.”

  And, with that, I joined the Sergeant and Ingrid, the guards stood aside and we three entered the building without further ado.

  Then the Sergeant briefly turned back and spoke to the now-confused driver of the second jeep – who was apparently in on the overall plan and who had been listening to everything that had just been said:

  “You’re dismissed, soldier. I will see you later.”

  The driver of the second jeep, briefly, looked puzzled:

  “I said, soldier, ‘I will see you later’,” said the Sergeant, with emphasis.

  The driver of the second jeep saluted and drove off slowly.

  We walked swiftly to David’s cell and were allowed admittance by a third guard. David was, a that time, the only prisoner and so it there was only one guard on the inside of the prison. Three guards for one prisoner might seem like over-kill but, unless I missed my guess, the prison was about to have a major influx of additional prisoners from the rioting that was still taking place within the parade ground area.

  W
hen we reached the cell, we found David was slumped and torpid in one corner.

  “Hey, shithead!” I yelled and, with that, David immediately roused and gave his accustomed morning groan. (You might stretch and scratch your bum first thing in the morning but zombies have a different practice. Their morning groan is very specific to the morning, much higher pitched than any daytime groans. Immediately recognizable.)

  David looked to me and I felt an instant pang deep in my guts. It was one of those brother-connection things again, I suppose. A gut-feeling, even.

  He jumped to his feet and started to roar. In relief? In celebration? Who knows? In any event, I needed to get him under control and I needed to do so immediately. The guard opened the cell door at the Sergeant’s direction and I entered quickly.