Brother Mine, Zombie.
Page 18
No response.
“Come on, Mate,” I called. “We’ve gotta get back to the tunnel. The soldiers are out looking for us….”
Still no response.
“…and it’s getting dark,” I added, hopefully.
David was gone. Just gone. Shit!
Optimistically, I thought that, maybe, he’d gotten bored and gone back to the tunnel under his own steam. After all, he knew where it was because he’d located it in the first place, while I had been asleep.
So, I hastened back to the tunnel and squeezed myself through the entrance.
Still no sign of David.
In the distance, I could hear dogs barking. This did not overly trouble me because these dogs would have been just the normal guard dogs that were already on the base. There had not been time to get any bloodhounds or other specialist tracker dogs up from Melbourne yet. So, unless David or I were stupid enough to make ourselves highly scent-visible, the guard dogs would not find our hideout before we had moved on.
Even so, I knew that I now needed to stay put. Wandering about in the bush at night was likely to attract the attention of any sort of dog. David would just have to fend for himself.
o0o
I spent an anxious night lying awake on the cold, earthen floor deep within the tunnel complex, waiting and wondering – just like parents do when their teenagers start going out at night without them. (Though David was hardly a typical teenager.)
Morning came – still no David in sight.
“Where have you gotten to, you little flesh-eating bastard?!” I said aloud.
I waited until mid-day once again before I could no longer stand the anxiety and suspense. I crept towards the mouth of the tunnel and, after listening for a time, ventured a peek out of the entrance.
Nothing. There was no sign that the searchers had passed by – that was a relief, of sorts.
I waited a further time – an hour or two maybe – and listened. It was a very still Summer’s day. Not even the familiar sound of eucalypt leaves rustling in the breeze. In the bush, in those conditions, any loud sound will carry for miles.
If there had been any trucks rumbling along the Scrub Hill Road, I would have heard them. If there had been any dogs still searching, I would have heard their barking. There were none.
So, what did this mean? Perhaps the search had moved on elsewhere. Perhaps it had been suspended until proper tracker dogs arrived from Melbourne.
Or, more likely, there were now troops stationed in bush ‘hides’, just watching and waiting until I emerged somewhere in the area. They probably had orders to shoot on sight because, after all, this was being treated as a wartime operation.
I couldn’t take the risk of emerging just yet. That would have made no sense. I was comparatively safe where I was – for the moment. David would just have to continue to fend for himself (unless, as I worried, he had already been picked off by some sniper hiding in the bush – though I had heard no gunfire at all.)
o0o
I rested for the remainder of the day, deep within the complex, and sustained myself with more spam and tinned vegetables. (I still couldn’t face the dog biscuits.)
As evening approached, I moved back to the mouth of the tunnel. Immediately, I could hear noises from outside, close outside. Had the searchers found my hide-away? Were they simply waiting for me to emerge before emptying their machine-gun magazines into me?
I fought back the urge to retreat back along the tunnel. I waited and listened, my heart pounding a mile a minute. The noise continued, on and off. I had heard it before but where?
“No-one lying in wait would be so friggin’ noisy about it,” I reasoned. “Would they?”
Then it came to me, where I had heard the noise before.
“Gronnff! Gronff! Gronff! Nunnff! Nunnff!”
It was the noise of a zombie feasting on a fresh kill – it could only be David.
(What a noisy little eater he was!)
With my heart beating out of my chest, I again ventured a peek out of my lair. What did I see?
The contented figure of my Brother Zombie, silhouetted in the gathering gloom. I still resisted the urge to bolt from the tunnel and wrap him up in my arms out of sheer relief. Snipers might yet be about, waiting to take both of us out at once.
But they weren’t – no snipers hereabouts just yet.
I approached David. He was very pleased with himself, wasn’t he?! Munch, munch, munch on what looked like a large bit of liver, blood dripping down his arms – just like a child’s ice-cream does on a hot day.
And he had something grisly draped around his neck, like some obscene laurel wreath (which was quite appropriate, as it turned out). I took a closer look to confirm that it was what I had thought it was.
It was indeed: a considerable length of someone’s small intestine.
(Why are zombies so fixated on people’s intestines? It can’t be healthy, can it?)
After overcoming my revulsion at David’s ghastly fashion statement – and before the daylight failed completely – I noticed that David had acquired a further ‘garment’. I studied it carefully.
It was an officer’s dress-jacket, completely drenched in blood, of course.
The officer’s rank was plainly that of Captain – and there were little caduceus badges clipped to each epaulette. I couldn’t actually read the good doctor’s name badge – that had been somewhat obscured by sanguinous effluvia – but I was content with what I saw. Very content.
Captain Dr Mengele should not have made his ‘grunt’ driver walk back to the base, should he?
I imagined the frenzied and bloody scene when, in the twilight, David had fallen upon the lone and unsuspecting medical officer.
Ah, well! (Excrement occurs.)
EPILOGUE
Though I shed no tears for Puckapunyal’s very own Angel of Death, David’s conduct simply could not go on. He needed a change of diet – and soon.
Within a matter of days, we had moved from the Scrub Hill area (having safely stowed Dr Mengele’s remains deep within the tunnel complex) and relocated ourselves to a lusher part of the Victorian forest, more suited to our needs.
(I’ve always liked ‘The High Country’ – very remote, very undisturbed.)
I’ll not trouble you with the trials and tribulations of that relocation. Suffice it to say, we made it there – and no-one else got eaten along the way.
I took time out to re-learn the spear-making skills I had learned while hunting small prey along Darebin Creek as a child. (And, yes, I do have many hidden talents). Within weeks, and before I starved, I became adept at catching the plentiful game that existed in our new home.
I could not interest David in food from the local waterways – fish, mussels and yabbies (yum!) – but, with time and practice, another, more palatable option eventually came onto the menu: chubby, young wallaby.
Did David take easily to the red meat of wallaby? No, it took time and patience on my part, a lot of time and patience. He refused this option for a great deal of time – and I had to put up with many zombie tantrums. (I really have decided that zombies have much in common with two-year-olds).
Eventually, however, he would trail along behind me as I hunted and, once I had speared a wallaby, he would sprint off through the bush and hungrily fall upon it – just as he had done with Captain Dr Mengele.
Oh, happy days!
One day, as we sat contentedly munching upon our latest (bloody) wallaby feast, I turned to David and said:
“How do you feel about Papua New Guinea – I hear they’ve got some lovely, but very slow, tree-kangaroos there?”
David grunted loudly – I thought he might yet warm to the idea.
RECORDED AT MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.
COMMENCED 19/01/2012
CONCLUDED 12/02/2012