by Dan Yaeger
First the mechanic would get the treatment. I looked at his overalls and the patch on his chest got me thinking again. "Cooleman," I uttered the place-name. This guy was or had been in Cooleman which was over an hour away by car. The situation did not fit the normal pattern of zombies and their behaviour. I played things out in my head, trying to piece it all together and make sense of whom or what I had encountered at my home.
The facts were played out first. “I had a zombie that lost his jaw in a scuffle with a roo. He had turned but doesn't look like an old vintage of zombie." The story continued in my head as I dragged the mess of what was once a man, to its funeral pyre. "So a jawless zombie, unable to bite, detaches from the fray and is seemingly on lookout when I came across him. It doesn't make sense,” I was working through a complex puzzle.
I grabbed the ankles of the Mechanic and dragged him over to a large stump over by where I had my site for bonfires. This stump was the twin to the stump I used to cut wood. It was my zombie meat stump. I kept on thinking and I heaved the body on the stump, “I then have two other junkies or zombies, whatever they were."
I lifted my meat axe and hacked the Mechanic’s limbs off, throwing them onto the pyre. I grabbed the integral belt on the soiled overalls and heaved the torso on next. "What makes no sense, something I have never seen, is Skinny and Blackbeard leaving the dying animal to attack me.” Such behaviour was unheard of. The only conclusion that could be made was that I was dealing with something that was new to me. Not human, not zombie. More evidence and inspection would inform this further. As though on cue, to scare the shit out of me, one of the arms settled or moved on the unlit funeral pyre. "Shit no!" I blurted out, shocked and unsure of what had caused the movement.
In ’28 or ’29, I had heard of cases where zombies had enough nerve tissue or some other means to “come back”. I always suspected this was simply a manifestation of the strength of the virus rather than the continuation of the human nervous system under extreme duress and trauma. I had never seen it myself but some survivors had told me they had encountered it. "Perhaps the wood just settled?" I aimed at the most simple of explanations. I wouldn’t rule anything out. With the mutation of divine into its weaponised state, anything was possible. An arm or leg was easier to fight off than a whole body so chopping them up was an easy insurance policy.
I then dragged over Blackbeard; across the wet ground and over to the chopping stump. I kept thinking, trying to find answers. But with the new dark age of zombies, following the cataclysm known as the Great Change, nothing was ever simple. My then predicament, trying to work out what I was dealing with in Skinny, Blackbeard and the Mechanic, was no different.
Zombies were the lowest of the low to me but also stirred my humanity and compassion. They were the ultimate disrespect of the dead but were once people; all sorts. Having to face them, fight them and lament those who had once been human was hard on my mind and soul. So I named all of them when I could. It helped differentiate them and I could associate the zombies with events and situations. Naming them was also a little fun and I could laugh a little about it if I had given one of them a funny name. You laughed or you cried and I had cried enough over the past couple of years; enough to fill buckets.
The naming of the zombies was my way of remembering the person in some way too. The zombie was like a bad caricature of someone, emphasising all their faults. Each person was a tragedy and a loss to the world; people from everywhere, from all walks of life. Even if not directly a tragedy to me, others would have said that the person that preceded a zombie had meant something to someone. If I thought about the sentimentality of it all, I would have to grieve hundreds that I had put to rest. I rarely took it that far. All of these thoughts and zombie apocalypse superstitions or sentimentality was something I needed. It was a coping mechanism mixed with keeping a sense of humour.
Using my means of coping and normalising the abnormal, I considered Blackbeard. "Nice beard mate," I said aloud. I furrowed my brow as I looked at his beard. It looked unkempt but as though it had been recently trimmed. "No?!" I said to myself. "Maybe the virus is stopping facial hair growth?" it didn't look right. Blackbeard was reasonably well-dressed. I found his beard and his remarkably clean clothes strange for someone who had been: a) blown in half and, b) wandering the world since '28 or '29. We were two years into that zombie apocalypse and finding a zombie in clothes that weren’t septic meant a couple of things; he was only turned recently, roamed in water, wore very resilient clothes or he had recently been dressed. "He's been recently groomed and dressed!" I was shocked at that obvious revelation.
The mind wanders and can play tricks on a man who was isolated but I really got the sense that Blackbeard, despite losing most of his lower torso and top of his head, had jeans that were cleaner than mine and a t-shirt with a clear logo of a famous metal band. The white on the t-shirt was too clear for my liking. The other thing was his skin. Zombies go an off, dead colour. He wasn’t “off” enough. Similarly, the outdoor elements weather the skin like a piece of leather. The old, early zombies, what I like to call the ’28 limited edition zombie (like it was a car or motorcycle), were a cross between overcooked chicken legs and an old leather jacket left out in the rain. Those old zombies were often found shambling around like a bag of bones in a leather jacket. Those original zombies were often shells just barely held together. This guy wasn’t weathered enough; sheltered and protected from the elements. He had a watch that was working. It was an old-school wristwatch that was driven by solar energy and kinetic energy from moving the arm. “This is too peculiar. This guy is not the garden-variety zombie. I should check his pockets,” I thought. First I put on the nice, well-kept, working watch.
"Damn, the talking, this watch, clean clothes and other signs," My world was rocked by these facts, staring me in the face. I didn’t like it and would like what I would find in Blackbeard’s pocket even less.
In Blackbeard’s pocket were a couple of pieces of paper, “chits” we will call them. Despite the moisture in the air and his zombie perspiration, excretion or liquefying, the three chits were clean enough and only a little damp. “Strange,” I thought and intently considered the paper.
One chit had “Tom Wright, 86” written on it. There was a stamp on the chit as well. “Dr Kian Penfould, Cooleman, NSW”, signed elegantly in the stamp block. “This is old-school”, I thought. The stamp had the corresponding address, business phone, mobile, web and other details you would expect of any doctor’s practice. The other chit was a spreadsheet with date columns, some sort of tally, with “86” at the top. The rows on this chit were some kind of code with the letters “F, D, S, M” and some crossed out numbers to each of these letters. Again, the Doctor’s stamp. There was a butterfly stamp on top of each change too. I would ponder this in detail a little later but this was not right. I pocketed the chits and got back to my grisly work. Well, it wasn’t like I was going to call the police and get the help of a detective with his or her team of forensic scientists. So I put him on the pyre after a few blows from the axe, chopping him into three parts. My chopping stump was now an intense colour: dark red. It dawned on me; "The blood isn't black and rancid!" I shook as the facts were beginning to pile up like the corpses on the pyre.
Skinny was something else; indeed a zombie but with hallmarks of humanity. The skin was greenish, pale and inhuman, but only just. I surmised that she hadn’t actually been a zombie for too long. I continued to scan her to understand what I was looking at. My mind wandered as things continued to break the normal mould.
"Is it possible that small enclaves of people could have managed to stay uninfected for some time?" I thought. "Could she have a natural resistance but not immunity? Maybe she only turned in the last couple of months?" the questions kept coming to mind.
“Has she actually turned?” I questioned that which I had thought was absolute. My estimation was that she had been infected; there were enough symptoms to make that assumption but inconsistencies
too. For example, she was an off-white colour but was, strangely, without the legions, boils, gaping holes and exposed flesh of others afflicted with the virus. Skinny was the least damaged from my encounter with them and she was providing the most interesting of cadavers to inspect. While it was interesting, I never enjoyed it. Death and carnage wasn't something I enjoyed revelling in. After letting my mind, thoughts and imagination wander for a few moments, I returned to the task at hand; the examination of this curious zombie I called Skinny. It had tattoos that were seemingly quite old, pre ’28; “Nothing unusual there,” as many people had them. But she/it had other tattoos that were of more interest. A pentagram on her upper chest/neck and a matching pentagram tramp-stamp on the lower back that looked pretty fresh. Other than the freshness of the tattoos, I could find nothing more of note. That was until I found some sort of a theme in her appearance. It was the last piece of evidence I needed to make a conclusion on the question; zombies or something else?
It was a design pattern that I noticed; it made my skin crawl. Skinny had matching jewellery and tattoos! The Pentagrams that adorned the neck and ears were clean and shiny. The leather throngs on both necklace and earrings were clean, intact and with that suede-like outer-surface. “This jewellery is new!” the shock was warranted. It was the realisation of some aberration or change that made these things a little more like me that shocked the most. It was extremely unlikely for a bush-wandering zombie to have such trinkets in the first place, let alone retain them for a year. “Vanity, self-preservation and personality are human traits, not theirs,” I thought. I was struggling to work out what had come to pass for this to happen. The theories over a number of weeks would be various until I lived the answers for myself. Skinny had similar chits of paper to Blackbeard. “Rebecca Falconer, 55”. The evidence of infection and zombie-like traits were there, no doubt about it. But this was something else; not good. It was organised chaos.
Chapter 3: A Fireside Chat with My Thoughts
That night the bonfire was lit and the funeral pyre crackled to life. The pitch black, with pin-prick stars and shroud of dark bush, created privacy and closeness. The fire roared up like a voracious, uninvited guest. The funeral pyre erupted in sequence, cleansing things of Divine in its fury. The screaming of gum twigs and cooking flesh gave the fire a life of its own and spelled an end to lives lost. What was once physical and what separates living things from being lumps of meat, was gone. Like a giant flaming, screaming grim reaper, the fire took the kangaroo and zombies to another place. I watched it with some appreciative awe. Sitting in a camping chair, I sat there regarding the powerful fire do its work, while my mind wandered to the situation I had encountered that day.
"I thought I was here by myself?" I both thought and questioned, rubbing my hands together and taking in the warmth from the fire. I had been up there for a year and had never seen anything like it; zombies that spoke, had thoughts and sentimentalities. Something had or was changing in the zombies I had encountered. I had seen and killed enough of them to know what a normal zombie was, if there could be such a thing. As unnatural as they were, there were patterns of things; how they behaved and how they moved and killed. What I had seen was indeed out of that pattern. "Of the hundreds I have killed, I have never seen anything like it," I concluded. Having culled so many lurching, shambling undead, I was sure what I had seen was new to me and the area.
My general area had been largely zombie-free up until that point. Like a cowboy regulator from ancient times, I had spent time “regulating” zombies at the expense of spending time setting myself up for food and survival. I figured the zombies did not have to be a given and, if you were remote enough and killed enough of them in your area, they could be finished. Up until that day, I thought my regulating had all but been complete. I rode them down, shot them down and struck them down so that I could live trouble-free. “Trouble-free” was quite a subjective term as I encountered a zombie in some way, somewhere in my travels in the New South Wales Alps in any given fortnight. One or two didn't bother me at all after having faced so many. I was as used to them as any person could be.
I opened a book on Italian cooking, turned my chair at an angle to the fire and tried to place my thoughts elsewhere. Reading by the intense firelight, I enjoyed a visceral experience that returned me to childhood. Beach shacks over the summer and spring and mountain cabins in the autumn and winter. There had been one constant on those high-times with my family; books in the evening. We were all old-school, prodigious readers in my family. One of the draw-cards of my relatively new home was a retro-style library with all sorts of literature.
With the Information Super-Highway (as my books on the shelf called it) long dead, books were an amazing entertainment, resource and refuge. This library had helped me shape ways of living, coping mechanisms and, all importantly, strategies to manage the zombies. One such book was unexpected in its revelation. I had read a piece on Communist China’s Chairman Mao who had once decreed that all people in his populous nation would kill at least one of each of the four pests that had plagued his vast country. The result was decisive and reduced the fly, mosquito and vermin problem into a memory. In my own way, I had used a similar philosophy to clear out pests from my own territory. Kill them, kill some more and kill them anytime you see them. Zero tolerance. It had only taken a few months to have crushed the small roving population in my area. I swatted an insect that had come to the light of the bonfire with satisfaction. I regarded the fire again. It had changed significantly in the moment I had been distracted.
The noble kangaroo had the quickest fate on the bonfire; to cells or units of ash as the hottest flames took him asunder in a white-hot mirage. The roo soon fell apart into sections of black ash and coals in a fascinating display of deconstruction. I reflected on the situation and the chits of paper. They were units that constructed something; structure, order, centralisation. “What did it mean?” I pondered the chits, the zombie behaviour and what it could all mean. Things were always uncertain, but this added another complexity. I could try to distract myself but I kept being drawn into the breaking of my routine and pattern on that pivotal day.
Before ’28, I would have gotten onto the Internet or a cloud community where I could learn from others and participate in a global knowledge-base. With the Internet and all the immersive cloud communities gone, we had entered an information dark-age across the globe. Connectivity and data centres went down progressively until it ceased to function in ’29. The global information network, which we had learned to rely upon for everything, left us like a parent leaving an over-coddled child. We had to fend for ourselves all of a sudden. There was no font of all knowledge to ask questions, appreciate and share our irrelevant, self-indulgent ideas and selfies. The parent who had loved our finger-paintings and indulged our every whim was dead. We had relied on this parent, this entity of the Internet, with such conviction that physical records and books had become unwanted antiques. But we were abandoned and let down. The world grieved as the information died without as much as a funeral. Even the zombies I had dispatched got that; an end and some ceremony to it. The information age just faded away in 12 months. I refocused on the bonfire which was both a pleasing beacon and a tool of intense, cleansing flame. In an ancient message, the fire meant “I am here, I am powerful and I can survive, no matter what and like all those who came before me”, I thought. "But what would I have to survive through?" The future was less certain than being starved and alone in the bush just 12 hours before.
I watched the mess that was Blackbeard shrivel in the heat. What was left of his face peeled back, revealing teeth of a Hollywood smile. "Those teeth are too white," I bit my lip and shook my head as I found myself trying to work out the events of the day and my future once more. Zombies that were clean, spoke, thought and organised were in breach of so many of the defining features of what made them a zombie. I wasn’t religious but had read the bible on many a cold and lonesome night during winter. People behave
and act as they are supposed to according to some guide or rules; a rulebook or bible of sorts. Be it in the image of their creator, if you believe, and if you do not, a church that exerts control and taxes on people’s lives through consistent messaging and inconsistent behaviour.
"God, gods, leaders, movie-stars, kings, queens-" Then it came to me: there was a controller. Zombies are normally about viral-self sustainment, but this was about personal preservation. If you looked at what had transpired, spreading the virus was not on their minds, nor was feasting on flesh. The chits had to have something to do with that. Something had made it about preservation and they were being managed and rewarded by what mattered to them.
As the fire did its work, I ran inside, excited. I had it. "A controller!"
I left one fire to go to another. While I had a spark of thought I didn’t have electricity. So the firelight by the hearth was my light and company that evening. I sat in my cane chair and began to write. Old-school pen and paper were used to make notes on what had happened. If I was to be ended I could only hope that, while big Internet had failed, the raw words and meanings in a journal may help others like me. I had a new project and, like a spark in me, a new fire was lit. Something amazing was happening and I didn’t even know what it was just yet. Isolated, up there in the mountains, I knew there was a whole world out there and change had come to me. I had survived but the world out there called to me to find out more. Going to all my windows, I manually cranked all of the formerly electric shutters that were like blast-doors or the doors to modern mechanic’s garage. I locked and bolted my doors. My home, my fortress, was just so perfect in many ways. The nightly lock-up was a safe, familiar routine which helped me prepare for sleep, on a normal night that is. I sat down again, picking up where I left off.
