by JE Gurley
“I wish they would all die.”
Nicole’s words escaped her close-set lips like bullets. If given physical form, they would have swept like a scythe through the horde of zombies. Alex stepped behind her and gently massaged her shoulders. Her muscles were tense and hard beneath his hands.
Val Marino looked on in quiet disgust. He had seen Melbourne close up. He wasn’t looking forward to entering another dead city. He wrinkled his nose. “It smells like Melbourne. I wonder if the stench of death will ever leave the cities.”
“Eventually,” Alex replied, “but probably not in our lifetimes.”
“Wonderful,” Marino said. “If there are survivors, how do we contact them without drawing out the zombies?”
Ivers had accompanied them. He held out a battery-operated loudspeaker. “With this. We announce a site for them to reach. When they get there, we bring in trucks.” He looked at the clogged roads and frowned. “Somehow.”
“Why not just detonate a device at the edge of the city?” Marino asked. “Work our way in afterwards. I don’t look forward to making myself zombie bait to deliver a message to people who may be dead already.”
“We have a limited supply of EMPs. Besides, any living humans too close to the source might die. We have to limit collateral damage.”
“Collateral damage,” Marino hissed. “Hell, man, we’re all collateral damage.”
“Why not sneak in with tape recorders attached to loudspeakers? Place them at various points to deliver our message.”
Everyone looked surprised at Nicole’s suggestion. Alex kissed the back of her head.
“Wonderful idea! We can go in at night and use small solar cells instead of batteries. When the sun charges them, the recorder switches on.”
Ivers scratched his head but could find no fault with Nicole’s idea. “We need to find an electronics store.”
“Val and I can do that,” Alex said. “You two decide where to place the recorders. We’ll be back before dark.” He turned to Marino. “You in?”
Marino shrugged. “As you people say, ‘in for penny, in for a pound’.”
“That’s the Brits who say that, but the idea is the same. I saw a shopping center a few kilometers away. We’ll try there first.”
It didn’t take them long to discover that Port Augusta had suffered a different fate than other cities. Alex pointed to a series of holes in a building with dismembered corpses scattered along the street near the wall, just as he had seen on the highway.
“These are bullet holes, large caliber by the size, and these are fresh zombie corpses.”
Val kicked at one body. “Who did it?”
Alex picked up a spent shell casing, one of hundreds lying on the street, and examined it. “7.62 mm. It looks like they used a mini gun from a helicopter, maybe one of the ones you said flew over Melbourne.”
“Why?”
“Some insane attempt to take back the city, I suppose.” He looked again at the corpses. “Though they did a pretty thorough job on this lot.”
Marino picked up a spent shell casing and tossed it away. “They’re wasting their time and good ammo.” He shielded his eyes with his hand and searched the sky. “Maybe we should signal them some way. If they could see us in this smoke.”
“Jeffries has someone manning the radio four times a day now in case the ionization recedes. Perhaps they can make contact.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“We can try the short wave set in my van.”
Marino jerked his head toward Alex, smiling. “Yeah, right.”
When they neared the shopping center, Marino was surprised to see a sign for Radio Shack and Baskin Robbins among the other signs. “Looks like home,” he said.
They saw only a few zombies and carefully avoided them. Alex tried the door of the Radio Shack. “Locked.” He pulled out his lock picking tools and had the door open in minutes.
Marino looked at him and smiled. “You could have had a great career as a burglar.”
“A little something I picked up in the army. It comes in handy.”
Inside, they filled a cart with tape recorders, batteries, small solar panels, wiring, a battery-operated soldering gun and loudspeakers. On a whim, Marino grabbed an I-Pod from a shelf. To Alex’s puzzled stare, he said, “You’re little silver surprise fried my old I-pod. I like my tunes.”
By the time they had stuffed their backpacks with their pilfered items, the bags were heavy and awkward. Marino settled his onto his shoulders and picked up his rifle. “Too bad we can’t use the cart.”
Alex redistributed the weight in his backpack. “I wouldn’t want to try to outrun zombies pushing a shopping cart like some homeless person. It’s only a couple of kilometers.”
“Kilometers, miles – It’s still a long way humping this stuff.”
“Quit bitching and get a move on. You could’ve stayed in Antarctica.”
“No thank you! I’ll play pack mule.”
The journey back to where they had left Nicole and Ivers was tiring, even though Alex refused to show just how exhausted he was by ignoring Marino’s repeated requests for a rest break. They trudged the distance in silence, except for the occasional groan from Marino. Alex thought it odd that they saw few zombies until they reached the highway at the edge of town. That made him wary.
“You would think the sound of gunfire would draw zombies,” he said to Marino. “And why so few zombies in a town of thousands?” He pointed out the hundreds of cars. “They plainly didn’t get far in their vehicles. It’s the Big Bingle.”
“Big Bingle?” Marino asked mystified.
“You would call it a pile up.”
Marino nodded. “Oh, I see.” He stretched to relieve the pain in his back. “My grandfather always said, ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’. Let’s just hope they don’t find us tonight.”
“Still, it’s strange.”
“I noticed zombies in Melbourne headed into the surrounding countryside. Maybe their food supply is running low and they’re after wild game. It seems pretty scarce.”
Alex considered this. If Marino was right, it presented problems to their plan. “That will make it more difficult to eradicate them.”
“As I see it, if there are fewer zombies in the cities, then that gives survivors a better chance. Concentrating on the cities first, provided there are enough people left to do the job; it will still take years to clean the planet. Even then, there will always be the possibility of stray zombies. They’ll become the new boogey man to warn children against, the new monster under the bed.”
“I guess you’re right. We’ll just have to do what we can.”
Alex was surprised to a see a third person with Ivers and Nicole. They sat casually on the ground, but he took his rifle off his shoulder, and carried it in one hand with the safety off as a precaution. Strangers made him nervous. As they got closer, Marino called out.
“Anson! You made it.”
Alex relaxed as he recognized Marino’s burly mate. Nicole and Ivers stood, but Anson remained seating. He soon saw why.
“You’ve been shot,” Marino said as he knelt in front of his friend, examining the wound.
The front of Anson’s shirt was soaked in blood. His face was ashen and he was in obvious pain. When Marino pulled back the shirt, Anson winced. The bullet had struck him halfway between his right side and his belly button a few inches above his waist. Alex, who had seen such wounds in Afghanistan, suspected the bullet had nicked the appendix or large intestine, flooding the abdominal cavity with bacteria. Even with a functioning hospital and a good surgical team, his survival was doubtful.
“Yeah, the bloody bastard saw me first.” He smiled, but Alex noted it held no warmth. “I put two rounds in his legs, and left him for the zombies to chew on, after I told him why I had tracked him down. He begged me to kill him, but that would have been too quick, too merciful. I needed to hear his screams.” He gritted his teeth as a wave of pain shot thr
ough him. “He may have the last laugh though.”
“How long ago?” Alex asked.
“Last night. I lay up for a while, and then I heard helicopters in this direction during the night. Lots of gunfire. I decided to check it out. Took a spill with the bike. Managed to walk the rest of the way. Didn’t think to find you here, cobber,” he said to Marino.
“We were going to look for you,” Marino said.
“Thought I’d save you the trouble. Now, help me up.”
Between Alex and Marino, they managed to get Anson to his feet. He swayed unsteadily a few times, but remained upright, mainly by sheer will power. He tried to hide his pain, but the sheen of perspiration across his forehead gave him away.
“Whoa, it seems I’ve got my wobbly boots on,” he said.
“We have to get you back to Woomera and get that bullet out,” Marino said.
Anson barked out a laugh. “Don’t yabber on, Val. You and I both know that I’m dead meat. I’ve had a good run. I got us here didn’t I?”
Marino fought back a tear. “Yeah, you did buddy. You saved my life back in Antarctica.”
Anson scrunched up his face as if trying to remember. “Antarctica? Oh, yeah. Save the tears. I ain’t dead yet. Besides, you promised you would teach me how to talk like a Yank.” He turned to Alex. “Now, what are you and the spiffy Shelia up to?” He smiled at Nicole who returned his smile.
“We’re here to eliminate the zombies with our EMP generators, like the one I used yesterday,” Alex replied.
Anson nodded. “Good enough. I won’t be much help but I can still shoot.”
“Val’s right. We’ve got medical equipment back at Woomera…”
Anson stopped him. “Forget it.” He leaned closer to Alex and whispered, “I keep forgetting things. I can’t remember my sister’s name. I’m kind of hazy on what happened in Antarctica. I think I’m going zombie. Don’t let it happen. Val’s too sentimental. He’ll hesitate. You won’t. I can see it in your eyes.”
Alex understood Anson’s concern. The EM pulse from their first encounter would have nullified all the nanites inside him at that time, but Anson’s weakened condition from his wound, combined with taking in new nanites with each breath, had probably hastened the conversion process. He tried to offer Anson some degree of comfort. “Detonating the EMP device will deactivate the nanites inside your body again.”
Anson smiled. “Thanks, but I think they’re all that’s keeping me alive.”
“What are you two whispering about?” Marino asked. His face showed concern.
Anson looked at Marino. “Just trying to get the Shelia’s phone number.” He smiled at Nicole and returned his attention to Alex until Alex nodded.
Ivers cleared his throat. “Ahem. We need to get started if we want to evacuate the city before we detonate our devices.”
“I would wait if I were you.”
Ivers scowled at Anson’s interruption. “We can’t wait.”
Anson shrugged. “Just saying. It looks like the people in these helicopters are doing a bit of target practice on zombies, probably just for a bit of sport. I don’t think they would be able to tell a throng of live evacuees from a group of walking dead.”
Ivers scratched his head. “What do you suggest?”
“Wait for the choppers to return and signal them.”
Ivers began a sharp retort, but stopped as he considered Anson’s suggestion.
“Elliot’s right,” Marino said. “They must represent some kind of authority. We need to contact them. They might ignore a fire, but if we signal with flashlights, they’ll know we’re human.”
Alex saw the wisdom in Anson’s suggestion, but felt strangely uneasy about contacting the men in the helicopters. He remembered the two men in Coober Pedy he had shot and the man Anson had killed. Not every survivor would be a good person. The plague did not work that way. A day or two’s delay in rounding up the few survivors wouldn’t matter to the survivors. They had managed to survive this long. The EMP devices worked. They knew this. Building more would only take a few extra helping hands. They could retake the planet; build it better than it was. More people would die in the meantime, but nothing they could do would prevent that. They had to concentrate on numbers. The people in the country would have to come last but they also had the best chance of surviving until help came.
Alex looked at the small group of people gathered around him and thought of Jeffries and the others back at Woomera. His circle of acquaintances had slowly been widening since the Demise. Fate had stepped in when he had run into Nicole, literally. Without her, he would have surely slowly gone mad or stayed in Coober Pedy until he too eventually changed into a zombie. Each additional person he encountered broadened his sense of responsibility, even though he knew that he wasn’t accountable for them. He had at least felt in charge of his and Nicole’s future. Now, even that could change.
He knew the military; how they worked. If the Woomera group joined with whatever military authority remained functional, which he knew they would have to do eventually, could he give up the small measure of control over his life he still had? He looked at Nicole. She was staring at him as if she could understand his dilemma. Her loving smile eased his mind. He felt her warmth wash over him. She trusted him, believed in him. Whatever the future held for them, the two of them would meet it together.
He reached into his pocket and lightly caressed his lucky opal with his fingers. Once, it had represented all he stood for, his reason to exist. Now, it was just another shiny pebble. He took it out of his pocket and looked at it. For a brief moment, he saw Jiselle’s face in its smooth, cool surface; then the image faded. Had she been smiling at him? Had she forgiven him? He glanced at Nicole again. Her face wore a quizzical expression as he tossed the opal away and watched it roll down the road embankment. He no longer needed it. His real, breathing good luck charm stood just a few meters away.
None of the others, embroiled in a discussion with their plan for contacting the military, paid any attention to him. He smiled at them. Eventually, they would remember the short wave set in his van. He walked over to Nicole and took her hand. For that brief moment, he and Nicole were alone, and the future looked suddenly brighter.
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