Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 6): June

by Dave Rowlands

In time we came to the Dingo Fence, or what remained of it. Once, it had been designed to keep dingoes on the other side, now it lay in a trampled, wrecked heap. Scout told us that when she had first seen the fence like this, she had assumed that the Dead had knocked it over, maybe in vast numbers coming down from up north. That night she saw her first Dingo. After that, she said, she reconsidered her opinion.

  noon

  A few short kilometres north of the fence, we found a Meat-beast beside the road and took the opportunity to carve off a few fresh steaks for our lunch. Disciple walked around the mutant cow, swinging his walking stick from side to side complaining that we were wasting time. Apocalypse Girl told him to shut his mouth, she wasnotgoing to live on jerky alone for the rest of this trip. If we could have fresh meat, we were going to make the most of it. If Disciple didn't like that, then he could, she said, quite frankly go and fuck a goat, provided he could find one un-mutated.

  Further on down the road, however, we found a large mob of Dead, swarming around what looked like a Greyhound bus. We began to drive past, but Apocalypse Girl told us that if the Dead were that enthusiastic about it, then there must be someone alive inside the bus. Scout swore and pulled over to the side of the road, the Dead still ignoring us. Disciple began to object, but the look in Apocalypse Girl's eyes made his mouth shut with a snap. The first Dead skull my sword clove through easily, Apocalypse Girl shattering the skull of the one next to it with her heavy skillet. Sister opened fire on the Dead from the other end of the bus, Sonny at her side, drawing them to her once they recognised the sound as potentially coming from a food source that was easier to get at than whoever was inside the bus.

  The Dead for the most part began to swarm towards Sonny and Sister, turning their backs towards

  Apocalypse Girl and I for the most part. Disciple, by now, had joined the fray, removing a slender sword from his walking stick and expertly thrusting it through the heads of nearby Dead. I had forgotten that he had won an award for fencing in his younger days.

  Scout, meanwhile, was looking for some way of getting the people on board the Greyhound to open up. They clearly didn't want to with all the Dead out here, and I could see the red of fresh blood painting several of the interior windows. I told Scout to be careful, there could well be Dead or at least someone infected inside. Once the Dead outside were taken care of, Apocalypse Girl hammered on the Greyhound's door while I shouted out that the Dead had been put down. A girl of perhaps ten, maybe as old as twelve opened the door from the inside. She was completely covered in blood and gore, holding a machete nearly as big as she herself was in both hands. The corpses of several freshly turned Dead still bled from their destroyed skulls.

  “Are you bit?” The girl asked, clearly ready to cleave through our skulls as she had those inside. Apocalypse Girl told her that we were all safe, asking her if any of that blood on her was her own. “Nope. I'm too quick for anyone, Living or Dead.”

  I asked her what had happened. “We were running away from this Dragon and it was chasing us, then it stopped but we ran straight into the Dead, then I saw this bus and we ran into it. But by theneveryoneI was with had been bit, but not me, so I had to take care of it, just like Daddy did with Mum when this all started.” She nodded for emphasis. “Then the dogs came out at night, the big nasty ones. I hoped they'd eat the Dead but they just stayed away from them. Then the dogs went away and you came.” She still held her machete at the ready.

  evening

  “We can't take her with us, though,” Disciple was saying. “She'll just cause trouble, besides there's no fucking room for the kid!”

  “We can't just leave her!” That was Apocalypse Girl. “What if someone likeyoucomes along?” Disciple at least had the decency to look ashamed. “What if she starves? Or more Dead come past?”

  “She can take care of herself, clearly,” Disciple countered. “But she can't come with us, that's final!” I pointed out that he wasn't calling the shots any more. We talked things over as a group. Scout suggested that she take her back to the Nest, Sonny arguing with her that we shouldn't waste any time, and besides she'd be as safe as all of us once we reach the Alice Facility.

  “If she can take care of herself that well, then she can help us, can't she?” Apocalypse Girl pointed out. I said that there was no way we were leaving a kid alone anywhere. We were taking her along to the Alice Facility at the very least. Disciple threw up his one remaining hand in anger and sat quietly, glaring at the new arrival, sleeping peacefully in the Land Rover's front seat. We had this discussion while searching through the dead Dead, both those inside and outside of the Greyhound. In the wallet of one of the dead Dead men in the bus was a picture of the girl, taken a couple of years ago.

  June 5thYear 1 A.Z.

  morning

  Machete was the first among us to awaken. She gently shook me awake, telling me that she needed the toilet. I opened the door of the Land Rover, she jumped out lightly, looked around everywhere for any Dead, including under our transport, then she squatted and went right there on the road. “Daddy always told me to stay close to him, even if I need to go. Being embarrassed is better than being Dead, he always said.” Telling her that he was spot on, I realised that I myself needed to urinate.

  I scouted around a little, Machete following silently behind me, stepping precisely in the footprints that I left in the grey snow. I asked her what she was doing. “Daddy told me that it wouldn't look like he's got a kid with him if I walked in his footprints to anybody that might be following him.” She told me. I asked her if they had been followed by many people. “Yeah, further north there are people that tried toeatus! Not Dead ones, but Living! Daddy killed a couple of them, but they tried to hunt us for a while. We didn't trust anyone we met on the road after that for alongtime.”

  By the time we returned to the Land Rover, everyone else was getting themselves ready to continue onwards, so we contented ourselves with Chef's Meat-beast jerky for breakfast while we drove.

  noon

  The roads were remarkably clear, all things considered. There were a few pileups that we had to carefully navigate around, a couple of which were large enough to warrant stopping to search for supplies, or would have had Machete not already told us that her group had come through there and already found it ransacked. There was a huge stretch of open, empty road that we were able to cruise down at a fairly rapid pace, though with the snow and the darkness Scout kept having to slow down to regain control from time to time. Apocalypse Girl was itching to take the wheel from her, as was Sister, but Scout insisted that nobody drive her Land Rover buther.

  We passed through a couple of towns on during the afternoon, deciding to keep on going when Machete told us that one was populated entirely by the Dead, the other by absolutely nobody at all. Disciple seemed almost as if he were sulking, though he asked Machete exactly where she had encountered the Living cannibals. She said she wasn't entirely sure but it had been a very long way from here. It had been a good couple of months since they had encountered the group that she had slaughtered on the Greyhound and over a month before that, she told us, that they had encountered the cannibals.

  evening

  We were sitting around our fire, outside of the Land Rover, cooking up our Meat-beast steaks for our dinner when it attacked. First came the deafening shriek-howl, announcing the presence of the Dingo, then it leaped into the firelight. The moment it landed my sword came out, as did Disciple's own slender blade. Apocalypse Girl fell back, with Sister, to find some heavier fire-power, and Sonny, who was closest, whacked the fucking thing as hard as he possibly could with his cricket bat, stunning the Dingo long enough for my sword to cut into its side.

  It retaliated by lashing out with its tail, slicing my arm open. I fell, dropping my katana as Sister and Apocalypse Girl opened up with assault rifles, the bullets tearing through the Dingo's flesh. It cowered under the onslaught, then pounced on Machete as soon as the pair stopped to reload.

  It twitched o
nce, then shuddered mightily. Machete pulled her blade out from between the fearsome jaws of the beast, hacking its head off with one devastating swing of her heavy blade, making sure the Dingo was really dead. “We're going to have to move now, more dogs are going to be coming in a minute.” She told us, casually.

  Sister examined my arm as Apocalypse Girl picked up my sword. “I need to sew this up before we go. If I have to do it on the road I'll fuck something up, I know it.” Machete stood beside Apocalypse Girl, the pair of them holding their blades at the ready on either side of the fire. Machete told Sonny and Disciple to drag the dead Dingo's carcass onto the fire. Sometimes, she said, burning Dingo scares the others away, sometimes not. Scout jumped up into the Land Rover, turning the ignition and gunning the engine before pulling out her shotgun and joining in the defence.

  A piercing shriek-howl came from the darkness, greeted by another. A third shriek-howl sounded from another direction, then a fourth from nowhere. I could clearly see several pairs of eyes staring at me from the other side of the blazing Dingo corpse.

  Apocalypse Girl swung at nothing, it seemed, and a Dingo tail, bony barbs protruding from the stretched flesh, fell into the fire, severed from its body. Machete stepped to the side and sliced with her blade, cutting deep into the flank of another Dingo that appeared where she had been a moment before.

  A third walked in on hind legs, attacking Disciple with its fore-claws as he defended with his blade. Before long the bipedal Dingo was missing a limb and let out a deafening shriek of pain as it dropped down and loped away into the darkness on three legs.

  The tailless Dingo stood up on its hind legs to claw at Apocalypse Girl, another leaping in from the darkness to meet death at the hands of Scout and her shotgun, as she unloaded into the beast's open jaws, tearing the creature's head to shreds. Machete poked her blade into the eye of her attacker, while Sonny clobbered it with his cricket bat, narrowly avoiding the flailing tail as I had not. Before long it fell dead, and Apocalypse Girl sliced out with my sword, up into the throat of her attacker. It, too, tried to flee into the darkness, but fell dead a bare couple of metres away. Sister finished up with my stitches as several more shriek-howls sounded, some terrifyingly close.

  June 6thYear 1 A.Z.

  morning

  For the first time in what feels like fucking forever, today, we saw theSUN! It was shortly after dawn, the clouds parted and the seven of us were blinded momentarily, it was so damn bright. It was there only briefly, but the sight of it filled us all with so much joy and life that even Disciple was genuinely smiling.

  We had to drive through much of the night, trying to stay ahead of the Dingoes, which slunk away near dawn. I was unconscious through much of it, but aware of everything once the sun began its climb behind the clouds. When it peeked through Scout pulled over so we could all get a good look.

  “Do you think this means the winter will end soon?” Sister asked of nobody in particular. I shuddered, remembering what Fluffy had told us. Someone was responsible for the mutations we were seeing, someone else was wanting to turn Earth into a colony world for their people. And Fluffy and his fellowSchrandfelths were cleaning the planet up. Was this their work? And, if it was their doing, was it good for us?

  noon

  We were able to make good progress, I'd say we are no more than a day or two out from Alice Springs itself. The Cold was not seeming quite so intense as it had been, though the snow and ice covering the ground was in no danger of thawing any time soon. However, we were running low on petrol. If we can't manage to find some soon, we will have to continue on foot, which means we're fucked. We're unlikely to survive roaming packs of Dingoes without a vehicle or some shelter.

  After a while, we found a small town. I asked Machete about it, she seemed to not remember it at all. But then, she told me, they did have a couple of cars at one point. We would have passed them during our flight from the Dingoes in the night. Consequently, there were a few towns that they missed.

  Scout drove along the main road until she found a truck stop, pulling into the petrol bowser bay. We all piled out when, out of nowhere, a gunshot rang out, followed by a deep voice telling us that we had gone far enough, we should get back in our Land Rover and fuck off out of here.

  I called out that we meant no harm, that we needed to fuel up and then we were happy to move on, but without access to petrol he'd have to shoot us all. “Fuck it all...” I heard him curse. “Right, come out, then, slowly. Keep your hands where I can see them.” We all did so, then we were told to turn around. Doing so, we saw an elderly gentleman holding a revolver that might well have been older than he was. He was dressed in an equally old army uniform.

  Not one to be cowed by someone simply pointing a gun in her general direction, Machete asked him why he was wearing that silly uniform. “Listen here, young lady, I wore this uniform when I went to war against the Nazis and the Japs. These Dead buggers, we're at war with them, aren't we? The Living, I mean. So I figured, if I have to go to war again, I'd do it in this.”

  evening

  Digger is a spry old bastard, I'll give him that much. The old man had single-handedly taken out all the Dead in the town and was one of five survivors that were still Living here. Disciple wanted us to leave Machete with him, Sonny and Sister as well. Digger, on the other hand, and his Mob wanted only to be left alone. I told them about Coober's Nest, but despite wanting to see the place to marvel at its construction, Digger's Mob was insistent on staying put.

  Even with the Alice Facility on the cards, Digger and his people wanted to stay where they were. They had been born there, raised families there, killed said families there, and wanted to die there. They had that right, certainly. Digger, who claimed to be ninety-seven years old and still in possession of all his original teeth, wanted no more than to protect what was his. That was his part in the war, as he saw it.

  He was, however, able to point the way to an old military base that he had known about nearby. He had heard talk about it being connected to a larger network by some kind of fancy underground train system, but that had been back in the sixties. If it still existed, by now it would no doubt be abandoned.

  They also invited us to stay with them overnight, which we did so gladly, especially knowing that they had hot water and were more than willing to share some with us. Machete especially needed a good old scrubbing. Under the grime, she was a pretty blonde girl, wearing the same haunted expression that everyone else had these days. Looking into her eyes, she looked a good deal older than the twelve years she claimed. Having to kill everyone you've ever loved will do that, though.

  June 7thYear 1 A.Z.

  morning

  Digger, true to his word, showed us on a map exactly where the old military base was, and after a mighty breakfast we were away. Following the directions we had been given, we drove for a good couple of hours, eventually coming across a dirt road that we might have missed had we not been keeping our eyes peeled for it.

  The going was bumpy and irritating and by the end of it we were all feeling motion sickness to a greater or lesser degree. When the dirt gave way to bitumen it was very nearly worse. Potholes abounded in a road that had not been maintained in fifty years or more. To make matters worse, it had begun to rain as well. Oddly, however, it seemed a far more natural rain than those we had seen in previous months. It was still a torrential downpour that soaked absolutely everything and everyone, but there was no greyish sludge left behind, save where the snow had been piled high against walls.

  The other main difference this downpour had to distinguish it from the previous rainfall we had experienced was that it was over in a little over half an hour, leaving the base washed clean for our inspection. In the centre of the yard, near what looked to be the most disused flagpole in the world, grew a Meat-beast. Hopefully that would deter any Dead that might stumble upon this place, though it was almost so out of the way that the chances of any Dead finding it were remote indeed.

  “T
his place feels familiar, somehow,” Apocalypse Girl told me as we hopped out of the Land Rover. I nodded, feeling the same way. Then it struck me. I told her that the buildings had been set up in precisely the same way as those topside at The Think Tank. That had been an older facility, re-purposed for the twenty-first century shortly before the world went to hell.

  We began to explore buildings, though all were empty. The furthest from where we had parked, next to the Meat-beast, was the one that would have had the elevator down into the facility, if this had been The Think Tank. As Sonny opened the doors, however, a blast of flame burst out, enveloping the poor kid. He screamed and ran away, Machete tripping him up and rolling him over in order to put him out.

  There was very little real damage done, though his hair was gone. All of it. His face looked sunburnt. Blinking, his eyelashes fell to ashes. Scout, having seen the burst of fire, ran over, saying “See? Itoldyou I saw a Dragon!” The seven of us converged around the doors, I motioned for the rest of them to move back as I peeked inside.

  Small fires lit up the interior of the building well enough for me to see that it was empty of all equipment, all that lay within were the elevator doors on the far side of the room and the enormous, mutated goanna that, as soon as I noticed it, burped fire out at me. I dove to the side lest I meet Sonny's red-faced, bald-headed, lash-less eyed fate.

  The Dragon burst through the doors, obliterating them entirely with its impressive bulk. I had heard of a goanna growing to the size of a man, even slightly larger, but this one was easily four times my own mass.

  Apocalypse Girl pulled me to the side as it began to belch once again, spraying the area that I had stood a moment earlier with flame. Scout brought up her shotgun and fired, the pellets bouncing off the gargantuan goanna's hide. “Fuck!” She swore, throwing the gun at the Dragon, trying to draw its attention away from me. Sister had brought her assault rifle to bear as the Dragon chased after Scout. Several rounds penetrated the thick hide, but the beast lashed out with its mighty tail, knocking the gun from her hands, sending it flying. It rushed after Scout once again and Machete ran in, underneath the Dragon's low-hanging distended belly, opening a large gash with a two-handed blow of the young girl's machete. The Dragon twisted in pain, the belch of fire it had prepared to roast Scout going way over her head.