Desolation (Book 1): Aftermath

by Butler, Simon L.

  Desolation

  Book 1 of the Aftermath Series

  By Simon Butler

  Content

  Prologue - (A New Beginning)

  Chapter 1 - (Fuck Humanity)

  Chapter 2 - (Baggage)

  Chapter 3 – (Lake Eyre)

  Chapter 4 – (Don’t Look Back)

  Chapter 5 – (The little things)

  Chapter 6 – (Outlaws)

  Chapter 7 – (Rest and Revitalise)

  Chapter 8 – (Homeward bound)

  Chapter 9 – (Old wounds)

  Chapter 10 – (Family Reunion)

  Chapter 11 (Nowhere to hide)

  Chapter 12 – (Close Call)

  Chapter 13 – (Dangerous hope)

  Chapter 14 (Loyalty)

  Prologue - (A New Beginning)

  Twenty-Six years ago, was when the world changed forever. The world humanity had shaped for themselves came to an end. The death of the Old-world plunged what was left of humanity into a dark age irrevocably changing what it means to be human forever. Some people out there still cling to hope and hold onto something resembling an old-world sentiment, but that hope it seemed to me was little more than a thinly veiled attempt to prevent the inevitable.

  Despite this, there is a class of scholars emerging from the ashes to keep a record of the world we have been left with. And, as someone who has been an avid reader for many years, I have decided to start keeping a record of events in the hope that maybe I can, in some way change, the way people think about the world and about each other.

  My own story began many years ago in a south-eastern corner of Australia near the coast. A region long since dominated by enormous herds of zombies, as with most of the coastal regions of this land. This, as far as I can tell, is because there remains a plentiful supply food in the form of rats, rabbits, and birds as well as plentiful supplies of water. It is in those surroundings that I spent most of my childhood, I was probably one of the first humans born after the outbreak to survive to John and Amy McAlister – a young couple that raised me until about the age of six. But that is a story for another time. This text is about my life and the world as it is now.

  I admit that despite my many years in and around New Alice, I still found the company of humans very difficult at times. I simply did not understand them well, people are complicated, and trust, especially now, is hard-earned. New Alice is as far as I know the largest remaining settlement of humans, at least in this part of the world, with just under one thousand people calling this place home. The settlement had been built on top of the ruins of Alice Springs around five years after the outbreak, a little over twenty years ago, when it was discovered that very few zombies had survived the harsh desert conditions of the central regions.

  Who am I to keep a record such as this? Why should anyone listen to my words? The truth is that I am nothing special in this world other than the fact that I am alive, and that is quite enough these days. The fact that even after all these years, the zombies still outnumbered us many-many times over is testament to that. They had found ways to survive in the temperate regions of the land, despite the lack of their most preferred food source, humans.

  I do not recall my exact birthday, I am sure my mother and father celebrated it, they were quite old-world in that regard, but the precise date remains beyond my recollection. My parents had died many years earlier, and I had somehow managed to survive up to this point. From what I remember of my mother, it was probably around October or November in the first year of the ‘Outbreak’ that I was born, but I can't say for sure. That is what people are calling it now all these years on. Day zero as it were of the world as we know it now.

  We still do not know exactly what happened that caused most of the world to die. It wasn’t a single event, though from what I have heard, it happened very fast, taking just a few weeks for the ‘Outbreak’ to spread all over the world. The flying machines of the old world made sure of that. Apparently, they could travel around the whole world in just a few hours. If that’s true, then it made sense that whatever caused the outbreak might move just as fast around the whole world. It was a disease that infects humans and other animals like monkeys and pigs, but unlike those other animals that simply died from the illness, we humans live on in a sense, transformed into something that can best be described as a zombie. From what I can tell, they resemble a primitive, savage state and that they are very difficult to kill if one does not know how it is done. The term zombie has been thrown around many times; indeed, I have done and often do so myself, but from what I have read in old-world fiction, these are something else. These creatures are not dead as many believed. They need to feed and drink as any other animal. They herd and form groups that roam the coastal regions in the thousands, and it is why the vast majority of what is left of humanity has rebuilt itself in the interior of the continent, beyond vast deserts, in various key locations.

  Humanity has, over time, learned to avoid the zombies as much as possible. That’s why the largest enclaves of human settlement are based mostly in the deep desert or in regions with many natural barriers which were hazardous to zombies. One thing we learnt about them was that they need water to survive almost as much as us humans, and a few days lost in the desert would mummify them to the point that even their infected brains could not keep them going. As a result, the coastal areas were mostly uninhabited by humans, with only a few small, mostly nomadic groups still clinging on and the feral humans of the inner cities. They were something different again from normal humans, but they were not zombies either.

  I hated the desert. The almost constant heat and dry weather along with the cavalier attitude towards the life of most survivors in those settlements didn’t sit well with me. Nevertheless, they were good for trade, especially when it came to finding weapons and tools that were at least usable, though their attitude towards outsiders left a lot to be desired. Even after many years in New Alice, I was still regarded in that manner.

  It was not uncommon for slavers to pursue lone traders and caravans just out of New Alice, especially to the south and east. But the far north where food and water became scarcer was a very different story, they were barely any different to the zombies up there. Consuming human flesh as readily and without the excuse of having contracted a mind-altering disease. I had seen of traders from the far north, coming south to buy ‘livestock’ for cheap many times. Slaves that for whatever reason, could not be sold for their labour or for sex were often sold on to the northern tribes who would use them for those things of course, and if they were no good for that, they would turn them into food. I had even heard of one case where they spent a little extra acquiring ‘fine specimens’ for breeding, though I had not seen the results of any kind of successful breeding programme. If I were to guess, I would say that it had to do with the lack of nutrition, which kept their female slaves from carrying children to term, though I was not about to pass on that knowledge. Their society was already brutal enough. New Alice was bad enough at times, especially if one were unfortunate enough to find themselves a slave; the rules and laws were often contradictory depending on who was enforcing them, even in New Alice. As a result, I prefer the company of zombies and had decided after several years in this cesspool to head back to the coast; zombies were often better company and much easier to deal with most of the time.

  One advantage of New Alice, though, was that Old-world luxuries were becoming more common, it was nice to have a clean room with a bed. But the temperature barely cooled down even after sunset, it was always hot here. I suppose sleep would be hard to find on this night despite having a meeting scheduled with a trader at around 6:30 a.m. As sleep was not forthcoming, I decided it was a good
time to go and get a drink. I made my way from my room and down a candlelit corridor to a flight of stairs leading into the front bar of the establishment I was staying at. I took a seat at the bar and ordering a glass of whiskey from the top shelf with half a dozen .44 rounds as payment. “Irish Mist, if you have it?” I said, my voice emotionless as my mind wandered to my next move. Ammunition was currency these days, with different calibres and sizes valued similarly throughout the settlements.

  “Not today, Jack; But I got my hands on an old bottle of Glenfiddich that you might like though – otherwise, its house whiskey tonight,” the barman explained.

  “I dread the day the world runs out of good whiskey!” I joked, getting a chuckle from the barman.

  “Yeah, I’m not sure we will ever be able to make good whiskey again, not this far from the coast!” He explained, “The corn we get is from the salt lakes to the south-east, and there isn’t much taste in it.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, it seems like the whole world is going the same way! Every year, it smells more like shit and tastes even worse.”

  My meeting the next morning was with a man named Rick, a trader I had dealt with many times. I hesitate to call him a friend even though I had known him for several years, but he was fair in his trades, and that was the important part for me, even if I found him repulsive at times. He was nevertheless an honest trader, and generally fair with his prices – even if I was not at all interested in his biggest trade commodity, slaves. He often had too many and would even try to discount them before selling them on to the northern settlements. Although I suspected his motives were more about recouping greater profits than out of goodwill for the slave. Honesty was about the best one could hope for these days, though in the mountains of books I had read had left me with a kind of Old-world sensibility when it came to slavery and morality.

  From our brief conversation earlier in the afternoon, he apparently had a plentiful supply of 30-06 ammunition, some preserved food of various kinds, and bottles of distilled water. The ammunition was my main goal and enough water to get me at least a few days’ walk from New Alice and maybe a new hunting knife. I liked the look of some of his blades, many of them seemed recently forged, as indeed he claimed they were. “High-quality steel from one of the northern tribes!” he declared. The implication that Rick probably had traded slaves for them did not sit well with me, but I had learned long ago to keep quiet in these parts – I was no saint myself after all. New-world steel rarely passed for anything resembling quality, but these looked good.

  My mind focused on the task at hand, and I had no interest in socialising around here. I swallowed the glass of whiskey the barman had poured and ordered another, this time sipping the glass more slowly savouring the taste. There were several men at a corner table playing a game of cards by candlelight, each of them with a glass of clear alcohol of some kind – likely some sort of moonshine. The tall bald man in the middle caught my attention, he had tattoos, which were extremely rare these days and made me think of a character from one of the books I had recently read. His demeanour was of a man that was not to be messed with, but his appearance was so similar to the character in my mind that I chuckled to myself. The group of them were probably in their late teens or early twenty’s, it was hard to tell these days – the desert was cruel like that and tended to age people far beyond their years. I did not realise I had been staring a little too long when he looked up at me glaring, his deep voice growling through far too many drinks, “You get a problem?”

  I said nothing in reply, simply shaking my head and returning to my drink. “Hey, you piece of shit!” One of the other men said, “My brother here asked what your fuckin’ problem was?” The chairs and tables shuffled on the floor behind me as I faced the bar looking away from them.

  I took a long drink of the glass of whiskey in my hand and did not want to waste such a fine vintage. It had been a while since I was last in a fight, so I swallowed the rest of my drink and steadied myself. Before noticing the bartender, a man in his early forty’s raising a shotgun over the counter. “Not in here, boys, if you want to fight you go out into the street, you know the rules.”

  The four men that were approaching me stopped and started trying to goad me into following them into the street. But they were armed, which was not unusual, sporting pistols on their hips, and probably no shortage of bladed weapons under their leather outfits which had been fashioned into a kind of lightweight armour. When I didn’t follow, the tall one walked over, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You better be gone by morning shit head, or I’ll kill you.”

  I smiled at him, as the scowl on his face grew bigger, replying calmly, “I don’t take orders from anyone, so if you come and find me in the morning, then it'll be your grave you’ll be digging.”

  The man growled and went to reach over and grab my neck, but I was too fast for him, grabbing his wrist and twisted him over in a single movement, slamming face into the hardwood bar. “You’re fuckin’ dead!” he roared, unable to move in my bear-like grip as I pressed him down, threatening to break his arm.

  My voice remained calm, offering only an icy expression on my face. “You’re not the first to try it, and you won’t be the last - I’m sure of that!” I glared up at his friends who were standing by the front door of the bar frozen and seemingly pissing themselves. “You and your friends over there are full of nothing but piss and vinegar. I promise if I see you or your friends again, I will end all of you.” I stepped back, releasing my grip and pushing him towards his friends.

  The four of them rushed out of the bar, I had no doubt they would try something at some point, but it wouldn’t be tonight. “Sorry about that, Jack!” the old bartender said, sliding another drink my way. “Have that on the house, I’d rather those idiots drank elsewhere anyway.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Thanks, Mick!” I said as he poured himself one.

  He shrugged. “I’ve known those assholes for years, and all they do is cause trouble around here. Of course, no one will do shit about it because they are pretty tightly connected to the Bishop family.” He drank the glass in one gulp. “Pretty big name in these parts, they pretty much run the show around here. The blonde one, he’s old man Malcolm Bishop’s son, so you stay clear of that shithead. If they come after you, kill the rest and leave him tied up somewhere.”

  I followed suit, similarly finishing the glass of whiskey in front of me. “Good thing I’m making tracks first thing!”

  “Probably a good thing,” he said as I stood up from the barstool and began making my way back upstairs. They were not the first by any stretch, just a bunch of reckless slavers looking to make a name for themselves, though it made things worse that one of them was a relative of one of the region’s most powerful people.

  I doubted I would stay long after the trade tomorrow anyway, so the confrontation did not seem likely, nor did it bother me much at all. I did not fear my own death, and if they got the better of me, so be it. My plan was to get most of a day’s travel in tomorrow anyway and get back to the cooler weather of the coast as soon as possible. It was just extra motivation to get out of this shit hole of a place sooner.

  It was summer, which was bad enough on the coast, but summer in the desert could be deadly. And since the heat had not been so bad the last few days, I wanted to get a move on. The idea of being stuck out here in New Alice for a few weeks waiting for the weather to cool off was not appealing. I did not enjoy fighting, I hated the heat, and I missed the water – all of which was an extra incentive to leave. I didn’t mind the zombies so much; they were slow and clumsy most of the time and easy to deal with if you know what you’re doing. Most of them moved in herds these days anyway, following a relatively predictable path of least resistance, so avoiding them was not an overly difficult task.

  It was getting late in the evening with the sun having long fallen over the horizon, but the candle in my room still had a bit of life left in it. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I pulled ou
t my pistol, a Glock .44, and proceeded to strip and clean the weapon thoroughly. It had been a little while since I had the chance to do so thoroughly, and thankfully, I had not needed to use it in quite a while. It was filthy with dust and sand from the desert winds – the grains were so fine that they easily got into every crevasse of the weapon. I would have to find an opportunity to clean it again when I got back to the coast, no doubt, but thankfully it did not take too long to clean. Still, it was yet another reason for my tastes disagreeing with the desert.

  I proceeded to do the same for my rifle, a Springfield 30-06, an old military issue weapon that had been discontinued decades before the outbreak. Apparently, the military had a ton of them lying around, so they dropped them with supplies to surviving groups in the early days of the outbreak to ‘help’ since they couldn’t do much else. The one I had belonged to my old man and had become an heirloom of sorts. My mother handed it to me when I was six years old after teaching me how to use it, then died a few weeks later at the hands of a gang of raiders. This rifle and a small necklace were all I had from them, so I kept the rifle despite having come across many ‘better’ weapons over the years. The fact that ammunition was easy to come by thanks to the Old-world military meant it was a pretty reliable weapon.

  I repacked my bag, stacking the few days of preserved food I had gathered neatly into the bag before gathering my loose ammunition and a small collection of 9mm, .22, and 5.57 rounds into another bag to use for trade, along with a bad full of jewellery and other vanity items. These things had been worthless for so long until these settlements become properly established in the last ten years or so. Now the notion of luxury items was beginning to re-emerge as individuals sought to display their wealth.

  The candle burnt out a short time later, and I soon fell into an uneasy sleep with my pistol resting under my pillow. People made me anxious, and trust was certainly not my strong point. My paranoia had long kept me alive in this world. In any case, the bed was comfortable compared to the rocky ground of the dessert, and sometime in the early hours of the morning, a cool breeze began filtering through the open window offering a little comfort to a somewhat anxious evening of rest.