Desolation (Book 1): Aftermath

by Butler, Simon L.

  “Holy shit,” Ashe said, relief evident in her voice. “You were amazing,” she declared, shuffling closer and wrapping me in a tight hug.

  Adrenaline was still coursing through me, making it difficult to speak. But Ashe’s warm embrace brought me back to the moment as my thoughts returned to me, my heart pounding from the fight. I sat by the rock for a long few minutes regaining my composure, before we moved back to where the backpack was left gathering the rest of our belongings and moving over to examine the truck they had abandoned. I checked the three corpses I had for anything useful, before finding a fourth. The man I had hit in the arm had been shot by his own group. The dead driver had nothing left on him, they had taken the time to gather the rifle and ammunition off his corpse and the man they had executed before fleeing, but the other two men still had their assault rifles close by. One man had been caught with his pants down, literally. But the AK assault rifle he was carrying was filthy and would take hours to get clean, however, the ammunition for these things was like gold, 7.62 rounds were amongst the most sort after these days. AK’s were almost as common as the thirty-odd-six rifles Ashe and I were carrying, but they were much heavier, and I didn’t fancy hauling one around. Ashe checked the truck they had abandoned, searching for keys or some other way of starting it. I was not familiar enough with these things to go messing with the engine, but she seemed competent enough. “Should we skip Lakeside?” Ashe asked.

  “We don’t have a lot of water, so we will need to stop soon. But we probably have enough water to get us well clear. Maybe we can head south and find another farmhouse to hold up in for a day or two. In any case, I think it’d be a good idea if we change direction. It might give us a better chance of losing them.”

  I finished checking the truck for supplies and was ready to go when Ashe peaked up above the visor on the driver’s side when a small screwdriver fell into the driver’s seat, “Fucking score!” She cheered to herself.

  I looked at her confused, waiting for an explanation when she picked up the screwdriver and inserted it into the busted keyhole on the steering wheel and turning it, bringing the engine to life.

  I had to admit to being slightly impressed, asking simply, “Can you drive?”

  She laughed, climbing into the driver’s seat. “Come on, get in,” then let out another cheer, adding, “The tank is half full as well. Those guys are fucking idiots, this should get us nearly a day’s drive in any direction we want to go.” I was a little lost for words at the thought of travelling in a vehicle, and a little apprehensive to say the least. I had never ridden in one of these things before, but Ashe seemed to know what she was doing and perhaps for the first time in a long time, I decided to trust someone other than myself. Cars were convenient but noisy, and they drew attention, so once we got to the coast, we would need to abandon it. “What’s up?” she asked with a warm smile, noting my apprehension.

  I tried to play it down but admitted: “It’s… my first time!”

  She just winked then put the truck into gear. “Car virgin!” she teased, adding, “Don’t worry, you’re safe with me. Now, which way?”

  I took a moment to gather my bearings and my thoughts, then answered, “South. We need to find the coast, we can head towards the ruins of Adelaide, then head east from there. It’s about 700km south from here, but we will need to lose the car once we are clear of the desert.”

  She reversed the drove the truck west then south, following the shoreline. “Why get rid of the truck?” she asked, “This is way better than walking.”

  I laughed, enjoying her enthusiasm. “While I do agree with the fact that this is significantly more convenient, it is also likely to attract the attention of zombies,” I explained. “It is very noisy!” There was a sudden realisation in her eyes about where we were going, that zombies would soon become a real threat. Her eyes narrowed as she drove south along the shoreline, as if lost in thought. I needed to find a distraction for myself though, the bumps of the rocks under the vehicle's tyres were more than a little unsettling. It was dark outside, and I was relieved that I had not yet had anything to eat since waking up. I decided now was as good a time as any to explain my concern about the lack of willingness for the desert survivors to learn to deal with the zombie threat. “Those that have grown up in the deep desert and beyond likely have never seen a zombie, or at least they have not seen one in years,” I explained. “It’s unlikely that they would understand what it takes to survive around them.”

  “True, but they can’t get out there anyway, so what does it matter?”

  That was a thought to consider, and for the time being, no, it probably did not. But I had my concerns for the future, explaining, “Since I started coming out here, I have noticed that the desert is retreating. Over the last ten years or so, the rains have returned to the far inland much more consistently then it had in the Old-world for a very long time meaning people like your family can now grow crops in regions that were once inhospitable to human life. It is a genuine concern that in the next few years, it might be possible for the zombies to make their way out there. I was not making it up when I said zombies have washed up on the northern shores of Lake Eyre.”

  We shared a look, then she asked, “Do the nearby settlements realise this?”

  I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, I know the Lake Eyre settlement encounter them and deal with it, but this place was almost dry before the outbreak, and I have never seen it lower than it is now in all the years I have passed it.” She looked out across the lake that stretched as far as the eye could see. “It is well over one hundred kilometres wide now, and much of the salted landscape is now beginning to become arable, especially around the far eastern parts of the lake.”

  As we continued south, a storm appeared to be accumulating to the east and moving north as if to reinforce my concern.

  We drove on for most of the night at a steady pace, the truck taking us so far south beyond the southernmost tip of the lake, until we passed a derelict farmhouse a few hundred meters west of the river that now seemed to connect the lake to the coast in the far south. I pointed to the structure and said, “Let’s make camp here for the night and get some proper rest, we will continue tomorrow afternoon.”

  Ashe agreed, diverting the truck towards the small house that seemed to be on its last legs. “Hopefully we can get some water here.”

  “Agreed!”

  Ashe stopped the truck in a small covered garage offering us some protection from the sun. The heat of the day had begun to settle in and even in a car I did not relish travelling at this time of the day. “Wait here,” I said softly, wanting to quickly check the house and our immediate surroundings. Climbing out of the car I found several fuel tanks by the rear wall of the garage, some of which still seemingly containing fuel. It was unlikely that the fuel itself would be much use if it was very old, but I was not sure how to tell. Ashe climbed out of the truck when I pointed to the fuel tanks and made her way over to look. “Can you tell if it’s any good?”

  She shrugged. “Usually you can tell by smell or if there are lots of particles on the bottom of the container, but I can’t tell with these.” The lack of transparency in the containers being the main problem.

  “Check them over and see what you think,” I said, diverting to her knowledge. She was certainly more familiar with them than me. “I’m going to check the house!”

  She agreed, gathering a small container to use to examine the fuel on a wooden bench with numerous rusted tools left to the weather. I left her to her task, leaving the garage and heading for the house. Most of the windows had been smashed with numerous bullet holes in the walls, indicating a fight at some point in its past. When I entered the house, more than a dozen bullet-ridden corpses lay on the floor where they fell, their flesh long since decomposed. The rest of the house had little in the way of supplies, with the victors of the fight likely having picked clean the house. It made me a little suspicious of the fuel, but there did not seem to be a
nyone around the area.

  As I walked back to the garage, my eyes cast over the terrain we had passed over and the tyre tracks left by the truck. I had no doubt they would get reinforcement and pick up the chase, but whether they could track us depended on how long the tracks lasted. When I returned to the garage, Ashe had put aside one of the containers which she declared was likely usable, while the others apparently would ruin the engine of the car. I thanked her and climbed back into the car before she loaded the fuel tank on the back and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Did you want to leave?” Ashe asked.

  “Not yet, let’s wait until we are through the heat of the day. We should rest here while we can. Let’s say four hours sleep between two of us, I will take first watch, you take the second.”

  She did not argue, understanding my logic and stretching out in the seat before turning to face me. Smiling warmly as she closed her eyes, her hand reaching out and resting on my thigh. She was someone who needed the reassurance of physical contact. It was taking some getting used to for me, but I did not mind it too much. My mind was still torn between seeking the girl’s affections, and my constant paranoia. She had done a great deal to earn my trust in the last few weeks and yet, Amy’s voice still haunted me, “Trust no one, Jack!”

  I did not wake her after the two hours as planned, I was unable to silence my mind and was unlikely to sleep regardless. So, I merely rested, having a meal of preserved vegetables before pulling out a small bag of dried meat. I had been told it was Camel, but who knew, it could just as likely be horse or dog and you might never know at this point. I put some aside for Ashe as well for when she woke up along with a bottle of water. We had one larger bottle and another small one, it was enough to get us maybe another couple of days if we avoided travel during the day. But the coast was different from the desert, water would be far more abundant, and night travel much more dangerous. Zombies, while active during the day, rarely hunted during the heat, preferring the cool of the night for more intense physical activity.

  Ashe opened her eyes after about three and a half hours, looking up at me sceptically. “Shit, how long was I asleep?”

  “A little over three hours.”

  “Shit Jack, you should have woken me up.” She stared apologetically, reaching out to put her hand on my thigh once more.

  “I was not sleepy, and I figured you could use the extra hour or so.” I pointed to the food and water I had put aside for her.

  She took in a deep breath and leant across to wrap her arms around me before consuming her meal eagerly.

  “We should get moving soon,” I said once she finished. “I would like to try to reach the coast before dusk. We will need to reverse our sleeping patterns there.”

  She nodded, taking in a deep breath before sitting up in her seat and starting the car engine. She expertly reversed the vehicle from the garage and headed south. I directed her slightly west as we drove, eventually intersecting an old highway which I hoped would help conceal our tracks somewhat. As we drove, I looked behind us, satisfied with my decision. “Won’t they just follow the highway?” Ashe asked.

  “Possibly, but we won’t be driving for too much longer. Once we hit the coast, we must abandon the vehicle, or we will end up with thousands of zombies on our trail.”

  “Okay!” Ashe replied nervously.

  We were beginning to run low on fuel when the coast came into view in the distance. We had travelled well over seven hundred kilometres before the engine started to sputter. “It’s okay, we have an emergency tank; it should get us another 50 or so kilometres,” Ashe explained. “Worst case we can try that fuel, but I wouldn’t unless it’s a last resort,” she explained, before reaching under the steering wheel, flicking a switch under the dash. A very large part of me hated the experience of driving and just wanted to get out and walk, but the vehicle was surprisingly well maintained for something that was probably pushing thirty years old. Ashe was indeed a competent driver and had done well to get us this far south, less than twenty kilometres north of the ruins of Port Augusta, an Old-world town on the southern coast of the continent. The engine had been sputtering for a while as we moved along the highway approaching the old city, adding yet more bumps to the ride. I sighed with relief when the truck was finally on its last legs less than one hundred meters from a motel that seemed mostly intact just to the left of the old highway.

  “Stop just up here.” I directed Ashe as we approached several intact brick buildings that composed that main structure. Ashe stopped in a small parking lot just in time for the truck to die completely.

  The motel appeared to have long been abandoned, and there didn’t seem to be any sign of movement - zombie or otherwise. The structures were still mostly intact, with the large sandstone brickwork withstanding decades of weathering quite well considering the storms that probably ripped through this place regularly. There was still another hour or so of sunlight, but the idea of travelling at night with the threat of zombies was a bad idea. We climbed out into an old parking lot where a few other cars had been abandoned long ago, most now nothing more than rusted metal shells. “Let’s hold up here for the night! I doubt we will have any company, but we should keep watch just in case.” I pulled the backpack over my shoulder, while Ashe gathered her rifle and the screwdriver, she had used to start the truck.

  “Do we want the fuel?”

  “I don’t think we will need it from here,” I replied, wondering to myself if we would ever find ourselves in another vehicle again.

  Ashe nodded; her attitude had become a little apprehensive as we walked away from the truck. The realistic threat of zombies having put her on edge as she moved closer to me. We cleared each room one by one before sweeping the surrounding area, finding some bottled water in a small office area. It was still quite arid around here, so some additional water was still a precious find. I didn’t imagine we would find too many zombies around here, but we were not far from a major population centre, so we would need to be vigilant.

  “We’ll be okay,” I said softly, trying to reassure her as I led us back into the main area of the motel, entering one of the rooms that overlooked a central courtyard where the gardens had long since overgrown the old concreted footpaths. I led us into one of the rooms we had already cleared, placing the backpack down on the still made dust-covered bed just a few meters from the door. The room was small, containing two single beds, a small kitchenette, and a small bathroom, all well worn by time – but still seemingly intact. I went back outside and sourced a few planks of usable wood from an old fence then returned to the room, knocking the planks into place over the front window to offer us a little protection for the night. It wasn’t much, but it meant nothing could simply jump through without waking us up first.

  It was right on sunset when I went back into the room, finding the two beds cleaned off and pushed away from the door and window. Ashe was standing in the small kitchenette towards the back of the room, serving up dinner for us. An ancient tin filled with pumpkin soup, it wasn’t much and the taste quite bland, but it would keep us both going until we got further south where food would be relatively abundant.

  Ashe was still on edge, and the idea of leaving her on watch alone didn’t sit right with me after the day we had experienced. “I’ll take watch tonight,” I said, knowing that I would be unlikely to sleep much anyway, and I didn’t want her to be alone again if something went wrong. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  As usual, she forced a smile, trying to hide what was bothering her. “I’m okay!”

  I needed to get the idea that I was going to abandon her out of her mind, but I didn’t want to probe too deeply. “Zombies?” I asked.

  She gave a single nod. “Zombies, yes,” she admitted. “But also…” She stopped herself from continuing. She moved into the bathroom, returning moments later with several bath towels. One of which was wrapped around her hips, while she hung her work pants on the end of the bed.

  I did not push the issue and
instead opted for a distraction. Another first for me with a mostly naked woman now sharing my bed it seemed. I searched the draws for anything that might take my mind away from my dark thoughts, finding an old bible and several novels packed away in a bedside dresser by the window that still seemed to be in reasonable condition. “Do you read?” I asked.

  “Uhm... No, I was never shown how,” she said sharply.

  I sat on the bed next to her with one of the novels and started reading just loud enough for her to listen. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked, concerned at her sudden darkening mood.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” she answered, “relieved in a way I suppose, but not great timing for my body to start fucking with me again.”

  I did not understand the implication and stared confused.

  “It’s my period Jack, Aunt Flow is in town,” she growled, rolling her eyes as if I were the most ignorant person in the world.

  “Oh!” was all I could manage, I understood the implications of the word, but did not know how to respond. “So, you are bleeding down there?” I asked, pointing down to her crotch.

  She just shook her head and pulled one of the towels around herself, facing away from me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. “It’s just… another first for me as well.” There was a definite need for distraction, so I kept reading. She seemed to be listening closely until I stopped. It got too dark to see, so I put the book aside. I did not know how to help her, or how to reassure her, but I knew she liked contact, so I laid next to her and put my arms around her in an embrace. I then heard a small sob and cry from the girl as she pushed back against me, her hand holding my arm around her.