Resource Economies

by Traverse Davies

  “Sure, but you’ll owe me.”

  “Fuck you, who hooked you up with Kaitlin? If anything, you still owe me.”

  “Alright. Look, we have a supply ship slated for three days from now. I can make sure you are on board and that you have a clean way off. I’m going to set up a way back for you as well, you best get your ass on it.”

  “Thanks Billy, tell Kaitlin I said hi, and give Jr. and Simone a kiss for me.”

  She headed back out into the heat of the day, the smell of the dock washing over her. It felt like home. She might be the princess of the island these days, but that wasn’t how she’d grown up.

  The Blessed

  The sunset was amazing. Junie thought about how much prettier sunsets were these days. When he’d grown up there was always light somewhere, even as remote as his home was. Now though Sydney was dark, and the sky could be itself. He was worried about Pa. Pa was supposed to be back by nightfall, and here the sun was down almost full over the horizon. Maybe Pa got grabbed by the strangers, the interlopers. Fucking New Hope, all those people thinking they were the rulers of the fucking world. Well, they would learn. Fucking right they would.

  He turned back to the village, so serene against the highlands. The little houses all painted and tidy, the church white against the darkening sky. The family had a bonfire going, a celebration of the late summer. The faces of the blessed showed through the gaps in the tight fence of the pen. The blessed were reaching for them, as always, trying to consume them. Sometimes Junie envied them, they didn’t have his turmoil, they knew their desires - he was always conflicted. Pa said it was a sin, some of the things he wanted to do, and Pa knew about sin. Pa had read the bible, all of it, even the lost books that talked about the time after the blessed. He had even written most of it down. Junie knew that he would have to read those books once Pa passed on, but until then it was Pa and only Pa.

  Evie was looking so pretty dancing around the bonfire. He wanted her, right now - but he knew that he had to wait until they were properly married, had to wait until her thirteenth birthday. It was so close. He had watched her for years now, as her limbs got long and smooth. Now, here she was dancing around a fire in a tiny white shift, almost a woman, almost his.

  He longed to join the dance, like he used to when he was little, just let go of his cares and spin wildly around the fire, under the stars, but the blessed needed handling and he was the oldest unmarried man, he needed to lead them.

  Junie grabbed a gaffe and got ready by the gate. Once he saw that all the other boys were ready to go he opened the gate. The three blessed stumbled out, arms reaching for them. All four of them struck at once, sinking the heavy hooks into the flesh of the blessed, pulling them into the firelight. Once the blessed were properly burning they let them go, let them wander as they would. The family avoided them, skipping out of the way as the blessed burned and then finally fell, the fire granting them the peace that death had withheld so far.

  After the blessed fell they had a feast. They had captured one of the strangers from Sydney, a big guy with lots and lots of meat on him. They portioned out his meat among the members of the family. Junie sat down next to Evie as he ate, looking at her skinny legs poking out from under her shift. Just a few more weeks now.

  Conspiracy Theories

  The command tent was larger than any of the other tents. Bennett felt bad about occupying it, but in the end, he needed the space. He had the map table set up with him, all the situation maps laid out. It didn’t actually leave a lot of room for him to move about. He started the day with his usual routine, push-ups, crunches, squats, stretching - post workout of course, wanted those muscles warm before trying to stretch. Then he headed out to join the men for breakfast.

  The food was cold and bland. They were strictly on a no fire rule until they had more area secured. Already the zombie activity was severe. The fence they erected was solid, no sign that the zombies were going to be able to make it through. They were starting to build up a bit on the southeast corner, a mass of rotting bodies slowly building up, ignoring the number that dropped. It was inevitable, at least with these fences.

  Bennett gave his morning address to the men. “You know your jobs. We have a bunch of z’s building up right now, but nothing to worry about. Take care of them, then head out. Four man squads, do a grid search, eliminate any zombies you run into. Make sure you search every building, we want our people back. Make sure your end points are clear. Get to it.”

  He wished he had Naomi’s gift for speaking. He always felt like he failed utterly to inspire people. His mind was better suited to tactics, to managing the day to day, than to scenes like this one. He wished there was some way to just offload those parts and do what he was good at.

  The men headed out and Bennett went back to his tent. Right now, the maps were pretty useless, pre-zombie relics with modern features drawn on them in pencil. He had small black squares to represent his men, and white ones to represent zombies. The white ones came in three sizes, basically they amounted to one, a few, and holy shit. There were more holy shit sized zombies than he would have liked by far. He also had blue ones to represent any of the scavengers he managed to rescue. He wasn’t holding out huge hopes that he would get to use any of those.

  Wayde came in with a squad member in tow. “Hey boss, Johnson just finished inspecting the first quadrant of the fence. He found something interesting.”

  Bennett waited, fixing the trooper with an expectant look. “I don’t have all day, out with it. What’s going on with the fence?”

  “Sir” the soldier stammered “the fence appears to have been cut, using tools.”

  “Are you saying people did this?”

  “No sir, I mean, I’m not drawing conclusions, but the links have been cut clean, would require wire cutters or something like them. Not sure the average zombie has th… the brains to manage it. Sir.

  “Okay, thanks for the report. This changes things.”

  Bennett allowed Wayde to show the young man out. When the man returned they got together to discuss the new situation.

  “So, if humans did this that means someone else is here, and whoever it is isn’t friendly.”

  “Yep. That’s my assessment too sir.”

  “How do we deal with that? What kind of options do we have? Everything we have done in terms of security is predicated on the idea of a mindless enemy. If we are fighting people, we have to completely and totally re-evaluate our strategy. I have a few contingencies up my sleeve for this sort of thing, but I’m not happy about it.”

  “Nope, me neither. Do I tell the men or wait for more intel?”

  “Tell them. I don’t want to pretend I’m in an old movie, get the men killed just because we don’t want to share info.”

  “Good sir. Anything else?”

  “Yes, scouting is going to have to change. We should pull the men back in for today, send them out again as soon we know exactly what we are doing. Also, I want some form of longer range optics, binoculars or something. I’m going to call home and see what they have available.”

  They discussed a little more, trying to come up with solid plans, but in the end, they gave up because they didn’t have enough information to come up with anything concrete.

  The discussion with New Hope wasn’t much more useful. The only thing he managed to get from them was that he would get a half dozen pairs of binoculars when the supply ship came, in several days. He almost smashed the handset on the radio in sheer frustration.

  Hit the Road

  They were stuck waiting. The men were busy, but it was all busywork, nothing valuable, nothing with a goal. They reinforced the fence, started clearing the rubble from the ground, started clearing brush, basically making the small base camp a more permanent place. Chad was working next to Johnny, clearing land. They had picks and shovels to work with. It was too hot for their armour while doing this kind of work, so they were in their basic uniforms. Nobody knew who was trying to kill people fr
om New Hope here, or even where the other people actually were.

  “Too fucking hot. I didn’t sign up for the reclaimers to spend my time doing construction work. Fucking hell.”

  “Yeah man. Kind of fucked up. Who the fuck would be trying to kill actual people?”

  “No clue. Something wrong with them. Fuck ‘em. Let ‘em come, we got the guns, we got the gear, we got the training. We’ll fuck ‘em up.”

  Chad wished he felt as confident as he pretended to be. He was new to all of this. He’d dropped zombies before, but never a person. Truth was he would rather dig than fight at this point.

  The day went quickly, then the next, then the next. Bennett Matheson kept them a little bit updated, basically telling them he refused to force them out into the field with inadequate gear. Finally, the resupply ship came. It stopped just off shore for a few minutes, for no reason anyone could discern, and then continued until it reached the dock. That meant more heavy labor, more hauling crates of supplies through the city, over uneven pavement and fallen buildings. The labor was backbreaking, and the weather had turned. It was still summer, still hot, but the rain was pouring down, punishing them. Clearly a storm was coming in.

  After they got the new gear up to the main clearing they set up the new mess hall and communal meeting area - a large tent, capable of holding most of the force at once. Setting it up in the high winds and heavy rain was punishing work, mostly performed in silence because they couldn’t talk above the wind.

  Then the gear tent had to be set up. They were settling in for a much longer time, with an eye to eventually making this base permanent, which meant setting up long term infrastructure. The gear tent was a middle ground, a staging tent where materials could be stored as they shored things up.

  Finally, days after they were supposed to start, they were brought into the mess tent and given a second - and final - mission briefing. Bennett once again talked to the entire group. He seemed less awkward this time, probably because he was exhausted and too dirty to care if he made a positive impression. “Alright men, as you no doubt have heard, the zombie incursion on our people here was the result of human action. Somebody cut the fence, and given that fact, probably lured the zombies inside. So, that adds a new wrinkle to our mission. We need to keep an eye out for enemy combatants now. There are people here, and they don’t seem to like us. Ideally, I would like one or more of them to question, but look out for yourselves first. Take one if the opportunity comes up, but don’t feel bad if you have to shoot them in the head.” His shoulders were slumped, and his voice had a resigned quality.

  It wasn’t until early the next morning that the teams finally headed out. Chad was again partnered with Johnny. It seemed that it was a simple matter of who they were next to on the boat that decided the teams. They also had a heavy gunner named Tim and a comms officer named Michelle. Michelle handled the big radio, the one not limited to line of sight. Johnny was in command.

  The day was miserable, the storm was still in full force, forcing the resupply ship to stay docked. It was the worst possible scenario for the reclaimers, visibility was low, they were wet, they were wearing heavy gear. Johnny was lead, he had slightly longer in the force than any of the others. They were sent southeast to scout.

  The going was agonizingly slow. They walked silently in the pouring rain, keeping their eyes alert. Their helmets theoretically allowed them to talk to each other, but the pounding rain was so loud against the unyielding steel shell that they had to shout despite using radio to talk helmet to helmet. The rain drowned out almost everything.

  Chad was the first one to spot the horde. A hundred zombies, maybe more, closing on them from the northeast, cutting off their route back to base. They had been walking for a couple of hours, seeing only the occasional single, easily picked off, when suddenly the large horde came out from the rubble. Still a long way off they were in the worst place they could be. It was by far the most zombies they had seen since reaching Sydney.

  They started heading back, hoping to get past the horde before being completely cut off, it was quickly apparent that wasn’t going to work, so they turned and headed back south. Johnny said “We need to get out of sight of the horde. Once we get far enough south we turn east and try to get around them. Not getting stuck out here, it’s not an option.”

  They broke into a light jog, moving much faster than the horde. Michelle called out “What’s that? southeast of us? Fuck, is that another horde?”

  Of course, it was. No way was this luck. Something was pulling zombies toward them. The west was the harbor, a dead end - the north and south were both blocked, so they started running east.

  A Pleasant Swim

  The trip to Sydney was pleasant until the last day. The boat crew treated Tamra with the respect her brother had insisted on. She had some incredibly high-end gear with her, thanks to her contacts. The best piece was the rifle, an Accuracy International L115A3 AWM sniper rifle. She had learned to shoot as a child on the island and had a gift for it. The gun itself was an extremely rare piece, an old-world military relic from another continent. She also had a small inflatable boat, something she could use to sneak off the boat before it docked. Other than that, she had rations for a week, a pair of heavy duty boots, and some basic survival gear.

  The weather turned bad the day they made landfall, so she had to slip off in rough seas with high winds. Nothing she wasn’t used to. Her family had survived the zombies without ever leaving Prince Edward Island, one of the very few to do so. They did it by being hard and doing what needed to be done. Part of why she didn’t believe that her character should be relegated to being the good little wife. Every woman in her family had survived hell and kept going. She’d be damned if her daughters (assuming she ever had any) were going to be relegated to second class citizenship. She slipped into the choppy sea and gave the crewmen a wave. The one advantage of the weather was that it meant she would have an easy time reaching the shore unobserved.

  She made landfall near the south end of the harbor and started looking for a place to set up a home base. She knew she would have to be on the move but having a safe place she could flee to if she needed was one of the first things she had learned from the zombies. That and she needed to get her zodiac out of the water, it was a tough craft but there was no way she could keep it secured in this weather.

  She found a semi-collapsed dock with a mostly intact building next to it. She wasn’t sure what the building had been in the old world, now it was just a shell, all the glass long since shattered, the furnishings and finishing destroyed, but it had stairs that were intact, more than one set of them, and a good perch on the roof where she could scope out the city. She got the zodiac secured above the high tide mark under the ruined dock, and then set herself up in the shell of a building. It was tall, five stories at least. She had never seen a building that tall.

  The view from the roof covered most of the downtown core, although her view of the reclaimers camp was obscured. She used the scope on her gun to get a better look at anything that caught her interest.

  She decided to leave the next morning, which gave her a day and a night to get her home base set-up, make it ready as a backup location. First she set up a small camp inside the fifth floor, hidden from view but with access to the rear stairs, then she set up a route she could use to get from the camp to the front stairs, something that would make sure she wouldn’t fall through the floor - much of it was unusable. She had to reinforce a few spots with some of the better boards she was able to find. She used a tarp as a lean-to against a wall, setting up a small sleeping area underneath it. She had a minimal camp mat and a sleeping bag inside of it.

  She knew she needed fire, but also that she needed to keep any smoke out of sight, so she had a small rocket stove. It burned so hot it burned up almost all the carbon in its own smoke, making it effectively a smokeless heat source.

  Her night was spent resting, alert for any noises. The solitude was both the best and worst
of it. Since she had become a star she hadn’t had much time to herself, something that the years before had been full of. She had time to reflect. Since her meeting with Naomi she had been running full tilt, taking no time to think. Now that she was resting and by herself doubt started to set in. Was she doing the right thing by coming here? Was it too much for her, a survivor, but self-taught and essentially untrained? Was, god help her, Naomi, right? She rejected that last thought almost instantly. It didn’t matter if Naomi was right in an abstract sort of way, that would mean living a life that was unacceptable for half the population for the near future. Sometimes a person just has to take a stand.

  Morning came finally, and Tamra headed back up to her lookout perch on the roof. She could see the troops starting to head out from the reclaimers base. One quartet was heading her way. She decided to try keeping up with them, staying out of sight but shadowing them, when the time was right she would let them know she was around.

  She followed them in the scope, and with her eyes, as they came closer. Then she was the hordes approaching, seeming to come out of nowhere. There was no sign, no warning, then there were hundreds and hundreds of zombies, coming from the north and the south. At least the east seemed to be clear. She grabbed her rifle, handgun, and machete and headed down to try and catch up with the reclaimers. She could see from her perch where they would have to go to be safe, and her secrecy wasn’t worth getting four people killed.

  Star Power

  Tim noticed the blonde girl running along behind them first. She was moving fast, much faster than they were. The girl was wearing an olive drab tank top, a pair of camo pants, and heavy boots. Her hair long and pulled into a pony-tail, peeking out from under a baseball hat. She also had a large rifle slung over her shoulder. She was running at a pace that wasn’t quite a sprint, but too fast to sustain. Tim nudged Chad and pointed back, Chad nudged Johnny and Michelle. They slowed the pace to let her catch up. As she got close Chad recognized her. Terry was a big fan of Homefires and made him watch every episode before she dumped him. That was Vivian running towards them. He liked her way better in camo than he ever had in those silly sun dresses she was always wearing on the show. What the hell was she doing in Sydney?