Cape Zero- the Fall

by Nicholas Woode-Smith

  Andrew had not lifted his head to look, but after the sounds of the armoured cars revving and driving away, he tugged on Peter’s shirt.

  ‘What was it?’

  Peter stared blankly for a while, and then turned back, staring out into the streets.

  ‘A betrayal.’

  Epilogue

  Peter had never smoked a day in his life. Well, there was a first time for everything. Taking a drag on a cigarette, he could not help but cough as he inhaled the smoke. Disgusted, he kept the cigarette away from his mouth. Maybe it was just the image that counted. He didn’t know why image would matter anymore, though.

  Once again, he was alone. He knew it would come to this again. It always came to this. There was no point in attachments. All relationships would eventually be severed, either by death, pain or hatred. There was no use in building up friendships, when by doing so, you only exacerbated the inevitable pain of separation.

  Peter sighed. ‘Even after all these months, my perceptions haven’t changed.’

  ‘Nothing simply changes, we grow, we add onto our experiences, but no, we hardly ever change.’

  Peter nodded to what he had said. Trying another drag of his cigarette, he immediately spat it out, coughing violently.

  ‘Screw it!’ Peter threw the flaming death stick to the ground, stomping on it.

  At that moment, Andrew exited the shop, carrying a sports bag full to the brim with assorted food stuffs that had thankfully never been looted. Neither of them cared about the expiration date – food was food.

  ‘Are you all set?’ Andrew asked, bag slung over his shoulder, Knighthood blade by his side.

  Peter looked out, down the street, as he often did. 'As ready as I can ever be.’

  With that, they left the entrance of the long abandoned grocery store and started their long journey south.

  13. Note from the Author

  I began writing Cape Zero back in 2012. At first, it began as a project with a group of friends. I had written an ‘Urban Zombie Survival Guide’ with what we believed to be quite a unique type of zombie. We are all gamers and geeks, so you can guess that we all think zombies are kind of neat.

  My view of zombies was, while dangerous in huge numbers, they are still not that threatening. They’re dumb and they’re slow. In Cape Zero, there are a lot of dumb and blind zombies, but the Sighted were the real focus of my attention.

  I remember reading an essay by Simon Pegg about how zombies represent our fear of death. In Cape Zero, I wanted to create something that was a mirror of innate human savagery. As the zombies in Cape Town are humans – just very hungry and very violent.

  Now, Cape Zero isn’t only about zombies. There are quite a few political references throughout the book and many of which may offend a few people. That is, of course, inevitable when working with a setting as tenuous as South Africa.

  The Fall was quite tame compared to what I have in mind for future sequels. There’s going to be some harsh stuff to come and I hope that you find it as enjoyable as I found writing it.

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  Nicholas Woode-Smith was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He spends his time writing and complaining about the government.

  Besides his writing of the Warpmancer Series, he also writes political commentary for the Rational Standard.