Remedy Z: Solo (11 page)

A marching horde of zombies was lurching all around on the grassy meadows surrounding the Waystation. I slowly pulled the string on the blinds, returning to seclusion from complete exposure. “No sudden moves, no more sound, no more fires and no more cooking meat.” I knew what I had to do: lay low. "This day could be a long one," I said bitterly as my eyes darted around, trying to make sense of my safety or vulnerability in that old house. After a slow, silent reconnoitre of the house, I returned to where I started without incident. The house was still secure.

Concluding I was still safe inside, I looked out from those old, thin and distorted window panes and considered the small groupings that added up to so many lurching dead nightmares, all about. I had never seen anything like it, not since the last trip to Tantangara. “But I provoked that?! This is just random?” No way. Something significant must have stirred up their collective interest. I can only assume such a population, and from the direction in which they were coming, were the remnants of the populace of Tantangara that I had fought so hard to exterminate. They stumbled and lurched and dragged their feet, on the way to some location near or at Tantangara. Something was or had happened to grab their attention and drive them from their bored stupor, to travel all the way here.

Ironically, I had covered the roaming patterns of zombies in the prior night’s writing session. The last commentary, which stated: “While they have predictable patterns, zombies will always surprise you. Stay careful and never get complacent.” I had been both prophetic and broken my own rules and the thought of it made me feel stupid. I grimaced at the thought. My mind raced, trying to cover everything and make sense of what had caused the formulation of a zombie group of such great number. 

I needed to know what had triggered this horde; this was totally unusual. Zombies are creatures of opportunistic instinct. They would not be on their way here without some prompting or sense that there would be hosts or protein or some spectacle which captivated and confused their over-taken consciousness. It was a long way for zombies to venture and I would soon see why. 

I glassed the zombies with my binoculars and concluded they were “normal” zombies, not like Skinny, Blackbeard and the Mechanic. They were all shapes, ages, sexes, races and sizes. A veritable cross-section of the once multi-cultural, diverse Australian society I had lived in. “I loved that place and took it for granted,” I lamented things as my fate looked more grim by the moment. 

The small clusters of slavering zombies formed a much larger herd or horde, with no specific or obvious way for having sorted themselves in this fashion. Unlike being an Australian in a diverse culture before the Great Change, I wanted no part of what I saw now. It was horror; overwhelming terror with teeth, groans and stench of road-kill. That awful smell began to infiltrate the Waystation and it inspired fear, caution and the expectation of a coming battle.

I had to keep quiet, keep cool and carefully ready myself to get the hell out. I hoped they had not come in this general direction due to the smell of my fire and cooking. It would mean life would be almost impossible. A man had to eat and, unfortunately, so did zombies. However they ended up there, I could see that they had caught my scent much as the rabbits’ movement had caught my attention the day before. Sometimes I looked at humankind and wondered just how different the zombies were, if they were just as destructive as man had been to the planet. But such pontificating was for quiet times, not when you are about to be knee deep in a sea of shit. And I was in such a sea that was for sure. 

I continued to cautiously scan the scene, from window to window, and from various vantage points. There was no discerning what was attracting or directing the zombies to the Waystation until it was upon me.  “Is there a noise or smell I can’t pick up? What the hell is going on?” I thought. Then it was clear. A helicopter, like I had seen a ghost, flew in from the North. It reached a good height and flew right over the top of me; hovering. “I’m really not alone?!” I thought. A number of options crossed my mind in that instant. I concluded that the chances of me flagging the pilot down, being rescued and being in the company of someone of good intentions was increasingly unlikely through to impossible as I considered the dimensions of the situation. 

“Hold tight: keep calm and stay with the mission.” The zombies followed it with their stupid gaze and movements and lurched in the direction of the Waystation, following the path of the helicopter. “Fuck! Thanks a milTiger you arsehole!” I thought, angry, shocked and in disbelief.

It was all clear: they had seen the smoke, flown around to reconnoitre and disturbed my sleep. When I woke, they were circling the perimeter of the area, far enough for me not to pick up the sound. Upon their return, they whipped up the last of the zombies in the area, right on top of me.  

“Bastards!” I yelled in rage, almost involuntarily. That someone knew that this someone was living up in the mountains and making a go of survival. Naïve hopes could have been that the pilot didn’t see the smoke or were good people. Either was unlikely. But the optimist in me, a trait inherited from my wonderful mother, persisted. I held some hope that things would be alright. My cool returned.

“I can’t worry about that now,” I told myself.  I had to park that whole new world of possibilities and get onto managing the marching horde of zombies that now centred on my location. They were on a collision course to sweep through the Waystation and take me with them. “They would definitely smell something, they would surely make attempts on the house and I need to be ready.” I was trying to keep my nerve with a horde of walking, deadly killers surrounding my position.

So I went to pattern and got geared up. That process always got me into the meticulous headspace needed for zombie killing. I got kitted-out with haste, bordering on being frantic. I was a rat in a trap and I knew it. The horde of zombies boiled around in their hundreds and I was now ready for them. “Absolutely badarse,” I told myself, getting psyched up. In a moment of getting ready for war, my mind was ready to face anything.

It was on! I unsheathed Ebony, ready for battle. I lifted the binoculars up with my free hand and watched on, hoping for something, anything to happen. I was met with a rhythmic drone. I could only recall one other occasion where I saw zombies out in such open terrain, so close and in such numbers. It was quite a spectacle; much like accounts of great battles I had read about in books, online or in a great-grandfather’s war diary. Like so many in similar situations before, I hoped it wouldn’t be my last fight for I was ready to hold onto life, kicking and screaming until the end. “May the Valkyries take me!”

The zombies reached the Waystation and began to bang on the walls, then a door and, what were initially the odd thumps on the building, became a downpour. It was a sound of violent zombie intent that resembled hailstones, the size of tennis balls, falling on the house from all directions. I put my binoculars down, almost symbolically, touching them with care. I left them there; “This won’t be precision work,” I concluded. In that moment, I lost all hope of survival and resigned myself to a bitter end, but I would fight. I was at peace with it all and would not give up: “I will fight for every last minute, until my dying breath, yes sir. No mercy for they will show me none.” It was almost a prayer. 

The laundry door sounded like it was going to give first. The sound of it being beaten, to get in and get to me, was terrifying. It was a deafening experience that made it hard to stay composed and gather my thoughts. There was an impact on my legs and I almost jumped a meter in the air. I looked down and notice a damned cat-door with a small predator, not a cat, coming through it. Through the cat door came a zombie of what had once been a kid. A boy or girl of around 12 years old, it was small enough to make it through. In its zombie form, that mockery of humankind, it was a messenger of death with an angel’s face. But sentimentality would get me killed; I did the unspeakable. 

Ebony was brought down with my own violent intent on this zombie fiend. No matter what it had been, what it was needed to be destroyed. I cleaved that zombie’s skull and spilled its rotten, stinking flesh, bone and brains across the laundry. I had tainted a room that had once been the place of hygiene and pride for the farmer’s wife who had kept this place so meticulously. Spattered with blood, I looked to the window’s shear curtains for a moment. The laundry window’s old glass revealed faces and breath-fog of those who should have been long dead and at peace. The sounds of groaning, panting and all-out screaming could not be muted by the door, window or walls. They were calling to me and for my death. 

I quickly pulled the body of the young zombie through, into my confined space, and bolted the home-made cat-door. It had an old-school iron bolt fastened onto a metal plate on the cat-door. It was the sort of thing a farmer welded together from parts lying around in a farm-shed. “Overkill for an old kitty,” I thought, “But It should stop zombies just fine.” It would hold alright.

The rest of the door was not nearly so sturdy. It was the laundry window I feared would give. And it did. A rain of broken glass and the sudden impact of the noise and the raw, up-close and personal reality were in my face. A morass of arms and faces boiled through the window frame. It was such a small space, nothing could appreciably enter. Such assumptions were assured. 

I hacked with savagery, letting out a bellow, a war-cry worthy of my ancestors. Ebony and Bob, my hand-crafted machetes, were put to work without mercy. Limbs, digits, teeth, bone and flesh were accompanied by squirts, spatters and a pool of blood that oozed out of gory stumps. Like a factory worker on some macabre production line, I made a meticulous mess of these monsters. As a limb came through; hacked off. As a head came through, it tasted a crude but nasty blade. Fingers? It was all up for the same treatment. This mass no longer resembled individuals but some sort of blob-like monster out of a 1950s sci-fi horror film. I fought like hell, through hell. The blood and gore and oozing morass of zombie matter was rendered benign, blocking the window. I had made the mistake of neglecting the door for a moment. The sum of all fears was that there was a breach elsewhere in the house and my back would be taken.

“The door!” The door was just a cardboard core portal that had absorbed moisture over many decades. As I braced it with my hands, I felt it bend and flex under the pummelling and beating it was receiving. Mindless as they were, the zombies would eventually find a way. Through the fear and the cacophony of noise, I braced the door with my body weight. It felt like me against the world; again.

The pounding and noise was deafening and, I believed that at any moment, multiple places would be breached and I would face the end. My thoughts wandered as I waited for zombies to get in, storm on through, like a gale force wind and extinguish my life like it was a little candle. This vision of the end was not some pretty white light-ascendance. It was the brutal, violent world where I felt teeth in my flesh, claws tearing at my eyes and skin and a death that no good man should endure; torn apart and consumed by monsters. I had seen it before and this experience sent me to a flashback of New Bolaro. A place I really didn’t want to go; but I was already there.

Chapter 6: Das Monster Marsch

As I braced against that door, hoping that my life would not be taken in the most horrific of circumstances, I remembered New Bolaro. I screamed a bellow, a release, as the memory took me.

After Canberra fell, many people fled to rural areas where there were fewer people and, it was believed, fewer zombies. Around ten percent of the population were believed to be immune to the Divine Virus. These people, however, were still targets and, while they may survive a bite, would end up a meal quite easily. So many refugees, immune and the unwittingly infected alike, escaped in convoys, looking for a better place. From the hell of cities, these brave souls faced the horrors of those turning around them, starvation and the loss of all hope. But they believed there was something else out there. I was one of them and I refused to be taken and endured. 

I had no idea that I was immune and, like others, lived in the fear of all around me and that I myself might turn. My endurance, mortality and resolve were tested to the limit in a town called New Bolaro.

New Bolaro was one of those satellite towns that had been setup in a hurry in 2025, using modular housing stacks, like shipping containers for living. It was known for its solar array; powering much of Canberra’s satellite towns and the capital itself and Divine-infused Pancakes (really). New Bolaro was on the way to a place that was etched my childhood memories as a place I could go for safety; Tantangara. I remember being hopeful I would get to the lake and safety, passing through New Bolaro and looking for food and shelter. But where there were people, there was horror, as I would find at New Bolaro. 

It had been a tragic night of which I was a survivor. I did not and would not give up, despite the worst physical and mental trauma I had probably ever experienced.

“Trapped; just like New Bolaro”, I thought. This thought came to me as I felt the weight of a score of zombies pulse its hate against the old cardboard door that separated me from oblivion. With my weight behind the door, and against all odds, the door held. Just like that door, I had held out and survived to the last at New Bolaro. Fight or flight? Fight indeed. “Fight hard, never give up and fight to the last moment.” I had whispered to myself as the horrors of New Bolaro had engulfed all of us in that roadhouse. We were all weary and, perhaps for the first time, people were sharing, giving unconditionally. I remember a kid giving his lollipop to a smaller kid who had been crying for a lost mother. A nervous woman needed some music so a man put a coin into the slot of a 1950s styled juke-box that delivered sounds of comfort to her and dulled the despair in the room. A man took off a flannelette shirt from over his t-shirt, giving his warmest piece of clothing to a man who was bare chested and cold. He was warmed by the gift and smiled without shame, a moment of mutual caring across total strangers. “Why couldn’t we always be like this?” I recalled thinking. I had played my part, giving my last muesli bar and tin of beans to two teenagers who hadn’t eaten in over a day. They had once been the sort of punks who had egged my house or stolen my mail but when the chips were down, they were my family in a war against the zombies. They thanked me with unexpected warmth and smiles, like they were kids again and free of teen angst and peer pressure; I nodded and left them to enjoy.