Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 1): January (5 page)

“Well done, live target practice!”  Archer exclaimed loudly when he arrived.  This caused the Dead nearest him to attempt twisting in order to get at him.  Several of these simply fell over, some catching others on their way down.  If not for the horrific stench and the fact that these things wanted to eat us it would have been really quite funny.  As it was we took Archer's advice and used the stuck Dead as targets.

The scouts, now that their collective bacon had been saved, reported that they had not been able to find much in the way of supplies, but they had found a ridiculous amount of salt left in several of the shops they had raided.  As I wondered why that might be useful I heard one of the cows lowing.

The newcomers from the farms, who had arrived in the car, also joined us by the river, and introduced themselves.  One woman, two men had come in the new vehicle, the younger of the men a butcher, the older a farmer by long standing family tradition.  Farmer claimed that the woman, barely out of her teen years, was his wife, while eyeing the other local girls carefully.  Butcher eyed the animals just as carefully, and asked me if we had a slaughterhouse that we were using.  I told him that we didn't, at least as far as I knew, have one, and to see Fat Dealer about it.  He nodded, saying that he assumed I was in charge because I was the one barking orders in defence of the commune.  Archer, coming past at that moment, laughed and told him that I was new, but unofficially in charge of defence of the community.  He also said that a slaughterhouse was a brilliant idea, and that then, with a couple fewer cows, there would be hides available to make some form of personal protection from.  Farmer's Wife squeaked in a tiny voice that she knew a thing or two about working with leather, and that she would help.  Farmer looked
pissed
at that.  Apparently he doesn't like his tiny young wife talking to people, or offering to help, but clearly he knows the situation well enough by now to know that we all need to pull together to get shit done.

noon

After lunch was more archery training.  Archer had indeed made a few humanoid looking targets and put them at various distances down the range.  The Twin was already teaching others how to shoot properly, some of them were finally beginning to show some real promise.  Fat Dealer came out to check on a few issues while we were training, and he told me that Farmer had given him detailed instructions on exactly how to care for cows and sheep, and Butcher was training up a couple of apprentices, including Junior.  The Kid had wanted to learn, but decided it might not be a good idea.  He didn't want to run the risk of tainting the meat he worked with.  That meant he spent most of his time either at the archery range or down by the river guarding the one weak spot in our defences.  The wall was progressing faster than expected, we now had a solid half-metre thick, one and a half metre high clay barrier halfway around our perimeter.  High enough for us to see and shoot over, and high enough that any Dead that get anywhere near the wall itself would have a great deal of trouble getting over it.  On the other hand, if needed, any of us could easily enough jump over it.  All we need now is a gate to the dirt track leading to the road and we're set.

“Just do me one favour,”  Fat Dealer said as he was leaving.  “Stay away from that young girl with the old farmer.  He doesn't like her talking to anyone, if you know what I mean.”  And he walked off towards Archer's shed.

evening

Dinner was fucking amazing tonight.  Roast mutton was a rare treat in this age, and we all feasted like it was our last night on earth.  Farmer sneered at the dessert joint that Fat Dealer  rolled and passed around, refusing even to touch it in order to pass it onwards, and when his wife took it, put it to her lips and inhaled deeply, he snatched her by the arm and marched her off to the room they had been allocated to share.  Even though it was halfway down the barn, upstairs, and the door had been slammed shut behind them we could hear Farmer yelling.

I sighed, and stood heading upstairs to try and defuse the situation.  Apocalypse Girl and The Kid followed me.

In most normal circumstances I would have knocked, but in this instance I just walked through in time to hear the words “I'm sorry, Daddy” trickle out of the poor girls split lips.  I wasted no time at all, grabbing Farmer by his shirtfront.

“Listen,”  I told him.  “I don't give a flying fuck what you did at home, or before the Dead started coming back.  None of that shit matters now, the only thing that does is staying the fuck alive.  Whatever we do for relaxation here, is our fucking business.  Do you see any law enforcement?  Maybe you'd be a little more fucking relaxed if you joined us too, rather than judging and condemning us for it.  We welcomed you into our community you piece of shit and one of the few rules that you have to follow is being fucking polite and decent to everyone else here.  That includes
her!
”  I pointed to his 'wife' “And it is my job to protect the people here.  That includes her too.  Protect the people,”  My finger shifted from his wife to his chest.  “From any and all threats.”  His face paled.

The Kid and Apocalypse Girl took Farmer's Wife out of the room.  I glowered at Farmer for a minute more, then followed them out.  We've been through too much shit with the Dead to have to deal with this.  Apocalypse Girl and The Kid were already downstairs making Farmers Wife a cup of tea, and to my amusement she was once more toking on the dessert joint.  As I had not myself gotten around to indulging, I headed on down as well.  Farmers Wife had just offered the next toke to The Kid, and was being told about the last time he shared a joint with someone.  She asked him to show her the bite, and he lifted his pants leg.  Indeed, it was hardly more than a scratch, yet there seemed something sinister about it nonetheless.  Of course, that might have been my imagination, as that tiny little scratch was responsible for six deaths already.

After an hour or so, Farmer came back downstairs, and publicly apologised for his, as he put it, “disgraceful” behaviour.  He even came up to me and thanked me for pulling him back in line, suggesting that the stress of the whole world ending was somehow responsible for his errant behaviour.  I let him think that, but realistically, everyone else here treats each other with respect, and as a group we have been through some fucked up situations, yet we never once resorted to punching a loved one in the face, as he had done.  Nor do any of us dictate terms as to how another person should live.  The world has ended already, time to do away with all of that outdated bullshit too.

January 10th Year 1 A.Z.

dawn

On patrol again in the morning, passing by the wall-builders, we saw a pair of people off in the distance, just standing, staring at us.  I told The Twin to keep her eyes open, and her bow handy, as Junior and I walked out to see who they were, and why they were just standing around.

One of the couple spotted us, pointing us out for the other man.  They discussed something among themselves, then the first man walked off a short way, keeping watch all around as the second came towards us.  I walked out alone to meet him, trusting Junior to watch my back.  And trusting The Twin to watch over both of us.

“Nice wall you guys are building there...”  He began by saying.  “Good to keep the Dead out, at least.  Looks pretty easy to just jump on over though...”

“As you said, it's good for keeping the Dead out.”  I replied.  “The Living shouldn't be a problem for each other should they?”

“Well, that all depends, doesn't it?”  He chuckled.  “How many people you got in there?  What are your defences like?  How much food have you got?”

“We have plenty of people, don't you worry about that.  As far as defences go, we took out a fair sized mob of Dead ones a couple of days ago.  Forty of them or so.”  They had been taken over the other side of the river and, as we had not come up with another viable alternative, incinerated.  “We have food, too.  You're welcome to join us, if you want.  Can always use another couple of pairs of hands to help out.”  I offered.  I didn't like offering, as I had a really bad feeling about it, but I offered anyway.

“Oh there's more of us than just us two...quite a few more.  What about women?  You got any women?”  He spotted The Twin off in the distance behind me.  “Oh yeah, you guys got women alright.  Tell you what.  You give us your food, your weapons and your women, and we might just let the rest of you out alive.  That's the only time you get this offer, and I strongly advise you take it.”

“How did you find this place?”  I asked him.  He just smiled in a gruesome way.  He was missing several of his front teeth.

“This place is a fucking myth man!  The prison we came from was full of stories about some old hippy commune nearby, out in the woods.  Heh, most of those morons are looking in completely the wrong direction for this place.  Lucky we found you first!”  I briefly considered my options.

“So you two came across this place this morning then?”  He answered in the affirmative.  I raised my bow, knocking an arrow as I did so, and fired at the bandit's sentry, taking him in the throat.  A bare instant later a second shaft flew into the bandit's face.  I walked carefully up to the sentry, and looked down at him, writhing around in the mud.  He gasped for a breath that kept escaping out from the gaping wound left where his adam's apple had been moments before.  He tried to hold his hand out to me, mouthing 'help', but all I could do, all I wanted to do, was to watch this fucker die before caving in his skull.  These sons of bitches could be trouble.  We had no way of knowing that these two had been the only members of their scouting party.  It could be that somebody watching from afar with a pair of binoculars was at this very moment running full pelt towards the bandits base.  This could get fucking nasty very quickly.  We searched their bodies, but they had nothing on them, save for a water bottle each and a pair of cricket bats.  These were immediately added to our arsenal.  After a quick re-con of the local area, we headed back to the barn to let people know all about our new neighbours, and their idea of coming over to borrow a cup of sugar.

noon

Fat Dealer had known that there was a prison nearby, but he had figured the inmates would be no real problem, expected in fact that they had perished in the initial few days of the outbreak.  Knowing that they had a large, armed force nearby and that they were already sending out scouts had us all worried.  Apocalypse Girl suggested that maybe they wouldn't bother sending anybody else out this way, but by the tone of her voice even she didn't believe that much.  The Twin rightly said that we needed to make sure the wall is guarded full time, but with the losses of the last few days we didn't have the personnel for multiple shifts of guards, even just in daylight hours.  With the new arrivals we were nearly back up to twenty people living here, but Fat Dealer said that the prison had easily several hundred inmates, perhaps even a couple of thousand.

Farmer simply suggested giving them what they want to the great disgust of everybody else, and Apocalypse Girl pointed out that meant giving them his wife too.  The way she hesitated just long enough to question whether she had hesitated or not saying the word wife implied that she too had heard what I had heard.  Butcher had a better idea, give them one of the sheep, loaded up with a slow acting poison, but that left the problem of us not having any thing of the sort.

The Kid had the best idea of all.  He wanted to find and infiltrate their camp, and use his unique 'gift' to spread a little bit of chaos in their ranks.  He pointed out that he was almost exactly the same size as one of the bandits that had shown up today, so fitting into his mostly prison issue clothing should be no issue.  Archer told him, that if he was going, to take a bow and some arrows.  The Kid shook his head.  The bandits had cricket bats, he would have to take one of those.  With that, he grabbed a bat and left to scavenge a prison uniform.  He definitely looked the part when he returned, save for the fact that a large amount of the original owner of that uniform's blood was soaked into it.  As there was little we could do about it, he decided that if questioned, he would claim it was his partner's blood and that he had done all he could, but once bitten, it's all over.  As far as they knew.