Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 4): April (11 page)

noon

Viking nearly jumped out of his skin when he and the others returned for lunch, though he recovered his composure more swiftly than Cyclops, whose single eye was nearly as wide as the empty socket.  Elder had an unusual tale to tell, and I personally am having trouble believing it.  For one thing, he claimed that the Dead don't exist for him.  Oh, he has seen them, seen them kill and devour all of his friends.  But, when he threw himself at them expecting to become dessert they left him alone.  Nine cups of tea were poured, on time, the very moment that Archer and The Mech-Techs walked on in.

“All I can say is that I walk in a different world to you mob,”  Elder said by way of explanation.  “That's why I could find the tea and you couldn't.  That's why that town was free from the Dead after I asked their spirits to leave the town alone.  That's why the Cold don't bother me.  Hell, the Cold doesn't exist where I am either.”  He cackled, drank some of his tea, then continued.  “I really just wanted to talk to you fellas, get a feel of who you are.  Now I know.”

Viking told him that there was plenty of room in The Bitch, if he wanted to come along to Adelaide with us, though from the expression on his face the thought of travelling with an old, blind, crazy person was not one he relished.  Elder declined the offer, however.  “I'll catch up with you fellas some time in the future, I'm sure of that.  Nah, you just leave me here and keep on doing what you're doing.  You've got a chance, you mob do.  Not much of one, true enough, but better than most.”  With that moment of relative lucidity over, he simply began cackling once more.

We glanced at one another, Viking motioning that The Bitch was more than ready to leave now, the only question was what to do with Elder.  Through his cackling madness occasionally the words “leave me” could be deciphered, and so we did.  There wasn't much else we could do.

evening

The Bitch was true to her name.  Were it not for the fact that the seating was relatively well padded we might have been vibrated to Death and back again by nightfall.  The fact that the fuel tank was inside was irrelevant at this point in time, but the fumes would make you dizzy if you got too close.  Apocalypse Girl and I stayed all the way at the back of The Bitch, with a nearby window open so that at least we would be able to breathe.

Judging from the way the land fell away behind us we were making reasonable time, better than we would have done on foot at the very least.  Not remotely as fast as we should have been travelling, but nobody could have foreseen Sister crashing The Nightmare into a de-railed train.  Anyway, provided the line was clear, we would be passing near the area the old prison and commune were around noon tomorrow.  Archer was betting on being able to recognise enough of the local landmarks, even covered by snow and in perpetual gloom.

Sister came back to sit with us for a little while, thinking that she would apologise for losing our transport, but I just laughed.  She still had a lot to learn about the way of the world, even as it is now.  Shit still happened, whenever and wherever it pleased.  The world ending certainly had not changed that one.  She just needed to know that nobody blamed her, that is all.

April 24
Year 1 A.Z.

morning

The relatively slow rate of travel of The Bitch was still more than enough to get us into what passed for familiar territory, in as much as I was used to seeing this scenery, just a little better lit, with fewer Dead and not so much snow.  In other words, this was almost totally alien territory to me now, even though I had lived in these parts pretty much my whole life.

We chugged along, going up hills were particularly painful, but going down the other side with not a lot of thought given to how the fuck we were meant to stop this bloody thing almost made The Bitch a rollercoaster of death, only with comfortable seating.  Fortunately for the eight of us nothing lay on or across the tracks and we were unimpeded on our rapid descent from the hills surrounding the city of Adelaide.

Unfortunately for the eight of us, however, once The Bitch began to slow upon our return to vaguely flat ground she hit something.  When I regained consciousness there were several Dead surrounding the exterior of The Bitch, but nothing had managed to get inside.  Apocalypse Girl had been relatively unscathed by this derailment, Sister on the other hand had a nasty gash down her left temple.  Guide was just finishing up with cleaning her wound, asking for Apocalypse Girl to help him sew her up.  Sister's face was as still as granite when the two of them sewed her up, though her eyes were telling me that it hurt a great deal.

The whole car had taken on a surreal aspect, now lying on its side.  Luckily there hadn't been a lot of fuel left in the tank, or I might have awoken to a firestorm.  As it was, there was no way we were likely to be able to salvage anything from this wreck.  Viking and Valkyrie were helping a groggy Cyclops to his feet, Archer was nowhere to be seen.  I asked about him, Apocalypse Girl telling me that he had gone off to do a spot of scouting.  I nodded as much as my throbbing skull would allow, then the man himself slid open a side door, now in the ceiling, and dropped down lightly.  His wounded arm seemed not to bother him much now.  He grinned with glee.

noon

We found ourselves having been prevented from any further travel by a wall that had been blown outwards from a military barracks that had clearly seen better days.  There were no people around, neither were there a large amount of Dead.  The dozen or so that had come out to investigate the sounds of The Bitch's crash weren't any issue at all, they lay dead behind us as we picked our way through the barracks.

The armoury was largely bare, having been looted in the early days, but we were able to find some spare ammunition for our weapons.  What had Archer grinning like an idiot, on the other hand, was not the several large unopened plastic barrels of fresh water, nor the water delivery truck that held them.  No, he was happier about the army supply truck that it had crashed into.  At the very least it had a radio, with which Archer contacted The School and The Colonel's mobile command centre while The Mech-Techs looked under the bonnet.

It turned out that The Disciple had been true to his word.  Several thousand 'friends' of his had descended on Melbourne in the last couple of days.  However, they had stayed well away from our allies, at his word, and seemed more intent on setting up trading locations than anything else at the moment.  Apparently these people were not in the least bit happy with The Disciple's methods, and in fact The Principal had received a formal letter of apology from the leadership of this mysterious group from the north, stating that they hoped that there could at the very least be mutual trade between the two groups.

Some of The Colonel's scouts had reported seeing Meat-beasts fixed to certain locations out in the field.  Interestingly enough, they seemed only to appear where there were people, and those people had been starving, sometimes near the point of death.  Every Meat-beast that had been discovered was being harvested by somebody, and they were all more than thankful for the free meat.  The Colonel had ordered tests run on the first one that they had encountered, beginning with running a geiger counter over it.  Despite the obvious mutation it had hardly registered above normal background radiation.

Viking and Cyclops were easily able to get the truck moving, and we were on our way, heading northwards to begin with.  Archer was driving and would be more than capable of locating whatever remained of the commune, since he had lived there at least part time.

evening

We made bloody good time, but then the roads had been cleared.  When Apocalypse Girl and I had fled the city, there had been abandoned cars littering the roads, now there were none.  Some vehicles were parked on the sides of roads, some of these had clearly been used recently.  We came to a road leading to the east, Apocalypse Girl making a point of saying that she was pretty sure we had come this way.

She was correct, we turned down that road, driving through another area that had been cleared up to a certain point, and found the chemist that we had holed up in on our way out of Adelaide.  Archer suggested stopping to check for any supplies, but I told him that the two of us had been thorough in our appropriations of anything useful in that particular establishment.  Apocalypse Girl pointed out that she still, in fact, carried some of the supplies from this place.

We moved onwards as the gloom deepened into the deep black of night, stopping only when there was no possible way of seeing any further possible progress.  Then we huddled together in the rear of the truck, making sure that the tailgate was up and locked, making doubly certain that the wind and Cold were not going to get at us.  Eight people in that sort of confined space generated an awful lot of warmth, let me tell you that.

April 25
Year 1 A.Z.

morning

We continued on our lengthy trek around the city of Adelaide, not daring to enter or go through, considering the likely numbers of Dead wandering around.  Instead we headed east, then north, then to the east once more when Archer felt he had spotted the appropriate snow-covered landmark.  After a short burst of free travel time we came to another area where the roads had not been cleaned at all.  Archer searched for some way through or around, in the end settling for driving over somebodies fence.  I doubted they were in much position to care now anyway.

This was a process repeated several times after that, as whoever had decided to clear the roads around the city had either not made it this far out, or had simply not cared to go this far.  However, after a few pileups, some of which would have been incredibly unpleasant, we came to the freeway.  There had clearly been a few crashes here, too, but they were fewer and further between, and thus easy to get around.

Archer slowed the truck, turning onto a dirt path that seemed to almost not exist, telling us that we were nearing our goal.  Before long he stopped, pulling as far over to one side as possible.  “We're on foot from here on people,”  He told us.  I looked out the front to see a barrier made from fallen trees not a metre ahead of us.  We exited the truck and began trudging through the snow and mud of the road, clambering over the fallen trees which crumbled as if rotten away from within.

noon

After maybe a kilometre on foot we came to a large gate set in a clay wall that had been built several months beforehand.  We hadn't put any gates in our wall, just built it to around chest height all the way around the perimeter.  This wall was twice that high.  I raised an eyebrow in Archer's direction, nodding in the direction of the gate and wall questioningly.  “This is the right place, I know it.”  He told me.  I didn't doubt his words, though clearly someone had moved in and finished the wall if nothing else.

I tried the gate, and it opened with ease.  Walking inside I was greeted by the barrel of a gun and immediately ordered to put my hands up and let everyone else inside.  I did so, slowly and with no sudden movements, turning to get a good look at the person haranguing me.

A young man, patchy fuzzy fur attached to some parts of his face in some semblance of a real beard, letting the eight of us inside before turning his head to call for some help.  If we were not the people we were, we might well have taken advantage of his mistake, instead we just waited.  A minute or so later three other people wandered on out from the barn.

The leader of the group, I assumed at least, spoke to us.  Her voice was smooth but hard, in a take-no-shit kind of fashion.  “I don't know who you are, how you've come here or what you're about.  You're going to turn around and leave, and forget about this place.  It isn't for the likes of you.”  Archer couldn't help but burst out in laughter.  The woman took one step back then reiterated herself.  “It is not for you!”

“Don't mind him, he used to live here once.  So did I, and my man, here,”  Apocalypse Girl pointed me out.  “We're looking for a friend of ours, he might have come back here, but I'm thinking not, now.”  The three newcomers drew their weapons.  Apocalypse Girl swore.  “Look, we don't want any trouble, we've been through too much of that shit.  Just tell us if you've seen someone weird-looking around that doesn't seem to need to eat and we'll be on our way.”

The four of them looked at one another.  “You say you used to live here, fair enough, I can believe that.  We've only just come here ourselves.  Used to be a whole fuckload of Dead here though, to begin with.  They seemed to have moved in after the walls were put up though.  We patched them up a bit, put in a couple of gates, but none of them are ever left unguarded.”  The leader told us.  “Is there only the eight of you?”  I nodded.  She appeared thoughtful for a moment.  “Right.  You lot can disarm right here, and stay the night.  You can ask around if anybody's seen this weird-looking friend of yours.  We'll feed you tonight, give you a room for the night, and then you get your weapons back tomorrow morning, and you leave.  If that doesn't suit you, then you can turn around and walk right out that gate.”

evening

Viking, Valkyrie and Cyclops were unhappy about the arrangement, but agreed nonetheless.  Archer had us give him all of our ammunition, which he kept to himself, then we handed over all of our firearms.  I insisted on being allowed to keep my sword, which this woman in charge was not happy about, but she agreed to it once I told her that I only trusted myself to take care of Apocalypse Girl, nobody else.

We entered the barn, discovering that little had changed inside.  There had been musicians playing almost constantly when we had been here last, they had stayed behind when the escapees from the local prison had broken out and overrun the place.