Tankbread 02 Immortal (23 page)

“Where’s he going?” Rache asked, jogging up to take position next to Else.

“Hunting,” Else replied.

“I thought we were looking for his people,” Rache said.

“Yeah, I guess they don’t follow the roads.”

“Is he coming back?”

“He will find—” Else stopped as in the distance Hob staggered and then collapsed on the road.

“Shit,” she muttered. Hurrying forward, the two women reached him first. The rest of the survivors came running to see if he was alive.

“He’s still breathing,” Else reported. Blood and fluid stained the rough blanket skirt that Hob wore. They lifted the fabric away and saw the dressing underneath was soaked with blood.

“Let him die,” one of the survivors muttered.

“He deserves it,” a woman said.

The others muttered their own opinions. Else scanned the group until she saw Anna.

“What do you want us to do?”

The girl recoiled, pressing against her mother’s side. “It’s okay, love,” her mother said.

“There was a wise man, named Voltaire, who once said that punishment should serve a purpose. A dead criminal is useless,” Else said to the girl. “If Hob dies, then his punishment serves no purpose. It would be as if I had killed him immediately.”

“I hate him,” the girl whispered.

Else nodded. “You have reason to. Letting him die won’t quench that. Let his punishment serve a purpose, not just his pain, but his scar for years to come.”

Anna frowned, thinking hard about what Else was saying. “He will hurt me again,” she whispered.

“No, he’s harmless now. If he strikes anyone, I’ll cut off his hand. If he threatens anyone, I’ll cut out his tongue.”

The girl nodded. “I’ll watch him, always,” she said.

“Okay,” Else said. She unpacked medical supplies from her bag and dressed Hob’s wound again. Using a sewing kit and thread she made some rough stitches in his flesh, closing the seeping wounds and finishing with a liberal spray of iodine over the area.

“Do we carry him again?” one of the men asked.

“Sit, rest, we will see how he is when he wakes up,” Else replied.

The group sat down in the road. Some moved to the shade, with others facing the trees to watch for the dead.

Else dozed in the warm afternoon. Flies buzzed and crawled over Hob’s stained cloth. Anna came forward, still wrapped in her blanket from head to toe. With a leaf-laden branch she waved the insects away. She then sat, watching Hob, out of reach but vigilant, until he stirred and asked for water.

“There isn’t any left,” Anna said. “You need to get up and walk until we find some.” She poked Hob with the leafy branch for emphasis.

“Geddafuckout,” he muttered.

“Else said if you hit anyone, she will cut off your hands, if you threaten anyone, she will cut out your tongue.”

Hob’s eyes narrowed. He regarded Anna, who sat on the road with her knees drawn up and her slight form draped in a blanket shield.

“Who the fuck put her in charge?” he asked.

Anna shrugged. “She’s the strongest. So if you try anything, she will hurt you so bad.”

“Gemme some fuckin’ water,” Hob said.

“You want water, you stand up and walk. You can stop when you find water.” Anna flinched when Hob rolled on to his side. She rose to her feet, the blanket clutched tightly around her, only her face, feet, and the leafy stick showing.

“Get up, you shit,” she said.

“I’m fuckin’ getting’ up. Why don’t you give me a fuckin’ hand?”

Anna didn’t move. Hob made it to his knees, his mouth open and panting in the afternoon heat. He licked his cracked lips. The girl stood firm, her stick like a sword across her body.

“You have to learn to do things on your own. You have to learn to live with what you did,” she said.

“Fuckin’ smart cunt,” Hob muttered, struggling to his feet.

“You speak like that to me again, and Else will cut your tongue out and make you eat it,” Anna warned. “Now start walkin’.” She lashed at Hob with the leafy branch. He raised his hands to protect his face and stumbled off down the road.

“You okay?” Else asked Anna, who stood trembling under her blanket in the middle of the road.

“He-he’s ju-just a piece of fuckin’ shit,” she said. Tears welled in her eyes and carved pale tracks in the grime on her cheeks. “Just a dirty piece of fuckin’ shit!” This time she screamed at Hob, who flinched but didn’t stop walking.

Else hugged the girl, her body wracked with sobs until her mother came hurrying over and Else released Anna into her arms.

“Make sure they are okay to keep moving,” Else told Rache before moving on to take up a point position ahead of the main group. With Hob in the lead and Else between him and the survivors, they trudged on until they reached the ruins of Innisfail well after dark.

Else thought Innisfail must once have been a beautiful town. From what she had found on her way north months earlier, it had been a thriving town, supported by agriculture and a busy airport that flew tourists into the Queensland wilderness on their way to Cairns to the north.

On the maps Cairns was a big place, and Else hadn’t been keen on going there. Her need to find a safe place to get ready for her baby pushed her onwards, into the rainforest, and it was there she found the abandoned hut that became her home.

Some tragedy had befallen Innisfail in the dark days following the end of the world. During the Panic it seemed that refugees had flooded into the city and they brought death and terror with them. Else had seen the scorched but strangely empty burial pits and the brick walls of buildings patterned with bullet holes and smears of blood where firing squads had gunned down people by the hundreds. Abandoned vehicles and luggage moldered in vast heaps at the highway entrance and on the airport grounds.

Painted graffiti declared that Innisfail was now the capital of a the new Australian republic and hand-printed pictures, now faded in the sun and rain, showed a smiling man who was the first and last president of the new Australia.

Else had found no survivors, only bodies among the many burnt-out ruins of the buildings. Dogs roamed the streets in large packs; she heard them hunting at night, snarling and fighting over every scrap. She understood why Joel and his people avoided the roads and towns of the old world. In the cities survivors and the dead kept the animals in check; out here, their numbers grew and in the case of the rats, they had become a plague.

She spent one night in Innisfail, watching from a dirt-covered window on the second floor of a building as a pack of dogs brought a wild cow down and tore into her with their fangs. The rats had come before the dogs were finished with their meal. At first she heard the sound of dry leaves rustling over the ground in a light breeze; then it swelled to the chattering of rushing creek water sweeping gravel until, in the moonlight, Else saw a dark carpet pour out of the rubble of the burnt buildings. Rats, millions of them, their numbers bolstered by the ready supply of food in the town’s grain stores and the rich fields of the outlying farmland. They had no natural predators, not once they reached these kinds of numbers. The dog pack bolted, scattering into the night, leaving the fresh kill to be swarmed over and within an hour the entire carcass was gone. Not even the hooves and bones were left.

She wondered if that was why the town had been burned and abandoned. The rats would have been unstoppable, burrowing into the mass graves and gorging themselves on the plentiful meat just under the surface.

Else had been pleased to leave Innisfail behind and continue north. Now as her group approached, she went to Rache to tell her they needed to steer clear of the place.

“We need to find food, water, and shelter,” Rache said, peering out into the darkness and trying to make out the details of the town.

“We will, just not here. There are farms all around this place. Lots of them have supplies, vehicles even, more than we could ever use.”

“Maybe the rats are all dead?” Eric suggested. “It’s been what, six months since you were here last?”

“I don’t know if they are dead, but I don’t want to go in there and get eaten.”

“Joel hasn’t come back,” Rache said. “We don’t know what happened to him. He might have just buggered off and left us.”

Else shook her head, “Joel wouldn’t do that. It’s . . . just not his way.”

“Know him well do ya?” Eric frowned. “If I was him, I woulda dropped us like a cardboard box full of live snakes.”

“Why don’t we send Hob in?” Rache suggested. “If the rats eat him, we know it’s not safe.”

“We’re not sending anyone in,” Else said.

“Could be some good stuff in there, hidden supplies of chemicals and stuff. Big farming community, I could make some great explosives using fertilizer.” Eric almost rubbed his hands together in glee.

“We go to the farms first,” Else said and started walking. Hob pushed himself off the tree he had been leaning against and hobbled after her. Anna stood up and trailed after him.

Rache and Eric roused the remaining survivors. “Not far now,” she said. “We’ll find a warm place with plenty of food and water. We can stay there for a while and rest up.”

“This’ll be the last walking you need to do,” Eric said, “We’ll get some vehicles going and ride in style, aye?”

The idea of riding to their destination encouraged the survivors to keep walking. It started to rain and in the pitch darkness they almost missed the first farmhouse. Hob had recovered some strength after turning his face up to the sky and gulping great mouthfuls of fresh water, while Else focused on listening for evols stumbling around in the pouring rain.

After the group had passed through, Else and Eric dragged the gates shut. It wouldn’t keep much out, but it would give evols something to slide past and continue on their way.

This house was larger than the previous farm they had explored. A long veranda ran along the front of the building that sagged with the slow decay of abandoned wood.

They followed the same procedure as before. Else and Rache went in first, checking the living room and commercial-sized kitchen for zombies.

“Clear,” Else announced.

“Clear,” Rache echoed from the kitchen.

“Check the rest of the ground floor,” Else commanded, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. They moved together, opening doors and stepping away. The ground floor was deserted.

“You smell that?” Else asked. Rache nodded. A musty smell had permeated the house, like something long dead and mummified in the dry heat of so many seasons.

The women went up the stairs and into the hallway at the top. Else nodded to the left. Rache went first, opening doors into what were once children’s rooms. Other than the dust that covered everything, the rooms could have been abandoned a few minutes ago.

Rache swallowed hard. “I remember a room like this,” she said. “When I was a little girl.”

Else said nothing, having no such memories and being less than a year old. She watched while Rache moved through the little girl’s room, gathering up dolls and wiping the dust from their perpetually smiling faces.

“We should keep moving, the others are waiting,” Else said.

Rache nodded and tucked one of the dolls into her shirt before following Else up the hallway.

The smell came from a home office. Papers were strewn over the floor, weighted down by empty liquor bottles. A desiccated corpse was slumped in a chair, a revolver on the floor next to his chair. Else poked at the skull. A black beetle scuttled out of the round hole in the side of the dead man’s head, antenna waving until it overbalanced and dropped onto the rags that covered his shoulders.

“He killed himself,” Else said, picking up the gun and checking the cylinder. Five rounds remained. Rache nodded, seeing nothing in the room to hold her attention. They continued on through the house, finding an empty bathroom, the tub half-filled with green-slimed water. The rest of the house was empty.

The survivors crowded into the living room. Eric set a fire in the grate and they stripped their wet clothes off and dried out in the heat.

“Any food?” Hob asked.

“Not yet,” Else said. She lit a lantern with a stick from the fire and went to explore the kitchen. The pantry was full, jars of preserves and rows of tinned food waiting for the home cook to feed an army judging by the size of the cans.

Catering-sized pots and pans were arranged on shelves. Else took one of the largest pots and went back to the living room.

“We have food,” she announced.

“And a pot to piss in,” Eric said cheerfully.

Else slept badly that night. The baby fussed and seemed to have trouble breathing. Else held her palm to his tiny forehead; he seemed warm, and his cheeks were flushed.

Cassie crossed the crowded room and sank down next to Else, Lowanna feeding thirstily at her breast.

“He has a cold,” she announced, looking over at the grizzling baby.

“He’s burning with a fever,” Else said, rocking her son gently.