September 8
th
Year 1 A.Z.
morning
I had a dream last night. That almost never happens, not anymore, so I usually take notice whenever it does. In this particular dream, I watched myself swinging my katana down upon Elder’s unprotected neck. I stop just shy of slicing into his dark skin, just short of seeing the blood spurting from his severed stump of a neck. Then, I ask him why he was letting me kill him.
“You’ll work it out sooner or later, mate.” Elder’s eyes sparkled as he winked up at me. They shone even brighter than the sun reflected off of my sword. “Everything has to happen the way it happens. There’s no point in struggling, you’ll only make it worse for yourself.” Then, the dream resumes, my blade descends, Elder’s head goes flying. As in reality, both head and body vanish, leaving only a red-stained robe and a pair of grotty thongs.
Then, Apocalypse Girl was shaking me awake. I was nearly late for my briefing with The Boss, and that simply would not do. So, I scrambled into my uniform and we made our way swiftly to the The Boss’s office. Apocalypse Dog thought it was some kind of race, tried to trip me up a few times, until we found Jester and were able to leave the dog with someone of a similarly small and mischievous stature.
The Boss was impatiently pacing back and forth when we arrived, the rest of my squad already there and awaiting orders. “Ah, good,” Her voice was dry. “Now that we’ve all decided to show up…” She launched into a series of instructions. We were going out on another scouting expedition, this time to find The Righteous camp for certain. We needed to find out approximate numbers, what sort of weaponry they used, anything and everything we were able. As before, we would have a two day window after drop-off to accomplish our mission.
“Remember this, if nothing else,” Her voice was weighed down by the gravity of her statement. “We need information. We don’t need bodies. If it comes to a firefight against a superior force, withdraw. As I said, we need to know their capabilities. If you guys don’t come back we can’t get that information. Dismissed.”
noon
Another tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. Fucking wonderful. All the locals seemed happy enough to see us, at least at first. When I asked if they had any trouble with Dead locally, one guy pointed us to a building that they had used in the beginning to house anyone that was infected. Now, it was a run-down old dilapidated building that was almost ready to fall down around its own foundations.
Once the front door was opened, the Dead wandered out. Maybe thirty, perhaps a few more. In all, nothing we couldn’t handle. Wall was covered in Dead giblets by the end of it, choosing to use his survival knife rather than his handgun or assault rifle. I completely understood: I preferred the katana myself.
The locals were happy that we had accomplished what they could not, at least now they could bury their loved ones. Some of those had been there since the very beginning. Some were a little more recent. In any event, there were far fewer people in danger of having their quarantine zone fail and being overrun by the Dead. In the end, we helped them erect fresh barricades, a little more likely to withstand assault by large numbers of shambling corpses.
They thanked us by offering to share their limited reserves of food with us, an offer that we obviously declined, telling them about the Meat-Beasts and even giving them the location of one nearby, that I had taken note of when flying overhead. The leaders of the community were almost in tears at this show of generosity, swearing that they would send their youngest and brightest to the AR-18 facility. I wasn’t so certain that The Boss would really want any more small town dribs and drabs, but accepted their offer gratefully enough. More trained guns to mow down the Dead would never not be handy. Until we run out of bullets.
evening
I was able to make radio contact with Fluffy once again, though it was able to tell me little that I didn’t already know. It refused emphatically any meeting with Apocalypse Mum, unless it was on the surface of the facility and I and her daughter were the only other humans around. Telling it that I could probably arrange that fairly easily, I bade it farewell.
Butler was next. No news from Adelaide, just the usual ranting from Her Majesty. He was of the opinion that, given time, she could be reasoned with. Perhaps even enough for an alliance with The Boss. It was not going to happen any time soon, though. From there, it was time to talk with Doctor, at The School in Melbourne. He had taken over after The Principal’s death, with almost universal approval from the residents. He wanted us to know that a large contingent of Mech-Techs had left Melbourne, heading for the big red rock in the middle of the country, where Nutter had told them he had seen Viking and myself in a dream, needing their help. He and Stutter had convinced nearly all of the Mech-Techs to join in the expedition, and The School’s defences were lacking somewhat as a result. Doctor had even considered hiring a few extra mercenaries from The Puller to keep the roads between Melbourne and Brisbane clear.
Curiously enough, nobody at The School had heard or knew anything about Sydney’s new owners. A quick request and a brief wait of around ten minutes later, and I had an answer from New Brisbane as well, not a single iota of information was available. The Puller wanted to send in some scouts, though. He even went so far as to order them to report to AR-18, directly to me, with whatever they discovered.
Finished with the radio, I glanced up, up some more, to see Giant’s worried expression. Asking her what was up, she heaved a huge sigh. “The locals have told Maori and Wall about a Righteous recruitment centre about twenty kilometres from here. The thing is, they didn’t want anyone to go there, except to wipe the post out. When they told me about it, though, it sounded more like they were going to try and join up. I know you didn’t want that, so I came straight to you with it.”
The locals had a couple of vehicles that they had kept in relative working order, so we were on our way after the pair before long, catching them up should not have been a problem. Except, of course, by the time we arrived, they were being frisked by a couple of nasty looking Righteous. The hilt of my sword was in my hand even before the stench registered in my nostrils. The same smell that I had encountered in Adelaide, while clearing out a department store full of Ghouls.
I sliced the head from the nearest, Giant firing above Wall’s head to take down the second. As the gunfire erupted, another seven Righteous swarmed out of the only nearby building standing, festooned with spattered blood and red paint. Maori and Wall ducked back, behind the Ute we had acquired, as Viking and Giant lay down suppressing fire and Scar lobbed a grenade into their midst.
Once they were all dead, I examined them more closely, and sure enough all nine of The Righteous were Ghouls. “No wonder they don’t like people leaving…” I told the others. “They make them all eat the flesh of the Dead. This is what it does to you, ladies and gentlemen.” Giant looked ready to throw up as the blood of the headless Ghoul corroded and pitted the asphalt of the road that it still seeped into.
September 9
th
Year 1 A.Z.
morning
Not exactly the recon that Apocalypse Mum had been hoping for, but the fact that we now knew that they were a Ghoul cult was perhaps the single most useful piece of knowledge about them that we possessed. It did mean an extra briefing for me, telling everybody everything that I knew about the blasted creatures. For this, I asked The Colonel’s aid, as she was with me the first time I met one of them, three in fact, and the sheer
wrongness
of the situation made her instinctively draw her gun and execute each one of them. As it was, they laughed about their newfound diet, either oblivious or uncaring that The Colonel was gunning them down.
I didn’t know about their corrosive blood at the time, nor did I know that they laughed off bites from the Dead. As I relayed what I experienced back in Adelaide, the room full of hardened soldiers and intelligent, scientific minds, all of them sat in silence, digesting the data. The results of the autopsies performed on the bodies of the Ghouls that we wiped out in the field were equally disturbing; their bodies literally began to transform from their diet. Their teeth grew longer and sharper, extruding out into fangs in many cases. It seemed that they no longer felt pain as acutely as they once would have, nor did they require daily sustenance. One learned fellow mused that they might not ever suffer hunger the way we know it. Their stomachs were completely empty, suggesting that the digestive system was working overtime, though it seemed as if the entire system was arbitrary. They seemed not to need to respire, at least not to the point that we do.
It seemed, as well, as though one of the doctors involved had perhaps suffered an accident, as she was being brought forward. “As you all know by now, the bite of the Dead is always fatal, though not immediately so.” Her accent was faint, but there. German, I thought. “The bite of the Ghoul, it appears, is in its own way much nastier.” As she spoke, the unfortunately bitten one began to convulse in front of the crowd. They recoiled as much as the benched seating would allow.
“This is the effect a mere fifteen minutes after suffering initial contact with teeth and saliva. We’re still uncertain as to which actually contains the contaminant.” She removed the plastic sheeting from the medical gurney upon which the doctor lay. His arm was a mess, the initial wound seemed almost to have healed, though the colour of the skin was a bright, infected reddish purple nearest the wound, fading swiftly to grey as it went. His eyes had turned a sallow yellow. The left bulged in an unsightly fashion. “We have discovered that they require the same treatment as the Dead, that being their brains must be destroyed. Decapitation works as well, and in this case will not result in an active cranium.” She nodded to me. In one swift motion, the unfortunate doctor lost his head to my blade. “The other thing that we have learned is this; the serum that works as a vaccine against Dead infection is completely useless in the case of a Ghoul bite. There is some conjecture, in fact, that it may hasten the process.”
I don’t think anyone was expecting to witness a decapitation this early in the morning, or else they might not have eaten, and consequently lost, their breakfasts. Oh well, the room was going to need a thorough scrubbing anyway. Once the situation had calmed itself somewhat, and the secondary vomiters had finished, German Doctor continued. “The blood, though corrosive and unpleasant, does not seem to be toxic in itself. It will hurt when you are bled upon, but there will be no other effects than the corrosive ones. I would still advise avoiding eye contact where possible, naturally, and in fact try to avoid it as much as you can. The substance is rather painful.” She raised her right hand, spots of red clearly visible where she had been exposed to small amounts of Ghoul blood. Everyone in the room hissed an intake of breath in sympathy in unison.
German Doctor wrapped up the briefing then, asking me to stay behind for a moment. “I understand that your group brought these in. Next time you might want to make sure that they are all dead. We had to put three of them down in the lab.” She bobbed her ponytail in her departed, decapitated companion’s direction. “He wasn’t the only one we lost last night.” Her look told me that it was all due to my own incompetence. I nodded, saying that now we know, we will only be bringing back dead ones. She nodded her head once, then spun around on her heel and marched off, back towards the medical labs.
Apprentice, whom I hadn’t even noticed until now, strode forward, slowly clapping. “Good job, mate. You’re about the only one to stand up to her glare and not wilt under it. Nobody really likes her in the labs, but by buggery we do what she tells us to do.” Her wry grin slowly faded. “Unfortunately I could only help one person at a time. I chose her. It took a lot more out of me than a simple Dead bite, even with what you went through with Disciple. We
have
to put a stop to these Righteous.” With no further word Apprentice left me to my own thoughts.
noon
One unfortunate part of leading a squad of soldiers, enforcing discipline. Maori and Wall had disobeyed orders to run off and sign up with a pack of Ghouls. This was not necessarily something that I would ordinarily overlook, and I told them as much. They both had the decency to look ashamed about the whole situation, neither offering anything as an excuse other than “I’m sorry, sir, I fucked up.” Yes, yes they had indeed. So, after a couple of hours of me screaming at the top of my lungs, I told them that this sort of shit had better not happen again, that I’d keep my eye on the pair of them, and that we would never have this sort of discussion again.
After that debacle, I headed off to the mess hall for a late lunch. Apocalypse Girl had already agreed to meet me there, her mother hovering uncomfortably close. This gave me an opportunity to tell The Boss that I had made contact with Fluffy and relay the conditions of any meeting with it. She also reiterated the importance of discovering where these Righteous Ghouls hung their proverbial hats, then bemoaned the lack of intel regarding the Terraformers. We were well enough able to look at their shiny new base over what remained of Sydney, but we had nothing solid. She was both pleased and irate that I had enlisted the aid of The Puller. Pleased that we might actually receive some information that we might be able to utilise, irate because she didn’t really want anybody other than those that needed to know involved with either the Terraformers or Mutators.
evening
The three of us watched the sun descend into the west from the top of Ayer’s Rock in silence. Apocalypse Mum was pretty insistent that the meeting with Fluffy happen tonight, and wanted me to make certain that it happened. When I brought out the radio and began scanning the frequencies that the
schrandfelths
had given me, Apocalypse Girl put her arm around me. Her mother was more interested in the radio than in glaring at her daughter’s display. Granted it was something that Smart Guy had cobbled together, several months ago now, that he claimed to be able to reach Jupiter easily enough.
Fluffy replied soon enough, though it was loath to meet so soon, it almost immediately appeared once I requested his presence. The Boss was taken aback by her first encounter with an extraterrestrial, approaching it cautiously. When Fluffy extended a hand in greetings she grasped and shook it with almost no hesitation.
“Welcome to Earth,” She began, her voice somewhat shaky. Fluffy smiled through the fuzz surrounding its mouth. “According to my daughter and her… companion… your species is one of three…?” Fluffy agreed with her. “Is there anything that you can tell me about the other two?”
“Indeed. Not a lot, but I can tell you a few things. I have been investigating things since meeting your family, and learned a couple of interesting points.” Fluffy emitted a smell that reminded me a little of vanilla. I think it might have farted, judging from the expression on its face. Not that it was easy to read a
schrandfelths
, not in the slightest.
“Anything that you can help with would be most welcome,” Apocalypse Mum told it. “And if you have any technology that we might be able to use that you feel you are able to give us, even just lend us…”
“NO!” Fluffy almost shouted. “I will not give you technology that your species is unready for, besides our species has nothing that you might even want. It is all designed for planetary exploration and sanitation. Some mining tools. I cannot offer you our teleport technology either, as it is not ours to give. It belongs to the Highest.”
“Who, or what, is the Highest?” Apocalypse Girl wanted to know.
“It is a being of unsurpassed power, my friend. It rules the Hierarchy under which we
schrandfelths
merely serve. Even those that you call Terraformers and Mutators are servant to the Will of the Highest.” Fluffy sounded almost as if it was educating a small child of something obvious, like the sun being yellow. “What I can offer is this, your species is clearly more resilient than other examples of humanity that we have encountered throughout the cosmos. This means that there are far more of you surviving this mess with the Dead than anybody expected. On any other world we would have seen you wiped out entirely by now, but here, on this Earth of yours… it may be that an appeal to the Highest would result in it declaring the Earth a sanctuary for your kind. I will investigate this avenue further for you. It is the least I can do for those that saved my life.” It smiled at Apocalypse Girl and myself, bade us farewell, and vanished into nothingness as The Boss was about to speak.
“So now we must rely on alien politics?” Apocalypse Mum did not look remotely happy about the prospect. “And what was it talking about, humanity on other worlds?”
I told her that we’d find out all of these things, in time. Surely, we will.