Authors: Dan Yaeger
Leading up to the Great Change, mass consumption and people’s dependence on the corporations for food, entertainment, well-being and infrastructure was such that society itself was unsustainable without the commercial-industrial complex. Worldwide, things collapsed over a number of months. When the simple things ran out, being immune was not enough. Many could not sustain themselves by their own hands. The morbidly obese and morbidly lazy, children, some disabled people, the elderly and other vulnerable folks, immune or not, made the first, easy targets. Some didn’t even try to save themselves. They accepted the results of Divine, death delivered to them, like they had accepted its highs and addiction to it. I had met others like me on my journey to the Alps; very few had the right stuff and ended up as a meal or had given up. Leaving people behind was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. But I had to do it or I would not be telling this tale. The Great Change had happened just like that. Things declined from there, much further into an abyss and further into utter horror; one year for the world, as I knew it, to collapse into our darkest age.
As normal people looked on, the chemically dependent Divine users and those infected by bites and bodily fluid grew in numbers. The virus made them a horde of monsters that worked together. The zombies were a wave of base-hunger that craved, ultimately, human flesh as a meal and as a host. It was obvious that the similarities between the Divine-infected users and zombies depicted in more than 100 years of pop-culture were there. The famed Zombie Apocalypse was a reality, not quite what had been pictured, but a worldwide cataclysm that fulfilled a pop culture prophecy. Welcome to 2030.
"Indeed; back to 2030," I thought. Hunger was beginning to make me weak and prey on my mind. I needed to get back to the cabin and eat, urgently. With a silent effort of will, I pushed on, past my mind's wanderings. My thoughts dissipated and I was back to the realities of finishing up and getting home. The skull and antlers were strapped to my pack and some bone would be taken for a range of purposes. I knew the meat would give me some much needed condition given the inclement weather of the Alps. "I’ll survive for a few more days," I nodded to myself, a little proud and keeping my mind busy. So it had been a successful hunt and it was time to clean-up before the trek home.
I wiped my knife clean on a tuft of wet grass and thought of my grandfather again as I cleaned up. He had died of old age, natural causes, and never saw the Great Change of 2028. He would have turned in his grave. Maybe not, though. "Maybe he would have made good of the crisis like I was trying to do?" I asked the question that would never be answered, except through me. One can never be sure of the emotions of others or what would have been. What I was sure of was that my grandfather was gone, like my other grandparents and I thanked them for their genes, love and teaching. One of my grandmothers was also a favourite and dearly missed. She was equally important in my survival. She was a smart lady who gave me the love of education, science and reason. She was also a maximiser, using everything to its fullest and she gave me the principles of re-use, recycling and repurposing. These were invaluable in modern survival in 2030. My grandmother and I had spent many wonderful days together when I was a little boy in her care. On those days, without knowing it at the time, she shaped thought, logic, reason, science and language in a way I can only reflect on as a time of great enlightenment. Most people get that in higher-learning institutions or through mature-age research or study; I was a very switched on and aware child with higher thinking. "Thanks grandma," I said to myself or her, if I believed in spirits of the ancestors. Those words were a reminder that I could still speak, to utter words and express myself. It was a good reminder that I was human.
My reflections on my life continued as I vaulted a tree and scared a few birds, cracking a tree-branch under my boot. While my parents had worked to feed and clothe us, Grandma taught and loved and helped define me. "What a gift!" The memory made me smile. I again acknowledged the luck to have had such positive and great family to define me. If these two grandparents were still around, humanity may then have had a better chance. But as I have written before, they were special and not the mainstream of people who had not only been part of the problem. They were not victims or consumed by addiction and laziness. From my family, I was unsure I was the last but suspected the worst; I believed I was. I fantasised other folks were still out there in communities but, deep down, I knew these would be few and far between. I was disconnected from the world but held out hope for the other survivors who still endured and lived as I did. In my naivety, I had envisaged that all survivors were looking to work together for some common good. The reality was that I was alone in the new dark-age and had been away from others for a year now. My perception, rather than a reality, was an idealistic view of survivors; zombies and humans, evil and good. All that would change.
Chapter 2: Cold Zero
Something wasn’t right. As I trudged, carrying my still-warm burden, I heard birds disturbed in the thick bushland and rustling near my cabin. I stopped: momentary silence and an ominous feeling of dread. It was that cold feeling ran down the nape of your neck. I could sense something was unnatural and out of order. My suspicions were confirmed as the silence was broken by faint rustlings that were not familiar sounds. It was not something I knew or expected; an unnatural sound that spelled something that should not have been there.
I slowly unslung my pack and placed my burden down in the ferns amongst the trees. My rifle was in both hands now, a round cycled into the chamber and my bowie knife was loose in its sheath. Then I saw it. “Movement,” I was a little nervous but generally cool and in control.
My binoculars came up to the site of that movement and my eyes registered a shape but my mind was in disbelief. Adrenaline and a hint of fear further surged in me; a cold feeling that makes you sick to the guts. Stumbling around from the far side of my cabin was mess in overalls. “How the hell did it find me?”
Zombies would wander in to the area around my home from time to time, but it was rare. A zombie could catch a distant scent and home-in on a target to investigate. Without a true, common consciousness, the zombies would let each other split off without further impact on the greater group, as long as a greater group remained. "What attracted them this time?" the possibilities were endless. It could be someone carving up a deer, pissing in the bush or the smell of a campfire - anything. Noise got them going as well, it could have been the shot I had fired. "Damn it!" I cursed. The hunger was beginning to turn into starvation and I didn't need to deal with zombies right then and there. "I came up here, cleaned house on the fuckers and I still have to deal with them," I grumbled. But that was the way of the world. I was never completely calm with zombies around but I was always cool in taking a shot at distance. So I lined him up and braced myself on a fallen tree, just at the edge of the tree-line. It was a very good shooting position, ideal to achieve the result I needed. I gazed through the precision optics and considered that which should not have been there. The crosshairs danced gently over the head of this zombie as I zeroed in on a headshot. I was about to take the shot but something caught my interest.
The zombie was once a man in his fifties; balding reddish blonde hair, bushy sideburns and wearing a pair of overalls. His bottom jaw was gone and I was unsure how he would be able to sustain himself or pass the virus on like that. "How the hell-?" I asked myself. It even looked in pain, holding its jaw. Something was clearly not right. But I parked the issue and got on with what I was good at: killing zombies.
"Where there’s a will there’s a way, I guess." The comment pushed the issue to the side. I refocused on the task at hand, breathed out. On a “cold-zero”, the trigger was gently squeezed. With another resounding rifle-crack for the day, the projectile spun out of the barrel and did its work. The high-calibre round took the zombie's head almost clean-off. The impact left a bit of neck-stem, up to one ear, and the bloody spine exposed.
"Boo-yeah! Glad that’s over," I whispered to myself. I picked up my pack and precious booty from the morning's hunt. My legs took me toward the once walking corpse that was then truly at peace. I began to jog, hunger gripping me and the sense that I had all the time in the world to do everything was well gone. I knew that if I didn't get to eating quickly, I would suffer some side-effects and could be a danger to myself. My legs cramped up, starvation and dehydration letting me know they were there. My head was a little dizzy and I slowed to a walk, almost at the fallen beast.
"Yep, he's dead," I breathed a sigh as my eyes scanned the corpse. My ears began to ring and I realised the sound of the shot, the starvation or something was messing with my senses. I was vulnerable until I could eat, rest and replenish.
Cooleman Duck – Diesel and Marine Mechanics – Land and Sea, read the patch on his chest. “You’re a fair way from home buddy,” I thought. "The mechanic." the label was said aloud. It had some steel-cap boots on that that were in pretty good condition and were in my size, I slid them off and he had thick socks that had not allowed the messy feet that had occupied them to bleed or seep too much into the boot. "Clean enough," was the conclusion.
I threw them toward my front door and relaxed; let my guard down. Before I could return to my comfortable standing position after the throw, I experienced a sickening sense; that I was being watched. A cold chill came over me, once more, as I looked right to see something emerge from the side of my home, sneaking with intent. Standing there bent and in a lithe half-crouch, was smiling death and she had brought a friend. A pair of sallow-skinned wretches regarded me, their next meal, and they were so close. They straightened, stood there, pleased to see me, of course.
I was incredulous for just a moment and then I got my head right. Through the fog of things bringing me down, my focus kicked in and I was going to fight for my life. I remembered thinking "Zombies were never organised like this, and the smile!" Such observations were correct in that split second. They normally shambled about together in a primal way and groan a bit, they didn’t normally wait till a shooter was close and vulnerable or remain silent and sneak up on you like these two had. No matter how this had come to pass, in all of its randomness, I had to deal with it and I could dissect and make sense of the “how” later.
The zombie closest was once a woman, really skinny, weak with thin bleach-blonde hair, a black singlet and skinny jeans; “Skinny”. The furthest zombie was also moving my way; “Blackbeard”. Skinny continued to crouch like a cat while Blackbeard came towards me with speed and intent. Things happened too quickly for the optimum response. In my half-starved state, I was lucky that my brain had triaged a strategy at all.
That old faithful, “Old Man” my rifle, was whipped off a strong shoulder, just in time to blow Blackbeard’s guts out. "Hip-shooting." It more or less halved him with a splatter back toward his friend. "Good, no extra washing!" I thought to myself in the narrative which kept me sane and thinking. The rifle came up again, but this time it wasn't to shoot. The heavy walnut stock impacted Skinny’s face and drove her upper and lower jaw inward with an awful cracking sound, as she pounced.
With a hollow howl, she stumbled backward onto hands and knees and gave me enough time to draw my knife. Its heavy blade came down on the back its skull like a cleaver, splitting it in a number of directions. With that sort of brain trauma, she was gone. Blackbeard, on the other hand, was grasping at my well-travelled boots. He was trying to take the boots from me like I had done his friend. The Bowie was swung around into a stabbing position, a downward motion followed, from standing to kneeling. The extra supporting hand on the pommel gave me all the power and more to finish the job. “Stop…” he loosely groaned but it was too late. The knife entered just above his nose and took the top off his skull. He was done now too. “What the fuck?!” I was in disbelief. “A zombie that had retained some speech?!” I was incredulous and concerned that I had hallucinated due to hunger and dehydration.
Blackbeard had become a new enigma for me to understand. I wanted to know more. “Was he human?! He was probably in too bad a state after the shot, even if he was” I justified. What had happened was completely unexpected. That sort of stress, fear and uncertainty was never pleasant and it always rattled the strongest of people. The soul of a person is never intact after killing something that resembles the form of a human. This is even more the case when what you kill has a voice!
Everything was questioned as a rattled mind raced. "Perhaps loneliness had reached such a point in me that I craved the company of a zombie and had imagined it?" A moment’s thought: "No fucking way. I was totally with-it and I had heard clearly. The bastard spoke!"
Now convinced that what I had heard was real, another noise attracted my attention. A gurgling and swishing sound from around the side of the house was telling and broke my moment of reflection. The threat may not have been over and further investigation and laser-like focus would be called upon, once more, before the day was done. Legs extended, a mind cleared and those legs stalked like a commando. Slow, purposeful actions were undertaken; a reloaded rifle with slow but strong movements, a steady silent movement to the scene of the unknown noise. As the reloading occurred, a casing was left to drop to the ground. I could worry about reloading bullets, cleaning this and that and everything else, later. There was a war on. I stalked, like when I was out hunting deer, around to the side of my cabin.
A kangaroo, the gods only know how, had been mauled by the group. It laid there, its comparatively little arms scratching at its exposed chest and guts that had been spilled on the wet ground. Tail swinging this way and that and its one intact hind leg kicked, almost twitched. Its mouth was mostly open in some strange expression as though it wanted to talk and seek my help. It knew I was different and was not one of the inhuman carnivores that had tried to eat it alive. The movement continued but was more subdued. I patted its head gently and it was not aggressive toward me. There was an understanding that one cannot explain. There was more in that understanding, in that poignant moment, than with the zombie that had spoken. On reflection, I used this as part of the basis to justify having killed Blackbeard; more connection with a mortally wounded roo. Without anything but compassion in my heart, I reloaded my rifle and put a round through its head. It was at peace. It was over.