Tankbread 02 Immortal
Read Tankbread 02 Immortal Online
Authors: Paul Mannering
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #zombies, #Horror, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #science fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #fracked
A
PERMUTED
PRESS
book
Published
at
Smashwords
ISBN
(
eBook
):
978-1-61868-1-805
ISBN (Trade Paperback): 978-1-61868-1-799
Tankbread II: Immortal
copyright
©
2013
by
Paul Mannering
All
Rights
Reserved
.
Cover
art
by
Alex Kranzusch
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.
T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
Chapter 1
It started raining a month ago, the first downpour sending tiny rivulets through the red dust of the Australian Outback. The trickles merged into streams, which ran to flooded creeks, which became thundering rivers. The growing torrent washed away everything in its path. Dead trees, trapped boulders, carefully built fences and barricades, all now lay strewn along creek beds still stained ocher with the desert silt.
When the rain
stopped the heat of the desert sun sent the water soaking into the earth.
Humid mists rose through the trees and scrub as a man, his clothes smeared dark with dirt and filth, staggered towards a groaning chorus of alarm. The trees that stood around the high-water mark now wore tutu-skirts of grass and branches torn from the ground-up soil. The man passed through the trees and blinked with near blind eyes at the long depression beyond.
The flood had torn the bottom out of the creek bed, gouging the hard clay until the low banks now stood ten feet high. A water-filled pit ran for nearly a hundred feet to where an ancient bedrock boulder lay as it had for a million years, making a natural barrier above the new stream. In the hole behind the rock a crowd had gathered. They had fallen, one by one, down the slick clay sides of the stream. Now they moved like sheep, bumping into each other, moving in a slow tide from one end of the hole to the other. Each walker was a desiccated and torn corpse walking in constant, mindless confusion.
The man hesitated at the edge. Moaning, he shuffled back and forth, the calls of the others luring him closer, the strange geometry of the hole keeping him back.
With the clumsy imprecision of the dead, the man worked his way through a turn that put his back to the pit. The maneuver took some time, and the angry moans of the trapped zombies behind him never ceased. The sun had moved in the sky by the time he returned to the road that was no more than a sunbaked strip overgrown with the shifting desert sands. It disappeared into the dust that led from the ruins of the coastal cities far to the south to peter out among the salt brush and ghost gum trees of the northern interior.
The
dead man walked with no destination in mind. Hunger drove his feet, and the rustle of bushes, the stirring of dust, and the flight of small animals caught his attention. Where his gaze fell, his feet followed as surely as the rest of him. Over time, others walked with him, the shuffling movement of his walk reminding them of something they could no longer recall or understand. Hunger was the only constant now.
The house stood in the dappled shade of the Queensland rainforest. It had been built from rough, hand-sawed gum tree planks, the cracks and gaps between the lumber slabs packed with wattle and mud daub. A roof of freshly cut wooden shingles kept the recent rains at bay. Next to the house a cow stood in the shade of a bark-roofed stall, chewing her cud, her swollen udder twitching as she flicked flies away with her tail.
The feet of the walking dead didn’t bleed even though several of his toes were gone. They’d been torn off as the dead flesh of his feet broke down on the long walk along hundreds of miles of broken highways and rough ground. The cow lowed as the shambling zombie approached. The noise cut through the dead man’s senses and he moaned in pain. Turning towards the cow, he raised his hands and all confusion left him. He needed to kill the source of that sound.
Else stood naked, up to her hips in a natural spring-fed pool. Silt stirred up with every step she took, giving the water the color and consistency of chicken soup. She lifted her hands and let the liquid trickle down over her swollen belly, watching fascinated as the baby cradled in her womb writhed and kicked in response to the cool touch.
She felt confident that she could give birth unaided; women had been doing that for more years than she could imagine. Every book she read on the subject made it seem like a natural thing. Pregnancy took nine months, the medical texts said, and it had been 254 days since the Courier died. She counted from that day, having no other day to count from.
“Soon,” she murmured, stroking her distended stomach. “Soon we will meet and I will teach you everything.”
Mona Lisa screamed and Else’s head jerked up, every sense alert for danger. She moved to the edge of the small pool; gathering her clothes from the edge she dressed in moments, pulling a loose dress over her head and checking her rifle with practiced ease. Slipping a razor-sharp machete on a belt over her shoulder, she ducked into the trees that led to her small house in the bush.
The Courier had called the undead
evols
, an old acronym made of the words “Extremely Violent Lucid Organism.” They never travel alone. They follow each other with the same lack of purpose that has guided all their actions since the destruction of the source of the virus that created them, a genetically engineered organism called Adam. The dead man tearing at Mona Lisa was joined by others emerging from the tree line. They came forward, drawn by the cow’s painful bellows, the smell of freshly spilled blood, and the thrashing of the dying animal.
The dead swarmed over the carcass. Blackened teeth tore at the warm meat. Fingers clawed and gouged. Their mouths opened wide and they gulped down the succulent feast.