Authors: Gregg Cocking
We got to the bus and Derek pulled up right beside it and looked from each of us to the other. “I see you fixed the flat… get in and follow me.” He glanced past me and through the window. “There’s the first one.” I turned around, and just through the gloom, with my eyes strained, I could see one of the unhumans (I am adopting Derek’s term from now on. I like it…) lumbering down the hill towards us.
We quickly got out and into the bus, and all three of us – Corne, myself and Lourens – went for the driver’s seat. We looked at each other for a while before nodding at Corne. Derek shouted out his window – “Okay, let’s get out of here. Just follow me and you’ll be fine.” Corne started the engine which luckily took first time, and we were off down the road behind Derek and his monster Touareg, leaving the hungry unhuman behind us in the middle of the road in the dark.
The first few metres were uneventful, but then the fun started. As we reached the first rise and followed closely after Derek, we saw, at first just the eyes glowing in the reflection of his lights, but then the bodies. Lots of them Sammie. I looked around and they were coming from all directions – they would appear out of the blackness when the lights passed their way and then disappear again into the darkness as we passed. That was the scariest bit as we had no idea how many of them were out there. The first one of them that I actually saw in the road was a young man, 25, 26 maybe, walking towards our oncoming cars with his mouth wide open and his arms outstretched towards us. The lights of Derek’s car highlighted the exposed ribs of his naked body. This guy was hungry… As we got closer in our two car convey, Derek kept to his course down the centre of the road, and as the naked guy got closer and closer I heard everyone in our bus breathe in and hold their breath. “He’s going to swerve,” I thought out aloud. “He’s got to swerve.” He didn’t.
The naked young man took another step towards Derek’s car as we hurtled down the road in the dark at close to a hundred kilometres per hour. The front bull bar, which bent around the sides of the front of the Touareg, connected with the guy between his knees and his waist, and at that speed, flung him violently into the dark night sky. He was airborne and spinning, his mouth still wide but this time in pain, and as we sped past, trailing Derek as Corne removed his foot from the accelerator in shock, the guy thudded to the ground to our right in an explosion of blood and broken bones. Then he was lost to the darkness behind us. Corne regained his composure, shook his head and pushed hard on the accelerator to catch up with Derek. This was going to be an interesting drive…
Countless other unhumans met a grizzly end when they met Derek’s car – one, I don’t know if it was a man, woman, adult or child, came flying straight over the Touareg and Corne had to swerve to avoid the flying body. Something, maybe an ear, maybe some flesh from the thigh, landed on the windscreen and he tried to use the windscreen wipers to wipe it away, only ending up smearing blood and fresh flesh across a quarter of the window. But after fifteen or twenty kilometres there were no more of them to be seen. We drove on though for ages in silence, all contemplating, I am sure, the events of that evening and the night. Eventually, as the bright blue digital clock on the bus ticked over to 11:00, Corne flashed Derek to try and reign him in. He got the hint after a few minutes and we slowed down to a stop next to him as he pulled to the side of the road. I glanced at his bonnet and had to look away immediately – the gore which covered it was hideous.
“Howdy,” he said as he rolled down his window, his glasses still perched precariously on the tip of his nose, “What’s the matter?” Corne popped the bus into neutral and leaned across the front seat to the passenger side window of the bus. “Are we going to stop any time soon? Some of us are really tired.” He looked at us as if we were deranged. “Um, I suppose we could do that,” he hesitated. “I usually do most of my driving at night though. Hey, where are you folks headed anyways?” “Bloemfontein,” shouted Corne over the roar of the two engines. “Great,” came the instant reply, “Me too!” He brushed his right hand through his grey hair and said, “Okay, follow me until we find a decent and safe place. See you folks shortly.” And with that he was back to speeding off down the road into the darkness.
We followed him for another forty minutes, and just as we were all beginning to lose patience with him, his right indicator flickered on and he swung right onto a dirt a road, which I have no idea how he even saw. We followed his red lights for a few minutes before he came to a stop and turned off his lights. We pulled up alongside him, grabbed our guns and climbed out. “You won’t need those,” he laughed and took his glasses from off his nose and cleaned the lenses with his shirt. “We’re safe here. There haven’t been any of those unhumans for twenty six kilometres and they always ‘hunt’ in groups.” You know what Sammie, I could hear that he had put the word hunt in parenthesis – that’s how he spoke.
“So, as I told you before, I’m Derek. And who do I have the pleasure of meeting this fine evening?” We introduced ourselves one by one to him, quite formally, and gave him a brief background of where we were from. “Well, as for myself,” he said after we were finished and after digging in his car for a six pack of Black Labels (the worst beer in the world tasted like mother’s milk then, Sammie), “I am, as you know, Derek, and I too am heading to Bloem in the hope of salvation. It may be farfetched, it may be nonexistent, but what else do we have in these times,” he said rhetorically. He jumped backwards onto the bonnet of his Touareg using his arms, surprising me with his agility for a thin, aging man. He took a long sip of his beer and continued.
“I have been many things in my life, some of which I am ashamed, some of which I am proud. Depending on how our relationship grows I may impart with some of my shameful acts, but for now, let me just tell you what you need to know.” And he did for a full ten minutes. He has had quite a colourful past my love, but most recently he has been a private investigator. In the past though, he served in the South African army (in many places I had never heard of), been a farmer, travelled from Cape Town to Europe on a motor bike, owned his own compressor manufacturing business, and, um, been a leg model for ladies pantyhose (and there I was thinking that he was going to leave out the shameful bits… but to be honest, even for an aged man, he does have decently toned legs...)
We finished our beers and decided to turn in for the night – Derek volunteered to stay up on guard as he had slept for much of the day and was wide awake. He left us by saying, “If we are going to head to the Free State together, we are going to have to chat and set some ground rules. I travel at night, you travel during the day, we gotta sort that out. I like you guys. I like you all, and I gotta tell you that I do like having company – it’s lonely out there when those unhumans are after you. But sleep, get your heads right and we will make up our minds in the morning. Sleep well, I have you covered.” And for once we did sleep well, all of us.
When I woke up the next morning the bus was filled with a smell from the past. Was that bacon? No, it simply couldn’t be. I looked at my watch (still the one you gave me when I got the game ranging job – thanks!) and saw that it was 8:11am! I hadn’t slept past dawn for I don’t know how long! I unfurled the blanket and quietly got up as I could see the five sleeping bodies on the bus floor around me. I silently opened up the door of the bus and saw Derek, believe it or not, frying up bacon on a portable skottel braai. “Howdy,” he said, tipping his hat to me before returning to the bacon. “Where the hell did you get that from?” I asked him as oil splattered up off the dish. “Everywhere we have been the meat in the freezers of the shops and the houses has gone bad.” Derek pointed to the ground in front of his car. “Well young lady, if you can’t find the frozen stuff, I always say that ‘it’s best to go fresh’. Pull up a chair.” I couldn’t though – although the little blue fold up chair, one of three that he had in his Touareg was just to my right, I was still staring at the pig carcass on the floor. “Where...” “Don’t you worry,” he interrupted before I could get the question out. “All you have to know is that it was fresh, undiseased and I killed it quickly. Did I tell you that I did a stint in a butchery in the Kalahari?” He hadn’t by the way. Must have forgotten to tell us because that would have been a relatively boring story compared to the rest.
The rest of the clan joined us when the sound of sizzling bacon woke them up, and we had an amazing breakfast compared to what we had been eating previously. There was plenty to go around although Derek had eaten much of the pig by himself before meeting us (he had apparently come across it on a farm in Mesina on his way down from Zimbabwe and had been savouring it for the last few days. Once everyone had had their fill, Derek packed away the skottel and hopped onto the bonnet of his car – obviously his favourite spot. “Okay folks, so what is the deal?” he asked, the glasses on his nose catching the sun as he looked around at us. “Lily, Sandra, Corne, Lourens… are you happy on your own or do you want company?” We had spoken about it briefly when Derek had been away for a second scrubbing the braai, and we had all agreed. “Yes we do,” said Lourens. “We’re coming with you.”
And we did – we spent the rest of the day relaxing and dozing on and off, and then at sunset packed the car and the bus and we were off. Corne drove with Derek that night and I took the first shift behind the wheel in the bus. I must say that being on the road at night is a lot less scary than trying to sleep somewhere in the dark, Sammie!
So, we have stopped for the day in some ‘dorpie’ where I luckily managed to find a 3G card in an abandoned (and bloodied) car, and then found an old, seriously slow laptop in a rundown house just off the main street – so Sammie, I am mobile and have internet (depending on the 3G coverage and which direction the wind blows!) so I will be in contact a lot more, not just six and a half thousand word novels like this one (gee, I need to seriously go and get some sleep – my body clock is still telling me to sleep at night though). Okay, let me go. I miss you more than words can express and think that I will feint with joy when I see you again. You are the one Sammie, I hope you know that!
Love
Your Lil
Told you it was a long one didn’t I! But worth the read, I think, although I may be biased. I did send her a quick reply (won’t bother pasting it here though) just thanking her for the update and saying that, yeah, of course I am the one. Hehe. The odds also are in my favour of it staying that way seeing as most of the eligible men would now simply want to devour her because they are hungry, not because they are sexually aroused. I thought that that was funny.
Take care
Sam W
6:33pm, August 17
Wooohooo! What a rush! Man, you won’t believe what I did today! But I guess I’ll have to tell you because that’s kind of the premise of a blog isn’t it…
Today, just after lunch, I took my Audi R8 for a test drive and, ultimately, went outside into the unprotected world for the first time in three months. Hell, that’s a long time. I needed to get some supplies anyways for my road trip to Bloem, and I was going out of my mind – the worst bout of cabin fever I have yet had – so I just needed to get out.
But this time, the nail gun just wouldn’t do as protection. I went out, first to my next door neighbour Steve’s spot, and then to number 34 to collect the guns which I had discovered during my previous hunts for food. Both fully loaded, and with the spare ammo found there too (and with the nail gun just in case) I felt a bit better. I got the keys for the car, my remote for the gate of the complex, and walked down the stairs to get into a car like I had hundreds of times before. It was a very, very odd feeling.
I walked up to the car and the doors unlocked automatically – another one of the high tech benefits of the R8 – and sat down with a few empty kit bags, my two pistols, their ammo and a nail gun on the passenger seat. Surreal. I started the car. It started first time… after sitting idle for all these months… seriously amazing. I think if I had left my car untouched for three days, never mind three months, it would have struggled to start. I put a CD in – Andrew WK – loud rock music. Just perfect. Although I did have to turn it down quite low…
I put the car into reverse and almost flew onto the grass pavement behind me when I put my foot on the accelerator – shit that thing is fast, even in reverse. When I got up the nerve to put it in first I touched the accelerator and I was off – I love this car! I went towards the gate as slowly as it would allow me to, slowing down to a stop when I was a metre or two away. Mr. WK was singing about how it was time to party: “Don’t try deny it, we’re going to have a party tonight. It’s not too late, it’s time to party.” Just what I was thinking Andrew.
I took in a few deep breaths before looking at that little red button which would open the gate and in turn open me up to the outside world. My thoughts drifted to Carrie who I had ‘saved’ in this exact spot a few days earlier… RIP. By this time my mate Andrew was singing: “She won’t try to stop you, just kick you when you are down on the ground.” I hesitated but knew that there was nothing that was going to stop me from pressing that little red button. I did it. I don’t know what I expected… the infected clambering and climbing over each other to get at me? Some survivors trying to get in? Nothing? And that’s exactly what there was – bugger all. If I didn’t know better, I could have been heading out onto the empty road early one morning.