Remedy Z: Solo Page 6

  All three objectives, Tantangara, a spotting outpost on Tiger Island and Samsonov’s, were all possibilities and all three could be workable into my mission. My primary objective was to go “shopping” (scavenging) and get another haul of supplies and see if the hard fighting in Tantangara had been worth it. Another secondary mission, in addition to Tiger Island and Samsonov’s was to try scavenge, meet someone, trade or find weapons and ammunition or perhaps get a working vehicle. I could do a range of things with a working vehicle and I needed to prepare for a road-trip to Cooleman to see where these seemingly sentient zombies were coming from. So I decided Cooleman was another mission after this one. The mission was not just from a curiosity or planning perspective; I needed things to survive. I wasn’t truly self-sufficient up in my mountain redoubt. There were many supplies that could help: food, a generator, a jerry-can, ammunition or medicine. I could scavenge a lot more if I could fit it all into a conventional vehicle. Bigger things of opportunity like water tanks, machinery or other targets of opportunity were also on my shopping list and I would look for some kind of truck to transport those. "Take what you can get."

  I had it; a main mission, options, targets of opportunity. It was a clear but flexible plan that got me prepared, warmed up if you like, for the bigger mission to investigate Cooleman. It was time to get dressed for success.

  Chapter 4: Be Prepared

  My well-worn German Army surplus Flecktarn smock went on over a t-shirt, flannelette shirt and a pair of khaki-coloured jeans. Fresh socks and old worn-in boots were a good combination; blister-free feet. A camouflage hunting cap and some leather gloves were last items on, but essential kit. I was well equipped to deal with the changeable weather in the Australian Alps. Fastening all the zips, studs and Velcro were familiar sounds that reminded me of many a trip out.

  Preparations would continue with the rest of the essential kit that had become a standard fit-out. The backpack was refitted and resupplied, including with some reloaded ammo. Ammo was extremely important and my technique for using ammo to the very end of its life would have been seen as dodgy in former times. It was utterly dangerous but less so than facing zombies without firepower. Ammo was at a premium and I never had a great stockpile of fresh ammo or powder to have the luxury of playing it safe. Every round had to count. For zombie-infested towns like Tantangara or Thredbo, I would take 20 rounds on a bandolier across my chest and possibly a sleeve of 10 rounds on my rifle's stock. I would keep the same or equivalent load-out in my pack. My chest sported the diagonally slung ammo belt and I counted it out.

  “Two fresh factory rounds of one-fifty grains, six once-reloaded rounds in the same grain, two fresh factory one-eighty grain rounds, my heavy hitters,” that was my longer-range load out. Following those 10 "good" rounds, the other ammunition was progressively worse. Each round had a declining casing quality, quantity of powder and quality of the tip. The last two rounds were usually embarrassing. They had hand-crafted projectiles of as close to 180 grain for heavy hitting. These were usually reserved for close range as they may not hit the side of a barn at 50 meters. These battered old casings looked like they were dug up relics and filled with the dubious leftover shavings of powder from more precision reloads. While dangerous and crude, they thumped any target at 20 meters. They were effective and survival was about being effective, not pretty. Wasting ammo could cost me my life. My ammo preparation was but one example of my meticulous preparation and my grandparents' “maximising” coming out in me.

  "Ok, the pack is good," I said to myself, stowing ammo and food with the rustle of water-proof fabric and the sound of fastening cords. I was onto another essential; blades. Knives were important, and when it came to zombies, machetes were even more so. I had a home-made machete that was razor-sharp on its leading edge and 15mm thick on its blunt edge; more like a cleaver than a machete and it was coming out to play. Its handle was made from some local gum-tree timber and was wrapped in some old foam and strapped with leather throng. This one was a butcher. It was made from some scrap metal I had salvaged from an old Japanese car. The iron was good (not great), heavy and expendable. I could sharpen that weapon, and had, a hundred times and it kept a good enough edge and had enough meat on it to keep going. Again, it worked but wasn't pretty. That machete had started its life looking much more like a cleaver than a machete but, with countless battles and sharpening, the blade dwindled away. In the past, zombies had come thick and fast into towns; you needed something like this hacking-machine to act as your utility weapon. “Pig Iron Bob.” I didn’t just name zombies, by the way.

  My second machete was another home-made one. It was an ugly one that had actually once been a star-picket. It had been heated over my makeshift forge with two of the three arms of the “star” folded back on each other, creating a wedge. A thin leading edge and a thick trailing edge made for a heavy-hitting killer. The handle was made from a deer thigh-bone, fastened by a threaded tang and a bolt. This one was called “Ebony Ivory”; in reference to its black blade and ivory-coloured handle. It was also a reference to an old song I used to cringe at. My grandfather played an old-time radio-station when I drove places with him when I was a kid. Granddad would play AM radio when we drove into the outdoors, to the tip or hardware store or just to get an ice cream. "Ice cream. I loved ice cream," I smiled and remembered those good times and the face of an irreplaceable man who meant so much to me.

  “Would I ever enjoy an ice cream again?” I thought. What I didn’t know was that I would be part of a reversal of fortunes and that even the frivolous thought of having ice-cream again would not be so improbable. But I was only at the beginning of that journey. I lost that thought as I strapped Bob and Ebony on my hips.

  A small skinner knife I called “Otto” would provide the means to manage game I shot. He was on my belt. His name came from the distortion of brand name which was on his blade; a brand of the knife from when German blade smiths made some of the best knives the world had seen in a place called Solingen. If you didn’t know this before, here is another vestige of the past. It is something to research and understand further if you ever read this book. Panther and Orion, bowie knives and also favourites, had been forged in the same place. My old friends; I would never leave home without one of them. Orion was a heavy-bladed knife that was thick, scarred with grinder marks from the original owner and almost indestructible. A scarred old combat veteran; Orion was a hunter like the man who wielded him. Panther was his twin, almost the same knife with its own stories to tell. The blades held an edge like no other knives I had ever owned. Both Panther and Orion were strapped to my legs with some thick leather straps. "Bad-arse!"

  I would also take an Austrian army knife. "Only the best, eh Soldier?" I smirked as the deadly, tactical-looking knife entered my hand. This knife was a gift from my dad. It was relatively cheap in its day, overlooked by much of the market and massively underrated as a combat knife. It sat in a durable plastic scabbard (or frog) that I had strapped to my chest and pack-harness; ready for action. This one was pretty simply named: “Soldier”. The name said it all really; a solider of a knife that killed whenever I needed it to. I wished I had one of his Austrian handgun cousins but firearms weren’t so easy to come by. People had largely been disarmed in the controlled consumerism, the paranoia, pandemics, anti-terrorism and drug-fuelled violence leading into the Great Change. Guns had been guilty by association; they were in the wrong place and in the wrong hands at the wrong times. Stringent controls were introduced in the 2020s. My dad was a landowner, hunter and competition shooter with an impeccable record so he was allowed hunting rifles. I was his willing pupil and learnt to shoot and be responsible and was accorded the same privileges. My arsenal of guns had largely come from my dad. My guns were mostly comprised of rifles and a couple of shotguns; no pistols.

  Handguns, like my favourite 9mm pieces, were reserved for military or police forces only. When Divine had hit, soldiers and police had become some of the most dangerous assailan
ts; the journey into addiction and turning brought out the devil in every man. In that place between normal person and mindless zombie, they had wreaked havoc. Funny how people just assume that people in a uniform and a power position would act in the right way. In the exodus out of Canberra, I recall a Divine-addled policeman flagging a convoy of cars down at a bridge. Cars were backed up back across the bridge behind me and the horns started beeping, making things even more pressured. You could have cut the air with a knife. The inner city of Canberra where I had worked was going berserk and people were desperate to get the hell out. The cop gripped his head with one hand, grimaced and sniffed, waving his gun around erratically. I could see the disaster before it happened but the people in the car in front were just too compliant. I couldn’t get out of the way with the car in front of me as the three lanes were reduced down to two, courtesy of some concrete barricades. With that roadblock of sorts, I couldn’t get through, nor could the hundreds of others banking up behind me. The stress was unbearable as the fear of danger and being a link in the chain that was risking so many lives became apparent. I was part of the problem and I had to make way quickly. What had erupted in the city was nothing short of horror. We all had to have a chance to make it, a chance to live, fight and survive.

  The car in front had a young couple in it and their fate ended up forging mine. The woman was in the passenger seat of their overheating car and was talking with the cop about something. She produced a cling-wrap bag of some Divine-laced meds which he snatched. He dragged her out of the vehicle, made her get on her knees with her hands on her head. Shamelessly, he consumed the stuff with Divine in it himself, shaking like the worst of addicts as he did so. This was the dose needed, the tipping point and in a few moments more, he would be a zombie. It would not be the last time I would see someone turn; far from it.

  But being a zombie wasn't always cut and dry; there were those that went into a sort of instant vegetative state, others were like sharks on the attack and others were cold killing machines. Unfortunately, the cop was the "killer" archetype. He used his gun to shoot the woman, execution-style, and twitched violently. He then shot the driver. The young man slumped forwards and I could see the break-lights go off on his car. At the moment they weren’t the only lights that went out: the cop was gone and so was my innocent hope that things would be OK.

  The cop continued to shock; the horror-show did not fail. He proceeded to attack and eat the body of the woman without abandon. There was blood, the odd fountain of it, as I sat there a little stunned. But at that moment, being faced with absolute horror, my flight and fight reflexes had kicked in. “You’ve never looked back again, have you mate,” I almost felt sad at the thought.

  I drove forward at full acceleration and hit the car in front, rolling it forwards, off the bridge, and into a railing. Steam poured off and people behind me started screaming. The space made by the car was just enough to make way for my vehicle to get the hell out of there. I saw that cop feasting away, a mockery of his former self and his former duty to protect and serve. He had a new credo at that moment: kill, eat and spread. It had become my duty at that moment to deal with him. I reversed back into the car behind me with a bang, lined him up and drove into him, crushing him into the railing. The 9-mil pistol flew from his grasp and into the lake, below. That was one of many handguns that got away. Luck in acquiring handguns was just not with me. That was my first zombie kill and the situation, that horror, changed me. My sense of duty to self was paramount, but I knew I had to act to stop that cop from spreading his disease to those souls behind me. “Who ever said all humans are purely selfish?” I was still proud of my actions on that day. What faced me from then on continued in its horror but I had been forewarned and forearmed. Reflecting on that memory reminded how much the horrors of the zombie apocalypse had changed me.

  The events at the bridge were a revelation; the old government, law and order, the military and society as I knew it were gone. It was every man for himself and all about survival from there. As a secondary learning from that day, I would never lose that sense of humankind, a common good and a hope that I could exist in a community of some sort in future. I was a link in a chain; on the bridge and in life.

  I wouldn’t know it at the time, but that wish for a community would be realised sooner than I had thought. But in the meantime, I had a distrust of those baring marks of authority as they no longer had a place in the new world. No infected person or zombie dressed as a cop or soldier would ever demand my respect by default. The world was a lawless, dangerous place and I was a self-styled “good guy”. Good guys, like in every western movie, needed guns to do those righteous deeds. My trouble was that the timing of where I was when things fell apart meant I was another member of the disarmed and deskilled masses. As bad fortune would have it, I wasn’t close to a compliant gun safe, filled with firearms and stocked with ammo. Guns were hard to come by and almost surely a necessity in order to survive.

  Back to the then and there, I would have loved to have topped off my kit with a handgun. A handgun would have been perfect for some of those close-quarters encounters when regulating the zombies from my region. But the desired 9-mil pistol I wanted had proved elusive, largely due to its former owners. Zombies that were once cops or soldiers usually wrecked their weapons, if they still carried them into their undead stupor. They were usually devoid of ammo, abandoned in the weather or trashed by their mindless owner. Stumbling through wind, rain and extreme Australian conditions for the last two years meant death for these 9-mil pistols. They needed regular cleaning and maintenance. The chances of finding an intact or serviceable handgun on a walking corpse or a dead body were slim, but I always kept my hopes up.

  With my thoughts on boys-toys concluded, it was time to put the finishing touches on my preparations and get moving; “To Tantangara.”

  I picked up a little utility knife that would be coming along for this expedition as well. “You can never have too many knives”, I said aloud, smiling and quoting my father.

  The loyal little utility knife was a foldout knife with a cord/rope-cutting serrated edge on half of the blade. He was somehow not as big or dangerous as the other knives but was of great use. What name did I give to such a loyal servant you ask? “Jeeves”. Jeeves had and would continue to save my life in the coming days.

  It was time to ice the cake; rifle. It was now “Old Man’s” turn to be readied; my .308 Mauser. He was a seasoned veteran of many conflicts. Old Man was a reliable friend that I could shoot with great accuracy. I had learnt to shoot on that old thing and he was my friend, hunting and trekking companion and a link back to my family. As I regarded Old Man's beautiful walnut wooden stock and fine metalwork, I recalled the tale of his origins.

  Old Man was made in the Brno Mauser factory in 1938 for the Czech Army, proudly stamped with a Czech Lion. It was a design that was under license; a German Mauser 1898 design. This rifle was special for a whole range of reasons which included its design. It was not only based on one of the most reliable and accurate rifles in the world, it was the shorter VZ24 carbine that was rare and prized by many soldiers. After the annexation of the Czech Republic by the Germans in World War 2, this rifle had been pressed into German Army service and stamped accordingly, denoted by Eagle markings or “Waffenampts”. During his change of hands, Old Man had been converted into a Mountain Division sharpshooter’s rifle with an Austrian 4x magnification scope. After almost 6 years of fighting, the rifle was captured somewhere in the Soviet zone of post-war occupation. The Russians had captured this rifle and made their mark on it too and put capture screws in it. It was kept intact, however. This was very rare; the bolt, barrel, receiver and stock were all matching serial numbers and had not been separated. These things mattered in preserving the accuracy and quality of the rifle. Then, this rifle had been sent to Israel to be used by the Haganah and Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Someone in the IDF had put a Star of David on the receiver, showing yet another mark of another maste
r in the rifle’s journey into my hands. After being semi-retired by the IDF and made obsolete by modern assault rifles, sub-machineguns and other Israeli specialties, Old Man was sold to an Australian gun bulk-buyer and then onto a local gun shop. This rifle has been my grandfather’s, then my father’s and then mine.

  Old Man was now being put to use as a tool in a new war against the ultimate enemy of man: the zombie war. While perhaps misguided or misused in its chequered past, whatever your politics, Old Man was indeed on the right path in my hands. There had never been a more righteous battle for humanity; kill all zombies and save lives. Old Man was a weapon and tool that had plenty more to give before being worn out. He was a bit like me really; that’s why we were such inseparable mates. He was family. "Come on old fellow," I brought him up and gazed down his rifling. All was in order.