Solo Page 9

  The laundry door sounded like it was going to give first. The sound of it being beaten, to get in and get to me, was terrifying. It was a deafening experience that made it hard to stay composed and gather my thoughts. There was an impact on my legs and I almost jumped a meter in the air. I looked down and notice a damned cat-door with a small predator, not a cat, coming through it. Through the cat door came a zombie of what had once been a kid. A boy or girl of around 12 years old, it was small enough to make it through. In its zombie form, that mockery of humankind, it was a messenger of death with an angel’s face. But sentimentality would get me killed; I did the unspeakable.

  Ebony was brought down with my own violent intent on this zombie fiend. No matter what it had been, what it was needed to be destroyed. I cleaved that zombie’s skull and spilled its rotten, stinking flesh, bone and brains across the laundry. I had tainted a room that had once been the place of hygiene and pride for the farmer’s wife who had kept this place so meticulously. Spattered with blood, I looked to the window’s shear curtains for a moment. The laundry window’s old glass revealed faces and breath-fog of those who should have been long dead and at peace. The sounds of groaning, panting and all-out screaming could not be muted by the door, window or walls. They were calling to me and for my death.

  I quickly pulled the body of the young zombie through, into my confined space, and bolted the home-made cat-door. It had an old-school iron bolt fastened onto a metal plate on the cat-door. It was the sort of thing a farmer welded together from parts lying around in a farm-shed. “Overkill for an old kitty,” I thought, “But It should stop zombies just fine.” It would hold alright.

  The rest of the door was not nearly so sturdy. It was the laundry window I feared would give. And it did. A rain of broken glass and the sudden impact of the noise and the raw, up-close and personal reality were in my face. A morass of arms and faces boiled through the window frame. It was such a small space, nothing could appreciably enter. Such assumptions were assured.

  I hacked with savagery, letting out a bellow, a war-cry worthy of my ancestors. Ebony and Bob, my hand-crafted machetes, were put to work without mercy. Limbs, digits, teeth, bone and flesh were accompanied by squirts, spatters and a pool of blood that oozed out of gory stumps. Like a factory worker on some macabre production line, I made a meticulous mess of these monsters. As a limb came through; hacked off. As a head came through, it tasted a crude but nasty blade. Fingers? It was all up for the same treatment. This mass no longer resembled individuals but some sort of blob-like monster out of a 1950s sci-fi horror film. I fought like hell, through hell. The blood and gore and oozing morass of zombie matter was rendered benign, blocking the window. I had made the mistake of neglecting the door for a moment. The sum of all fears was that there was a breach elsewhere in the house and my back would be taken.

  “The door!” The door was just a cardboard core portal that had absorbed moisture over many decades. As I braced it with my hands, I felt it bend and flex under the pummelling and beating it was receiving. Mindless as they were, the zombies would eventually find a way. Through the fear and the cacophony of noise, I braced the door with my body weight. It felt like me against the world; again.

  The pounding and noise was deafening and, I believed that at any moment, multiple places would be breached and I would face the end. My thoughts wandered as I waited for zombies to get in, storm on through, like a gale force wind and extinguish my life like it was a little candle. This vision of the end was not some pretty white light-ascendance. It was the brutal, violent world where I felt teeth in my flesh, claws tearing at my eyes and skin and a death that no good man should endure; torn apart and consumed by monsters. I had seen it before and this experience sent me to a flashback of New Bolaro. A place I really didn’t want to go; but I was already there.

  Chapter 6: Das Monster Marsch

  As I braced against that door, hoping that my life would not be taken in the most horrific of circumstances, I remembered New Bolaro. I screamed a bellow, a release, as the memory took me.

  After Canberra fell, many people fled to rural areas where there were fewer people and, it was believed, fewer zombies. Around ten percent of the population were believed to be immune to the Divine Virus. These people, however, were still targets and, while they may survive a bite, would end up a meal quite easily. So many refugees, immune and the unwittingly infected alike, escaped in convoys, looking for a better place. From the hell of cities, these brave souls faced the horrors of those turning around them, starvation and the loss of all hope. But they believed there was something else out there. I was one of them and I refused to be taken and endured.

  I had no idea that I was immune and, like others, lived in the fear of all around me and that I myself might turn. My endurance, mortality and resolve were tested to the limit in a town called New Bolaro.

  New Bolaro was one of those satellite towns that had been setup in a hurry in 2025, using modular housing stacks, like shipping containers for living. It was known for its solar array; powering much of Canberra’s satellite towns and the capital itself and Divine-infused Pancakes (really). New Bolaro was on the way to a place that was etched my childhood memories as a place I could go for safety; Tantangara. I remember being hopeful I would get to the lake and safety, passing through New Bolaro and looking for food and shelter. But where there were people, there was horror, as I would find at New Bolaro.

  It had been a tragic night of which I was a survivor. I did not and would not give up, despite the worst physical and mental trauma I had probably ever experienced.

  “Trapped; just like New Bolaro”, I thought. This thought came to me as I felt the weight of a score of zombies pulse its hate against the old cardboard door that separated me from oblivion. With my weight behind the door, and against all odds, the door held. Just like that door, I had held out and survived to the last at New Bolaro. Fight or flight? Fight indeed. “Fight hard, never give up and fight to the last moment.” I had whispered to myself as the horrors of New Bolaro had engulfed all of us in that roadhouse. We were all weary and, perhaps for the first time, people were sharing, giving unconditionally. I remember a kid giving his lollipop to a smaller kid who had been crying for a lost mother. A nervous woman needed some music so a man put a coin into the slot of a 1950s styled juke-box that delivered sounds of comfort to her and dulled the despair in the room. A man took off a flannelette shirt from over his t-shirt, giving his warmest piece of clothing to a man who was bare chested and cold. He was warmed by the gift and smiled without shame, a moment of mutual caring across total strangers. “Why couldn’t we always be like this?” I recalled thinking. I had played my part, giving my last muesli bar and tin of beans to two teenagers who hadn’t eaten in over a day. They had once been the sort of punks who had egged my house or stolen my mail but when the chips were down, they were my family in a war against the zombies. They thanked me with unexpected warmth and smiles, like they were kids again and free of teen angst and peer pressure; I nodded and left them to enjoy.

  I found my own little place and parked my rear on the well-trod carpet floor. As I watched onward, the community and kindness continued. An old lady handed her last muffin and hug in some comfort to a teenage girl, alone and scared. With just her P-plates and a taste for escaping the chaos that young, teenage girl had been ill-prepared for any of that which would face us all. None of us would be. The old lady and the girl didn’t know each other but it was like the last goodbye for humanity and innocence. True community and selflessness pervaded all, in that moment; their last.

  We had all arrived there, shell-shocked from what had happed in our city. The Great Change was still so new and none of us really knew what to do. People came from the surrounding area, some from Canberra or as far as Sydney. We had all driven away, a few of us in that direction and we had accumulated in numbers at the roadhouse. We had come together by chance or luck, one might have said. But there was no luck on that night.

  The owne
rs of the roadhouse had been welcoming, as selfless as the patrons, taking us all in without question and offering shelter and what little they had left. It was a last gesture in hospitality at the roadhouse; almost a last supper of sorts. Someone had the idea of barring the doors of that building to keep us safe from what was outside. None of us knew any better, it was all so new to us. It was what was inside that was to be the horror, but we had no idea.

  We were living in the most uncertain of times and we had no idea about zombies, Divine or that people were ticking time bombs. In such strange circumstances, utter strangeness was inevitable. I saw, on that night, the true extent of the insidious nature of Divine.

  What happened was as if the virus itself had orchestrated a mass transformation of the unknowingly infected in the roadhouse. In sudden and dramatic wave of sickness, more than half the room seemed to throw-up, lose their minds, and tear their own hair out and other strangeness. It all happened so quickly.

  Divine proved to me that it must have been airborne or able to communicate to achieve what it had on that fateful night. It may have been the simple coincidence of things that created the “perfect storm” but there was more going on that met the eye. I would never know all the reasons why New Bolaro would have been the tragedy it was, I simply lived it and lamented it upon its thought.

  I remember being there, stunned, a little like at the bridge in Canberra and watching all hell break loose. I cowered behind the bar shaking and feeling the sheer terror of being locked into a room with over a dozen killing machines. But that instinct to fight kicked-in; that innate feeling when your back is up against a wall. I vaulted the bar and uttered those words like a spell of protection or ward against evil; “Fight hard, never give up and fight to the last moment.” And I did. As the metamorphosis took place, people to zombie, my own metamorphosis had occurred. This baptism of fire forged a man who had an iron will to survive. The New Bolaro Tragedy, as I had aptly named it, had been one of the most awful and defining moments in my life.

  Picking up the barman’s “paddle”, I prepared but simply couldn’t be. I was frozen for a moment as the night became truly dark. The boy with the lollypop launched himself at an old man, a baby attacked its mother, men were fearful of twin girls who now gnashed their teeth and demanded flesh. Families imploded and strangers feasted on each other alike. Blood flowed, rained and sprayed about the room. The man who had given up his shirt came at me first. He had a hunger in his eyes and he reached out at me, the bar in his way. I brought that paddle down on his skull so hard that his spinal cord tore forward, down to his sternum; brain crushed. He was dead for the second time, truly dead. My next assailants were a teenager and an old woman and they received a similar welcome from me. As they fell under repeated beatings, my paddle broke. Without a weapon, another three zombies lurched toward me, peeling off from the morass of bodies, blood and melee throughout the room of that roadhouse. I hurled everything I could get my hands on, a loose brick for holding a door in place; nothing wasted. I used that brick to beat down a number of zombies. I used it until my hand bled and was so sore that, despite the adrenaline, I felt the pain and the brick crumbled into terracotta crumbs. Things seemed to be going well for me in the most unwell of experiences.

  And then it happened. The single-biggest mind-fuck of my life: I felt teeth sink into my side. I had the zombie bite that was the hallmark of infection and, to most, infection meant death. I was ill-prepared at that moment, but fought on. My predator was a zombie that had once been a lovely woman, a mother of three. But the virus had been in control and it had changed her and her mission irrevocably. Divine wanted protein to sustain it and hosts to spread it; sharing and caring.

  At first I didn’t make the connection that I was as good as dead. It was only as I used a bar stool to crush the last skull that I realised I was covered in claw marks and the very deep bite that was now bleeding profusely. My blood had mixed with zombie blood in a dozen places. It was a sure bet as far as I could see it.

  How did I go dealing with all of that? I went to pieces. It would take a little while to reforge myself from that mess. Sitting there, in a veritable charnel house of blood, gore, body parts and corpses, I began to cry uncontrollably. What I had seen, what I had done and what I thought I would become. Hell on Earth. Against the bar, I rocked sobbing like a small child. I lost time, going into shock. I sat there for the most part of an hour, until bodily functions such as hunger and the need for a toilet stirred me into being a human again. I thought I was going to turn, convinced of it. My stomach churned and I went to the bathroom and had a blowout. It was nerves, bad food and sickness from a perceived date with death.

  Despite the realisation of my own fate, I felt better, cleaned myself up, washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror. “How much time did I have?” I thought as some mental clarity emerged, staring into my own eyes. “How do I stop myself from infecting others?” Was the next thought. I had seen what mass negligence about this matter had done. New Bolaro proved that you had to think about how and when you turned.

  I also thought, ultimately, “Should I kill myself now to keep others safe?”

  That was the final question before knowing what to do. If I had had something to do myself in, I would have. The fear of hurting innocents and losing control, only to descend into an inhuman, horrific state was a little overwhelming.

  Suddenly, I heard a baby’s cry break the silence; hope. I turned to a corner and heard a “Ssshhhh…” from someone. Life proved it was persistent yet again and I would always be thankful for that. I crept over to the door to the roadhouse’s back office and gently pushed it open. There, under the desk, was hope for humanity. A mother nursed her baby. With wide eyes of horror, she regarded me, stunned and in silence. The fear was beyond rational, controlled fear. She was in a moment of terror. I realised that I must have looked like a zombie; crazy, covered in blood and brutal. I tried to speak, stuttering as I came out of shock. “I…I am still a person…” I cleared my hoarse throat (I must have been screaming or bellowing in the melee).

  The mother’s expression turned from terror to pity in a moment as she looked at a man who was damaged and posed no threat. “I’ve been bitten but I think there is time before I turn.” I continued, thinking as I spoke. There was a pregnant pause and the mother’s big brown eyes looked up at me in curiosity and apprehension. “I’m sorry,” she said simply.

  “I want to help you, get you on your way safely, so I don’t hurt you, your baby or anyone else.” I was clear again and made sense. She nodded, saying nothing, still transfixed on me as though she had seen a ghost.

  I held out my hand, that bloody, battered hand and she took it, without fear. I gently pulled her to her feet and she simply nodded again.

  Her acknowledgement that I was alive triggered something in me and I had a purpose again; get her and her baby off safely.

  I worked hard for the next half hour doing all I could to make things right for these two miracles that had endured and emerged from the horror. I decided to bundle mother and child into a new four-wheel-drive instead of the tiny old hatch-back they had arrived in. It would have a greater range and I could siphon fuel out of the other cars until that big tank was full. I retrieved the four-wheeler’s keys from some blood-soaked jeans; that zombie wouldn’t need them. As I did so, the creature moved, grabbing, tearing at my leg. Its mouth snapped open and gasped like a ghost of legend. Its eyes fixed on me and demanded my life, my blood and my existence. The young mother recoiled, drawing her baby away as I pummelled down on the cracked skull and exposed brain. The brain splattered everywhere; a mess but a fair exchange of those keys.

  The four-wheel-drive was loaded with everything I could find that was packaged. Smashing a chip machine, soft-drink machine, raiding the fridge and other measures, I filled that car up with all the supplies we could find. We then took the baby seat out of her car, and secured it into her new car. As I helped her into the driver’s seat, she looked at me a
nd smiled gently. Her hand touched my bloodied face and I smiled back. The tenderness of a mother was there and it was something I almost needed before I went into the next life. It calmed my nerves for a moment and I was grateful.

  “Thanks, for everything. What is your name, er-for next time?” she asked awkwardly. I responded, not quite understanding the question. “Jesse.” I said. “Bye, Jesse. Thanks and, I’m sorry it has to be, y’know?” She said with a warm smile that turned to a sad look of pity. With one last moment to look upon a human being and a human baby, no less, they were ready to go, even if I wasn’t.

  I waved and watched her drive onward, down the Monaro Highway. Whether mother and baby drove on to oblivion or salvation, I may never know. But I knew I had done the right thing at the time. It occurred to me what the lady had meant. She intended to honour me, my name, by naming her next baby “Jesse”; that’s what she meant about a next time. I had smiled, despite that predicament. I was honoured and my life, somehow, felt enduring if there was hope for another Jesse that may hear this story one day. “Go well, survive and make a Jesse.” I smiled and cried at the same time. There was still good in the world and any little amount, even in my last moments, was worth it.

  I was still waving there stupidly in the pitch black, as if she could see anyway. I turned back to the roadhouse to await my fate in the mess I had made. That act of kindness buoyed me and I accepted what I thought was my impending doom. It was the tiniest insights into the emotional rollercoaster of a person with a terminal illness or one about to be executed. Despite your instincts to hold onto life and preserve your very being, you selflessly think of others and accept death, the ultimate adversity. It somehow makes sense; I had stumbled on the heart of the human condition and perhaps that of the zombie as well. Preservation of one’s self and continuing the species was an obvious parallel to Divine; survive and spread, even at the cost of the individual.