Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 9): September Read online

  evening

  Much as I was loath to do so, we returned to the garage. Viking, Scar and Maori had cleaned away all of the corpses that we’d disposed of, though I still couldn’t see any way of them getting from the main cloning floor to here, or outside, for that matter. Until I heard the scratching from the larger vehicle door.

  Viking had turned the truck into a traditional Mech-Tech violation of all that is natural with vehicles, with spikes and head-height blades sticking out every which way. “She’s got a full tank of fuel, for whatever its worth. Not sure how far that’ll get us, but hopefully if we do need it, she’ll do the trick.”

  Punching him in the arm, I told him that he’d never met a vehicle that he didn’t want to profane. “Go fuck yourself, Bossman!” he told me, laughing at my roundabout praise.

  I decided to investigate the office a little more thoroughly, finding a floorplan of the complex, discovering that there was indeed a route leading directly to the exterior of the place. There was no way to get out the way we had come in, not with the vehicle that Viking had nicknamed Spikey, but it seemed as if this route led right through the middle of the cloning floor.

  “If I can get close enough to the main machinery, I can plant some C-4 on it, Chief,” Giant told me when I presented the map to everybody. She patted her pack.

  “How about we see if that mate of yours can help?” Wall asked. “The one in the caravan.”

  “Okay, we might be able to bring him into it. The problem is, if he sees any Dead that might fuck with the effect.” Viking mused. “We’ll go and visit with him in the morning. See if he wants to help, if he even can. It might have something to do with his caravan, you never know. If it is him, it should make this bullshit annoying mission we’ve been sent on a damn sight easier.”

  I couldn’t agree with him more.

  September 18th Year 1 A.Z.

  morning

  Caravan Loony was perfectly willing to have Viking blindfold him under the pretence of a ‘game’, allowing us to take him deep inside the cloning facility. As expected, the Dead seemed to make way well before they could even see the bizarre individual. The downside of this was, unfortunately, that the tunnel behind us was soon overrun with the Dead once again, this time from the overflowing naked corpses that had somehow made it to the exterior of this facility.

  Firing up The Abomination, I held Caravan Loony steady near the garage door as Scar and Maori opened it. A couple of thousand Dead simply stood and stared, naked and rotting, as we all piled into and onto Viking’s latest toy. The massive blonde man gunned the engine and told the rest of us to hang on as he flattened the accelerator, forcing the ancient vehicle to lurch forward, almost impossibly quickly for a truck of its age and size. By the time we reached the front ranks of the Dead we had gathered enough momentum to plough straight through the lot.

  After a couple of minutes of driving through and over Dead that seemed to try and flee from our approach, or Caravan Loony’s approach at least, we followed the road into the main cloning floor. Dead gave way to us, spreading out in a wide circle around The Abomination. I nodded at our explosives expert, and she set to work.

  It didn’t take long for Giant to attach the explosives to the main computer console, the generator and a small amount at the base of each of the junctions supplying power to the banks of cloning cylinders, each one emblazoned with the logo of the Spaarti Corporation. I’d never heard of them before and I doubted that I’d ever hear of them again.

  Caravan Loony began to scratch at his blindfold, complaining that he felt that the material that Viking had chosen to use was causing a rash. It dropped to the floor, the loose knots coming untied at his touch. Without a second thought, Caravan Loony grabbed the piece of fabric before it could drop to the flatbed of the truck, wrapping it around his face once again with a quick grin in my direction.

  I doubt anyone else noticed it, but I swear that the Dead took a step forward the instant the blindfold came away from his face.

  noon

  We were more than ready to get the hell out of this place, Giant had finished setting the explosives and we were all busily making certain that we had all of our supplies with us in The Abomination when Caravan Loony decided that he needed to take a piss.

  Without a word to anyone, he lifted his blindfold from one eye, moved off a couple of metres, unzipped, flopped it out and began to urinate. Attention focussed on what he was doing, he failed to notice the Dead take a step towards us as he relieved himself. Then another. Scar jumped down from the truck, grabbing him by his unoccupied arm, telling him that he needed to stick with us, that he should just piss out of the truck if he needed to go that badly.

  Smiling at Scar, Caravan Loony agreed, turning back to the truck. The Dead that surrounded us stepped forwards once again. By the time he had returned to The Abomination the noose of Dead surrounding us had closed to within a hundred metres. Then, glancing over the roof of the truck, Caravan Loony spotted the horde of shambling carcasses that began moving forward the very instant that he did so, enveloping the truck.

  Grasping hands in various states of decay reached up to take hold of us and drag us to our grisly deaths. Viking gunned the engine, flooring the pedal and dropping the truck into gear. The sheer power of the truck’s engine was all that was able to keep us going forwards, the sheer weight of the numbers of the Dead that surrounded us forcing the truck to rock back and forth.

  A fresh clone dropped from his cylinder, distracting those Dead nearest it, the newly copied life-form’s brief existence ended in horrific fashion, with thousands of gnashing teeth gnawing at his flesh, tearing him to pieces. His screams, brief though they were, provided enough of a distraction that the Dead in front began to disperse, sensing fresh flesh and blood.

  Viking wasted no time in taking full advantage of the temporary lull in the swell of rotting bodies that surrounded us, forcing the truck through and over hundreds of Dead in an attempt to find the exit.

  Moments later we were at a massive door, Dead still surrounding us. The door was made of solid metal, with a massive wheel on one side of its metre thick bulk. It stood wide open, allowing the cloned Dead fresh access to the outside world. And us, should we be able to get through the extra thick throng that barred our way.

  Caravan Loony, by this time, was just getting some clue as to what was going on, and beginning to panic more than a little. It was all that I could do to prevent him from leaping from the truck, as it was, I had Giant holding onto his head while I tried to calm him the fuck down. It worked, after a fashion, but he was still in no way what I would consider ‘serene’ but at least he was no longer screaming and crying that we were all going to get eaten alive. It seemed fairly likely, that much was certain, but I’ve been in situations like this and worse before and made it out in one piece. The trick is to keep a cool head. Caravan Loony was having a hard time learning this lesson.

  evening

  The Abomination was completely covered in gore by the time we finally made it out from the cloning facility under the mountain. The Dead had required us to climb on top of The Abomination, clear the doorway so that we could swing it open enough for the truck’s bulk, then continue along a dimly lit tunnel, still crawling with Dead that eventually led out into the dying sunlight.

  Still surrounded by several hundred naked rotting corpses, I stood in the back of The Abomination, detonator in my hand. The sign above read ‘Spaarti; the Future is You’ for a brief second after I set off the explosives. The resulting chain reaction blew the top off of the mountain, leaving nothing more than smoking ruins and rubble. The shockwave, enough to rock the truck upon which I stood, blew the hundreds of Dead surrounding us off of their feet.

  “Looks like that’s our cue,” Viking stated, driving at a far more sedate pace to the south, in the direction of our new home.

  September 19th Year 1 A.Z.

  morning

  Driving at a relatively sedate pace throughout the night, we ran o
ut of fuel just before dawn. Sitting in The Abomination, its spikes dripping with gore and bits of Dead flesh. As the sun rose over the horizon, spreading its weakened rays over the barren grey landscape, I spied a large watering hole a few hundred metres away from us.

  We walked towards the billabong, strolling past a fairly recently harvested Meat-Beast and a stash of skulls that had been neatly piled atop one another to form a sepulchral pyramid of bone. It looked as though someone was using this particular watering hole as their home, judging from the scraps of clothing that littered the floor of the makeshift shelter, no more than a lean-to, really.

  While Viking carved chunks of flesh from the conveniently located Meat-Beast, I ordered Scar and Wall to check our perimeter while I relaxed a little, as much as I could allow myself to, in any case. Giant and Maori began building digging a firepit, encircling it with nearby rocks and stones. Once the flame was blazing away, Giant pulled out a billy and began making tea. Viking returned with breakfast, fresh Meat-Beast steaks, my favourite post-apocalyptic meal by far.

  As the meat cooked, sizzling away in the frypan angrily, I thought I saw something break the surface of the billabong. Sitting up straight, I kept my attention on the water, just in case. In this day and age, you never knew what you might encounter, or where.

  noon

  I must have dozed off for a little while, as I swear Elder came to talk to me while I sat alone, my men making certain that we had no Dead nearby, or anything else that we needed to worry about.

  “G’day,” The dead elderly Aboriginal man nodded to me. Idly I wondered what was holding his head on, as I myself had severed it only a few short weeks ago. He laughed at my thoughts. “I know what you’re thinking, mate, don’t worry about it. I’m not dead where I come from, that’s the important thing, even if I did lose my head there. That’s the Dreamtime for you.”

  I had always thought of the Aboriginal Dreamtime as a mythical past event, maybe drug-fueled visions of a world that once might have existed, but no longer. As Elder explained it, however, it seemed more something that is happening now, with absolutely no distinction about time. Elder also went on to explain that, though the world considered it the Dreaming of the Aboriginals, it belonged to all of Humanity.

  “Doesn’t much matter, now. You need to wake up, mate.” Elder nudged my shoulder with a thong-clad foot. “Wake up, now, or you’ll be in shit with your woman!” My eyes snapped open.

  Just in time, too. Whatever I had seen in the water earlier, it had returned. A pair of eyes stared at me, barely breaking the surface. I glanced around, but my squad-mates were nowhere to be found. An assault rifle lay near me, my katana just beyond that.

  The thing in the water lunged, moving impossibly quickly, and I rolled out of the way, picking up the gun as I moved over it. Blindly, I fired off a couple of rounds, more to get the attention of my fellows than to actually damage whatever it was, but a pig-like squeal of pain told me that at least one round had hit its mark.

  Barely managing to make it to my feet before the creature knocked into me, sending me flying one way, the assault rifle the other, I wondered if this was it; was I going to meet my demise fighting some strange beast that rose up out of a billabong?

  A doglike face erupting from a crocodilian head covered in dark, grey fur, patches of green scales showing through at odd intervals completed the beast’s head. Its body was a good couple of metres long, forelegs equipped with taloned claws that sought to grasp, rip and tear flesh to ragged shreds. My only wish was that they’d seek someone else’s flesh other than my own!

  Gunfire distracted it, the beast spinning around as Giant fired into its flank once again. Scar attacked it from the other side a moment later, forcing it to turn to its newest assailant, giving me time to recover. I stood, taking hold of my katana, and moved in for the kill.

  When the thing was finally dead, we were able to get a decent look at it; broken tusks jutted out of its half canine, half reptilian mouth. Eyes filming over in death had vertical slit pupils in an orange iris, the body was longer than a car, though serpentine. The forelegs that I had been so concerned about seemed to have opposable thumbs, the hind legs were more flippers, designed to propel the thing through water at high speeds. The image was completed by a horse-like tail that, even now, still twitched as electrical impulses still travelled through the beast’s nervous system.

  evening

  The chopper that we had radioed for almost as soon as we made it out of the cloning facility finally arrived, rotors stirring up swirling clouds of dust as it landed. Piling aboard, the seven of us heaved a collective sigh of relief; the mission was over, at least this one was.

  A couple of hours later, we returned to AR-18 to a heroes’ welcome. It seemed almost as if the entire base had piled out to the exterior, atop Ayer’s Rock, to cheer us on. Apocalypse Girl ran into my arms, Apocalypse Dog barking excitedly in a hurry to greet me in true canine fashion, slobbering all over my face.

  German Doctor curiously glanced at the tarpaulin-wrapped carcass that we had brought with us, wondering what it might be. After unwrapping it and telling the tale of its attack and subsequent demise, The Boss peered at it intensely. “I’ve heard of these things. What you’ve got there is a Bunyip. They’re pretty rare, usually don’t show themselves to humans. Not since we started building cities and the like, anyway. Apparently, when Australia was first being settled, Bunyip attacks were fairly common.”

  German Doctor ordered the corpse taken to her lab, as she couldn’t wait to dissect what was, at least to her, an entirely new species. I felt that, had we brought it in alive, she might have had even more of a glint in her eye at the prospect, but that might have just been my imagination.

  September 20th Year 1 A.Z.

  morning

  Apocalypse Girl snored next to me as I lay awake for most of the night, wondering what fucked up situation her mother, my Boss, was likely to send us into next. As far as I knew there was only The Righteous and the extraterrestrial bastards that had overrun what remained of Sydney. Which would we have to deal with next, and how much of a break would we be likely to receive before being sent out once more?

  As I watched her sleeping, I wondered what might have happened between us had the world not ended almost as soon as the two of us met. I realised that the Dead probably began rising at least a day or two before the end of the year, maybe even as long as a week. It hit me that just about anyone dealing with it at the very beginning would have had a hard time believing what he or she might have been seeing. Nobody is really prepared to have their dead loved ones trying to take a bite out of them, after all.

  It wasn’t that long before she began to stir, opening her eye to look into my own. Had she not met me, she’d at least still have both of them. She’d likely not be pregnant, too, and thinking about it, would likely not have survived as long as she had. Neither would I, for that matter. In the last nine months, there were precisely two people that I’d trust with my life itself. Fortunately for me, Viking went out every time I did. As for Apocalypse Girl, we’d saved each other more times than I could count by now.

  noon

  The Mech-Techs had settled in well enough in the time we had been gone. Stutter and Nutter had been spending almost all of their time with Mutter and Clutter, Static trying to keep Soldier company as best she could, occasionally being chased out of the medical labs by irate medical staff. Soldier’s condition had been steadily improving, though the length of time he had had that brown alien slime in his many wounds had severely weakened the poor man.

  Caravan Loony met us for lunch, asking all sorts of questions about The Dead. Many we could answer, such as the best defence against them, tricks and tips we might have learned from our months in the wastes. Many more we were unable to even speculate about; their origins, the reason that every body that keeled over would get back up with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Honestly it was a subject that I just didn’t care about any more. The first couple
of days after the end, sure, but after that I was far too concerned with keeping myself and Apocalypse Girl alive.

  The Brigadier was happy to see me, taking me aside after I had eaten, telling me that The Righteous had been seen on the move, heading this way. Whether they knew of our existence or were just coming towards us by sheer coincidence he couldn’t say, only that we’d have to intercept their forces sometime very soon.

  I decided to wander into the computer labs, see for myself the satellite images that The Brigadier had gained the information from. Sure enough, there seemed a large force, maybe a thousand or more individual heat signatures that I could ascertain. Lots of them, anyway, many more than I could count easily. I checked the number of satellites still in orbit and available for use; there were not many left by now. The Terraformers had taken out most of humanity’s satellite network upon their arrival, at least we were still able to keep an eye on our own home.

  evening

  The Colonel wanted to see me, so I tracked her down with minimal effort after dinner. The petite woman had once been kind of pretty, but her horrifically scarred visage now inspired terror even in her closest friends. The smile that she greeted me with didn’t help, it only served to make the scarring seem angry.