The End: Surviving the Apocalypse (11 page)

“What?” Pious Kate said.

“Do you have something to say to Dave?” Rabbit said.

“No.” Pious Kate stuck out her bottom lip.

“Go on,” Rabbit said.

Pious Kate glowered. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Sorry for what?” Rabbit said.

“Sorry for asking about your stupid back-up zombie plan.”

“’Sright,” Dave said.

“Excellent!” said Rabbit. “Lentils for everybody!”

Dave’s face twisted into a grimace. Q smiled. At last, she had someone who understood.

*

After dinner, Q and Dave sent everyone to bring their stuff out to the campfire. The hippies disappeared into the darkness, clinging to each other. No one wanted to be alone. They returned with their packs and emptied the contents into a pile near the fire.

Q’s heart sank when she regarded the pile. Books, magazines, lightweight tops that would be useless against both the cold and the clawing attack of an undead assailant, fluffy pillows and a Tibetan prayer bowl. No rations, hardly any decent clothes and not a single weapon in the lot. It was an ode to the uselessness of modern life.

Dave prodded the stack and grunted.

“There’s my stuff,” Q said. “I got snacks, SAS rations, a first aid kit, thermals, knives and this.” She pulled out her survival tin from the left pocket of her cargo pants, leaving her satellite hotphone hidden in her right pocket, heavy as guilt.

Dave took it, grunted, handed it back and unbuckled his belt. Angela took several steps away from him. He unslung it and threw it to Q.

“Wow!” said Q. “You got the Bear Survival Belt III! Is that the one with the collapsible hacksaw?” She leaned over to admire the supplies sewn along the inside of his belt. When she was done, Dave looped it back through his pants, fastened it and wandered around the campsite. He paused as he brushed past Pious Kate.

“What are you doing?” the woman said.

Dave lit a cigarette.

“That man sniffed my hair!” Pious Kate said. “He—
smelled
me.”

Rabbit made a quiet joke and there were nervous laughs, but Q noticed that Rabbit managed to insert himself in between Pious Kate and Dave while prodding the fire. Dave noticed, too. He walked away to smoke on his own.

Poor Dave, an outcast in his own place. Still, he was probably used to it. He was a smoker.

“Q, can I talk to you?” Angela said. She led Q into the chill air beyond the fire’s touch.

“What’s up?” Q said.

Angela jerked her head in Dave’s direction. “I don’t trust him.”

“Dave’s all right,” Q said. “He’s just like me, but fatter and hairier and less personable.”

Angela examined her fingernails. “Have you ever described yourself to yourself?”

“What do you mean?” It sounded fun. Q tried it out.
Martial arts expert. Good with guns. Failed the army psych test. Unresolved issues with dead mother.
“My God,” Q said. “I sound like a psycho.”

“I’m not sleeping in the same cabin as him,” Angela said.

Q thought about those small rooms, each with one exit and no lights. If something came in, no one would be able to get out. “No,” she said. “We’ll sleep out tonight. It won’t get too cold if we keep the fire going.” She walked back to the circle of warmth. “Right,” she said. “Who wants first watch?”

Q woke. Something was wrong.

Many things were wrong, including the fact that she was out bush and wasn’t being paid for it, she was six hours’ drive from the nearest wifi café, she wasn’t making any progress with Rabbit, she had the serious no-sugar shakes and yesterday a zombie had attacked a vegan hippy, which was another set of wrong all on its own, but there was something more immediate that had stirred her from sleep.

She glanced at the backlit dial of Vengeance Betti’s face. It was five thirty a.m., maybe half an hour before dawn and the coldest part of the day. She shivered.

She lay on a mat of lumpy clothes that was meant to cushion and insulate her from the heat-sapping dirt, but was doing both things badly. Her back ached and she couldn’t feel her toes. She wriggled, trying to push blood around her body. Where was her dad now? Was he cold, too? If so, did he feel it, or was he beyond feeling normal human things like cold and sore and scared?

The fire was out.

It was dark and it was cold and the fire was out. Who was on watch?

Q sat up and listened. The birds had not yet begun their dawn torment. The wind had died down. The world was still and silent as the grave. Bad example. During a zombie outbreak, the grave was anything but still and silent. Q rephrased. The world was still and silent as a quiet place where nothing moved.

Q got up, took a few deep lungfuls of cold air, bounced on the spot and stretched. Angela, Rabbit, Sheath and the Scarlet Terror were asleep in their bags. Dave and Pious Kate had abandoned their sleeping bags and the circle. Dave would never leave watch. It must be Pious Kate’s turn. Q had always known they couldn’t trust her.

She grabbed her rifle and checked the cabins, in case the woman had abandoned her post for illicit jerky – not as exciting as it sounded – then circled the campsite, searching for tracks. The ground was torn up with so many footprints that it was hard to make a story from them, but there was a fresh-looking set heading off in a direction Q couldn’t remember anyone taking the day before. She woke Rabbit, whispered to him that he was on watch, grabbed her bush knife and followed the footprints.

Nothing sharpened the senses like tracking in the dark when your prey might turn out to be your predator – except for several energy drinks at three in the morning when your
Z-Day
campaign has reached its final battle. Q hefted the knife in her hands and strained her eyes, trying to work out which of the indistinct shapes around her were trees and which were something more sinister. She paused. There was a crunching sound, soft but distinct.

Was it footsteps? If so, one set or several? Could several zombies move that quietly?

She knew something else that could move quietly. She’d seen him in action.

“Dave?” she said. There was no answer, but the crunching sound stopped and was replaced with something else. Deep breathing.

Zombies don’t breathe.

It must be Dave. Why was he skulking around out here on his own?

Or was it Pious Kate? What reason did she have to lurk?

Q crept over the leaf mold and saw a figure kneeling. It held something in its paws – no, its hands. She sheathed her bush knife and readied her rifle, then flicked on her head torch.

Two red eyes glowed.

Pious Kate was trapped in her beam, wide-eyed and bloody-mouthed, clasping something small and furry and very, very dead.

Q fired.

*

“What a pretty sunrise,” said Angela as Q approached, and yawned. She looked far more relaxed than she had the night before. That woman had a fantastic reset. “Are you okay?”

Q gave her a weak smile. “Where is everyone?”

“Dave and Rabbit are getting water for breakfast. Michelle and Will are meditating. I haven’t seen Kate. I had the weirdest dream.”

“Let me guess,” said Q. “You heard gun shots?”

“Nope. The spirit of ‘Greensleeves’ possessing an evil ice-cream truck.”

“You are one solid sleeper,” Q said. “Listen, I’ve got something to say and it’s not pleasant—”

She looked up as she spotted Dave and Rabbit returning to the clearing. “I heard gunshots,” Dave said.

“No, that was Greensleeves,” Angela said. “Hang on …”

They regarded the rifle in Q’s hand.

“Trouble?” Dave asked.

“I’m not sure how to say this,” Q said, “so I’ll make it simple. We’ve all grown used to Kate. Like a toe grows used to a toe infection which, in turn, grows used to the toe, or grows on the toe, but sometimes the foot needs to choose between the disease and the cure and when an antibiotic foot powder shows up, it’s time to say goodbye—”

Angela cut in. “Q, be simpler.”

“I’m antibiotic foot powder,” Q said.

This met with blank stares, the kind that punctuated Q’s conversations like commas.

“Even simpler,” Angela said.

“Kate’s not okay,” Q said.

“You didn’t!” said Rabbit. He gaped at her gun. “You couldn’t! Did you?”

“Kate is not what you thought she was,” Q said. “She’s not human.”

This met with incredulous stares; the kind that punctuated Q's conversations less often, like semi-colons.

“What do you think I am, then?”

It was Pious Kate. She had walked into the clearing from the direction of the river. She looked clean and wan as tofu. Was Q alone in noticing the woman’s eyes flick to her own hand, as if checking for spots of blood?

“What am I, Qwinston?” Pious Kate said. “Besides target practice for
you
?” She pointed a finger at Q. “She shot me!”

This declaration was undermined by the absence of bullet wounds and gore.

“She shot at me!” Pious Kate corrected. “She tried to kill me!” She collapsed into Rabbit’s arms. He managed to catch her, thanks to the quick instincts honed by years of running away from disgruntled parents who didn’t think their darlings were ready to find out where their food came from.

“Come on!” Q said. “I didn’t try to kill her. When I try and kill her, she’ll be dead.” This didn’t have the reassuring effect Q had hoped. “Listen,” Q said. “I shot a zombie that was right behind Kate. You can check! I saved her! But the important thing is what Kate was doing when I found her. And the zombie went right past her and came for me, like it didn’t even notice her. Like she smelled wrong.”

Q tapered off. It was dark and she had been pretty freaked out. Had she imagined it? “You got something on your mouth,” she said to Pious Kate.

Pious Kate scrabbled at her face, as if something disgusting might linger there.

Nope. She hadn’t imagined it. She had busted Pious Kate, vegan extraordinaire, eating carrion and shunned by the undead. “Dave, Angela, can you come give me a hand?”

*

“Wow,” said Angela. “Déjà vu.”

“I don’t know about that French stuff,” Q said, “but I’ve seen this before.”

For the second time in two days, they regarded the dead, mangled form of Princess Starla, champion of the people, warrior of the way and now smelly corpse. Except that this time, the body was closer to camp.

“I killed it yesterday,” Dave said.

“Two in the head won’t make sure it’s dead,” said Q. “
Apocalypse Z
rules don’t work here, Dave. We gotta find our own.”

She felt a wave of dizziness as she contemplated the chaos of a world in which there were zombies that did not follow the rules. It brought her one step closer to the rest of humanity, who were contemplating the chaos of a world in which there were zombies at all, but she failed to appreciate this moment of near-normality.

“Poor Melissa,” Angela said. “Her first retreat and she’s already been killed twice. She always said going vegan would be the death of her.”

Dave stepped forward and prodded the body with his foot. It moved. He shrieked, leaped back and pulled his rifle into the firing position.

The dead body rolled back to its original spot. It wasn’t self-animating any more. It was a flesh log.

Princess Starla’s change had taken about a day, where Hannah’s school friend, Charmaine, took a minute. Were the change rates related to age, or body weight, or reading level?

Angela was wrong about this scene. It wasn’t déjà vu. There were differences between this body and the one they’d seen yesterday. The toes of the shoes were coated in dirt, as if the creature had dragged its feet along rather than picking them up to walk. The face wore a different twisted expression, as if a necromaniac had used it for play-dough practice.

Dave traced his fingers over one of many holes in the smooth white skin of a tree. “You shot wide,” he said.

Q colored. She hadn’t shot wide, she’d shot uncontrollably, nothing like the single, accurate shots she’d practiced at the range. She recalled Pious Kate’s eyes glowing in the beam of her head torch and the headless possum the woman held. She remembered her moment of clarity, when she had lined up Pious Kate in her sights and squeezed the trigger.

Before she had time to fire, something else had reared up and pushed past Pious Kate, throwing her aside. The thing had been Princess Starla, transformed into a demon.

Q had shifted her aim and fired. She hit it in the head, twice. It kept staggering forward. Had she been thinking, she would have realized that head shots wouldn’t work – Dave had already shot it in the head. She had fired again without effect. Then she had panicked and shot four more times, hitting the ground, the trees, anything. On her last shot, the zombie had toppled backward and remained in the dirt.

Q related all this to Angela and Dave.

“The head shots didn’t work?” Dave asked.

“No, but,” Q pressed on to the point that bothered her even more, “Princess Starla didn’t even try to bite Pious Kate. Wasn’t interested in her. As if Pious Kate wasn’t human.” Q paused to let them process this information, then delivered the killing blow. “It’s obvious what’s going on. I suspected it before.”

Dave grunted in agreement.

Q turned to explain to Angela. “Pious Kate is an evil, blood-powered, animal-mutilating, vegan-posing terrorist sleeper robot.”

Dave and Angela looked surprised.

“Or a zombie,” Dave said.

“Oh,” said Q. “I didn’t think of that.”

“Pious Kate is a zombie?” Angela said. “That seems unlikely.”

“Less likely than the fact that zombies exist in the first place?” Q said.

“Good point,” Angela said. “What are the symptoms?”

“Victims sleep a lot, stop eating and become secretive, irrational and aggressive,” Q said. “No wonder we missed it. And then they start eating raw meat, like dead possum.”

“Who’s gonna tell her?” Angela asked.

Q resisted the urge to jump up and down and yell, “Pick me, pick me!” She adjusted her face into a dark reflection of Angela’s.

“You know her best,” Dave said to Angela.

“How do you think she’ll take the news?” Angela said.

“Irrationally and aggressively,” Q said.

“Ah.”

“And then she’ll have a nap.”

“What do we do with her?” Angela asked.

Q had a flash of understanding. “You mean, now that the head shots don’t work?”

“What? No! You can’t shoot Pious Kate,” Angela said. “I dislike her as much as you do – more, I’ve known her longer – but you can’t shoot her! There must be some way of treating her. Will has a first aid kit.” Angela headed back to camp to search for anti-zombie first aid, tailed by Dave and Q.

“Rule Two,” Dave said.

“I know,” Q said. “We’re in trouble.”

*

“Hannah! Why didn’t you answer?” Q had crept away to make the phone call, and her friend hadn’t answered until the eighth ring. Was the girl doing it to punish her?

“I was asleep,” Hannah said. “Why are you whispering?”

“I’m hiding from the hippies. Are you safe?”

“I’m in the attic,” Hannah said. “It smells like wee.”

“Excellent!” Q checked over her shoulder to make sure she was alone. “Did you find my stashed supplies?”

“There was food and bottled water and stuff. And a gun. Q, you hid a gun in a primary school.”

“Thank me later.” She had picked the 638 revolver for its tag line,
So easy, even a child could use it
.
It was perfect. She’d chosen to leave just one, to avoid the chance of a survivalist shoot out. While this made it unlikely that scared captives would kill each other, it did allow one person to take over. She wanted to make sure that person was Hannah.

“Has anyone else seen the gun?” Q said.

“No,” said Hannah. “I cached it, like you always say.”

“Good. You have to keep it. Don’t let anyone know you have it until you have to use it. Do you remember how?”

“You showed me and Katz Bratz like a thousand times,” Hannah said. “When you get back, can we play dolls like normal people?”

“How many of you are there?” Q said. She resisted saying, “How many of you are there left?”

Hannah’s breath caught. Something had happened.

“Hannah?”

“Tim was bleeding,” Hannah said. “I told him to climb down the rope and wait in the gym until he felt better, like your plan said. Mr Macklin said no, then gave a speech about teamwork and how disaster brings out the best and the worst and how we have to be our best.”

Q considered. “Good speech. What happened?”

“Tim ate him. Now they’re both in the gym.”

“Remember to clean the gun after every shot, Hannah,” Q said. “If you keep it clean, it’ll work every time. How many are you now?”

“Mrs Matthews, Mrs Barrett, Mrs Caroll, Mr Wright, me, Sophie, Lisa, Ricky and Anne,” Hannah said.

Q’s mental calculator kicked in. They’d last a month on what she’d left, provided they collected more water. “Set up one of the bins under the skylight,” she said. “If it rains, drink that first.”

“Do you believe in God?” Hannah said.

Q wasn’t ready for this sudden shift. “I dunno.”

“Remember Mr GLEEM?”

Mr “God Loves Everyone, Especially Me” was a smug Seventh Day Adventist who lived across the road from the school. He and his wife did good deeds and handed out pamphlets to those unsuspecting enough to walk past their house. “What about him?” Q said.

“We can see his attic from ours. We’ve been holding up notes in the windows. He says God healed his wife. She got bitten and she’s getting better.”