Invasion Day

1 like Chapter 1 — Updated Jan 25, 2011 — 46,060 characters

When I awoke, it was dark outside. I lay there for awhile breathing in the close, fetid scent of other bodies. At least they were alive – the stench came only from a lack of consistent running water and the heat and humidity of the small room. It was the height of summer and we’d been experiencing yet another heat wave – not uncommon, for this time for year, but highly unpleasant without the soothing luxuries of civilization. We’d been running on generator power for about eleven months now. It had been ten since the water had stopped.



I listened to the night. I fancied I could already hear the rumble of many hundreds of feet trudging relentlessly to the foreshore. It was tradition, after all. Traditions didn’t stop just because you were dead. If anything, death seemed to strengthen mundane routines.



Next to me, Charlie rolled over, muttered something incomprehensible, swatted away a blowfly that was buzzing about his tousled head. None of us slept particularly well. Not in the sticky, slick heat of the Australian summer. Not with the threat of what lurked beneath us on the streets. Not since the invasion.



I got up and pulled on some frayed denim shorts. It took a while for me to locate the top I needed; a tacky string bikini sporting a design of the Australian flag. Tourists used to go mad for that sort of thing. Manufacturers would stick the Southern Cross on just about anything; keyrings, hats, towels, car-seat covers. Ironically, it was all made in China.



With a quick glance over my shoulder, I shrugged off the shirt I’d been sleeping in and slipped on the bikini. I hadn’t needed it much, lately. We’d been going out less and less in the lead up to Australia day. Errol said it was wiser to conserve our energy, spend our time formulating a decent plan rather than running off on half cocked vigilante missions. That’s why the army had failed, he said. Typical white boy arrogance – just point a gun at it, and it’ll surrender. Didn’t work the first time and was obviously just as ineffectual now. He seemed to find a kind of wry satisfaction in this.



Tip toeing out of the overcrowded bedroom, I picked my way through the junk and detritus in the living room and hunted for a pack of smokes. I hadn’t used to, before – but all the others did, and they seemed to have endless stockpiles. It was about the only thing we never ran short of and as such I’d taken to indulging freely. It was the little things. That was all we had.



Ordinarily we lit up in the lounge with the curtains drawn. The infected didn’t seem to have very good eyesight. They were known for walking and driving into streetlights and trees. They shambled with the uneven gait of someone who had inadvertently welded a pair of beer goggles to their face. But you couldn’t be too careful. Nevertheless, I reasoned, tonight of all nights they were unlikely to notice me. Besides, it would be helpful to get an impression of how many there were.



The balcony door had been well secured. It took me the better part of ten minutes to unlatch all the deadbolts, chains and locks – to remove the barricade of furniture. Errol wasn’t satisfied with the level of security but we lacked the resources to do any better. A full scale move to an alternate location wasn’t feasible. Too risky. Besides, we might not find anything better.



I tugged hard at the unlocked door. The wood had swollen in the heat, but it finally gave with a muted pop. The stench was instantaneous. I’d always hated the river smell, even as a child…a strange sort of mingling of sea salt, eggy methane and congealed, baked river weeds. The heat made it rise worse, but the scent of it was now combined with the perfume of decay: rotting organs, open wounds and septic fluids. The miasma assaulted me more intensely than I had anticipated and my stomach lurched violently. I swallowed thickly, took a moment, suppressed the nausea. My fingers fumbled with the packet of cigarettes until I freed one, lighting it with shaky hands.

The nicotine soothed me. I took a few moments to breath in the dizzying smoke. I needed this, before I looked down over the balcony. Clearly my nerves had weakened somewhat in the time we’d spent holed up in the apartment.



Finally, I walked to the edge of the concrete wall. The sky was almost pitch now. There were no clouds. Perfect for what we had planned. I glanced down. The freeway, which ran adjacent to the apartment block, was a writhing mass of flesh. Some of the infected could still operate machinery but many had wrecked their vehicles in the first few months. There were burned out husks of abandoned cars scattered haphazardly across most roads. Early on, some well meaning government department had cleared most of the rubble off the freeway and into the breakdown lanes to allow for a smoother, faster evacuation. Of course, it hadn’t made much difference. The whole thing spread too fast. Now, the government didn’t do much of anything at all - except gnaw feebly on the opposition.



So instead, the dead walked. They could be remarkably determined, Errol noted, when they wanted to be. They were a bunch of lazy, sluggish bastards most of the time – as in life, so in death – but some things were apparently worth the effort. Especially if there was the promise of a cold beer and some nice, fresh meat at the end of it.

I watched them, an undulating sea of blue, red and white, process slowly towards the riverside. Something in them obviously retained the knowledge that today was important – a celebration, a party, the chance to assert their dominance. I didn’t know if the infected bothered changing clothes, or whether the array of Southern Cross garb was a fashion hangover from last year. Perhaps they’d worn the same stinking rags since the outbreak.



It seemed longer than a year ago. I remembered flicking news channels boredly, just another riot on the foreshore. Same old, same old. Some race thing, the media reckoned: only it had escalated into a full on drunken clusterfuck, and suddenly it hadn’t seemed to matter whether you were white, or Indigenous, or Macedonian, or Asian, or Indian. Angry white guys were lashing out at everyone – but what was new about that? I’d switched the news off. It wasn’t until a few days later that people realized something was wrong. The rioting hadn’t ceased. Police squads sent in to control the violence had been wiped out, or else inexplicably absorbed into the melee. And the fighting had adopted strangely primal characteristics: rudimentary weapons like broken bottles had been shunned in favor of the gouging of sharpened fingernails and the blunt, bloody tearing of teeth. Mercifully, there was very little video footage. The journalists rarely made it back to the station after venturing out into what was rapidly becoming a warzone.



The one image that was reprinted incessantly – in the newspapers, emergency bulletins, on-line – was that of a young white guy, perhaps in his thirties. The photographer had obviously startled him – caught him as he whirled around to face the camera. His chest was bare, his stomach ripped into a gaping, oozing smile just above the bellybutton. His board shorts were soaked with blood. Despite all this, his wounds did not seem to be bothering him. On the contrary, his expression mimicked the hideous rictus that bisected his middle. Sticky pink saliva webbed his maw, stretching between the yellowed, rotting teeth of his top and lower jaw. The cavern of his mouth was stained a dark, cherry red and there were chunks of what seemed to be partially digested berries dripping down his chin. Only we all knew they weren’t berries. They weren’t berries, at all.



Politicians began issuing statements. Initially they all more or less agreed with each other:



Race rioting. Make sure to keep your children indoors. Only leave your homes in groups, if absolutely necessary. Mass hysteria is responsible for the growing number of rioters. It is tragic that our dream of an egalitarian society has been so perverted by these unstable, angry individuals.



Nobody really listened to the warnings. We’d all seen rioting before and we were never the target. We were safe. We weren’t ethnic or indigenous. Surely it was safe for us to pop down to the shops to pick up some prawns and a slab of beer? Surely it was safe for us to let our kids play in the sprinklers in the evenings?



My university kept running classes. In our introduction to sociology class, we discussed ‘hive mind’ and how a large group of people might evolve into a chaotic mob with the right catalyst and a healthy dose of hysteria.



I only really started to worry when the number of kids turning up to classes thinned dramatically. In the space of two weeks the lecture theatres went from being packed to holding barely any students at all. And the students who did attend looked peaky, bags under their eyes from stress or anxiety or maybe some sickness beginning to creep into their system.

By that time, the politicians had begun to issue massively conflicting statements. The right wing big wigs were still claiming an on-going, extensive riot – but the news media was giving an ever increasing amount of air time to the lefties.



The further left the political party, the more extreme and unbelievable the statement:



We are looking at a nationwide epidemic. The virus is easily communicable through biological contact with an infected individual. The Prime Minister needs to enforce a mass evacuation. Stay away from major cities – move inland if you lack the resources to leave the country. If a family member appears lethargic or unwell, isolate them immediately.



Strangely, despite the warring political factions and increasing outcry against the government’s lack of official announcement, Nationalism seemed more prevalent than ever. In the weeks following Australia day, an increasing number of Southern Cross flags could be seen flying from the balconies of apartment buildings, hanging in trees, pinned to front doors. However, the flags were invariably torn or frayed. Many of them were darkened by thick, wet bloodstains.



By the third week, I had stopped attending classes. There had been an incident on campus and the school had been ‘temporarily’ shut down. The details of the incident were never formally released but I heard third hand that someone had found the corpse of the Dean strung up from the flagpole, ripped open from neck to groin, totally hollowed out like a gutted pig carcass.

An increasing number of eyewitness accounts similar to ‘The Dean Incident’ were appearing on BBS boards and hastily constructed websites. As all the major TV channels began to drop out, most people turned to the ‘net for their information. And it wasn’t pretty. Blurry camera phone pictures began to surface: shots of little but grayish shapes with gaping, oozing maws. A grainy video of slumped, staggering individuals beating a child to the ground, then dropping to their knees over it. Invariably these clips cut out abruptly – usually with a hissed curse and the sound of running feet.



People didn’t know what to believe. Many were claiming the pictures and videos were a hoax – some kind of a sick joke, or a culture-jam gone too far. They kept leaving the safety of their homes. And, in ever increasing numbers, they kept failing to return.



By the time all the terrestrial channels had been knocked out, the government was pressured into a response. An official announcement was posted to youtube, linked across numerous government websites and played on the remaining cable and satellite tv channels – for those of us who hadn’t already lost our service. The Prime Minister looked harried, too thin. He kept glancing over his shoulder. Simply put, he was jittery as fuck.



Australia is experiencing a nationwide epidemic. A full scale evacuation plan is being put into effect as of today. Government officials will be in touch with your family shortly to assign you to one of the emergency crafts that will begin leaving Australia on Thursday. Please, if you do not have a well prepared evacuation plan, stay in your homes until you are contacted. We advise you to barricade the doors and windows. If a family member seems unwell, or is displaying any of the following symptoms: vomiting, loss of coherent speech, increased irritability, insomnia, fever or loss of apetite, isolate them immediately. At the present time, there is no known cure for this virus. We are uncertain of its origins. Individuals who are unwell will not be permitted on the evacuation crafts. For more information on the virus, its symptoms, warning signs and for information on how to barricade your home please see the website of the department of Health and Ageing. Good luck.

It was the ‘good luck’ that did it. An obviously unscripted addition, stuttered just before the camera cut to black. The reaction was immediate. Nobody paid any attention to the evacuation instructions. We all fled like panicked sheep, pelting blind into the darkness. I remembered trying to call my parents on my cell phone only to find that I couldn’t get any reception. The rest was a blur: three of us piling into my housemate’s shitty little sedan, the traffic crawling immediately we got out onto a main road, the streets littered with empty beer cans and chunks of rotting flesh. How long had it been since we’d been out of the house? Long enough that we hadn’t noticed the infection spreading, even as it hooked it’s plagued fingertips over the fences of our own backyards. Yet many of the houses were still lit up from the inside by the flickering lights of the ‘no signal’ colorbar on a myriad of TVs. We noticed strange, slumped shapes moving behind the curtains. There were those who weren’t trying to evacuate, it seemed. Because they didn’t care. Because it was already too late.



I took another drag of my cigarette as I watched the legions of diseased bodies swarm towards the shoreline. A few years ago, I would have been down there too. Dad would have been driving, a stoic grimace on his face as Mum whined about how terrible the traffic was. I’d have been in the back-seat with my best friend, drinking pepsi out of the bottle. Later on, we’d have staked out a good spot on the riverbank, barbequed some sausages and steak, snuck a few swallows of booze when my parents weren’t watching. And I would have layed down on my back and watched as the fireworks exploded above me, the tiny flickers of fiery color seeming as though they might fall right onto my body.

Somewhere far below me, one of the shambling mob let out a guttural howl. How had things escalated so quickly? Would things have been different if the police in attendence at the initial outbreak hadn’t been so squeamish about shooting a few white guys in the head? The seething mass of infected flesh beneath me seemed almost hypnotic now, like watching patterns emerge in the gray and black dots of television static. The longer I looked, the more I wondered what it felt like to be down there – amongst the sweat and the bile and the blood. Under the banner of patriotism. With my own kind.



I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me. A dark arm curled around my waist, the other reaching up to stifle my anticipated scream.



I tensed stiffly, biting back on the scream that I knew would be useless, except to alert the infected to my presence. My heart tattooed wildly at the inner walls of my chest.

Then the grip around my waist slackened. Another hand reached out to pluck my still glowing cigarette butt from my hand, snuffing it out on the concrete balcony wall.



“The fuck are you doing smoking out here?” Charlie’s voice was calm, affectionate even, but it was a serious question. When I didn’t answer, he squeezed me gently. “Did I scare ya?”



“Nah,” I replied, in whispered sarcasm “…not at all.”



He laughed softly, tugging me backwards until we were both safely inside the apartment. His skin was damp against mine.

“You’re sweating like a pig.” I commented as he let me go and began the laborious process of re-latching the balcony door. He gave a nonchalant shrug. What do you expect?



I settled myself in the pillow-less skeleton of a sofa whilst he finished locking the door. At length, he turned to face me again.



“So…” he ran a hand through his long hair, pushing it back off his face in damp strands. “How many are we lookin’ at?”

I gnawed at my bottom lip absently.



“I’m no good with that kind of thing – estimating numbers. How does ‘lots’ sound?”



He raised an eyebrow at me.



“…lots.” I repeated, dully. “Within my eyeline? At least a couple of hundred. But I’m guessing they’ve been trekking down there since this morning.”



He nodded, mutely, his brow furrowing.



“Cheer up.” I forced a smile “…’least they can’t infect you, right?”



It was an ironic twist that the others all found strangely poetic. Every human being bitten, scratched, drooled or bled on by a virus carrier would either contract a weaker strain of the virus and die, or develop the full blown infection and rise from the dead. Except Indigenous Australians. Naturally, this revelation was never made public (though by the time it became obvious there wasn’t much of a ‘public’ left to inform). Indigenous Australians could still die if a bite turned septic and they didn’t receive adequate medical attention. But they never rose. They never joined the seething, stumbling mass of thick, dense flesh. They died with their dignity still intact.

“Fat lotta good that’ll do ‘im, if he gets himself all fucked up protecting your skinny white bum.” Errol stood in the open doorway of the bedroom, his wiry gray hair already pulled back into a chaotic bushy ponytail. He was still bare-chested, and I noticed with some alarm that he seemed to have lost even more weight. I’d never asked Errol how old he was – it would, I figured, have been rude – but I was sure he’d looked ten years younger, when I’d first met him. The past year seemed to have been a drain on his vitality. Maybe it was our increasingly poor diet, or the stress of never knowing whether you were safe. Maybe it was the losses we’d sustained: quite a few, early on – survivors driven mad by what they’d seen and experienced – nooses strung from balcony rails, slashed wrists in half-empty bath-tubs. Or maybe it was just the strain of what we woke up to every night. The eerie silence. The scent of death. The cloying, oppressive heat.



He’d never complain, though. That wasn’t Errol’s style. And woe betide if any of us mentioned that he looked a bit peaky. He’d whack you on the back of your legs with his stick for even daring to suggest that he might be incapable of leading us. Fact of the matter was, Errol was born for this. He’d seen some shit in his time. This was just the most recent in a long line of hideous atrocities. A lesser man would have given up by now. God knows most of the rest of us had wanted to, at one point or another.



Charlie laughed quietly. “She doesn’t need protecting. Look at her. I’ve seen her pull some hardcore shit on those motherfuckers.”



Errol looked from me to Charlie, then raised a furry eyebrow.

“You kiddin’ me? This tiny white girl? She gonna need a suit of armor out there, boy – she about as hardcore as three legged puppy.” His cracked lips spread into a piano-key grin.

I grinned back. I couldn’t help it.



Errol stepped forward and ruffled my hair with one of his large hands. The veins in his skinny arms stuck out like the roots of ancient trees.



“She knows I’m messin’ with ‘er. Told ya she was a keeper, this one, din’t I?”



Charlie rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.



“Sure you did, Errol.”



I looked from Errol to Charlie, uncomfortably. Something unspoken seemed to be passing between them, communicated in the subtlety of raised eyebrows and cheeky grins. I felt, suddenly, rather like a chunk of prime steak arranged tastefully in a butcher’s shop window.



“Is everyone else up?” I asked, keen to deflect the spotlight from my relationship with Charlie. Errol was a sweet old man...but he was also a foul-minded lecherous old man, and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with pointed questions and lewd jokes.



Errol nodded, “They’re all suitin’ up in the bedroom. You oughta do the same...” he inclined his head to Charlie, who obeyed immediately, disappearing back into the stinking hot sleeping quarters. I could hear the soft whispers of the others as they pulled on their protective gear. Most of it was pretty ineffectual – a few riot helmets scavanged from the early stages of the outbreak, thick, leathery dryzabone coats (which made you sweat something chronic but protected you well enough from surface bites and abraisions), shearers gloves and one highly prized bulletproof vest. This, I knew, would go to Errol. Nobody would dispute that.



I noticed, belatedly, that my knee was jiggling up and down. Nervous habit. A hangover from the ridiculous number of anxiety meds I’d been on before the outbreak. Ironic, really. I’d been medicating a problem that I had no good reason for having until after the outbreak – after the pills had run out. And yet most of the time, I felt only a strange, disconnected kind of calm. If I was ever on edge, it was less anxiety and more expectancy. The leg-jerk was just a tick – a physical side-effect that felt the absence of the drugs like a phantom limb. Was I nervous? I guessed I must be. I wanted another cigarette. I wanted to ask Errol if I could have some fucking protective armor. But I knew what he’d say. Girl, ya got the best armor of all of us. Camoflauge, sis! You can’t beat a good camoflauge. You think they gon go for you, wearin’ that get up? Nah. Us, but. They’ll come after us soon as they seen the color of our skin.

In the other room, I heard one of the younger boys boasting loudly about how many of those gangrenous motherfuckers he was going to take down. It was Daniel, I guessed. Last time we’d taken him on a hunt he’d freaked out so badly we nearly had to bail just so we could get him home in one piece. When he finally had come face to face with one of the creatures, he’d just stood there like a startled kangaroo, twitching very slightly in sheer, unadulterated fear and panic. After that, we didn’t take the younger ones on hunts anymore. I wondered if Dan was still afraid – if his macho bullshit was more an attempt to convice himself of his potential, than an attempt to impress his peers. Or maybe he’d changed. Grown up.



Errol re-entered the room. I could see the dark shapes of the others milling around behind him uneasily – checking and double checking their armor, whispering to each other in unsettled excitement.



“Its time to go,” he said, expressionlessly. His face, in the dim light, looked younger. Smoothed of lines. Strangely calm. “Put your shoes on.”





Exiting the apartment was never easy. This was good: it meant entering it was equally as difficult, which meant in our twelve months of squatting, we’d never had a break in. When we’d first moved in, one of the younger kids had suggested we block or destroy all access to the upper floors. This had, at first, seemed counter intuitive, until we observed some of the plague-ridden individuals trying to get at a carcass that had somehow ended up impaled on a barbed wire fence. They were simply too clumsy to do much about it. They’d stumble and lurch about, ram the fence trying to bring the bloody mass of meat down…but none of them could climb up and remove it. They simply lacked the fine motor function to do so. When one of them tried to jump up to grab the swollen, bloated body, they fell down.

No coordination. Errol had said. They’re legless as amputee at a wedding. Can’t climb for shit. We’ll be apples.

And we were. A sledgehammer to the cement stairs left the bottom flight in rubble, but it wasn’t impossible for us to clamber over. Sure, you had to be careful – and it was slow going, especially in the dark. But we could do it. The infected had no chance in hell.



The heat seemed even more oppressive in the darkness of the stairwell. I chose my foot holds carefully, making sure the rubble wasn’t going to slip before I put my weight down. I could feel my heart pounding thickly in my chest. The pitch black of the stairwell reminded me too much of the few days I’d spent alone, huddled in my own sweat and piss inside a public toilet. My housemate had crashed the car – smashed it right into a tree as he drove, paniced, through a park. He slumped over the steering wheel, bleeding from a sizable head wound. The crash had drawn a pack of infected to us. We hadn’t even had time to check if he was still alive. Jess stumbled whilst we were running. Let caught on a tree root, or something. I never really forgave myself for carrying on. Errol and the others found me a few days later, head resting on the cracked plastic of the toilet seat, a thin trail of bile seeping from my open mouth into the bowl. They’d thought I was dead.

I finished my descent by shimmying down the remaining heap of rock on my ass. Errol, who had somehow managed to make it to the bottom without having to resort to such measures, smirked at me through the gloom. I stuck my tongue out at him.



As I pulled myself to my feet I noticed a discarded can of Foster’s lying near the broken stairs. The can was new – unrusted. I fancied I could even see a thin trail of liquid pooled beneath it. Fresh can? It couldn’t be. None of us were allowed to drink – Errol was strict about that. Besides, it was nearly impossible to find. The infected kept it stockpiled. They’d raided all the liquor stores early on into the outbreak, when people still thought it was just a riot. I remembered my dad snorting at the tv, muttering something about ‘keeping their strength up’. One of my lecturers had called it ‘fuel for bigotry’.



One of the wilder rumors circulating just after the outbreak had an intimate connection to Foster’s beer. Most ‘credible’ news sources discounted it as a paranoid conspiracy theory but privately I’d heard a lot of people given credance to it. Supposedly, the virus was engineered by biology students at one of the Science/Tech campuses in the city. ‘Socially conscious’ kids, who the media would have dubbed left-wing nutjobs. Kids not all that different to me, really – passionate, idealistic kids who’d jumped on a bandwagon and ridden it all the way to the end of the line. Maybe it started out as an experiment or a joke. They had an inside man, the story said. Someone who worked at the brewery. Someone with access to the production line. A few drops in the tank. Several batches contaminated.

It was just in time for Australia Day. Designed to target the lazy, the bigoted, the ignorant. Nothing serious – just a nasty as fuck bug to bring down all the Nationalist assholes a peg or two. Maybe they’d deliberately thrown in one or two wacky symptoms; loss of fine motor function, for example. Or temporary loss of memory and speech.



Most people didn’t think the virus was designed to do any serious, long-lasting damage. Certainly it wasn’t supposed to be communicable. Neither was it supposed to reanimate the dead.

“What’re you lookin’ at, girl?” Errol peered at me, trying to see what I was staring at it. I nudged the can into the storm-drain with my foot.



“Nothing.” I lied, smoothly. No use in worrying Errol. Not right now.



Once everyone had safely made their way to the bottom of the stairwell we made our cautious trek to the parking lot. Dan and the other kids had stopped whispering to each other. When I turned back to look behind, I noticed that they were keeping close together, hands on each others’ backs and shoulders. Physical contact. A kind of security blanket.



I didn’t blame them. There was something eerie about the empty night. Just across the street, over the concrete barriers, the freeway still held a steady trickle of stragglers coming to the end of their ungainly procession to the water. We had never been this close to such a large group of them. Knowing that we’d have to get a lot closer made me want to reach for Charlie’s hand, squeeze it and never let go.



We halted under the dubious shelter of a rusted corrugated iron car-port. The spindly posts barely looked as if they were holding the thing up and I briefly wondered whether being crushed to death would, at this point, be such a bad thing.

Errol was busying himself in the lot next to us, removing a stack of old crates that formed a wall between the two parking spaces. He looked up at Charlie and I, glaring.



“Gonna giz a hand, or what?”



Charlie sprung into action, busying himself removing boxes. When enough of a space was cleared, I walked over to the concealed Kombi van, helping Errol and Charlie remove the final few layers of camoflauge.



The van hadn’t been driven in a good four months. We avoided taking a vehicle whenever possible. They were too loud, too conspicuous on the now (mostly) empty roads and chewed up too much gas which was too hard to procure. The last time we’d taken it out, we’d been going for supplies. The very supplies that, tonight, would finally come into their own.



“…the hell?” one of the younger kids, Brandon, piped up, unable to restrain himself now that he’d finally set eyes on our secret weapon. “Ya gotta be kiddin’ me. We’re gonna stick out like a sore thumb in that!”



Errol ignored Brandon, rubbing a gnarled hand lovingly over the body of the van. His palm rested over one of the large white stars.



“Don’ ya listen, boy?” he asked, at length. His voice sounded distant, far away. “We gotta blend in. Aint nothin’ about this beauty that’s gonna stand out. Not tonight.”



As I watched our little troupe pile into the back of the van, I was reminded of those gag tins of candy you used to be able to get at joke shops…back when things like joke shops existed. You opened it, expecting one thing, and instead out popped a whole mess of rubber snakes. Nobody ever would have guessed the van, emblazoned as it was with a giant mural of the Southern Cross (and several choice bumper stickers, including the ever popular ‘Fuck Off, We’re Full!’) would contain a mob of Indigenous Australians. Even before the outbreak, nobody would have seen it coming. Now, more than ever, narrow minded Nationalism was the best protection we had.



I kept telling myself that, as I adjusted the straps on my string bikini, and climbed into the back of the van.





Charlie drove, Errol navigating from the passenger seat. We took the back streets, driving painfully slowly on the unlit roads. The clear sky meant enough moonlight to see by, which was fortunate as the Kombi’s headlights had been smashed out even before we’d gotten a hold of it. Errol said it was for the best. Light attracted too much attention and burned up too much of the battery.



The kids were quiet now, staring at their feet as the van rumbled along the suburban streets. The way they sat there, in the gutted back of the van, hunched over, their eyes on the floor reminded me of young men in war movies – that closed, controlled expression paratroopers have before they jump from the plane.



At our feet were dozens of fireworks. There were several large, open crates containing smaller flares: roman candles, catherine wheels and little foil packages which I knew contained the crushed up powder of hundreds of sparklers. Packed between the crates were the larger pyrotechnics – the rockets, cakes and mines that would produce large, impressive visuals and sounds.

Procuring the fireworks had been surprisingly easy. Turned out Charlie had been in the public service before the outbreak. I remembered how he’d laughed, when he’d seen how surprised I’d been. Fella can’t be a pencil pusher just cos he’s black? Ya racist, now? I’d been so embarrassed I’d flushed the color of red desert dust.



The government organisation that ran the yearly fireworks display turned out to be closely aligned with the department Charlie had been working for. He knew where the storage facility was, how to get there by the back-streets and, better yet, he had a fairly good idea of how to break in.



We rounded a corner and the rockets rolled towards my feet. Now, on our way to execute our plan, I wondered if we’d picked up enough. I wondered what Errol would say, if I brought it up – if I suggested we take a detour, revisit the warehouse.



Looking at the crates on the floor, at the fear in the younger kids’ eyes, it suddenly didn’t seem like enough. Not by half.

“Right, this is it...” Errol grunted as the Kombi pulled to a rattling halt. He turned around in his seat, glaring at us all seriously from under bushy gray brows.



“Brandon, Sam – ya know what yous have ta do. I don’t got time to argue about it either, so no complainin’, gottit?”

The two youngest boys nodded solemnly. Prior to tonight, Sam had been keen on getting into the thick of the fighting. He’d been angry and offended that Errol had thought him too young to take part in the real fight. This is a fuckin’ girls job! He’d railed, denting the useless refridgerator as he kicked it. You think I’m a fuckin’ pussy or something?



Now, however, Sam seemed immensely relieved. He and Brandon gathered up a few of the larger fireworks. Errol handed Sam a beat-up walkie-talkie.



“When ya get the word from us, set ‘em off. We’ve put ya a good few miles away from where most of ‘em have set up camp. Ya shouldn’t see any. But if ya do...”



Brandon nodded, patting the baseball bat he’d tucked into his jeans. The two boys climbed out the back of the Kombi, hauling the fireworks with them. Nobody said anything further. The back doors of the van slammed shut. We drove off.





--





We drove the rest of the way in silence. I knew what route we’d be taking: I’d helped plan it out. We were zig-zagging through the residential streets that made up the wealthy, affluent suburbs that bordered the river. I knew we were moving in a slow arc around the crescent-shaped shoreline, that soon enough we would be on the opposite bank to Brandon and Sam. People had been congregating on the foreshore to watch the fireworks ever since the inaugural display in 1985. Old habits died hard, even for the dead. I fancied, as the van slowed, that I could smell them, though I couldn’t be sure, now, whether it was simply my over-active imagination. My knee was jerking again, up and down and up and down on the dirty floor of the van. Nobody seemed to notice.



We stopped and Charlie cut the engine. I looked up to see him catch my gaze in the rearview mirror. He didn’t looked scared – just resigned. He was ready for this.

I realized, as a cold bead of sweat ran down my chest, that I wasn’t.



“Awright...” Errol turned to face us again, his expression grim. “We’re parked in the shrubbery behind an old boat house. It aint much cover, but it should be enough for us to unload everythin’ without bein’ seen. Those bastards’ll be too distracted by the pretty lights to notice much, anyway...”

He raised his eyebrows at Charlie, who picked up the second walkie-talkie.



“You there?” Charlie buzzed through. The receiver crackled with static before Sam replied.



“Yeah, we’re all set up. Ya want us to...?”



“Yeah. Do it now.” Charlie responded. I watched his eyes in the rearview mirror. Blank. Determined.



“Roger that!” Sam’s disembodied voice buzzed, out of the receiver. I could picture his face – a cheeky grin. He’d obviously regained his nerve. Dan and the other kids in the back of the Kombi seemed to visibly relax, as if Sam’s ridiculously stereotypical reply had taken a huge weight from their shoulders.



I didn’t smile.



We waited in silence. I kept my focus on Charlie’s reflection, watching him stare out the windshield of the Kombi, not once noticing or meeting my gaze.



“How many d’ya think are out there...?” one of the kids whispered, before being abruptly shushed by the others. I swallowed heavily, a dry lump of nothing.



Errol had turned his back on us again.



Finally, the resounding crack and rumble of a rocket broke the silence.



“Tha’s it...” Errol mumbled, more to himself than to us. Then he turned, fixing us with an intense, unreadable expression.



“Go, c’mon, c’mon...go!”



I don’t know how I made my legs work – how they managed to support my weight or carry me from the back of the van out into the sticky summer heat. I tumbled out with the others, a clumsy white ghost mingling with the shadows. Their makeshift armor grazed my bare arms, knocked against me in places that I knew would bruise later. And all at once we were working together to unpack the artillery from the van, passing it from one set of hands to another, laying it out onto the burned grass behind the boat shed.



The smell had returned. The noxious odor of rotting meat and river water. The scent coiled around me like a serpent, leaving its pungent aroma on my naked flesh. I swallowed again. Bile, this time.



I stood back and watched them all – Errol and Charlie, Dan and the other boys – unpacking the boxes, working together quickly with deft, dark fingers, their skin covered by thick clothing, by riot helmets and leathery coats.



I had never felt so slight or vulnerable in my entire life. I felt like I must be lighting up the area like a tiny moon. Here we are, guys! Come and get us!



Ya got the best camouflage in the world, sis. Errol insisted, in my head.



Someone shoved one of the larger fireworks into my arms. It was black, with a red tip at the very end, like a spot of blood.

“C’mon…” Charlie grabbed me by the arm roughly. I looked up at him, feeling suddenly very bewildered. His eyes were trained on the distance. “It’s time.”



I let myself be man-handled towards the corner of the dilapidated boat shed. The others had already clustered around the side of the building, some crouched, others leaning over to peer around the edge. There looked almost natural, like that. Tense, alert, all taut ligaments and strained tendons. Somehow, it reminded me of pictures I’d seen in my highschool history textbooks.



“How many?” the same kid whispered again, and this time Dan replied;



“Shit, man. Fuckin’ hundreds.”



I could feel my legs shaking, becoming increasingly incapable of holding me upright. I realized I was shivering, despite the closeness of the humid night air. Next to me, Charlie shifted his grip on the hefty firework he was holding. I wanted him to ask me if I was okay, tell me I didn’t have to walk around the corner – or even look – if I didn’t want to. But something had changed in him. He was too fixed upon the impending struggle for domination, too much a hunter, now, to realise that anything might be wrong with me. I felt, suddenly, as if I didn’t exist to him at all.



Errol was talking, but his voice sounded distant, far away. I could just barely make out his mouth moving in the darkness – a black hole opening and closing, a muffled echo of words. He made a gesture, the jerk of a spindley black shoulder and the younger ones slid out of view around the corner to the front of the shed. Everything was still and silent, save for the crack and thunder of distant fireworks. Errol disappeared into shadow. Finally, I felt Charlie move away from me. Without a word, he was gone from view.



I stood there for a long moment, willing my body to move me. Finally it obliged, carrying me, with a sluggish lumber, around the corner.



The shoreline was clearly visible from the other side of the boat house. A large expanse of inky water stretched into the distance. It was so dark the opposite shore was barely visible save for the brief moments where the bright explosions of fireworks lit the night.



And I saw them. Hundreds – probably thousands – gazing up at the sky entranced, their rotting mouths hanging open in awe. They stood, or sat, in clusters, some huddled under ripped and weather worn marquees, others reclining on bloodstained towels and picnic blankets. Some were grouped in families, mum, dad and the wasted, flesh-torn lumps of meat that might have once been children. Others crowded around broken barbeques, aluminium cans gripped in their rigid, meaty hands, a perfect, hideous tableux of my memories. The stench was overpowering; rotting flesh, decaying entrails and the rusted odor of open wounds mixing with the river weeds, with the smoky gunpowder. I knew I should be frightened. I think I must have been, somewhere deep down, because my legs were still shaking, my body still felt weak and unresponsive.



But, as another volley of fireworks blinked across the sky, I found myself wresting my gaze from the gathered undead, looking upwards instead. The darkness sparkled with a thousand artificial stars – pinks and blues, white-hot and shimmering. I heard a rumble from the crowd as the glittery lights began to fall towards the river, which reflected them beautifully. The infected were sighing in pleasure, in the simple joy of a firework display. And though it sounded, to the untrained ear, like a death rattle – like a terrifying, gurgling wail – I recognised it for what it was.



And then a deafening crack sounded, much closer – right next to me. A flash of white light that sent the boy who launched it staggering backwards. The rocket launched erratically into a nearby group of onlookers, hit something – a body – with a wet, thick crack. And then it exploded into a shower of blood red stars.



I stood still as the others rushed forward, Errol cackling wildly into the night, firing rocket after rocket into the approaching mass of flesh. The infected staggered blindly forward, their faces displaying a gentle surprise, like a drunk just woken from a heavy slumber. To my left, Dan set off another firework with a mad shriek of glee. It made impact in the throat of a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven. Her head swung backwards just as easily as if it had been on hinges, a putrid mess of dark blood spurting from the hollow that might have been her throat. She fell, and she didn’t rise.

“See?” Charlie laughed, somewhere nearby. “We got the little fucker. We got her. I told you this would work, Errol.”

I stepped forward. The rocket was still clutched in my arms, but it felt too weighty. Too wrong. The crowd were closing in. I fancied I could make out their eyes in the darkness, their open mouths registering shock, pain. A lack of understanding.



A middle aged woman broke from the group. She wore a baggy tshirt and a sarong. Her legs were damp, as if she’d been for a paddle in the river. The front of her t-shirt was soaked with blood, but I realized that it wasn’t her own. It was the fresh, dark stain of the little girl Dan had killed. The woman’s eyes were blank, fearless. Her jaw dropped open, thick and wet with saliva and viscera, and she howled at us – a deep, pained, keening wail. She lunged forward suddenly, throwing herself on Dan with a fury and madness that I knew extended beyond race. He yelped as he went down, then made no further sound. In a swift motion she had punched through the delicate flesh above his collar bone, reached up, wrenched his trachea from his throat. Now that he no longer struggled, she set about tearing through his chest, splitting it apart as easily as if he had been poultry.



I stood, watching numbly as Errol rushed past me, slashing with his cane, screaming at her in a language I didn’t understand. Something had dawned on me, as I watched the woman rip Dan apart. A dark, terrible realisation. A secret shame that had lurked at the back of my mind, unspoken and unacknowledged, all my life.



I looked up again at the oncoming crowd. I could make out details, now. Clothing, facial features, hair styles. The smell, which had previously been unbearable, was softened by a hint of something familiar – department store perfume, the scent of sweat and beer, cheap aftershave. Familiar scents.



I caught the gaze of an old man. Outwardly, he seemed unmarked besides a thin trail of black fluid oozing from the corners of his mouth down his neck. In the dim flashes of light cast by the fireworks, he almost looked like my grandfather; elderly, frail, a thin halo of white hair circling his bald head. There was something, in his dark eyes - he seemed almost to recognise me. He reached out his hands, the palms cracked and stained with dark blood. Reaching for something familiar. Reaching for help. For comfort.



I took another step forward. The rocket dropped from my hands, leaving them empty. Neutral. Free to grasp at whatever I wanted. Dimly, behind me, I was aware of Charlie screaming. A firework shot past me, ill-aimed, careening past the crowd and embedding itself in a tree. I thought I saw the old man smile.



I reached out a hand.



I heard my name called. Charlie’s voice, far away.



“Errol!” he screamed, “Errol fuckin’ do something, she’s not armed!”



Ya got the best armor, sis.



He was right, I realized, as I stepped into the group, into the welcoming arms of the man who could have been my grandfather. I felt the familiar mass of bodies press around me, as snug and comforting as the womb. I heard a distant howl, another volley of fireworks cracking across the darkened sky.

And then, as I closed my eyes and let the fear slip away from me, I felt nothing more than an immense relief.









