A Single Girl's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (28 page)

Q drank in the familiar classroom aroma. Chalk dust. Last week's forgotten apple, gone to slush in a schoolbag (that was Sandy). The tinge of almost-but-not-quite-made-it urine (Sandy again). It was a different classroom from the one Q had trained in but it beat eucalyptus and fear.

The chairs and desks were gone, smashed up and used for weapons or barricades. Many of the windows were boarded up. The carpet had a Rorschach design that scrubbing would never remove. On her good days, Q pretended the stains were spilled coffee.

Crayon pictures covered the walls. Most featured headless monsters or Mommy dearest, arms outstretched and teeth bared. In the old days, pictures like these would have been bundled into the school counselor's pigeonhole with urgent Post-it notes affixed, but now they were proudly posted by the blackboard.

There wouldn't be much point putting these in Natolia's pigeonhole. Natolia had had both degrees removed. With an axe.

It was a different class, too. There were fifteen children instead of thirty. Mrs Mason would have been thrilled that she finally had a manageable class size, but for the method used. Besides, Mrs Mason could no longer thrill. The Blue Ogre was no more.

The class was broader than in pre-Z days. Q taught ages four to ten, and the group drew from more suburbs than it once had. There weren't that many children left. They couldn't come from too far away, though; the new students had to get to class by foot or by bike. It was surprising how far a five-year-old could walk these days without complaining.

Kids didn't complain much any more. They were a different species from the one Q remembered. Perhaps it was all the beans.

The change in classroom snack was also stark. No more cartoon-themed chip packets, no more food coloring, no more foil wrappers. Nothing chicken-flavored or beef-style. People ate apples and oranges and home-baked bread.

Gone, too, were the fat kids. Z had cured the obesity epidemic in a few short days. Any child who couldn't run fast had lost twenty pounds instantly, usually in the form of a leg. It was a nutritionist's dream, if that nutritionist were a psychopath willing to sacrifice two-thirds of the population to improve the average body mass index.

Q shared her observations with Hannah during recess.

“Steve says it's like what happened after the blockade in Cuba, when America cut trade relations,” Hannah said. Steve was Hannah's new dad. Hannah liked him a lot. He told her interesting things and had a great armory.

“I wish I'd studied history,” Q said.

Hannah prompted her with an encouraging smile.

“Commie zombies under siege,” Q said. “That must have been cool.”

“That's not what the Cuban blockade was,” Hannah said.

“I'm kidding!” Q said. Hannah smiled, pleased to have made her point. Q continued. “I doubt they were still commies after they turned.”

Hannah tried another tack. “Steve says the zombies brought a class revolution,” she said. “The countries and people that ate industrial meat were the rich ones. The poor ate beans and rice and got better.”

Q sighed. “The damn hippies inherited the earth. Who would have thought it?” She checked the wind-up clock in the classroom and called the kids back inside for their next lesson. They entered in orderly fashion and settled on the floor without prompting. The outbreak had fixed all former discipline problems. Q only had to begin counting and everyone fell silent. She never said what would happen if she reached “three.” She didn't have to. Their imaginations had flesh.

They sat in family groups, although the families themselves had changed. Some bright spark had decided to billet orphans with bereaved parents, creating new sets of siblings overnight. The system had its problems. There was rejection, but only ever from the parents. Angela had marched her two weeping billets back one morning, claiming she didn't have time to look after them and her work was more important. She had signed up to the virology team shortly after they got back to Sydney, but Q didn't think work was the problem.

It didn't matter. There were enough parents to go around.

The kids were more resilient than the adults. Even the orphans did okay after their first couple of months. Children were used to living in a world split between fantasy and nightmare and it was easier for them to accept the monsters and move on. Especially once they were taught how to make an accurate spleen shot.

Q and Rabbit and Angela finally made it back to Sydney after three weeks trekking through the bush and a day of hitchhiking. Q had never been so pleased to see a ute full of dirt-stained travelers as she was when they heard the first engine.  But she'd soon found she was an orphan, too. She'd expected it. She never discovered what happened to her father, but she hoped it was quick. She put out a hand to pat the kelpie and was rewarded with furious tail thumps. The dog's life had improved immeasurably. Pets were welcome in the classroom now, and after only a few months, Q's kelpie was already reading at a border collie level.

Q had tried to register herself as an orphan but was put in the “foster parent” column by mistake. She narrowly avoided the allocation of three toxic boys before removing herself. Maybe it hadn't been a mistake. Maybe the world was telling her it was time to grow up.

She shook herself. Speaking of growing up, she was meant to be in charge here. She glanced to her left.

Rabbit in ripped jeans. Lean and lanky, he had regained his olive glow. The old bullet wound in his left shoulder hurt when it rained and his face was scarred, but his smile was as it had always been. The road back had been hardest on him and he had not complained. Half starved, drained from near-fatal flu, he had crossed rivers and climbed mountains.

He turned toward her and mouthed words she didn't catch. That was fine. She'd make him repeat them that night. Being adult had compensations.

“All right, you lot,” Q said. She glanced at her lesson plan. “We're doing music for the next hour. Pay attention or you'll be on blanks at the firing range this afternoon.”

She handed over to Rabbit and returned to her thoughts. Hannah had told her the outbreak was the biggest global population drop since the Spanish Flu, but with way more deaths from head shots. Q's mountaintop theory had been largely correct. Once infected, the virus lodged in the spleen and took control of the nervous system to cause zombie-like symptoms in the living. If a patient died, they became the walking dead. Viral control of the nervous system continued post-mortem until the body rotted away.

But the epidemic wasn't as devastating as the conditions that went with it. More people died from gunshots and exposure and starvation than from infection. Apparently, this was normal. In war, the enemy was rarely the biggest killer. There had also been murders, looting and abuse of all kinds. Prosecutions were considered, but what was the point? They couldn't spare the people.

Q considered her next few days of teaching. It was easier now she had a full lesson plan for the term. She'd been asked to turn in this incriminating document and had done so with misgivings. Pre-Z, such requests always lead to quiet, serious discussions in Mr Macklin's office with a witness present, but this time, her plan had been studied and then copied for general distribution.

She thought about that first meeting with Ms Scorbet. The new principal had suggested that live ammunition should wait until the kids were seven. Q had argued that she didn't want to leave the little ones helpless. Ms Scorbet had told Q they had all the help they could handle, and then said something that filled Q with pride.

The survival rate for the Kindy Koalas and Lethal Littlies was eight times higher than that of the general population.

Q returned to the present, because the present was a gift.

Ooh. That was good. She should write that down.

She borrowed a piece of paper and a pencil from Hannah and wandered to the back of the classroom. She leaned against a wall, ready to enjoy one of her favorite activities. Rabbit watching.

Q had always loved nature.

“Okay, kids,” Rabbit said, strumming. “It's a dangerous world out there, so listen up.”

Thanks to my partner Rob, for his support and understanding. Thanks also to Inga Simpson and Nike Bourke (Sulway) of Olvar Wood, who picked the early manuscript for a Fellowship Award and then helped make a proper book out of it. I'm grateful to my agent, Alex Adsett, for her endless enthusiasm, and my editor, Kylie Mason, for her keen sense of pop culture, continuity and zombie logistics. And to my early readers who were so positive, particularly Seema, Imogen, Nik, Ian and Andrew.

JT Clay worked in counter-terrorism and law before switching to waste management, which generated much more dinner party debate. People care about rubbish. She now works as a technical writer and looks after her mixed-species family.
A Single Girl's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse
won a 2010 Olvar Wood Fellowship Award and is her first published novel. She lives in Canberra, which she claims is not as dull as people say, but she is notorious for making things up.