Remedy Z: Solo (10 page)

The Waystation was a nice old cedar home that was weathered but remained in good condition. It was a small house, sheltered on the side of a hill but offered great 360-degree visibility, including out to Svetlana’s farm. I shivered involuntarily as I looked out on it again. The Waystation was a good little outpost and I could survey the area and spot threats well in advance of their arrival. Other than a little more zombie traffic than my more remote alpine home, that little cedar house would have made a good home for perpetuity. "Perhaps it would be a home again someday?"

I sighed as the memory of family, sharing things like books with them, was gone. I was alone with my thoughts yet again. "I would give almost anything to have that sort of conversation or share a coffee and chat with someone,” I said aloud. I realised my vocalising thoughts could be dangerous so I kept it to an inner monologue until I had done a sweep of the house. “Is there anyone I can find that will talk to me about books?”

A rare find would be a person; even more unique would be a reader. I concluded that finding people first was about the self, finding a reading person was just frivolous and self-indulgent thoughts. I stopped thinking about my distant past and approached the Waystation. While acting with caution, I took a moment to admire the pleasing character and rugged beauty of the place. It returned calm and I reminded myself not to forget or repeat Svetlana's Farm.  

“Let’s go on in, Jesse,” I said.

My circulation was in full-steam and I was feeling good and confident. “Waystation: all quiet, all clear,” I thought as I lowered my binoculars, once more before entering. The tell-tale checks were there; any smoke out of the chimney? No. Has the branch I laid up against the door been moved? No. Has the small packet of chips been taken from the letterbox? No. All clear indeed.

I walked up the steps to the farmhouse and kept my wits about me. All was as it should be. I took the key out from its hiding place, under the mat on the porch. Yes, indeed a cliché place to put a key but I had a moral and personal sense of duty to another soul who may stumble on the Waystation and use it as a place of refuge. I reconnoitred the house at close range, right around, sneaking about and peering through windows like an old peeping Tom. It was overkill; too much reconnaissance but I needed to do it. “Nothing,” I was satisfied I could not have been more meticulous in my approach.

The door clicked and creaked and I entered the house and the smell of dust and old timber. It was another familiar smell, like the old coast house that reminded me of books, family and safety. I looked to the simple side table, the pens were in the same place as where I left them and the beckoning journal which implored people to leave the details, was empty. The journal had no additional entries in it other than my last one about a year ago. I penned a new entry, simply writing:  “The same as before, Jesse Stadler”. Disappointed, I had to get on with checking the place from the inside before I could get on with eating and resting.

As I moved through the house, I was reminded that it was in good condition, albeit with a fair amount of dust about. Looking around, the dust had indeed not been disturbed anywhere; no finger marks, footprints or zombie swagger prints or dragging prints. Zombies and people left some fairly distinct marks: "Another topic I need to cover in my book! People need to know what to look for when tracking zombies or investigating a new location. Whether one chose to exterminate or avoid, this was important knowledge." I had a task before bed: to pen those important survival memoirs.

First, it was time for food. I had a couple of potatoes and onions that would go nicely with the rabbit meat; a delicious stew was the order of the day. Some very useable Wiltshire knives from the 1980s and an old semi-transparent plastic chopping block were taken out from sagging kitchen cabinets and put to good work. Like an excited and passionate chef, I was eager and wanting to do my best with the meal. Food was one of those few pleasures that I could indulge in and enjoy. The old kitchen knives impressed me as they sliced through vegetable and meat alike. Under normal circumstances, they would have been taken and used at home or turned into zombie killers. But the Waystation was a place to be kept safe, useful and well kitted out. That was the intent; for me and any soul that turned up there. It wasn’t to be scavenged and picked clean.

As the parts of the meal were cubed, my mind turned to the cooking part. The old gas cooktop was long dead and I would cook over the fire like I would in the field. But the kitchen was not entirely useless; it has the utensils and pots to make the meal what it needed to be. The old aluminium pots and pans clanked about as I removed them from the poor ergonomics of the simple kitchen. But I didn’t care, with no-one else around; I enjoyed the familiar note made by the pots. Those pots took me back to former times and I smiled at the thought; “Hiking and cooking in some amazing places,” I smiled. “Aluminium pots on each and every trip.” 

Aluminium had once been demonised as having caused Alzheimer’s disease. While some believed this and bought non-stick pans and stainless steel pans that were overpriced, many didn't care and proved the farce to be what it was. It reminded me of the many first world issues in the indulgent and decadent times before the Great Change. I had heard that this hoopla about eating off of aluminium had been debunked but I never truly checked or knew for sure if it was real or myth. My sense of utility and safety in numbers kicked in when hiking; aluminium was used just fine. My hiking group enjoyed many a meal out of a lightweight aluminium cooking vessel over some 7 or 8 years. Similarly, my brother had been in the army and ate out of alloy mess tins without problems for over a decade. Military servicemen and women would have been the litmus test; my own limited review on a government data hub revealed there were no greater instances of Alzheimer’s disease in retired military personnel than in the retired civilian population. You never know but I was pretty sure that these pots and pans wouldn’t make me forget anything if I used them tonight. “Perhaps a good G&T would do that?” I wished. "I wouldn’t mind losing some of my memories: Svetlana’s Farm, perhaps?"

I rarely indulged in a stiff drink but could do with a memory loss of a number of events. Svetlana’s Farm was just one of them. Whether from some gin or the aluminium pots, I wished I could remove that memory from my grey matter. The hiking memories, however, would be ones I wanted to keep. "Great times and great people," I reminisced, coaxing the diced meat and vegetables into a well-used and well-loved pot. "That was a great group of friends," the thought of them made me feel alone again. Those had been some great times and the thought, those nostalgic moments, reminded me of just how great some of us had had things, leading into the Great Change. It was after that where you could put a big smoking hole in my memory and I wouldn’t have cared too much. Knowing that my entire group of hiking friends had died was a memory that could go. So could the Great Change and the hard times that followed. "Waking up in paradise, up in the mountains with no memory would be awesome, eh Jesse?" While I flippantly wanted to erase such things, the journey had helped chisel away at my character and define me more. For those memories and experiences I resented, I understood they were pivotal in my survival. A great and famous author once said that pain and suffering in our lives are the things that shape people and define their character. I appreciated this and the idea of being shaped by experiences, but not in all ways. Some things were downright awful and would never positively impact someone: rape, abuse, slavery, extreme violence, trauma, horror in general. But having hardships and triumph over adversity were hallmarks of the best humans that had ever been. It was a paradox I would ponder at times. 

Freedom was everything to me and some of those painful experiences I had been through had meant losing that. That wasn’t a good thing and didn’t assist in shaping a person positively. If you disagree with me, just look back at slavery: disgusting in every way, on every level. “Hang-on…Slavery….” I wondered.  I had a feeling the Mechanic, Skinny and Blackbeard weren’t entirely acting on their own free will. I spared them a moment’s thought and concluded this must have been correct. Someone was controlling them, shaping them, making them do things: slaves of sorts. I wouldn’t know how right I was or just on what scale my fears would be real until later. But I didn’t want to think about my three recently departed zombie friends or slavery or whatever was going on for a moment longer. A man’s stomach was waiting and multi-tasking doesn’t come easy to us blokes. The little, well-loved pot sat over the fire on a metal rod and I watched the flames and coals over a number of hours, relaxing and clearing my exhausted mind.

My stew was delicious. It could have cooked longer but I couldn’t wait. Hunger had taken over and I greedily slurped and enjoyed the meal more than you would expect. With a bowl in hand, I leisurely wandered around the house, eating and gobbling like it was the first meal in a week. I ate and looked at the rolling hills, pausing for a moment to put my meal down onto a window-sill. I looked for movement with my binoculars.

I spotted a distant mob of kangaroos, birds, some far off rabbits and even a fox as the sun fell behind the hills and mountains that adorned the sunset. Despite the horrors, life was still beautiful. I left half of the stew to continue its maturity, to be enjoyed in the morning. I stoked the fire and let it bubble away, giving the flavour time to set-in and magnify the meal’s taste and the experience of eating it. In the meantime, I would take the opportunity to wash myself and clean up the kitchen before bed. I didn’t have any electricity here so the firelight would be my warmth, comfort, light and companion. I felt like those before me, earliest humans, who also used fire to illuminate their world. Fire always held some magic and the dark around such fires allowed the mind to imagine the vast possibilities of the universe. I loved watching a fire and thinking. But first, I would do another ancestor pastime; a freezing wash like a caveman in the river. After a very cold shower, courtesy of the Waystation's rainwater tanks, I was clean and invigorated. My mind and body felt clear and as well as I could ever expect.

It was back to the fire; the cold shower made me appreciate its warmth even more. As I curled up, I continued to write my new book; a chapter on zombie tracking.

As the fire danced in front of me, I was inspired to write about the writhing, shuffling and shambling movement of the zombie. I penned paragraphs on movement style, rough speeds they were capable of travelling and patterns of movement. The fire burned bright and clean and both warmed me after that icy shower and provoked my experiences and imagination to write. The flames were ever-changing and held my attention, captivating and stimulating. The words came to me and the chapter took as unique a shape as the fire that inspired me did. My work would serve any reader well in tracking, hunting and avoiding zombies. In fact, “Hunting, Tracking and Avoiding Zombies” was the title of the chapter. A particular focus had been the “Avoiding” part was how to secure a house. It was a sort of therapy, noting my experiences to paper and I felt better for it. The evening’s work was done and I got up from that warm sofa-bed to lock things down before sleep.

It was all relatively easy; bolting the door and bringing the old metal Venetian blinds down to obscure the light of the fire. Zombies were attracted to light, smells and noise and any minimisation of sensory stimulus of those creatures reduced the risk of having them upon you. 

I setup the sofa-bed in the living room and took some old blankets out of the hall cupboard. I lay down my rifle, machetes and knives close at hand, and watched the fire some more. That lovely, blissful feeling of being warm and full gave me a sense of general comfort: wonderful! In relative safety and peace I curled up on the old sofa-bed in the living room and watched the fire into oblivion.

I woke to the dimness of the room, feeling completely refreshed. With all the old blinds closed, I had slept till late. I looked at my watch, the one I had acquired from Blackbeard; it was 8:12am. I had slept too long, longer than I had expected but didn’t care too much. Something had disturbed me and I would not realise what had woken me and with what gravity it would affect my world until a short time later. I yawned and stretched, warm, rested and hungry at the smell of that stew which had stewed away most of the night, gaining flavour with each moment. Life was as good as it could be when you are alone in the zombie apocalypse. But was I alone?

Such a restorative sleep was what I needed to start the day; prepared for the big and dangerous trip into Tantangara. I looked over to the fire and saw it barely live.  “Ah, just embers and ash. It’s lazy like the man who had built it.” I thought to myself with a smile. I was feeling good and prepared to face my demons in Tantangara. I stoked the fire a little.

The blackened aluminium pot that held my breakfast was still too hot to handle. A good sign the food hadn’t gone bad and was still edible. Was it edible? “Very much so,” I concluded with a taste and satisfaction. Breakfast was even more delicious than dinner; the stew was at its peak of flavours and juiciness. It was what the Vikings would eat in Valhalla. I ate every last morsel of it and, despite still being a little hungry, I felt pretty good for a day of exertion ahead of me.

Putting my pot in the kitchen, to be washed, I lazily stretched and used the taps to fill the pot with water. I would let it soak for a bit and wash it in a half hour or so. In that moment I had a plan of how I would do things and a few moments later that would all to change. I went to the window to look out on the scenic landscape. With the pull of a string and a “creaking” sound, the blinds revealed my world was upside-down again.

What was a beautiful scene the day before had quickly become a scene of death and horror. The view from the Waystation was surreal, but real nonetheless. It was a reality check and reminder of the type of world I lived in: I was not prepared for it.