Tankbread 02 Immortal (4 page)

Jirra gathered sticks and speared a couple of fish in the shallows of the river without breaking stride. In the last moments of daylight he crouched at the edge of the riverside trees and made a small fire. Else washed the baby and her damp wrap in river water and then fed her again while the swaddling cloth dried. Jirra sat in a silhouette on the other side of the fire, sharpening the heads on his spears and then scraping a whetstone along the machete’s gleaming edge. The fish he had speared now hissed and spat over the small fire.

“You kill many?” Jirra said without lifting his eyes or hand from the blade.

“I kill the ones I have to,” Else replied. She wanted to tell him that she almost killed them all. That a man carried her across the world and back again. A man who then gave his life to save them all. But he would ask her what was his name?
What name should we whisper when we remember this hero?
And she wouldn’t know what to say.

“We move around,” Jirra said. “Like the old people did. Since the end our people are better off. No more alcohol. No more reason to try and be like the white man. Now we remember the old ways again. We sing the old songs. We go on walkabout and we live like the old people did.”

“How long did the old people live this way?” Else asked.

“Since the Dreamtime. Since the first people. We have always been here. This is our land.” Jirra turned the fish over the fire.

“Now it’s the land of the dead,” Else said and scanned the darkness again.

“Fish is cooked,” Jirra replied.

They ate quickly, sucking the white meat from the fine bones and licking the juice from their fingers.

Jirra buried the remains and covered the fire with sand. Else stood up and led the way into the darkness. The little girl grizzled in the cloth sling around Else’s torso.

Jirra started to sing, a soft dirge-like lullaby. The baby stilled and they walked on in the darkness. Only the moonlight and the smear of stars overhead lit their way.

“What do you call her?” Else said.

“Lowanna.”

“Does it mean anything?”

“It means girl,” Jirra’s voice came from behind her. “We just call her girl.”

“Lowanna,” Else whispered and carried the bundle cradled in her arms a little higher. “Your name is Lowanna.”

She tried not to think about her boy. He didn’t have a name yet. She would give him one when they found him. She would give him a good name. One that would mean something. A name people would always remember. When she found him she would give him a name.

“How much further?” Else said, her pace quickening over the sandy mud.

“A while yet.”

“We have to hurry.” She thought she heard something, a baby’s cry sounding out there in the mud-brown water.

“Baby!” Else called and started to run. Jirra loped after her, hearing only the cry of a seabird.

“Baby!” Else cried again. The river widened here and she could smell the tang of salt on the air. Leaping over driftwood, she sprinted along the water’s edge. A glint of dull metal caught her eye. The moon was bright enough to reflect more than the dull water. As Lowanna grizzled and writhed in the sling, Else dropped to her knees by the overturned skiff. The edge of the boat had pressed into the mud. Else dug at it with desperate hands. Jirra reached her and began to scoop the soft ground away with his digging stick.

“My boat. This is my boat. I can hear him crying. I can hear him!” Else panted as she dug. She snatched the digging stick from Jirra and crawled along the edge, digging frantically.

“There’s others here,” Jirra said, reading the ground with the eye of a master tracker. “Dead men walked here. Live fellas too. They got boots on and they fought pretty hard with some dead fellas.”

“Help me lift it now!” Else snapped from the sand. Her fingers scrabbled under the edge of the boat and strained to pull it free of the mud.

“Wait, missus!” Jirra leapt forward, knocking Else on to her side as the skiff came free. A bloody hand lashed out and snatched Jirra’s ankle.

“Shit!” Jirra hissed at the sky. He fell back, one leg caught. Else sprang forward, tipping the boat the right way up to grab her baby. A female evol snarled from the wet sand as Jirra smashed at her head with the butt of his spear. The dead girl growled and tore at his ankle with her teeth.

“Fucking bitch!” Jirra snarled.

“Where’s my baby?” Else wailed. She swung the machete down on the dead woman’s head, severing it from the neck.

“No . . . no . . . no!” Jirra whined. Scrambling backwards, he clambered to his feet on one and foot stared down at the blood oozing from his bitten leg.

“Baby!?” Else screamed. The boat was empty. The baby and all her carefully stored supplies were gone. Only the two paddles remained, tied in position.

“Shit . . . shit . . . shit.” Jirra sagged and toppled into the boat. “I’m dead, missus,” he said. The smoky-yellow whites of his eyes were wide and rolling.

“I need to find my baby,” Else said, ignoring Jirra for the moment.

“Fuck your baby,” Jirra growled. “This dead cunt fucking ate him!”

“No! Where are the supplies? He was wrapped in a blanket. Where is the blanket?” Else climbed into the skiff and ran her hands over the empty space, not trusting what her eyes were telling her.

“See now,” Jirra said, a grim smile splitting his face. “All that noise and we bring them to us. They come to take us home. Welcome us . . .”

Else looked up. A group of ten evols had stumbled out of the darkness of the tree line and were now making their way towards them. “Where is my baby!” she howled at them. The line of approaching dead groaned and writhed in response.

“Push the boat out; we can make for the water. They can’t get us out there.” Jirra pulled himself back into a sitting position at the rear of the skiff.

Else stepped out of the boat and pushed back on it. The skiff slid in the wet sand until the edge of the current tugged at it.

“Come on, get in, aye?” Jirra panted.

“Not without my baby.” Else scooped Lowanna out of the sling and carefully put her in the bottom of the skiff. “I’ll be back when I find him.”

“You’re fucking crazy!” Jirra shouted at her.

Else walked up the beach. The machete felt good in her hand. A solid piece of killing steel. She scanned the dead faces in front of her. With over twenty-five million zombies in Australia the chances were slim, but she looked each one in the eye, and still all of them were strangers.

“Let’s get this done,” she said to the advancing line. The first one reached for her, his blind eyes scarred by the scouring of windblown sand.

Else swung her blade. It tore through the dead man’s head, splitting him between his gaping jaws. She moved on as he fell, spinning and using her momentum to tear the next rotting head from its shoulders. There were those among them that had not been dead for so long. Their clothes were cleaner. Their dead flesh showed little signs of the ravages of the elements. They were all hungry. They came down on Else with savage snarls and raking claw-like hands. She hacked an arm off, then blocked a grasping hand and shoved the tip of the machete into a gaping maw that bled black.

An evol caught her hair, dragging her head back. Else dropped to one knee and slammed the machete up and over her shoulder. The end of it buried in a zombie’s chest. He looked down, releasing her and tugging at the steel now sticking out of him. Else jerked the blade free and took his head. The dead pressed closer, mindless of each other and everything except for their need to tear at the warm, wet meat they could almost taste. Dark drool oozed from the mouths of the fresher ones. The older dead had little moisture left in their bodies.

Else rolled to her feet, kicking at a zombie who tried to bite her leg. Her booted foot crushed his nose and smeared it into a black paste across his rotting cheek. A girl with lobotomy eyes gaped at Else. The little control she had over her dead limbs made them thrash aimlessly. Else smashed her face into the sand. The back of the girl’s head was a gaping crater, half of her brain already gone.

In the moment it took Else to straighten up, a man with black and broken teeth bit into her sleeve, narrowly missing her skin under the loose shirt. With the machete blocked in her right fist, Else punched her fingers into the eyes above the biting mouth. The grey orbs burst, sending stinking pus spraying out. The man moaned, his head thrashing, tearing the cloth away from her arm. Else snarled and shoved the zombie’s head back.

Dropping the machete, she kicked upwards, catching the back of the heavy blade on her booted foot and sending it flying up to within reach of her other hand. With three hard blows she hacked the evol’s skull into chunks. Panting, she circled slowly. The sand was thick with black slime and broken bodies. Nothing moved. Else took stock—the fresh corpses were all dressed the same. Frowning, she searched them. They carried odd possessions: seashells and bullets, keys and colored tags. They all had the same tattoos on their arms that Else recognized as an anchor with a lightning cloud above it.

Hacking an arm off, she carried it back to the boat.

“Jirra,” she said. “You know what this means?”

Jirra opened his eyes. His breath came in shallow pants. “I can’t see...” he whispered. Else leaned over and let the black blood drip down Jirra’s chest as she held it close to his clouded eyes.

“Sea People...” Jirra whispered. “Sea People. They come in boats. Sometimes they trade. Mostly they take.”

“Could they have taken my son?” Else tossed the severed arm into the water.

“Coulda.” Jirra tried to shrug.

“Where do I find the Sea People?”

Jirra moaned, his eyes rolling. Else slapped him hard across the face. “Where, Jirra? Where are they?”

“Big boat . . . like a cloud on the water . . . out there on the sea.”

Else stood up and stared out into the darkness. She could hear the hiss of the waves. The books told her the sea went all around the world. She wondered if there was any place free of evols.

Gathering Jirra’s dropped spears, she laid them in the boat next to him and the wailing baby. Else pushed the boat out and climbed in. Dropping the machete in the bottom of the boat, she took up a paddle and steered the boat into the current. The river grabbed them, driving them towards the sea.

“Help me paddle!” Else yelled over her shoulder. Jirra stirred and fumbled for an oar. He started singing again, a low and chilling sound that made Else’s skin crawl. As he sang, he paddled, dipping the oar into the dark water and pulling them straight.

“Gotta hit the waves head on,” Jirra said. “We get turned around, we all gonna drown.”

Else gritted her teeth. Lowanna cried and wriggled between her feet. The land was ending on either side of her. She felt a sickening sense of the world opening up and she was falling into the darkness.

“Keep her straight!” Jirra yelled.

Else dug her paddle deep, pulling against the water as it foamed. The stink of river mud and salt clogged her nostrils.
The sea goes on forever
, a small voice in the back of her mind said.
It goes on forever and you will never find your way back to land
. “My baby is out there,” Else said to the heaving waves. The nose of the boat rose up and crested. Else’s paddle swept through open air and she overbalanced. Slamming her hand into the floor of the boat, she braced herself as the bow dropped and hit the water.

“Paddle!” Jirra yelled. Else pulled herself up. Scrambling with her oar, she swept it through the water and they surged up the face of the next wave. Else was ready when they broke through this one. The entire skiff was airborne for a moment and then with a sickening fall they dropped. Lowanna howled as the shuddering blow of the wave hit the bottom of the boat.

“One more!” Jirra shouted and they rode the sickening slope up the third wave. Cold water burst over the bow. Else tasted mud, not salt. The river had pushed itself out into the vast sea like a cold steel dagger stabbing deep into a warm body.

They paddled on, pulling themselves through the water. The waves slid under the skiff now, lifting the small craft and rocking them in a longer motion.

“How far to the ship?” Else glanced over her shoulder. Jirra had slumped forward, his paddle trailing in the water. “Jirra?” Else twisted in her seat.

“Unngh . . .” Jirra moaned and his head twisted. His dark skin had gone as grey as the white ash of mourning he smeared himself with. Else dived for the machete. The dying man lunged at her in the same moment. She jammed her right arm under his jaw and scrabbled for the knife handle, his teeth snapping at her, black saliva dripping over his bloodless lips.

Else lifted the machete. Jirra’s hands clamped on her arm and he pushed her back. Else hissed and swung at the zombie’s head with the machete, striking him a glancing blow. He grunted and his teeth sank into her forearm.

The effect was immediate. The zombie’s eyes went wide and he pulled back. His back arched, contractions popping his joints as every muscle in his body clenched. Else pulled herself up into a sitting position and watched as his skin swelled and split. Strips of flesh peeled off his bones. Black blood gushed from every pore and spots of dark liquid welled in his eyes. Jirra whimpered, a desperate and agonized sound as the antiviral plasma in Else’s blood destroyed the Adam virus that coursed through his dying body.