Once we had made it as far as the snowline she pulled the truck to the side of the road, keeping the engine running in case we needed to make a swift getaway. The four of us exited the truck, knowing what was to come. First, the earth buckled, seeming to roll under our feet. Sister nearly fell over, but The Kid grabbed hold of her shoulder, keeping her upright. A plume of ash and smoke rose high from the direction we had come, followed by a reddish glow that lit up the clouds above. We then heard the sound, a massive rumbling roar that drowned out all speech. Since meeting Apocalypse Girl on New Years' Eve I had seen a lot of things. The Dead rising, naturally, the depravity of human society with no structure or rules. I had even seen a thermonuclear explosion as a neutron bomb went off at The Think Tank, vaporising an entire lake in an instant. All very impressive, yet incredibly disturbing sights, to be sure. The sight of a volcano erupting at close range, however, blew them all away. The lava spewed up into the sky, lighting the world as far as the eye could see. The road behind us, maybe a couple of hundred metres away, bubbled and boiled like the proverbial witches cauldron of yore. Cracks large enough to swallow a bus opened up in the earth between us and what little would have remained of The Facility. The lava began flowing from the caldera, newly formed, down the mountainside, slowly setting everything around ablaze. It was truly an awe-inspiring thing to witness.
noon
We drove in silence after the eruption. There was really little any of us could say after that. It was the first we had actually seen of any kind of
natural
activity since the initial Rise of the Dead. The torrential rains certainly had not been, the coloured lightning was caused by something out of this world, the snow caused by massive nuclear devastation mixed with the ashes of the Dead. Who knew what had caused the Dead to rise in the first place? Whatever it was could not have been natural, either. It seemed comforting, to me at least, to know that the world still fought to reclaim itself. We could only do the same.
We drove through a town that had been burned to the ground, probably a couple of months ago by now, not bothering to stop to search the rubble. We wanted to get as far away from the erupting Facility as we could manage by nightfall. Alice Springs was several hundred kilometres away, to the north and west, and the roads would not necessarily be easily travelled.
evening
We pulled over to the side of the road, Apocalypse Girl having had more than enough time behind the wheel. Breaking out some food and water we had a quiet meal, the three of us that ate, at least. While we ate, The Kid told us of Archer's Daughter. He and Kindly Lady had been involved with one another a couple of decades ago, The Daughter being the result. She had rebelled in a big way against her parents' way of life, running away at the age of thirteen to move to Sydney to become a lawyer. She had kept in touch, though, sending the occasional letter to Kindly Lady informing her of the latest developments in her life, the last of which had a postmark from a tiny town in the dead centre of Western Australia called Mount Newman, an isolated mining town. She had been in charge of legal matters for the local mining concern, apparently, and the pay was apparently quite lucrative.
He went on to say that neither Archer nor Kindly Lady ever really talked about her, though he knew her mother was proud of her accomplishments. The only way he had been able to find out any information was by sneaking into Kindly Lady's room from time to time to read the letters The Daughter had sent. The way he was talking was contemplative, as if he considered himself responsible for their Deaths. In a roundabout way, perhaps, he was, but I don't think it really matters.
His reverie was interrupted by flame streaking across the sky, burning up the clouds briefly, but enough to show stars, the first any of us had seen in months. The fireball fell to earth north of our location, detonating on impact, creating an enormous explosion. We resolved to check it out in the morning, the column of flame that rose into the darkened sky serving as a more than sufficient beacon. It might take us a couple of days, there was no real way of knowing just how far away it had come to ground, but whatever it was, was sure to be worth investigating.
May 14thYear 1 A.Z.
morning
Following the road to the north we soon discovered that we were not the only ones who felt the need to investigate the pillar of flame that had appeared overnight. There was a small army of Dead between us and it, shambling along. Only a hundred or so, but more than enough for the four of us to cope with right now, not without being overwhelmed even inside of our truck. Were we in The Nightmare, it would hardly be a problem, but that was rusting away halfway between Melbourne and Adelaide by now.
The Kid tried to move them, though they seemed to resist at first, they stumbled out of the road, leaving us plenty of room to pass unnoticed. After a couple of minutes of relatively slow going, however, Apocalypse Girl spotted them in the rear-view mirror following us. We came across another such group of Dead, dealt with them in similar fashion, then moved on down the road. Whatever had caused the fireball in the sky still blazed on the ground, still a column of brightest orange against the stark grey wastes.
A third group of Dead lay before us, shambling along as is their way, though they seemed to split into two distinct groups, right along the middle of the road. As we wondered at this phenomenon, the last group of Dead we had passed came into view behind us. Revving the engine, Apocalypse Girl told the rest of us to hang on before slamming the truck back into gear and ploughing through the Dead before us. Luckily, she was able to see the massive shape of the Meat-beast that the Dead were avoiding in time to hit the brakes so that the impact was lessened somewhat.
noon
It was an amazing sight, the Dead parting like the Red Sea, paring off to one side or the other, the Meat-beast breaking them like a wave. Though they sensed food nearby, The Kid told us that the heavily mutated former cow masked us quite thoroughly. On the other side, however, the two streams of Dead became one wide river about twenty metres down the road as they continued on their journey to whatever had crashed down from space. The radius of the Dead-cloak extended a good couple of metres from the Meat-beast, so we were easily able to carve off a few steaks, light a nice warm fire and cook up a good sized feast for three while The Kid went off on a scouting run. Sister suggested that we should try to take out some of the Dead from within the safety of the Meatbeast's Dead-cloak, though I told her it might not be a wonderfully good idea. Something like that just might get their attention. Grumbling, Sister allowed that I might be right, putting up her assault rifle and turning back to her meat.
evening
The Kid returned, while we were chopping off some more meat for later, cooking up a second meal for our dinner. Tomorrow, he told us, we would likely reach the impact site. The flames had begun to die down somewhat, though the pillar of fire was still dominating the darkness. The Dead perfectly content to just want to wander into the flames and burn up. As long as we take our time getting to it, the Dead should take care of themselves for us.
Apocalypse Girl asked him what he had been able to see, though he told her that he hadn't been close enough to see much, he had just felt the flames through his connection to nearby Dead. The second, or rather first, group that we had encountered today had just finished swarming past us and we ate our fresh Meat-beast steaks. Personally, though the idea of eating mutated cow would have sickened me, before the world ended at least, now I could think of nothing tastier.
The Kid told us that there were no more Dead nearby, so we kept our cooking fire lit, sitting around it sharing stories from before. None of us felt as though we were the same people that we had been before, so rather than tell our own tales, we told those of others.
Sister told of how her brother, Copper, had, on his first day on the job, once pulled over a drunk driver who had proceeded to vomit all over his fresh, new, shiny uniform. Copper duly joined him, throwing up all over the inebriated man. The worst part of that was that he had to finish up his shift covered in chunder.
The Kid spoke of The Daughter, staring off into the distance to the west as he did so. He stroked her sharktooth pendant as he did so. She had loved the ocean, though she rarely saw it, living a fair way inland as she had. She took off one day, 'borrowing' Fat Dealer's Ute, heading to the coast. That was the first time she had left the commune, other than to go to school. She had stayed away for over a week, having found some of Fat Dealer's stash that she was easily able to sell. Not that the money had lasted her very long, though, as she had paid, among other things, for a shark-cage diving session. She had been fascinated with sharks, The Kid told us, where most girls would prefer dolphins. In any event, a fucking huge great white had come up to her cage and tried to devour it whole, leaving behind the tooth. When she returned, she handed it to Archer as a Father's Day present. He had made it into a pendant which he, in turn, gave back to her for her next birthday.
Apocalypse Girl's anecdote involved an aunt of hers. Apocalypse Aunt had gone on holiday to Malaysia, spending a large amount of time in Penang. While there, she had her handbag stolen, along with all of its contents. Naturally this included her passport, all of her money and any other possible form of identification that she had carried with her. Fortunately, a tiny little Chinese man who identified himself only as Uncle, came to her rescue, taking her into his home. Not that it was really
his
home, but it belonged to his nephew, the doctor. Apocalypse Aunt had stayed in comfort for a couple of weeks while Uncle's doctor nephew made enquiries at the Australian Embassy and in time she had been able to replace her passport and return home in safety. She returned to Penang about a dozen years later, when she received an email from the doctor nephew saying that Uncle had
died. Her flight had been on December 27thof last year.
My story, however, was one of The Disciple, back when I had known him as a decent person, called him my friend. He had always been a man of definite, absolutely defined morals and opinions, everybody had their place, no exceptions. It wasn't really surprising that he would lead a group like The Followers, thinking about it. One day, in high school, he came across a kid being beaten up by a few older guys. He didn't step in, not until the kid was on the ground being kicked by one of the older ones. Then, he stepped up, punched the older one in the face, told them all to leave the kid alone. After that, he took the kid under his wing, taught him how and ,most importantly,
when
to fight. A week later, the three older kids started picking on him again, though this time the younger kid was ready for it. He still got the shit kicked out of him this time, but all three older kids paid dearly for their victory. One had a black eye, another had been punched in the throat and the third was rolling around in the dirt, holding his nut-sack in agony. Black-eye got the kid in the end, that day, but none of the three ever dared lay a hand on him again.
After our stories had been told, three of us headed into the truck while The Kid kept watch for any Dead, folding himself up atop the roof of the cab, closing his eyes and stretching out with other senses. He would warn us if anything came up.
May 15thYear 1 A.Z.
morning
The Meat-beast had regenerated every single steak that we had carved from it yesterday, it seemed, and was ready for more. I took out my sword and cut off a few breakfast steaks, then a couple of larger hunks of flesh for later. To be honest, I kinda felt sorry for these creatures that had once been cattle, but they seemed to not feel it and besides, I doubted we could really do any lasting damage. And we needed to eat, after all.
Sister stood on the bonnet of the truck, scanning the gloom through the scope of her sniper rifle, not seeing much. Apocalypse Girl wrapped up the meat that I passed to her, smiling at me. The Kid had gone off on another scouting run, really just running around in a wide circle, trying to sense any Dead that might be out there. When he returned, shaking his head, he told us that he still sensed a lot of them out there, most moving into the flames, now quite a bit lower down on the horizon than they had been previously.
We piled into the truck and continued on our way, using the glow as a guide marker, which before too much longer turned into a column of black smoke, barely visible against the dark grey gloom of the sky.
noon
True to The Kid's judgement, we reached the impact site shortly before noon. Sister tried calling up Soldier on the radio, to tell him what we were investigating, but got only static for her troubles. Apocalypse Girl stopped the truck and we got out, drawing various weapons as we did so. The Kid told us that there were a few Dead around, though he couldn't confirm any actual numbers yet, they were mostly too distant. As we closed in to the still-smouldering crater, he warned us that there were some that had survived the flames up ahead.
Our footsteps crunched and crackled, I realised we were walking on the charred bones of those Dead that The Kid had sensed strolling into their fiery deaths. The conflagration must have been quite mighty, as we were still a good hundred metres or more from the edge of the crater itself.
As we approached the lip, we saw there were a good thirty or so Dead in various stages of incineration still wandering around inside the crater. They noticed us, naturally enough, and attempted to climb the side of the enormous hole in the ground. The heat of the impact, however, had turned the earth, mostly sand in this region, to a shiny glass, and the Dead were hard-pressed to make any actual progress.
I asked The Kid if there were any more nearby, he shook his head. “It's hard to tell, really. These here are
hungry
, you see, so that kind of blocks everything else out. If there are any more, they'll probably be on the other side,” He told me. I pulled out a grenade, removing the pin and lobbing it gently into the centre of the reasonably densely packed group of Dead attempting to shamble up the glassy slope towards us.