Brett McBean: Tales of Sin and Madness

Simon only stayed a few days — it was all he could stand — and he left Alice (including the vile ‘meat-wagons’ which Simon thankfully never got told to go into), before the people got rough and forced the sack open. Some of the parting comments included: “I hope you rot out there.” “May the zombies eat your heart.” “You should’ve stayed with us.” “You’ll die out there.”

So far Simon had yet to regret his decision. It hadn’t been a hard choice anyway, in his opinion. He would rather face the zombies than live in a world where madness was King and abomination the Queen.

That had been almost two months ago, and since then he hadn’t come across any more militaristic-style towns. He had come across a few zombies, wandering aimlessly near the South Australian/Northern Territory border; either lost travellers dead from exposure or local townspeople who hadn’t left for better food prospects. They had been mumbling about needing new souls to survive and had been weak from lack of nourishment — even zombies could get famished, he had learned. They hadn’t posed any threat, so he had just kept on walking.

That had been his last zombie encounter, aside from the cars last week. He didn’t know if they had been zombies or humans, but nobody had come, so he guessed it didn’t matter. Either one could be as dangerous.

Simon knew from his six-month pilgrimage that if he didn’t stop to replenish his liquids and give his feet and legs a rest, he would become delirious from fatigue and dehydration. There were times when he was sure he was going to die, lying on the hard, sun-cracked earth, his adversary blaring down on him, feeling as if he was being baked in a giant oven; he barely had the strength to get the water from his backpack. He even considered using what lay at the bottom of his bag to ease his suffering.

What had got him through those times was his promise to Tully. Knowing that if he died, her fate would lie with the evils of the New World, and he couldn’t let that happen.

“Not long to go,” he breathed as he set down the sack and then his backpack. He grabbed one of the water bottles and downed a small dose, dribbling some of it over the lumpy sack.

He was putting the bottle away when movement caught his attention. He turned and spotted a dingo coming towards him. The animal walked with deliberate steps and it wasn’t until it got closer that Simon saw the trail of intestines being dragged through the ochre-filled soil behind it.

Simon knew how vicious animal zombies could be — like humans, animals seemed to grow in ferocity when they came back from the dead. A once meek tabby would become a raging feline; a harmless pigeon would come back as a squawking feathery missile; snakes came back even more lethal, even though, fortunately, he had only encountered a few. And a dingo, an already dangerous animal, would become more vicious and blood-thirsty. Simon had fought a number of them during his sixth month trek, including a large male he had encountered while exploring Finke Gorge.

But the one that was limping towards him was no threat. Aside from being severely wounded, it looked old and in dire need of food.

Simon stood his ground and waited. The sack was behind him, as was the backpack. The dingo bared its teeth as it approached. Always the hunter.

Simon felt sorry for the creature. It was only doing what came instinctively.

That’s why, when the dingo ventured within touching distance, eyes cloudy but alert, Simon grabbed the animal around the back of its neck and snapped it before the creature got a chance to attack. Then, while it writhed on the ground, feebly trying to get up, Simon picked up a weighty rock and bashed in its head. He stopped once the dingo’s brain coated the red earth around its flattened head.

“Sorry, mate,” Simon said, letting the rock drop to the ground. “No hard feelings.”

His eyes drifted from the dingo to the desolate plane — a seemingly never-ending expanse of red and orange, dotted with purple and the green of spinifex, all blanketed by a rich blue sky, and realised, perhaps for the first time, how utterly quiet it was. He really was in the middle of nowhere, lost in a vast desert of unrelenting heat and dust, a lifetime away from the horrors of the real world, a world that was in the grips of an apocalyptic nightmare. A world that was dying.

The late afternoon sun called him back with its penetrating rays and he knew he had to get going, had to get to Coober Pedy before night descended over the land.

He gathered his things together then started off. He estimated another half-an-hour until he reached his final destination.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “Almost there.”

He thought back to when he first started out. How he had dreaded the journey, even though he knew he had to make it. The desire to see Australia’s outback was never strong in him; he didn’t care if he died never having seen it. Tully, on the other hand, had always longed to visit the outback. A real cowgirl at heart, an adventurer who loved the outdoors and getting dirty. That spark, however, died when she was diagnosed with leukemia. After that, she no longer dreamt of white-water rafting, or skydiving or traversing Central Australia in a four-wheel drive. Pretty soon her main source of exercise was hurrying to the bathroom to throw up — a result of the chemotherapy. It was the most painful thing in the world to watch her fade away. It wasn’t just the hair-loss, or the way her cheekbones began to jut out, or her increasingly gaunt frame. It was her loss of spirit that was the most difficult to bear. Of knowing that she would never get to see the outback, particularly Coober Pedy with its underground homes, churches and hotels, which, for some reason, held a particular fascination for her.

“Get me out of here,” she had whispered to him the morning he killed his first zombie with the scissors. “Please, don’t let me die in here, surrounded by all this. I don’t want to end up like them.”

He always had a hard time listening to her talk about her death. He knew it would be inevitable, the chemo just wasn’t working, but he hadn’t prepared himself for her end.

“Take me away, far away, somewhere beautiful.” Her body had been pumped with so much morphine she couldn’t even open her eyes.

A few hours later, Tully deeply asleep, the zombie on the floor with the pair of scissors jutting from his eye, Simon decided to honour Tully’s wishes and take her away.

It didn’t take him long to get everything ready. He dressed his wife in jeans and an old T-shirt, filled his backpack with bottles of water and junk food that he looted from the abandoned cafeteria (it was all that was left), and found an empty sack in the storage room. It was the only way he could foresee carrying Tully half-way across the country, since he didn’t want to drive. Driving meant using roads and highways, and that meant lots of zombies. No, Tully had wanted him to take her away from it all, and that’s exactly what he was going to do. No cities, no roads, no civilization, no zombies.

Before they left, he injected her with more morphine, then bundled her into the sack, along with a years worth of the drug he took from the hospital pharmacy. He hoped Tully would be out of it for the entire journey and miss seeing all the blood-shed and insanity.

After battling his way through the city, stopping off at a supermarket to stock up on canned goods (mostly baked beans, vegetables and meat), he set off on his journey, stopping only to sleep, to stock up on provisions when he came upon a deserted town and to keep Tully both hydrated and doped up on painkillers, letting her out of the sack often, but only when he was certain there was nobody around. His only prayers had been for the cancer to stay away long enough so that Tully could be alive when they reached their destination.