Shannon stared back at him.
“Hello, Paul.”
Paul gaped. Behind him, he heard the fallen zombie getting to its feet.
“Surprised to see me?” It spoke with Shannon’s voice, but Paul knew it wasn’t Shannon.
“Wifey,” he gasped, his voice thick with emotion.
“What did they do to you?”
“They tortured her, Paul. Made her drink acid. Injected gasoline into her veins. She died croaking your name.”
Paul grimaced. The zombie laughed.
The crowd grew louder.
Paul lowered his stick. “Do it. I don’t want to live without her.”
The zombie’s laughter ceased. “You don’t wish to fight? It’s more fun when you fight.”
“Just do it.” His stick clattered across the ice.
“Make it quick.”
“If you insist. I’m so hungry.”
He embraced Shannon’s corpse. Her teeth closed around his throat.
At that moment, the bomb they’d planted exploded, filling the arena with heat and light and wind. A moment later, the sound followed. Paul and Shannon shared one last kiss as the ice melted beneath their feet.
Then they both found out where the Down Boys go.
WALKABOUT
(Part Two)
The Rising
Day Twenty
Melbourne, Australia
Leigh Haig opened the dumpster lid a fraction of an inch and stared outside. Dark, ominous clouds dominated the sky, and cold rain fell in sheets. A flock of birds wheeled overhead, buffeted by the gale force winds. The storm lashed them, sending molted feathers and shreds of rotting meat plummeting downward with the rain. He remembered peeking out the window of his home before he’d departed, and seeing the sun. Now, he couldn’t remember what the sun looked like.Twelve days ago, he’d left his house in search of medicine for his wife Penny, whose body was being ravaged by the common flu. The sun was still shining when he departed. Now, it was raining, and he was hiding inside a garbage dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant, less than ten kilometers from home.
Ten kilometers. Not far. Not far at all. And yet, it might as well be the other side of the world.
Shivering from the cold, Leigh closed the lid. The darkness surrounded him again. His fingers and toes were numb, and his muscles ached. He felt for the rifle, a Yugoslavian-made SKS with a bayonet mounted on the barrel. He drew the weapon to him. Twelve days ago, he hadn’t even known how to fire it, let alone the rifle’s specifics. Now, it was his best friend. His teddy bear, after sleeping in the dumpster overnight.
After leaving the house, Leigh had gone one and a half blocks before encountering his first zombie, an elderly woman whose wig had gone missing and whose varicose veins had burst right through her skin. He’d smelled the creature before he saw it, and had time to hide behind the burned-out shell of a car before the corpse rounded the corner and started down his street. Armed only with a makeshift axe, Leigh had let it wander by. When the coast was clear, he continued on his way.
That was when the snake bit him.
He’d felt a sharp, jabbing pain in his ankle, and when he looked down, there was a snake clinging to his foot, its fangs piercing his sock and the flesh beneath it.
Leigh screamed, and that attracted the attention of the zombie that he’d just eluded.
The snake was already dead. Maggots squirmed in the open, ulcerated sores all along its body. One eye was missing, and more maggots filled that cavity. Muscles, free of rigor mortis, flexed as it clamped down tighter against his skin. It glared at him with its one good eye, and Leigh saw a dreadful intelligence reflected there.
He swung with his axe—two kitchen knives embedded in a wooden mallet. The blade sliced through the snake’s mid-section, cutting it in half, scattering maggots and innards. A dead mouse spilled out onto the road, the serpent’s last meal. Then the mouse began to move as well. Leigh stomped on the zombie rodent with his free foot. Tiny bones crushed beneath his heel.
The snake’s upper half held on to his ankle. Its severed end whipped back and forth like an out-ofcontrol fire hose. Leigh swung again, carving another six inches from its body.
The other zombie, the old woman with the missing wig, ran towards him.
“Come here, lad. I’m hungry!”
With the snake still clinging to his leg, Leigh planted his feet and watched the zombie’s charge. His heart pounded in his chest. As it reached for him, he swung the axe with all his might. The blade buried itself in the center of the old woman’s bald skull, cleaving flesh and bone. The zombie collapsed to the pavement, blood and brains leaking around the weapon.
Leigh tried to retrieve the axe, but it was stuck. He heard more of the undead approaching, and cursed, tugging on the handle.
Suddenly, automatic gunfire rang out. Seconds later, an armored jeep pulled alongside him. The side-door opened, and a man with a red beard leaned out, offering Leigh his hand. “Come with us if you want to live, mate.”
Leigh jumped onboard.
There were four people in the jeep—two soldiers, a woman, and the red-bearded man. All of them were heavily armed.
“You’ve brought a friend,” the woman said, nodding at Leigh’s leg. “Lucky it’s not poisonous.”
The red-bearded man leaned over, pried the snake from Leigh’s ankle, and tossed it out the window. “We’ll have to get that doctored. Fucking things are crawling with bacteria.”
“I need a doctor,” Leigh stammered. “Medicine. My wife, Penny, she’s sick.”
“You’re in luck,” one of the soldiers said. “We’re from Box Hill. A bunch of us have holed up in the hospital.”
Leigh soon learned that forty survivors, mostly medical staff and military forces, were living inside the hospital. After arriving, a doctor fixed Leigh’s ankle and gave him something for the infection. But before Leigh could convince anyone to accompany him home to get Penny, the hospital fell under siege from the zombies.
He got a crash course in combat weapons training, was given the SKS and plenty of ammunition, and assigned a position on the barricades. The siege lasted eleven days before the undead finally broke through. By then, the survivors’ numbers had dwindled to ten, and their dead companions had wreaked as much havoc inside the facility as the zombies outside.
As the creatures stormed the hospital, Leigh stuffed a sack with vials of antibiotics, a few bottles of water, and some candy from a vending machine. He grabbed his rifle and extra ammunition, and fled through an unguarded fire door. He made it two blocks before being forced to hide inside the dumpster.
And now here he was.
“I’ve got to get home,” he said aloud. “I promised Penny that I’d be back.”
He lay there in the garbage, cold and wet and miserable, until it was dark. Then he crept out of the dumpster and, using the darkness and the rain for cover, walked out of the alley.
The downpour immediately soaked through his clothing, and he was drenched before he’d gone a dozen steps. The rain blinded him, but Leigh hoped that it would lessen the zombie’s visibility as well. Leigh Haig wasn’t a religious man, not after everything he’d seen these last twenty days, but he prayed now.
“Please Lord, if you really are still up there, just let me make it home. Let me get back to Penny without meeting any of those things.”
Thunder rumbled across the sky.
Leigh walked all night, and whether it was the weather, or the darkness, or someone really answering his prayer, he didn’t encounter a single zombie. Shortly before dawn, he reached the estate their home was located in. His legs ached and his feet were blistered from his wet shoes rubbing against them on the long walk home. His nose was running and he’d developed a chronic cough.