Short Story: COLD FRONT

There was an order to those things, even at their worst.

START

I

Reynolds stood in the deserted student refectory and looked at the mess and felt sick. People did this. The monster — the dead things — were clean most of the time. They licked each other. Reynolds had seen them, over by the pine grove on the other side of the sports oval. They worked together. They cleaned each other when they were done. They didn’t do stuff like this: the smashed foodstuffs, bloated bottles, upturned furniture. They didn’t do chaos or mess, aside from tearing people apart, and this was why they’d win, eventually. There was an order to those things, even at their worst. They had a focus that regular people couldn’t hold on to.

Reynolds found a can of miniature corn under a bench. He opened it, sat down.

II

In the beginning, the virus itself wasn’t choosey. It infected all sorts of people and slowly turned them into demonic creatures. No one knew how it was transferred or how contagious it was, or who had it or why. In the beginning, it felt like it could have happened to anyone. A musician, a writer, a lawyer, a politician, the police, celebrities. Reynolds had seen what looked like fraternal twins once, both gone bad. They’d all seen former friends.

III

Earlier on, Reynolds had driven around. The things kept to themselves during the day and he was curious to see what the undead apocalypse actually looked like. It was disappointing in a way. It was no colourful spectacle. The city didn’t burn. It did not look like urban warfare or civil unrest, either, and there were no piles of rubble or overturned cars. Some of the street lights still worked.

There was no blood.

It was all very cold and stark and anonymous. And that was also how those things made you feel when they were up close. When a pack of them came through. They raided the campus from time to time and it was as if it an invisible frost had settled. You could almost feel it was about to happen. As dusk came and night fell, it was right there, that feeling of being out in the open when a cold front rolled through.

IV

Sarah said it exactly right: ‘This is the worst zombie holocaust ever.’

They were standing in the library when she said it, looking at the new recon photographs. Professor Camino had always been interested in photography and he had a long-range lens. They’d never seen the monsters up close like this.

‘Look at them,’ Sarah said. ‘Look, they’re organised. They’re not biting each other or gnashing their teeth. Look, there’s Johnny Ryall, on the edge over there. He looks better than he did when he was alive. It’s…’

‘Frightening,’ said Reynolds.

Dee Dee lit another cigarette. She nodded at them. She was one of the people that went mute after it started. She now carried a small axe with her everywhere.

Professor Camino said, ‘But what the hell are they, exactly?’

That’s when the pompous idiot from economics, Associate Professor Fin Hannish, stopped spinning on his chair and said, ‘Come on. Let’s not pretend. We all know exactly what they are….

‘Really, Fin?’

‘They’re soldiers, right?’

END

— IAIN

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