A Short History of the Demise of Man

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Comment by Ron Salter on February 16, 2010 at 6:07pm

Chapter 1
As Alice in Wonderland was advised “It’s best to start at the beginning”. Well this is no Wonderland and no one has ever called me Alice but I’ll take that advice.
Day one of this shit fight was just another one of those hot, humid summer days when you’d rather just stay at home that drag yourself to work and get behind the wheel for 8 hours of being slowly baked through the windscreen. My cargo was the same every day; shipping containers. I’d pick them up from the wharves, deliver them to their destination or pick up an empty and take it back to the storage yards. The traffic seemed a bit more congested than usual that day, by midday I was in a traffic jam that stretched for miles, ambulances and police cars were whizzing up the emergency lanes, I figured there must have been a bad smash up ahead and started thinking of a way around if I took the next freeway exit. I turned on the radio to get a traffic update and got the 1pm news. An outbreak of mass hysteria in the city, people being urged to keep away if possible and not to confront any people acting strangely.
“Must be a bad batch of drugs hit the streets” I thought to myself.
Up ahead people had gotten out of their cars and switched off the motors as they began overheating, the traffic was gridlocked, I turned up the fan on the air conditioner and put the CD player back on, I got paid by the hour, I could sit here all day. I was reaching across the seat for a newspaper when I saw the people up the road suddenly start running, I had a bird’s eye view over the cars, more people started getting out of their cars, trying to stop the runners to find out what was wrong. As a man ran towards my truck I opened the door and grabbed his shoulder. “Oi, mate, what’s going on?” I asked. He pulled himself free of my grip and yelled “Cannibals” and kept running.
“Cannibals” I said out loud to myself and laughed. Shit, they must be on some wild drugs. There was now a steady stream of people pouring down the freeway, not one had the sense to simply pull into the emergency lane and drive around whatever the problem was, no, they all got out and ran away from the “cannibals”. “Well, I’m not sitting here until knock off time and then having to work out how to get home” I thought. I reached under the seat and put a large tire iron on the passenger seat just in case and spun the wheel on the truck, there wasn’t enough space for me to get into the emergency lane so I shunted the car in front of me foreword a bit and made room. I guess I had gone about half a mile crawling along the narrow lane ,there were still a few people running about but they got out of the way when they saw me coming, then one bloke didn’t he just stood with his back to the truck, I stopped and sounded the air horns and he still didn’t turn around. I put my head out the window and yelled “Hey dickhead, get out of the way!”
He turned slowly at the sound of my voice; his face and chest were covered in blood, as he moved toward the door of the truck he dropped something. It was an arm! He stood below the window of the truck and started clawing at the door. I leaned from the window and looked down at him “Are you OK mate?” I said. He looked up and his eyes were those of a dead thing, that milky glazed over look they get, they didn’t move or blink, they just stared up at me while his hands searched for a hold on the truck. I wound up the window and put the truck back into gear and drove on. Up ahead I could see a multi car pileup, so that was the reason for the holdup at least. There were ambulance and cop cars parked around but I couldn’t see any movement. There was an exit before the crash scene and I took it.
Things weren’t a lot better on the streets, there were people running down the roads, no one seemed to obey traffic signals, there were car crashes everywhere. I grabbed my phone and called into work to see if they knew what was going on and got no answer. I put the radio back on and they were still saying it was mass hysteria. What a load of crap. I changed directions and headed towards my house while trying to call my hunting buddy Stan. Stan was pretty much my only real friend since my wife died a few years back. You know how it is, when you’re a couple you get invited places with other couples, once you’re the odd man out the invites stop coming, Stan and his wife Sue were the only ones who still invited me over for dinner once in a while knowing full well they wouldn’t get a return invite. All I had to do was ring Stan and say “I hear there’s a big old boar causing some trouble out at Stanthorpe” and Stan would be on my doorstep at 5am the next morning with his rifle and pack ready to hunt.
Stan’s phone was busy.
Fifteen minutes later I was home, I parked the truck outside on the street and took the tire lever with me as I jumped down to the road. As I walked up my drive my neighbor came shuffling towards me across his lawn.
“Hey Theo! I reckon you should get inside, people seem to be going nuts, you should see the shit up on the expressway” I said. Theo didn’t reply but continued coming towards me. “Theo, can you hear me?”
He was now just 10 feet away, I could see he had blood on his sleeve and the same dead eyes as the guy on the expressway.
“Theo, it’s Bill. Keep back mate, you’re not well, I don’t won’t to hurt you, so please just go home” I said backing towards my front door and fishing my keys from my pocket. I was now at the front door and Theo was just feet away, as I tried to get the key in the door he made a grab for me and I swung the tire iron hitting him on the arm, I heard the bone break but he simply stood there, then grabbed at me with the other arm. I swung again and hit him in the head and he dropped to the ground. I wasted no time in getting in the door and locking it behind me.
I tried to ring Stan again and this time he answered. He and Sue were waiting on their eldest son to get to their house then they were all going to make for a hunting shack we had in the hills behind Stanthorpe. Their youngest son was already home and they had packed Stan’s Jeep Cherokee with everything they thought they would need. “We will meet you there Bill, if you leave now you will probably beat us so put the kettle on mate.” Stan said.
“I’m in the truck mate, I’ll get what I need from here then take the truck back to the yard and get my own truck, I doubt the container mover would make it out there.” I laughed. We spoke for several more minutes about what was happening, Stan knew no more than I did but we had discussed the shit hitting the fan many times before and he was working exactly to plan. Then he had to go, the last of his family had arrived and they were going to make the move. We said our goodbyes and I began packing stuff from the house to take with me.
There was a lot to take, and I would have to carry it all out to the roadside and lift it up into the passenger side of the truck. I looked out into the back yard and saw the wheelbarrow. The back yard was fenced so it was safe, the barrow just fitted through the door and I placed it by the front door and began loading it up.
3 cases of 12gauge 00 Buckshot,1 case of 12G slugs,2 cases of No.6 Shot. Ok, that was a load in itself .I peered out the window by the door and looked straight into Theo’s dead eyes or at least one of them, the other was hanging on his cheek after I’d hit him. More disturbing was that his wife was standing next to him, both of them clawing at the window. I went back to my spare room which served as my gun room and ignoring the safe for now I went to the wardrobe and lifted the false bottom and retrieved my forbidden treasure. My Franchi pump action shot gun. I should have handed this in during the gun buyback years ago but couldn’t bear to part with it, we had accounted for a lot of feral pigs together. I loaded it with 00 buck and headed back to the door. As I stepped out both my neighbors lost their heads in rapid succession. I wasted no time; I threw the shotgun on top of the ammo and ran to the truck with the barrow, swung open the door and threw the cases on the floor. The truck was high enough that I figured these crazies wouldn’t be able to climb up so I left the door open and ran the barrow back for another load.
500 rounds of 270, 1000 rounds of 308,1000 rounds of 223, 1000 rounds of 9mm.
Back for another load 2000 rounds of 357, 500 of 45/70, 2000 of 22. The passenger side of the floor of the truck was now stacked level with the seat. I threw all of my clothes in several garbage bags, grabbed all the tinned and dry food I could find and loaded all that onto the seat. I left the rifles in their cases and stacked them behind the seats. I put on 2 holsters, on my hip my 586 Smith and Wesson revolver, in a shoulder holster, my 1911 9mm. I dumped the contents of my knife draw into my hunting pack and headed out the door for the last time and was about to close the door when I saw my katana on its stand in living room. I grabbed it too and walked back to the truck as I rounded the corner of the truck to get to the driver’s door I was greeted by another dead thing. I fired the shotgun from the hip making a clean hole thru its stomach and it fell to the ground, I stepped over it and climbed in to the truck and leaned back in the seat and took a swig of water. I was exhausted. I sat and rolled a couple of cigarettes for the journey and glanced down at the road to see the thing I’d just shot staggering to its feet. Fuck off! I’d just disemboweled the thing, how could it possibly get back up! I drew the 1911 and took aim and shot it in the head, it fell again. I smoked a whole cigarette and watched to see if it got back up, it didn’t. OK , I had just learned something useful.
I put the truck into gear and headed back to work and the storage yard where my 4x4 was parked.