Christ.
David's eyes snapped open. He'd had that dream again. Wearily he clambered out of bed and set himself to get about the day's work. He found Mike in the kitchen, already eating a dry bowl of cereal.
"Beautiful morning out there, Dave," Mike commented as Dave poured himself a drink of water from a tank of sterilised rainwater. They were both pretty sure that they were immune, after all, they'd been coming into pretty regular contact with the infection for months now, but they weren't figuring on taking any chances.
"Dave..." Mike broke into Dave's thoughts, "I reckon I'm probably gonna leave. If you could come into town with me to get a vehicle and some supplies, I'd appreciate it. Gonna head south, see if I can't find somewhere safer to stay."
David sighed. He'd suspected this was coming for a while, but he hadn't wanted to push the issue.
"I'll hang around for a couple days at least, let you make up your mind if you wanna come or stay here, and at least help you set up all the feed for the next couple months and all that if you decide to stay. I reckon you should come though, hey, we could be the last two left for ages and our survival chances are much higher with more of us. What do you reckon, mate?"
It did sound like a good idea, after all, the farm would go spare with just one man running it - it was bad enough with the two of them running it - it was far too big a property to manage. Besides, they could always fortify it, go down south to see what they could find, and then if they needed to they could bolt back up here with anyone they could find - try and retame the farm after it had been left to go bush for a few weeks or months or years.
However, David knew he had to weigh the options. Although the infection seemed to be getting worse and worse around where they were situated, who was to say it wasn't the same everywhere else? They'd lost all contact with the outside world save a couple people in town and so on who had holed up in their houses. And the last he'd heard, the government wasn't acting very friendly towards anyone found on the streets, although they hadn't been seen around these parts for years...
David walked outside, into the early morning sunshine, and looked around the farm. The fences needed re-wiring, the cattle all needed to be cut and hocked, the feed was starting to run out, and the cotton bushes were starting to be a real problem in the Northernmost paddocks. He certainly couldn't deal with this on his own.
Mike came out behind him. "I figured I'd get all my stuff together tonight... plan to head into town over the next few days, get a car, dig up some supplies, maybe try and get my hands on a police shotgun or something..."
They could take the Landcruiser - they probably wouldn't need a second car between the two of them.
"Count me in."
"Really? Wow... that's great! I reckoned you'd need a little more time to decide than that. OK, well over the next few days, we'll need to prepare - we can knock a few fences up across gates and things like that, cut a few wires here and there, turn the farm into one big paddock for the livestock to run around in... board up the house, bury all the valuables, dig up all the vegies, figure out how to take the dogs... it's gonna be a hard slog, getting everything ready."
He started walking down to the large shed - he'd have a last poke around, see what they couldn't come up with to take with them.
They would need to go into town... to get supplies, fuel, food and so on from the abandoned shops... see if anyone else was up for coming with them.
--
Even though it was early morning and cool, Dave was still sweating, bent over the vegetable garden out the back of the house. He stretched upwards and knuckled the small of his back with his left hand, his right holding the shovel that he had been using to hack at the tough soil. He grimaced as he felt a painful twinge in his back, accompanied by a slight click. I'm getting too old for the farm life. He grinned. Too old for the farm life, maybe, but apparently still young enough for dangerous cross country jaunts into the great, zombie infested unknown. The last few days had been a frenzy of activity, as he and Mike boarded up the house, herded all the animals into a lone paddock, wired open all the gates on the property, checked every inch of the external fences, and did the million and one other things that just kept cropping up in preparation for their leaving.
A commotion from around the side of the house made him drop the shovel and snatch his rifle from its leaning position against the wheelbarrow. He had jogged to the corner of the veranda before he heard Mike begin yelling curses, as well as one of the dogs growling fiercely. As he skirted wide around the corner of the house, rifle at his shoulder, he first saw one of the dogs tugging and pulling tenaciously on a bloody side of meat, growling and barking in its frustration. Then he saw Mike, who was sprawled in the dust, the car fridge having proved too heavy for him to negotiate down the veranda stairs by himself. Mike was tangled in the electrical cable extending from the back of the fridge, and was holding the other end of the large haunch steak of meat which had obviously spilled from the fridge. He was trying to prevent the dog from making off with it, and swearing bloody goddamned stupid blue murder at the creature. David couldn't help it. He lowered the rifle, sat down heavily against a nearby tree and began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, sitting there, occasionally glancing over at Mike, who, for his part, had relinquished the steak to the dog and had rolled onto his back where he lay and chuckled at the sight he must have been. The dog trotted off proudly with his pound of meat to a hole in the side of the shed, where he flopped down and began to chew.
Soon enough, Dave levered himself up off the ground, and helped Mike shift the fridge into the back of the Landcruiser, where they packed the rest of the supplies. After bagging up the all the veges that he had managed to dig up that afternoon, and packing them in the back, Dave called Mike to lend a hand hooking up the trailer to the car. For the next two hours they packed food, water, tents, petrol, camping gear, ammo, spare parts, gas, and anything else they could think of into the trailer, the back of the car and onto the roof rack. Then, returning to the house, they gathered up everything of personal value and buried it all deep in a big box under the big gum tree out back, choosing only to bring a few personal items in the car with them. Dave brought a photo of his wife and an early sketch of the farm house that had been done by his father when he had first moved onto the property and finished building the house. Mike took his guitar and a knife that had belonged to his grandfather. The two of them called up the dogs into the back of the car, then got in and drove slowly away from the farm. Mike jumped out quickly and let all the livestock out of their one paddock before shutting the final outer gate to the property - and they began the drive to Meekatharra.
About 20 minutes later Dave brought the car to a halt. They sat just outside the town, finding that neither wanting to explore the now-deserted urban sprawl that lay abandoned in the desert. Mike broke the silence.
"We should head into town, see if we can get hold of some more food and better weapons. Ammo too."
"Sure," David agreed, "But I also want to see if there's anyone still alive down there... maybe we could take them with us."
