BACTERIOPHAGE

By

Felix Yeager

Chapter 1 - Close

Red dust billows in a storm around him, caught in air that doesn’t breathe and a heat that doesn’t break. Mark Garvey creeps through dense thorns and overgrown gardens. His daughter whimpers from the papoose on his back, and he pats her head in consolation. Sweat stings his eyes. Adrenaline keeps him moving. He vaults over a collapsed fence, boots skating in the dirt, and ducks behind the remaining slats.

Mark straightens just long enough to catch his breath, adjusting his grip on the hand axe. Blood drips from the blade. “Yo-you okay, Harp?”

Her protesting babble says she is.

The auto shop looms at the end of the street, a dull metal building across from a church he’s keen to avoid. For some, it was a sanctuary, a beacon in the last days of hope. He fears what it’s become. Only it and the Porters’ trailer stand between them and salvation.

Mark adjusts his surgical mask with the back of his gloved hand. Dust clings to the sweat-drenched fabric.

A shriek, feral and hungry, breaks the stifling Australian heat. He lifts his hand axe, slinking toward the derelict trailer, nerves ablaze. Two crushed lawn chairs lay amidst the scrub. An overturned tricycle sits between them, handlebars stained red. He swallows.

Something crashes inside the trailer, metal clanging off the wall. It tilts. Ungainly footsteps rattle inside. The door bursts open. Amy Porter staggers out, dark veins spider webbing beneath her skin, ravaged by infection and scorched by the sun. She snarls, hunger warping her once-kind face. Rank breath hits him. The acrid stench of death and rot. She barrels toward him. Mark leaps to the side, but not soon enough. Her nails rake across Harper’s carrier.

Hot rage sears through him. Mark swings, sinking the hatchet deep into the meat of her neck. Blood splatters his face, soaking through the fabric of his mask and clogging his nose. Bile rises in his throat. Panic rings in his ears. He wipes the sunglasses on his sleeve just enough to see.

Harper shrieks, and he spins to take the brunt. Gary Porter slams into them, knocking him into the trailer wall. The impact leaves his vision red. Mark kicks, bringing the axe down onto his neighbor’s head. It cracks into his skull, biting deep into the bone and sinking into his brain. The once boisterous trucker lies still at his feet. His gorge rises as he pries the weapon free.

“You…you okay, Harp?” Mark pants.

A nearby screech drowns out her cry. Mark ducks behind the Porters’ trailer, leaping over the tongue and landing with a squelch. He glances down. Coils of Allen Porter’s intestines slop from his boot. Mark gags, shaking free, and takes off down the road.

A chorus of moans wafts between the building and eucalyptus trees. Flesh slams against pavement nearby. He gives them a wide berth, cutting through the McCutcheon’s front garden and around the side.

And skids to a halt.

Over a dozen infected fill the church parking lot ahead, thrashing against a rusted chain-link fence. Pastor Joe stands hunched in the center, suit painted in fresh blood. He bares chipped teeth, gums black, sinew dangling from yellowed incisors. His hiss sends a shudder down Mark’s spine.

The fence creaks under the infected’s weight. He takes a retreating step just as the panel gives way.

Mark barrels down Main Street, horde on his heels and gaining fast. “Shit, fuck, shi-”

Fifteen meters.

Ten meters. 

Five.

Mark skids to a halt, wrangling the keys from his pocket. They slip from his hand and drop to the scrub, lost amongst the barbed leaves and tufts of bladed grass. Panic consumes him as he drops to his knees, fumbling through rocks and vegetation. He spins, spotting a glint of metal in the dust, and snatches the keys.

It takes two tries to get the door open. He throws it open, slamming it shut just as someone–something–thuds against it. It holds.

Mark stumbles back, dropping the axe and smearing bloody handprints across the dusty shelves. He pries off his gloves. The mask. His sunglasses crack as he drops them. He fumbles through a pocket, before dousing his hands in sanitizer and scouring his face. Blood and alcohol mix in a putrid stew. His eyes sting. His wrist. Another desperate squirt, another frenzied scrub, until his hands run clean and the bottle drips empty.

Harper’s sobs follow him past the front desk and into the shop bay, where his Land Cruiser waits amidst the tool boxes. Sunlight beams through the barred windows. He fumbles the buckle on his chest with trembling hands and numb fingers. “I-I know, Harp, just…just give me-”

The buckle snaps free, and he shimmies the pack off, resting it on the dusty concrete. His daughter reaches for him, terrified and pleading under her pink sunhat. Snot and tears soak into her koala onesie, blonde curls plastered to her forehead, eyes red and puffy. 

“You’re alright, Wombat, I’m right here,” Mark assures her. He sheds the raincoat, and the gore with it, before pulling her from the harness with a groan and tucking her against his chest. She clings to him as he rocks her, resting his chin on the top of her head. Mark cups her face in his hand, wiping her cheeks with a calloused thumb. “It’s okay, Harper, you’re okay. I know that was scary. I’m sorry.”

He unlocks the truck with a click. Harper whimpers as he sets her in the waiting car seat, holding his shirt in sticky, tiny fists. “I know honey, I know. It’s just for a little while. You’re okay.”

 Sunlight pierces through the window behind him, flickering as shadows pass, casting waves over the concrete. Something wet slops against the glass. Mark glances over his shoulder. Pastor Joe peers inside, his tongue leaving a trail of bloodied, glistening saliva. He watches Mark with clouded eyes. His wife joins him, her pink sundress torn down the front. Their teeth click on the glass. Someone’s arm thuds on the adjacent wall.

Mark turns, shielding his daughter as he works her arms through the harness. He forces a grin, blowing a raspberry to distract them both. It seems to work. For her, at least. The last buckle clicks into place, and he rewards her with a kiss before moving to collect her carrier. 

Fresh tears mar the fabric, a yellowed fingernail caught in the frayed edges and black, oily blood smearing the supports. A rock drops into his gut.

Close. Too bloody close.

Mark flops into the driver’s seat. The sunlight catches the darkening bruises on his knuckles. The fresh blood, and scratches down his arm. He swallows, adjusting the rearview mirror to focus on his daughter, and forces a smile he doesn’t believe in. “Alright, Wombat, ready? Next stop, Echo Peak. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

She gurgles, reaching for him.

Mark looks at the clutter surrounding her. He’d packed the truck three months ago—supplies for three to last a month, diesel loaded with stabilizer, front push bar reinforced—when the news started with reports of folks turning sick. Turning violent. When the evacuations were first announced. 

He ignores the empty seat beside him, and turns the key. 

The truck roars to life, engine growling in the claustrophobic building. He takes a slow, steadying breath, and presses the door opener in the center console. The bay door ahead of them clacks open. A sliver of light cuts beneath it. Someone’s hand worms its way through. Their shoulder. Mark’s foot hovers over the gas as the seconds agonize by. Several more hands. A face, torn from cheek to chin. 

Mark slams on the gas. The truck bolts forward, crumpling the bottom of the bay door and splattering through the gathering crowd of infected. Bones snap. Flesh pops and tears. He fights the steering wheel as it wrenches sideways. Finally, the tires reach pavement, and the truck rockets forward.

Mark hooks a left onto the main road, hard enough to lift the side tires, breaking their sight line and leaving the horde behind. Buildings whiz past: the diner where his sister worked as a waitress growing up, their high school with Australia Day banners still hung in the windows, the ice cream shop he’d bring Harper to. In a few brief seconds, his whole life disappears from the rearview mirror.

It’s nearly half an hour before his heart rate settles out of his ears. The drone of the tires mixes with his mum’s 80s jazz, a sweet, lighthearted melody that makes reality sting. Harper’s toy squawks its usual combination of animal noises and commentary behind him. He catches her eye in the mirror strapped to the seat in front of her, and grins. 

“Are you ready to see Papa and Nana, Wombat? Fly in a big plane? We’ll get to see the ocean—looks like a carpet from the air. And, it’s March so that’s what…late winter up there? Maybe we’ll get to see snow when we land!”

She doesn’t respond, fixated on his Royal Flying Doctors badge swinging from the rearview with soft blue eyes. 

“You know, Dad used to work on planes before we had you,” he continues, flicking the RFDS badge with his index finger. “Maybe we’ll meet some of my coworkers at Echo Peak! Hector, Jacob… Remember Jacob, Wombat? You got a kick out of his mustache.”

She gurgles, turning back to the toy. A cow moos in response. 

His smile wavers. “You’re doing so well, Harp. I’m sorry about all this. I wish we could have gone with them. But! We’ll see them soon, yeah? Just-”

An explosion of fur and limbs over the windshield sends him to the roof. He swerves, over-steering in his panic and blinded by the curtain of blood and gore streaking down the glass. The truck bucks, leaping over a rock. A terrible weightlessness fills his stomach as they sail over shrub and dirt.

And slam head-first into a tree. 

Mark groans as his senses return. A horn sounds around him, deafening and disorienting over Harper’s cries. He fumbles the buckle with shaking, bloodied hands as smoke billows from the dashboard. His eyes water. His lungs burn. He has a half-formed thought and cuts the engine. 

Blood pours from a gash on his brow, blinding him. Wiping his eyes only makes it worse. Mark throws the door open, dropping to the dirt and nearly toppling. The world spins under adrenaline’s curse. He steadies himself on the truck long enough for his vision to clear, and nearly rips the door off its hinges. 

Harper bawls in her car seat, face red and tear-streaked.

“I’m-I’m here Harper, I’m-I’m so sorry,” he stammers. “You okay?”

She wails hard enough for his heart to hurt. He looks her over with trembling hands, smearing blood across her onesie. Terrified, but okay. His shoulders wilt as he lets out his held breath. 

“Okay. You’re okay, Harp, just…I gotta…”

He stumbles backward, finally taking stock of their battered vehicle. Steam hisses from the engine bay, pillowing out in thick, angry clouds beneath the crumpled bonnet. The left front wheel’s bent the wrong way. Smeared on the road some fifty meters back, a kangaroo corpse twitches in a growing puddle, spine snapped and protruding from a grotesque wound. 

Both dead. 

“Fuck!”

The curse comes out unbidden, raw and final. The desert swallows it. Mark pants in the silence, in the accursed, vast loneliness of the outback, devoid of birdsong and life. It’s all wrong. This isn’t home. 

Not anymore. 

He paces to control his racing thoughts. They could turn back, find another vehicle, but he tosses the idea—they’d never make it through town alive.

Mark glances at the sky. A new, primal fear cuts through him as the gold dusts the clouds. The brush suddenly seems thicker. The shadows darker. He looks back over the mangled vehicle slumped against the tree. At Harper still whimpering in her car seat and the carrier beside her, before hefting a sigh that starts in his toes. 

Chapter 2 - Walk

The rain starts first as a testing drizzle, just enough to dampen his shaggy brown hair and wash the sweat from his brow. Mark pulls the leather jacket tighter. Even lined with a once-too-tight jumper, he shivers against the autumn breeze. The movement helps, as does the knowledge that every moment brings them closer to safety, even if pain ricochets up his knee with each step, or his head feels ready to burst. Harper coos behind him, toying with a clump of his hair. He unthreads her fingers when she starts to pull. 

“Easy, Wombat. Not bald yet, and I don’t need your help.”

She babbles her indignation. 

“Yeah yeah, I know I need to cut it,” he grumbles, wiping the greasy fringe from his eyes and wincing when his fingers brush the scab on his brow. “Hasn’t exactly been top priority. That honor goes to you, my dear.”

She squeals, battering the top of his head with her tiny, furious fists. 

“Grot,” he teases, but grins. “What’s the first thing we should do when we get to the UK? Ooh, a proper Greg’s sausage roll. You gotta try it, Wombat. Pair it with Vimto? Heaven.”

His mouth waters at the childhood memory, echoed by his stomach. The prospect of eating something besides canned soup, jerky, and freeze-dried fruit nearly has him skipping. 

A flash of light crosses the clouds, followed by a raucous boom, loud enough for him to jump and for Harp to whimper. 

“Think that’s our cue,” he mutters, and pushes his pace into a trot. It lasts all of four seconds before his knee drags him back to a limping walk. The weather seems to take offense. A torrent of rain opens above them, drenching the ground and soaking his hair enough to trickle down his shirt. He keeps a hand on Harper’s sunshade to keep it upright, and trudges against the wind.

Ahead, set between a cluster of gum trees, rests a stout building, only visible from its dull pink paint and giant blue ‘Snack Shack’ sign.

“Well, it’s not a sausage roll,” he says. “But, how about a snack?”

Darwin’s Snack Shack, or The Shack that Cracks, is well suited for its name: a simple tin building with peeling salmon paint, steel shutters over the serving window, and a roof that gave up three summers ago. Mark slinks around the back, pulling a hatchet from his belt—one he’s always kept beneath the Land Cruiser’s front seat—and hooks the back of it into the padlock. He leverages it against the frame, and pops the lock with a grunt, before reaching for the handle.

Wait.

Mark takes three steps back, digging a rock from the dirt, and throws the stone against the door. A deafening clang rattles in his bones when it lands. The seconds claw by. His grip on the axe tightens.

A full minute passes before Mark relaxes his shoulders, loosening his grip and wiping the sweat from his palms. He clears the distance in a single step, nudging the door open with his boot. Dust coughs out of the derelict kitchen, immediately soaked by the rain and humidity. A grease-caked griddle top greets him first, flanked by two steel tables, a stained cutting board, and a bowl with something unnamable crusted at the bottom. He steps inside and shakes the water from his hair, now red with dust and days-old grease. The smell of metal and decades of grilled meat still lingers in the air. The door closes with an unassuring click. He pulls a table in front of it, just in case. 

Darwin is notably absent from the shack, much to Mark’s relief. He sets down a grumbling Harper, pushing his fists into his back and stretching the ache from his bones. 

“I know, Dad’s late on dinner,” he says. “Really cracking the whip, aren’t’cha?”

Her face wrinkles in a pending wail. 

“That was a lie, you’re right,” he concedes, lifting her onto his hip and ruffling her hair. “You’ve been a real trooper, kiddo.”

Dinner consists of a half a can of mashed sweet potatoes for her and a protein bar for him, stale and dry, but enough to keep his stomach from rumbling. He sets the tin of formula on the steel counter, rummaging through their pack in a growing frenzy. 

Water. Where the fuck is the wa-

Mark upends the pack, sifting through their gear. 

How in the FUCK did he forget water? 

Mark mashes his palms into his eyes, remembering the questionable decision to only bring the treacly, overly-caffeinated electrolyte drinks—greatest bang for the lightest weight. He looks around the pitiful kitchen, rain pounding on the tin roof like stampeding hornets, before a stack of metal bowls catches his eye. 

“Hold tight, Wombat. Dad’s gotta fetch some water for ya.”

Mark perches the bowl on a marginally flat rock, still keeping half an eye on the door. Beyond the rain, he can make out the faint moo of Harper’s toy. He leans against the wall, letting his head drop back against the cold steel, and his eyes drift closed as rain pelts his skin. Exhaustion clings to his bones. Muscles he didn’t know he had ache, even worse than his uni days as a rugby forward. 

You’re getting old, Mark. 

He scoffs. Guess it’s true what they say about turning thirty. Tack on a couple years, and of course his knees are going to hurt, the laugh lines around his eyes will deepen, and he’s already found the odd white hair. The stress hasn’t helped, and that was before the world turned feral.

Mark pries his eyes open, running his fingers through his beard, feeling the grit caked in the strands. His hand comes away red, dried blood crusted in the creases around his callouses and dark under his nails. If only he hadn’t used all the hand sanitizer earlier. 

After a long, scrutinizing look around, Mark slips his jacket off, then his jumper, tossing both through the cracked door. Goosebumps spark across his bare arms. He rubs them, scratching at the clots glued to his skin. It’s a trying effort. 

He swallows a yelp as he catches a scrape on his wrist. Fresh blood beads from the wound, mixing with the rainwater and dust and grime. He frowns, following the mark up his forearm. The memory of his wife’s corpse, feral and bloodied on the bathroom floor, leaves his hands trembling. 

It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t even know she was infected. How could he, with with her locked in the bedroom for days on end, eating food he’d scavenged, draining the neighbor’s wine cellar and doing God knows what on her tablet? In truth, he preferred it that way. It was quieter. Easier, without the constant bickering and insults. Everything was his fault. He needed to be doing more.

‘Look at the neighbors, why don’t we have a fence like theirs? Canned ravioli again? We’re out of water and I need to wash my hair. I don’t care that she’s colicky, I’m trying to sleep.’ 

Always she. The baby. Never Harper, or our daughter. 

Mark looks through the crack in the door, memorizing each curl, the hues of her flushed cheeks, the stout nose and perfect face. 

His daughter.

The fading light highlights the scratch across her forehead, dark and awful against her fair skin. Guilt shoots through him. 

He never should have left them alone. Left the nursery door open. Should have seen the signs long before she was in the room, snarling and tearing at the crib.

More scrubbing, until his skin stings with the imprint of his nails. He splashes his face, mashing his palms into his eyes until the memory fades and-

Something rancid and snarling slams into him, knocking him into the shack. The man’s teeth sink deep into his forearm, snapping through skin and flesh. Pain blitzes up his arm. Mark rips it free with a yelp. Muscle and flesh tear. The man hisses, clad in a putrid chef’s apron and overbloated gut, a chunk of bloodied meat dangling from his mouth.

Mark screams.

He throws a punch, knocking the chef back. Mark’s kick snaps his knee the wrong way. The man folds, keening like a wild animal, teeth gnashing. Mark stomps the man’s blistered head. Once. Twice. The third kick caves his skull in, splattering grey matter across his boot. 

Mark stumbles back, clamping a hand over the gaping wound in his arm. Blood pours between his fingers. The world closes around him as he staggers back into the shack. Back to Harper. Denial bubbles in his chest, a hot, smoking ember that chars his thoughts. He drops beside his wailing daughter, tearing off the bottom of his shirt and wrapping it over his arm. He doesn’t bother to clean it. It’s not going to matter. 

Harper whines as he lifts her into his lap, hugging her with the strength he doesn’t have. He rocks her, consoles her with words he needs to hear. It’ll be okay. He’s okay. He’ll keep her safe.

Mark wipes his face, smearing blood and tears and rainwater across his cheeks, and reaches for his watch. He stares at the timer with thorns in his throat.

Twenty-four hours.