30 Days of Undead Summer

#FridayFreeForAll

Australia's a dangerous place to live in on the best of days. During the zombie apocalypse? It's literally the worst place in the world to be.

Jake sighed as he tromped over the nearby desert to check his traps. Never should have left America, he thought crossly.

It was a regular thought, that one - Jake thought and spoke it daily. For good reason, too - when the zombie apocalypse had started from a mutated disease that a man had gained from one of the many killer bugs on this continent, Australian airports had shut down, trapping citizens and tourists alike inside.

Jake had almost immediately abandoned his hotel room, which was located in the middle of crowded Sydney, and headed for the desert with his wife, Sally. They had found a house belonging to an old man who graciously let them live with him - mostly so they could help care for him.

Jake had been in the U.S. Army for a decade, so he knew many survival skills, skills that he was sure "regular" people were only faintly aware of. Making traps to catch his food was one of them.

He felt a surge of victory as he hurried up to one of his pit traps - it had been triggered. When he saw what was within, however, his heart fell and the smile faded from his face.

A kangaroo lay dead at the bottom, its neck twisted. In its pouch, a tiny joey  squeaked in pain.

Jake jumped down into the pit and approached the kangaroos with caution. He could see that the joey was hurt - one of its front paw was dangling out of its mother's pouch at an odd angle. It was going to die, anyway.

Jake drew his knife, letting a cold indifference settle over him as he reached down and put the creature out of its misery. That same veil of cold indifference was what had allowed him to keep his sanity in the army, and what helped him survive guiltlessly now.

It was only at times like these that Jake was glad that his wife had passed away a month or so after moving into the desert - it had been a scorpion bite, of course, because everything in Australia was out to kill humans.

What would Sally think of him, killing helpless baby animals?

Bending down, Jake slung the dead adult kangaroo around his shoulders with some effort. After all, the creatures weighed nearly 100 pounds as adults, and the added few pounds of the joey did nothing to ease that burden. However, the meat would be more than enough to feed both himself and the old man he was living with for several days.

Jake chuckled at the thought of it. A few months ago, he had lived in the American suburbs with his wife and a small dog (he wondered what his friend, who had been house-sitting, had done with the terrier). Now, he lived in the Australian deserts with an old man who could barely walk without groaning in pain, the pair of them eating kangaroo meat that he skinned and cooked over a campfire himself.

The apocalypse does things to you, he thought sadly. Irreparable things.

Bending his head, Jake turned off his mind, focusing on nothing but the anchoring weight of the dead animal around his shoulders.