Anne of the Apocalypse

Stimulants

Stimulants 

Anne mused that there were a lot of things to hate about Year Three,  After Virus. There were the zombies of course, and dust. Dust was a big one. Civilization really kept the dust down. Without it, you were constantly spitting the dry out of your mouth. There was the excess of rats and bugs: Flies, and fleas in particular. There was the fact that everyone was dead.  And then there was the disease. If the zombies didn’t kill you the Zombie Virus would, or it would turn you into a Zombie or both.  And let’s not forget the raft of super viruses that vaccines had supposedly stamped out. It sucked to live through the Zombie Apocalypse only to die of hopped up chicken pox. There was a lot to hate. Right now, however, Anne hated the coffee. She shot a long brown stream out of her mouth unable to swallow another drop. Fucking Feldmann’s. Fucking freeze-dried, under-ripe, under-roasted, over-processed, ground to shit, crap in a can! If this was what collective humanity called coffee, they had deserved to die. She tossed the dregs of her cup into the dust by the fire and spat again. She needed some gum. That mint gum that had always been next to the register in the—nope. 

Anne spent the day belly down, on a grassy hilltop overlooking a small neighborhood of what had been Shell Beach, California. There were a hundred or so moderate beach homes strung in rows down the steep hillside between Highway 1 and the ocean.  All the rows terminated in a single drive that served the big homes along the cliff line. The day was clear and breezy. The tall sun burnt grass made good cover. Anne could move easily from vantage point to vantage point as long as she kept low. There wasn’t much to see. The narrow roads were empty.  A few Z’s drowsed on the sand at the far end of the cove. Weird how they looked like sunbathers spread along the beach like that. Though she never took the presence of the Z’s lightly, today she was more relieved with the absence of breathers. Shell Beach, with its clutch of cheap surfer motels at the south end of town, had been a popular low rent vacation spot for San Joaquin Valley residents. Basically, a lot of hicks with guns knew about this place. Anne thought they might have run this way when things heated up. 

In the past year Anne had performed 29 extractions. In that time the living, (breathers), had persistently posed a greater threat than the zombies. If they weren’t dangerous because they were armed, crazy, and mean, they were dangerous because they weren’t armed and were sick and desperate. Anne thought it was a waste of energy to miss “normal people”: People just ignoring you at the bus stop or standing in line at Trader Joe’s, people who didn’t need you to help them or want to eat you. She would never say it out loud, but waste of energy or not, she missed them anyway.

They had dropped her a klick inland two nights ago. It was still farmland out there, had been anyway. She had worked her way seaward, quietly clearing the zeds as she went. She cold camped, making small fires at sunrise for coffee. Then she settled in to watch. Toward evening Anne backed off the hill and looked at the sky. She didn’t mind the long hours of surveillance. Like the other collectors she understood that good surveillance, more than weapons, more than planning, more than killer combat skills, kept you alive. She liked the solitude. She emptied her mind and watched and listened, tucking every single detail into a mind map. When the map was complete she was ready. She shot another look skyward. Sunset. Alone time was over. 

Anne’s suit-up was ritual. It took her five minutes: Steel toed boots, shark suit, micromesh gloves, lightweight shop glasses, tools and weapons. Once she was dressed she took five more minutes to check for "straps and gaps", making sure wapons were ready and her skin was completely covered. She didn’t carry around a small arsenal like some others. Though big guns killed zombies good and dead, they were heavy and the noise drew more of them. Scuffles turned into battles and the general mayhem panicked your package. No good.  Whenever possible Anne preferred to get in and get out without engaging. If she had to fight, quiet was better. She checked her suit one last time. “My Bonny lies over the ocean,” she chanted softly, “My Bonny lies over the sea,” as she pulled on dirty sweat pants and a big ragged open fronted hoodie to disguise her decidedly ninja looking silhouette. “My Bonny lies over the ocean”. It was twilight when she headed down the hill under cover of the lengthening shadows. The sunset was breathe-taking, but she didn’t notice.