Sit down, kiddo. Pass me the bottle. I have something I feel I gotta tell ya. Yeah, I know, I'm always telling stories. But better you learn from me instead of the hard way, right?

I know it's been a long time since the virus hit. Not for me it ain't. It's all in me head still. Like I'm still running, even when I'm not. At first, we were all so full of cortisol that if someone came in for a hug you'd jump and run, or turn and punch their lights out. I'd only approach the living with caution - maybe as much caution as I had for the dead. At least you knew what to expect with the dead - amble, shuffle, bite. Or worse, leap out from dark corners in supermarkets where maybe there would be a can of baked beans, or hell, even sardines, and damn I hate those. The living, you can't predict.

In those early days, we were wide eyed like you, kiddo. We were full of wonder. How the fuck did we not see this coming? I guess it's easy to have foresight in retrospect, or something like that. Easy to see the patterns after the event. The roads slashing through jungle, awakening bacteria and viruses that had laid amongst the leaf litter and bats for thousands of years. The die off of natural predators and the collapse of ecosystems in favour of markets. When it happened, though, we all wondered why us. Why couldn't this pestilence wait for another hundred years, leaving us to get on with our lives and die in peace, rather than disembowelled or huddling in a corner store with someone on look out with a machete or a iron wheel brace they'd taken from the back of their truck when it smashed into a lightpost dodging a horde of corpses shuffling down Sydney Road. But that seems like a life time ago now.

We often talk about how things might have been different if they'd shut the borders at the first inkling of trouble, or if they'd made us wear masks or socially distance ourselves or whatever dumbass rules they came up with. But we'd gone through COVID-19 a few years back and everyone had just got complacent, me included. A virus popping up in Brazil or Korea or wherever was just another virus. We had time, we thought, to prepare. Bullshit we did. When the first worker got bit on October 30th, we were all half dead and gone by the morning of September 1st. So much for stashing all those bags of rice under the bed.

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Now, son, we're a little better off. We've been up this mountain a good few years now. Haven't seen one of the shufflers for at least two of those. Maybe they've run out of food - damn if we don't know what that's like, that unbelievable hunger causing you do to things you thought you'd never do. I know, I know, my hands are shaking, I know. I'm not the only one. You young ones don't remember the worst of it. You're blessed with a decent nights sleep, whereas I still sleep with one eye open. Yeah yeah I know, I only have one eye, but that's because of that bastard Mick who mistook me for a shuffler, and hasn't stopped apologizing since. At least I have all my limbs, right? We learnt to machete them off fast if we got bit - but you know that story. Your mother does alright with one arm, doesn't she? At least she's living and breathing to tell the tale. You might be sick of hearing it but if we don't tell you these stories you won't be prepared.

We weren't prepared but our instincts were pretty good. Some folk didn't have those at all. Like the woman and her kid. I don't know why but it's those two that keep coming back in my dreams. Maybe it's how I keep them alive. It's easy to keep people alive in your thoughts than in real life, that's for sure. It's a better kind of undead - at least they don't bite. They just look at you, like there was something you coulda done. Maybe there was. Maybe there wasn't. We've learnt not to second guess ourselves. Much.

Don't look at me like that, kid. If I wanna open another bottle, I will. It's not every day someone finds you a crate of ale. It's a bit past it, but it's been a while, and I'm not fussy. Besides, your mother's on a run, so what she don't know can't hurt her. If you're lucky she'll find you chocolate, like last time. You have your chocolate, I have the amber gold, right?

I reckon we were four days in. You could hear the screams echoing off the buildings. Not a lot of silence in the first weeks. There would be gas tanks exploding, gun shots, and a lot of screams. I reckon me and your Mum survived because we learnt fast not scream, because that'd bring the shufflers. We also knew enough to get out of the city, but that was taking far more time than we thought. It seemed that every block we'd run into trouble and have to hole up for a few hours, a day. Try to get some sleep at night, a few hours at best. Damn, was I wired. I didn't need coffee or whiskey or anything - pure adrenalin keeps you going. And your Mum, she kept me going to. Love'll drive you to do anything.

Maybe that's why she wouldn't let the boy go when she had the chance.

We'd run into her in a tourist shop in the CBD, one of those ones for Asian tourists buying last minute gifts before flying out, or maybe sending gifts back to China, which was kinda ironic as most of them were made there anyway. As a kid I used to love the little koalas you'd clip on a pencil. We were working out way down to the Yarra because your Mum had the bright idea of finding a boat to take us down to Williamstown - figured the water would be safer than the roads. She was right, in a way, until that shuffler bit her on the way down the gangplank and that samurai sword I'd lifted from that Vietnamese corpse on Nicholson Street turned out to be way more useful than I thought. But for now, we'd found relative safety, as we'd slipped under the roller door to regroup for a minute after seeing the gap underneath. Any shelter was welcomed - just to take a breather. Thing is, you never know what you'd encounter - so when you're allowed to go on runs, boy, take note - always keep your eyes open.

We saw her as soon as we jammed the shutter door down and peered into the shop. The boy was asleep on her lap, using a stuffed wombat as a pillow. She nodded at us, quiet like. She looked gorgeous - a tiny Japanese girl, likely a student, except she was wearing this rubber dress you'd think she was poured into, and bunny ears, one lopsided and dripping with blood. 'Fake blood', she said, like we weren't already used to blood. 'Halloween', she said, all apologetic like. It would have seemed surreal except surreal just becomes real when the dead start chasing you after their pound of flesh. Halloween was four days past. No wonder so many of us died in the first few hours. We just thought they were joking.

Your Mum knelt down and took the bunny ears off her, tender like. I'm not sure the girl entirely realised how silly she looked, given the circumstances. She only clicked when someone else arrived to tell her. I wasn't up for any tenderness, and went straight for the drinks fridge. Dammit panic makes you thirsty as fuck. The sound of the fridge door opening had the boy up in a flash. He must have been all of eight years old - not much older than you, kiddo, chubby and red haired. His weapon of choice was a boomerang he'd taken from the wall. What a weopon of choice. Forgive me boy, but I had to use all my strength not to laugh and I know how much you kids try your best to be tough when we need you to be.

Hey, if those two had survived for four days, that was nothing to laugh about.

'If you want to come with us, love, you need to remove those heels' your mother said. The girl was wearing these ridiculous stilettos. Beats me how woman run in those things anyway, but I swear you have no survival instinct whatsoever if you're still wearing them four days into an apocalypse. Some people took longer than others to let go, but not letting go didn't serve us, or her. It was clear she hadn't got far. She was probably walking down Swanston Street when it first happened and had been hiding here for days. I guess they'd been living off macadamia nuts and shortbread. They'd had no sense to keep moving.

'And the boy - is he yours?'. Ordinarily, a rude question, but the girl must have been barely eighteen and the boy was clearly not hers, because he whispered for his mum, as if we'd happen to have passed her on the street. Clearly the reason they'd stayed put. Maybe they'd thought his parents weren't rotting on the pavement outside after all, but were coming back to get him. She shook her head and held the boy tighter. He leaned in to her. It was sweet. People can be sweet. They'd ended up together, surviving, and that made a bond faster than you could say 'pass me the vegemite, cobber, there's zombie's a-comin'.'

Don't look at me like that, kiddo. Dad jokes survive even the end of the world.

She did stumble out of there with us, clumsy like, in her rubber party dress and come fuck me heels. She wouldn't give them up. Wouldn't say why. Sometimes people just lose all reason in a crisis. That's why we're up the mountain and others are down there, dead or shuffling. We thought we'd get them to the river, regardless. It was a city block away, at most. If we could get her to the boat, she wouldn't have to walk. It was worth a shot. You only leave people when it's clear it's you or them. The rest of the time you help.

Flinders Street Station, Melbourne

Except not 500 yards short of the river, just across from the clocks at Flinders Street Station, she gets her right heel caught in a tram track. The boy's tugging on her arm, begging her to stand up. He's wailing and there's two shufflers doing an about face on the station steps, and moving fast, because time has slowed down so much for us that they seemed like leopards on this city savannah of horror. We knew enough to keep at arms length, but your mother is swearing blind at her to take off her fucking stilettos. And to give the girl credit, she finally wakes up and she's fumbling with the straps, releasing her tiny bare feet from the trapped shoe and getting up to run with the other still firmly on. I'm swearing too at this stage, for her to take off the other goddamn heel. She does try, beginning to bend down to release the buckle on the ankle strap. But the shufflers are there, and despite the boy's flailing at them with the souvenir boomerang he'd lift from the tourist shop, they take hold and bite and he goes down.

And we're screaming now to run, to leave him. We had to leave people we loved too. We left your sister, see. And the dog. We still ran and never looked back. But she couldn't, even though he wasn't hers. She's clearly a sweet kid with a good heart. So she grabs the stilletto and swings, and the heel goes in deep and fast and the first shuffler drops. The second shuffler stops gnawing on the dead boy's insides and leaps, and he's on her now, and she's still trying to extract the heel from the skull of his undead compadre, forgetting that all she has to do is bend her leg, flip off the stiletto, and whammo - two dead zombies, not one. But she's a terrified mess, and she's just lost her survival buddy, the one she's adopted as her own. She has no wits left about her.

At that point, we just ran, leaving her screaming. Yeah, that third bottle will be good right now mate. Stops my hands dancin'. Don't tell your mother I told you this story. But you gotta be ready. You gotta know what it's like.

That was years ago now. There's been a lot of horror since then, not least your mother losing her arm and having a baby in an apocalypse, but I think of that boomerang boy and the girl with the rubber dress and the stilettos every Halloween. Reminds me that you shouldn't hold onto anything, because it'll cost you.

Always be ready to run, kiddo. Always be ready to run.

Somebody said 'zombie writing contest' and I just had to join in. Thanks @snook. Seriously, I can whip up a zombie story over vegemite toast and a coffee without proofreading - which I shoulda, but hey - who has time to proofread in an apocalypse. Also, I got to support The Dark Side community, which I doubted I'd have content for any time soon - but look at that, I managed just fine, thanks to some writing inspiration courtesy of @snook. Hope you enjoyed it - it has a bit of a Melbourne feel to it, which just came out somehow. I haven't written a story for months and months, so this was heaps of fun for me!