Author's NB: Look, I'm sorry, I know it's been six months since I last updated. Despite my impressive ability to touch type at 100+wpm and all the ideas in my head, it still takes me an age to get round to doing these.

This chapter itself is about eight months old! I have about three other chapters that need editing and I have about five other ideas that I need to start writing.

I'm just violently good at procrastinating.

Some might call it laziness. Hehe.

And at least with a story like this, I don't need to worry about chapter order.

ooOOoo

Hobart

I meet with Tammy Richwhite, a still practicing registered nurse. She's nearing 70 but looks a lot older – as most people do these days. Heavy bags under her eyes are somewhat blocked by pre-war crafted glasses. Plastic. Rounded. Pink zig zags on the frames. Likely constructed sometime in the 1980s.

Her short white hair is thinning, but kept mostly hidden under the clichéd Australian hat. She waves a cigarette at me, I decline, she lights it up. The wrinkles around her mouth and the heavy yellow stains on her teeth and fingers speak of a well cemented habit, though cigarettes now tend to be heavily padded with dried lawn grass as tobacco is in high demand and very expensive.

She wears dark grey scrubs, faded, marked, ripped in places. The ID around her neck indicates she works as a nurse practitioner for the elderly.

A little about myself to paint the picture I was in. I had just turned 47, the day of the first public case of "African Rabies" in Australia, actually. A little over weight, hah, who am I kidding? I was classed "morbidly obese". Probably why I didn't starve to death, bit more padding on my bones got me through some cold, hungry days. Three years before I had divorced my arse-hat of a husband. He had never been violent or abusive, not a druggie, or a drunk. He had a good job, was a good provider, a good father. It just so happened that when you get prescribed a little blue pill suddenly its like its wasted on the tubby, gray haired 44 year old woman who bore your children. Its clichéd, but he took off with his secretary or his personal assistant, I don't know, I don't really care who that whore was.

They are both very much dead now, I can assure you. My kids as well, unfortunately, but I'm not the only mother to have lost her babies to that thing. I tell myself that each night just before I cry myself to sleep. Even now. All those years between now and then. I still can't quite find a place for the pain.

There is a considerable pause.

After my husband buggered off with that slut, I decided to get my life together. I was starting to eat healthy, go to the gym; I was still a fatty though. I started aiming higher in my career. I was a nurse, I had a semi-interest in geriatrics and quite frankly my weight, even coming down, was still impeding my ability to work on the busy wards. I knew some people, got me a job interview for a rest home out in the middle of nowhere. Manage the place. Simple job, mostly paper pushing, great pay and it was in a quaint little town away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Not to mention, it was a new start. I kept running into that ginger tramp that fucked my Brucey. Out in the boondocks, that's where I could go to escape those awkward cuss-match moments.

I got the job easily enough and over the few years between then and the Great Panic [GP] we expanded the facility to meet demand and acuity. I was actually really proud of what we had achieved. Originally it was a tiny little 30 bed rest home [RH]. By the GP, it was 90 rest home beds, 40 hospital level care beds [HLC] and 10 hospice beds [H]. We also had 20 little units around the facility grounds where more independent residents could live in their own little flats; it was reassuring to them, to family, to have a nurse on site 24/7.

Now, RH, that's pretty much individuals who are no longer safe in their own homes, high fall risks, slightly forgetful, medicines, meals, that sort of thing. Little, if any social interaction, so easy for them to fall off the radar, sometimes they might be diabetic and need a little monitoring that they'd forget to do at home. Or they might have some continence issues.

HLC, that's your Alzheimer's, dementia patients. Dense strokes, advanced Parkinsons, double incontinence, bed ridden, those sorts of people.

Palliative is pretty self explanatory.

The facility was built about a ten minute drive from a small rural town that itself was about two hours from a major Australian city. Mind you, by the war urban sprawl – if there was such a thing out there, had reached our gates. It had originally marketed itself as a kind of resort for the elderly, to get away somewhere nice and peaceful. Stunning landscaping, large, expansive, well protected, secure. As the facility expanded those grounds became a little smaller, but that was always the intention.

People seem to think we had it okay. "Secure" grounds, large facility area – by comparison, less people, a smaller town near by. Yet, it was these things that caused us the most grief. It was hellish. Being near little towns or in lower population density areas don't mean shit to the ghouls when they're swarming from coast to coast. The small town mentality also meant there were fewer supplies to access and when you have all those elderly mouths to feed, many with specialised diets, suddenly trying to get a month's worth of meal replacement thickened drinks for at least 70 people is near impossible. Some of the elderlies who were drinking it, they'd do okay with normal meals; it was a supplement for them. For the ones in the Hospital wing, the ones who had swallowing problems, that thickened goo was all they had. The elderlies with the peg feeds, [a tube directly into the stomach], they died off real fast. You can't exactly mash up a can of beans and squeeze that into one of those things; and it was here you got into the unpleasant decision territory. Can you justify mushing up said can of beans for squeezing into a PEG feed of a bed ridden, demented old man when there's a somewhat spritely 70 year old who still has all their faculties?

Anyway, we knew something was coming and it wasn't going to be a few sniffles that skittle a few of the frailer elderly. Did we think zombies? Absolutely not. That was insane. Whatever it was coming, we knew it was going to impact on how we ran things, on how we were able to run things. Trying to build up stocks of food and medicine and other things a rest home needs to survive wasn't as easy as you'd think. It was actually a bit of a nightmare. It was sort of the bums' rush with other residential organisations trying to do the same as us. The industry was under a lot of strain and the governments were very discreetly starting to crack down. Seeing as they had more Intel they were planning for the aftermath and really, a few old people in the middle of nowhere wasn't going to rank too high up. Initially we did okay as we weren't far from a main arterial route and it was no biggy for trucks to turn off. We certainly were a lot better off than other places though, especially non-medical residences. I hear the jails had a real bastard of a time!

Legally it was very complex. The law was still standing and we had no real idea how long this thing was going to last or what would be left when it had finally all blown over. If we didn't feed those elderlies because we couldn't get enough stocks in and they died then once whatever had stabilised, would family members show up with lawyers to sue us for being unable to provide our end of the deal? Would the cops show up and charge us with murder or neglect because we just shut the door? Would the health authorities show up and take our licenses because we administered a little more morphine than was charted? Other surviving elder care facility managers have differing stories, did different things. I've spoken to a few. The whole Z war, everyone had different outcomes, did different things. Different. Different. That's a word that get's thrown around a lot, like it matters a damn. Like that "no objective truth" bullshit. What's right for you might not be right for me but end of the day we decide what's right for us, kinda nonsense. We can quibble about the morality, talk about why we did what we did and what we had been willing to do, but nothing ever came of those decisions legally. There was no law left to care, and really, what was growing in its place certainly didn't give a crap about what happened to tens of thousands of elderlies in resthome facilities pre Z. Yet, we didn't know any of that, so we just had to act like it was going to be okay, that whatever it was would be a blip on humanity's medical history.

I know this is a terrible thing to say but hindsight is a good thing. It's taken a lot of worries off my shoulders; a lot of the guilt has abated. The government knew, or at least certain people did and they started pooling resources to fight zed and to try and stockpile something for after. They were not going to give three blue fucks about Mr. Trent and his advanced Parkinson's, or Mrs. Smith and her dense CVA. They weren't going to be funding Mr. Elliot's insulin or Mrs Clare's three weekly enemas and they sure as hell weren't going to send teams in to investigate if nurses euthanized or outright neglected and murdered the patients. The politicians are more interested now in who they can blame for letting zack get such a foothold, I sleep easy knowing they're not interested in my sins.

So before, we did manage to flick off a bunch of the more independent and less cognitively declined residents on family. Some people we couldn't reach, some didn't respond, some said they'd come but didn't. Maybe I'm being judgemental, maybe those people were already dead before it was officially realised we were in the poop. Maybe they were in places with rolling brownouts because a mob of zeds ripped through a power station. Maybe they forgot to pay their phone bill? Who knows? But we started the ring arounds when we were getting less and less deliveries of stocks.

Now, population count about a month before the rumours started trickling in of the new plague sweeping African shanties, was 79 residents in the RH, so we weren't full there. 40 in the HLC was capacity. 20 self contained units, all of which were occupied - 28 people there. A grand total of 147 elderlies. The day the zed showed up, still had the full 40 in HLC, 32 in the RH and five left in the units. Those in palliation had all died by the GP – though we had already closed admissions due in part to our concerns of something coming.

We had people in the RH who still had all their marbles, who were clever, who would be useful post any disaster. We had an mechanical engineer who once lectured at universities on the physics of aviation and flight. The only reason he was in the RH was he kept having falls and doing his hip. He walked with a cane. He was 84. A smart man. A valuable man. We had a 79 year old woman in the RH who had been an Obstetrician and specialised in high risk pregnancies. She'd had a minor stroke a few years prior and other than a kink in her wrist was okay. These were really people we'd sacrifice for the patients in the HLC wing?

Yet, every one of those dribbling, incontinent men and women in the HLC, they were human beings. They were people who had friends, family, people who cared for them. They'd worked hard. Built homes, raised families fought in wars. They had rights. The right to life, the right to privacy, the right to dignity and respect of their culture, but when zed is coming up the driveway rights really do mean all of nothing. We can try and stay firm and hold onto these rights, but doing so only proved a greater hindrance. We couldn't make their ends comfortable. Overdosing them on morphine, we didn't have enough and what we did have, how could we waste that stuff? Someone suggesting injecting large amounts of air into major veins and arteries, but none of us were really sure how much was needed, none of us were sure if we could do it if necessary and really, what it came down to, could we really waste one needle and syringe - obviously the risk of cross infection wasn't an issue.

So we moved those 40 odd HLC patients into the furthest set of rooms and we shut the doors on them. I don't like to think how long it would have taken for them to die. For some, probably not long at all, but others, well, you just don't know. I don't know. Its one of the things that haunts me. I know a lot of other medical professionals did what we did, but knowing that doesn't ease the conscience. Not one bit.

Weighing one life against another, it's not feasible to waste resources and effort on those invalids. That's what I'd tell myself.

Anyway, I'll talk a bit about the people we actively tried to save, or at least keep alive as long as possible… wait… sorry, I think I skipped a head. I'll go back to when things started reaching crisis point.

It's nothing too exciting really, like I said, we knew something was coming. We were stockpiling as much as we could get our hands on. I went home from work one night and sat at my kitchen table and realised a couple of things – one, if the rumours were true, of zed; and I only considered this when I was having a bout of exhaustion induced paranoia - then my house was a death trap. No fence. Duplex. Single story. Surrounded by other non-fenced single story duplexes. A school over the road. A main street out the front. I had ceiling to floor windows and flimsy net curtains in my main rooms. I had heard from friends, colleagues in the major centres, they'd quietly let me know that there was more to "African Rabies" then we were being told. Phalanx wasn't likely to be air dropped in our little town, with that said our local pharmacist, who also worked in a few other little towns near by, managed to get a few doses in. I never saw one. Was never even asked if I wanted any for the staff – it was only the front line hospital staff in the big centres and medical personnel in the armed forces that were going to get it. Unless you were connected and very wealthy, civilians in Aussie weren't going to be getting a look in, it was being sucked up by Americans and Europeans at that point.

Well, maybe not exactly, but that's what it felt like. I don't think I knew of anyone in town getting it, despite what Lez [the pharmacist] said. Hell, I couldn't even tell you what the packaging looked like.

From an official standpoint, the most I got was a fax from the Health Board with a "signs and symptoms" list and a few numbers to call if I suspected a patient had it. And I can tell you, the signs and symptoms page didn't have any pictures of zombies! Of course, at that point, it was all rumours.

That's what I hated most about it. There was no honesty but I guess if they sent us a little booklet "So Zombies are real: a what to do guide when faced with being eaten by the undead" probably wouldn't have gone down too well, I think people would be checking the date to make sure it wasn't April! Heh, seems strange to try and joke about it, even now, still… Who knows, though, maybe it would have made it easier to deal with Yonkers?

So the fax was as useless as at tits on a bull, it was like no one really knew what to expect of the thing and just slapped together a few titbits of info from other diseases. I called one of the numbers at the bottom to see if I could get more info, even a recorded message. First ten times all I got was that engaged signal, and when it did ring it hung up automatically after a chimes. I never heard a voice, never got through to anyone, computer automated or otherwise. When I sent a message back to the fax number I got a return error. When I rung the board directly I got the "call cannot be connected due to overloading", if I got anything at all.

One of the last packages I received in the mail was actually from the Health Board, but all the information about the "African Rabies" was different to the fax, and just another pack of glossy bullshit. The fax arrived the same day as the package, actually. It arrived about a month before the GP.

I got more information from friends and colleagues working in the big centres, like I said, and none of them really had anything useful. Zombies? The corpses of the deceased getting up and biting people? That was insanity. It was sort of said with a joking tone.

I'm getting away from myself, I'm sorry. Here's the general recap: the rumours of the African Rabies on Aussie shores were getting louder, we were hearing of cases ripping through American and European towns. There was a vaccine, called Phalanx; it never made it into my town that I saw. We managed to get most of the more independent residents out of the facility, but the HLC lot, not a chance. It started getting harder to gain supplies, medicine, food, laundry, the usual things an elder care facility needs to run.

Then the GP hit.

For us, in our little town I mean, a few things happened prior to things going pear shaped. We lost the communication network. Woke up one morning, went to check the fax because I heard it bloopping and beeping in the night, it was dead. Picked up the phone, nothing, not even any tone at all. The internet of course was down.

Power went out two days later – that made the facility very unpleasant.

We had an emergency generator but we ran out of fuel at the three day mark.

The GP happened in a city a few hours away and we had no idea.

Being in a small town, with shabby teleco service, terrible reception, it wasn't uncommon to lose one or both, or even for a few days so people weren't all that bothered.

The next day the TV's were all getting a signal – the emergency broadcast screen, but nothing ever came on. Of course, the day after that the power was off, so we never saw anything official after that.

The third day a man showed up in a car, his wealthy brother lived in town. He was spouting a story about zombies! Zombies! He said that this African Rabies was bullshit; it was a cover for a virus that killed people then resurrected them into zombies! These infected would then go crazy and eat people! He said nothing killed them. He went on about the Americans, how they'd had some major battle in New York or LA or Houston, I'm not sure where, I was hearing this all second hand from the receptionist who knew the wealthy brother – he was her dog's vet.

No one took him seriously. Not really. His car was a mess though. I saw it parked out side the supermarket early evening. It was scratched all to hell, and the back window was completely missing. Then I took a closer look. There was blood on the backseat, a lot of it. And some of the scratches? They were in sets of five…

I'm sure a few people took him seriously, because when I was in the supermarket, dimly lit by its generators – which had a lot more fuel, then the facility, a lot of the canned goods were gone. Long life milk. The always stocked first aid section. The checkout operator said it was the busiest she'd seen. I just figured it was the blackout and the phones being down that were causing a bit of hysteria.

At home that night, I sat in my living room staring at a dark TV screen with a few candles burning dimly and I started reflecting on things – that's when I started thinking "what if?" And I mean the crazy "what ifs?" I still didn't think zombies but I was starting to think, power out, phones down, difficultly getting supplies from the medical companies, lack of valid information from the Health Board, the crazy man and his wrecked car. Maybe there was something to this African Rabies, not zombies though.

Fourth day was pandemonium. I'm amazed I slept through the night. I woke at seven; my clock was one of the old battery analogues, with the nice little bells on top. I had some breakfast of crackers and cheese spread. I left the house at 7.30 and found the street a complete shambles.

Well, by our small town's standards.

My neighbours in the other duplex were gone. Their front door wide open, their garage open and when I peeked inside to say hi it looked like the place had been ransacked. The kitchen had been stripped of anything in a can or packet. I knew it wasn't random looters because their photos were gone and their little rat dog Chihuahua's things were missing.

There were 10 houses in our street, and 4 of them were empty. The gay guys across the street were getting out, loading up their SUV. They only lived there a few months a year for a holiday. I asked them where they were going and they said they were heading up to the mountains, going bush, wherever they could go that would put as much distance between them and them.

They then gave me the feeling that they weren't going to give me any more time and were back busying themselves with a heavy looking cooler.

It was Sheryl, a woman in her 60s who lived at the end of the street who wandered down in her dressing gown and slippers and told me.

Around 9 the previous night a few men had shown up from the city, they were heading up here to get a few family members and one of them had a fishing hut, they were going to go bush. They had the same story as the other guy, zombies. African Rabies was a cover. They said America was in the shit, that the world was going to Hell, and the only thing for Australia was to hope its vast land size and somewhat smaller population could hold out. Sheryl wasn't all that worried, she told me, she figured the zombies, if indeed they were zombies, weren't really going to wander all the way up here, right?

I drove to work then, through an incredible mess of a town. In less than 12 hours, during the night hours I might add, this information had spread, in a town with only world of mouth to spread it! Sometime around 2 that's when the looting of shops happened. Power down, so no alarms. The supermarket was on fire when I drove pass. That nice checkout girl just standing on the side of the road with a few other workers watching it burn – don't' know where the fireries were.

When I got to the facility it was a sort of dulled down version of panic. A few of the residents had been picked up by family during the night and were gone. We'd get a few more being taken in the next few days. Of our 15 staff roistered that morning, only 3 didn't show up, so that wasn't so bad, it was manageable. Without power we didn't have to worry about showers or laundry and meals were just soggy Weet-Bix for the elderlies who couldn't swallow and bread for those that could, with a bit of jam. We had decided when things weren't going well with the suppliers that we needed to be rationing. A lot of the residents were Depression Era, WWII, used to hard times, so took it quite well.

I spent that night at the facility. Slept on the couch in my office. At this stage I still wasn't sold on the "zombie plague" but I was thinking if things were getting hairy in the cities so much so that people were fleeing, what was the probability of fuel trucks driving up here to fill up our BP station? So I didn't want to waste petrol. The next time I saw my quaint little duplex was after the war, it was a quiet pile of charred ruins.

The next day rolled around and that's when we saw our first ghoul.

It was about 2 in the afternoon, I was wondering about taking a bike back home to grab a few things. I was still chubby but thought my new found level of fitness could hack it – with a few rest stops of course. Anyway, the receptionist came in; she said that only two of our required 15 afternoon staff had shown up. I was quite annoyed about that, I really didn't think we were at "emergency level: wag work" status just yet, but that's where we were. With the phones still down, the power still out, there was no way to ring around anyone else to see if they'd come in.

The receptionist told me that three of our causal hospital aides lived within walking distance. So we decided to go do a door knock. I took the two closest, they lived in the same block; the receptionist was going to walk 20 minutes to the other one.

I made it to the first house and found no one there. Place was empty, door locked up, windows all secure, curtains shut, car gone. Shed door was open, and it looked like a few things had been moved that hadn't been for some time. Guessed they'd taken off.

Went around the corner to the other house and found the woman and her family in the process of getting out. She was very apologetic; I don't think she wanted to leave. Her husband had always been of a high octane mind set, a bit dramatic. Her kids were all quite upset, the youngest just sat on the gutter crying and crying holding her Barbie. Her son was throwing a tantrum and kicking the tires of car – which no one seemed to mind, and her other daughter was screaming for the cat; that was quite irritating. Her husband didn't bother talking to me. There really was no point me trying to convince her, they had made up their mind, or he had made it for them, they were getting out.

I had just reached the gates of the facility when I saw it. There was this Toyota Corolla parked outside one of the small houses a few doors down from the facility, the thing was sitting behind the wheel. I hadn't noticed him there when I was leaving but I was sure I remembered the car, but couldn't be 100% about it. It just turned its head and looked at me with these empty, nasty looking eyes, it raised its hands and slapped them on the window but it never cracked the glass.

It's funny, deep down I knew what it was and it wasn't human but I wasn't quite at the point of calling it a zombie yet.

So when I got through the gates of the facility, I stood there for a few moments. Just staring up at the buildings, at the small little units, some having already been vacated and I looked back at that thing in the car and then I shut the gate. It was a heavy thing, stiff and probably a bit rusty given the squeaking but we hardly ever closed it. In the time I worked there I don't' think I ever saw it shut.

It was 2 metres tall, and a pretty solid metal construction – diagonal criss-cross design with these cute little metal flowers pressed into each overlap. Despite the decorative nature, it was a sturdy gate. The fence around the facility was inconsistent. Where it neighboured with residential homes it was 2 metres, wooden, a bit soft in parts, broken in others. Then as it started wrapping around the back where we boarded a reserve area it was just a scummy tin fence about hip height. We kept meaning to change that, to doll it up a bit but no one ever really saw that part of the facility so why bother spending money glamorising something very few people outside of the grounds staff saw?

When I got into the office one of the young kitchen hands, a girl of about 20, nice girl too, bit dense though, asked if I thought it'd keep the zombies out, I told her to stop being ridiculous. The receptionist never returned. I didn't actually notice till about 6 that evening. By then the other staff were getting a bit anxious. The 20 year old girl, Cathy, she decided to go home. At this point, I wasn't going to argue anymore. The cook had already up and left making the argument that there was no point for him to stay as there was no way he could cook without power! He'd gone at about 3.30pm and that's when I started doing a roll call of staff.

So at six, Cathy attempted to go home, then she comes running back in, flustered, freaking out a bit. She was quite scared. I obviously asked her what that the matter was and she started going on about zombies. There were zombies all up the street, having a go at the gate. I figured now was the best time to go see what all this really was. I walked out the door and turned left towards the entrance and I could see them. Probably only about thirty people standing there, and you know, everyone knows, you see them at a distance – you know you're not looking at people people. You're looking at dead people. Zombies. The way they moved, the way they propel themselves along, like this unsettled shamble. The way they push their faces and hands against blockages as if they can penetrate through and grab something tasty, it's a strange antithesis of thought, mindless, without consideration, without awareness, just this default setting of hunger and the need to seek anything to sate it. Each zombie, really they're just human shaped viruses. Not really alive. Not really dead. Only one intention, to spread their infection. The eating – if they gain any pleasure from it – simply a bonus.

I was curious. I needed to know, I guess. I walked towards the gate. Slowly. I got up on the grass, its stupid, but I thought it'd muffle my steps – but they could already see me. They started getting riled up. Pushing up against the gates like the ocean waves on rocks. The gates actually had quite a bit of give in them, and I knew, I really knew that if I kept approaching they'd keep pushing until the gates gave in and broke.

There was really no internal monologue about the stupidity of zombies, about how unrealistic it was, that this was all a big silly misunderstanding, paranoid, crazy. They were zombies. They were the recently dead brought back to life, and I wasn't going to hang around to see if every other stereotype about the undead was true.

I rushed back inside, told Cathy to find the other staff and start getting our residents up to the second story.

Now, you have to understand, it was an elder care facility. An older building that we had renovated and expanded – there was no elevator. The second level wasn't very big; it was five small office rooms, a staff conference room and a staff room which wasn't all that big anyway. There was a staff shower and toilet block and that was the extent of it.

To fit about 35 people up there wasn't going to be pleasant but I knew the gates weren't going to hold. The facility was quite large, a lot of open spaces, a lot of windows and doors and we couldn't' be sure every one of them was securely shut 24 hours a day seven days a week. I figured if we could get the really slow ones up the stairs now, then when the zeds made it through the more mobile elderlies could rush up at their leisure, well, not really, but you get my drift.

It was ten that night before we had everyone up there. Getting rest home level elderlies up a narrow flight of stairs was not an easy task. Midnight was when the gates broke. I could see them from the office that directly looked down towards the gates. I thought once they got through it'd be like the bums' rush but it was like all that open space calmed them down, slowed them down. A few tripped over the edges of the garden and were simply trodden on by those coming in behind.

They then spread out, across the road ways, the footpath, the lawns. Several of them made it down the private paths around the units. A few wandered into the open and vacant units. Of course, a few of them were in direct line for our main entrance.

Cathy had the foresight to hang up some sheets along the glass. It was decent glass, thick enough; end of the day I didn't think it'd hold its own against a mob of ghouls.

One of our male care givers, who was actually a student nurse in his final year –he was very brave. He volunteered to head over to the hospital, shutting all the major doors and pulling curtains along the route and he was going to wait with those residents until, well, you know…

He took a packet of biscuits for himself and a bottle of coke and off he went.

He returned five days later with a rather unpleasant story.

Now as I said, as things started getting confused, we moved the elderlies in the HLC wing all into one section to try and make it easier for the few staff that were coming in, and for patient protection – they could be better watched if they were close together. Nate had gotten there no problem. Told us about the ghouls that were wandering around in the gardens, he locked up a few doors that led straight outside and shut all the doors to patient rooms, closed all the curtains. At that point no one was really sure what these things were capable of, how determined they were to get in, you know? Could they break windows? Could they open a door handle? We figured, or rather Nate did, that they wouldn't be able to figure out a locked door and the glass was pretty sturdy but could those things pick up a rock and smash it through? Didn't reckon they could.

So Nate was then left wandering back and forwards in pretty dark surroundings – there were a few sky lights but they never offered great light mostly because the leaves had fallen on the roof and stuck to them and no one could really be bothered getting up there to clean them off. Nate made it to the HLC and he did what he could for the residents. Most were pretty sick by then, especially the insulin dependant diabetics, the cardiac patients, the ones with COPD. There were 12 patients down in the HLC who were on C-PAP which is a breathing device you use if you have sleep apnoea but of course, without power they're not going to run. Those 12 died within the first few nights; lucky for them it was relatively peaceful, in their sleep. The diabetics and the cardiac patients followed suit, all by the fourth day. So that left Nate about 15 at that point.

He said he found he couldn't tolerate being in the room for to long because of the smell, the noise and how depressing it was that none of the survivors had any ability to speak coherently. So he went from room to room in both the HLC and the RH – where he could access, and collected the sweets and biscuits and fruit. You'd be amazed how crafty diabetics can be. Sometimes its not really them being sneaky buggers, its more that they have friends and family who come in and bring them a sampler box of bikkies or a large jar of sugary, sugary jam – they just don't' know the patient is diabetic or they don't understand what that means.

Finally when he realised the last of the patients were dying, at about day five, he brought the supplies back to us and got them up the stairs. He was being really careful about it too. It was the first time in five days that we'd seen him. He was so quiet, nervous; he said they were the corridors of the RH. That all that was between them and the main dining and longue areas – which have direct, doorless access to that stair well, were swing doors. They were fire doors and were quite sturdy; most of our elderlies couldn't open them if they shut, so we just hoped the zeds couldn't manage it either.

Nate spent another two days in the HLC then returned, he said the last ones had finally died and he'd shut it all up, taken everything of any value and brought it back here to wait with the rest of us. His actions kept us alive for the next four months and what he would do outside the facility would keep us alive till the army came through to reclaim the area.

For the most part, from that point to the end of the war, it was generally quite boring when it came to the zed. Over the course of a few weeks thousands of them started wandering through. I guess they were following people up the highways and into farm land and the bush. It seems that was quite common for zed, or rather, quite common for people. Zed are like rats, go where the people are, because that's where the food is.

It didn't take us long to realise we had some problems. On day eight one of the residents died in their sleep, probably a heart attack – no, they didn't reanimate, but we did have the issue of what to do with the body? We'd open the door at the top of the stairs and we could see zed down in the area below. Even if they weren't down there, there really wasn't any logistical way we could carry a body down that narrow stair well.

We also couldn't tell how they'd gotten in. We figured they hadn't broken the major entrance that was less than ten metres from our stairway to Heaven, because we thought that'd make a hell of a racket; with that said, the doors were automatic and there was every possibility they simply didn't latch when the power went off. They could have been wide open. Or the ghouls could have found other ways into the facility. Nate might have closed a lot of doors but some of our doors were swing doors, especially from the kitchen and Nate didn't know the kitchen very well. When he went in there he didn't know about the loading door and the back sections. It was a sprawled out area, it could be a window blown in or broken somewhere, a door left slightly ajar. Nate did a great job, I'm not blaming him, but they got in somehow.

There was a quick chat about tossing them out the window but then we worried that it'd attract the zeds and maybe they'd climb over each other and get in that way? A body rotting in the Australian heat, the smell, it'd also attract flies and rats and who knew what else, clearly we needed a solution. We talked about putting them in the furthest closet from where we were "living". We'd still have the stench; still have the risk of animals, but what else could we do? So that's what we did, we just pushed them into the closet and shut the door. There was nothing to wrap them in and we just pushed a towel in the gap under the door and hoped that would help.

Later that afternoon we had a woman with a heart attack.

Thing was, if we were downstairs with the de-fib handy she'd be okay. She had what was a shockable rthymn, if it had happened pre-zed, she'd be fine. We'd zap her. Get her in an ambo, she'd spend a few days in the cardiac care unit and then come back here with a new prescription. So we just had to sit with her as her heart finally gave out, a gradual process, you know. Took about two hours. Then it was in the closet with her.

Now, one body had us worried, but two?

Then we started taking stock of what we had. Thirty odd people up there. Two corpses at the end of the hall. We had some pretty serious conversations at that point. And when I say serious, I mean macabre.

Some of the older, sicker individuals who had a bit more brains in their heads, they said it was stupidity to have them sit up there eating our food and drinking our water – that's how they phrased it. They said it didn't make any sense that we'd waste resources on them. One of them said he'd go wait in the closet with the bodies, save us having to drag him down there. The others wanted to wait with us, they wanted company.

I was amazed that old chap went and sat with the bodies, he didn't come out after that. I think he would have lasted a few days maybe; I'd occasionally go down and tap on the door, ask if he was okay. He'd grunt in reply but a sentient grunt. Then one day I went down there and there was no response – I had no interest in opening that door.

The three others who'd wilfully stopped eating, they died within a few days. Most people can last about 12 days without food, its dehydration that kills you, and in Aussie heat, with no air-con, didn't take some of the frailer ones long to go. Of course, now it had been several days since we'd put the first body in there and no one was too keen to drag the latest deceased to join that room. Good on Nate, he wrapped a towel around his mouth and nose with a bit of coffee rubbed into it – I don't' think it overpowered the smell. Stone the crows! When Nate opened that door we could smell it down in the office with the door shut. I wanted to hurl, and I have quite the iron cast constitution.

A few very uncomfortable days passed. For Nate, well, he found a way to make things more pleasant for himself, he clambered out the window and up onto the roof, with a bit of help from myself, I might add. He'd usually be back by sunset, but one evening he didn't. We didn't want to dwell on what could have happened, maybe he slipped, maybe he fainted, maybe be saw his chance and decided hanging out with some dying elderly and a few rest home staff wasn't his scene. He showed up the next morning.

He had a bag of food. Fresh food – well, mostly. Some fruit from some of the neighbours' trees. Some vegetables which raw or not, tasted great in comparison to that processed shit we'd been forcing down. He said a lot of gardens were secure from the zed, a lot homes were vacant but the problem was ghouls were everywhere in the streets. He said a few had gotten stuck in odd places and that if you were on the ground wandering around you could walk right into one, wee Nate, well, that eager beaver was jumping roof to fence to car top. Quite a nimble chap.

That night we lost three more of the elderly and the others were pretty sick at this point, we had to hand feed all but two of them and those two weren't all that healthy. If we were going to move, which it was looking more and more likely we were going to have to do that, there was no way we could bring them with us.

We didn't put the latest dead in the corpse closet, it was just too horrid to open, the maggots were starting to wriggle under the door through the towel. We started using a side office next to the closet. Even with Nate's success, you can't really subsist on Roses chocolates and digestive biscuits; the fruit and veg did not last and I felt guilty each time he went out to pick lettuces. Of course, I can't tell you enough just how awful it was with those bodies. The ghouls, however, they don't seem to smell, which I thought was quite odd but it wasn't like I was down there treating them like a "scratch n sniff". Never saw any maggots on them, no flies either. I have to tell you when I was up close and personal and you can't smell much and you don't see maggots squiggling around in their dried up eye sockets you wonder if they really are dead but then when you see the ones dragging their guts behind them like a dried pair of stockings, well, it's hard to think that they could be in any other state.

It seems convenient. You know? Suddenly we start thinking of getting out just as our elderly are dying off, so we don't' have to drag them around with us? What can I say? I think if we didn't have them with us we would have left earlier, or waited as the ghouls spread a bit more sparsely. It's hard, with hindsight. I've heard a lot of stories, health care facilities, jails, boarding schools, all these places with large numbers of dependants, food running out, water diminishing. ghouls closing in. A lot of stories sort of soothe your conscience, they did what you did, or they did something worse. Others make you ashamed, you know, stories about people really going out of their way to keep the weakest in their group alive? Fit, healthy people going without for the benefit of a group of retarded kids? I've stopped reading those stories, there's too much room for the "what ifs" and the "maybes" when you start comparing those situations to your own.

I did what I thought was best at the time, like everyone I suppose.

We decided to get out. The last of our residents were in situations that they weren't able to be moved, even the sturdier ones. In case your readers are wondering, I'll say it real clear.

We abandoned them.

Initially, we had every intention to save them. If we didn't, why bother with the palaver of hauling them up the stairs and feeding them? We were emotionally invested in these people, that's the nature of elder care. You get to know them. Their likes and dislikes. Their life stories are yours for the taking if you just give them a few moments of your time every day you see them. Pre-zed, our society saw them as a burden and not a treasure. Health care resources will be pulled from geriatrics, new grad nurses have no interest in it, a lot of families just dump their elderly relatives in places like this where a generation ago they were looked after at home.

That's what really pissed me off, you'd get some new resident and they'd be bright as a box of birds, sharp as a tack but over time, age and illness drags them down, its just part of living – dying, for the most part. They'd come in and you'd get to know them, you'd hear about their life story, where they were born, where they lived, where they travelled, their spouse, their kids, their pets. Then they're in this place and it's like they've been forgotten, a visit on Christmas, maybe their birthday. Then it's been five years and you get some relative, usually a child, come waltzing in from some foreign country they've been living it up large in for however long. They traipse up to the rest home and go ballistic! What have you done to my mother? Why is my father so confused? He wasn't like that last I saw him? Why are you feeding my mother that mash? Aren't you aware she loves her steak blue and her potatoes cheesy? How dare you put a diaper on my father, how unidentified!

These idiots, these stupid selfish adult children who bugger off for years and never visit, they never ring or write or even keep contact with their siblings who are in there every weekend spooning pureed Mac & cheese into their declining parent. They have the audacity to a tantrum about elder care? Where the fuck was they when their parent was having the stroke that put them here? What the hell were they doing when their other sibling was paying extra to ensure their parent got a larger room? Eh?

I hated those people the most. Really did. They disgusted me.

So here you have this situation, where it's staff who are becoming a part of this elderly person's life. You feed them breakfast, you get them out of bed and shower them, toilet them, clothe them. You sit them in the day room and talk to them, organise games and quizzes and entertainment. You listen to them as they gradually decline and you see that. Until one day you see it in them, they're dying, they know it, you know it and then its bed sponges and positioning every four hours. Its palliative care nurses with little syringe drivers full of drugs that will make them comfortable. Peaceful. Then it's the final wash. They're usually still warm. You talk to them. You share stories about them with your colleague as you roll them to clean up any motion that may have dribbled out at the moment of demise. You carefully cover them; position them for family that may come in. Then you help the funeral director slide them onto that cold, hard trolley. If you can, you attend the funeral. You see their life from a different perspective, recounted by people who may or may not have seen them in their final years. Then that's it, they're gone from your life forever, their life however is now a part of your experience and you use that for your next patient.

It's a hard job, rest home care. We see them every day. It's not like acute hospital wards where they come in with one problem, the docs fix it, then off they go to rehab or home or rest home or wherever. I remember when I worked in acute wards you'd sometimes have a patient one afternoon and they'd be discharged by the time you came back for your next shift. So many patients, so many problems, sometimes they were the same and so you got confused but generally you'd forget them and move on.

But Eldercare? These people were part of your life because you were now a vital part of theirs.

It is indescribability difficult to just walk away but that's what we had to do. Deep down we knew we couldn't have long winded debates about it. I'm just being honest. I'm sure plenty of other health care professionals did the same. Who's going to follow up? No one. Sad but true and we're the ones who have to live with it. I think about those people, their faces, the looks etched in those weary eyes as we clambered out. They were too old, too weak, too confused to come. Yet, how could we stay? It wasn't feasible, it was too big an ask, too much a sacrifice. We weren't that strong. I wasn't that strong. The guilt, the realisation there's no justice to strike a blow against me for what I did, that's a harsher punishment I think than any sort of judicial process. The guilt, the shame, it's a jail all of its own.

Nate came back with a rope later that night. The moon was full and provided quite a bit of light for our plan. Even in the dim we could see the ghouls no problems. We could also see the looks on the faces of the residents who still had some understanding, who were still conscious. I avoided eye contact and we climbed out the window and up onto the roof. Our plan was to head to the RSA [Returned Servicemen's Association] and hole up there. It was a decent building, solid brick construction with a lot of internal lockable doors. Like most small rural towns, it was usually the largest building around. It also took patrons from two other small towns within 30 minutes drive of us. It had a decent fence, better than what we had and as far as Nate had been able to tell, it wasn't badly damaged.

The biggest challenge was getting to the RSA. It was just outside the town limits, which happened to be on the other side to where we were currently. It may have been a small little place, sure, but that was more in part because of population. The homes may have been cute, small structures but the sections they sat on were large. The main street was well spaced, there was a lot of ground to cover. It was easily twenty kilometres between us and the RSA. Now, the houses and streets are one thing but there was also a lot of bush, a lot of wide open spaces, empty sections waiting development and building, a small school and a few churches. A lot of places for zed to mingle in, to be obstructed from our view, it wasn't going to be an easy stroll, and Nate had made that very clear.

I didn't know prior to that night that he had made it to the RSA, I thought he'd just got into the neighbouring homes and took what he could. He'd been thinking long term, thinking about the best place to secure – if that was really possible. He'd noted zed didn't do to well with steps, so figured the best places to barricade ourselves were multi story buildings. He'd also been thinking about the best strategy for getting there. At that point he thought our best bet was to take it slow, he'd mapped out a plan. We'd go a few K's a day, hold up in a 2 story house, wait a day or so, then move on. He thought if we went too quickly we'd make too much noise, attract the ghouls. That if we moved like that we'd be tired and could mistakes. He thought that they'd get our scent if we went straight there as quickly as possible, that they could start herding. It took us probably two weeks, we'd spent four days in one particular house because there seemed to be a lot of ghouls hanging around, we thought they'd wander off if we didn't advertise our presence. It seemed to work, or they caught the scent of something else.

Nothing all that exciting happened along the way, we were lucky in that regard. Once we were at the RSA? Turns out we weren't the only people who had that idea. At first it was kinda all chummy chummy, you know? No one was too bothered, there seemed to be enough food for all of us. There were people in the other groups that were like Nate, willing to get out and raid homes but the leader, I guess you could call him that, of the largest group, he wasn't too keen on such excursions. Too many cooks in the kitchen, he called it. Said we couldn't operate like that, that we had to unite or die. What if Nate or Kelly fucked up while they were out and about and brought a whole bunch of ghouls back to our little hidey hole? What if they grabbed the attention of other survivors who were less willing to share? We all came together one night, under Mr. Mister's orders to hold a meeting. To talk about who'd be in charge – obviously him – and how we were going to make it through.

Mr. Mister obviously wasn't his name, I think it was Hunter but I can't recall as soon as the army ripped through we parted company. He went looking for family. I went looking to see what condition my property and the facility was in. His people called him sir, so I wonder if maybe he was former military, or just a pig headed male who wanted his ego stroked. Regardless, you know what? I was so happy! I was glad it wouldn't be me making the hard decisions any more. I wouldn't be the poor schmuck to shoulder the blame for leaving defenceless elderly people in a building to die horrible deaths. I wouldn't have to worry about Nate's death, or Cathy or anyone else's weighing on my conscience if they went out to get food and they didn't come back.

I wish I could say we had some really exciting run ins with the zed but we didn't Nate and a couple of others would head out for food and supplies and come back with a few close call stories but I never stepped foot out side the RSA compound.

It was a pretty secure area and as long as we didn't venture too close to the fence we were okay. It was a standard chain link fence but there was so much shrubbery and trees and of course all the leaves and dead plants that normally would have been cleaned away – it all built up, creating a really great barrier to the zeds' line of sight. We hung table cloths over parts of the fence that were facing into clearer areas.

We had our vegetable garden; there were already well established citrus trees and a few banana trees. One of Mister's guys came back with a sack of chickens and that provided us with eggs for at least a few years until they died of natural causes. I would have loved some meat but at that point you don't' want to risk it, you know? Plus, they were layers, they would have been all stiff and stringy, wouldn't have been pleasant.

It was quite a comfortable existence in the apocalypse, well, not really.

There were swarms. Large ones. When that happened we just had to get up stairs, stay away from the windows and hope like hell they didn't think to push to hard against the fence. They never got in. Not one. Not once. It was quite strange; I thought that we'd get one or two stragglers finding their way through. A few times where Nate would get stuck out after dark, so to speak, generally we didn't' get too fussed, but during swarms? That had us all on edge – primarily because if he panicked and tried to come back our way he could twist the swarm, you know, where the front portion turns into the back and they end up creating a kind of counter force? Then they all just start spilling out in different directions. They're more likely to do damage then.

More likely to notice people hiding upstairs in a building.

Well, that was the theory; we only ever saw that when they were in smaller numbers – a dog or something would have caught their attention.

Gastro was quite a common problem, however. Infection control standards were a bit lax I have to say. We couldn't do that much about it. Water was like gold, it was so precious, so we couldn't waste it on washing our hands. There were supplies of hand sanitizer and dish washing liquid – which is actually more effective at killing bugs than those expensive "hospital brands", but we ran through that pretty quickly. One of the girls from another group was a bit OCD about hygiene. It was kind of comical, actually, when she got the V&Ds [vomiting and diarrhoea]. Hehe.

We obviously couldn't use the internal toilets because of plumping and water wastage, so we just dug holes outside, close to the fences but not so close as to attract the attention of zed. We tried to keep them away from our fruit and veg. It didn't really leave us too many options. Yet, when we had an outbreak of the Noro we'd make sure we dug individual shit holes and made sure after we knew where they were, so we wouldn't go re-using.

And that was the extent of our adventures in zombie land.

And your life after? Tell us about your work now.

Well, my house was as I said, a charred ruin. A fire had started in one of the homes on the street, whose I couldn't tell you. Took out the entire suburb.

Aussie wild life seemed to have done better than most other countries. Things like kolas and possums they could get up trees real quick. The crocs apparently were just too tough for the zeds to get a bite in. We all know animals high tail it away from the infection but that's not to say they won't stand their ground if they have no choice but to fight. Then you've got all the snakes and bugs, which will run from zed but zed don't seem too interested.

It's quite reassuring, you know, to see a bunch of roos hoping about, able to outrun zed, and able to gut him if he gets to close. Yeah, not the friendly boxing types you see in movies.

Most of the other residential property was just worn down. Weather, insect and animal life, plants, all had taken their toll on those places. The major buildings like the supermarket and the farming supplies depot, they'd taken heavy storm damage and eventually suffered partial collapses, it was only when people were sheltering with thoughts of the long term that maintenance was considered, even if it was just a quick bang up job. The two near by towns, one had been inundated with floods a few times during the war and there was nothing there but soggy, uninhabitable buildings and a few places where the ghouls had gotten stuck. The other town was victim to a bush fire. I remember seeing smoke on the horizon a few times during our time in the RSA and we always had that fear and what could you do then? A bush fire baring down on your from the north, the zed heading up from the south, ocean to the east and ruggered mountains to the west? Thankfully we didn't have to address that question.

A lot of survivors from further up north and from the mountains started heading through down towards the major centre that had been cleared of ghouls. I thought about going but the town was relatively safe, and it was a good area I didn't want to lose out. I'd rather sleep in a tent in my backyard with fear of zed from the forest then go into a major city where zed could still pop up. I often wonder just how many other people thought like that, but weren't knowledgeable enough to live so rough. All those years of self-sufficiency, making hard decisions, living a very hard life, fearing zed every step of the way, to suddenly go back to complete dependence on an armed force? Living in some "secure" city? Well, I've talked to a lot of people who said pre-war, just before the GP and a bit after, they were told to go somewhere "secure" which ended up being a death trap.

Maybe deep down people were just tired? They wanted someone else to call the shots – no different then me with Mr. Mister. Granted, maybe that was different… I don't know. I just didn't want to leave.

I went to the facility and at first I wasn't sure it was still there. The gardens had becomes so over grown, the fences had become so coated in leaves and such that it was really well obscured. Even the top floors were difficult to see.

I hadn't even thought about going there actually, I was busy trying to figure out if I could squat in someone else's house. Anyway, a jeep shows up with a rather well painted general type. I don't know if he was a general but he was definitely an officer. He asked if I had been the manager of the rest home facility, I told him yeah, he basically said given its size, it could prove useful in pre-war efforts and rehoming, they wanted to go in check the place out. Wanted my know how of the place and quite frankly, I was a little curious then to see it. I did tell them upfront that there would be a clean up job – I clarified corpses, I think they meant zed.

At that point, no one was too keen on doing a check of the fence line because of the long grass and the close proximity to trees that ghouls could be lingering around. So a couple stood watch and we went inside.

It stunk, but not from rotting flesh, guess there wasn't any at that point. Just that smell when you open up a house that's been closed for years. Exactly like that. I pointed out the offices where we had initially sheltered. Two soldiers went up, I heard a few shots, they returned. There were three ghouls up there. Well, two and a half if you want to get real technical, but they weren't elderly, and they were sort of fresh.

My thought was they'd gotten up the stairs. The CO didn't seem to think so, figured a couple of survivors probably got bit then rushed up the stairs to try and wait it out, the inevitable happened and the rest is, as they say, history.

There weren't all that many ghouls in the place, I was surprised about that but it had been ten years so they probably just wandered out.

The HLC area, where Nate had cared for the elderlies, there wasn't a single zed down there, just skeletons in beds and reclining chairs.

The facility was in remarkable condition, all things considered. One of the wings was a complete right-off though, water damage was quite bad. A burst pipe probably? Because Nate had shut as many doors as he was able; other staff had done that prior, the animals that got in through broken windows or slightly ajar outside doors had only been able to wreck the bedrooms they found themselves in.

The HLC wing was in great nick, the only other thing other than the skeletons to clear out, was a big dead wasps' nest. Sure, it was overgrown and there was some mould in the bathrooms but other than that, well, it was up and running as a field hospital for injured soldiers within four weeks.

I felt actually quite good about things then too, I was back working as a nurse, it was good to be doing something worth while for a change. I had lost a lot of weight, we all had, but I was probably a size 12 then. I looked hot. A little older, sure, but I looked better and felt better than I had before the war! Too old for some of those grunts, though. I wasn't going to be robbing the cradle! However, I was now in the vicinity of 57. Life had been tough. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep plugging along as though I was a slender 37 year old. Nate, before he left for the big wide after zombie world, told me I should get into education. It really was the most logical position to get into. A lot of other nurses who'd survived were doing the same thing. We had pre-war knowledge. We had been trained in hospitals and classrooms with books and computers, now we were going to have a whole generation of young people wanting to get into nursing because it really was a valuable profession and they weren't going to have the same foundation as we did.

We're talking kids who for ten years had no real education, no more reading and writing and arithmetic. It was survival they were concerned with. Only very few of the under 20s [when the war started] were in a situation where they could at least keep reading anything of any value. Some cases you hear of families being well off and secure enough that the adults were able to give them a sort of ad hoc education – but they were incredibly rare. In fact, I heard of one hysterical case where a man and his three pre-teen kids were caught some place pretty solid – so the man, what does he do? He teaches his kids about tax law and accountancy! Tax law! Now? Hahah. Granted, the economy has to get going eventually and once it's no longer a barter system the politicians are going to want a steady income. Maybe in 20 years those kids are going to be sitting pretty.

I had a chat with the CO, and he basically said his troops were starting to move out and down towards another cluster of infected towns that geographically sheltered. A few units would be stationed here because it was close to the coast – and at that point people were aware of ghouls coming up out of the ocean so we needed to have people on standby to respond.

The town slowly started to come back to life, buildings that were complete write offs were knocked down. Materials that were salvaged were recycled into the new structures and generally there were quite a few people willing to do the work. A lot of people had headed down towards the city, then returned looking for work, or maybe just to strike out a claim in a former fishing town in some derelict house. It was quite a shock to some people, I think. There were a few paper pushers arrive from the big centres who had no real useful skill base. Oftentimes they'd frustrate the guys who knew what hard work was. Men and women who'd been plumbers and builders and truck drivers, who weren't afraid to get their hands dirty and the tops of their heads sun burnt, now they had to try and teach low level bureaucrats how to hammer two planks of wood together. Of course, I think same of them liked it. You know? Here were people that before the war would have driven a Mercedes and worn a Rolex and a suit that'd cost more than a despot on a house and these people were now answering to folk they wouldn't have said boo to before hand.

Anyway, I'm off topic.

Basically, the facility was used to treat those soldiers who got themselves into a bit of trouble. It wasn't really many zed injuries, most of those guys just shot themselves out in the field. It was things like a broken ankle from a slip, or an accidental shooting, or a snake bite or a burn. Pre-war kind of stuff. Then as the soldiers declined their numbers and moved the bulk of the new recruits over towards the coast we used the hospital for the civilians. Builders still fell off ladders, people still managed to get hit by cars, there were always cases of influenza and meningitis, which sadly we couldn't do much for the later. Drugs and supplies were at an all time low. We made do with what we could find. We actually stripped curtains from the ruined houses, boiled up some sea water and cleaned that fabric sterile. If it was too ratty or the fabric frayed too easily we found other purposes for it, mattress stuffing kind of things.

I too had to face a steep learning curve. We started getting more Aboriginal people coming by. They were able to give us a whole lot of "bush medicine" that proved invaluable. Without antibiotics or analgesics we really couldn't' call ourselves a hospital but now we could actually really help people beyond strapping a limb. I never put much stock in alternative medicine but now it was saving lives!

I helped set up a small teaching hospital, some of the kids in their late teens, early twenties, they'd come and I'd show them some slightly more complex things then they'd probably witnessed. Of course they would have had a lot of experience with bleeding and open wounds, infection, breaks. I was more into sterile techniques, better stitches, bone alignment, nerve and sensation issues, basic physiotherapy and rehab. I gave them a run down of anatomy and physiology, talked about respiratory and cardiac failure. How to identify stroke. Childbirth was another, they'd either seen it or they hadn't. We always seemed to have a pregnant woman.

Each week I'd pop into the little school someone had gotten started, to talk about science in the context of human medicine. For the vast majority of them, they probably would never use it, never need to, but it was sort of a push to get the ones who might have been interested in nursing or medicine to give it considerable thought.

So how did I go from that dinky little town to Hobart? I got old myself! I had heard from colleagues that there was a really decent university in Hobart that was now getting really good funding from the govt in regards to medical and nursing care. Our little town had grown quite significantly; it now had a population of 4,000. The nearby city had reached 30,000. People came to our little town because of the space, it seemed cleaner, less cluttered and I think deep down a lot of people, myself included, thought smaller centres would be the way of the future post zed. It was easier to defend, less of a target and if a zed outbreak got established, it couldn't do as much damage – well, at least with our post zed war understanding.

If I had been younger, maybe my reasons for moving would have revolved more around wanting a challenge, wanting to make a difference but frankly I was now just after more comfort. Hobart seemed like the best bet.

It was a kind of depressing trip to Hobart, though. There wasn't the money or the fuel to fly me. I was able to bum a ride off a military convoy but that meant I couldn't carry all that much. I had one small duffle bag. In a way I prefer it, pre war we were all so hung upon crap, what was the latest phone, how many shoes you had, was that a designer bag, could you get a pay rise? Now, well, now I found I could be happy with a clean pair of underwear. There was quite a bit of construction work but it was generally in defensive structures. No one said it out loud, well, not that I'm aware of, but there was always the thought that it was a waste of time and resources. The best place to build the structures was along the coast but the government was putting heavy fortifications around places that faced inwards. Thing was, there's a giant stinkin' hot desert out there. The Outback wasn't too kind to ole Zack. There were stories of a few being buried under sand and dirt and then drying out, then digging themselves out when they heard people near by. I saw more come out of the sea then I did from the inland areas. Mind you, who the hell was going to take the risk? Pre the GP we had heard the rumours but the politicians and the military men, they would have had all that Intel, they would have had photos and recordings and reports and eye witness testimony from their own guys, yet they did nothing, they brushed it off as nonsense. Look where it got us!

Before the war, I used to hate euthanasia; I saw it not so much as a coward's way out but rather a lack of respect for the elderly. Shameful. Making them feel burdensome, that somehow their inability to control their bladder, or that their twitches or Alzheimer's made them less a person and better off dead. Talking about death with dignity? I used to laugh at that. There's nothing dignified about death. You can go to sleep one night and die in your bed and that's certainly better than lying in a hospice oozing faeces, or hit by a truck. The process of death isn't more dignified because you're cosy and you chose? I used to find that amusing as well, as if your death was a right. No culture has ever acknowledged death as a right. We're all going to do it. It's like saying you have a right to skin. There sure have been cultures where suicide has been encouraged for people who have brought great shame on themselves and their families but no culture has ever said to the elderly "you have a right to die, now go do it so we can use your bed", well, except for ours.

I also hated it in that sense that it was cheap. Here we have these elderly men and women and so what if they're sick, or incontinent or confused? They've fought in wars, they've lived through the depression, they've built up this society we like. They fought and suffered for our rights that we enjoy. Pay a life time of taxes. They don't whinge that they're on the minimum wage, they don't bitch that they don't have enough "me time", they don't wail that they're not having enough holidays. They suck it up and get the job done and now to replay them for their service we dump them in rest homes and tell them that they're a burden and that euthanasia should be legal. Drunk drivers cost the health system more money then the elderly.

So now? Unfortunately, I have to concede on the euthanasia issue but not for the elderly. For cancer patients, for the AIDs resurgence, for the diseases we could treat, or at least make them comfortable for a good while. We don't have the money for expensive operations to remove tumours and we don't have the drugs to fight HIV like we used to. Euthanasia for them is a mercy and it's really only all we can afford now. And this is where I sound inconsistent: we should probably make euthanasia mandatory for everyone who is unable to work or pull their own weight, or who doesn't have family and friends who are willing to care for them, without them being taken from their own tasks. Allow this euthanasia programme only for people who were elderly during the war and directly after. You have your middle aged people during the war, the people in their 60s, the war lasted ten years, and it's been now ten years give or take, since the war that puts those people in their 80s. They were people who likely drank and smoked and generally didn't live all that healthy a life – I'm generalising of course. So I think those people should be gently pushed.

Yet, are we suddenly going to be up and running as a society in another 20 years? Another 50? Hell no. It's going to take us probably a good 100 years, if not 200 to get back to the way we were before. Well, that's my opinion based on the people I've spoken to who are a bit more in the know. The kids and teens, you know, old enough to remember and understand somewhat, the mess before the GP, then to have experienced the war and to have faced off with Zack. They're the ones we need to be keeping as long as possible. What I'm saying, essentially, you have 12 year old Timmy who starts high school the year the war starts. He's old enough to understand a bit about geo-political issues, the global trends, very simplistically but enough to get the basics. He'll have then survived the war, seen Zack at his worst, yet Timmy would be old enough to have survived that, keep his humanity and understand what's going on. Tactics. Strategy. Signs and symptoms. Experience. That's what Timmy has. So now ten years later, little Timmy isn't so little any more, and he's a 32 year old guy who's leading an army unit against the zeds, or he's researching cures and vaccines, or he's just a farm hand who knows how to tell if the animals are unsettled, if the soil's been tainted. Forty, fifty years from now, Timmy will be pretty elderly. Hopefully outdoor living, active job and a less processed diet will have Timmy facing his final years with marbles still rolling in the right direction. To euthanize old Timmy would be to do a huge disservice to our society as a whole. Yeah, he may cost a bit more money in upkeep but can we really put a price on his experience, experience we may suddenly need again?

Some may argue that we should just document these stories, that when Timmy becomes too much of a burden its euthanasia time, yet Timmy will likely have a family, Timmy is likely to have grandchildren, maybe see great grandchildren, and it's easier, more relatable to pick up information from a story told to us. Oral Tradition, isn't that what it's called? Isn't that how knowledge was passed down through human history when not everyone could read and write?

People like me; I should be scuttled if I got a bit loopy. I mean, what good would I be, would little Timmy be, regardless of life experience, if we're too confused to draw on it?

People are very pro-euthanasia now and the thing is, there's no point legalising it or criminalising it. People are going to do it if that's what they want. There's plenty of fire arms around, there's still rope and trees, there's still razor blades and knives. Not pleasant, but if a person is mentally sick enough, or just plain doesn't see a point, they wont' care what the politicians and the ethicists are arguing about. Besides, if someone does euthanize a friend, a family member, you think the authorities have the time and resources to go after them? Heck, some murders are just left because the cops don't have the resources, I'd imagine it'd be like CSI 1900AD. Abortion? Well, people hate that now. Its not about a woman's choice, or freedom of bodily autonomy, we're not so individualistic any more. That's the issue. For the foetus, they represent hope, another human being to help rebuild. The foetus is suddenly very valuable and the woman's discomfort takes backseat. Pregnant women get more rations, they get better medical care, they get medicines that are hard to come by. The expense spent on the pregnant woman, well, its an investment isn't it? That foetus is a benefit for all of society. The elderly however, caring for them is no longer going to benefit society, is it? You have to weigh up outcomes. Spending on the pregnant woman has a positive outcome for society, hopefully, a baby. Spending on an elderly woman with dementia? She's not going to get better, will probably spend the rest of her life in a care facility, facilities we can't afford.

It hasn't been an easy premise for me to accept. I cry about it sometimes, especially after I give lectures, talk to politicians, about my euthanasia idea. I came to love so many frail elderly, saw them as an entire person with this amazing pile of life experience, of stories and wisdom and now here I am advocating for mandatory euthanasia of those who are no longer any use.

Our elderly population has declined considerably, not so much because of suicides but because they just don't hold out well. Probably a moot point at this stage. Someone asked me once, would I have the guts to do it to myself, you know? Thing is, being a little forgetful, getting names muddled up, that's a normal part of aging, I could go on being useful for another 20 years. If I snuffed myself because I couldn't remember where I left a set of keys, that'd be premature. Could I get someone to do it for me? A friend, colleague? That's a hell of an ask. I don't think I could put someone in that situation, which I guess is ironic, because here I am advocating for doctors and nurses to be forced to do the very same thing I don't think I could do to myself.

But its all conditioning, isn't it? Even though our society pre Zack was at a stage where we didn't really care about the elderly and euthanasia was currently legal, or at least decriminalised in a few places around the globe, for the majority of people killing the elderly and the sick because they were elderly or sick was morally repugnant. The sanctity of life nonsense. Sort of. It's not so much nonsense now as it is rather a requirement. Humans are living. Zombies are not. Humans must continue to live. Zombies must be destroyed. Yet humans who are no longer useful are taking resources from other humans who are. Perhaps if we have a few generations of mandatory euthanasia people will eventually lose interest in opposing it – it'll be seen as childish. Of course, by then, who's to say we won't be back to pre-war standards of living, where we can afford to keep them running? Maybe we'll open Pandora's Box and it won't just be the elderly the cancer patients who get removed.

I won't diminish the argument by saying it's not the slippery slope, I won't try and brush it away, we need to address it. I'm scared though. I think euthanasia has its place. I think the elderly are a valuable resource. I think in 30 – 50 years they're going to be a huge asset. Yet, my ideas, the ideas put forward by others who are pro-euthanasia, they can't be ignored.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll go to Hell when I die for just suggesting it. I'm not happy about it. I'm afraid. Yet, all up, I think moral wrangling over these questions is a luxury we don't really have. Not now. Maybe in fifty years, sure.

I guess what I'm saying, in a roundabout kind of way, is we need to be making horrible hard decisions now so we can have a future full of healthy people who can then try and clean up our mess.