“Okay,” I replied. “Let’s suppose there is indeed a leading edge to the infection, carried forward by a small band of fleet-footed and unidirectional zombies. They would be travelling at not less than 20km per day – after making a proper allowance for lost time due to their undertaking only absolutely essential murder and mayhem.” “Agreed. A reasonable estimate,” said Paul. “20 km per day for nine days. So, the fastest group of zombies – and therefore the infection itself – is now nearly two hundred km away from central Melbourne.” “But that means the infection would have reached the three major regional cities in Victoria: Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo,” I observed, stating the obvious. Paul shrugged: “I just hope none of the zombies can drive or fly!” This casual remark – made in jest – made me think of David. You never quite knew what he might be capable of – particularly if he could tap into my mind at will. But there was no time to worry about that possibility now. How many people were within a 200km radius of Melbourne if you included those major regional cities? I didn’t know. I wasn’t up on population statistics at the time. I guessed, maybe, two or three million. And let’s assume that none of the girls (nor gay men?) became zombies, how many potential zombies did that mean? Somewhere between one and one and a half million? Hmm. But, of course, many victims were so badly injured by zombie attack that they simply could not reanimate. Beyond that, perhaps a lot of folk, knowing what was on the way, had fled in front of the leading edge of the epidemic. That would reduce the numbers substantially. Then again, so far as I could see, there had been a total news blackout. So, how would people find out that they needed to flee before it was too late? And, once the numbers of zombies had grown from hundreds to thousands, wouldn’t the leading edge become like an irresistible tidal wave, sweeping all before it? Paul and I calmly debated all of this, debated the end of civilisation as we knew it (or so it seemed) but reached no firm conclusions. The information we had was paltry – we were simply working on guesswork.
Ott, yma hi ow kul ergh!langbot langbot