Apart from this half-forgotten lecture in jungle warfare, my only knowledge of military tactics came from reading (in Latin) about Rome’s wars with Carthage. Naturally, I still thought of Hannibal as a ‘gun’ General but, given that I didn’t have ready access to any battle elephants, I thought the valuable lessons I had learned from this reading were likely to be of limited use in dealing with the zombie apocalypse – or, for that matter, with any counter-offensive that might then be under weigh. After playing in my mind with the remembered fragments of the lecture from the reg, I turned to David – who had just listened to the radio with me. (Mildly interested – comprehension? I guess next to zero.) “Okay, David, we can forget about Hannibal,” I commenced (David had studied Latin as well). “Let’s think about our time together in the cadets. If the Army was going to form a defensive perimeter around the docklands area, how would they go about it? How far from the docks would they place the perimeter? As far as Central Melbourne? As far as here, at the university?” Naturally, he didn’t answer me. I was just using him as a sounding board. His eyes, however, did seem to look at me quizzically – if dead eyes could ever do that. We still sat in the Activities Office, each of us on one side of the desk upon which sat the transistor radio, currently our portal to the outside world. We sat for a while staring at one another – my mind was racing. His mind ....? Well, I didn’t know what was going on in there - maybe more than I realised. This moment of quiet reflection was abruptly interrupted: ‘Gween’, the zombies’ pet cat, had apparently wandered by and decided to join the party. (She obviously had the run of the building and feared none of its current residents.) She leapt nimbly onto the desk, rubbed against my unprotected arm, bit it sharply and then sauntered over to David as if nothing had happened. The wretch! David, of course, took the furry beast into his arms and clumsily started petting it. In return, the mainly black animal miaowed its appreciation at him, in a decidedly cutesy fashion, and started to purr loudly. After looking adoringly into my brother’s dead eyes for a time, Gween turned her face to me and hissed with apparent conviction.
Da yw an te-ma.langbot langbot