"All Dead on the Western Front" - A Drag/NET Story By Arthur Levesque -- bs@boog.org -- http://boog.org (A Sequel to the terrible saga, "The Blue Plague") (It's not that terrible...) (No, I mean 'terribly violent.') (Oh. Yeah!) After spending a week alone surfing and camping up at Cape Leveque, a point on the Northwestern coast of Australia that I'm particularly fond of, I once again returned to the last known human civilization on Earth. As I drove through a small town in the desert, I was astonished to see that people were celebrating something. The years had been hard, people never knew when the plague might someday hit Australia, and very little celebrating was ever done. Very curious (the Australians referred to me sometimes as a "sticky-snoot"), I went into the local pub and ordered a Foster's Lager. Normally, I prefer making love in a canoe to English or Aussie beer, but this seemed to be a special occasion. There were two trappers that I knew sitting at a table in the corner, so I went over and joined them. "So what's the celebration about?" I asked, quaffing a draught of the brew. "Who died?" "Ah, g'day Slash!" Swamp Rat said. "No one died. No one will, either." "They've found immortality then?" I asked. "Not quite," Fozzie Bear replied. "But they have found a vaccine that will prevent one from catching the Blue Plague." "It's only temporary so far," Rat added. "But it's only a matter of time now before we can stop living in fear and start going back to other continents. Life has been hard since we can only use what we produce here, and Australia never was much for hi-tech production. It's like living in the 19th century." "Really?" I asked. "I'll have to look into this." "Mark this date on your calendar," Fozzie Bear said. "November 5, 1998 -- the day the fear ended." "There are still many things we're afraid of," Colonel Kurtz told me. Col. Kurtz is the man in charge of the group trying to find the Blue Plague cure. "First of all, the Blue Plague is not one germ, it's several. This is why there is such a great variety of symptoms, and people have died many different ways. The fact that several fatal diseases all struck at the same time is what caused people to believe that a germ warfare laboratory must have screwed up. We now have a new theory. We've traced the course of the Blue Plague and found that it originated in Canada, far from any known laboratories. Canada is not known for germ warfare research anyway. Shortly before the Plague started, there was a great meteor shower over Canada. We feel that the plague may be extra- terrestrial in origin, or merely germs from the upper atmosphere that were brought down by the meteorites." "Why is this important?" I asked. "Because we still don't have a real cure and may never," Colonel Kurtz replied, "unless we can find pieces of these meteorites. What we have now can prevent a person from contracting the Plague, but won't cure someone infected with it. Also, our vaccine only lasts about a month, after which enough of the white blood cells in the body have been replaced with new ones which don't have the vaccine. At this point another vaccination is necessary. The upshot of this is that we do not have the resources to continually vaccinate everyone every month. The government, still paranoid, is sticking by its ruling that anyone who leaves can't come back. I have to go to Canada, but I can't go alone and no one wants to go with me." "I know a few people we can go with." I personally had always wanted to return to America; after ten years in Australia, I was extremely homesick. I realized that everyone in America had to be extremely homedead, but I just wanted to go back and look around for a while, maybe even live there. Everything a person could possibly need had to be lying around there somewhere. So, naturally, I jumped at the chance to go back with Colonel Kurtz. I figured I'd look up the rest of the dudes and see if they felt like a trip down memory lane. First I called up DragNET II, Sergeant Friday's BBS, to get the addresses of the others, then I chatted with Sarge for a while. The new BBS was running at 9600 baud now, but I could only call it at 2400 because I never got around to upgrading my old system. I explained the situation to Sarge and he agreed to come along. He was so excited he forgot to say "Blopshniggledoo!" Ian A. and Max Ray declined my offer, saying that they were in serious training for the Olympics of 2000. They both competed in the '96 Olympics and got a total of eight silver and five bronze medals; but they figured this year they had a great shot at the gold. I didn't mind, I had no way of knowing how long we'd be away, or what we'd find over there. Ford Prefect and Thee Mystyk also decided not to go. Both of them were pretty well set where they were, with best-selling books and two kids each. I couldn't really blame them, I wasn't sure how I'd tell my wife I was leaving... I talked with Greg Ericson for quite some time. Finally, when I asked him whether or not he wanted to go, he said he'd have to stay behind "due to moral considerations." When I asked him what he meant by that, he explained that he refused to go anywhere where he wouldn't be able to find teenaged girls. It took me a couple of tries to reach Zork Pendragon. When he heard about the plan he agreed to go immediately. "You wouldn't believe how dull being a talk show host is," Zork said. "I had been planning on taking a hiatus of several months. I'll just have Paul Hogan substitute for me until I get back." I called the Electric Monk last. I didn't really want to call him at all, I've never been able to stomach the feckless oaf, but I figured I might as well. The way things were running now, the odds were that he wouldn't want to go anyway. "I can't really go," the Monk explained. "The are several extremely serious votes coming up in Parliament, and I can't afford to miss them. The way things are now, every vote will count. By the way, how do you intend to get out?" "I still have the old Yellow Submarine that we got here in stashed away," I replied. "We had no problem getting in with it." "Let me explain a couple of things to you," the Monk replied. "This is, of course, secret. We weren't the only subs to come to Australia. Most of the American and Russian nuclear subs were at see while the Plague hit, and when they heard that the Plague wasn't hitting Australia they rushed over. The Australian government let them stay on the condition that they patrol the coast and keep out everyone else. They have orders to shoot and sink anything, and they're still out there. If we had arrived a month later we never would have made it; they're horribly effective." "Is there anything you can do about it?" I asked. "In about a week they're having training exercises. No one has tried to run the blockade in a long time, so they play cat-and-mouse games with each other now and then to keep in shape." The Monk grinned. "USSR vs. US subs, of course. Anyway, I'll arrange for an opening off Cape Leveque at noon in seven days that you can get out through." "Thanks a lot, old boy." "No worries, mate." We went out and got the old yellow sub from where it had lain hidden for the last ten years. It stilled worked fine (the engine was from a Chevy Nova), so after a few minor repairs it was once again seaworthy. We managed to get some gasoline for it (all cars in Australia now ran on alcohol) and prepared to set out for the old country. We only had enough gas to get to Hawaii, but we figured we should be able to find some gas or other transport there. One the scheduled day at noon we set off. The beach was of course deserted, so no one saw us off. We hoped that the Monk had managed to clear the area of other submarines, but I knew the Monk would probably screw up. Luckily I had a few defensive measures added before we left. Sure enough, a lone sub wandered into our area just before we reached the limit of the patrolled waters. The commander of the sub called us on several frequencies. He identified himself as Commander Worminator of the U.S.S. Boston and requested the identity of the unknown vessel off his port bow. Naturally, we did not answer and tried to get out of Australian waters as fast as we could. "Transient approaching rapidly!" Sarge said, looking up from the sonar screen. "Looks to be a torpedo of some type... probably the type that explodes!" We quickly turned off our sonar and all other noisy systems (which pissed off Zork because he was trying to play "The Legend of Zelda" on the Nintendo we brought along). We turned away from the U.S.S. Boston and started diving rapidly. I flipped a small green switch on the dashboard and ejected the spare tire off of the back of the sub (which was, remember, a heavily modified van). The tire ruptured from the depth we were at, causing enough noise to distract the missile. Commander Worminator had just sunk a 1983 Goodyear. We sat on the bottom for a about ten minutes while the U.S.S. Boston searched for any sign of our sub, or proof that he had hit us. I flipped another switch and a small clock/radio (watertight) was ejected. After fifteen minutes, when it was a good distance away, the alarm went off. The sonarman on the Boston, Lieutenant Bruno, heard "Yesterday" coming through the Pacific Ocean. As the Boston went to investigate the Beatle Bomb I created, we slowly started engines and went in the opposite direction. Once we were out of the Boston's torpedo range, we accelerated and headed north as fast as we could. "This must be a decoy, Commander!" Bruno said. Just then the radio switched from Beatles to Sex Pistols. Bruno screamed and ripped off his head- phones. He therefore was not able to hear us steaming towards Hawaii at 20 knots. The Worminator ordered the radio destroyed, and the torpedo wakes and subsequent explosions stirred up the water even more. By the time they resumed the search, we were long gone. After getting out of Australia's search radius, we didn't expect any further contact. However, as we had no idea what was "out there", we kept our defenses up. We saw an inordinate amount of whales, they must be making a comeback now that humans are no longer hunting them down. As we approached Hawaii, we broke the surface occasionally to check out the situation. We didn't receive anything on the radio, nor did we see any signs of life. We arrived at Hawaii with barely any food or fuel left. We had planned it just right. We all took fresh injections of the Plague vaccine and got out of the sub. It was much warmer here than it was in Australia. We wandered around for a while. The cemetary was extremely large, until the end they must have been burying the dead. There were still skeletons scattered about the island, they must have been picked clean by scavengers and predators. Seagulls, probably, Sarge suggested. There were very few things in the market that were still good to eat, but we did find pineapples and other food growing wild. We found a plane that still functioned, so we decided to let Col. Kurtz fly us to America in it. As we were walking down the runway toward the plane, a <<>> fell over us. We looked up and saw thousands of seagulls flying towards us. "Hitchcock must be rolling over in his grave," Zork said. "Let's get to the plane!!" The rest of us yelled simultaneously. We ran as fast as we could, but the gulls were gaining. Zork, who was trailing the rest of us, got hit by some "white projectiles." We ducked into a nearby hangar and tried to figure out how to reach the plane without having our eyes pecked out. "There are goggles and flight suits in here," Sarge noted. "We could wear those over our clothes and face and dash to the plane." "Here's jeep!" I yelled. "If we drive this towards the plane we'll get there faster." "I found a tarpaulin," Zork cried. "Throw that over those of us who aren't driving and we won't get soiled or pecked." "Here's a gun," Kurtz said. "I'm gonna shoot the little peckers." Needless to say, we reached the plane (Sarge drove the jeep because he drives fastest. We almost lost Zork when he did a "brake check", though). We took off and headed to America. We crossed the ocean in a matter of hours. While Kurtz flew the rest of us got bombed on the wine in the plane's storage section. Aged an extra ten years, it was especially good to those of us who hadn't been drunk in some time. Since alcohol was used in place of gasoline nowadays, there wasn't much left for drinking (except for that terrible Australian beer). As we were flying past Washington state and into Canada, we saw lights and smoke up ahead. Could there have been survivors? More people in the world, cut off from everyone else and thinking that THEY were the last human beings? Zork suggested that since humans were dead that maybe cats had evolved intelligence in the last ten years. We promptly beat him into unconsciousness. We landed at a nearby airport, glad that we didn't have to wait for other planes before we could land. We grabbed a car that had plenty of gas (actually, we siphoned the gas from several cars into one '76 Nova. I kept looking over my shoulder for cops!) and drove north. That settlement was about ten miles from where we estimated the meteor fell, so we figured we'd visit the settlement first. It would be interesting to meet these people who had survived the Plague and maybe offer to bring them to Australia. Zork insisted that they may be cats and got some 9-Lives from a nearby store to bring them as a peace offering. About half a mile from the settlement, we heard a gunshot and a voice yelling "Stop! Who goes there?" "Uh... well, my name's Back Slash, this is Sergeant Friday, he's Zork Pendragon, and my cohort in the back is Colonel Kurtz..." "You sure you're not Quas?" The guard shined a flashlight into our faces. He sounded surprised when he asked, "Where the hell did you come from??" "Australia," I responded. "You see, we're here because..." "Shut up!" the guard said. He thought a bit. "I'll have to take you to the Raven. He'll want to talk to you." "The Raven?!?" I asked. "Shut your bloody gob!" the guard answered. He got into the car and told us to drive on. "You know this Raven?" Kurtz whispered to me. "I've heard of him," I responded. "In the early days of the Plague when we were back in the shelter, we were listening to the CB conversations of a gang of looters led by a man who called himself the Raven. It was from him that I learned about Australia. He never made it to Australia and I had wondered what happened to him..." We arrived at the camp fifteen minutes later. It looked like one of those log forts that settlers built in the 1800's to keep out Indians. The guard (who eventually told us that his name was Odysseus) spoke to a man at the gate for some time before we were admitted. Finally, eight men with 16-gauge shotguns came out to escort us into the fortress. The doors were bolted behind us, all of our possessions were taken away, and we were locked in a small room. "The Raven will see you tomorrow," the guard told us. In the morning we were led at gunpoint into The Raven's office. Colonel Kurtz started to say something, but The Raven silenced him with a motion. "First of all," the Raven began, "the only reason we let you live and let you in is because you said you were from Australia and your accents and clothing seemed to verify this. The only people we normally see Outside nowadays are Quas, and when we see them we shoot to kill." "Your guard mentioned Quas," Kurtz said. He was the only one able to ask intelligent questions as the rest of us were suffering our first real hangovers in several years. "Who, or what, are they?" "There are a very small number of people who, for some unknown reason, are immune to the Plague. It may be due to heredity, for the entire Qua family have survived Out There for the last ten years. Unfortunately, whereas they aren't affected by the plague, they carry the germs and infect anyone they come close to. The Quas are an insane clan that have been living in the hills for years. During the Plague and the food riots they practiced cannibalism. Now they eat the animals that survived the Plague. Every now and then they attack our fortress, screaming about how they want to 'rule us'. If they ever manage to get into our compound, we'd all be dead." "Sounds terrible. We'd love to help, but we are in a hurry, so if you'd just let us go..." The Raven went on as if he hadn't even heard Kurtz. "The Quas aren't the only carriers of the Plague. Cats also carry it. When we first set up this compound we allowed in a small number of people we knew weren't infected. When people tried to come in we gave them blood tests, because we did need workers. Of course, anyone who owned a cat was instantly shot." The Raven reached into a box and pulled out the bag of 9-Lives that Zork had bought at the airport. "Who does this belong to?" Without hesitation, we all pointed at Zork. "Take him out and shoot him." Odysseus and Arthur Dent dragged Zork out of the office. A couple of minutes later we heard three gunshots. "Now," The Raven said, "perhaps you'd care to explain these?" He pulled the vials of Plague vaccine out of the box. "Have you found a cure for the Plague in Australia?" "No," Kurtz said. "Those vaccines are only effective for about 29 days. They prevent a person from contracting the Plague. The reason we came back to North America was to find the Source of the Plague so that we could create a true cure." "Very interesting. Very useful." The Raven put the vaccine back in the box. "With this some of our men can go out and hunt down those Quas once and for all!!" "No!" Kurtz shouted. Sarge and I winced. "That's ours! How will we finish our mission without it?" "It looks like you're stuck here. Guards!" Odysseus and Arthur Dent came back in. "Bring them back into their room. Unless--" The Raven looked at us. "Would you be able to bring us back to Australia?" "They'd never let us back without the Plague cultures. Even them we might not be allowed back. I don't know what they'd do with you." "Then we have nothing more to discuss." We were returned to our room and advised to stay there. The lock on the door and the armed guards outside were very convincing arguments that that was a good idea. The next morning we watched out the window as almost all of the adults of the community marched out in search of the Quas. Every one of them had been temporarily made immune to The Plague because of the serum Raven had stolen from us. They had immunized as many people as they could, and all of them went out to finally destroy the evil and deranged Qua family which had attacked the compound so many times and had come so close to killing them all. We realized that unless we escaped and got to the plane in the next two weeks, our immunity would wear off and we might be trapped here forever. However, we were still guarded by Dent and Odysseus, who wouldn't allow us any opportunity to overpower them and take their guns. We therefore spent another day locked up as the last Americans fought their last enemy and Raven tried to decide what to do with us. After we were given lunch, we were brought to the Raven's office again. As we were brought across the compound we could hear gunshots and explosions echoing throughout the woods. The Raven once again asked us if we would forget about Australia and stay here. He told us that after this battle was over the settlement would be shorthanded, and he reminded us that Australia may not let us return. We reminded him that we had managed to sneak in once, we could do it again. "You can't even escape from my fortress here!" Raven yelled. "How will you get into the last bastion of a civilization that tries its hardest to keep everyone out?" "There is no way they can keep every inch of coast guarded," I replied. "If you let us go," Colonel Kurtz said, "we'll try to bring you back with us. We will make it somehow." "My place is here," the Raven said. "Unless you can bring all of my people, you and I are going nowhere. Shall I return you to your cell?" "No, it's more comfortable down here," Sarge replied. "Why is your office underground?" "Once we all lived underground," Raven replied. "Eventually we built a wall around us, and started to live aboveground again. Our food and other important supplies are still kept underground, as is my office." Just then, the ground shook as an unnaturally loud explosion manifested itself in the distance. "Hold on," Sarge said. "The second shock wave should hit soon." It did. Everyone was thrown to the floor. Kurtz and I used this chance to take Arthur Dent's and Odysseus' guns from them. "What was that?" I asked, as we motioned them to stand against the wall. "It seems that somehow the Quas must have gotten themselves an atom bomb," the Raven replied. "Put down the guns, we have more important things to worry about now..." "Well then," I said. "Before we were merely trapped in the compound. Now we don't even have that much space. What do we have down here for supplies?" "Don't worry about that," the Raven replied. "This cave complex was originally stocked by survivalists. We had to move in when we couldn't get to somewhere safer. Originally, they kind of 'objected' to our presence, but eventually they decided to let me take control. There are a couple of rooms full of crates down there, full of food I guess. We only had to open a couple." "If this place once belonged to survivalists," Colonel Kurtz said after a moment of thought, "there should be weapons around. Maybe radiation suits..." "Didn't you ever ask to owners what was in the crates?" Sergeant Friday asked. "I mean, how long have you been here?" "I been here a long time," quoth the Raven, "but they weren't here long. There were three of them to begin with. One, Balthazar he was called, was shot when we took the place. The other two, Scorpion and Overlord, were killed by the Quas. We never got around to opening all the crates." "We got plenty of time now," I suggested. "Let's check 'em out..." The first storeroom was full of food. Canned food, dry food, concentrates, granola... enough to last us a long time. The second had more of the same. The third storeroom was full of weapons. One of them was being pointed at us by a bloodstained man we thought was dead... "Zork!" Sarge yelled. "You're OK!" I remarked, in case someone hadn't figured that out yet. "What happened?" Kurtz asked. "His goons tried to kill me," Zork said, waving the gun at the Raven. "I figure I'll kill him, and maybe the three of you for not trying to stop them." "You don't want to do that," I said. "Why not?" Zork asked. "Because you're unconscious," I replied, as Kurtz grabbed the gun and Sarge knocked Zork out. When Zork came to, we explained recent events to him. He told us how he broke free and escaped from Dent and Odysseus, getting shot once as he ran away. It wasn't serious. Why Dent and Odysseus failed to report Zork's escape was anyone's guess. We continued the search and found seven radiation suits. We were all able to find one that fit. We decided to grab as much food as we could carry and head back to the plane. We could probably get back to Australia; we might even be able to complete our mission. We started out the next day... Carrying all the food we could carry in protective bags (which had originally been meant to carry geiger counters and other such instruments), we set out in the direction of the plane. After we had walked about a mile, Sarge looked back. "Do you think anyone else survived the blast?" "I doubt it," Col. Kurtz replied. "Why?" "Oh, I just noticed that we're being followed, that's all." "What?!?" I yelled. I dropped my sack on Zork's foot. Zork also yelled. "My god!" The Raven exclaimed. When God didn't reply, the Raven continued: "Those are Quas!!" "What should we do?" I asked. "Pick up your bloody sack," Zork growled. "Kill them, of course," the Raven said very calmly. "Kill them, rip them to shreds, burn them, bury them, jump up and down on the bloody bits, feed them to aardvarks..." "Sorry to interrupt," Sarge said, sorrowfully interrupting. "But we have no guns, grenades, or weapons of any kind. We only took food, remember?" "We do have these plastic knives," Zork suggested. I dropped the sack on his foot again. "Booby traps!" Kurtz exclaimed. "We have time to create a few simple booby traps, pits, pointed sticks... We can take out most of them before they get near us. The rest of them, well, they don't look armed or in much of a good condition for fighting..." Kurtz was right. The radiation had obviously taken its toll on the Quas. If they weren't reputed to be such assholes I might have felt sorry for them. They had red sores all over their body, most walked with a limp (but they were still moving faster than we were because we were encumbered with food), and they generally resembled the guy in "RoboCop" who hit the toxic waste tank. So, directed by the Colonel, we set up trip wires that dropped large rocks and branches from above. Zork sharpened sticks, which we put in a pit and also put on branches that we pulled back. This took a couple of hours, but should have been good enough to take out a couple of Quas. There seemed to be six of them, one was a woman and another was practically a baby. But it was them or us. We got into position and waited... The first Qua around the corner was probably the infamous Papa Qua, their leader. As he jumped around the corner and screamed for his family to attack, he fell through the covering of branches and leaves into our Burmese Tiger and Qua Trap. He hit the spikes with a disgusting sound, sort of a cross between a "splat" and a Bronx cheer... He lay unmoving with several spikes through his warped body. As Zork retched into the bushes, the Raven said: "One down, five to go..." The other Quas heard Papa Qua's grisly death, and hesitated before coming around the corner. We heard one of them, probably Mama Qua by the sound of it, whispering commands to the other Quas. They split up and tried to come at us from different directions. King Qua hit a trip wire and was impaled by several pointed sticks attached to a branch which swung into him. Jesus Qua, coming at us from the right, was crushed when a tree (the old Malay Man-Catcher trip) that was mostly chopped through fell on him. Finally, Col. Kurtz dropped a bag of large stones on Brother Qua, giving us enough time to take care of him. At this point, we were out of traps and were about to prepare for the attack of the remaining Quas. However, Mama Qua and her Baby had somehow circled around us much faster than we would have thought possible and entered our clearing from the rear (entering from the rear was a particular obsession with Mama Qua). Mama Qua hurled herself violently at the Raven, using her nails and teeth to trip to rip out the Raven's throat and testicles. It took Sergeant Friday and Colonel Kurtz to pull her off, and all three of them to knock her out. "Fiesty bitch," the Raven commented. "Yeah, huh?" Sarge replied. "Shut up, ya pinko panzy!" Kurtz told Sarge. Baby Qua, meanwhile, was attacking me. I was holding him off with one hand and trying to find a club or sharpened stick with the other when I wandered around the bush where Zork was still sick. I slipped on the wet ground (ugh!) and fell into the pit. Luckily, I landed on Papa's body. It was rather disgusting, actually, but much better than landing on the spikes. As the others tried to help me out of the pit, Baby Qua ran off, crying about how we murdered his family and how he would one day get even and rule us all. In the skermish, some of us had torn our radiation suits. Luckily, we were far enough away from the blast area that we didn't absorb too much radiation. We found the plane intact, and flew on to where Kurtz had estimated the meteor with the Plague(s) had hit. We took samples and headed back home to Australia. We called the Monk on the radio and explained to him what had happened. He managed to convince them to allow us back, and we were met at the airport by a large group of people (government, military, scientists), who had all recently been innoculated with the temporary vaccine. We were given new shots, as we had just three days left on the last ones we took, and the whole lot of us were kept in quarantine for five months. At the end of that time they had a cure, a vaccine that would make a person immune to all of the separate viruses of the Plague. They told us they might have had the cure faster if we had brought a Qua back, but we just shrugged. For a time, we were heroes, interviewed on TV and all that. Eventually, life went on. We went back to our wives and jobs. When the government decided to accept volunteers to re-colonize the rest of the world and alleviate the population problem on Australia, we all naturally joined up.