by Jackson Lear
3) Everyone around the world has seen at least one zombie movie and they all know what to avoid and how to survive, i.e. shoot the fucking zombies before they become a problem.
The Internet is back, the phone lines are open, and the world has gone to shit. This better be an elaborate hoax because Sofia is as white as a ghost. “That’s my city,” she said, over and over, watching images of the downtown area that have been streamed from phones and street level security cameras.
We were all sitting in the lounge with the TV on and everyone had their laptops out checking the news from all over the world.
St. Petersberg: fucked.
Krakow: fucked.
Helsinki: fucked.
Vienna: fucked.
Budapest: fucked.
Istanbul: fucked.
Edinburgh: fucked.
Firstly, I have no idea how the hell anyone managed to fuck up Edinburgh. It’s on an island in a no-fly zone and somehow there are dozens of zombies running rampant. At this point I’m thinking there are only a few safe places left in the world, Malta being one of them and Antarctica being the other.
Michael was telling me it won’t really be that bad, there will always be pockets of survivors no matter how bad everything gets. He also reminded me that we are in a city surrounded by hundreds of kilometres of desert, so good luck to the zombies getting through. There’s just one slight problem there: the Edinburgh conundrum. First there were no zombies in St. Petersberg. Then there were zombies in St. Petersberg. Then the UK sealed itself off to stop the spread of clusterfuckedness. Then, days after St. Petersberg was flooded with zombies, zombies appeared in Scotland. How? If they can go from Russia to Scotland without conquering everything in between then they can go anywhere.
It also means the spread of infection takes a while, obviously long enough to become infected, board a flight, take off, land in another country, then fall victim to the lunacy of science fiction. I mean, what the shit is going on here?
There are hundreds of zombies causing havoc in each of those cities. There’s only a few hundred of them and yet everyone around the world is crippled with fear. It’s like if there was one fake sighting of a zombie in Mexico City then the entire population would cross the border into Texas just to get away from it. Why? Because we’ve all seen the movies, which, frankly, might soon be regarded as documentaries.
There was a video from Estonia of a zombie with a shotgun. That doesn’t bode well. He looked like a regular guy stumbling down the street like he was blind drunk. He was able to keep a central line while walking, though. So the only difference between him and an actual drunk person? His coordination was much better. He was dressed in a cheap blue tracksuit that was covered in blood. Maybe he had been out hunting zombies when one of them got him. People were shooting at him with pistols. The zombie shot back, slowly and stupidly. Then he ran out of shells and kept trying to shoot. Maybe it thinks it’s still human. I’ve never seen someone … actually, no, I have seen someone being shot before, online. Some guy took a shotgun blast to the face. His body fell limp. Worst thing I’ve ever seen.
Wait, no. The worst thing I’ve ever seen was the Japanese girl going up in flames in a restaurant.
I have enough bread and pasta to last four days before my situation becomes desperate. Rachel is the same.
Katy just went upstairs to the roof. Please don’t let her jump. Please. Even though she said she was just going to wait it out and let the authorities clean up the mess in cities that don’t affect her, please don’t let her jump.
Part 2.
I called the embassy. They have my address here, they have my address back home. They have my phone number, email, and the usual details. I’ve been set up with a text alert about what to do or where to go. I asked if there was any chance of flying back home. Nope. We’re staying put.
Part 3.
There are zombie sales in the street. Anywhere that sells booze is open for business. There are trivia games going all around the city. It’s all because the various presidents and prime ministers of the world have announced that the spread of the disease is ‘contained’. My arse it’s contained. They’ve really shot themselves in the foot with that statement. If the situation is contained then everyone else can go on with their lives normally. If they say it’s contained when it isn’t they’re risking every human alive. If they say it isn’t contained then there will be widespread panic.
I got the ball rolling with a couple of songs earlier, just to relieve some tension. It began with replacing words in typical songs with ‘zombie’ and seeing which ones are the funniest. ‘I got 99 problems but a zombie ain’t one’ was my highest claim to fame. ‘Hold me closer tiny zombie’ was Rachel’s best. ‘Zombie in the deep’ was Cristina’s. It certainly brought new light to the lyrics and it bummed us out.
Then we were inventing all sorts of songs, love songs to zombies, anything from Elvis to Eminem where the focus is now on the undead. That branched off into general trivia and scenarios, like what would you do if a zombie lumbered down the street? I imagine I would casually out walk it.
One quirk of the Internet is that the zombie uprising has put a stop to a lot of pointless pictures showing off how incredibly mundane everyone’s lives are. I just made dinner! Better take a picture and post it online. I’m reading a book with a glass of wine! Better take a picture and post it online. Look at my cat! Better take a picture and post it online.
St. Petersberg is evacuating the city. That doesn’t sound like ‘contained’, does it? And get this: no one is looting. They’re walking around with backpacks and those are probably full of food and anything valuable. I wonder how long the no looting thing lasts for. Right now there are a dozen cities affected and there’s bound to be some nutter taking shit that isn’t his.
Not everything is running perfectly smooth over here. The lines for the ATM are huge. I had to wait twenty minutes in the sun just to withdraw a stack of cash. It’s probably the most I’ve ever carried at one time.
I figured another couple of reasons this ‘apocalypse’ will never happen.
1) Dead flesh doesn’t stay around for that long. Eventually the body will rot away to just bones.
2) Dead flesh in the winter or summer is going to freeze or cook quite easily.
3) There are millions of people in well contained pockets of mankind, not just Malta. There’s everyone who can stay on a boat or submarine for a long time. Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Ireland, and lots of islands in the Caribbean are closed off to the world now. I imagine somewhere like Cuba would be easy to contain until there are boats loaded with zombies. And there are lots of people in middle America who are well armed and won’t find much contact with zombies either. That said, what qualifies as an apocalypse? One million people dead? One hundred million people dead? Right now we have an outbreak, so at what point would it shift into an apocalypse? If 10% of the population fell dead? 20%?
The nauseating thing is knowing that one hundred million dead people is just a blip in our population. It’s only 1.4% of us. How many dead people do you need to reach the tipping point where fear takes over? One hundred million people might die from a zombie infection, but how many more will die because someone shot them because they weren’t going to take the chance of trusting them as a decent human being?
‘Fuck everyone else because I will do whatever it takes so that I survive.’
So, what happens in Madrid when zombies are walking around a thousand miles away? Drinking. The fiestas around the country have been shut down as a mark of respect and caution. There are free check ups at the hospital for a quick zombie test but no one is really buying that. Hospitals are busy and packed even when there isn’t a mass outbreak of the undead. A quick test should be quite simple:
“Hey! You! Are you alive?”
“Uhhhhhhh …”
“Put your arms up in the air!”
“Uhhhhhhh …”
“I’m warning you!”
“Uhh
hhhhh …”
(Warning shot)
(More shuffling)
(Kill shot)
“Either he/she/it was a zombie or he/she/it is so friggin’ stupid the world doesn’t need ‘em.”
Simple.
I’ve been drinking so I’m kinda drunk. Hang on, zombie drinking game, brb.
Part 4.
Back. Three hours later and the drinking game was pretty epic! It was engineered by Sofia, the Russian, in celebration of her family being safely evacuated and her loving the Russian military for saving them. She got a call and her folks are in a small town where Sofia’s grandmother lives, so they’re staying with her. Sofia is beyond relieved and spent the first hour laughing, kissing everyone in sight (no complaints here), and crying in joy while giving us a run down on the best vodka available. Her energy lifted the whole mood, so Derek got us all drinking. We were all partnered up, guys and girls. I was not missing any cues this time so I kept my mouth shut. It was surprising how quickly people gravitate towards each other because there were two options: find your own partner or everyone’s name would be drawn out of a mug. Yep, a mug. We’re classy. Everyone found a partner.
Sunburned French girl and sunburned French guy.
French guy and Nadia, the Indian girl.
Derek and Cristina.
Katy and Michael.
Sofia and Ediz.
Rachel and myself.
Louise sat out and went to her room to call her folks.
We each had turns in our teams to answer zombie trivia questions, zombie movie questions, and so on. Whoever was correct got to nominate another team to take a drink. Then we watched the news (in English). If there was a sign (like a protest sign) saying the apocalypse is coming, the end is nigh, or that bible quote John 14 something … essentially any sign that was written by a Debby-downer … the guys had to take a shot (of beer or wine, since we would have died if it was spirits). Any time there was someone trying to call for calm and peace the girls had to take a shot.
It didn’t take long before we were all sloshed enough for titty shots! The girls poured a shot glass and put it in their cleavage (poor French girl doesn’t have much of a cleavage) and their partner had to pluck it out with their mouth and down it hands-free. Since it was largely one-sided we needed to change the rules. For every titty shot the guy had to wear something of their girl’s (she got to choose what, and it wasn’t anything she was wearing, rather something from her closet or suitcase), so Michael ended up wearing five girly tank tops. Guess how many g-strings came out? Zero. And bras? None. Spoil-sports.
Things went well until Nadia ran to the bathroom and threw up. That stopped most of the festivities for a while and everyone was wrecked. Seriously, only half an hour of ‘Breaking News’ was all it took for us to get clobbered on beer and wine. By the end we were just sipping instead of shooting.
Some bad news: Louise won’t be flying out tomorrow. The airports will be closed for at least three more days and she’s stressing out. It isn’t just Barajas that has closed down, it’s everything in Europe, so even if she could fly out of here she wouldn’t be able to land anywhere. I think Shannon is the closest airport to Sligo but I don’t know for sure.
You know what we need now? A robot army uprising. Robots versus zombies! They would have to be psychotic zombies and outnumber the robots to make it a fair fight. Make it a game show and everyone wins.
Clint removed his latest picture series of Basil In Peril. He had one of an urn with the caption, ‘Poor Basil. RIP.’ Yeah, that was pushing it, dick. The next was, ‘Back from the pet store. Hope Mark doesn’t notice that Basil is now a female.’ I’m expecting a call from Mum any moment now.
Part 5.
The US now has drones flying over their major cities. Drones with guns. The bastards stole my idea! Robots versus zombies. I’m sure that’s not doing much to quell the fears of the masses (I can’t believe I could even use ‘quell’ while heavily intoxicated, hehe). Imagine if there are no walking undead in your area but there are flying death machines overhead ready to take on anyone who’s walking too slow. The government is questioning everyone who has flown in from overseas. They’re all calling for calm.
Cristina apparently hates zombie movies. They creep her out. A lot of that is because it forces the survivors to become murderers. Take vampires, for example. There’s only ever a couple of them at most so only a handful of us will be required to kill them. If we’re fighting zombies then everyone on the planet will be forced to pick up arms and kill their former family, friends, and neighbours. And while they look human they can no longer act like it. Vampires have all the memories. They can taunt, they can talk, they can seduce. Zombies have none of that, it’s like the worse-case scenario of someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s. Your mind is taken away from you.
We’re also desensitised to shooting people. I wouldn’t think twice about shooting a zombie but there’s no way I could take a baseball bat to one of their heads. I’d have to get in close, put my life in danger, and then the only way to win is when I hear a crack along the top of their skull as I beat my former friends and family to death.
20 July
Some of the Russian soldiers are quarantined. A couple of them are dead because of injuries and counter attacks. There is an American CDC team flying in to come up with a vaccine or a cure but they’re still preparing themselves in the States. Every infected city says they are making progress. The Germans are researching various animals to see if it can spread that way. Zombie dogs, zombie rats, zombie birds … we’ll see. I don’t know how long it would take before the effects become noticeable. They’re still trying to figure out how all of this started and are asking everyone around the world to help identify Patient Zero. So far they don’t even know where he/she/it would be. They might be dead in the middle of Siberia or floating down the Ganges by now.
I helped Cristina in the kitchen today and for the first time in my life I’ve made fresh pasta. 1 cup of fine semolina flour, 1 and a quarter cups of plain flour, 4 eggs. Mix everything together and wipe the goo off your fingers. Add a little more flour until the pasta ball no longer sticks to the bowl. She said it was easy, but good god it was time consuming. Leave the pasta ball for half an hour, then cut it up, roll it out, cut it into strips, hang it out to dry for another half an hour, then cook, but not for ten or twelve minutes like regular pasta, no. Two minutes, tops. And don’t put oil in the boiling water, only salt. Just as well Cristina handled that part because I would’ve fucked it up.
Part 2.
Rio de Janeiro has been hit. That’s a little unnerving. I have no idea how it managed to cross the ocean but obviously someone flew across while sick. They weren’t expecting it in Rio and it’s actually worse there than in Russia. Russia has four cities that are affected and being dealt with.
One story from St. Petersberg chilled me. The police responded to suspicious noises and found a grandma in her apartment with her dead husband banging on the bedroom door. She had managed to barricade him inside but she didn’t dare leave the apartment until he got better. She kept passing food to him under the door. When the police finally arrived they had to drag her away. All the food she had been giving to her husband was mouldy and rotten, stinking up the whole bedroom and turning into a sort of furry puss. He had been treading all over it for thirteen days, moving back and forth along the wall as he tried to find another way out. Thirteen fucking days of him banging on the bedroom door, trying to get out and kill his wife. And she stayed in the living room the whole time, passing food to him! She even barricaded the front door to stop the police from coming in!
As I was saying: Rio. Four thousand people were admitted to hospitals with symptoms and six hundred have been killed in the street already.
They are introducing three levels of symptoms: light, medium, and heavy. Light symptoms are mostly psychosomatic, animal bites, rashes, etc, and are of no real concern. Medium means that you are definitely infected and need to be close
ly observed. Your eyes will be bloodshot, open wounds will have stopped bleeding but won’t close, your bowels will loosen and your organs will be in pain. Heavy means that your body can no longer keep itself running without medical aid. Your organs are shutting down, you’re pissing and shitting blood.
I’m assuming a zombie would be level four.
Wall Street is closed. They’re predicting another financial collapse around the world as people fall into a panic. Travel is largely suspended, medical industries have had their stock soar, and oil is dropping.
The government is being paranoid now and recalling all meat products except for fish, so bye bye lamb, beef, and chicken. Everything meaty is being destroyed so the restaurants are closing down or serving vegetarian. That made Rachel somewhat happy but I wish I had some advanced warning on that so I could have stocked up.
There are now five Zombie Locator apps available to download. Didn’t take long, did it? One of them is connected to your phone’s GPS, so you type in how many zombies are in your area, click ‘update’, and presto! I guess some server filters out the hundreds of updates and tells you the exact location of all the zombies roaming around. There are ads on the app as well. So far it’s kind of buggy.
There’s also a Help Me app. There are two functions. You can log in as a helper or as a helpee. So, I’d be typing in that I’m male, where I’m from, where I’m trying to get to, how many people are in my group looking for refuge, etc. Then it tells me where the nearest helper is. I’m weary of this app, mostly because you have to specify if you’re male or female. It sounds like a group of women would be easy prey for a helper who isn’t as honest as he makes himself out to be.
Part 3.
I just got a call from Dad. He and Mum are heading into the country. The motorways are jammed as everyone is leaving London. Dad said they haven’t moved in two hours, they’re just sitting in the car with the engine off and the windows down. No one else is moving, probably because of a couple of accidents farther down the road. Everyone is being really nice but almost all of London had the same knee-jerk reaction at the same time. And who wouldn’t, there are now zombies in the world! He saw a news helicopter hover over head so he considers that a good sign, especially since there aren’t any screams and no one is running.
