by Jackson Lear
There isn’t much to do here except wait and distract ourselves, so Ediz suggested a game with the African map. We each try to name as many of the countries as possible without looking at the map and see how many we can get. I got nine (and have since forgotten what two of them were). Ediz got to thirty. I don’t think I can even list thirty European countries.
Nope. I got to twenty. Either there aren’t thirty countries in Europe or my brain has died from shock, lack of food, or it’s the sweltering heat that keeps dripping sweat onto my diary.
At least I’m clean, though. Clean, caffeinated, and fed. Totally uncertain about the future, not even sure if I’ll be able to eat anything in a week, but at least right now I’m doing okay. Even Rachel and Cristina are in better moods.
Whenever we go for a walk around the streets we have to take our backpacks with us. We just want to see what our options are. Mentally, I’m trying to map out escape routes and see what connects to what. We get shouted at by just about every local. Maybe they think we’re coming to rob them, maybe they think we’re trying to find an empty house to break into. We can’t do too many walks because every time we come back to our camp site people seem to be getting closer and closer to our spot. It won’t be long until they move in completely and try to take our place. Ediz will say, “Six people are here.”
They will say, “There’s only two of you and five of us. Move over.”
“We’re saving that space.”
“There’s no saving. They’re not here so they lose it.”
I need more coffee.
Part 2.
I’ve been standing in the line for Gibraltar again, now for two hours. The guards are telling us that there are still no boats and no planes and they won’t let anyone in until there are boats and planes available. In the meantime, I’ve been studying the hell out of my Internet notes. In theory, I can now hot wire a car and pick a lock. I don’t have any picks or tools to break open a door, but I understand the theory. And if I find a magnifying glass I can start a fire with the sun. I’m learning how to make traps and how to hunt. It’s still all theory, since I can’t make a fire out here and there aren’t any rabbits worth catching. Ugh, what if one of those rabbits is covered in zombie fleas?
Part 3.
I’ve come back to the camp site and once again we’re counting off the countries we know, continent by continent. We also try the capital cities but it’s boring listening to people say the same places over and over again. There’s still no electricity.
Liam has been sitting outside our tarp for an hour as though he’s moving in with us whether we like it or not. He’s brought some people with him. There isn’t enough space here for him and his dickhead friends. I keep fearing that every time I line up to get into Gibraltar I’ll be turned away only to find that Liam’s friends have taken our spot and have managed to kick us out.
Ediz was asking me why I still write a diary. It gives me something to do, I guess. I started writing a diary in high school and never stopped. One day my life might be interesting enough for an autobiography, but right now I’m in the middle of something that everyone else is going through and I’m not doing anything remotely heroic about it. I’m just plodding along.
22 August
I woke up with incredible abdominal pain and hurried outside the tent without my backpack, turned back and had to grab it. By then Ediz, Rachel, and Cristina were awake and convinced that I’d seen a zombie or a soldier and was making a run for it. I ran to the public toilet and had to take a dump with my backpack sitting on my lap because the floor was absolutely rank with filth. I must have been in there for an hour, squeezing and trying to go. Even when I pissed it came in drips and drabs, barely anything. I also noticed there was no toilet paper so I rummaged through my bag to ready a pack of pocket tissues. After bursting a vein I passed something that felt like a solid pebble. Then, with the force of a thousand suns, everything else came gushing out. After that little episode it felt like someone had wiped my arsehole with a Guatemalan insanity pepper. I might actually need to see a doctor soon. I was sitting on the can for so long my legs had gone numb. Took five minutes to stand up.
I have since spent the day lying under the smelly tarp feeling hotter than anything, trying to sleep and not move. Maybe if I don’t move I won’t feel hungry or thirsty.
Cristina is finally at the stage of not caring and got changed in front of us. She said the bathrooms smelled so bad that she can’t go in there. Good God she is stunning. I caught a reasonable sight of her arse and some side-boob. She was careful not to look at anyone, despite there being five other people in the tarp.
The even better news is I haven’t seen Liam all day.
23 August
Liam woke me up early. Rachel rolled over and huffed. I had my game face on of being unimpressed with Liam, hoping he would pick up on the signal, but he actually had something worthwhile to say. There are a few restaurants in the area offering jobs. We would have to carry the crates of fish from the boats to the restaurants, as well as any wood or coal or fuel that the restaurants need, and they will feed us. In exchange for an hour or two of labour they’re offering us a free meal. I hadn’t eaten yesterday so I agreed. I tapped Rachel on the shoulder, told her what I was doing, and got Ediz and Azeem to help. The work was pretty tedious, just carrying crates of fish from the shore to the restaurants and back again. The restaurants sometimes use vans but with petrol being a scarce commodity these days it’s much cheaper using human labour. Some of the restaurants were twenty or thirty minutes away. We got lost a couple of times. Even so, we were done by ten, got fed, and we each brought back something for the girls. It’s not much but it’s free, kinda. Later today when the sun goes down a little I’m going to line up in front of Gibraltar again and try to find out when flights or boats might resume. It’s stupid because the zombies are already in every country and probably in every city. We all know what one looks like so we’re not going to let any of them onto a plane, and yet they’re stranding millions of people.
It’s the first time in days that I’ve left my backpack in the tent. It was all I could think about while I was lugging about the crates of fish. There are zombies somewhere in the country and I was at least a half hour walk, maybe a fifteen minute run, back to my things. If just one of those things popped up while I was carrying fish to a restaurant then I’m sure someone would have stolen my things, leaving me pretty much dead. And if I caught whoever robbed me I’d probably end up as a murderer and I’d walk towards Portugal.
Part 2.
I just came back from venting to Ediz by the beach. He had an interesting point which I had forgotten about: the zombies managed to spread before anyone realised there were zombies. It wasn’t an instant transformation, it was gradual, so someone could be infected, get on a plane as a human, land in London and spend the next few days getting worse before turning into a full blown zombie.
Part 3.
There are Africans going from tent to tent saying there are boats we can take, fishing boats even, which will help us get to any country we want. It seems like the dodgiest thing ever. Even Azeem tells them to piss off, but still these guys hang around.
24 August
Today was the same as yesterday – woke up to carry fish to restaurants, got fed, brought food back, waited under a tarp for six hours, got hassled by people trying to get us to take a boat to some far off country, waited in line to see what’s going on in Gibraltar, waited for the electricity to come back on, took another painful dump and felt my arse burning, and did my best to be polite to Liam, even when he asked me if I thought he had a chance with Cristina. No, you idiot, you certainly do not.
Carrying fish in crates by hand is exhausting. Each crate is about fifteen kilos and we have to carry it against our stomachs for up to half an hour at a time. My hands cramped up and started to blister from the bits of plastic that were sticking out. The salt water is also rubbing against my skin and burning me. My arms are like jelly
the moment I drop off my load. Then I head back to the shore and do it all over again, following instructions that are in Spanish or broken English (at best), following hand gestures as though I know where this restaurant is or that restaurant is not. I don’t even have a map. I just have to remember the instructions by brute-force use of memory. “Bring this to Casa Iberica, down that street, fourth road on the left, take the next road right, go up, you’ll see it.” If I happen to see a local I need to ask them, “Casa Iberica?” They wave in some general direction and then through divine luck I manage to get to the right place. I hurry back to the shore and get shouted at for taking my time.
I’m getting better at mentally mapping out La Linea de la Concepción. The streets are narrow and a virtual death trap, but most of them go north to south or east to west. Some squiggle about but it’s not as bad as central London. Every so often, though, you come to a fork in the road that goes kinda left and kinda right. The roads aren’t perfectly straight either, so you can only see a hundred metres down one way and up the other. If they were straight then we’d have a better chance of spotting a zombie if it was chasing after us.
25 August
There was no work for me at the docks today. I got there too late. Gonna be hungry for a while. I can now recite forty African countries. I need to be back in London in a week or else I lose my job.
28 August
It’s Sunday. Nothing’s open. We’ve been waiting here for twelve days now. England has pushed their quarantine up to five days. I have no Internet to tell work that I won’t be back in time. I’ll be fired for not turning up.
29 August
I had just delivered two crates of fish this morning and was about to offload a third from the boat when I looked into the water and saw a human body. It had been dead for a while and, thankfully, wasn’t moving. Maybe it was a zombie. Maybe it was an innocent person who drowned. I can’t help but think that there are people fishing in zombie-infested waters, that the fish might be eating the zombies, and that I’m eating those fish. I don’t know what to do about it. I delivered the fish and was told they’re out of rice, so the only thing available is fish. I ate it anyway.
My arms are going to fall off. I did six trips with crates of fish. Three hours of carrying fifteen kilos against my stomach.
I’ve lost another inch around my waist. So has Rachel. Please let me get to a cheeseburger and a coke.
We went off to find the church that helped us out before and volunteered there. I told them I could patch up a wall or a roof if necessary. They smiled and said no. Turns out, people have been volunteering there for days. Everything has already been repaired and replaced.
29 August
Big mistake. I washed all of my clothes in the ocean and now they’re itchy and salty and it feels worse than sweat.
I don’t think I’ve had a decent conversation in days. Probably weeks. None of us are all that chatty. We have a deck of cards and keep playing the same games over and over without any of us really improving. We keep fighting the wind. It’s a stupid losing battle.
Fourteen fucking days we’ve been here, waiting, with no sign of help. Forty two days since zombies were reported to be real. Would someone please tell me what the fucking delay is!?
30 August
I’m feeling a little sheepish here, but … I found €10 on the ground. There it was, lying on the road against the curb. No one was around. I scooped it up, pocketed it immediately, and kept on walking. If anyone had seen me it would have been fairly obvious, since I had to rest a crate’s worth of fish against my knee just to bend down.
My hands have been getting a decent shredding from carrying the load of fish but it’s my stomach that’s had it worse. I rest the plastic crate just an inch below my belly button and I come back with friction burns like you wouldn’t believe. But, with the €10 in my pocket, all I could think of was how to spend it.
Chances are I’m still going to be staring at Gibraltar for another week. A couple of planes have flown in and out and every time they do I look up in hope that maybe flights have resumed and that I’ll be on one of them by this time tomorrow. I line up at the border and the official tells us all that flights have not resumed, despite the fact that planes are taking off and landing.
Another problem that has started to creep in is, the longer we’re all here, the higher the chance it is that a zombie will get to us. We managed to walk from Seville to La Linea de la Concepción in, what, five days? Six? We stopped during the hottest part of the day and again at night, but even a slow moving zombie could reach us in the same amount of time if it just kept on walking without taking a break. So, with the increasing certainty that we’re going to die here, I decided not to save my new-found money and instead have a time-out and reclaim some sense of sanity.
Rachel and Cristina had been fighting with one of our neighbours and had retreated to the Mediterranean to try to calm down. Azeem stayed put under the tarp to keep Lalla company. I decided to shout Ediz to half a coffee. He was speechless at the gesture. I wish I could say it was out of the kindness of my heart, but I need someone to back me up if I’m ever in trouble. Rachel will, no problem. Cristina has a decent conscience. Ediz is a good guy and quick thinking, but that quick thinking might lead to a problem if he decides that I’ve just become a liability due to some accident. He pitched in some money, I used the change from the €10, and we shared a large cappuccino and a cheese bagel while staring across the Atlantic. It was glorious.
I finally asked why Lalla had spent the last three weeks crying. I always assumed it was the obvious – that she’s a nervous wreck and the walking dead are terrifying her. It dawned on me that I had never bothered to find out, I just immediately blamed her for being useless. Maybe she lost her entire family and they tried to kill her. Maybe Azeem kidnapped her and she can’t communicate with anyone to get their help. I find that one unlikely because here there are people who speak the same language as her and she hasn’t tried to escape. But you never know. Ediz had the answer and I wish it was more interesting than my imagination. She’s homesick, has never travelled before, had never been more than a night away from her parents before coming to Spain. Just the slightest bit of anxiety in her life catapults her into a full blown attack of hysterics. Azeem puts up with her because she’s his cousin. Apparently she’s also something of a shrieker when something jumps at her. If Ediz is right then she’s just scored herself a one-way ticket to abandonedsville if we’re in a life or death situation. If she shrieks while we’re hiding quietly …
Ediz and I stayed on that beach for about an hour, sitting quietly, staring at the horizon.
3 September
We’re in Morocco.
There was a scream and a scramble yesterday, just after 10am. There might have been a thousand people in the park waiting for Gibraltar to open and along came a zombie, just casually wandering through our camp. I have no idea how it got this far. It was the kind of scream we were all expecting and yet none of us were ready for the following stampede.
Rachel and I were in the middle of a card game when it happened. All of a sudden everyone looked up, pointed in one direction, and then shit was on. People grabbed their packs and ran, crashing into tarps and tents, getting knocked over by everyone else who joined the fray, getting trampled.
The zombie called out, “Surrender,” it that same voice. It kept stumbling forward, like a drunken goat herder pushing all of the pretty little humans into a bottle neck.
There’s nothing but narrow streets. Cars can squeeze through one at a time. I’ve seen pictures of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona where thousands of people are crammed into long and thin roads with several ferocious bulls racing along them. It looks like suicide. Here, people were pushing into each other with no idea of where to go. We were all bordering on exhaustion from the moment the zombie found us. My lungs were burning before I even left the campsite. I had a stitch in my side the moment I hit the road. Cars were trying to run me ove
r. The drivers saw a thousand refugees racing towards them in a violent thrall and every – single – fucking – one of them hit the accelerator and drove straight into us.
Did they get away with it? Some did. The others were yanked out of the driver’s seat, beaten unconscious, and then each car was a prized possession to be won by the alpha-male refugees.
Guess what happened then? Yeah. Alpha-males drove into the next lot of refugees. Some headed straight for Gibraltar. Some tried to find the closest way out of town.
The rest of us were crammed between the buildings, hurrying forward. Those who were the farthest away couldn’t see where the zombie was so they stopped and waited, while those who knew exactly where the zombie was kept trying to push through the deadlocked crowd to get the fuck away.
I saw one of the officers try to pepper spray the zombie to no effect. Another used his police car to drive up to it slowly, trying to push it away, but the zombie stumbled around and the car was not as manoeuvrable as you’d think, so the zombie just kept walking after us. It looked like it was once a security guard. He was missing a shoe.
I was hit from behind by a car. I survived with bruises. Others were not as fortunate. There was a trail of injuries all around me. One woman howled with both of her legs twisting in the wrong direction. Another woman had broken her pelvis. More had gashes and grazes along the side of their hands, arms, and faces. Some had bloodied noses from a fist-fight. I was banged up from hitting the bumper but I was able to turn in time and land on my backpack. I got poked in the kidneys by a saucepan handle.
