by Jackson Lear
I still can’t breathe properly. I think I’ve cracked one of my lower ribs. I can’t extend my chest out fully. That run almost killed me.
I can’t get the look of that zombie out of my mind, the one that said, “Getafe.” It looked at me dead in the eye.
And what the hell is wrong with me? Following twenty zombies just to get to a stupid backpack? After all this time I should know better.
Part 3.
If I had to summarise the last six months into just five words they would be: and then things got worse.
I’ve fucked up my right knee.
Can I walk? Kinda. Can I run? Not for more than ten metres, and I wish I was exaggerating because I’ve tried to run. The top of my shin bone feels like it’s being crushed into my kneecap. The whole area has swollen. The skin along the back of my knee feels numb, not the kind of numb where you don’t notice it, no. It’s the kind of freezing numb that you’re aware of but prevents you from moving quickly, like your limbs have become icicles so you end up moving in slow motion. Going downhill seems to be a lot worse than going up.
It means I’ve spent the best part of six hours running, hobbling, walking, and now crying because I am in too much pain to move another mile. I have to keep moving or else they’ll catch me, but I simply can’t move anymore.
I’m a blubbering mess. I’ve been kidnapped and forced into slavery, I’ve been chased to near death, I’ve seen a whole town fire bombed, I don’t speak the language, and I’m all alone. Rachel is somewhere. Ediz is somewhere. Cristina died in front of me and no one has made it back home. If I’m found dead no one is going to know who I am or where I’m from, aside from my diary, and that might easily blow into the wind and be lost forever. I’m going to be the unknown traveller, a random Brit on the Sicilian hillside. My parents will never know for certain what happened to me. How am I going to get off this fucking island?
Okay, Mark, you’ve had your moment. If you’ve broken your leg you’re just going to have to keep moving. Just go as far as you can until you need to rest, take five minutes, then move again. You still have another leg and that’s working fine. More or less.
8 January
I heard music today for the first time in months. The last I heard was some garbled crap in the interment camp. Some wanker blasted it on his phone like he was on the train, determined that everyone around him was going to listen to ‘awesome’ music whether they wanted to or not. Today was some Italian pop song in the background. It certainly had a corporate pop feel to it.
I met an elderly Italian couple. They live in a small cottage. I walked along a deserted road and saw the man, Carlo, picking apples from a tree in his front garden. I said hello, he said the same. He didn’t seem aggressive so I paused and said, “Telefono?” I made the gesture as well and he showed me to the front door. He asked me to wait and he brought the phone to me. I wrote down Cristina’s Sicilian family’s number and Carlo was kind enough to call. They were home and they spoke some English. I nearly collapsed with relief. I probably sounded like an idiot as well.
Her brother broke down in tears so I spoke to Cristina’s sister in law. She spoke to Carlo and asked him to help me out. We exchanged the phone a few times because she was our translator. She vouched for me being a good person and one of the heroes of this whole epidemic. In that moment I loved Cristina’s family more than anyone on Earth. Even from beyond the grave Cristina was able to save my life. Carlo had a couple of bikes, which is a blessing because my knee is so swollen that I can barely stand up without shrieking in pain. We rode towards a coastal villa. It seems to be a refuge for foreigners. A lot of Europeans decided to move to Sicily for their retirement. A lot of them speak English. Carlo bid me a farewell and he walked back with his two bikes.
I met with Filipo, a middle aged man who married an English woman. She died last year. He asked me to help out around the place. I told him that I was a slave in a farm only last week and Filipo promised me that I am not a slave here. There are no gunmen, no harsh rules, but it is now a community. He said that he’s been in contact with the British government and he’s trying to return the English to England.
I met with a few other people here. Filipo seems to be a man of his word. He was able to get a boat for the French guests here just three days ago. One of them called here to say that they landed and made it to Nice safely.
Filipo is a nice guy … but I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Kindness can’t be as easy as this.
10 January
I’ve been typing up my diary online and emailing it to my parents as some kind of record. John, one of the guys from Sussex who arrived a week before me, said that he heard the Haitian speak on the radio. No one knows what he looks like, but they’ve heard his voice. This gist of his short speech was: “Your weapons are stoppable. Mine are not. Your only chance of coming back to life is by surrendering to me.”
According to the news, the Haitian is now in command of several countries. He has a million zombies (what the fuck?) under his control and he has forced at least eight countries to surrender. Some of the zombies have begun showing signs of sentience. They have been given orders and actually follow them. They’re still about as smart as the dumbest of dogs, but every so often one is seen showing a burst of sudden intelligence, to the point where they’re now able to drive a truck or build a bomb. Then, when their objective is over, they’re back to being as dumb as Rover. That’s telling quite a few people that the Haitian, or at least his lieutenants like Boyer, are able to telepathically link into any zombie they want and get them to complete complicated tasks or target specific people in a crowd.
The folks here are a lot nicer to talk to than back at the farm. We get to sit on sofas and watch the TV, even though it’s mostly in Italian. Filipo has a few movies in English which we watch. The Notebook seems to be on a constant repeat.
The bathroom is still an issue. There are too many of us and only two bathrooms. Thankfully we don’t have another Lalla situation where someone is locking themselves inside, but one room is now for the men and the other is for the women, because some of the women didn’t like being walked in on and have complained.
There’s a girl here from Ruislip. Jessica. She gave me her details and told me to contact her if I find a job, because she wants one as well. She was studying in Sicily until the university closed down and her bank account was frozen. Everyone around here has a story of survival, though for some reason they all want to hear about me crossing the Mediterranean twice and escaping a slave farm. They all say they would stab anyone who forced them to work in a camp like that, but you know what? I had a month’s worth of chances and I didn’t do shit about it. I thought about it enough times, where I actively wanted to kill Enzo, but I never did it. On the bright side, I know his farm is a day’s walk south from the firebombed town of 6 January. Retribution is coming, you arsehole.
21 January
It’s been okay here. No real complaints. We have access to the news. Most of the governments have militarised their people and have deputised a lot of locals. Come hell or high water they are forcing civilisation to continue, but the damage will still take decades to fix. The current problem is zombies kitted out as suicide bombers. Just as you would imagine, these creatures are walking into buildings and blowing themselves up. They are targeting government buildings, hospitals, and bridges. The Haitian has also ordered them to drive truck after truck into the Suez and Panama canals to barricade them.
I had a dream about Cristina. She told me she loved me. I woke up with tears in my eyes.
I still haven’t heard from Rachel, Ediz, or Simon. I was able to send an email to Moroccan Mel but I haven’t heard back yet. I sent an email to everyone I knew (bar one), relaying my story and hoping that they are well. One person replied, Steph from work. She said that when I get back to London I won’t recognise the place. There are soldiers everywhere, barricades, and check points. The state of paranoia is extreme and the government is passin
g laws that, under any other time, would cause riots and assassinations. She didn’t elaborate beyond the phrase, ‘England first.’ Not ‘English first’, no. ‘England’. I guess the needs of the state out weigh the needs of the people and that, when I go back, no one will have any rights. I’m willing to bet that my emails have been blocked through various firewalls. That might explain why I haven’t had many responses.
I’m confident that somewhere in England there are camps like the ones I’ve been stuck in, complete with slaves hired out for work. I’m going to help them get out. I will buy their freedom if I have to.
I’ve become close with this lady called Chloe. She lost her husband to a zombie. We stay up all night talking. She’s from New Zealand and is leaving in four days. On the second night of our chats I asked why she was still talking to me. She said it was because I’m suffering from more stress than I realise and I’m barely coping. I thought I was coping just fine. She said that’s why everyone is interested in me, because they’ve all had it easy and I’ve had the worst of it. I started blubbering about my life, about losing Cristina, having Rachel taken away from me, and for three hours she just sat there, listening, never once interrupting me. Then I found out that she lost her two children as well. Her husband attacked them. So for a while I felt like a jackass, having just blabbered on as though my problems were worse than hers. She was able to calm me down and told me that no one’s problems are worse and that no one is here to compare. We’ve all been through hell. No one’s hell trumps another’s.
I’ve finished typing up my diary. I’m sending what I have to my parents. I asked them also to keep all of the contact details from the people I met in Madrid; Katy, Nadia, Sofia, the French trio, Michael, Derek, Louise, Ediz, Cristina (for what it’s worth), and Rachel.
A boat is coming for the English tomorrow. It’s taking us to Gibraltar of all places.
22 January (not quite, but I’ve tried to keep the wording exactly the same as when I first wrote it.)
Land ho!
We’re finally on a boat! And not some dinky thing that will flip over with the slightest of waves, but a proper multi-deck ferry. British soldiers were on board when we got on. They were checking our stories and making sure we were who we said we were. They asked me to say, “Squirrel.”
Why? Who knows.
I was delayed the longest, having lost my passport and documents to Enzo and his farm. They called my family and had them send pictures of me online so they could see who I was. They asked me a hundred questions about where I went to school, when did I graduate, where did I work, and they double checked everything they could. I passed.
Part 2.
And then things got worse.
There’s a zombie on board. She must’ve climbed on in Sicily and we’ve only noticed her now. There’s blood splatter on her top. This one is talking, saying, “Don’t shoot me,” in English. Her eyes are vacant, though. She’s saying the words but she doesn’t know she’s saying them. The soldiers have her pushed against the bow of the ship, with all of their weapons drawn on her. They keep asking if she knows her name and where she’s from. She looks Italian. In fact, she looks a lot like Cristina. Same height, same figure, same hair. She keeps mumbling, “I’m scared,” but she can’t even tell the soldiers her name. They’re ordering her to climb overboard. She still says she’s scared. They’re going to force her off the boat, I know it. They’re just going to leave her to die. This is when we need a human test. How the hell am I ever going to be able to sleep, knowing that these things can go anywhere and climb on board anything?
Part 3.
The civilians were pushed to the back of the boat. We’re being checked over again. The soldiers don’t want to come anywhere near us in case we infect them. We were segregated, men and women, strip searched and checked for any scratch, bite or mark that would give them a reason to throw us overboard.
When we were allowed out again the zombie woman at the bow was gone. There wasn’t any blood, but no one will tell us what really happened. Or, rather, no one asked what happened and the soldiers didn’t volunteer to tell us.
24 January
Gueeeeeess what? I’m in Gibraltar for the first time in my life. Yeah. Imagine my excitement. I’m also under quarantine. We were strip searched again and given a full medical exam. According to the metric system I’m sixty four kilos. This apocalypse has cost me thirty pounds.
We were given care packages. All of our clothes and possessions were seized and burned. Why? Because we’re all covered in disease. They took my handwritten diary and burned it. For fuck’s sake. I rewrote as much as I could from the last few days, word for word, from what I remember. My diary went from 246 pages down to 1 in the blink of an eye. I’m now relying on getting the rest of it from email, assuming that it hasn’t been blocked or deleted. If that’s gone then I’ll have no record at all of where I was, who I spoke to, and what happened to me. I’ll just be another nameless face in the crowd.
I’m now wearing freshly steamed faded green pants and a pale blue cotton shirt. I don’t like the combination. I’m told I’ll be here for a few weeks until they are able to clear a quarantine unit in England. All of our phone calls and emails are being screened.
I keep thinking about that zombie woman. I saw the look in her eyes. She was genuinely scared. Soon these things will pass for human and we won’t know who is alive and who is dead.
We’re located in the Gibraltar airport. I can almost see the parklands where we were camped five months ago. They’ve allowed a trickle of people to cross the border every couple of days. Apparently my name popped up as ‘authorised’ a while back but I had left by then. All I had to do was stay in La Linea de la Concepción and I would be home by now.
I asked about what happened on the day we high-tailed it to Morocco. A couple of zombies had managed to follow the road along the coast. They attacked our camp. Lots of people were turned into the Haitian’s Bitch. Zombies charged at the Gibraltar border. So did the humans. No one is willing to say which side of living the casualties were on or how either side actually met their fate, but I’m told a thousand people died over the following few days. The dead were left for Spain to clear up. The Spaniards were super pissed off that Gibraltar opened fire on Spanish territory and killed a whole lotta people that Spain then had to ID and dispose of. Since then they’ve been a little testy with each other. Spain has even set up military barricades with guns pointing at Gibraltar. I’m looking at them right now.
Spain has a new president. He’s made it a point that, above all else, Barcelona and Valencia will not secede. He’s also given himself emergency new powers. By the grace of God he will still be in power by the time I’m old and weary.
I’ve come to the realisation that learning another language is no longer necessary for my life. It will be years before they lift the borders around the countries and the hassle of getting through will be too much. Several airlines have collapsed and the planes are sitting unused in airports around the world. Cargo planes are still active. I imagine Boeing and Airbus will survive but as a mere shadow of what they used to be. I also imagine that solar power will be the new push for the future so that we don’t get bogged down with a lack of oil. Still, that won’t stop wars for oil.
I remember reading an initiative from Cambridge University just before I started this whole ordeal – that their science department were working on bio-steel and bio-concrete, where they can grow plants with certain properties that can be pulverised and hardened for building purposes. Anything that can make England self-sufficient will be a plus.
When you die, you will now be cremated. Organ transplants have stopped. They can’t risk an infection. Alcohol imports have slowed. Tourism has stopped completely. Public health is the number one focus, or at least it’s the number one distraction while the government targets its real number one focus, whatever that may be.
There’s a TV in one of the rooms playing old Monty Python movies. Thank fuck, becaus
e I’m dying of boredom.
19 February
There’s nothing to do here. No one to talk to. I went online to check symptoms for depression, survivor guilt, post-traumatic stress. I have it all. Nightmares, hyper-vigilance, anger, flashbacks, rethinking past situations and figuring out what I should have done differently, regretting every moment of my European trip, numbness, mood swings, crying, and enough guilt to make a Catholic proud. I want to punch so many people and shout at them and it’s with the utmost inner strength that I contain myself. I’m just waiting around, getting older, slowly dying, and there’s no one who can let me get on with my life.
They’ve killed Boyer in Algeria. There’s already another lieutenant who has taken his place. Rebels have overthrown many more governments around the world. I’d list the countries that have fallen, but it’s too long and too pointless. Those rebels won’t hold the country for long. There will be another uprising, either from the dead taking their revenge or the living with an opposing dogma.
In England soldiers have been going door to door searching for zombies, executing them and bringing them to a mass crematorium, then they close down the house the zombie was found in, pour shitloads of chemicals on every surface and dissolve the building into slush. They burn whatever remains. Finally they bulldoze what couldn’t be burnt and scrub the earth clean.
Insurance companies have collapsed. They’ve just taken our money and have run off with it, leaving no one protected in the event of a fire, theft, damage, or government cleansing.
