The Journal of Tom Barnett: Vampire Apocalypse Survivor

by Daniel S. Atkinson

  30th November. 10.40am.

  Nothing on the TV. I don’t mean there’s nothing to watch, I mean there is literally nothing on the TV. Just that fuzz. I hate that fuzz, it has always creeped me out ever since I saw Poltergeist. That little girl staring into the TV like a zombie, talking to the ghosts. It’s giving my goose bumps just thinking about it. I remember when Rory and I watched Poltergeist. We had read about it on the net, how the people involved were cursed, some even dying in mysterious ways. So we hired it and watched it late one night. We thought: how scary can this old movie be? Well it scared the crap out of us. Good times.

  But that fuzzy image is haunting. I switched off our telly after going through all the channels. Nothing. This is a bad sign.

  30th November. 13:57pm.

  At least the internet still works, well sort of. Let me explain. Nearly all of the local (Aussie) news sites are still up, but they haven’t been updated for hours. Take the Herald-Sun newspaper’s site. Last story I could find is dated 21:31pm last night. It’s a story about the Australian Army withdrawing from metropolitan areas. They are vastly outnumbered by the vampires. Army has suffered significant losses and there are doubts as to its continued functionality. There have been unconfirmed reports of many desertions as well. Soldiers looking to reunite with loved ones before it’s too late.

  This report felt weird to me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then I realised the cause, there were quite a few grammar and spelling mistakes. You could tell the journo was rushed. Seeing it was the last story posted, maybe they were the last ones to leave the building. Or the last one left alive.

  The federal government’s website is still running. I guess they are operating it out of Hobart. There seems to be two main press releases on the site. This first is a message to citizens on the mainland. It’s a rehash of the PM’s last press conference, be vigilant, advice on survival, don’t go outside, etc. The last paragraph was new. They promise that everything will be done to mount rescue missions once the crisis has abated. Ha! It will only abate when there is no one left for the vampires to kill. I wonder if vampires can die of starvation.

  Second message is an international press release in conjunction with the UN. It talks about the Australian mainland being a quarantine no-go zone. The shoreline is being monitored by numerous flotillas (including thirty aircraft carrier battle ships). Any ships or aircraft leaving or approaching the mainland will be dealt with deadly force. This is bit of a contradiction to the previous message. No one is coming to help us. The risk of the vampires spreading is too great. I mean they took over the entire country within a week. The rest of the world would fall in less than a month.

  30th November. 3:35pm.

  The international websites are more revealing. They don’t appear to have any more information regarding the vampires. The US, UK and UN seem to be just as flummoxed as our authorities are. Due to the quarantine situation, they are unable or unwilling to do any further scientific investigations. I seriously doubt they will find anything though. As our Prime Minister all but admitted, this is Supernatural.

  I found this political commentator in the US, some fatso called Limbaugh. Was listening to his radio rants for a while. He’s calling for nuclear strikes on all the major cities in Australia. That’s just fucking great. If by some miracle I survive this nightmare, some gung ho cowboy will ruin my party by dropping the bomb on my head.

  30th November. 18.57pm.

  I have been doing some research on the net. Overseas scientists don’t really seem to know much at all. They just don’t have any first hand data. The Aussie scientists however have done some front line research. Initially I couldn’t find any of this data. Our government website is blocking or refusing to publish their findings. However I was able to find one of their reports via an American website. They must have obtained a leaked report somehow.

  The most troublesome finding was that they are unable to identify any kind of pathology. That means there is no biological reason for this crisis, well no biological reason they can discover. This must be why they are reluctant to release their findings. Can you imagine the panic if this got out? The people who are elected to protect us have no fucking clue. Then again there won’t be anyone left to vote them out.

  I’m pretty confident they will never find a scientific solution. These are vampires, plain and simple. I also think I understand now how this got so bad, so quickly. Remember how heaps of people were sick last week? A laboratory in Adelaide ran tests on two infected ‘patients.’ God knows how the managed it. The first patient had those flu like symptoms and died shortly after. The other patient was his wife, she had no symptoms.

  Talk about unethical practices. They must have known her husband would attack and kill her. Their excuse appears to be that they thought she might have the infection as well. In their defence, no one knew what the hell was going on.

  The current thinking according to the report is that three out of four people die from this initial flu like infection. After that there is one hundred percent reanimation. All of them come back as vampires. On top of this horrific situation anyone killed by a vampire is resurrected. This terrible chain reaction must have occurred in every home across the nation. It spread like wildfire. No one was safe.

  I guess I was lucky, neither Dad nor myself suffered that initial infection. If he had turned, I would be dead right now. Re-animated as one of those ghouls.

  30th November. 22.40pm.

  Couldn’t wait any longer, I was starting to feel woozy. I had to eat something. Or else my stomach would have eaten itself. Food situation is getting grim. I finished off the pasta. The only thing left to eat now is the cornflakes, a frozen steak and a couple of carrots. Not sure what I’ll do once they are gone.

  1st December. 07.59am.

  I found my school yearbook. It was underneath my bed. I won’t tell you why I was looking under there. Let’s just say it’s my hiding place. I’m not sure how the yearbook ended up there. I also found an old apple core. It was so desiccated. It looked like a shrivelled old man who had just sucked on a lemon.

  I hadn’t given the yearbook a second glance since receiving it at the end of last year. I flipped through it casually now. Here was my football team. We weren’t very good, but we had managed to win a few games. The team was probably my favourite part of going to school. The side is made up of year 10, 11 and 12’s. I am standing next to Rory. Even though he is taller than me, we look the same height in the photo because I am standing on my tippy toes. It’s a neat little trick of mine.

  Here is a photo of my home group, 10B. Mrs. Ketcher is looming over the seated students like a vulture. Talk about sucking a lemon, she looks like she swallowed a whole lemon tree. You can probably tell I never got along with her very well. One good thing about the world ending is I don’t have to put up with her shit on a daily basis. I turned the page quickly so I didn’t have to look at her anymore.

  The next page hit me like a slap in the face. Staring up at me was a picture of Kelly MacKenzie. I felt the familiar sensation of my stomach tightening. This happened without fail every time I saw her. The photo showed her and a friend (I forget her name) displaying the fruits of their home economics labour; a large chocolate cake covered in fresh, plump strawberries. I felt saliva forming in my mouth and had to slurp to stop myself drooling. I didn’t know whether I was drooling over Kelly or the cake.

  I lay back on the bed and held the yearbook over my head. Her face floated above me, completely filling my field of vision. She is not a very tall girl, at least head and shoulders below me. This never fails to surprise me, you would expect her to be taller, larger than life if you will. She has dark blonde hair, almost a light brown. She always wears it in a neat ponytail with a long ribbon.

  This ribbon fascinates me for two reasons. Firstly our school dictates a very strict policy on uniform, but somehow she manages to wear different coloured ribbons almost every day. I’m sure she charmed the teachers into letting
her get away with it. Secondly, the ribbon gives her a sense of innocence and purity. I hear so many stories of kids going off the rails, getting wasted, drunk and worse. Hell I’ve seen it myself. But you could never associate that kind of behaviour with Kelly. I’ve done some stupid things myself, but she makes you want to be a better person.

  Finally she has these incredible eyes. They are a deep blue. But it’s not the colour that is so striking. It’s the size. Her eyes are almost too big for her face, but somehow it all works. It is those eyes that always draw me in. After all this gushing you can tell I’m in deep right?

  Kelly is in the year below me, she must be sixteen I guess. I remember the first time I noticed her. It was the first school day of the year, my second year of high school. I was with a bunch of mates sitting around the oval at lunchtime. We were checking out all the new year sevens. Even though we were only year eight, we were no longer the little runts of the school. We now had a younger year level to be superior to. We laughed and joked, watching the timid youngsters huddling together for protection. It was about then I noticed this little girl (that sounds a bit creepy, but she must have been only twelve or thirteen then). She wasn’t like the other youngsters. She was confident and seemingly carefree. It irked me at first, remembering my own timidness a year ago, but I found I couldn’t stop stealing glances at her. She was laughing and talking with not only year sevens, but kids from other years as well. And no one seemed to be giving her a rough time. Her good nature and fun mood appeared to infect anyone within close proximity. Hell, it had even stretched halfway across the oval to ensnare me. From that moment I was smitten, that very day started my four-year infatuation with her.

  It took me two months to work up the nerve to talk to her. I had no option really. Rory had finally gotten sick of me constantly talking about her. After the final bell had rung one day he had roughly grabbed me under the arm and marched me to her home group. Initially I tried to resist but my terror was being combated by a growing exhilaration.

  Kelly was talking with a group of girls before heading home for the day. Rory, being the confident kid he is, barged in on their conversation and stated loudly “Kelly right?” She had nodded a quizzical look on her face. Rory had continued “This is Tom, he would like to say hello.” Kelly’s friends had giggled and turned away shyly. Girls tended to do that around Rory, he didn’t suffer from my own personal form of social awkwardness towards females. Kelly hadn’t laughed though. She had just smiled sweetly and replaced Rory’s vice like grip with her own gentle hand. Her touch sent tingles up my arm. She had simply said, “Good idea” and led me away. I had walked her home. It must have been a half hour journey but at the end of it I couldn’t remember a single thing. She had done most of the talking, I hadn’t felt awkward or anything. As I said above she had this amazing ability to make anyone around her feel like a million dollars. I had stood dumbly in front of her once we reached her house. She must have thought I was fishing for a kiss because she had laughed kindly and given me a gentle push. She walked up her driveway calling over her shoulder, ‘See you tomorrow.” I waved and walked away. As soon as I was out of sight of her house I began running. I don’t know why I was running but it felt like the right thing to do. Energy was just pulsing through me. I had never felt like this before. I stopped eventually, breathing heavily. Once I had recovered I looked around and realised I had no idea where I was. It had taken me over an hour to get home from there. It’s funny how I can recall every detail of that afternoon.

  I’m finding it hard to talk much more about her right now. Just bringing up all these memories. . . I can’t help but speculate on what could have happened to her. That’s too much to bear. I’ll think about her later, throw this damn yearbook back under the bed.

  1st December. 11.33am.

  Power just went out. Just like that, no warning. I sat in the semi-darkness confused for a few moments. Until the consequences hit me. What will I do without power? No internet, no contact with the outside. Should have eaten that steak yesterday. It will still take a long time to thaw out. We still have gas, so I better cook it up tonight.

  The laptop is telling me it has about 2 hours battery left. I am dreading tonight.

  1st December. 21.43pm.

  Took a peek out my bedroom window. It is so black outside. There is either no moon or too many clouds tonight. It’s weird looking out at that familiar view devoid of streetlamps. From my upstairs window I look directly at the Robinson’s place. It’s a townhouse directly opposite ours. In fact their townhouse is pretty much a duplicate, a mirror image of this joint. A small shared driveway and two strips of lawn is all that divides us. Mr. And Mrs. Robinson live there with their small daughter. They are nice folks, but we don’t talk to them much. Dad might give a wave or a nod sometimes, but that’s about it.

  When I took my peek I thought I saw a light on in their house. I can’t be sure though because my attention was more focused on the small crowd of shambling figures loitering outside. From my quick glance there would have been at least six of them. From the sounds I hear at night I knew they were out there, but seeing them for the first time with my own eyes is very unnerving. I better switch off now I need to conserve battery.

  Even from up here I could see their eyes. A sickly yellow glow.

  2nd December. 1.10pm.

  Heard the strangest thing this morning. People laughing outside. It just sounded so out of place. I think it was some kids by the sounds of their voices. I rushed upstairs and looked through the blinds. There were three of them, two boys about my age and a girl, slightly younger. I didn’t recognise them though. Maybe they went to the private school. The largest boy seemed to be the leader. He was egging the smaller boy on. The smaller boy had a cricket bat. In the space of one minute he managed to shatter the windscreens of four cars. The girl was shrieking in delight. With no one to tell them off, these kids were out of control. As bad as they were, I could understand their behaviour. A few months ago Dad left Rory and I home for the entire night. Well, he didn’t mean to. He had some kind of conference to attend in Sydney, so I was to spend the weekend at Rory’s. We pulled that old trick and told Rory’s folks that he was going to spend the weekend at my house, without knowing that Dad was away.

  We had the best time, staying up late, eating pizzas. After we had a few of Dad’s beers, we were feeling confident. We prowled the streets in the dead of night, ducking in and out of shadows. It was liberating to be free and doing something naughty. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t vandalising like these three kids, but it was fun. I think it will be best if I leave those kind of kids alone, I doubt they will last very wrong in this climate.

  Oh another thing. There is someone still in the Robinson’s house. I caught them peeking at the delinquents too. I don’t think they saw me though. I hope that little girl isn’t all alone in there.

  2nd December. 11.55pm.

  I was lying on my bed drifting in and out of sleep. I’m not even tired, but there is nothing else to do. I found that if you lay there long enough, bored shitless, eyes closed, your mind just shuts down and goes to sleep.

  I was lying there, feeling groggy, when my entire room lit up. One moment the room was almost pitch black, only a sliver of pale moonlight split the room in half. The next moment a brilliant orange glow illuminated my surroundings as if dawn had arrived early. It faded just as quickly as it had arrived. The room was no longer pitch black. I could make out the posters on my wall, albeit in an orange tinge. The colour made my picture of Megan Fox look like she had just received a bad spray tan.

  I grew very excited, all vestiges of sleep forgotten. Had the power come back on? Had the authorities begun the recovery operations? Their first order of business was to drive the night away, bringing light back to the masses. I imagined columns of soldiers marching down the streets backed up by tanks and armoured cars with spotlights. The vampires fleeing into the shadows as my rescuers mowed them down with automatic gunfire and flamethrowers.r />
  I rushed to the window and peered through the blinds. In the distance, beyond the multitude of silent houses, a gigantic fireball was rising into the sky. Even as I watched it was dissipating into the night air. Then the noise of the explosion hit me. It felt like a solid wall of sound. The windowpane vibrated violently underneath my hand. Then the eerie noiseless night returned. It was as if nothing had ever happened. I retreated further behind the curtains, suddenly aware that I had exposed myself to anyone watching below.

  The creatures below hadn’t spotted me luckily. They were all looking in the direction of the explosion, their faces eager and hungry. When the commotion died down they resumed their prowling. I studied each of them in turn until I was confident none of the ghouls had discovered my hiding place. I felt the dark night envelope me once again. The fireball had briefly driven away the blackness, only for it to return more ominous and repressive than ever before.

  I could barely see a faint flickering glow in the distance, the only evidence that the event had occurred. I wonder what happened. Had a petrol station ignited somehow? Had a normal person attempted to blow up some of the vampires? I had no idea. Maybe it will spark a fire that will spread through the suburbs, razing the dead houses to the ground. It could even be a good thing, might kill a bunch of these ghouls as well.