Wild Strawberry: The Motorcycle Diaries

by Donnelly, T. A.

  Jeffrey jolted awake, asking, “How do you feel?”

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “That thing, yesterday, do you remember?”

  “Yeah, it bit my hand.”

  “I’m sorry Peter,-” Jeffrey wanted to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, but they were too tightly wedged into the tractor, “-but the thing bit off your thumb.”

  “Why didn’t you take me to hospital?”

  “Don’t you remember, the whole Country’s fucked?” Terry said with a yawn, waking up feeling stiff and cramped.

  “Oh Jesus.” Peter closed his eyes. The pain seemed to be getting worse.

  “And Doctor Jeffrey-fucking-psycho-Crippen here set your hand on fire,” Terry added.

  “What? Yes, I remember the fire.”

  “I had to stop the bleeding and clean the wound,” Jeffrey explained, “there was nothing else I could do.”

  “Yeah. Fucking hell.” Peter was sweating and rocking back and forward as he spoke, “Shit. My fucking thumb. Thanks, though, mate, you probably saved my bloody life.”

  “But,” Joe broke in, “the important question is can you ride? We need to find somewhere to set up camp properly.”

  “I, I think so.” Peter looked pale and his voice shook unconvincingly, but they took him at his word, as none of them wanted to stay any longer in the old tractor.

  They each ate one of the chocolate bars they had taken from the garage, and started up their bikes.

  This time they kept their eyes on every possible place a zombie could come running from, but nothing appeared.

  They kicked their bikes into action. Peter took several goes, his body visibly sagging under his leathers. He had lost a lot of blood, and the others were worried about him, but they had to start moving.

  Overnight the situation in the world had deteriorated.

  Now whenever they entered a village the dead would come running out of houses or cars.

  Joe was sickened by the sight of a dead woman chewing on the head of a small child. When the woman saw him she dropped her small meal to chase after a larger feast.

  Now the bikers started to speed up every time they came near any buildings.

  Twice they had to leave the road and travel over rough fields. The first time had been because a crash had blocked the road, and the detour, although bumpy, had been straightforward. The second time they had been faced with a large crowd of at least a hundred undead, who spilled out onto the road, and blocked their way. They had only just managed to double back and find an alternative route. This time the monsters chased them through several fields before losing sight of them, and only then could they slow to a more cautious speed.

  Now every village was an ordeal, when they read ‘Welcome to Downe, please drive carefully,’ they revved their engines and sped forward.

  They travelled in single file. Joe knew the area best, so he rode in front. Behind him was Peter: in second place so that the others could keep an eye on him. Behind Peter was Salman, and the others followed on.

  After they had been on the road for over an hour, Salman noticed that Peter was swaying as he rode. He was slumping lower and lower over the handlebars, and weaving from one side of the road to the other.

  Salman looked over his shoulder to signal to the others, and as he did so, Peter’s bike toppled over, and went into a long, sideways skid.

  After looking back, Salman was too close to avoid the bike and he smashed into it. He was thrown in the air, over his handlebars, and landed in a ditch, dazed and winded.

  Meanwhile Peter’s bike skidded and stopped at the side of the road.

  The others screeched to a halt and dismounted, running to see if their friends were alright.

  Jeffrey and Troy ran to Peter; Terry jogged towards Salman. Joe was still on his bike. He had been in the lead, and was now turning his bike around.

  As Jeffrey and Troy approached the prone figure of their friend he started to thrash wildly.

  Jeffrey took off his helmet as he ran forward, shouting, “I think he’s going into some kind of seizure. Do you know if he’s an epileptic or anything?”

  Troy caught up with his boyfriend and grabbed him firmly by the shoulder.

  “Wait!” Troy warned, his words were muffled by the helmet he was still wearing, “Be careful, it could be the infection.”

  Peter’s left leg was trapped under his motorbike, and while the others talked he pulled it free. The skid had already scraped through his leather trousers, and taken a layer of skin away. He left a red smear on the surface of the road as he pulled his leg up from under the fallen bike.

  Without word or warning, Peter lunged at Jeffrey, pushing the much lighter man to the ground and pinning him there with his bulk. Peter still wore his helmet, so his face was invisible to Jeffrey, but Jeffrey knew what it would look like – wild eyes and snapping jaws. He cursed his lack of medical knowledge, and the fact that he had not been able to save him.

  With his mouth under the helmet Peter could not bite Jeffrey, but he repeatedly tried to, and continuously head-butted his friend in the process.

  “Shitting help me!” Jeffrey yelled from under the creature that had once been Peter.

  Although Peter’s helmet and thick, leather gloves had prevented him from getting a good grip on Jeffrey, his eighteen stone of weight was crushing the breath from Jeffrey’s lungs.

  Troy tried to pull Peter off his lover, but Peter was too heavy to budge. He moved to pull Peter by the head, but as the helmet started to slip off, Troy realised his mistake, and jammed it back down firmly. As an afterthought he twisted the helmet round so that the visor was facing backwards, and shuddered as he heard Peter’s nose crack in the process.

  The zombie who had been Peter was blinded and unable to bite. Flailing around, it rolled over Jeffrey who struggled to his feet, nursing his bruised forehead.

  Salman was unable to walk. His leg was broken.

  Everyone else ran back to see the struggling creature that had once been their friend.

  “What the fuck do we do?” Terry shouted, his voice high-pitched, nearly hysterical.

  “How the fuck should I know?” Troy screamed back, then collected himself to say, “let’s just leave him and carry on.”

  “We can’t leave Peter, like that, can we?” Said Jeffery. He was pale and bruised, but the thought of leaving his friend as a blinded zombie turned his stomach.

  “Break his fucking neck, I don’t know!” Suggested Terry.

  “How?” Joe asked shaking his head.

  “Like this?” Terry mimed gripping Peter’s head under his arm and then twisting. It was a manoeuvre he had seen in countless action films.

  “Yeah,” said Troy doubtfully. “I’ve seen that move too. It’s impossibly cool when Rambo does it, but when you really think about it, doesn’t it just seem impossible?”

  “But will you do it Terry?” asked Jeffrey.

  “Will I do it?” Terry replied sounding incredulous. “Will I fuck! I was just suggesting is all.”

  “Well don’t fucking suggest it,” screamed Jeffrey, “unless you’re fucking prepared to give it a fucking go, you fucking tourist!”

  With these words, Jeffrey stepped forward, gripped Peter’s head, and twisted and bent it backwards with all his strength.

  The neck snapped with a sickening crack, and Jeffrey, trembling, looked defiantly into Terry’s eyes as the body fell to the floor.

  Everyone stood round in silence until Jeffrey spoke again, “You,” he pointed at Terry “I did the dirty job, now you can take care of the funeral arrangements.”

  “Funeral, what the fuck?”

  “Bury him or cremate him, just don’t ask for my help.”

  Jeffrey stomped off along the road to throw up behind a low hedge.

  Terry crouched by the body of his old friend. He heard a scrabbling noise under the motorbike helmet. “That better not be a fucking rat in there trying to eat my mate.” He gingerly twisted the helme
t, turning the neck too, but eventually he was able to get the visor to face frontwards.

  He opened it and leapt back sharply. Peter’s nose was nothing more than a red smear across the middle of his face, but his eyes were still wide, and his jaw was still snapping open and shut hoping for some food.

  “Holy fuck!”

  When he heard Terry’s shout, Jeffrey looked up, slowly, from the pool of vomit he had just produced. As his line of vision became parallel with the horizon his heart jumped; there were about a dozen blood-stained creatures running straight towards him.

  “Ladies!” He screeched, “we’ve got company, get to the bikes!”

  Joe half carried Salman and sat him on the back of his saddle to ride pillion.

  No sooner had the bikes roared to life than the monsters jumped through the hedge.

  “Fuck it!” Joe pumped the accelerator, but, unaccustomed to the additional weight on the back of the bike, raised it up on its back wheel, lost control, so both he and Salman landed on their backs on the road while their friends shot forward.

  The creatures were almost on them; there was no way they could get back on the bikes now.

  “Sorry mate,” Joe muttered as he glanced back at Salman. He had started to run down the road towards the backs of his friends as they cycled down the road away from them.

  “Don’t leave me!” Salman cried, and with adrenaline pumping through him, he was able to leap up and start hobbling after Joe, each step an agony.

  Joe cursed, stopped and turned to go back for his friend.

  Salman saw a figure burst out of the hedge in between him and Joe. It had been a paunchy police officer: its mouth was stained with gore, and it had a series of holes in its chest that looked as though they may have been made by bullets.

  He knew it was hopeless.

  “Just run!” Salman shouted, “just bloody run!”

  His shouts turned to screams as the police corpse reached him, gripped his head in both of its cold, blood-stained hands and bit a chunk out of Salman’s forehead. He could feel the scraping of the zombie’s teeth against his skull.

  At the same moment, another creature grabbed him from the back and started biting at his padded jacket.

  Salman had been proud of his biker’s leathers, and they offered him some protection even now. But now the defense they offered only slowed his inevitable death, as more and more sets of teeth tore at the leather.

  He tried to bare his neck, hoping for a quick end to this torture, but the only part of his bare flesh that was available for consumption was his face, and the creatures soon stripped it of flesh to the skull.

  Even now, he tried to say, “Just bloody kill me,” but his lipless mouth could only produce a ghastly groan.

  Joe glanced back over his shoulder. Most of the zombies were in a scrum around his fallen friend, but two gave him chase: a man in stripy pyjamas and a milkman whose white coat was torn and almost completely red.

  “Fuck!” He calculated how long he could run at this pace - five minutes at the most; then how long the creatures could keep running - as far as he knew, indefinitely. He may be able to keep ahead of them for another few minutes, but then he’d be far too exhausted to put up a fight.

  Two tireless pursuers - one terrified, sleep-deprived man. He estimated that in all probability he had six minutes left to live.

  He wondered if he could climb a tree, but the prospect of starvation while looking down at a growing crowd of hungry corpses did not seem like any better an option than being eaten.

  He was just considering stopping and letting events take their course when he saw Jeffrey turn back around the corner up ahead.

  Jeffrey took in the situation, skidded his bike, turning again to head away from Joe.

  “What the fuck?” Joe panted, until he realised that Jeffrey was slowing down so that he could leap on the back of the moving bike.

  Now Joe put on a burst of speed, realising the more distance he had between himself and his pursuers the easier this would be.

  He ran and ran.

  His legs burned, and his whole body was slick with sweat under his warm and heavy leathers.

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  “Fuck!” So much for his plan of putting some extra distance between himself and the zombies; they were closer than ever.

  All it would take was one trip or stumble and he would be dead.

  The bike was within reach.

  As he staggered onto the back of the bike he felt the fingers of the foremost creature scrabble against the leather of the back of his jacket.

  He thanked God that he had cut his long hair short just last year. In his mind’s eye he imagined dead fingers tangled in his hair as the bike surged ahead.

  Joe almost lost his balance, but gripped tightly onto Jeffrey to stop himself falling backwards.

  He looked over his shoulder. Zombies were still running. Their faces showed no disappointment, no sign recognition that their prey was now beyond their reach, just the same wild hunger that was becoming a horrifyingly familiar sight.

  They cycled on at a risky seventy miles an hour, a dangerous speed for the winding country roads they were using. After half an hour they relaxed a little, and when they came to a sign that said the next village was two miles away they slowed, and stopped for a moment to consider their position.

  There were now four of them, with three bikes.

  They had left in such a hurry that only Troy had his helmet.

  The others had previously disliked being required by law to wear a helmet, now they all craved any protection they could find.

  Wearily, they continued their tortuous journey and after another thirty minutes of cycling they saw a small single-track road leading to a small farmhouse. Parked beside the farmhouse was a large, black, forty-foot truck.

  Terry, who was now in the lead, signalled to the others that he was stopping, and he came to a halt in the middle of the road.

  “What do you think?” He asked once the others had stopped beside him.

  Terry pointed to the farmhouse; Troy and Jeffrey looked and nodded agreement.

  “I like the truck,” said Troy, “if we have to leave it’ll be a mobile fortress.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Jeffrey, “but we need to be careful. We have to ask, what is the truck doing down such a small road in the first place? There must be some one around…”

  “…alive or dead,” cut in Terry, finishing Jeffrey’s sentence.

  Joe did not say anything, nor look up from where his face was buried in Jeffrey’s back.

  “Joe?” Terry asked, “what do you think?”

  Jeffrey shook his head, and Terry turned back to the house.

  “So what’s the plan?” Asked Terry, looking hopefully to Troy and Jeffrey.

  “How’s this?” Jeffrey spoke slowly, thinking aloud, “one of us drives round the yard a few times; if anything is in there it will come out after the noise.”

  “Then what?”

  “Either we try to kill them,” continued Jeffrey, “or we lead them away from the house, like the Pied Piper of Zombie Town, then lose them and return to a nice, new empty home.”

  “Jeffrey?” Terry put a hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder, “you’re a bloody genius.”

  Jeffrey smiled grimly. “All we need to decide is should we all play Pied Piper, or just nominate one of us?”

  “I’ll do it!” Troy volunteered.

  “Troy darling!” Jeffrey looked shocked, “you could get killed.”

  “I could get killed waiting round here. But I’m the best biker here, especially off-road. You know it makes sense. If any of us can do it, it’s gonna be me.”

  Terry grinned, and said, “I want to argue with you about being the best biker, but I’m not going to!”

  “Fuck, Troy, are you sure?”

  “Yep,” Troy nodded, “just get of sight behind that hedge, and get ready to make a swift getaway if a hundred of them come running out.”

  So
saying, Troy kicked off and revved his engine noisily, heading down the small road towards the house. He skidded round the garden, circled the house and made as much noise as possible.

  Feeling confident, Troy pulled a wheelie the length of the garden, but almost crashed when they appeared: two creatures burst out of the front door of the house.

  One looked almost comically like a stereotypical farmer, in its white shirt with rolled up sleeves, and black waistcoat. It was paunchy and bald, and its bushy sideburns framed a mouth dripping with saliva and blood.

  The other creature, also male, was wearing a torn denim jacket and jeans. Half of its face was missing: the flesh hanging in flaps like a tattered curtain.

  “Love the denim look darling!” Troy quipped sardonically, as he steadied his bike and tried to steady his nerves.

  They were running directly for him, his turning space was very limited. He looped round the truck, hoping they would stick together and maybe do a few loops before heading off down the road.

  However, without warning, a third creature leapt out from the front of the truck. Troy’s instinct had been to turn away, but in the split second he had to make a decision, his aggression got the better of him.

  “Fuck you!” he spat, pointing his bike directly at the creature. It was a woman, with curly hair, matted with blood, and stuck to one side of her head. She was wearing a woollen sweater that had partially unravelled, revealing a series of deep bite marks on her stomach and ribs.

  He pulled back slightly on his handlebars, moving his weight backwards, going into another wheelie, and struck the zombie in the chest with the front wheel. It went under the bike and Troy skidded over the body, bones crunching and blood spraying under the wheels.

  The bike lost traction as it mushed the corpse, and Troy bumped against the truck, once, twice, then veered out of control towards the farmhouse.

  Troy tried to stabilise the bike, and leant to turn away from the building. He managed to turn ninety degrees, but skidded sideways into the wall. For a moment he was still, his wheels spinning, digging a small trench in the grass.