1 x cordless drill
I decided that some of this was now redundant, especially if we were to escape the house on foot. The garden spade I could sling through the shoulder straps of my backpack if I had room, and Lou could do the same with the garden fork; I was quite set on the flame-thrower idea; a mallet we’d have needed if we were going camping anyway, and one of the hammers was definitely in; the impractical circular saw blades went, even though they were cool; I wouldn’t have time to use the hand saw effectively; and the cordless drill was just simply gratuitous.
I filled the sprayer with the white spirit and hauled it over my shoulders, tucking the spade down between the sprayer tank and my back which worked well but wasn’t comfortable. I pushed the mallet and hammer into my belt, then opened up our chest freezer (now starting to give off a whiff of stale cheese), and pulled out two carrier bags full of portions of chilli and Bolognese sauce, as well as some bread rolls and a carton of orange juice. I had got into the habit of cooking up batches of chilli and Bolognese in a huge pot ten litres at a time and freezing it. It meant I would double the cooking but get fifty meals out of it, meaning more time on the sofa. Then I had a brainwave. I picked up a roll of parcel tape and a small pot of red gloss paint, together with a half-inch paintbrush.
I wanted to get back into the relative safety of the house, but I felt that I wasn’t properly armed yet. Everything I’d gathered so far had a drawback; the sprayer would need igniting; the mallet required a short swing and contact would be too close for comfort. I needed something like a club, a baseball bat or even cricket bat, but I was no sportsman and had nothing of the sort. I did, however, have lots of wood. I turned to my pile of timber off-cuts and pulled out a couple of three-foot lengths of two-inch by two-inch wooden post, and a box of barbed four-inch wood screws. I set about screwing them straight into one end of each post, so they both looked like angry toilet brushes when I was done. I pushed one of the clubs down the back of my trousers with the screws pointing away from my arse, held the other in my left hand and made for the door.
I didn’t think I had made too much noise until I heard something heavy thud against the door. Floyd’s immediate high decibel reaction would only begin to attract more attention so I had to move quickly, and tapped the alarm’s keypad to start the beeping. Pressure.
I tested the door with my foot but it offered no resistance and opened to reveal a fat bloke on his knees facing towards me. He must have gone for the door and knocked himself over but he was about to get to his feet. Resisting the temptation to growl a cheesy Hollywood-style one-liner, such as ‘Confession time, punk!’, I instead conducted an immediate field-test of my DIY mace by bringing the useful end cracking onto the back of his head. I had to work to get it free, but he was out for the count. A design fault, I thought, watching Floyd run up to the others bumbling about on the decking and mindful of the two sprawled out on the lawn. I turned and closed the shed door nicely within the alarm’s beeping time, and jumbled up the numbers on the padlock.
As I strode back towards the house I tested the weight of my club. One of the ones on the grass in front of me stood up and pointed his face into the air, nostrils twitching. He turned on the spot and levelled his nose at me, then bared his teeth and gurgled. I walked up to him and slammed the club upwards into the soft flesh underneath his chin. It was effective enough. I could see Lou watching me through the blinds as I stepped up onto the decking, catching one of them on the side of the head as he got too close. The three others trying the kitchen door had spotted me, but I was a bit disappointed to see that Floyd was more interested in ripping to shreds a pair of trousers he’d torn off one of the creeps. I kept facing them as Lou held the door open and I backed into the dining room. She looked at me.
‘Blimey!’
I got her to pull out the spade and her club before hauling the sprayer from over my shoulders.
‘Who are you supposed to be, Shaun of the Dead?’
‘That’s yours.’ I explained, pointing at the improvised club I’d made. Mine was dripping with jet fat.
‘Okay,’ her brow furrowed. ‘Can I take the screws out?’
‘No. Empty the fridge; I’ll throw down the cool bag from the loft. Bung these in it, along with those ice-packs.’ I handed her the carrier bag of slowly thawing food, and pulled a big bag of cat biscuits from the cupboard. ‘Grab some knives, cutlery, half a dozen plates, and some mugs – you know, like we were camping but more permanent.’
‘Will we be expecting anyone? And where are we going?’
‘Camping.’
In the loft I started hauling out the gear. The previous owner had boarded and carpeted the loft and installed a couple of windows. It was nice enough, but it was a drag getting cups of tea up the steep staircase so we didn’t use it that much. Now it was a place for Maui to take refuge from an over-inquisitive puppy who wanted to sniff her backside like his life depended on it. She was up there now, licking her paws and washing her face in the morning sun. She mewed at me and sprawled out on her back. Happy days.
I split open the bag of cat food so she wouldn’t get her head stuck in there. You couldn’t do that with a dog; the whole lot would be gone in minutes, and you’d be clearing up puke for days. A cat - especially Maui - would make it last. I knew she’d be okay; she was a smart cat, a survivor. Years ago when she was a kitten and we had lived on the seafront a stray greyhound had caught her and ripped her side open in the front garden. I found her under one of the armchairs in the living room, soaking wet through slobber and all her muscles showing down one side. I also found greyhound hair and bloody rolls of skin stuck under her claws when we were driving her to the vet. She’d be fine with zombies.
I started ferreting under the eaves for the camping gear; the camping stove, kettle and gas lamp were all downstairs already. What else would we need? I settled for the following:
1 x four-man tent
1 x twelve-litre plastic water container
2 x mess tins
1 x cooking ring adapter for gas lamp
6 x spare small blue gas bottles
1 x 20ft corkscrew dog tether
1 x four-inch lock-knife (illegal in UK, bought by my brother-in-law Mike in a high-street French pharmacy)
1 x pair binoculars
2 x vacuum flask beakers
1 x foldaway aluminium table
2 x foldaway chairs, single
1 x foldaway chair, double
2 x maggot/mummy convertible sleeping bags
1 x inflatable double air bed
1 x car lighter powered air bed pump
1 x washing-up bowl
2 x tea towels
1 x small bottle washing-up liquid
I’d often wondered how resilient the tents, table and chairs were, all folded up and stored away in their bags with shoulder straps, so I took the opportunity to find out and started to drop them through the hatch. Lou couldn’t have a go at me, it was an emergency. Some of them fell all the way to the bottom of the stairs, and I could hear Floyd barking and Lou shushing him. I was quieter with the pots and pans and gas canisters, then slung the binoculars around my neck and made my way down the stairs. Lou was at the bottom, arms folded.
‘We can’t take that much.’
‘I know, we’ll have to cull it but at least it’ll all be by the front door when we’ve got a car again.’
We decided to ditch the chairs, airbed and pump but not the table, and Lou insisted on the washing-up stuff. She’d found two rucksacks and found two of our holiday suitcases ‘just in case’.
‘We can do this easily,’ I said as I went to the sink for water, trying not to look into the back garden. Lou had taken all the food we weren’t carrying with us out of the fridge and kitchen freezer and into two bin bags. She’d unplugged them and propped their doors open, and even cleaned up the black sludge from around the cat-flap. I loved her with a powerful fire in my belly. The plastic water container was about two-thirds full when the tap
gave a splutter, and I heard the plumbing kicking itself behind the walls. I pulled the container away and watched the flow of water - after five seconds and some more spluttering it ran cloudy, then rust red, then brown, then trickled, and then it just stopped.
‘Water’s gone.’ I shouted
‘No.’
‘It’s fine; I got loads out before it went.’
We packed up my survival kit which came in a rolling tin with electrician’s tape around it and boasted a flint; fishing line; hooks and weights; waterproof matches; a button compass; a wire saw; a Morse code sheet for people who hadn’t bothered to learn it; and some other stuff like swabs and eyewash. Lou had got a small first aid kit from the bathroom and we started to pack the rucksacks. The two medical kits went in my outside pocket, and I estimated that the tent would take up the bulk of the inside of mine. I peered in.
‘There’s some stuff from holiday still in mine.’
‘No its not,’ Lou explained efficiently. ‘I packed you some trousers and pants and a towel and some highlights from your frankly grotty wash-bag.’
I was peering into my bag still.
‘I love you.’ It was muffled.
‘What?’
I bent down to grab the tent up. ‘I love you’, I said, straining to pick it up with one hand.
‘I love you too baby.’ She helped me put the tent into my backpack. She seemed quite cheerful.
Everything else fitted fairly well. Mine was heavier than Lou’s which I was pleased with, and I used garden string to attach some of our smaller Le Creuset saucepans and a frying pan to Lou’s back pack, which she had put on already.
‘Fucking hell.’
The cast iron pans were heavy, and according to the leaflet they were so resilient you could sit them on hot coals to cook on. We’d never taken them camping, they were wedding presents and Lou thought they were too nice, but I’d been intrigued by the thought of sticking them straight onto a bonfire to cook with. Now was my chance.
I hadn’t thought about wearing a backpack when I’d grabbed the pressure sprayer, but there was no reason it couldn’t be worn on my front. I took my pack off again and set up the sprayer tank on my chest like a papoose. At least the fumes would be fun, I thought. I pulled the rucksack back on and, in a flash of inspiration, picked up our mini kitchen blowtorch – also a wedding present – and stuffed it into my pocket.
I was forgetting things I needed, but remembering other things too fast to remember them. This was classic key-forgetting territory. I went to the front room and picked up my Zippo lighter and tobacco. I was overloaded. Floyd had sensed something was afoot a while ago and was hopping round us and whining, his head occasionally making contact with Lou’s dangling pans as she strapped the spade to my back.
‘Like a soldier,’ she said.
‘Dog food. Oh nuts, and his lead,’ I sighed but Lou was there already, stuffing them into the top of my rucksack. Floyd had smelt the kibble and was jumping up.
‘Down Floyd! You ready Lou?’
‘If you’ve got your keys?’ she smiled, smacking the back of her club into her palm.
‘Yep.’ I patted my pocket. ‘Radios!’
‘They’re here. Al’s set ours and one of his to the same frequency, but he’ll be well out of range at his parent’s house.’
I helped Lou fit hers onto the belt of her jeans. She had hiking boots on.
‘Where are we going, by the way?’ she asked me, putting Floyd on his lead.
I clipped the radio onto my shoulder strap and looked at her.
‘Cissbury Ring.’
As we stepped out of the front door I popped the lid off the red paint with a pound coin and dipped the little brush.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Lou hissed, looking up and down the road.
‘Hang on woman.’ It was only when I knew the outcome of what I was doing would be triumphant and victorious that I spoke to her like that. Sometimes it backfired, but I was confident as I started to paint on the front door: “WALKING THE DOG”. I had to go onto the wall, and the “G” of dog was on the bay window, but it did the job. I put the lid back on and stuffed the tin and brush into a side pocket of Lou’s backpack, very pleased with myself.
‘Why didn’t you just write “UP CISSBURY”?’
‘Al needs to know where to go, and everyone else that we know will understand exactly where we are. But we can’t make it easy for other people - even if there are survivors, the stupid ones will get us killed. Anyway, we’ve got to get up there ourselves first.’ I scratched my head. ‘We’re taking the same track up that we drove down last night, but then cutting across the golf course. We drove down from the car park last night, not from the centre of the Ring.’
‘Of course,’ Lou said as she headed out onto the pavement.
‘Keep to the middle of the road. You’ll be easier to see but so will they. I don’t fancy getting pulled into a garden hedge right now. Take this.’ I handed her the mini-blowtorch.
‘You’ve really, actually, seriously thought about this day, haven’t you?’ she asked.
‘Yep.’ I said, pumping the T-handle on my pressure sprayer tank up and down. I held the thin metal wand in my left hand and the club in my right. We moved up the street cautiously but without dithering, Floyd’s lead pushed up my arm to my elbow joint as he trotted along behind us. We’d got half-way to the end of the street when a hunched man limped out of a front garden on our right, his ankle dangling uselessly at the joint, and his dressing gown stained black. I wondered what yesterday had been like for him; was that his house? I hadn’t seen him before - at least I didn’t think I had. The few infected that I had recognised looked nothing like themselves; instead the illness gave them the appearance of a caricature, or a cheap horror mask. The man had a dressing gown on so maybe he’d been ill and infected other people. Maybe he’d been in bed and answered the door to one of them. That was unlikely, unless they’d worked out doorbells. He might have answered the door to someone fleeing though, someone looking for a safe haven - someone who had already been infected.
As we drew up alongside him I could hear the wet crunch as he kept putting weight onto his snapped ankle. I heard a rustle up ahead, and a young woman fell from a bush and slapped face-first onto the pavement. She was wearing a ripped England football shirt, and lifted herself up as we drew closer. White dotted lines now marked our path down the centre of the street onto the T-junction with the A27 as we passed the man. His eyes followed us, his arms stretched out towards us and his ankle squelching moistly.
‘He’s okay; he’ll never catch us up at this pace but watch out for Waynetta Rooney up ahead.’ We drew closer to her. ‘Light me.’
‘What?’ Lou asked.
‘The blowtorch…’
She was there already, almost over-efficiently, blue flame licking my nozzle. I squeezed the trigger.
‘That’s it, back away.’
I squeezed harder, and the whump of the orange jet made my face hot. I’d got her, the shiny material of her football strip blackening and shrinking around her torso. She didn’t react as it bubbled into her flesh, but it seemed to send her muscles into involuntary spasm. She went down to the sound of spitting fat and popping tendons and began to arch her limbs wildly as Floyd strained to get to the smell of cooking. I spotted another three up ahead and went to pull Floyd away to face them; but I caught my breath when I saw the girl in the football strip’s steady gaze through the flames, as her muscles thrashed her around on the tarmac. She was looking straight at me when her eyes boiled.
We heard a thump on a car we’d passed. I wheeled round to see another one alerted by our activity.
‘Take this dog and light me!’
Lou did the business and a plume of flame leapt away from the nozzle, dousing him as well as a clearly quite dry privet hedge.
‘Let’s jog.’ Lou suggested.
As we yomped up to the three creeps at the junction with the A27, I kept the fire going by dousing
the barbed tip of my club with spirit, dripping flames onto the street. I let out a searing arc in front of us as we sped up towards them. The pressure on the sprayer was dropping so I only hit the two at the front, who lit up like torches and dropped to the tarmac. The third one proceeded to stumble towards us over the others who were now writhing on the ground. His clothes caught fire, spreading quickly up man-made fibre, soon licking at his chin. He continued towards us undaunted for a few paces, then finally collapsed in a twist of muscle and taught limbs. We were running as we turned left towards the bridleway up the Downs, and I pumped my handle. The rucksacks were heavy - I was obviously not as fit as I used to be and I slowed down, grimacing. Lou sprang ahead, eager to show she wasn’t short of breath yet, approaching a series of wrecked vehicles dotting the middle of the road.
‘Wait!’ I had a stitch.
She stopped. A man sprang up from behind a car and stood with his back arched, gawking at my wife. I could see the entrance to the track up to Cissbury just off the road to our right, past the wrecked cars.
‘I don’t want them to see us going up that path.’ I yelled, fighting for breath.
Lou backtracked to where I was now doubled up but eyeing the man who now took juddering steps towards us, and I saw her swinging her club in readiness.
‘There’s too many of them,’ I pointed to a house on the corner of the road and the path. ‘Let’s get to that garden.’
Their numbers were swelling all the time, some appearing from behind the cars, others out of a nearby garden. I saw a block of flats fifty feet away with people standing in the car park, staring at us with slack mouths. We all ran, Floyd twice as fast as us.
‘How do they know we’re here? We’ve been quiet,’ Lou had a note of exasperation in her voice. ‘It’s not like they’re communicating with each other.’
Good, I thought. She’s not thinking in human terms.
‘I think I stink.’ I explained, clambering over the garden gate and opening it for Lou. We ran up a driveway to a garage extension at the side of the house where I grabbed Lou’s arm to stop her running in front.
Breaking News: An Autozombiography Page 11
