Don't Be Dead- Heartache After The Outbreak

by Paul Wilcock

  It takes me an hour of agonising climbing but I finally reach the 9th floor and prise open the doors, falling into the corridor, turning my head left and right while I lie on the floor, completely unable to move if I do see any danger; luckily I don't.

  Hours pass by and I sleep but it’s not a restful sleep, I keep waking up with numb body parts and it's cold and I had to leave my belongings, including my sleeping bag, on top of the lift because there was no way I could carry it up the ladder with me. Eventually I haul myself up and into the room where the murder took place all those years ago, where I partied with Natalie, where we held out against the cops. The room seems clear, it’s a mess but it doesn't look like anything too terrible happened here, at least not since that guy murdered his wife and jumped from the balcony anyway.

  Some of the furniture is flipped over, the bed hasn't been made, there's still a bloodstain on the floor but I’m not sure if it’s the same one that was here before; I guess the outbreak started before room service had time to visit. I smile weakly at my rubbish joke, I'm exhausted. I flop onto the king size bed and start to drift back into unconsciousness, pulling the sheets over me to try to warm up; a movement beneath the sheets freezes me, my stomach sinks, and I turn my head in time to see an infected man turning over on the other side of the bed to look back at me, he'd been hidden beneath the pile of sheets, just lying there. Sleeping? I don't know if the infected still need to sleep but anyway he was definitely awake now. I push myself away from him with my legs onto the floor as he crawls across the bed at me, his legs tangled in the sheets, restricting his movement. I scramble away, my arms too weak to do anything useful, I push across the floor using my feet and the infected man, face twisted and disfigured, flesh stripped from one of his arms as though something had been chewing it, pulls himself onto the floor, crashing onto his face with a mixture of a crack and a splat, he continues to crawl towards me, his head now held at an odd angle, making him even more grotesque. I kick at his head, and continue crawling away on my back as he pulls towards me relentlessly. I pass a chair by the dressing table and scream in pain as I use all of my strength to throw it at him, it bounces off harmlessly, doing myself more damage with the strain of throwing it than I did to him. I kick him again as he grabs my foot and start to panic as I hit the wall behind me, nowhere left to go, I start to pull myself upright using the curtain to help me until the curtain pulls from the rail and I fall back down to the ground, he grabs me again and I reach forward with the curtain, wrapping it over his head, blocking his teeth from biting at me. Kicking him again and again until he stops moving. I've never been so exhausted but I can't rest yet, not while it's still in the room and I use the last of my energy to drag him out of the room and over the side of the balcony, he falls into a crowd of hundreds of infected that have gathered in the streets outside the hotel and my stomach sinks again when I see them. Then I fall backwards into the sun lounger on the balcony, pulling the remaining curtain over me, I can finally rest.

  Natalie ii

  I'm woken by rain hitting my face, I look around, I'm still on the balcony wrapped in a curtain, I think its daytime but the sky's so dark with clouds it's hard to tell, it's raining heavily and I open my mouth, glad of the moisture but not so glad of the metallic taste. My arms hurt and I don't want to move but I force myself to stand and before going inside to climb into bed I take another look over the balcony. The streets are swarming with infected, I've never seen so many and there's a disconcerting low rustling sound caused by hundreds of bodies shuffling and shambling around. I lean over the balcony and look up and down the street, the entire city looks completely overrun, they aren't just gathering outside my hotel they are everywhere, if it’s not me that's drawing the crowds then what? Then I remember those cocks in the Subaru than ran me off the road, they were driving around the city making as much noise as possible to draw out the infected, but why? I couldn't think of any possible reason other than they were cocks. Unfortunately it did mean that I was stuck here for the time being. I drop the wet curtain on the floor and close the door to the balcony, shutting out the disturbing noise of a thousand restless bodies, as I climb into bed I'm glad that there are no nasty surprises this time when I pull the sheets over me and fall back into the arms of sleep.

  I dream, the dream starts out good, I'm with a girl, I love her but she isn't anyone I know, more an amalgamation of different girls I've met in my lifetime, we kiss and her lips are the softest, warmest lips I've ever kissed and I hope I remember how they feel when I wake up. Then she dies, out of nowhere she just stops breathing and drops to the ground, I fall to my knees by her side and start to give her mouth to mouth, she revives and the mouth to mouth turns into a kiss, our tongues caressing each other, saliva mixing. I help her up and we go into the kitchen of the apartment where we live and she starts taking various packets and bags from the cupboards and I help her and take out a mixing bowl and we start to bake buns but when I open the oven door to put the tray of buns inside, the buns are already burned and as I turn around confused and look at the girl she dies again and drops to the floor. I give her mouth to mouth again and again I manage to revive her and she wakes up and she's fine but now I'm scared that she'll keep on dying and call an ambulance but they won't come out because the girl is perfectly fine at the moment, they'll only come if she dies again but by then it will be too late. I hang up the phone and look at the girl, I love her but I don't know her name, I stare into her eyes and the room spins, it spins so fast it becomes just a background blur and I'm nowhere and time has stopped and she's smiling at me and I smile back and as I stare into her eyes I can see a light, sparkling and flickering and I feel warm and at peace and I'm not scared anymore and I reach out my hand for hers and as my fingers touch her hand the light in her eyes goes out, I feel cold and I can't move and she falls away from me still smiling, still staring into my eyes but now her eyes are dead and I'm trying to grab her but I still can't move and I can't look away and I can't seem to do anything but scream.

  I wake up with a jolt, sweaty and aching and my heart hurts and I'm not sure what's real for a few seconds but then it all comes back to me, I'm still in a nightmare but this one is actually happening, I don't know how long I've been asleep but my shoulders don't hurt so much when I move and I'm hungry and my mouth is really dry. I need to find something to eat and drink, I can see that the mini bar is already empty, I'll need to explore the hotel.

  I climb out of bed, put on one of the hotel's bath robes, still white, clean and fluffy, luxurious, I'll try not to get it covered in blood during my search. I test my arms, spin them around at my side, stretch, above my head, in front of my chest, behind my back, not bad but still not one hundred percent, I'm still not ready to climb back down the lift shaft to retrieve my bag. I pick up one of the bedside lamps, feel the weight of it, heavy enough if swung right. I remove the shade and cable with a tug leaving just the base; a pillowcase from the bed will do for carrying supplies if I find any so I remove one from the pile of pillows on the bed and tuck it into my waistband. I start with the ninth floor, searching room by room but other than a couple of packets of dry roasted peanuts on the floor of room 94 I come up empty, luckily I also come up empty on encountering any more infected, the hotel must have been cleared out by a previous survivor, presumably the same one that blocked up the stairs in the lobby, nice of them to miss the guy that was sleeping in my bed though, he must have been laying there tangled up in the sheets for months. I descend to the eighth floor but it’s the same story here, no food and no infected. As I move down the hotel, back towards the ground floor, I become more disheartened, the place has been picked clean, there's no evidence that Natalie was ever here and the horde of infected is still surrounding the hotel, long story short, I'm fucked.

  As I open the door to room 103 I'm struck by the foul odour of rotting flesh and immediately set upon by a raggedly dressed middle aged woman, I shove her backwards across the room and try to determine whether she's infecte
d or a crazy survivor, I glance around the room, stockpile of food, weapons and clothing, four dead bodies, flesh chewed off, blood all over the walls, decide she's probably infected and should probably be killed even if she isn't, I step forward and smash a hole in her skull. As I pull the lamp free from her head I notice her left hand is missing, her arm severed at the elbow and bandaged, I quickly put together a scene of what happened here; she was bit and the rest of her camp chopped her arm off thinking they'd caught it in time, later she turned and killed them all, bummer. My focus returns to the stockpile of food, weapons and clothes, some of it has been sprayed with blood, but most of it looks okay, I can see the contents of the room mini-bars have all been gathered and also tins of food from the kitchens, weapons-wise there's one hand gun with four bullets, a hunting knife and a baseball bat, the clothes are mostly hotel staff uniforms, totally uncool but I take the items that fit anyway. While searching the room I notice a rolled up rope ladder tied to the balcony railings outside and it dawns on me why they chose the first floor to hole up on rather than the top floor like I did, I wanted to be as far away from danger as possible whereas they wanted a way to escape if their defences were ever breached, too bad they didn't count on the breach coming from inside their own camp. I check the faces of the dead in this room, one of them has had the face chewed off but I can tell by the body that it's not Natalie, the rest of them aren't either and I feel a mixture of relief and sadness that it doesn't look like she's been here. I load up with as much as I can carry and set off back to the top floor, on the way, while I'm on the first floor, I prise open the lift doors and retrieve my own bag of supplies from the top of the lift cursing my stupidity for climbing all the way to the ninth floor on the ladder when I could have exited on any floor once in the lift shaft and then taken the stairs.

  Back in my room I eat and drink and sleep, I'm not in any rush to leave, the infected are still crowding the streets outside and my list has hit a dead end for now, I have enough food to last a couple of months if I ration it right so I decide to stay here and see if the streets clear up in the next few days. My time is spent listening to my iPod and scanning the city skyline with the telescope I found in one of the other rooms, I think back to the assorted people we spied on in the hotel opposite last time I was here, all of them probably dead now. The plumbing in the hotel doesn't work properly any more so I just piss and shit over the railing, spattering the infected shuffling around below, I hope I don't have to fight my way past them later, the infected are disgusting enough to get close to as it is.

  I'm looking over the balcony, throwing empty cans and bottles down at the infected below, Kate Bush - Watching You Without Me playing on the iPod, I see a small flash of light in one of the rooms of the hotel opposite. I'm not sure what it is at first but then I realise it’s the sun glinting off a telescope lens as the scope is moved around, it looks like someone has got the same idea as me and is searching for signs of life in the surrounding buildings. I scramble over to my own telescope and focus on the window where I saw the flash, there's a woman in the hotel opposite, she hasn't seen me yet, she's still scanning the rooms, the same way that I've spent hours myself the last few days. When it looks like she's pointing in my direction I start waving my arms wildly trying to get her attention, it takes a few minutes but eventually she sees me, she steps away from the telescope and looks with her own eyes and then returns to the scope and I do the same and I can see that she's smiling and it makes me smile too. I never thought I'd be so glad to see someone.

  She steps back from the scope again and as she brushes her hair away from her eyes I recognise her.

  It's Natalie. I can't believe I found her, I look again to make sure, it's definitely her, my heart is pounding now, she's so close but I can't get to her, the streets are still flooded with infected. I search the room for paper and a marker pen, find them in the bedside drawers, run back to the balcony and write a note. “HI NATALIE” I hold it up and look through the scope, she looks confused then disappears away from the window, she must be searching for her own set of paper and pens. She returns to the window two minutes later and writes her own message in red lipstick, I guess she didn't find any pens. “U NO ME?” I write another note back, “DAN WEDLOCK!” She covers her mouth, obviously surprised, I stand away from the telescope and wave, letting her get a good look at me. The notes go back and forth faster now. “U ALONE?” I ask her, “YES, R U?” she replies, “YES, LOOKING 4 U” I tell her “FOUND ME!” She writes and I can see her laughing. “TRAPPED THOUGH!” she replies back, drawing a big frowny face and I smile. I ask her “HOW LONG HERE?” She tells me “JUST GOT HERE” followed by another sheet “CAMP OVERRUN” I see a sad look come over her face as she remembers and I try to change the subject “GOT MUSIC?” She replies “IPOD Y?” I remember I gave her a USB charger for her iPod for her birthday when we were together “LOVE SONG, MARK OH!” I hold up my iPod with the note, she grabs her own iPod and we both find the song and press play, start dancing, I feel a bit foolish, wish I was drunk, wish I was in the same room as Natalie, wish I could go back to when we danced to this song the first time. The song ends and I get serious again, a new note “GOT FOOD?” She answers me “SOME” I scribble another “HOTEL SAFE?” Her reply worries me “THINK SO” I quickly scan the windows around her, see a couple of infected trying to get out of a room further down the hall, I hadn't seen them earlier, they must have reanimated when they heard Natalie arrive. I go back to Natalie's window and write another note “2 INFECTED, 3 RMS DOWN.” She looks to her right as though she can see through walls, goes to her bag and grabs a machete, “Nice”, I say to myself, and watch her go out to the corridor. I can't see her now so I move my view to the room with the infected, still clawing at the door to their room, I see one of them violently shake and drop to the floor as Natalie's machete is pushed through the door and the infected woman's stomach.

  Then the door is kicked in and Natalie steps through taking the top of the remaining man's skull clean off and then smashing her blade down into the one on the floor, finishing it off. A quick scan through the rest of the room and Natalie returns back to her telescope and writes another note for me “ANY MORE?” I hold a finger up “one minute” and I take another look around at the windows in her building. Nothing as far as I can tell, I write her a note “NOTHING ON THIS SIDE.” She does a thumbs up and heads back out of the door with her machete to search the rest of the hotel and I have to sit and wait for her to return, the longest two hours of my life, occasionally I'd see her enter a room on my side of the building, checking that they are, in fact, clear. I'm glad I wasn't wrong about any of them and they did all turn out to be empty.

  Eventually she returns to the room, streaked with blood but she looks ok, I'm giddy with glee, she's still totally bad-ass and I remember how alive I always felt when I was around her and I'm grinning like an idiot as I write a new note “U OK?” Another thumbs up in return and she starts to get cleaned up, stripping off her vest top as she walks into the bathroom, moving out of sight just before I get to see anything, the tease. I haven't been this happy in a long time and I need to get over there somehow and see her in person. I look out over the balcony again but the streets are still a death zone, no way through at all.

  Night falls and I'm starting to get cold, I wrap the bed sheets around me and put some coffee on to boil, we've been messaging each other for hours, catching up on what's been happening since the outbreak, and then the conversation turns to what happened between us and how it all ended, I'm currently trying to think of a good way to find out if she thinks I'm a dick, I'm getting the feeling that she doesn't but I'd like to be sure. I hold up my next message “AM I A DICK?” Not very subtle I know, she answers “WHAT DO U MEAN?” I'd give anything to have a proper conversation now, I need to use more than a few words at a time; this is ridiculous. “WHEN WE DATED” then I hold up the “AM I A DICK?” one again, she looks a little confused, she holds up her answer “WHY?” Just answer the quest
ion for fucks sake. “NEED TO KNOW” she writes back “A BIT YEAH” I ask another “THAT WHY WE SPLIT?” She thinks back, considers it, replies “PARTLY” then “WAS FUN THO.” Then why did she leave? I write my message “WHY LEAVE THEN?” and then another “I LOVED U” I can tell by her face that she's conflicted, not sure how to answer, she writes a message, screws it up and writes another “NO FUTURE, WAS JUST FUN” she shrugs as she holds it up. I draw a heart on a piece of paper, hold it up for her to see and then tear it in half, heartbroken. Her reply simply “SORRY” I'm in a bad mood now, does this mean it's another tick in the dick column on my list, I know she said I was a dick but she doesn't have any bad feelings about us or anything, if anything she's a dick for leaving, I decide it’s a win for me, it doesn't cheer me up though, I want to know what was on the note she screwed up, I really need to get over there somehow, I look over the balcony, still no chance, FOR FUCKS SAKE! I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I storm back into my room and scream at the ceiling as loud as I can for as long as I can until my throat hurts and tears are streaming down my face. I storm back out onto the balcony, hold up a “GOODNIGHT” note and then storm back in again and throw myself onto the bed.

  A couple of days pass with no change in the situation, both still trapped, communicating by signs held up for each other to read through the telescope, I write Natalie a love letter late one night when I can't sleep and fold it up into a paper plane, I throw it out into the night sky from the balcony and watch it soar across the street towards Natalie's hotel, it flies better than expected but still crashes to the ground well short of its destination, I don't bother to try again. As I look at my plane’s wreckage lying in the street I realise that the number of infected down there is a lot less than it was, they seem to have started drifting away, back into the buildings or maybe drawn elsewhere by a distant sound but if they keep leaving I might be able to make it across to Natalie soon, I go to bed happy despite my failure with the paper plane. The next day myself and Natalie are both like giddy kids watching the streets slowly clear, we decide to wait a while longer to make sure it’s safe but we're sure we'll be able to meet soon and I decide to spend a few hours cleaning myself up ready.