The Pestilence: The Diary of the Trapped

by Rob Cockerill

  It’s not just the reinforcements we made and the different furnishings we used to soundproof the flat, it’s more than that. It’s hand washing our clothes because even the quietest of washing machines would give away our presence; it’s being mega careful when handling any cutlery or crockery for fear that even the slightest slip could result in a clanging sound; it’s shrouding the lights to keep them dim; it’s trying not to muffle the sound of the toilet flush with linen and other fabrics surround the unit; and trying not to boil the kettle too often, instead choosing to boil water on the hob during times of busier walker activity outside.

  That’s just scratching the surface of our attempts to maintain silence. It’s concentration sapping and at times thoroughly demoralising. On top of which, we just need air – both literally and metaphorically. Crazy as it sounds, we need that stinking, almost rotting ‘fresh’ air outside. A month of living in stale air and an atmosphere of tension is no good for anyone.

  We’ve also realised that the one thing we can think of that we're really lacking right now is medical goods. When we stockpiled food and water, we also stocked up on paracetemol, ibuprofen, rehydration sachets, vitamins and supplements, and other remedies for general ailments. But we didn't account for things like plasters, bandages, medical tape, sutures, slings, antiseptic wipes, lotions and other such supplies. I guess we never thought we would have any reason for them; we didn't anticipate leaving the house. Our only hope is to loot, starting with our neighbours’ belongings. It’s a horrible realisation, it’s one of the signs of civilisation breaking down right in front of you – right by you, in fact. But we might not survive without those essentials, and this is the world we find ourselves in now. This is the new norm.

  I know you may not forgive us for giving up what safety and security we have here, reader, but it will come at a cost eventually and sometimes you know deep down when you have to take that plunge and hope for something better. Maybe it’s gut instinct, maybe its anxiety, maybe it’s paranoia – either way, we’ve made our decision.

  So we've spent the morning preparing our bags, our weaponry, our supplies. We’ve been cooking off various rice or pulse-based meals and salads to take with us, all in portable little portions, as well as copious amounts of water and snacks, and generally trying to refine our on-the-road-profiles. We’ve chosen our most appropriate clothing for the journey – a surreal experience in itself – and as stupid as it sounds, even the clothing that makes us feel the most confident or ready to take on the world.

  How bizarre is that? For what we’re about to embark upon, you’ve got to feel comfortable and mobile. For me that means a tight black t-shirt and trusted, warm hoodie, a well-fitting pair of jeans and sturdy trainers. For Jenny it’s much the same – ripped jeans, trainers, a couple of top layers and her own snug hoodie, as well as hat and gloves. It’s function over form.

  The good thing is, we have time on our sides. The apartment is not compromised, neither of us is in some cliff-hanging life or death situation, and we are not yet actually being forced to leave the building in any way. This is as much on our terms as possible, and we have the luxury of choosing the optimum moment – that moment is this afternoon.

  Here we go….

  15th February 2016

  I have killed. I am now a killer. It wasn’t dignified and it sure as hell wasn’t the cleanest of kills that will have been made during this crisis. Awkward, forced, not at all satisfactory and almost succumbing to stage fright, it was a terrifying experience and far worse than I could ever have imagined.

  Coming face-to-face with the undead, in the flesh, is not what I thought it would be, far from it. You just can’t prepare yourself for it, no matter what you think and what weapons you might be packing. But it was necessary and I am slowly coming to terms with that; after recovering all night and gradually getting my head around it, I am slowly starting to feel better about my first time.

  …

  At 2pm yesterday, we began to quietly dismantle the reinforcements that have kept our front door so secure. Almost rigid with fear, I slowly lowered the lever on the door – despite my fumbling grip – and with the other hand spun the key to unlock it, before taking sharp inhale of breath and a step into the unknown.

  Jenny was braced closed behind me, so much so that I could sense her holding her breath over my shoulder, and in one swift motion upon pulling back the door, we launched ourselves out into the communal hallway and immediately up the stairs to our left. In our haste we didn’t even stop to check out the heavily sandbagged outer door, we just ran. Once atop the unfettered stairs, we froze for a moment and reflected on our little achievement, unsure what the next few minutes might have in store for us.

  Fixing our gaze on the panoramic window offered by the landing, we took in the gloomy view before us and wised up to just how many dead bodies lay twitching and shaking in the street outside. There’s way more than we thought, it looks like nothing short of a massacre out there. They’re everywhere: in the street, hanging out of cars, laying in wait in gardens and garages, even lurking in hedgerows. We couldn’t even count how many there are out there. I’ve never felt so estranged from community, from life itself.

  To the left, toward the church and adjacent memorial hall, we could see throngs of corpses salivating for flesh and hounding the foreboding oak doors of the Lord’s building, which felt somehow symbolic. A 200 yard section of the street, however, looked quieter, passable even. In the opposite direction, toward the school and the wooded tramway that we hope to make our escape on, there was perhaps another 200 yard clearing in the street, maybe more. But before we could crane our necks further to establish the scene outside the school, the silence was punctured by a scratching and scraping at the door beside us. It was coming from apartment three. And that’s when it happened.

  Just as I was daring to dream about a route out of here, fear set in again, constricting our bodies almost like the rigor mortis in the undead outside. A deep, coarse scraping sound resonated from within the apartment that we had assumed to be empty for the last four weeks; when this outbreak began, our neighbour Andrew appeared to be out, his car was missing from the driveway, and we had not heard a thing from his abode since then. He had always been a mysterious neighbour anyway, his movements always came across as furtive and despite some lengthy conversations, we had failed to actually ascertain that much about him. He had always been pleasant and approachable, yet neither Jenny or I ever felt like we really knew him.

  In those moments yesterday afternoon, he threatened to be far from friendly or approachable. The scratching grew deeper and more abrasive against the white panelled door and pulled some innate fight or flight reaction from depths I didn’t know I had. I threw myself at the door repeatedly, with every ounce of weight and strength I had in me, until it burst open and unwittingly sent me crashing to the floor with the caged beast behind it.

  Andrew’s corpse was wrestling and gnarling on the floor beside me, snapping its putrid jaw line in my direction and flailing its rotting arms around me. It was almost as taken aback by the fall as I was, but couldn’t scramble to its jaundiced feet as quick and immediately found itself the subject of a series of punishing strikes to the head and chest. The cadaver continued to snap and snarl, hungered and undeterred, as my makeshift spear smashed it over and over without dealing the decisive below. It was a frenzied and frenetic struggle, an unnecessarily clumsy and messy encounter until I managed to bring it to a bloody, brutal end with one final puncture to its disfigured head.

  The corpse finally fell silent in a widening pool of crimson blood and parasitic brain juice, and I felt far from victorious. Jenny and I were both stunned. I know she was shocked, saddened in me, I could feel it. She shook uncontrollably as the hungered, mottled grey eyes of our former neighbour stared back at us, fixed on its prey to the end. I dropped my ruthlessly wielded weapon to the floor and silence prevailed once more. There were no words in those moments, no consolation nor reprieve. I ha
d made my first ‘kill’ and there’s no going back from that. My first bloody and barbaric kill.

  Like the haunting face at the window a few weeks ago, those moments are etched in my memory. I spent the night trying to reconcile with my volatile actions, my aggression and the fact that I had just brought an end to another – with still ‘living’ or not. I’m slowly coming to terms with it this morning, though I am not sure Jenny feels the same just yet.

  16th February 2016

  With every hour that passes I am coming to terms a little bit more with what I have done. Though I endured flashbacks every time I drifted off to sleep last night, destroying Andrew White’s corpse had to be done. It was another necessary evil in a world now full of selfish malevolence.

  I don’t feel good about it, far from it. I still don’t feel good about watching ‘Dog die right in front of me a couple of weeks ago, either. I may have had the chance to help him, but I didn’t. It was all over in moments anyway, but it was selfish and I know that; or rather it was ruthless and, more to the point, I know that’s what this brave new world is going to demand of us if we’re going to survive.

  We spent the day regrouping back in the apartment yesterday, and readying ourselves for the real brutality outside. Neither of us has fully come to terms with our ordeal, and I know that Jenny looks at me slightly differently now, but it is what it is. I have to keep telling myself that this is the new norm, this is what it takes – pummelling that corpse into submission was the first big step in Jenny and I making it out of this nightmare alive. That’s how I’m getting through this shit I’m feeling.

  In ruthless terms, again, it was in fact a profitable kill. Once we managed to get over what had just happened moments before, while still in shock we searched the apartment for anything worth taking. We found a whole load of medical supplies, many of the items we were looking for, in fact. There were also some useful snack foods to take with us, as well as a heavy-duty torch, penknife, a mobile internet ‘dongle’ that still seems to work, and some other random bits.

  It was also important for another very notable reason – we now know that the building is not compromised. We know that we have eradicated a biter that was lurking upstairs, previously unknown to us, and providing we are very careful with our exit plans, we know that our apartment is a safe haven to come running back to if necessary.

  So what is our plan? Well, we have now had a couple of days to regroup here following our experiences, and we have also assembled just about everything we think we need. We’re travelling light and yet very well prepared, we’re confident of that. We plan to slip out at first light (venturing out into the unknown in the dark is too much too soon for us) and head right down the road toward the school, from where we can pick up the tramway and make haste through the woods.

  The way the village is laid out, there’s no alternative route for us other than the main road through the village; so we’re going to have to be as stealthy as possible to make it past what will surely be an absolute horde of cadavers near the school. We know the first 200 yards of the street looks passable, but beyond that we have to presume the worst. It may take us a while, and I have no doubt we may have to make good on my first kill experience almost immediately. But if we can reach the school, that would be massive for us; not only will we be one step closer to the tramway and ultimately the military base we seek, but there may be even a shred of evidence as to the mystery bell-ringing too. We have to live in hope. We have to survive 2016.

  JP x

  17th February 2016

  Day 31. One month since this all began, and we are stuck in the village church, surrounded by corpses clambering at the door.

  Yes, that's right, the church. We’ve done nothing more than move from one form of imprisonment to another, barely 200 yards away from our apartment.

  We've had a torrid time since slipping out of the apartment with the dawn chorus this morning. It's been a long, intense, and truly terrifying 10 hours. We left at around 5am as planned, opting to leave the full barricades in place to the front of the apartment and take our chances out of the back patio doors instead. Thankfully we judged it right, the courtyard was empty and we could take a few seconds to adjust to the scene outside, to take it all in.

  It stinks, it actually stinks. There's a staleness to the air, with layers upon layers of rotting flesh, puss-filled blood, decomposing garbage and even harbour seaweed smells poisoning the atmosphere. It may be 'fresh' compared to our apartment, but it's enough to make you throw up every time you inhale. It's also so desolate, so vacant. This isn't Porthreth, it's like some terrible, virtual reality incarnation of the village. Everything has somehow lost It's character, it's life. It's difficult to put it into words, but beyond the conscious knowledge of what's happened, everything just feels so subconsciously different, so lonely and uninhabited. The cars don't move, the buildings are all largely cold and lifeless, the grass and hedgerows already look unkempt, and even the birds in the trees sound less chipper. Everything has changed. And it is bloody freezing too. The cold continues to bite like the corpses we're hiding from. It's like a two-pronged attack that has us in permanent retreat.

  That's where we're at right now, in fact – we had to retreat and abandon our plans for the time being. No sooner had we left the safety of our apartment grounds, and we found ourselves thoroughly exposed out in the street. We didn't even get halfway along the 200-yard stretch of road that looked negotiable just 48 hours before.

  We were caught out straight away; a cluster of craved cadavers lay in wait for us as we emerged from the cover of a couple of vehicles outside our friend Steph’s house. Having been slowly and stealthily crouching along behind a succession of cars that concealed the progress we were making, we were blind to the pack of predators waiting for their next feast just two cars ahead. Though we stopped in our tracks and ducked back down, another shock was in store behind us. A 15-20 strong pack of the undead looked like they had been mischievously led into some kind of makeshift holding pen adjacent to the house, the sight of which forced Jenny to let out an uncontrollable shriek of fear.

  The sheer terror of seeing such a crowd of corpses right there over our shoulders, picking up our scent over the decayed air and visibly baying for our blood, took over and induced instant panic. Fear and anxiety take over, there’s little room for calm thought. But there’s also no place for unconfined screams anymore either. Within seconds, they were on to us – the crowd of cadavers before us were excited and restless all at once, while the enclave of attackers to our rear continued to salivate and agitate for our flesh. Upon getting to our feet, the scene surround the school in the distance looked just as perilous, with every other corpse in the street slowly coming out of it's cold-driven dormancy and heading our way. We were cornered from almost all directions, it seemed, and we had no choice but to revert back down the road from where we had came.

  So we turned on our heels and ran, slaloming between overturned vehicles and other carcass obstacles and dodging small pockets of zombies as we fled past our apartment and down toward the harbour end of the village. But it soon became clear we were running into opposition ahead too.

  The Trethewy’s spacious bungalow to our left looked long since overrun and was teeming with bored zombies, they were pouring out of all areas – from the front door, the wide-open garage and even the amidst the rising sunflowers on the lawn. Next door, the local garage boasted a forecourt of corpses where cars were once parked, and the road directly ahead was all but cordoned off by their approaching peers. We were surrounded. To our right the church appeared far from sacred ground, with a mass of biters beating at the heavy oak doors and a crowd of them assembling in the foreground. They were the only ones to not yet have seen us and in some kind of split-second confidence, I took Jenny’s outstretched hand and made the snap decision to take our chances down the side of the holy building.

  I was desperate to make light of the gravelled car park and proceed down the blind alleyway that
would connect us to a parallel residential road and, hopefully, some reprieve. But Jenny noticed several more corpses clumsily climbing through the hedgerow from the neighbouring nursing home and it was clear we couldn’t make the alley without being compromised. Already committed to the church ground, we again had little choice but to detour into the empty grassed area behind the building and scrambled up onto an adjoining conservatory roof. From there, we found a small skylight window into the roof of the church and, at last, some salvation – of sorts.

  Three diversions, two near misses and 10 hours later, we’re trapped in a cold church with a gathering of former friends and neighbours, all unified in our feelings of fear and frustration. There are about 20 of us here, huddled in small friendship groups, hungry and hoping for liberation. Sarah and Steve are here, as are Kate and Joe, but many of the others here are merely recognisable to us, not people we really know. The parish councillor and her family are here too and, I gather, were instrumental in ushering everyone to refuge here in the first place. Each has a story to tell, but few appear to have any idea how hopeless the situation is outside. The very statesman-like windowless nature of the building has protected them from that.