That path to freedom has been made more accessible by my attempt to ‘box clever’ last night. Emboldened by several slugs of vodka last night and armed with only a small torch, kitchen knife and some worn rope, I slipped out of the house on my own via the skylight window in the roof. Jenny had given in to several shots of vodka herself last night, which allowed me to go undetected in the early hours, while the dark of the night afforded me a bit of a cover against the throngs of corpses outside.
My scent no doubt rippled on the cold night air, but I was able to skirt across the rooftop without notice and leverage myself down to the adjoining garage. Once inside, it took me just a few minutes to find the camping stove we were once so familiar with from family holidays, and make light work of negotiating the path out of the garden. With only the safety of myself to worry about, weaving around clusters of corpses was surprisingly easy, if not spine tingling. In little time at all I was face-to-face again with Jane, or what was left of her; I had reached the pub’s beer garden. It shook me for a few brief moments, I thought I was going to throw up there and then, but I had not the time to ponder. I had to move fast.
Hands shaking with fear, I placed the camping stove right next to the caged enclosure housing the pub’s two huge gas bottles, turned on the stove’s gas, placed an empty plastic recycling box over the top and ran a trail of rope from inside the makeshift bomb to a quiet spot about 12 feet away. After several frantic, fearful attempts, matches were able to set the rope fuse alight and an increasingly ferocious fire blazed its way toward the pub as planned.
The explosion was huge, louder than anything I had experienced myself before. I hadn’t hung around long to find out if the two main gas bottles had ignited as hoped, but the raging boom of the explosion implied they had. Sparks, smoke and fire were in full flow by the time I had criss-crossed my way back to the house – and so was Jenny. She was incensed, not only at what I had clearly done but also that I had left the house in a ‘fucking reckless’ manner – leaving both of us entirely exposed.
What if it hadn’t worked? What if I had been compromised along the way? What if I picked up just one scratch? What if walkers had, in those moments, somehow found a way into the house as she was sleeping?
I knew she would not be happy. My half-arsed plan risked both our lives, as well as likely killing anyone seeking shelter at the pub. It completely defied Jenny’s moral compass and embodied the ruthless selfishness of this brave new world. But it worked. Somehow unknown to me, and as highly unlikely as the science behind it may have seemed even to me, a massive explosion was unleashed before our eyes. It tore through the night sky and left scores of corpses spellbound by the sights and sounds of the eruption, drawing them fervently in its direction. We watched as the house lost all its appeal and became less than a footnote in the undead’s attention.
Several hours and arguments later, and the road outside is empty, desolate. We have just been given our best chance of escaping these four walls and, despite our differences over the incident, we are in agreement that we’ll beat a hasty passage out of here in the early hours of tomorrow. We’ll take our chances out on the trail.
28th February 2016
Day 42. I’m back – and this shit really did just get real. We find ourselves well and truly trapped, yet again, in the darkest depths of the woods. Diverted off the beaten path of the mineral tramways, we were forced to make pitiful camp atop some wooden play equipment we stumbled across in the thick of the coppices.
When we left the house two days ago, the road ahead was relatively clear; all eyes were on the explosion at the pub beer garden. And we made good progress towards the tramway, not running or particularly powering through, just moving at a steady pace and reserving our energies for potential use later on – invaluable, as it would later be proven.
The main road in and out of the village had been overrun for weeks, it was like a constant thoroughfare of migrating, meandering flesh seekers. To rely on it as a route to freedom would be a dangerous voyage to make, hence our reasoning for using the wooded trail. We couldn’t risk it. I’m pragmatic – our limitations in the field of battle are not lost on me. To fight such an irrepressible militia of carcasses would be a near certain death sentence. Despite being only 31, my best days of fitness are probably behind me. I could comfortably outrun a group of corpses and manage a good pace for about five miles, but I’d be spent for a little while afterwards. As for Jenny, due to her asthma, she could barely break a canter these days without grasping for breath and feeling like her chest was collapsing in on itself. Any number of oncoming eaters might pounce upon us long before the chasing pack arrived. It could be fatal out on the main roads.
Yet we soon found the very same threat waiting for us on the tramway. I had barely had enough time and cold air to succumb to the grief and guilt of my actions, my selfish kills, since this apocalypse began, before we encountered snapping, snarling skulls lurking in the woods amidst the saplings and shrubberies.
Spotting an alarmingly quick biter advancing on us out of the corner of my eye, my footfall got heavier as my gait graduated to a sprint toward the next stile along the trail. A swift glance to my left confirmed the rapid advances of the unusually sprightly cadaver, but also revealed a struggling Jenny now 10 feet behind me and beginning to heave laboured lungfuls out into the crisp dawn air. A hundred thoughts raced through my mind in mere split-seconds as I attempted to calculate the collision course between my slowing wife and the relentless attacker. Instinct kicked in and I launched back toward her, easily gaining three feet of ground just with weight and momentum alone. I could see the corpse bearing down on its prey and threw myself forward without thinking, clumsily lunging into it with my right shoulder as if staging some kind of dirty shove on the rugby field.
We both went crashing to the ground, the impact sending a spew of rusting red blood up into the air and showering me with flaking flesh. The stirred corpse demonstrated instincts of its own, snapping its head back into my face and snarling with renewed vigour. It was like coming face to face with our neighbour all over again. Blood and an overpowering odour hit me as the corpse’s head contorted and crunched at the air, almost taking my dazed head by surprise. I could feel the immediacy of its decaying teeth to my cheek, moving in for the first flourishes of flesh. From there on, everything unfolded in some kind of blurred memory; I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but I think I dropped my shoulder, slipped the rucksack from my back and used it to leverage some space between us, and unleashed a broadside of punishing punches. I pummelled it into the muddy ground, a cascade of crimson fluids and grey matter erupting before my eyes.
As Jenny looked on in stunned silence, still chasing breath, and I staggered to my feet with blood-soaked hands still shaking, three more rousing attackers lumbered toward us from the dark of the woods in the distance. Rage and a need to protect Jenny took over and three more kills were racked up in seconds with little more than a heavy duty kitchen knife wielded in anger.
After we successfully negotiated the stile and maintained our progress down the tramway, a sense of emptiness filled the air. After everything we had just been through, after perilously brushing face-to-face with an insatiable biter, I could barely believe we had reached an empty section of the trail. It was reminiscent of the feeling we had when we reached the family homestead just days before; the cars were in the drive, toys were on the decking, and dishes were visibly stacked up in the kitchen, but no-one was home. It was like dashed hope twinned with frustration. Only this time around, there was hope.
We proceeded down the trail for a while longer, quietly forging on unscathed, lucky not to have yet encountered any more ambling undead. The now wintery leaves that had fallen in the previous season and provided a makeshift carpet throughout the trail were wet and hazardous. Their once crisp nature had long since been replaced. They masked a slurry laden slippery track underfoot and left behind an immobile army of bare woodland that enabled a clear line of sight for
500 yards ahead. But it also left us vulnerable to the equally sighted corpses that stalked the countryside, each of which carried a hunger and bloodlust as vivacious as the next. It wasn’t long before we walked into trouble again.
Despite thee visibility ahead, the haze of the early morning caught us out and three awakening corpses seemed to just appear on the horizon, aroused by an impending meal and stumbling desperately toward us from three different angles. To the left, a former hunk of a man now cast as a heavy, immovable force of rotting flesh lumbered forward, literally a dead weight. To the right, a stray waif of a corpse appeared drained of all colour and life as it raced nimbly in their direction. Straight ahead, the most tenacious of the oncoming pincer formation dragged its cumbersome and imperious limbs toward us with an angered, aggressive growl. In the distance, a fourth walker threatened to close in on too, salivating as its eyes narrowed.
What little progress we had made was blunted, the tapered trail ahead was cut-off from all sides – we were trapped, again. Only backtracking toward the road, at least half a mile back, would be a viable option. Even then, we could not guarantee safe passage back out of the situation. I lunged forward and planted the same knife into the head of the nimble waif with enough speed and force that it drove right through the centre of its skull. As the corpse fell to the ground in a heap, Jenny took my hand and we weaved our way through the muddy tangles of twigs, foliage and debris that blanketed the floor beneath the trees.
But the diversion took us far from the beaten track and into the undergrowth. Though we shared a strange inclination that someone had already trodden the ground before us – Jenny’s family? Her father? Fellow survivors? – and we passed a small grave-like mound of earth decorated with a wreath made of leaves, we felt completely without bearings and, ultimately, lost. I couldn’t help thinking I was suddenly completely out of my depth. The frenzied fear and veil of adrenaline had faded, leaving behind an inner core of anxiety and panic. We walked for another hour until we found sanctuary, of sorts.
And here we are, 24 hours later, surrounded by a handful of corpses 12 feet below us clambering at the sturdy wooden play structure we find ourselves camped in. We’re in the tree-house style cabin that you sometimes find in pub gardens or children’s play parks, offering just enough shelter from the elements to make it bearable and reprieve from the chase of the cadavers’ bloodlust on the ground. It’s just big enough for us to both sprawl out with our bags and blankets in a rough-and-ready style den, and only accessible by one of those chainwalk balancing acts that no corpse in this apocalypse, no matter how agitated or adept, could tackle. We are comparatively safe, if not cold and consumed by fear, as we head into our second night here.
From this ad-lib watchtower we will assess the situation again at first light, and hopefully find a way of getting back on track. For now, we need to try and pursue some much-needed semblance of sleep, if that’s really possible amidst the moaning, groaning and wrestled thoughts.
29th February 2016
I think we must be about a mile out of Porthreth now. From here on the play equipment watchtower I can just about see the school over the tops of the trees in the distance, while some of the natural geography is recognisable from my running days of yesteryear and I think we’ve drifted out amongst the woodland toward the next village along, Bridge Heath.
We haven’t drifted for two days though. We’ve been stuck here, freezing our bits off up on this exposed woodwork. While it may have been a great place to seek refuge from the deciduous undead all around us, and catch our breath from our sprinting travails through the woodland, it has also proved a tricky summit to escape from over the last 48 hours.
We draped our blankets over the edges of the cabin last night and kept huddled closely, quietly together, as we attempted to play down our presence up here and drive the walkers down below into a starved boredom. It’s taken about 14 hours, but they finally seem to have lost interest and assumed we’re no longer here. They can’t hear us, can’t see us, and have decided our fleshy morsels are no longer here. As a result, they have slowly and almost begrudgingly trudged off through the foliage in the pursuit of another smell on the afternoon air.
The blankets provided some shelter from the wind chill too, but not a lot. The cold snap continues and we’re now really starting to wonder if we were right in leaving the various (warm) buildings we’ve been in over the past few weeks. We were feeling the cold even then, but now we’re completely open to it. I think the adrenaline and core body heat from our running had belied the extent of the cold before but, unable to move up here and with only sleeping bags and extra layers for comfort, we’re really feeling it now. So are our surroundings; the grassy ground below is a bit of a whiteout and crunchy underfoot, the daffodils that remind us of brighter times are this morning frost-bitten, and even the draped fabrics have less of a ripple to them in the breeze, semi-rigid now with a thin layer of icy crunch.
We’re cold to the core – I even questioned whether it was affecting my mental state earlier, after seeing what looked like a survivor running in the distance. But Jenny saw it too, sprinting away from the woodland towards the village, presumably from a hungry pack of walkers. All manner of questions have been running through our heads. Who was it? Was it Jenny’s father? Was it somebody we know? Who or what were they running from?
Whoever it was, they demonstrated an impressive turn of pace – especially considering today’s slippery terra firma – and looked almost as if they knew what they were doing, rather than being part of a frenetic chase. Within seconds, he or she had disappeared from sight again, blended into the vista of thickset woodland.
It’s been otherwise quiet. Our entrapment aloft this bitter, leafy vantage point has afforded a lot of time to sleep and think things over. At the forefront of those thoughts has been one corpse in particular. Not ‘Dog, not Andrew White, not Jane the councillor or any of the merciless monsters that we’ve had to slay along the way, but something altogether more unnerving. It didn’t really register at the time, with the adrenaline pumping, the blood spraying and the breath I was catching, but overnight a series of flashbacks brought it back to me – there’s a silent, stalking cadaver out there like no other.
I can remember it now, so clearly that I can’t believe I didn’t think about it sooner. There was a corpse just standing there, watching. Staring longingly through the wooded hillside, the corpse stood still, fixed on the target in its sights. It was an empty gaze, though somehow less vacant than the others – less primordial. In its vision were Jenny and I, a pair of survivors carefully treading our way through the muddied, leafy winter track.
It didn’t pounce uncontrollably like all of the others we’ve encountered. It resisted, showing some kind of intentional restraint that no other corpse out there possesses. During all of the fighting, the frantic bloodshed, the minutes that we were caught in the moment and completely vulnerable, the running off into the hillside for safety, it just tracked us. Stood still in the distance, the silent and stealthy corpse simply twitched and observed from afar, its gaze unabated and its thirst seemingly managed.
Though I didn’t realise at first, I had subliminally noticed it watching us both in combat and in retreat; from the corner of my eye I had seen it stand and gaze as we fled. Further flashbacks told me this morning that it had slowly trudged through the flora and fauna in our direction, always there in the outermost edge of my peripheral vision as I looked back to check Jenny’s progress behind me.
I can’t believe it didn’t register with me before now. What the hell was that? It was definitely part of the corpse brigade, somehow dark and bloodied, with disfigured facial contours and other bedraggled features. But why didn’t it lurch instinctively and irrepressibly toward us? Why did it stalk and spasm rather than attack? It’s wholly unnerving and completely fear inducing. Did it follow us here? Was it able to? Is it lurking somewhere down there in the thicket? Are there more like that?
The thought that the
re might somehow be a breed of ‘intelligent’ or perceptive corpses hunting out there adds a whole new level of fear to this apocalypse. Fear that we cannot allow to paralyse us today – we're keen to get going and move on. We've had too many diversions and distractions along the way so far that have waylaid us for several days at a time, sometimes by choice but more often not. We don't want this to be another one; stuck for days on end in a random part of the woods that we have no bearings in. As soon as we’re confident we can climb down and negotiate the crispy earth beneath us, we need to get moving, get back on the tramway, and get back on track.
1st March 2016
The zombie that doesn't attack – I've seen it again, we both did. We stood not thirty feet from it, and it didn't move. It twitched and snarled and motioned to move, but the attack never came. The drooling corpse took maybe one step forward, but nothing more. It just stood and stared, it's head tilting to one side as it surveyed the prey before it and seemed to longingly analyse our weight, our smell, our being.
The Pestilence: The Diary of the Trapped Page 8
