That's when it hit me, when I realised who it was. The jaundiced, disfigured features and a torso now bereft of any healthy weight masked the realisation. I think I know who it is, who it was, but I haven't told Jenny just yet and I won't know for sure until that thing is put out of it's misery. The big question is, why the hell won't it attack us?
We can't begin to understand this apocalypse or its inception, but we know the rules: You get bitten or scratched, you become one of them – and then you uncontrollably hunt anything in sight yourself; and so the process keeps repeating. Bite, turn, attack, repeat. But this apparently restrained cadaver breaks all of those rules. It re-writes the pages of fear with whole new chapters and verse.
We're only just coming to terms with what's happened to the world, to the people around us, and – closer to home – to the people that we've become. We don't need another game-changer. If that's what's this creature is, of course. Maybe it's something else, maybe there's another reason it didn't attack. Perhaps it was bogged down or unable to move. Yet again, all we have are questions – and fear.
Now add injury to that list. Jenny has a strained ankle that’s caused us to stop in our tracks for a couple of hours, and hopefully no longer. We made a lot of progress today, and I have a feeling we’re now not that far from the military base.
It’s been an arduous trek, made painstakingly slower since a blanket of cold covered the ground beneath us. Once we disembarked the frosty play equipment that we’d called home for the last couple of days, we began trying to retrace our steps back to the trail and had to meticulously plant each and every footstep on the old tramway. Not only were we having to tread carefully for fear of an icy accident, but every wet leaf and sludge of mud, and every snap of a crunchy twig creates noise enough to alert any dormant corpse; our footfall needs to be a delicate motion that lightly glides across the glacial-like ground. That’s not easy in dense woodland.
Despite such efforts, we made a lot of early headway and not only found our way back to the path, but actually started to advance a long way down it. It was a mess. We’ve seen body parts, blood bogs, tendons and entrails caught in low-lying branches, and even mini landslides in the earth, presumably where corpses have stumbled and slid down the hillside or survivors have actively jumped down to avoid them. The ground itself seems to tell a thousand stories, and we’ve only traversed a small amount of it in the grand scheme of things.
But our progress was curtailed when Jenny turned her ankle. We inadvertently found ourselves heading in the direction of what would prove to be seemingly non-aggressive corpse. About a 25 feet expanse of trees and brittle brambles stood between us when we caught sight of it, and our intimidating stand-off felt like minutes but probably only lasted a few seconds – just long enough for the grisly looking biter to consider the meal stood rigidly in its vision. Though relatively passive and twitching constantly, one particular tic sent Jenny into a flap and she bolted, leaving me little choice but to join her. We ran and ran, and ran – until Jenny caught an awkward bounce off one of those earth landslides and tumbled to the ground.
Thankfully we were in a stretch of the tramway without immediate danger, and limped a few steps further to a cave-like clearing in the valley, where rainwater trickles down the rocky surface and the trees afford a small hideaway from the open trail. We’re staying here for a couple of hours to catch our breath and allow Jenny’s ankle to rest up. I’m not sure how bad it really is, but she seems to be in a lot of pain and unable to place much weight on it. That’s yet to be put to the test by an onrushing corpse though, only then will we find out how bad it is. Hopefully that’s not something we’ll have to discover anytime soon.
2nd March 2016
Dear diary
Well, here we are, almost. 46 days since the zombie apocalypse went from silver screen fiction to unrelenting blood thirsty reality, and we have finally reached what we hope will be our salvation.
The last few days have been tough. Two weeks ago I was forced to make my first kill, days later I would have to repeat that chilling, life-changing feat, and since then the reluctant, ruthless slashing spree has intensified. In the last 48 hours we’ve come face-to-face with more of the undead corpses than ever before, we’ve seen and done things we never ever thought possible, and we’ve succumbed to the increasingly harsh winter elements of 2016 with sickness and injury.
Jenny’s latest challenge is a swollen, heavily bandaged ankle. She can weight-bear, but not for long spells, while I have fallen sick overnight myself. Over-tired, weak and anxious, the resulting over-active and aggressive stomach acids are wreaking havoc with my insides.
I guess I should be thankful that my innards are still inside me and not splayed throughout these woods or inside the rotting entrails of the undead that we so fear, but it’s not much comfort right now. I’ve never coped well with sickness. I had always thought that vomiting was the worst pre-apocalypse feeling or sensation – the gut wrenching, uncontrollable heaves, the starvation of breath and near choking, and the vicious cycle of the pungent stench and the further sick it induces all over again. Every time sickness came to dictate my insides, it was a stark reminder of why I hated it so much.
But that was nothing. At least we had the scant warmth and comfort of our sickbed, we had the toilet or a vessel to discard vomit in, and we could take a hot shower and scrub the feeling of engrained unpleasantness away afterwards. Sickness and dehydration while hiding from the marauding undead – and during exposure to one of the most unforgiving cold snaps I can recall – is another thing altogether. There’s no escaping the vomit, nowhere for it to go. There’s no time or place to curl up and ride out the physical suffering. The putrid, acidic stench of sick only builds upon the already acrid and barely tolerable air of rotting flesh and congealed blood. And there’s little or no family around to share the pain with and offer sympathy and dry biscuits.
We had to keep moving in-between my heaves and rest breaks for Jenny’s ankle, which only made both worse. Despite that, we’ve made slow and steady progress to the gates of the military base. We’ve staked the place out for a few hours from a quiet little area in the woodland, from where I’m writing to you now, reader. The wireless dongle continues to keep us connected.
But we can’t stay out here for much longer, and we want to be in before nightfall, so we’re going to make our move shortly.
There’s a sturdy looking perimeter fence as far as the eye can see from here, with a heavy set of gates for us to (hopefully) find a way through yet. Beyond, it looks like everything I pictured it to be; solid, reinforced, expansive and adaptable. We have hope again and freedom, perhaps. But let’s get inside first.
3rd March 2016
Four incinerator flare gas towers loom large over the military base, giving it a sturdy, industrial look that reinforces its forces nature. Two of which appear to have been converted into temporary watchtowers, adding to the sense of security around the installation that’s already established by the octagonal perimeter fence, it's cliff top location, and the building's solid concrete construction.
A large runway stretches as far into the distance as the naked eye can see, perhaps a mile or more in length, though at first glance it looks to have been a long time out of use – no aircraft appear to call the base home. Barren, largely green fields surround the base to three sides, while the woodlands that we have come to know so well mark a steep descent from the gated front of the site to the valley below.
The site personifies safety and the best thing about it is, we’re on the inside.
We ended up enduring a tough time of getting in; the gates were firmly locked shut and in the absence of any bolt cutters to hand, we had a difficult time of scaling the perimeter fence with Jenny’s damaged ankle. It was no mean feat getting up and over, and being unable to really cushion her jump to the ground once on the other side. She winced and almost broke down in pain there and then, but there was no time – we had to keep moving in case there were
any starved corpses waiting around the base. We beat a hasty path to the first door we could find, and eventually broke our way in. Actually, once we’d tackled the fence, it was surprisingly easy to penetrate the building itself.
And so, we were in. It had taken hours of strategising how to overcome the obstacles we faced, and I know today’s diary entry has been a long time coming, reader, so you may have thought we were waylaid in the woods again, but this is the zombie apocalypse – you simply have to find a way in.
It’s exactly what I had hoped for, and I think it exceeds Jenny’s expectations, whatever they really were. We spent several hours staking the place out, exploring every room we can find, hunting down cadavers that weren’t there behind every heavy steel door, knives in hands, naturally. This place is huge, seriously huge. We’ve covered as much of the building as we can and no-one seems to be here, living or otherwise, but Jenny needed to rest up so we’ve made camp in the base’s living quarters for the night. Her ankle is badly swollen, she’s flat out asleep, and we made a pact not to go off exploring on our own, so I thought I would use this time to write.
Appearances can be deceptive, but the base has all the hallmarks of a safe haven: remote location; fortified; and a worthy stronghold that we could begin to build a new life of survival around. The last few days and weeks have shown us that this is no longer our world. Life as we knew it belonged to the dead now; we’re simply hiding in the shadows. This place might just be a big enough shadow for us to get lost in for a little while.
There’s a functioning cabled Internet port here, which I’m making the most of, and if there are any active radar communications from the huge golf ball-like domed beacon to the rear, then longer-term survival might be possible. We’re going to check out the station’s command centre tomorrow to see what’s online or offline. My guess is the latter; we seem to be alone here, to our surprise there were no military personnel waiting to mob us, nor any vigilante survivors like ourselves that had already lay claim to it. On that basis, I’m thinking that the site’s facilities might not be worth risking the journey for. I’m hopeful they are, we have to be, but I do wonder why there’s no-one here. Has anyone been here during the apocalypse? Was it abandoned? If so, why?
Another question we have is, where are Jenny’s family? We thought they would be here. We definitely hoped they would. But there’s been no sign of them either here or en route, except for a lot of the displaced earth and evidence of footfall on the tramway, perhaps. I haven’t brought it up with Jenny yet, but I know she’s thinking the same. It’s the inevitable elephant in the room.
For now, I’m focusing on the task in hand. We still have some far off sections of the building to properly explore, and there were several locked doors that we couldn’t begin to prise open – so we have some questions and concerns about what they might lead to. And I already have ideas about what needs to be done to build a future here, if that’s what we intend to do.
The fence may need some working on – more able individuals might find entry to the base far easier than we did – and I would actually be keen to dig out a perimeter trench beyond the fencing too, once Jenny is back to full health. That’s a two-man job; one digging and one on lookout. We’d be keen to engender survival and community up here, but we have to be wary of strangers as well as the undead. Hence, beefing up the breaches.
Weapons aside, safety and security is the only currency in this callous new world – and this could prove to be the safest piece of real estate for miles around. So we have to safeguard it against not just the dead, but the living too. They could be just as dangerous. We’ve seen what it’s like since this shit all kicked off – its territorial now, dog eat dog. Society's gone, and we can’t take any chances.
4th March 2016
I’m so relieved we’re here, I really am. Having strode confidently through the woodland as if battle hardened and brave, when I was in fact battle weary and less than brazen, I couldn’t maintain that mask much longer.
The torturous journey through the kinks and contortions of the trail were beginning to take their toll, and the freezing cold elements coupled with injuries we’d picked up meant that our vulnerability was forcing the issue. We needed somewhere to seek refuge.
Three times in our last hour out in the timbers we had found ourselves fending off advances from passing corpses, either hiding in deep pockets of scrubland or creating noisy diversions for onrushing corpses to blindly follow. We had a feeling a bigger pack was not that far away, and to hang back in the woods for another hour might compromise us altogether. Jenny was feeling particularly pensive and with every zombie kill that she watched me claim, I know she wondered if I would be so successful the next time. I had stepped up for sure, and I have the faces of every kill etched into my consciousness, but I’m no warrior.
We needed safety. When we finally achieved it, opening up before us were countless square meters of tarmac ribbons and grasslands of pale greens and yellows. I’m still taken aback by the sheer scale of the site today, 24 hours on, and we will need to scout it all out over the coming days.
The somehow idyllic vista is flanked to the left by what appears to be a giant white radar dome and to the right, a number of square block concrete buildings. All of which sits inside the enclosure of a lattice wire fencing festooned with bright red ‘warning’ signs at 30-feet intervals. Behind it lies the perilous woodland that we spent days trekking through.
From within this vast expanse of the military base, it seems almost as if nothing is wrong with the world. We look on at unfettered lawns and grassy knolls, while light blue skies belie the gruelling winter that has so ravaged the village to date and, even if a little clichéd, faint birdsong can be heard from the distance, carried on the sea winds. It’s the kind of scene that leaves us in disbelief that we actually managed to negotiate the precarious path through Porthreth and the surrounding copse unscathed. It also makes us question if it was all real; if the world really has gone to a frenzied, bloodied shit after all.
But it has. Up here is, perhaps quite literally, the calm after the storm. We’ve spent much of today picking up where we left off yesterday, taking zone by zone and room by room as we sweep through the site and attempt to establish if we really are the only ones here. I’m still not entirely sure, and it makes me nervous to think that we both fell into a deep sleep in the living quarters last night. We propped a table and chairs against the door for reinforcement, but had anyone or anything been here, I’m certain we would have been taken by surprise in the dead of the night.
We’ve seen some strange sights as we work our way through the building, from abandoned test tubes and vials to burnt documents and chaotic dorms. We’ve found a couple of light firearms in lockers so far and I’m convinced there must be more to come, once we’ve checked out every locker, every cupboard, and every nuance of every room.
I’m also growing confident that this place was occupied until very recently. The disordered dorms hint at a hasty, unplanned exit; the guns we picked up did not seem particularly dusty or discarded; and there were some cluttered, scruffy diagrams lying around in the main control centre that appear to depict the school. Jenny thinks I’m reading too much into everything, but I’m not so sure. Not for the first time, I have more questions than answers and can’t help but theorise about it all. My new biggest question being, if this place was in use until just a few days or weeks ago, why was it left abandoned? Surely it is an impregnable fortress during such times – so why would its inhabitants have left?
We’ve not encountered anyone else here yet, nor have we had to wield our kitchen knives in anger, but there have been a couple of occasions in quieter moments where we thought we were hearing things, and there are still several heavy steel doors that we cannot find a way through. But we’re fine for now and we’re safe warm, so we’ll eat and drink to that this evening.
5th March 2016
As we continue to explore the site here at the military base, we’ve b
ranched out into the open and are surveying the site’s exterior features.
We came across several designated dumping sites (marked A-D), presumably for the disposal (and burning) of hazardous materials judging by the receptacles and warning signs that they comprise of. It all adds to the picture we’re painting here of some very recent chemical activities, what with the scene inside the laboratories and the torched paper trails. Rumours of present day actions had occasionally been the talk of the town below, but to all intents and purposes this was for decades an out-of-service installation.
We’ve seen something else to suggest that all might not be as it once seemed. For a start, there’s a strip of tarmac that’s home to a handful of navy-luminescent liveried 4X4 vehicles, each equipped with biohazard suits, light firearms and various other preparatory tools. And, although barely visible to the naked eye from the runway, there are scatterings of spent shotgun shells littering the grass mounds that push out to the far corners of the fencing. So was the base in some sort of use after all? Were they from a training exercise, perhaps, or did something go down here?
Our site checks have taken us to all four corners of the installation, something that Jenny did not really thank me for as she still nurses a sore ankle. But we can now rest assured that there are no breaches of the perimeter fence, and having found a set of keys to the gates inside one of the 4X4’s, we are in control of the robust gates that guard the camp.
The Pestilence: The Diary of the Trapped Page 9
