We can at least wash clothes up here, unlike at our apartment where the location meant that the washing machine was simply too noisy to keep our presence below the radar. But washing detergent of any kind is in short supply – and it doesn’t disguise the fact that we have very little clothing options to choose from. Again, it’s hardly crisis material during the end of days, but when you’re constantly facing blood-spattered situations or worse, it would be nice to scrub that morose, fleshy footprint of death from your being. Such things are all miserable little reminders of the world we’re surviving.
There again, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. This isn’t a dream, it’s very real, and we need to stay alert and prepared for what lies in wait out there.
9th April 2016
April has not been kind to us. Daffodils and primroses have sprang up all over the place over the last 10 days, finally emerging after the prolonged, bitter cold snap this winter. Around the same time, Jenny's bump began to show; modest but definitely showing signs of growing away in there.
As a result, we're thinking of calling her Primrose for a girl. It's a beautiful name and we're both really keen. But I also read once that primrose means 'first rose' and that seems pretty perfect to me - she can be the first rose of this dark new world. Hopefully we'll have got the hang of this existence by then, and Prim can go and do much more than that - she can excel in it.
Our perhaps flowery hopes aside, there's little else to offer in terms of the cheeriness of Spring. Some kind of electrical storm knocked the power out for over four days since the month began, completely catching us off guard and delivering a hard, salient reminder of our vulnerability in this world. It came completely about of the blue and just when we had began to get on top of things here, as you know, reader. The sun had been shining, the air had that cool, crisp Spring feeling, and we were making good on our plans for sustainability. Then it all changed overnight; a violent, rasping storm tore inland at about 2am on the 2nd April and brought scenes of desperation all around us.
Trees eventually came down in the woodland, huge chunks of our new tunnel hurled back and forth across the runway, the perimeter fence swayed and rippled on the wind, and forked lightning lit up the skies as we could do little but watch it unfold from the panoramic view of the observatory. It was mesmerising, yet terrifying all at once.
Two hours in, and the power gave out in what would prove to be the middle of a three-hour lightning show. We half expected it, such were the bright bolts first down from the sky and the force that clearly whipped the overhead power cables, but we thought it would only last minutes, maybe hours at worst. When the power still didn't return after 12 hours, we began to worry. When we went into our first full night without it that evening, we started to scare easily - the base is a far more fearful place to be when it's pitch black inside. It's the same with any building, but when it's an installation such as this with limited natural openings, you can't help but be overcome with irrational fear. We tried to spend most of our time in the observatory, the most living and airy room in the building with its 360 degree panoramic viewing window, but even that vantage point cannot stop your mind wandering into the realms of paranoid thought in the night hours.
The power remained out for more than four days, robbing us of hot showers, hot water, heating, laptops and devices, the ability to cook (even toast), and even make a warming brew. It left us truly compromised - not good for a pregnant lady - and living in even more fear than we thought possible recently. We had our noses well and truly rubbed in our intense vulnerability. We've been lucky to have power all of this time, but we're in no state to give it up just yet.
What happened I'm still not sure, but the power was restored a couple of days ago and we could finally give those survival pack torches and lamps a much-needed rest. I think a back-up generator or two must have kicked in somewhere around the site; such a facility would surely have a few generators ready and waiting for such eventualities. The question is, why did it take them four days to register? And did they switch on automatically?
The one thing that isn't working now is the surveillance system - it just hasn't come back on again, and I'm damned if I can figure it out. It's a shame because we could really do with getting a look at the rest of the village and assessing he storm damage, if there is any. We could also do with checking for corpse activity; we saw a few extra cadavers seemingly stumble across the base in all of the drama of the storm, and it would be good to know if we can expect a bigger crowd yet to come.
And we're not done there, either. What's that saying, it never rains but it pours? Yeah, it's pissing it down this April. To top it all, during the height of the blackout, I broke out in an untimely fever that raged within my body and left me near paralytic with lack of energy.
It forced Jenny and I to spend several days at arms length. We had to sleep apart (which I have always hated), eat and drink apart, and keep a relative distance between us where possible. That's one thing on our side I guess, even if the power is out - the security of the base allows us the space and freedom to mingle around separately. We sanitised anything we so much as looked at, and washed any sheets or clothing items I came in contact with. We couldn't take any chances in Jenny's present state.
It took me back to a full-blown flu we both endured about three weeks before this all began. Jenny had caught it first and we didn't realise at first how bad it would transpire to be. She spent just under a week burning up and shivering, burning up and shivering, barely able to move from her sickbed. I managed to steer clear of it, it seemed, until one week later it completely caught me by surprise and wiped me out just the same. My body's never been very good at coping with such ailments; it's either going good and capable of 10k runs, or it's not good at all and descends well and truly into the depths of sickness. I lost half a stone that week just in sweating and lack of appetite alone. Paracetemol and ibuprofen, as well as water of course, became my best friend that week - and all three of those have come in handy again over the last few days.
But they are now in shorter supply, and that's not good when we have so many different issues that Jenny may need them for in the next six months or more. We're running out of a range of basic meds and items that may be essential in times to come, and those tough decisions we have to make may have just been brought forward by this week's events. It made me realise yet again how vulnerable we are now. April already looks to be a long month in prospect.
14th April 2016
We're spent the last four or five days working like dogs to repair much of the storm damage and reinvigorate our earlier reinforcements around the base, and then sleeping for what seem like long spells as we recover from the exertion.
I've still not shaken the fever completely. I'm almost there, but when you have to make hay while the sun shines because your life may literally depend on it, then it takes a little longer to get the rest and full night's recuperation that you need to get back to full strength. But I'm almost there, and thankfully Jenny hasn't caught it yet so we're taking that one as a positive. I think we can safely say by now that she’s managed to avoid it.
Using the mass of different coloured refuse bags that we found up here, I had the idea to make our very own hay bails – so I've been heading on 'safe' runs over the fence and into the old farmer's land behind the base to gather up as much hay as I can muster. It made for tiring trips, over and over, but we managed to get a little production line going with Jenny firmly on the safe side of the fence, and enough hay to tightly pack about 60 refuse sacks. We were doing it all of Sunday, in the warm spring sunshine, and I built a very tightly bundled screen up against one whole section of the perimeter fence. Shored up with two solid struts made up of some old 4X2 wood that I couldn't find any other use for, the screen gives us some breathing space to tend to the raised beds without beady eyes watching us. It also acts as an extra buffer for the fence itself, which we could have done with before to be honest.
We have hundreds of refuse
sacks left, and if I spend another hard day scavenging the fields then we can probably get together enough hay for a whole new screen along another section of fence. That would give us some much-needed cover from the undead, while still being able to keep an eye on those blood-thirsty threats from the lofty position of the observatory. It would also be further strengthening of the perimeter fence, at a time when we really do need to maximise our defences.
Defences aside, we've been tending to the vegetable patches and setting up some improvised water butts to salvage and conserve water too, not only for watering those thirsty crops but also with a view to our water supply running dry one day. Filtration will be the issue, but we've set up some natural filtration systems for the water involving rocks, pebbles, Earth and some redundant sieves. Who really needs sieves for cooking purposes during these dark days anyway? They're a luxury item that we've managed to turn into an invaluable piece in the jigsaw.
That's what this is all about now; taking the once luxurious or superfluous and turning it into something useful, something worthwhile; almost everything has to have a purpose these days. If man one days learns anything from this apocalypse, and stories such as my own, then let it be that we perhaps got too comfortable, too ‘cocky’ with our way of life and everything it became. We became obsessed with digital devices, social media and other communications, technologies of convenience and having everything there at our fingertips. This survival has stripped us back to basics and beyond, and shown us that we could have been doing more all of this time – something more constructive and proactive, something more resourceful and meaningful.
There’s precious little good about this brave new world and I would go back to how things were before in a heartbeat, but if there’s one good thing to come out of it, it’s the throwback to a simpler existence. We’re certainly ‘keeping it real’.
27th April 2016
Dear Diary
Today began like any other day during this zombie apocalypse, an early morning mixture of anguish, anxiety and but for just a few fleeting moments, hope. The latter is soon extinguished by the very first cursory glance out of the window, a daily surveillance routine that moves swiftly into the art of setting one's frame of mind for the long day ahead. It's a pained, somewhat morose, and completely challenging task that can sometimes be a struggle, yet inevitably is achieved – because there is little hope of surviving 2016 without that sense of gumption.
But that's okay, because it's better than I've been feeling for the last 10 days. My absence from this diary has not been lost on me, quite the opposite in fact; at times I have made a conscious effort to stay away.
The first few days of abstinence from my one-way conversation with you were enforced – the power went off yet again, and for several days. It came out of the blue given that the shockingly stormy weather of early April had all but disappeared to be replaced by bright blue skies and a crisp Spring air. But take us by surprise it did and we just had to roll with those cold, uninviting punches.
As it would transpire over the last 10 days, it was probably for the best. I've been overcome with anger for the last few days, the kind of anger and anguish that we all felt in the first few days and weeks of this apocalypse and which essentially resurfaced in me some three months on. I just kept aggravating inside over the same question – why didn't we have a plan for any of this?
I get that this zombie apocalypse is the epitome of the unexpected, it's so unforeseen it's off the scale. But was there seriously no plan or strategy of any kind, at all? No covert Government disaster plan or contingency committee? No local authority briefing on potentially apocalyptic matters? Not even a memo of a looming threat? Nothing?
Or was it simply that everything moved so frightening quickly that there was no time to implement plans or coordinate any kind of tangible response? Either way, it wasn't good enough, certainly not in this day and age.
It is all bloody, corpse-laden water under the bridge now of course, but it's been seriously eating up me up all over again over the last week or so and I didn't feel I could really write anything constructive here. I'm afraid to say that reasoned thought or discourse was beyond me, reader, so I opted to keep my counsel and work through it with Jenny in the only way I know how – keeping busy and venting frustration in my activities.
One of my biggest steam valves has been exercise; it always has been throughout my life. I've been trying to keep fit over the last 10 days, sprinting lengths of the runway and doing endurance laps around the base, skirting along the perimeter fence and ‘keeping it real’ as I figuratively brushed face-to-face with the snarling corpses on the other side – reminding myself of the terrifying danger we live amongst.
Cadaver activity has been quite static over the last fortnight or so, which may be good for us but can't help leaving us concerned for whoever else is courting their attention right now. That's the bittersweet feeling that comes with these dark days of apocalypse – if it isn't you in the hungered sights of the undead, it's definitely someone else. These monsters don't rest; they don't sleep; they don't go dormant or take it easy; they don't take their eye of ball. Instead they yearn; they pang for flesh; they lust for blood and slimy sinews around the clock – they do not and will not stop in their quest for fresh food. They're unrelenting, and completely menacing. While their absence from our vicinity is good for us, it engenders a natural apprehension for others that may be less fortunate.
I’ve also busied myself investigating the power supply to the base – or trying to – and getting my fairly limited head around how it all comes together. We need to establish if we are currently running off the generators or if we're back to full power supply from the mains. If it's the former, we just don't know how much longer we have, although to be fair we could probably say the same of the mains power. Either way, we need to know and we need to put a plan of some kind in place for whatever eventualities we might face, and my work in this regard is ongoing…
28th April 2016
You know that feeling of being watched? I’m pretty sure everyone has felt it at some point in their life, whether they were in fact the object of someone’s attention or not – that feeling of unnerving insecurity, that someone is staring at you or surveying your behaviour.
Well I’ve had that feeling now for the last two days, and it’s leaving me with a distinctly uneasy feeling. You could of course say that there must always be a feeling of being watched during this dawn of the undead, especially given our position in what is essentially a huge goldfish bowl for corpses to gaze longingly at. It’s also true that the zombie apocalypse leaves you feeling more than uneasy. I get that – I’m living in it. Or rather, surviving it, just about. But this is different. It’s weird.
We’re used to the snarling corpses, and the crazed cadavers, we’ve been literally surrounded by them for more than three months. That’s a whole quarter of a year that we’ve had our very lives pinned back and imprisoned by these insatiable bloodthirsty beasts. We’ve almost come to terms with it, and we’re certainly more than familiar with the feeling of being surrounded. But like I said, this is different.
I can’t quite put my finger on it; it just feels very unsettling. Even with the makeshift hay bail screens that I’ve erected against two sections of the perimeter fence, and the relative safety that this fortified base gives us, there’s been an aura of scrutiny or inspection over the last 48 hours. More than that, though, it’s a disturbing, disconcerting atmosphere. The worst thing about it of course, is that there’s very little explanation for what it could be.
Our very own ‘stalker walker’ has the ability to strike a similar kind of fear into us even without any of its compulsory twitches, but we haven’t caught sight of it for at least four days now. We know it seems to like to play some kind of uncharacteristically intelligent waiting game with us, so maybe it’s just readying itself to pounce somewhere, but we usually have at least an inkling of its whereabouts. It was last seen to the rear of the base, loite
ring around almost inquisitively you would have said, if it wasn’t a creature of the undead. So we’re fairly sure it isn’t the clever cadaver that’s causing this unsettling sensation.
So what is it?
Survivors? Surely not. Why not just rock up and either acquaint or attack? New corpses? That’s unlikely, given how exposed and familiar we are to them. Something else? Paranoia, perhaps? That’s entirely possible of course. Like I said, we’re now more than three months into this nightmare, alone up here on the cliff top and slowly running out of the tiny semblances of comfort that we not only took for granted not so long ago, but have been clinging to for sanity in many respects.
Maybe it is paranoia. We’ll see over the coming days and weeks, I guess. It’s a shame because it’s such beautiful weather outside at the moment. It’s still quite chilly, perhaps more so because we're so exposed up here atop the 200 feet high cliff, but it’s certainly enough to take the joyousness away from the sunshine at the moment. It's proper spring air; cool, crisp and bracing, with barely a cloud in the sky. And it’s been perfect weather to maintain my fitness kick while Jenny attempts to soak up some much-needed vitamin D from the safety of one of the 4X4 rooftops. We hope it will also allow us to put some of our bold new security plans in place in the next few days – either that or it will expose just how much heady sunshine has warped our thinking.
The Pestilence: The Diary of the Trapped Page 15
