Blog of the Dead - Life

by Lisa Richardson

  ‘Are you from Folkestone?’ I continued.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where did you come from?’

  ‘London.’

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘South.’

  ‘What brought you down here?’

  ‘I like the sea.’

  ‘Did you come down here before or after the outbreak?’ I carried on, undeterred.

  ‘After.’

  ‘What’s London like now … you know, since the outbreak?’

  Sean stopped walking and turned to face me. ‘It’s shit,’ he said, and carried on walking.

  ‘Not much of a conversationalist are you?’ I said.

  ‘Nor’s he,’ said Sean, nodding his head to Misfit. ‘He hasn’t said a word since we set off. Unlike you.’

  ‘He’s different. I know him,’ I said. ‘I’ve learned that I can trust him.’ Misfit cast me a sideways look and half smiled at me.

  ‘And you can’t trust me?’

  ‘No. I don’t know anything about you,’ I said.

  ‘Hi, I’m Sean, I’m from South London and I’m looking for my sister,’ he said. I shot him a sideways look as I negotiated my way through a patch of brambles … he was smiling. Sort of smiling – smirky smiling. ‘That’s all you need to know,’ he added.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘Is she older or younger?’

  ‘You ask a lot of questions. No wonder he doesn’t speak,’ said Sean, pointing towards Misfit with his hammer. ‘Can’t get a bloody word in, eh?’ Misfit ignored him and continued to dart his eyes left and right, searching for zombies, as well as probably fictional sisters while being led into the woods by a probable serial killer. ‘She’s younger,’ Sean added after a moment, stopping again. I stopped too and watched him as he spoke. ‘Fifteen years younger. She turned thirty just before the outbreak, but she’ll always be my kid sister. And I promised to always look out for her.’

  ‘See, not so hard, is it? Opening up … building the trust system,’ I said.

  ‘I couldn’t give a shit if you trust me,’ said Sean and he carried on further into the undergrowth.

  ‘What makes you think she’s down here?’ I asked, trotting to catch up with Sean. He still had a slight limp but not enough to effect his long legged stride too much.

  ‘I followed her down to the beach yesterday.’

  ‘She could be anywhere by now. Have you thought of checking wherever it is you two are staying? It makes sense she would head back there if you two got split up, surely?’ I said.

  ‘No it doesn’t.’

  ‘OK then.’

  ‘Not with Anna.’

  ‘OK then.’

  Misfit stopped and thrust out his left hand to halt us. ‘Something or someone has been through here recently,’ he said. ‘See that branch,’ he pointed to a branch, about the thickness of my skinny wrist and at shoulder height on a small tree to our right. It had been snapped about a foot from the trunk. ‘It’s a fresh break. Something hit that with force.’

  ‘The wind?’ I said.

  ‘No, the wind wouldn’t have done that. And it hasn’t been that windy anyway,’ said Misfit.

  ‘Zombies?’

  Misfit picked up the fallen branch and held it out to us. ‘Blood,’ he said. I looked at the bare branch and saw a smear of dried reddish-brown blood. ‘Had to have been a human.’

  ‘Was your sister hurt?’ I asked. ‘Did she get bitten when you two got attacked by zombies?’

  ‘She didn’t get bitten.’ I watched Sean rub his stubbled chin, then he ran his hand through his greasy hair. ‘We should split up,’ said Sean, a little too quickly. ‘We’ll cover more ground.’

  ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘We stay together. We’ll help you search down here for your sister. We either find her or we don’t find her, then you leave … with or without her.’

  ‘You really don’t trust me do you?’

  ‘No.’ Caine, who subjected me and the others to weeks of abuse in the house in Sandgate, before Misfit shot him and helped us to escape, leaving Caine’s cronies Trent and Eddie to burn alive in the house, had taught me not to trust strangers. ‘I don’t. But then you don’t care if I trust you, do you?’

  Sean ignored my comment. ‘You can’t stop me from coming back here … with my hammer … at night …’ He inched towards me as he spoke.

  Misfit dived between us. ‘Back off, arsehole!’ he said to Sean.

  Sean smirked. ‘Well, fucking help me look then so we can all get what we want. Any idea which way, Ray Mears?’ he asked Misfit. Misfit rolled his eyes and nodded his head to the left of the tree.

  ‘Looks like the tree was snapped by someone travelling from the right hand side, if you look at the pattern of the break. So my guess is whoever it was carried on in that direction, heading to the left,’ said Misfit. I couldn’t help smiling at him. I wouldn’t have worked that out. I would’ve answered Sean’s question with a shrug of my shoulders and an ‘I dunno’.

  We walked further until we reached the wood where Misfit had been attacked, following the occasional bloody smear on tree trunks and snapped branches and stopping to kill the zombies we came across. I noticed Sean’s pace had slowed, his limp increasingly evident. That and the way he hugged his stomach with his left arm, and the grimace on his face told me he was in pain. But he pressed on, not complaining once. Sister or no sister, something was down here and that something drove him on.

  We came out to the bridge that crossed the train track. It led us to the woods on the other side of the Warren. Misfit saw no sign that anyone had been there recently, but we followed the track, worn by many hikers, to some steps carved into the dirt, and reinforced by horizontal wooden planks. We climbed the steps going left, then right, then left again as they zig-zagged up, getting steeper the higher up the cliff we got. Sweat trickled down my back, even in the December chill. By the time I reached the top, I had to pause to get my breath.

  I found myself standing in front of a small, white painted, boxy café, Cliff Top Cafe written in blue over the top of the glass double doors, one of which stood open a little way. I guessed we were in Capel Le Ferne, the village on the cliffs above Folkestone.

  I couldn’t make anything out inside the gloomy interior. In front of the café was a small tarmacked seating area with wooden picnic tables. I waited with Misfit until Sean caught up with us. Like me, he was sweating, and pain deepened the lines on his face.

  Sean sidled up to me and did his best to steady himself, leaning against the railings at the top of the steps. ‘I’ll go and check it out,’ he said, forcing himself away from the railings and taking his weight on his good leg. ‘You two stay here in case any zombies show up. We wouldn’t want to get trapped inside. I won’t be long.’ Sean saw that I opened my mouth to speak. ‘If she’s in there, she’ll be scared. Best I go in alone,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘And if she is in there, I’d really appreciate it if you’d leave us alone. We’ll find our own way out of here. You won’t see us again.’

  ‘OK. Fair enough,’ I said. Sean nodded once and I watched him limp towards the café.

  Now that we had been standing still, the frosty air crept into my bones and I wrapped Misfit’s biker jacket around myself, just as Sean slipped through the door and disappeared from my sight. I stomped my feet on the hard ground, trying to get my circulation going. But it didn’t help. I had so little body fat left to protect me from the elements that the icy air may as well have been injected into my veins. Nothing but sitting beside a roaring fire with a hot drink could warm me.

  I heard a yell from inside the café, followed by a smashing sound. ‘Sean’s in trouble,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

  Misfit grabbed my arm as I moved towards the building, halting me. ‘Leave him,’ he said. ‘He’s nothing to us … nothing but trouble, I reckon.’

  ‘Misfit, I can’t,’ I said, pulling away from him and carrying on towards the café. Through a broken win
dow, I could see movement inside, near the back. At the door, Misfit caught up with me. I pushed it open and saw Sean behind the food counter, five zombies surrounded him and more came from an open door at the back of the counter, I guessed, where the kitchen was. He smashed one of the zombies in the head with his hammer and it fell. He shoved one back with the elbow of his free arm and swung the hammer at another, getting it clean between the eyes. It fell and Sean turned the hammer on the one he had just shoved.

  Glass from the smashed window crunched under our feet as me and Misfit, weapons raised, headed for the counter. I slid through the opening first and stabbed one of the zombies through its left eye. It went still and slid off my knife to join the pile of dead rotting bodies already on the ground. Misfit jabbed the other zombie between the eyes with his hunting knife.

  Six more zombies staggered towards us from the kitchen. Misfit leapt towards the front runner and rammed his knife into its ear. He was on the next one, even before me and Sean joined in.

  One of the zombies stumbled over a fallen body and it fell, its head hitting me in the chest. I threw my right arm out, trying to grab hold of the counter to prevent myself from going down. I missed, dropped my knife and the weight of the zombie knocked me onto my back. My head cracked against the counter on the way down.

  Groggy from the blow, I lifted my head as far off the ground as I could to see a rotten face snarl at me before it lowered its jaws, its teeth aiming for my chest. I threw a hand out and grabbed the zombie under the chin and pushed upwards, forcing its head back. The weight lifted off me and I looked up to see Sean, a handful of the zombie’s hair from the back of its head, lift the zombie into the air. Misfit drove his hunting knife into the zombie’s skull, and Sean tossed the body clear of me. Both Sean and Misfit held out a hand for me. I grasped my knife off the tiled floor and chose Misfit’s hand. He hauled me up onto my feet. Sean shrugged and turned, swinging his hammer at one of the remaining zombies.

  Once we had slaughtered all the zombies, I flopped against the counter. Misfit slid out of the gap in the counter and back onto the café floor, taking a seat at one of the dusty, filthy tables, a plate with some unidentifiable food on it in front of him. Sean followed Misfit out from behind the counter, walked over to the smashed window and stared outside. ‘No sister then,’ I said, propping my chin up on my hands, my elbows on the counter surface, looking at Sean’s back.

  ‘No,’ he said without turning around.

  ‘She could be anywhere,’ I said. But Sean said nothing and continued to stare out of the window.

  ‘It’ll be getting dark soon,’ said Misfit, cleaning blood off his knife with the bottom edge of his t-shirt. ‘We should head back.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ I asked Sean.

  ‘Do either of you know how to hotwire a car?’ he asked, turning to look at me and Misfit in turn.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Misfit.

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me,’ said Sean, grinning. ‘It’s a long walk back,’ he continued. ‘And like you say, it’ll be getting dark soon. There must be a road up there.’ Sean pointed to behind the café, away from the cliff. ‘If you hotwire a car, I’ll give you a lift back to your camp and I’ll drive around for a bit and look for Anna. It’s the last you’ll see of me.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘A lift sounds good. I’m fucking exhausted.’

  Outside, we walked to the right, up a path and up some steps until we saw a small car park to our left. Misfit slid his hunting knife through his belt and strutted over to an old silver Vauxhall. He tried the doors but they were locked, so Sean used his hammer to smash the driver’s side window. Misfit slid his hand through the window and pulled up the lock, opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. I watched as Misfit used his hunting knife to prise open the panel of the steering column, exposing the wires underneath. He cut and stripped the ends of two red wires before twisting them together. He then cut and stripped another wire before touching it to the exposed ends of the red ones. The car made a clicking sound but the engine wouldn’t start. Misfit tried again, touching the exposed ends of the wires together but the engine failed to roar into life.

  ‘Flat battery,’ said Misfit, easing himself out of the car. ‘Not surprising with how long these cars have been sitting here. But we might get lucky.’ Misfit strode around the back of the Vauxhall to a two door red Ford Fiesta. I leaned the front of my body against the side of the Vauxhall, resting my arms across the roof of the vehicle while Misfit tried the door of the Ford. It opened so he jumped into the driver’s side, ducked down under the steering wheel and had the engine running in mere moments. Misfit eased himself out of the car and stood by the open door, grinning proudly. ‘We got lucky,’ he said.

  ‘Top work,’ said Sean. He slid past Misfit and climbed into the driver’s seat. I opened the passenger door, pushed the seat forwards and climbed into the back, while Misfit rounded the front of the car and took the passenger seat, in front of me. Sean drove the car to the gate that led out onto the narrow road and he stopped with the engine running. ‘I’m guessing we head that way back to town,’ he said, nodding to the left.

  ‘Must be,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been up here before.’

  Sean turned the car out to the left and put his foot down. We tore down the road with the cliff on one side and houses on our other. ‘Nice spot if you can afford it,’ Sean said, nodding sideways to the semi’s on our right with a clear view over the English Channel. ‘Beats the view of depressing council high rises from my depressing post-apocalypse council high rise.’

  ‘Well, anyone can afford a sea view these days,’ I said. ‘Just by being alive.’

  After a short while, the road veered away from the cliff and we now had houses on our left and right, until the houses on the left gave way to an open field at the edge of the cliff. Just before the junction onto the main road something darted from behind a garden fence on our right, and onto the road a couple of metres in front of us. It happened so fast all I saw was a blur. Sean swerved to the right, but whatever or whoever it was didn’t stop and disappeared into the bushes on the left.

  Sean tried to right the car by pulling hard to the left but we had been going fast and he lost control of the wheel. He hit the brakes but the car carried on going, out over the main road and smashed into a brick wall outside a house on the other side with a sickening crunch of metal.

  Entry Seven

  I hadn’t been wearing a seat belt and the impact forced me to slam into the seat in front. My chest and left shoulder took most of the hit and I rubbed at them while I shifted back a bit and surveyed the damage. Sean had smacked into the steering wheel and lay over it. But it was the sight of Misfit, unmoving, with his body flung over the dashboard, his head through the spider webbed smashed glass of the windscreen that caused me to start hyperventilating. Breathe, Sophie. Breathe, I told myself. You can’t help him if you panic. Fuck it!

  ‘Misfit!’ I flung my upper body between the seats, reached out my left arm and touched his back. ‘Misfit, wake up!’ Sean groaned to my right. He lifted his head from the steering wheel and sat back a little, lifting his left arm to his forehead. ‘Misfit!’ I cried. ‘Sean … help him!’

  Sean glanced at me and I saw he had an inch long gash on his forehead. Blood trickled down into his right eye and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. As he leaned across to Misfit, I moved back a little to give him room. I watched as he placed his fingers on Misfit’s neck.

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘He’s alive,’ said Sean. He placed one hand behind Misfit’s neck and with the other, he moved him backwards into the passenger seat.

  I leaned around the back of the chair to get a better look. Blood covered Misfit’s face and matted his hair. So much blood I couldn’t see where he’d been cut. I reached my right arm through the gap between the seats and gently brushed crumbs of glass out of his hair, before touching his cheek with my fingers. ‘Misfit!’ I cried. I resisted the urge t
o shake him when he remained unresponsive, worried I might injure him further. ‘Do something. Help him, please,’ I said to Sean.

  ‘I’m not a bloody doctor. I don’t know what –’

  We both heard a slam against the car’s back window. I turned and saw a zombie, its palms beating the glass. Through the side window, I could see a sizeable crowd of zombies lumbering down the road from the left towards the car. ‘We have to get out of here,’ I said.

  Sean opened his door, climbed out and headed to the back of the car, braining the zombie with his hammer. I pushed the driver’s seat forwards, climbed out and followed Sean. We both stood in the street, looking at the approaching zombies. The majority of them were far enough away to be easily outrun. But with Misfit unconscious, there would be no easy outrunning.

  I darted around to the passenger side door. Yanking it open, I squeezed my right arm between Misfit’s back and the seat behind him, sliding it under his right arm. With my left hand hooked under his left arm, I began dragging him from the car. His head lolled backwards now he didn’t have the back of the seat to support it and I panicked I might cause him even more damage. Free of the car, his feet hit the tarmac. I tried to stand him upright with his weight on my right side but he was too heavy for me.

  I glared across the roof of the car and watched Sean glance at the bushes where whatever had leapt out into the road had disappeared. He turned back and eyed the approaching zombies, the front runners had already cut off the single lane road back the way we’d come and would be on us in seconds. His eyes darted to the right, to the road that led into Folkestone, a hand stroking his chin. That way remained clear.

  ‘I can’t do this,’ I said, doing my best to keep Misfit upright. Sean turned and looked at me, then back at the clear route into town. I saw him shake his head. I thought he would run off and leave me with Misfit, and I wouldn’t have blamed him. Though I would’ve hated him. Instead, he darted around to the passenger side of the car, took Misfit’s weight off me and flung him over his broad shoulder.