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 had 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 ah
ead. 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.
We haven’t told them the full extent of devastations outside, despite their many lines of questioning toward us, I don’t think this group could take it. Nor have we declared the food rations we have in our bags or the wireless dongle that’s allowing me to upload this entry. How they have survived here is beyond me. I can’t believe they haven’t either cracked up yet or surrendered to the cold that has clearly penetrated every crevice of the ageing building. They have little food or drink, little ambition and, in my opinion, little hope. We just need to regroup and re-route ourselves again.
18th February 2016
Exposed. I think that’s my word of the day.
As I write this it is 11am and we have now spent our first night in the church with the other 20 villagers huddled in here, toughing it out against all odds. We spent much of the night reflecting on yesterday’s do-or-die mission to leave our apartment. Well, I did at least. Jenny has slept a lot, a great deal more than in the last few weeks, that’s for sure.
We’ve been exposed to so much in the last few days, it has really taken it out of her and she needs to rest. I think there might also be some sense of safety in numbers, of community, and that has enabled Jenny to really let go and get into a deep sleep. It must have had something to do with it, because there’s not a lot else going for this church hideaway right now.
The cutting chill in the air is wrapped around the building like a python strangling its prey. The revered old building feels beleaguered and battle-weary, chilled to the core and with dank air emanating from its every fissure. The exposed brickwork inside the church is just as cold as its counterparts to the exterior, providing little comfort amongst the blankets and sleeping bags that we are nestled in.
To be fair to them, our fellow survivors have done their best to shore the place up. While walkers and the wind chill batter the building from the outside, groping and weathering the walls like tide smothers the shoreline, we have heavy wooden pews, blankets and drapes reinforcing it inside. The once immovable pews are positioned as ballast for the thick and surely impregnable oak doors, while the blankets, duvets and throws provide screens for the stained glass windows and creases of the building, stifling signs of light to the outside and doubling up as insulation for the community camped inside.
Mini convection heaters, on two-hour shifts are plugged into every available socket, but are only succeeding in keeping a very low base level of heat at the moment. Sleeping bags, pillows and cushions adorn the cold oak flooring flattered only by a makeshift carpet of towels and rugs and, in sparse patches, aerobic mats. It would be cosy and communal if it wasn’t so clinical. But it is, of course.
The collective desire to stay alive – and maintain the sanctity of the church – resonates throughout the group, that’s clear to us after just one night here. But the make-do-and-mend drapes and crumpled fabrics used as under-door draft excludes do little to really shelter the group from either the penetrating cold or the agitated corpses outside. It’s a dry rasping air that just seems to permeate every man-made obstacle. And the presence of the zombies at the door and at the backs of our minds is inescapable.
The undead really are growing more and more aggressive now. They are looking as starved and gruesome as ever. Their unquenching thirst for fresh blood had spurred them on for so many days, ravaging through town after town as they had, but it’s now four weeks since the outbreak and for some, the meal vouchers have largely dried up in the last fortnight. Either everyone has been converted to living corpses, or survivors like us are getting cleverer, waiting it out or managing to avoid their attacks. It’s making them restless, hungered, and desperate for the merest suggestion of flesh, so much so that the hordes of them outside seem to be reignited from their near dormancy of the last few days. Everyone here is exposed to their yearnings and unrelenting pestering outside.
Despite that, this band of brothers appears content to stay, for now. They don't seem to have the same sense of imprisonment as we do and, as we gradually answer more and more of their questions, the feeling grows that they would rather keep themselves locked in here until it all blows over. It’s not going to blow over.
We haven't told them that we'll be slipping out of here again today, as soon as the coast is clear for us to make our exit out of the conservatory door.
19th February 2016
Am I really a killer? Really? I don’t think I am, not in the popular sense of the term. When I felled Andrew’s corpse a few days ago, it was exactly that – a corpse. It was not a human life that I had taken, it was merely a shell of Andrew’s former being. It was not a life at all. So does that really change me?
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That’s a question that another night here in the church has allowed to weigh heavy on me. I thought it about it for hours last night, as Jenny continued to rest and recuperate in this mini community of trapped survivors. Against my better judgement, she convinced me to stay for another couple of days, just while she comes to terms with everything we seem to have been through this week and prepares to ‘go again’ in search of the trail.
I’m happy to give her time, I couldn’t ask much more of her after all, but I don’t particularly want to be here. It’s too soft, too accepting of what’s going on. There’s no ambition to find something better, to find answers. And yet, Jenny and I seem to be the subject of an intensifying amount of questions from the group, in some kind of post-apocalyptic show and tell sessions.
· What’s it like outside?
· What did you see?
· How did you survive?
· Was my house overrun?
· Did you see Peter/Adam/Leanne/Dave/Cory/Lara?
· Do you think help is coming? Will anyone come to rescue us here in Porthreth?
· Have you heard about an antidote?
· Do you think it’s getting better or worse out there?
Those are just some of the questions we’ve faced in the last 12 hours or so – and they just seem to keep coming. I can’t and won’t answer them all. As I said before, I think this group of individuals is fragile and submissive and I’m not sure they could take some of the grim realities that we might deliver to them.
The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3] Page 9
