The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  30th March 2016

  Nothing is forever anymore. Four words that seemed to fall into my mind last night and, the more I mull them over, bleakly sum up the world we find ourselves in. There are two ways of looking at it:

  1. Nothing is forever anymore – because it isn’t. From what we’ve seen of the apocalypse of 2016, nothing lasts forever. Food, warmth, shelter, safety, security – all are fleeting, none are forever lasting. Even power and water, two things that have so surprisingly endured since society fell in mid-January, will surely not last the distance. As for happiness, if it can be found then it is so often momentary; a hug, a kiss, a look between loved ones, a shelter or security, they are all tender moments.

  2. Nothing is forever – all there is nothingness, all around us. Society, civility, are all but gone. As the undead maraud from town to town, village to village and even street to street, they breed a sense of nothingness. What little survivors remain are huddled in hiding. Where there was once industry, movement and community, there is now emptiness, stillness, and desolation. The nothingness endures.

  It makes for morose thinking, granted. But I find it’s important to have that perspective; at least we are grounded, we know where we stand. From there, we can build hope and just maybe, leverage some kind of happiness. Happiness which we accept will not last forever…but we can have a bloody good go at continuing to find new sources of happiness and fulfilment.

  That fulfilment has today been found in the form of our defences. There’s been nothing of note showing up on the surveillance system, and therefore no more insight on the school grounds survivor. But we’ve made more progress on the perimeter trench, furrowing out a further six feet to the right of the site as we look at it. We’ve also had some degree of success in other forms of defence, erecting a sort of lightweight ‘tunnel’ from one of the building’s exit doors to a location to the rear of the base.

  Of makeshift construction from old metal bedsteads, table tops and an assortment of fabrics and coverings, it spans more than 100 feet and has taken days of solid work to complete. We’ve even been able to set up a small viewing window adjacent to the door to ensure the tunnel is safe for departure. Now that it’s finally finished, it should enable a discreet passage off the site in the event of emergency, unbeknown to the militia of undead that might be approaching. From that point, we can skirt along the coastal path in either direction until we reach safe harbour.

  Another defence has again involved the mass of discarded wooden pallets that we have to call upon up here; we’ve been using them to buttress any proven weak points in the fence now that the hundreds of cadavers have been led away. They’re just another temporary measure in reinforcement and can surely be improved upon themselves, but if we get a few weeks, perhaps even a few months, out of it then we'll be happy with that. After all, nothing is forever anymore.

  31st March 2016

  Today we didn't feel like doing anything, nothing at all. So we didn't – we stayed in bed, talked about our future together and hazily wiled away the hours.

  Having ran up to the watchtower to glance out across the base, the sight staring back at me confirmed there was little we could do today anyway; there it was, menacing as ever, standing right to the front of the fence and right where I need to continue to trench-dig. We were just staring at each other, the ethereal corpse unwavering in its steely gaze. As long as it is stood there longing for my every ounce of 30-year matured flesh, I can't crack on with that earthy conduit.

  So we just thought 'fuck it' and I jumped back into bed with Jenny in some kind of Lennon-Ono style bed-in. On what would have been my Dad's birthday, I had little reason to want to wrestle with the world today anyway.

  So we decided to try to put some control back into our lives, as well as some hope. We chose to spend the day in bed, getting up only for toilet breaks or food rations. We tried to treat it like an old-fashioned duvet day and make the best of a bad situation. It's been so long since we had such a day, way back to those first few weeks of the apocalypse in our apartment, that it actually felt good. It felt good to wallow and rest our weary bodies.

  We talked for hours. From reminiscing about our wedding day to plans for our future son or daughter, and our perfect desert island discs in-between, we talked and talked; we fell asleep to idle pillow talk and woke up through dreamy hazes. We hugged and held Jenny's increasing baby bump, for what felt like hours at a time. We laughed and joked and just for a few moments at a time, we forgot where we were. We forgot what had happened. Momentarily, it was the 2016 we we're supposed to have.

  We had breakfast in bed, of sorts, followed later by lunch and tea. Ever so often, amidst the stillness and over the whirring hum of the base's various facilities, we could hear the unmistakable sound of the sea lapping against the equally sleepy shore – and off we would fall again to slumber. We rolled back the years and revelled in all things lazy and restful. We gained some ground back; we reined in the control in our lives just for one day; we made a concerted effort to live with some semblance of freedom. And it felt good. As I write this, we have but a few hours of vague daylight in which to wallow before the night is ushered in our thoughts turn to the daily grind of paranoia and bloodshed again tomorrow.

  1st April 2016

  I wanted to begin today’s entry with some kind of April Fool – that it was all a Dallas-style dream or something. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  After yesterday’s dreamy duvet day of taking back control and trying to pretend that this all isn’t happening, we were brought sharply back to reality this morning with the dark, morbid view over the site. It’s a cold and dreary day outside anyway, but that bleak, desolate panorama never ceases to demoralise. So I simply couldn’t bring myself to play an April Fool; I think it would undermine just how shit this world is now.

  New depths will be felt soon. It’s hardly crisis material, but we're starting to run out of the basic toiletries and products that we had been so fortunate to have so far. I had inadvertently stockpiled things like deodorants and hair waxes, aftershaves and shower gels from the obligatory 'smelly' sets that one traditionally receives around Christmas time each year, and we were naturally savvy enough to pick up plenty of spare essentials from the supermarket when the outbreak began. But we could only bring so much with us when we left our apartment. We needed to travel light and that's exactly what we did.

  So we're beginning to run low in several areas, some more important than others, and shortages will soon be felt across the board – toiletries and essentials, food and clothes. We do of course have our very own vegetable patches in progress now, but the produce from those make-do-and-mend raised beds will take a little while to come to fruition. And we don’t even know how successful or bountiful they will be. I have some basic gardening know-how, but I’ve never grown cabbages, corn or carrots before. Rations of snack foods and dried packet foods are also beginning to enter dearth levels, so we may have to address that conundrum soon. It’s all pointing to some big decisions to be made in the coming weeks.

  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've 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.

  Th
at'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.