The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  Once more, I had to remind myself I had a job to do. I began to loot everything we had so stoically stored – bottles of water, frozen bread and rolls, porridge oats and pulses, jams and preserves, peanut butters and spreads, powdered foodstuffs, jellies and custards, rice and pasta, tea and coffee rations, and whatever else I could possibly squeeze into those rucksacks, all wrapped up in extra blankets and snugs. Most pertinently of all right now, I threw just about every bandage, plaster, pill, potion and supplement I could into my pockets and bags. In doing so I raided bathroom cabinets, kitchen cupboards and for every last source of pain-killers, our old bedside units. That’s when I discovered I had company.

  As I had busied myself in the rooms to the front of the apartment, corpses filed in through the patio doors to the rear. That was my biggest mistake, leaving it open. I thought I would be mere minutes, in and out, but in reality was far longer. I had allowed myself to get carried away, I got greedy in stowing the provisions, and now I was compromised. They flooded in, dismembered cadavers of all shapes and sizes came ambling into the small apartment and within seconds the kitchen-lounge was teeming with torturous terrors. I had no way out. The front door was heavily barricaded and beyond that, the building’s heavy communal front door was reinforced too. I wouldn’t have time to unburden either, and definitely not both. All windows to the front were boarded and blocked, while the rear was swarming with salivating stiffs desperate to feed. Either I blocked myself in the bathroom and waited it out, or I had to find a way out of our bedroom.

  I chose the latter. I had to silently push the door to, and somehow block from the inside with what little reinforcements were available; all of the heavy furnishings like wardrobes and bedsteads had been deployed in the front room to shore up the patio doors. All I had was a King-size mattress and a chest of drawers – the two small bedside cabinets would be no use. Moving them quietly was impossible. I had to opt for speed over stealth, and a handful of zombies were immediately onto me, shuffling down the hallway toward the bedroom.

  Crusty, disfigured fingers scrambled at the door frame and threatened to force their way in as I gave the chest one last push into place, crushing their jaundiced hands giving rise to rampant outpourings of groans and growls. More came piling into the doorframe, pushing and shoving and forcing huge pressures onto the panelled wooden door. Somehow overcoming the paralysis of fear, I pushed the unit as tightly up against the door as I could and levered it a little more toward the frame, severing countless jaded fingers and sending thick, congealing blood into the air with every exertion.

  The sheer force of numbers and hunger was still telling on the reinforcements and the gap between the door and the frame began to widen again. I had to move fast, prising away at the boarding over the window and trying to fashion an opening. It was tiny. On any other day, I would not fit through that window, but I had no choice. I threw the rucksacks through it and grabbed a bedside unit to bridge the height to the window ledge, and out my first foot forward onto the sill – when the bedroom door gave way and corpses came flying through the opening and cascaded in a heap about the chest of drawers, still scrambling for my flesh as they tumbled and twisted. Even with bones smashing, skulls fracturing and sinews splaying as they piled into each other in their fervour, each and every one still quivered and contorted in angst for my fleshy body. It was their first thought, their only thought. It was instinct. Blood and puss and stench so overpowering filled the air as they scrapped and scraped for my body, fighting their way toward me with frenzied faces.

  In my panic I flustered and fumbled, all arms and legs as I struggled to force my way through the small opening. I wasn’t going to make it. I knew it. I could feel myself slipping back into their frantic clutches, and I had not felt so mortally scared since my very first encounters with the undead in the early days of this shitstorm. I thought it was the end. They pulled and yanked at my leg, wrenching me back into the room and falling into a stunned mess on the floor. I had not been so scared since I was face-to-face with Jake ‘Dog’ Penberthy, mauled by biters outside these very four walls at the start of the apocalypse.

  In split seconds I had to find a way out. I had to use everything I had, every ounce of what energy and strength remained, to leverage two heavy corpses off my chest and get their gnarling faces from my cheeks. It took everything out of me, and I could feel my still-recovering shoulder ready to ‘pop out’ under the exertion. I didn’t have it in me to repeat that feat. With six or seven all around me in my peripheral vision, I had to forcefully roll to my left and just hope that the aggression of my roll would not only bowl my enemies out of the way, but stop them from puncturing my frame with their blood-sucking bites. It worked. I swerved the advances of those to my right, and rolled right into those to my left, struggling to me feet in the mere moments of their shock. I managed to lunge for my trusted chain and whipped it around in one swirl of the room, sending five convalescing corpses to the ground permanently, rasping the haemorrhaging abdomens of another two, and leaving four still to deal with – and surely more ready to pour into the room.

  I took two out with my small blade, clean and clear; they slumped to the floor in a rotting heap. But the last two were far less heroic. Anticipating even more cadavers coming down the hall, panic got the better of me and I executed a desperate pile drive into them both with my right forearm as a shield-cum-battering ram. Amidst the other biters sprawled across the floor, they fell backwards and buried their backs into the chest of drawers that had once so badly barricaded the door – and I made a mad dash for the window, pretty much throwing the top half of my body through and wriggling to get my legs to follow. As I wiggled and writhed, the two corpses were joined by half a dozen more and were bearing down on the window frame and my trailing shins.

  I literally fell out of the window onto the two rucksacks and the cold concrete floor of the alleyway. A lonesome lurking cadaver threatened to feast on me right there and then, but for the blade I shoved up through its mouth and into the brain. From there, I lightly ran home an anxious, jittering wreck, still ducking and diving past ambling corpses but not nearly as freely or with the same conviction as I had an hour earlier. I got back to the house without reproach, sneaked through the window with Jenny’s help, and unveiled the bounty of riches we so craved. Jack immediately dosed himself up on painkillers; Jenny made toast and peanut butter; Nic, Tam and Riley muched their way through a handful each of blackberries; and I sat in a corner indulging in both their relief, and mine.

  23rd September 2016

  I miss bacon sandwiches and hot coffee. I miss looking out at the stars as I close the curtains to the night sky. I miss doing the ironing or the dishes. I miss going to bed late at night and fretting about having to be up for work in six hours’ time. I miss not being able to hear the television properly for the emphatic spinning of the washing machine.

  I miss being so hot in the summer that you have to open all the doors and windows and pray for a passing breeze. I miss rushing to work and worrying about every lost minute and how I'm going to make up the time. I miss having to think of something for tea every evening – something that's good, nutritious, homemade, and yet quick and simple. I miss doing all the dishes and knowing that I’m just doing them in a vicious cycle that begins again the next evening.

  …..

  Some of those things I honestly never thought I would ever miss. I never thought I would wish to do ironing, or meal plans. I couldn't imagine wanting to get up for work, let alone rush to it. And I certainly didn't think I'd ever be pining for things to do around the house.

  But all of those things and more are parts of day-to-day life that we’re crying out for. Some of them may have been the ball and chain in life, but they were in fact the freedom of it. It's not until you lose that freedom that you realise what you don't have anymore.

  Equally, as I have been reminded again in the last seven days, it's easy to take for granted what you do have. I have my life right now, for whatever
it's worth, and most of the world today doesn't have that. I have my life and only six days ago, I so very nearly didn't. As those fiery, frenzied corpses weighed down on me and threatened to strip the flesh from my living carcass, I thought that was it. I thought it was all over for me. I didn’t think I had the strength to force them off me; when my shoulder crunched as I was in the middle of leveraging them from my quivering body, I nearly didn’t. And I feared I would meet my child for the first time as one of the undead myself – if there was anything left of me, that is. How I scraped out of that situation I don't really know, but I did and I'm lucky to be here.

  What's more, I don't just have my life, I have my wife and my unborn child's lives right with me. And what's left of my extended family. I don't feel at all secure here, but I'm not going to keep moaning about the grand house that we find ourselves in. We're lucky to still be here. Not only that, we're bloody lucky to have the provisions that we do. Again, we so nearly didn’t. Our old apartment is gone for us now, completely compromised and I fear, not somewhere we can even think about venturing back to for some time to come – if ever.

  So we're going to hole up here, make a fist of it and take good care of ourselves with meds and food for as long as we bloody well can – and at least until we work out what our next move will be. We have to get some positivity back. We have to work out a way forward again, and start to make this place work for us in the same way that we did our apartment and the old military base. As soon as we are over our injuries and back to full strength, we have to start work on fortifying this grand old house. We have to get to grips with what we’re dealing with. We’re eight months into this brave new world – we can do this.

  27th September 2016

  I’m still generally sat in the corner of the room indulging in the collective relief of our group, and trying to conjure up ideas of how we can move forward here at Porthreth Vean House.

  It’s tipping it out down outside, absolutely tipping it down as the hot and humid air of this longest of summer’s gives way to a crisp chill and bucket loads of autumnal rainfall. We’ve already had more than our fill of rain for this time of year, and I can picture the rainwater cascading down the craggy valley rocks like tears trickling down the sad, weathered face of a mountain. What we can actually see is very limited, such is our barricaded, blanketed existence within the building. But the sound of heavy rain lashing against every wall, window and square inch of tarmac is enough to fill the void.

  A cold wind whistle through the village as fiery and fierce as the rain, no doubt leaving a footprint of natural disturbance in its wake and certainly creeping into every crack and opening of this grand old building. The temperature has dropped considerably in the last week or so, we’ve all felt it within these four walls. Even as I write, we’re exposed to a cool breeze moving through the room from a small gap in the boarded up window of the conservatory. As I’ve said so many times before since January, it would almost be cosy if we weren’t imprisoned here during the end of the world.

  We’re wrapped up in blankets, sweaters, any layers we can muster to keep our bodies warm; our hearts are warmed by each other, and the comfort eating that our newfound supplies have given enabled. We’ve gathered up all the throws, duvets, fabrics and cushions that this former guesthouse has been so rich in providing. They’re here with us, all around us, in this makeshift ‘snug’ as Jenny would call it on the ground floor next to the kitchen. We have amenities close, we have all the ‘comfort’ we might need, and we have each other. We’re getting there, slowly but surely.

  Even our injuries are patching up, gradually. We are still weary, if not weak, and I sometimes sleep for almost a day at a time – seemingly my body's reaction to trauma and fatigue – while Jack still winces at times when moving around. It has fallen on Jenny to step up and rally the troops during these bleak days with good shepherding skills and hearty hot food, but we’re almost back in shape. My shoulder is almost as good as new, but for the knocks it took in the apartment, and I actually believe Jack now when he says the pain has subsided in his abdomen. Nic, Tam and Riley are over their exertions physically, if not mentally.

  And Jenny's in the best condition she’s been in since we realised she was pregnant. She's not exactly radiant; the relative lack of food, nutrition and comfort prevents that. But, that now cumbersome bump aside, she's got her game back. She hasn't felt sick for weeks; she isn't in any natural discomfort; and all of those natural fears and insecurities that seem to come with impending maternity have subsided. I know little about it of course, but Jenny appears to be in a confident bloom of a stage of pregnancy, as if a natural readiness and sense of assertion is kicking in. Even her cooking has improved! It must be the body's way of preparing for labour.

  Now as a group we just have to prepare for the next few days and weeks. Winter is here, it seems, and we could be about to head into more unchartered territory than ever before.

  30th September 2016

  I tried to write this the other day, but for the internet connection dropping out at every opportunity.

  We remain huddled together, barricaded and blanketed, passing the time with a mixture of hazy recollections of yesteryear and dreamy hopes for tomorrow. The heavy rains continue and I shouldn’t wonder if there are some pretty deep floodwaters out there. We have no intention of finding out for sure just yet. Our recovery and recuperation continues nestled together in here.

  I can't remember if I've pondered this before here, and in the situation we’re in it seems pretty ridiculous, but it came up in conversation…What would you do in the event of the fabled four minute warning? In the event of a nuclear attack or other potentially apocalyptic action, where would you have gone? What would you have done?

  It seems strange to think that before this apocalypse even showed signs of breaking out, we were – as a global village – seemingly edging closer and closer to the brink of devastating world wars and yet to a man, I bet we never even thought for a second about any kind of four minute warning scenario. How contrite. How very negligent.

  Right now, we have more time that ever to think about those kind of questions – we are in those theoretical moments, we are surviving the apocalypse. We had more than four minutes to ponder what we would do, at least where we were we did. Our remote, rural location far from the madding, cannibalistic crowd afforded us that time. We had four hours, four days, some of us. And yet we still made mistakes. We still didn’t have a plan, not really. We still weren’t prepared for what the world threw at us.

  Some of us were better prepared than others. Jenny and I did everything we could to be armed and ready. We barricaded the apartment; we reinforced everything we possibly could; we sealed copious amounts of supplies in with us; and we gave it a bloody good shot at keeping our presence on the lowdown on our patience on the high side. We rode it out with the best of them, perhaps even better. But we realised in time that we couldn’t do it alone – we couldn’t stay holed up inside the same four walls forever and do it with any sanity. The solitude and curiosity – and a longing for something more sustainable – flushed us out in the end.

  We had a plan for that, an it worked for a while. But we didn’t have a bigger plan. We didn’t have the master plan and ultimately, we still don’t. So what would you have done? What would you do? Where would you have gone if you had a four minute warning. It’s an interesting one to ponder, even if it is all academic for us now. We’ll never be in that situation. There is no civilisation anymore, so there is no potential situation for it to all fall apart.

  As another month in this pestilence draws to a close, that’s where we’re at: rattling around in our drafty snug considering ‘what if’s’.

  5th October 2016

  The rains, like our injuries and weariness, have eased. But with their passing we stumbled upon two grim realisations.

  Maybe it's because we've got so unnervingly used to a base layer of zombie footfall and lashing rains, but our first realisation over break
fast this morning was that we can't actually remember the last time we heard a fox or a rabbit in the undergrowth. You normally hear something every now and then, even if you don't really realise it at first. On some level, perhaps even a subconscious one, we see or hear wildlife in the streets and leas around us.

  It might be a fox skulking the streets at night for a forage; a rabbit diving into the hedgerow as you unwittingly walk it's way; a badger in the brambles; or a shrew somehow making far more noise than its size should allow as it scuttles to and fro. It may even be a wood pigeon startled in the trees overhead. There's always something going on. But lately, there doesn't seem to be. Save for at-times menacing black crows, we haven't seen or heard a thing. Isn't that quite sad? And what does it imply?

  The very blunt denotation is that nature has gone, disappeared, died away. The connotation is that the apocalypse has wiped it out; wildlife has been made extinct by the undead. Is the deeper connotation that the undead are catching and eating our wildlife, and destroying the ecosystem? Or that the whole ecosystem has succumbed to whatever plague brought us the undead in the first place? Are the foxes more than just feral these days? Are the rabbits rabid, and the badgers bloodthirsty? Whatever the answer is, it's another sad indictment of the apocalypse, however small – another consequence that serves only to sadden and depress those left surviving it.