The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  But as Jack also explained, the plan is fundamentally flawed on a safety and sustainability level. The mines are inherently dangerous, in every possible way. It’s claustrophobic, dark and dank; they are full of unseen pitfalls and shafts; they can collapse or crumble at any moment; they descend deep below earth, sometimes with no way out; and they have enough mineral poisons and toxicity to kill, just like that. Not that living here is any better, but stepping foot into the mines would be like walking into death. And so, as I write this on this bleak winter evening, with a neverending chorus of cadavers all around us, it feels as though I’m left staring at another plan that’s been rattling around my mind for a few hours. Right now, while it’s still in its infancy inside my mind only, I’m calling it Plan D for Drift.

  26th October 2016

  For so long we wanted something more, something sustainable and worth fighting for. Jenny wanted something meaningful, a way of life that was self-fulfilling, and I totally get that. I understand what she was seeking, and still is seeking. And with surely only a month or two before we bring new life into the world, I absolutely get it.

  But right now we just want to be safe and secure. We'd take that. We want the kind of fortitude we had only a couple of months ago. We'd take some calm, some quiet, some sense of safety and security – and sanity.

  It seems odd that it could change so much in the few days since I last blogged, but the power is now regularly cutting out. It's very much a side issue, but the internet is intermittent as a result too. The water is still running, but with weakening pressure over the last 24 hours. It's very much starting to feel like we're entering a new end-game. If there's a God up there, or this was a game, then the playmaker just turned the screw on us.

  We've been lucky, of course, so very lucky all of this time. Since the apocalypse began in mid-January, we've near enough always had power and connectivity. We've always had fresh water too. Food hasn't always been in good supply, but you can find ways around that. Sometimes you go from feast to famine and back to feast again, but after nine months of the world going to shit, we can't complain on that score.

  Now it feels very much like we're going to lose power completely. It's the last pillar of normality or luxury that we're having taken away from us. If I'm honest, I'm not sure how we'll cope without it. Maybe others have been since the very start? Maybe this is the real test.

  So right now, it’s about as bad as it gets. It doesn't feel like this is going to get any better. We were never living in hope or delusion anyway, but it still feels like the penny is dropping - there is no rescue plan, there isn't going to be a cure. As we get closer to a year since these insatiable, bloodthirsty monsters tasted first blood and went on to unravel mankind's progress, it now feels as though there really is no turning back.

  This is it now. We'll be lucky if we can see this – this group, this family – through to a year. We're ‘gonna face threats we don't even no about yet, scenarios we couldn't see coming – and we'll be lucky to make it beyond that year.

  So we need to make some luck of our own too. We need a plan; I'm working on it. I'm running out of ideas but this pestilence has proven time and again that necessity is most definitely the mother of invention - so there must be a plan out there in the ether. I've just got to find it.

  30th October 2016

  Reader, I simply can't sleep and I wanted you to know what it is to endure a night like this in the pestilence. You never know how many more we will have to write about…so I’m taking this opportunity to write to you, right here and now.

  As I type this it's about 10pm I think, and Jenny has not long given into the vast overtures of fatigue. She simply couldn't stay awake any longer. She joins the children, Nic, Tam and Riley, in the land of light rest, while I can see that Jack is slumped against the wall trying to force a short sleep, but without success so far.

  It's cold, bloody cold. The building offers scant protection, even against the cold. We're dry, and out of sight, but that's about it. There's no heating, no radiators or night storage heaters. Like most buildings today, the chill just permeates through every wall and joint; right through to the bones of the house. Every square inch of render, plastering and wallpaper is growing colder and damper every day.

  Like the others, I'm wrapped up in a thick duvet of my own, attempting to somehow shield myself from not only the cold, but the feeling of exposure too. It’s completely dark outside now – the nights are already drawing in so early – and we’re in that zone where we really do have to focus ourselves to hunker down, keep things quiet and try to get through the night with safety and sanity. It’s a slightly tense, awkward zone to be in; there’s a natural cut-off point when the light truly fades, the emphasis on corpse chorus heightens and the conversation dries up. There’s a palpable tension as the whispers cease and each of us seems to enter into a scared, fragile state of anti-social self-soothing. Everyone is trying to get through it on their lonesome, like a passenger on a long-haul flight sinking into their seat, putting the headphones on and cutting themselves off from their fellow passengers until it’s time to disembark. Considering we are close family, and everything we are trying to get through, it becomes an awkward, uneasy situation – especially if you’re the one that clearly can’t get to sleep.

  Right now that’s me. All I can hear is a cacophony of zombie jarring and groaning, murmuring and roaring as they shuffle in and around the grounds of the house, skirting ever closer to discovering our presence. Every so often your fatigued mindset gets jolted by what sounds like two corpses colliding into each other, or having their progress impeded by impalement on a car or tree branch – and the hungered roars that reverberate out across the village. It has a cyclical effect; every major sound such as that breeds a gathering in the area, which brings more collisions and impalements, and even more noise. It’s a long time waiting for it all to subside, and the heightened threat to pass.

  In other moments, your psyche – in fact your whole body – is jarred by both the sound and silhouette of a cadaver clambering against the window, aimlessly. It’s not onto you, usually, but you’re immediately convinced it is. The tension builds, the anxiety rises, and the moment takes over – and it’s intolerable trying to remind yourself it’s just a dumbass biter bumbling into the building. The moment goes on. It moves from seconds to minutes, and sometimes into an hour. All the while you’re shaking and contorting as you try to hold in the terror and resist the overwhelming urge to jump up and bolt. You’re fighting the instinct, and mopping the cold sweat from your brow; you’re wrestling with yourself, without making a single sound.

  As I gently brush my fingers against the keys right now, I can hear several corpses ambling around the exposed window in the conservatory that we had to board up with a combination of kitchen cupboard doors, mattresses and dark fabrics. It’s a point of vulnerability in the building, about 12 feet from our group huddled snuggly here on the floor, and I know that Jack has clocked it; he’s clearly trying to keep those eyes shut, but I can see his body tense up and his fists clench in anticipation. He’s ready to pounce in a moment and usher the children to the exit door if needed – that’s how it is to be surviving each night of the zombie apocalypse.

  This is it. This is it now, this is real life. We're cold, we're exposed and we're dog-tired from spending every night with one eye open. There has never been anything scarier than this existence. Nothing you have seen, nothing you have imagined, nothing you have dreamt about in your worst Halloween nightmare is anywhere near as terrifying and tense as this – and we are living and breathing it every single second. It never ends, the threat rarely dissipates; morning, noon and especially night. It leaves you on the edge of permanent paranoia.

  The corpse is pressing harder against the window now. Jack’s clenched first tightens. My leg twitches and twinges uncontrollably. My heart is pounding. It scratches and scrapes at the wooden boarding; Jenny stirs in silence and looks up at me for confirmation. I nod, and take her
hand. Jack looks across and his eyes grow steely, somehow holding in the irrepressible. My heart is pounding even harder now. It’s not going away. I think it senses our presence. I’m going to hit ‘save’ and shut this down.

  5th November 2016

  Dear diary

  The dawn of another month, and the dawning realisation that this isn’t going away. The threat isn’t subsiding, the dreary cold is unrelenting, and the physical and mental torture never leaves us.

  I had really fucked up dreams last night and I need to write it out here and try to clear my mind, if that's possible. Hopefully the connection and charge in my laptop will hold.

  …..

  Against the dead of the night, I fumbled through the blinds and began to bring down the lock on the patio door for the evening, slowly forcing the lever down before turning the key counter-clockwise. Before I could bring the lever to its resting place, however, the silhouette of a stranger came into view and the door was prised back open with gusto. An as yet innocent blade thrust into the very depths of my stomach and twisted my insides into a thousand splayed pieces.

  Within the hour I was gone, and promptly turned – into one of the mindless marauding cadavers that stalks the streets in search of blood. Except, even as a corpse, one of my few basic thoughts was that death, replaying over and over in my dead mind as I meandered down alleys and side streets on the scent of flesh.

  I was always searching for flesh, for warm, pulsing blood. But I was searching for some fleshy bodies in particular. I was looking for Andrew and Ezrah; my first and last kills. They haunt me, to this day. They haunt my mind, whether it's waking or sleeping.

  I see Andrew, before he was a corpse and after, and constantly replay the moment I smashed his skull to pieces in a frantic, frenzied and very bloodied first fight with the undead. In my dream I found him hiding out in the park, crouched beneath the small child’s slide for shelter and as yet unseen. I raged towards him and forced him backwards into a dead end of shrubs and fencing, shivering and shaking in fear of my aggressive, agitated state. As he wept into submission, I devoured his face in mere seconds. As I made my way through his torso, I felt compelled to leave the feast and find another, Ezrah.

  Eventually, there he was, drifting down the wooded trail, looking for somewhere safe to lay his weary head. Despite my chaotic, clumsy state as a member of the undead, I managed to sidle up behind Ezrah and plunge my mangled teeth into his neck, spraying blood high into the sky as his arterial veins burst, and fell in time with his own collapse to consume him on the muddied tramway.

  …..

  Even when I’m resting, when my mind has for the most part shutdown and I have drifted into a light sleep, those kills, both entirely brutal in their own ways, clearly run amok in my mind. Worse still, in my dreams it all gets screwed up and intertwined with some twisted version of the truth that plays on that fear, that fear of both dying and then reanimating. Neither that fear, nor the memory of what we have done since 17th January, ever leaves us. It certainly isn’t leaving me. The question is, how much more of this can we realistically take?

  12th November 2016

  I'm still working on a grand plan to get us out of here, but we could have more immediate problems.

  Things are definitely not good. Jack took me to one side today to tell me that Riley is not coping well at all. I suspected as much. How could such a young boy be expected to cope with the trials, tribulations and traumas of this dark new world and everything it has thrown at us? How could any young boy cope with the silence and solitude of it, a life without play or stimulation? They couldn’t. When you factor in all of the mental and emotional trauma that Riley has been through too, including the devastating loss of his mother only months ago, it’s little wonder he’s in a bad place right now. We’ve perhaps overlooked it all for too long, in the pursuit of doing only what is necessary for us all to survive all day, every day. There’s only so long you can do that to anyone, let alone fragile young children. Now Riley is showing the strain.

  He thinks he could be on the verge of something - an outburst, a mini rampage, a meltdown, or something similarly momentous. And something that could bring danger not just to Riley but to us all, if he either gets outside or makes so much noise in here that he attracts the thousands of corpses outside.

  It's all pushing us toward something, we just don't know what.

  I've got several ideas going through my mind, but all of them seem to be flawed. In reality, any plan in an apocalypse like this is going to be flawed or fragile, but these are more so than we could probably cope with or agree to.

  I've been thinking about heading out to a nearby National Trust estate; they're usually fine old stately buildings, maybe even castles, set in vast, rolling estates with perfect views for miles around. If vacant, they could make for a more than safe stronghold, a veritable fortress in fact. But, and this is how ruthlessly realistic you have to be now, there are some basic flaws to consider:

  · Those buildings are cold, relatively rundown and without many of the regular comforts or amenities that you might need/expect

  · They could be too remote, crazy as that sounds

  · They could be a prize for another group or clan, and who knows how friendly that tribe might prove to be. Think Ezrah.

  Worst of all, there's none nearby. We're about 12-15 miles from the nearest National Trust estate, and there's no way we could make it there unscathed.

  So I turned my thoughts to another desperate brainwave, a step into the unknown at the top of the village, the opposite side of the valley to before. Way up high behind us, there's a modern housing estate of new-build properties, constructed only about three years ago and potentially free of wandering zombies. It has the advantage of height and a difficult path up the hillside to get to it, just as the military base had. It also runs off a separate power sub-station if I recall rightly, and those new houses are far more insulated. Some of them have gas connection too. If they are empty and the estate is trouble-free, we could make a go of it.

  If not, only a stone's throw away is a plush holiday resort of luxury lodges, cabins and on-site facilities. Well, I should probably say former holiday resort now. The lodges are incredible, wood-fire heated, and with brilliant views for miles around. They're also comparatively high off the ground, such are their raised stilt-like footings, so they even have the advantage of being challenging for a corpse to attack. Meanwhile the facilities up there include a swimming pool, gym, spa and restaurant. But that’s an unthinkable level of luxury; we’ve strived for more before, right now we just want a safe place to rest our heads.

  The problem with both is, who can say for sure whether they are overrun with cadavers or not? How exposed were they early on, and how safe are they right now. Those are questions we might not be able to answer unless we took the plunge, but equally those are risks we can ill afford to take. The other major stumbling block for either is our chances of actually getting up there – we can barely see past the grounds of this house right now, let alone down the end of the street or forging a safe passage back out of the village, up through the wooded hillside, and on to the top of the valley. There must be a good 5,000 or more undead corpses out there, and we'd be lucky to slink our way through with the odds in our favour; we have a heavily pregnant lady, three young children, and two semi-wounded men. Our odds are far from good. We're about as vulnerable as it gets.

  16th November 2016

  The power is out. We're screwed. Completely screwed. Thankfully we had enough devices and torches charged up, and I have a functioning dongle that gives me a stable enough connection to upload here, but that's about it.

  It’s not intermittent, it’s been completely out for two full days now. We have no power to cook food, no lighting, no warmth, no hot water, nothing. Have you ever felt that slight sense of vulnerability and uncertainty that comes with a power cut in the dark of the night? Well, this is the worst power cut imaginable.

  We feel more vulnerable
than ever before. We didn't even think that was possible. In fact, I hinted as much in one of my last entries, when I tried to convey just how intolerable the nights are and how immensely vulnerable are. Yet we sit here right now feeling more alone, scared and at risk than at anytime since this apocalypse began. It's amazing how the loss of power can do that. We knew this day would come, we'd said so many times before how lucky we had been to have power and water until now. But I don't think we truly had any idea how terrifying it would be. Without warmth, without hot food and water, without lighting, a whole new dimension of terror is added.

  Lighting is a big one in the evenings in particular. Not that we would have the place lit up like a beacon anyway, we have always done everything to keep our presence unknown, but therein lies the problem. We boarded every window up when we arrived here. Whether with wooden reinforcements, layers of fabrics, items of furniture or even large mattresses, every opening was boarded up as best as we could to keep the light and noise contained within the building – and the external threats out. But in doing so, we no longer have any natural light coming into the building. Without power, we are now completely in the dark. It's amazing how adrift and defenceless you feel without that basic level of sight.

  We have candles lit, those that we could find. We have torches too of course, but we have limitations on their usage – we need to save them for when we may actually need them out on the road or something. We also have the light projected from this laptop screen but, again, I'm trying not to use what power it holds. Without the power and warmth, we’re left in an ageing building with little doing for it. Broken, boarded-up windows don’t fill us with any confidence, the general rundown state of the building leaves us feeling completely exposed, and the growing realisation is that we actually are. We have to do something. And we have to do it now. With that, I’m going to call it a day and devote all our energies to the task in hand.