We listened intently for hours, Nic in close attendance with ears pricked too, but nothing more would be heard for a full four hours – and then, a dull hum again somewhere up the coast, toward Gwithian and Godrevy, I’d say. Since then, nothing. It was but a fleeting glimpse of life, but it did happen. Now we need to know who or what it was, and why. The quest goes on, Prim. We survived 2016. We survived 2017. Maybe we can thrive in 2018.
1st February 2018
There's so much hate and aggression in the world today, and I really hope you don't grow into that, Prim. I hope you grow in spite of it. I hope you can thrive one day, even if we can’t.
I'd like to write something poetic about there being so much hate and hurting, but actually there's a whole lot of loving and togetherness to match – but there isn't. Not anymore. There's no sugar soaping it – there's just a whole lot of hate right now, as far as I can see.
There's no discernible code or compassion amongst survivors, no solidarity. The love amongst ourselves is clear and sustaining. But it's been well over two years now of the Pestilence and we've seen nothing but self-preservation and survival of the fittest. The closest we've come to a bond or togetherness or any kind was in those oh so brief days in the church at Porthreth, huddled amongst fellow villagers scared out of their wits just the same as us. Beyond that, it's been selfishness rather than selflessness. And if anything, we've seen malice and territorial aggression in the name of survival. I’ve even killed in both the face and the name of it.
It is what it is, but I hope you grow up better than that, Prim. I hope you grow with a character and zest for life as beautiful as the flower you were named after. We hope you can go and truly represent that name of yours – and flourish as the first rose of the new world out there. Stay strong and happy, our love.
The world around us just got a whole lot scarier in the last few days. We don’t have a clue what’s going on or why. We’re just struggling to stay alive. There are planes overheard, there are fires rages all around, and loud booms crashing out across the horizon. Our existence just feels chaotic right now. If there were a population of any living kind, it would be a scene of pandemonium with people panicking and fleeing in all directions. Who knows what’s going on? We’re doing what we can to stay out of trouble, on so many levels.
We will do everything to keep you as safe and sheltered and innocent as we can, Prim, for as long as circumstance allows. We owe you that. And whatever may happen to us, know that we always did everything humanly possible to keep you alive, to keep you thriving, to make you happy, and to make your future an even happier one.
22nd May 2018
Dear diary
It's been four months since I last wrote properly. A long, enduring four months.
We have missed so many crucial stages of Prim's development in that time. It has been a huge, momentous period in Prim's early years and we have watched and soaked it all in as she has flourished and bloomed. I have made many paper notes of those moments, which I will share here soon. I will have to transcribe those memories later, because we have been too scared to use any electronic devices in the last 15+ weeks. It has, we fear, not been safe. The Pestilence as we knew it has taken on an altogether different, unforeseen complexion.
When the pestilence began in January 2016, many of us thought that salvation was only a few days or weeks of survival away. For the 99.5% absolute fear that consumed everyone, there was 0.5% hope of rescue. We were wrong. We were so wrong. It failed to materialise for so very long, that we began to accept there was no salvation. Nothing was happening, good or bad. All that occurred was the relentless bloodlust of the undead. All that mattered was surviving and making do, until just over four months ago, when that whole balance was turned upon it's head.
The blissful freedom and innocence of our time in Sennen last year, and even our travails up the Penwith coastline, eventually gave way to terror again – but not of the kind that we expected. Far from it. Planes began to fly overhead with a numbing hum or descent, at first in the distance and then days later, much closer to home. The full hum and register of planes flying directly overhead was soon upon us, the sound of which Prim had never heard before. As we quickly began to realise, neither had we; it resembled something from a scene right out of World War Two, the inimitable sound of bombs dropping on the horizon and gradually getting nearer and nearer.
Camping out of tents and the back of the van, there was no feeling like it. The hope of days earlier was instantly smashed and replaced with a new fear. We didn't know what to think or do. It was so surreal. Here we were, fighting the bloodied, frenzied enemy that we have become so familiar with, face-to-face, all of this time, and suddenly a new threat was swarming overhead right out of the blue.
Bombs were falling out of the sky from these great beasts of aircraft. Others, seemingly small missiles, were criss-crossing through the blue overhead – darting over us at speed and with great regularity. As soon as one had detonated in the distance, another shot across the sky above us from another direction. Just like jet planes used to leave a whispy white trail in the sky, there were so many of these small, explosive missiles at play that they left a lattice-like trail of white in the sky. Prim was terrified. The sight, but most of all the sound, was chilling and so inescapable for a young child.
The landscape was obliterated, in places. Huge swathes of the A30 and other trunk roads were wiped out. Fires raged across whole moors and hillsides, spreading throughout towns and valleys. It was a traumatic, tense time – so much so that I just didn't feel like writing. I didn’t want Nic, let alone Prim, to be so exposed to it either, but there was little we could do to protect her from it.
Though it was no doubt an effort from above, from some sort of higher order, to wipe out the spread of the Pestilence, to keep it in check, if not destroy it entirely, it didn’t feel so positive. The very notion of such a campaign in our skies, the fact that life clearly exists and is flying right there over our heads, should be cause for celebration – for hope above hope. Yet it felt like a war playing out in the clouds above, and we were just dots on a map trying to avoid the carnage and capitulation that ensued. It seemed far from positive as we spent days and nights huddled together in the tent or the van, hoping we might be spared a direct hit from above.
We had to move. Our spot on Godrevy clifftop was in all probability one of the safest, most unassuming places we could be, but when you lie beneath the stars with only a few layers of canvas between you, and when the humdrum of planes and bombs surrounds you, you tend to become unsettled and crave something more. We wanted bricks and mortar; we needed safety and security. And so we were on our way, a veritable moving target again, even if it once more went against my better judgement where Prim's happiness and development is concerned. Before we moved on, we didn't actually know what was going on overhead, we could only guess – we certainly had no idea (or rather confirmation) that there were bombs of any kind at play. That much became clear in time, the further inland or up the coast we travelled. For that, I’m thankful we kept moving – to stay put would have been futile.
What wasn't bombed or on fire was largely overgrown and arduous to pass. Wild gorse and Japanese knotweed had gone unchecked for so long, they seemed to proliferate across whole roads and junctions. Many B roads were impassable; others were fertile ground for the undead; the rest seemed to be a scene of devastation at the hands of some heavy bombing. Bit by bit, postcode by postcode, huge parts of the county were becoming blitzed.
We tried to go back to the military base at Porthreth, but couldn’t find a safe way of completing the journey. The two main access roads toward the village and ultimately the base itself were badly blocked with a combination of overgrown vegetation, fallen trees, and snarling, starving biters creeping out of the shadows of the woodland. They stumbled and crawled from all directions, like newborn spiders leaving the nest for the first time and heading out in search of new places to weave their webs. We had to retreat. Even w
ith our combative nous these days, we couldn’t take that on. The risk was far too great. And the undead looked so unbearably hungered. Even though they looked more emaciated than we’ve ever seen them before, they also looked as ruthless and savage as ever. They looked like the leanest, meanest and most ferocious brand of biter the Pestilence has given us so far, and seemed to move at a far faster pace than we have encountered before. I have slain many to get this far, but I’m not sure I could take those biters on.
So we retreated and slowly snaked our way further along the North coast toward PerranPorth, criss-crossing over ground we had already broken a year before while missiles criss-crossed themselves in the skies above. It was a long, pain-staking drive past burnt out cars and homes, abandoned industrial estates, dishevelled coastlines, and dormant ghost towns. Prim hated every minute of it, I remember that so clearly. She was so frightened, frustrated and inhibited, largely stuck in the van and puzzled why we were keeping her in such captivity. Her often glum-looking face in those days will stay with me for some time to come. It evoked a feeling in me of wanting to do whatever it took to stop her feeling that way. If it were a particular situation pre-apocalypse that had brought about such fear and sadness, I would have removed the problem or at the least, creating a distraction away from it. As a parent you would do whatever it took to take that sadness away from your child. But this isn’t pre-apocalypse, this is the Pestilence, and there’s very little – if anything – that I can control about it. As parents, we are largely powerless. I cannot convey enough how empty that leaves you feeling.
So after much frustration and deliberation, we settled in PerranPorth, on the beach. Like Penzance, the town is gone. The once lively and thriving, if not insular and petty, town that I was once so fond of has completely gone. It is a ghost town of the undead. Unlike Penzance, it is nowhere near as chaotic and overrun. You could probably get away with taking a tense stroll down the main street unchecked. It’s by no means safe, but it’s passable. The beach, on the other hand, is empty. It’s a complete solace and as parents, by being here it’s the one thing that we can control, it’s the one thing we can do to put a smile on Prim’s face again.
PerranPorth will always have a special place in my heart. I lived here for 16 of the first 20 years of my life. I was pretty much raised around this beach. It has always been a huge part of my life. As a young boy I remember our Sunday walks along this very beach, it was a weekly ritual to have a Sunday morning walk along the beach and cliff path, full of shell hunting, tide runs and wacky races in the sand, before heading back for Sunday lunch and the Formula One. I want Prim to have the same lush memories of this beach – of running around with no limitations, of the endless childhood possibilities it allows you. I want to her always cherish it, and selfishly of course we want her to have happy memories of her Mummy and Daddy giving her those happy memories.
And here we are, with everything we need all in one place. We chanced our hand with the famous bar on the beach, the WaterHole. My memories of it were vague, but it had always been there throughout my childhood and it checked all of the kind of Pestilence survival boxes:
· Remote – check
· Isolated – check
· Sheltered – check
· Clear vantage points – check
· Basic living quarters (bonus) – check
· Power, running water (bonus) – check
Our luck was in and the place was empty, completely empty – there was not even a single corpse to encounter and deal with. So we claimed it, and set up home there. It has the bar, a two-bedroom apartment above, the natural shelter or solitude of the beach location and, being actually on the beach itself, it has great 360º vantage points for oncoming threats. Accessible from a lesser-known road to the rear of the beach and past some old apartments, which itself leads to the back-end of town and a direct road out of the PerranPorth, it also has a hasty escape route and a passageway that allowed us to get the van as close as possible to our sandy retreat.
It’s well stocked with snacks and beers by default, and we've brought a lot of our own supplies with us too. There's a major leak to the rear of the building, where the glass store and utility room adjoins a lean-to, but other than that it’s dry and pretty warm. I'd imagine in the winter it can get a little damp, and very cold given how exposed the place is to the winds coming onshore from the sea, but it's bricks and mortar at least and we've experienced worse. We lived out of a van and tents for almost a year – and while Prim was an infant too – so we’ve definitely experienced worse. Best of all, it has – ironically – a view to die for.
So we left the van in the sand dunes, covered up as best as we could with a large coverall raided from a nearby petrol station and the natural camouflage of thick marram grass. It still has a very basic level of bedding and blankets, and some long-life energy bars and snacks, as well as a few small bottles of water in a heavily iced cool box; the van is ready to roll should we ever have need to flee or just spend a couple of nights there. But our hope is that the marram grass grows long and intertwined throughout that van; that we need never use it again. We hope we can be safe and free here. We hope that we can carve out a long, happy and sustainable future here at the beach. We hope Prim can grow up here.
30th July 2018
In so many ways, we are more lost than ever before. And yet, we are also more stable and secure than at any time during the last three years. It's a delicate, complex conundrum, and here's why.
This is a whole new world, all over again. How many times have I said that before during this shit storm that has been the Pestilence? I remember in late 2015, just weeks and months before the outbreak. There was a lot of chatter across industries and news wires for Industry 4.0, the next new age of the industrial revolution – an age of industry dominated and facilitated by digitisation. It would be essentially the fourth significant age or chapter in industrial operations and I guess, modern mankind. If we use that premise to count the key phases of this apocalypse, then I would say we are now in Pestilence 3.0. And we are more lost than ever before.
We've gone from the outbreak and total collapse, the complete devastation of the Pestilence, to an age of survival of the fittest and smartest – what we might term Pestilence 2.0. That was a period that saw us find ourselves again in many respects, where there were undoubtedly pockets of survivors everywhere doing what they could to get by, to elude the pervasive undead all around them and linger on a little longer on what measly supplies they have. We each knew the other groups were out there, we just didn't know where or how.
Pestilence 2.0 was the age we are perhaps most familiar with; it was the period of most of my blogging of the apocalypse, and the age in which Prim came to be – and came into the world. But now we are in Pestilence 3.0 – a whole new phase of devastation and destruction, an age of apparent ruthlessness and cleansing. A time where the dull hum of heavy aircraft can still sometimes be heard in the distance and, if you take a trek up to the highest point of the cliff top here, you can still see the criss-cross of small missiles firing way off on the horizon inland.
And yet, amidst all of this, we are more united and found than ever. Through Prim, now well over 18 months old, we are more found than lost. We know what we are doing and why. We are settled and content here in PerranPorth, we like we what we have with our sedentary existence on the beach, and we have what we like. We have each other, and that’s all that counts.
One of the central parts of our thinking at the moment is, what became of everyone else? All those that we knew and loved – how are they? Where are they? Did they make it? Did they survive, only to be cleansed in this wave of apparent bombing? They're very much the kind of questions that ran through your mind back when the apocalypse first hit, right in the earliest of days; the frenzied, frenetic, fraught thoughts that criss-crossed through everyone's panicked minds as they scrambled to find their place in this new world. Now we’re pondering those all over again.
Some peo
ple you have an inkling or a sort of conviction that they made it. Take our good friends Sam and Imi, for example. Sam had always been a fan of the zombie genre too and a keen strategist for the scenario, should it ever happen – not that any of us really thought it would. Imi, meanwhile, was terrified of even the thought of such a concept, but she was a fearsome optimist and a brilliant home-maker; if there was a way to make do and mend and do it in style, Imi would already have thought of it and put it into action. They both had a passion for gardening and growing. Together, they were a real team – ready to roll up their sleeves and dig in, quite literally.
They would have wasted no time in identifying a safe harbour and fortifying it – and then some. It wouldn't just be safe and secure, it would be homely and snug. It wouldn't just be beans and bread rations, there would be raised beds full of produce and herbs, whole vegetable patches and plantations. They would be alright, I would wager. I just know they would have made it; I'm confident they're thriving somewhere not too far away.
Others, I’m less so. Some that we know would have just capitulated, whether through bad decisions or sheer fear. For many, that likely would have happened very quickly. That's the way it must have been for almost everyone. Any of us survivors were pretty much the lucky ones. There's plenty of times we could have gone the same way; lord knows we certainly had our scrapes along the way, and still seem to.
The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3] Page 41
