The Pestilence Collection [Books 1-3]

by Rob Cockerill

  So there is no new strength to the undead. We’ve encountered many that seem to be faster and more agile these days, but they are also no longer as rampant at every turn and it is possible to elude them at certain times or scenarios if you’re quick-minded enough. There’s also some chinks of hope, perhaps, in the planes and apparent bombings that were going off across the skies all those months ago. I can’t help feeling that it must have been some sort of cleansing or radicalising act to wipe out the hordes of festering corpses that had so infested our lands. We haven’t anything for months now, and it was both terrifying and tragic to see so much of the county razed to the ground in that onslaught – but at the same time that means someone, or something is out there trying to fight this shit. Something bigger than us is at play. Aren’t they?

  And of course, the biggest hope we have right now Prim, is that your Granddad Jack, Auntie Tam and Uncle Riley are still out there surviving, looking for us. We will all be together one day, I’m sure of that. There couldn’t be a better birthday present than having that hope right now.

  What we’re thinking right now is, especially on today of all days, nothing else matters – nothing is really bigger than the four of us right here and now. Your birthday is another timely example of that. We’re better off steering clear of the present world, the new world, and clinging to the ideals and values and love of the old world. That love never ‘turned’ or faded. It’s always been there, now more than ever. So we’re just going to focus on ourselves now, on the core and what matters. That's why they're just riding it out and living each day for what it is, right here on the beach.

  23rd January 2019

  They told us this day might come. Fantasists. There were reports in the news and medical journals that an ‘antibiotic apocalypse’ was coming…. we just didn’t think it would come so soon. How did it come to this? How did it happen so soon? Was it an accident? All I know is, we’re scared shitless. We’re scared shitless of the vicious animals that lay in wait outside. We’re trapped here, slowly running out of food and one-by-one, our creature comforts as we know them are running out. God only knows how much longer the power will be on for.

  Fiction had always speculated this day might come, but we didn’t really pay attention. Did anyone? Did government have a plan for this? I know we’re sat here in deepest, darkest rural Cornwall, but it doesn’t seem so. Right now it feels like we’re trapped in a very scary, very lonely new world.

  That was three years ago. Three years ago today.

  Disaster has been upon us for three full years, and ‘life’ is no better now than it was then. We’re still scared shitless; we’re still lonely. Our creature comforts are long gone, tangible food stocks have gone, and both power and fresh water supply are intermittent at best, as is this connectivity. We are trapped, on so many levels.

  Now that I really have seen it all in recent weeks and months, it adds to the sense of finality here. We've seen, fought and survived so much. We’ve seen safety compromised as swarms of hungered zombies have circled around a building with bloodlust. We’ve been in that building. The groans were deafening and the fear is crippling. No amount of barricades is enough to allay your anxiety.

  We’ve seen people turn, right before our eyes. We’ve seen the trickles of thick, bloody puss visibly began to travel up their throat from their infected insides and spill out of their mouth before them. Drops oozed from their ears and nose as the transformation took hold, and just a window pane separated us from them. We’ve seen people draw their last breaths as a normal man, woman or child.

  We had no choice but to watch as they fell to the ground and were torn apart by an insatiable pack of undead predators, gorged upon from limb to limb as veins and sinews were savagely stripped from the bone and mauled major arteries sprayed crimson blood up into the air. We’ve watched friends ripped to pieces.

  We’ve been just feet from corpses that wrestled and gnarled on the floor beside us, snapping their putrid jaw lines in our direction and flailing their rotting arms toward us. Cadavers have snapped and snarled and contorted all around us; despite our strengths in hiding and survival, we’ve been in countless frenzied and frenetic struggles and resisted the temptation to cower clumsily as disfigured heads and limbs have closed in on us from every direction.

  We’ve been soaked in congealing blood and parasitic brain juice, sprayed with sinews, and enveloped in the stench of dirty, rotting flesh. We’ve endured scratches and scrapes and various injuries in the heat of combat and our struggles to escape to safety. For some of us, we’ve killed or be killed; we’ve killed in the name of life.

  We’ve worn mostly the same comfortable clothes – t-shirts, jeans and hoodies – throughout. Blood-spattered, nervous sweat-stained, and then washed again as best as we can and go again. The cycle repeats itself, until you can’t remember how many different layers of blood and guts you’re wearing. But you do always remember which stain came from where, and whose body it might have been.

  We’ve hidden and locked ourselves away in darkness, in the same shrouded and barricaded four walls, and tried to block out the shit storm swirling all around outside. We’ve ‘lived’ a life of complete entrapment or imprisonment for three years, doing everything we can to keep our existence off the radar. Even for the last two years, largely spent on the road, we’ve never truly been free. We’ve not been comfortable in our surroundings; you spend every hour of everyday watching over your shoulder and wondering where the next threat is coming from. It’s torturous, mental abuse. That’s what the Pestilence is: it’s not just the physical strain of survival, it’s the mental battle – the fortitude required and the inevitable drain on your mental stability that it will bring about.

  None of that has gone away in the last three years. The horror continues today, just as it did two years ago, three years ago. Just because I haven't written about it doesn't mean it's any less. We’re just learning to live with it a little more each day, each week, each month. But it's still there. I'm still fighting these things and having near-misses with my own life, and trying to not to have them with my family’s lives. I'm still racking up the kill counts: 107 zombies knowingly evaded or impaired; 223 zombies killed; 5 people killed or on my conscience. That shit will never leave me. I think about it every day, without fail. I still see many of their faces. I may get a little more numb with every kill, but it never leaves you.

  Though it has always been good for me to process my thoughts here, and some of my best plans have come to me while blogging the day’s events, I do think it’s time to call it a day. I’ve been thinking it for months, and certainly since my last post almost a month ago. We’re so tired, so completely worn out – we need to settle and put everything we have into making this work. We’ve not felt so peaceful or at ease as we do here in PerranPorth right now. It’s an emotional drain reliving everything in words and I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to do it anymore, not when we could be focusing on what few positives we have and devoting everything we have to giving Nic and Prim the best chance of survival – and life – they could have. That’s what’s important.

  I want life to be about more than all of the things we’ve seen and done, all of the things we still cower and cringe from. I want it to mean something, for Prim more than anyone. If we didn’t pay attention to the vivid imaginations of literature, or the overzealous caution of sensationalised news reports, if we didn’t take our warnings from history seriously, then I don’t want to make the same mistakes. I do want to pay full attention to my family. I do want to pay attention to our survival, to Prim’s growth and blossoming my day, and to Jenny as my wife and best friend by night. Who knows how long the power will stay on for? Who knows how long the water will keep running? Who knows how much longer our food stocks will last? Who knows how much longer we have.

  So this is it, reader. It’s almost midnight, it’s pitch black outside and pouring with rain, and I’m going to bury the dongle in the sand unsighted, never to be found
– no more blogging, no more Diary of the Trapped. Goodnight all, stay safe.

  Epilogue

  21st February 2044

  Down goes another pristine layer of tarmac, a ribbon of black sheen laid down on the latest stretch of trunk road through the county. The A30 hasn't looked this good for decades. Cornwall rarely had a track record for strong infrastructural investment, but as those workmen took an early lunch break and looked out upon the new build housing taking shape across the rolling hillsides, the county was starting to look modern and resplendent again. To a man they dreamed of living in one of those new abodes, each with their own obligatory land to tend to and crops to harvest. Every new house sale these days came with a responsibility to nurture the adjoining land, sow the designated crops, and carefully harvest them each season to provide subsidised goods for sale within the community. Though it was technically a contractual clause, it was also a collective responsibility; everyone realised not just how lucky they were but also the importance of their contribution. Society depended on it now.

  It's been a quarter of a century since the zombie apocalypse known as the Pestilence destroyed the world as it had once been known, and lay waste to millions of innocent people. Years of chaos, carnage and unrelenting bloodshed wiped out county after county, before Bunker Government-led troops finally launched a programme to proactively combat the undead that blanketed the country. Operation Blitz began with localised aerial bombing campaigns that befitted the title: Step 1 was a wave of bombs that simply wiped out as much of the undead and their surroundings as possible; Step 2 were a series of more sophisticated, chemical-based missile campaigns, designed to make the ground less inhabitable for the undead; Step 3 was essentially a period of strategic patience, waiting for the chaos to subside and the remaining undead to both surface, and starve; Step 4 involved a further aerial reconnaissance; and Step 5 was re-entry – the day that carefully assembled groups of troops were sent into strategic locations across the UK to Assess, Invigorate and Re-Assert (AIR).

  That day was 21st February 2022. The day the world began anew. From its bunker retreat in Bletchley, the Government had waited a full four years since the start of its 'cleansing' campaign for the worst effects of the bombing and its fallout to pass. There were chemicals and particulates that they were apprehensive of being around in those first months or years of the campaign. They also wanted the remaining cadavers to wait it out – to force them into starvation. From them on, Project Blitz transitioned to Project Dawn, as efforts were focused on re-establishing civilisation and rebuilding the towns and cities that had been razed to the ground by the combination of bombing and fires sweeping unadulterated through entire parishes.

  With the introduction of rescue squads and the hard work of certain survivors, efforts began to rebuild the country, county by county. Everywhere had to be cleared first; completely checked and rid of the undead. Then plans were drawn up for how many dwellings were required and semi-skilled teams tasked with building new homes and facilities. Land was drawn up and essentially issued to survivors and their families on an innovative new mortgage basis; everyone had to work to rebuild communities and establish ecosystems. In time, shops would re-emerge and basic trades would be reinstated.

  From there, things moved very fast. Infrastructures were rebuilt, digital networks re-established and connectivity restored. Trade moved rapidly forward and society quickly adopted the blueprints of mankind's previous advances – sometimes literally in the case of rebuilding technologies and industrial capabilities – to get itself up and running again. But the physical rebuilding took time to catch up. So much ground had been lost that it was impossible to just go back to how it was before. Great swathes struggled with that realisation. Some didn't think the rescue was genuine. So many others, so very many, simply couldn't believe it. They wanted to, but they couldn't. By hiding long enough they had survived, but had long since lost their minds with their freedom. They had to be detained in whatever hospitals remained intact and sedated, described as one of the great tragedies of the time in the narrative of the modern new press.

  Others embraced the re-growth, thriving upon the opportunity to start something new and be at the forefront of a new generation, a stakeholder in the community. Some wanted to give something back; many wanted to reinvent their pre-apocalypse self and make an entirely new life for themselves; others simply wanted to put the pieces of a broken world back together. All were united in a sense of pride in watching the reconstruction of infrastructure, housing and more importantly, homes. Mankind felt reborn, as if given a renewed chance at life, like waves rolling into the beach and washing the sand clean before ebbing away again.

  Sat looking out over that sand was Primrose Evans, 27 year-old child of the apocalypse and a key pillar of new Cornwall. The daughter of Parish Councillor Jennifer Evans and a revered doctor of medicine in her own right, even at her relatively tender age Dr. Evans is already an upstanding member of the community across the county, travelling far and wide to hold medical clinics in different towns and villages. In her spare time she can’t help but be drawn to the beach, yearning to feel the soft sand between her toes and clinging to her innately happy childhood memories of sun, sea and sand. Her inherently selective memory means that she doesn’t remember the wind and rain, nor the threat of the undead that so encircled her first years in this world.

  Every Sunday she makes the pilgrimage to PerranPorth with her mother, to the memorial bench dedicated to her father. Everything she does is done in the name of her father, her hero, the man widely acclaimed as one of the new world’s ‘founding fathers’. When the new world order swept into Cornwall seeking to wipe out the Pestilence and restore society, JP Evans was among first in the queue to offer his services. He went from reluctant fighter to leading marksman and strategist, valiantly leading teams of survivors into battle with the undead throughout towns and villages across Mid and West Cornwall. He did so in the knowledge and intent that he was building a better tomorrow for his darling Jenny and his beloved Prim.

  He led the efforts in that part of Cornwall, helping to stake out old buildings and villages and ‘clear' them of the undead, which were dwindling in both numbers and ability by the time they were stormed. The long periods of starvation had not treated them well; many were visibly rotting from the inside out. They were still a formidable opponent, however, with scores of heroic lives lost in those first few weeks, stoic survivors who had lived through the Pestilence but were caught unawares and succumbed to the very corpses they were trying to eliminate every last trace of.

  JP was not one of them; he continued to survive so many skirmishes and near misses, and happily split his time between striving to rebuild society and doing everything he possibly could to be the best father, husband and brother-in-law possible. Until, he ultimately fought one fight too many. Three years later, a short while after Prim’s eighth birthday and long after the undead were meant to have been exterminated, JP unknowingly fell into a basement of dormant cadavers. Though he somehow hurriedly fought his way out without so much as a bite from his prey, he never recovered from the injuries sustained in the fall itself nor the hours of waiting for help to arrive. His was a story of legend, especially his refusal to the last to fall into the mangled arms of the undead. The only solace in that story was the opportunity to say goodbye to his girls before he passed, and telling his darling Prim where he had kept the diaries devoted to her.

  Both subsequently dedicated their lives to his memory. Jenny pushed herself into raising Prim and rebuilding the human side of the post-apocalyptic new world, becoming revered herself for her tireless work in restoring civility to a community struggling with its growing pains; Prim devoted herself to medical science, determined that no-one should befall the same fate as her father, bravely battling against all odds, only to be denied a long and happy life by man’s medical failings. Fast-tracked through the system due to her outstanding education and performance, she qualified as a fully-fledge Doctor at
just 24.

  They both visit the bench dedicated to him, every Sunday without fail, and keep an open diary together during every visit. Jenny routinely refers back to those “formative first weeks and months back in 2022 that were so fun and energising” and gives weekly updates on her father, Jack, and his determination to keep fixing motorbikes even into his late eighties. Prim often takes over and runs through the week’s events with trademark medical precision, at pains to document how the county is slowing coming back together and validating the greater good of her father’s legacy. She talks about her auntie Nic’s teaching career; auntie Tam’s work on the farm and love for animals; and uncle Riley’s latest exploits with motorbikes, both fixing them and wildly ragging them around the Cornish coast in his free time.

  Above all, they always thank him for recording their journeys together and the sense of freedom that now emanates from what was once a diary of entrapment. “We do remember, we do learn, and we do pay attention, Dad,” Prim signs each week before they take a long walk across the beach and soak in the renewed liberty that life post-Pestilence affords. “Because,” she recites as a thousand grains of sand sift through her toes, “you never know how long it will last.”