Diary of the Displaced (Entire Novel)

by Glynn James

  Oh, and it’s not near the zombie route.

  Day 14

  Yesterday I spent the majority of the day rummaging through the pile of prams and bicycles trying to find enough useful bits to put something together. I did it in the end, after a lot of messing around. I found an old pram that only had three wheels, and a single wheel that was roughly the same size. It’s probably going to wobble though.

  Thinking of other possibilities, I also picked up a couple of the bikes, and various other parts that looked usable, and pushed them along in the pram, back to the bus.

  After a couple of trips there, I had enough bits to rig something up, and spent the rest of the day inside the bus, fixing up my new contraption. I made it from two prams, four bikes, and a heap of other bits to keep it from falling apart. A push cart.

  It is a thing of engineering genius and beauty.

  Well, it is to me.

  There is only one can of drink left. I’ve done well to ration them, but they don’t exactly quench any thirst. If anything, they make it worse.

  Today I decided to go and have a poke around back near the old camp. There was an area where all the cardboard was damp, so I figured there had to be water around there somewhere. I took a pile of empty bottles and one of the hanging lanterns. Hopefully I’d find something to fill the bottles.

  On the way to the wreck, I spotted the hose pipe that I had seen before. It had a few holes in it, and was wrapped around a massive stone block that looked like a collapsed part of an old building. It took a bit of cutting with the new knife, to free a section of it about four metres long. I cut it into two pieces, which should be enough for siphoning off petrol, I think. I’ve seen how it’s done; my dad was always tinkering around with his car, but I’ve never tried to empty a petrol tank myself before.

  The zombies had gone, and there wasn’t even much left of the gargantuan one with the swinging head for a weapon, the one that I torched. There were small bits here and there, but the majority had vanished. I’m sure some of the bits were broken bone. Maybe DogThing came back and had his dinner here.

  After clearing out what remained of my camp - the pillow, sofa foam, curtains and odd bits that I had collected, including a pile of chair legs - I wandered back over to the car wreck.

  It was still there, with that musty smell of petrol lingering in the air. Where I had managed to prise open the side of the vehicle, the petrol tank was in clear view. I admit that I was a little nervous holding a lighted torch over it.

  After propping the torch up a few feet away, I took off the petrol cap and forced the pipe down the hole. It took a lot of sucking to get the petrol flowing out, and it tasted disgusting, but soon I had a few full bottles.

  The lantern - once filled - lit up an area much bigger than the torches did. At last a source of light that shouldn’t run out every half an hour. I hope.

  It was strange to see the old camp area, and the place where I first arrived all brightly lit up. I could see about a hundred yards before light began to recede.

  After a bit of clambering around, I found a decent piece of metal pole and attached it to the pram with ripped bits of curtain, pointing upwards. A couple of whacks from my mace and there was a hook shape on the top to tie the lantern on. Another strip of the curtain sorted that out.

  The damp area where I first found the cardboard – a few feet from the spot where I first woke up – was as dry as the rest now, and I couldn’t find a reason for it being wet in the first place.

  Something I hadn’t noticed whilst I was living out of that camp was a mountain of books and newspapers about a hundred yards along the wall, in the opposite direction from where I made my quick exit a few days ago. I pushed the cart over to it and had a poke around.

  There had to been thousands - tens of thousands even – of books and magazines in the pile. I grabbed a few of the least damaged ones and stacked them on the cart before moving on, promising myself that I had to come back and have a proper look around. If I was going to be stuck here, I may as well have something to read.

  It was so much easier to spot useful things with the area lit up almost as bright as daylight, but that also meant I kept seeing stuff that would definitely come in handy - far too much of it to carry at that moment. Damn it. I was becoming a bag lady.

  One interesting thing that I did spot was half a dozen sacks filled with empty drink cans, the same ones that I had been living off. Unfortunately, there weren’t any left unopened. Had someone else sat here drinking them all?

  DogThing hasn’t shown his face again since he popped back to the bus yesterday. I wish that I knew what he knew. He’s probably lying around in a huge pool of water somewhere, drinking his fill and rollicking on the shore. If only he could talk. I bet there would be an endless amount of interesting things he could tell me, having lived here all his life. I still wonder what exactly he is, and how he got here.

  As I headed out to the mushroom field, I spotted the oddest thing.

  Scaffolding.

  I don’t mean piles of it. This stuff was already erected and sitting there in the middle of an immense clearing in the junkyard that was close to the wall. Some of it was hanging down, ready to collapse, but most of it was standing quite sturdy - ramps, ladders and all. The only thing that was missing was the building in the midst of it all. There wasn’t time to head over to it and investigate, I needed new supplies. I set off again, pushing my cart back towards the mushroom field.

  Sometimes it just doesn’t click does it?

  Then later on you have an epiphany, and feel damn stupid because you didn’t put two things together.

  Mushrooms.

  Where do they grow?

  In the dark. With little light. In the damp.

  I was busy cutting up my third mushroom, standing in what looked like an endless field of the things - seriously they stretched on as far as I could see, so I wasn’t going out into them. I’d have gotten myself lost – and I felt something tap me on the shoulder. I span around, dropping both the mushroom and my knife. My heart almost leapt out of my throat. That stunned tingling feeling you get when you jar an elbow, or knee on something, shot around my whole body.

  There was nothing there, only more mushrooms and darkness.

  I was alone.

  The mace was in my hand in about a millisecond, well, maybe not that quick, but I was fast. It was a good job that I wasn’t holding the lantern or I might have dropped it and wound up standing in complete darkness. A minute went by and then I felt it again, but this time it was on top of my head.

  A drip.

  In the utter silence of this never-ending void, I heard a sound that nearly made me jump up and down with joy. It was only a faint noise, barely audible, but it was there.

  The pattering sound of rainfall.

  Day 15

  Catching rainwater is not an easy thing to do.

  I spent the remainder of day 14 hunting down bits of plastic and sheets of anything that I might be able to use to catch the water in. Eventually I dug some holes in the sparse layer of soil that is like a crumbly coating on the rock floor. I straightened out what little bits of plastic sheeting I could find in the nearby rubbish, making small reservoirs. Then I waited for the water to collect.

  An hour later and I managed to fill one bottle of water up, which I drank down in about three seconds.

  It was fantastic. But there wasn’t enough of it.

  After some more hunting around, and more digging, I eventually managed to cover a large area of ground with little pot-holes for the water to collect in. I’d have to come back after I’d slept and hope that it had worked.

  I had another strange dream last night.

  I was still on the bus, sitting watching the traffic and the throng of people on the streets of London, but this time I was the only one on the bus. I didn’t look downstairs at the driver’s booth, mainly because I had an eerie feeling that it would be empty.

  The journey seemed to last for ages, but
then I guess it would if you were sitting there with no destination. I had no idea where I was going or where I was supposed to be getting off. So I sat there. Then I fell asleep - within the dream - which was odd.

  In the dream within the dream, I was watching the old tramp again, but this time he wasn’t in London, not even on the bus. He was here, walking amongst my mushroom patch, past all of the (now full!) little water pits I had built.

  He didn’t seem aware of them though. He appeared preoccupied with something else, something that I wasn’t privy too. He was wandering slowly through the mushrooms. Although it might sound strange, I think that he was singing to them. He held his arms outwards and his palms flat. A mumbling sound - like a hum of an electricity generator - was coming from his throat.

  He walked on, and I was trapped in my camera view of his journey through the mushroom field, which ended after about half mile later, after passing some particularly huge mushrooms that must have been ten feet tall.

  Along the way, I noticed wooden shafts jutting out of the ground, with pieces of bright cloth tied to the top. The tramp seemed to be using them as a guide through the mushrooms.

  After the mushrooms ended, the ground was hard rock. No crumbly soil coated the flat plane of ground that he walked over. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. My gaze was fixed on his back. I tried to look around me, but my head wouldn’t turn. I was only allowed to look in the direction that he was facing.

  The expanse of flat rock went on for the best part of a mile before the ground once again turned to soil. I suspect it was much further, but that was the distance that my brain registered.

  Now the land sloped downwards, and for the first time, my vision was released. I realised then that I hadn’t been seeing by the light of a torch. I wasn’t even there to be carrying one. I was floating, disembodied behind the tramp, and he wasn’t carrying any form of light source. Instead, the area was lit by the glow that now came from the scene in front of me.

  Where the flat rock plane ended, a valley spread out below us. Wild slopes covered in strange glowing grass and even stranger plants spread out before me.

  It was hard to judge the distance to the far side, where the rocks were sharp and jutting upwards into what appeared to be a rock face. It looked like a natural rock wall, rising for hundreds of feet from the valley floor, and lit up by massive stalactites that were formed from a strange, blue, translucent, glowing, glass-like material.

  There was a waterfall cascading down into the valley, and white foam splashed off of the rocks as the water fell from the darkness above, to end in a roaring swirl in the middle of a crystal clear lake.

  It was beautiful.

  My gaze went back to the old man, as he made his way down to the water. I noticed for the first time that a body lay barely five feet from the water’s edge.

  I followed him down the slope and glanced down at the body. It was him, or what was left of him. Something terrible had happened to him here. Apart from his face - which had enough features remaining to make him recognisable - the rest of his body had been torn apart and spread out across the area in a frantic and random pattern. I guessed that something had literally ripped him apart.

  I turned to the other old man - the same, but living one - to find him looking back at me. His eyes were brimming with tears. He spoke, and it was the last part of the dream that I remember before I woke up.

  “Wake up.”

  I had to find out. I had to go there. It was probably quite a journey. I don’t remember the exact passage of time from the dream, but it didn’t matter. I had to find the valley. I didn’t remember looking at it during the dream, but when I went over it in my head, I was positive that there was a building - a shack of some sort - up on the rocks on the opposite side of the water. There was a wagon, a log pile, and other vague features that I had forgotten, or were blurred, as many things are in dreams. Someone lived there. I don’t know if it was the old man, but if the place still existed, I was going to find out.

  But not without being prepared first.

  I spent the whole of the day getting my supplies together, packing whatever I thought that I would need into my cart. I hauled out the sack of bottles and made some alterations to it so that it would hang comfortably off of the front of the cart. I collected more wood, made more torches until I ran out of the curtain material. By the time I was finished there was a pile of torches enough to last me a few days if the lanterns ran out.

  A trip out to the mushroom patch later in the day rewarded me with a dozen full bottles of water. I drank two of them down straight away, relishing the feel of real water running down my throat. No more cheap cola for me.

  I’d kept a look out whilst walking there, hoping to spot more plastic sheeting or anything that might collect water. Nothing jumped out at me.

  After chopping up another mushroom to take back with me, and checking that all my makeshift water collectors were setup properly, I turned to head back, but couldn’t help but stop and look out over the expanse. Somewhere through those mushrooms I would hopefully find some that were ten feet tall. If I did, I would know that there was a chance that everything else I had seen in the dream was true.

  As I go to sleep tonight, I am full of the first hope that I have had. There is a place out there. I’m certain of it. It’s a place that has light, and water, and grass. There was grass!

  Of course, in the back of my mind I remember the body on the shore, torn to pieces. It somehow didn’t worry me. I was under constant threat wherever I was in this place.

  Day 16

  Didn’t sleep as well as I would have liked to, but then I wasn’t expecting too. I lay awake for a long time last night, wondering whether I should set off right then. Eventually tiredness took me into slumber, and yet another dream.

  This time I was sitting on the bank of the lake and the old tramp was sitting next to me, staring into the mirror-like surface of clear water.

  “I told you that you would be fine here, didn’t I?” his voice was harsh and cracked. His gaze cast out over the lake to something that I couldn’t see. “You will be fine here.”

  “Where is here?” It was all that I could think of amongst the multitude of questions that I really wanted to ask.

  “I wish I knew, exactly. I have been here a long time, as long as I can remember. My life back in the old world seems to be a vague memory, and one that fades a little more each day. Home, is all I can say. This place is my home - was my home.”

  “What happened to you? Was that you on the lakeside?”

  “Yes, again, I wish I knew.”

  “But you are still here?”

  “Yes. It would seem that even in death, I am still trapped here, though that is a comforting thing. After so long here I would not choose to leave. It is a dangerous place. But if you can adapt - as you have done - it is also a wonderful place.”

  “Dangerous? Like the zombies and the dogs?”

  “Yes, and far worse. The zombies - as you call them - are only dangerous if you approach them. They are tormented enough with their own inner pain that they do not wish to be reminded of how whole you still are. The dogs - the maw - are no danger to you. If anything, they are a gift. Do not fear them.”

  “But something killed you.”

  “Yes. There are… other things here. Things best avoided."

  “What things?”

  I didn’t get an answer. Instead, I felt myself drifting away from the scene. My body was no longer a barrier to hold me. My mind raced back to the bus where I lay sleeping. A million questions still unanswered.

  Before I awoke, I heard his voice one more time.

  “You must find your way here, James. Find your path to the lake. You must leave, soon. For after the rain will come the storm. Leave as soon as you can. I will be waiting for you.”

  The first on my list of things to do was to head back to the old camp - to the car wreck - to siphon off as much of the petrol as I could in the couple of hours that I
had spared myself. I figured that I might not have the opportunity to come back here - at least not without a long trip - and the petrol was something that I didn’t want to run out of soon. Torches were all very well, but there was nothing like the light of the lanterns.

  The trip was surprisingly quick, with not a single sign of a zombie anywhere. It was disconcerting to be wandering the place, to find nothing. I was on edge whole way, expecting to hear that stomach turning groan in the darkness. No movement - not even DogThing - whom I am starting to miss.

  Ten bottles of petrol filled later, and the tank was empty. I had made such a lot of ground in a short time that I wandered back via the book pile, and had a bit of a rummage through it. Most of it was damp from the rain, and mouldy from sitting outside. But I found a few readable books and magazines. A lot of it is ancient.

  Then back to the bus, to take as much as I could carry in the cart. Tools, lanterns, mushrooms, the hose - everything that I thought would be useful that would fit on it. By the time I had stacked everything up, the cart was quite heavy. I only hoped the wheels would hold out for the journey.

  With some reluctance, I finally set off, saying goodbye to the bus as it disappeared from view. With my temporary home left behind me, I turned the cart toward the mushroom patch, and the journey that awaited me. I had only gone a hundred yards when I saw movement in the gloom ahead.

  I prepared myself - mace in one hand and knife in the other - and I watched and waited. The shape moved slowly out into the light, becoming DogThing. He padded towards me, and then sat down about twenty feet away, glancing backwards in the direction that my journey would lead me.

  “So you are called a maw then?” I don’t know what I expected back from him, but he replied in his own manner. He shuffled, stood up, and gave me what was almost a nod. Then he made a quiet, whining noise, before sitting back on his haunches.

  I hauled the cart into movement again. It was heavy to get started, but once you had momentum it moved quite easily over the dirt ground.