by Frank Tayell
Am I just reading too much into this? I used to do that all the time, extrapolating too much from too little data. It was why I was dreadful at predicting election results from exit polls.
I’m going back downstairs today to make a better inventory. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. Anything is better than sitting by this window. Other than a secret tunnel to a long forgotten but still well stocked bunker, I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but if I’m going to leave here someday soon, then I’ll need more than just the clothes on my back. Besides, going up and down the stairs very definitely counts as exercise.
17:00, 21st March.
The basement! I’d forgotten about the basement! That almost warrants two exclamation marks. I didn’t forget about it, not really. It’s not a proper basement, let alone a cellar. It’s nothing more than a long tunnel the length and width of the front hall, dug out to about five feet seven. I know that because I keep banging my head whenever I go down there. It, like those in most Victorian houses this size, was really meant as nothing more than a place to store the coal (there’s a coalhole at one end, now completely painted over. I suppose, in a pinch, I could use it as an escape route, but only if I could get outside and spend a couple of hours unsticking it). It stores the fuse box, the electricity meter and whatever stuff my tenants wanted to dump down there.
I haven’t been in the basement for two years, not since the fuses blew on Christmas Eve. I was meant to spend the holidays in Northumberland but had missed the last train to the north. This honestly wasn’t my fault. What made it worse was that Jen and I had gone down to the station together and were both on the train when I got a call. Since we were in a quiet carriage I got off the train to take it. The doors closed as I was standing on the platform and Jen laughed, she actually laughed, as the train pulled out of the station. Of course she did, she was going off to her parents’ for the holidays and I was stuck in London until the garage where I stored my car opened again on Boxing Day. I arrived back here to find the fuses had blown and spent a very unpleasant hour rummaging through the accumulated detritus of decades trying to find the box. Looking at the basement this afternoon I’m not sure anyone’s been down there since.
But I digress. Victory and achievement and success! Of a sort…
No weapons, no hidden stashes of guns and food indicating that Grace was actually a Russian spy, and no secret tunnel. None that I could find anyway, but the basement is full of treasures. Most of it, in fact almost all of it, is useless in the current situation. There’s some mouldering camping gear that could probably be resurrected, but I’m not planning to sleep outside. Similarly, if I was a bit more skilled I could turn the weird electric thing, that’s either for curling hair or stripping paint, into something truly deadly, but as it is, I am resting on my laurels this evening over my find of a bike.
I’m not sure whose it is since I never saw any of them ever ride one. The wheels look okay, except that the tyres need pumping (but the pump was still attached!). There’s some rust on the frame, the brakes look more than a little dodgy, but all in all it seems sound.
Yes, I know I can’t ride it just yet, but the cast will come off sometime. At worst I can always sling some bags on it and use it as a pack mule. I saw a lot of evacuees doing that.
20:00, 21st March.
The bike got me thinking about transport and that got me wondering whether the car outside, the government one sent to collect me, is an automatic? If it is then there’s no reason I couldn’t drive it. The keys, well, I know the driver turned the engine off. They’ll be in the ignition or on the floor, or at worst, in his pockets. I guess the risk is in the time it would take to check whether the car would start. It’s the risk of getting trapped inside the car, with the living dead outside, pounding against the glass until it breaks. I did say I was going to start taking risks, but perhaps this is one too far.
Day 10, 68 days to go
09:30, 22nd March.
Exercised then breakfast. One half bowl of muesli, and that’s the last of it gone. Another three days and I’ll have finished my looted cereals, then it’s pancakes until the eggs run out. And then? No, I’m not going to think about that, not yet.
The car. I find my eyes drawn to it more and more. It presents an attractive idea of a quick escape, but how practical is it? Will it work? Where would I drive it? To the south, east and west there’s nothing but mile after mile of suburbs. Roads could easily be blocked either by man or the undead. To the north lies the river.
My mind is as drawn to the river as my eyes are to the car. The Thames is only three and a half miles away and the undead can’t swim. I’m only basing this on the video footage I’ve seen, but I’m pretty sure there weren’t any reports about Them swimming. At least not substantiated reports from reputable sources. There was hearsay and rumour of course, but there were rumours that They could fly and change shape, so I don’t know if I should pay any credence to the ones saying They can swim.
Once I get to the river, all I’d have to do is find a boat and float out to the sea. That has to be easier than trying to walk, cycle, or even drive down to the south coast. With so much of the post-evacuation plan, what little of it there was, dependent upon fishing I’d certainly be picked up, wouldn’t I? Even if the evacuation failed, especially if it failed, surely I’d be most likely to find other survivors at sea.
It’s hard to think coherently. Is it because of the lack of vitamins or the lack of human voices? I’ve tried talking to myself, but I find it strange, slower than I can think and unsatisfying.
Focus. Stay Focused. The car. I’ve been looking at the car and replaying what happened, trying to work out if it’s worth the risk.
The text came on 10th February at 09:12. I’ve still got it. It reads: ‘Car coming. Maybe 1 hour. Be ready. Jen.’ That was it. My last message from her. If my tenants had only stayed a few more days they could have driven out with me. Surely the four of them could have easily subdued the zombies out there. Even if the driver had still been killed, the five of us could have driven off. We could all have been safe.
When the message came I grabbed my jacket, threw my laptop and the hard drive into my bag and then sat by the window, waiting. By that time, I’d already seen a few of zombies. The first time had been on the 8th, at around tea-time. By then the streets were deserted. I’d not seen anyone out there all day. I know it was tea-time, because I was sitting by the window sipping a brew, just watching and waiting, my eyes flicking between the street and the phone, waiting for Jen to call. That’s when I saw him, just walking down the street. He was wearing a tracksuit and not a cheap one, but the kind professionals wear to run up and down mountains. At first I thought he was a solitary type who’d decided to wait until after the evacuation and leave when the streets were deserted. Perhaps he’d just bought the gear to look cool at the annual company away-day and finally he’d found a proper use for it. By the time he’d got level with my house I realised that it wasn’t a he, not any more.
There weren’t any visible wounds, there was just something about the way that it walked that told me it was one of Them. It was almost out of sight when it suddenly stopped. I’m not sure why, but I think I heard a scream from somewhere not far off. It paused only a moment before heading in that direction, faster and more purposefully.
That was the first and I saw a handful more before the car came, always moving, but never chasing anyone. Never attacking.
I was in the bathroom when the car finally pulled up. It was late, almost two hours had gone by since I’d received the text. By the time I got over to the window the engine was off, though the driver was still inside. Whether he was waiting for me, or whether he was checking the address, who knows? I was still debating if, since I didn’t have his number, I should call Jen or should just open the window and shout down to him, when the car door opened and he got out. He looked up at the window and raised a hand to his eyes. I don’t think he could see me through the tinted glass and was just shi
elding his eyes from the sun, but I waved back anyway. He took two steps away from the car, paused, then went back, bent over and reached in for something, I think from the glove box. I couldn’t make out what he was doing, but it took his full attention for half a minute.
It was long enough for a scrawny woman, she must have been at least seventy when she’d died, to claw at his leg. She had been in the alleyway that runs between the two houses opposite, hidden from his view and mine by the multi-coloured cluster of bins. Unlike every other one of Them I’d seen and every one that I’ve seen since, she wasn't wearing thick winter walking clothes, rather she was dressed only in a thin nightgown.
I watched as he turned, as she raised a hand to his shoulder and pulled herself up his body. He grabbed at her arms and tried to push her away, to hold her back, but she kept violently thrashing, her mouth snapping open and closed. With each twitch and jerk, her teeth got closer to his skin. There was a pop as her right arm dislocated, and then her mouth could reach his neck. In two ferocious snapping bites she’d virtually severed it. His body hasn’t moved since.
But he did turn off the engine before he got out of the car.
11:00, 22nd March.
Having difficulty planning lunch. I’m starting to feel hungrier more often and thought if I spent more time planning the meals that would help distract from the size of the portions, but I’ve not much variety of ingredients. It’s going to be rice with herbs and spices. The only real decision is whether I should add oregano or thyme, paprika or cayenne.
They’re moving faster. They’re still slow, slower than I could walk. Slower than I think I could walk, anyway, but They are getting faster, as if there's something drawing Them in. Is it herd mentality or could there be some kind of hive-mind behind it?
No. There’s no evidence of that. I need to stop thinking like that. It’s just late-night horror show stuff. There aren’t any hives or herds. I need to stick to what I know, what I actually know, that today They are moving faster than yesterday.
16:00, 22nd March.
Outside of the UK and New Zealand I don’t know of any country that turned off its mobile phone network. Even with the fractured internet a lot of video footage was uploaded, particularly in that first week of the outbreak, and thanks to my government phone I had access to it. I watched some of those recordings. All in all, I don’t think my fellow Brits missed out on much. Most of it was camera phone and webcam stuff that could be split into two categories; the forlorn goodbyes of those about to leave whatever safety they’d found, and the bloggers who saw it as their duty to chronicle the end of the world. I didn’t see much point in either of those types, but there were a few genuinely interesting pieces that stand as a final testament to the macabre marvel of the web.
My favourite has to be the pseudo-scientific pieces. I found them oddly reassuring despite their content. It was these videos that I was thinking of when I was trying to recall whether or not They can swim, though I’m not sure I ever saw a piece where they covered this. In some they dissected living zombies, in others they catalogued how to turn household objects into weapons, or categorically proved things like holy water, for instance, had no effect. Even I know it’s from the wrong mythology, but it was clear, from the blogs, that others didn’t. Then again, what has myth to do with this harsh reality?
There was footage from the space station where the last astronauts set the cameras to automatic before evacuating, or of the disastrous attempts made again and again by refugee ships trying to dock on the Antarctic ice. And then there was the blog from The American Free Army.
The group, if you were to believe their own site, was based in Texas, but based on the exterior shots I’d say they were somewhere in Colorado. According to their hour-long vitriolic propaganda piece, they’d been preparing for the UN-Zionist backed invasion for decades, and this apocalypse was the result of us ignoring them. It was all our fault. They had declared themselves the natural successors to the United States government and they commanded all citizens… and so on. After a half hour or so of the worst kind of vitriolic paranoia, the cameraman took us on a tour of their bunker. I have to say that it was a good thing the zombies came, because there was no way the Feds would have ever dug them out of there.
They had concrete bunkers with three-foot thick walls, fall out points, underground tunnels, a storeroom with enough food for a thousand people for twenty years (which I guess is why they lied about their location), with the largest chamber kept for the armoury.
The video finished with footage of them killing what they claimed were a handful of zombies in the woods outside, but to me they looked like refugees. That footage was uploaded on the 24th February and I’d initially only watched it in the hope that there might be some practical advice. I stayed on their site because after that video finished another started, and this one was a live stream.
I don’t know whether they were just technically incompetent, or whether some hacker decided to embarrass them in front of the world, but the webcams they’d set up inside and out were broadcasting over the web. It was like reality TV when you really didn’t care what happened to any of the contestants, and it was compelling, just as long as you kept the sound off.
There were about sixty of them in that bunker, split into four firing teams and a command and supply unit. Seriously, that’s what they called it. Each day more zombies would appear, and each day they’d kill Them, yet more undead were always there to take their place, drawn in from miles around by the sound of gunfire.
Each day the number of full boxes of ammunition in the armoury got fewer and fewer. On the third day, the leader told them to start making the shots count. “Aim for the head,” he said. “One shot, one kill,” he said, and he took to marching around the compound hitting the younger ones who were “wasting rounds.” They tried, but they just weren’t that good.
On the fourth day, at 16:04 GMT - I made a note - someone went into the armoury and found it was empty. They were overrun thirty minutes later.
What got me about that video was that these guys in the bunker had no idea that the rest of the world was watching. You could tell that from the conversations, from the bravado and banter that turned to bluster and threats that they thought they were talking in private. I don’t know how many rounds they fired in the end, or how many zombies they actually killed, but not one of them knew anyone living outside who cared enough about them to call and let them know the world was watching.
Day 11, 67 days to go
13:00, 23rd March.
I need a plan. I need somewhere to head to and a way to get there. A goal, if you like, and one more purposeful than counting down the days until the cast should be coming off. Someone still may come for me, but with each passing day the chances of that recedes. If I am truly on my own then I need to act whilst I still have the luxury of time.
If this had happened at any other time, or if our apocalypse had manifested itself in any other way, I’d have headed up to Northumberland. Jen’s parents’ place isn’t really a farm, it’s more of a manor. There’s farmland attached, but that’s all looked after by tenants. At last count there was a dairy herd, six fields of potatoes and an organic farm tied up in an exclusivity deal to supply courgettes to one of the London department stores. It’s not exactly the makings of a balanced and varied diet, but it is food and the farmers there know how to grow it.
Her parents are real life aristocracy, the landed gentry, genuine minor nobility that can trace their stewardship back to the times they used to stand on the walls and square off against the Vikings. Not that there are walls now, that part, the crenelated castle part, that burnt down around the time of the Restoration, but the manor house that stands on the spot would be ideal to hold off the undead.
I suppose the question is whether the place would withstand a siege by the living as well. All over the world, there are, or were, millions of people looking for somewhere like that, somewhere that was obviously safe. If I managed to get th
ere, would I find those people I knew still there? And that’s if I could get there.
I’d have to use the government car. I can’t see any other way of travelling that far. If the car still works, of course. If the battery’s not dead, and if there’s enough petrol in the tank. If I can get up enough speed to push through and out of London, if the roads north aren’t blocked and if, when I get there, there’s someone there I know, someone who will take me in, then I’d be safe.
Too many ifs. I know the bridges over the river were closed during the crisis, but did they remove the roadblocks when they evacuated? Probably not. Looking out there now, the street is so packed with the undead I don’t think I could drive through Them. No, I know I couldn’t. So the car’s out, and without it there’s no way I can limp to Northumberland. What then?
The government, the new government, was going to be based, nominally at least, on the Isle of Wight. Eventually any journey there would be by sea. One option, the obvious one, is to head south to either Portsmouth or Southampton, where a large coastal enclave was going to be created around the two ports and the New Forest.
How far is that? I wish I had a map. About eighty miles I think, but that’s as the carrion-crow flies. How far would I have to travel? That’s a very different question and one that’s impossible to answer. But let’s say I’m lucky, and miraculously, somehow, don’t have to take any detours, how long would it take? If I was healthy and fit, four days. Since I wasn’t close to fit before the outbreak I’d say without the cast, five. With the cast, ten days? Twenty? I really have no idea.
That’s without detours or hiding out for days on end, or the time it would take scavenging for food. What chance is there, what real chance, that I would actually make it on foot?
But there’s another way. The river. I’ve no idea how to sail a boat, but would I have to? If I could get on board one, couldn’t I just ride it out to the coast? Surely I’d get picked up by a fishing trawler or some naval vessel, or maybe I’d be spotted by a satellite, for there’s no reason why they shouldn’t still be working. Certainly I’d have a greater chance out on the water than I would here.
