We were just heading for the exit when the first zombie stepped over the threshold, cutting us off. Mark was just ahead of me and Clay. He had his pickaxe raised already but, even so, I pulled my knife from my belt while Clay slipped his gloves on – we could see more zombies behind the first one, all heading for the store. Mark stepped forwards and swung his pickaxe up and over. The pointed tip embedded into the top of a zombie’s head. It remained standing for a moment, its faraway eyes almost managing a look of bewilderment then it slid down, off the pickaxe tip, to crumple at Mark’s feet.
Gripping the shopping bag in my left hand, I strode forwards, wanting to meet the next, bigger wave of zombies out on the street, rather than inside the small store where we could get trapped. I estimated around twenty or so zombies waiting for us in Madrid Road – totally manageable between the three of us – but a larger crowd – and I had no idea what had attracted them as we hadn’t been making much noise – were heading our way from the street directly opposite the store, as well as more staggering our way from further up Madrid Road to our right.
I slammed my knife through the heads of zombies directly outside the door, feeling cumbersome and slowed down by the shopping bag that I refused to let go of. I wasn’t too worried, Clay and Mark were doing great job at clearing the way. The three of us headed back in the direction of the house, keeping close to the shop fronts as we inched forwards.
A bang made me stop and I turned to see around six or seven zombies crowded at the window of a carpet shop, trapped inside. They slammed and banged and clawed at the glass. Morbidly, I moved closer and lifted the hand that clutched the shopping bag, touching the fragile barrier with my fingertips. A zombie pressed its face on the opposite side and opened its mouth wide. I could see yellowed, rotting teeth and saliva like thick green puss as the disgusting creature tried to bite through the glass to get to me. The other zombies sniffed at the air and surged towards me, drawn to me like ducks hoping for a bite of bread held out to them.
I jumped as something caught my eye from the right. I turned to see a zombie lurch from the alley between the carpet shop and the pharmacy next door. As it lumbered towards us I saw Mark raise his pickaxe. He swung it with force and I cried out, wanting to warn him. Too late. The pickaxe smashed through the zombie’s skull and carried on and into the floor to ceiling window of the carpet store. Even before the glass had settled, the newly freed zombies lunged forwards, out of the carpet store, their feet crunching on glass as they staggered out onto the street. It happened so fast that a zombie caught my arm before I could get away. I swung my blade into its head and pulled myself free.
Something yanked my head back. From the corner of my eye, I could see the grey, withered arm of a zombie and knew it had me by the hair. I strained to keep my head upright, even though my hair was ripping from my scalp. I dropped the shopping bag to the ground and lifted my arm, readying to swing round and stab the zombie. But before I could, another of the zombies from the carpet shop grabbed my knife arm by the elbow. I was stuck. I glance to my left to see Clay fending off the zombies that had now caught up with us from Dunsdon Avenue, slamming his spiked gloves through their skulls. I yelled to him for help. He glanced my way and fell back, the zombies in danger of swamping him as he turned. One grasped his shoulder and another, his elbow, both zombies holding him back.
As I struggled against the zombies that held me, I saw Mark slam his pickaxe through the head of one that lurched at him. More gained on him as he paused to pull the pickaxe tip from where it was embedded deep in the slain zombie’s head. Another one grabbed me, its filthy feet kicking the shopping bag so a couple of tins rolled out onto the street. The zombie behind me moved closer, its mouth seeking out the flesh of my neck. My violent movements were keeping them all back for now, but I knew I couldn’t keep it up for long.
Mark used his pickaxe to push a zombie away from him before plunging the tip into another’s head. He was the furthest along the street. Ahead of him was now clear, give or take a zombie or two. Me and Clay weren’t so lucky. The undead swamped us both. I glanced at Clay as he struggled, driving his spikes through the rotten heads he could reach. I waited for the scream that would indicate game over for him. My eyes darted back to Mark as I waited to see what he would do. I mean, me and Clay were lost causes, pretty much.
Mark’s eyes locked onto mine. I imagined his brain like a fruit machine in full whirring mode, waiting to see what it would settle on – three cherries or a lemon – then DING DING DING! A look of absolute determination struck and he leapt towards me. It didn’t take long to cover the ground between us and his pickaxe slammed through the brains of the undead that stood in the way, then into the head of the one holding my knife arm. That freed, I was able to stab the one on my left arm, and with the blade still in its head, spin and kick back the one about to bite my neck. Yeah, I lost a bit of hair, but I didn’t get bloody bitten. I stabbed the zombie as it came back for another go.
By this point, Mark had also freed Clay and in the absence of any spine-chilling screams, I guessed Clay was as bite free as me. I watched as Mark and Clay dealt with the zombies closest to them, then they fell back in line with me and the three of us turned and fled, not before I grabbed the shopping bag off the ground.
We dodged around five zombies that lurched out from Ridgemount, and sped into Guildford Park Road, not stopping until we reached my house. Inside, the three of us stood panting in the living room, sweat dripping from us despite how cold it was outside.
‘Nice time?’ said Kay as she appeared from the dining room.
‘It was awesome,’ I said.
‘Shame I missed it.’
‘Yeah. You would have loved it,’ I said. I still had the shopping bag gripped in one hand and my knife in the other as though letting go of either of them would be letting go of my sanity for good.
11pm
By the time Misfit returned with a bundle of rabbits and a couple of pigeons, the rest of us were settled around a fire in the back garden. The fence panel had been fixed and, despite the fact that we were in an urban area and with only a wooden fence around us, we were not as secure as I’d like us to be, it felt good to be out in the open again.
Me and Clay had calmed down after our near-death experience. We had both thanked Mark profusely. He had risked his life to save us – strangers to him – and we wanted him to understand just how grateful we were. I made Clay and Mark promise not to tell Misfit about what had happened, how close I had become to being Zombie-Sophie.
Misfit sat next to me around the fire as he skinned rabbits. ‘Can I try?’ I asked him.
‘Hmm?’
Misfit had been lost in thought as he worked but my words pulled him back.
‘Me, have a go?’ I said, nodding to the rabbit on the flattened grass before him.
Misfit half-smiled and passed me a small bladed hunting knife from his backpack. I picked up a dead rabbit, surprised that I wasn’t freaked out by its cool but floppy body. I mean, before the outbreak, I would never have considered touching a dead animal – apart from the pre-prepared ones you get in the supermarket, and even then I used to hate touching raw meat – and here I was about to skin a little bunny. Except I didn’t see it as a cute little fluffy bunny anymore – I saw it as food… fuel… protein… life. Confident I wouldn’t get squeamish, I watched and then copied what Misfit showed me. I felt a surge of something inside me while we worked together – excitement, closeness, an ever developing bond that began, well, longer ago than I even realised.
Once the meat was on cooking I felt a pang of sadness at the absence of guitar music. It was times like these, sat around the campfire at the Martello tower in Folkestone that Stewart would have played and sang for us. And I realised that this was the first campfire we’d had since he died. The HZs were all gone but they took more than a few of our friends with them.
Clay was chatting away while we waited for our dinner to cook. I had to kick him just the once when he almost
spilled the beans on the zombie attack earlier but then, with my head on Misfit’s shoulder, my thoughts drifted off. I watched Mark sitting across the fire from me. He was sat back a little, just the same way that Misfit used to sit back from the campfire a little when he was new to the group. Mark had a sketch pad open on his lap, and his eyes kept flicking in the direction of Charlotte. She caught him looking and I noticed her smile at him while she twiddled a long strand of hair around her forefinger. Mark returned the smile, holding it long after his eyes had settled back on his sketch pad.
I remembered what Mark had said as we made our way to the Co-op earlier, that he used the zombie apocalypse to inspire the narrative for his comic. That meant my family was in there as part of the narrative. I wondered if he’d let me read the part they starred in, the part where he put them down. But then I remembered what he’d said about his drawings being an illustrated diary. Diaries are private.
Would I let anyone read mine? No, I wouldn’t. That’s where I go to download my thoughts and feelings. And while the people I meet and share my time in the apocalypse with make it into my diary’s narrative, I wouldn’t want any of them to read it. I know I used to publish my diary on the internet but it’s a little different writing it down in a notebook. I don’t know why and it’s stupid really, but it just makes it more private, like I open up more in this notebook than I did in my blog. Well, that’s how it feels. When you know people will see something, you edit yourself just a little. But then, I never really considered that anyone would be reading my post apocalyptic blog, I guessed people were dead or too busy trying to survive. And if they were reading it, well, I wanted to share my experiences so that maybe it would help them to survive or to feel less alone. I was there and I was surviving alongside them, albeit miles apart. But this, this notebook, this is just for me.
I guessed Mark’s work had undergone a similar transition, going from webcomic with a large following to becoming something much more intimate and personal to him and not just his experiences but how his experiences affected him inside. But, that being said, I wanted to know. I wanted to see it for myself.
All I had to do is get hold of Mark’s comics.
January 6, 8am
Last night, as the others were peeling off to their bedrooms, Clay collared Misfit just as Misfit had been on a beeline across the living room towards me. Clay leaned in and said something close to Misfit’s ear. I was too far off to hear what was said, but Misfit shrugged and smiled awkwardly and went and laid out a quilt cover on the sofa.
Misfit gave me a resigned smile and a shrug before perching on the sofa, while Clay settled down on the inflatable bed alongside. Clay spoke in a quiet and clipped way and Misfit nodded along. I shrugged internally, turned and sloped off upstairs to my bedroom.
Alone in my room with my quilt pulled up to my chin, I could almost imagine that the whole apocalypse had never happened. I could imagine that I had never left for Uni, that I had never met Leanne and Richard and… Sam. I could imagine that I’d never met Kay or Charlotte, Stewart… Misfit. I tried to imagine that my mum and dad were asleep in the bedroom across the landing and that Jake was snuggled up under his Spider-Man quilt in the room next door. I tried to imagine peace. Normality. I tried to imagine that death didn’t stalk the streets outside. But as much as I tried, my thoughts kept drifting down the stairs to the living room and to Misfit.
January 7, 9pm
Earlier today, we were all sat around in the living room. There was a little chit chat about plans for the week’s scavenging, whether we’re going to be here long enough for the others to learn the area in terms of supermarkets etc. Small talk didn’t feature much in the apocalypse. There were no must-see TV programmes or latest movies to discuss. No celebrity gossip. No British Bakeoff. We would reminisce about pre-zom days sometimes, ‘Who used to watch…’ ‘Do you remember when…’ but usually these conversations would end up with us in a melancholy mood, like discussing old friends that had passed away. It can be good to remember – but painful too.
Mark remained quiet, the sketch pad on his knees separating him and us. I noticed him glancing up to Charlotte from time to time, just like he had done the other night around the fire. After a while, he placed his pencil behind his ear and raised the pad so that it covered his face, as though he was studying his work. He lowered the pad, glanced at Charlotte and then he tore a sheet of paper out and awkwardly offered it to her. She took it and sat staring at the sheet of paper for a moment, her face impassive. But then Charlotte’s face burst into a rosy cheeked smile.
‘I love it,’ she said. ‘I love it!’ she repeated, this time with a little squeal.
‘What, for fuck’s sake?’ said Kay.
Charlotte turned the sheet of paper around and held it up so the rest of us could see. Mark had drawn a portrait of Charlotte in pencil but it wasn’t zombie apocalypse Charlotte I was looking at now. Not as though there’s anything wrong with post-apocalypse Charlotte that a good meal and a hot shower and some soap couldn’t fix. She had a natural beauty that grime and filthy clothes couldn’t hide. But in Mark’s version of Charlotte, she was sitting in a lush meadow – no, not ‘sitting’, I’d say ‘reclining’ as though there was no danger of a rotting zombie coming stomping through the wild flowers and long grass at any moment. A crown of daisies had been woven into her long hair, hair that billowed in a gentle breeze. She looked almost Pre-Raphaelite with her porcelain skin and serene expression and the flowing white summer dress she wore. Idealised as it may be, the drawing was stunning.
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘It’s beautiful, thank you, Mark!’ squealed Charlotte, turning the picture back around so she could look at it again.
Mark’s cheeks grew a little red and he looked a bit sheepish but he smiled and said, ‘It’s OK. I should thank you. You inspired it.’
I noticed Charlotte blush a little as she sat and stared at the sketch.
January 8, 11pm
Charlotte and Mark ate their lunch together today. They sat apart from the rest of us, down the end of the garden. It was like they were on a first date or something. I watched them as they chatted together, Charlotte throwing her head back as she laughed along with him and twiddling her hair as she listened to him. He, in turn, sat gazing at her as she spoke. Charlotte’s always quite animated as she speaks, as though everything excites her. It was amusing to watch her bouncing up and down and waving her arms about from a distance. It was really rather cute, too, watching her and Mark get to know each other. I felt like some sort of scientist conducting an experiment by placing two people in a bell jar and watching them fall in love, the process speeded up in the confined setting.
January 10, 5pm
I hadn’t realised just how speeded up Charlotte and Mark’s relationship would be until yesterday when we were sat around the living room and I heard Mark, who was sat next to me on the sofa, whisper in Charlotte’s ear, ‘You know I love you don’t you?’ To which Charlotte, a little more subdued than usual, replied, ‘Yes, I know that’, before Mark was like, ‘But do you though? Do you know how much I love you?’ and Charlotte said, ‘I do’.
‘Good,’ said Mark. ‘Because I love you very much.’
‘I know.’
‘And how much do you love me?’
‘Very much.’
I won’t lie, I felt awkward, having to listen to that. I mean, bloody hell, I hadn’t expected the experiment to work that quickly. They’d not even known each other a week. Was it possible to fall in love that fast?
‘I love you,’ Mark said to Charlotte.
‘I love you too,’ she replied.
Jesus, I felt a little bit sick.
January 12, 10pm
Over the last couple days, we haven’t really done a lot. Kay has had chance to rest up and has now recovered fully from her infection. The bite on her neck has begun to heal nicely with all the swelling gone and a healthy scab peeling to reveal fresh pink skin beneath.
Oh and
Charlotte has moved into Mark’s room. I’m worried. I’m worried that Charlotte is getting into this thing with Mark a bit too deep, a bit too fast, but my worries are also selfish; when we move on – and we will move on because whether I get any further information out of Mark about the day he put my parents down or not, we will continue on our way to Wales to find Zombie-Shelby – will Charlotte come with us, or will she want to stay with Mark? Could I leave without Charlotte, even if she wanted to stay with him? She might think she’s happy now, but would it last? But, of course, Mark could come with us, couldn’t he? I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens. I can’t say I really want the guy that put my family down tagging along with us. That’s understandable, isn’t it?
January 14, 11.30 pm
The following couple of days passed in a blur of scavenging, board games that I dug out of the games cupboard in the dining room, missed opportunities with Misfit, an inability to shake off Clay and the blossoming romance between Charlotte and Mark. I wondered if I should say something to Charlotte about my fear she was taking things too fast with Mark, but other than the fact it was hard to get her on her own without Mark these days, I worried that she wouldn’t appreciate the input. I mean, the messenger always gets shot, right? If I waded in with my thoughts that Mark was being too full-on with her, she might well get defensive and end up alienating herself from me and the others even more.
Kay, however, had none of my reservations and, in earshot of Mark, said to Charlotte, ‘For fuck’s sake, this is all a bit weird, isn’t it, all this lovey dovey stuff when you’ve only known each other five minutes? You don’t know anything about the bloke.’ And like I predicted, the pair of them retreated into their own little bubble even further.
On the occasion that they did join the rest of us, we had to listen to Mark asking Charlotte if she knew how much he loved her. On these occasions I would be very tempted to butt in and say, ‘Is the answer, “Very much”, Mark… is it? Is it, Mark? Is the answer, “Very much”?!’ But, instead, I would take a deep breath and smile. I mean, young love, it’s cute, right? It has a habit of becoming full on very fast, right? Just because I wasn’t getting any, didn’t mean I begrudge anyone else, right? Just because he killed my fucking family, didn’t mean I didn’t want Mark to be happy, right? Right?
Blog of the Dead (Book 3): Lost Page 10
