Blog of the Dead (Book 1): Sophie (19 page)

‘We can’t do that,’ I said, at a loss as to why I was standing up for Polly after what she’d just done. Polly now turned her tear soaked face to me. She looked how a faithful old dog must look at its master right before the vet gives it
the
jab, all pleading eyes full of loss and sorrow, with a hint of resignation.

‘What’re we going to do with her?’ asked Sam.

‘Feed her to the zombies,’ said Kay.

‘Ok, look … all in favour of throwing Polly to the zombies?’ said Liam, resting his sword on the floor by Polly’s crumpled body. Her gaze flicked between the four of us.

Kay’s hand shot up. Mine stayed down. I looked at Sam and Liam, both looked unsure. Kay eyed the pair of them imploringly, then threateningly. But neither put their hand up.

‘After what she did … are you serious? She as good as murdered Shelby. For fuck’s sake. Well she’s not sleeping in my room any more,’ said Kay and she stepped over Polly’s legs and stomped off up stairs.

That’s how Polly ended up on an inflatable bed on the floor in mine and Sam’s room. A disgusting, spineless, evil, psychopathic, sociopathic fucktard in the bedroom, that’s a total passion killer right there.

January 16
1.20pm Day 64
Googled how to fix a broken leg. The broken bones need to be brought back together and then the leg set in plaster to keep it immobile while the bones fuse. With neither me, Sam nor Liam having a grain of medical expertise between us, we just had to line Polly’s leg up as straight as we could and hope for the best, using a splint made from a couple of rungs from the banisters. Luckily the break is what they call a ‘closed break’ – no bone has erupted from the skin, so there’s no open wound to get infected.

Polly screamed the place down while we cack-handedly aligned her bones. We’d given her as many pain killers as we thought we could get away with without killing her, washed down with some Jack Daniels. But, hey, if the bitch still felt agonising pain, none of us really gave much of a shit. The only reason we’re looking after her is because neither me, Sam nor Liam can stoop to her subhuman level. But we fucking despise her.

The Google result says it’ll take a lower leg between 10 – 24 weeks to heal. So I guess we won’t be going anywhere for a while. I think the safe community will have to wait a bit longer. And it’ll give us time to figure out what we’re going to do about Polly long term.

Despite having her in our bedroom, me and Sam are having sex again. We just have to be quiet.

January 17
7.30pm Day 65
Kay says she’ll leave if we don’t kick Polly out – right now, tonight. She doesn’t want to be under the same roof as a murderer any longer. Who does? Polly is a total infrahuman life form, but will throwing her out of the cottage make everything ok again? Of course it won’t. It’ll just turn
us
into a bunch of murderers.

Polly’s not helping in that she’s not at all sorry for what she did to Shelby. It’s not the first time I’ve seen Polly be responsible for someone’s death (Asda roof …). I’m wondering, is she a sociopath by nature, or has living in the zombie apocalypse bollocksed up her head so much that, for her, the lines of right and wrong have blurred big time?

I don’t know how we’re going to get through this. Kay won’t leave. I’m sure she won’t.

January 18
3.50pm Day 66
Kay hasn’t gone. I didn’t think she would. But the tension in the cottage is fucking hardcore. I feel like I’m in the Big Brother house (minus the young, skinny, brainless wannabes). Every little thing is magnified cos there’s nowhere to go to get away from anyone. I’m glad that we’ve almost run out of painkillers for Polly … that means the classic Head-Out-Into-The-Nearest-Town-For-Supplies-Trip is called for. I’ve volunteered to go tomorrow. It’ll be getting dark soon, not a good time to be heading off to an unfamiliar town. It’s a little drive away, too, in Chepstow.

A day out. It’ll do us good.

Sam wants to come with me. But, as it works out, we need someone to stay with Polly, and there’s no way Kay’s gonna do it. Liam’s just too good with that fuck off sword to leave behind, and, well, no one tells me what to do … so that leaves Sam for nursing duties.

I’m going to make sure I get some alcohol while we’re out. I know that shouldn’t be a necessary supply … but it fucking is. I’m feeling the need to get drunk again. Only, this time, Polly’s not invited.

January 19
10am Day 67
Shopping list for today:

1) Alcohol

2) Cigarettes (for Liam)

3) Food

4) Microgynon (I stupidly left my packet of the pill back in Folkestone. Me and Sam haven’t been that careful, which is dumb and irresponsible beyond belief – I know. But, hey, I’m not very good at self control)

5) Tampax (thank fuck I still need that … phew …)

6) Clean clothes for everyone, especially underwear (we all stink)

7) Various toiletry items – toothpaste, deodorant, blah blah blah …

8) Magazines, books, DVD’s, CD’s etc.

If we have time and the opportunity – we’ve no idea how many zombies are going to be around the town – we might have a bit of a mooch around the shops, see if we can turn up anything useful. I wouldn’t mind picking up some new weapons from a hardware store or somewhere, you can never have enough these days …

Oh, fuck, yeah … and we need painkillers for the murdering bitch.

January 20
5.40pm Day 68
Zombies pottered around Chepstow town centre like tourists. Kay drove the Mazda, mowing down any zombies in the way. Their bodies splattered comfortingly against the sturdy 4x4, wheels crunching over bones. The road into Chepstow town centre slopes enough to add a little speed to the stagger of any zombies going down hill – not quite your
28 Days/Weeks Later
or 2004 remake of
Dawn of the Dead
speed, but they definitely had a spring in their step.

We drove through a sort of turreted castle thing that arches above the road (which narrows to a single lane until through the other side) looking for a supermarket, or a Boots or something, when we noticed that the crowd of zombies ahead was getting denser to the right hand side of the street. They clustered around a store, its frontage painted a pale blue, a lilac sign above the front door said, Herbert Lewis. It was hard to tell because of all the animated dead bodies in the way, but I could see enough through the tall ground floor windows (bedding, clothes etc) to guess this was a department store.

Kay stopped the Mazda in the street behind the crowd of zombies. They didn’t seem to notice us, they were looking up towards the roof of the building, their arms trying to grab sky, groaning as one. I looked up and could just make out a girl with long blonde wavy hair standing on the roof of Herbert Lewis, a hand on each of the dormer windows either side of her.

She looked very much like she was going to jump.

6.30pm Day 68
The zombies still hadn’t noticed us, so me, Kay and Liam climbed out of the Mazda and stood on the street behind them. Liam had his sword, I had a nine inch knife and a claw hammer and Kay had an axe. We were ready should any of the zombies turn around and see us. But I didn’t really want to take that amount on. There had to be at least a hundred, and more coming from both directions.

‘So, what we doing about this then?’ I asked.

The problem we had been presented with was: girl who no longer wants to live is surrounded by shit loads of zombies, and if we survive long enough to get into the store, will she jump before we can get to her, thus rendering our whole expedition pointless? I know this sounds heartless, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk my life for someone who didn’t want theirs any more.

But … walk on by? Hell no! That’s not what we’re about …

‘Let’s go,’ said Liam, raising his sword before him.

Some of the zombies noticed us now. The ones closest to us turned. Their heads made the transition first, their eyes seeking us out, reaching arms swung round next, then the all important legs caught up with the rest of their bodies and they staggered towards us.

It would have been insane to tackle the lot of them in order to get to the front door (which was probably locked anyway), but I could see an alley to the left of the department store that looked clear, and pointed it out to Liam and Kay.

More and more zombies broke away from the main group and lumbered towards us, keeping our weapons busy. A shrivelled zombie whose flesh had virtually wasted away leaving papery skin on bone shuffled towards me. It looked like, oh bugger, what’s that Indiana Jones movie, the one with Sean Connery –
The Last Crusade
, that’s the one. There’s a bit in it where the bad guy drinks from the wrong Holy Grail and he ages really fast, turning into a skeleton with clothes and hair. That’s what this zombie looked like. I imagined if I breathed on it it would turn to dust. It gnashed its bony jaws at me, reached out its skeletal arms to me, and my claw hammer smashed its skull with one blow. Then – BANG! BANG! BANG! – my claw hammer was cracking skulls left, right and centre, while my knife stabbed.

Together me, Kay and Liam fought our way through the zombies as quick as we could, heading towards the alley before the rest of the zombies spotted us. Thankfully, the alley was clear. Kay used her axe to smash a small window set in the side wall. It would take us longer to get in, but at least it would take the zombies even longer to get in to follow us (them being really shit at climbing). After clearing all the loose shards of glass, Kay climbed in first, and I was about to go next when I noticed zombies staggering into the alley behind us.

‘Move!’ yelled Liam.

I dropped my weapons over the windowsill then threw myself through the window in one smooth acrobatic movement that I had no idea I was capable of. I crashed on the ground in a bad finish, but, hey, I lived. I was in the store itself, in the beauty and perfume department. I scrambled to my feet and leapt back to the window, looking for Liam. He was still in the alley, longsword making mincemeat (not that you’d want to make bolognese with it) of the zombies. But more and more were filling the alley.

‘Come on!’ I shouted at Liam.

‘I’m fucking trying, my dear.’ Only problem was that there were so many zombies in the alley now and they had crept so close that if Liam were to turn his back, they’d be on him.

Shit, shit, shit, I thought to myself. I looked around the store for some inspiration. In desperation I grabbed a hideous blue crystal bottle of perfume, two pink crystal hearts dangling from its neck,
Curious
by Britney Spears. I felt the weight of the ridiculous looking bottle in my hand. Not bad. ‘Kay, grab all the bottles you can and follow me.’

We filled a shopping basket each with tacky perfume bottles (this was not limited to Britney, but other crap celebrities’ shit perfume too) and we dived over to the window. Liam still fought the zombies and, as far as I could tell, was all in one piece.  ‘Now, Liam. Come on!’

Without hesitation, Liam turned and grabbed for the windowsill. He had to drop his sword over first, too big to handle while he climbed, but then he began hauling himself through the window, at the same time the zombies surged forwards and grabbed for him with rotten hands. Me and Kay hurled perfume bottles at the zombies’ heads. This wasn’t enough to kill them, but it knocked them off balance long enough for Liam to get half his body though the window.

A zombie grabbed Liam’s leg and pulled him back. He kicked at it with his other foot but it didn’t let go. I threw a perfume bottle at it, hit it square in the head, but it still it didn’t let go. So many perfume bottles had smashed that the collective smell was overpowering and made me feel sick and light headed. Another zombie got hold of Liam and they both pulled him backwards. I grabbed hold of his arms and pulled from my side but I knew that at any moment a zombie might bite. The odds were well and truly stacked against us in this game of tug of war.

‘Kay, the sword,’ I yelled, realising that the sword was the only weapon long enough to reach the zombies from this side of the window.

Kay grasped the hilt of the sword. I pulled, Liam kicked, and Kay flung her upper body out the window. I saw her slice the top off a zombie’s head, just as it bent down to bite the back of Liam’s leg. The zombie’s body dropped. But where it had been bent over Liam’s legs it fell onto him, and its weight dragged Liam down further.

‘Fucking hell. This is shit!’ I screamed as Liam slipped out of my arms a little.

I clung on, though, and put my right foot against the wall to steady myself. I was guessing, due to the fact that Liam hadn’t yet screamed in agony that he hadn’t been bitten. But most of his body was now outside, blocking my view. I could see that Kay still hung out the window, and I could hear her swearing like a trooper at the zombies.

‘Have that you fucking dead bastards!’

I felt myself falling backwards. Not long after my back smacked the floor, totally winding me, I had a heavy weight land on my front – Liam – squashing any remaining air out of my lungs. We lay there for a moment, me trying to refill my battered lungs.

I guess whatever Kay did did the trick. We were in …

7.40pm Day 68
There followed a moment of checking bodies for injuries – me tentatively testing out all my body parts, but, other than being bruised and squashed, they all worked. Liam carried out a more frenzied sweep of his legs to check for bite marks. Kay tried to calm him down by explaining that he’d have felt it if a zombie had bitten him, but he performed this little paranoid freak out regardless, convinced that the adrenaline had numbed the pain. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d checked every inch of flesh on both legs.

Me and Kay already had our weapons in hand and were looking across the department store. Even having lived in a quiet-ish town like Folkestone, a deserted department store is a never-to-be-seen sight. It was so eerie, and, with no lights on, quite dim. The mass of seething zombies outside the big front windows blocked out the daylight.