Blog of the Dead (Book 3): Lost (14 page)

I racked my brain to see if I could remember doing anything to piss Misfit off. I couldn’t think of anything. Not since me, Kay and Sean were playing in the snow when we should have been keeping watch on the supermarket we were all holed up in, while Misfit risked his life to go hunting for fresh food for Sara. Even though he’s never said it, I know he worked it out. But he couldn’t still be annoyed about that, could he? He wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. Misfit existed only in the here and now.

We turned off Stoke Road and into Nightingale Road and edged through the black metal gate into Stoke Park. I spent a lot of time here, growing up; picnics, playing in the children’s play area, the paddling pool, tearing through the gardens, the football pitches and woodland areas. I came less as I grew older, but even as teenagers we hung out in the park – sunbathing on the grass or hiding in the woods to smoke cigarettes that always made me feel sick.

What a difference a zombie apocalypse makes: the ornamental gardens were overgrown and had been reclaimed by nature; grass, flowerbeds and hedges that had been so tamed by man had now been released into the wild. As we travelled further into the park, I noticed that Misfit’s stride slowed and his shoulders relaxed and, for the first time since leaving the house, he cast me a sideways look. So quick, it was gone before I could read it.

The damp, knee height grass on the football pitch soaked the bottoms of my skinny jeans and right through my
Converse
, to my socks. I saw trails in what had become a wild meadow, where the grass had been flattened by dead feet, feet too useless to lift up and over the grass as we did. A couple of zombies lumbered through the long grass a little way ahead. They spotted us and turned in our direction but both looked in danger of tripping as they stumbled through the tangled grass. As we strolled towards the zombies, I had to step over or around the occasional sprawled body, evidence of Misfit’s previous hunting trip here.

Misfit reached the zombies before me and slid the blade of his hunting knife through the ear of one in a suit and tie, looking out of place in the wild surroundings. He’d already slain the next zombie, female, a teenager with a short floral skirt and thick black tights covering her rotting legs. She’d managed to avoid getting any holes in her tights, which was impressive, though she did have a large, bloody hole in her white t-shirt, exposing the large bloody hole in her stomach. Still, some great quality tights she had on there. I wondered, as I slammed my blade through the eye of a short, podgy zombie with a beer gut, bloated even further in death, what make the tights were. But then, I doubted I’d ever wear tights again. I did occasionally wear them pre-apocalypse when the urge to wear a dress or skirt reared itself. It didn’t happen often, I always felt uncomfortable in tights – all hemmed in, like a sausage in a skin.

Zombies dealt with we ploughed on, me following Misfit until we reached Jubilee Wood. The whole park had been eerily quiet without the visitors playing tennis or football, and without the kids running and screaming or families chatting and laughing. But, once under the cover of sparse trees, a deep, shrouded silence descended and the crisp winter air dulled to a musty, damp earthy aroma. Something about being in a wood, even though it is still outside, made me feel more secure, no longer exposed. Maybe that’s why Misfit did what he did next or maybe he had it planned all along and that’s why he’d been so weird earlier.

He stopped a little way into the wood and scanned the area, his eyes darting from tree to tree. I followed with my own eyes and could see no zombies. I guessed Misfit was checking for signs of wildlife. I didn’t know how he hunted, what his processes were. I watched as he slipped his knife through his belt. I imagined it was to free his hands to make a trap or something. But I was wrong. He turned to me and slid his backpack from his shoulder, letting it drop to the ground. He placed the palm of his right hand against my left cheek and before I could speculate any further he slid the hand around to the back of my head, his fingers grabbing a handful of hair and he pulled me towards him.

As our lips met, I felt his free hand slip around my waist and he held me as he pressed his body against mine while we kissed. We kissed gently, our lips touching lightly, only slightly open and staying pressed together for long moments each time as though we each needed the other to breathe. Then we’d unwillingly pull apart, only to join together once more. As the kisses became deeper and tongues began to join in, I let my knife slip from my hand and I wrapped my arms around Misfit’s waist, feeling the strength in his skinny but muscled body.

I wanted Misfit like I had never wanted anything or anyone. I closed my eyes losing myself in his kisses. I was only aware of his lips as they moved against mine and of his hands as they explored my body. He pulled away from me, breaking the spell – I feel so clichéd calling it a spell but, fuck it, it was – and I was surprised to notice I was panting, breathless – oh heck, how do I explain all this without sounding like a
Mills and Boon
novel? – and I watched as Misfit ripped off his checked shirt and tossed it to the dusty ground, before pulling his jumper and t-shirt over his head, leaving his chest bare. I shrugged off my biker jacket, then, looking into each other’s eyes, Misfit slipped my shirt down my shoulders. I tugged the shirt off the rest of the way and let Misfit lift my t-shirt over my head.

I shivered as the chill, damp air brought me out in goosebumps and Misfit wrapped his arms around me, skin touching skin. His skin was warm, and I felt a little guilty that I was leaching his warmth into my icy flesh. But he didn’t seem to notice or care. His hands went around to the front of my body and he tugged at my belt before undoing my jeans. Despite them being ‘skinny’ jeans, I had, in fact, out-skinnied my jeans, due to the restricted ‘post-apocalypse’ diet that was all the rage these days, and the jeans slipped easily down my legs with very little interaction by me. Without stopping kissing, I used the toe of my right foot to ease my left foot out of my boot, then used my cold, damp socked foot to ease off the right
Converse
.

Having an absolute aversion to being seen in just my underwear with my socks still on, I paused, pulled away from Misfit and bent down to remove my grubby socks. Misfit took advantage of this break to slide out of his boots and jeans, and then we were together again, our near-naked bodies trembling from the cold and excitement, touching and feeling – to me – like this is exactly why our two bodies were made, to fit together like this. I’d never experienced anything like it, so much pleasure just from kissing and touching. I was like,
Zombies
,
what zombies
?
Apocal-what-now
?

Part of me somewhere knew it was far too cold to be as naked as we were – but this wasn’t the kind of sex where any clothing is left on, this was the kind of sex where everything is bared – and, more importantly, I knew it was far too dangerous, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. Misfit kissed my neck, moving downwards. I felt the delightful feeling of my bra releasing as Misfit undid it, he pulled it off and carried on kissing my body, down further. I threw my head back, enjoying each surge of pleasure. He straightened up and before I knew it, he was kissing me on the lips again. He released me and I watched as he grabbed some of our fallen clothing and laid it out on the cold, hard ground. When he was done, I lay down on the clothes and Misfit lowered himself on top of me.

We kissed slowly but passionately, savouring every moment while our bodies found each other. All I will say from that point on is that Misfit has a lot of stamina – a fuck of a lot of stamina. And another thing I will say is –
WOW
– just fucking
WOW
!!!

Afterwards, we lay for a moment, both of us still panting while the heat we generated kept us warm against the chill January air. I couldn’t help noticing how all the fear, anger and sadness from the last year and three months just vanished and I felt relaxed, serene even. Trouble free.

As I lay in Misfit’s arms, I gazed into his eyes. ‘I love you, Sophie,’ he said and he kissed my forehead before adding. ‘I always have.’

I smiled and touched his cheek with my fingertips. ‘I love you too,’ I said, tracing the shape of his lips. ‘I always have. It just took me a while to figure it out.’

‘You have now.’

‘I have now.’

I had begun to shiver with the cold. Misfit released me and sat up, rooting through the dusty clothing on the ground beneath us. He located some of my things and handed them to me.

‘Get dressed before you freeze,’ he said, gathering his own clothes.

Despite the fact I was now shaking uncontrollably, I still waited a moment and watched as Misfit slipped his boxers on, wanting to savour the last moments of our first time together.

‘Get dressed,’ he said with a wide grin. ‘Though given the choice, I wish we could stay like this the whole day.’

‘Me too,’ I said and reluctantly pulled on my own underwear.

I continued to shiver, even after I had pulled on my biker jacket – what used to be Misfit’s biker jacket that I had nicked because it had always helped me to feel close to him, even when he wasn’t around. Now I had been closer to him than I ever had. There was no going back, even if I wanted to.

Fully dressed, we hugged each other tightly, our bodies remembering what it was like when there were no clothes in the way. We kissed gently and slowly until I pulled away from him. ‘Misfit,’ I began, ‘d’you wanna move in with me?’

‘Into your bedroom?’

‘Yeah. If you think you’ll be able to break the news to Clay.’

Misfit laughed. ‘I can do that.’

We emerged from the wood to see a mass of zombies lumbering through the long grass towards us. I saw some of them sniffing at the air. ‘Fuck,’ I said, pulling my knife from my belt.

‘Yeah, I second that,’ said Misfit.

Misfit, knife in hand moved forwards towards the horde. I placed my hand on his forearm to halt him. ‘No,’ I said, realising there were way too many for just the two of us to handle, so many that I couldn’t count and couldn’t figure out where they had all come from, let alone how they had found us. ‘Back through the wood, there’s a way out on the other side of the park.’

The pair of us backed away, turned and re-entered the wood, trotting even though we knew the zombies couldn’t catch us at their slow pace. I scanned the wood for any sign of zombies between the trees and I saw Misfit doing the same. We emerged from the trees and ran through overgrown grass. I could see more zombies, around ten swarming towards us from our right. I led Misfit into Peacock Wood to get some cover and, eyes peeled, we made it out onto Parkway, turning left, where we could make our way around the park on the roadside.

Even though the streets remained horde free, we both ran all the way home.

When we returned to the house, the place was empty. A note sat on the dining table explaining that the others had gone scavenging.

‘Shit, I feel a bit bad we didn’t bring anything back,’ said Misfit. He scratched at the back of his head as he spoke.

I reached over and pulled a dried up leaf out of his long sandy-coloured hair. ‘Nobody will mind…’

‘I’ll mind. You stay here and I’ll head out.’

‘You can’t go back to the park.’

‘I know. I’ll find somewhere to hunt.’

‘There are so many zombies.’

‘I know. I’ll be OK.’

‘Let someone else take responsibility for feeding us for once.’

‘I want to go. I enjoy it.’

‘We could make better use of the time,’ I said, moving up close to him.

‘Sounds lovely,’ said Misfit. ‘And we will as soon as I get at least a rabbit or two from somewhere.’

‘I’ll come.’

‘No. I’ll hunt better on my own. You’ll scare everything off with your clumsy size eights.’

‘You had that planned all along earlier, didn’t you?’

‘Busted.’ Misfit leant forwards and kissed me on the forehead. His eyes found mine and he smiled before kissing my lips. ‘I won’t be long,’ he said and, with his backpack over his shoulder, he was gone.

Bored, I wrote in my diary, until I remembered something – Mark’s sketch pads… the comics.

I wondered if he’d left them in the house…

10pm

I doubted Mark would have left the comics lying around, seeing as he had them stashed in his backpack permanently attached to his back most of the time when he wasn’t working on them. But I was wrong. Maybe he had relaxed a little since setting up home with Charlotte. Or perhaps he felt he’d got to know us now and felt comfortable leaving them in his room, I don’t know. But that’s where I found them. All of them. I know it was morbid, but I just had to see for myself.

I picked up the most recent pad, even though I knew I’d have to go back a few months to find my parents’ part. I just wanted to get a feel for Mark’s work. I opened it at the current page and flicked a few pages back from there. Sure enough, there we were, right after all the recent sketches that were pretty much all of Charlotte – me, Misfit, Kay, Charlotte and Clay arriving at the house. And there was Mark. Although he didn’t really look that much like Mark. He had his pickaxe and the clothes were similar but that’s where the likeness ended. Comic book Mark was a tall, muscular man with close cropped hair and a cigarette permanently hanging from his smirking lips. A scar ran from beneath the inner corner of his left eye to end just below the end of his flared nostril. He looked like he ate zombies on toast for breakfast and psychos flambéed for lunch and dinner.