Breaking News: An Autozombiography (13 page)

I could flit from left-wing to right-wing at the drop of a gauntlet, but even with my own personal opinions I wasn’t sure-footed. I leaned to the right with my unfashionable patriotism, but I felt a lefty empathy for the underdog. Prejudging someone based on their particular DNA pick-and-mix was abhorrent, but in a country were ginger-haired people were still very much fair game I had little patience for legislating against it. Social injustice left me uneasy, but I didn’t think of it as my duty to try and change it.

Was this still playing Devil’s Advocate, or was I just sitting on the fence? Maybe I was just being typically ‘English’ in my hypocrisy, but did such thing as a ‘typical Englishman’ even exist any more? Had it ever? Looking back it is evident that I encouraged external manifestations of what I thought Englishness was, which I wouldn’t have felt the need to encourage unless I was starting to feel a bit like the underdog myself.

However, there were distinct and undeniable traits amongst many English people which you only see in an old and close-knit culture. No-one could deny that we English had a fondness for humour which tended to be both self-derogatory and self-critical. This is all well and good but in the preceding years it had transformed into an ugly self-loathing. It had been suggested that we were as close-knit as an open sore. As a people we were pretty lost, yet no-one my age or younger seemed to care – and anyway,
Hollyoaks
was probably on.

Someone has since told me about the theory of relativism, and about how before the outbreak we weren’t unified as a country by common ideals any more (the relativist in me asks ‘were we ever?’). The terror felt by the general public which led to volunteering for the trenches could never happen again (the relativist in me asks ‘is that a bad thing?’). Thinking relatively is tiring even when you don‘t know you‘re doing it - it saps the will and takes away the stomach for a fight, things which if our predecessors hadn’t proudly displayed them would have spelt a rather different (and probably quite German) future for England.

I wondered if we hadn’t all somehow been hamstrung by our own hard won freedom to express ourselves, especially when we started blowing each other up on public transport - apparently you could be English and hate everything England stood for. I used the suicide bomber/freedom fighter argument less after that, not because it didn’t wash with other people but because it made me feel sick to do so. I was English and proud to be so. I do hope sincerely that a beagle, a pair of green wellies and a few books on Winston Churchill didn‘t make up my entire personality, however. These were my part of my vision of Englishness, but like it or not there were sixty million visions of what Englishness was - before everyone enthusiastically set about eating each other.

I had an old Ordnance Survey map of the Downs spread out on our dining table and a roll-up hanging from my lip like a General’s cigar. Al was sucking on his second helping of tea, and Lou was fiddling with a little battery radio from the bathroom to find out if any stations were broadcasting. Then the dogs started to growl.

The gaggle of freaks we’d disturbed in the back garden was now a crowd, one or two of them occasionally falling off the decking into the bushes or onto the lawn. We’d watched them as their numbers swelled, drawn to the house by our activity and noise, maybe even by our smell. But when I walked into the kitchen I saw what had caught the dogs’ attention. One of the original freaks had pushed his head right through Maui’s cat-flap in the back door, and got one whole arm inside right up to the armpit. It looked like an impossible situation, like he had to at least dislocate a shoulder to get through. Our kitchen was long and narrow, with barely enough room for two people to pass each other. At the end was the back door, with the sink to the left and the fridge and oven on the right. His head was forced down into a position facing the fridge door, but his teeth seemed to be magnetically leading his face towards us, gnashing at the closest flesh. Floyd was right up in his face giving a shrill continuous bark with Dmitri behind him deeper and louder. I didn’t want the dogs to start tearing him up, it would have made a right mess. Floyd’s paws slipped on the lino as Al tugged him by his collar to hand him over to Lou, who herded both dogs into the front room and shut the door behind her. Al looked at the corpse trying to crawl into my house.

‘
What do you want to do?’

‘
I don’t know.’ I replied. ‘Do you think he can get all the way in?’

‘
Well, he’s got that far chum.’

I inched forward, warily feeling my way along the countertop. I stopped just out of the range of the flailing arm and torn nails, and muscles contorted in grabbing spasm. I put one hand on the counter top and leant forward to get a knife from the magnetic strip above the sink. It was only just out of reach, and my fingertips were touching the handle but unable to get a grip. I looked down at the desperate arm, and the head still straining to get to me. I could hear the sickening sound of pressure on gristle coming from his neck as I took a step forward – it would only be for a second - to grab my choice of knife, but I felt my trouser leg tightening. It reminded me of the time I’d accidentally drilled into my jeans and the material gathered up instantly and nearly cut off my blood supply. I tried to take a step back but instead I was pulled towards the door.

I felt the force in this one. He was very strong, stronger than a dead bloke should be. I was pulled to one knee, my balls dangling inside my tense trousers not three inches from the teeth. You could see him trying to twist his head impossibly towards me until, with a sickly crack, it snapped round to face me. It looked like the arm and the head of two different people were sticking through the cat-flap as his lips peeled back to show the roots of his teeth. He lurched towards my groin with a moist snap as his arm seemed to cramp up, pulling me in.

My nuts were now just an inch away from his grinding teeth when the refrigerator door slammed open and onto the top of his skull with a sharp crack. I saw Al’s ruined Nike Jordan no. 4 pushing harder onto the inside of the door and popping the lid off the carton of milk. It seemed that because the fridge door was now an obstacle to the flesh available, it became more of a priority to him than the flesh itself, and his grip on my trousers loosened enough for me to pull free and jump to my feet. Al was grimacing as he pushed the door, using the fridge itself as leverage to stop it slipping. I took a step forwards and stamped on the arm with all my weight, breaking it with a splintering crack. Still it moved, now just muscles contracting an arm-shaped bag with bits of bone in it. I grabbed the cleaver - a sushi cleaver, as opposed to a butcher’s - and slammed it down onto the arm as it clutched uselessly at Al’s shoe. The arm lay on the floor with fingers still twitching as the stump revolved, grinding bone onto bone. A slow dribble of blood – more like it was pooled in the arm than ever flowing through it – ran down the stump and onto my kitchen lino. It was black, and stank of eggs.

‘
Ready?’

Al nodded as I raised the cleaver. He pulled the fridge door shut and I sank it deep into the back of the freak’s exposed neck with a distinct metallic ring, where it stuck. The shoulder stopped grinding instantly. I leant down to retrieve the knife from the guy’s head, and Al jumped.

‘
Jesus,’ he breathed quietly.

I looked up at two ghost-white faces pressed into the window. We all stood there staring at each other through the glass; their jaws churning at the prospect of meat, our noses twitching at the volcanic stink of sulphur. I heard Lou open the door behind us and gasp.

‘
Oh, shit, the shed door’s still open,’ I said.

‘
My fault I suppose, but we were in a bit of a hurry,’ Lou said, her eyes flickering to the cleaver in my hand. ‘It’ll have to stay open; you’re not going out again. Cor, it really stinks in here.’

‘
At least you know nothing will get stolen,’ Al said helpfully. Lou looked at him.

‘
So you don’t think anyone’s left is… normal? Remember we saw looters in Crawley, and in Brighton,’ she offered, almost wishing my workshop would get pillaged as some proof of normality. I thought Al was going to say it to her, right there and then; that there were real zombies, real fucking
Night of the Living Dead
right there in your back garden, and they wouldn’t even know how to steal a free gift because they’re obsessed with eating your flesh. He didn’t.

‘
I’m sure even the looters have got other things to worry about right now,’ he said.

‘
If anyone else is actually still alive,’ I added

‘
Okay you two, what if there really is a cure? What if they come round injecting everyone with an antidote and you‘re standing there with a kitchen knife in your hand? How many have you killed today?’ she asked, here eyes sparking dangerously. ‘Bill! You know it was Bill, don’t you, and you’re not telling me. Do you feel guilty?’

‘
When would you ever think it was zombies, Lou?’

‘
What?’ she asked, lips thinning, sensing counter-attack.

‘
I mean, what will it take to persuade you that these are proper common-or-garden zombie flesh-eaters?’ I asked her. ‘What have you seen today? Cannibalism, that’s a new one on me. What about that smell - have you ever smelt that from something that’s alive? I could understand if it was the smell of pus or infection, but it isn’t – it smells like carcasses, of ammonia and decomposition.’ I was shouting now. ‘You saw that old lady in Brighton, and the guy with the motorbike rammed up his arse. You’ve seen what happened to Susie after just a scratch; and people taking massive injuries, deadly ones, and getting straight up again.’ Al was looking at me.

‘
Tell her,’ he said. ‘She should know. But don’t shout; it’s not nice.’

‘
Know what?’ Lou asked shakily, the colour draining from her face, her eyes starting to puff up. I took a deep breath and told her how we had pierced her friend’s heart with an umbrella in the middle of nowhere, and how she had just kept moving, kept clawing at our legs. We’d watched her dead eyes and her open chest, and seen how she’d still writhed amongst the rotten, skeletal leaves.

‘
You know when she attacked you in the car? That was the first thing she did after she died. You said yourself it didn’t look like her - you said you saw it in her eyes. That’s why I don’t feel guilty about Bill, or Susie.’ I said. ‘It wasn’t them inside; they’d already died. Look, do you think the security guards at your work are still alive? How about Clive or Dean? Or the newsreaders, or those soldiers we saw on the Downs? Lots of people died today Lou, but not us. I think we can give ourselves a bit of a pat on the back for that.’

There was a long silence, and the moaning and scratching from outside the back door had ceased, as if they were listening to us arguing. Lou spoke first.

‘
I don’t know what to do any more.’

‘
Let’s just survive. We can all try and do that, right? As far as we know, we’re the only ones left until we see any different with our own eyes. There’s no friends, no parents, no Prime Minister. No-one.’ I stopped, feeling like I might have been a bit harsh, but it all seemed so clear to me – if people were smart they would have survived that day just like we had, but right now the only people left in the world as far as I was concerned were the two people standing in front of me.

‘
Look,’ I said eventually, ‘I’ll bet a tenner that we’re not the only ones who aren’t… infected. But let’s just look after each other for now, and concentrate on getting through the week, at least.’

‘
Help will come.’ Al said to Lou. I wasn’t so sure that help would come, but I knew it was likely that there were more people like us, surviving. I kept quiet.

‘
But all those people… What about poor Susie?’ Lou asked.

‘
She’s dead, Lou, but we didn’t kill her. She died in Brighton, before we got onto the Downs. Look, if we get the chance, we’ll go back and I’ll bury her. You know - give her a proper send-off.’

That was enough cold logic for Lou, who burst into hot tears.

‘
So. How did they know we were here? Let’s apply ourselves.’ I was leaning over the dining table again. As Lou dozed on the sofa we’d levered the dead bloke out of the cat-flap with a mop, and Al had heaved the coffee table up against it.

‘
Well, we didn’t have the lights on, and I was careful to block out the candlelight.’ Al said.

‘
I made a bit of a noise when I broke through the fence, but we were inside the house within five minutes. Plus we’d drawn the others out of earshot when we were still in the car.’ I smelt my armpit.

‘
Maybe they can smell our activity – car fumes, milk, dogs. Armpits.’

‘
Maybe they can smell our flesh, our meat,’ Al suggested.

‘
I can definitely smell theirs.’ I said. ‘It seems so soon though, for them to be smelling so… off. I know its been a hot day, but still.’

‘
I’ve smelt that smell before, when Dmitri dug up a seagull dad had buried in the back garden. They’d been shitting on mum’s washing for weeks. I’ve smelt enough to know they’re dead, and there’s definitely no cure for dead. Listen, I don’t know what I would have thought if you hadn’t been jabbering away about zombies all day. I might not have been on my toes so much, so thanks and all that for being irrationally paranoid about the undead.’ He looked awkward. ‘Never thought I’d say that,’ he muttered to himself.

‘
Actually Lou thanked both of us earlier, you know, for picking her up.’ I slapped my forehead. ‘Sorry, I forgot to say.’

‘
Well, that’s okay. I did drive exceptionally well.’ He yawned.

We didn’t talk much more after that, except to briefly discuss how many AA batteries you’d need to run a PlayStation, and then Al fell asleep where he sat. It had been a long, weird day. I curled up on the sofa next to Lou.