Breaking News: An Autozombiography (34 page)

It was his parents, Jinny and Jerry. Jerry carried a tangle of tubing and flasks (I assumed the remnants of his home brew kit), as well as his banjo and Jay’s steel string guitar. Jinny lugged two heavy-looking suitcases and a bag with two of her favourite cats in it.

‘
Hello!’ Jinny shrieked. ‘Bloody hell, you need a haircut!’ Jerry giggled into his beard. We hugged, and Jerry shook my hand.

‘
Alright Rasputin?’ he asked me. ‘Where can I dump this?’ Some of the tubing uncoiled and sprang around him, falling to the floor like a tangle of snakes. Floyd eyed Maui as she set about the apparatus. Chuckling, I pointed him towards our cabin.

‘
Sling it in there if you like. Hold on,’ I said. ‘You haven’t been in quarantine, have you?’

‘
It’s alright, mate, they’re clean. They haven’t been bitten.’ Jay said.

‘
Oh, I believe them, but we’ve got to put them in. Think of how it would look if we didn’t,’ I said.

‘
That’s fine,’ said Jinny, ‘you little fascist.’

‘
It’s for the safety of the camp,’ I began, but she cut me short, smiling. It was only then that I saw who was with them, and it completely span me out. He was one of the local weirdoes you see in town and generally try not to interact with. This one, Rockin’ Johnny, Horace, Pint-talking Man and Polish Lec were the five main local nutters. Every town should have at least one. We used to see him when Jay had a cramped flat in Broadwater, dressed in combats and webbing with a cumbersome-looking field radio on his back. We’d named him ‘Keep-fit Man’ as he always ran everywhere, the ten-foot aerial whipping the air above his head. He hadn’t changed, he appeared a little smaller perhaps, but still carried the radio. He also had what I guessed was a film prop, possibly a Klingon or other
Star Trek
-related weapon, with an elaborate pewter-coloured blade on the end of a gnarled, jet-black pole. I could see that he’d carved about thirty little notches in it.

‘
I’m Mark,’ he explained, extending a grimy hand for me to shake.

‘
We found him on the way up here. The 2CV made it all the way to the car park. It started first time.’ Jinny said. She extended her compassion for waifs and strays beyond cats. He might be a real asset though, and the radio intrigued me.

They all stripped, and Glyn and his wife checked them over before putting the three of them in the only available pit, one of the original ones. Keep-fit Man had been reluctant to hand over his radio, but I’d told him I would keep it safely in my own cabin. When their quarantine was up he hugged it like an old friend.

‘
Can you pick anything up on that?’ I asked him as he was unpacking his rather eclectic possessions.

‘
Noo, battery’s dead, innit?’ He had a tick which forced a grimacing smile to break out every so often. He smelt a bit of piss. ‘I did speak to someone though. They were on Harrow Hill, about six clicks west of here. That means ‘kilometres’, when I say ‘clicks’.’

‘
How long ago did you last speak to them?’ I probed.

‘
Last week. Perhaps a couple of days ago. I dunno, I don’t do time,’ he said, sounding irritated and baring his teeth.

‘
What did they say?’ I asked him. ‘What was their ‘sit-rep’?’

‘
Well, I gave them my location and they suggested I did a recce up here, to Cissbury.’

‘
Up here?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t they invite you up to Harrow Hill?’

‘
Well, they’d just received someone who’d escaped, from Chanctonbury Ring,’ he pointed north. ‘The survivor told them he was heading for you lot, up here at Cissbury. They said you’d be a better bet.’

‘
Hold on – they’d escaped from zombies in general, or they were escaping from zombies up at Chanctonbury?’ I quizzed him, knowing the answer already.

‘
What?’ he asked, head cocked.

‘
That bloke who went up Harrow Hill - do you mean that he was escaping from the zombies in the general countryside; or do you mean the survivor was escaping from an infestation of zombies in the Chanctonbury camp?’

‘
That one,’ he said. ‘They were escaping from the Chanctonbury zombies,’ he said, matter-of-factly.

‘
We’ve seen they’ve got a camp up at Chanctonbury. What was the problem?’ I pressed.

‘
Apparently,’ he was drawing his words out, relishing the moment, ‘the virus got into the Chanctonbury camp. Bad camp-craft. Got into the water. This bloke escaped and tried to head down here, to Cissbury, along the South Downs Way. I’ve walked that.’ He said to Lou.

‘
I bet you have,’ she smiled at him.

‘
Well, he took a wrong turn and headed up Harrow Hill towards their fire instead. He’d been bitten, so they eliminated him after they’d extracted the intelligence,’ he said.

‘
Well, Chanctonbury obviously weren’t as strict as we are.’ I said, quite smugly. Night time had crept up on us, and looking north we could see that the fire wasn’t burning on Chanctonbury any more. Sure enough though, further west, two orange dots glowed dimly.

‘
There’s two camps up there,’ Keep-Fit Man said. ‘That other one’s Blackpatch Hill’

We couldn’t mourn people we hadn’t known, even though we had made some sort of connection. After ten minutes of ‘bet you’re glad we didn’t listen to you and go up to Chanctonbury instead,’ and ‘well, what can you do?’ the crowd dissolved, leaving just Lou and I. The air had turned colder recently, and that night was crisp and fresh, with a beautiful canvas of stars strung across the sky. No streetlamps meant that the view was incredible, and we could see the wispy end of the Milky Way stretching out above us. I realised this was the freshest air I’d tasted in months. As Lou and I hugged, staring up at the empty space, I felt a sense of union, a sense of place. Usually the sight of the stars just reminded me that we were all simply carbon lumps, scrabbling around on a mould-stained rock which was hurtling through nothing. Now I felt at home, possibly for the first time in my life. Cheesily, that was also the moment Jay and his dad chose to start playing, and the sound of
Across the Universe
came drifting towards us from the camp. We laughed, and ran. Some of the people who were sat around the fire sang along; I was just happy to fill my ears with something familiar.

The aroma of the lamb curry was thick in the air, and stomachs rumbled audibly as I slopped it out into bowls or onto plates. Jerry came and stood in front of me with his back to everyone else. He wordlessly showed me a bottle of rum, twenty years old. I grabbed a few cups and he set about pouring an inch into each, understandably out of sight. He poured six or seven little tots as well as our own, leaving the rest for those cunning, sharp-eyed or fortunate enough to cotton on. The rum and the curry made me so hot I broke out into a sweat. It was a hearty meal, and there was even second helpings. No pud though; not yet. Maybe when the fruit’s out next year, I thought.

Someone laughed and said ‘Oh, how cute!’ as Floyd started howling. The sound chased the heat from my bones and filled my stomach with dread. Dmitri’s low rumbling growl mingled with a woman’s screams and carried on the night air. I stood, sending my plate clattering onto the chalk. I couldn’t see Lou.

‘
Watch it!’ One of the new arrivals shouted at me, brushing imaginary flecks of lamb curry off his grass-stained trousers.

‘
Everybody! Stinkers in camp! Get up, they’re coming from the north!’ Jay screamed. Al was already on the case, halfway to the armoury. No-one else around us seemed too bothered, like we were disturbing their evening. As Al tried to hand weapons out, people just looked at him, bemused. The woman whose screams we’d heard then stumbled into view. She was young, with long hair, impractical earrings and plastic nails - I’d only spoken to her a couple of times since she’d come out of quarantine. Now she was sobbing quietly, like she was tired, and I had to look twice at her midriff, at the stomach that just wasn’t there. Strings of severed gut hung limply within the cavity made by her stripped ribcage, and I could see the underside of her lungs heaving silvery in the firelight. She was close to us, and I could see her eyes were rolling in her head. I whistled to Al but he had already sent the long axe sailing through the air and into the ground in front of me. I loosened it, stepped up, and took her head off. It took two goes, and in the moment between strikes her eyes met mine and she gurgled the words ‘I’m alright’. Her head rolled onto the hot stones around the campfire and sizzled, hair curling tight to her scalp. More screaming. My actions – as well as Patveer hollering at them to help – seemed to spur people into life. I’d not heard everyone’s stories of how they came to be atop Cissbury Ring in West Sussex that clear autumn night, but it occurred to me that any number of them might have never had to fight like we were about to.

‘
They must be from Chanctonbury – they’re lively!’ David was shouting over his shoulder as he knocked heads together. I looked for Lou again, but had to help out a bloke who was cornered by two stinkers. He had no weapon. I swung down hard on the closest, cleaving off one side of his head. The other one – a young boy – was fast, and sunk his teeth into the man’s forearm as he shielded himself. He shrieked as the boy wrenched his head back, taking muscles and tendons away in his jaws and stood munching with stuffed animal eyes, before the urge took him over again and he made a second lunge. As he was a lot smaller than me I had to strike downwards at an angle, and his head actually flew off the edge of the Ring a good twenty feet away, as if I’d chipped a golf ball. The man sat quietly now, pale and sweaty as he looked down at the mess of his arm. He turned to face me, shivering. He knew what was about to happen, he’d signed the contract. I was wondering whether or not I should say anything when the man spoke himself.

‘
What do I do now?’

‘
I’m sorry,’ I said, and his shoulders slumped. My ears roared with the pumping of blood. He closed his eyes; I found my footing, raised the axe and let it fall under its own weight. I looked up to see four of them advancing on me. Four vs. one is not good zombie-mathematics - the ratio is definitely not in my favour. I started to backtrack towards the campfire when an air-expanding crump of flame jetted into them. Lou was beside me, my pressure sprayer loaded, pumped, and on her shoulders.

She had a torch; I guessed pulled from the quick-lime fire pits where the sprayer had also been kept for quick ignition of the trenches. The quick-lime was an ongoing industry now, a production line of chalk- and wood-collecting; pyre building; chalk-burning; and finally the collection of the quick-lime itself. Then the pit would be raked over and the process began again. We had five pits now, and the quick lime lay an inch deep all around the ditches below. New arrivals had unquestioningly completed shift after shift at the pits, some not even knowing what they were making. Some were inquisitive; others positively enthusiastic. They seemed to be eager to help on the whole; eager to work for the good of the camp. This would be the acid-test of teamwork, though.

I kissed Lou’s head before dispatching the four creeps that lay thrashing and spitting on the ground, then we both ran to our cabin where I collected my bow and arrows, together with a long sheepskin quiver for the arrows that Dawn and Lou had helped Janam to sew for me. David was right: these ones were obviously from the Chanctonbury encampment, as they were coming into the north end of our site and were very fresh. The big giveaway was that their clothes were relatively intact but adapted and modified like our own. The shelters for the new arrivals had spread northwards to the back of the Ring, so they were the first to be confronted by the freaks. Their collective inexperience meant they were all vulnerable, and the scene was devastating.

Several huddled walkers sat feasting on our fallen camp members. Lou lit them all up with the sprayer, as Al and Jay worked to protect those caught unawares with axe and nail gun, and we all shouted at people to get to the armoury. Glyn started to help but I got him to release everyone in quarantine so they could at least defend themselves. The kids were true to form; brutal and efficient. Dal and Dawn rode through the throng on horseback, lopping heads. I stood on the edge looking down - there must have been forty or so scrabbling up the sides of the outer ring. I saw David, who had been keeping watch, now running along the path, swinging a sword and yelling to attract their attention.

I picked one out, drew my bow, fired - and missed. I stopped, taking a breath, trying to relax. I pulled again, picked out the same chap and sent the ancient flint arrowhead through one eye and out the other side, thumping into the neck of one behind him. Two for the price of one made up for the crap shot. I drew again.

I heard Al yelling, and turned to see him on the floor being pulled by the trouser leg by two women stinkers. They scratched and scrabbled at him, and he kicked out, making contact with one and snapping her jaw. Jay ran up to Al and started to pull him the other way, but Al shouted at him to stop the freaks instead. He was laughing, and soon Jay started too. I caught sight of a couple of our camp members fall off the edge of the Ring into the ditch, and I thought of Vaughan.

Pretty soon the top of the Ring was clear, as far as we could tell. There were less of them and more of us this time, and it felt almost too easy. Dal had felled half a dozen on his way up to the top, and we were soon joined by Glyn and Jay, their bows at the ready. In all I think there must have been close to eighty living dead coming our way from the Chanctonbury camp, and we’d seen off maybe a third of them by that point. We spread out in a line on the Ring’s perimeter and were soon bolstered by the more willing newcomers, their newly chosen weapons at the ready.

‘
Don’t shoot ‘till you see the whites of their eyes,’ Jay shouted, only half joking. Dawn and David trotted down the slope, followed by Floyd and Dmitri who quickly disappeared from view into the approaching morass of limbs and teeth. You could make out where the dogs where as the odd creep seemed to get sucked out of sight, like cartoon carrots pulled underground by cartoon gophers. The Goths hacked and sliced, and we picked out ones starting to scramble up the base of the slope with bow and arrow. Any zombies that were closer we let come to the top, to the waiting clubs and sticks and blades. Dal thundered past us, on one of the horses with no saddle. Patveer clung onto his shirt with one arm, looking tiny as he bounced dangerously into the air but swinging his weapon with gusto. The week before, he had unearthed a sharp flint rock - only a little smaller than his own head - and lashed it to the end of a length of heavy duty rope, making a fearsome Indian club. He caved heads in, not flinching from the task at hand. He looked terrified, but his face was the only thing that gave him away. He was a fierce fighter like his father who, grim-faced, set about the advance. Lou sent arcs of flame into pale faces. Jerry had a long pole and was jabbing at heads with one end of it, herding them towards those with more effective weapons. I heard a throaty gurgling sound on my right and turned, expecting to see one coming for me, but it was Keep-Fit Man. He was doing some crazy moves with his bladed
Star Trek
stick, the guttural noises he made presumably Klingon fighting-talk.