Breaking News: An Autozombiography (7 page)

‘
Take the next left, in four hundred yards.’

‘
I feel sick,’ Lou said. ‘That would have killed him outright, but he just…’

‘
You want me to stop?’ Al asked her. She shook her head, and closed her eyes.

‘
That could have been anything, couldn’t it?’ she pleaded. ‘It happened so quick; it might have just been leftover messages reaching his brain or something. You know, like wiring a frog’s legs up to a battery. When they guillotined people their eyes would sometimes move…’ She gave up, knowing we had no answers.

‘
It’s true. I saw some footage of a severed monkey head on the internet; some Russian scientist bloke had wired that up to the mains, and it still wanted to eat. Food would just drop out of its neck though.’ Al stopped, realising he wasn’t helping much.

After we ignored a few of the instructions to join busier or entirely blocked main routes, we opted for a terraced street which was lively but passable. Al was using his indicators now, I noticed. We did what the calm lady told us, through the screaming and the car alarms, and after twenty minutes or so we had ended up by a quiet meadow in the fields and farms still left on the southern edge of town. It was quiet; so quiet we could hear the hum of traffic on the dual carriageway a hundred metres away, on the other side of the field.

‘
We need to be on there’, Al pointed at the A23. ’She’s telling us to go through Horsham now though, which will be just as mental. I’ll just keep going south.’

I wondered how to get the huge bottle of water open as we continued south on the narrow lane, towards the coast but still a good twenty miles inland. We passed another field on our left, catching glimpses of the tops of cars through the trees which were moving faster than we were. Up ahead was a dirt track tracing through the field, leading to a one-lane service bridge which rose up and over the A23 itself.

‘
We’ve got to get on the other side of the road anyway, if we’re going to get on it without causing an accident,’ Al rubbed his chin and looked at me. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘
Let’s do it – that bridge is probably for a farmer to get over the road to the rest of his field.’ I said. ‘I’ll open the gate,’ I offered, then realised I’d have to get out of the car to do so. It was hot; moreover, there were zombies afoot. I checked behind us; in front of us; either side of us. I waited then checked again.

‘
Right, I’m going – keep your eyes peeled and beep if you see any freaks.’

I got out of the car and ran the five metres or so to the gate. There was a chain, but it had no padlock and was easily pulled away from the gate – obviously a visual deterrent more than a practical one. I swung the gate wide, and Al gingerly left the tarmac for the parched mud of the field.

‘
Grab that chum,’ Al motioned at the chain. ‘We might need it.’

‘
You’ve got your magpie eyes on today,’ I said, running with the gate until it shut, then wound the thick galvanised chain around my arm and headed back for the car. Al watched me sit in my seat before taking us down the track and up onto the bridge which was strewn with hay and dung. We looked down onto the A23 at the heavy traffic, sluggish but still moving in both directions, and up to the odd column of smoke smudging the blue sky above the towns.

‘
This is all very saucy,’ Al murmured as we headed down the arc of the bridge and onto new tarmac which doubled back on itself through a gap in a high fence, under the bridge and onto the southbound lane of the dual carriageway.

‘
Emergency Services Vehicles Only, my arse,’ Al said dramatically, heading under the bridge. ‘Tell The Man his rules are dead.’ He nosed the Audi down the slipway onto the hard shoulder, and forced a gap in the constant stream of cars to much indignant tooting. As soon as he could, we peeled away into the fast lane. Progress.

Al was happy to keep his head down, happy to just be making progress back home. Every so often someone would come thundering past on the hard shoulder but from what I could see from the purple faces, it seemed to be testosterone-fuelled road-rage as opposed to Armageddon panic-driving. No point rushing though - people still die from road accidents even during a zombie invasion. At points the hard shoulder at the side of the road was jammed up, with cars mounting the verge and people dotting the embankment. We saw a scrap taking place between the drivers of a minivan and a Mondeo, with wives or girlfriends dutifully pulling at shirts. In a lot of the cars people in the back seat were wrapped in travel rugs, the odd grey face staring out open-mouthed at the traffic. I did a double-take as we pulled alongside one car - a young boy was driving. He looked no more than ten and could barely see over the wheel. He turned to face me as my window drew level with his. Our eyes met, and he looked scared. The rest of the car was filled with slumped figures and duvets.

The good thing about not being a scared ten-year-old any more is that you can hide it better. The bad thing about being a scared adult is that you’re the fucking responsible adult. Why did it have to be a zombie outbreak? Give me an alien invasion or walking shrubbery any day.

I don’t know where it all started. The seeds were surely planted years ago as a child: maybe by a snatched VHS glimpse of a long recorded-over splatter movie, a few frames of a disfigured face existing between cartoons taped from the TV; or by a waking daydream whilst alone and snot-nosed in a friend’s field one winter, of a blue-faced figure rising stiffly from a mound of snow in front of me; or by the hazy yet enduring memory of a trick played on me one summer by my brother and his friend, who donned duvet covers and waited for me behind the shed before walking out, their arms outstretched, moaning (they thought they were being ghosts, though). Throw in an episode or two of
Dr. Who
to taste and bake in an Englishman’s head for a few decades. The luxury of being scared of apparent bullshit really was a privilege that only a truly decadent lifestyle could allow.

Sirens and blue lights from behind us. A couple of police motorcycles were roaring down the centre line, cleaving the traffic into two and forcing cars onto the outer edges of either lane. They slowed to our pace and squeezed us even further to the edge of our lane, one drawing up right next to Al’s window. In between them sped another two bikes swiftly followed by a dark green Jaguar, a black Range rover with tinted windows and two black cars I didn’t recognise, all in a line. Al rammed his spliff into his mouth and grinned at me, then executed a particularly cheeky move behind the alternating bikes at the back of the entourage and put his foot down, easily topping a hundred miles per hour in places. One of the riders looked over his shoulder at us, but did nothing. Al held the joint in his teeth at a jaunty angle.

‘
Fuck The Man.’

‘
Why are they going south?’ Lou asked.

‘
Ooh,’ I said, quietly. ‘That’s quite interesting.’

‘
What’s that?’ Al said, staring ahead intently.

‘
Do you remember that mad letter in the
Argus
?’ I had read the reader’s letter about a year before in our local paper and it had tickled my interest.

‘
You know the Southwick Tunnel’s coming up? Okay, there’s this theory that under the same hill is a bunker, or meeting rooms or something. Al - you know how often that tunnel is shut, right? It’s ridiculous. This chap pointed out in his letter that, even though they always put it down to maintenance work, the light bulbs that were blown before they closed it are always still blown afterwards. How much maintenance can you do without getting round to changing a few light bulbs? If you check out the doors they look like steel blast doors, with covered hinges and that. Plus, chalk’s pretty easy to dig into, right?

‘
Well here’s the weird thing; and this isn’t rumour, its fact. That tunnel was closed on September 12th 2001, right; from midday when the London underground got bombed; on the eve of the war – shock and awe, remember that? When we went into Afghanistan… and these are just what I can remember. They guy had documented loads of oddly coincidental dates that the tunnel had been closed on.’

‘
I remember you reading it out. It is closed a lot.’ said Al. Lou was incredulous.

‘
I’m sure people have got better things to do today than play king of the castle,’ she said. ‘They’re probably going home, or sending cars to take people up to London. Aren’t all the MPs on holiday still?’

‘
Think about it, think about it. Okay, that hill is flank-on to any firestorm from a nuclear blast over London; it’s an hour – or half an hour driving at our current speed – from London itself, so land access is no problem; Shoreham airport’s just a spit away, as is the sea obviously; there’s a superstore at the west end of the tunnel for supplies; plus there’s more golf courses round here than there are fields. That’s the secret COBRA headquarters; I’ll put a fiver on it.’

‘
The what?’ Al quizzed, still focussed.

‘
COBRA; it’s the government and police and army chiefs and that when they all meet up for crisis talks in an emergency.’

‘
They might as well have called it “Cougar Force” or “The Power Squad”.’ Lou could be overly sarcastic at times.

‘
It stands for “Cabinet Office Briefing Room A”, actually.’ I sniffed.

‘
Why would their HQ be under the South Downs, then?’

Lou was pleased with her point. I kept quiet, a touch eggy. We powered on in their slipstream for a mile or two before losing them as they turned west onto the A27 and towards the Southwick Tunnel and Worthing. Al continued into Brighton, on a road that would take you to the end of the Palace Pier if you didn’t turn off. It was 5.30pm, and we had made pretty good time.

Breaking In

[day 0001]

Brighton was great. It was a place that had grown fairly organically, and as a result it made sense, at least to me. The benignly militant population had, on the whole, indignantly rejected the mindless progress that had ruined other towns yet their own brand of progress gave the city a sense of freedom that sometimes bordered on lunacy. It was so bright and breezy that a wag on the council marketing team had even plastered ‘Brighton Breezy’ over anything from buses to billboards. Old and new sat comfortably - almost respectfully - next to each other, nurturing tiny theatres, impossibly trendy bistros and renegade comedy clubs. Being as gay as sandals was optional. Naturally there were throwbacks from the 60’s and 70’s – sickly tower blocks and absurd concrete wastes – but the greedy madness had never been allowed to actually take over the place.

Withdean Park was large and open, and usually dotted with sun seekers on such a bright day – now it was packed with bodies. Some pushed; some queued towards a similar set of inflatable tents to the one we’d seen in Crawley. A line of ambulances fought with cars and pedestrians to get off the road and onto the grass. Al flicked on the local radio as the crowds spilled onto our side of the street and I watched for faces.

‘
We should get her some help,’ Lou said, dabbing at Susie’s forehead.

Al forged through the crowd, leading an impromptu line of half a dozen other opportunists. There were hardly any moving cars now; most were abandoned or contained people less bold or cheeky than Al, honking horns and gesticulating at each other. On the radio they were reading out those town halls that had made available lists of the known dead, and moved on to the longer list of places where the stricken could visit the makeshift treatment centres. I gazed over the park at the bouncy hospitals, and Al slowed as more people spilled onto the road.

In one motion, I saw a hundred people shoal outwards to make a circular gap in the thick throng. At the centre was a man in a shawl, with a crimson chin. Through the ever-increasing hole in the crowd I could see a boy lying at his feet, pawing at his own face with red hands. People were running and falling. A young man with ‘FCUK you!’ on his T-shirt turned to us and started hammering on the roof in sheer white-faced terror, setting Floyd off barking and making me jump. We powered through, and the lad thumped on the car behind us, and then the one after that. The road ahead was blocked by an upturned furniture van and its contents. Al knew where he was, so he simply swung a left onto a side street, and after several tight squeezes turned south onto the Seven Dials roundabout. He passed the GPS unit back to Lou.

‘
Save the batteries.’ He said.

‘
It’s alright; I’ve got a spare charger at home.’

Al said nothing, but I caught him checking his petrol gauge. We weaved through the obstacles littering the streets, slowing down and sounding the horn where humans outnumbered cars. There was more thumping on the bonnet. We passed a bus stop, seeing a man thrashing about with an umbrella, beating people away from him. A woman in a night-dress ran from her house screaming, with one handless arm raised in front of her. I saw a fight – or a beating – in an alleyway, and lots of foaming blood in the gravel. There were kids on bikes grinning on street corners and people weeping in the sun. Raging house fires burst glass onto the road in front of us; screams and sirens became muffled in the blistering heat.