Diaries of the Damned (3 page)

Jessica dropped the phone, her world a blank and noiseless place. She felt cold and hot in the same moment. Unable to focus her thoughts, the final moments of her best friend’s life replayed in her mind like a broken record. When the hand fell onto her shoulder, Jessica jumped from the bed, the fright so great that she screamed and fell to the floor. She had forgotten all about the man she had shared her bed with. Even upon seeing him, her mind couldn’t place him. Screaming, she backed away into the corner, losing control of her bladder in the process. As her cries quieted down, and the world came back into focus, and she stared at the man;
Jack, his name was Jack
, embarrassed by the puddle that spread on the floor around her, and for the first time since waking, she was conscious of her own nudity.

“Jack…
Jesus Christ, you scared me. You won’t believe what’s happening…” Jessica stopped talking and took a good look at her guest. His skin was pasty, his eyes sunken and lifeless. His breathing was shallow and raspy.

“I don’t feel good at all,” was all that he could say before a stream of bloody vomit erupted from his mouth, and showered the bedroom with gore.

Jessica screamed and scrambled to her feet, forcing herself even further into the corner to avoid the blood.

“Jessica, I am so sorry,
” Jack gasped before a final spasm gripped his body and erased all traces of life from it. He fell back into the bed, still. Tentatively, Jessica moved from the corner, walking on tiptoes to avoid the rapidly spreading puddle of blood. She gathered her clothes from the floor and ran out of the room, hurrying downstairs so fast that she tripped down the final few. Jessica managed to keep from falling, but twisted her left ankle, which started to swell almost instantly. Acting on instinct, she ran and locked the front and back doors, and then turned on her living room television. The picture was fuzzy but the sound worked well enough, and judging by what she had seen already, a live broadcast from a heavily populated area was the last thing she needed.

She pulled on the shirt and trousers that she had worn the previous evening, conscious, above all other things, that she wore no underwear and that the cold weather made the fact somewhat obvious. However, the recorded message that repeated on all channels was enough to focus her mind.

This is a public service announcement. Quarantine laws have been put into effect. People are requested to remain in their homes, and ensure that all doors and windows are locked. The military has set up road blocks in order to contain the virus, and any person attempting to leave the containment zone will be apprehended. Hospitals are currently at maximum capacity. Should anybody in your immediate family show flu like symptoms, they are to be isolated. Sufficient fluid ingestion is imperative. Face masks should be worn at all times. We urge you all to remain calm, Help is on the way.

Jessica stood and stared at the TV until a sudden thump at the living room window made her jump. She snapped her head up, but saw nothing. Rising from the sofa, Jessica slowly walked to the window. She peered out. The street wa
s empty; everybody was indoors…the body of Barbara Johnson was gone. Jessica heard another heavy thump - this time it came from above her head. She spun around, her body wrapped in an icy blanket of fear, her heart hammering in her chest. There was nobody. Jessica turned back to face the window, and felt her heart go from thundering to frozen in an instant. Her neighbor, Barbara, stood on the other side of the glass, staring at her. Her face was covered with blood, and the gaping hole in the side of her neck continued to leak vital fluids.

Barbara hammered the glass with her fists. Three blows were enough to break the glass. Her arms pushed through and grabbed hold of Jessica’s shirt. The power of her grip caught
Jessica by surprise, but also gave her the mental kick in the ass that she needed. Pulling hard, Jessica wrenched herself free. She watched as her neighbor continued to reach, shredding her arm on the shards of glass lining the windowpane like teeth.

Barbara made no sound as she struggled, and when she twisted her head in response to a noise farther up the street, Jessica saw why: it had not been a single bite that her son had taken, but many. He had chewed through to the bone. Her head leaned to one side, opening the wound into a vicious grin as Barbara tried to groan before taking off down the street, ripping her arm free of the glass in a shower of flesh blood. It only took a few seconds for Jessica to hear the screams. The house three doors down was under attack by five zombies. One had adopted the same approach as Barbara, only he had succeeded in his quest. He pulled a young woman from the window, and within seconds they were upon her. Their frenzy so heightened that they dug in with their hands, scooping steaming handfuls of raw flesh into their ravenous mouths. A retch rose from Jessica’s stomach as the woman’s screams fell silent; to be replaced by a sickening, tearing sound as the mass dug deeper, ripping her apart in search of the juicy bits. Jessica showered the window with vomit, pushed over the edge by the appearance of the woman’s liver, which was thrown into the street, discarded. Apparently, even zombies didn’t like an excess of Vitamin A.

Where Barbara had failed to growl, Jessica didn’t have to wait long to hear the sound of the zombies’ signature call; a sound that would become very familiar to her ears. This one came from within the safety of her own home. Jessica spun around just in time to duck away from Jack’s reaching hands. His face was caked with the still drying gore he had disgorged upstairs. His eyes were dark, and Jessica could see that there was no hope for him; now that he had become one of the zombies. She knew she had to get away; to get out and get somewhere…anywhere. The problem was that she was inadvertently allowing herself to be backed into a corner. Jack’s hunger for her now far greater than it had been during their love making the night before, his hands now desperate to get a grip for a different reason. His motive for eating her was now far more literal; his craving for her warm moist flesh had consumed him.

Jessica changed the course of her retreat and directed herself into the kitchen. There was only one course of action, if she wanted to get out of the house alive. Getting past Jack however, was not her only problem. Her scooter was still at the restaurant. That only left Jack’s car. The keys were by the front door, where he had dropped them as part of an automatic reaction to
coming home at the end of the day. Opening the drawers in the kitchen, Jessica fumbled around, never once taking her eyes off the zombie that bore down on her. Her fingers wrapped around the heavy rolling pin that her grandmother had given her.  She was an old-fashioned woman, and had given it to her as a gift when Jessica moved out of the house with the message: know how to take care of yourself and you will always be fine.

With her grip secured, Jessica waited for Jack to get close enough. The roller was heavy, but she had no idea how effective it would be as a weapon. Jack took another step, and Jessica’s heart leapt into her throat. She swung the heavy rolling pin, her arm descending at a forty-five degree angle, more through indecision as to whether to follow the horizontal or the vertical, than anything scientific.

Jack stumbled back from the blow, and a welt the size of a golf ball erupted on the side of his head, just before his ear, but it didn’t stop him, or even make him fall. His approach began again, and again, Jessica swung. She gave a scream of exertion as she put her whole body behind the strike. The sound of impact was a dull thud; the spray of blood that it caused a sign of its effectiveness, but still Jack moved forward. There was a hole in his face; rapidly thickening blood fell from the wound like cottage cheese, but it wasn’t enough. In disbelief, Jessica took a few more paces backward, the last she could make, for it brought her to the row of cupboards that lined the inner wall of the kitchen. In frenzy, her survival instinct kicking in, Jessica began to swing. Not once or twice, but repeatedly. She hammered away on the skull, working the same spot like a man cutting down a tree. Each strike embedded the rolling pin further into the skull, and it wasn’t until the walls were spattered with blood, brain, and shards of bone that Jessica stopped. At some point Jack had fallen to the floor, but his crawl had continued. It was then that Jessica abandoned the roller and began to stamp on the zombie’s head. She gave a howl of triumph when she realized she had won.

She was sticky with gore when she stepped outside. Judging by the reaction of the rapidly expanding crowd of zombies in the street, the woman whose liver lay by Jessica’s front door had risen and joined the fun. The gaping hole in her abdomen proving to be of no hindrance; even the fact that her intestines dangled from the wound like a tail causing her to stumble seemed to be of no concern. Her husband or partner had also been added to the mix, and in the distance a large mass of the undead could be seen shambling down the road.

They can smell me.
Jessica thought when she saw her bloodied reflection in the car’s shiny paintwork. Jessica’s hand shook as she slipped the key into the lock and wrenched the door open. She had never driven a manual car before, and had no real idea as to where she was headed, but the zombies were upon her, their fists clubbing the roof of the car. The rear passenger side window broke and an arm appeared.

Turning the key and forcing the car into gear, Jessica slammed her foot to the floor and shot out into the street. The car was new, and far more powerful than her scooter. She had not owned nor driven a car since she gained her license at the age of eighteen and almost lost control. The tires found their purchase at the last moment and made the sharp turn to narrowly avoid the trees which grew intermittently along the street; large brutes of nature which the houses had been built around.

The road was blocked by a wall of the undead, and in the passenger side mirror, Jessica saw that the owner of the arm was still dangling from the car. She knew she couldn’t slow down; they would rip her apart like they had her neighbor. The mere thought caused her to wince in pain, so she pressed her foot even harder against the floor, plowing into the mass. The car was a pseudo-sporty thing with a front end that was more wedged than rounded. Perfect for cutting through a crowd, she soon discovered. One after another the zombies fell. Their legs shattered upon impact and they began falling left and right depending on which leg gave first, only to be crushed by the speeding wheels, or they fell forward, into the car, whereupon they disappeared under it.

The crowd had only been a few lines deep, maybe a hundred zombies in all. When the car burst through and into the open space beyond, Jessica finally took a breath. She hadn’t realized that she had been holding it, until her lungs burst into flame to help get the message across. In the rearview mirror she saw
, to her horror, that not only had the zombies turned to give chase to her, but that many of those she had hit were still alive; crawling along the road, with their legs nothing but mangled lumps of useless flesh trailing behind them.

Jessica wasted no time in getting the car moving again. Every street she passed told a similar story. Bodies littered the roads, hung from windows, or ran screaming from one house to the next, desperate to find shelter. The road was slick with blood and dotted with scraps of flesh and organs. She noticed several livers lying on the ground near bodies that had been
dismembered beyond the point of recognition; yet still they lived, flapping on the floor, immobile yet still gripped by the cannibalistic cravings.

The sound of the car attracted zombies to it like moths to a flame. It was early and the area was quiet at the best of times, so Jessica was the only real target they had. Thanks to the missing rear window, the sound of their undead growls filled the car and chilled her to the bone. There were also more than a few genuine cries for help, but Jessica didn’t stop. She didn’t look, for she knew that she had abandoned those people, condemning them to death. Her subconscious had taken over and kept her focused on the task at hand, protecting her as best it could by shutting out all things that would slow her down or cause her problems once she resumed full control.

The motorway was not too far from where Jessica lived, the ring road that looped the city, and she could see the road that led to the airport around the midpoint. It was there that she was determined to reach. Her mind operated on the single hope that maybe, just maybe, there would be a plane ready to leave.

Despite the infancy of the outbreak, the zombies were everywhere, and it seemed to Jessica as if every street she passed grew worse. Her escape was aided by the many families who, listening to the news broadcasts, had barricaded themselves in their homes. Every house seemed to have a group of the undead pounding at the doors and windows. They may not be smart but with the power they could produce, especially in a group, it was only a matter of time before the locks and chains caved and the buffet opened.

Once Jessica was on the motorway, the activity seemed to lessen, although there were several zombies wandering aimlessly along the lanes, moving through the abandoned cars in search of food. Cars, lorries and more than a few buses littered all four lanes, which caused Jessica to have to slow the car down to not much more than walking speed in some places, in order for her to maneuver through the gaps.

As she navigated one of the gaps, Jessica came closest to losing her life. After having negotiated her way through a series of abandoned vehicles, Jessica happened to glance in her rearview mirror and saw movement coming from the inside of a severely dented station wagon. The occupants of the front seats were clearly dead, however as she watched, she saw it again. A child struggling to climb over its dead parents and escape. Without thinking, Jessica stopped the car and got out. The child pounded against the window. Her fist an
d the glass were smeared with blood from the effort. The child could not have been more than three or four years old judging by her size.