Last Words

by Jackson Lear

  I wonder if the apocalypse will cause a surge in the population. If the power’s off and no one can go online then of course people are going to get drunk and bored enough to have sex. But that’s in the safety of a house, not out here with the army poking things into your ears.

  15 August

  We’re close to Gibraltar. We should get there tomorrow before 10am, assuming everything goes well. Right now, ‘things going well’ has a fifty-fifty chance. There were riots and looting in Valencia and Barcelona. I don’t quite understand the mentality, but a lot of people were pissed off about the army being there when they want independence. Some people got together and started throwing Molotov cocktails at the police, which is a stupid, stupid move, so the police responded by firing tear gas and water cannons into the crowd. Buildings were set ablaze and it was your usual riot and looting thing that got out of control. A couple of officers were killed when one guy in Barcelona drove a car straight into the police line. Apparently there were four hundred arrests last night and, get this, one of the people they arrested was cuffed and thrown into the back of the van so quickly that no one realised they had just arrested a zombie. He could still be in the back of the police van for all I know.

  I’ve been confused by a particular phrase that has been used a lot in the last couple of days. By the grace of God. I’ve been hearing it everywhere. At first I thought it was coming from the bible thumpers to help them survive this ordeal, but no. In Spain it’s become synonymous with a darker meaning. General Franco overthrew the government, proclaimed himself the de facto regent of the throne, and slowly added royal traditions to his style. One of them was, ‘by the grace of God’. The Spaniards haven’t forgotten that he led them through a fascist dictatorship through most of the twentieth century and they’re starting to see it rise again. It might be through the actual military or it might be through this one voice person who, by the grace of God, has risen the dead to join his army.

  Things are not as jolly in other countries either. There are a lot of religious groups claiming it is now Hell on Earth, or the Rapture, or a sign from the various gods that it’s time for a regime change. Iran has taken the line of ‘There are no zombies in Iran.’ Sure. Despite the media reporting otherwise, Iran refuses to budge.

  According to the news, Syria is all but lost. It’s weird thinking that a month ago the worst case scenario was an unending civil war that would level the entire country. Now it’s a civil war with zombies rampaging through the streets and terrorist groups trying to strap explosives onto the running dead.

  It’s hard to get a good idea of what’s happening in the world when there are a hundred news stories happening in Spain that seem more relevant to the Spanish people. When we switch over to the BBC they focus on England with a brief look at Europe and an even briefer look at the rest of the world.

  Saudi Arabia seems to be heading towards a bad situation. Gunmen have surrounded the palace and are trying to break in. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when the US realises that it has the strongest military force in the Middle East with easy pickings nearby and the need to protect their oil interests. All it takes is a couple of zombies on the street and the population is willing to turn against their government. This is no longer a peace time world, either. This is definitely a war. That means whichever president or prime minister was elected into power either sides with the Might is Right policy or they step aside and allow someone else to rule with an iron fist.

  There seems to be only one topic of conversation coming out of the US: ‘How will this affect the election?’ Yeah, no need to worry about the economy, pensions, or healthcare, we want to know how the President is going to stop the zombies. “We need to increase our presence along the Mexico border,” was one answer. I’m sorry, I thought the question was about zombies, not Mexicans.

  So far every hopeful in the running has said, “God told me to run for president.” 95% of the people who run for president are never elected and 95% of the voters seem to forget that four years ago someone else said, “God told me to run for president.” I bet they also forgot the guy who said the same thing four years before that.

  If this goes on for another month half of the world is going to be thrown into a civil war while the other half will be on a global land grab as a way to ‘protect their interests’.

  Part 2.

  Rachel just measured her stomach, chest, and thighs. She stared at the results and measured again. She now has a 32 inch waist. She still has huge breasts which seem to get in her way. She’s been complaining about her chest and hips as though her whole skeleton is shrinking and causing her pain. She described it as being squeezed by a boa constrictor.

  My belt is practically down by my knees. Not really, but for the sake or argument let’s say it is. I’ve got my travel wallet on the inside of my shorts so I don’t get pick-pocketed. When I arrived in Madrid I had moved down two notches on my belt. Now I’ve moved two more. I’m almost skin and bones.

  There are jokes thrown about of being worked to death. People wake up on the street after what should have been a night of drinking. They kinda recognise that work is somewhere down this road and they’re trying to get there before the boss shouts at them for being late. They just haven’t realised that they’ve died. And there’s no time to waste! There are Works In Progress reports to update, wages to earn, families to murder. They’re not great jokes, but they’re there.

  16 August

  We’ve arrived, sort of, at Gibraltar. We’re still on the Spanish side of the border. Gibraltar is two hundred metres away. There’s a small camp building in a park and that’s where we’re stopping for now. It turns out lots of people had the idea to head for Gibraltar. Not all of them are English speakers. Everything is so damn narrow here. The streets are only wide enough for one car to drive along. Lots of really small cars are parked on the pavement. The buildings hang over the street and are close enough that you can high five your neighbour with a whole road between you two. The pavement is about as wide as my hips. There are a couple of restaurants within sight but by the looks of things they’re into price gouging.

  The landmass of Gibraltar is smaller than I expected. On the map it’s like a rocky finger sticking into the Mediterranean. The rock itself looks hilariously out of place compared to the relatively flat surroundings. It’s a shoe-shaped mountain standing five times as high as the tallest apartment building in sight. By the looks of things you could walk from one side of Gibraltar to the other in ten minutes at a very leisurely stroll. Even the park we’re staying in is proportionally strange. It’s a big square but it takes up a third of the land.

  To our right is the Atlantic Ocean. To our left is the Mediterranean. I’m just a two or three minute walk from two major bodies of water. Thankfully there is a public bathroom just across the road that still works, though it hasn’t been cleaned in a while and I’ve nearly thrown up upon every visit. I still haven’t taken a dump in there. I’m afraid I might pass out from the fumes. There are concrete shells here that look like WWII gun bunkers. We’re surrounded by palm trees.

  The locals look at us with incredible distrust. They keep to themselves and we try to leave them alone, since we’re invading their home town and taking up residence wherever we want. That doesn’t stop a few of the lads from shouting at the locals, that we should be treated no different than anyone else. Apparently the best way to be treated well is to shout at the person who is wary of you. Bravo, chaps. Bravo. I’m ashamed that some of those arseholes are English.

  Everyone is sweating balls. The beach could be a good place to spend the rest of your days unless you’re pasty white like I am and burn easily. I’m not going to last long here. My hat looks ridiculous and the brim is always covered in sweat.

  So here’s the situation. We’re setting up camp in the open garden/park area which offers no protection at all. There is zero security. A zombie can wander through and have its pick of victims. With all the tarps and tents blocking
the view no one will know where it is or what it’s doing. If that happens in the middle of the night, amid screams and panic, then we’re just going to end up running into a zombie that’s stumbling towards us. We’ll be too disorientated to have a full escape plan. Rachel thinks we should run for the beach. Have you ever tried running on sand with a backpack? No. And you won’t want to.

  It took longer than we expected to walk, given all of the police blockades and frequent passport checks. My sweaty arse rash is still with me, right between the cheeks. It’s not like losing an arm in a hydraulic press agony, it’s slow and painful like the Chinese drip torture method. It’s just a constant misery. I might have to lie here through the night and just wait for my body to recuperate.

  Word around the street is that Germany is starting to accept refugees and displaced European nationals. The only problem is that everyone else’s borders are closed and no one can actually get to Germany. If the apocalypse had started just a couple of weeks earlier I would have been okay. Fuck, if it had started a month later I would have been back home counting my blessings.

  It’s been 35 degrees all day. There’s a cool breeze coming from the water but even so, 35 degrees is a lot to deal with. Still, it’s 10 degrees cooler than Seville.

  Somehow I walked two hundred kilometres in the desert heat without dying. Go me. And yeah, one day I might tell the kids about it.

  17 August

  It was impossible to fall asleep last night. We’ve picked a bad location to camp. Any second now one of those things will find us. It won’t be the walking dead that kills us, it’ll be the panicked humans trampling over our tarp as we try to stand up.

  There was a muffled scream last night. We all sat up and looked around. Some people stood up to have a look. After twenty minutes we decided there was no zombie out there, it was just a muffled scream. It may have been someone having a nightmare. One person’s nightmare led to a hundred people living in a panic at two in the morning.

  We lined up today to get into Gibraltar. It turns out, we were only lining up to apply to get into Gibraltar. They didn’t even check our paperwork. They said to come back tomorrow.

  I caved and spent money to get a few jars of curry paste. I just couldn’t go another day of eating plain mushy rice. At least now I can mix a teaspoon of paste into the pot as it sits in the sun, ready to be kicked over by someone who’s not looking where they’re going. We’re burning through the rice quickly, though. Six of us to feed from just five kilos. We’ve already gone through half the pack. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get any more paste in the next couple of days. We’ll have to make this last.

  Despite the agony of sleeping in parklands, La Linea de la Concepción is quite a nice place to stay in. The buildings are all colourful and a mix of various styles of architecture, the town is mostly clean and the beaches are free of litter. The roads, however, are so narrow that I don’t trust going down them at all. The only time I will is if I can see someone else walking ahead or behind me. All it takes is for one sprinting zombie to charge through those bottle-neck roads and the rest of us will be running over the top of each other like rats through a corridor, hoping like hell that we’re not being guided towards another zombie.

  I’ve been practicing some first aid from my printed notes. I tried it out by wrapping bandages around Rachel’s hand, wrist, arm, and ankle. I’d been making them far too tight. I also have a method of making disinfectant from common kitchen stuff. Use warm water from a very clean cup. Add a teaspoon of salt until it dissolves. Mix well. Add a tablespoon of vinegar. If there isn’t any vinegar, use fresh lemon juice. Dab some cotton wool into the mixture and wipe the wound. Watch your patient howl, hiss, and question your medical expertise as you pour acid onto an open wound.

  18 August

  We’ve been lining up and sitting in what little shade there is while every Englishman in Spain fills out his details, speaking to the officials here who do a background check, a health check, find out where we’ve been up to two months prior to the outbreak. If they think I’ve been through every country that’s become infected then I’m fucked. Thankfully I did not go through every country that’s become infected, no. I arrived in France two months ago, was passport checked on the border of Spain, and now I’m trying to go home.

  In slightly more upbeat news, I’ve asked Cristina and Ediz for their best recipes, something that screams homemade cooking. Why would I torture myself like this? Because I’m hungry. Really, really hungry. And dreaming about food is better than dreaming about zombie-Rachel chasing after me.

  Cristina was kind enough to offer me her recipe for ragù. She insists there’s an accent on the u. Like the Spanish ú? No. The one where it points up to the left. Obtuse, maybe. Not sure. We don’t really have accents in written English. She says we sometimes do. I challenged her. Café. Résumé. Soufflé.

  Okay, smartypants, do any of those have the accent going the other way?

  “Ragù.”

  “That’s cheating.”

  “Maybe. But if you make this well then every man and woman will want to have sex with you.”

  “You have my attention.”

  So, the way past someone’s underwear is:

  1 kilo of beef (not mince) that can be slow cooked. Get this from a butcher, she tells me. Not from a supermarket.

  1 onion, diced

  3 cloves of garlic, minced

  2 carrots, diced

  2 sticks of celery, diced

  2 handfuls of actual tomatoes, crushed

  1 pack of tomato paste

  1 cup of red wine. She specifies that this is ‘adult red wine, not student red wine.’ I might need help then from a qualified adult.

  2 cups of beef stock

  A splash of water

  3 bay leaves

  Sea salt and cracked pepper. Not the usual black pepper you get in a little shaker that’s pre-cracked, but the kernels. Crack it fresh, she says. Tastes better.

  Cook the beef in a pot that’s already hot for a minute and a half on each side, remove. Turn the heat down to medium low. Cook the onions and garlic for 2 minutes. Add the carrots and celery. After 5 minutes add in the tomatoes and paste. Then add the wine, allow that to cook through for a minute or two. Add everything else, including the beef. Simmer for 2 hours. At the very end add a splash of balsamic vinegar and a pinch of sugar. Taste. If it’s too sour, add another pinch of sugar. If it’s too sweet, add the tiniest splash of vinegar.

  Don’t serve with hard pasta you got from the store. Some stores do sell fresh pasta in the refrigerator section where you’ll find yoghurt. Add a sprinkle of parmesan cheese once you have plated everything. Serve with wine.

  “And eat with chopsticks,” I said. She scowled at me.

  Ediz’s recipe is far easier to remember. It’s a kebab. Take as much cooked lamb as you want, shove it into a soft tortilla made from durum wheat flour (no idea what that is), fill it with salad and sauce. What kind of sauce? My choice. Probably Greek yoghurt. How much? As much as I want. Prep it before getting kasnickered and I’ll be golden. Brilliant. Makes me think I can find this Greek yoghurt next to Cristina’s fresh pasta.

  I asked Rachel for her best recipe. Barbequed chicken and chips from down the road, next to the sushi place.

  19 August

  Bad news. Rachel and I can go into Gibraltar, as can the other British or Commonwealth people, but no one else. So we’re stuck trying to figure out what to do. Azeem and Lalla are trying to get to Morocco so they said not to worry about them. But what about Cristina and Ediz? We pretty much led them here. I made several promises that I can’t really keep anymore. But there’s a waiting list as they can’t let everyone in at the same time. They just don’t have the resources to feed and water everyone. Some are able to fly out, but not many.

  Going into Gibraltar is definitely safer than staying out here, sleeping under a tarp with zombies somewhere nearby. I’ll gladly sleep in that airport over there. There’s stress on ever
yone’s faces, waiting in the open, even when we’re lining up. People aren’t paying attention to what’s happening in front of them, they’re more concerned about what’s around that corner, creeping up on them. We’re starting to hallucinate from the lack of sleep. Death is getting here one step at a time. It may take a few days or a few months, but one of those creatures is going to make it all the way down here. We’ve already pushed ourselves to the edge of the map. The only option we have after this is to either storm into a house and force the occupants to let us stay or run into the ocean.

  We’ve been sleeping in our clothes. Can’t risk not to, considering that we may have to run for our lives at any given moment. The trick is to keep t-shirts rolled up to allow as much air onto your belly as possible.

  What’s really annoying is that we can see the great big rock of Gibraltar at all times. It’s not a piddly little thing, either. It’s a great big fist of a mountain poking out of the flat ground and shallow water. I’ve been told it’s a hundred metres taller than the Eiffel Tower. That’s our destination. Right there. No matter where you are in this town you can see it, and it’s soooo close.