Last Words

by Jackson Lear

  It must be doubly annoying for Azeem. You can see Morocco from here. Well, not here here, but from the docks. That’s his home. We’re trying to get into a British colony so that they will find a way for us to fly back to London, whereas he’s trying to figure out how to cross the fifteen kilometre stretch of water and get home. He spends at least an hour a day staring across the water, working out how to make that happen.

  Maybe I should marry Cristina and Ediz marries Rachel. Then as couples we might be able to get to England. That doesn’t really help Cristina or Ediz get back home but it might get them out of Spain. I can’t imagine Gibraltar will accept that, though. It will be painfully obvious that it’s a marriage of convenience, especially when they find out we’ve known each other for only a month.

  My drawing is getting better. I mean, it should, considering how much time I’ve been sitting around with nothing but a diary and a pen. I’ve got a six hour stretch of time in the afternoon with nothing else to do.

  I guess it’s only a matter of time before a bunch of millionaire musicians get together for a Z-Aid festival. You know what they could do instead? Send their private jets to Gibraltar and bring me home.

  I had an idea for the next round of ads that’ll be on TV. “Always on the run? Never sure where you’ll spend tonight? You need Morty’s Invisible, designed to drive those bad smells away from whichever crowd has followed you.” At this point I’ll pop up on TV with a cheerful smile on my face. “It’s a life saver!”

  Then there’s: “Ever have to sleep in your clothes? Tired of that salty rash feeling when you wake up? Try Benson’s 2-in-1 to revitalise your clothes so they won’t let you down.” There’ll be a quick shot of a formerly dishevelled woman who has just had a shower, has her hair wrapped in a towel, and someone hands her a soothing tea. My smug face will interrupt this beautiful moment because the entire campaign has been built around me. “I wouldn’t be here were it not for Benson’s 2-in-1. It literally saved my life!”

  Basically, everyone here sweats through their clothes 24/7 and there isn’t much chance for us to wash them. Do you know what it’s like lining up to Gibraltar, wearing an itchy Hawaiian shirt, while everyone else is wearing something sensible?

  Part 2.

  Tanks have rolled into protect several Saudi Arabian cities. Rebels are being fought. The price of oil has jumped.

  There’s still nothing on this ‘One Voice’ person and we haven’t seen a zombie in a while. Perhaps the various militaries of the world have a handle on the situation.

  We’re still debating. Cristina is desperate to get to Italy, Ediz is heading for Turkey. Rachel and I want to stay in Gibraltar. This is probably going to be goodbye.

  Oh, and chances are, once we’re in Gibraltar, Spain won’t let us back in. It’s going to take a few more days to process us.

  Part 3.

  So as we’re sitting here, moping about, it was time to come clean with everything. Let’s say we’re all going to die. What is something you need to get off your chest, no matter how awful it is? The kind of thing you would tell a stranger because there’s no way that information will be traced back to you.

  I, once, stole a thousand pounds from my roommate in uni. In my defence he did fuck my girlfriend on my bed and I used the money to move out.

  Rachel found out that her dad isn’t really her dad. She once threatened her mum with the truth.

  Cristina had a Single White Female friend who worshipped her, so Cristina said she was dying to get a tattoo of an octopus because they’re cool. The SWF got a tattoo of an octopus and Cristina stopped seeing her again. Cristina also gossiped like crazy and revealed everyone’s inner most secrets, including someone getting an abortion. It backfired on her and she lost all of her friends.

  Ediz got a couple of blow jobs while in Chueca. If his family found out he says they would disown him. Ediz is very much straight, he says. He was just drunk and some guys were simply pulling his pants down and got to work.

  Part 4.

  We can’t find Lalla. One of our rules is to tell everyone where you’re going. She didn’t. She just walked off. Her backpack is here so I assume she plans on coming back. I think if she does we should kick her out for breaking rule number one. Azeem is livid and keeps calling out her name. He’s gone from tent to tent asking if anyone has seen her. I can’t imagine that’s eased our neighbour’s concerns, that someone is missing. They’ll be keeping an eye on us in case she comes back as a zombie.

  Cristina finally let loose on the anti-Lalla rant. Her walking off is a hindrance since we now need to waste our time to look for her. It seems to be all her, her, her. We need to come up with some rules to decide how we’re going to act if someone really is missing. I want to be harsh and say, ‘fuck ‘em, they walked off, they’re on their own for the rest of their lives.’ Only I walked off a couple of weeks ago and had to come grovelling back. Lalla doesn’t strike me as the grovelling kind. She’ll just lock herself in a bathroom and cry until someone takes pity on her.

  She’s not in the bathroom, by the way. We checked. We also checked the beach. We checked the streets and the restaurants and all the tents in our little community. What a fucking waste of a human life. How did she even make it this far in life without someone strangling her?

  Part 5.

  There are people on the side of the road with signs in a mix of languages. They’ve been standing there for a couple of hours. The ones in English read, ‘Hunger will overthrow the country faster than politics,’ ‘Countries don’t shut down because of 100 dead people.’ Others have their names and phone numbers of parents, telling them that they love them. It’s not exactly the most cheerful of moods, knowing that these people are preparing themselves in case they die.

  We need someone to stay in our tent at all times, to protect our gear. We’ve had people walk by, pretending to be lost or forgetful. They look at me sitting here with six bags. They know they can take me. I know it too. I will have to fight back if they try to rob us.

  Being here is worse than Atocha. More and more people are arriving and the camp is spilling into the street. The locals are shouting at us, telling us to go back home. No shit! What the fuck do you think we’re trying to do? There are always people standing in front of our tent, talking loudly, farting with their arses pointing in our direction. They’re standing too close for any of us to relax. Hey, fuck face, this is where I sleep, stop shouting a conversation and stop looking in on us and our six backpacks full of clothes that won’t fit you. Just fuck off over there and leave.

  As soon as they move away someone else comes along and stands right in front of us, as though we have the best location in town. We don’t. We’re near the street and far from the bathroom, which is a blessing because it stinks like the arse end of a music festival, so why the hell are they standing right there?

  Liam, the Welsh guy from Edinburgh, came over and told two of the guys standing in front of me to fuck off. And not in a sympathetic way, but in a way that would guarantee retaliation. I told Liam that wasn’t necessary. He looked at me like I had just taken a dump on my own breakfast, since I was complaining about those guys when he came over. He thinks he did me a favour. He didn’t. He was sitting under the tarp and shouted (at the two guys): “Hey, what the fuck is wrong with you cunts? Fuck off from here, okay?” Does he not understand that someone might snap? And not just snap with an outburst of their own choice of language but rather they’ll snap and beat the fuck out of someone.

  We’re almost out of food.

  Still no Lalla.

  Part 6.

  Some people from the town have come up on bikes with baskets of food. I think they’re church people. One of them is certainly a priest, giving prayers and blessings to people who accept the food. They’re handing out bread rolls and something that looks like a Yorkshire pudding. I don’t care if they’re Catholic, I’m going to get some food and be blessed!

  Part 7.

  When this is all over I’m
coming back here. I’ll find that church they all came from and give a princely donation. Or at least €20. That should cover a bread roll and a dumpling pudding thing.

  I’ve been staring at the photos I took while in Paris and Madrid. It’s like a world away now. We were blissfully unaware of the chaos surrounding us. I can’t look at them for too long or else my phone will die.

  People are putting their names on boards and sticking them up on lamp posts, with their names, a phone number, and a message to a loved one. Rachel and I just put our names up there. Writing a message to your parents because you might not ever see them again did not cheer us up.

  There are people coming up to us, all Africans, trying to sell stuff like packs of tissues, boxes of sweets, and other useless junk. They say, “Please” when they come up, or “Por favour.” The sweets were expensive but I bought some. I had to. I needed some kind of pick-me-up after all this sitting around in my own sweat. I’ve been sharing them with Rachel, Cristina, Ediz, and Azeem. We also jumped at the chance of buying tissues as we’re running out of toilet paper.

  Part 8.

  We found Lalla. Or rather, Azeem found Lalla. One of the Africans who tried to sell us some crap knew Lalla was from Morocco. He invited her back to meet his friends because they are from Morocco as well. Lalla went without telling any of us. She was probably bullshitted into going over.

  Azeem is barely saying a word, he’s just sitting here steaming. He had to go in and pretty much rescue her. Her friendly captors were trying to convince her that there’s a boat to Morocco if she can come up with the money. Azeem shouted at them and said no. They’re scam artists. He shouted, “Show me the boat!” and they kept saying, “The boat is coming, it will be here.” Granted, he said this in Moroccan, translated it after the event into Spanish, which was then translated for my benefit into English by Cristina.

  What was probably once a small and idyllic park now looks like a depressed version of the Glastonbury music festival. Someone was snoring last night. Someone else blurted out, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, shut up!” every ten minutes. Someone else eventually shouted, “Be quiet!” So, yeah, when it’s the day time everyone talks. When it’s night time everyone shouts. I really need one of those African guys to come around with ear plugs, not packs of tissues.

  20 August

  Wow, that was a waste of time. I spent four hours waiting in line to get someone from Gibraltar to talk to us. He said there are no flights, no boats, we’re in the wrong place, go somewhere else. I kept insisting that I’m a British citizen and he kept saying that I’m from England, this is Gibraltar.

  What the fuck is wrong with you people, I’m trying to get home! I have eleven days to get back to London before I risk losing my job. Scratch that, I have eight days left to fly into London and three days of being stuck in quarantine. I’ve been stuck in this shitty place for four days without moving. Four fucking days, only to be told that they won’t let anyone into Gibraltar until flights are permitted to resume, and they won’t resume until Spain let’s them use their airspace. Gibraltar’s border is closed until some other country can get their shit together.

  We’re almost out of food. We have little in the way of money. We have no transport options. We are about to tear this town apart and hijack a plane.

  And if I have to play another game of Pato I’m going to scream.

  Part 2.

  Liam is here with us. He’s still trying to get to Portugal (which is on the other side of the country and yet he’s still here …) but he seems to have become intrigued with our notion of getting into Gibraltar. He keeps coming over to talk to us because we’re now friends. Great. Does he not understand that Rachel wants nothing to do with him? He has nothing but crass stories to tell and thinks it’s endearing. Now, if I was in a bar with a couple of drinks in me, this conversation would be hysterical, but I can see Rachel glaring at me whenever Liam comes over, which is pretty much every hour without anything in particular to talk about.

  He was talking about starting a business together when we get back to England. A pub called ‘Almost There’. Then he was talking about building wind farms off the coast of Scotland and getting ahead of all the major companies on that one. “We can do it,” he assures me. What’s this ‘we’ he keeps talking about? Is he utterly delusional or simply making small talk?

  Part 3.

  We can’t stay here forever. Rachel and I are trying to get back to England, not Morocco, Turkey, or Italy. We have to think of ourselves. If there are no flights back to England then maybe there’s a boat. Either way, I’m feeling pretty pissed off with England right now. I just want to get home and they are telling me to fuck off. I’m an English citizen for crying out loud and they don’t care. Perhaps they think they have enough English citizens.

  I need to work on my mastery of Zen. Every time I sit down to write something I end up in a ball of molten fury.

  We’re going to run out of rice tomorrow.

  21 August

  Last night our bitch-face neighbour wouldn’t shut up. She was joyfully having a conversation at 2am for the whole world to hear. She’s a shouter. And a cackler when it comes to laughing. And she has no clue that hundreds of people currently want her dead. The only problem is we don’t know what she looks like. She was telling someone this story about how she went over to this guy’s place and got drunk. She stayed the night and Paul kept trying to make the moves on her. How often do you think she needs to reiterate ‘fuck off Paul’ for her listener to understand? Twenty times. “I kept saying, ‘fuck off Paul.’ I had to keep saying, ‘fuck off Paul.’ He moved in with his hands and I kept saying, ‘fuck off Paul.’” Anyway, bitch-face went to her car and sat in the driver’s seat until Paul came and sweet talked her back inside. Then came another spate of ‘fuck off Paul’s before she ended up back in her car again. Paul, being the stand up gentleman that he is, came out, poured a bottle of wine over her windscreen, so she drove off while being too drunk to drive. She ended up down the road and around the corner where she promptly decided to stop and sleep for the night in the driver’s seat.

  Someone finally snapped and told her to shut up.

  “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t listen!” shouted bitch-face.

  “Yes! That is exactly what I want! To not have to listen to your story about fuck off Paul, so shut the fuck up so the hundred people who can hear you don’t have to listen!”

  “It’s my birthday so I can do whatever the fuck I like!” shouted bitch-face.

  Zen. Need to be a master of Zen.

  Aside from that we’re waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting, bored of waiting, holy fuck why are we still waiting?

  One of the Africans came along with soap. They’re the little packs you find in hotels and each bar is likely to run out after just three washes. We bought one pack which has five small soaps in there and shared them out. We then went in pairs to the Atlantic and washed up. I was able to take my t-shirt off and soap up my entire upper body, face, and hair. Of course, getting enough water in my hands without dissolving the soap was an issue and my hair is now clumpy with dried soap stuck and salt water sticking it all together. I was also able to wash my balls with a handful of water. My arse rash has eased and no longer feels like a sauna down there. I now smell like cheap-hotel, which is quite a step up from broke-backpacking-street-urchin. I could probably sell proper body wash for a hundred quid.

  A little while ago one of the restaurateurs came up to the park. We’re all hungry and irritated at waiting. The restaurant guy told us there is a fresh batch of sea food being cooked up on a wood fire grill. Lots of paella. Lots of fish. Rachel, Cristina, Ediz, and I went off to get some. Azeem asked us to bring back some food for himself and Lalla while they mind the tarp. The food is expensive, like €35 for a plate of fish and rice. I haven’t had anything fresh to eat since the church people came and handed out bread rolls, so I won’t complain. What I can complain about is having less than €300 left, so I can’t afford much mor
e. At least here they can fish and grill without needing petrol or electricity.

  I had my first espresso in days and it was heavenly. €5.50. I’m pretty sure I could buy a pack of espresso from the supermarket for that price and it would last two weeks. But, for once, sitting on those benches, looking out into the ocean, finally at or near Gibraltar and having a reasonable meal with a hot coffee … it was divine. My headache went away. I didn’t realise I even had one until it lifted. Must have been the caffeine fix all of a sudden. I’m in a much better mood because of it.

  There is a chalk board outside with a list of locations and an update on the official count of zombies. People are writing out their names and next of kin on pieces of paper. The manager of this restaurant is taking all of the paper and storing it, promising he will contact those when he can and email them.

  There’s a map of Africa there with dots and scribbles from people showing where they all come from or where they travelled to. I must admit, I know fuck all about Africa. I know where Morocco is and that Casablanca is there. I know about the pyramids being in Egypt, I know that Star Wars was filmed in Tunisia, that the Congo is to be avoided, as is Zimbabwe and Somalia, and that South Africa is full of white people right down the bottom. I probably know a couple of other names of countries but they don’t jump at me. Aside from that, I know shit about Africa, which is unfortunate. I know shit about central Asia as well, although I don’t feel so guilty about that. It seems as though we’ve all seen the documentaries of humanitarian crisis in Africa, so we’re supposed to feel guilty about that area, but no one ever speaks of central Asia where all of the ‘stans live. No idea how to feel about those places.