Last Words

by Jackson Lear

  I know why Simon from the BBC isn’t here. The authorities knew he would be a hassle. He would make sure that Enzo and everyone from the farm were crucified for running this operation. He’s probably still in quarantine, working on a story to release to the BBC once he gets out. Maybe he’ll be able to track me down.

  There is no indication that we’re ever leaving.

  2 December

  Someone keeps snoring. It’s not what I need in the middle of the night before a long day of back breaking work.

  12 December

  I can’t believe we’re coming up to Christmas. I turned twenty four the other day and I completely forgot about it. I also just figured out it was nine months after my dad’s birthday. Yay.

  There’s no news up here. No one speaks of the zombies. They could have all been exterminated by now and still we’re here, slaving away with no idea of what’s happening in the rest of the world. My parents must think that I’m dead. They knew I was in Tunis. They would know that NATO started attacking and that they haven’t heard from me in weeks.

  I’m never going to see Basil again, am I? He may not even remember me if I ever get back to England.

  I barely think about Rachel. It’s just … if they’re treating me like this, like nothing, then they must think of Rachel as nothing either. When they’re done with me they might shoot me and bury me in a ditch. Wouldn’t they do the same to her? Whenever I think of her all I imagine is that someone has been raping her for weeks. I wonder if by now she’s stopped trying to fight them off and just accepts her fate? That’s why I can’t think about her, because if she gave up then I might give up.

  We’re moving around with shears and wheelbarrows, carrying things back to one of the buildings where all of this crap gets sorted. We keep some of the food to eat. Someone asked me to move my futon to another part of the room because he hates the two guys he’s sleeping next to. He kept saying that if he had to wake up to them again he would have to break their face. I obliged, but I now understand why he hated them. They fart towards me, they burp, they’re the slobs from hell. They stand on my mattress with their shoes on to chat to each other, they stand on my mattress to fix their beds. I’ve told them to stop it. The guy before me told them to stop it. They keep saying sorry but they don’t change. Last night one of them was jerking off and getting into it. He didn’t care if anyone else was bothered. I want to break their faces as well.

  Another stupid thing is the conversations I’ve had to have with the other prisoners. No one is interesting here. No one has a ray of hope. We’re all miserable fucks and none of us want to see each other again. I was trying to wash my jeans and get them clean while Shrieker was telling me about his travels during the outbreak. He flew from Rome to Syracuse and has all of these survival tips for when you encounter a zombie. I asked him flat out: “How many zombies have you encountered?”

  “Twenty,” he said. I told him that I was in the Madrid riots, which he hadn’t heard of, and we escaped a zombie on the train tracks. We were also attacked on our way to Getafe and I saw someone die in front of me. I saw two zombies from the roof and they changed my world forever. I was there when someone got hit by a motorbike. I passed three dead people on the side of the road. I was chased by two zombies near Gibraltar. We ran from dozens in Algeria and hundreds in Tunis. The girl I can’t stop dreaming about was killed when we tried to run from them. They were swimming after us on our way to Sicily. So, really, shut the fuck up and stop shrieking when you laugh.

  He left, but that allowed Dribbles to come up and ask me some genuine questions. He hadn’t seen any. He, like Josh, just stayed in a hotel during the outbreak until they kicked him out and he spent his time wandering around until he was picked up by the police. He asked me how I escaped all of that. I don’t know. I was with friends and we ran for most of it. Dribbles keeps stealing people’s pillows and swapping them for his.

  1 January

  I only know the date because the Italians were celebrating New Year’s last night. No one told the foreigners. We stood by the window looking at the main house with its lights on. The people inside were all cheering and drinking, counting down from ten. We stood by the window not saying a word.

  We haven’t had a day off since arriving. I think I’ve pulled a muscle in my right shoulder.

  A while ago, Dumbass, one of the roommates, disappeared. He was working in the field during the day and he never came to lunch. No one really noticed until dinner time. The Sicilians went looking for him but no one was willing to use their car. It’s a smart move, really. No one can catch up to him. I have no idea where he planned on going but it’s given me the motivation to get out of here. He had to leave his backpack, though. I don’t know if I could do that. It would mean leaving behind just about everything I have left in this world, except for what I’m wearing.

  4 January

  I’ve tried to keep my spirits up by reading over previous entries. I shouldn’t have bothered, it’s only left me more depressed than ever. I can’t seem to stop crying at night. I think about Alana more than I should. I wake up so horribly miserable that it becomes the only thing I can think about during the day. I can’t believe I’m still thinking of her almost a year after we broke up. But you know what? If we had broken up two months earlier or remained together for two months more then I wouldn’t be in Sicily right now. I took this trip to get away from her, to have something to remember later on in life. I wouldn’t have been in Spain during the outbreak. There’s a good chance that Rachel wouldn’t have gone south towards Gibraltar. They might have gone north, towards France. Cristina certainly wouldn’t have died in Algeria.

  Of all the people I’ve ever met, Enzo is the one most deserving to die as painfully and horribly as possible. He shouts at everyone he sees and is an abusive fuck. Even the Italians hate him. He is so chronically abusive that even a Buddhist monk would tell him to shut the fuck up. I wish I was a ninja so I could pinch his throat and drop him to the ground. I wish the Doctor would turn up in his TARDIS and save us all. I wish England would get its act together and come save me.

  I can’t sit around and wait for someone to rescue me. I have to figure out how to do it myself. There are no fences here, only guns. On the outside is the threat of a mindless horde. I’ve reached my limit. I just need one night of decent sleep with no one snoring and I will be able to make my move.

  6 January

  Yesterday I escaped. I’m wearing two lots of clothing so that I have a spare set. I left my Hawaiian shirt behind because it’s been nothing but trouble. I brought two pens and my diary. Nothing else. I got to work the fields yesterday and, like Dumbass, I snuck off and just kept moving. I’m going to keep walking north. I don’t know what’s north of here but that’s where I’m going.

  Clearly, I couldn’t have started working in the fields with my backpack, that would have been too suspicious. I had to say goodbye to everything that was non-essential. It’s terrifying not having a backpack. I’ve had it with me for almost every waking moment for months, to the point where I was fidgeting in the night just to be sure it was still there.

  I don’t know how I chose the right time to move. I had been sweating over it for a few hours. Do I go now? No. What about now? Maybe. As soon as that guy moves I’ll go. Oh, he’s back. Okay, when the next guy moves away, I’ll go.

  I was given the chance to run for it a dozen times before I actually worked up the courage. The whole time I scurried away I was sure I would hear the snap of a bullet just a second before it slammed into the back of my skull.

  As soon as I was out of sight from the houses I ran. Convincing myself to stop and walk was hard. When I caught my breath I forced myself to run again, always thinking that they would notice I was gone the moment Enzo shouted at one of them to stop fucking up. I kept going until it got dark. I was starving. Still am, but at least I was able to find a tree to sleep against. I say ‘sleep’. It was more dozing and waking up a hundred times before the sky starte
d to brighten. Then I walked again. It’s only now, next to a river and some fruit trees, that I dare believe that I’m far enough away from Enzo and the farm.

  It’s the first time on my own in months. It’s the first time I can’t hear a single other person out there. It’s glorious. Everyone on the farm was snoring or farting. I just want to get back to England and curl up under a blanket in my own bed and stay there for a month, watching something like Archer. I want to enjoy the brisk English air again. I want my crisps and I want a burger and I want Yorkshire pudding covered in gravy. I want Monster Munch and Sugarpuffs and Curly Wurlies.

  I have no idea what the fuck I’m going to do when I eventually run into someone. I don’t speak Italian. They might send me back to the internment camp. Enzo might send some of his guys to get replacements. They’ll realise I was caught. They’ll bring me along, kicking and screaming, force me to dig a ditch while the rest of the prisoners watch, before they do a song and dance about how no one is to ever escape. Then: bam. Back of the head. No more trouble for them.

  There’s a zombie staring at me.

  I stopped walking and there it was, standing in the middle of nowhere. After ten minutes without it moving I had fallen into a false sense of security, so I scribbled in my diary without taking my eyes off the creature.

  I shouted at it to leave. It didn’t respond. I asked for its name. After a moment of staring back at me it squinted and said: “English.” It had the Haitian’s voice.

  He now knows where I am.

  Part 2.

  There’s an empty town in sight. I’ve been watching it for half an hour now. There are no people moving about, no cars, no human sounds of any kind. No traffic noises or even a single radio playing to itself. There are birds in the air but no cats or dogs. It wouldn’t surprise me if a rolling mist had suffocated everything that once lived on the ground.

  Two things are burning through my mind right now. The first is that there are beds down there and supplies. I doubt there’s a lot of food, but there will be backpacks, clothes, and water bottles. I need those to survive. The second is that the town is deserted for a reason and that reason will kill me. It might be infested with zombies or perhaps the army has forced everyone out and will shoot anything that moves. If I had a coin I would flip it to see if I should go down there anyway.

  The zombies have been changing their tactics. They’ve started hiding like cockroaches, building their numbers by hiding in areas that no sane person would dare enter. Then they wait before blitzkrieging the population.

  I can out-run one zombie. I might be able to out manoeuvre two. But there could be thousands of them down there, waiting for me. Thanks to that solitary zombie on the hillside, the Haitian knows I’m here.

  If there’s a phone down there I can call Cristina’s family. I’ll pay whoever picks me up a thousand euro to drive over here and bring me back to a decent bed. In the meantime, I have to figure out if that town is actually empty.

  I really don’t know what to do. I should go down there but it’s going to be a death trap. My throat is starting to feel like sandpaper. My stomach shudders from a lack of food. If I can’t get a drink soon I’m going to die.

  What do I do?

  Is it a whole town just for me or a whole town waiting for me?

  Half an hour of waiting and nothing has moved.

  Nothing that I can see has moved.

  Fuckity fuck fuck.

  Part 3.

  Helicopters are coming. Military choppers, and lots of them. I’m hiding in the shrub land behind a tree, watching the town. I had just decided to go down there when I heard an engine from the far side of the hill.

  Jesus Christ, they’re fire bombing the town. I can feel the heat from here. There are a thousand houses down there and they’ve just carpeted the whole place in flames. People used to live there. People who went to work for twenty five years to pay the mortgage on those homes and these helicopters have just incinerated them in seconds.

  The buildings are all exploding independently, popping and collapsing under the flames. I can hear the glass shattering and the smoke rising. They weren’t taking any chances in killing everything that was down there. Don’t you think that’s maybe what the Haitian wants? He wants us destroying everything we’ve already built? And if there was just one zombie down there, one little dead person, would that justify the madness here? The flames are howling, roaring at a volume I wouldn’t have believed possible.

  There might have been people down there, hiding. Or they became deformed beyond even Satan’s abilities. Ravenous wolves, ripping each other apart. There’s not a smile on their faces when they do it. They’re not even doing it to save their own lives. And here I am, standing over their homes, unable to feel even an ounce of pity at whoever was hiding down there, nor unable to feel joy that there might be fewer dead in this world.

  The smoke’s coming this way.

  Part 4.

  For two hours I had to hurry around the mountain to get away from the smoke, but even now I can smell it and I’m coughing up lungfuls of soot. I can hear stumbling through the mountain, faint gasps and wheezes that convince me there are creatures or animals moving towards me. I keep turning around but there’s no one there.

  I spent a good long while watching the town burn. It’s like the flames swallowed the last of my emotions, leaving me now as a vacant wasteland. I don’t feel the urge to eat or drink, I just do it because I know I have to. I don’t have any opinion on the people who used to inhabit that town. Either way, anyone who’s alive right now will be dead one day and no one will remember their names. I’ll be dead one day as well and it won’t be long until everyone forgets me. In a hundred years I might be known to a few distant family members, but all they’ll know of me is my name and that I walked through Africa during the zombie uprising. And so what? Everyone else will have their own story of survival. Mine will be just another within the muddle. In a hundred and fifty years there won’t be any need for people to remember me. In two hundred and fifty years only the top twenty stories about this epidemic will survive. I can’t tell you a single thing about what happened between 1800 and 1850, aside from the birth of the industrial revolution. I don’t know any of the pioneers. These people actually did something and I don’t even know their names. All I did on this trip was tag along with some friends and became another mouth to feed. The only name people will remember is the Haitian’s. I don’t even know what it is.

  I’ve been watching the town burn while keeping a look out for anything stumbling through the dark. I’m getting tired. I don’t know if I can keep on going like this. At times I think I’m just going to sit down and wait until something gets me.

  7 January

  The wind changed last night and I couldn’t risk falling asleep. The smoke blew into me and I didn’t want to choke to death. That was enough to move me. So, I started walking. Then I was thirsty, so that kept me going a little farther.

  At dawn I saw some of the fleeing zombies. I reeled back from the stench long before I saw them. They were shuffling away from the town. Some had burns, some were still smouldering with smoke. Others had clothes burnt and falling apart. One of the zombies, a woman, has a backpack. She must have died while wearing it. I need to get it from her or I’m going to die out here.

  Part 2.

  I’ve lost them. God, I can barely breathe. What the hell happened to my energy levels that I can’t even run anymore? My legs won’t stop shaking and my handwriting is a mess.

  They all turned against me. I was following the horde, maybe twenty of them, over this hill. They were all walking in the same direction, stumbling along, and I was trying to keep a safe distance while figuring out how to get to the woman with the backpack. She was towards the side of the group but was still surrounded. I needed that backpack.

  As they descended the hill there was a zombie standing ground, facing them, like it had been there for weeks and had been forgotten about. Then it saw me. It cocke
d its head to one side and I swear it rasped, “Getafe.”

  So, holy fuck, the Haitian remembers me. I was stopped dead for a moment as I realised what it had said. I was on the roof in Getafe looking down at the woman staring at the swings who kept saying “Surrender,” and now this creature in Sicily remembers me from then.

  The twenty other zombies turned all at once, stared at me, and started plodding in my direction. My heart lurched as I realised I had just epically fucked up. As soon as I took a step back they all shot at me in full sprint. I only had a twenty metre lead on them with no energy left in me. I ran over the hill I had just walked across. I could hear them hissing quickly, like they were waiting to grab me before breaking into a full blown laugh. None of them needed to slow down or rest. I could feel my heart screaming in my chest. My vision clouded over and I was about to pass out.

  Some of them tripped and stumbled. I kept running. Some snarled. I kept running. With every step I imagined face planting and breaking my neck, then being torn apart by these creatures. I can’t make it this far only to die because I tripped on uneven ground like a half naked bimbo in a cheap ‘80s horror flick.

  I stupidly looked over my shoulder and knew they were gaining on me. I had a stitch in my side and I hit that wall of exhaustion, but there was no way I was stopping. I came within sight of a narrow river. I had no idea how deep the water was or if it was going to lead me to more of thems. I jumped. I kept my diary firmly above the freezing water. It’s a little wet now but it’s salvageable. I was able to swim to the other side. The zombies jumped in after me and were mostly swept away. I headed back upstream hoping that my lead was now too far for them to bother.