Last Words

by Jackson Lear

  I’ve gone to several meetings about Enzo and the farm in Sicily. I’ve described the whole operation in great detail, given descriptions on the people working there, gave them the license plates, and every time I do, one of the guys from special services says they’ll look into it. I asked if they know about the quarantine facilities in Sicily and if Simon Gillard from the BBC is still being held there. They write down my details, say they’ll look into it, and leave. No one comes back with any information.

  I’ve decided to get buff. I started with no idea of what to do or how to exercise. I was doing twenty push ups a day and checking out my biceps. According to the Internet that’s not going to do anything, so now my routine is: on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I do 3 sets of 12: push ups, pull ups (using the edge of a table), dips, and I bridge for 2 minutes 3 times. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I do split-squats, regular squats, lunges, and calf raises. When I get back home I’m thinking about doing karate or jiu-jitsu. I might be black belt by the time I’m thirty.

  15 March

  I’ve been here for, what, six weeks now? I’ve kept my patience, I’ve played it cool, I’ve swallowed all of that anger and I have buried it so that, on the surface, I appear like a master of Zen. They originally told me that I would be quarantined for three weeks, but given the numerous countries I’ve visited (hot spots, they tell me), my situation is different. I am what they call a slow risk. Everyone else I’ve been in contact with here in Gibraltar are now also in a slow risk category so they’ve bumped us all up to six weeks, all because of me. None of the other patients here know that. They all think it’s some government bullshit. It is. But it’s also because of me. No one new has come into our particular ward since I arrived.

  Six weeks of mind-numbing boredom. I watch TV, I tune out, I draw when I can though I’m still not getting any better at it.

  I somehow started lying a few days ago. We were in Group and my turn came up. I was bored and needed to vent, so I told them I saw my girlfriend die in a car crash. I never got to say goodbye or tell her thank you for saving my life. I remember the times she tried to teach me how to Salsa, regardless of how bad I was. I remember being mesmerised by her smile the first time I saw her. She still comes to me when I dream.

  If we had left it there everything would have been fine, but this woman came to me saying that it’s okay to grieve, that her son died not long ago so she knows what it’s like to lose someone close to you, then she kept following me around offering herself as some kind of shoulder to lean on. Fuck off lady, I was lying through my teeth, and I only started lying because I just found out that you’re all stuck here for the rest of eternity because of me. So fuck right off, bitch, and leave me alone.

  25 March

  They’ve changed it now to sixty days. People are talking to themselves, losing the will to live. No one has tried to commit suicide yet but if they raise the exit day again someone is bound to try.

  I’ve been given a booklet about the new English austerity measures and what to expect. I might as well be saying ¡Viva Britannia! It’s total pro-England propaganda bullshit. There is a list of rules we need to obey in order to ensure that the outbreak doesn’t spread. There is a curfew at night from 10pm to 4am. Holidays through the UK need to be registered with the department of special services. Flights in and out of England are restricted. It doesn’t say that they don’t happen, only that they are restricted. We are encouraged to watch the news every day to keep tabs on the situation and to follow new protocols as they are released.

  There’s a whole section on what to look out for if you suspect someone might be infected. What if someone in your family is sick? Leave them alone, call the department of special services, and a doctor will come and handle it. When you dial 999 there is now a fourth option: to report a sighting.

  Dad is sixty four, had been retired for two years, and is back to work and hasn’t complained once. He complained all the time about work, how it hurt his back and all he wanted to do was lie in a hammock and read a book. He doesn’t complain about working. Not in any of the emails I’ve received. My mum even says that he is putting all of the young ones to shame with his work ethic.

  I’ve become great at building a tower of cards. I have six decks to play with and I can get fourteen storeys high before they tumble.

  I’m not really seeing any progress in my work out routine. Not sure what’s happening there. Maybe it’s due to a serious lack of protein, given that I haven’t eaten meat since arriving. A lot of my diet has been pre-packaged edible cardboard crap.

  30 March

  I’ve been given papers to leave. There’s a plane taking me back to England in a few hours. I can’t seem to find any emotion within myself. I wonder if they’ll let me keep my new diary.

  Part 2.

  So far so good. We’re flying over Spain right now. Our destination is Gatwick airport. We’re told that we will be screened again and we should expect delays and processing. There was a new video on the plane by the government, explaining what to expect when we return. It’s all ‘England First’ bullshit. We have to work together to rebuild the country, they say. Times have changed and our perspective must change. They showed clips of soldiers helping farmers, helping little girls out of the back of trucks. They didn’t show any zombies, internment camps where people are led away to be used as slave labour, or any of the bad shit. They told us about health warnings and symptoms to look out for, who to contact, and under no circumstance should we approach the sick.

  I’ve been away for ten months. I need to see my friends again. I haven’t had anyone to talk to since Rachel. I have no idea how I’m going to tell her parents that I don’t know where she is.

  I need to find out what happened to Rachel and make sure she’s okay. I was with her for so much of it that it kills me that all it took was a ‘doctor’s appointment’ for us to be separated. It was just so easy. It wasn’t either of us walking off and being stupid, it was a simple, “Please wait through that door.”

  31 March

  I’m. In. England.

  Holy shit, it actually happened. I was sitting quietly just after we landed, terrified that they would realise they had made a mistake in allowing me to return home, that everyone else would disembark first. I’d be just getting out of my seat when someone from special services would ask me to wait until everyone else had left. “Sure,” I would say, but then I would realise that I was the only one staying behind. And that I wouldn’t be leaving the plane while it was in England. But no! They let me leave the plane! And for the first time in almost a year I had a blast of that glorious biting weather as I trundled down the metal steps and touched the tarmac. It was bliss! Fresh air! Then in the blink of an eye I was inside another airport terminal again.

  And guess what? No, really, you should guess, because it’s hilarious.

  Welcome to Quarantine, round two.

  I’ll be here for six more days, they tell me. There is still nothing to do. The news is heavily censored. There isn’t anything that is anti-England or even questionable-England. There’s no news of any other part of the world unless a journalist mentions that we are doing better than ‘other parts of the world’. That’s the quote they love to use, ‘other parts of the world’. Not isolationist at all. And no shit, my life at any given time was better than someone else’s in another part of the world. The news isn’t telling us about any new laws that have been passed unless it is vital for the public to know.

  Through the perspex windows I can see soldiers and heavily armed police. They have dogs sniffing people and sniffing luggage. Every piece of cargo that comes through here is being screened and checked by hand.

  I have no idea what’s going on in the rest of the world. Everything could be a nuclear wasteland for all I know. I’m allowed to read emails but not to respond to them. I’ve had only one email in the last two weeks and that’s from my parents. They’re looking forward to seeing me when I return. They say the new diet is act
ually working for them and they are a lot healthier now. They haven’t felt this good, physically, since they were my age. I feel like shit, so I don’t know what they’re so happy about.

  As soon as I’m out of this place I will send an email to BBC Simon, hoping that he’s out of Sicily. I have to tell him all about Enzo and the farm.

  I watched Eastenders for the first time in fifteen years. Apparently the show mentioned something zombie-related a couple of months ago and the viewers didn’t like that. They want escapism, not realism, so they’re back to who saw who in a shop talking to someone they shouldn’t be speaking to about a rumour they shouldn’t have heard about the best friend of the eavesdropper. These people must also be competing in some world record for the shortest duration you can be in someone’s house before leaving in a bad mood. All of the characters seem be intent on beating this record because I saw three of them arrive and leave in a fuss within two minutes of knocking on the door. They come in, they accuse the first person they see (who is conveniently always in the lounge), they have a row that could be easily be ended with, “Stop coming to me with all of your petty shit and mind your own business,” then someone leaves. Sometimes the tenant goes and the guests stays. Very odd.

  2 April

  There’s been a delay in my getting processed out of here, since I’m still a slow risk / high risk patient. I’ve been quarantined for over two months, I’m not likely to burst into a zombie song and dance routine, am I? Still, I bury that anger, because I am a master of Zen.

  I received another email from my parents. The office of special services contacted them and told them I won’t be out of here at the previously specified time. They offer their sympathies and remind me to stay strong. I have no idea what I’ll do for work. Maybe I’ll be a mechanic. I know a little something about making diesel fuel and converting tractors so they can be solar powered.

  England doesn’t really seem to have a good idea of how to stop the undead. They might kill every last creature in the country, then all it takes is for one of them to swim across the Channel and it will catch everyone with their pants down again. And these things seem to now be using a populate-and-wait strategy. Build their numbers quietly then explode onto the streets and take on everyone.

  Constant vigilance, that’s what we need. Literally 24 hour vigilance. It’s the only way.

  They still haven’t caught or killed the Haitian. One of the guys I see around here called this whole uprising ‘the African disease.’ Haiti’s in the Caribbean. Sometimes there are just no words.

  5 April

  I received this email from Dad:

  ‘We’ve heard some good news from your cousin Rebecca. She got a job as a geography teacher at a girl’s prep school just outside of London. We passed on our congratulations and we told her that you are doing well.’

  I don’t have a cousin Rebecca. I can ask him in a few days when I see him but I’m sure he’s talking about Rachel, that she escaped Sicily and is back in England.

  7 April

  I guess Clint mentioned to Alana that I was back in the country and under quarantine. She emailed me.

  ‘I’m sorry how things turned out,’ blah blah blah.

  ‘I’m sorry you were caught overseas during this mess,’ blah blah blah.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  That had me thinking for a long, long time. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  I spent hundreds of hours on that farm hating Enzo and everything else in sight, and I spent most of my time thinking of Alana. I wondered what she was up to. Was she single? Would I ever speak to her again? Would she ever find out what I’ve been through? That I saw people die? That I lied to those around me, saying that I had a girlfriend called Cristina? That I woke up several times during the night while backpacking through Europe, then fleeing Africa, Sicily, and Gibraltar, only to find Alana still lingering in my mind? That I was terrified of seeing her again in case she was single, because something breaks in me whenever I see her and I don’t think I could turn her away?

  Yeah.

  Life has not been the same without you. You stirred something in me that no other person has ever come close to reaching. I miss you more than you will ever realise but I will never admit to that. I will lie and say I’m over you. I will lie because I didn’t stir in you the same feelings I had in me.

  I just realised we broke up a year ago yesterday.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  Yeah. I want to know that you were torn up inside thinking about me, that you were a wreck while I was travelling, that you woke up night after night because you couldn’t stop dreaming of me. Most of all, I want you to be single. I want us to meet. And I want you to smile when I ask you out again.

  10 April

  I have paperwork affecting my future. It’s more of a brochure, really. Nothing about when I get out of here, more about what will happen to me when I do. Get this: upon my release from quarantine I have 48 hours to report to my nearest special services branch. Since I’ll be living with my folks, the Bracknell office will be my port of call for the time being.

  I’m required to join the army reserves in order to help England’s recovery. There’s a lot of rebuilding bullshit written in this thing. I guess there’s a good deal of urgency in tearing down houses and rebuilding roads. There’s a lot of money in it as well if the right company wins the contract. We tear them down, they rebuild them.

  The army reserves, for fuck’s sake. It’s not permanent, just six days a week. I notice how there’s sweet fuck all about any mention of pay. Will it be food stamps? Will it be in the form of care packages? I guess I’ll be sleeping in a barracks for a while until they train me not to run off. They’ve probably noticed my history of doing exactly that.

  I’m also well aware of what happens to deserters who are caught. I live on an island, and a small one at that. What chance do I have of getting away?

  Every soldier I’ve seen in the last year has said just two things: “I don’t know,” or, “I’m not allowed to say anything.”

  I’ll never be allowed to quit or leave the country. I’m not special or qualified enough.

  13 April

  I’ve been given more papers. I’m a free man now. Tonight I will be able to sleep in my old bed in my parent’s house, under my very own blanket. I haven’t slept there since graduating uni.

  The cold will keep me company and it will be a welcomed relief from the Spanish summer, the African summer, the Italian winter, and the Gibraltar spring. Mum and Dad are coming to pick me up. I’m just dawdling in the airport. I’m able to leave whenever I want, I just don’t have any money for a bus or a taxi. It’s irritating, being free and still stuck at an airport. When I get home I’m going to sit in the bathtub and listen to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Oasis, and everything else that is awesomely British. I haven’t heard proper music since Sicily.

  Now I just have to wait the twenty minutes until my parents find a place to park so they can come and get me. If they ask me what I would like for dinner I’m going to say chips. How many do I want? All of them. All the chips. Is that too much? Not at all. I want so many chips that I will never see the plate. Even when I’m full and about to throw up from too many chips I still want to see a mountain of them on my plate.

  I can’t, though. Austerity measures. At most I will be allowed to have a scoop of chips. Enough for a snack. If my parents chip in (hehe) then I might be able to get a decent haul. I need malt vinegar and lots of salt.

  There are too many soldiers for a vacant airport. There’s mostly only cargo going through here. The only other humans are not passengers but quarantine release patients. The soldiers outnumber us two to one. They have a scowl on their faces. Come on fellas, give me a break, I’m about to join the reserves and be one of you!

  No one is smiling, no one is talking. They look at me as though they lost too many of their comrades because of high risk people like me, and now here I am about to waltz back into th
eir country. At least no one has blamed me for a lot of blatant criminal activity, of which I have done my fair share.

  I’m just going to sit here and wait. I won’t risk spending too much time writing in my diary in case they become suspicious that I’m writing about them. I can’t do that. I need to keep it all blasé and cool.

  There’s nothing like waiting in an airport to cheer me up.

  Part 2.

  I’m home. No word from Clint about if I can pick up Basil. There’s about twelve hours worth of check points and closed roads between here and his parents place and I’ll only have one day off a week from the reserves. Add to that all the petrol rationing that’s going on. I can’t afford to even get my fucking cat back.

  Mum squeezed me so tightly when she saw me that she nearly broke my ribs. Dad as well. He looks like an old man. They both read the emailed version of my diary and saw my photos. They don’t think writing a book about my experiences is a good idea. Not that it’s a bad idea, just … it won’t help the relief effort. I was off seeing the world while everyone here had creatures running through their back yards, attacking hospitals and biting babies in the maternity wards. It’s not what people want to read about.

  The car ride home was difficult. London is a mess. There were soldiers everywhere. Entire streets have been demolished and burned down. I passed a burnt out bus that was on the back of a giant tow truck. I’d never seen one that big before. That was from a riot yesterday.