This report was coming from Manchester. More or less the exact same scene filled my screen. A ticker tape scrolled along the bottom reporting riots at three other airports around the country.
Now at a time like this, your first thought is for your loved ones. I was lucky in a way that I had none. Well, not lucky, but you know what I mean. I did have an ex who lived in the next town over but that had ended messily due to me being a dick and subsequently left me utterly heartbroken. She’d moved on, and met a young, good looking fitness instructor. Yep, a fucking fitness instructor. I know how clichéd that sounds. But it was true, and to be honest, if she was happy, I was happy for her. I loved her and always would but he was a fuckin twat. I’m not bitter.
So, it was me, myself and I. Not one for jumping to conclusions, I decided to confirm what was going on before I set off into the wilderness with my bugout bag, started eating woodlouse from under fallen trees and wiping my arse on dock leaves. It’d be just my luck to be found twenty years from now like a Japanese soldier who hadn’t known the war was over. I needed to know what was going on without any bias from the TV. That meant Facebook.
Facebook, as usual, was full of shit. Videos of kittens, racist posts about immigrants and photos of people’s dinner. I really didn’t know why I still had that stupid app. The thing did more damage than good. Usually, when I’d had a few too many, it became a platform to vent my frustrations, which often included abuse thrown at the ex and Mr fucking six-pack man. I’m really not bitter!
There were a few posts, however, relating to the news broadcast I had recently viewed. WTF prevalent throughout the said posts. OMG was there too. Goosebumps erupted all over my body when one particular post from a friend of mine from Islington, London wrote, ‘What the fuck is going on? Sirens are blaring all over the fucking place.’ Henry Hutton-Wingate was his name. Not his real name I might add. Like me he had stage name. His real name was Davey Holly. I met him when we were both the tender age of nineteen. We shared a guitarist and a bass player. I had them at weekends and he had them midweek. I would get them to play cover songs to the grannies and he’d get them to play his own material to the jet set of the Newcastle music scene. We never really got on at first. This was mainly an alpha male thing we’d had between us, but over the years our friendship grew stronger.
He’d moved down to London in his mid-twenties to become an actor, hence the double-barrelled name change. He’d done quite well actually, starting off in TV ads, then the soaps and finally ending up on the West End. Being able to sing as well as act progressed his career and made him a household name. Whoop de fuckin doo.
I wasn’t jealous at all.
The post he’d written on Facebook was only a few minutes old, so I wrote him a quick reply telling him to check the news and lock the doors. He replied with, ‘Are you pissed?’
Now please don’t go thinking that I’m well known for being a party animal. I admit I used to be but have been drug free for a number of years and only ever drink on very special occasions or when I feel the need to visit Facebook to have a swipe at the happy fucking couple. I’m not bloody bitter!
A few minutes later my friend messaged me back. ‘Mate, WTF, fucking zombies!!! this can’t be real. Are you playing games?’
I am also known to have been a bit of a joker in my time, but not once have I ever employed over a hundred people, police officers, a special effects makeup team and a computer whizz kid to hack into the news channels all in the aid of a gag. I must admit, if I had the money and the imagination to do such a thing I probably would. But I didn’t.
I replied to him and told him to double check the doors and to keep in touch.
I focused on the TV again and realised that the news wasn’t on anymore. Just the news channel’s logo and a statement saying they were experiencing technical problems. Fucking technical problems? Yeah, your cameraman and news anchor have just been fucking eaten mate. There’s nothing technical about that.
As I flicked through the channels I found that they were showing the same message. I thought, ‘This must be serious if the infomercials and the roulette shows have ceased to function.’
I checked the internet. It was off. Mobile phone signal. Gone. Radio. Nada. There was a message flashing from my Facebook friend. He must have sent it before the net went down. It read. ‘Fuck me mate. I think those people are in my street. They’re banging on doors and smashing windows. Shit, there’s someone coming down my path.’
The message ended there. Even though he’d turned into a southern softie and took to wearing a coat in winter, I really hoped he’d be ok.
Suddenly my brain kicked in to gear. Was this it? Was it really happening? The final chapter in the story of humanity? The end result? Armafuckingeddon?
Chapter 3 – The ‘keep’
If it was the end, I had to secure the house before anything else.
At that moment in time I was living in a small rented house on a very nice estate in a place called Cramlington in Northumberland. I’d moved there when I separated from the ex. I liked it. It was close to the A1 motorway and the Tyne Tunnel, it had a nice local pub, lots of shops, a cinema and was close to the gym. All I needed.
The estate had two ways into it by road and had lots of wide cycle paths if the roads became congested and I needed to get the fuck out of dodge!
The main weakness of the lovely two-bedroom house were the front door and the living room bay window. I quickly went outside and positioned my van, which was around fifteen feet long and seven feet high, against said door and window with the side door of the van in line with the front door of the house. I was surprised none of the neighbours came out while I performed a thirty-two-point turn on the unkempt front lawn, which was absolutely ruined now anyway with divots and tyre marks all over it. Sorry mister landlord.
Just take it out of my bond!
There was about a six-inch gap between the house and the van. Just enough for the van door to pop out and slide open. The back garden was enclosed by a very sturdy wall/fence combo and could only be accessed through the garage or the kitchen.
That done, I went and filled the bath with water. One of the ‘rules of three’ for survival. I’d learned this on one of my survival courses: three minutes without air or in zero degree Celsius water, three hours without shelter, three days without water and three weeks without food.
I had plenty of air and my shelter was sorted – the tub full of water was another check on the ‘rules of three’. I did have a lot of bottled water stored in the garage but it’s best to have something and not need it rather than need something and not have it.
While the bath was running I quickly entered the garage through the garden and dragged the mountain of camping equipment I’d acquired over the years in to the house.
Not forgetting my bugout bag.
I imagine you’re wondering exactly what a bugout bag is. It’s a prepper thing. I’d had it hanging in the garage for around fifteen years and would replenish its perishable contents every six months or so. It contained everything you needed to survive in the wilderness for around two weeks.
It had: a lightweight sleeping bag, a waterproof bivi bag that enshrouds the sleeping bag, a waterproof tarp, fire-lighting kit with various tinder and lighters, water purification pump, a small survival kit (with fishing hooks and line, water purification tablets, flint and steel), compass, torch, candles, a solar battery charger, maps of the surrounding area for a hundred miles in every direction, first-aid kit, food for two weeks, two litres of water in a camelback, a wind-up radio, survival knife, multi-tool, a hundred metres of paracord, changes of clothes, toilet roll, a fifteen-inch bolo machete and a pistol-type crossbow which I’d bought for shits and giggles.
I opened the front door and the van door and loaded it with some of the larger camping equipment I’d chosen to take if I needed to bug out in the van by road. The fiveman tent went in with the inflatable bed, gas lamp, chairs, four-season sleeping bag and about a week’s supply of food a
nd water. I left the bugout bag on the settee in the living room in case I needed to hightail it on foot.
As I closed the door, I listened to the birds singing and watched the sun begin to rise in a terrifically beautiful clear sky but also on a very different world.
Chapter 4 – The decision
While listening to the birds’ dawn chorus I suddenly realised that I could hear the faint sounds of sirens in the distance. It had been over four hours since I first saw the news report. The shambling fuckers couldn’t have made it this far north already, could they? I slapped my hand to my forehead Oliver Hardy style. Newcastle airport! It was only a fifteen minute drive from my house. The sirens could well have been unrelated to the events that were occurring around the country, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
It was time for a decision to be made. Do I jump in the van and literally head for the hills?
Northumberland is host to a range of hills called the Cheviots. Not quite mountains but large, expansive, remote and sparsely populated. It is exposed and bleak, but it does have lots of rabbit, grouse, deer and pheasant and is also home to the incredibly shy Northumberland wild goat, so food should not be too hard to come by.
Or do I stay and ride out the storm? With the food in my bugout bag and the emergency supplies I have stacked on shelves in the garage (thank you paranoia-inducing cannabis) I could probably comfortably survive there for around two months, more than enough time for the people in power to sort the situation out.
I decided I would stay. I had shelter, water and supplies.
It was a decision I came to regret.
Chapter 5 – The reality check
After checking the TV and internet and finding no change, I chose to check through my local maps to plan out a few escape routes. I promptly dropped off to sleep.
The next thing I knew I awoke to the sound of gunfire. Fucking gunfire? Here? In England?
Now that is one of the perks of living in the UK. No guns. The police don’t even carry them.
Unlike in the US, when one goes for the weekly shopping in Blighty, one doesn’t have to worry about getting one’s fucking face blown off for taking a person’s parking space. An altercation in this country is usually sorted out with fisticuffs or at the worst a glass bottle. So, the sound of a gun in the relatively small town of Cramlington was akin to seeing a mackem graduate from university. (Google it.)
Startled, I leapt from my chair and bounded upstairs to my bedroom which overlooked the cul-de-sac (posh for street with a dead end) which I lived on.
In the distance, above the houses on the far side of the housing estate, was some sort of military helicopter hovering around 150 feet from the ground. A soldier was hanging out of the side, tightly gripping a very large mounted gun, pointing and firing it in the general direction of the airport. At this stage I’d like to be able to tell you the type of gun and the size of the projectiles it was spitting out but I didn’t have a fucking clue. It was big. And loud.
Some of the neighbours were out in the street staring aghast at the proceedings. I’d love to say I get on well with all of my neighbours. I really would. I hadn’t been living among them for very long but they rarely spoke to me or even acknowledged me. Maybe it was because I didn’t own a lawn mower, hence the unkempt lawn, and maybe it was because I didn’t pull the weeds from the drive, hence making their street (with a dead end) far from perfect. I did return from work one day to find the lawn had been cut for me. Result! They didn’t pull up the fucking weeds though. I was sure they’d do it before I did. Maybe not now however.
Anyway, back to the obviously confused neighbours. Waking up to no TV, phone signal, internet or broadcasts of any kind must have been somewhat bewildering. Not to mention the huge fucking whirlybird shooting the shit out of something not too far away.
I opened my window when my closest neighbour Max saw me. He was a nice bloke and one of the only neighbours in the street who didn’t look down their nose at me. Always said hello and always had time for a chat. He was probably in his early fifties and took fantastic care of himself fitness wise. He looked at my van parked across the front of the house and waved. ‘Whats going on?’ he shouted over the roar of the helicopter and gun.
I wished he’d never seen me. I mean, where do you start when explaining the zombie apocalypse to someone who has just woken up? I decided to keep it vague.
‘There have been riots all over the country through the night. They think it may be terror related,’ I lied. ‘Stay inside and lock your doors.’
He looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and humour. Someone else who thinks I’m a bloody joker!
He moved on down the street relaying the information to the other neighbours. Big mistake. As I was watching him do so, and more than likely telling them I was a fruitcake, something caught my eye at the entrance of the street. It was a man.
Now if it had been around midnight on a Saturday the scene before me would not have seemed out of place. Oh, it’s just a drunk bloke who looks to have had some sort of argument with the pavement. But no. It was 8am on a Tuesday morning. The man was painfully thin and looked to be in his late eighties and had blood smeared down the bottom half of his face and chest. The neighbours all turned towards him as the man let out a despairing moan. I stood there frozen in my bedroom. Unbelieving. After a whole night of preparing for this moment I was dumbstruck. Unluckily for the neighbours, they weren’t. They ran collectively to the aid of the poor, drunken, very old injured man. Before I could come to my senses and warn them, it was too late.
The man lunged towards Max as he approached and grabbed him in bear hug. Now Max is no slouch, gym three times a week and looked to be solid in the muscle department, but no matter how much he tried he couldn’t escape the clutches of the rabid pensioner. As Max tried again to pull away, the man went in for his throat with his teeth and tore in to him. The blood and panic that followed were terrifying. I shut my curtains and proceeded to watch through a tiny slit, which offered me, I felt, a degree of safety.
I know what you’re thinking. I should have leapt down the stairs and heroically come to the aid of my fellow neighbours and shot crossbow bolts into the old geezer’s noggin. Fuck that. I was petrified. Well and truly glued to the spot. I was that scared a little bit of wee came out.
Two of the other neighbours were not so cowardly. They rallied and with great effort broke the death grip between Max and the pensioner and then proceeded to pin the old man down, trying unsuccessfully to avoid his gnashing teeth. The only thing I could think during the carnage was how his teeth were still in his mouth. He was old. Really old. There’s no way he didn’t have false teeth. Double lashings of Fixadent must have been applied prezombification. Strange, the thoughts that go through your head in perilous situations. Or that might just be me.
While the neighbours were trying to subdue the old man, Max slowly started to get up. ‘Oh, thank god,’ I thought. ‘It must have just been a scratch.’
My jubilation was short lived when Max threw himself upon the struggling neighbours who were holding down the old man. What came next was a blood bath.
By this time the whole street was out, nervously approaching the squirming piles of bodies, not knowing what to do.
I finally pulled myself together and opened the window and shouted over the noise of the still firing helicopter. ‘Stay back! Go indoors and lock yourselves in.’ At this the neighbours ran back to their respective homes.
I looked back towards the three neighbours and old man to see what was happening and froze. They were all on their feet and staring up at me from across the street! More wee.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. They slowly started shambling their drunken gait towards my house. I shut the curtains again. The first thing I heard was the slapping of hands on my van outside and then that god-awful moaning. I’m not going to lie. I started crying. All my false bravado and silly excitement gone. This was real. I didn’t want to be bitten. I’d been bitten before in a pla
y fight with the ex and it hurt like buggery. And she didn’t even break the skin. Also, please let it be known that I have no idea what buggery feels like but I can imagine it hurts as much as a play-fight bite.
I crept downstairs and carefully sneaked a peak through the bay window curtains. Most of my view was obscured by the van but I could see the old man banging away on the bonnet with his fists. I knew there was no way they could get into the house from the front so I did what any other person would do who’d had my vast survival training and expertise. I went and hid in the cupboard under the stairs. Yep, that’s right.
All those years of role-playing scenarios about what I would do if the zombies came, I never once hid under the stairs with pissy pants.
Chapter 6 The alterations
After a while I summoned up enough courage, came out from the cupboard and sneaked another peek between the gap in the curtains. I found that the helicopter had stopped shooting and fled and, to my surprise, the monsters had left too. WTF?
I ran upstairs and looked out of the bedroom window to confirm that they had really gone. They were still in the street but had moved to another house and were frantically banging on the doors and windows. I knew the neighbour who lived there. She was called Alice I think. A rotund middle-aged lady who’d actually shaken her head at me one day while admiring the weeds on my drive. It was mainly her fault that I hadn’t got around to tidying the garden. I can be a little stubborn at times and have been known to cut my nose off to spite my face.
The silly cow must have drawn the monsters away from my house somehow.
From what I could see of the zombies. No, let’s stop a minute and think of a better name. Zombie has been done to death. (Pardon the pun.) Walkers? No that’s been used before. Creepers? So has that. All the good names have been used so I shall have to invent one but now is not the time. On with the story.
It's Grim Up North (Book 1): It's Grim Up North Page 2