The thing that always got me about that story was that they obviously had no cement mixers, no radios, and no four-wheel drive vehicles to get them there. Of course they had no accurate maps either, and instead had to rely on the combined guile, hardiness and cunning that blessed the gaggle of ex-Army types, amateur ramblers and sporty chaps who volunteered for the task from all around the country. Even if you found the volunteers, nowadays they’d drown in Health and Safety red tape before they’d even pulled on their hiking socks.
The flat top of the Ring always appeared much larger than I had remembered, but the biggest bonus was the ancient fortifications. Earth and chalk had been dug from a deep ditch which circled the whole structure, and piled up at the edge of the plateau creating a steep drop-off away from the edge of the Ring. The outer rim had also been built up to form a narrow walkway all round Cissbury Ring, separated by the deep ditch.
Floyd was constantly nose-to-the-ground, working in curves and sometimes doubling back. We walked slowly; I had taken on the gait of a country gent, whilst Lou had found another stalk to chew. We found lots of depressions and hollows in the ground – the remains of the ancient flint mines, I guessed – some with trees growing in them, some deep and fenced off. The views were awesome up there, five-hundred feet above the gentle swell of the surrounding countryside, even through the thin veil of smoke above the roads and the more built-up areas. On the South side we could see Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters looking left and the Isle of Wight looking right, possibly sixty miles apart. We could see Devil’s Dyke above Brighton and what I assumed was as far as Surrey when we looked north, although the smoke on the horizon there was thicker and darker. Lou counted ten windmills but I think she must have double up on some. In one of the back fields was a huge combine harvester, pointing an angled tube down into the open top of a lorry next to it. The scene looked frozen in time, with the flow of grain stopped dead and the blades still. Where were the drivers? Had they been infected sitting in their cabs; or had they fled the scene across the open fields, screaming for loved ones?
After reaching the northernmost point of the ancient structure we sat down, and I made farting noises with a long piece of grass. When I got bored, which was quite quickly, I laid back and let the sounds of the glorious English summer refuel my heart and soul. Soon I could smell something familiar, which made me salivate and realise how hungry I was - chilli. Floyd smelt it too, and started to whine. As he led us in a straight line back to the camp, Lou and I walked hand-in-hand, soaking in the calm, restoring our nerves and making some sense of the crazy couple of days we’d been through.
The pot was bubbling furiously, so I ripped a couple of bread rolls from the packet and handed one to Lou, who had laid out our mess tins on the ground. She used the tea towel to pour the chilli, giving me more than her. We sat and ate in silence, occasionally grinning at each other, and relishing the moment. I used a second bread roll to make a ‘sloppy Joe’ out of the last of my chilli, and also to mop up my tin. Lou put the kettle on for another cup of tea, and I grabbed my home-made club and fetched my knife from the tent. I sat back on my log after taking off my vest and wrapping it around my head, and made a start on shaping the handle so it was a bit more comfortable to grip.
I was beginning to worry about Al. It was mid-afternoon, and we hadn’t heard from him, even though I’d been intermittently turning the radio on to check. I was about to say something to Lou when we heard a huge thump, like a cross between thunder and someone flicking a giant towel. I stood and whirled around me, unable to pinpoint the noise – but I had to do a double-take when I saw a black globe hundreds of feet across growing like bubblegum above the centre of Worthing. I couldn’t work out what I was seeing for what seemed like an age as it grew and grew; only when I saw its deep buttercup yellow underbelly when it started to rise into the air did I realise that it was the gas tank in the town centre exploding. It blossomed into a crimson ball, its surface like those close-up photos of the sun. We felt the heat on our cheeks, even though we were two or three miles away. As the vast fireball lifted up it cast a shadow which travelled eastwards, seeming to suck in the rows of terraces and plunging the green parks into darkness.
‘Well at least that’ll get a few of them.’ I said.
‘I hope no-one we know was left alive in there before that went off.’
I got my binoculars out and saw a river of fire from the town centre leading up to the hospital. The huge gas container which had stood between the two was now an open spray of twisted blackened metal. The wall of flame had left fires dotted all around the town, catching the oldest buildings first, turning into a blazing fury, creating its own wind which whipped up the flaming debris. Trees shrivelled and warped, sending dry leaves into the vortex like fireworks, settling on hot roofs and soft tarmac. Cars popped like bright yellow corn; offices and shops spewed fire from blackened windows; the smoke rose higher.
We watched for as long as the fading light would let us, sipping our tea and taking turns on the binoculars. I managed to pull myself away before the sun went down completely and gathered four loads of firewood which stacked together so high I could only just see over the top. Floyd had whined at me to come with me each time I returned to dump it at camp, but I wanted him to stay with Lou whilst she neatly sorted and stacked the wood. We had seen no other soul, living or otherwise since that morning, so I felt confident going alone. I still made sure I was back well before the darkness came and shrouded the camp.
Al still hadn’t turned up by the time night came. I knew his parent’s house was well away from the gas tank, and he had no reason to head into the madness of town. I couldn’t think about Al though, because if I did I would start to think about Jay and Vaughan; my parents and my brother; all the other people we had left behind. If we had survived that day, there was no reason why there wouldn’t be others.
A patchwork of flaming buildings across the towns lit up in the night like lava on the slopes of a volcano. They were linked by blazing roads; the intense vehicle fires looking like psychedelic dew on cobwebs. The brightest flames of all were in the middle of Worthing, spreading unavoidably until they hit the sea. I hate to say it, but it looked beautiful.
We heard a plane that night, probably a passenger jet by the heavy sound of its engines, and clearly in trouble going by the erratic changes in pitch, but we couldn’t see it anywhere above us. We listened breathlessly as the whine of the engines dropped, struggling, and then stopped dead with a series of muffled crumps.
Lou sobbed, so I stroked her hair. We turned to our campfire, sipped our tea and lost an hour or two watching the fleeting sparks lifting from the embers, relishing the cooling balm of the night breeze. We decided to turn in early; well, early for me, but late for Lou for a weekday. Not that that mattered much now. We’d brought a twenty-foot steel dog tether with us, which we secured to a tree away from the fire but so Floyd could keep warm in its glow. We made a fuss of him before zipping up the tent behind us. He was quiet at first and I thought he’d be okay until we heard him whining for us. This was the first night in his life he’d not slept in the same space as us, but I wanted him to keep watch on the camp and it was best to get him used to the situation. He’d have to grow up fast. Eventually he was dozing, and I could hear his soft snores above the crackle of the fire. But gradually, as our ears became used to the quiet, we started to hear noises. Rasping, hoarse moans and, once, the blood-curdling scream of a real living human carried faintly to us on the breeze. I sat bolt upright at the sound of it, but Lou gripped my arm and begged me not to go outside. As if I would. I was too scared to make a joke, too scared to even pretend I would. We gripped each other tightly; the droning of the crickets peppered with the groaning of the undead thousands that surrounded our little plastic tent on a hill in the middle of the night.
[day 0003]
There are not many fears that bright sunshine cannot melt. I was pleased to find that my estimated position of the shade from the morning
sun was spot-on. Lou was up already and I could hear the dog noisily slurping water outside the tent.
‘How long have you been up?’ I blinked in the sun.
‘Good morning grumpy. I’ve been up for about twenty minutes.’ She yawned and stretched. I clambered out of the tent and stood in my pants looking out to sea – what I could see of it. The fires were really taking hold, and some pockets had spread out to the terraced houses and leafy streets of the suburbs. The smoke tainted the crisp freshness of the morning air even up on top of the Ring. I got my binoculars, walked to the triangulation point - officially now the tallest thing around, except for the odd tree - and stood on it, scanning the area surrounding the Ring from the fields to the woods. No zombies, so I peered through the infernos in the town to try to find any familiar landmarks. The only structures that weren’t twisted and flattened to the ground were church spires. In the chaotic, spark-spinning winds some of their bells were sounding with a heavy ring through the scorched stonework, the muffled sound reaching us warped by the heat and setting my teeth on edge.
We could see that our road hadn’t been caught up in the inferno even without the binoculars; the nearest flames were patchy and at least a dozen streets away. I could only make out the back of our house pretty much looking straight down our street from where we were. I couldn’t quite see the workshop but it looked like the ladder was still against the side of the house. I was about to pull the binoculars away when I saw movement - a car, driving from the middle of our street northwards.
I couldn’t make out the colour but it was dark like Al’s. I wondered for a moment if he’d even understand my message, but quickly scolded myself for underestimating him. I tracked the car to the end of the road, and saw it turning left onto the A27, before I lost it behind the trees lining the road. It might not even be him, I thought as I ran back to the camp - what if it wasn’t him? What if someone else had understood my message, and was coming up here?
‘Lou! A car!’ I panted.
‘Really?’ she was pegging the bottom of the tent up, to get air flowing through it. Floyd jumped up at me, wagging his tail like I’d been gone for a year.
‘Where are the radios?’
‘Here, on the table,’ she was on her feet and into the tent, eagerly snatching both radios up and tuning into the sound of static on one of them. She handed me the other.
‘He said he’d be on that preset.’ She pointed. ‘We can go on this one if we want to talk to each other.’
‘Okay, but let’s not waste the battery. I’ll keep mine on standby,’ I said generously, thinking that really I should be in charge of the radios. ‘He was going up the A27 coming this way.’
‘Do you think it is Al then?’
‘I saw him coming out of our street. I’ll bet a fiver it’s him.’
I checked out what I could see of the route up to the Ring. Given that there was absolutely nothing on the roads except car wrecks and walking corpses, I scanned our usual route through Findon Valley and up to the Cissbury Ring car park, wherever the view was unbroken by trees or houses.
‘How long does it take us to drive up here, on a quiet day?’ I asked. Lou usually drove; it was her car, although I had been driving for thirteen years. I had no points, never had a speeding ticket and only ever had one parking ticket. I didn’t drive much.
‘About ten minutes.’
I waited and watched. Ten minutes came and went, and turned into twenty.
‘Maybe it wasn’t him, Sweetpea.’ She kissed my cheek and rubbed the small of my back, and made my helmet tingle. I turned and kissed her on the forehead, and she leaned up to my lips. We hugged.
Lou filled the kettle as I fetched some small fuel to put on the embers from last night, which were still kicking out a fair amount of heat. I stacked some big fuel straight on top of the dry twigs and the fire spat into life. I hung the kettle from the tripod, the three sticks scorched now but still holding true as the green, wet insides resisted the heat. As I went to sit in the shade where Floyd sensibly lay panting, I heard the radio.
At first I thought Lou’s radio was burping up some static indigestion, but it was a voice, broken and garbled. I turned up the volume and searched the Findon road again with my binoculars. I saw nothing, but the stuttering voice continued, getting stronger and more frequent, until I heard, as clear as a bell:
‘Hang on…’
The radio fell silent but then, through the binoculars, I caught sight of a magnificent thing; an old estate with a buckled bonnet, coursing in and out of the burnt-out traffic at a terrific pace. Al had a clear run for a few hundred feet and no zombies in the road.
‘Anyone there, over?’
‘Yes we are, matey!’ I exclaimed.
‘Are you there chums, over?’ Al crackled.
‘You’ve got to press the button on the side, darling.’ Lou was pointing to the handset, but was too far away to be specific. I found a button, and tried that.
‘Yes we are, matey!’
‘Wicked! Are you walking the dog where I think you are, over?’
‘We are indeed! Did you see your old folks?’
Silence, even though he still had a clear stretch, as far as I could see.
‘It’s Al!’ I turned to Lou.
‘I heard, Sweetpea. Let’s have a quick cuddle before he gets here. I won’t get a look-in as soon as you two start talking camp-craft.’
I was so glad we were going through this together; I dreaded to think what my life would be like without her on a normal day, let alone now.
‘There, by the garage.’
I handed Lou the binoculars, and watched her as she tracked the car, turning off into the little flint-knapped hamlet. When it was my go on the binoculars I saw the Audi kicking up dust as Al wound through the narrow streets, deserted and dotted with clothes, cars and bodies stripped to the bone. He kept disappearing from view behind houses, walls and lines of trees, until we eventually saw him coming out of the coppice at the bottom of the hill, and thundering up the single tarmac track which led to the car park.
When Al and I would drive up here to walk Floyd and Dmitri he’d always take it at a cracking pace. You could see all the way up the hill, and as it was a single track with passing places, cars coming down would usually do so cautiously. I would shout ‘Left left over crest’, and we’d laugh. It could get hairy if we’d been playing PlayStation that morning and Al’s eyes were tuned in.
Al parked up and pulled a big rucksack from the back seat, along with what looked like a tent bag and a plastic carrier bag. He also wielded an aluminium baseball bat and had a huge hunting knife on his belt.
‘You alright mate?’ I shouted, cupping my hands.
‘Shush!’ Lou prodded me. ‘You’ve got the radio, you donut.’
‘Al, we’re up here, we can see you,’ I said into the hand-set. ‘Do you want us to come down?’
‘No, mate - just keep an eye on my back,’ Al said, springing the boot for Dmitri who knew exactly where he was. ‘I haven’t seen anyone since Findon anyway. Are you alone up there, over?’
‘Yeah, it’s just me, Lou and the dog. Oh, I think he’s coming down to see you.’
Floyd had seen the bobbing white flag that is the tip of another beagle’s tail, and with his own wagging furiously Floyd half-tumbled, half-sprinted his way down the slope, ignoring the steep wood-and-gravel steps. A light stand of trees covered the bottom of the slope, and for a minute or two we’d lost sight of all three of them.
‘Al, we can’t see you.’
‘Over,’ said Lou, even though she wasn’t holding the radio and I wasn’t pressing the button. I knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t commanding me to say ‘over’, it was just a subconscious acknowledgement of protocol voiced at no-one in particular.
‘It looks clear, and I can’t hear anything,’ Al replied. ‘The dogs would know if there were any about long before us anyway.’
‘Over,’ said Lou again, watching the dogs burst out
from under the cover of the trees and up the open chalk and flint path, followed soon by Al, pushing down on his legs for extra lift. Before long the dogs were upon us, and Lou dropped to the floor giggling as they both bounded around her enthusiastically. As Al reached the final few steps I turned the radio off. He did the same, nodding but silent. He sat down cross legged, catching his breath as beads of sweat pierced his beetroot forehead.
‘Room for a brave one?’ he panted. I laughed.
‘How are your folks?’ I asked.
‘Dead.’ he said, plainly, his eyes closed. I shot Lou a glance, who was sitting up, a dog under each arm.
‘What happened?’ Lou asked.
‘They’re both dead, I’ve seen both of them, and buried them in the back garden. I spent the night there, packed a few things, and then came here. My mum died peacefully, I’m sure of that and I’m glad of that, but I don’t want to say any more,’ he sat up and looked at me. ‘Okay chum? I don’t want to talk about it, ever, and that’s that. Okay?’ Lou looked glum. I took him at his word.
‘Kettle’s on.’
Breaking Through
[day 0003]
Al was obviously ready for a fight. The tent bag turned out to be full of clothes, but he’d brought a load of useful equipment from his parent’s house too, which we unloaded from the Audi. First to come out was a brand new set of kitchen knives, the same set I had at home.
‘That’s not for slicing and dicing those zombie fuckers, they’re for you. I take it you’ll be doing all the cooking?’ He had a spliff between his gritted teeth. We took armfuls of stuff from the car up to the camp, along with more water and – lucky Floyd – two big bags of dog biscuits. Next came some heavy white canvas.
Breaking News: An Autozombiography Page 13