Breaking News: An Autozombiography

by N. J. Hallard

  ‘I got some really long ones, maybe thirty feet or so. Why don’t we halve them or even cut them into thirds, and have one side shorter?’ Al was eager. ‘We should clear the ground too, make sure its solid.’

  We all kitted ourselves out with hand saws, and Al and I went round each log with two rope markers to mark the cutting points, so we were sure we were making the most of the timber - one length of rope was around eight or nine feet long, the other eighteen or nineteen. Soon we had twenty-two long ones and twenty-four short ones, as regular as telegraph poles. Any off-cuts went on the log pile to dry out.

  It was invigorating work, but soon we were all hungry. Al took the empty backpacks and went with Dawn and Dmitri down to his car, taking a radio. He was eager to try out a horse for himself, and he was a natural. They didn’t need to use the radio though, and soon returned with bulging bags. Lou looked a bit sick when we started to pull out the things that she recognised from her mum’s larder, so I suggested she put the kettle on whilst I set about some food. There were two big white onions, loads of tins of tomatoes and some tuna and sardines. There was more salt and pepper, and – genius Jay – Lou’s mum’s spice rack. There was a kilo of dried spaghetti. Tuna bolognaise. As the mixture sat bubbling next to the big pot of pasta on the campfire (now made wider to accommodate two tripods and two pots), I joined the others.

  They were hacking notches into each log with the hand-axes, about six inches from the end, so we could slot the poles on top of each other precisely. Some were better at it than others, being more skilled with their hands naturally or by experience. By mutual agreement these people took over the work, increasing the time needed to finish the job but vastly improving the potential for solid joints. David and Dawn chose their plot, level and facing the fire, a polite distance away from the other structures already erected. The camp already sat in a good spot, in the lee of some trees which should act to break up and soften even the strongest winds.

  As there were to be no windows in the structure, the Goths suggested a south-facing door to catch the most light in the morning. The ten foot by twenty foot strip was cleared of turf quickly, and levelled by whacking it with the flat end of a spade. We laid out the first layer of four logs flat on the ground in a rectangle, following the shape of the exposed earth and scraping away even more soil at the edges so each log sat halfway down into the ground. When that first layer of logs was laid out we could see the actual size and shape of the building for the first time. The notches hacked into each end allowed them to lie together more snugly, making a tighter seal with the next layer of logs, but as more were added it became clear that our measurements had to be spot on. It took a bit of juggling, trying two or three different logs in the same place before we found a good enough fit, with Jay and Al lifting each one into place and me chipping final adjustments out of the notches with one of the hand-axes.

  ‘We need my brother here,’ Lou said wistfully. Mike had been a carpenter and joiner since he left school but had a lively passion for photography, so whenever he could afford to do so he jetted off to the other side of the world to take pictures of interesting stuff. That’s why he was in Thailand. I wondered what the rest of the world thought, if indeed there was anyone left - we certainly hadn’t seen any contrails, or even any planes in the air since the jet we’d heard crumpling into the countryside. Mike would never have the benefit of air travel again. He was trapped alive, effectively, if indeed he was alive. Nice place to be trapped though, I’d seen his photos.

  We worked on the cabin until bad light stopped play, the structure standing chest-high. It all fitted together pretty well, and we’d not even used all of the logs yet.

  ‘Nuts!’ David spurted. ‘We’ve forgotten to put the door in.’

  We had indeed, but as this was everyone’s first attempt at building a log cabin I thought we had done well. Laughing, Al came up with a plan. We lashed two of the eight foot logs upright and next to each other tightly to the outside of the structure - about the right width apart for a modest door. Then he just used the chainsaw to cut out the gap between them, saving the excess for the wood pile. The next day we could work up the door frame until we’d hit the right height to start building a roof. David was eager to spend the night in the unfinished building, laying one tarpaulin out on the ground and stretching another over the top of the half-built walls as cover from the rain.

  ‘It’s alright!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s homely, if a little draughty.’ Dawn wasn’t as impressed by the lack of roof, and opted to stay in Al’s tepee for the night. David shrugged, and said he’d enjoy keeping the dogs warm. After some predictable banter about how David felt about animals we all settled in for the night. As Lou snuggled into my chest I stroked her hair, she soon dropped off, and I began to think about the progress we’d made, and planning how our own house would look. House. I’d never thought of it like that. I contemplated the notion that we might be up here for longer than even I’d thought.

  As I drifted, my eyelids heavy, Lou let out a piercing scream. I’ve heard people say the hair on their head stood on end, but this was the closest I’d ever come to it. It might have had something to do with the proximity of Lou’s vocal chords to my ear; the back of my neck began crawling with electricity and every follicle ached in time with my pulse. The dogs began barking. I sat bolt upright, but my arm was trapped under Lou’s head. I couldn’t hear anything, until Al shouted ‘Chum?’

  Lou screamed again, and I looked around the inside of the tent. There were no claws ripping through plastic, no fingers scrabbling under the sides. Lou’s eyes were still tight shut.

  ‘I think Lou’s having a bad dream,’ I shouted. I tried to wake her but she was out cold, breathing heavily, her forehead creasing. She thrashed her head from side to side and let out a gasp. I shook her, until her eyes sprang open. She took a breath, locking my eyes with her gaze, but not seeing me. Her hands clutched my arms.

  ‘Lou, you’re having a dream.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’ She closed her eyes, but looked drained. ‘Really sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay baby,’ I stroked her head again. ‘It’s okay.’

  I stayed up most of that night, waking Lou when she screamed. I left the door-flap open a crack so Floyd could poke his head in and check on us. When he’d started to scrabble at the outside of tent I’d really nearly shat myself. I could have done with a spliff after that, and remembered our first few camping trips, smoking under the stars listening to John Peel on the radio. I was woken once more in the early hours when the dogs started to howl. I heaved myself outside into the hazy dawn, and found Al and David standing over a headless body. David was still fully dressed, but Al was wearing just his pants and some walking boots. He was holding Jay’s sword.

  ‘This is spot-on,’ he said to me, swinging the blade in an arc.

  I donned the gloves, grabbed a twisted leg and dragged the body to the edge. Al wrestled the chap’s head from the dogs and drop-kicked it over the edge with a crunch, before looking with dismay at his right boot. It was slicked in a gloss-black sheen.

  ‘That’s rotten,’ he said. ‘It sounded like his head was hollow; it split when I hoofed it.’

  I filled the washing-up bowl with water and carried it to Al at the edge of the Ring. I sluiced the water over his boots, taking care not to splash any back on us or into the bowl. I mumbled my goodnights and stumbled back into my tent.

  [day 0009]

  The others had let me stay in bed; Lou was up before anyone else. She and Dawn had set about tidying the camp up, and made a big pot of porridge with half water, half UHT milk. Mine was like dry sponge when I finally got to it, but it tasted amazing dipped in sugar. It was a hot day, but the others had made an early start and finished off the logs from yesterday, adding another foot to the height, and were eager to get back into the woods to fetch more. I pulled my shoes on whilst Dawn got the horses ready and Jay and David discussed security. They showed me a quick-release thingy they had worked out for th
e chain, in case they needed to dump the wood and get the horses away from danger quickly. The plan was to have the Goths continually tow sets of ten logs up the steep track from the coppice to the camp, making several journeys slowly and steadily. It would keep the horses busy and out of the way of the noise the saw made; but would mean we’d have to be on our toes in the woods, and would lack the higher vantage-point afforded from horseback. We could also fetch a lot more wood this way, and if we had to abandon the woods we’d have at least some materials in camp to work with.

  We hiked down first to make a start on the felling, and to see how we fared on our own. We almost felt more mobile without the horses, and were especially heartened when we saw another two zombies failing miserably to scale the side of the hill fort. Al took responsibility for safety, and worked out a system of warning based on the hours on a clock face. We all knew roughly where each tree would fall by now anyway, but we could have done with David’s warning whistles. When we had eight or so logs cut and drilled, Lou radioed up to the Goths. We rolled the logs into place next to each other, and soon we heard horse’s hooves as Dawn picked her route through the coppice. David sat atop the other horse, carrying the chain. They set down, and we loaded them up. They were in and out in just four and a half minutes.

  We carried on through the morning, the heat building with each hour, Al stopping after each tree to quaff the water David had brought down with them. We walked our circle, and picked off just two walkers that had ambled into the clearing, both apparently uninjured. I found I was being almost over-cautious since nearly pasting Dawn, and I actually thought they might be survivors at first. Their clothes were stained – red not black - but not tattered, and it was only their gurning jaws and bared teeth that gave their game away. They were quicker than the one we’d seen the day before, and had no problem with the slighter slope of the mulch-strewn floor. Seeing their split skulls spilling healthy pink globes of fatty matter onto the leafy ground made me think of the difference between these fresher ones and the hollow-sounding head that Al had put his foot through, with its black, rotten core. They were definitely slowing down, perhaps even decaying. We left them where they landed, at the edge of the trees - we were felling in the other direction. But just before we radioed to the top for what must have been the fifth or sixth load, Lou saw more movement through the trees, down towards the car park. We saw it was the shape of a man, and then we heard a voice.

  ‘You have to help us. My daughter.’ He was sobbing.

  There were two little figures alongside him, but he was carrying something too, which hung limp from his arms like a sack. They all burst into the clearing and the man stumbled, falling to his knees. He was holding a young girl. Soon another little girl and a slightly older boy were at his side, with black hair and nut-brown eyes, clutching at the man’s clothes - their dad I assumed. The littlest one’s face was streaming with tears whilst the older one, still no more than eight, stood with his jaw out and a determined look in his eye. The dad had a bandaged head and a beard, and it was only when he started speaking more slowly that I realised from his accent that it was a turban, clawed loose by the branches.

  ‘My daughter has been bitten,’ he sobbed. ‘We were in the car and we got a flat tyre, we tried to fix it. Sachbir, she’s only fourteen. Sirs, you must help us.’

  We were dumbfounded, but Lou was the first to act. She walked forward cautiously, and asked the man to lay her onto the ground. He seemed to crumple as he let her free from his grip. She seemed wilted and grey, her clothes sodden from sweat. A great long gash lay open on her calf, one edge serrated as if torn. She moaned.

  ‘Oh great, she’s still alive.’ I murmured.

  ‘How did it happen?’ Lou asked him.

  ‘Has anyone else been bitten?’ I was keeping my distance.

  ‘No, none of us have, except Sachbir. She was helping me find the place to put the jack underneath. It is my brother’s car, an unfamiliar one, but she is smaller than me you see? I took my eyes off her and a young man just bit her in the leg. He was one of them.’

  ‘One of them?’ I asked.

  ‘One of those fucking filthy dead bastards!’ He sputtered. That was that, then; it wasn’t just me and my stoner, zombie-movie fan chums. With everything out in the open I thought it was best to cut to the quick.

  ‘You know she’s gone, don’t you?’ I asked quietly. Lou shot me a glance. ‘Mate? You know that she’ll be one of them? Sachbir is dead.’

  His face seemed to collapse into his beard, and great fat tears rolled into his lap. He spoke after a minute.

  ‘I know, I know. I have lost my wife and my father this week. The very same happened to them, I tried to nurse them, but they turned onto me, onto the children. We were escaping yesterday night when we broke down and…’ He heaved great juddering sobs, and his smallest daughter buried her head into the folds of his jacket. The little boy still stood stock-still, only his chin now quivering.

  ‘We have walked here,’ the boy offered quietly.

  ‘Okay, we’ve got a little more way to walk, up that hill, you see it?’ Lou was bending down to the little boy, taking charge. ‘I’ll take you and your sister up there, we can have some tea. Would you like to do that?’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Al said, pulling the chainsaw to life. ‘You’ll be safe here, with us.’

  ‘Will Sachbir be well again?’ the little lad shouted to Lou over the two-stroke rattle of the saw. She said nothing; I wondered if she was choking up. I stood next to his father, who was built like a bear. I could feel the soft ground shaking with every judder of his shoulders. I put a hand on one.

  ‘Mate, you know what we’ve got to do, don’t you? You know why you were escaping?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said softly.

  ‘Well, age is no barrier for whatever this disease is.’ I said. ‘She’s dead already, and we have to do this now.’

  He threw his head back and let off a long wail. My neck-hairs stood dutifully to attention. Jay got on the radio – he was getting jumpy too. Lou and Al had already headed up the slope with the kids and now it was just the three of us standing round just the one of them. One was enough. It felt like it was all starting to unravel.

  ‘Dawn, David – we’ve got some survivors here. Lou and Al are coming up with two kids, and we’re with another one now. Can you come down to meet them, over?’ A whoop sounded from the radio.

  ‘You have radios?’ he sniffed moistly.

  ‘We’ve got lots of things. You’ll all be safe here,’ I told him. ‘But I’m afraid Sachbir can’t come. You go on ahead with the kids, Jay and I will follow you, but you have to leave her here with us.’

  ‘No!’ he roared as he pulled himself to his feet. He was massive - I wasn’t going to argue, even before I noticed the long curved sword at his side. Then the girl groaned and sat up.

  ‘No, you two go. I will follow you. First I will kill this thing that has taken my daughter,’ he hissed.

  ‘Make sure you get this bit,’ I said, pointing at the back of my neck, but Jay was pulling me away by my arm.

  We left him in the woods with his daughter’s corpse. After a minute we heard a dry crack ring out followed by another wail, then nothing. We waited where we were, halfway up to the top of the Ring. We’d heard Dawn’s horse trotting to meet the others, just out of sight at the top. Soon the man appeared behind us, with his turban restored to shape, carrying his daughter in his arms just like before, but this time her head sat on her lap, facing the sky, lips apart. He looked half the size as we walked in silence next to him.

  ‘I’ll radio ahead; to get the kids out of sight.’ Jay said.

  ‘No,’ the man said sharply. ‘They have to see.’

  Tough love, I thought. It was true, they had to be careful, and demonstration was the best education - if they were to survive, that is. When we’d got him back to camp and we’d laid his daughter under some trees, he wiped his eyes and told us his name was Daltegh Singh. The boy was cal
led Patveer, and the little girl Janam. He told us to call him Dal. They all lived in Worthing and had holed up in their house when the virus hit, turning the streets into a frenzy and blocking the roads with traffic. He thought they were safe after the third day, and they all walked out of the house to get help. They hadn’t got far before Dal’s father had fallen and been bitten by a girl in a bush. Dal ran back to fetch his sword, but his wife had been attacked by the time he returned. He had got angry with her, he said, looking apologetic. I tried to tell him it wasn’t his fault, but he wasn’t having it. He’d carried his wife and father back to the house, and nursed them as best he could until they’d turned. Then they ran for the safety of the children. Sachbir had been infected on the way.

  ‘I had seen your fire from the town,’ he said to me. ‘Sir, I will need to use that fire,’

  ‘Oh, for a pyre,’ I said. Al was looking at me.

  ‘We do not have to,’ Dal said, ‘but I would like to do so.’

  ‘Some council up north got done for letting a Sikh family burn a relative’s body in a public park last year,’ I explained to anyone in earshot. ‘It was the first open pyre in Britain since the 1930’s. It looks like we’re going to have another one. What do you need us to do?’ I asked him.

  He told us, and I explained that we needed to get the quicklime we’d made out of the pit, and then build the firewood up again. Dal nodded, and we all set-to, raking away the charcoal to reveal the grey powder underneath. The quicklime process had certainly seemed to work, but whether or not it would do the job of breaking down the corpses any quicker was another matter. We piled the finished product up onto the tarpaulin and took it to the V-shaped notch, the centre of the most activity over the past few days. The corpses – three deep in places - stank in the heat, a thick black cloud of flies ever present. Gagging, we used spades to fling the claggy powder into the ditch, as evenly as we could. We got a thin coating over most of them with the amount we’d made, and wherever they were still moving but unable to walk, the contact of the grey dust would make them squirm like salted slugs.