Breaking News: An Autozombiography

by N. J. Hallard

  ‘If we do this once a week, we’ll soon be able to cover them quite well.’ Al said, firing nails into the faces of any that were still moving. It wasn’t very efficient, but no-one was volunteering to jump in to do a neater job.

  ‘It’s supposed to halve the decomposition time David says.’ I told him. ‘I suppose we’ve got all the time we need.’

  We built an awesome pyre; chest-high with straight sides, just like Vader’s at the end of Return of the Jedi. We topped it off with the shorter, thicker off-cuts from the building work, making a level platform that Dal rested Sachbir’s corpse onto. He spent a while resting her head in place on top of her shoulders, but it kept rolling to one side.

  Al and Jay had made six torches, four of which they handed out to David, me, Dal and little Patveer (already nicknamed ‘Paddy’ by Jay). But Dal shook his head, and gave his to Lou and told the kids to share theirs. I guess they’d assumed he wasn’t into women doing things, but from what I’d seen he’d not got many hang-ups. He certainly was eager for the kids, snot-faced and small, to get involved. Patveer had stood with him as he prepared the body, wrapping it in the canopy Al had given him from his tent. The girl had taken a shine to Dawn and they’d both made a fuss of the horses, watching us prepare the fire.

  I asked Dal if he wanted to say anything but he didn’t, so we all leant our torches at the base of the structure. We all stood for a few minutes. I watched as the flames played around the girl, melting her hair to her scalp and sucking her cheeks around her teeth. We left silently, leaving Dal clutching what was left of his family.

  ‘We’ve got to get a treaty going, or a pact, or an agreement or whatever.’ I was sat with the others around the campfire, sipping Lou’s mum’s vegetable soup.

  ‘Rules you mean?’ Lou asked.

  ‘Yeah, but rules that mean something – they’d be rules that are too deadly to be broken,’ I replied. ‘We’ve got to establish a system; something that people can rely on, and that we can use without any sense of guilt or remorse. You know, to make it as difficult as possible for newcomers to put the rest of the camp in danger.’

  ‘Like what though?’ Lou quizzed.

  ‘I dunno. It won’t be pleasant. To guard against exactly what happens in the movies when someone gets bitten. You know the sort of thing; hoping their loved ones will recover, looking after them but also spelling Game Over for everyone else.’

  ‘Take the bull by the horns. I agree; there should be absolutely no fucking about.’ Al was sitting up. ‘Zero tolerance on foolishness, no question - if someone gets bitten, that’s it. Even if you love them there’s no option. Especially if you love them, you’ve got to put them out of their misery.’ I wondered what exactly Al had seen at his parent’s house. He was so sure of the point I was making, and I appreciated the backup.

  ‘It is fucking miserable. It has to be done humanely, as it were.’ Jay scratched his nose.

  ‘Like Dal, in the woods.’ I said ‘He knew he had to do it, I think he just wanted to hear someone else say it. He did it without questioning it really, as soon as he found us. He did it for the other two kids too. But the truth is we can probably expect more survivors to come, as their food runs out or as they see that there are signs of life up here. I would suggest that most of them won’t be as quick to reach to the conclusion that Dal did, and time is of the essence.’

  ‘Also,’ Al chipped in, ‘If they see any movement after they’ve become zombified that’ll just add to the illusion that there’s some hope of a recovery.’

  ‘Very true,’ I said.

  ‘But won’t they have seen what these things are like over the past week? Won’t they know what they’re dealing with?’ Jay was playing Devil’s Advocate, which was good, it was what we needed.

  ‘Some people might have been holed up since the outbreak.’ Al suggested. ‘They might not have seen anything really serious happen, and now they could easily make it all the way up here without seeing what this disease can do.’

  ‘Plus, some people are just idiots with their eyes permanently shut anyway. I don’t want those idiots putting anyone up here in danger. We deserve to be here, we deserve to have survived. We’re not idiots; should decide how best to survive from now on.’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, I’m not too sure about this,’ David admitted. ‘This was your site, you were here first. If you want to do anything like that I’ll definitely support you, but I don’t want the responsibility of making up the new law of the land.’ Dawn nodded her agreement.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘So that’s that. If we’re all agreed, the four of us – me, Lou, Al and Jay - then we’re making the law.’

  We the undersigned hereby state that we will abide by the following rules of the camp at Cissbury Ring under penalty of complete and permanent expulsion, imposable by force and decided by the common consent of the first four to strike camp there (hereafter referred to as the Group of Four):

  I am a free human being, of sound mind, and understand that I am entirely responsible for my own actions

  I understand a highly infectious disease has spread throughout the country

  My skin has not been broken by or near an infected person

  I have not, to my knowledge, ingested, inhaled or consumed anything that may be infected, including: blood; spittle; mucus; flesh; skin; bone; semen; menstrual fluid; vomit; bile; urine; faeces; breast milk; tears; or any other potentially infectious material not mentioned

  If my skin has been broken by an infected person I will be decapitated without question or compassion by the person closest to me at the time of infection

  (If decapitation is not an option, the top of my spinal chord must be severed)

  If the skin of someone next to me is broken by an infected person I will immediately decapitate them without question or compassion

  (If decapitation is not an option, the top of their spinal chord will be severed)

  I understand that my responsibility to other survivors goes beyond family, love, friendship or any other human compulsion

  I understand that if I need help, assistance or support at any time I will ask a fellow member of the camp

  I will arm myself and be prepared to use my weapon to protect myself and other members of the camp, and will help keep the camp secure in any way seen fit by the common consent of the Group of Four

  Only specific camp members agreed by the common consent of the Group of Four may interact with the water storage and water collection equipment (hereafter referred to as Representatives)

  Only Representatives will be responsible for the horses; the armoury or the stores or anything else deemed appropriate by the common consent of the Group of Four

  I am free to put myself forward for consideration by the Group of Four to be a Representative responsible for the horses; the armoury or the stores (or anything else deemed appropriate for protection by the common consent of the Group of Four as they arise)

  I am free to use a horse or anything in the armoury or the stores, but I will give as much notice as possible to the Representative responsible

  I will not collect water

  I will not leave the camp without someone else

  I will not leave the camp without telling a member of the Group of Four or a Representative

  By using the camp’s supplies (firewood; building wood; water; food), I am bound to replenish them as I can

  I understand the Group of Four is not exempt from any of the above, nor should be afforded any special or favourable treatment or bias of any kind

  As the four of us were signing our names I’ll admit I did wonder briefly if we were doing the right thing, but I quickly told myself it would be preferable to have set up the laws before any other survivors might arrive. The decapitation was a bit harsh – I hoped I’d never have to do to Lou what Dal had done to Sachbir. I also wondered if the pact would ever mean anything, even in a year - for the time being at least it could just keep us alive. Anyway, deep down English people l
iked rules, I told myself. I just never thought I’d be making them up on a bit of A4 with my chums.

  Dal was impressed with the camp. He said he’d ridden horses before, but that ours were far too weedy to be good in battle (his phrase). He loved Al’s tent, and told us of the tents he’d seen when he was living in India. He’d described them like ships, with great white sails flapping against the horizon. He had no shelter, but was happy to sleep by the fire if the kids could bed down somewhere under cover. We showed him the cabin, and for the first time I saw the fruits of our labour in the woods. In a neat pile there was about three or four times as much timber as we’d collected the day before, so I was confident we could house the new arrivals, even if it was in temporary lean-to shelters. David had numbered each log with Al’s knife, and kept notes of the amount and size of the timber. He’d also written a complete inventory of the equipment, consumables and weaponry that we had amassed in the camp. I even watched David scrambling for his notes when he first spotted Dal’s Sinbad-style scimitar, which he’d let Al and Jamie play with. Dal sat cross-legged on a log as his children played with Floyd and Dmitri, and he told us that he knew a way to make the horses far more efficient. He talked about making a yoke for them to push against, instead of pulling the weight of the logs.

  He had already signed the bit of paper we’d thrust at him without question, and got the kids to sign their names under Dawn and David’s. I rolled it up carefully and put it back in my tent, then returned to the others. I caught the tail-end of a rhyme or something that Janam had wanted to sing to people for ages, but my ears pricked when I heard a woman wailing. Janam stopped singing and ran to Dal’s arms. Patveer demanded the sword from Al and handed it to his father, who stood to join Jay and I as we searched the horizon.

  ‘I’ll check it out,’ Jay said, and walked to the sound, swinging his axe. Al followed, and Patveer went too but his father called him back, much to his disappointment.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Dal asked.

  ‘Chill,’ I said. ‘Jay’s pretty handy, but that sounds like a survivor to me.’

  Sure enough, a woman was being hauled up the slope by a sweaty man, as tall as me but wider, with short curly hair and jewellery. They were red faced; her from crying, him from a painful-looking suntan. The woman moaned and wailed, trying to flop to the floor as the high heel of her single shoe caught in the thick tussocks of grass at the edge of the Ring.

  ‘Stop there,’ Jay had his axe lowered yet visible, but Al openly slipped a strip of nails into his nail-gun in front of them. The man looked at them both, but continued dragging the woman towards our camp.

  ‘Have either of you been bitten?’ Jay was shouting now, and held his axe up. We all waited for a response, but none came.

  ‘Look, mate,’ Jay said, ‘I need to know if you’ve been bitten or scratched or…’

  ‘Fuck off, sunbeam. I got the missus in one ear; I don’t need you on at me too.’

  Al turned to look at me and I nodded. I didn’t really know what I was nodding for, but it soon became apparent as Al popped three nails into the man’s foot. He promptly dropped the woman and they both fell to the ground, screaming.

  ‘You fucking twat! What did you do that for?’ he demanded of Al, who was airily unsympathetic. I walked up to them. Jay looked ready to take his head off, and I puffed up my chest and stood over the man. I hated confrontations, they made me shake and my eyes go blurry. My heart felt like it was going to burst into my mouth.

  ‘My man here asked you to stop.’ I said. ‘We’ve got people up here, children too. None of us are infected. You were asked to stop because you might be infected. What’s wrong with her?’ I pointed at the woman.

  ‘Oh, she’s as useless as arseholes, there’s nothing wrong with her.’

  ‘Oi, fuck off!’ The woman’s fall had brought her round from her wailing stupor, and now she was simply indignant.

  ‘She’s not been bitten, or scratched? You’ve not been bitten or scratched?’ I demanded.

  ‘Nah, mate, she’s fine, I’m fine. We just got pissed off waiting around. Help me with my fucking foot.’ He was clutching it and wincing. I looked behind me, to see the others who were now making their way towards us.

  ‘You were at home when it all kicked off then?’ I asked.

  ‘Look mate, what’s it to you? Who the fuck are you anyway?’ he stuck his chin out at me. I was getting a bit fed up with him.

  ‘I’m going to have to ask you both to take your clothes off and sign a list of the camp rules.’ I said, unable to stop a big grin from spreading across my chops. As he began to splutter insults at us, Jay turned to me, lowering his voice.

  ‘What do you want to do with them?’ he asked me.

  ‘Dig a pit.’

  Making Friends

  [days 0010 – 0015]

  More survivors turned up over the next few days but we’d only dug two pits. True to form Jay and Dal worked pretty much constantly with pick-axes and spades. Every new arrival went in for four days, unless they were willing to show us they had no breaks in their skin by stripping off, in which case they came out after twenty-four hours to sign the agreement and help with the digging. Each pit was impressive - at least ten feet deep but they could only hold three or four people standing up. They were like vertical graves really, and pretty inhumane if I’m honest. A family of four were in one of the pits; sunburnt, hobbling Brian and his gobshite girlfriend Jenna were in the other, along with two people who hadn’t met each other. We’d only had one major scare; a woman who had refused to show us a wound on her leg promptly fainted and puked black slush down herself. I took her head off. Her husband Paul was one of the people in the second pit, and the other was Jez, a student who had spent a week and a half up a tree in a park before running here simply because it was the highest point he could see. No-one had a problem with the procedure except Brian and Jenna, who were still refusing to prove they’d not been bitten. The others all showed their unbroken skin and seemed glad to let someone else defend them for a while.

  The family of four were nice. I made sure I sat and talked to them all for at least half an hour each day. Jez was funny too – he was a chronic piss-taker and never let up on Brian, who nearly thumped him on several occasions. Jay, who had taken on the pits as part of his security duties, had to lasso Brian one time to keep him from fighting. Paul, however, was inconsolable after I’d decapitated his missus. I tried to explain that his wife had been doomed from the moment she’d got bitten, but he couldn’t see it - he didn’t really have a clue what was going on. I wasn’t very good at being comforting to people, so I gave up after a bit. Glyn, the father of the family, was very understanding about the quarantine pits, and he had shown us that they had no scratches or cuts even before they’d got into their pit, which meant that they were only in for a day.

  He had a key to a mechanics in Findon, and he’d barricaded his family inside the inspection pit and toughed it out. The garage door was still open onto the street, so they had freaks coming in and scrabbling at the heavy steel plate he’d pulled over his family. They had no food or water and the gas lamp ran out on the second day, so they’d been in total darkness too. They’d broken out one night and started to fight their way up to Cissbury Ring with crowbars and spanners. He’d joked that it was nice to have the fresh air, even in the dank pit. We fed and watered everyone, and used tarpaulin to cover the tops of the pits at night. The rain still got in though, and rats too. We’d seen rats in the camp, as the flesh got stripped from the corpses in the ditch around the base of the Ring and they began to look elsewhere for their food. Al had got his eye in with the nail gun, but everyone had their own weapons, so they didn’t last long if you could catch them. The dogs found the rats very amusing indeed.

  I divided my time between cooking, felling, building and foraging. Most other people seemed to settle into routines, sticking to their tasks but being on hand to help out anyone else. David and I knew the food was running low but
said nothing, eking out the last of the supplies as best we could. I’d dug a latrine – a deep ditch which led over the back edge of the Ring. It sloped slightly, allowing urine to trickle away (piss was pretty neutral anyway – I’d heard of people using their own on their vegetable patches). Turds just sat there, and as people’s guts started to complain about the change in their diet, it got pretty stinky. Dal had crushed a load of chalk into powder, and we encouraged people to throw on a handful after each visit to keep the smell down. Every time we finished washing clothes or cooking equipment, the water would be carried to the back of the Ring, and get sluiced down the trench. Someone built a couple of little seats, like decorator’s trestles, which you perched on if you needed to. Several people’s guts went the other way and just got bunged up in the change of circumstance, so some of them fell ill, getting pale and sweaty. Only Dawn had any kind of medical training, but was lost without pharmaceuticals, so we consulted the survival books, already looking well thumbed and worn. We got two cooking pots and soaked, then stewed any dandelions that we could find, reducing the green-brown liquor by a third and giving it to those with constipation. It worked almost too well. I picked blackberries and crushed some hazel leaves and elm bark, then poured boiling water on it. Dawn did this once a day for those who had the squirts, and pretty soon there were far fewer complaints.