Diaries of the Damned

by Laybourne, Alex

  It was only as the first zombie crossed the threshold that the group realized two things: One - Glenn was dead; his blood no longer flowed from the wound in his chest; Two the door had been left open, and the dead had queued up for their turn at the buffet.

  Everybody moved in an instant, by impulse rather than actual decision. Rebecca and Danielle began flailing away with whatever they could find, screaming with exertion as the first of the assailants approached. He was an older, heavyset man, who used his bulk to walk through whatever stood in his way.

  Robert and Dan grappled with a pair of zombies, trying to force them out of the open door and back into the masses.

  A cry rang out as Rebecca pulled her arm away from the man, the floor already crimson from both the wound and the gaping mouth lunching on her flesh. The zombie, with one arm free, struck out at Rebecca, punching her in the face hard enough to cause her to lose her grip.

  The menacing creature growled as it stood to full height, ready to claim its conquest.

  “Die bitch!” Nathalie screamed, appearing from the kitchen with a canister of hair spray and a cigarette lighter. Without a moment’s hesitation, she flicked the wheel. On the third attempt the lighter sprang into action with a tall flame. The zombie showed no signs of stopping. Nathalie sent a jet of hairspray through the flame and watched with amazement at the speed with which the man caught fire.

  Flames savaged the flesh as if it were a pile of dried out twigs. The zombie screamed, or rather, gave a high pitch groan. Robert never knew if they could feel pain, but that sound the creature made as he burned made him certain they could…on some level.

  Thinking quickly, Mark jumped up from beside Glenn and grabbed a large sofa cushion from the floor. Using it as a shield, he shoved the zombie backward, guiding him through the open door and into the crowd. The flames spread, and within seconds of closing the door, seven of them were consumed in the blaze.

  “Fuck me! That was too close,” Mark breathed a heavy sigh of relief as he slid down the door, coming to rest within his knees pulled toward his chest, and his head resting in the groove between them.

  “Too close,” Dan agreed.

  “What should we do with Glenn?” Dan motioned to the newest body in the house’s history. He lay on the floor, his eyes closed, at peace. “We can’t leave him here, and I am sure not about to throw a friend of mine out to them,” he continued, stamping his foot on the floor for added emphasis.

  “We will put him upstairs for now. We can rest him in Phillips room.” It was only a small room on the mezzanine floor that divided the house in to a marketable three story property, and meant that the body was above them, and they wouldn’t have to walk past it every day.

  The body was heavy. It was with weary limbs that the three men carried their friend up the stairs. The door to Philip's room was closed. Nobody had seen what happened to him, but Phillip was a wild one; the craziest of the group. For him to disappear was normalcy.

  “You get the door Rob, we’ve got him,” Mark grunted.

  Robert released his hold on the body and turned to open the door. He did, and screamed. The others took a single look, and screamed. They dropped the body, which landed with a heavy thump onto the floor.

  “Philip, what the fuck man?” Glenn cried out after his brain had allowed him to piece together the scene.

  “Dude, you need to try this,” Philip’s voice came from the room. The stench of alcohol and cannabis flowed out of the room like a rolling mist, and made them all cough. “This girl’s always fucking horny, dude. It’s awesome.” Philip howled like a lunatic and resumed his wild pounding into the raised rear of the zombie he had tied to the bed. She lay on her stomach, but from the way her restraints crossed each other, it was clear that she spent most of her time looking at the ceiling. Her mouth was open and chomped at the air, her tongue darting from between the bloodied mess that had been her mouth like a snake’s tasting the air for the food she knew was close by. It was then that they saw Philip had removed all of her teeth. They lay in a pile on the floor, beside of pair of pliers.

  Philip pumped a few more times, and then gave a groan of satisfaction before falling back onto the bed, laughter erupting with his every breath.

  “Come on dude, climb on this bitch. She loves it.” He sat up, and they could see in his eyes that he had gone quite mad. “Watch.” He sat up and rolled the undead woman over. The hole in her neck had already dried, which told them how long the two of them had been locked in the room.

  The moment the zombie was on her back, she began to grind her hips in the air, and when Philip released the bond that held her left hand to the bed, rather than search for his neck, it searched for the dried out spot between her legs.

  “I’m going to be sick.” Mark retched and spun away just as a shower of vomit erupted from his mouth. He fell to his knees and called at the approaching girls to stay where they were.

  “Phil, man, you need help. Come here, man, and we’ll take care of her; you get dressed and go grab something to eat,” Robert offered. Though it had only been a few days, there was a strangely emaciated look to his friend, a pale sickly pallor to his skin.

  “No! Just leave us alone, it’s our honeymoon.” Philip screeched at them, his hand reaching out to squeeze the hardened tits of his stone cold lover. It was then that they saw the wound on his left forearm. It was not a bite, but rather what appeared to be a deep scratch for it ran through his flesh for several inches.

  Moving quickly, Robert and Dan jumped back and pulled the door closed.

  “We can’t leave him there; he is sick, it is only a matter of time before he turns into a fucking zombie.” Nobody laughed at the double entendre of Dan’s statement. All five of the remaining houseguests sat together in the Glenn’s bedroom. The girls had not seen Philip, but had heard enough to consider themselves up to speed.

  “So what, we just throw them both out there?” Robert pointed out of the window.

  “What choice do we have? We can’t just leave them in there to fuck for the rest of our lives,” Dan responded.

  “What is that all about anyway?” Rebecca asked. “I thought that zombies were just hungry for…flesh and brains.” She cringed as she spoke the words. All of the sights and sounds of the previous few days played out in her mind.

  “I don’t know. This is real life, and there are zombies. I don’t think movie rules apply anymore. My guess is that if you died with certain…cravings or urges, then you kept it when you came back,” Robert mused, watching their faces to see how they would react. It was something he had been thinking of ever since he met the first corpse finger banging herself in the kitchen. Had she not been so preoccupied, he would have been dead too. Of that, he was certain. “If they were strong enough, that is.”

  “It can’t be, man,” Mark scoffed, unable to think of anything more fitting.

  Robert rose from the floor and walked to the window. “Oh no? Take a look at this.” He pulled the curtain to one side and stared at the gathered crowd. “You see down there…watch. Drunk, drunk, horny,” he pointed to three zombies, all of whom had been at their party the night everything started. “But over there, you have a group of hungry zombies, and look; there is the woman that we tried to save.” He pointed to the bloodied form of the mother that had killed Glenn. She stumbled around, her hands out before her, a cry etched on her face. Her abdomen had been ripped open and an indeterminate organ – it looked like her kidney – hung from the hole, bouncing around like a macabre yo-yo. “Don’t you see it Mark? Being a zombie fills you will hunger, but if you had a desire for something else when you died, that must stay in your brain too; the prefrontal cortex or whatever part it is that controls such things.”

  Though they were all convinced by the points Robert made, there was no time for anyone to speak. There was a loud scream and a crash from the bedroom on the half-floor.

  Moving quickly, the group, including the girls, who did not want to be left alone, made their way b
ack to the bedroom. The female zombie was still half tied to the bed, and her other hand still buried between her legs. Philip lay on the floor, his body convulsing as the last pulses of life fired out into the world.

  “Looks like we don’t have a choice anymore,” Mark was the first to speak.

  They closed the door and stood on the landing in silence, nobody daring to voice the only real option they had.

  “Who’s going to do it?” Rebecca asked; the silence had made her whole body itch.

  “We’ll do it together,” Robert answered, looking at his two friends.

  “Yeah, ladies why don’t you go wait in the room? There is no need for you to see any of this,” Mark offered them the chance to walk away, but they did not move.

  “We are all involved. If we’re going to survive this we all need to carry our own weight. We can’t hide in here forever,” Danielle offered, in a surprising display of defiance.

  “Ok, well, let’s do her first, and hope that Philip doesn’t wake up before we get done,” Robert suggested, while they waited for Mark to return with the right tools to conduct their business with. He came back with a kitchen knife, a pair of scissors, and three chair legs.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here, man,” He apologized as he handed out the weapons with trembling arms.

  “None of us do, dude. These will be fine.” Robert patted his friend on the shoulder. “We’ll go in on three. One… two…”

  * * *

  With the deed done, they sat in a sort of comfortable silence. The bodies had been disposed of, and from the sounds that came beyond the door, the zombies had picked their bones clean; especially Philip, who had been the fresher of the two.

  Night fell, and the group slept. They moved as a single unit: if one went downstairs for a snack, they all went; everything became one fluid motion. Even toilet trips followed the same routine, although privacy was still granted when called for. No chances were taken, and the house was searched at regular times throughout the day, not just for signs of intrusion, but for possible weak points, and escape routes should that be necessary.

  The food and drink were in ample supply, and after three days – when the electricity went out – they had cleaned out all of the fresh food and drunk all of the beer so paid it little mind.

  “Hey, look,” Mark whispered to Robert, who sat perched on the edge of the bed. The two of them had been on the night shift and now, just as the day began to dawn, Mark looked out into the street to find it almost empty.

  “They’re getting bored. They’re moving away,” Robert whispered with a smile on his face. It was a little too early to get excited.

  “Shall we tell the others?” Mark asked.

  “Why wake them? We can’t go anywhere; or rather, we have nowhere to go. We’ll have to move soon, but not now,” Robert answered, looking up and down the street. Something didn’t feel right about it.

  Two days later, as they shared the last can of soup in the cupboard; they made the decision to move. The road had been relatively quiet for forty-eight hours, and while the odd zombie strolled past, the men were confident in their ability to take their shots and keep the group mobile.

  “Worst comes to worst we flame thrower them and duck for cover in a house. We will keep to the residential areas as long as possible. Make our way out of the city.” Robert outlined their plan. He knew it was shaky, and a foolish idea to suggest charging into a house without checking it out first, but this was their emergency contingency plan after all; desperate times always called for desperate measures.

  “Why out of the city? Surely help will be in the city,” Rebecca replied as she swirled the last mouthful of soup in her cup.

  “I doubt it,” Robert began, not understanding that every word he spoke increased his standing as the leader of the group. “The zombies will be at their heaviest in the city center. I mean that it will be the most heavily populated area. We need to head out of town, into the rural areas. Once we get there we can plan where to go. I think we should avoid the densely populated areas.”

  “We should try to find a military base,” Dan offered.

  “Marham is the nearest base to here. It’s an RAF base…” Mark began but was cut off by Nathalie.

  “Marham is too far away, we’d never make it, not if those things really are everywhere. Our best bet is to head up to Coltishall. They closed it back in ’06, but I heard that everything was still there. It is the perfect place. If the military were going to set up an additional base of operations, as they’re bound to do, that would be their ideal place. They would just need to send people, no additional work required.” She stopped talking when she noticed every face at the kitchen table staring at her in wide-eyed astonishment. “What? My dad was in the RAF. I know all about that stuff,” she added as if it was common knowledge. It was easy to forget that they had only really known each other a few days.

  “Where is that?” Robert asked. He was not from the area, and while he had lived his whole life not too far away, the geography of towns and places was Greek to him.

  “We head north out of the city, past the airport. Head east, toward the coast, follow the A140 and then the B1354 I think. 54 or the 56, I always get them confused. Anyway, it’s a lot closer than Marham, and our best bet out of the city,” Nathalie continued.

  “Then it’s settled,” said Robert “One more night here and then we will leave early, just as the sun comes up. That seems to be when the streets are quietest.” Robert rounded off the meeting, which had begun as a discussion about making a supply run to the Texaco garage two streets over, for toilet paper and chocolate bars.

  None of the group slept much that night. When the time came to open the front door and head out into the world, all fatigue was forgotten, and a strange excitement hung over them.

  Chapter 9 – They Came From Outside

  “We didn’t make it more than three miles before we lost our first member. We rounded a corner and walked right into a cluster of about a dozen zombies. They had just ripped open the chest of some random guy. His screams were still in the air. We turned around to move away, but Rebecca tripped and turned her ankle. We tried to carry her, but it was too late. They tore her from my grip and ripped her apart.” Robert’s eyes had welled with tears as one by one he recounted the deaths of his friends.

  “It’s okay, Robert, I’ve got enough here,” Paul interrupted, taking the moment to wipe the sweat from his brow.

  “We made it out of the city, onto the ring road. It was freaky man. The cars had all been moved to the side of the road, parked in long neat lines. The army did it, I guess, because they picked us up as we drew close to the airport but…but…” A tear rolled down Robert’s cheek as he fought the memory.

  “What was it, Rob?” Leon gently pushed.

  “They took the time to move the cars, line them up nice and tight, but they left the dead sitting in them. After everything that I saw in that house, after having watched my best friends ripped apart, that was still the worst. Seeing those cars filled with corpses was the worst.” Robert dissolved into sobs. He clenched his jaw and screamed into his pursed lips, slapping himself in the forehead as he did so.

  “Easy man, take it slow.” Both Leon and Paul moved toward him, but the young man calmed down quickly and looked at them.

  “I’ve been at the airport for three days now, standing outside in a fucking queue. I haven’t seen Nathalie since I arrived. They separated us at the cleaning stations, and we just kind of entered different flows. I hope she is okay,” Robert spoke the last half sentence in a hushed voice, addressing himself.

  “I’m sure she made it out alive. There was a second plane being loaded on the other side of the terminal,” Jessica offered. Rising, she fetched a small bottle of whiskey and offered it to Robert.

  “Thanks.” He twisted the cap and downed the miniature’s contents in one swift gulp.

  Silence fell over the cabin, the gentle rock of the plane helped sooth jittery nerves
, while darkness comforted them all. Strange given the creatures that walked below them were most active in the night, but still, none could deny the feeling of calm that washed over them.

  “So… So far we think that it was a biological attack – a toxin or something unleashed into the air? The flu was the main idea, and the zombies came along as a nasty after effect, right?” Paul was the first to speak, as he flipped through his notes. The book was already more than half filled with his cryptic, homemade version of shorthand.

  “Plus, emotions play a part. Any strong emotion you felt the moment you died, following contact with a zombie, was brought back with you,” Jessica added, mulling the theory over in her head as she spoke. She had not seen any such activity, but her rescue had come on the first day.

  Leon was clearly impressed. “So the virus, or agent, whatever you want to call it, attacks the brain. It had to be. Smart really. Then couple it with the fast acting nature of the agent; a short half-life that threw doctors off the scent by causing them to treat a smoke screen illness.”

  “It had to be terrorists, right?” Robert asked. The alcohol had returned the color to his cheeks.

  “That would be my guess, but why attack Norwich? Delia’s cooking isn’t that bad. Other than insurance and mustard, there isn’t much going for the place,” Paul mused.

  “Early TV reports and NHS warnings confirmed that the outbreak, as they called it, was centralized in the city.”

  The group fell silent, their brains tying together everything they had heard, hoping for an answer to appear. Another new voice broke the silence.

  “It didn’t come from within the city; it came from the outside,” a middle-aged black woman spoke as she walked toward them. Her left arm was cradled in a sling and she had a deep half-healed gash that ran along her forehead.

  “But reports confirmed that Norwich was the source,” Jessica shot back before the woman had a chance to introduce herself.