The Pestilence: The Diary of the Trapped

by Rob Cockerill

  Getting there would be more than difficult, however. I’m not sure we could do it alone – and it would be such a gamble if we did. I don’t know, it’s just a thought I keep having the longer this ordeal continues.

  9th February 2016

  It's definitely been getting colder over the last few days, very gradually but now quite noticeably. We upped the heating another level when we got up this morning, and that's the third time we've turned it up in the last week.

  We took a look out of our small opening in one of the front windows, while we can (pretty much all of the undead are presumably still swarming around the school), and all of the cars in the street appear to have their windscreens iced up. We have no weather forecast to confirm it, but it feels as though we're in the midst of a cold snap. The heating is obviously doing a great job of keeping us warm, and all of our various reinforcements and makeshift fabrics for floor insulation are helping to maintain that cosiness, but we can still feel one or two drafts of cool air seeping in from somewhere.

  It’s also raining incessantly, and has been for about three hours now. It’s difficult to be sure when you’ve essentially blocked out almost any openings to the outside world, but we’ve heard heavy rain pounding the corrugated iron roof of next door’s garage relentlessly since 7am. What it’s doing to the village and the river levels is anyone’s guess.

  Porthreth does not have a good track record when it comes to flooding and burst river banks; only a couple of years ago we were very nearly evacuated from our homes when freak storm conditions combined monstrous tidal surges with non-stop rain and flooding. Saturated ground just got wetter and wetter, the river eventually broke its banks, and strong incoming tides meant that the surface water had nowhere to go either. This sleepy Cornish fishing port was pretty much in a state of emergency for a week. So what would happen now, with no-one to manage the situation?

  Hopefully the rain will ease off, but there’s no sign of it abating yet. From what we can see, it’s already created fast-flowing gulley’s down either side of the main road, and we’ve no idea about the river levels; we daren’t adjust our blockades to the rear of the apartment for fear of there being walkers in the garden. If I could just get outside and up onto the lawn, I could take a look at the river and establish whether we’ve got anything to worry about. But we can’t advertise our presence again. Even as I write this, it sounds as though the rainfall is getting heavier – the sound of it is so vivid, I can almost see the drops bouncing off that corrugated iron.

  10th February 2016

  Well, any thoughts I may have been having about leaving the apartment look to be on hold for a little bit longer. The rain just kept on coming yesterday, it was so unrelenting. I’ve never seen anything like it. Well, not that we really saw it, but you know what I mean.

  We heard it pouring down for another solid two hours after I blogged, before it eventually calmed for 90 minutes. We thought it might have passed, until it came back with a vengeance and brought with it a bitterly cold wind that lashed beads of rain against the windows and doors for hours further. We lost track of what became a background ambience, but I think it was around 8pm that the rain finally dwindled.

  Thirteen hours of rain – thirteen hours of it, more or less. The gulley’s out in the road rapidly swelled and soon became a river running right through the heart of the village. Shredded corpses slowly floated past the apartment window along with traffic cones, the gnarling faces of the undead, effluent, plants pots and other garden ornaments, and what appear to be rotting body parts. How many people have been lost or mauled in the village already? How many were flooded or forced out of their safe havens?

  It’s subsided a little overnight, but the roads and pavements are still not passable and the stench is almost unbearable. The street river must have dislodged and picked up so much waste and apocalypse debris that it’s created a smell that must be permeating every corner and crevice of the village. It’s not just any rancid odour either, it’s carried on an icy wind chill that has a ruthless penetration to match. We’ve reached the highest level of heating in the apartment now, and yet you can still get a feel for the cold at times.

  Are first thoughts right now are, how long will all of this last? Has the rain passed or can we expect any more to come? Everywhere is either so saturated or flooded completely that we’re not sure the village can physically take it. Much more and vehicles will surely start floating too.

  But we’re also starting to wonder, what effect might all of this be having on the undead? Can such cold or rainfall affect them in any way? Could it bring an end to this nightmare in some way? The only change we’ve ‘seen’ is a slight calming in zombie groaning and activity. After the raucousness caused by the school bells ringing, it’s been a welcome relaxation in all of the commotion. Maybe these cadavers were taken aback as much as we were. I doubt it, but we’ve got to live in hope whenever we can.

  We could do with some hope right now. We haven’t heard from anyone since this all began; the same four walls are becoming more than oppressive; Jenny is starting to feel unwell and having headaches that throb as much as yesterday’s downpours; the bitter cold is starting to win the tug of war with our heating; we have an increasing number of questions occupying our thoughts; and the flooding has quashed any wild ideas we may have had of leaving the building. We can’t even do the things we don’t really want to do.

  11th February 2016

  So, for the second time in the space of a week we were woken in the early hours by an almighty racket outside. At 2:40am we were jarred out of our light slumber by the sound of car alarms further down the street. There must have been three or four of them resonating simultaneously, and with no-one to disable them they kept on sounding for a good six hours or more – presumably until batteries flattened or they timed out or something.

  They must have been set off by a directionless walker ambling into them; either that or the storm winds. In the absence of anyone else to tell us so, that’s what we’ve decided it is now, a storm. It’s a bitterly cold wind tearing through the village, and it both feels and sounds like it’s gusting up to 60mph at times. The rain has at least dried up, for the most part, and by the looks of it a lot of the torrent running through the village has subsided, but it’s been replaced by the howling winds and icy chill. With so much saturated ground and standing water, there will surely be widespread ice I the coming days. For the fleet-footed, that might just present another opportunity to escape and outrun the undead – or it could see any opportunists sent slipping and sliding in their direction.

  Like the school bells or a simple knock at the door in the early hours, it’s amazing how much the brash car alarms could set our teeth on edge. We didn’t know what had hit us at first, with the initial few split-seconds spent establishing what the noise reverberating around us actually was. It brings out your primitive fears, like a clank in the middle of the night that leaves you fumbling for both your torch and courage, and breeds a strange edginess that makes me wonder how the hell we would ever cope with coming face-to-face with the corpses that lie in wait outside.

  Thankfully, that’s something we won’t have to find out for the next couple of days at least, as Jenny is still feeling so withdrawn and unwell. We’ve discussed the idea of leaving the apartment at some point, and what we might do or where we might go, but for now it’s not an option. Jenny’s been quite feverish this morning and generally drained, so she needs to just rest up for now.

  With Jenny laid up in bed for most of the day/night, I’m quite often here on my own patrolling the apartment with only my own often paranoid thoughts for company, and I’ve never felt so lonely and scared. How is it possible to feel so lonely and yet so suffocated all at once?

  12th February 2016

  Dear diary.

  We’ve now passed 25 days of this apocalypse and we've had a bit of a nothing day, what with Jenny convalescing in the other room and some unnervingly limited walker activity outside, so I t
hought this would be a good time for a recap.

  Though we collectively didn’t realise it, on 17th January 2016 a zombie apocalypse unfolded right here in the UK, the cause as yet unknown.

  Stories began to emerge of bizarre acts of terrorism, with victims bitten or ravaged in unprovoked assaults. These surreal rampages continued to proliferate at an alarming rate in the first 24 hours, with graphic, violent mutilations playing out before the world’s eyes on rolling news channels and social media. Every mutilated corpse came back to life – sometimes within mere hours – to carry out its own bloodlust and sate its desire for flesh. The ‘undead’ were taking over, and it soon became apparent that this was something that could not be combatted nor controlled. This was a zombie apocalypse.

  Government, military and authority collapsed. Civility disintegrated. Those that weren’t already infected went into hiding. Like my wife Jenny and I, those that are still living are trapped in their own personal hell, merely surviving 2016. Villages, towns, cities and communities across the UK are ‘living’ with the undead masses. And not just in the UK – reports in the first few days after the outbreak suggested this great pestilence had already fanned out across Europe and crossed the Atlantic to wreak havoc on the Americas. We can only assume its vociferous penetration did not stop there.

  After just 3-4 days the infected had reached us here in Porthreth, Cornwall; within 10 days the last of the news networks had gone offline; and by day 14 I had come face-to-face with a gnarling, sinew spluttering corpse myself. I was lucky, not only that it had taken me so long to come up against such an experience, but that there was double-glazed glass between us. That haggard, hungered face – as well the helpless sight of its quickly dismembered victim – has not left me since. It’s burned into my consciousness like words engraved on a plaque.

  Though given brief reprieves, Jenny and I are surrounded here in our small apartment by walkers at the window, smashed skulls on the drive, bodies strewn in the street, and an army of the undead still within earshot of a simple pin drop. Though ‘happy’ with the reinforcements we’ve made to our humble four walls, we know we’re far from safe. Nothing can prepare you for this. The undead stalk the streets everywhere. They’re dominating us – our way of life, our every thought, our very existence.

  We’ve had our own reminders of that in the last fortnight. There was the mutilation at the window before us; the subsequent bombardment of our apartment by an unrelenting horde of cadavers; the strange incident of the school bells ringing out loud in the early hours, drawing hundreds of walkers past the front of the building for reasons as yet unknown; and the unsettling uproar of car alarms exploding into action just a few days ago. All, however evil or innocent, sent shivers down our spines, strike fear into our hearts, and allow paranoia to sweep through our minds.

  On top of that, what seems like a ruthless cold front is permeating through the village like water seeping its way through the fractures of a fragmented surface. We have no idea how long it will last or what damage it will ultimately cause.

  Nearly a month on, we still have power and fresh running water here in Porthreth. We have adequate food and supplies, and we just about have our sanity. But this is the end of the world as we know it. The year has only just begun, but we’re trapped in 2016 with nowhere to go. Or are we?

  13th February 2016

  We had a momentary power cut last night, at 2:25am, and we wondered if that really was the beginning of the end. We’ve been so fortunate to have an unaffected electricity supply this whole time and, thankfully, it came back on within mere minutes last night. But it certainly made us think about just how worse this could get – and question whether we’re so right to stay here after all. If the power goes, what do these four walls leave us with? Certainly, not warmth.

  The cold continues to bite, piercing every nuance of the building and gradually making itself at home throughout our apartment, acquainting itself with our fabrics and furnishings bit by bit. I dread to think what it would be like out on the road in this wintriness.

  The extreme icy chill seems to have brought about a calming in walker activity, almost as though they can’t survive the cold without a ready source of flesh and blood to sustain them. Those that we can see appear to be either still or very slowly creeping and crawling across the ground, while the collective layer of moaning and groaning seems to have quietened too. They almost look like a child’s toy that’s limping on with fading batteries and slowly grinding to a halt.

  If that’s what the cold is doing to these voracious, single-minded animals, what might it do to us mortals used to our central heating and home comforts? Whilst we wouldn’t want to be out in the elements ourselves, we can’t help wondering if this could be our opportunity to act.

  With the threat level reduced for the time being, we’ve been able to peer out of that vantage point at the front window and survey the surroundings. We can see a couple of overturned cars in the street, several more abandoned vehicles, various strands of debris, and countless slugs of waste, congealed blood and bodily remains – all tingling with a light layer of ice frosting. Dotted seemingly everywhere in-between are rotting, teeth-chattering corpses, all at innumerable stages of decay and decomposition. But, crucially, they appear to be relatively dormant, like primates in winter hibernation.

  It gives us confidence that we might be able to do something here. As a starting point, we’re thinking of taking down the reinforcements around the front door, and venturing upstairs to the other two apartments in this block. Atop the landing there’s a larger, panoramic window that will have a much better view both up and down the street outside. We’d be able to establish how bad the situation is out there, and how severe the threats to our safety are.

  Yet, despite our intrigue and longing for even the slightest change of air, my overriding fear compels me not to do it. I just can’t bring myself to take those defences down yet and brave it. Am I a coward? Am I sensible? What would you do, reader? Maybe I just need to let the idea sit with me for a few days and pluck up the rationale, or courage, or whatever the hell it will take to open that door. The problem is, we may not have days. We may have to take our chances now.

  Let’s weigh this up a moment. The building isn’t comprised, as far as we know. Beyond our front door there’s a small kind of lobby, with a heavy communal outer door that we firmly slammed shut and barricaded halfway up with sandbags. We haven’t heard that open or cave in, so we have no reason to think there are corpses outside our front door. But we might still be face-to-face with them if any are lingering around the front of the building. We might unwittingly draw them to the apartment, again – and I’m not sure I could cope with that intense imprisonment so soon after the last time.

  There’s also the danger that any of our neighbours are infected. Are they alive? Are they even in there? Only three out of the four apartments are regularly occupied, the other being a holiday home, and we haven’t heard a single thing from them since this all began three weeks ago. They may not have heard anything from us either; we’re all in hiding after all. But, like this whole apocalypse, it’s the great unknown. And, potentially, a huge danger. Are our immediate neighbours alive, or undead? We’re ‘gonna have to find out.

  14th February 2016

  The bells have been ringing at the school again. Yet again at 4am, and again for exactly 20 minutes – yet again, we didn’t act upon it, not immediately.

  Having all but decided we were going to go for it in the coming days, the bell ringing once more caught us completely by surprise. It somehow had the power to send shivers down our spines all over again. I guess we’re just always living on the edge these days.

  We have so many questions, so many fears. But we think this has told us three things:

  1. It’s methodical

  2. It’s clearly a living person, and with a purpose.

  3. We need to act fast and find out what it means.

  So we’re going to go for it. Jenny is just
about well enough. The fever has passed and her cold seems to be shifting now. She’s still using painkillers to manage her headaches, but she’s otherwise good to go. We’re going to leave the apartment – first to venture upstairs and check out the neighbouring apartments, and secondly out on the streets to take our chances of long-term survival, and sanity.

  Why, you may ask. Why leave the apartment? Well, we're so safe here and yet, so exposed. Both have been proven. We're still alive and we've barely had to get our hands dirty in the last month, with our barricaded apartment proving impenetrable to even crowds of zombies. It has been our safe harbour, but it has also proved limiting.

  As long as we are located right here in the centre of the village, at sea level and on the main drag in and out of Porthreth, we will be exposed to constant zombie traffic, localised flooding, mounting questions, even our own mental fragilities. Our location means we can barely make a sound in our own home and the concentration that takes, 24/7, is unreal.

  Until you're in this situation, it's difficult to grasp how stifling it is to keep such a low profile. The lengths we have had to go to in order to hide and hush our very being are brilliantly resourceful but, in all honesty, not sustainable in the long-term.