by John Moralee
In a last desperate attempt at stopping the zombie plague spreading, the prime minister decided his government would drop a nuke on London. Being a gentleman from Eton, he issued a warning, telling everyone in London to get out before the detonation in twelve hours.
Our safe haven was about to turn into a radioactive wasteland – so we all had to leave the building. We armed ourselves as well as we could with weapons made of the office furniture – then we descended down the emergency stairs floor by floor. I grabbed a fire axe on the way. We encountered no zombies until we were on the eleventh floor – but then they appeared below us. Hundreds of undead employees. We had to fight our way down to the underground parking structure floor by floor. Of the twenty-two people in my office, I was the only a handful of people to make it down to the underground parking lot alive and uninjured. My red Porsche was still in my private parking space when I got in it with a couple of other weary survivors. We drove it out onto the streets of London, which were eerily quiet. Harvey was in his blue Jaguar right behind me. Another two vehicles were behind us. There were zombies everywhere. We ploughed through crowds of them until we were out of the city heading north. We didn’t slow down until we reached an army check point. The soldiers detained two people with bite wounds. I heard gunshots and knew they had been summarily executed. Harvey was one of them. The rest of us were released and told to keep driving north, joining a mass exodus up the M1.
Exactly twelve hours after the PM made his announcement, a nuclear bomb exploded over the Square Mile. It turned the city into a radioactive wasteland, contaminating most of the south of England with fallout. The bomb destroyed millions of zombies and thousands of innocent people trapped in the capital – but it proved ineffective against the plague. The zombies were like cockroaches. The ones that didn’t die in the nuclear furnace survived and moved out of the city in search of new food sources. Instead of slowing the plague, the government made the zombies hungrier and more dangerous, scattering them into a wider zone.
I had been lucky enough to get out of London before the nuke exploded – but I was stuck in a traffic jam on the M1 when the mushroom cloud rose into the sky.
A few days later the prime minister was shot by one of his own bodyguards. Then the country descended into total anarchy.
Now - Again
I ignored the warning sign and drove on. The Geiger counter stuck on the dash started to click faster after a couple of miles, making everyone nervous because the radiation around London was just as lethal as the zombies, probably more so because you could not see it. The radiation was still not at a dangerous level when I saw a crowd of zombies on the road ahead – several hundred of them walking and crawling over abandoned vehicles. They looked like an army of homeless people.
Our grey van was almost impervious to the undead because we had modified it, turning it into an armoured killing-machine, but I was reluctant to drive on. You didn’t look for trouble.
“What do you think?” I asked the others. “Drive through them or turn around?”
I knew all of the windows were protected by wire mesh. There were slits for shooting out. The doors had been reinforced. An escape hatch was in the roof that could be opened so somebody could shoot out as we were driving. There was also another under the passenger seat for emergency escape. We could confidently drive through a group of a dozen zombies or even fifty without a problem – but the number ahead looked like it was exceeding our capabilities.
Angela, Jason and Hayley answered me at the same time.
“TURN AROUND!”
I could see the zombies were reacting to our appearance, becoming more lively, no pun intended.
“We’d better turn around now,” Angela advised. “I can’t even count how many are coming, Ben.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. There were thousands of the zombies coming towards us. All hungry for fresh meat. They had seen our vehicle and increased their speed. Some were very slow – but the freshest ones could run at the speed of a normal person without slowing down for miles and miles. Dozens were sprinting down the road, leaping over the fallen, racing each other. My heart thudding, I turned the van around and got the hell out of there. I didn’t slow down until I lost sight of them in my side mirrors.
We drove parallel to the M25 for about ten miles before turning north, avoiding the major roads because they were controlled by the Pure Bloods. They had roadblocks on the M1 and every intersection of the M25 – but I knew it was possible to slip by them on the B roads and across fields if you don’t mind getting out to push your vehicle if it got stuck in mud or a pothole.
I won’t tell you our exact destination or exact route because the Pure Bloods might find out about this blog and use it to track us.
Now in the area around London you not only have radioactive zombies – but you have thousands of very sick survivors living like wild animals. On the edge of the radiation zone you have the Pure Bloods. They are fighting a war to keep the zombies from spreading beyond the M25. They have a noble cause to eradicate all of the undead – but they kill anyone trying to leave the zone that doesn’t surrender at their roadblocks.
They kill first and ask questions later.
To avoid them, we sneaked through small villages and along narrow country lanes until we were past the perimeter of the M25. Even then we remained cautious. There was still the chance of encountering some Pure Bloods – or some other gang – or some zombies. I watched the road ahead as I drove with Angela sitting next to me looking through binoculars. Hayley and her brother Jason were in the back with the supplies stolen from the Asda superstore. Hayley was drinking a Pepsi Max and burping as the fizzy liquid refreshed her. Jason was looking out of the back window, making sure nobody was following us. The van jolted over every pothole in the road – so I was only going forty.
To my right, I noticed a couple of zombies in a field feasting on the corpse of a crow. The sound of our vehicle had made them turn to look our way. One had only half a face. The other had lost its arms. They shambled in our direction, but they were soon tiny figures in my rear-view mirror. No threat at all, really. Just sad, pathetic creatures. I didn’t see many more zombies on our journey through the countryside – but I stayed constantly alert because a relaxed person was a dead one. I opened my window and let some fresh air into the van. It would have been a pleasant journey if there had been no threat of attack.
It was getting dark so I looked for a place to stay the night. I picked an industrial estate where I parked inside a lock-up garage.
That’s where I am right now, writing this journal.
I’ll continue writing this after I get some sleep.
ENTRY FOUR
I’m wide awake and unable to sleep because I’m wired – so I’m back online, letting the others get some well-earned rest in the van. This internet connection is kind of dodgy – but it is pretty amazing that I can a signal at all. After the national grid broke down you’d think nothing electrical would work – but this laptop uses a satellite link. I don’t know how it works to be honest – but somewhere there must be a load of computers still working on solar power, keeping the internet functional even though most of the people who designed it are now long dead. Anyway, enough about boring technical issues.
I should tell you something about myself and my new family while I have the time.
You already know I was a banker before Day One – so no need to go over embarrassing confession again.
Right now the ‘me’ from then wouldn’t even recognise the ‘me’ from now. He wore designer suits and a big gold wristwatch that made his wrist ache because it was so heavy. He only wore it to show off his wealth. His bling was worth more than a family car.
These days I don’t wear a suit. I wear a dark waterproof jacket with lots of pockets, all stuffed with life-saving items, including two machetes, a torch, a walkie-talkie radio, bandages, sterile dressings, alcohol, a claw hammer, and some fireworks that I could set off as a distraction in an emergency. I
also wear black jeans and steel-toed boots. I look like I should be on the poster for a Robert Rodriguez movie: Machete 3: Zombie Takedown.
As well as keeping weapons on me, I always keep a hold-all of other weapons and tools in the van. My bag contains long-range weapons like a crossbow and a modified air rifle that is silent and lethal over a short distance. I also contains more fireworks, some knives, bolt cutters … It’s useful to keep it all close as a backup to my more portable weapons. I couldn’t lug those things around all of the time – but it is good to know they are available if I encounter a tough situation.
That’s enough about me for now.
Let me tell you some important things about the others.
Hayley and Jason
I wouldn’t be alive if Jason and Hayley had not saved my life a six months ago. I’d been living on my own, surviving day to day by looking for food in empty houses on a zombie-infested housing estate when some teenagers robbed and beat me. They’d left me to die in the street where the zombies were bound to get me – but I’d been rescued by a little girl. She had fought off the zombies with a nail gun while her older brother got me into the back of a van. Jason had driven the van back to their camp while I lay semi-conscious.
At the time the kids had been on their own because their parents had died. They looked after me for about a week while I was recovering from my injuries. Had the kids left me behind that day, like most adults would have done, I would have died without doubt. I would have been bitten and turned – but they risked their own lives to save mine.
I owed them more than my life.
I owed them my soul, which they had changed that day, by making me a better person.
Until then, I had been surviving on my own – Ben Smith versus the rest of the world – but they showed me it didn’t have to be that way.
I became a new man, a man willing to do anything to help those kids survive.
Angela
Angela is the newest member of the family. I don’t know anything about her past because she had never talked about it, though I know it must have been very, very bad.
One day we found her locked inside a garden shed. She was naked and half-crazy because she had not eaten anything in days. Someone had locked her in and left her there, trapped with just a bag of potatoes and source of fresh water from a rain barrel. She would probably have died in a week if I had not busted the lock off the door to see what was inside.
I remember it had been dark in the shed, the smell foul, like death. I had shone my torch in and caught a movement in a corner. A flash of dirty red hair. Pale skin. Naked breasts. Then a wild thing launched itself at me, screaming. (Zombies don’t scream. They moan and groan and snarl - but they don’t scream.) But for a second I didn’t realise the thing attacking me was a living breathing woman. It wasn’t easy to stay cool when a screaming naked thing was clawing at my eyes with sharp fingernails. I pushed her back and raised one of my twin machetes, my favourite close-combat weapons. With her dirty red hair covering her face, her green eyes wide and angry, I had thought Angela was a recently turned zombie that I would have to decapitate before she bit or scratched me – but then suddenly all the fight went out of her when she noticed I was with the Hayley and Jason.
“Not them?” she mumbled. Tears of relief ran down her cheeks. The only sound out of her lips after that was a sob as she collapsed into my arms.
It had taken Angela a week to get strong enough to train with me – but now she was a hardened member of our little group. She was good with a crossbow and a crack shot with a rifle. She carried an axe in her backpack for close combat and a knife taped to her ankle. She was fearless – but not foolhardy. More than once, she had saved my skin and surprised me with her bravery. She was no longer the scared naked thing from the shed. She was a strong, beautiful woman, a valuable addition to our family.
Angela wears a black T-shirt and jeans with a green jacket over the T-shirt, her red hair hidden under a backwards baseball cap. She looks very sexy in a tough girl way, like Angelina Jolie playing Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider films. She is in her mid-to-late twenties, but I had not asked her exact age. She doesn’t talk personal. Maybe one day she will open up and say something about her life before I met her – but she isn’t ready for it yet.
I don’t even know her surname.
Sometimes at night I hear her moaning in her sleep, reliving in her nightmares the bad events in her past that were none of my business. She’s doing it now. I’m tempted to wake her before she wakes the kids – but she would panic and slash at me with her knife. It is better to let her sleep on.
We all have things in our past we don’t want to share. For me, it is my life as a rich and over-privileged banker, leeching off society. I want to forget about that arrogant jerk. He is dead as far as I am concerned.
It’s a few hours until dawn. I’m yawning now. Must be tired. I’m going to shut my eyes for a bit.
ENTRY FIVE
The day was warm and sunny when we left the lock-up garage on our way back to the camp. It was almost possible to forget we were living after the zombie apocalypse. The countryside was beautiful. Spring daffodils lined the roads as we rode homeward, avoiding major towns and Pure Blood patrols. We were all in a good mood because we were so close to making it home.
Unfortunately, our good luck didn’t last long. We were in the Thames Valley in sight of the Chiltern Hills when I saw something ahead that alarmed me.
There was a quaint village coming up – the sort of place you’d see in an episode of Midsomer Murders. There was a little church and some thatched houses and a small streets of shops that had once sold touristy things like genuine fake antiques. I’d been through it a dozen times – only something was different. Something was wrong. I slowed down on the narrow country lane approaching it.
“You see that bus?” I asked Angela. She had been half-dozing, but she snapped awake.
“Yeah,” she said. “What about it?”
“It wasn’t there last time. It’s almost blocking the road – forcing us into a narrow opening between it and those houses. I think it’s an ambush site.”
Her eyes widened. “You think it’s the Pure Bloods?”
“Maybe – but I doubt it. This isn’t like them. They’d just do an obvious roadblock. This is more subtle. More sneaky.”
“You want to go another route?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’d better go back to the last intersection.”
I braked and reversed down the lane because there was no way to turn around.
“Uh-oh,” Jason said. “Ben, there’s a big black car behind us!”
The car had pulled into the lane from behind a stone wall leading into a farmer’s field. It was an SUV.
“Check it out,” I said to Angela.
She scrambled into the back and looked out through our pair of binoculars. “There are four guys in it. They don’t look like Pure Bloods – but they look like trouble. They’ve got guns. The driver’s talking into a radio.”
“Contacting the ones in front of us,” I said. “Great. Hold on to something. We’re in for a bumpy ride.”
I accelerated and drove off the road through a closed wooden gate that broke apart on impact. Beyond the fence was a fallow field of black soil. The van had never been designed for off-road driving – but the field was flat and didn’t slow us down much. After thirty yards something hit the van. It sounded like a coin tossed on a metal tray.
I knew what it was instantly.
A bullet.
They were shooting at us.
Ping. Another bullet struck the van. Hayley screamed because the bullet had shot through a crate of drinks near her head, spraying frothy foam all over. I was glad it hadn’t been her head that it hit. Another bullet struck just missing Hayley by inches. Jason covered his sister with his body, protecting her, as another bullet hit our vehicle, making a dent in my door. I pressed the accelerator to the floor and yanked the wheel left, then right, t
rying to make whoever was shooting lose their aim. It worked – for a second. The next bullet didn’t hit us. It raked up some dirt.
There were some oak trees and bushes on the far side of the field. We had to get to them. Ping, ping, ping. Holes appeared in the van. Pieces of metal ricocheted around like angry wasps. I felt something cut my neck. Angela yelped as she was hit somewhere. So did Jason. I veered between two trees over a bramble bush that sprayed the window with twigs and leaves as we hurtled down a steep embankment towards a fast-flowing stream. I couldn’t afford to crash our van filled with vital supplies – so I braked and stopped us falling into the water.
Everyone was yelling for me to keep driving – making it hard to think what to do next.
I saw the stream was shallower about a hundred metres to my left. The pebble stones on the bottom were visible there. We could drive across there. I backed up, the tyres kicking up dirt. “Anyone seriously hurt?”
“No,” Angela said.
“Jason?”
“No,” Jason added. “Just a flesh wound.”
“Hayley?”
“Nothing hit me,” she said.
I drove along the edge of the stream towards the shallow section. The van struggled over the uneven muddy ground.
“Angela, keep looking out for them!”
“I am! I am!”
I was almost there.
“They’re here now!” Angela yelled.
Looking back up the bramble-covered slope, I could see the black car had stopped at the top of the embankment. Its occupants were jumping out with handguns and rifles. They looked like thugs from a prison movie. They had shaved heads and hard faces. The shotgun was no match for them at a distance – so there was no point in using it. I had to just get us out of there. Quickly.