Journal of the Living

by John Moralee

  “There are too many of them,” I said. “The risk is too great. We can’t go up against them all. It’d be suicidal. We’re not soldiers. We’re just survivors. We have to be smarter than that, Angela.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. You’re right. Forget it. We’re better off waiting.” She sighed. “If you want to get some sleep, I’ll keep watch. There’s no need for us both to be watching.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah. I’ll wake you if things change out there. Take your own advice, Ben. Get some rest.”

  I was tired. I had not slept much the day before in the lock-up garage. I didn’t think there was any harm in napping for a while because I’d be in better shape to think of a plan afterwards. I closed my eyes and rested my head into the deep upholstery. I almost moaned in pleasure. The easy chair was the most comfortable thing I had sat on in months. So comfortable … This building would make a great home if …

  I jerked awake upon hearing a noise like a gunshot. No – not a noise like a gunshot. An actual gunshot. From outside. I jumped out of my chair completely alert, reaching for my shotgun. It wasn’t there. And the other chair was empty. Angela had gone out alone. All that talk … I should have known what she intended to do. She was taking on the gang by herself.

  The kids were sitting up. Hayley looked around for Angela. “What happened? Where’s Angela?”

  “Outside,” I answered. A quick look out of the window showed me enough to figure out what was going on outside. There was a dead gang member on the road with a crossbow bolt in his chest. He’d been killed silently, like we planned, but the other gang member was crouched behind a car, shooting towards the van. It was his gun that I had heard. From my high position, I could see Angela crouched behind the van, shooting back with her shotgun. She hit the man and he went down – but more members of the gang were already on the street, firing at the van from behind the other vehicles. Angela was trapped in the middle of the street. She kept returning fire – but they outnumbered her. She needed help – fast.

  “Jason, the big rocket!” I shouted.

  “I’m on it!” he said, understanding what I needed. While he was busy, I lifted up my chair and hurled it at the window. The noise it made crashing through alerted the gang to my position - providing a new target for the enemy – hopefully diverting their attention from Angela. Some started shooting towards our building as I took cover behind the brick wall next to the window.

  “Jason!”

  “I’m coming!”

  Jason had opened our bag of weapons and found the biggest firework. It was one normally used for professional displays containing a serious amount of gunpowder. With bullets whizzing over his head, he crawled across the floor to me. I lit the firework when Jason passed it over. I shoved it into a metal waste basket that would hopefully contain the blast, then pointed the rocket towards the pub. The basket jolted in my hands as the firework ignited. The firework streaked out, screaming, as it whooshed across the street like a glowing missile. The rocket smashed through a bottom-floor window into the pub, where it exploded with a series of bright flashes and loud bangs.

  I doubted it hurt anyone inside – but it caused confusion. Smoke spilled out onto the street and burning phosphorus and magnesium shot into the sky.

  Angela used the momentary distraction to run for the side street filled with bins – but I saw her stumble as at least one bullet hit her in the back. She dropped the shotgun and staggered on – barely reaching the corner before more bullets got her.

  I prayed she wasn’t badly wounded.

  Unfortunately, I had no time to worry about her when we were in just as much danger. A crackle of gunfire blasted out the windows around me – sending broken glass into the air. Hayley and Jason dived behind a double bed as the men ripped apart the room with their bullets.

  I’d jeopardised the safety of the kids for Angela – so we had to move now before the men figured out a way of killing us. I grabbed the bag of weapons, yelling at Hayley and Jason to run for the stairs. We had to get out of the shop via the back exit. It was a wise decision – the first of the night. Behind me, a Molotov cocktail landed on the floor, shattering, the petrol setting fire to the furniture. I reached the top of the stairs with smoke stinging my eyes. Hayley and Jason were running ahead. I followed them down into the main floor, which was filled with kitchen and dining furniture. Another three or four Molotov cocktails had been tossed into the display room, spreading a fire, which was a pretty dumb move because it prevented the gang coming into the building from the front entrance. They had stopped themselves trapping us upstairs. Instead they were trying to burn us to death. Luckily, the flames didn’t stop us escaping through the rear exit, out into the cold night. I closed the door behind me before dashing towards some houses on a small estate behind the High Street.

  We hid around the side of a home just as a couple of men ran around the back of the warehouse. They approached the exit cautiously. One opened the door and tossed a Molotov cocktail inside. He probably thought he had caught us in the building – which meant they did not expect us to outside, watching them. I heard one on his radio. His words confirmed my theory.

  “We’re at the back. They’re toast. You got the other one yet?”

  I didn’t hear the reply – but the men ran off down the street. By then the furniture store was fully ablaze, casting a yellow-orange glow over the streets. Thick black smoke rose into the sky as parts of the roof caved in. The fire was spreading to the other buildings nearby. The gang must have decided to torch the whole street. Maybe the whole town.

  I could hear the gang shouting and firing their guns – but they were some distance away. It sounded like Angela was still causing them trouble. Good for her!

  Hayley and Jason could also hear the fighting. Jason grabbed my arm. “Ben, we have to go back! We need to help Angela!”

  We’d all die if we did that. Right then, the bad guys thought we were dead. They would not look for us. But if we went to help Angela we would all die.

  “We can’t,” I heard myself saying. It didn’t sound like me saying it. It sounded like a pathetic coward – but I wasn’t afraid for myself. I didn’t want Hayley and Jason murdered by those men. “We can’t rescue her, Jason. They have her surrounded by now. If we try to fight them, we’ll all die. We have to save ourselves. We have to let them keep think we’re in that burning building.”

  “No,” he said. “We have to go back!”

  I shook my head. “No, Jason. Not now.”

  “You coward!”

  I grabbed his shoulders. I looked in his eyes. “Would Angela want you to risk your life for her?”

  “No,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it. We can creep up on those guys and shoot them with our crossbows. We can -”

  Just then I heard a scream.

  ENTRY SEVEN

  The high-pitched scream startled me – until I realised it was one of our enemies. When I heard him screaming for help because he had been hurt, I didn’t feel bad. I felt relief because Angela was still alive and eluding capture. Good on her. She had lost her shotgun – but she was fighting with her other weapons. Any thoughts of abandoning her to save myself vanished once I knew she wasn’t captured.

  I switched on my walkie-talkie to her frequency. “Angela, if you can hear me, get to the alpha site. H and J will come for you while I provide a distraction. You copy?”

  Angela answered my question by her turning her walkie-talkie on and off, creating a short burst of static. That was the code for yes. That told me she had heard me – but she was too busy to speak because the gang were hunting her. I silently wished her luck, hoping she could get to the alpha site. Whenever we went somewhere, we always designated some places with codes so we could talk on the walkie-talkies even if someone was listening it. If Angela could get there, she could hide inside and wait for Hayley and Jason. They both had good enough emergency medical training to treat her bullet wound (at least on a temporary basis) unt
il we could get back to the camp.

  Hayley and Jason were staring at me. Waiting for commands.

  “Okay – I’m going to do something seriously dangerous,” I told them. “You guys find Angela at the school. Stay there until I give you the all-clear on the walkie-talkies. If my plan works, those guys will be leaving this town really really fast.”

  Jason’s eyes widened. “You’re going up against the gang on your own?”

  “Not exactly on my own,” I said. “I’m going back to the garage to let out the zombies. Now go! Save Angela!”

  They dashed off. I grabbed my bag of weapons and headed back to the High Street through some back streets. I avoided crossing the street until I was far from the parked vehicles belonging to the gang. I crossed between some abandoned cars. I was very lucky. I narrowly dodged detection by a two-man patrol of motorbikes scouting the area. I could see several men on the street outside the pub. The leader was giving orders on a radio. He was not dressed like the others. He was wearing a black suit. He looked like a businessman – except for the rifle in his other hand. That made him look like Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs.

  “Find her and kill her!” I heard him shouting. I was tempted to take a shot at him with my crossbow – but the range was too great. And shooting him would not get rid of the rest. I had to stick with my insane plan.

  I sneaked around the rear of the pub and some other buildings until I was back at the garage where I’d left our van. The noise on the street had excited the zombies trapped inside the garage. They were banging on the doors and moaning. I checked nobody was looking my way before creeping up with my bolt cutters. What I was about to do was incredibly risky, but I didn’t hesitate. I snapped off the lock. The zombies moaned louder, sensing they were close to a living tasty human. I returned my bolt cutters into my bag, strapped the bag over my shoulder, then grabbed the bottom of the garage doors. I pushed them upwards until the doors continued opening under their own momentum, releasing the hungry zombies lurking in the dark.

  I’d expected a dozen – possible twenty – but the garage had been completed filled with them. There were over a hundred of them. I wondered how they had been lured inside – probably with a fresh corpse as bait – just as they started to move forward, lurching towards me. They had been trapped in the garage for months – but they had conserved their strength by going into a hibernation state, waiting for an opportunity to feed again.

  They saw me and poured out of the darkness, gnashing teeth, slobbering, groaning.

  They wanted to make me their dinner.

  No time to dawdle.

  I turned and ran, knowing they would follow me like rats following the Pied Piper. I could hear them chasing me – but I didn’t have the time to look back. I didn’t have time to go around the side of the garage either because so many zombies had already blocked that exit. I had to head into the street where I could not avoid being seen by the gang. The zombies chased me into the High Street. My bag of weapons was weighing and slowing me down – but I didn’t want to ditch it because I needed it to fight them and the gang. My shoulder ached as I sprinted towards the pub where the leader and a couple of bikers were standing. They saw me and the horde of zombies at the same time. I tossed a lit firework at them before they could aim their guns. It wouldn’t kill them – but it had the desired effect of making them scatter as it exploded. The leader ran into the pub, but the other men were left on the street. Through a cloud of acrid black smoke, I dashed past them and hid behind the corner of the pub, leaving the gang members to fight the zombies.

  I dropped my bag to get out my air gun. Around the corner, I could hear the gang members shooting at the zombies.

  “There’s too many!” one shouted.

  I heard a man running my way. He appeared around the corner – and I shot him in the face. At close range my air pellet was fatal. It blasted a small hole in his forehead. He looked surprised when he fell over, his limbs twitching. A second later a green-faced zombie was feasting on him, ripping his throat open. It turned to look at me – another meaty meal – before returning to its current feast, sinking its yellow teeth into the soft flesh of my man’s neck.

  I grabbed my bag and hurried away.

  A minute later I heard more gunfire as the other gang members encountered the zombies. The zombies were spreading out for fresh food.

  I had to make my way to the alpha site now.

  The school was behind four rows of houses on the other side of the High Street.

  I got there without encountering anyone living or dead.

  The school was a modern brick building with flat roofs and a concrete playground behind a chain-link fence. I’d seen it only from some distance when we were hiding from the gang during the day – but now I could see some words sprayed on the main entrance doors in red paint.

  ZOMBIES INSIDE!

  KEEP OUT!!!

  ENTRY EIGHT

  I could hear angry moaning on the other side – but something wasn’t adding up. The message sprayed on the primary school’s doors looked like the one on the garage where I’d found over a hundred zombies – but the paint was fresher and smelled of chemicals. On closer inspection I noticed it wasn’t even dry. I grinned. The message was a fake designed to fool the gang. Someone had tagged it recently. I knew it had to be one of my friends. With the sound of a motorbike heading my way, I quickly approached the door. It was locked from the inside with a chain. The moaning continued.

  “Hey! It’s me! Let me in!”

  The moaning stopped. I heard the chain rattling. The door opened. Hayley appeared, holding her favourite anti-zombie weapon, her nail gun. The nail gun looked comically huge in her small hands. She looked at me and grinned. “You made it!”

  “Yeah. Quick. Someone’s coming.”

  I entered the school and shut doors behind me. We secured it with a padlock and chain. I could hear a bike roaring up the street. It slowed as it went by – but it didn’t stop at the school. It accelerated away. Whoever was driving it didn’t want to stick around to fight the zombies. They were leaving the town, and I couldn’t blame them because it sounded like a hell of a fight was going on back where I’d released the zombies. All the gunshots and screaming sounded like a New Year’s Eve firework display. Right now, the gang were too occupied with staying alive to bother hunting for us. Good.

  “The warning was a brilliant idea,” I said. “Did you think of that?”

  She nodded proudly. “I didn’t want the bad guys coming in. I thought they’d be scared of zombies. You think it will work?”

  “You had me fooled – until I smelled the fresh paint. Where’d you get it?”

  She rolled her eyes like I was stupid for asking. “Duh! This is a school, Ben. There’s like loads of stuff in the art class.”

  “I don’t suppose you found an Uzi?”

  She frowned. “What’s an Uzi?”

  “A type of machine gun. It was a joke.”

  “Oh,” she said. “No. Nothing like that. Just art stuff. Your jokes aren’t very funny, Ben.”

  “Have you cleared this place for zombies?”

  “Of course!” she said, sounding insulted. “There aren’t any. The whole place is empty. Jason’s in the staff room with Angela. Should I stay here and guard the door?”

  “No – the gang won’t be looking for us any longer. They’ve got bigger problems. Let’s go to them.”

  We hurried by several classrooms filled with small desks and child-sized plastic chairs that made me feel like a giant. I could smell crayons and chalk and plasticine. The smells reminded me of my childhood. It was strange being inside a school again. Especially one that was empty of children and teachers. I wondered what had happened to them. I hadn’t seen any small zombies coming out of the garage – so maybe the kids had escaped. I liked to think that, anyway.

  Jason and Angela were in the windowless staff room, where Jason had set up a few torches so there was some reasonable light. The room smelled of blood
and iodine. Angela was lying flat on a cheap-looking leather sofa, stripped down to her bloody T-shirt. Jason was crouched beside her, inspecting the small bullet wound in her back. Blood flowed out with every heart beat. The blood loss itself wasn’t a lot – but that was only what I could see on the outside. Her internal damage could be much worse. The bullet could have perforated an artery or entered an organ. Angela was gasping and breathing shallowly as Jason cleaned the wound with iodine. Her face was pale and damp with cold sweat.

  “No … exit wound,” she said when she saw me. “That’s bad, right?”

  “We’ll get it out,” I said. “Jason, can you see the bullet?”

  He shook his head. “Too much blood.”

  “Okay – let me look.”

  I stepped closer and shone a torch on the wound. I’d have to cut wider to have a better look – but Angela was already in pain. She’d go into shock if I started butchering her. I spoke to Jason quietly so she would not hear our conversation.

  “We’ll have to look inside for the bullet – but it will hurt her. You’ve given her painkillers?”

  “Yeah, I’ve given her some of the morphine,” he said. “Ben, I don’t know what to do now. This isn’t a cut on her finger.”

  Since the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, I’d had to learn some survival skills, like basic medical treatments, but I’d never done major surgery. There were two types of injury, according to some medical books I’d read: hollow organ damage and solid organ damage. Hollow organ damage was caused when a tube carrying a fluid was nicked. For that kind of injury, you needed to clean the area and sew it up and pray gangrene didn’t kill the patient. The other kind of injury could stop an organ working. Her liver, kidneys, spleen and bowels were all kind of close to the entry wound. If any of them had been damaged, there was nothing I could do.

  “Okay, we’ll have to cut her open,” I said. “Angela, I’m going to give you a local anaesthetic.”

  I took some things out of our emergency medical kit. They included a scalpel that I sterilised with alcohol. An injection of lidocaine into the area around Angela’s wound made her skin go numb before I started cutting. Making the first cut was the hardest thing I had ever done. I hated hurting her. She grimaced when the scalpel sliced her flesh. Hayley held her hand.