Journal of the Living

by John Moralee

  We were food they could get.

  Ahead, a one-armed woman ran towards us from an open doorway. Her nearly-fleshless head only had an upper jaw, but her teeth would cut if she got close. Hayley fired a nail into her skull, splattering pink brain tissue onto the road. The road was clear in front – but the fresh zombies were keeping up with us. I fired a crossbow bolt at the fastest zombie behind me – but my aim was off. The bolt slammed into its shoulder and stuck there, harmless. It didn’t slow the thing at all. It just made the zombie run faster. There was no time to reload my crossbow – so I gave the useless weapon to Billy, telling him to hold onto it as we continued to sprint towards the supermarket.

  “They’re too fast,” Billy said.

  He was right. We could run – but the fastest zombies would catch up when we tired. “You two keep going. I’ll slow them down!”

  I switched to my favourite weapons, my machetes, before turning to face the zombie gang member. I stopped running. The zombie charged straight at me – but I hacked off his head with one blow. The head rolled away as his body continued to run for a few seconds before stumbling and falling. More zombies were right behind it – so I attacked them to give Hayley and Billy some breathing space. I decapitated two men and a woman. There was now a safe gap between us and the other zombies. They were chasing – but they’d not catch us if we hurried. I chased after Jason and Billy, who were most of the way to the supermarket. They were almost at the street corner when they stopped and waited for me to catch up.

  “Want this back?” Billy said, offering me my crossbow.

  “Yeah,” I said, taking it. I reloaded it. We hurried around the corner of the supermarket. I could see twenty abandoned cars in the parking lot. I could also see well over a hundred zombies between us and the red Audi. I didn’t understand it. They couldn’t all have come out of the garage. These were a different group.

  “What the hell?” I said. “Where did they come from?”

  Billy knew. I could see the guilt in his eyes. He had known about them – but he had not told us.

  “Billy?” I said.

  “Uh. I forgot to tell you I found some more zombies in the supermarket when I was on the run. They were locked in until I opened the doors. I thought they’d all chased me to the school – but it looks like some stayed behind. I’m sorry.” He grinned sheepishly. “Guess I should have warned you, huh?”

  “Would have been useful,” I snapped. “This is a problem.”

  Hayley was looking back at the zombies following us. They’d soon catch up. “ We’re going to get surrounded. Ben, what are we going to do?”

  ENTRY ELEVEN

  The zombies in the supermarket’s car park had not noticed us – yet – but they would if we tried to steal the car. I could have picked them off one by one with my crossbow if I’d had an hour and a safe rooftop – but I could hear the undead horde behind us, getting louder as they neared the corner. As the first zombie appeared, looking like a skeleton with one grey eye in a mostly fleshless face, I fired my crossbow - but nothing happened.

  The bolt didn’t fire.

  I knew what had happened and cursed my stupidity. “Billy, you sabotaged my -”

  The sneaky traitor was off running down the street. I swore. Hayley turned ready to fire a nail at him – but the one-eyed zombie was more of an immediate threat. My crossbow was useless so I was basically unarmed until I got something else out of my bag. Hayley had to use her nail gun for taking down the zombie before it got near me. She ran forward and aimed at its head – firing a nail straight through its good eye.

  As the zombie died, Billy got to the street corner and whistled before ducking out of sight. The purpose of his whistle was to draw the attention of the zombie shoppers and zombie employees in front of us. They couldn’t see the source of the noise – but they did see Hayley and me. Billy had just dropped us in it big time. I muttered something furiously under my breath as I realised Billy had tricked me. There probably was no car with petrol and a charged battery. He had just lied to save his life back at the school. And then he had ditched us at the first opportunity – after leading us into the second ambush in two days.

  I was a big idiot for untying his hands. I should have never trusted one of them. I wished I had killed him – but I had bigger worries. The zombies were advancing across the car park. They were also at the corner – blocking our route back to the school.

  “Ben?” Hayley said. “What do we do? What do we do?”

  Standing and fighting was not an option. “Come on. We’ll follow that traitor. Let’s hope he knows where he’s going. To the corner. Now!”

  Billy had escaped down the next street. We raced to the corner, which led to a row of old terraced houses on a cobbled road.

  Billy was only twenty feet away. His escape had been prevented by more zombies. A pack of forty were spread out across the street, salivating at the prospect of fresh meat. There weren’t any gaps to get through. Billy had picked up a brick, which he was bashing into the head of a bald female zombie while trying to avoid getting bit by others. He was kicking and screaming and fighting for this life. I felt like leaving him to fight alone – but there were fewer zombies in that direction. We had no choice but to fight with him.

  My machetes were excellent for close combat in tight spaces – but what I needed for street fighting was something extending my reach. I chose a hefty fire axe, then handed the bag of weapons to Hayley because I needed both hands free. She knew to stay behind me as I raised my axe and charged, hacking my way through the undead like a bloodthirsty maniac.

  Several hungry zombies snarled and lurched towards me, gnashing their teeth, so I had to fight two or three at once. Not a problem – normally – but I got my axe stuck in one’s head. I struggled to pull it loose – but I had to let it go to kick another zombie backwards and elbow a third in the face.

  It was bad. We were getting surrounded. Once that happened, we’d get bitten and turned.

  I couldn’t let that happen to Hayley.

  With a yell, I pulled out my trusted machetes and started hacking away at the zombies. I slashed one zombie with my right-hand machete – chopping off an arm - then slammed my left one into the creature’s skull. Pushing it back into the others, using it as temporary shield, I tried to get my axe back from the one dead at my feet. The axe was really caught in the bone. When I pulled upwards, the zombie’s neck stretched and tore, leaving me with the axe with the head still stuck on it. The axe with the head attached was a blunt instrument – but I swung it around to fend off a zombie sneaking up on me. I bashed its head with the other head until it went down, head-butted into its second death. Then I stood on the attached head and pulled it off the blade with a sickening squelch. About a dozen zombies were coming around behind us by then – angry undead shoppers wanting to feast. They were closing the distance. To help me out, Hayley fired nails into their kneecaps to drop them. It was an effective way of slowing them down – but it didn’t kill them. They crawled towards us. Hayley blasted nails into the heads of the fallen, covering my back as I made a path for us through the others. In my peripheral vision I could see Billy slamming his brick into the face of a former gang member.

  I bet he’d wished he had not whistled.

  Nearer me, the ground was covered with corpses – some truly dead and some twitching and snarling. Hayley and I had to step over some zombies to get to the other side – but it was dangerous stepping on the living dead. One I’d thought I’d killed with an axe blow suddenly lurched its jaws towards my leg – salivating in anticipation of chomping through my flesh – but then its head exploded as Billy appeared, slamming his brick down on its skull.

  “Need some help?”

  “Yeah,” I muttered.

  He joined me in fighting our way through the last few blocking our escape. Then we ran until we were clear. We got off the street and rested in the back garden of a house where there were no zombies. For a few seconds we all rested, gathering
our breath, momentarily on the same side.

  Then Billy stepped away from us – but he didn’t run away. He lowered his brick. “Look, I’m sorry about what I did back there. I just wanted to get away. I’ll team up with you guys for real this time. I can get us out of this town – but I’ll need your help.”

  “You want us to help you?” I said. “After you whistled to those zombies? You tried to kill us!”

  “That was a mistake,” he said. “I swear I won’t do nothing bad again. I wasn’t lying about the car. I could’ve got it working if the zombies hadn’t been everywhere. I have another way out – if you’ll listen.”

  “I’m listening,” I said, though I had my axe raised.

  “I checked out your van. I know I can fix what’s wrong with it in two minutes if we can push it into the garage over the pit. I don’t think there are zombies inside now. You released them all, killing my friends.”

  Oh – they were his friends now? Earlier he had made it sound like he had been forced to join the gang. He was bitter about them getting killed.

  That was a decision I regretted because it had made it worse for me and my family – but I wasn’t going to feel bad about it. “Hey, Billy, I wouldn’t have done that if you and your gang hadn’t pursued us here. I’m not the only one to blame here. Besides, you released the ones in the supermarket, Billy. I figure we’re even now. I’ll call a truce if you help us get out of here. How do you know you can fix our van, anyway?”

  “Before Day One I was a trainee mechanic for CarFit UK. I fixed hundreds of cars. I know how to fix your van. I can weld a plate onto the bottom to repair the tank – but I’d never be able to push the van into the garage on my own, so I need you to help me do that.”

  “You expect me to trust you again?”

  “Look, I can always get out of here on foot – but you’re the one who needs to get a vehicle for your friend. So, you make the choice, Ben. Want to team up for real?”

  He had a cheeky grin I wanted to wipe off his face – but his plan did make me interested. Our van was a zombie-proof box on wheels. It would be great to get it working.

  “We’ll need petrol,” I said, thinking aloud.

  Billy looked smug. “No problem. We can syphon it from some vehicles around here. I’ve seen a couple. All we need is a garden hose.”

  We agreed to help each other. There was a little greenhouse in the back garden. It was filled with tools we could use to syphon petrol – a garden hose and a large green plastic watering can. It also contained some great gardening tools ideal for fighting the undead – hoes, spades, rakes and pitchforks. They were excellent weapons. Billy swapped his brick for a pitchfork. Hayley grabbed a long hoe. I decided to keep using my axe.

  Meanwhile I contacted Jason on the walkie-talkie. “What’s the situation?”

  “Pretty nasty,” he said. “The zombies are inside the school, dude. Couple of minutes ago, I had to come down off the roof because I could see some of the zombies breaking into the school through a classroom’s windows. They would have got to Angela if I hadn’t stopped them. I killed some and barricaded the rest into the classroom – but they’re slamming themselves against the door. They might break through at any time. Some are now on the roof too because they climbed up when I was gone. I locked the roof so they can’t follow me. I keep checking the corridors to see if any have got in through the classrooms – but there are too many windows and doors to guard them all, Ben. We need you here, Ben. Have you got the car?”

  “No,” I said. “Change of plan. We’re going to repair our van.”

  “The van?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Billy says just a few minutes – once we get there. It’ll take us about ten minutes to sneak our way to the garage. That’s assuming we don’t encounter trouble. So, I’m estimating twenty minutes. Can you hold on until we’re get there, okay?”

  “Dude, I don’t know.”

  “Lock yourselves into a room if you have to. We’ll come and get you once we’ve got the van running, okay?”

  “Be quick,” Jason said. “Angela’s looking worse. She’s unconscious again. We’ve got to get her proper medical treatment, Ben. She’s dying.”

  ENTRY TWELVE

  We needed to syphon petrol from three abandoned vehicles to get just enough to fill the five-litre watering can. Billy did that unenviable task, sucking the air out of the hose to create a vacuum to draw out the petrol, while Hayley and I protected him from wandering undead. The worst part of syphoning was the need to suck on the hose until the petrol started flowing, because if you were not quick you got a mouthful of foul-tasting unleaded petrol. Billy wasn’t fast enough one time – so he was spitting out petrol as we circled around to the garage. I tried not to laugh – but it was funny seeing his face twisted in disgust every time he spat out petrol. He looked like Robert De Niro gurning in the mirror in Taxi Driver.

  We reached the back of the garage after encountering a couple of emaciated zombies – but they were easy to kill with our gardening tools. Billy was right about the garage being empty of zombies, but they were loitering on the High Street, where a group feasted on a biker’s corpse like his organs were the first course in a mediaeval banquet. Two were fighting over his entrails. The group were bound to notice us when we started pushing the van into the garage. Before revealing our location, I sneaked around the van’s side to check it was completely empty inside. Luckily, there were no living or undead hiding there. Then I scouted out the garage. Something moaned in the darkness. So – it wasn’t completed deserted. That problem would have to wait until we got the van moving, though.

  “Hayley, get in and steer the van when we get it rolling.”

  She jumped into the driver’s seat while Billy and I went around the back. We started pushing as soon as Hayley had the brakes off. The van didn’t start to move until we both got our backs into it, really straining. We were being silent – but the zombies spotted us. Their moans changed tone, signifying their interest in our flesh and blood.

  Billy spat again, cursing. “They’re coming.”

  “I see them,” I said. “Push harder!”

  “I am pushing harder.”

  “Push even harder.”

  We pushed and pushed. The van rolled forward. It started to move on its own momentum once the wheels turned, rolling into the darkness of the garage. We kept pushing harder and harder as the zombies advanced. As soon as the whole van passed under the doors, Billy and I scrambled to get the doors shut. They came down painfully slowly as the zombies ran, crawled and shambled in our direction.

  The doors were half down when the first arrived. I recognised him. He was the man Angela had shot in the leg during the ambush. He hadn’t escaped with their leader. Now he had a large chunk of his face missing, which had gone pale as he died. He dragged his injured leg behind him, his eyes focussed on me with savage hatred. He remembered me. And now whatever remained of his human mind wanted revenge. I pushed him back with Hayley’s hoe – catching it under the chin with the blade. The blade sliced into his throat, crushing his larynx. The undead man stumbled backwards, gurgling through the hole in his neck, his blood running down his chest. I jabbed him a second time – pushing him over. Some of the one behind him started tearing him apart so they could get past him to the warm, tasty meals in the garage. I didn’t want to be fast food. I jumped up and used my weight to drag the door down much faster. The doors slammed down a moment later, plunging the garage into total darkness.

  Turning around, I could hear moaning from inside. It was getting louder as the invisible zombie approached me in the dark. Where was my torch? My jacket. Got to get it out now. I fumbled for it while hearing the zombie getting closer and closer. I had no idea where the zombie was until Hayley switched on the headlights, flooding the room with light. Then I could see two zombies. One zombie was lurching across the room towards me. It was an elderly woman with no teeth. She smelled like decayed
cabbages. The other zombie was younger, but it was writhing on the floor without any legs or arms, no danger to anyone. I dispatched the pensioner with my axe. Billy finished off the immobile one with his pitchfork through its skull.

  A quick search didn’t find any more. We were safe – for the moment. But I was fully aware of the danger awaiting outside. The doors rattled behind us as we pushed the van over the pit. I called Jason while Billy looked for the tools required to get the tank fixed.

  “Jason, how are you doing?”

  “Uh – worse. They’ve broken through the rear exit – but they’ve struggling to get past the barricade because I’ve added more chairs and tables and stuff to block it. I can hear other crashing around in the classrooms. The air gun is empty of pellets. I’ve got my baseball bat and other weapons – but I can’t fight them and protect Angela for long. Please tell me you’re coming, Ben.”

  “We’ll be there soon,” I promised. “Just keep yourself alive, Jason. We’ll get there. Get to the main entrance. We’re coming soon.”

  I fixed my crossbow while Billy climbed down into the pit with the welding tools. I had my weapon reloaded when he had done the job, which did take him only a couple of minutes. I was impressed – but I didn’t show it. I handed him the watering can – while Hayley pointed the crossbow at him, making him understand we were in charge. “Fill the tank quickly.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. You’re in charge, boss.”

  I moved into the driver’s seat as Billy ran around the side. He started pouring petrol into the tank.

  “I don’t trust him,” Hayley whispered.

  “Neither do I.”

  As soon as the watering can was empty, I turned on the ignition and tested the engine. Nothing. I tried again. The engine whined – but stopped. I tried a third time, praying that time for a miracle. The engine roared. Yes. The van was alive again and showing a decent amount of petrol on its gauge. I went around the back and opened the back for Billy – but I wasn’t going to let him get in without taking some precautions. I had some gaffer tape. “Billy, I’ll drive you out of here – but only if you’re hands are tied.”