by Frank Tayell
I told myself to get a grip, to calm down and think, but all I could do was keep looking behind. Two became three, became four, then five and I ducked down another alley, across a cul-de-sac and straight through a laurel bush, tripped on a low brick wall and hit my head as I fell.
I crawled under the bush, curled up as close to the wall as I could manage, and lay as quietly as I could, barely breathing, just listening. I couldn’t outrun Them. I couldn’t fight all of Them. I just hoped that They wouldn’t hear me. I think I passed out for a time, maybe for an hour, maybe for two.
When I came back to myself I held my breath, closed my eyes and listened. There was plenty of noise, the trees blowing in the light breeze, the drip of a broken pipe, the scurrying of something too small to concern me. Then there was the noise of the undead. It wasn’t close, it was at least a few streets away, a clattering snuffling sound as They slouched along, knocking into each other and whatever lay in the roadway.
Slowly, painfully, I got up. My leg had been knocked about a lot during the chase and when I stood, it didn’t waste a second letting the rest of my body know it. Going by the chunk I’d torn out of the cast, I must have fallen over the wall a lot harder than I thought.
As I made my way out of the garden it took a moment to work out that I was roughly a mile south of my house, on a street that ran parallel to the railway. I remembered that the alleyways were down on the map as a pedestrian cut through to the station, one that the locals had wanted to get closed due to the late-night traffic. It was completely the opposite direction to the one I’d wanted to go.
Since heading north was out, at least for the moment, I headed southeast, trying to put distance between myself and the undead I’d woken up. I moved slowly, each step far more painful than it had been at the beginning of the day. My breathing was more laboured, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep going for long.
I killed my third zombie a half hour later. I’d found a cycle path that follows an almost straight line between Crystal Palace and Greenwich. It cuts through parks, across supermarket car parks and along railway cuttings, offering a quick route to the river, but it’s a narrow path. In most spots it’s enclosed either by the high walls of the buildings running alongside or by the fence that was meant, in some unfathomable way, to make it safer at night. It was that fence that kept me on the roads as much as possible. There was a greater chance of meeting one of Them, but also more options for getting away.
The zombie was in the middle of a footpath about thirty feet from the road. It was facing towards me, looking right at me as I walked around the edge of a high brick wall. If I’d been more cautious, if I’d gone a different way…
It came towards me at a fast, stilted walk. I didn’t panic, I don’t think I had any panic left in me at that point. I looked around for an escape, but it was moving faster than I could manage, and then it was only a few steps away.
I flailed at this walking corpse with the left crutch, trying to push it away. That meant putting more weight on my right leg, which screamed in agony. The zombie raised its arms, batted at the crutch, its momentum swinging it round so it was now sideways on to me. I shifted my weight onto my left leg, let the crutch fall from my right hand to dangle from its strap as I tightened my grip on the hammer and swung with all my strength.
The first blow knocked the zombie down, but my own impetus carried me forward another step, my weight now completely on my broken leg. I stumbled, almost collapsing on top of the creature, my right leg stuck out behind me, my entire weight on my left knee. The inhuman monster pushed itself back to its feet, snarling, trying to snap at me with its mouth. The blow must have done some damage as it was moving jerkily, its arms groping out, clearly unsure where the threat was. I brought down the hammer a second time. It died.
I picked myself up as best I could, and limped away. The leg… I’m worried I've done something serious to it, but what can I do? I needed to take one of my painkillers but couldn’t afford to have my senses dulled. I tried to focus on something else, anything else, and that’s when I realised that when I spotted the creature in the alley, it wasn’t in that half crouch posture the undead adopt when there isn’t any prey. It was upright, waiting.
What had I done to give myself away? If it was smell, They would have known I was in the house or under those bushes. Perhaps the living dead can still see, but not as well as humans. After all They didn’t notice the light when I was signalling to Sam. In this case since I couldn’t see the zombie, there is no way it could have seen me. That left sound. Instead of listening for Them, I started listening to myself. My breathing was loud and laboured. I began to take shallower, slower breaths. Then I heard the sound of my crutches. It wasn’t that loud, but it was a rhythmic clip-clunk. I paused again by a brick wall and tore off strips of cloth from my shirt and wrapped them around the rubber feet.
It was an improvement. I took my time at corners, and cut through back gardens so as to avoid the streets They were on, doubling and tripling back so many times I am thoroughly exhausted.
I found a laundrette, maybe a mile and a half from the river. There’s nothing at all useful here except intact windows, and a door that was easily broken with the chisel and just as easily secured again by pushing a washing machine in front of the doorway.
Looking back on the day I think I saw less than two-dozen of the undead. I was expecting more, a lot more. I’d imagined a dash to the river, with hundreds and thousands chasing me as I slammed that locked gate to the community of houseboats closed just in time. As far as I thought about killing any of Them, I didn’t think of it as anything more than swinging my arm, then They would fall, and I would move on. I didn’t think of it as killing at all, not really.
And the undead can hear. I’ve suspected it, but today I had proof. It’s obvious, really, every time I emptied the sink or bath or flushed the toilet, They heard water running through the waste pipe to the sewer by the side of the house. Sam must have been doing the same, and with the same sorts of sounds coming from different ends of the street, They couldn’t work out exactly where the noise was coming from. As their numbers began to thin about the same time the water ran out, the conclusion seems sound.
As theories go, this is both a helpful and a gloomy one. If there are so few zombies in London, then why couldn’t the government deal with Them? Does this really mean the government is gone? But that is a question I can’t answer today, one of many, like why didn’t the driver turn? Had he used the vaccine? I suppose that’s the most obvious answer.
Oh, and the radio? It was broken.
Day 36, The Walworth Road, London
05:30
There’s a huge plume of smoke hanging in the sky to the north. It’s bigger than any I’ve seen so far. The buildings are too close together to properly gauge how far away it is, but wherever it is, it’s large enough to block out a whole section of sky. I’m not generally one for omens, but this doesn’t bode well. I just have to hope it’s north of the river. I can’t smell burning, though. I’d have thought I’d have been able to, but that musty noisome tang is so strong here that I can’t smell anything else.
I’m just finishing breakfast, a tin of pineapple chunks. That’s my last tin, leaving not very much left at all. Ah well, at least the bag is lighter. This isn’t a bad place. There’s nothing here, but the walls are solid, the windows are unbroken. I suppose laundrettes and drycleaners had nothing worth looting.
12:00, Bermondsey, London.
Lunchtime. And joy oh joy, a change of pace. I’m no longer hungry. I’m actually satiated. Stuffed. Fed. Gorged. I’ve had sufficient unto the day thereof. Well, okay, that’s the slightest of exaggerations. I’m no longer hungry and isn’t that the greatest feeling of them all?
I owe my full stomach to my distracted mind. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate, scenes of the evacuation, the official ones that they broadcast, went through my mind this morning. I’m not quite sure what triggered it, perhaps a survival
reflex to avoid thinking about the horrors around me. Whatever, I don’t care. I’m trying to avoid introspection.
Before the main evacuation started, during that period when everyone was at home and the government wanted to keep it that way, the press tried to emphasise why people without a permit shouldn’t try travelling. There was this one piece, an interview that Jen gave at Paddington Station. She was explaining to the camera how important a gradual evacuation was in order to not overload the system. In the background, surrounded by smiling but armed soldiers, were quiet orderly queues, made up mostly, but not exclusively, of boarding school children interspersed with the hostage families of those workers being kept in the city. Not that the reporter gave any explanation of who the evacuees were, as for Jen all she said was that “those of you clogging up the roads, and trying to get on the trains, are just slowing down the evacuation of people like this.” Whilst pointing meaningfully at a group of very young kids. Then there was a choreographed Q&A session that lasted about five minutes.
Behind Jen was a vending machine. Every thirty seconds or so someone would come along and hopefully put some money in. The thing was empty, long empty I guess, so the evacuee would head back to the unmoving line and then, a few seconds later, the scene would be reproduced. It was weird. I counted it happening eight times during that short piece. All these people, they could all see other evacuees try, they could see them walk away empty-handed, but it was as if not only did they distrust the other people, they distrusted the evidence of their own eyes as well.
By the time I’d been released from hospital, most of the looting had stopped. There were occasional raids on supermarkets and supply depots and these were put down very publicly. I saw some of the combat footage, all taken with helmet cameras and relayed to a ‘Forward Combat Command Centre’, where the video was scrutinised to identify whether any of the ‘hostiles’ had been undead. The looters were shot down without mercy or hesitation, no prisoners were taken, no warnings were given, none were left wounded. I think that in the videos I saw – and I must have seen at least twenty – in none of them were the looters armed, and in none did any appear to be infected. They were just hungry.
The following morning, the news bulletins would start with a reporter in a barricaded car park. The bodies had been taken away, but the ground was littered with damp patches where a half-hearted attempt had been made to clean away the blood. The reporter would then say that a number of looters had been stopped and the food distribution centre would open shortly. The camera would then slowly pan across the car park, lingering on the bullet holes that riddled the stained concrete. And that was it. No further details were given and against that backdrop, none were needed.
As the reporter finished, occasionally, in the corner of the shot, you could see hundreds of people queuing to get in for their day’s meagre ration. Usually they were careful not to show the queues, not the real ones anyway. When they were doing a segment on rationing, they always used the same out of the way, immaculately clean store with its equally immaculate customers. People would line up outside, chatting quietly, waiting patiently for their turn. None seemed bothered by the soldiers. Perhaps those customers were military themselves, dressed in civvies and glad for the easy duty. Or it might well have been staged, I didn’t ask.
The rationing system was pretty ad-hoc. For those in boarding schools, living on university campuses, in retirement or nursing homes, stranded in hotels and so on, an individual was designated to collect the ration on their behalf. For the rest it was one ration per household per day. The size of the ration was determined by the size of the household, and that was calculated by counting the family members physically present in the queue.
Rations could only be collected from a specified distribution point, and only between the hours of nine and five. The only proof of address that was accepted was a TV licence. If you didn’t have one, tough. If you couldn’t find it, tough. If you turned up late, or couldn’t persuade your teenager to get out of bed, tough. If you didn’t want to risk any of your family having to walk the increasingly dangerous streets, well then, you would get a one-person ration and the rest of your family would go hungry. And if you were even suspected of bringing along people who didn’t live with you in an attempt to get more than your share, then you’d be lucky not to be detained there on the spot. It was a very poor system, everyone knew it, but it only had to tide the populace over for a few weeks until the evacuation proper.
The little shops weren’t subject to the centralisation of supplies, the closures and the rationing. It just wasn’t practical to send troops to empty their shelves, not when you consider how many of them there were and how little stock they carried. It was even less after people realised they were open when the supermarkets were closed.
I saw three today, all looted, their windows broken, the shelves inside torn down, weeks of wind and rain finishing the work that the hungry masses started. But small shops aren’t the only places where there would be food. After remembering the image of Jen at Paddington station, I went looking for vending machines. They’re everywhere, it was simply a matter of finding somewhere that had one but which had been closed from the first day of the curfew.
The obvious places will have been picked clean long ago. Train stations, shops, and restaurants aren’t worth investigating. One place I’m sure would be worth checking, though, would be the warehouses where they stored and prepared all the airline food, but I’m nowhere near an airport and don’t have any plans to be. Hospitals stayed open too long. Schools and universities might be worth a shot, but not all schools had vending machines.
Gyms, at least this one, are a veritable treasure trove of energy bars, protein shakes, glucose drinks, and whey powder. I’m not sure what whey powder is, something to do with cheese I think. There’s dozens of tubs here, all claiming to be protein rich and banana flavoured. I miss bananas, sadly no real ones were harmed in the making of this stuff.
They seem to be clumping together now, which is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, it means there are stretches of road where there’s not a single zombie in sight. On the negative, if one spots me, five or six others will be after me before I can blink. That’s meant I’ve headed more east than north, and I’ve still not seen the river. But I’m close! Outside there’s a sign pointing the direction of a footpath that goes along the South Bank. There’s no distance given, but it means the river can’t be much further.
This gym’s a decent enough place. There’s more food and water than I can carry, a back door, strong front doors, and no broken windows. I could probably hide out here for a week or two. But, now I’ve got this far I’m going on. I could be at the river this afternoon, and floating down the Thames by nightfall. The bag’s filled to bursting with sports drink and energy snacks, by the time I write the next entry, I’ll be on the waves!
19:00, Bermondsey, London.
It’s all gone to hell.
After I closed the gym doors behind me I secured them with a bit of cord. It wasn’t a great knot, but it did need to be cut or untied, a feat that I’m sure is beyond the undead. I stuck a note to the door that read ‘If the cord is still tied this place should be zombie free’. I thought someone else might need somewhere safe to hide up. As it turns out that someone is me.
After an hour, I’d travelled half a mile northeast. The plume of smoke I’d noticed is somewhere to the northwest. I’ve been trying to angle away from it. I don’t know whether this is grim schadenfreude, but that plume, I think, is over Whitehall.
I saw a few zombies, not many, maybe one or two per street, but enough positioned at crossroads and corners to force me through narrow alleyways and gaps between buildings. If I don’t have to face Them, then I’d rather not. Call it cowardice if you like, I prefer to think of it as prudence. All the time, as I was sneaking along, getting closer, metre-by-metre, I kept thinking how few of Them there were.
A couple of years ago, I found myself with a few days to spare in
February. On a whim I decided to get in the car and go and stay at the coast. I’ve always liked the seafront in winter. There was something about the sight of the waves crashing against the beach, of rain pouring down windowpanes when you're safely inside, that appealed to me. So I got in the car and headed south. I’d been hoping to find a quaint B&B, but ended up in one of those dreary chain hotels. The first thing the next morning I got in the car and drove back.
When I got home everything looked the same but something felt wrong. The door was still locked and nothing was missing. It was only when I went to make a coffee that I found out the water in the kettle was still warm. It turned out to have been Jen, I’d not told her I was going away and she’d dropped by looking for some feedback on a speech she had to give to the NUT. All was well, and we laughed about it afterwards. Walking through London this morning, I got that same sense of unidentifiable dread, as if the other shoe was about to drop. Something, I didn’t know what, but something was wrong.
The buildings I passed were looted, ransacked, or otherwise without promise. They were certainly not worth the time to investigate when I could almost touch the river. Above me the Shard cast its long shadow over the streets below, where a few more cars had been pushed onto the pavement to keep the roads clear. Then I came to the barricades.
A bus had been wedged diagonally across a road. Behind it were a couple of supermarket delivery vans and an upended skip. Around and behind those was a great mess of wood and rubble. I thought, at first that this was some bizarre accident, so I continued on to the next street, but that too was blocked, this time by a more professional agglomeration of concrete, barbed wire and sheet metal.