Blog of the Dead (Book 1): Sophie (8 page)

‘Sophie, we’ve pretty much secured the place,’ said Hannah, the woman with the knitting needles, as she approached me. ‘It’s just a few trouble makers left back there,’ she nodded towards the scuffle. ‘Nothing we can’t handle. And we found who we think are the ring leaders in some offices on another floor up.’

‘Where are they now?’ I asked. Hannah didn’t say anything. ‘
What
?’ I said, noting Hannah’s shifty look. ‘Where are they?’

Hannah looked pained, and then she said, ‘Polly. She, um, thought that because they’re the ring leaders they’re too dangerous to let go …’

‘She’s keeping them prisoner?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘You’re not telling me …?’ Hannah looked at me. ‘Where are they, Hannah?’

‘The car park on the roof.’

I sprinted up the escalator to the next floor, up another escalator until I reached the top level of the car park. I ran out the doors and scanned the area. At first I could only see abandoned cars. But then I saw them. On the roof of a hatch back stood two of our men, a struggling and screaming guy gripped between them. Two more of our men stood beside the car, another struggling guy between them. Polly stood next to them, her arms across her chest, looking apathetic. She had stopped wearing a bandage, and I could see the healing gash on her arm from when she cut it that first trip to Sai’s.

‘Polly! No!’ She looked at me but turned back to the men on the car roof.

There was nothing I could do. I watched as the men threw the first guy off the roof. I fell down onto my knees, dropping my hammer, and put my hands over my head. I don’t know why, other than to shut out what had just happened. I heard the second guy scream and beg them to let him go, that he’d do anything if they just let him live. His cries intensified and I looked up to see the men on the ground shoving him up onto the roof of the car, while the two already up there hauled him up by his arms. The guy struggled but the two men held him firmly between them as they waited for Polly’s orders.

‘Stop! Polly! Stop this now!’ I got to my feet and ran at them. The two men beside the car lunged forwards to block me from getting to Polly.

‘Stay out of this, Sophie,’ she said.

‘Polly. Let him go.’ I tried to push past the men and get to the car, but they held me back. I struggled and kicked out. I heard Sam shouting then. I turned to see him racing towards us.

‘Please, Polly,’ I said, turning to her. ‘Let him go. Let him go or you can get out of the house. I don’t want anything to do with you.’

‘I’m terrified, Sophie,’ she said in a monotone voice.

‘What the fuck has got into you?’ I asked.

‘Sophie, do you really think it would be safe for us to have the masterminds behind the ambush of the town still roaming around? What do you think they would do to us, eh? Do you think they’d let us get away with it? Like fuck they would. Killing them is the only way to be rid of them and it sends the message to the others that we mean business.’

‘You have no right, Polly,’ said Sam when he reached us. ‘We didn’t agree to anything like this. Let him go you fucked up bitch!’

‘Are you the fucking boss, Sam?’

‘No. But, Polly, come on. You can’t do this. It’s murder for fuck’s sake.’

It didn’t escape my attention that I’d helped kill the big guys downstairs. But they had been attacking us, it had been self defence. This guy wasn’t – couldn’t – fight back. ‘Polly, please. Let him go,’ I said. I could hear the guy crying. I turned to look up at him. He’d stopped struggling and hung limply between the two men. He looked young – early twenties, tall, slim, shoulder length dark hair, a couple of tattoos on his arms, quite good looking. Just a normal guy. Not particularly threatening. I wondered how he’d ended up in his position, in charge of the big guys.

‘I’ll take full responsibility for him,’ I said, still looking up at him. He stared down at me, his features softening. ‘You’ll work with us, right?’ I said to him. ‘You won’t do anything to put any of us in danger, will you?’

‘I-I’ll do whatever you want,’ he said. One of the men that held him, a tall, stocky man with a shaved head, shifted uncomfortably on his feet.

‘No way,’ said Polly.

‘Let him go. He’ll help us,’ I said, turning to Polly. Then turning back to the guy. ‘You’ll work here and help everyone in town get a fair share of food, right?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. Anything. Just don’t fucking kill me.’

‘I don’t want to kill him,’ said the man with the shaved head. ‘I don’t want to kill anyone else.’ He let go of the guy’s arm. Then the other man let go, too. The long-haired guy virtually leapt from the roof of the car onto the ground beside me. I didn’t know if he would stay or run. Then he moved closer to me and grabbed my left hand.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll do anything. Absolutely anything.’

And that is how we ended up with not only control over Asda and a big portion of the town’s food supply, but also, David, our caretaker.

December 11
2pm Day 28
I’m sitting in the living room as I write this. Leanne is sat on the other sofa. I don’t know how that girl does it, but she has this way of always looking awkward and uncomfortable. She’s all bony limbs, jutting out from baggy clothing, that don’t really know where to put themselves. She’s sitting shoulders hunched, head down and avoiding eye contact, while picking at the healing cuts on the palms of her hands from when she fell in town that first day we found her. Leanne’d make the world’s comfiest sofa look like a bed of nails. I don’t like to say this, but she gives me the creeps. She hardly ever speaks and when she does it’s usually only to Polly.

Polly’s making tea. Polly. I’ve got a fucking problem with Polly. I mean, is it just me or is throwing slightly bad people off car park roofs really not an ok thing to do? I’ve always known that she’s a fucking cow but … Her and Leanne spend most of their time shut up in Leanne’s room. This is a rare and honoured appearance. I don’t even want to know what is going on in that room.

Everyone involved is recovering from Wednesday’s showdown. There were a few injuries, some nasty, but one good thing about owning your own supermarket is we’ve a good supply of first aid equipment and medicines from the instore pharmacy. One of our guys died in the battle, one more died yesterday from his injuries. I guess we’ve got to be thankful that there weren’t more deaths.

Four out of the seven big guys died. The others must have crawled away, there being no sign of them anywhere when we went out to look once things had quietened down inside (and once I felt sure Polly wouldn’t kill any more fairly innocent people). The dead ones we’ve dragged and dumped in some big bins behind Debenhams for now.

Michael’s fine. Well, to say he’s fine is probably saying a bit too much. He’s alive and uninjured. But he’s not fine. Archie had turned into a zombie by the time Michael had got home on Wednesday evening, I found this out when I saw Michael in town briefly on Friday, while he collected some food from Asda for his family. He didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to him. Michael didn’t really say much so all I know is that Archie had died and that his mum and dad are safe and well. I didn’t press the matter, so I have no idea whether by ‘died’ Michael meant that Archie had turned but is still, as we speak, a functioning zombie or if he meant they’ve given him the
through the head treatment
. I want to know but I can’t exactly go round there and say,
You know that whole Archie bitten and turned into zombie thing – how’d that pan out exactly
?

I knew him briefly, but it had been enough time for me to fall in love with him.

As I write this, there’s a team of people clearing up the town, and repairing the damage done by the big guys. It’s not an easy job, what with the ever present danger from the zombies. We’ll have times when we don’t see any for hours then a whole bunch will turn up. One of the volunteers got attacked and we lost her.

But even despite the danger, each day more and more people turn up and pitch in, sweeping up broken glass, boarding up broken windows. We’ve got Asda secure. David – former bad guy turned caretaker – lives in the store along with a group of volunteers. David has made his home in the store itself. He’s made a little den in the store café, while the others have turned the offices above the store into their new home. Our instore team are responsible for security and for organising the rationing of the stock.

We’ve decided – that’s me, Sam, David and the other store keepers – that we can’t just have people coming in to Asda and taking what they want when they feel like it. We’d be out of stock (this includes the stock from the petrol station and various newsagents and off-licences that the big guys plundered and stored in Asda) in no time. So we’re setting up a rationing system. That way we’ll hopefully have enough stock to last until we can get some sort of urban farm up and running.

December’s a bad time of year to grow food, but we’ve got some people in the group, led by Hannah (she with the knitting needles), who know about the whole grow your own thing. They’ve been scouring the area for greenhouses and sunny conservatories, anywhere that they can start sowing seeds. Hopefully, by spring and definitely by the summer, we should have some fresh crops. I never thought it possible for me to get excited by a carrot, but by the time they’re grown I’m pretty sure I will be.

We’ve also got control of the Sainsbury’s off Sandgate Road as well as the Tesco Express in Bouverie Road. The idea is that, because it’s dangerous for any of us to be moving around too much due to the zombies, those stores will run as franchises, serving the survivors in the local area. The store keepers in each supermarket communicate with me and Sam via Facebook, as do the network of Farmers across the town.

This is pretty exciting, really. We’re getting a community spirit going. I know it won’t be easy, though. The most I’ve had to organise before this is just getting myself to seminars at uni, and that didn’t always go to plan on Thursdays if we’d been to Onyx Nightclub on a Wednesday night (even though my seminar didn’t start until 1.30pm).

Me and Sam are going to head into town now to help with the clean up. I don’t even care what Polly and Leanne are going to do. (Polly’s just come in with a cup of tea for Leanne – where’s mine???!!! – and they’re both heading upstairs again). Bloody weirdos!

December 12
1.30pm Day 29
When I arrived in the town centre with Sam yesterday afternoon to help with the ongoing clean up, I saw that it’s looking a hell of a lot better. Debris from the smashed up shops as well as the bodies of zombies – some of which had probably been there, I guess, since the outbreak began, and others me, Sam, Polly and the volunteers had slaughtered over the last few days – had mostly been cleared away. We’ve been loading all the crap, including the bodies, into the back of a truck that one of the volunteers drove into the town centre and parked in Guildhall Street. We’re trying not to use vehicles too much, though. They’re noisy and attract more zombies, so we end up with even more bodies, and so on and so on. So vehicles are mostly for emergency use only or unavoidable long journeys.

Volunteers have started to board or seal up some of the shops and cafés to keep the elements out, as well as zombies. Any place that has anything that might be useful, like clothing, food, first aid, medicines, toiletries etc, needs to be protected.

I caught a waft of cooking drifting out onto Rendezvous Street as I swept past (literally – I had a broom in my hand) Googies café. The boarded up door opened wide and I saw someone emerge with a tray loaded with burgers (the famous Googies burgers – in a wrap not a bun) and started handing them out to the volunteers outside. I was starving so I grabbed one for me and one for Sam. I found him round the corner, helping to seal up the smashed window in Bonmarche (even female middle-aged survivors need clothing during the zombie apocalypse, you know) with sheets of plastic snaffled from around the UCF building. The plastic had been attached to wooden batons, fixed over the window. Sam knelt down while he banged nails into a baton attached to the bottom of the window.

Two other volunteers were annihilating a couple of zombies close to where Sam worked. The zombies were atrociously manky, even by zombie standards. One had no left arm and turned in pathetic semicircles every time it swiped for the young bloke, Liam, who taunted it with an axe. On one particularly unfortunate spin the zombie span 180 degrees and fell to its knees. Liam swung the axe at the back of its head. It split open like a carcass on the butcher’s block.

The other zombie had a hole right through its stomach. You could actually see through to the other side. Seriously! Hannah skewered it with one of her deadly 16 inch knitting needles – right through the eye.

‘Sam. Dinner,’ I said, having to step over the mangled body of the polo mint zombie that splodged to the ground in my path. I could see an old fag butt and some chewing gum on the ground through the hole in its stomach.

Sam stood, put his hammer through his belt, removed a nail from his mouth that he’d been holding between his teeth, put it in his pocket and said, ‘Fucking awesome,’ (at the sight of the burger, not the splodging zombie) and took the burger that I held out to him.

It had started to get dark, and a light drizzle misted the air. Volunteers started to down tools, or rather hold on to their tools for the journey home (some tooling themselves up even more). But more people came up the road from the direction of Googies with trays of food and drink, some with candles in jars glowing comfortingly in the dusk, their flames fighting successfully against the damp air.

The joy induced by the burgers became contagious and spread through the volunteers all along the street. I heard chatter, even laughter and instead of disappearing back to their homes, people gathered around the ones handing out the food, faces illuminated by the candles. Word must have reached to Asda because soon (by the time I’d started my second burger) people with bulging Asda bags and bottles of wine came into sight from Bouverie Place, heading down to Googies. Me and Sam followed.