Breaking News: An Autozombiography (20 page)

He tried to help a few people at first, nearly getting bitten in the process, and had soon changed tactic and started running. However, once he’d caught sight of a woman laid out on the bonnet of a car parked in a driveway, he couldn’t walk away. She was unconscious, but two men stood over her, one of them scrabbling at her torn dress with his trousers round his ankles, the other one watching as his friend ground away at her limp frame. Jay had taken a sword from his dad’s study so he could really go to town on the self-defence front, but decided to put it to good use on those two. He shouted to get their attention, and the one who was watching walked right up to Jay and pulled out a knife. Jay told us that before he had even had time to pull his sword out, the woman sat upright on the car bonnet. She put her hands into the other man’s mouth and ripped his cheeks clean away from his face. As she began to chew on the fatty flaps her rapist disengaged and ran past Jay screaming, his skeletal face bubbling scarlet. Jay laughed as he told us that his accomplice had ran after his mate shouting ‘Graham - you alright?’ Jay hadn’t helped the woman.

He fought his way across half a mile of madness to his house, and had been almost scared to death by Vaughan leaping out from behind the bushes where he’d been hiding, waiting for Jay and keeping very still. Together they had shored up their defences as more stinkers gathered round the outside of the house, but a window got smashed and they had started to come in. Throughout the day Jay and Vaughan worked their way from room to room, moving or fighting when it became necessary. When the gas tank in town blew it took all the windows out, and that’s when Jay decided to move to the high ground of Cissbury Ring. As soon as it got dark they tooled-up and ran for the Downs, becoming so exhausted that they had climbed into separate trees at the other end of the woods below us, and slept the night up there. As soon as day broke, they walked the last mile up to the ring. Jay had seen us through his binoculars.

‘
Have one of these,’ Al said, handing them a radio each and demonstrating how to talk to just one other radio or all of the units in range. Talk soon turned to the camp, and both newcomers admired Al’s tepee-like construction. He said Vaughan could stay on the floor until he had built himself something substantial to sleep in.

‘
We need to get a patrol going on the perimeter wall. You know, in case they come.’ Jay suggested, swatting a fly away.

‘
Yes, definitely, but first we’ve got to get some extra stuff.’ I pulled out the pad and flipped over to my wish-list.

‘
Where from?’ Al asked.

‘
B&Q I reckon,’ I motioned down the hill to the town. ‘If there’s any of it left. I want to see if I can get down to our house too, it’s so close.’

‘
We could see Sainsbury’s on the way up here,’ Vaughan said. ‘It was trashed.’

‘
Well, that was for food I should think. We saw looters in Crawley too.’

‘
Why don’t we just load the car up?’ Vaughan asked.

‘
No petrol,’ Al and I both said simultaneously, so we linked little fingers and said ‘Voodoo.’ We all brainstormed for half an hour and came up with the best list so far. It was designed to plug the defensive gap which we faced, mainly because everyone had grabbed things to fight the undead with, and didn’t bother with the things we’d actually need to last the week.

‘
If we were in the US, we’d all have brought our guns with us,’ Jay said.

‘
Yeah, and we’d be counting until the ammo ran out.’ added Al.

‘…
if we hadn’t already shot each other,’ Vaughan chipped in.

‘
We could try nail-guns,’ Al suggested. ‘They’ll be useful for any building we do too. We’ll have to tamper with them so they fire even when they’re not pressed up against something.’

‘
It’s worth a go,’ I agreed, ‘but only if they’re not too heavy.’ A chainsaw made the list too, but not for wantonly violent purposes and only if we had room.

10ft of 4in diameter plastic drainpipe

4 x nail guns and nails

1 x Water butt

Tarpaulin

Bin bags

Gaffer tape

6 x hand axes

6 x hand saws

1 x pick-axe

8 x litres white spirit or similar

As much rope as we can carry

At least 1000 screws

At least 5000 nails

1 x petrol chainsaw (small)

12 x pairs gardening gloves

4 x pairs chemical protective gauntlet gloves

12 x pairs protective goggles

1 x petrol generator (if there is one)

Vaughan suggested the drainpipe, to cut into lengths to cover our forearms from teeth, and also to make them difficult to grip. We thought the protective goggles and chemical gloves would also be good for any close-up work we might have to engage in. I liked the idea of the gaffer tape so we could bind our trousers closer to our legs; mindful of the handful of clothing I let the cat-flap chap get hold of.

‘
Did I tell you about the one who came in through our cat-flap?’ I asked to nods and grunts. The tarpaulin and water butt were my rather pensive attempt to plan for the water situation, which I knew was woefully inadequate now there were seven of us, including the dogs who would drink a cool Alpine lake each if you let them. With the stuff on the list and any bonus items we might find we would need at least four people to do the trip. I asked Lou if she minded staying put with the dogs, and she rolled her eyes and said that she didn’t, that she’d be safer up there and knew the camp needed supplies. I kissed her. She gave Vaughan her empty rucksack, and I joined Al who was listening to Jay as they contemplated the weapons stacked up under a tree.

‘
We need light and efficient ones. Whatever we take down we’ll need to bring back up with us.’

Al was especially taken with Jay’s sword, and began negotiations along the lines of swapping it with his baseball bat. The negotiations broke down because one or other of the parties was nominated as being too gay. Jay’s dad’s sword was ceremonial, but he’d been using the sharpstone from Al’s survival kit and had got a good edge to it. Al was huffily ‘okay’ with using his baseball bat, forcing a grin and explaining that his billy-club was too short for comfort if we ended up in the thick of it. Vaughan wanted to use the pitchfork as a purely manipulative tool, and I could see the attraction - to prong one in the chest and either shift him to a safe distance or use him to fend off others, but I told him about the trouble I’d had working my screw-laden club free of bone, and it put him off. He settled for the long-handled axe, deciding it was worth it the extra weight in order to keep a good distance.

‘
That’s good - now both you and Jay can take heads off,’ I said. I really wanted to take the pressure sprayer (I’ll admit, for show more than anything), but it was heavy; took up space; needed constant pumping and was running out of white spirit. In the end I went for my club, the handle now reassuringly comfortable in my grip after more earnest whittling. I had also taken out all of the wood screws when Al needed some, and put them all back in so they were pointing the same way, now more toothbrush than toilet brush - I thought it might make it easier to pull out of skulls.

We took two radios. Al was pretty sure we’d be out of range from Lou, but nonetheless she said she’d keep hers on, just until we’d got back. We decided Al should go with Vaughan, and I would go with Jay, so that if we needed to fight on two fronts each team had one clubber and one cutter. I had binoculars, so Jay took the radio. Al and Vaughan fought over who had the radios but of course Al won because they were officially his. I made Vaughan take a pack of antibacterial wipes as his secondary item, but he looked too glum so I gave him the smallest first aid kit too.

‘
Now you’re the medic chum,’ I said.

Happy with our roles we set off, and I gave Lou a lingering kiss goodbye.

‘
Go!’ she said, wafting me away.

‘
Stay out of sight, and don’t turn the radio off.’

‘
I won’t,’ she smiled at me. Then she handed me my house keys. ‘Don’t forget these, dumb-arse.’

‘
You’ll have to name your club,’ Jay and I were ahead of Vaughan and Al.

‘
Let’s wait for them,’ I said, lifting my binoculars to see the first good view of the industrial estate we were heading for.

‘
What about “Fah-Q”?’ he said, giggling.

‘
That’s
Dazed and Confused
, isn’t it?’ Mindful of a
Simpsons
I’d seen recently, I put on my best Patrick Stewart. ‘…and now for the Paddling of the Swollen Ass.’

Jay laughed. Vaughan wanted to know what was so funny.

‘
Nothing,’ Jay sighed.

I could see smoke curling up from under the corrugated roof of the supermarket. I saw cars in the car park, but no movement.

‘
It looks clear.’

‘
What’s that though?’ Al was pointing down the trail. Two ‘stinkers’ as Vaughan would have it were stumbling along the hedgerow towards us. Tattered clothes and dusty hair, one of them had black blood caked down one side of his body from a massive head wound, and his trousers practically round his ankles.

‘
Okay chaps, here comes some target practice to help get your eye in,’ Jay was swinging the sword, taking the feathery heads off the grass by the wayside. We organised into our teams, each naturally focussing on the stinkers on our own side of the track. Al and I were eager to get stuck in, but Jay and Vaughan were equally so, and we all ended up charging them. I got the first crack in with my club, but true to form it just sat there fixed in the top of our freak’s head.

‘
Here you go chum!’ I wheeled round, dodging the arms that were thrashing at me, and placed the walking corpse between Jay and I, holding the head still right in front of him. As Jay raised his blade I looked into dead eyes. This one’s eyeballs looked cooked, like when you steam fish. I could still see the pupil, with a grey shadow where the iris should be. That’s what makes their eyes go white, I thought, they’re not rolled back into their heads at all. With a sound like sweeping grass Jay swung the sword and the body collapsed to the floor. The sudden loss of weight made the severed head on the end of my club lift up above my own head, which was still mercifully attached to my shoulders.

‘
Cool!’ Jay was impressed. We watched as Vaughan cleaved the head off the shoulders of their one – Al had floored him already with one satisfying swing.

Vaughan looked up and sniffed.

‘
Well, that was easy.’

‘
Let’s not get complacent,’ I said. ‘We should get going.’ I pushed the head off my stick with my foot.

‘
How about “Pin-head”?’ I asked Jay.

We saw two more single walkers, coming up the hill and dispatched them quickly, even though the second one was a little girl of about ten. She was vicious - more mobile than the others, and it took three goes to get her as the only course of action if she came for you was to turn and run. You would outrun her over the space of just a few feet, but her movements were unpredictable. She was hungry, you could tell. Vaughan got her eventually, bringing the axe down at an angle on her neck and spinning her head away over the hedgerow. I could hear him recounting to Al how much her head span as we trudged down the dusty path. Not once did we let the humanity cloud our judgement: we’d seen the movies, there was no cure. I remembered what Jay had said about his parents being okay in the cellar until help was coming, and wondered where he thought it would be coming from.

We were closer to the industrial park now, and decided to cut through the fields to the back of the units, avoiding the road. We found one of them with her foot trapped under what I assumed was a horse feeder. She’d got herself in a right mess, and must have been thrashing about for a while as her limbs where shredded to the muscle where they met the sharp metal edges of the covered trough. Jay took her head off ‘to put her out of her misery,’ but I suspected he wanted the practice.

We clambered over the fences and onto some waste ground at the back of the store where we saw two dogs. I think they were both border collies, but it was hard to tell because their fur was matted and strung with oily black guts as they fed on the open chest of a fat old man. They didn’t even see us - it must have been better than Christmas Day for them. We soon got to the outer edge of the buildings, where there was a low wall onto a path which led all the way around to the front entrance.

‘Let’s split up,’ Al suggested, eager to use the radios. ‘You go that way, we’ll

go this way.’

‘
Okay, but stop at each corner to report,’ Jay said. ‘Mistakes at this stage would be unforgivable. First one of us to make a mistake is a gay-lord.’