From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (83 page)

Day 96. Love in the time of zombies.

I was in too foul a mood to write yesterday, and for a while it looked as if my journal would not make it beyond its first entry. I barely slept the night before. Not having had my nightcap didn’t help my mood and They were out in larger numbers that I had ever seen them, screeching away as if it were some frigging zombie rock concert. In the middle of the night, I was so mad that I grabbed the rifle and was about to go out and take a few potshots, but then sanity prevailed. They’ve left me alone till now, why mess with them?

Besides, if I ever feel suicidal, putting a bullet in my brain would probably be a better way to go than being eaten alive by Them.

However, last night I slept surprisingly well. Perhaps it was the backlog of sleep catching up on me or perhaps my body is adapting to the lack of drink better than my mind is.

So here I am, back at the desk overlooking the valley. There are only a couple of Them visible now. A few minutes ago, out of curiosity, I took a look through my binoculars. One of them had been a young girl, and she was still wearing the brightly colored clothes that you see so often among the mountain folk here. The other was a man who was wearing tattered jeans and a bloodied vest. The writer in me started thinking that perhaps they had been a couple who had been turned and were still together. Did They feel any such emotions even after turning into the blood-soaked ghouls that they now were?

That line of thinking ended abruptly when the male grabbed the female and snapped her neck before biting deep into her flesh.

Day 97. How it all began

I spent the morning making sure none of Them had come any closer to the bungalow I now call home. The winding path leading up the hill was still unmarked and there was no sign of any of Them nearby. I remember my heart pounding as I ventured out and I was so relieved to be back inside, and thankful that my former employer had kept such a well-stocked getaway to host his Nepalese mistress. There was lots of bottled water, canned food and as I’ve mentioned, a pair of binoculars and a rifle. It’s an ancient Lee Enfield .303

of the sort cops still favor in India, but it’ll do the job at long range, and if They get too close, I doubt my one good leg will carry me too far before They get me. Once I got back, I started thinking about this journal and decided that my random musings aside, in case anyone ever chances upon it, I may as well serve some useful purpose by recording what has been happening.

Don’t ask me how it all began, because I have no frigging clue. I was at a local watering hole, having been dismissed for the night, drinking
Tsing
Tao beer brought in from across the Chinese border and getting smashed with a couple of other ex-Army types. The chick on TV was talking about some virus. Different networks had different names for it, but the one that seemed to stick was Wild Dog Virus. You’ve got to hand it to whoever comes up with these names. Mad Cow and now Wild Dog. But unlike all the previous animal monikers, this one did not go away with the media frenzy far exceeding the death toll. This one spread like wildfire. It took just a couple of days for the major cities to be affected, and in little old Gangtok, while we were initially untouched, we watched it unfold on TV screens. That was when the toad I had for a boss bolted and left me here in his holiday retreat.

Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I get to my boss and how I happened to be appointed Guardian of his Weekend Fornication (now, is that a cool job title or what? If I ever get such a gig again, and assuming there’s anyone left alive, let alone horny old business tycoons, to offer me such a job, I’ll ensure that’s what they print on my business card), let me tell you a little bit about myself.

Hold on. Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, I just heard something on the radio.

False alarm. My mind must be playing games with me, or maybe I’ve started to appreciate the musical genius of the Static Brothers.

Day 98. The one-legged man.

I’m beginning to like this writing routine. It keeps me from just staring at Them down there and gives me something to do. So where was I?

Oh yes, my horny boss. But to get to him, I need to go a bit further back. See, once upon a time, there was a soldier in the Indian Army who spent more time than any sane man should sitting in god-forsaken mountain passes looking at similarly miserable Chinese soldiers. This soldier may have been a grunt but had a dream of being a writer, and would spend many evenings working on his book. He had a novel that had accumulated so many rejection slips that if you stapled them together, they would make for a pretty hefty book by themselves, but he hadn’t yet given up.

This was back in 2013, when if you remember your history, there was a fair bit of saber-rattling by politicians on both sides of the India-China border as they tried to distract the unwashed masses from inflation and slowing economies. As often happens, the old politicians give speeches in their air-conditioned offices, and we poor schmucks are left holding the body bags. Or a severed leg in my case.

Two of my men had strayed across the border. Happened all the time. At ten thousand feet up, where you see more goats than people, who knows where the bloody border that some drunk Englishman drew sixty years ago on a map is anyways? Difference was that this time some Chinese officer took the rhetoric seriously and killed both of them. They were good men. Men with families. Killed because some fat fool made some angry speeches and some stupid officer was mad or drunk enough to act on them.

My men wanted to get even, and I was pissed. I was doubly pissed when the powers that be hushed up their deaths, since they did not want ‘escalation’. So I did what I should never have done, but seemed to do all too often. I let body organs other than my brain dictate my course of action.

To cut a long story short, we went after the Chinese platoon responsible and wreaked some nice havoc. We attacked at night, and I had the satisfaction of shooting that son of a bitch officer myself. Callous, you think? Well, I don’t need you judging me. I’m the last man left in this madhouse, and I’m allowed my bouts of insensitivity.

On the way back, after not getting a single scratch in the whole battle, I fell down a crevice after a landslide. I lost a leg, we lost four men, and my military career lost whatever future it may have had. I soon found relief only in the neighborhood pub. The Army at least paid for the prosthetic leg, I suspect in part because they didn’t want me to go to the media. In addition to all the rest, I shortly lost my wife. She walked out after I came home piss-drunk one time too many.

I don’t think I need to make excuses to you, so I won’t try.

Would I have done things differently if I could? You bet, but there’s no point thinking about that now. Everyone is a genius with benefit of hindsight, and everyone’s self-image is always a bit rose-tinted in the rear view mirror. I have seen too much shit to harbor any such delusions. I know who and what I am, and now it frankly doesn’t matter if I’m an asshole, because the only ones whom I can piss off or hurt are the undead shufflers below, and I seriously doubt they are the sensitive sort.

Back after a break. They are down in the valley, clawing at some building. I really can’t figure out what they are up to. I am no expert on this, but I’ve watched my share of zombie movies, and at first sight, that’s what They seem like. Nothing more than bloody monsters out to attack anyone, and believe me, I’ve seen them rip people apart. But there’s more to them. I can’t figure out why they roam around, sometimes turning on each other, sometimes attacking buildings. And unlike the zombies you may have seen in movies, they do die. I’ve seen enough of them do that, and I’ve shot my share in the early days to be sure on that count. It makes no sense, but when they’re rampaging, I don’t want to take any chances. A few minutes ago, I got the rifle ready and drew a bead on them. I’m sure I could take out a few from here, but if they wanted to come up the hill in force, I wouldn’t last very long. But They never seem to come up the hill. Again, no idea why, but I’m not complaining. I may be lonely but They aren’t the kind of company I’d exactly invite over for dinner. Especially not knowing that I was the main course.

Day 99. Ode to an old fornicator

I spent much of the day taking stock of what’s left in the bungalow, and while I spent the first three months holed up here in an alcohol-addled sense of complacency, the bitter truth is that sooner or later I will have to go down into town and look for supplies. The old man I worked for certainly had stocked this love nest well. There was a huge stash of drinking water, canned food and a generator, and of course, enough booze to last even a fish like me three full months.

If you’re hoping that I turn out to be some heroic survivor like in all those post-apocalyptic movies, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. I’ve run through most of the supplies and am now in a bit of a fix. At least the old man left the rifle and a pistol, which I’m sure to need if I have to venture down.

Hung over most of the time, with a tarnished career and one good leg, I was not exactly a magnet for job offers when I finally decided to try and find a job. So I jumped at the offer I got to be one of the bodyguards of Mr. Vohra, a billionaire business tycoon and, take it from me, a horny old bastard. One of my qualifications that apparently landed me the job was that not only did I have extensive special ops experience, but that I was fluent in Nepalese, having spent a fair bit of my career on the China border and in training Nepalese officers. Turns out the old man’s favorite squeeze was some girl a third his age, supposedly with connections to Nepalese royalty. He’d have her flown down to Sikkim from Kathmandu and I’d accompany his retinue from Delhi. I was supposed to arrange security with her minders. In truth we sat around drinking while the old man had his fun.

That was how I found myself in Sikkim when it all started.

The old man bolted, and having a private helicopter ready, he didn’t exactly have to worry about flight tickets. I have no idea what happened to him, but I hope he made a tasty meal for some of Them. The old bastard dumped all of us and ran. There were ten of us, and we tried to make it to the bungalow, thinking it would be a defensible position. I was the only one who made it.

I’ve thought of writing down what happened in those two days when we fought our way through the hordes of monsters, but I don’t know if I can yet bring myself to do it. At least, not without a stiff drink and as I’ve said, there’s no more booze left.

Damn the old bastard. He could have kept a few more cases of beer and skimped on some food.

Day 102. Tourism in the land of zombies.

Skipped a couple of days, but I’ve been busy. Today is when I head down into the city. I have just a couple of days’ worth of water left, and this seems as good a time to venture down as any. For one, They have not been out for the last two days. I don’t know why that might be so, but I don’t want to wait another day and find out that They’re back and I’m stuck here without water.

I’m terrified and no, I am not afraid to admit it. I’ve seen combat several times, but nothing, absolutely nothing compares to being close to Them. Forget what you’ve seen in zombie movies. All that ketchup and special effects is good enough for vicarious entertainment, but it all becomes real only when you see a human being get eaten alive in front of you and when you shoot someone feet from yourself and find pieces of their brain stuck on your shirt hours later.

Another thing the movies got wrong: it’s not just head-shots that do them in. They die all right, but can take a hell of a lot of punishment, which makes me believe that it’s some sort of disease, but whatever it is, They scare the shit out of me. They just come at you, focused on biting you, and don’t seem to feel any pain or fear. I’ve seen men infected by a single bite, but sometimes They just go frigging rabid and tear people to pieces instead of infecting them. Who knows that They’re thinking, if they still think. I remember some news articles from back in 2012 about so-called ‘zombie’ attacks in US where people high on drugs would go totally apeshit and start attacking and eating people. If I remember, one of them had to be shot dozens of times to stop him, since the drug gave him almost superhuman strength and ferocity. I wonder if what’s happened to us has anything at all to do with that. I guess I’ll never know for sure.

I got closer to Them than I’d ever wanted to when I made my break for the bungalow and I killed more of them than I can remember. I just hope They don’t hold grudges – I don’t want to find out the hard way today.

In case I don’t make it back, and in case this notebook does get to anyone, congratulations on surviving longer than I did, and do plan your supplies better than me.

Day 103. The city of the dead.

I went out last night. Going into a city full of zombies at night may seem insane, but actually my chances of survival in the dark are much higher than in daytime. It’s easier to find cover in the dark and at the end of the day, even in a relatively small city like Gangtok, which used to have a population of about two hundred thousand, you can remain unseen if you want to.

If anything, running into Them was not the biggest of my worries. Certainly, I wouldn’t have relished bumping into Them, but that’s another thing the movies get so wrong about zombies running amok. In any city, even one the size of Gangtok, once you factor in all the people who have died or escaped, you will have only a fraction of the initial population left as the undead. That leaves you with plenty of space to hide, if you know how to, and I was trained for years to operate behind enemy lines.

The far bigger worry is disease. A town with thousands of corpses rotting in the open for three months is not a pleasant place to enter.

The stench alone makes you want to puke and I must confess I threw up my breakfast of baked beans and tea soon after I got down the hill. The trip down made me realize just how tough a climb it must be for Them. Even for a very fit man it’s a tough climb, and my former horny employer loved this bungalow for its secluded location. Of course, he didn’t have to worry about climbing – his helicopter got him to the helipad at the top.

I was winded when I got down and after I regurgitated my breakfast, I wondered what the hell I had got myself into by coming down. I was wearing gardening gloves I had found and a cloth tied around my mouth as a mask, but I had no idea if it would be enough to protect me from whatever bugs were lurking among the corpses. I didn’t have to wait long to see the first signs of who the city belonged to now.

I can’t even count the number of zombie novels I read that talked about empty and spooky city streets after the dead rose. Believe me, there’s nothing empty about bloodied and decomposed body parts littering the streets. I’ve seen combat and death and I came closer to Them than I’d ever want to again in the first couple of days, but this was something else. This was not like the aftermath of a battle. No, this was more like a slaughterhouse. I tried to pick my way through the carnage, but I wouldn’t bet a penny that I didn’t have someone’s brains sticking to my shoes.

The first hour was thankfully quiet as I rummaged through several houses and found little but rotten food. Then I struck gold as I came across a bar I had visited a couple of times. Lounge 31 was a nice place to hang out and sip reasonably priced beer, but now it looked like a tornado had come through it as I shone my flashlight around. There were pools of blood in several places but no bodies, which made me think that those bitten here had been infected and not killed. That was till I reached the bar and saw the butchered remains of a man behind the bar. I wondered if it was the bartender I had chatted with so many times, but there was really no way to tell.

I saw some packets of food lying just beyond the bloodied remains and I hesitated for a second, but then I reached in and picked up several packs of nuts and chips and stashed them in my backpack. I would clean up the blood later. If you’re grimacing about me eating chips from a pack that was once stained with blood and gore, you have no idea what desperation and hunger can make a man do.

I do have a confession to make here. After I had finished stuffing my backpack, I paused, and then I took out about a quarter of the packs of snacks and put in two bottles of Old Monk rum that were left intact.

Now, don’t judge me. A man’s allowed his weaknesses, especially if he’s roaming around alone in the dark in a city that now belongs only to the dead.

Even more than food (and as much I hate to admit it, even more than the rum), what I needed was water. The overhead tanks that had sustained me so far were now almost dry and the bottled drinking water was running out, so I nearly shouted in triumph when I found more than a dozen bottles of water in a nearby house. The problem was going to be carrying it all back. I didn’t relish the idea of coming back down for repeat trips, but I really had no option. The climb was torture, and considering I have a prosthetic leg, the joint where it met my thigh hurt like hell when I got up to the bungalow. I took a break and then I went back down for more water. That was when I bumped into Them.

Man, I’m tired. I think I’ll catch some sleep and continue tomorrow. Watch this space.