Last Words (22 page)

Liam didn’t like it when I told him we’ve seen a zombie talk to us, telling us to surrender. I can’t imagine many people being thrilled to hear that kind of news, but it did send Liam into a conspiracy theory head spin, so I might keep my opinions to myself later on.

It got me thinking again about that documentary I saw on those monkeys where the scientists played with the status of the group. Right now these zombies are not as brainy as monkeys, but they used to be human. And, technically, no one stops being human. Even if you’re dead, you are still human, right? But no one is going to recognise that these zombies have rights, because they are obviously not human, even though they are. They’ve devolved. They are a contradiction to humanity. They probably don’t even dream. Animals dream. I’ve seen it in cats and dogs.

I’ve also seen some severely mentally handicapped people out there, the kind who never learned how to speak. Some are bed ridden. They can scream and cry out for help but they can’t even form words or recognise anything more than their own name. Even the dumbest of dogs can be trained to recognise a few commands. So where does that place a corpse who can walk around and follow someone’s orders?

Cristina wishes she had her cigarettes.

Part 5.

I know this is probably all bullshit but I did a couple of classes focussing on communication, especially in the media. Most of what I took out of it was a side by side comparison showing the aftermath of a hurricane before law and order was restored. One picture showed a black couple wading through the water with supplies in a child-sized dingy. The other was of a white couple swimming out of a convenience store. One caption detailed looters. The other detailed survivors. Guess which race was portrayed as the looter?

What I always found interesting was what was missing, kinda like Sherlock Holmes’ attention was drawn to the absence of the dog barking, thus pointing him towards the criminal being known to the dog. There have been quite a few things unmentioned in the last couple of weeks. First and foremost is that there hasn’t been a single reported case of a zombie raping a human. Now, that’s the kind of thing that would propel a story to the front page, or at least to the first five pages, since it is truly a horrific and terrifying act. If a group of soldiers go in and kill a dozen civilians while on an operation, that’s tragic but casualties do happen. If they go in and rape a dozen civilians then there is no forgiving them. Rape is one of the greatest weapons of war and there hasn’t been a single reported case of it happening with the zombies.

Believe me, if you really want to turn someone into an enemy within the media, just mention rape.

“We have a viral disease that is putting people into a semi-catatonic state with severely reduced brain capacity while also making them hyper-violent when they get close enough to someone else,” is the story they’re going with right now and people are running scared. These people will turn into a militia as soon as their wives, daughters, and friends are specifically targeted. Is that how you control the situation? ‘All zombies are rapists’. That would give everyone permission to go out and take care of the problem themselves. Every single undead creature would be decapitated within a day.

I could ask Rachel or Cristina which they think is worse: being killed by a zombie and potentially turned into one or being raped. But Rachel’s still pissed at me for introducing her to Liam and Cristina is going through a nicotine withdrawal.

These things also don’t hack off people’s limbs as punishment or as warnings, as some mercenaries and slave owners have been known to do. They also don’t share camaraderie. I haven’t seen anything where two zombies are working together. Walking together, maybe, and until we see more of this one voice thing in action then maybe they will always be loners. So that’s another thing that separates us from them. People share camaraderie, that’s how we have the mob mentality without discussing our plans with everyone else. The zombies haven’t befriended any animals, which is telling. I don’t think mankind could ever trust another creature that didn’t try to befriend an animal, especially a cute little puppy.

There was a bible group meeting last night where the leader said, ‘the one voice’ was Satan himself, commanding the undead to do his bidding. So yay, aside from the Xanax deprived housewives sowing discontent with a simple point of their finger I also have to be mindful of the group two tarps away from me who can recite swathes of bible verses off the top of their heads.

I wish Cristina had her cigarettes as well.

13 August

This is one of the few instances where I’m writing while seeing what’s going on, as opposed to writing after the event. We’re still on the road to Gibraltar. It’s 8:07am. There’s something of a pedestrian road block up ahead that’s starting to swarm around us. There are two army trucks’ worth of soldiers staring at everyone who walks by. They’re not stopping us, but like watching the aftermath of a car crash everyone is moving slowly to see something they don’t really want to see. It’s not hard to follow the trail of gasps and subtle points to the right. Just ten metres off the road are three bodies. All dead.

It is the closest I’ve ever been to a dead person who remained dead while also open to the elements. I’ve been to funerals and I had my hand on the coffin once. But I can see these people now, slowly decomposing. I’m close enough to remember their faces if I wanted to. They would have died screaming, or died being terrified, never realising that a few hours later a group of foreigners would be walking by, gawking at them. No one came to help these people. One of the dead women’s skull is embedded a little too deep into the ground, as though she was stomped and her head was caved in.

One of them is surely a zombie. It’s hard to know which one. All of their clothes are ripped and torn, covered in dirt with blood covering them. If I were to guess I’d say one of the two women was the zombie, that it got a hold of the other woman and started attacking her, then the man stepped in to fight it off and was attacked in turn. The man is farther away. It looks like the woman he was protecting was able to get away for a moment. The zombie continued attacking the man until he fell, then the zombie was able to get to the woman. That doesn’t quite make sense, since the woman should have kept running unless she knew the man. None of them have backpacks. They all look Spanish. I can’t quite figure out the order of the attack, but they’re right there, three dead people on the side of the road and we’re all walking by. None of the soldiers are getting too close. There’s one guy in a white suit wearing a mask holding something that looks like a camera. Maybe it’s infra-red.

I only saw one dead person before Spain: Grandpa George. I don’t think I will ever want to go to another open casket funeral for as long as I live.

If this thing really does take over the world I might be dead in a week. Hell, I might be dead in the next few hours. I could be stumbling around, walking after Rachel and Cristina, biting and infecting everyone I meet.

My feet are in agony. It’s like I’ve broken all the little bones and my arches have completely collapsed. Every step forward is murder. I have a sweat rash up my arse and if I scratch it anymore I’ll go insane. To add to my wonderful jaunt through the countryside I keep walking through someone’s farts.

14 August

The police are here in one long parked convoy of cars. It’s 5am. They’ve been here for two hours already. We were all camping when the convoy stopped and woke us up, flashing their lights and getting everyone’s passport details, finding out where we came from and how we got here. Cristina told us to say Getafe instead of Madrid. I don’t know what the police would do to us if they found out we had escaped from the Atocha riot and made it this far.

They’ve been checking names and where we live. We told them we’re trying to get to Gibraltar. They’re on the radio forwarding all of our details and they’re not even close to being done. I don’t know if we’re about to be arrested or will be allowed to carry on. They have a couple of sniffer dogs with them checking everyone’s bag, so we’re standing outside our tents feeling degraded while the men with guns go through what we have to make sure we’re not thieves. I doubt any of this is legal, but I’m also betting they have acquired emergency powers allowing them to better protect their citizens from us thieving foreigners.

Only one of the officers is speaking in English. I know some of the others can speak it as well because they don’t need a translation when any of us speak, but they only talk to us in Spanish. It’s making me feel useless, being unable to communicate in their language. Even Rachel has resorted to English because she doesn’t want to run the chance of slipping up in Spanish and saying something that will get her in a lot of trouble. It’s going to take a long time to go through fifty people and check us all. Even when people duck off to take a piss behind a tree the police shout and tell them to come back, thinking they might be trying to escape.

Part 2.

It’s 8am. The police are still here and they’ve brought along a pair of army trucks with guys in white suits and masks, checking everyone’s temperature, asking if we have any problems. I do actually have a problem. It hurts when I piss and it takes forever for it to actually come out. I might be bursting to take a leak, then when I whip my dick out and stand in front of a tree there’s nothing for a couple of minutes as though my bladder has changed it’s mind, then it shoots me with a stabbing pain as though I’m to blame for not being able to do this. Then, at last: relief. The tip of my dick burns. It fades but occasionally I can feel a dribble of urine down my shorts. There’s no way I’m telling the military guys that.

Part 3.

To pass the time, I asked Cristina if the girls in Italy are any different from English girls. She said of course. She also said the guys are different. English guys will show they are attracted to you by ignoring you. Then comes the occasional locked eyes and nod to show that they acknowledge your existence. Then after a year or so they will initiate conversation.

I did ask specifically if the girls were different and I got an answer about guys. So … maybe she’s trying to seduce me?

Rachel and I got onto talking about guys and girls as well. We’re on a two hundred kilometre walk so eventually we’re going to talk about getting laid. She said her last boyfriend broke up with her because they didn’t have sex enough, so how often is not enough? I told her that, in my opinion and mine alone, five times a week is good. I also said that I get resentful at the ten day mark without sex. That’s if I have a girlfriend. If I don’t have a girlfriend then I don’t get resentful because the expectation is that if I have a girlfriend I should be able to get laid a lot more frequently than if I don’t have a girlfriend. I asked her how often she thinks is a good amount. Twice a week. How often was she and her boyfriend having sex? About twice a week. Her boyfriend thought it was more like twice a month. I’m siding with him on this one.

I wonder if the apocalypse will cause a surge in the population. If the power’s off and no one can go online then of course people are going to get drunk and bored enough to have sex. But that’s in the safety of a house, not out here with the army poking things into your ears.

15 August

We’re close to Gibraltar. We should get there tomorrow before 10am, assuming everything goes well. Right now, ‘things going well’ has a fifty-fifty chance. There were riots and looting in Valencia and Barcelona. I don’t quite understand the mentality, but a lot of people were pissed off about the army being there when they want independence. Some people got together and started throwing Molotov cocktails at the police, which is a stupid, stupid move, so the police responded by firing tear gas and water cannons into the crowd. Buildings were set ablaze and it was your usual riot and looting thing that got out of control. A couple of officers were killed when one guy in Barcelona drove a car straight into the police line. Apparently there were four hundred arrests last night and, get this, one of the people they arrested was cuffed and thrown into the back of the van so quickly that no one realised they had just arrested a zombie. He could still be in the back of the police van for all I know.

I’ve been confused by a particular phrase that has been used a lot in the last couple of days. By the grace of God. I’ve been hearing it everywhere. At first I thought it was coming from the bible thumpers to help them survive this ordeal, but no. In Spain it’s become synonymous with a darker meaning. General Franco overthrew the government, proclaimed himself the de facto regent of the throne, and slowly added royal traditions to his style. One of them was, ‘by the grace of God’. The Spaniards haven’t forgotten that he led them through a fascist dictatorship through most of the twentieth century and they’re starting to see it rise again. It might be through the actual military or it might be through this one voice person who, by the grace of God, has risen the dead to join his army.

Things are not as jolly in other countries either. There are a lot of religious groups claiming it is now Hell on Earth, or the Rapture, or a sign from the various gods that it’s time for a regime change. Iran has taken the line of ‘There are no zombies in Iran.’ Sure. Despite the media reporting otherwise, Iran refuses to budge.

According to the news, Syria is all but lost. It’s weird thinking that a month ago the worst case scenario was an unending civil war that would level the entire country. Now it’s a civil war with zombies rampaging through the streets and terrorist groups trying to strap explosives onto the running dead.

It’s hard to get a good idea of what’s happening in the world when there are a hundred news stories happening in Spain that seem more relevant to the Spanish people. When we switch over to the BBC they focus on England with a brief look at Europe and an even briefer look at the rest of the world.