Surviving The Evacuation (Book 1): London (19 page)

10:00

It was occupied. Only the one, I think.

14:15

They were both occupied. That explains the empty water tank. Both flats are clear now. I went as far as the street door, and listened, but nothing seems to have heard. Maybe their hearing has started to deteriorate.

The first one, he'd been a man once, somewhere in his twenties, though I’m basing that more on the DVD collection than on his appearance. He was in a chair when I walked in, only the back of his head visible. For a moment I thought he was alive, I actually said “hi”, but as he turned, I saw his face more clearly. It was drawn, pale, almost skeletal, his eyes seemed massive against the receding skin. On his arm there was a bandage, stained brown with dried blood.

My crutches went forward, I swung in, braced myself and brought the hammer down as it was trying to stand, crushing its skull in one blow.

He must have been infected, but managed to make it home. He sat down in his chair and waited to die. Did he know he was dying? Probably not. He probably thought he was the exception. It wasn't much of a view, his last sight on Earth was of a dozen anonymous and empty windows.

The second flat... There were two women. Girls, really. I don't know where they came from, why they were staying here in this dingy flat. There's a story, and maybe if I went through their things I could find it out. But to what end? To track down their families and confirm their daughters are dead? Hardly.

I'd sat down, just to write a note or two, just to collect my thoughts. I find it helps to ground me, I suppose, to remind myself that everything in this nightmare is real.

The noise I made killing that first zombie must have woken the others out of their hibernating trance. They started slapping and tearing at the door and it was clear from the noise there was more than one in there. It was the strangest most disturbing sound I've ever heard. The door was shaking in its frame. I pushed against it, trying to decide what to do. Could I just walk away? It wasn't the idea of leaving them there, I've no qualms about that, but of leaving the food I'd found upstairs.

I spent too long thinking. The door gave, splitting around the hinges. I dropped the hammer as I grabbed at the wall. Off balance, trying to retain my footing, I stumbled as the first one fell through the doorway. She was wearing a yellow t-shirt too stained to make out the logo and a pair of thin cotton trousers torn at the knees. Two of her fingers and four of her toes were missing. I noted that later, but all I saw as she came towards me was a gaping wound where her left cheek should be. I had the chisel, the one I use to break the locks, in my belt. I pulled it out and swung it sideways into her face. Call it luck, but it went straight through her eye socket into her skull in an eruption of puss and gore.

I was off-balance already, barely standing up, as the body fell towards me. I tried to push it away and it was that effort that finally knocking me from my feet. I started scrabbling backwards, away from the second one, who was now past the door and coming towards me.

My hands were empty. With no weapon I had no hope. I couldn’t get to my feet, not without rolling onto my front and there was no way I'd turn my back on the death that was getting inexorably closer. I kept crabbing backwards into the first flat, and she kept following, her progress only delayed by the body of her twice dead friend lying there in the hallway. All the time my eyes were glancing around looking for an escape, looking for a weapon, looking for something, anything that might get me out of this. But my gaze was always drawn back to this spectre, wearing nothing but a loose nightgown, an old encrusted bandage on her arm and an empty emotionless expression.

I got to the coffee table, and managed to use it to pull myself to my knee, my right leg sticking out at an angle, screaming all the time, and all the time she was getting nearer, barely four steps away. I stumbled again as my leg buckled under the strain.

Three steps.

I searched around behind me with my hand, my eyes now fixed upon this approaching death.

Two steps.

My fingers found something.

One step.

I brought my arm round in a swing and with the object I'd found gripped tightly in my hand there was enough force to knock her from her feet. There was barely a pause after she hit the ground before she tried to get back up. I crawled forward, dragging my leg behind me, reaching her as she rolled over onto her front. I brought the weight down on the back of her knee, crushing the bone. In another second I'd pulled myself along another foot and brought it down on her spine.

With each upswing I pulled myself forward and brought the weight down, crushing bone and pulping flesh, and all the time her hands and feet were twitching, her jaw was snapping as she tried to get up, tried to turn, tried to bite and tear at me.

I was sobbing, crying, screaming, and then I was at her head. I brought it down on her skull. Twice.

Only then did I look and see what was in my hands. It was a metal moneybox in the shape of a London bus.

Day 46, Bermondsey, London.

11:00

I stripped off on the stairs. Those clothes are unwearable, even forgetting the potential for infection. I've washed all over with a bottle of peroxide I found in the upstairs flat. That should be strong enough to kill anything. It was all I could find.

Four flats, three infected, one survivor got away. It was the one whose mother sent the Jam. That makes sense, why else leave all this food, unless you knew that They were in the flats beneath you. Someone got away. That thought is all that's holding me together right now.

It was the sight of all those little jars of jam, all signed “love mum”. I don't know if I could handle the idea that one of the zombies I'd just killed was their owner. I know it's too late for a cure, but I wonder how many of Them, even if there was a cure, if They were brought back to us right now, how many of Them would want to?

12:30

I've new clothes once again. They're the wrong size but who cares about that.
A pair of scissors took care of most of my hair, and
the rest, I guess the peroxide will turn it blond and that'll be my new look for this new age. It's not the same as having a long hot shower but it has helped. I'd like and been hoping to say that I feel like a new person. Except I don't.

My leg's throbbing, it's a dull persistent ache, and that's after I've taken two of the painkillers. I guess it's been like that for days, but it's been considerate enough to wait until now to let me know. It'll probably heal, probably badly. I doubt I'll ever run again. No more guilt laden, morning after jogging for me.

As for the cast, it's covered in grime, I’m not even going to begin to describe it, but until I can find a replacement it has to stay on.

No flies. That's interesting, isn't it? There were no flies in the flats. If this was a movie, then when I went into that first flat there should have been a swarm of insects around the body. There had been around the driver of the government car.
What was it about this one that repelled the insects?
Does it mean that They are not really decaying? That, as the fluids evaporate, They are becoming desiccated? I don't want to think about that and what it means. Not now. Not today.

I went downstairs. I had to check the apartments for food, to see how long I can stay here, how long I can sleep for. There's enough for a few weeks. Maybe longer. Enough that I don't need to count to exactly.

I guess that's to be expected. The people who left with the evacuation were the who ones who had to, who didn't have any food left. They were the ones who had to queue for handouts at the supermarkets. The ones who stayed, they were the ones who bought food in bulk for financial, cultural or dietary reasons, or because they simply hated shopping. There had been a lot, in both apartments, or a lot for an apartment this size, but the tenants had stayed here a long time before they became infected. A kilo of rice, seven tins of tuna, a couple of packs of crackers, some noodles, and an assortment of tins whose contents I’m going to have to guess on based on the pictures since the labels aren't printed in English.

I can stay here a fortnight, if I can find the water to cook with. I've used up the last of what little was in the toilet cisterns for rinsing off after my peroxide sponge bath. That leaves two litres of coke, one of lemonade, one of something pink which is either alcoholic or drain cleaner.

It rained last night. Not heavily. Just enough to splatter the windows. That's going to be the long term solution to the water situation. I just need to work out how to collect it. Not today. For now, I’m going to sleep.

Day 47, Bermondsey, London.

06:30

Coke for breakfast, in lieu of coffee. Not quite the same. Ooh, I've an idea!

7:10

I boiled up some coke to make cola flavoured coffee. Or is it coffee flavoured cola? I’m calling it colaffee and if I’m honest, I'd have to say it tastes better than that pink stuff.

I’m feeling far more upbeat this morning. No. Not upbeat, just more accepting I suppose. Have decided to have a day off. Who needs water when you have colaffee?

19:00

Something has been nagging at me over the past few days, but I suppose I've not had the leisure to really think about it until today. I’m hoping putting it down on paper will help clarify my thoughts.

It's the driver. The one Jen sent, or at least the one I thought she sent. That's what's bugging me, did she actually send him? I couldn’t reach her on the phone, and the only reason I thought she'd sent him was the text message she'd sent, or, rather, the one sent from her phone.

She'd spent three weeks resolutely keeping me away from the evacuation, and for reasons I can't begin to fathom keeping me away from wherever she was. Finally, when she does send someone she sends someone I don't really know, someone on his own, and when he didn’t return why didn't she follow up? We are family. As close to family as I've got, anyway.

Why would she send a car with only one driver? She knew I couldn’t walk and since it took two of them to get me up to the flat how was one of them going to get me down? Why was there no wheelchair? Why was he fitting a silencer to a gun, one he kept not on his person but in the glove box?

Maybe there wasn't a wheelchair to spare and it's not like I'd need one on a car journey. Fine, I can accept that, but if she was in a position to send a car with its priceless fuel surely she could certainly spare a person, it wasn't like human beings were in short supply.

All right Mr Paranoid, what is it you're suggesting? What is it that's been eating away at you? Well, I'll tell you. The silencer. Why would you fit one of those to a gun? Well, yes, obviously so that no one else would hear the shot, and yes that could be an issue with the undead. Next to the sound of a car engine, however, the sound of a single shot fired at a zombie close enough to hit with a hand gun isn't a risk even worth thinking about. No, the only reason I can think it would be in the glove box at a time when even the police were armed, was if you didn’t want anyone to know you had it. The only reason you'd fit a silencer to a gun, that'd be if you didn’t want other people, other living people, to hear the shot.

Jen knew that my tenants had left, but that doesn't mean she'd told anyone else.

The Radio Free England people said that the government had fallen, but which government did it mean? Who were these men working for that she felt she couldn’t speak freely to me in their presence?

But why does that matter? The evacuation clearly failed. Knowing who and why someone was sent to kill me doesn't help in getting out of here, but perhaps it alters my destination.

20:00

In the last two weeks I've killed, if that's the right word, five people. I've let loose, albeit unwittingly, thousands of the undead into South London, thus indirectly endangering and probably killing an unknown number of survivors. I've broken into four flats, one gym and one shop, looted, stolen, caused criminal damage, and I plan to cause more. I shouldn't feel guilty about any of this, but I do.

I was worried that some of the blood, or gore, or whatever that brownish ooze They have under the skin is, I was worried that it might have seeped under the cast and into some scratch or graze I couldn’t see. I didn’t want to say anything, didn’t want to write it down, in case the act itself in some way made it more real. Call it superstitious if you want, but look outside the window and tell me this isn't a world made for superstition. Eight o'clock tonight was my cut off point. If I got this far then I knew I wasn't infected. I’m not. I’m just lucky. I never believed in luck before and find it hard to do now.

There's hundreds milling around outside, heading vaguely westward, except by the door to the gym. There's about a dozen by the front doors. I'm not sure how many are inside, but if I were to guess, based on the gym's layout and how the undead around the door are moving, I would say that there are maybe twenty in the building.

Sometimes one of the undead walking past will stop and join those trying to get inside. Sometimes one of those at the doors will be jostled or knocked far enough away that They drift off and rejoin the exodus. It's like magnetism in a way, or gravity, there's a certain distance from the gym at which the mass of the herd becomes more desirable than, well, than me.