First draft and unfinished. A bit stuck with it, to be honest :( Feedback/critique welcomed: 

 

14th March 2012

 

The first thing I did was go and sit on the sofa so I could see the pictures. It was important to get as much information as possible. My lukewarm, milkless tea splashed on my shaking fingers.  It had spread pretty quickly;  no one seemed to know where the epidemic started. The BBC news channel had a number of  “experts” giving interviews. Everyone seemed to have a theory as to what it was. A blonde lab-coated microbiologist appeared and said it could be a virus. Somehow they’d managed to get the Archbishop of Canterbury on screen to tell us it was a supernatural phenomenon and that God was judging us for allowing civil partnerships.

I left the news and went to my room. There was a list on my bedroom wall that I ripped down, holding in my left hand, leaving my right free. I put my iPod, all of my battery packs and my Kindle on to charge. I got a large green hiker’s pack out of my wardrobe. My tent  was already in there at the bottom.

I went back downstairs to the kitchen. I had tons of non-perishable food in my cupboards. A loaf of wholemeal bread and an eight pack of sausages were the only perishable nibbles I had. Resting the list on the counter,  I packed five tins of ravioli, five tins of beans, five small bottles of water and three packs of Jacob’s Cream Crackers.

The news still blared in the living room. The epidemic had covered the South- East of England and was steadily spreading. The latest pictures were from  Northampton.  That was only 40 miles from me. Shit. I didn’t look but I heard the screams, the sounds of people running.  “The assailants seem to have cornered a large group of people in an alleyway in the centre of the town” a journalist said. From the sounds of it, she was  safely in a helicopter. I couldn’t hear screaming anymore. I packed the torch I kept next to the kettle. “The assailants have reached the...Oh God. Are they chewing on them?”

“Of course they are. That’s what zombies do. Stupid woman.” She can’t hear you. Stop talking to the telly. That’s plain crazy.

Hatchet was the next thing on the list. I grabbed it from under the kitchen sink along with the first aid kit. It had mostly plasters in it. I’d hoarded some anti-biotics from when I had a chest infection the previous year, just in case. There were also some heavier bandages, eye wash, safety pins, alcohol wipes and two bottles of hand sanitiser.  The first aid kit went in the back pack, the hatchet rested next to it. There was nothing else on the list but I decided to take the remaining bread, sausages and a jar of marmite as well. I probably wasn’t going to be around to finish them otherwise and they’d just go to waste.

I carried my pack and the hatchet upstairs to my room and then went downstairs. The news still blared. The epidemic as it happened. The army had been called out to defend London but it’d swept through, which meant the majority were gone. There was nothing left of Kent.  They’d lost ground coverage of Northampton. People were panic buying across the East Midlands. There was footage of a young woman and her baby son being trampled by a crowd at a Tesco supermarket in Birmingham. About three miles from my home in Leicester, the Asda at Fosse Shopping Park had descended into total chaos. People had given up panic buying and had just started looting. The reporter kept a safe distance as the cameraman filmed people smashing the huge windows overlooking a full and disorderly car park. Two men exchanged fists over a six pack of bottled water. A woman sobbed next to a trolley full of food and water as she saw  her car had been blocked in by three more. A young man, no more than twenty, pushed her over, kicked her in the ribs and took the trolley.

I checked the back door was locked and then dragged my sofa into the kitchen to barricade it. I lived in a small two bedroom terrace house in Leicester city centre. It wasn’t ideal but I couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. I pulled the kitchen curtains shut.

Back in the living room the TV. was replaying the footage of the alleyway in Northampton. The scrolling news panel at the bottom of the screen read BREAKING NEWS: EPIDEMIC ROCKS BRITAIN. PUBLIC ADVISED TO STAY INDOORS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. I locked the front door but didn’t barricade it and then went to the living room window. Pulling the curtains shut, I peeked through the dark blue fabric. The street was quiet but I could hear sirens in the distance. My car was still there. I had ten bottles of water,  two bottles of paraffin, twenty five assorted tins of food, another hatchet and three changes of clothes in the boot.

I turned the TV. off and went upstairs. I closed the rest of the curtains and made sure the window in the study was locked. My electricals weren’t quite charged so I checked the BBC news website. Reports of the epidemic were coming in from most of Northern Europe. Aerial pictures of Paris showed it was over run and huge fires raged all over the city. A refugee camp had been set up in Italy for survivors fleeing south. People were migrating in their thousands from Portugal to Morocco; border police had given up trying to refuse them . A group of people had attacked and killed a woman in an Australian hospital because they believed she had the disease. America had pledged three billion dollars worth of aid to help the “European Epidemic Crisis.”

The sirens were much closer now. I could see the blindingly blue flashes through a tiny slit in the curtains. Everything was just about charged. I unplugged them all and put them in the backpack. Carrying them into the hallway, I rested them on the carpet momentarily. Above me was the tiny hatch into the attic, attached to that was some string. I pulled it, stepped back and a ladder folded out.  I picked up my bag.

My attic was just a space between the ceiling and the roof containing wooden beams, pigeons and dust. I'd put down the some plywood over the beams so I could move around without  falling through the floor (or ceiling, depending on your perspective).  One corner contained a sleeping bag and pillow, a small paraffin burner and a couple of books. In another,  there was a bucket, a toilet roll and a can of air freshener.  I put my pack next to the sleeping bag and sat down.

 

24th September 2009

I tugged the sleeves of my jumper over my hands and pushed my fingers against the fabric. They looked like they were straining to get out.  The air was warm and stale with the faint musty scent of some flowered air freshener. I felt slightly nauseated. The office was painted blue and had only two chairs facing each other, a small coffee table in between and a bookcase against the wall. It was lined with books: Understanding Yourself, The Psychology of Anxiety, Catastrophes Calmed...

She wrote down every I said in a blue hardback notebook. It got annoying after the first session. Everything I said got written in that damn book.  I put my feet up on the coffee table and curled my jumper covered fingers into my lap.

"Why do you do that?"  

"Do what, Sam?"

"Write down everything I say."

"It helps me to think." She carried on scribbling.

"It doesn't seem to help you to listen."

"What makes you say that?"

"I've been coming here for three months and you haven't really helped me with anything."

"But you keep coming back." she wrote down my last comment, pausing slightly to make eye contact with me but not actually ceasing to write.

"I don't know what else to do."

"I believe you. Do you still believe that zombies are real?"

"I never said they were real. I said they were possible."

"Do you still believe they're possible, then?"

I put my feet back on the floor and leaned forward, hands still in my lap. I looked at her face. She was quite pretty, in her mid-thirties by the look of her. Her long brown hair, straight and soft, was resting over her shoulders. The strands jostled slightly as she continued to write. She was quite slim but her breasts were full and round, pushing out her I.D. tag where it had snagged on the plum fabric of her jumper: Michelle Moore. Her lips were parted invitingly. I felt the hard on begin before I could consciously stop it. Shit. What was she saying? Zombies. Are zombies possible?

Keeping my hands firmly in my lap, I sat back and crossed my legs carefully, gazing intently at my fingers. I looked up to answer the question. "Ye-"

Half her skin was hanging off her face, dead and decaying. Her teeth showed through her cheek, her gums were shrivelled. The brown hair that had rested on her shoulders was now patchy, as though it was falling out in clumps. She looked no longer slim, instead her had breasts shrunk and ribs showed. Michelle's brittle skeletal fingers clutched the pen.  My erection was gone. I threw up in my mouth a little and then swallowed.

"Yes. They're possible." 

"Have you expanded on your theories as to why they're possible?"  She asked. Her lips were dangling from her face. That "p" sound must've taken some effort.

"I still believe it's a bacterial infection. Probably caused by foods such as yoghurt or cheese. I'm still not entirely convinced that bread's safe. Yeast just seems a bit dodgy to me."  I turned to look around the room. I was closer to the door than she was. I could make it there if before her if need be. Turning back, I saw her face had changed back to its normal state.

"Do you know why you're afraid of people, Sam?"

"I'm not afraid of people. I'm afraid of zombies."

"Zombies are people, Sam."

"Not anymore. They're dead. They're brainless monsters."

"Do you think  that people can be brainless monsters too?"

"Of course they can. But it's different. People are brainless monsters in a metaphorical sense. People are stupid. They do stupid, evil things like kill other people or rape them or steal from them. Zombies, however, are literally brainless monsters. They have no cognition. They have no desires other than to fulfil their basic physical needs."

"People sometimes live that way, do they not? Just living from one physical need to the next. Happy as pigs in mud, as they say." She set down her pen and faced him. "Why don't you like people, Sam?"

"Because they could turn into zombies."

"I see. Because they could turn into brainless monsters that kill or rape or steal." She began writing again. 

"Or literal brainless monsters."

"Indeed." Putting her pen down again, she glanced at the clock. "I'm afraid we've come to time, Samuel. Same time next week?"

"Fine."

"I'd like to set you a small assignment for then if I may."

"Knock yourself out."

"I think we need to start tackling your agoraphobia head on. You've improved greatly but you need to get out more. Socialise. I'd like you to go swimming this week, try and meet some new people."

"No. Absolutely not. Those places are full of bacteria."

"You don't have to swim. You could sit near the pool. "

"I have chairs at home."

"Just think about it. Also, I'd like to discuss your childhood next week so think a little about that too. How your relationship with your parents affected the way you formed relationships with other people."

"Whatever makes you happy." I put my coat on and opened the door.

"See you next week."

"Yup. Bye." 

 

17th March 2014

The past few days had been a smorgasbord of screaming and groaning but now it was quiet. A small hole in the roof had allowed me to see what had happened outside, to a limited extent. Two cars had crashed at one end of the street and both occupants had fled. I didn't see them get eaten but I heard the shrieks. There had been a lot of sirens to begin with but by the middle of the second day, they'd stopped entirely. I'd heard a few loud pops too, what sounded like gunshots. By day three, I didn't hear anything except the occasional groan. I could see a few zombies shuffling around like they were confused or lost. All human activity seemed to have ceased entirely. 

I packed up my stuff as silently as possible and lowered the ladder from the attic. It was early in the morning, not far past sunrise; the light shining into through the small hallway window was soft and hazy. Birds sang sweet symphonies to each other from the rooftops.

 I stepped down the ladder my pack heavy on my back, my hatchet clunking gently on the side of it with each step. I checked each of the first floor rooms but they were empty. I flicked the light switch on. Nothing happened.  Downstairs, everything seemed unchanged. The front door was still locked, all the windows were still intact. In the kitchen, the back door was still barricaded but when I peeked through the kitchen blinds into the back garden, I could see a zombie lurching around on the flagstones. 

It was a woman or had been, at any rate. She was loitering, her back to me. Her blonde hair was matted with blood and stuck to her neck in clumps.  She was wearing a salmon pink t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans, also blood-stained. There was a large chunk of flesh missing from her side, bits of her shirt were stuck in the wound. Every time she moved she split the congealed viscera a little and her decaying organs peeked through. Straggling bits of flesh around the hole swayed in the direction of her lurch.  I closed the blinds.

My hands were sweaty and my grip slipped on the hatchet. I just caught it before it hit the ground. I sat on the floor, back against the cupboard under the sink. Holding the cool metal of the hatchet against my forehead, I took a couple of deep breaths. Keep calm. Don't panic. The worst thing you can do, Sam, is panic. Check on the car.

I managed to get on my hands and knees and crawl out of the kitchen, trying desperately to keep the hatchet from clunking on the floor. The living room faced the street and the loud sound of zombie groans floated through the window like it wasn't there. I stopped next to the sofa to catch my breath, still trying not to panic. Getting up again, I crawled to the front door and poked my fingers gently through the letter box.

The car was gone. I peeked through the letter box again to make sure.

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck and double fuck."

The street was also full of zombies, at least thirty. I was not going out there without a vehicle. Very quietly, I let the letter box close and I wept.

"Now what?" I hadn't planned for this. I'd been both waiting for and dreading this moment for most of my life. The idea that I might not survive just hadn't occurred to me. Everything was planned. Now I was sat in my house, surrounded by zombies with no way of escaping.  To top everything off, I was whispering to myself and sobbing like a girl. I suppose it served me right for skimping and getting a house without a garage.

"Okay. Get a grip, Sam." I wiped my eyes. "What are the options? Okay, okay. Option one: Go outside, try and steal a car. Option Two: Stay in the house."

There was a blue Ford on the opposite side of the street but I didn't know how to hotwire a car and I didn't have the internet so I could learn. The presence of thirty or so zombies also put me off a little. I was staying in the house. I had ten two litre bottles of water in the kitchen and two more of the smaller bottles I'd packed a few days earlier. There was also another forty tins of food,  fifteen packs of crackers, fifteen packs of beef jerky and a few packs of pasta and rice. My contingency plan had involved staying in the house for a few weeks, not the foreseeable future. The food could last me a while but I'd have to be careful with the water if I didn't want to die of dehydration in the end. Still, that was better than being eaten alive.

I unpacked my stuff back in the attic and, hatchet in hand, took the empty pack back down to the kitchen. The blinds were closed but I crawled around the kitchen anyway, my pulse racing. All it took was for just one to know I was there. Every time the zombie in my garden moaned I froze, my grip around my hatchet tightening. I felt nauseated. Sweat dripped down my back. Get a grip, Sam.

It took two trips but I managed to take all the food I had up to my improvised living space. I had no idea what to do with the bucket I'd been shitting in. Emptying it into the drain was impossible with the Zom in the garden and the toilet was out of the question as the flush made too much noise. I didn't even know if it would flush, under the circumstances. In the end, I tipped it at quietly as I could out of the back window, onto the roof of my extension. The Zom didn't look up.

I grabbed a few items from my bedroom to make the space upstairs a little more comfortable. Namely, another pillow and my duvet.  I also took up a pile of books. Stacking them neatly on top of the other two next to my makeshift bed, I made a deal with myself that I'd only read whilst it was light and I could use the little hole in the roof to see. There was no sense in wasting the batteries in my torch. I might need it at a later date.

I picked up the book on the top of the pile. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. How long do zombies take to decay into nothing? If you believe 28 Days Later, approximately six-ten weeks.