Blog of the Dead (Book 1): Sophie (31 page)

‘No,’ said Stewart, holding on to them. ‘I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do …’

‘Ok. Watch.’ Misfit began slicing into his piece of wood. ‘Like this,’ he said. ‘Just let the wood guide you.’

Stewart settled down and began to carve clumsily. His first efforts weren’t much more than pointed sticks that made me wish we had some marshmallows for toasting on the fire. But they got more elaborate throughout the night. Though nothing like Misfit’s perfect little works of art.

The sun had risen when Charlotte bounced out of the caravan, wide eyed and fresh faced. ‘Morning sweeties!’ she said. ‘You been out here all night?’

‘Mmmmmm,’ I said, too tired and content on Sam’s shoulder to say any more. She laughed and ruffled my hair as she jogged past me. I looked over my shoulder and watched as she began some warm up exercises near the front fence, then started punching and kicking the air, karate stylee. Grim concentration on her usually sunny face.

Kay came out next. ‘Hope no one’s hungry,’ she said. ‘Because we’ve got no food.’

‘Supply run,’ said Sam.

‘I can get some food,’ said Misfit, looking up from the giraffe he was carving. ‘Without having to go into town,’ he added.

‘Where from?’ asked Kay.

‘Nature’s supermarket,’ he said, nodding in the direction of hills behind our base. The Warren. I used to go running there every Saturday, this spot being only a five minute run away from the house we used to live in before the outbreak. It’s a secluded area of untamed hills, woods, and cliffs that lead down to a beach. In the warmer months, tents would pop up in the dunes like spring flowers.

‘You can hunt?’ I asked, sitting up straight, causing Sam’s arm to fall from my shoulders.

‘Yeah. Well, I’ve always been into survival skills and … But I never … Um, my step dad used to take the piss out of me.’

‘Gotcha,’ I said, not wanting to give away to the others that Caine had been the step dad in question.

‘I’ll go and get the stuff I need,’ said Misfit. He stood and headed for his caravan, the one he shared with Stewart.

‘You going now?’ I asked. ‘You haven’t slept.’

‘No worries,’ he called back. ‘My senses are even keener when I’m tired. Like I can go into a sort of trance where I become one with the land … I know it sounds stupid.’

‘No,’ I said, but he had gone.

Watching Misfit leave, about half an hour later, I surprised myself how concerned I felt about his safety. He wasn’t the easiest person to get to know. He didn’t talk freely and kept himself to himself. Anything I did know about him – that Caine had been his step dad, that he could carve amazing things from wood and that he could hunt – I would stumble over like a log hidden in undergrowth.

‘Be careful, Misfit,’ I said. He stood at the opening in the fence and gripped the chain link with his right hand. I read the word ‘lost’ on his tattooed knuckles, though the word was upside down from where I stood.

‘I’ll be ok,’ he said, looking at me. Then he turned and set off into the wild.

Not long after Misfit left the camp, me and Sam staggered sleepily to bed. But as soon as I lay down, my mind began to whir and I tossed and turned, unable to sleep despite my exhaustion. My ears strained for the sound of the fence opening. Nothing.

After a couple of hours, I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I climbed out of bed and pulled on my jeans and, leaving Sam sleeping soundly, I went through to the living room. I perched on the sofa and peered out the window. Kay and Charlotte were outside digging in the veg patch. I couldn’t see Stewart and guessed that he was sleeping in his caravan. I sat with my legs curled up underneath me on the sofa, and my eyes fixed on the fence.

It was late afternoon by the time Sam got up. He found me sitting on the sofa, watching the fence. ‘Is he back?’ asked Sam.

‘No.’ We went outside and I helped Sam build a fire, my eyes darting to the track every few seconds. At dusk, I saw Misfit marching up the track. I dropped the stick that I was using to poke the fire and a knot of tension in my stomach dropped too. Misfit had five dead rabbits – two in one hand and three in the other, held by their fluffy back legs. Sam and Kay let him in through the fence. I forced myself to stay sitting by the fire, curbing the urge to run over and fling my arms around his tattooed neck. Misfit triumphantly lay the rabbits down on a patch of grass beside the fire. Then he undid the backpack he’d taken with him and pulled out a dead seagull and placed that next to the rabbits. He squatted on his haunches and smiled at me, then pulled out his knife and picked up one of the rabbits. ‘Hungry?’ he said.

We cooked the rabbits and the seagull on the fire, and ate them as the sun went down. Three zombies staggered up to the front fence and banged against the metal with rotting hands, making it clang.

‘Shut up!’ I snapped at them. Misfit stood up, pulled a knife from his belt and marched over to the fence. He stabbed each one, the blade of his knife jutting through the gaps in the fence so swiftly that I couldn’t fail to be impressed. All three zombies were dead in seconds.

Not much else has happened over the last six weeks. Misfit hunted, Stewart whittled, we all tended the veg patch, and we managed to avoid going out into the zombie infested street of Folkestone for supply runs.

So, back to today – has it been an unlucky Friday 13
^th
? Before I start feeling sorry for myself, I can’t help thinking back to the ones we’ve lost along the way, too many to mention all of them. Keith, Liam, Shelby, David, Leanne … Polly – they all know what unlucky is. Unlucky is not making it. Unlucky is being bitten. Unlucky is being torn apart, eaten alive. I’m doing ok. I’ve got my team. And I’ve got my boyfriend. Sam, the dopey sod, asked me out on a date earlier. He said we’ve never been on a date. He wants to take me somewhere in town. Crazy bugger!

27th July, 3.40pm
Two weeks have passed since Sam asked me out on a ‘date’. When he first asked, I spent about ten minutes sat on the beige L-shaped sofa in our caravan looking at him. Sam sat next to me saying, ‘Why are you looking at me like that, Sophie?’ Eventually I asked, ‘Like what?’ and he said, ‘Like I’m mad,’ so I said, ‘Because you are.’

‘Why?’

‘A date?’ I said, bringing my bare feet up onto the sofa and wrapping my arms around my knees. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, Sam. It’s the zombie apocalypse. And while I’m sure we’ll get a table at Portofino, I think it’ll be us on the menu.’

‘Yeah. It’s a dumb idea, right?’ said Sam. He hung his head and dark hair flopped forwards hiding his eyes while he picked at the skin around a finger nail.

‘No! No it’s not,’ I said, letting my feet drop to the beige carpeted floor. I sidled up to Sam so that my thigh touched his and put my hand on his. ‘Sorry,’ I continued. ‘It’s a lovely idea. I think.’ Sam looked up, pushed his overgrown fringe from his eyes and smiled at me. He rested his cheek against my shoulder. In the silence that followed I looked round the caravan. There wasn’t much to give away the personality of the former occupant. I guess most of his stuff had been put in storage while he did up the Martello Tower to live in. It struck me how sad it was that he’d left so little behind for anyone to remember him. Not a single photograph, so I didn’t even know what he looked like. If anyone ever moved into our old student house, they’d have all sorts of photos, books, diaries, letters, DVDs, piles of old magazines, clothes and so on to paint a picture of us. This guy left not much more than a used tube of Colgate and a ratty old toothbrush, a couple of pairs of men’s Fat Face boot cut jeans (size 34 L), a few plain t-shirts from Next (size medium) and a large black Fat Face fleece. Oh and the Cher and Brian Adams CDs.

I avoided any further mention of the ‘date’. Sam would get a soppy look on his face – a sort of dopey, lopsided smile – which would alert me he was thinking romantic thoughts, and I’d either think of something totally unromantic to say or head off to talk to someone else. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a ‘date’ with Sam. Just that I didn’t want to go outside.

Only Misfit went out. He foraged and hunted for our food, and he’d even found a fresh water stream down the Warren. We had the veg patch to supplement what Misfit gathered. So we had no need to go out. That suited me fine. After everything we went through with Caine, I wasn’t ready for the outside world.

But last Tuesday, while I watched Misfit skin a rabbit for dinner, fascinated by how he made it look as easy as peeling a banana, Stewart let out a big sigh. I looked across the camp fire where he sat cross legged, staring into the flames, his features illuminated in the orange glow. In one hand he gripped his knife and in the other, a fresh piece of wood, like he was holding a knife and folk and awaiting his dinner. Various bits of whittled wood littered the ground around him. ‘I want a guitar,’ he said after a few moments.

Ok, so Stewart had whittled enough and he wanted a guitar. It became the push we needed to head into town. We planned to combine a trip to the music shop in the Old High Street with a trip to Asda to pick up toothpaste and toothbrushes and other much needed personal items we’d been managing without. On Wednesday morning Charlotte and Misfit stayed behind to keep an eye on the camp, while me, Sam, Stewart and Kay headed into town in the Mazda.

We parked outside Asda first, Kay playing
Carmageddon
with some zombies that staggered outside the supermarket. The crunch of tyre over bone was disturbingly satisfying. Even more so, the thought of their heads and decaying limbs popping from the pressure.

We slaughtered any zombies that crossed our path in Asda. But the weeks holed up had made me sloppy. Sam and Stewart went off to pick up whatever food they could find on the alarmingly bare shelves, while me and Kay stuffed carrier bags with toiletries. I reached out to pick up a bottle of shampoo when a rotten hand wrapped itself around my forearm. I hadn’t even noticed the zombie arrive, and I didn’t have chance to reach for my knife. I’d put it through my belt to free up my hands while I ‘shopped’.

‘Shit! Fuck! Shit!’ I said as I tried to pull away from the lipless, yellow puss dripping jaws heading for my flesh. I dropped my bag and cans of deodorant clanged to the floor and rolled away. The zombie pushed my right side into the shelves. I had nowhere to go, and I waited for the pain of teeth ripping my flesh. That’s when the zombie’s whole face fell – literally – onto my arm with a splodge, before it slid to the floor. It happened so fast that it took a moment for my mind to take it all in. I saw Kay standing between me and the zombie, her axe inches from my arm where the zombie gripped it. The zombie had no face, Kay had sliced it off, cutting far enough through the brain that after a few moments the zombie’s legs buckled and it fell to the ground, loosing its grip on me. ‘Nice one, Kay,’ I said.

‘No worries.’

Sam fussed around me like mad when he found out what happened in Asda. When Kay parked the Mazda outside the music shop down the Old High Street, Sam acted like my minder, opening the door for me, checking the street was clear of zombies. All he needed was a pair of dark glasses, an ear piece and a suit.

Inside the store, Stewart pottered about trying out different guitars with a concentration that I have only seen on a woman choosing a new pair of shoes (not me, well, other than which colour Converse to go for next).

‘Hurry it up,’ said Kay after a while.

‘Patience,’ said Stewart. He stood with a foot up on a low shelf, while he played a tune I didn’t recognise on a guitar that, to me, looked and sounded the same as all the others he’d picked up. ‘I need to see which one connects with me,’ he said, eyes closed, head slightly tilted as he continued to play.

‘What ... are you Harry Potter doing a spot of wand shopping, or something?’ said Kay. ‘Pick a guitar and let’s move!’ Stewart opened his eyes.

‘Really, Stewart,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

Stewart stopped playing and gripped the guitar by the neck, ‘Well, let’s go then,’ he said with a bright-eyed grin.

‘You’re all connected?’ I asked.

‘Yep.’

‘Fine.’ I headed for the door, but Sam – who’d been casting nervous glances out the door every few seconds while he hovered by my side – put out an arm to stop me and moved ahead of me. The Mazda stood just outside the door of the music shop. We only had to walk a couple of steps to the damn car. But as Sam stepped onto the street outside the store, his focus on me, rather than where he was heading, I saw him get rugby tackled to the ground by a zombie that lunged at him from the right. ‘SAM!’ I screamed.

Everything went into slow motion for no other reason than to let me watch that terrible sight in great detail – Sam thrown to the ground, a filthy body landing on him, snapping its jaws at him. Sam taken by surprise and unable to use his claw hammer before the impact with the pavement knocked it from his hand. I heard my voice scream Sam’s name, but even that sounded like it came out in slow motion, deep and stretched out. My body wouldn’t react as fast as I wanted it to, like I was moving in a vat of treacle. I saw the zombie sink its teeth into Sam’s hand. I saw the blood running down his arm. And then I was outside, standing over the zombie, and I saw my knife plunge into the back of its head. I registered a flash of movement and the sound of feet pounding the pavement as someone ran down the Old High Street, but I had no idea who. And then everything went black.

August

5th August, 6.20pm
The day Sam got bit, I opened my eyes and saw nothing but the dusty pavement. I lifted my head, dazed, and winced at a sharp pain on my forehead. I put my fingers to the source of the pain, and when I looked at them I saw blood. I realised I had hit the pavement hard. But I couldn’t remember why … then I heard Sam groan.

My head shot up and I saw Sam sat with his back against the front wheel of the Mazda. He clutched his bloody right hand with his left, looking at the missing chunk of flesh between his thumb and forefinger with wide, terror filled eyes. Between us lay the body of the zombie, face down. Kay knelt beside Sam, her axe forgotten on the ground. I could see tears on her cheeks; tears that she didn’t bother to wipe away. She had one hand on Sam’s shoulder, the other clamped around his right wrist, and she spoke to him with a voice that cracked with grief. But he ignored her, oblivious to anything other than the bite.