Blog of the Dead (Book 1): Sophie (34 page)

October

6th October, 1.55pm
As the days roll on, the hot topic – and the topic that manages to eclipse whether or not we should go pay a visit to Soph, Chris and the gang – is mine and Sam’s wedding. Post zombie apocalypse weddings are not without their stresses, much the same as pre zombie apocalypse weddings, I guess. Just different.

‘So who can legally perform a wedding ceremony?’ asked Charlotte as we all sat in the living room of our caravan, the one me, Sam, Kay and Charlotte share. I could hear rain beating at the thin roof, while me and Sam sat next to each other on the L-shaped sofa, Charlotte and Stewart sat around from us to the left.

‘Has to be someone recognised as part of a religious organisation,’ said Kay from where she sat at a bench at the little fitted dinning table. ‘Or a judge, a mayor, or someone.’

‘Or a captain,’ added Stewart. ‘Ooooo, marriage on the high seas … awesome!’

‘Well, we’re stuck, quite frankly,’ I said, tucking my feet up on the sofa beneath me. ‘Where are we supposed to find someone like that? What happens when all the vicars, judges, mayors and captains are all dead?’

Sam placed his right hand on my left, resting on my knee, and gave it a squeeze. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, taking my hand in both of his now. ‘We’ll find someone. We’ll work something out.’ I turned to look at him, his stupidly gorgeous face, those stunning green eyes that I could just fall into and never want to come out of. But why did I have a feeling that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing not to find anyone who could marry us?

We were ok as we were weren’t we? Did we really need to get married? Would I have said yes if it weren’t for the fact that I’m so painfully aware that any day could be my last … would me and Sam have even been together if it weren’t for the zombies …? Part of me wanted to sink into Sam’s lovely, strong arms and the other part of me wanted to bolt out the door, the one Misfit sat opposite now, one leg up against the door frame, his knife cutting a piece of wood into a beautiful shape, his eyes flitting between that and the door, his body language itching to be out there … out in the wild, where it’s dangerous … but fun. And where you know you are truly alive.

11th October, 2.30pm
What is the most important part of a wedding? Someone to perform the ceremony? The location? The party … food … guests? Nope. It’s the dress. I may not be a girly girl, this may be the middle of a zombie apocalypse but … Hell … I want a fucking kick-ass dress for my wedding. So, despite the fact that I’m still having, let’s say, lukewarm feet about the actual event, when Charlotte suggested we go wedding outfit ‘shopping’, I agreed rather more excitedly than I ever imagined I would.

We decided that we’d all head into town. We would, after all, all need wedding outfits. Misfit tried to protest that he was fine as he was, in his jeans and black Ramones t-shirt – the same t-shirt he uses to clean the blood (animal and zombie) from his knife on a regular basis. But I vetoed him, and insisted that he get something new for the occasion. I didn’t care what … could be another black Ramones t-shirt, a string vest or a clown suit for all I cared, just so long as it was new and clean. He didn’t argue with me, just smiled a half smile and nodded, squeezing my forearm gently, his palms rough from the time spent hunting and whittling but warm and comforting against my skin. ‘Besides,’ said Misfit, ‘I wouldn’t mind getting a few things to make a fishing pole.’

‘Right then,’ I said. ‘That’s sorted.’

Nobody could face going back to Debenhams after what happened the last time we went there for clothes, when we lost Liam. Instead, we parked the Mazda in Bouverie Place shopping centre, just outside Asda, and the five of us went from Peacocks, New Look to Next, killing zombies and looking for my wedding dress and wedding party outfits. I couldn’t find a thing I liked.

‘Ok,’ said Kay. ‘How about we go to that bridal shop down Rendezvous Street?’

‘Because I’ve no desire to look like a meringue on my wedding day,’ I said flatly. I have never EVER wanted a white wedding. Me in a big flouncy fuck off dress. No fucking way.

‘Might be fun,’ said Charlotte. ‘Go on, just try some on … please …
please
…’

‘Damn, girl! Stop looking at me with those pretty eyes … ok. I’ll try on some big ugly dresses just for you Charlotte. But I will
never
wear one for my wedding.’

‘Yay!’ said Charlotte, raising her arms above her head in victory and doing a little jump.

‘Are we heading down the High Street then?’ asked Misfit. ‘Cos I could do with going to Wilkos. Some bits and pieces … what the fuck?’

‘What’s up?’ asked Kay.

‘Ssshh, listen,’ said Misfit, his head cocked to the side. I heard it. Banging. Then shouting … more banging. ‘I’ll check it out. You guys stay here,’ he said, darting off towards the High Street, his feet barely making a sound on the concrete. Of course we didn’t stay put, and the rest of us pounded after him.

At the end of Bouverie Place, I saw zombies staggering around the High Street, the highest density to our right, up towards Debenhams. At the bottom of the High Street, I could see the source of the banging … two dirty, blood stained people – and I use the word ‘people’ very loosely – each had an axe and were bashing at the big wooden door of the old cinema, their movements clumsy and slow but effective enough. Another one was on its knees and scratched at the splintering wood below where the axes hit. Human-Zombies.

On the street outside the cinema, a blonde thirty-something woman and two boys, both late teens, twenty at the most were blocked from getting any closer to the door by a gang of around eleven Human-Zombies. For now, the Human-Zombies paced in front of the three humans, sizing them up. The woman, dressed in a pair of black combats, boots and a black vest, had an axe in one hand and a long knife in the other and waved both at the Human-Zombies, while screaming at the ones attacking the door, ‘Get away from there! Fuck off out of here!’

A Human-Zombie with long, blood matted hair, its clothes in such ruins that it was almost naked, filthy limbs exposed, lurched at one of the boys. The boy swung his baseball bat. Wood and skull connected with a crack, clearly audible from where I stood, halfway up the High Street. This sent all the HZs into a frenzy and they lunged at the three humans with their bare bloodstained, claw-like hands. The other boy smashed his crowbar into the head of an HZ, while the woman put all her energy into slamming the HZs with her weapons as she tried to get through them, towards the door. The noise generated by the fight was attracting zombies from all directions, some filed past, not noticing us stood against the side window of Shoe Zone on the corner of Bouverie Place and the High Street.

‘Let’s go,’ said Kay, axe raised. She sprinted off down the High Street, weaving in and out of zombies on the way. The rest of us followed, and, at the bottom of the street, we ploughed into the battle against the Human-Zombies as well as the real thing.

The HZs, without death to stiffen their limbs, proved harder to fight than real zombies because the HZs could dodge and weave, and they were fast. They were strong, too, and despite their feral appearance, they had human minds, capable of predicting our movements … they just wouldn’t stay relatively still and take a stab to the head like all good little zombies should. But, at least, other than the two with axes, the rest were unarmed.

As blood and body parts went flying, I looked about myself. I saw the woman fighting her way through the crowd of zombies and HZs, heading for the cinema door, the door almost annihilated now by the axes. If we didn’t get this scrap under control, the zombies – human and otherwise – would be inside in no time, and I guessed that there was something, or more likely somebody, or many somebodies, inside the cinema that the woman was trying to protect. Besides the zombies (living and dead) present in the scrum, more zombies lumbered towards us from down the High Street, from Rendezvous Street on the left and Guildhall Street on the right. A regular fucking hoard. And with the cinema, housed in upper part of the old town hall, and what used to be a clothing store in the lower part of the old town hall, with its grand pillared front porch and arched doorways, at our backs, we had nowhere to run.

I stabbed a zombie through the head, just as something sharp dug into the flesh of my left shoulder. I span my head around to see an HZ, its dirty, blood crusted nails, filed to sharp points, piercing my flesh. Beads of bright red blood broke to the surface. The HZ snarled at me and I saw, with stomach turning horror, that its teeth had also been filed to points. It lowered its head to bite and I swung my knife around, but before I could slide the blade into its head, two zombies dragged the HZ off me. They tore at its dirt smeared skin with their yellow teeth and rotten fingers. The HZ grunted in pain and anger as it struggled and lashed out at the zombies with its sharpened nails. Another zombie lurched at the HZ’s stomach, knocking it and the two zombies to the ground and the HZ was engulfed.

I spotted Misfit, his small knife jabbing through zombie brains like the needle on a sewing machine through fabric, and I stabbed my way over to him. ‘Misfit!’

‘What?’

‘We’re done for unless we do something,’ I said. ‘We’re about to get swamped.’ I nodded towards the hoard heading our way from above, left and right.

‘I know, Sophie. I’ve seen them.’

‘Go and get Soph and Chris,’ I said.

‘But –’

‘You have to do it, Misfit. Our only chance is if they agree to help us.’ Misfit stabbed a zombie and glanced at me sideways. ‘Go. Run, Misfit!’ I urged.

He looked towards the new wave of zombies that would shortly descend upon us. ‘I’m not leaving you –’

‘No choice. You’re the fastest. Has to be you.’ I stabbed a zombie. ‘You’re wasting time.’ I stabbed another.

‘Ok. Ok. I’ll be as quick as I can.’ And with that, Misfit slipped like an eel through the zombies, and darted off down Rendezvous Street. I hoped I’d still be alive when he got back.

If you’ve ever seen a French zombie movie called
The Horde
, there is a bit in it – check it out on YouTube under
Epic zombie scene! La Horde!
– where a guy ploughs through a hoard of zombies and ends up on a car roof, surrounded by hundreds of the fuckers, all decaying arms raised, hands grasping. Well, that’s sort of how I felt, fighting the HZs and zombies outside the cinema that day, only me and my team had no car to stand on. All we could do was fight whatever came at us and avoid being bitten.

In all the chaos, I lost track of most of my team, but I could see the combat wearing blonde woman chopping and stabbing up a frenzy in her bid to get the HZs away from the door of the cinema. Then I spotted Stewart. An HZ slammed into his side while Stewart sliced a zombie with his sword. Stewart hit the ground and disappeared from my sight in the mass of bodies. But before I could push through the living and the dead alike in order to help him, I heard the thud of a body hitting concrete directly behind me. I turned to see Misfit bending to pull his knife from a zombie’s head. He’d made it back from St Andrews already. Misfit looked up, caught my eye and smiled his half smile that right then said,
I got your back, Sophie
, and then he stalked off into the fight.

That’s when I heard a distant purr of an engine, growing louder. Not one, but two motorbikes roared up from the direction of Rendezvous Street, each ridden by a lather-clad figure. On the back of each bike rode another leather-clad figure, each with a  chainsaw that buzzed through the rancid bodies of the zombie hoard.

As the leather-clad figures did their work, mashing up zombies and sending a fountain of black blood and body parts – and sometimes the red blood and body parts of the HZs – me and my team gained a bit of breathing space, and I caught a glimpse of Kay and Charlotte both busting zombie heads. The rest of Soph and Chris’s people came into view, marching up Rendezvous Street towards us, all tooled up to the max. I didn’t have time to count, but I guessed there were more than ten of them.

The St Andrews lot descended on the zombies and HZs like a plague of locusts through a corn field, smashing, stabbing, chopping, skewering and pounding brains with abandon. It wasn’t all good – I watched, helplessly as I fought for my own life, as a twenty-something woman from the St Andrews lot had her baseball bat yanked from her hand by an HZ. The HZ turned it round and smashed it into the side of her skull. She dropped to the ground and zombies engulfed her. The HZ slammed the baseball bat down onto the heads of the zombies, killing each one that had been feeding off the woman. Then the HZ knelt down beside her and – just as she began to regain consciousness – it pinned her down and bit into the flesh already torn by the zombies.

I paused to wipe sweat and tears from my eyes. The two motorbikes had cleared the crowd and the stragglers were being despatched by the zombie slayers on the ground. The battle had been won.

I spotted one of the HZs trying to run for it down Guildhall Street. I sprinted after it, leaping over bodies and gore, and, with my knife still in my hand, I rugby tackled the fucker to the floor. With rage fuelling my strength, I rolled the HZ over so that I could see its face and I straddled its filthy body. I grabbed a handful of blood and dirt matted hair and slammed the back of its head against the concrete. ‘Why?’ I said to it. ‘WHY?’ The HZ grinned at me, exposing teeth that had been filed to points. It snapped its jaws at me, laughing coldly. I slammed my knife through its eye.

I felt hands touch my shoulders. They gripped me and I let them guide me up and away from the dead HZ, knife still in my hand, red blood, mixing with black. I turned and saw Sam, his claw hammer in his belt, his eyes full of concern. I threw my arms around him and hugged him so tight I imagined he’d say,
Ouch
! But he didn’t, he hugged me back until I was on the verge of saying,
Ouch
! But I didn’t. I had my eyes shut tight, wanting the mangled bodies to disappear for a moment. But I knew I had to open them again.