Blog of the Dead (Book 2): Life (28 page)

Entry Thirty-Three

Early the next morning, before anyone else was awake, I crept up to the office on the top floor. Flick was asleep on a big leather armchair in the corner by the window. The swelling had gone down around her eye but she had a vivid purple bruise both under the eye and across her eyelid. I gently shook her shoulder. ‘Shhh,’ I said when she opened her eyes.

Flick sat up and looked at me. ‘Sophie, what is it?’

‘I need to ask you something and I need you not to ask me why I’m asking.’

‘
It’s a bit early for this,’ said Flick. ‘Can we start again.’

‘
I don’t want anyone to know.’

‘
Know what?’

‘
Flick, can I borrow your shotgun for a little while?’ Flick opened her mouth to speak but I carried on. ‘I know asking someone to borrow their weapon is a bit like asking to borrow their toothbrush but I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t really important.’

‘
And you can’t tell me what you want it for.’ It was a statement and not a question. ‘Go on,’ said Flick.

‘
Thank you.’ I picked the shotgun up from where it rested against the wall by the armchair. ‘You haven’t seen me,’ I said and headed for the door. I scurried downstairs to the front door and opened it slowly and quietly and slipped outside.

The rain had stopped and the morning was clear and bright. Most of the snow had been washed away during the night, apart from some thicker patches where it had drifted up against cars and the sides of buildings. I jogged down towards the harbour, managing to weave my way through the occasional zombie. In the harbour itself, a group of about seven zombies staggered in the road by the car park and I had to stop and fight my way through them with my knife before I could carry on. I made it to the steps by the old abandoned pub. I darted up them two at a time until I came to the door to the pub’s backyard. I jumped down the step, slipping on the wet, muddy ground and walked over to the railings around the cellar.

I peered down but couldn’t see anything in the gloom. ‘Sam!’ His face appeared out of the darkness, gaunt and pale, his arms reaching up for me. For a moment I just stood there and watched him, my heart aching. I tried to remember him as he was, young, fit, gorgeous … that floppy brown hair and his piercing but kind green eyes. I wanted to remember the good times – it was hard because most of our relationship had taken place during the apocalypse. Before, he’d been Sleazy Sam the womaniser, someone I knew but didn’t know; someone I lived with but didn’t share my life with. Our bond had formed and grown during the time we had faced death everyday, and we had managed to smile and even laugh. We had enjoyed each other. I had loved our alone moments, sitting in the Martello tower. Looking out across the sea, it had been possible to believe there were no zombies, only endless possibilities.

I watched Zombie-Sam as he swiped at the air above his head, groping for me, wanting me but not in the way he used to. I thought I’d trapped him to try and save him but I realised I had only done it for selfish reasons – because I couldn’t let go. Flick had been right, I couldn’t help Sam. There would be no cure. I was insisting on keeping the life support machine running even though he was brain dead.

I clenched my jaws together to stifle a sob. I closed my eyes to hold back the tears. I heard Sam groan. I opened my eyes and stared down at him. I didn’t have to do this. I could leave him – maybe he could be helped one day …
maybe
? Sam snarled me. ‘Sam,’ I said to him, my voice breaking, ‘what would you want? Would you want the chance to come back even if it meant you were never fully you again? If you had to make do with the mental abilities of a child?’ He snarled at me again. ‘That’s what I thought.’ With tears rolling down my cheeks, I lowered the muzzle of the gun. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I aimed and fired at his head.

I heard a thump as Sam’s body fell, but I couldn’t see any more than a vague outline of him in the gloom of the cellar.

‘I love you, Sam. Rest in peace.’ I dropped to my knees, my free hand clinging hold of the blue bars and my body shook with violent sobs.

Later that morning, I stood on hard, wet sand with my hands in the pockets of my jacket, trying to keep the chill out. The bodies of our recently fallen friends – all apart from Lucy and Josh who had already had a similar send off – had been laid out in a small fishing boat that Misfit had sailed out of the harbour and onto the Sunny Sands beach. He stood beside the boat, soaking the bodies with petrol from a can, while the rest of us gathered in respectful silence close to the shore.

When I returned to the house that morning, shortly before we headed to the beach, Misfit asked me where I’d been, his eyes flitting between me and the shotgun in my right hand. ‘I owed a friend a favour,’ I had replied, my grief – a grief I couldn’t explain to Misfit – making my words sound hostile in a way I hadn’t intended, and he questioned me no further.

Once the boat’s passengers were saturated, Misfit poured petrol onto rags wound around the end of a stick that Soph held out before her. He used my lighter to set the rags alight. Soph touched the burning end of the stick to the bodies, moving to the next as each one caught alight. Then, with the blaze taking hold, and the smell of petrol and burning flesh in my nostrils, I watched as Shane, Misfit, Clay and Soph pushed the boat out, its nose rising and falling against the gentle waves. When they were about knee height in the sea, they let the boat go.

Once they had waded back to shore to stand with the rest of us, Flick began to speak, ‘I’d like to say a few words, if I may?’ I gave her a nod and she continued. ‘As our friends leave this life and begin their journey to the next, let us take a moment to remember Jordan, Tracey, Elsie, Patrick, Cleo, Max, Amy, Stewart, Sean and … Sara … with joy.’ Flick’s voice cracked and tears fell freely as she spoke. ‘Remember them for their bravery, their strength and their achievements in this life. While we mourn their absence, we also celebrate their lives and what they meant to each one of us. We can honour their lives by continuing to fight for our survival and our humanity.’

We had wandered the short distance back to the house in sombre silence, broken only by Kay stopping to brain a couple of zombies with her axe that she had been reunited with after the battle at the bowls club. Everyone gathered in the large kitchen, apart from the youngest children who disappeared into the living room, where I could hear the sound of tiny hands rooting through the big wooden toy box.

Flick pulled a bottle of whisky, two thirds full, from a selection of bottles that nestled in the corner of the kitchen worktop. She placed it in the centre of the kitchen table with a thud. Charlotte and Clay gathered glasses from the shelving above the sink and arranged them on the table in front of the bottle.

I lifted the bottle of whisky, twisted off its cap and poured the amber liquid into the glasses, passing them around until everyone held one.

‘To friends,’ said Flick with a small smile.

‘
To humanity,’ I added. I stood on Misfit’s left side and I slipped my fingers between his, feeling him squeeze the back of my hand.

‘
So,’ I said, looking around the room. ‘Who fancies a road trip?’

***