Blog of the Dead (Book 3): Lost (15 page)

There was a whole scene with Mark catching us in the house. My brow rose as I scanned images of Mark overpowering Misfit while the rest of us cowered from him. We each had speech bubbles from our mouths showing us pleading for our lives and begging him to let us shelter from the zombies in the house. Comic Book Mark managed, single-handedly, to restrain us all and tie us to chairs in the dining room and he questioned us to make sure we weren’t psychos intent on stealing his supplies and killing him in the night. Eventually he was satisfied with our stories (that we were a hopeless group of scavengers who had no idea how we’d managed to survive in the zombie apocalypse without someone like him – a brave zombie slaying expert – to keep us safe). Wow, I’m so bloody glad we ran into Mark, I mean, how on earth have we coped without him? And, well, who knew?

I let the front cover fall over the neat, well drawn sketches and dropped the pad to the floor. I picked up another pad and opened it randomly. The sketches were good, really good, all done in pencil and in a style I can only describe as simple but detailed, if that makes any sense at all? I liked how he drew the zombies with big buggy eyes and wisps of hair, the hair slightly longer on the females and short and spiky on the males. The females all wore a similar simple dress and the males wore suits that hung on their emaciated frames. As uniformed as the zombies were, their wounds were the only thing that set them apart from each other. Some had missing jaws, some had torn out chests, others had their throats ripped open. There were zombies with chunks of flesh missing from their cheeks, some were missing an arm or had a broken, twisted foot. Each one unique and beautifully – yes, beautifully – drawn.

I carried on turning pages, my eyes scanning left to right along the boxes showing illustrations of Mark slaying the occasional zombie while scavenging local shops, or Mark breaking into houses, killing any zombies he found, filling his backpack with any edible food he found in cupboards, all the time looking for survivors, or Mark avoiding the occasional gang of dubious looking humans. The bad guys were all based on the iconic American gang member look circa 1980: bandanas around the heads, white vests topped with either a leather biker jacket or a sleeveless denim jacket.

Most of the survivors he found and helped were big busted women whose rubbish zombie fighting skills were probably hindered further by the tiny, body hugging dresses they wore, quite often with tears in the top sections that could result in spillage if the women were not careful. Thank goodness they had Mark to kill the zombies for them so they could concentrate on screaming and ensuring their boobs didn’t fall out of their tops. The females all looked so different from the images Mark had drawn of Charlotte and I wondered what she would think if she saw these slutty images. And who was closest to his ideal woman, the Pre-Raphaelite or the tart?

I was beginning to wonder if it was worth carrying on. The comics were less inspired by real life and more inspired by Mark’s immature nature. I flicked on a little further, getting bored as more and more pages showed Mark doing very little other than cleaning his pick axe or sitting smoking cigarettes while keeping watch out the window.

Then I landed on a scene where Mark came across a group of five survivors that had been cornered in an alley by some zombies. I lingered on the page, wanting to read the story that was displayed in speech bubbles as well as narrative boxes. One of the survivors gets bitten and torn apart by zombies before Mark even has time to get his pickaxe through the skull of the first zombie. Having not seen another human – other than gang members – for a long time, seeing one bitten and killed drove him on in grim determination to try and save the other four. Mark rushed in with his weapon and obliterated zombie heads like a crazed, super starved kid let loose on a piñata at a birthday party. The actions were accompanied with thought bubbles saying things like,
Nooooooo
!!!
Must. Try. To. Save. Humans
.
Aghhhhhhhh
!!

Unfortunately, two more survivors got bit. While one was torn apart, the other received a flesh wound and was able to carry on the fight alongside Mark and the other survivors until all the zombies were dead. The scene that followed was a touching moment when one of the remaining survivors, a young woman wearing an outfit that was, to me, a little too tight and too revealing for the zombie apocalypse – but what do I know – cradled her dying boyfriend in her arms while sobbing hopelessly. Despite her pleading with him, Mark used his pickaxe to put the boyfriend down before he died of his wounds, not wanting him to turn and attack his girlfriend – whose amble boobs where way too close to his mouth area.

The girlfriend and the other remaining survivor, an older male, both turned on Mark, driving him away despite the fact he’d just saved them from a horde of zombies. They also seemed to overlook the fact that he’d saved them from the nasty deed of putting down a loved one before they became the new zombie’s first snacks. Good story line – Hero saves the day, only to be turned upon and rejected, having to continue his life as strong, silent loner in a post apocalyptic world – but, based on the first scene where Mark changed the facts to make it look as though he’d had the upper hand when we first met, I doubted its credibility.

I closed and dropped the sketch pad to the floor and picked up the next one. This time I kept flicking back, looking for the moment Mark first arrived at my house. Though I appeared to have to travelled further back in time than I thought, more like a year than a few months. When I found what I was looking for I stopped.

The illustrations showed Mark, pickaxe in hand, edging his way down my road. The narrative and speech bubbles informed me he was new in town and was staking out the area, trying to find somewhere suitable to hole up. He stopped when he heard screaming. He followed the screams to my house. Thinking there was a survivor to help, he tried to gain access through the front door. Front door locked and unable to see anything through the front window because of the drawn curtains, Mark crept around the back of the house.

He snuck through the fallen fence panel, the illustration showing dark patches over the grass and garden furniture, what I guessed was blood – Jake’s blood from when he was attacked. The next box showed Mark in shadowy silhouette as he stood at the back door, looking through the window and into the house, down through the kitchen. The scene included an image of my mum, an incredible likeness, just visible in the dining room beyond. She was standing with her hands at her mouth while she screamed at something only she could see from further in the house. This couldn’t be right – my mum clearly wasn’t a zombie in the image.

I read on regardless, my eyes quickly scanning the pictures and the words. Mark broke into the house and darted through the kitchen to the dining room where, beyond my screaming mother, stood a man – my dad – holding a zombie child from behind. Jake. Dad’s arms were wrapped around Zombie-Jake, pinning his pale arms to his sides. Zombie-Jake’s mouth was open, baring his teeth at Mum and now Mark as he stood beside her. Zombie-Jake’s eyes bugged out his head as he struggled in my dad’s grasp.

Although these were only drawings, and obviously scenes that Mark had made up, they were still incredibly hard to look at. I was watching something awful happening to my family, except it hadn’t happened. The timeline would be all wrong for a start. If Mark had been here just after Jake turned, he would have to have arrived a year ago, not just a few months ago as he told us he had done. I remembered the earlier drawings and how none of them bore much relation to reality – so this must be make-believe too, right? Was this why he didn’t want me to see the drawings, because he’d used my family to invent some dump-arsed work of fiction where he gets to play hero?

The speech bubble from my mum’s mouth said, ‘Noooooo! Not my Jake. Not my little Jake Bake!’ while Dad said, ‘Aghhhhhhhhhh! My son!’

I read on, my eyes bulging and tears forming as I watched Mark slam the end of his pickaxe through Jake’s head. The next box showed my mum screaming, ‘You killed my Jake Bake, you bastard!’ while rushing at Mark with a hammer. The next showed my mum whacking Mark around the head. Dazed, Mark put his hands up to ward off any more blows, pleading with her to stop. Mum raised the hammer again but before she could hit Mark again, and before Dad could reach her to stop her, Mark slammed the handle of his pickaxe into the side of her head. She fell, blood seeping from a wound on her temple to soak into the carpet.

Next I saw an image of my dad kneeling on the ground cradling my mum, sobbing, ‘She’s dead! She’s dead!’ I saw Mark, a speech bubble saying, ‘I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry. I–’ then my dad gets to his feet and, with the words, ‘You killed her – I’m going to kill YOU!’ he charges at Mark. Mark retaliates by spiking my dad’s head with his pickaxe. I stared at the image of my dad’s head on the end of the pickaxe. Mark had captured that moment where life snubs out and, just before death takes over, there is a subtle realisation visible in the eyes. Nausea ran through me and I fought the urge to throw up. I swallowed hard to try and keep what little was in my stomach from coming back up but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the image of my dad’s last moments.

Just in the same way the world disappears when you’re engrossed in a good book or movie and all that exists is the narrative, a narrative that becomes more real than reality itself, I sat staring at the images drawn by Mark’s hand. My surroundings disappeared and I found myself, not in Jake’s old bedroom but downstairs, a year earlier, in the dining room. I was standing over the bodies of my parents, human before they were slain. Jake’s zombiefied body lay in the corner of the room, under the window looking out on the back garden. Mark stood in front of me, his gaze flitting from my mum and my dad to me. I watched him, his pencil etched self, as he gazed at me with bulging eyes, trying to come to terms with what he had just done. Were they the first humans he had killed? But it can’t have been true. It can’t have happened like that. It had to be a work of fantasy loosely based on real life, just like the rest. I couldn’t make sense of it.

I felt as though someone had released a canister of liquid nitrogen inside me, a coldness seeped from my core, through every vein and every cell in my body until it reached my skin. I looked back over the images, my eyes scanning the speech bubbles. Something caught my eye.

The bedroom door opening dragged me back to reality. My eyes darted towards the figure that entered the room. Mark. He stood rigid in the doorway, his eyes bulging with shock.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked. He kept his voice level, but it took effort for him to do so and I just picked up the hint of a tremble.

I didn’t move. I sat on Jake’s bed with Mark’s pad held open on my lap. I let that answer his question.

‘You told me you used these comics to document what happens to you in the zombie apocalypse,’ I began, trying to keep my voice level but feeling like I was being even less successful than Mark. I stopped and cleared my throat as my voice crackled. ‘But how much is fact and how much is fiction?’

‘How much have you seen?’

‘Enough.’

‘Your parents?’

‘Yep. Were they alive when you got here?’

‘No.’

‘When did you get here, Mark, a few months ago or over a year ago?’

‘A few months ago, like I said.’

‘You’re lying,’ I said.

‘No, Sophie, they were dead when I got here. They were zombies. I had to–’

‘Stop lying to me Mark. And that’s not what it says in here,’ I said, lifting the pad a little higher.

‘Sophie, I’m a story teller. What’s in there, it’s not always–’

‘Don’t try and tell me you’ve taken artistic licence,’ I snapped and I stood, slamming the pad onto the floor at Mark’s feet so that images of my mum and dad being murdered could be seen by both me and Mark. I nodded my head down towards the pad, to what I had just spotted in the speech bubbles. ‘You wrote my mum calling my brother ‘Jake Bake’… how would you know that nickname if they were dead when you got here? You had to have heard my mum say that!’

‘I–’

‘Don’t lie to me, Mark. They were alive when you got here. WEREN’T THEY?’

Mark didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The way he gazed at me, his eyes narrowed and his look considered and cold told me the truth. ‘But what I want to know, how much did you embellish the self defence angle?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I can believe my parents would come at you if you had wanted to hurt Jake. But he was a zombie. I know my parents. They would have been devastated at losing Jake, but they were both practical enough to know that they had already lost him when he turned. My mum wouldn’t have attacked you like that. She wouldn’t. So why’d you kill her?’

‘I didn’t–’

‘BOLLOCKS!’

‘Sophie,’ Mark approached me by two tentative steps, his left hand outstretched towards me, ‘please, you have to understand it was an accident.’

‘Don’t lie to me!’

‘Sophie, calm down,’ said Mark and he extended his free hand out towards me as though I was some kind of danger to him.

‘This is just a misunderstanding,’ he said as he took a step towards me.

‘Fuck off! Misunderstanding, my fucking arse! You killed my parents.’

‘Please don’t tell the others – Charlotte, please don’t tell Charlotte.’ He took another step towards me.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ I said, fearing the cold look in his eyes. I saw no remorse, nothing. Just coldness.

‘Don’t tell the others,’ he said again as he held his pickaxe. ‘We can sort this out between the two of us, hey? Charlotte doesn’t need to know, does she?’

‘How many others have you killed, Mark? How many others died to make the narrative more exciting?’

‘Stop talking, Sophie,’ said Mark as he stepped closer, his pickaxe raised before him. ‘We can sort this out just so long as you don’t say another word.’

Mark stood only a metre before me. I had no doubt he would swing the pickaxe at my head. He could dump my body over next door’s garden and when the others returned and asked where I was, Mark could say he hasn’t seen me, that I wasn’t here when he got back, that he hadn’t seen me since before me and Misfit left for the park earlier. The others would be none of wiser. Misfit would say we came back to the house and he’d left me here while he went to hunt and everyone will think that maybe I’d got bored and I’d gone out to scavenge and got attacked. No one would suspect Mark. No one would search for my body. Even if Misfit refused to believe I was dead and went to look for me – very likely, especially as I did the same when he went missing – he wouldn’t think of checking next door’s garden. I’d never be found and Misfit would eventually and reluctantly give up on me.

I didn’t have my knife. I had left it downstairs. But I did have my hammer in my belt. I kept my eyes on Mark’s, wondering if I could pull my hammer out before he got the point of his pickaxe through my skull. Well, if you don’t try… I slid my weapon free of my belt, raising it before me. Mark laughed at the sight of my puny hammer. He lunged forwards and brought his pickaxe down towards my head. I was ready and swung my hammer, not to hit him but to bat the point of the pickaxe off its trajectory. Mark hadn’t expected this and the force made his heavy weapon swing past me to my left. Mark overbalanced, following the momentum of the heavy weapon. Only trouble was, as our weapons became entangled, I dropped my hammer. Nevertheless, I took the opportunity to dart past Mark and out of the bedroom.

It didn’t take long for Mark to steady himself because, even though I flew down the stairs without looking back, I could hear his feet pounding not far behind me. I flung open the front door and out into the street with no weapon to defend myself from either the zombies or Mark. I turned left and sprinted down Denzil Road. About halfway down, a few zombies staggered out from some old garages. With no weapon, I used my momentum to smack them out of my way with my shoulder. I turned left into Farnham Road, Mark close at my heels. At the end of the road, I flung myself over the railings of the underpass in true parkour style – though I never would have guessed I had any talent for freerunning until that moment.

On towards Guildford station. I ran into a group of around ten zombies blocking the road. Weaponless, I stopped, before realising I couldn’t stop because I had Mark behind me and I dodged the frontrunners that lunged at me. At the last moment, I cut to my right, making for the car park outside the station. I glanced behind me to see that Mark had been travelling too fast to stop and his momentum forced him into the zombies. I saw him swing his pickaxe into the group. I turned back to concentrate on my escape. I cleared the car pack, dodging around abandoned cars, and I tumbled down a slope thick with overgrown shrubs, to rejoin the main road.

I intended to make a run for it back to my house. Only problem was, Mark was fast. I could see him in my peripheral vision. He was coming up on my right hand side, having doubled back on himself, taking the road from the station to rejoin the main road. He’d not had to do the detour through the car park that I’d had to do and he now cut me off from turning right, the way I needed to go to head home. So, instead, I was forced into turning left, into Bridge Street. I ran on, twisting and turning on myself, darting down and up streets in a bid to shake Mark off.

I was almost at the castle when I realised I’d outrun him. I decided now was the time to head back towards home. Only problem was, as I emerged into Quarry Street, I saw zombies blocking the way up ahead. They spotted me and began lumbering in my direction so I ducked back into Castle Street. I jogged up Chapel Street, scanning left and right for any signs of zombies but the way ahead remained clear. In the High Street, I wasn’t so lucky and to my left, a crowd of zombies stumbled and staggered in the street, while to my right, I caught a glimpse of Mark.

‘Shit,’ I mumbled under my breath.

I slunk back into the cover of Chapel Street and glanced behind me. The zombies I’d run into in Quarry Street had followed me and had the narrow street blocked off. I glanced around me but saw nothing I could use as a weapon and nowhere to hide. What to do? I peered out into the High Street. The zombies to the left hadn’t seen me. I looked the other way to see Mark stalking off in the opposite direction along the High Street. With a crowd of zombies coming up behind me, the frontrunners just a few metres away, I couldn’t hang about to wait for Mark to clear off. I had to move now.

With Mark’s attention checking the doorways to the right of me, I snuck out of my hiding place and crept to the left, moving from doorway to doorway towards the zombies but away from Mark. I prayed he wouldn’t turn around and see me. Out of the two sets of pursuers, the zombies were slower and I hoped to dodge them and get back round to Quarry Street before the zombies spotted me. But as I crept around a shop front, the damn things did spot me. I ducked into the nearest doorway but they had already begun to stagger in my direction. I worried that, a) they would cut me off before I got to Quarry Street and b) the noise they made would alert Mark.

I tried the door beside me but it was locked. I couldn’t stay where I was or I’d be trapped in the doorway with no way to fight my way through the zombies coming for me from the left of the High Street. I couldn’t go to the right because Mark was still there. I snapped my head in all directions, desperate for a way out. On the opposite side of the street, I spotted one of the doors to Marks & Spencer was open a little way. No time to think it through, I dived out of the doorway and darted across the street, past the zombies and into the cover of Marks & Spencer’s doorway. I glanced left and right – the zombies had seen me and were starting to change direction and stagger to my new location, but, most importantly, Mark hadn’t spotted me. I prized the door open and crept inside the store.

Inside, the only light came from the bank of grimy glass doors that I’d entered through. The dark and gloomy interior combined with racks of clothing, columns and free standing mirrors, made it very hard to tell if there were any zombies inside. They could be lurking around any corner. As a place to find shelter, it sucked. I edged my way further in, my eyes scanning left and right. I wondered if I could find anything to use as a weapon. But all I saw were clothes, hats, gloves… useless.

I heard a groan and a shuffle and I stopped, my ears straining to figure out what direction the sound had come from. A bang from behind me made me jump and I turned to see zombies lining up outside the doors. They began slamming their withered hands against the glass, and as their bodies gathered, they blocked out even more of the daylight, plunging me into a deeper gloom.

‘Shit,’ I said under my breath as I realised the entrance wasn’t only blocked but that the zombies would soon figure out how to prise open the door I’d come in through. I had hoped just to lay low for a while, until Mark cleared off, but now I realised I would have to find another way out.

I turned my attention back to the way ahead, gasping as I spotted a shadowy figure lumbering towards me. Satisfied it was only the one, I stalked behind the racks of clothes to my right, keeping myself low, hoping the zombie wouldn’t work out where I’d gone. I waited a moment, gathering my nerve before I carried on. I ducked from clothes rack to clothes rack, careful not to knock into them and cause the hangers to scrape against the metal frames. Once I was confident I’d left the zombie behind, I stopped to scan the area ahead. I didn’t see any movement so I crept on, the frenzied sound of rotting hands against glass behind me driving me on.

Further ahead, I could see the food hall coming up, a display of Christmas food and decorations at the entrance. I carried on towards it. A little more light filtered in through the bank of four doors at the very end of the store as I made it into the food hall, but I still trod carefully, knowing that zombies could be waiting in any of the aisles. The shelves I passed were for the most part bare, just mouldy perishables like loaves of bread and sandwiches remained. In the cake aisle, the contents of one shelf had tumbled, or been knocked to the floor and some of the boxes had burst open. The bitter smell of decayed sponge caught me in the throat and I clamped my hand over my mouth to stop myself from coughing. It passed and I lowered my hand and moved on quickly.

In the next aisle I grabbed a packet of biscuits off a nearby shelf. I wasn’t particularly hungry and I knew they’d be well and truly stale but I needed the energy boost if I was to keep going until I returned home. I pulled at the plastic with grubby fingers and revealed the chocolate and oat biscuits inside. Before I could take a bite, I heard the sound of smashing glass from back the way I’d come. I assumed the zombies had broken their way through but then, from a way off, I heard, ‘SOPHIE! I KNOW YOU’RE IN HERE!’ Mark had found me, the zombies gathered outside the store no doubt tipped him off. ‘You can’t hide from me, Bitch! I will find you!’

To make matters worse, I heard a groan and I turned to see a zombie stagger out from an aisle ahead of me. It was joined by another.

‘Oh shit!’ I said. I dropped the packet of biscuits and darted off to the right, towards the checkouts, hoping to slip past them that way. It worked and I continued through the food hall, my eyes flicking to the aisles on the left and right in case any more zombies were waiting for me. The way remained clear and I crashed into the doors at the end of the food hall. They were locked.

‘Shit!’ I said, slamming my fists against the glass.

I could see the street outside was free of zombies but I couldn’t get out. I had to turn back and find another way. Only problem was, the way back would be blocked by Mark and the zombies he’d brought in with him. I was fucked. I glanced at the glass doors. If only I could smash them. But I would need something strong enough to do it first time, something like Mark’s pickaxe. Anything else would just bounce off the toughened glass and the noise would alert both Mark and the zombies as to my whereabouts. I really was fucked. Only one thing for it, head back into the store and stay out of sight.

Maybe I can sneak around Mark and the zombies to reach the doors
, I thought.

I hurried back through the food hall, careful to avoid the zombies I’d snuck past earlier, and, back in the clothing department, I took cover behind a rail of jumpers. I could see the first wave of zombies staggering between the clothes rails but I couldn’t see Mark anywhere. How many zombies had trickled into the store behind him, I didn’t know.

I darted across to the next clothes rail, making sure I wasn’t spotted by the zombies because drawing them to me now would be like a big red neon arrow pointed at my head, and Mark would find me straight away. The front runners were a few metres further into the store and I could see more emerging from the gloom behind them. How I’d ever get past them without them and Mark spotting me, I didn’t know. And what if the doors were blocked by even more zombies? I had to rethink my plan. I spotted an escalator to the next floor. Well, going up would be plunging me deeper into the store in one respect – I mean, those people who run up the stairs in the big old house in the horror movies rarely make it back down again, do they? But I had no choice.

Taking care not to be seen by the zombies, I snuck from rail to rail until I reached the escalator. Keeping low, I crept from the nearest clothing rail to the bottom of the escalator – long since given up on moving – and I jogged up the first few steps as quietly as I could.

‘SOPHIE, COME OUT, BITCH!’

I stopped and ducked down at the sound of Mark’s voice. After a moment I dared to peek over the railing of the escalator. I saw him in the store below as he swung his pick axe at a zombie’s head. He pulled the weapon free and swung it again, this time at a rail of trousers. The sound of metal clattering against metal drew more zombies towards Mark but he seemed oblivious as he stormed further into the store. I breathed out as he carried on towards the food hall, knowing he had no idea where I was.

I thought about tackling him while his back was turned. But with what? I had nothing but my bare hands. And while Misfit was deadly with his bare hands, me, not so much. I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance against Mark, not even with the element of surprise on my side. Besides, there were too many zombies around and I couldn’t risk leaving myself open to attack if I got caught up struggling with Mark.

Only one thing for it, I carried on up the steps and out into the underwear department. I glanced all around me. I had no idea where to go. I decided to find somewhere to hide to wait it out until Mark had given up on me. He would eventually, right? I sped off, not really thinking about the direction, just wanting to disappear. I darted through the men’s clothes, into the children’s section and the homeware department. Then I saw something that brightened my day no end. I saw windows at the end of the store. One was open.