Breaking News: An Autozombiography (15 page)

‘
I know, we’ll have to cull it but at least it’ll all be by the front door when we’ve got a car again.’

We decided to ditch the chairs, airbed and pump but not the table, and Lou insisted on the washing-up stuff. She’d found two rucksacks and found two of our holiday suitcases ‘just in case’.

‘
We can do this easily,’ I said as I went to the sink for water, trying not to look into the back garden. Lou had taken all the food we weren’t carrying with us out of the fridge and kitchen freezer and into two bin bags. She’d unplugged them and propped their doors open, and even cleaned up the black sludge from around the cat-flap. I loved her with a powerful fire in my belly. The plastic water container was about two-thirds full when the tap gave a splutter, and I heard the plumbing kicking itself behind the walls. I pulled the container away and watched the flow of water - after five seconds and some more spluttering it ran cloudy, then rust red, then brown, then trickled, and then it just stopped.

‘
Water’s gone.’ I shouted

‘
No.’

‘
It’s fine; I got loads out before it went.’

We packed up my survival kit which came in a rolling tin with electrician’s tape around it and boasted a flint; fishing line; hooks and weights; waterproof matches; a button compass; a wire saw; a Morse code sheet for people who hadn’t bothered to learn it; and some other stuff like swabs and eyewash. Lou had got a small first aid kit from the bathroom and we started to pack the rucksacks. The two medical kits went in my outside pocket, and I estimated that the tent would take up the bulk of the inside of mine. I peered in.

‘
There’s some stuff from holiday still in mine.’

‘
No its not,’ Lou explained efficiently. ‘I packed you some trousers and pants and a towel and some highlights from your frankly grotty wash-bag.’

I was peering into my bag still.

‘
I love you.’ It was muffled.

‘
What?’

I bent down to grab the tent up. ‘I love you’, I said, straining to pick it up with one hand.

‘
I love you too baby.’ She helped me put the tent into my backpack. She seemed quite cheerful.

Everything else fitted fairly well. Mine was heavier than Lou’s which I was pleased with, and I used garden string to attach some of our smaller Le Creuset saucepans and a frying pan to Lou’s back pack, which she had put on already.

‘
Fucking hell.’

The cast iron pans were heavy, and according to the leaflet they were so resilient you could sit them on hot coals to cook on. We’d never taken them camping, they were wedding presents and Lou thought they were too nice, but I’d been intrigued by the thought of sticking them straight onto a bonfire to cook with. Now was my chance.

I hadn’t thought about wearing a backpack when I’d grabbed the pressure sprayer, but there was no reason it couldn’t be worn on my front. I took my pack off again and set up the sprayer tank on my chest like a papoose. At least the fumes would be fun, I thought. I pulled the rucksack back on and, in a flash of inspiration, picked up our mini kitchen blowtorch – also a wedding present – and stuffed it into my pocket.

I was forgetting things I needed, but remembering other things too fast to remember them. This was classic key-forgetting territory. I went to the front room and picked up my Zippo lighter and tobacco. I was overloaded. Floyd had sensed something was afoot a while ago and was hopping round us and whining, his head occasionally making contact with Lou’s dangling pans as she strapped the spade to my back.

‘
Like a soldier,’ she said.

‘
Dog food. Oh nuts, and his lead,’ I sighed but Lou was there already, stuffing them into the top of my rucksack. Floyd had smelt the kibble and was jumping up.

‘
Down Floyd! You ready Lou?’

‘
If you’ve got your keys?’ she smiled, smacking the back of her club into her palm.

‘
Yep.’ I patted my pocket. ‘Radios!’

‘
They’re here. Al’s set ours and one of his to the same frequency, but he’ll be well out of range at his parent’s house.’

I helped Lou fit hers onto the belt of her jeans. She had hiking boots on.

‘
Where are we going, by the way?’ she asked me, putting Floyd on his lead.

I clipped the radio onto my shoulder strap and looked at her.

‘
Cissbury Ring.’

As we stepped out of the front door I popped the lid off the red paint with a pound coin and dipped the little brush.

‘
What the fuck are you doing?’ Lou hissed, looking up and down the road.

‘
Hang on woman.’ It was only when I knew the outcome of what I was doing would be triumphant and victorious that I spoke to her like that. Sometimes it backfired, but I was confident as I started to paint on the front door: “WALKING THE DOG”. I had to go onto the wall, and the “G” of dog was on the bay window, but it did the job. I put the lid back on and stuffed the tin and brush into a side pocket of Lou’s backpack, very pleased with myself.

‘
Why didn’t you just write “UP CISSBURY”?’

‘
Al needs to know where to go, and everyone else that we know will understand exactly where we are. But we can’t make it easy for other people - even if there are survivors, the stupid ones will get us killed. Anyway, we’ve got to get up there ourselves first.’ I scratched my head. ‘We’re taking the same track up that we drove down last night, but then cutting across the golf course. We drove down from the car park last night, not from the centre of the Ring.’

‘
Of course,’ Lou said as she headed out onto the pavement.

‘
Keep to the middle of the road. You’ll be easier to see but so will they. I don’t fancy getting pulled into a garden hedge right now. Take this.’ I handed her the mini-blowtorch.

‘
You’ve really, actually, seriously thought about this day, haven’t you?’ she asked.

‘
Yep.’ I said, pumping the T-handle on my pressure sprayer tank up and down. I held the thin metal wand in my left hand and the club in my right. We moved up the street cautiously but without dithering, Floyd’s lead pushed up my arm to my elbow joint as he trotted along behind us. We’d got half-way to the end of the street when a hunched man limped out of a front garden on our right, his ankle dangling uselessly at the joint, and his dressing gown stained black. I wondered what yesterday had been like for him; was that his house? I hadn’t seen him before - at least I didn’t think I had. The few infected that I had recognised looked nothing like themselves; instead the illness gave them the appearance of a caricature, or a cheap horror mask. The man had a dressing gown on so maybe he’d been ill and infected other people. Maybe he’d been in bed and answered the door to one of them. That was unlikely, unless they’d worked out doorbells. He might have answered the door to someone fleeing though, someone looking for a safe haven - someone who had already been infected.

As we drew up alongside him I could hear the wet crunch as he kept putting weight onto his snapped ankle. I heard a rustle up ahead, and a young woman fell from a bush and slapped face-first onto the pavement. She was wearing a ripped England football shirt, and lifted herself up as we drew closer. White dotted lines now marked our path down the centre of the street onto the T-junction with the A27 as we passed the man. His eyes followed us, his arms stretched out towards us and his ankle squelching moistly.

‘
He’s okay; he’ll never catch us up at this pace but watch out for Waynetta Rooney up ahead.’ We drew closer to her. ‘Light me.’

‘
What?’ Lou asked.

‘
The blowtorch…’

She was there already, almost over-efficiently, blue flame licking my nozzle. I squeezed the trigger.

‘
That’s it, back away.’

I squeezed harder, and the
whump
of the orange jet made my face hot. I’d got her, the shiny material of her football strip blackening and shrinking around her torso. She didn’t react as it bubbled into her flesh, but it seemed to send her muscles into involuntary spasm. She went down to the sound of spitting fat and popping tendons and began to arch her limbs wildly as Floyd strained to get to the smell of cooking. I spotted another three up ahead and went to pull Floyd away to face them; but I caught my breath when I saw the girl in the football strip’s steady gaze through the flames, as her muscles thrashed her around on the tarmac. She was looking straight at me when her eyes boiled.

We heard a thump on a car we’d passed. I wheeled round to see another one alerted by our activity.

‘
Take this dog and light me!’

Lou did the business and a plume of flame leapt away from the nozzle, dousing him as well as a clearly quite dry privet hedge.

‘
Let’s jog.’ Lou suggested.

As we yomped up to the three creeps at the junction with the A27, I kept the fire going by dousing the barbed tip of my club with spirit, dripping flames onto the street. I let out a searing arc in front of us as we sped up towards them. The pressure on the sprayer was dropping so I only hit the two at the front, who lit up like torches and dropped to the tarmac. The third one proceeded to stumble towards us over the others who were now writhing on the ground. His clothes caught fire, spreading quickly up man-made fibre, soon licking at his chin. He continued towards us undaunted for a few paces, then finally collapsed in a twist of muscle and taught limbs. We were running as we turned left towards the bridleway up the Downs, and I pumped my handle. The rucksacks were heavy - I was obviously not as fit as I used to be and I slowed down, grimacing. Lou sprang ahead, eager to show she wasn’t short of breath yet, approaching a series of wrecked vehicles dotting the middle of the road.

‘
Wait!’ I had a stitch.

She stopped. A man sprang up from behind a car and stood with his back arched, gawking at my wife. I could see the entrance to the track up to Cissbury just off the road to our right, past the wrecked cars.

‘
I don’t want them to see us going up that path.’ I yelled, fighting for breath.

Lou backtracked to where I was now doubled up but eyeing the man who now took juddering steps towards us, and I saw her swinging her club in readiness.

‘
There’s too many of them,’ I pointed to a house on the corner of the road and the path. ‘Let’s get to that garden.’

Their numbers were swelling all the time, some appearing from behind the cars, others out of a nearby garden. I saw a block of flats fifty feet away with people standing in the car park, staring at us with slack mouths. We all ran, Floyd twice as fast as us.

‘
How do they know we’re here? We’ve been quiet,’ Lou had a note of exasperation in her voice. ‘It’s not like they’re communicating with each other.’

Good, I thought. She’s not thinking in human terms.

‘
I think I stink.’ I explained, clambering over the garden gate and opening it for Lou. We ran up a driveway to a garage extension at the side of the house where I grabbed Lou’s arm to stop her running in front.

‘
Hang on a sec. You wait here, I’ll go on ahead.’ I said, and shushed Lou’s tutting noises. I crept to one side of the driveway to keep out of view behind a parked Jaguar, and jumped out holding my club high. I saw something which made the bile rise in my throat.

A man sat cross-legged on the back doorstep just like the sheep-eater on the Downs, but instead of a lamb’s ribcage he was burying his head into a pair of toddler’s denim trousers with a sew-on patch of a strawberry on the back pocket. It almost looked at first like he was hugging a reminder of someone he wanted to be close to. Then I saw the scarlet blood, as he lifted his face up with the sound of wet suction and I saw a pair of little legs in the trousers as he literally growled at me.

‘
I can see them coming up to the gate!’ Lou hissed, still mercifully out of sight. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

I was frozen, staring at the man and trying to process too much information. Long seconds passed before I snapped to, bringing the club down onto his head - but it glanced off onto his right shoulder and stuck in. He looked at it; then looked back at me with something close to disappointment in his eyes. He started gnashing, dropping the child’s corpse and trying to stand up but my club was stuck fast and acting as a handle to keep him at bay.

‘
Lou, chuck me your club,’ I yelled over my shoulder. ‘I’ve got my hands full here.’

‘
But they’re getting closer. One’s just fallen over the gate.’

‘
Quickly!’

The club clattered to my feet.

‘
Sorry. Hang on.’ She was coming to pick it up.

‘
No, wait there!’ I barked. I bent down, but the handle was just out of my reach. I tried another way, and dropped to one knee, constantly keeping my eyes on the bloodstained freak on the end of my two-by-two. He worked to free the club stuck in his shoulder, the skin on his fingers getting stripped away by the screws. I swapped the stuck club to my other hand, still keeping him at a distance, and picked Lou’s up with my right. I lifted it high and swung it straight down onto his forehead, but he looked upwards just as it made contact so he got the barbed wood screws in the face instead. I saw them embedded to the hilt into the bone of his forehead, piercing his cheeks and flattening his nose. One of his eyes was spitting dark juice.

He slumped with the blow but was still going, so I used the head-handle as a lever to work the first club free from his shoulder, and swapped hands for a second time. I turned him away from me and brought the club down onto the side of his head. It didn’t glance off this time, instead the screws sunk into his temple. That did it. I was now holding two bits of wood which were both firmly attached to a man’s head, and I had to take his weight as he dropped to his knees, nearly falling on top of him. I hauled him backwards onto the doorstep and on top of the child’s corpse, which I didn’t want to touch, and called out for Lou.