Breaking News: An Autozombiography (26 page)

‘
Hi cuteness!’ David said to her. She wrinkled her nose at him before levelling her eyes towards me coolly.

‘
Thank you for letting us stay here last night.’ She said to me.

‘
This is yours as much as it is mine,’ I motioned around me. ‘I was glad to see someone else.’ There was a pause.

‘
What, after you tried to shoot me? Sorry, I’m being a bitch. If I’m honest I haven’t felt this safe for a good few days. If that’s how you’re going to treat anyone else who finds their way up here, I’ll feel even safer. Anyway, where did your friends go?’

‘
Oh, fuck knows,’ I said, my voice over-loud. ‘That was my wife, who slapped me. Fuck knows. Brrr.’

I didn’t want to talk about it, so I suggested we ate what was in the pot - it was gone in minutes. After picking some bay leaf from my teeth, I turned to Dawn.

‘
There’s a washing-up bowl over there.’

I didn’t even think about it. Maybe some archetype of what a man expects a woman’s work to be influenced me, possibly, but I was just projecting the arrangement that Lou and I had worked with for nearly a decade onto Dawn – me cook, woman wash up.

‘
What the fuck are you saying?’ She was indignant, little lights burning in her eyes like embers.

‘
Oh, no, I’m not suggesting…’

‘
It’s okay,’ Dave said calmly, ‘I’ll wash up. You do it next time though cuteness, yeah?’

‘
Don’t use too much water,’ I called after him, before turning to Dawn.

‘
Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve just buried my mate. My mate’s T-shirt, anyway. I didn’t mean to offend you, but if I’m honest, there’s not going to be much room for getting upset up here. Like earlier, when I tied you both to the tree.’

‘
And left us for dead,’ she jutted her jaw at me.

‘
Yeah, well. Level heads, stiff upper lips and that. Best of British. Am I being patronising?’

‘
Yeah,’ she smiled a small smile. ‘But I get your point though. You won’t get any trouble from me, I have to change shitty old men’s pants and mop up piss every Friday night.’

‘
Oh, that reminds me,’ I waggled a finger at her and she frowned. ‘I want to go over some stuff with you – medicine and that, you know, from herbs and berries and stuff. It’s in a survival book I brought with me – we brought with us. Well, we nicked a lot of it really, from B&Q, but the book’s mine. Anyway, it’s all down there.’ I stood and stretched, pointing down the track into town. ‘It’s only about a half-mile ramble.’

‘
What? We’ve only just got here!’ David was in earshot, sluicing the water out of the bowl.

‘
It’s alright mate, we’ll all go, and play it by ear. I’m not leaving anyone alone up here again.’ I pulled my binoculars from the tent and scanned the length of the track. There were no figures standing or walking along the route, just felled bodies from when we broke through. I spotted the rucksacks, untouched where I’d left them.

‘
Here,’ I handed Dawn the binoculars. ‘See them? Each one’s chock-full of bits from B&Q. We broke in yesterday, all kinds of stuff’s in there, mainly defensive.’

When I heard Floyd break into his long baying howl my stomach flipped. When I saw the horse, I thought I was losing it again. But there it was in front of us, complete with all its riding tackle or whatever its called. Dawn let out a gasp and thrust the binoculars back at me.

‘
Well, she’ll be happy then. She had a horse when she was a kid.’ David looked at me and whispered ‘Bit of a daddy’s girl really.’

‘
I thought I’d imagined horses last night. Look, there’s another. Floyd hates horses with a passion.’

For whatever reason - lack of food, lack of human contact – the horses had found us. The bravest one let me rub his nose. There were five of them in total, including a much younger one that nuzzled the side of one of the big ones. It didn’t seem too bothered about the responsibility, and would butt the little one away from time to time. Two of them had saddles and leads, or leashes or whatever. I hated horses as much as Floyd - I’d been forced to go on an adventure holiday in Wales when I was a school kid, and when we went trekking up the Breacon Beacons on one dismal day, I ended up with the biggest pony out of the lot. It kept nipping the arse of the one in front and eventually got bored and galloped up the steep wet scree to the front of the queue. I didn’t have fun.

I wasn’t too sure about Dawn’s suggestion of using the animals to fetch the backpacks one bit. But after a while, and seeing how confident she was with them, it made sense. She seemed filled with a spark I’d not seen before as she told me how much quicker it would be, and how it meant we’d be above any zombies we came across. It was good timing. Dawn laughed again as she showed me how to get on. These were real horses, nothing like the
Thelwell
mules I’d been on before. David said she had made him ride on a few before.

‘
Just don’t give him any reason to doubt you,’ she said. ‘Imagine you’re riding Floyd.’ That made sense to me, and I must admit during some of my heavier smoking sessions I’d had full-on daydreams about me and Al, miniaturised to the size of Action Men and scooting about the living room on the backs of our dogs. I showed Floyd no fear, and as a result he thought I was leader of the pack. How little he knew.

She showed me how to get him going, but it was like showing a driving student the accelerator before the brake. I worked it out myself eventually, after picking up some hair-raising speed.

‘
He’s probably eager for a canter,’ Dawn said. ‘I wonder whose they are. Were.’

I showed them both the armoury. Al and Jay had taken their weapons with them, so choice was more limited than I’d have liked. Dawn reluctantly took Vaughan’s axe, claiming she wouldn’t be using it, and David took a fancy to the nail guns.

‘
I can at least keep my distance with these,’ he said.

‘
I think I’ll be keeping my distance from you – do you know what you’re doing?’

‘
X-Box,’ he said simply. I understood, but couldn’t approve. X-Box indeed.

Dawn was confident enough to take one of the horses without a saddle and, after tethering the others and helping David onto his, she clambered up swiftly, using the mane as a grip. The horse stood still for her, before setting off at a trot on her command. Ours followed hers to the whinnying of those left behind.

‘
Dawn, do you know where we’re going?’ I yelled.

‘
Think so,’ she shouted back. Even though she was ahead, I could tell she was smiling. ‘Just keep going down, I’ll shout when we’re there.’

The horses waded through the corpses at the bottom of the trench and around the brittle remnants of Lou’s gorse-fire protection. We picked our way through the fallen freaks scattered around the top of the path, with Floyd running ahead, and started south towards Worthing. I couldn’t see any stinkers. The town centre was still dotted with fires - many less than before the rain - and the smoke spread out on the wind instead of climbing into the sky. I tried to make out landmarks with my binoculars, but the ride was bumpy. I could smell charred metal and molten plastic above the reek of eggs.

We all had to slide to a stop before we were at the rucksacks, as Dawn’s horse reared up and threw her to the ground. She rubbed her elbow, and was about to mount again with a breezy grin when she shrieked. The horse had seen one of the bodies on the ground moving. I dismounted – well, fell off really – and ran up to her.

‘
Do you want to do one?’ I asked her. ‘You’re going to have to at some stage.’ The woman on the ground was young, about thirty. She had a massive head wound opening up her forehead, oily scum building up along its edges. One eye had been dislodged. She seemed to only have movement above her neck. Her eye twitched and her jaws chomped on the damp air.

Dawn had wrapped Vaughan’s axe into the folds on her net skirt. She felt the handle tentatively.

‘
I can’t. What if they come with a cure?’

‘
Who is this ‘they’ everyone’s wishing will arrive?’ I gesticulated. ‘No-one’s coming,’ I said more softly to her as David joined us. Dawn stood over the corpse reluctantly.

‘
I don’t want to.’

‘
She’d dead already.’ I said. I was happy for Dawn to do it in her own time, and I knew it would be better for her to do one before David. That way, neither of them would have any excuse not to dispatch one when it was coming up behind me. After raising the axe a few times and checking with me where she was aiming for, she cracked it down at right angles to the woman’s neck, sending the head rolling down the track. She sniffed, grimaced and folded the axe back into her skirt. She helped me back on my horse and we carried on. David saw one in the trees. The first I knew of it he had popped some nails into the man’s head, but he still lumbered toward us.

‘
The nail guns are tricky; you’ve got to be spot-on.’ I took it from him and put three or four into his neck, felling him. At least now David had got his hands dirty.

We were soon by the backpacks. The first one I checked was the one with all my books and DVDs, which had let some water in, but on the whole was fine. The VHS tapes hadn’t crinkled up, I was delighted to see. I wondered if I should half-inch a TV/DVD combo from Sainsbury’s and a generator from B&Q. It was risky, but it would be worth it, I thought - I could do with a laugh, but I did have other slightly more pressing priorities though. I loosened the straps on the rucksacks and tied them together in pairs, so I could sling them over the horse’s backs like saddle-bags. Dawn helped me tie the water butts to my own back, like a low-budget Ninja Turtle, before we set back off up the path. We saw two up ahead when we were close to Cissbury Ring.

‘
Now have a proper go,’ I said, dismounting uniquely.

David joined me as I swung my club.

‘
Just go for the head; this is really what you’ve got to do to any that have got into the camp, when you’ve got to finish them off. We left a lot of them alone coming up here – it slows you down if you think you’ve got to get them all. Going by the amount of survivors I’ve seen, there could be sixty million of them crawling over the country, so it’s usually better to do what you two did, and run.’ I struck the first one in a downwards blow to the forehead, and then dislodged my club with a gristly sucking noise. Before he could get up I broke his neck. I handed it to David as the next one shuffled up. He had a gash opening up his leg, and no left arm.

‘
Use my club for the time being. I’m good with the nail gun.’

‘
Cool. What have you called it?’

‘
Haven’t decided yet. Club Med. Club Head. Club Dead. I dunno. Go on.’

David was less reluctant now that the man’s good arm was nearly at his throat. He rained five or six blows onto his face.

‘
Aim for the important bits.’ I suggested. He struck the man sideways across the neck with an impressive blow, seeming to loosen the chap’s head from its moorings as he crumpled to the rain-soaked path.

‘
He was harmless,’ he giggled to himself. He turned to Dawn. ‘Armless.’

She rolled her eyes, and breathed out a deep breath. I saw she wasn’t looking at David’s handiwork. We followed Floyd back into camp – the little pup seemed well at home now. Dawn tended to the animals whilst David and I unpacked the booty.

The first thing we set up was the tarpaulin. It would be far more economical than Al’s dad’s sail, as it was much bigger. I dismantled our impromptu rain collector and used the same tree to stretch out the much larger sheet of blue plastic. I put a rock onto a raft of short sticks in the middle of it, weighing it down to form a point and also hopefully keeping the wind from tipping it up. I put one of the water butts underneath and cut a small hole in the sheeting – around an inch in diameter and as circular as I could get it, as a lot of weight would be on it and I didn’t want it to split. It was still raining, albeit lighter than during the night before, yet it worked well, making a constant trickling sound echo inside the container.

Next we unpacked Jay’s bag, with all the small bits. I put all of the screws, nails and chain into Jay’s tent, and then David and I silently pulled on the chemical gauntlets and face masks. We knew what had to be done, and worked for the rest of the day grimly clearing the camp of bodies and body parts, and hauling them over the sides into the ditch. When we sat for a rest, we discussed ways to get rid of the corpses below us. They stank, and the flies were starting to reappear as the rain slowed.

‘
If it wasn’t so damp I’d incinerate them down there where they lay, you know; torch them in small batches so as not to cause a massive fuckup,’ I said.

‘
It would be too risky with the hot weather.’ David was leaning back on his elbows.

‘
Yeah, I suppose. But we could dig fire breaks in the grass on the edges so it didn’t spread up here.’

‘
It’s too wet anyway, he said. ‘We could make quicklime.’ David’s eyes showed eagerness. I knew quicklime decomposed things quicker, that they used it in mass graves; and that they put the stuff into cigarettes - but that was about it. I had no idea how to actually make it.

‘
How the fuck are we going to make quicklime up here?’ I asked.

‘
Chalk!’ He spread his arms out to demonstrate the undeniable excess of chalk. ‘You just burn it. You get quick lime from burning chalk.’

‘
How do you know that?’ I asked incredulously.

‘
Dawn’s favourite song. It’s about a high school massacre, and the kid makes quicklime to decompose the corpses of his fallen victims.’ He looked serious, contemplative.