Diaries of the Damned (26 page)

He woke with a jolt; one of those inexplicable jolts that jerked him into the conscious world with such speed, that he didn’t realize he was awake. The streets had darkened. The shadows lengthened. The flames engulfing a house a few streets away gave the night a surreal, orange glow. A handful of zombies roamed the street, but their numbers seemed to be thinning. In the distance, Brian thought he heard the echo of gunfire.

We’re winning
, Brian thought to himself as he sat back on the bed. The darkness of the house, coupled with the lack of anything to keep him occupied, soon lulled him back into an uneasy sleep. It seemed only seconds before the heavy footsteps of the house’s other occupant punctured his doze.

Brian opened his e
yes to a new day. Confusion at his unfamiliar surroundings enveloped him until the reality of the previous night broke through. He sprang out of the camping bead, hoping to see that the military had reclaimed the streets and stopped the zombies before the problem grew out of control. Brian thrust the curtains aside ready to greet the day, but froze when he saw the street filled with the undead. Their numbers had increased over night, and they moved through the street in a procession of death, spreading their message to every living soul they found.

It was then that Brian heard the shuffling footsteps coming from the hallway of the house. He jumped. His blood froze in his veins. He felt vulnerable and exposed. He had no means of self-defense, and there was nothing to stop the dead from forcing their way into the house to take him.

Brian eyed the door, waiting for the end to come. After five minutes, nothing had emerged through the door, his nerves settled. The creature was upstairs. He heard that now, in the way the boarding above his head creaked.
Has it been there all along?
Brian thought to himself. He then remembered the stair gates that had been put in place, he presumed by the previous owners, in an attempt to keep their child away from harm. Who knew it would also one day protect a stranger from the hungry gullet of a reanimated corpse.

Brian moved carefully, slowly, into the hallway. Every nerve ending in his body tingled. Every muscle screamed at him to flee. He knew he could not stay there. He needed to find a new place to shelter down – to fortify. Still, something inside him had to s
ee. His presence in the hallway excited the creature on the first floor. It appeared behind the bars, dragging itself on all fours. Its head appeared a few inches above the ground, and caused Brian to stagger backward. The zombie could not have been more than six months old. Its body propelled forward with uncoordinated grasps. Not even a crawl.  The small blood stained mouth showed it had just two freshly sprouted teeth. The infant gave a growl, which reminded Brian of a Jack Russell terrier, in the way it sounded much meaner than it appeared.

Unable to help himself, Brian opened the gate and ventured upstairs. The baby was clearly not the one the gate was intended for, but its presence did account for the camping bed and rickety dining table.

The infant began to bang its head against the bars as Brian drew ever closer.

“Easy, kid, I’m not dinner,” h
e spoke to it as he reached the top step. A small arm found its way through the bars; the tiny hands grasping in the air.

With a quick movement, Brian opened the gate and the infant zombie was swept to one side. Stepping over the dazed form, Brian moved onto the landing. Behind him the creature began to turn, but it did not get far. Feeling confident, Brian turned to look at the rest of the property. A scream erupted from him as the mother and father zombies appeared out of the master bedroom, a few meters from where he stood. Their movements were not only more forceful, but more successful. The mother was first. She was shirtless, and missing her left breast. Brian didn’t need a second look at her decaying tit to understand she had been breastfeeding at the time of the child’s death. Her husband had no visible injuries, though he had the same sickly pallor as some of the other zombies Brian had encountered the day before. Whipping around, Brian sprinted down the stairs, remembering to lock the lower gate.

He ran out of the house through the back door, remembering at the last moment the dangers that lay beyond the front door.

Leaping over the fence into the neighboring garden, Brian was greeted by a dog which charged at him with salivating; jowls and evil eyes. He didn’t spend enough time there to ponder the question as to whether the dog was alive or not.

Jumping the fence once more, Brian found himself on the street, having reached the end terrace property without realizing it. In a lull of activity, the street was next to empty. By the time the air was flavored with his scent, he was out of sight; vanished into the shadows. Brian moved quickly, entering the first decent looking house he could fine. His mind was reeling, but he made sure that he moved quietly, locking the front door behind him. He didn’t stop to rest until he had searched the entire house, and double-checked that all of the doors were locked.

Once assured of his security, Brian moved a heavy dresser unit to block off the door, sealing himself inside. The window was a deep bay, and could not be blocked easily. Brian reasoned that if he stayed quiet and remained upstairs as much as possible, he could keep himself hidden well enough until he figured out a way to block the windows and further secure the property.

The first night was the worst. Not long after midnight, gunfire erupted in the neighborhood, wrenching him from sleep. The noise was deafening. While it raged for but a few minutes, the impact lasted for days. The military unit that had initiated the skirmish was overrun by the undead, whose bullet ridden bodies advanced on them with no regard to the assault they came under. The sounds of their screams chilled Brian more than the sound of their weapons. The noise of the attack attracted even more creatures searching for another meal. It only worsened when the freshly risen military troops made their appearance. Three of them still clutched their rifles. As they walked, their decaying fingers would twitch and fire off an occasional shot. One even blew out the back of a passing zombie’s head.

It took two full days for the zombie herd to thin out enough for Brian to even consider moving from the top floor of the house. He was weak with hunger and dehydrated, but had not been discovered; a fact that encouraged him.

The perishable food had spoiled, but there were tinned vegetables and soups aplenty. While he couldn’t bring himself to heat them, the cold food perked him up and improved his spirits.

The boost he got from the food was eliminated, however, when he looked out of the window in the kitchen, located at the rear of the property. At some point, he presumed in the period between the first zombie waking up and his arrival, the fence at the rear of the property had been smashed through by a car, which sat abandoned in the middle of the small garden.

Zombies wandered through the grass, not in search of him, but rather funneled that way as they tried to find a way around the road block, which had been the reason for the car to swerve from the road in the first place. A quick count put four zombies in the small back yard. While they did not make any direct moves, they all showed signs of a heightened alertness the moment Brian appeared before the window.

He retreated back into the shadows, his options limited. He was surrounded on all sides, and running had already proven to be a pointless exercise. He was exhausted, and wouldn’t make it far even if he tried. So he stood and watched them. They stumbled back and forth; some in an endless loop around the car, while others came and went. A few returned, but most were replaced by others. Men, women, even children. There was no difference between them all. They had become one and the same.

Time sped by him unnoticed as he watched them. It was like staring at a fish tank. With his presence removed from the window, the undead paid no attention to the house, and once again resumed their pacing. 

The close proximity to the house made it a risk, and Brian knew that he could not stay there indefinitely. He raided the cupboards and gathered all of the supplies he could find. He split the pile into the things he would take and the things he would leave. There was enough food to last him several days –maybe even a week if he was careful. So he allowed himself the luxury second large meal before he prepared to leave the house.

As he packed, Brian heard another crashing sound. Running up to the master bedroom Brian looked out and saw a group of fifteen zombies trying to force their way into a house at the end of the street. A fresh body, the head roughly wrenched from the shoulders lay in the street, while a raggedy looking zombie, with wild hair crouched beside it, scooping the fresh contents out of the inverted skull. At that moment Brian understood. He would not be able to stay in one place. He would need to keep mobile, and be prepared. Luck would not keep him alive for long.

With the food packed, Brian added a rack of kitchen knives to the backpack he had found, as well as a cricket bat from one of the upstairs bedrooms. The roads around the house were as empty as could be expected, so once more Brian left a home behind him and scurried out into the night.

He only made it two streets before he needed to find shelter. Jumping into an open garage; he crawled beneath the car parked there. He watched as a group of zombies passed along the street, pausing to sniff the air as they neared the open door.

Brian held his breath and waited. The group moved on. As Brian hauled himself out from beneath the car he realized that no matter where he went they would always be there. The military could not stop them. It was up to him to survive, and without a place to call home he would be useless. He needed to find a place out of the way. A property separated from the roads and out of the city. In the few seconds it took him to crawl from under the car his mind conjured up the image of a house in the country, walled off and secure. He saw himself, and others. They all stood gathered around him, looking up to him. He was their leader, and they listened to his every word. He was important. He was somebody. A smile stretched across his face as he left the garage and hit the streets at a brisk pace. On the other side of the hospital grounds was the countryside. Fields and farmland for the most part, peppered with houses, barns, and plenty of open space.

It took the better part of two days for Brian to reach the farm house, with zombies forcing him to find shelter in three different homes in one day. The very first farm house he found seemed perfect right off the bat. It was empty of zombies, but in the kitchen he found the sad remains of two more souls that had opted for suicide. During his trek into the countryside he had seen plenty of suicides; the majority from within the secured walls of the hospital. Doctors and nurses had hung themselves on whatever they could find that projected from the building. Three hung from the flagpole, which raised the question of how three people made it that far in order to hang themselves without wrenching the pole from its fixtures. As Brian watched, the pole bent and tumbled to the ground and a horde of hungry monsters descended on the meat. Even though it was not the freshest of cuts, the juicy center was still damp enough to satiate their hunger for a few moments.

The hospital had been secured from the inside, and had trapped a large majority of the zombies within the walls. As Brain came close to the mesh fence that ran around a section of the perimeter, they charged at him, pushing against the fence with their combined weight. They would escape. It was only a matter of time.

This is what kept Brian walking another day; choosing to head as far away from the hospital as possible.

With a callousness that accompanied the rising of the dead, Brian collected the bodies and moved them into the fields. He would find a shovel and bury them, but first, he needed to make sure the perimeter was secure.

The farmhouse and the surrounding fields had three security measures in place. There was a fence that ran past the outer edge of the property. From the looks of the barns behind the house, and the lack of any large vehicles, it had been a livestock farm.

Having started to secure the house, Brian ensured that he was alone and that it would stay that way. He installed a trip wire made from rope. It was hardly sophisticated, but good enough to stop the walking dead. He secured it at waist height on every door. Next he checked the fence that separated the farm house and personal land from the business section. The fence was intact and a large gate secured the driveway. During his check of the surrounding fields, Brian found six zombies, all moving alone. Had they been in a group he would have been dead. By the time he had dispatched the fifth body, he had learned that headshots killed them. Anything else just pissed them off. It took
the best part of the day to check the outer hedge, with the farm being in the center of five large fields. Four surrounded the property and another lay to the south of the house. A rolling hill hid the field from view. There were several lone zombies in the field, but Brian’s first goal was to find any weaknesses in the fence. Where were they coming from? He found the gap in the third field. A gate had been opened, knocked open by a speeding pickup truck. The truck sat in the field, the occupants nowhere to be seen, its interior was covered with blood. Brian didn’t need to look any closer. Closing the gate sapped what little strength he still had. He was about to head back to the house, eager to see if there was a meal that he could rustle up, when a strange, deep groan rang out. Something about the cry drew Brian to it, even though the light was fast fading. The air changed and the sound grew as he drew closer to its source. It became heavy, meaty. As Brian crested the hill, an image formulated in his mind of what he expected to see. The reality however, was far more chilling.