Last Words (37 page)

Of all the people I’ve ever met, Enzo is the one most deserving to die as painfully and horribly as possible. He shouts at everyone he sees and is an abusive fuck. Even the Italians hate him. He is so chronically abusive that even a Buddhist monk would tell him to shut the fuck up. I wish I was a ninja so I could pinch his throat and drop him to the ground. I wish the Doctor would turn up in his TARDIS and save us all. I wish England would get its act together and come save me.

I can’t sit around and wait for someone to rescue me. I have to figure out how to do it myself. There are no fences here, only guns. On the outside is the threat of a mindless horde. I’ve reached my limit. I just need one night of decent sleep with no one snoring and I will be able to make my move.

6 January

Yesterday I escaped. I’m wearing two lots of clothing so that I have a spare set. I left my Hawaiian shirt behind because it’s been nothing but trouble. I brought two pens and my diary. Nothing else. I got to work the fields yesterday and, like Dumbass, I snuck off and just kept moving. I’m going to keep walking north. I don’t know what’s north of here but that’s where I’m going.

Clearly, I couldn’t have started working in the fields with my backpack, that would have been too suspicious. I had to say goodbye to everything that was non-essential. It’s terrifying not having a backpack. I’ve had it with me for almost every waking moment for months, to the point where I was fidgeting in the night just to be sure it was still there.

I don’t know how I chose the right time to move. I had been sweating over it for a few hours. Do I go now? No. What about now? Maybe. As soon as that guy moves I’ll go. Oh, he’s back. Okay, when the next guy moves away, I’ll go.

I was given the chance to run for it a dozen times before I actually worked up the courage. The whole time I scurried away I was sure I would hear the snap of a bullet just a second before it slammed into the back of my skull.

As soon as I was out of sight from the houses I ran. Convincing myself to stop and walk was hard. When I caught my breath I forced myself to run again, always thinking that they would notice I was gone the moment Enzo shouted at one of them to stop fucking up. I kept going until it got dark. I was starving. Still am, but at least I was able to find a tree to sleep against. I say ‘sleep’. It was more dozing and waking up a hundred times before the sky started to brighten. Then I walked again. It’s only now, next to a river and some fruit trees, that I dare believe that I’m far enough away from Enzo and the farm.

It’s the first time on my own in months. It’s the first time I can’t hear a single other person out there. It’s glorious. Everyone on the farm was snoring or farting. I just want to get back to England and curl up under a blanket in my own bed and stay there for a month, watching something like Archer. I want to enjoy the brisk English air again. I want my crisps and I want a burger and I want Yorkshire pudding covered in gravy. I want Monster Munch and Sugarpuffs and Curly Wurlies.

I have no idea what the fuck I’m going to do when I eventually run into someone. I don’t speak Italian. They might send me back to the internment camp. Enzo might send some of his guys to get replacements. They’ll realise I was caught. They’ll bring me along, kicking and screaming, force me to dig a ditch while the rest of the prisoners watch, before they do a song and dance about how no one is to ever escape. Then:
bam
. Back of the head. No more trouble for them.

There’s a zombie staring at me.

I stopped walking and there it was, standing in the middle of nowhere. After ten minutes without it moving I had fallen into a false sense of security, so I scribbled in my diary without taking my eyes off the creature.

I shouted at it to leave. It didn’t respond. I asked for its name. After a moment of staring back at me it squinted and said: “English.” It had the Haitian’s voice.

He now knows where I am.

Part 2.

There’s an empty town in sight. I’ve been watching it for half an hour now. There are no people moving about, no cars, no human sounds of any kind. No traffic noises or even a single radio playing to itself. There are birds in the air but no cats or dogs. It wouldn’t surprise me if a rolling mist had suffocated everything that once lived on the ground.

Two things are burning through my mind right now. The first is that there are beds down there and supplies. I doubt there’s a lot of food, but there will be backpacks, clothes, and water bottles. I need those to survive. The second is that the town is deserted for a reason and that reason will kill me. It might be infested with zombies or perhaps the army has forced everyone out and will shoot anything that moves. If I had a coin I would flip it to see if I should go down there anyway.

The zombies have been changing their tactics. They’ve started hiding like cockroaches, building their numbers by hiding in areas that no sane person would dare enter. Then they wait before blitzkrieging the population.

I can out-run one zombie. I might be able to out manoeuvre two. But there could be thousands of them down there, waiting for me. Thanks to that solitary zombie on the hillside, the Haitian knows I’m here.

If there’s a phone down there I can call Cristina’s family. I’ll pay whoever picks me up a thousand euro to drive over here and bring me back to a decent bed. In the meantime, I have to figure out if that town is actually empty.

I really don’t know what to do. I should go down there but it’s going to be a death trap. My throat is starting to feel like sandpaper. My stomach shudders from a lack of food. If I can’t get a drink soon I’m going to die.

What do I do?

Is it a whole town just for me or a whole town waiting for me?

Half an hour of waiting and nothing has moved.

Nothing that I can see has moved.

Fuckity fuck fuck.

Part 3.

Helicopters are coming. Military choppers, and lots of them. I’m hiding in the shrub land behind a tree, watching the town. I had just decided to go down there when I heard an engine from the far side of the hill.

Jesus Christ, they’re fire bombing the town. I can feel the heat from here. There are a thousand houses down there and they’ve just carpeted the whole place in flames. People used to live there. People who went to work for twenty five years to pay the mortgage on those homes and these helicopters have just incinerated them in seconds.

The buildings are all exploding independently, popping and collapsing under the flames. I can hear the glass shattering and the smoke rising. They weren’t taking any chances in killing everything that was down there. Don’t you think that’s maybe what the Haitian wants? He wants us destroying everything we’ve already built? And if there was just one zombie down there, one little dead person, would that justify the madness here? The flames are howling, roaring at a volume I wouldn’t have believed possible.

There might have been people down there, hiding. Or they became deformed beyond even Satan’s abilities. Ravenous wolves, ripping each other apart. There’s not a smile on their faces when they do it. They’re not even doing it to save their own lives. And here I am, standing over their homes, unable to feel even an ounce of pity at whoever was hiding down there, nor unable to feel joy that there might be fewer dead in this world.

The smoke’s coming this way.

Part 4.

For two hours I had to hurry around the mountain to get away from the smoke, but even now I can smell it and I’m coughing up lungfuls of soot. I can hear stumbling through the mountain, faint gasps and wheezes that convince me there are creatures or animals moving towards me. I keep turning around but there’s no one there.

I spent a good long while watching the town burn. It’s like the flames swallowed the last of my emotions, leaving me now as a vacant wasteland. I don’t feel the urge to eat or drink, I just do it because I know I have to. I don’t have any opinion on the people who used to inhabit that town. Either way, anyone who’s alive right now will be dead one day and no one will remember their names. I’ll be dead one day as well and it won’t be long until everyone forgets me. In a hundred years I might be known to a few distant family members, but all they’ll know of me is my name and that I walked through Africa during the zombie uprising. And so what? Everyone else will have their own story of survival. Mine will be just another within the muddle. In a hundred and fifty years there won’t be any need for people to remember me. In two hundred and fifty years only the top twenty stories about this epidemic will survive. I can’t tell you a single thing about what happened between 1800 and 1850, aside from the birth of the industrial revolution. I don’t know any of the pioneers. These people actually did something and I don’t even know their names. All I did on this trip was tag along with some friends and became another mouth to feed. The only name people will remember is the Haitian’s. I don’t even know what it is.

I’ve been watching the town burn while keeping a look out for anything stumbling through the dark. I’m getting tired. I don’t know if I can keep on going like this. At times I think I’m just going to sit down and wait until something gets me.

7 January

The wind changed last night and I couldn’t risk falling asleep. The smoke blew into me and I didn’t want to choke to death. That was enough to move me. So, I started walking. Then I was thirsty, so that kept me going a little farther.

At dawn I saw some of the fleeing zombies. I reeled back from the stench long before I saw them. They were shuffling away from the town. Some had burns, some were still smouldering with smoke. Others had clothes burnt and falling apart. One of the zombies, a woman, has a backpack. She must have died while wearing it. I need to get it from her or I’m going to die out here.

Part 2.

I’ve lost them. God, I can barely breathe. What the hell happened to my energy levels that I can’t even run anymore? My legs won’t stop shaking and my handwriting is a mess.

They all turned against me. I was following the horde, maybe twenty of them, over this hill. They were all walking in the same direction, stumbling along, and I was trying to keep a safe distance while figuring out how to get to the woman with the backpack. She was towards the side of the group but was still surrounded. I needed that backpack.

As they descended the hill there was a zombie standing ground, facing them, like it had been there for weeks and had been forgotten about. Then it saw me. It cocked its head to one side and I swear it rasped, “Getafe.”

So, holy fuck, the Haitian remembers me. I was stopped dead for a moment as I realised what it had said. I was on the roof in Getafe looking down at the woman staring at the swings who kept saying “Surrender,” and now this creature in Sicily remembers me from then.

The twenty other zombies turned all at once, stared at me, and started plodding in my direction. My heart lurched as I realised I had just epically fucked up. As soon as I took a step back they all shot at me in full sprint. I only had a twenty metre lead on them with no energy left in me. I ran over the hill I had just walked across. I could hear them hissing quickly, like they were waiting to grab me before breaking into a full blown laugh. None of them needed to slow down or rest. I could feel my heart screaming in my chest. My vision clouded over and I was about to pass out.

Some of them tripped and stumbled. I kept running. Some snarled. I kept running. With every step I imagined face planting and breaking my neck, then being torn apart by these creatures. I can’t make it this far only to die because I tripped on uneven ground like a half naked bimbo in a cheap ‘80s horror flick.

I stupidly looked over my shoulder and knew they were gaining on me. I had a stitch in my side and I hit that wall of exhaustion, but there was no way I was stopping. I came within sight of a narrow river. I had no idea how deep the water was or if it was going to lead me to more of thems. I jumped. I kept my diary firmly above the freezing water. It’s a little wet now but it’s salvageable. I was able to swim to the other side. The zombies jumped in after me and were mostly swept away. I headed back upstream hoping that my lead was now too far for them to bother.

I still can’t breathe properly. I think I’ve cracked one of my lower ribs. I can’t extend my chest out fully. That run almost killed me.

I can’t get the look of that zombie out of my mind, the one that said, “Getafe.” It looked at me dead in the eye.

And what the hell is wrong with me? Following twenty zombies just to get to a stupid backpack? After all this time I should know better.

Part 3.

If I had to summarise the last six months into just five words they would be: and then things got worse.

I’ve fucked up my right knee.

Can I walk? Kinda. Can I run? Not for more than ten metres, and I wish I was exaggerating because I’ve tried to run. The top of my shin bone feels like it’s being crushed into my kneecap. The whole area has swollen. The skin along the back of my knee feels numb, not the kind of numb where you don’t notice it, no. It’s the kind of freezing numb that you’re aware of but prevents you from moving quickly, like your limbs have become icicles so you end up moving in slow motion. Going downhill seems to be a lot worse than going up.

It means I’ve spent the best part of six hours running, hobbling, walking, and now crying because I am in too much pain to move another mile. I have to keep moving or else they’ll catch me, but I simply can’t move anymore.

I’m a blubbering mess. I’ve been kidnapped and forced into slavery, I’ve been chased to near death, I’ve seen a whole town fire bombed, I don’t speak the language, and I’m all alone. Rachel is somewhere. Ediz is somewhere. Cristina died in front of me and no one has made it back home. If I’m found dead no one is going to know who I am or where I’m from, aside from my diary, and that might easily blow into the wind and be lost forever. I’m going to be the unknown traveller, a random Brit on the Sicilian hillside. My parents will never know for certain what happened to me. How am I going to get off this fucking island?