Gerald

It would seem that being trapped in an upstairs flat amidst a zombie holocaust is not enough of a head fuck for me. To add an extra dimension of weirdness to my situation the internal clock on this website has gone haywire.

Yesterday was 21/6/07. According to this site, today is 27/6/07. I’ve effectively lost a week.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky that this blog site even exists. Everywhere else on the net is gone: Google, the BBC homepage, Reuters. This was the only page that would load from my bookmark folder. I have no idea if it’s being maintained by actual people or if the whole thing is running on automatic from some isolated server. I’ve mailed tech support several times and received zero response.

Early evening is fading into night. The sky outside is a morbid grey. The clouds are so low they seem ready to collapse into the earth. I’m surprised at the lack of rain.

Outside I can hear the wind ripping through the leaves of the fallen tree, even with the window closed. The undead dispersed about midnight, shuffled off to do whatever the fuck it is they do. Hunting for other survivors I suppose. At one point there were 30 or more of them gathered around the tree, all swaying out of sync with each other and moaning. God, the moans! I found myself moaning along with them at one point. It was so disgustingly infectious and terrifying at the same time.

I need to talk about Gerald. That was how this siege really began.

After the nightmare of Stockport Road I swerved down a side street. I was literally a minute away from my flat in Levenshulme. All about me was chaos. People were running from burning houses, running away from groups of zombies, being torn apart by the things in their front gardens. I’ve never seen so much blood, so much mutilation.

A girl stumbled into the road at one point clutching both hands to her face. I swerved to avoid her but not before she took her hands away and I saw that the skin had been ripped down from her hairline to her upper lip. The top half of her skull was exposed to the air; her eyes bulged from their sockets and the gristle of her nose flapped loosely above her mouth. I could clearly see the ropes of her cheek muscles – they were stretching and contracting as she tried to scream. It would have been better if I’d knocked her down.

I managed to turn on to Slade Lane without being mobbed by zombies. I took a left on to Albert Road, narrowly missing an overturned truck, and pulled up outside the flat.

Albert Road was unnervingly quiet in comparison to the surrounding streets. There were no undead in sight but a car was burning in a driveway several doors down from my house. I opened the car door and ran for the flat. My bowels loosened as I left the comparative safety of the car and I looked around for a weapon, any weapon. Nothing useful presented itself so I dashed up the driveway. Then I stopped dead.

The flat is in an old terrace house, split into two. I live upstairs, Gerald lives…lived…downstairs. The front door opens onto a tiny hallway with a door to the left leading into Gerald’s place and a door directly ahead leading up to my flat. The front door was wide open but this was not what stopped me in my tracks. The bay window, Gerald’s living room window, was smashed. The curtains had been ripped from the fitting and I could see right into Gerald’s flat.

He was in there. He had his back to me. I knew it was him because he was wearing his favorite Carcass t-shirt.

Gerald was rocking gently from side to side. His head was bobbing up and down erratically. His whole body language seemed unnatural and with the benefit of hindsight I never would have done what I did next.

I ran through the open front door. The door to Gerald’s flat was also open so I peeked in. The living room was in disarray. The floor was littered with DVDs and books, an armchair was lying on its side in a corner and a plate of food had been dashed against the wall. I inched my way into the room.

As the room opened out I saw Gerald again, closer now. He still had his back to me. His hands were in front of his face. This posture, combined with the bobbing head, made it seem as though Gerald was sobbing. I discarded this theory when I heard the noise – a soft squelch followed by a tiny crack.

‘Gerald?’ I kept my voice low, snuck a glance over my shoulder through the broken window.

Gerald froze at the sound of my voice.

‘Gerald, we need to go somewhere safe. My flat. The world’s gone fucking crazy…’

He began to turn towards me. He moved like a drunk, pivoting on one foot while the other did all the work. I glanced at his feet and that was when I saw the pool of blood between his legs. Unidentified chunks of God knows what floated on the surface.

Gerald’s face appeared in profile. His cheek was marble white but splashed with a butterfly stain of garish red. As he turned further in my direction I could see what his hands were doing.

Gerald owned a small dog. A terrier called Hercules. I hated the fucking thing – yap, yap, yap and if you were lucky a bite on the hand whenever you tried to stroke him. Gerald was holding the dog in both hands. What was left of it anyway.

Hercules was sprouting guts. They hung in thin, pathetic grey loops from his ruptured stomach, black beads of liquid oozing down their lengths. Gerald had chewed away most of Hercules’ snout; a dark glistening hole sat below the animal’s staring eyes. One of Hercules’ ears was plastered to Gerald’s chin with sticky thick blood. The dog’s tiny body spasmed wildly – I have no idea if Hercules was still alive or if he had reanimated while Gerald was eating him.

As soon as Gerald locked eyes on me he dropped Hercules and lunged forward, arms outstretched. He let out a keening, hungry moan which turned my legs to jelly. I stumbled backwards and tripped. My head hit something solid and everything went black.

…... …

A cold sensation in my big toe woke me up.

I lifted my head as far as it would go which wasn’t far due to the pounding sensation behind my eyes. When my vision cleared I saw Gerald crouched at my feet. The shoe and sock on my left foot had been removed. Gerald was slowly lowering his mouth over the toe. His breath was like ice.

I panicked and by pure fluke managed to twist my body to the side and away before he took his first bite. I rolled across the carpet on my stomach and desperately tried to regain my footing. Gerald let out a cheated groan and staggered after me. His fish white hands, fingers hooked and wicked sharp, clutched at me as I back pedaled across the carpet on my arse.

I shuffled through the archway that led into the kitchen. Gerald’s face loomed over me as he crawled along in pursuit. He was grinning. Strands of dog-gut clung to his teeth. His eyes were bleached of all colour as though they had been replaced with egg whites. I could see a gaping wound in his neck, exposed flesh hanging in ragged shreds, where whoever had turned him had feasted.

My hands waved around for something, anything, to protect me from the horror creeping up between my knees. My fingers skimmed over the sticky surface of the kitchen floor, seeking, grasping, until they finally met something solid. I wrapped my fingers around whatever it was and brought the object down on to Gerald’s head as hard as I could.

Blind luck had granted me the gift of a saucepan - a big, heavy fucker.

The first blow bounced off the side of Gerald’s head and sent him reeling. This gave me time to grip my new weapon properly. It was one of those stainless steel affairs all single men have, pockmarked with age but capable of denting titanium if required. I grabbed it by the handle and staggered to my feet.

Gerald was rolling around on the floor in a daze.

I waited for him to climb up to his knees and turn his face towards me. I planted my feet solidly on the kitchen floor and looked down at him.

‘Sorry Gerald.’

My next blow dented his forehead. The impact sent shudders along my wrist. Gerald fell on to his back and stared vacantly at the ceiling, his fingers clutching spasmodically at nothing. I crouched over him and raised the saucepan over my head, the handle gripped in both hands. The second blow collapsed his nose, the third split his skull. The fourth produced a spray of greyish red tendrils which I took to be brains. I noticed a smell and thought, ‘Gerald’s brain smells like shit. So that’s what a brain smells like’. It was only later that I realised the smell was coming from me. Without noticing I had soiled myself for the first time as an adult.

A strange calm overtook me. I continued slamming the heavy base of the saucepan down on to Gerald’s head until only a thick bony paste remained. When I was done, nothing that could be called ‘Gerald’ was left. His body from the neck up was a nightmare rendered in mutilated flesh and bone.

After a while (who knows how long?) I dragged myself out of Gerald’s flat and closed the door. I also closed the front door to the house. Albert Road was still free of the undead. Nothing attacked me as I secured the place. I opened the door to my own flat, locked and bolted it behind me. Then I filled the stairwell leading up to my home with every heavy object I could find: An oak bookcase, an armchair, a table, five stools, a wardrobe. Somehow I found the strength to lift these things and place them down in the stairwell as securely as possible. All the time I could hear my mother’s name repeating over and over as though someone just behind my ear was calling for her.

When the last item was placed on the barricade I stopped and listened. It was me calling for my mother. I'd failed to recognise my own voice.