The Change

Last night was one of the calmest nights I’ve experienced since everything changed.

I’m not sure if revisiting this blog made a difference. Maybe I just needed to start writing it all down. They say things are put into perspective if you write out all your problems. I certainly slept better last night but I’m unconvinced that this was a result of typing my thoughts into a computer. I suspect the lack of explosions and screams helped more.

The silence of last night unnerves me. Has the city finally succumbed? Am I the last person alive? How long will I survive?

At least I got some decent sleep.

I’m hungry again. It’s hard to concentrate on writing when your stomach is asking if your throat has been cut. The boiled rice and mushy peas seem like a year ago. I only allow myself to eat once a day. I tend to make dinner before bed because it makes me sleepy.

My neighbour, Gerald, used to make a mean chili. I know how to make a mean chili myself but Gerald’s chili was something else. He never told me his secret ingredient and now he never will...

Gerald.

It happened like this…

…FUCK!

…………

A tree just fell over behind the house. A giant oak. Felt like a bomb had been dropped on me for a second there. I looked out the window and spotted four of the undead heading for the tree. Do they eat plant life? I hope the noise doesn’t attract more of them. What the fuck happened to the tree?

Anyway, Gerald.

It was a Thursday. Usual boring day at the office. Same old people, same old tasks. I first noticed something was different when I went out for lunch.

I was faced with the same dilemma as always. Should I buy a Greggs pasty, a sandwich from Fresh n Tasty, or wander round Asda to gaze at the fruit and veg meaningfully and then buy a pot noodle?

That day I decided on Asda. Except Asda appeared to be in a state of emergency. People were running away from the place. Five police cars, two riot vans and three ambulances sat in the car park. The alarm system was going haywire .

I approached a police officer (except he had a blue band round his hat which means he was a ‘community support officer’) and asked what the problem was.

He told me in no uncertain terms to mind my own business and go away. I took his advice but not before I saw people being carted out of Asda on stretchers, some of them bleeding quite heavily from various parts of their bodies. I also saw real coppers, armed with automatic rifles, heading towards the building.

This got my mind in a twist. What was going on here?

I forgot lunch and headed back to work.

My manager was waiting outside when I arrived. The building was locked. Everyone appeared to be gone. I asked what was going on and he told me that the company was implementing its Business Continuity Plan.

I asked him what our Plan was.

He told me to go home and lock all the doors.

…………

So that’s what I did. I went home.

The drive back was a nightmare. Twice, stuck at traffic lights, people tried to get inside my car. The first was an old man with blood pouring from a cut in his cheek. The other was an eastern European woman clutching a baby to her breast. The woman was worse. She kept screaming, ‘Nekem! Nekem!’ The baby was silent but I’m sure I saw red seeping through the blanket it was wrapped in.

I kept the doors locked both times and drove on. By now my heart was fucking pounding.

Then I got to Longsight and the situation stepped up a gear.

Stockport Road was a scene from a war movie. A 192 bus had fishtailed across the entire road. A huge double decker with the front end embedded in a butcher’s shop and the back end in flames. Smoke was billowing into the sky. People were running around screaming. Some of them were on fire. I saw more community support officers trying to keep the peace. They were failing dismally, and not just because of the panic. It was because of the walking corpses.

This was my first experience of them. The undead. The fucking zombies. Whatever you want to call them.

They were easy to spot. They looked like people but they moved like puppets from an old stop motion film. I watched a man try to help a girl by lifting her up out of the road. She was lying on her side next to the bus. He almost had her upright when three of these things gathered round him and beat him to the concrete. The three zombies bent over the guy and for a second there was nothing. Then there was a scream which I’ll never forget.

Their arms began to work furiously, elbows pumping. I saw droplets of blood at first, flying over their heads in ever increasing waves. Then a bluish tube appeared and flopped onto the road. A flood of dark liquid followed. I’ve never seen a person's insides before. The three undead bent their heads and started to bite chunks out of him. I saw one of them bite his cheek off. The girl he had tried to help just stared, her face blank.

Someone ran towards my car. It was another living person, a little boy. He was about 12. His small fists hammered on the driver’s side door and I could hear him shouting for me to let him in. I could only focus on the other sounds around me, the horrible scene unfolding right in front of me. Sirens, screams, a crashing thump as the roof of the butcher’s shop caved in.

Then a screeching sound behind me. I glanced back at the boy just in time to see him vanish underneath the car that had almost broadsided me. The car was doing at least eighty and the driver tried to brake as it approached the burning bus. It didn’t work. The car spun sideways and flipped over on to the man who was being eaten.

I had one second, at most, to think 'Shit!’ before the car slammed into the bus and both vehicles exploded. The resulting mushroom cloud blew out all the windows within a 20 meter radius.

That was enough for me. I got the fuck out of there.

…………

It’s late. I’m starving.

I feel too sketchy to deal with Gerald tonight. If I don’t eat I’m going to throw up. With so little in my stomach to regurgitate I may lose a lung.

There are more of them around the tree that fell earlier. They’re not doing anything, just standing near the torn up roots and swaying. I hope they go away soon. I need to eat and get some sleep. The thought of those monsters walking around just outside the garden wall makes me very nervous.

That reminds me, I need to check the barricades before I make dinner.