look at that Z car go

I now know what starvation feels like.

All the focus is on the stomach. When every last morsel of food has passed through your bowel you simply feel empty. This is nothing to worry about. You still feel quite satisfied, content even. You won’t need to eat for hours yet.

Hours pass.

A low growl resonates deep in the pit of your guts. This is the onset of hunger. You may think briefly of snack food; chocolate, nuts and crisps. Oh my!

Then you may think of all those wonderfully crap things available on the supermarket shelves; pot noodles, vacuum packed meat, cheese slices, bag after bag of Doritos. All of those quick fix foods.

Then you stop.

Your body is lying to you. You’re not hungry.

The quick fix has a deathly grip. You’re not actually hungry. Your stomach is empty but you can survive for hours, days, without food.

Until you starve you cannot possibly understand how pointless junk food is.

What was I saying?

Lets play guess the quote. These are all from films. See how many you can get:

“There are monsters, aren’t there?”

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.”

“If you ain’t on the whirlybird when I take off then you’re likely to have a very bad afternoon.”

No, fuck that. I can’t concentrate on anything other than my own twisted internal organs.

There was a space inside me. I could feel it right at the centre of my body. The growling in my stomach had ended ages ago. Jolts of agony followed. Acidic pain tore holes in my stomach, piping itself through my veins. It continued for hours then dwindled, vanishing as quickly as it appeared. The space was the only thing left.

From my window I can see them. They’re gathered around that damn tree again. They’ve been there since last night.

It’s dark now but not dark enough to hide their ruined faces. Last night one of them glanced up at the window while I was peeping out. I ducked down but not before I saw the thing’s shredded lips pull back in a grin. I almost screamed but managed to bite my tongue instead. My mouth filled with blood which I drank gratefully.

The barricades were not attacked so it couldn’t have spotted me. The grin must have been some kind of reflex

I’m jealous of them. Even though their bodies are bloated with gas and rotting, even though their minds have become jellified collections of basic urges, I’m jealous. I’m in here losing my mind over images of sirloin steak and fried bacon. They’re outside filling their filthy stomachs with meat. Okay, the meat they’re filling their stomachs with is primarily human but at least they aren’t going without…

I looked behind the cooker earlier. Prior to this I searched the flat for anything edible and came up with nothing. The entire place is a testament to dietary abstinence. The back of the cooker was my final hope, my grail.

I found, in this order:

• A dead mouse.
• Two slowly moving snails.
• A slice of ancient bread crawling with tiny insects.
• An empty clipper lighter.
• Several brown lumps swimming in a pool of some putrid and foul smelling liquid.

I put the mouse, the snails and the bread in a plastic tub and sealed it. Then I placed the tub in the cupboard and told myself it was to be the very last resort.

Less than two minutes later I opened the cupboard door, tore the lid off the tub and grabbed one of the snails. I threw my head back, dropped the snail into my mouth and bit down hard. The shell cracked between my teeth and sent shudders through my jaw. Juices squirted out over my tongue, surprisingly viscous but not as bitter as I’d expected. My teeth crushed the shell and began to work on the snail’s chewy flesh. Within seconds I’d reduced the snail to a tightly rolled ball of protein. It sat at the back of my tongue waiting to be swallowed. I closed my eyes and let it go.

I felt the ball squeeze its way past my Adam’s apple. My stomach growled in anticipation. Food, glorious food…

Then a tiny noise drew my attention. My eyes fluttered open and I traced the noise to the tub containing the rest of my bounty from behind the cooker. I reached out and took the tub down from the cupboard shelf. I placed it on the counter in front of me and peered in.

The first thing I noticed was the bread. All the little insects living on the bread were huddled up in one corner instead of racing around the surface. It reminded me of herding instincts I’d seen on nature programs. Their bodies were tightly packed together so only their black shells were visible.

The noise distracted me. It sounded minutely wet and ever so slightly crunchy. I looked into the corner of the tub. It took a few seconds to figure out what I was seeing.

The dead mouse was being eaten by the other snail.

The snail had already chewed away a large portion of the mouse’s underbelly. Tiny grey ribs poked out of the wound. Strands of pink meat clung to the ribs like colored string. I peered in closer even as my stomach began to churn, focusing on the snail.

Greenish fur was growing on the snail’s shell in little patches. I noticed that it was missing one antenna and that its leathery neck had chunks torn out of it. It crawled over the mouse, its unseen teeth chomping miniature mouthfuls out of the dead flesh.

My stomach tried to turn itself inside out. I beat it back into submission, swallowing huge gulps of air. My saliva production went into overload. Within seconds I was drooling spit onto my t-shirt. Too late, I thought, Far, far too late.

At least I’d eaten something.

………

Oh for a New Scientist article detailing the adverse effects of consuming undead gastropods…

“Snails are harmful if eaten raw although the risk level is low. Undead snails, however, raise the question of cross-species infection.

Case studies have shown that only 3% of humans who ingested the snails of the living dead went on to lead full and happy lives. The rest died a slow, agonizing death and then returned to life as relentlessly hungry undead monsters.”

I don’t care if I turn into one of those things.

….Jesus, what am I saying?

………..

I ate the snail two hours ago and so far I feel fine. I’ve felt no changes in my mind or body. I think I’m okay except that my last resort is now gone.

The insects were the trickiest to eat. In the end I simply folded the slice of bread in half and shoved it in my mouth. My tongue tickled like mad as the insects tried to escape. The mouse was crunchier than the snail I’d eaten but mercifully bland.

The other snail is still sliding around inside the tub. I’ve replaced the lid and put it back in the cupboard.

Dawn is creeping in – the bedroom curtains are starting to glow a dull orange.

Today I'm going to find a way out of this flat.

"This is a dead place. Like all the others, you know..."

My living room window looks out over Albert Road. Once I’d completed the barricades and regained control of my own mind I looked out into the street. They were out there. Hordes of the shuffling undead. I peeked at them from behind the net curtain.

The zombies staggered in seemingly aimless directions up and down the street. I tried not to focus on individuals but it was hard to tear my eyes away. One man had such a severe rupture to his neck that his head hung loose over his shoulder. He kept trying to reposition his skull so that it balanced on the neck stump but every time it flopped to the side again. One of them held a bright yellow balloon in one hand. A rainbow coloured banner hung in tatters across his chest. ‘…py birthday Simo... ‘, was printed down the length in bold, happy colours. He was dragging a small body behind him, gripped by the ankle.

A cluster of the creatures were huddled round a corpse just outside the front garden. Lengths of intestine and clods of glistening meat were strewn around them, painting the grey concrete in shades of dark rust. Occasionally one of the undead would turn and snatch a piece of offal from the road, stuff it into their mouth and chew, eyes closed. They were experiencing some kind of awful, sublime pleasure from eating the dead body. Hands ripped into the corpse, lifting out dripping portions which were fought over and devoured as though it were fine steak. They swayed on their knees, moaning even when they were chewing. The noise of them made every hair on my body stand on end.

Most of the creatures were simply ambling around. They staggered into bushes, bumped into parked cars and shoved at each other. All of them had the same gait; they moved like marionettes, arms and legs jerking in staccato rhythms, heads lolling from side to side. Their bloated, purple lips pulled back from their teeth in a permanent, disquieting sneer. Some of them were quite badly damaged, limbs torn off; stomachs ripped open so that internal organs trailed around their knees.

It was a scene from some darkest region of Hell. I cursed the fact that I had no religion, no God to pray to. Then I realised that this must be the work of a God, some God, one of the hundreds. That was when I almost gave up hope. If an all powerful being sees fit to visit a plague such as this on It’s creation then what hope is there? The only outcome is complete destruction, a reckoning on a grand scale. Wipe out humanity, reset the counter to zero and begin again.

I was torn from my thoughts by a clattering noise somewhere further along the road. I looked to the right and caught a flash of colour. Then a horse appeared, a mounted policeman clinging to its back. The horse was one of those giant brown beasts used by the Greater Manchester Constabulary. It was clearly in distress – foaming sweat plastered its neck and flanks, its nostrils flared and jetted snot out on to the road. The copper glued to the horse’s back was screaming. I watched the pair, horse and man, plough through the congregation of undead. Zombies flew out to either side as the horse made frantic progress down the road. Living corpses were crushed beneath hooves the size of dinner plates. I found myself silently cheering the horse and rider on.

The horse had almost made it to the junction with Slade Lane when disaster struck. A motorcycle was lying on its side in the road. The horse leaped, tried to clear the bike, but terror and exhaustion had taken their toll. The horse clipped the bike with its back legs and crashed face first into the road. The policeman tumbled from his saddle and lay half-crushed beneath the fallen beast. The undead were on them in seconds. When the horse began to shriek I dropped the net curtain and moved away from the window.

I snuck into my bathroom like a mouse, checking that the barricades were still intact. I removed my trousers and boxer shorts. Then I began to peel moist strips of caked faeces from my buttocks and testicles. I cleaned myself up and then I cried.

………

With the clock on this website fucked it’s hard for me to tell how long I’ve been incarcerated. I don’t have a mobile phone, never needed an alarm clock (I wake up at 7.30am every day, on the dot) and the TV hasn’t worked since day one. Same with the radio. The radio just gives out static and the TV pisses out white noise whenever I switch it on.

The real shock was the internet. The web was designed to live after we’re dead and gone. At the end of time all that should be left are cockroaches and google. It didn’t work out that way. I got the same thing on-screen whichever site I visited: a black screen with a white, inverted smiley face plastered in the middle. For the first few nights that down turned mouth and vacant eyes haunted my nightmares along with the creeping undead.

After trying as many urls as I could remember I tried my bookmark folder on Firefox. www.blogger.com was the only site that worked - kind of. The homepage appeared but the only hypertexted sections of the screen were the link to one of my old blogs and the automated tech support template.

I deleted all previous entries on my blog and began writing this.

………

I’m so FUCKING HUNGRY!!!!!!!!!!

While I’ve been writing all that bollocks about what’s gone before my stomach has been eating itself.

I feel drowsy, sick. It feels as though some kind of poison is rushing through my blood. This must be what starvation feels like. I ran out of food last night. If I don’t go out tonight I won’t eat. Eat or get eaten? What a fucking question that is.

I need a weapon. I also need a plan - a good one. How do I escape unnoticed from the flat, a storey up? How do I defend myself against the overwhelming odds outside? Fuck, fuck. So hungry…