Breaking News: An Autozombiography (11 page)

My dad had once told me that during the Battle of Britain anti-aircraft guns had been put in place along the high earth ramparts up on Cissbury Ring, as well as a huge one-hundred-pound gun pointing out to sea. One day, when I was a young lad, he had walked up there from our house carrying a mirror, leaving me in our back garden with a carefully hand-drawn sheet of Morse code – he could, he had claimed, reflect the sun’s rays back down to me and spell out a message. I’d waited there, watching the Downs intently for at least ten minutes before getting bored and going inside to watch television. He had returned breathless an hour and a half later, excitedly asking if I’d worked out his message, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth so I’d pretended I just couldn’t see the flashes. This new sensation of guilt drove me to learn Morse code by heart before the end of that same week.

I loved the views of Worthing and Lancing pushed right up against the sea, and of the open downland stretching to the north, east and west. You could almost drink in the sparkling air. Crickets would drone in the summer months, and you could immerse yourself in the heady scent of meadow flowers and the green and gold of the surrounding countryside; in the winter the rain would sting your ears and the wind would tug at your clothes and push you on your way. It was one of the few places left on the south coast where it seemed we might be tamed by nature and not the other way around. High up on the top of Cissbury Ring it was easy to imagine that the glass and bricks of the town had just been poured out from a cup, glistening grey crystals flowing downhill and finally settling at the base of the valleys, clinging for dear life to the coastline for fear of falling into the English Channel. Sitting in Al’s Audi that first night, the Ring was a black hump, like a rising whale against the dark blue seas of the night sky.

We were soon driving up to the familiar territory of the National Trust car park beneath the north side of the fort; really no more than a dusty patch of broken tarmac squeezed between fields at the crossroads of two chalk tracks. From that point we had three options to get back to our house: We could have taken the route we would drive on any normal day walking the dog, on tarmac streets back through Findon village; we could have taken the dusty crossroads onto an eastward track, doubling back on ourselves for a mile and a half to a proper road leading south; or, we could go straight down the footpath we always used when we walked from our house up to the Ring. The track from our house up to Cissbury was certainly thin and steep in places, but we reckoned it could take a car, so that’s the way home that we opted for even though it would be slowest. It was the most direct route, and Al was getting concerned about his petrol. It took us through no towns, was downhill all the way, and led straight out onto the A27 no more than fifty yards from the top of our road.

The footpath followed the scalloped crest of a hill overlooking the golf course, but first we had a gate to get past. It was chained and padlocked, so I quietly got out of the car, alert to the tell-tale sound and smell of trouble, but the air was fresh and still. I looped my own chain around the gatepost and linked it up to Al’s tow bar once he was in position. It took three attempts, as the tyres slipped on the dew-laden grass, but eventually the post was wrenched from the ground. I stood the gate post back in its hole when the car was safely through.

We rumbled down the straight track. It was tight in many places and I had to dismantle three other gates and negotiate Al though a sharp ninety-degree bend into some woods. I was also filling in the bigger cracks with my log, and it was when I was sorting out a particularly long one that I saw we’d got a puncture. Al rolled onto level ground and got out, pleased with himself that he’d encouraged his eyes to get used to the gloom. Within four minutes we’d had the spare tyre on, rounded up the hounds and set off again.

‘
I’m sure I’ve seen tractors coming down from this far up.’ I said. ‘We’ll be alright now.’

From that point we could see the creeping urban mould of Worthing, and the notion of nature’s dominance over man disappeared pretty quickly. A large business park ate into the green of the downland with vast corrugated roofs hiding a DIY store and a supermarket. I hated both, but hypocritically Lou and I used both stores; Lou understandably balking at the thought of going to a greengrocers, a butchers, and a fishmongers after commuting home at seven in the evening; me because I needed screws and paint to make pub signs and I was a lazy arsehole. We were just doing what we were used to doing; what our parents did and probably what our grandparents wished they could do. I couldn’t help think that we’d been hoodwinked though – the smaller traders were being squeezed out by the big stores and their impossible economics of flying asparagus from Peru to England when it was in season here. It’s not like we didn’t know how to grow vegetables; we just couldn’t resist cheap ones when we were offered them. Lou and I had fought back by starting a tiny vegetable patch in front of my workshop and had already had carrots, wild rocket and tomatoes out of it. “Dig for Victory” was a long-forgotten sentiment. I learnt more and more about how to grow vegetables and where and when, but all the while Sainsbury’s was just at the top of our road curling a fat, cold finger at us, luring us inside like a portly Siren. Inside we all went, into the cool crisp cathedrals, oblivious to the millennia of trading history being throttled purple outside the doors. Except some of us weren’t oblivious, we were just hypocrites, which was even worse.

Soon the track grew less steep as the golf course opened out to our right, and Al actually had to use the accelerator for the first time since Cissbury. The dusty chalk turned to wide, dry mud and eventually we were driving past the back gardens of houses. Some were grand old places, others were more recently built. One had a high concrete wall with ornate stone gates leading out onto the unassuming dirt track; fruit netting rose above some fences and mouldering garden waste lay to the sides, alongside the occasional long-browned Christmas tree. The odd farm building and horse field stood empty. We reached the end of the lane with high hedges on both sides and a good view onto a slice of A27, where we saw no moving traffic and heard no sound. Our house was one left turn at the end of the track, then the next right. That was it – Lou and I would be home. Al faced me.

‘
Let’s do it.’ We rumbled down the last few metres of the dusty track, accelerating all the time. Al spun the steering wheel, deliberately losing traction before taking us sideways onto the tarmac road - but then he stalled. He grinned and fumbled at the ignition, then took us haring past an overturned van as one or two figures turned to face us, skin milk-white in the moonlight. There were more up ahead. Headlights still off Al gunned towards our road, taking the right turn with a snap of the wheel and I saw three or four of them along the length of the street as we got nearer the house. Al hand-braked another right onto our drive – really a concrete front garden – and switched the engine off. Lou was eager.

‘
I need to pee.’

‘
Right, here’s the plan,’ I said. ‘I’ll open the front door, and only when it’s open do you two get out. Don’t forget the dogs.’

‘
We’re right behind you baby, just hurry up.’

I did the breathing you do before you dive into water, then sprung out, slamming the car door behind me. I’d been too noisy, and down the road I saw heads snap round, open mouths slitting across pale oval faces. A groan sounded out.

‘
Oh shit.’

I patted my pockets for the front door keys. Front left and right, back right, back left. Nothing - try again. Front left and right, back right, back left. They hadn’t suddenly appeared in my trousers, to my dismay. I went to check my coat pocket, but I wasn’t wearing one.

‘
Are they on my seat?’ I shouted to Al – no point in being quiet now they know we’re here now, I thought. One was close, I could hear shuffling. Eternally optimistic, I patted my pockets again. I could see the closest one now, at the end of my path with a leather jacket and a beer belly. I didn’t have the keys no matter how hard I looked, so I bounded back to the car and got in. The dead man was at my window scraping uselessly at the glass with his fingers - he had no nails and left greasy streaks. His face was a mess, with watery boils spreading down to his neck. Al popped the central locking shut.

‘
Great plan,’ he said.

‘
Where are your keys?’ Lou asked.

‘
I’m pretty sure I put them down on the coffee table before we left.’ I said limply.

‘
Durr,’ Al added helpfully.

‘
It’s alright, let’s have yours.’ I held my hand out, but Lou didn’t reach for her bag.

‘
I told you,’ she said exasperated, ‘someone took my keys from my bag at work, and then drove away in my car. With my keys, I should think.’

‘
What?’

She didn’t repeat herself – she knew I had heard what she said. I watched the putrid face at my window, gurning and gnashing its teeth.

‘
Hello.’ Al said, turning the ignition, watching the face of a young boy with hollow eyes on his side of the car, but I had caught sight of an open downstairs window.

‘
Wait, I can get in through the window. Look.’

‘
Not now you can’t, not with these two outside.’ Lou said to me. ‘Plus, if we have got to break into our own house we might as well do it round the back. We can get a ladder from your workshop.’

Al reversed into the road with a thud or two, and I saw that he was taking a distinct pleasure in not looking behind him. The two creeps were now rolling about on my driveway.

‘
Sorry Lou.’ Al said sensitively, and thundered back up the road onto the A27.

Our back garden faced onto a thin strip of woodland; from our bedroom at the rear you could see the backs of the houses one road over peeping between the leaves. It was marked as No Man’s Land on the survey map we’d received when we bought our first house together, but that sounded more exciting than it really was. Sometimes local kids would festoon the branches like monkeys, and I would lean out of the upstairs windows to holler at them. It was mostly lawn clippings and fallen twigs from the unkempt stand of trees - because no-one owned it, no-one really looked after it. Some of the trees were dead or weak, so I had paid a hundred quid to have the most skeletal specimens pruned heavily before I built my workshop under them, but other than that it was left to its own overgrown devices.

On the other side of the copse was a stretch of hard standing and some garages for the houses one road over, and this was where Al headed with the car’s headlamps still switched off. We needed to circle once, because Al sensibly sounded the horn at the entrance to the garages and, sure enough, five or six dark shapes bumbled out. We waited until they were close, then reversed twenty feet or so, tooting the horn and flashing the fog lamps. They followed, so he did a three-point-turn as we begged him not to stall the engine again; we drove right round the block, approached from the other end of the road and slipped in behind them.

‘
I’ll stay here for as long as I can,’ Al suggested. ‘Then I’ll drive the car back round the front of the house, in case we need to leave in a hurry. Let me in when you’ve got the front door unlocked.’

‘
Good skills chum – you alright to take the mutt with you?’ Al nodded. ‘Come on Sweetpea, let’s go!’ I piled out of my side to see that Lou was already out. Floyd started barking when he realised we were leaving him in the car.

‘
Shush! Going to the shops!’

We clawed our way past thick cobwebs strung between the garages. I pushed through undergrowth and up to the fence around the perimeter of the parking spaces, and soon found the gap in the chain link that the kids must have used. I peeled it back so Lou could crawl through, looking down the alleyway and trying to distinguish between zombie groans and tree creaks.

‘
Hurry up.’ I followed Lou, as she held the wire back for me to inch underneath. The weather had dried out everything and we couldn’t help snapping twigs as we went, but soon I could make out the back of my workshop roof.

‘
Come on.’ We both clambered over a pile of cuttings and fallen branches, setting down in the alleyway round the back or our house – now all we had to do was get into my garden. I had nailed the gate shut when the bin men refused to collect the rubbish from the alleyway any more, but the fence was old enough that I could punch through it, trying to make as little noise as possible. The hole ended up larger than I’d have liked, as the interlocking planks above it fell to the floor. I was being too noisy.

‘
I wish we had Floyd here,’ I said ruefully, checking over my shoulder.

‘
Well you told him to stay.’

The heat of the day had given way to a cool, still night with little breeze, especially in our leafy back garden. Even though it was summer, the only window I had left open that morning was one in our bedroom, and only the small top one at that. Maui, our cat, had jumped onto the water butt we used for the vegetables in front of my workshop, and was curling round Lou’s arm and gently nudging her chest whilst Lou scratched her long ears and talked nonsense to her.

My workshop was undeniably just a big shed with a pent roof and horizontal slats, but even so I tried very hard never to call it a shed when talking to a potential client. It was the same thinking that made me say it was one hundred and sixty eight square feet as opposed to twelve foot by fourteen foot. It was definitely a shed though. I had a sturdy combination padlock on my workshop doors which I’d bought in exasperation at having to trudge back into the house for the keys I forgot every single morning, effectively doubling my thirty-second commute. I could open the padlock in seconds with a plate of toast and a cup of tea in one hand, so doing it with both hands was quicker still. I silenced the pre-alarm beep and waved Lou in, followed quickly by Maui who was eager for her biscuits. I didn’t turn on the light - that was as stupid as checking out funny noises in the attic. Basic rules.