Breaking News: An Autozombiography (14 page)

[day 0002]

I woke to streaming sunlight and Lou shaking my shoulder.

‘
Come on baby, we’re going.’

‘
Eh? Where are we going?’ I rubbed my belly.

‘
Anywhere. We’ve got to go now. They had all disappeared when Al woke me up; now there are three of them at the back door again, and they’re trying the handles.’

‘
You’re shitting me.’ I held my head. ‘Where’s Al?’

‘
He went to his parents’ house when it was still dark. He left us two radios and said he’d be back before midday, but its only eight o’clock. There‘s two more.’

I pulled myself to my feet and stepped over Floyd who was upside down and snoring on the hall carpet. The back door handle was waggling erratically, knocking against the top of the upturned coffee table, and they were doing the same in the dining room to the doors onto the decking. If they could try the handles today, why not chuck rocks through the windows tomorrow - or before midday when Al was due back? I shuddered. My head was throbbing as I walked to the stairs.

‘
There’s more in the garden, they’re coming this way,’ Lou shouted.

‘
Get away from that glass. They might have a
2001
moment and start using tools,’ I called back to her as I ran up the stairs to my office – really a spare bedroom – at the front of the house. I sidled up to the window and looked up and down the deserted street, then dashed back down to Lou and Floyd, who was now awake and snarling at the door handles in the dining room with his tail between his legs.

I picked up three bottles of wine from the wine rack.

‘
Get a thing; er, get the lamp or something.’ I told her. ‘Get ready to paste one of them.’

‘
What? No, I’m not going to,’ she said.

‘
Look, I’m not asking you to decapitate anyone. I’ll do that. Just push them out of the way for me. Don’t look at me like that; you wanted to be more involved.’

‘
Even if some of them do move after they’re dead you don’t know that these particular ones aren’t still alive,’ she said.

Look,’ I said, tucking two of the bottles into my baggy trouser pockets. They started to fall down, so I did my belt up two notches too tight. ‘If we’re going out on foot, we both need some stuff from the shed. You know - to shoo them away with...’

‘
Don’t be sarcastic,’

‘
I’m not,’ I lied. ‘You don’t have to disembowel any of them, you don‘t even have to go outside. Just push one backwards and I’ll do the rest.’ I said, one hand on the key in the door, the other holding a bottle.

She unplugged the tall standard lamp.

‘
Okay, I’m ready,’ she said, holding the lamp as if guessing its weight.

‘
What did you do that for?’ I asked.

‘
What?’

‘
Why did you unplug it? Safety first?’

‘
Stop having a go at me,’ she said hotly.

‘
The electricity’s off anyway.’

‘
Come on, if we’re going to do this,’ she hissed, nodding at the door and curling her elbow around the stem of the lamp. Floyd was pawing at the glass and whining.

‘
Ready?’

I turned the key, opened the door and saw a head right in the path of my swing, so I swung. The bottle fractured, and the impact sent the girl to the ground in a pool of claret as I pulled another bottle out of my pocket. I watched Lou sizing up one of them as he pushed his way towards us, and saw her ram the bulb-end of the lamp into his chest, shoving him away until she was holding the circular base. I watched the shade buckle - I had always assumed it was glass but it was clearly plastic – and heard the bulb’s crystalline pop. He fell backwards over the picnic table and down onto the lawn. Floyd had felled the third one, and was working on a fourth, but I couldn’t see the last one so I poked my head out. A kid of about fifteen was ambling to the open door, his jaws in motion. I cracked the bottle over the top of his head and he crumpled onto the floor. That was five. I leapt over the bodies, off the decking and onto the lawn, hearing Lou pull the door to and Floyd following on behind me.

I had one bottle left but there were two to go. I took one of them out with a crack across his pus-bloated face, sending him reeling into the bushes, and Floyd flung himself at the throat of the other. I tore through the open workshop door, turned and whistled. Floyd, possibly because Dmitri wasn’t there, satisfied himself with just some simple face-work before leaving the corpse writhing on my garden path. As I slammed the door shut behind the hound I caught sight of my neighbour Bill laying in the bushes, still in his pants, with his neck bent backwards so his head faced behind him. His throat had no broken skin except for the network of red sores but I could clearly see the hollow break in his neck above his Adam’s apple. I ducked down and crept along the workbench to the window, slowly lifting myself up so I could see outside. On the decking only one was getting to his feet; the others lolled uselessly on the ground.

I turned around to my tools. The list, which I had mentally prepared long before that day:

1 x garden spade

1 x garden fork

1 x pressure sprayer, with white spirit

1 x wooden mallet

2 x claw hammers

2 x circular saw blades

1 x 24 inch hand saw

1 x cordless drill

I decided that some of this was now redundant, especially if we were to escape the house on foot. The garden spade I could sling through the shoulder straps of my backpack if I had room, and Lou could do the same with the garden fork; I was quite set on the flame-thrower idea; a mallet we’d have needed if we were going camping anyway, and one of the hammers was definitely in; the impractical circular saw blades went, even though they were cool; I wouldn’t have time to use the hand saw effectively; and the cordless drill was just simply gratuitous.

I filled the sprayer with the white spirit and hauled it over my shoulders, tucking the spade down between the sprayer tank and my back which worked well but wasn’t comfortable. I pushed the mallet and hammer into my belt, then opened up our chest freezer (now starting to give off a whiff of stale cheese), and pulled out two carrier bags full of portions of chilli and Bolognese sauce, as well as some bread rolls and a carton of orange juice. I had got into the habit of cooking up batches of chilli and Bolognese in a huge pot ten litres at a time and freezing it. It meant I would double the cooking but get fifty meals out of it, meaning more time on the sofa. Then I had a brainwave. I picked up a roll of parcel tape and a small pot of red gloss paint, together with a half-inch paintbrush.

I wanted to get back into the relative safety of the house, but I felt that I wasn’t properly armed yet. Everything I’d gathered so far had a drawback; the sprayer would need igniting; the mallet required a short swing and contact would be too close for comfort. I needed something like a club, a baseball bat or even cricket bat, but I was no sportsman and had nothing of the sort. I did, however, have lots of wood. I turned to my pile of timber off-cuts and pulled out a couple of three-foot lengths of two-inch by two-inch wooden post, and a box of barbed four-inch wood screws. I set about screwing them straight into one end of each post, so they both looked like angry toilet brushes when I was done. I pushed one of the clubs down the back of my trousers with the screws pointing away from my arse, held the other in my left hand and made for the door.

I didn’t think I had made too much noise until I heard something heavy thud against the door. Floyd’s immediate high decibel reaction would only begin to attract more attention so I had to move quickly, and tapped the alarm’s keypad to start the beeping. Pressure.

I tested the door with my foot but it offered no resistance and opened to reveal a fat bloke on his knees facing towards me. He must have gone for the door and knocked himself over but he was about to get to his feet. Resisting the temptation to growl a cheesy Hollywood-style one-liner, such as ‘Confession time, punk!’, I instead conducted an immediate field-test of my DIY mace by bringing the useful end cracking onto the back of his head. I had to work to get it free, but he was out for the count. A design fault, I thought, watching Floyd run up to the others bumbling about on the decking and mindful of the two sprawled out on the lawn. I turned and closed the shed door nicely within the alarm’s beeping time, and jumbled up the numbers on the padlock.

As I strode back towards the house I tested the weight of my club. One of the ones on the grass in front of me stood up and pointed his face into the air, nostrils twitching. He turned on the spot and levelled his nose at me, then bared his teeth and gurgled. I walked up to him and slammed the club upwards into the soft flesh underneath his chin. It was effective enough. I could see Lou watching me through the blinds as I stepped up onto the decking, catching one of them on the side of the head as he got too close. The three others trying the kitchen door had spotted me, but I was a bit disappointed to see that Floyd was more interested in ripping to shreds a pair of trousers he’d torn off one of the creeps. I kept facing them as Lou held the door open and I backed into the dining room. She looked at me.

‘
Blimey!’

I got her to pull out the spade and her club before hauling the sprayer from over my shoulders.

‘
Who are you supposed to be,
Shaun of the Dead
?’

‘That’s yours.’ I explained, pointing at the improvised club I’d made. Mine was dripping with jet fat.

‘
Okay,’ her brow furrowed. ‘Can I take the screws out?’

‘
No. Empty the fridge; I’ll throw down the cool bag from the loft. Bung these in it, along with those ice-packs.’ I handed her the carrier bag of slowly thawing food, and pulled a big bag of cat biscuits from the cupboard. ‘Grab some knives, cutlery, half a dozen plates, and some mugs – you know, like we were camping but more permanent.’

‘
Will we be expecting anyone? And where are we going?’

‘
Camping.’

In the loft I started hauling out the gear. The previous owner had boarded and carpeted the loft and installed a couple of windows. It was nice enough, but it was a drag getting cups of tea up the steep staircase so we didn’t use it that much. Now it was a place for Maui to take refuge from an over-inquisitive puppy who wanted to sniff her backside like his life depended on it. She was up there now, licking her paws and washing her face in the morning sun. She mewed at me and sprawled out on her back. Happy days.

I split open the bag of cat food so she wouldn’t get her head stuck in there. You couldn’t do that with a dog; the whole lot would be gone in minutes, and you’d be clearing up puke for days. A cat - especially Maui - would make it last. I knew she’d be okay; she was a smart cat, a survivor. Years ago when she was a kitten and we had lived on the seafront a stray greyhound had caught her and ripped her side open in the front garden. I found her under one of the armchairs in the living room, soaking wet through slobber and all her muscles showing down one side. I also found greyhound hair and bloody rolls of skin stuck under her claws when we were driving her to the vet. She’d be fine with zombies.

I started ferreting under the eaves for the camping gear; the camping stove, kettle and gas lamp were all downstairs already. What else would we need? I settled for the following:

1 x four-man tent

1 x twelve-litre plastic water container

2 x mess tins

1 x cooking ring adapter for gas lamp

6 x spare small blue gas bottles

1 x 20ft corkscrew dog tether

1 x four-inch lock-knife (illegal in UK, bought by my brother-in-law Mike in a high-street French pharmacy)

1 x pair binoculars

2 x vacuum flask beakers

1 x foldaway aluminium table

2 x foldaway chairs, single

1 x foldaway chair, double

2 x maggot/mummy convertible sleeping bags

1 x inflatable double air bed

1 x car lighter powered air bed pump

1 x washing-up bowl

2 x tea towels

1 x small bottle washing-up liquid

I’d often wondered how resilient the tents, table and chairs were, all folded up and stored away in their bags with shoulder straps, so I took the opportunity to find out and started to drop them through the hatch. Lou couldn’t have a go at me, it was an emergency. Some of them fell all the way to the bottom of the stairs, and I could hear Floyd barking and Lou shushing him. I was quieter with the pots and pans and gas canisters, then slung the binoculars around my neck and made my way down the stairs. Lou was at the bottom, arms folded.

‘
We can’t take that much.’