Breaking News: An Autozombiography (23 page)

I chose a path up to the top of the Ring which was relatively free of scrabbling stinkers and began to scale the inner hill. I had got half way up when I was struck by something heavy from above. I had been scanning the ground for a hand grip and hadn’t seen the corpse stumble to the edge of the Ring and then over it. He fell on top of me, grabbing at my clothes and trying to bite me as we both fell, his nail-stripped fingers finding a grip on my boot. I kicked at his face with my free leg but his grasp never weakened. I kept kicking, desperately looking around the ditch for help, my nail gun on the ground a few feet above me. There was no-one, but I could hear the warped pinging of nails through the gorse blaze.

But I could also hear the dogs. I whistled the friendly, not-a-care-in-the-world whistle I did when I wanted Floyd to come to me. I kept booting the bloke’s head, confident he couldn’t bite me, but I was absolutely pinned to the floor by his hunger-powered strength. Our struggle had caught the attention of more peckish walkers, too. I whistled again.

Floyd skittered down the chalk towards us, black blood covering his head and chest. His tail was wagging, and he licked me, seemingly ignoring the fellow trying to consume my foot. He soon got the idea though, turning away from me and slamming his jaws shut either side of the stinker’s face, sinking them in and determinedly twisting his head to an impossible angle with an impressive low grumbling sound. The grip on my foot loosened and I got to my feet, grabbed my nail gun and began firing at the others who had got far too close for comfort. I whistled again and Floyd let go instantly, following me up the chalky scree and over the top. I ran towards the first few stunted trees where I could hear Dmitri but see neither him nor Lou. I turned back to the prow of the hill to face a line of tattered figures, one far less hunched than the others and with something in his hand. On hearing a metallic ‘pop-pop-pop’ I realised it was Al. When he saw me he shouted ‘Where’s Lou?’, but I could only shrug before sprinting onto the plateau of the Ring, Floyd bounding around my feet.

‘
Where’s mummy?’ I asked him. He ducked and barrelled off like he really had just understood me. Toward the middle, beyond the camp I could see a tree, windswept but taller than the others. Gathered around its base were twenty or thirty of them, arms clutching at the lowest branches with a collective murmur as Floyd stood to one side and barked at the tree-top. I kept my distance and yelled Lou’s name into the leaves. Dmitri appeared, bouncing up to greet me but hauling one stinker to the ground in the process. Floyd took his cue and they both worked the face. I could see the radio sitting on the ground at the foot of the trunk.

‘
Lou?’ I yelled, checking over my shoulder. ‘Lou, you up there?’

‘
Yes. I’m in the tree thanks.’

‘
Hang on baby,’ I swung at a freak that had lumbered up to me. ‘She’s here!’ I yelled at my three chums, all of whom were now in the camp, hacking away. They ran to the tree, screaming to divert the freaks’ attention. It worked, and they started to drift towards us. We picked out our targets and worked our way through the throng methodically.

As Al and Jay finished off the final few I looked up to see Lou’s leg rustle out of the lowest bough.

‘
Can you get down?’

‘
I think so. Hang on.’

Vaughan joined me, standing against the tree trunk and holding a hand up for Lou to step onto. I guided her as she jumped the last few feet. Jay and Al were standing with their backs to us, ready for some fresh zombies who had managed to stumble up to the top of the Ring and now had us in their sightless eyes. Lou thumped me in the chest.

‘
You took your fucking time!’ She was fuming. Al handed her his nail gun, and, seeing that she had nothing at all I gave her mine too.

‘
I like the bonfire. Where’s your club?’

‘
It was cutting into my hand.’

‘
Sorry baby.’ I turned and faced the strange. ‘Spread out. Take one at a time and only advance when they’ve stopped moving. Be methodical. Push them to the edges.’

We all got stuck in, pounding away, raining blows even when they were on the ground, sidestepping their slow advance and severing heads whenever it was feasible.

Al reached the edge of the ring first having retrieved his scythe from the armoury. He stood and swung like he was deadheading roses. Jay was also whisking off heads with his sword as soon as they appeared. Vaughan just hacked and hacked with the axe, and still they came. Al tried using the pressure sprayer in short bursts, trying not to increase the grass fires that had sprung up all around us but soon gave up, beating at the ground with his towel. Jay and Vaughan tried a new angle with the rope, running rings around groups of five or more with an end each like the Rebel Alliance around an AT-AT’s legs, before tightening the loop and felling them, whereupon Al would step in and take off their heads.

I saw Lou with her jet-black hair whipping around her face, both nail guns raised, taking alternate shots in quick succession before reloading in a heartbeat. That’s my girl. My girl…

Breaking Up

[day 0005]

We fought into the night, taking it in turns in teams of two to mop up any freaks that had made their way into the camp. The dogs were crucial, and would alert us and fight at the same time. We couldn’t see how many more of them were shuffling their way up from the town, but in the brief lulls between waves we stopped, listening to the hoarse moaning and whispering that carried on the breeze. Lou had told us in breathless episodes about the last two hours. After we had started off down the hill she had busied herself collecting wood and clearing more of the long grass with the scythe. But she’d got freaked out when the birds and insects stopped chattering, just after the wind had picked up. She had thought she could see shapes in the woodland below and the dogs had been acting up, growling and drooling. She’d seen that the main weak point was the V-shape through which the footpath led up to the centre of the camp, and had started to hack down the gorse and broom bushes, piling them up in the gap. It was then that she’d seen the first one coming. The dogs ran down to inspect him and had quickly dismembered the threat, but were soon overwhelmed. Lou had been sure her impromptu defences would block their way but they started to thrash through the gorse.

She had called the dogs to her and set the whole lot alight with the pressure sprayer. She’d had to put out some fires but the tactic had bought her some time. Soon enough though they had started to come over the top, seeming to either avoid the flames or, as Jay suggested, learning from the mistakes of the others. I couldn’t help suggesting that there were enough of them to spread themselves out randomly. Lou had fought for as long as she could with both dogs staying by her side to defend her. She’d tried the radio – which we heard – but eventually she’d had enough and climbed into the tree, dropping the radio in her exhaustion.

Yet here she was; twice as exhausted as the rest of us but invigorated by new energy for the fight. We were all running on vapours, and Al had brought the water container round to each of us.

We had the southernmost quarter of Cissbury Ring pretty well covered, and luckily for us they seemed to all be taking the most direct route up. Gasping for air, we breathed in the foul sulphurous vapours like we were drinking the purest well water. But blinded by sweat and gagging with every breath we fought on, lopping heads and severing spines. It was worth relighting the bracken every so often, when it got clogged up with corpses and their crackling, withering rasps carried away on the air like ghosts. Flies droned around our heads, settling in our eyes and ears. The fires spread down the slopes and onto the fields, broken up by pathways and patches of bare earth and chalk. Al’s nonchalant, absent-minded early-morning clearance of the long grass in camp probably saved our lives.

Lou was the first to say it, in the rests we took in pairs; she was the first to actually say what the others were apparently thinking. She said she wanted to go.

‘
Go where?’ I asked sarcastically, to no answer. But even Al was worried, about our vulnerability on top of the Ring as much as the fires all around us.

‘
But where will you go?’

Dawn broke, splitting the horizon with slivers of rose and gold. The smoke hung blue over Worthing town, and still they came. We could see them coming through the woods, across the char-streaked fields and up the parched golf course. We saw zombies who couldn’t make the slope any more though loss of limb or shredded muscle, and just scrabbled at the chalk and brush in the ditch, sometimes standing on bodies three deep and clutching at the sky with stripped fingers and broiled eyeballs. There were more who could still make it, slithering over the prow of the hill toward the camp with that fixed stare, the gurning jaws and in some cases clothes still in one piece. These fresh ones were noticeably faster, but still we could outrun them and dispatch them quickly if we kept our heads. But we were getting increasingly tired, the adrenaline only going so far when the bursts did come. We had kept each other going with encouraging words like ‘nice shot’ and ‘keep on rolling’, but they seemed meaningless now I had the thought in my head we weren’t actually defending anything. But I remember becoming steadily less bothered, laughing uncontrollably as I fought, to the point where Jay had to come and help me out.

‘
You alright chum?’ he asked.

‘
Yeah,’ I tried to take a breath. ‘They look so funny!’

They did look funny; like broken humans. Social niceties had all gone out of the window. All that scrabbling around and moaning seemed such an obviously un-English things to do. The one thing that stuck in my mind was the fact that none of them were bothering to queue for their food.

‘
Where’s the water?’ Lou looked haggard, but I was thirsty too. I was too impatient to be gentlemanly, and took a swig before I passed it to her. There wasn’t much left; I had removed the stopper. I’m not sure what happened – I thought Lou had hold of it, and I’m sure she thought I had hold of it too. It fell anyway, water spouting from the container and rolling like mercury on the parched ground.

‘
What the fuck did you do that for?’ I roared. I took myself by surprise, but Lou positively crumpled. The water ran to a dribble.

‘
Easy chum,’ said Jay

‘
Fuck you, I’ll talk how I want,’ I rounded on Lou. ‘Why did you drop it? The boys hadn’t had a drink yet!’

‘
It was an accident, don’t worry,’ Al looked uncomfortable. My friends who had known Lou longer than I had hated even being near our arguments, let alone being used in them as guilt leverage. We rarely fought, but when we did it was fierce – Lou could more than stand up for herself, but now she just sat there, motionless, unable to even look at me.

The bodies piled up. I should have been wishing we had the respirators and chemical gloves that we’d left down the path. I should have been wishing we had some water. I should have been wishing I hadn’t shouted at Lou, who had picked herself up and kept on fighting although she still hadn’t looked at me. I just carried on silently, grimly. The zombie advance thinned during the midday heat, allowing the others sometimes as much as ten minutes to cat-nap in shifts. The flies were getting worse in the heat as Jay opened two tins of plum tomatoes for fluid and shared them out. Al declined the warm watery pulp and even Lou thought twice about it when she started dry heaving at her first gulp. I wordlessly opened some sweet corn which they both took a sip from. Then we all saw something which stopped us in our tracks.

Lumbering towards Lou was a traffic warden, his clothing almost complete if a little dusty. He had no obvious injuries, and even had his radio still attached to his belt. At first I thought – we all thought – he was still alive, and needed help. Vaughan even cried out for Lou to stop when she raised her nail guns and unloaded them into his face and neck, but he stumbled and just carried on undaunted, although Lou’s reaction was enough to spur us all toward him.

I don’t know who got to him first, but there was little left when we were done. Jay puked, and we all stopped and looked at each other. Such a minor authority figure would have been a source of laughter to us, even treated with mild contempt. Now, though, the raw sight of a uniformed human we’d bludgeoned to paste laying at our feet made us all sick. We had to carry on without the renewable vigour that made possible our efforts of the previous day and mistakes were made: Jay nearly took off my ear when taking a swing with his sword, and Al had been hit in the calf with a stray nail. All of us were in tears at some stage after that; Lou in the shade of the tree, knees to her forehead; Jay as he fought; Al quietly, choked; and Vaughan openly and wetly, his round face to the sun. I was shuddering constantly, great waves of sickness pushing tears to my cheeks and hot coals to the back of my throat. It began to make less and less sense. In the old zombie movies, that was the time and the mental place in which the principal characters usually got eaten.