Blog of the Dead (Book 1): Sophie (2 page)

Me and Sam looked at each other. Then I heard Polly’s cool voice moaning about the stink from Richard’s room. I looked up and saw her pull the door shut in disgust.
Hello!
Almost bitten by a zombie and completely winded person needing help down here
! I thought but didn’t say. It was only as an after thought as she walked past me on the stairs that she turned and helped me up. Christ!

But Polly is not my main concern. No, that would be the zombie in my bedroom – perfect!

10.30am Day 2
So, we’re sitting in the living room while I type this. The TV is on but there’s nothing being broadcast. There’s no radio. Everything’s off air. We’ve got the Internet but its not telling us any more than we already know – society has gone crazy. Whatever is happening here is now happening all over the country. We’ve got the curtains closed and we’re staying away from the windows. It attracts them.

We’ve got red rimmed eyes after having had a bloody good cry. I can’t say that I was overly fond of Richard, but … It’s weird to think he’s dead. He’s still in my bedroom, which is really crap.

He can’t work out how to use the door handle or do anything that requires brain function, beyond standing, walking, groaning and eating flesh. Though, none of us are particularly confident that he won’t just get lucky and bust out, so we’ve shoved the small sofa from Polly’s room in front of the door, upside down, and piled some stuff on top of it. It won’t stop the door from opening but it’ll be an obstacle to slow him down and there should be enough noise to alert us of the breach.

At the sound of every creaking floorboard and clunking from the antique plumbing, we cast nervous glances at each other and Polly will leap up and shout, ‘He’s out!’ which causes Richard to get agitated and crash into the furniture in my room. ‘We should hammer planks of wood across the door,’ said Polly after one such outburst. This would’ve been a fab idea if it wasn’t for the fact that we don’t have any nails, a hammer or even any planks of wood. We are not that organised a household. The blockade will have to do until we figure out what to do with him …

But, Richard, he’s not the only reason for the tears. We’ve all had a good cry for our friends and families – out there. The phone lines, land and mobile, are dead. I guess the networks got flooded with people trying to reach their loved ones. I’ve sent an email to my mum and another to my dad and I check my inbox obsessively.

Anyway, miracles do happen. As I speak I’m drinking a cup of tea made by Polly. It tastes like crap – because she’s had so little practice I guess – but I’m drinking it and I’m making little happy noises of satisfaction and gratitude to mark the occasion – Polly has actually done something for someone other than herself.

November 16
10.05am Day 3
Well … where to sleep when you have a zombie in your bedroom? Sam, of course, offered me a bed for the night – top and tails. But, as I told him, I’d rather bunk down in stink of death room, or Richard’s room as it is otherwise known. Surprise, surprise, Polly actually offered to let me sleep in her room – on the floor, of course – but stink of death room looked more and more attractive. I decided on the sofa. But spending the night at street level wasn’t cool. I could hear all kinds of noises … scratching and snuffling, banging, running, shouting, the obligatory screaming. Not to mention the groaning and creaking coming from Richard in the room above me. I lay awake with my blanket pulled up so only my eyes peeped out the top.

Our house is a Victorian terrace and there isn’t much space between our living room bay window and the street. At about 1am I heard a dragging noise that went on for a while, right outside the window. I grabbed my blanket and pillow and scarpered to Sam’s room. Polly was already there, cocooned in her duvet on the floor by Sam’s bed. She shot up into a sitting position as I opened the door. ‘God, it’s you,’ she said. ‘You almost gave me a fucking heart attack.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. Polly lay down again but she didn’t close her eyes.

Sam was awake too. He lifted his covers and patted the space next to him, this little half smile on his lips that didn’t fully mask the fear in his eyes. I ignored him and found a relatively clear spot on the floor, among the crumpled clothing – I really hoped there was no underwear there – books and dirty plates, and settled myself down. I couldn’t get comfortable, but that didn’t seem to matter any more. I lay there with my eyes wide open – listening for footsteps on the stairs, imagining Richard just outside the door.

I slept a little, dozing in and out of bad dreams and wakefulness, not really knowing where one stopped and the other started. I’d normally be having a four hour Poetry lecture this morning. I guess that’s cancelled. Maybe I’ll write a poem about a zombie apocalypse? It’d give me something to do other than be shit scared.

6.10pm Day 3
My family are ok! I had an email from them earlier today. Mum, Dad and Jake are safe and well and have barricaded themselves indoors. Mum had to do a to-the-rescue mission to get Jake from school after a teacher went zombie and attacked some kids in his class. They hid in the school office over night and made it back home yesterday afternoon. I’m trying not to think about that right now … just how close my little brother came to … But he’s ok.

Dad was lucky to get home from work. The motorways became gridlocked and he’d had to abandon his car, but he made it back into Surrey on foot, then a push bike that he found in a garden. He got home just after mum and Jake.

Polly’s family are ok, too. Sam hasn’t heard from his. He hasn’t said a word for hours. We’re getting pretty hungry. There’s not a lot left in the cupboards. There wasn’t a lot to begin with. We’re rationing.

7.55pm Day 3
Learned the hard way to stay out of sight. I took a peek out the living room window just now and thought I saw someone in the window across the street. So I pushed the curtain out the way a bit more to get a better look, and, shit, there was this manky, half eaten thing outside. It looked like it had been played with by a cat, a big cat, and it stood in the middle of the road, swaying and looking like it would topple over at any moment. Bite marks covered its body, its flesh raw. Most of its clothing had been torn away and one arm had been stripped to the bone. A total, bloody, crumpled mess. It saw me. At first it just stared, then it lumbered towards the house, right up the front path and started banging on the window. I jumped back, away from it. But the curtain didn’t fall back into place so I could still see it, its palms beating at the glass, leaving bloody, pussy, greasy hand prints.

Sam dived over and pulled the curtain across the window. The thing is still out there, you can just make out a shape behind the curtain, totally still, but at least its stopped banging. I worried that it’d attract others. Thank God for uPVC glass, though.

Sam’s gone back to sitting on the sofa like a totally non violent kind of zombie. I hope he says something soon. Even if it’s just to make a poor attempt of a pass at me. I sat with my arm around him for a while earlier, but … totally unresponsive. I’d snog him if I thought it would help.

Polly’s making lots of tea. Though I have no energy for making any kind of reference to ‘Polly put the kettle on’. Richard got all over excited when the zombie banged on the window. It sounded like he was jumping up and down while wearing a pair of clogs. But he’s gone quiet now.

November 17
9.20am Day 4
Got another email from my parents this morning. They’re ok but pretty freaked out. There are loads of zombies outside their house, milling about. Like here, the initial violence is over and anyone still alive is staying indoors, so the zombies don’t really have anything to do. I warned them to stay away from the windows. Jake’s refusing to sleep and if he does doze off, he wakes up screaming. Not surprising after what he witnessed at school. But they’re safe and they’ve got plenty of food, that’s the best I can hope for. Their chest freezer’s full so I don’t have to worry about them going out.

I’m keeping the news quiet for Sam’s sake … I just wish Polly would be as considerate.

11.10am Day 4
I could kill Polly right now. She just had an email from her best friend back up in Cambridge, saying that she’s ok. Polly squealed so loudly that Mr Cat Toy outside (yes, he’s still out there) started banging on the window again. Sam stood up. He marched over to the living room window, flung the curtain wide, almost pulling it off its rail and started banging this side of the window. I know its toughened glass, but, still …

‘Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!’ yelled Sam as he and Mr Cat Toy slammed the palms of their hands on opposite sides of the glass, looking like they were playing pat a cake, or something. ‘You fucking bastards! Just leave us alone, you shitting, fucking cunts! I hate you, I’ll kill you, you fuckers! I’ll kill every one of you! Fuck off!’

I tried to pull him away from the window, but he lashed out at me and knocked me to the floor. ‘Shit, Sophie ...’

He seemed to collapse in on himself then, like a juice box that someone had just given one last big suck to. He slumped against the windowpane, looking right at the zombie that tried to bite the glass against where his flesh rested.

I got up and went over to Sam. I put my arm around him and guided him away from the window, making sure the curtain fell back into place after us. He went quietly and I sat him down on the sofa. I held onto him while he cried. I cried too. Polly made tea, but I didn’t drink it. It’s still on the coffee table beside me, stone cold.

7.05pm Day 4
We’re hungry. I put myself in charge of rationing our meagre supplies, well it needed someone sensible to do it. I’ve done a stock take and discovered we’re down to one tin of baked beans, a couple of pot noodles, one frozen lasagne, a few slices of stale bread (one with a little patch of blue mould on it) and something unidentifiable in a tub in the fridge. Oh, and there’s some Cheerios left, maybe a bowl full, but no milk. Loads of teabags. We’ll make some sort of dinner out of that (well, obviously not the teabags), maybe save the Cheerios and pot noodles for tomorrow.

November 18
3.30pm Day 5
Another restless night, all three of us squashed up in Sam’s room, scared to shut our eyes. Richard got pretty noisy around 3am but quietened down after about half and hour. We keep a kitchen knife in the bedroom with us now, one with a comforting eight inch blade, but I still can’t sleep. We tried sleeping in shifts so that one of us would stay awake to keep watch as the other two slept. It didn’t work. We all lay there, straining our ears for any sign that Richard had escaped, until each of us drifted off into fitful sleep as the sun came up.

We have to make a decision on Richard. Polly’s all for going in – gung-ho – and doing the whole knife between the eyes thing. But as I pointed out, could any of us really do that? Maybe to one of the ones out there, if our lives depended on it, but our friend? Ok, we’ve only known each other since the start of term in September, but, Christ. We’ve been living with the guy all this time. I’ve seen him naked (don’t ask). I don’t think I could kill him and I’m not sure about Sam either. He’s a bit of a sleaze but … He’s all right really. Perhaps Polly could do it. But I don’t want to be there to find out. I mean, if she steams in there and then bottles it … we’ll have a ratio of two zombie lodgers to two humans – or one and a half zombies, depending on how hungry Richard is by now. Ok, make that one zombie to two humans.

We were all feeling really low this morning. Hungry and tired, and down to just two pot noodles in the cupboard. But then Polly made a confession – she revealed her stash, her secret stash that she had hidden in a box at the back of her wardrobe: basically, shit loads of crisps, chocolate, Haribo, boxes of Mr Kipling and a packet of blueberry muffins. Hello there, Pollyanna has a sugar coated skeleton in her closet. Gorge-purge. Who knew? But who cares – oh, I don’t mean it like that, just we get to eat today.

November 19
10.35am Day 6
Richard got really aggravated late last night, and we made a discovery.

‘For fuck’s sake, can’t that bloody dead stoner shut the fuck up?’ screamed Polly.

She leaped off the sofa and went over to the stereo, pressing play and committing us to the mercy of what ever CD some lazy bugger had left in the machine. It just happened to be one of Richard’s – The Orb – and Polly cranked up the volume on the ambient music to drown out Richard’s banging and groaning. And, you know what? Richard fell as silent as a sleeping baby.

‘What the fuck?’ said Polly, turning the music down a bit, just to be sure, but Richard remained quiet.

‘There has to be some sort of recognition going on,’ said Sam. ‘The Orb were one of his favourites, right?’

‘Yeah, they were,’ I said. ‘But … You really think he could have memories of when he was alive?’ I went over to the stereo and shuffled through a pile of CDs on the side. I found another one of Richard’s CDs, a Liberator mix, which is more techno, and put it on. As soon as the fast beat kicked in, Richard went loopy and started banging and groaning worse than before. I put The Orb back on – silence. We kept the Orb on after that.

Richard is becoming a bit like a pet, albeit one we don’t dare stroke or feed. Though I’m tempted to feed Polly to him from time to time.

5.20pm Day 6
It was a beautifully clear and sunny day today. Unseasonably warm. I could almost have believed that everything was ok – if it hadn’t of been for the ominous, shadowy figure of Mr Cat Toy still loitering outside our living room window. At least he’s been quiet all day.

Just in case anyone out there is reading this blog, don’t think that I’ve forgotten about the zombie apocalypse poem. I made a start on it today. This is what I’ve got so far:

Living, I thought I was doing that before,

But I have never been so aware of my beating heart,