For the last couple of years I couldn’t afford gym membership, not with the millstone mortgage around my neck, so I took up running. Not that frequently, it was more a case of guilt when I’d wake up on a Saturday morning and realise I'd not done anything more physical than lift a coffee mug during the past week. I’d drag on my trainers and head to the park before my brain had a chance to convince my body that going back to sleep would be a far better idea. That’s when I’d see her, running the same circuit as me.
She always had a little dog with her, a tiny thing with stubby legs, big hair and either a coat or a bow depending upon the season. She wasn’t cruel, just forgetful. She’d start off slowly, just meandering along, talking to the dog, encouraging it. As her stride lengthened, the talking would stop, and she’d start going faster until the dog couldn’t keep up. For a few steps, it’d be dragged along before she noticed the weight and remembered it was there. She’d stop, bend down, apologise profusely to it and stroke it for a minute or so. Then they would start once more at that slow and sedate pace, and sure as the sun rises, after a few steps she’d pick up the pace and the dog would be dragged along a few more steps.
Maybe she ran out of food. Maybe she thought the longer she waited the worse things would get. Maybe she thought help wasn’t coming. I’m leaning to the latter because she made her move on the 11th, the day after the car came to collect me. The sight of a dead military uniform lying uncollected in the street must have made her think there was no more help coming, not here anyway.
Wearing a backpack and hefting a cricket bat, she came out of the back gate to her house and headed straight to her car. She’d knocked two zombies over on her way there, but from my vantage point I could see They were still moving. The bag went into the car and she followed it. The engine wouldn’t start. She didn’t panic. I was impressed with that. She got out, looked around and saw that there was a zombie between her and the house. Realising it would be on her in seconds, she turned and began walking briskly up the road.
They’d noticed her by then, and two of the nearest, their faces too disfigured to even guess at their gender, slouched towards her. She gripped the bat tightly in both hands and scythed it forward, but misjudged the blow. It barely grazed the first and missed the second completely. She swung again and this time one of Them went down.
She pivoted gracefully, shifting her weight to her back foot, and brought the bat down with a ferocious backhand. The creature’s skull shattered, and I swear I saw teeth fly out of its mouth. It was stunning, and I guess she thought so too because she stopped. It was only for the merest heartbeat, just long enough to adjust her grip, to take a breath, just long enough for the first zombie, the one who’d been crawling along the curb, to rise up onto its arms and bite her leg.
She screamed and brought the bat down, again and again until its head was nothing but a reddish brown smear on the pavement. By then she was surrounded. I didn’t watch the rest.
She lost an arm at some point, chewed off above the shoulder. Enough of her left calf is gone that she can’t really stand any more. She just half sits, half lies on the pavement, until there’s some distant sound and she stirs and moves in this terrible circle, never getting more than a few inches towards it.
I wonder what happened to her dog.
11:00, 16th March.
Should I try and get the bag my neighbour took to her car? Relatively speaking it’s not far away. I can’t decide if there’s likely to be anything useful in it that would be worth the risk. Not weapons, clearly, since if she had anything better than a cricket bat she would have used it. Maybe there’s food. Then again, she left the bag in the car, so maybe not.
I have to accept some responsibility for her death. No, not responsibility, that’s not quite the right word. I didn’t know she was there, nor did she know I was here, but her actions were precipitated by a car pulling up, a uniform getting out, being killed and then left, unlooked for by anyone in the nearby houses and unclaimed by any of his comrades. If I wasn’t here then maybe she’d still be in her home, maybe she would have lived, if only for a little longer.
No, I shouldn’t think like that. I mustn’t think like that. It’s not my fault, it isn’t! Her death is not my responsibility. Even if I’d called out, I doubt I could have reached the door in time to let her in. And if I had, all that would have happened is that she’d have ended up in here, sharing my food, with the undead right outside, knowing where we were. I’ve done enough soul-searching over it, and whether I kept silent out of self-preservation, fear or cowardice and whether it was the right thing to do or not, it wasn’t a conscious decision but it was a decision, and it’s made and done.
It was that book, the romantic idea of two people finding and saving each other, of a zombie with compassion. Reality is just so much more depressing.
But the batteries ran out last night. I need more unless I want to face another night in the dark, so back downstairs I go.
19:00, 16th March.
Out of all the job descriptions I’ve ever had I think looter sounds the best. It’s certainly more rakish than survivor. It’s more proactive, yes, that’s it.
It got me out of the maudlin introspection that’s been plaguing me for the last few days. I found some more batteries for the flashlight (thank you, Jessica, I refuse to call you Jezzelle any longer. I’d apologise, but since you aren’t here…). There are two sets, neither new. Hopefully they’ll last the night.
There’s still a chance of another flashlight in the downstairs flats, but it’s such a supremely useful and practical thing I just can’t see either of them ever even thinking of buying one. Those two were both utterly hopeless, completely incapable of changing a fuse, light bulb, or even of just turning off the central heating. I kept getting these emails, the summer before last when I was at the party conference (I forget which one, I usually went to all three), saying the house was too hot. The tenants complained that they’d tried everything, but couldn’t fix it. In the end, I got in the car and drove back, arriving about three a.m. and solved the problem ten seconds later by turning the thermostat down.
No, I can’t see them having anything useful, but am I any better? I mean, there’s my toolkit, but what else of any practical use do I have here? My flashlight, and it’s a good one, along with the survival blanket, wrench, multi-tool and decent pair of walking boots, though those wouldn’t be much use right now, are stuck in the boot of my car in an underground car park on the other side of the river.
If they did have a flashlight it’ll have been an app they downloaded onto their phone. How long would that have lasted them? One night? Two? It’ll have run out by now, certainly.
When I found out they were gone, I called Jen. I was sure that, since they’d left whilst the curfew was still in place they must surely have been arrested and detained. She was in a cabinet meeting and I ended up speaking to an assistant, some officious dogsbody whom I’d never heard of and who clearly hadn’t a clue who I was. I was assured that due to the large number of people who’d left early, no one was being arrested. Then he added that they were “just muddling through with the evacuation as best they could. Thanks for the concern.” Then he hung up.
My plan, for it was my plan, though others may have come to the same conclusions, was that an evacuation of our urban areas was the only practical solution to the problems we were about to face. The only other choice was to tell the nation to stay inside, barricade their homes and hope that the zombies would die or decay before the uninfected starved. Some in the cabinet office wanted to extend that idea and use our nuclear arsenal to destroy those urban areas. That would reduce the pressure on what were increasingly scarce resources, but there was a very real risk that an action like this would bring about the anarchy and chaos that we could see taking grip elsewhere.
Our Thin Blue Line was stretched taut, even bolstered as it was by camouflage green. The only thing stopping the mass desertions that had spelled the end for Russia, was that
our troops had nowhere on the entire planet left to flee to. We needed to give people hope, and asking them to stay put was never going to do that.
We had no food coming in except that which could be stolen from aid depots and foreign shipping. The refineries were running out of oil to process, and what little fuel we did have being reserved for coastal defence. There were close to thirty million citizens, tourists and refugees in our cities and urban areas. The situation was dire, and the country on the verge of collapse. The plan I came up with was simple. It had to be.
First we would move the people to the coast where it would be easier to distribute what we could steal and fish. Then our aim was, or is, I suppose, to begin massive agricultural works. With the sea at our backs, we’ll push forward and reclaim the island. It’s not the greatest plan, I see that now, but we had so little time.
Six days after New York, the announcement was made that there was to be an evacuation. No date was set and only scant details were given, but following an increase in riots and curfew breaking, people needed to know that there was a plan and that someone was still governing. The citizens were told to prepare. Those that could would have to walk, or cycle, up to forty miles to a muster point from where they would be transported to an evacuation zone. Those that couldn’t make such a journey would be transported by train or bus.
Each city had its own evacuation plan, with cities split by postcode, each given a different muster point. The bridges over and the tunnels under the Thames had been closed, so for London there was a roughly north-south split.
As soon as it was announced, restrictions on travel were increased. Most motorways, and many A-roads, were closed to the little traffic that was left so that protective fences could be erected along the routes the evacuees were going to take. Anyone caught trying to leave a city without a permit was lucky if they ended up working on one of the gangs fortifying the roads.
Not everyone had to stay and wait. The doctors, nurses, scientists, engineers, logisticians, builders, plumbers, electricians, and others whose skills were needed to cater to the basic needs of the tens of millions of refugees were evacuated, along with their families, over that first week.
Then there were those who remained behind. In order to prevent the kind of anarchy seen in Sao Paulo the appearance of normality had to be preserved. That’s why the football matches were shown on TV, it’s why the roads were swept, why the dentists stayed open.
I’m proud of that last one. I couldn’t think of a better way to reassure people that Britain still functioned than by telling everyone to visit the dentist. A lot of people did. It’s pretty clear that of all the priorities after the evacuation, dental supplies are going to be very low on the list and we don’t want to worry about the loss of labour during the first harvests because of tooth decay. I know, this sounds really petty, but by keeping dentists open, by making all treatment free again, by telling people to go now, because they really wouldn’t get a chance in the near future, it made the evacuation real. No, it was more than that, it made the idea of survival and life afterwards real too. That kind of hope was as important in maintaining order as the sight of a whole regiment marching through the streets.
To ensure that none of those workers tried to abandon their posts, we evacuated their families during the first few days. You can call them hostages if you like, but what else were we going to do? Money wasn’t worth anything, food was scarce, and the only valuable commodity we had to offer was safety. The conditions this first wave were confronted with in the enclaves were squalid and cramped, nothing at all like the propaganda footage that was being broadcast, but it was safe.
Perhaps it would have been easier if we’d been able to evacuate the cities immediately. A rolling exodus using the trains, spread out over a week or even longer. But we couldn’t. When the evacuation was announced so to was the existence of the vaccine and that it would be administered only at the muster points. We had the delivery mechanism, one hundred million single-dose injection pens stockpiled against the pandemic we’d been waiting decades for, but of the vaccine itself, we had nowhere near enough.
During the latter days of the cold war, after Britain abandoned its biological weapons programs, it kept up its research into a so-called super-vaccine, a drug that would work against any biological agent the USSR could throw at us. It had little early success. When the iron curtain came down, the project was only saved from the axe by virtue of being a major employer in a marginal constituency. Over the decades since, under new management and with the country facing new threats, the project was revitalised until, finally, about eight years ago success was reported in agent RL-291 (9XT).
It wasn’t completely effective, far from it. In the early trials thirty percent of the animals died, forty percent contracted all seven of the test viruses and twenty-five percent contracted at least one. But consistently, in trial after trial, five percent remained free of infection. It was that five percent that made the agent effective enough to be seen as the first step on a long road of research and development that would ultimately see all the world’s worst diseases consigned to the history books. Naturally it would be the British government who would take the credit.
It was about six years ago that I first came across it. I was looking for a cause for Jen to trumpet after her popularity had been tarnished during a misguided head-to-head with the Mayor on live TV. Following a tip from Sholto, I’d been investigating a black hole in a particular hospital’s budget. I assumed it was just another scam, we’d had so many, and so I started asking questions. That quickly landed me in an underground room at the MOD being interrogated by some very unpleasant men. I promised to ask no more questions and they promised that if I did… They didn’t finish the sentence. In that place, under those circumstances, they didn’t have to.
The day after I got out of hospital I asked Jen about the vaccine and whether it would be worth trying it on this infection. Her response wasn’t at all what I was expecting. She seemed shocked that I knew about it. I thought they’d have told her about my time in the dungeons of Whitehall. Ah, secrets, what would politics be without them?
She said that yes it had been tested on humans the day before, and it did work. At least it worked some of the time, but more time was needed to manufacture enough for the entire population.
I don’t know how much I should say, even now. I suppose if this is being read by someone other than myself then National Secrets no longer matter. From the time I stopped my digging, RL-291 had been refined, redesigned, and improved. When its existence was announced we said it was ninety-nine-point-nine percent effective, but that was an exaggeration. According to Jen, the vaccine that was to be used at the muster points would, at best, stop transmission of the virus in eight percent of cases. It was a small lie, I suppose, but a necessary one.
By saying that it would be distributed at the muster points first, we kept the cities from emptying. Even with the influx of troops from overseas, if they’d left en masse there’s no way we could have stopped people from flocking to the countryside. For over a week people stayed at home. They queued for food and some queued for the dentists, above all they waited.
And whilst Britain waited, the world collapsed. Rioting consumed Europe as those from the Mediterranean countries headed north, towards the illusory security of the cold. Why they thought that would help them I can’t say, clearly none of them had seen the footage from Canada. Those from Eastern Europe headed south apparently seeking food. Great waves of refugees collided all over the continent, unable to find food, shelter, or protection. With them went the infection.
Some military units from the northern coastal regions of Denmark and Germany headed northwest to Greenland, joining elements of the Scandinavian military and refugees from Canada and the northeastern US. Others had had the same idea and this small group, well-armed though it was, was overwhelmed by waves of refugees from across the Americas, all heading for one of the largest coastlines in the world, in a land famo
us for barren desolation.
China descended into anarchy as the ill-prepared city dwelling millions headed for the illusory safety of the countryside. North Korea began an artillery barrage of the South, after Kim claimed the whole thing was an elaborate US hoax. Having to divide their forces prevented the South Koreans from properly dealing with the infection. By the time the barrage was over, it was an army of the undead marching through the mine fields in the DMZ, reaching Pyongyang about the same time as the first waves of the living dead from China waded through the Tumen River.
New Zealand evacuated to the North Island, Australia to Tasmania. Theirs was a more ruthless form of evacuation, taking only a select few of the general population and sinking any ships approaching, whether they came from the mainland or from elsewhere. South Africa tried implementing a similar plan using Madagascar, but they weren’t the only ones. That island nation soon descended into a bloody four-way war before the number of infected outnumbered the living and the war turned into a battle for survival.
Very little of this final curtain call of civilisation was broadcast in the UK. Most of what I learnt came from Sholto, or rather I culled it from the files he sent. Gigabyte after gigabyte of raw video, audio recordings of calls, satellite images, emails, and pictures. I’m certain he didn’t have time to go through it himself, he must have just grabbed all that he could from wherever he could and sent it on. I went through some of it, enough to get an overview, but I thought, and I still do, that there will be enough time in the future to go through it and create a proper archive of the end.
Almost two weeks after the first scenes were broadcast from New York, when Jen made that final broadcast announcing that the evacuation would start the next day, countries the world over had fallen. All that was left were towns and villages, hamlets and houses, barricaded and held against zombies and refugees alike. They were isolated and alone as the power failed, and that once mighty global communication system finally collapsed.