Canada – 78
US – 740
What the hell has happened in England? Over a thousand? How could a country that’s been on full alert after terror attacks and student protests and economic meltdown protests have managed to lose over a thousand people? Is it the same for the other countries, only they’re not reporting the actual truth? How can Italy be doing so well compared to her neighbours? I’m calling bullshit on Italy right now, those figures can’t be right.
Either way though, everything is significantly worse today than it was yesterday. Yesterday we had a chance at flying out of here. Now? No way. England is under quarantine. They’re not letting anyone in.
The BBC said there was a curfew in major cities and cameras were being set up to catch any more of the infected. The military has been mobilised and is on almost every street corner.
Oh, and get this … our delightful Prime Minister has effectively ended every military occupation that England is going through right now. Seeing that home is much more of an important issue than fighting in the Middle East and Eastern Africa he’s announced plans to immediately bring all the troops home so they can go on active duty to protect England from within. The flights began yesterday but the bulk of troops won’t start leaving their locations for another two months. We’re abandoning the countries we ripped apart. And he wants us to leave the European Union so they can take care of things on their own!
America, meanwhile, is saying that their commitment in these regions is still strong. You know how you have to occupy a country to stamp out communism and terrorism? Well, you have to do the same for zombies.
A thousand people in England. Jesus. How are they going to deal with a thousand rabid people with one voice? If they all have the same telepathic madman guiding them then there will be a plan. An objective. They’ll go after the Houses of Parliament. They’ll go after the Royal Family. They’ll throw themselves at military bases and power plants until everyone has run out of bullets. They’ll shut the country down and bring it to its knees. And then what? Turn us all? Lure us under the false promise of safety? Box us in and then let one zombie go crazy on us?
11 August
With flying to England something of an impossibility right now, we’re on our way to Gibraltar. Azeem and Lalla are still with us. We’re walking. That’s right, we’re walking two hundred kilometres to Gibraltar in the middle of the Spanish summer through something that feels like a desert. We’re not the only ones this crazy either. There are around fifty people in our group. A couple of cyclists zip by every now and then. Even the cheapest of bikes probably cost a thousand euro these days.
I’ve walked by a sign that has various destinations in kilometres. I keep thinking it’s in miles and that we still have to go farther than that. God, that depresses me. Then I remember I’m not in England (you’d think all of this sunlight would be a reminder), then I perk up. Kilometres are shorter than miles! Then I remember that two hundred of anything is still really fucking far. It’s the entire width of Ireland.
No buses are running. They’re out of petrol. Because of the whole country going into shut down, no one was delivering any petrol, or at least not enough of it. Everyone else has stocked up and is saving it for an emergency. The price has tripled since I arrived, now standing at €5 a litre.
The trains aren’t much help either. Most are on a reduced schedule, despite a previous build up of activity. They’re saying that some of the tracks have been damaged or vandalised. There were images of zombies on the tracks smacking them with axes or clubs, trying to break them apart. Even if that happened in just one location it’s managed to shut everything else down because no one is willing to risk overlooking a missing section of track and cause a couple of hundred deaths, especially when there aren’t enough ambulances or hospital beds available. Any casualty would quickly become an abandoned fatality.
So that leaves walking. We all chipped in to buy a tarp, some cord, and a couple of collapsible poles. We’re all walking whenever it is cool enough to do so. We stop at 10am and quickly set ourselves up in a camp, then hide under the tarp like it’s a tent. Then we sweat out the day until 4pm. It doesn’t get much cooler at night but at least we’re out of the harshest of the sun. We then walk again for as long as possible. Some people keep going when others stop, some need frequent breaks.
As soon as we sit down I cook up a batch of rice. And by ‘cook’ I mean: pour a cup of rice and two cups of water into a pot, leave it in the sun for half an hour, and hope for the best. Rachel took the salt and pepper shakers from the apartment in Callao. Thank god she did because this mushy slush that can barely be considered rice needs all the flavouring it can get. I share what I have with the others and get to work making a second batch, because one cup of rice does not go far with six people. If any of the shops are open in Gibraltar I’ll try to pick up some curry paste.
This is our second day. It’s the middle of the afternoon and most of my handwriting is smudged with sweat. We were unable to sleep for the middle six hours yesterday because people kept talking around us, or walking by. Sometimes we’d hear trucks honking on their horn to make sure no one was walking onto the road. We did hear a slam on the brakes, quickly followed by a lot of gasps and shrieks. None of us were willing to see what happened. I’m guessing there is at least one less person in the world after that mishap.
We then walked for a few hours, rested, walked some more, rested, and collapsed in agony at around 11pm. The six of us slept until dawn, then we got back to it. 200 kilometres from Seville to Gibraltar: it will take us at least four days to walk, probably five.
There are a few non-Spanish people with us. Some are Spaniards trying to get home to their families, or just to get to somewhere else, but at least half of us are from elsewhere. I heard a Welsh accent this morning but didn’t say anything. I’m thinking now it might be a good idea to talk to more people to see if they can help me and Rachel. I have to remember to be more proactive. Someone in this pack can help me, I know it.
Two hundred kilometres with a backpack. By foot. Kill me now.
Part 2.
Rachel just grabbed onto me and made me promise never to leave her alone. Someone in earshot has given her a bad feeling, but I don’t know who. A few days ago she and Cristina were wary of me after I helped to drag Lalla out of the bathroom. They’ve both had a couple of meltdowns since the walk began. Cristina has shouted at me a couple of times. Not sure why.
Rachel has timing, I’ll give her that. I was just about to go off and find the Welsh guy when Rachel began blubbering. Half an hour later Cristina needed to pee so she brought Rachel and Lalla with her. I had to stand on guard, with my back turned and facing the sweltering sun with enough sweat dripping into my eyes to blind me. We all brought our backpacks. Cristina was using hers as a shield from the crowd of onlookers who weren’t all that interested in giving her some privacy.
I can only imagine the end of the world is going to jostle even more screws loose in people’s heads. They’re already looting. They’re driving like assholes. Some car crashes have ended in brawls to the death because free reign has been pushed open a few more notches.
The police are going to be too overwhelmed to deal with everyone going batshit crazy. We’re now becoming too afraid to investigate when someone screams. We’ll run for cover and hope it was just a random bystander being raped, somewhere out of sight, and not someone being turned into a zombie.
This morning there was this woman shouting and screaming at some guy. We all turned to see what was going on. It was clear that he knew her. He kept shaking his head and trying to walk away. She followed and kept shouting at him in another language. It seemed very much like a, “Don’t you walk away from me, you bastard!”
Let’s face it: his life was in danger from the mob. If she kept it up and found someone to translate then she could have said anything. It would have been her word against his. There was a chance of the crowd turning on him regardless of what the truth was. What a magnificent adult she turned into.
If some bitch points a false accusation at me and starts screaming lies then the mob will turn on me. I wouldn’t have done anything, nothing at all, but if Miss High-and-Mighty hasn’t had a waitress to shout at for days and all of her pent-up bullshit drama needs some release then I’m an easy target. She will have singled me out for a reason and I’ll never know if it’s because I’m a threat of if I remind her of some arsehole she knows. As far as she’s concerned everyone needs to learn their place and that place is to respect her, even though she hasn’t done a single goddamn thing to earn that respect. Pointing the blame at someone doesn’t earn it. Letting someone else deal with your petty bullshit doesn’t earn it either. So what if your Xanax just ran out? Are you presenting us with a solution that we will actually be able to implement within the next ten seconds? No? Then sit the fuck down.
Part 3.
One of my first culture shocks in the world was seeing some of my old teachers on a pub crawl. They invited me to join them. I got to hear Mrs Higgins and Mr Cartright slurring their words together like they were old friends. The idea that they once got trashed at college and shagged anyone that would let them didn’t even cross my mind until Mrs Higgins gawked at one of the waitresses and said, “Look at the tits on her!” Then Mr Cartright started sweet talking the lady in question. Somewhere in this bizarro-world I was instructed to call them Kerrie and Tony.
The next culture shock was landing a job. I was all ‘yes sir’ and ‘yes ma’am’. Biiiiiig mistake, especially in a warehouse.
“Jesus H Christ. ‘Sir’? Where the fuck have you come from, Eton?” Soon followed by, “Let me guess, your school was a Saint-Something, yeah?”
Indeed it was. St. Edmonds.
“Figures. You ever see a wrench before?”
Then I was quickly guided over to the despatch office, sat in front of a computer, and told to process this stack of invoices while guys twice my age unloaded the back of freight containers.
You know who needs to meet the guys at my warehouse? The screaming woman from today. She had the whole, ‘I’d like to speak with the manager’ vibe about her. The type who will ruin your life through gossip.
Yep, this little adventure of mine is hardly the stuff of legend. There’s an apocalypse going on and one middle class guy is simply trying to walk to safety through a desert. Producers from Hollywood will be lining up buy that story, no question there.
I flipped through some older entries in my diary. It turns out I’m an idiot. I watched the
Resident Evil
pentalogy. One of the things I apparently learned was to stretch and warm up before facing zombies. Have I done any stretching in the last two weeks? No. Did I even do any before or after a six hour walk with a backpack the weight of a small moon strapped to my shoulders? No. Given that high level of stupidity, I’m willing to bet that I’m exactly that kind of moron who rummages through the basement of an abandoned house, ignores the blood-smeared hand prints on the doors, walks past the array of axes and farming shears, and then screams in shock when an undead hand jumps out from the shadows and grabs onto me.
I’m dripping sweat onto my diary. I’m also wondering what will happen when my last pen runs out.
As for this two hundred kilometre trip, Ediz says it’ll be a story to tell the kids one day. Maybe his kids. Certainly not mine. I don’t want to remember the look on everyone’s face here. People are collapsing all around me. Some have actually seen the dead roaming around. For the rest it’s just been news. News of zombies, news of quarantine and border control, news of a single voice speaking on behalf of every dead person walking through the streets, news of the country going into lock down. These people are at breaking point and all they’ve had to deal with is everyone’s imagination.
Lalla is way ahead of them, of course. She won’t stop crying. All I want to do is walk in peace and quiet or sit under the tarp in peace and quiet and she won’t stop crying. Cristina is on a knife’s edge as well and is about to go full on Italian. I see her flexing and balling her fingers into a fist whenever Lalla starts blubbering again. But we can’t kick Azeem and Lalla out of the group because we’re all in this together, heading for the same destination. Azeem has already helped us. We owe him. He might be able to help us again. Considering he plans on spending another hundred and fifty kilometres trekking with Lalla by his side then I can only presume that he has the patience of a saint. Or that he’s part of an ancient order of knights, sworn to protect the Princess Lalla and bring her back to her people, where she will unite them with the crystals of Rabat and defeat the evil wizard living in the mountains.
Or she’s just a blubbering fusspot who can’t keep her shit together.
Part 4.
I managed to convince Rachel to come with me to meet the Welsh guy. After a little hunting around we found him. Liam, who’s been working in Edinburgh for the last five years, came to Barcelona for a buck’s night. He and a few of the guys got so hammered they missed their flight home. The remaining flights were haphazard, what with the dead walking around and causing a disturbance. A couple of his friends were so desperate to get back to Edinburgh that they took a train to Paris, or at least that was the plan. They texted Liam at the border and said they couldn’t go any farther, so they were stuck in Figueres or Girona or something like that. I briefly remember seeing those names on the drive after Nice.
Liam has an ex-girlfriend in Portugal so he’s trying to go in that direction. I don’t know how lucky he’ll be since all of us seem to be heading south and Portugal is directly west of us. He seems like an okay guy, but he’s very much someone who will spend his entire paycheque in the bar and then swear at the barman for throwing him out. Rachel says he kept leering at her chest. Her t-shirt is covered in sweat and she still has the chest of a fat girl in a body that is rapidly slimming down. I lost five kilos before Madrid from all of the backpacking and not eating a full meal at lunch. My clothes are hanging off me. God knows what I weigh now, considering how little we’ve been able to eat and how much we’ve walked.