Authors: Gregg Cocking
After a good hour of chatting – and sporadic scanning of the surroundings for any signs of the infected – Marie said that they should be on their way. Hearing that left me with such a horrible feeling – like when you go on holiday when you are young and have the best time ever, and then have to spend six hours in the car on the way back home and have to go back to school the next day. The feeling that you have when you reminisce about those great times, knowing that shit times are just around the corner, was probably the closest way to describe how I felt just then.
We exchanged some books and I gave them both a hug in the falling rain – “Sorry that you can’t go the way we are going,” said Jayson as he hopped onto the back of the bike and slid his arms around Marie’s waist. “Don’t worry – I’ll see you guys there. Be safe!”
As they pulled off and a fine spray of water settled on my nose from the back tire, I thought of something. “Hey! Marie! Jayson! Wait up!” I shouted. Nothing. Luckily Marie looked in her rear view mirror and saw me waving my arms at them before they disappeared between the maze of cars. She turned the bike around and came back. “All okay?” she asked as she lifted her visor, and deep inside I was disappointed that she didn’t take her helmet off and shake her hair again. “Just give me a second,” I said as I dived into the car for a pen. I grabbed one of my books, Irvine Welsh’s Maribou Stork Nightmares, which I am just over halfway through, and ripped out the blank back page and quickly wrote on it. “Here,” I said as I handed it to Marie after folding it up to protect it from the rain. “Please give this to my girlfriend Lily Fontaine – I am sure that she is there in Bloemfontein. If you could ask around for her I would really appreciate it.” She smiled and nodded before tucking the piece of paper with Lily’s name on the outside into her top leather pocket. Then they were off and I watched the bike weaving between the static cars until I couldn’t see them anymore, just listening to the faint roar of the engine and the pitter patter of the rain on the roof of the R8.
So I headed back the way that I had just come to find an alternate route, basically the story of my journey so far. I am well fed and, believe it or not, having a good time – just me, the open road (on the odd occasion) and my music.
But I better go as the battery is looking like it might bomb out soon – I am caught in a quandary as I want some sun to quickly boost the battery but I also want the rain to continue to keep the infected at bay!
Be careful, look after yourselves wherever you may be, and I will do the same.
Take care.
Sam W
11:48pm, September 20
Hi – two quick things you need to know:
1)
It has stopped raining.
2)
I am fine though, thank you for asking.
I am in a small town outside of Kroonstad – well, town is a stretch – it’s probably more like a village to be honest, and the sun broke through the clouds this morning. I guess that I can’t be too upset – I was hoping for a good spell of rain, and to rain for a week almost non-stop was beyond my wildest dreams. But now I have to face the fact that if they see me, and when I say they I obviously mean the infected, I’ll be an open invitation to attack. I fortunately have not had to use any of my ammunition yet, but I have a strong feeling that I am going to be using a lot of it in the coming days.
Okay, but before I get into that, let me fill you in on the last couple of days (no sign of Marie or Jayson, although she has been in two of my dreams lately, and no… not those kinds of dreams). After one hectic detour around Vereeniging which took almost the rest of the day, I discovered that the more rural roads and those outside of the towns are a lot easier to negotiate. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Yeah, I thought so to… On those open roads I got the Audi up to past the 150 kilometre per hour mark in places, but when there was an obstruction, such as the one which I encountered which saw a jackknifed truck, almost fully burned out, surrounded by battered cars, almost fully burned out too, then I was in the shit. Sure, if I didn’t have such a low profile car as the Audi R8, I could have driven ‘around’ the catastrophic crash, on the bumpy, sodden ground and carried on on my merry way, but I don’t, so I couldn’t… If there had been a useable car there that could have got me around, say a 4x4 or a double cab bakkie, then maybe I would have toyed with the idea of swapping cars. (But to be honest, I am really attached to this car! How materialistic is that in this current climate? But hey, I keep on visualising myself pulling up to Bloemfontein at some big gates, honking the horn and driving into the safe haven in a sports car – all the kids would gather round whooping with glee as I revved the engine, and then I’d see Lil… she would be beautiful. She’d come running towards me as I climbed out of the car and I’d go down on one knee to eventually propose in the right way… Okay, yes, I have thought about this once or twice). So that’s the hassle with these rural roads – if there is an obstruction, you have to travel back a hell of a distance to come across the next road or off ramp and can lose a couple of hours, or in the worst scenarios, a day’s worth of travel time.
It was on one of these ‘retours’ as I have come to call them that I came across one of the most mind-boggling things that I have ever seen… from a distance I thought it was one of the infected who had gotten over their fear of the rain and was walking towards me in the middle of the road, but as I got closer, I noticed something – this thing, this person, was walking normally – no lumbering strides, no shuffling along – it was a purposeful walk. Oh, and they had an AK47 too.
I slowed down and reached for my gun – I approached the person at around 30 kilometres per hour, and as I did so I lowered the window and raised the gun. He – I could now see that it was a man, a monster of a black man with muscles in places that I never even knew existed – smiled an infectious smile and raised his hand to greet me. I quickly withdrew my pistol back into the car in the vain hope that he had not seen it, and felt slightly embarrassed by the size of my gun compared to the size of the AK47 hanging from around his shoulders (they do always say that black men are more gifted in the size department, don’t they?)
“Eita,” he beamed, his pristine white teeth glowing despite the dullness of the day. I turned off the car and got out, still astounded by the sight of this man standing before me. “Um… hi,” I said, unsure how to start the conversation. “Do you need a lift somewhere?” I asked. “Nah, man,” came the quick reply. “I’m sharp.” And the smile remained. “Are you sure?” I urged, “I can make space in my car, it will be no problem.” “Sweet ride,” he said as he admired the car, his voice a weird combination of a South African Will Smith and James Earl Jones, “But I’m fine.” I didn’t know what to say. “But you’re out here in the open with… with… them. And you have no protection.” “Ah – but I have this,” he said, nodding towards the AK47. “I have this to help.” I was getting slightly exasperated. “But it won’t rain forever – they’ll come after you soon enough and you can’t have enough ammo to kill them all – fuck, the whole world is full of them.” My voice had gotten higher as I spoke, even though I was trying to stay calm. “Chillax man,” he said in that powerful yet soothing voice of his. Chillax I thought? Chillax? What the hell is that? Then it hit me – chill and relax. I laughed. So did he.
We both leaned against the car in the drizzle and he told me his story. His name was Mphethi and he was a father of three – ‘was’ being the significant word. When this all happened, his wife and three kids – two daughters and a son – were killed right in front of him by a gang of the infected. He managed to fight some of them off, but it was to no avail – he said that more and more of them kept coming and coming until he eventually had to flee to save himself. “It was too late anyways,” he reflected, unable to look me in the eye. “I could see that it was already too late for my family.”
He spent the next couple of weeks bouncing around between family and friends, trying to deal with the grief of losing his wife and children as well as dealing with the chaos of a world turned upside down. “I had some close calls… very close calls,” he recalled, “But I had to keep on moving, you know, man? I couldn’t stay still. It was hectic.” He went on to relay a story of how he beat three of them to death, leaving nothing but three bloodied pulps behind (if you think that I am being too graphic you should have heard his version of the story). And now, for the past two weeks, Mphethi has been walking… yes, WALKING, to Bloemfontein. “I have lost my beautiful wife, I have lost my three amazing children… I’ll never see them again. Ever. I don’t have anything to live for really.” (And at this stage he raised his voice to a frightening shout). “If they want to come and get me, I am here! They can see me – they know I have killed a lot of them so far.” (And then back to normal). “Let them come. If they get me, well, so be it, man.”
We shared some food and I tried to convince him to jump in with me and I could at the very least take him to get a car of his own. But it was to no avail. “Sorry man, this is what I am doing. Great to meet you and good luck. If the Lord desires, then we shall meet up again in Bloemfontein.” And that was it – he flung his AK47 back over his shoulder and started walking, raising his left hand in a sort of salute as he trudged down the street with all his life’s belongings in a rucksack. All I could do was shrug, say a quick prayer for him and carry on looking for another route to Bloem.
Other than that it’s just been hitting the road daily, and now, trying to avoid the infected. So far this little town seems okay and I reckon I’ll have a decent enough sleep tonight, before braving the world again tomorrow. I am in a converted barn/workshop thing in the middle of town and haven’t seen any of the infected for miles. Maybe they are starting to thin out, as Lil had mentioned, the further away that you get from the main centres.
I did a bit of a recon throughout the town today, armed with my guns and a backpack. I decided to stop at around 4pm-ish so that I would have enough time to find a decent enough stop over. As I said, it hardly even warrants being called a town as there were less than a dozen buildings which I visited. As I had guessed, the little petrol station shop, which I guess must have catered for the needs of those who stayed here, was completely bare – those that had passed through here before had taken everything, even the light bulbs for some reason. The other buildings – a handful of houses, something that looks like it might have once been a police station due to its two cells, but obviously abandoned long for this whole infection nonsense, and a mechanics – didn’t produce too much in terms of useable and eatable food, but I did find some plum trees in one of the gardens which had a healthy crop (if that’s what you call it?) which made for good, if slightly messy eating. One of the houses also had a solar geyser which afforded me the opportunity of having a good, long clean after all these days on the road (I have been trying not to use the air conditioning in the Audi to try and preserve petrol, so you can imagine how great I smell). It was a fantastic shower and I don’t think I will have a better one as long as I live! It was amazing just to feel the warmth of the water. I stood there for ages, probably, thirty or forty minutes although I cannot be sure as I totally lost track of time, and only got out because I could feel the pressure of the shower lessening – I’d obviously almost run the thing dry. Thanks whoever owned that little shithole for caring so much for the environment.
Alright then, I am tired – driving really takes it out of you. I am in the car for nine or ten hours a day – if I drove that long in my ‘other’ life in a week, then that would have been a hell of a lot.
Take care
Sam W
8:26am, September 21
Remember that good sleep I was telling you about last night? That fucking never happened! But this is what did…
At about 1am I woke up with what I thought was wind blowing the barn/workshop thingy’s door, so I got out of the car, having been sleeping quite nicely on the reclined passenger seat, and went to go shut it properly. As I put my hand on the round wooden handle to give it a good tug shut, I heard a groan –
the
groan. It was the infected.
I peered through the gap between the two doors, and yip, there they were… five of the infected trying to get into the barn – I could see the steam rising from their foreheads as they sweated away in the cold night air. I snuck slowly and carefully back to the car, taking care not to knock over any of the multitude of noise making tools and contraptions littered around the barn. I caught my reflection in the side mirror, highlighted by a streak of moonlight coming through a slit in the roof. I looked petrified, even though inside I felt as calm as could be expected. I grabbed the two guns which were stationed on the dashboard, checked that they were loaded and that the safety was off on both, and headed back to the door as slowly and as steadily as I could.
When I got there, the klutz that I am, I actually walked into the bloody thing! I was being so careful not to stand on or to knock anything, that I miscalculated how far away the door was and went right into it. A blinding pain enveloped my nose and my face and for a second the world was just white. I totally forgot about the five infected outside – just a few feet from me – who surely would have heard the hollow thump of me walking into the door. I felt something running down my cheek. Blood, I thought. I wiped it with my finger and held it up to the moonlight – it was clear. I was crying from the pain and didn’t even realise it. I felt my nose, and although it was tender to the touch, somehow it wasn’t broken, though the two black eyes that I now have are testimony to the force of the collision.