Great Bitten: Outbreak Read online

  I know all of these things. And I will report them all to you.

  For now, Warren Fielding, signing off.

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  Introduction

  “We come to beginnings, only at the end.” – William Throsby Bridges

  I hate zombies.

  I hate practically everything, but zombies really rank it right up there along with reality TV shows and fake tan. The apocalypse has eradicated the latter two, but it’s meant an exponential rise in the former, and I can't even begin to explain how irrationally irritating that is. I’m waiting for the day I see one of same said reality stars with a fake tan still vaguely intact, then I’m really going to go to town with any weapon I have to hand.

  So, you found me? And you followed? I’m honoured. Well, I’m not really, but that’s what you’re meant to say isn’t it? At least that’s what people used to say when we had culture and some people had manners.

  There’s been a lot going on since the UK became infected. Like I said, I’m going to get it all written down for you, and I promise you I am going to find out what happened here. The more I find out, the more I will write. If this ends abruptly then shit, I didn’t do that well after all and my promotion to investigative journalism ended badly. But I’m going to write what I can because when it comes down to it, I’ve got nothing else left to do with my evenings and the escapism helps me forget where I am right now. It also helps put all my thoughts in order. I was a journalist before and the only thing I was good at was discovering the truth. Now it turns out I’m also good at surviving, but the desire to find the truth hasn’t abated.

  Just in case the literary methods of the latter centuries of mankind didn’t make it through the end of the world, this bit is what you’d call the soliloquy. Shakespeare used them quite a lot and man I fucking hated them when I was studying it at school, but it’s going to be the only way I can write this for you without turning into a mumbling madman and hopping from event to event, time to time, like some poor mash-up between Pulp Fiction and Dawn of the Dead. What I’m going to tell you this time, and thankfully I have a few days’ worth of safety to get it all written, is what’s already happened to me so far. The heroines have the axes already buried in their heads and the bikers have long since ran out of fuel. Right now, it’s around July 26th of the year 2015. Because I don’t know exactly what the date is now, I can’t say how long it’s precisely been since this all went south on us. And whilst I’ve got a really good idea about what’s been going on now, in the early days I didn’t have the first fucking clue.

  So with my few days of grace given to me, I’m going to tell you about my baby steps in to the world that was no longer a world, and how amongst so many other millions of people in this country, somehow I was the one to come out of that particular shitstorm alive. I wasn’t the only one and I know I’m not alone in the UK, not by a long stretch. But it doesn’t matter how many others might be out there, shrugging their shoulders as they cry cold tears by candlelight. I stood and looked out on a sea of the undead, and their moans froze a heart I had long before thought was already cold. And whilst you would have thought the juxtaposition would have made me realise my cold heart was hot and alive, pumping my body with fear and passion and love for those I was defending, it only emphasised my vulnerability. It made me realise that I had been a loner for most of my life and now the odds truly were stacked against us all. The only person that I was going to live for was me, because in every sense of the words we were all, every one of us, already the waiting dead, and no one wanted me to live more than I did right at that moment.

  Remember dear readers, I am not a storyteller and I am not a hero. This may not be the prettiest, nor the most eloquent tale you have ever read. I am a journalist, and I find the answers to the questions that people never thought to ask. This is what I am doing now; finding those answers for us all, so the world can be restored to some vague semblance of normality. But what I did first? There are nights I wake in a cold sweat in fear and shame at how I went through the first weeks of my survival. This is what I remember. This is what I did next when the UK all fell down.

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  Chapter One

  “primum vivere, deinde philosophari” – Arthur Schopenhauer

  “Get me a whisky.”

  My voice croaked, cracked and hoarse from the insane bike ride I had taken out of the capital and away from the blood and fire that social networking sites proclaimed was coursing through the streets of London.

  “Whisky? What the fuck Warren, you need water, not booze! It’s not even eleven in the morning!”

  My head was banging and my anger was rising to match it. I’d ridden all the way to West Sussex from London and seen people dead or dying and a plane on an inexorable crash landing. I couldn’t give a fuck what time of day it was or how raw my throat felt. Right at that moment I needed the cold flash of a hard drink to take off the sharp edges cutting at my brain, and all I had was my little sister poking the sore bits with a stick. Thankfully her other half Rick saw my irritated eye roll and headed straight for their drinks cabinet, pouring me a generous helping of single malt, bringing it to me and making sympathetic eye contact. I nodded gratefully as Carla hissed at him for placating me, and downed it in one go. I winced and gritted my teeth as a warm fire rolled down my windpipe and set my empty gut ablaze. The edges of my eyes felt fuzzy and for the first time since seeing the old lady stagger down Brick Lane I felt vaguely relaxed, although lucid is probably a better word to use in hindsight.

  Carla stood in front of me with her arms crossed and a disapproving pout on her pointy face. I sneered at her then, not ready to go to battle with a lawyer at that time of the morning. I held out my glass in the direction of Rick with a hopefully endearing eyebrow. When he didn’t move I waggled the glass around a little in the time-honoured gesture of a man in need of a refill. Rick hesitated, not wanting to cross his girlfriend twice in such short order. Carla relented herself this time though, and poured me another measure with a disapproving snarl. She slammed the glass down hard on the dining table in front of me.

  “After this we start talking. I’ve just spent the best part of five hundred quid down the supermarket and the DIY store, and I’m not even sure why yet.”

  I didn’t let my gaze drop from hers as I took another grateful gulp of liquor. My hard and brutish façade was usurped however when the fumes went up my nose and I snorted, choking and spitting half the drink on her ridiculous skin-tight jeans. Carla rolled her eyes incredulously and pulled out a chair, plonking herself onto its cushion in frustrated exhaustion. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand and looked up at me from bloodshot, mascara-smeared orbs.

  “What’s happening Warren? I read on the news that there’s been at least one plane crash. London’s been locked down and they’ve stopped reporting live since a reporter got his ear chewed off on the early morning news. What did you see?”

  I recounted to her my ride down after seeing Old Ma Deathly staggering up the street. I didn’t leave out any of the details, of what I saw in Croydon or of the plane that crashed overhead as I came through the Downs.

  “But what about the roads? Was anyone panicking?”

  “I really don’t think word had properly got about when I decided to do a runner. What time did they think they could lock London down?”

  “Not long after you got out, so it’s a damned good thing you left when you did. I think you were right, they saw thousands of people on public transport and this thing spreading out of control before anyone could blink. The stock markets are in chaos and I haven’t even been nagged to work from home today. That’s bizarre and you know it. Have your work even tried to ring?”

  I thought about this briefly but then realised without surprise that not only had the office not been in contact, I also didn’t give a flying fuck. I was focused before on saving my life and the last thing I was going to do was check in with my boss. I wondered then how many horror stories had played out acr
oss the city already this morning as hard-nosed jobsworths had stoically made their way to work despite the social network explosion and news feeds that were repeatedly telling people to stay at home. The bland expanse of my desk was going to remain the last thing on my mind as I prepared us to survive whatever was going to go down.

  “So you’ve been to the shops like I asked? What did you get?”

  “What didn’t I get? Loads of bottled water, tins of crap. Honestly, who eats this stuff, it looks disgusting! Minced beef in a can?” Carla simulated choking and I shook my head at her.

  “Anything else?”

  She started counting off on her fingers. “I got the stuff you see them getting on the films – I wasn’t sure what else to take. Batteries, candles, vitamins, painkillers, loads of first aid stuff. Flour – make sure you get me a recipe to make bread before the internet breaks – salt, hydration tablets…”

  “Okay okay I get it, you’re an apocalyptic domestic goddess. What about stuff for the house?”

  “I left that to Rick, I couldn’t carry half of what he picked up. We’ve got some hatchets, some two by four and nails to put over the windows, blankets, torches, that kind of stuff.”

  I went to stand up so I could set to work, but Carla quickly waved me down. “Wait! Warren, you are not nailing horrid bits of wood across my windows unless I know this thing is coming here. They might have it sorted in the capital you know? Or at least in the major cities. We’re a long way outside of anywhere heavily populated so maybe it’s going to pass us by?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll take a look at the news myself first before we decide that. If they’ve already locked down London, and I have no idea how they think they’re going to achieve that, then they think it’s at risk of spreading. Turn on the TV, I want to see what’s been going on since I left.”

  I followed her through to her lounge and threw myself into an armchair, the initial buzz of the whisky now fading and exposing the pain in my saddle-sore arse and burning calves. Cycling from London? What was I thinking? As Carla switched to the BBC though I sat up and on the edge of my seat and stopped just short of dropping my jaw both in relief and disbelief.

  “They’re not live feeds, and they’re mostly aerial views now to be honest. Some people are rioting and they appear to be focusing on that rather than the fact that most people are trying to suck each other’s eyeballs out of their sockets.”

  I was ignoring Carla at this point. London was literally burning.

  The riots in 2011 had been bad enough. I hadn’t enjoyed covering that; no one wanted to see people burning down family businesses and smashing through windows just so they could get a bigger TV or a glossy new Blu-ray. This looked like something else entirely. A helicopter was circling near St Mary’s Axe, or the Gherkin if you’re either unsure about London, or an asshole who wants to sound like he knows what’s cool when it comes to talking about city architecture. It seemed to be circling pretty low for central London, but it wasn’t exactly a normal day.

  I can’t describe what I saw without using stereotypes. Ants scurrying? Bees crawling over a honeycomb? Shoaling sardines? Name any animal that swarms together in its thousands, and that is what that camera was capturing. I squinted at the screen trying to make out whether they were rioters, evacuees or something more insidious. There hadn’t been too many hours since I had left that area of the city myself, and now mobs were streaming through the streets and tearing apart everything they saw in their path. Whilst it might seem unbelievable now, when you open up a bit more into the undesirable parts of England’s ‘culture’ the inevitability of populated areas succumbing to any aggressive virus is woefully exposed. I was guilty of it in my late teens and early twenties. Most were guilty of it for longer, and harder. Before civilization evaporated, Britain’s younger generations took to the streets and drank until they could barely walk let alone talk. Combine blind drunkenness with loud music and general ignorance, and the first infected making their way into London’s nightclubs and tourist hotspots in the early hours of the morning had an absolute feast and didn’t care if their flesh and blood came with 30% proof.

  “What time did the media get hold of this?”

  “They must have caught on from Twitter and Facebook. Not long after you called from Croydon they were declaring the City a no-go zone. No one can believe how quickly it’s degenerated out there, it makes the Riots look like a fucking tea party.” Carla shook her head with a faraway look, and I wondered whether she was slightly in shock from what she had seen so far. I can’t say I could blame her if she was, but we really didn’t have time for damsels in distress at that point and she had never really been one for playing Rapunzel.

  “Carla, do you honestly think they’re going to be able to quarantine London? Never mind all the major routes out and the Tube, you’ve got dozens upon dozens of minor roads all over the place. From what I see most days the Met is usually busy scratching its arse and sorting out domestic disputes – they’re not going to know where to put themselves with this lot going on. Look at the city after the July bombings, and the Riots. Still no one has any guns. I saw that plane coming down – they must have let infected people on it. The place is going to be chaos quicker than you can say Jumping Jack Flash.

  Look, let’s just get the house secure, okay? We’ll board up the windows and make sure we’ve got water stocked up and plenty ready to weather out a week or so. If your neighbours even try to ask – and if they’ve seen the news I sincerely fucking doubt they will – then we’ll be ignoring them.”

  I went to get up and Carla pushed me back down with ease. In my defence she had the higher ground and my legs were starting to feel like elastic bands, otherwise I’m sure I would have been able to stand my ground. She waved her arms at me like some crazed Sicilian housewife, clearly a little tense at the idea of having her pretty windows boarded up and making a blot on the pretty landscape of her up-market neighbourhood.

  “If you think you’re just sticking two by four on my windows in the middle of the day you’ve got another thing coming. Let’s keep calm and do a bit more research on this thing. I mean, there’s soldiers stationed all around the country these days and the police in London go armed, no matter what you think you see when you don’t go out and socialise. We don’t need to overreact – we’ll look like freaks!”

  “Carla,” I drawled, helped out somewhat by the whisky it has to be said. “I watched a plane fall out of the sky. London is a warzone. They’re trying to quarantine the capital, and we’re talking about a country that can’t even organise gritters in winter. If I thought for a second we could save your precious sashays by holding out and doing some research, and oh boy I know how you lawyers love research, then I’d do it. But I saw that woman on the street, and the only freaks I’m seeing are the ones trying to rip everyone to pieces. Now what do you care more about, your ass getting chewed off by a neighbour worried about how good his view is, or one of those fucking zombies. They look like they’d love a piece of your ass.”

  She slapped me. I can’t really blame her; maybe I was hitting a little below the belt. But passion proves a winning argument, and I had no doubt that my words had hit home. She was breathing heavily, and Rick was notable in his absence. Sensible man, keeping out the way when siblings look like they’re going to go toe-to-toe. From crazy to matter of fact, she settled her hands on her hips and glared down at me.

  “You’re fucking nasty Warren, you know that? You know what’s worse? I can’t even blame the whisky. So we do it your way and board ourselves in, then what? Look outside at the street. Can you see droves of people leaving their homes, cannibals…”

  “Zombies.”

  “… Zombies, you fucking smartarse, chasing people down the street? No. Are there police cars patrolling and keeping the peace? No. Do we need to worry yet? No. It’s still early. It’s still only being reported around London. If things start to head south then I agree we can board up the house, but not before. I don’t wa
nt to be the house that triggered a riot in Bennington because everybody thought the apocalypse had arrived.”

  “If you’d have been in Croydon, you’d have been pretty certain the apocalypse had arrived.”

  “I’m pretty sure Croydon looks like that in the early hours most weekends.”

  “Now who’s the smartarse?”

  “Have you two finished bickering?”

  Rick stalked back in to the room. It looked like he’d been to the car, as he was doing the proud work of International Man by carrying an uncountable amount of carrier bags at once at the expense of the blood flow to all of his fingers.

  “These are the last of the bags of food. I’ll get it all put away. Christ knows what we’re doing with all the stuff from Homebase, sounds like you two are sorting that out though.”

  If I hadn’t been so pissed off that Carla was getting the upper-hand, I would have laughed at his blatant attempt to lighten the mood. At least our comic relief was earmarked; I decided straight away we needed to keep him out of red shirts, otherwise he’d be dead in a week.

  “Fine, we do it your way. But we’re not going to sit around doing fuck all. We’re going to get as much stuff off the internet as we can. We’re going to see what the area is like, what escape routes we’ve got… hey, did you buy that boat in the end?”

  “Bought it months ago, you were meant to come out in it for the weekend, remember? But you blew me out for some journalist network that you couldn’t miss, blah blah blah.”

  “It was a lie and you know it, I hate those social things. I blew you out as I get sick as a dog on boats. But any port in a storm sister. That may prove to be a very canny investment in the next couple of days.”

  I resigned myself to the fact that Carla was in her own house and was accordingly ruling the roost. It did make sense to wait at least until the later afternoon – the streets weren’t exactly melting down, and we could do a bit more planning than my adrenalin and whisky-fuelled psyche would have possibly allowed for. I helped Rick bring in the stuff from Homebase and made a checklist.