Journal of the Living Read online

  JOURNAL OF THE LIVING

  BY

  JOHN MORALEE © 2015

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image © John Moralee 2015

  The moral right of John Moralee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  EDITORIAL NOTE

  ENTRY ONE

  ENTRY TWO

  ENTRY THREE

  DAY ONE

  ENTRY FOUR

  ENTRY FIVE

  ENTRY SIX

  ENTRY SEVEN

  ENTRY EIGHT

  ENTRY NINE

  ENTRY TEN

  ENTRY ELEVEN

  ENTRY TWELVE

  ENTRY THIRTEEN

  ENTRY FOURTEEN

  ENTRY FIFTEEN

  ENTRY SIXTEEN

  ENTRY SEVENTEEN

  ENTRY EIGHTEEN

  ENTRY NINETEEN

  ENTRY TWENTY

  ENTRY TWENTY ONE

  ENTRY TWENTY TWO

  ENTRY TWENTY THREE

  ENTRY TWENTY FOUR

  ENTRY TWENTY FIVE

  ENTRY TWENTY SIX

  ENTRY TWENTY SEVEN

  ENTRY TWENTY EIGHT

  ENTRY TWENTY NINE

  ENTRY THIRTY

  ENTRY THIRTY ONE

  ENTRY THIRTY TWO

  ENTRY THIRTY THREE

  ENTRY THIRTY FOUR

  ENTRY THIRTY FIVE

  ENTRY THIRTY SIX

  ENTRY THIRTY SEVEN

  ENTRY THIRTY EIGHT

  ENTRY THIRTY NINE

  ENTRY FORTY

  ENTRY FORTY ONE

  ENTRY FORTY TWO

  ENTRY FORTY THREE

  FINAL ENTRY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EDITORIAL NOTE

  Shortly after the zombie apocalypse, a survivor called Ben Smith posted a series of blogs on the internet, recording his life in Britain. The following is his complete journal. Only minor changes have been made to the original text, which can be found in the Ben Smith archive in the British Apocalypse Museum and on the Journal of the Living website.

  The Editor

  BEN SMITH’S JOURNAL

  ENTRY ONE

  Ignore the blood on my face. It’s not infected. It’s mine. I cut my forehead a couple of days back raiding an Asda superstore in the territory of The Pure Bloods. On a whim I grabbed this laptop from the electrical aisle. I thought I’d like to write a journal about my life when I had some free time between hunts and raids. This blog might be the only record of what happened to me. I’m going to fill these blogs with things I consider important, so other people, like you, can know what it was really like living in Britain after the zombie apocalypse.

  It’s no picnic, believe me.

  Dear Reader, my name’s Ben Smith. I’m a survivor of the zombie plague, living in England ten months after civilisation collapsed. I’m alive for now - but I’ll probably undead by the time you read these words.

  At the time of writing this first entry, I’m hiding out in an old farmhouse a few miles north of Watford, watching a gang of Pure Bloods hunting for me and my friends. They want back the food supplies we grabbed in the Asda raid. They’re coming my way now – so I’d better stop writing. I’ll write some more when it’s safe.

  Bye for now.

  ENTRY TWO

  The Pure Bloods have gone now. It’s safe for me to write some more – telling you some things that you should know.

  I’m a member of a small group of survivors. There are currently six of us – me, Sadie, Neal, Angela, Jason and Hayley. We don’t have a permanent base because it’s risky to stay in one place too long – but we do live together in a camp. It’s currently hidden in a clearing deep in the woods miles from anywhere important. Our base consists of a camper van, some tents and lots of razor wire fencing. Sadie and Neal guard the camp while the rest of us scout out sources of food and essential supplies.

  I’m the leader of the hunting party just because I’m the oldest. I wasn’t anything special before Day One of the zombie apocalypse like a ninja or SAS captain. I was just an ordinary guy with a boring job in the City. I sat at a desk all day staring at figures while writing witty emails and tweets. Nothing I ever did meant anything. I made a load of money for myself and spent it on expensive toys like fast cars and fast women – but I didn’t want to have real responsibilities, like getting married and having kids. Those were things you did after you were too old for clubbing and drinking all night. I didn’t want to settle down. Not me. I was Mr Party. You wouldn’t have liked me if you had met me a year ago. I was a thirty-five-year-old jerk acting like a hormonal teenager. I was forced into growing up by necessity. All the things I did back then were selfish and stupid – but now I have responsibilities.

  I have to keep my family alive.

  Robbing the Pure Bloods of their supplies was a pretty dumb move. They don’t exactly forgive and forget – but since we’re already on their hit list for just being untested I had to do it. We needed food and medicines from that Asda superstore because we were running out. Now we have enough food to last another month in the back our van. We’ll feast tonight – providing we get back to the camp.

  I hid our van behind a disgustingly filthy cow shed that I knew the Pure Bloods wouldn’t go near because of the smell of the dead animals, which must have been ripped apart by zombies a few months ago. The rotten carcasses are covered with flies. I would have been sick smelling the decomposing flesh if I had not become used to smelling bad things – but it barely registers now.

  “Are we leaving now?” Hayley asked me a few minutes ago. She looked desperate to go back to the camp. Her big blue eyes stared at me from behind a fringe of long blonde hair that had blown in her face as the wind changed direction, making a whistling noise through the broken windows of the house.

  “Not yet,” I told her. “The Pure Bloods might still be nearby. We’d better wait a bit longer.”

  “How long?”

  “They’ll want to go home before it’s dark,” I said. “So we will have to wait another hour.”

  “I hate this place,” she said. “It’s creepy.”

  The farmhouse was creepy – but it was also deserted. The elderly residents had died upstairs by committing suicide in a bedroom with a shotgun. I’d found their skeletons lying on the bed next to the weapon. It had been empty – but I’d found some shells in a cupboard under the stairs. It had been a good day because of that. A shotgun was a great weapon against the living and the dead. It was better than the crossbow that I carried, except for its limited ammo supply.

  After I had told Hayley she would have to wait here for a bit longer, she pouted and stomped off, acting exactly like a normal ten-year-old girl. She left the house through the kitchen and joined her teenage brother Jason, who was crouched low behind a stone wall watching the road through his binoculars. He was wearing a camouflage jacket and dark jeans, practically invisible. Hayley sat down beside him and tore open a Snickers bar, stuffing it into her mouth hungrily. It was the first chocolate bar she had eaten in several weeks. I couldn’t blame her to wanting to gorge on it.

  “She’s right about this place,” Angela said, coming up behind me
as I cleaned the dusty shotgun on the kitchen table. “It is creepy. I can feel the ghosts of those people disapproving of the way we’ve treated their house.”

  We had ransacked the house for anything useful. “We had to do it, Angela. It’s better we have their stuff than the Pure Bloods.”

  Angela sighed. I had not known her long – but I could see she was nervous. It wasn’t the fear of ghosts, though. “I don’t think we should wait, Ben. They didn’t find us because they didn’t look very hard. But another group could come back. We need to get back before it’s dark. You know what happened the last time we tried to drive at night.”

  Zombies were not like vampires. They didn’t come out at night. But they did get drawn to movement and sound. A whole herd of zombies had been drawn to the headlights of our van the last time we had been driving after dark. We’d had to smash into them to break through. It had been terrifying. I’d never turn on the headlights again – but driving in the darkness without them would be just as dangerous.

  I honestly don’t know what to do. It’s not like there’s a manual for this situation.

  Should we leave now or later?

  If there’s anyone out there, I’d love to know what you think we should do. Just send a message to my blog.

  COMMENT FROM ‘ANONYMOUS SOURCE’: Ben, you must not stay where you are. The Pure Bloods will come back soon. I’ve been listening to their radio signals. They are intending to sweep the area around you. They will bring more troops. GET OUT NOW!

  ENTRY THREE

  Okay. I did what you suggested, Anonymous Source. We left the farmhouse straight away.

  This is what happened after that.

  We headed south-east towards London, which was the last direction the Pure Bloods would think we’d go. You had to be a little bit crazy to drive into zombie-infested areas, ignoring the warning signs left behind by the government, but we could not get back across the M25 border near Watford with the Pure Bloods hunting us.

  After a couple of miles, a yellow sign appeared that caused me to shiver:

  Danger Radiation

  There was a radioactive zone ahead. At the moment the Geiger counter stuck on the dash was registering an almost normal background level – but we were heading into a radiation hot spot. Great. Zombies and radiation. What a combo.

  Anyone sensible would have done an immediate U-turn because Greater London was by far the most dangerous place in Britain – but if we wanted to slip past the Pure Blood patrols we would have to continue.

  That radiation sign reminded me of what had happened at the beginning of the crisis, when nobody had even heard of the necrovitalis virus. Nobody mentioned the z-word at the beginning. The outbreak was treated as a mysterious disease that started in America.

  DAY ONE

  I was at my trading desk when I first heard about something happening. A New York trader – a buddy of mine – phoned me.

  “Yo, Benny-boy,” he said. “It’s Chuck. Get this. I’ve just seen some weird things on the subway. It all started with this homeless guy biting an old lady’s fingers off.”

  “What?” I said. “He bit her fingers off?

  “Yeah. He chomped her fingers off like he was snacking on hot dogs – then he wouldn’t even let go of the stump. She was screaming her head off – but nobody wanted to get near the guy. There was something seriously wrong with him, man. It was like he was totally nuts. He kept chewing on her hand until her blood sprayed all over. Some cops tackled the guy at the next station – but he bit them too. I got out of the train and saw the lady he’d attack collapse with a heart attack. Next thing I know, a paramedic arrived and started pumping her chest. He saved her life – but then she starts going mental, attacking the man trying to help her. She grabbed his head and bit off his nose, tearing it to shreds. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen, man.”

  “Chuck,” I said, not believing a word of his story. “You sure this wasn’t a dream?”

  “It was real, Ben. I’m deadly serious. I got out of that station fast, man. I saw dozens of people were going crazy. They were biting other people and eating chunks of flesh. Then the ones bitten started biting other people. It was like instant rabies, man. I’ve never seen anything like it. Half the people on the platform were infected with whatever it was, attacking the rest of us. I was real lucky to get out of there. It’s all over the news if you don’t believe me. They’re calling the Subway Madness. Look – I got to go.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said, thinking that I would have to do some trades in pharmaceutical companies. A new disease meant big bucks for the industry. The cold, hard, cynical trader in me didn’t care about what was going on in New York as long as it didn’t harm my trades. I put CNN and Fox News on my screen to check out what was happening over there. The American networks were reporting an outbreak of a rabies-like disease, origin unknown. The weird thing was it wasn’t only happening in New York. There were outbreak in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. All big cities, all suffering an outbreak of a new disease simultaneously? Only one thing could explain that. A biological or chemical attack. I turned to my colleague Harvey, sitting at the next desk on the trading floor.

  “Looks like we got a major terrorist incident in America, Harv. A biological or chemical attack in several big cities. Get your money out of the US now.”

  Watching the news showed the chaos in America.

  Even then I was only thinking about the damage to the international markets. Terrorism meant new opportunities for investing – with the governments of the world increasing taxes to spend buckets of cash for military contracts to get those responsible. I needed to shift some money around before the markets reacted. For a few minutes, I had an advantage. My hands danced over my keyboard, making money for my company. In an hour I had made a killing thanks to my buddy in America. I called him back to thank him – but I only got through to his voice mail.

  “Ben!” someone called out. It was Harvey. He was looking down the hall towards the elevators, where someone had just got out covered in blood. It was a dark-haired girl from the legal department called Mandy Something. She was staggering as blood poured down her right arm. She was begging for help. A group of concerned people rushed over, asking her if she was all right.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve just been attacked. I was about to leave for my lunch when this businessman ran into the building. He was snarling and biting people. I bit me as I tried to get away. It was mental. There were other crazy people outside, banging on the windows, trying to get in. I ran to the elevator to escape. I saw one of the security guards get his throat ripped open as the doors were closing.” She sobbed and showed everyone the nastiness of her wound. “Ow! It really hurts. My arm feels like it’s on fire.”

  There was a ring of teeth marks in her flesh. The skin around it was pale and slightly bluish. Blood was running down her arm, dripping on the carpet. Some people helped her to a seat. A woman with first-aid training opened a medical kit and applied some antiseptic and a bandage. Mandy’s condition was deteriorating rapidly – too rapidly for it to be blood loss. Her skin was turning grey and mottled as she breathing became shallow and raspy.

  Everyone had turned their attention on Mandy – forgetting about the elevator, which opened again. There was a security guard inside it covered with blood. He staggered out and fell down. His uniform looked like it had been caught in a shredder. His face, neck, arms and legs were savagely wounded. He was holding onto his own stomach, keeping his entrails inside his chest. “They’re attacking like maniacs. Don’t let them come up here. Stop the elevator.”

  The elevator doors were shutting. I jammed my foot in the way. The doors stayed open. Harvey saw what I was trying to do. He brought a desk across to the block the doors from closing when I removed my foot. I turned around to ask the guard some questions – but he had stopped breathing. His eyes were open and he as definitely dead because his entrails had spilled out onto the floor in
a steaming mass. Remembering what my buddy Chuck had said about the paramedic, I didn’t rush forward to do some heroic CPR, like stuffing the man’s insides back in. It was just as well that I hesitated. Within seconds of dying, the security guard suddenly sat up, opening his mouth very wide, emitting a moan that I felt in my bones. He glared at me and crawled towards me, gnashing his teeth, leaving his entrails behind. There was no humanity in his eyes any longer. They were dead. I knew what he was – but the word “zombie” seemed so ludicrous, so B-movie that my mind rejected it. I would have stood there until he reached me if Harvey had not smashed down a swivel chair on his head. Harvey hit the security guard over and over until his head resembled a large squashed tomato.

  “That guy was a zombie,” he said.

  I nodded. “Yeah. He was.”

  We both looked at Mandy, knowing she would be next to turn. We had no choice but to lock her into an office, quarantined from the rest of us. She lasted forty minutes before passing away. A minute later her pale dead face pressed against the glass wall. Then she began to moan.

  There were twenty-two living people on the trading floor that day. We all knew it was safer to stay on the thirty-fourth floor than risk leaving. We barricaded the exits and waited there, expecting a rescue that never came. We were fortunate to have full water coolers and vending machines to use while we waited. We watched what was going on in London through the windows and on our computers until the power failed two days later. Then we used our phones to keep track of what was happening on the outside. Though it was obvious to us that the infected were zombies, the z-word wasn’t mentioned by the authorities until three days later. By then the capital was overrun with millions of the undead.

  For a while the PM stayed in Downing Street, protected by the police and the army, giving reassuring interviews to the BBC and Sky News about dealing with the problem soon. He convinced a lot of people to stay in their homes, barricaded in, waiting for the army to rescue them from the zombies taking over the streets. He promised effective action in a few days – but he was lying. On the eighth day the PM fled Downing Street in a black helicopter, leaving behind thousands of Whitehall staff to fend for themselves.