31-Dec

I remember when Mrs B told me the story of her Happening. She had been a school teacher in a small town.
The Happening was going on around her and she was very scared. The radio and TV, a radio with a picture on it, told her that everybody should go to their nearest civil defence centre. She told me that her nearest one was the school she taught at, so she went there.

All the neighbourhood were going there and they had all these beds and blankets and food set up in the school hall. All the people started coming there and looking after each other and telling scary stories of what was going on in the Happening.

On the third night a sick lady came into the hall. She had been bitten by an angry man but had run away and got to the hall. People looked after her, but she died in the night. Then she woke up as a Deader and bit some more people.

Mrs B was scared and could see what was happening. When those people died and woke up, everybody panicked and they were running around and shouting. Mrs B saw three children whose parents were biting people and she wanted to save them. She grabbed the two girls and a boy and ran off into the school.

She knew her way around the school and even had her keys to open doors. She found a room far away from the hall and they locked themselves in. The children and Mrs B were scared and tired so they slept.

In the morning the little boy didn’t wake up and Mrs B saw the bite on his arm. She didn’t know what to do. The little boy groaned and started to wake up and Mrs B thought he was going to be OK and she hugged him and cried. That’s when the boy bit her on her neck.

She says she didn’t really feel the pain because there was too much shock. The two girls were scared and Mrs B knew there was only one way to save them. She carried the little boy, who was thrashing around in her arms, out of the room and locked the two little girls in there alone. She locked the little boy in another room and ran all the way back to her house. She burst in the front hall and collapsed in her hallway and died.

When she woke again she wasn’t in control of her body. Something else forced her to move around. Made her do things that were scary and gross. She worried about the two little girls every day.

I saw Mrs B for the first time a year ago. She had told me where her house was. I went there and threw a dead cat on the front step and hid. She came out of the house to investigate the noise and saw the cat there. Her dress had flowers on it and her skin was grey and saggy. She told me she used to be quite pretty once, and I believed her.

Her body grabbed the cat and tore into it, ripping clumps of fur and flesh out with her teeth. Mrs B apologised but I was OK with it – I had seen much worse.

Now Mrs B helps me to understand things. But as I move further away from the village her voice is fading and other ones are coming in louder.

Most of the voices are angry and scared and hate filled. I tune those ones out and only listen to the nice ones. Right now Dave Robinson, a chartered accountant, is helping me understand the right roads to get through this big town. He says he used to drive them all on his visits to clients. His body is trapped in some hardware depot where he was getting supplies to secure his house before he was bitten.

We need all the help we can get Bobby and me, so I listen carefully and tell Bobby what they say.

 

29-Dec

We’ve walked for days now. We follow the old roads and always head south.

A cat walked across the road in front of us yesterday. It had something furry in its mouth so we followed it. It was a little cat it was carrying in its mouth. It dropped it in the hollow of a tree and went back to the other side of the road and got another one. We watched this for a while and it put four of them in the tree hollow before sitting there licking them. I don’t think it was going to eat them.

I wish Mrs B could help explain what was going on. I’d like to hear her voice again. She was always able to explain things to me so I could make sense of things from the Before.

 

26-Dec

The roads are covered in grass and vines. We only know they’re roads because you can see the path ahead of you in a straight line, and if you dig down a little bit with your foot there’s hard ground underneath.

Some of the bridges have started to get a bit broken, and we have to be careful, especially on the high ones, that they don’t break when we walk on them. Bobby nearly slipped off the edge when one of them started crumbling along the edge. The rail fell off and into the river below and I grabbed him and pulled him back. I laughed because Bobby had a scared face, and he got mad, but then he started laughing too. I don’t think I’ve heard him laugh before. We ran to the other side of the bridge then fell in the grass and laughed a lot more. It felt nice.

We stopped laughing when the deaders came out of the forest for us. But they were slow, and Bobby and me didn’t like our fun being stopped, so we slashed their heads open and walked off with smiles on our faces.

 

23-Dec

We came to a small town today. Most of the deaders were skeletons and had already been re-deaded. We saw a couple of them stuck in buildings or houses, but we left them. They can’t get out, so we left them there.

Mrs B says she feels sorry for ones like that. Trapped, with no way out. They can’t wander about freely. Not that she wants Bobby and me to be hurt, she just knows that the deaders trapped inside buildings aren’t happy.
Bobby and me found some cans in the back of a store. Everything had been cleaned out of the front, but nobody had thought to check the back.

We know that cans can have food in them, but you have to be careful because they’re so old, the food might make you sick.

These ones had meat inside, and it tasted a bit like squirrel which made Bobby not very happy. The faded paper wrapped around the cans showed a picture of a dog, so they must be full of dog.

Next time I see a dog I think I’ll shoot it and eat it. They taste nice.

 

20-Dec

We camped out near a stream. The grass around its banks was long and we had to cut through some of it to get to the water, but it was so cold and fresh it was worth the effort.

I set some snares and caught a rabbit and a squirrel. Bobby and me shared the rabbit but he let me eat the squirrel because he doesn’t like the taste.

There was a deader in the forest, but Bobby re-died him before he even knew we were there. Bobby is getting good with the knife and made it quick and mostly without any noise.

It was only just warm enough to sleep outside, but is here and we’ll have to find warmer places to sleep until that has passed. For now though there is enough sunlight and wild animals to keep us going until we reach the big city. I don’t know what we’ll find there, but we think it might be where Bobby is from, and I remember my dad saying that is where we started out. I just feel that something wants me to go there.

We’ll keep worrying about today until the day comes where we’re in the city. Then we’ll worry about that day.

 

17-Dec

My dad was a smart man. Mrs B once told me that he must have been very clever to adapt and survive when the Happening started.

He taught me how to shoot, but also how to use knives and his favourite machete which I take everywhere with me now. He showed me how to find food and what’s not good to eat. And he showed me how to clear a building safely from the deaders.

I can’t remember his face any more. I don’t have a picture like Bobby has of him with his family. They look like nice people. Bobby is sometimes sad and never talks about his Happening time. Mostly he’s quiet though, which I like because I’m mostly quiet too. And you have to be quiet to survive long.

We found an old house. There is grass and dirt inside where a hole in the roof lets the light and rain come in. We found a dry room and slept in there on the floor. The floor was fuzzy and had a blue pattern on it and smelled of dust.

All the cupboards are opened and there is nothing inside, but one had a dead mouse. It looked dry and you could see bones through the grey skin. It looked how the deaders look when they haven’t eaten anything in a long time. But I know that animals don’t become deaders. They just run away when you come near.

I wish the deaders ran away from you and not towards you.

 

14-Dec

I don’t know how far we got. We walked all day and most of the night too. Our packs are heavy, but that’s OK because Bobby and me are strong and can carry lots. They just make us slower, that’s all.

I’m not going to miss that smelly village anyway. All the people there are poo faces and mean and they can do their own dumb jobs. Me and Bobby are heading South. Going to where the big cities once were. We want to see the world. And we want to prove those Village Masters wrong about us.

We’re good boys, Bobby and me. We didn’t want anybody to get hurt like they said they would.

We’ll show them how tough and smart we are. And they don’t even need to banish us. We banished ourselves. So they can stick that in their poop holes.

Ha! Poop holes.

 

12-Dec

Bobby and me have lasted three days with people being mean to us and not getting much food. They make us do all the bad jobs and people say not nice things to us.

Mrs B says they are all upset that we put them in danger with our stunt. I don’t know what a stunt is, but I think it might mean making deaders come near the village.

If they keep being mean, I want to make a big stunt happen and then we’ll really see who the best shots are. Bobby and me would survive that. Some of the others don’t even know how to use guns and are getting too soft with all the easy life.

I reckon Bobby and me would do alright on our own, without all these mean people being mad at us and saying things to make us feel bad. Making us do the worst jobs in the village.

Bobby thinks so too.

 

9-Dec

So the Village Masters met again, which was strange because it wasn’t a day six yet. And they got me and Bobby into the room and they were all angry and talking mean stuff. And they said that my dad was a good man, but that I was reckless and selfish, but I’m not. They said that we put the whole village at risk and that what we did was inexcusable.

Mrs B said they were right to be mad because we did a silly thing. I tried to tell them that we wanted to show them we were better than the Guard, but they said that the Guard had to clean up our mess for us.

They were really mad. Two of them wanted us banished straight away. Three others thought we needed a punishment and to learn from our mistake.

Bobby and me still don’t think we made a mistake. It was all going good until we ran out of ammo.
We mucked out the public latrines today and didn’t get very much food given to us.

Everybody seemed mad at us. It wasn’t nice.

 

8-Dec

We lit this big fire. Out on the street. Out at the edge of the village. It was a really dark night and the fire was big and yellow. I’m sure it could be seen for miles.

It took a while for them to come. They came out of the darkness. They must have come from a long way away because it took them ages. They don’t walk very fast, or very well. But as they stumbled into the fire light, we shot them dead. Re-dead.

Booby and me, we took turns. Tried to kill each one with a single shot. We’ll show the Guard who the better shots are.

We didn’t really think this through though. We used up all of our silencers before we realised we didn’t need to use them. The deaders were being drawn in by the fire light anyway so the sounds of the guns wouldn’t have been a problem.

So we ran out of silencers, but we still had bullets, and the fire kept going. We had put a bunch of tires on it, and they kept on burning. So the fire kept going, and the deaders, they kept coming. And we were starting to run low on ammo. But the deaders kept coming. And now we had no silencers, so the ones that had reached the fire and got tired of looking at it were being drawn to our gun shots. We re-deaded most of them, but they kept coming. More and more.

So Bobby and me, we ran for it. Back to the village.

I think they might be angry with us now because there was a lot of shouting, and the Guard were all woken up and went running out there to kill them all off and put out our fire.

We might be in trouble. Mrs B says we’re on ‘thin ice’ but I don’t know what that is.