Chemical Z : Zombie Domain

08:15

I feel a bit stiff this morning. My old body is not as supple as it used to be. I spent the biggest part of the night in the car but I didn't feel secure so not much sleep to be had there. I decided it was best to drive on to the next town (a place called Annan) and find an abandoned house. There are plenty of empties around the country now, and I'll wager all around the world. For me, that is quite a pleasing prospect. It's not a pleasant thought, by any means, that the biggest part of the population of the UK is walking around dead. It's the ease of access to homes that I could only ever have dreamed of owning or even stepping foot inside. I've been inside so many abodes over the past months, it's an eye opener to see how other people lived, and a lot of the times I help myself to the small things, like ipods, watches, and whatever gadgets, although I usually don't, having too much to carry slows me down, and God knows when I'm going to make it back to my own flat to use them. I haven't actually slept in anyone else's bed yet, but I dare say when the time comes it'll be weird. If I'm tired enough, I'll sleep on broken glass.

Right time to move again. And speaking of moving, I need to get my bowls shifting, I've not done a decent shite in days.

08:56

I'm in a house in Annan just of the A75. It's a nice house and they must have left in a hurry, because there's still two suitcases upstairs in the bedroom. I had a quick look through them, nice clothes, nothing that fits me, but still nice. Six 5litre bottles of water in one of the kitchen cupboards, they'll come in handy. I still don't know if the water in the taps is OK to drink. What if this virus can be passed on through water. I'll just stick to whatever is still sealed: bottles of water, cans of cola, tins of pineapple juice or whatever runs the least risk of carrying the infection.

I don't know my exact location but I do know I'm on the outskirts of the town. I no longer venture into the centre unless I have to. Here's the strangest thing I've seen in a while. On my way into Annan I passed a running track, for, I suppose track and field events, on the track were about ten zombies, most of them walking around the track, aimlessly. Three of them were exhibiting strange behaviour,even for a zombie, walking quickly, followed by short bursts of running, then back to walking again. It was kind-of comical, as though they were limbering up for the dead Olympics. I wonder if they get out of breath or anything? Probably not. The thought that bounced around in my head the most when I saw the runners was I wonder if I could outrun them? It's a valid question. So far, any zombie I've come into direct contact with has been a walker. I have seen one's slightly faster than them, but I don't remember ever seeing anything quite like these chaps, actually running, as if it was a calculated action and not just a memory being relived through dead bones.

I've been trying to get onto twitter again to see if there's anyone out there. No luck with twitter. Servers are down, and to be honest with you, I've never been one for sitting at the computer all night, searching for videos of a dog talking then noticing a video link at the right of the screen, then following that one, watching it, moving on to the next link with a lion talking, then the next link with a lion eating some guy in a cage, then on to street fights, and....Have I just inadvertently admitted to spending far too much time on youtube. I'm just the same as everyone else, only I feel like a bigger hypocrite, pretending I'm better than the ones actively seeking out the sick internet thrill. I tried not to watch all the sick shit on the internet, but the horrible truth is, it's out there, and it's getting harder to avoid it. Ten, maybe twenty years ago you had to know where to go to get videos of people getting beaten up, but these days it's everywhere. Youtube has made a lot of not very nice stuff easily available, but I suppose it's not them posting it, and there is a market for it. Once all this is over and the internet is back to normal, just you go on to youtube, or as it's pronounced in Scotland youchoob and search for something you think should not be available for the consumption of human eyes, and I'll bet you a year's wages you'll find at least a dozen videos on the subject, and there'll be over 2,000,000 hits on each of them.

Now that I've had my moan, which I haven't really had for quite a while, I feel a little better, but then I remember that there's a whole world of sick possibilities out there with dead people walking around eating the living. I think I'm losing touch with reality. I've seen more death in the last six months than I could ever have imagined seeing in my whole life. It's a whole new ball game. Youtube is no longer the main purveyor of disturbing imagery, real life is, it has surpassed anything previously available online. Sure, there will be people taking footage of their cleansing, or whatever the term is for acceptable disposal of zombies, and uploading it to youtube or vimeo but that'll only be the tip of the iceberg now. These are not isolated incidents, it's a worldwide threat, happening 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You could leave your house any time of the day or night and find yourself on the receiving end of infected teeth. I used to watch Star Trek, and was nave to think that this pandemic would somehow bring the world together to beat the scourge, one man helping another, all pulling resources together, one massive think tank working for a cure. But no. George was bastard and I don't think he'll be the last one I meet. Not in this world. It seems to have made people worse, the total opposite of what I was hoping.

Am I rambling on again? I think I'm dehydrated, time for a drink of that lovely bottled water.

10:00

I've just had a bowl of coco pops, no milk so I'm afraid all the water turned chocolatey. Not the nicest thing I've tasted but I can see the whole virus situation getting worse and then I'll have to eat some pretty disgusting things, as each food source runs dry. No-one will be working in the factories producing beans, pot noodles, pop-tarts or pineapple chunks. I'll be reduced to eating my own faecal matter....well maybe not. I hope not.

Two cars past the house, one of them stopped outside and looked at the Merc. I didn't think on hiding it, not in a world of walking dead, but it seems to have caught the eye of a few passers by, potential trouble makers. I'll wait until the coast is clear then I'll go and move the car to somewhere less conspicuous. I can't afford to lose the car, not when I'm so close to the complex. If the car goes, it means having to look around for another, and that's going to put me at risk. I've not come this far to be the victim of little shits driving around the scheme....wait a minute, I'm getting carried away. I must be getting a buzz from the chocolate on the coco pops.

11:00

I'm in the toilet. One of the cars I saw earlier came back, and two of the guys are in, downstairs. I'm not too sure of them. The elder of the two, James, is in his mid-thirties, blue jeans, short black hair and glasses, skinny kind-of guy, really prominent cheek bones, if you half shut your eyes and he almost looks like a zombie he carries a baseball bat, which looks pretty filthy, and blood stained. He's the one in charge. The younger guy, Stephen, he's wearing a black adidas tracksuit with white piping down the arms and legs, and white trainers, he keeps his hands in his pockets as if he's hiding a surprise in them. I don't know if I want to see that surprise, because if it's sharp, and things get messy I may get hurt. I haven't yet killed a living human being, but self preservation...let's not forget self preservation.

They tell me they have a safe place if I want to come with them and check it out. I'm not too sure if that's a good idea. They seem friendly enough, but I still don't trust them 100%. They have this big idea that they are a resistance of sorts, but this isn't 1940's France, this is a world full of monsters that don't carry guns and won't go down without a fight. I haven't told them about Connie, because they don't need to know the full story, in fact, the less they know, the better. I have told them, however, the general direction I'm heading in to find a friend. They also said they understand why I don't want to go with them, why should I trust them? I'm hoping they'll go without any trouble and then I can move on out of this place before things get complicated.

14:38

The two guys from earlier, James and Stephen, came back to see if I wanted to go with them, to their cottage on the East side of Annan. I declined and told them I prefer my own company, and that I hope they understood it was nothing personal. They asked if the silver Mercedes out on the street was mine and I told them it was a friend's. They also asked where the keys were, because they weren't inside the car. I told them the keys were in the car and that I always leave them there just in case I need to escape. James wanted to know if I wanted to escape them, and that they were not there to be escaped from. He told me they were there to help me and anyone else that needs a place to stay, which I could almost believe, but how did they know my keys weren't in the car. Obviously they had checked, very quietly, so as not to disturb me. I don't know if that's a bad thing or not, after all, it's not really my car anyway, is it? James said it was his duty to check any new faces in the area, and that means inspecting vehicles as well. Stephen told me that James and his team from east Annan were the first to take action against the zombie outbreak, striking anyone down who showed the symptoms of CZV. Stephen had just turned eighteen when his foster parents returned from a trip, visiting friends in Glasgow. Cath and John, both fell unwell and had a temperature. He hadn't had time to call for help as both parents died pretty soon after returning home. James told me that's where he came in. Luckily, he says, when Stephen's foster parents eventually died and were risen again, James had watched them arrive back in the street, as they coughed and spluttered in their car, so it was no surprise to see them chasing Stephen out of the house. That's when James and three of his team felled the dead Cath and John with a barrage of baseball bats and tyre braces. Stephen has been with James' team ever since.

Suffice to say, James wouldn't take no for an answer and insisted I stay with him at his humble abode an abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of Annan.

I've noticed both him and Stephen look at my knife belt. I don't like the way they look at it. I'll keep my hand close to the handles....you never know.

18:00

I've just been fed. It was a pretty good meal actually, something I wasn't really expecting from a bunch of strangers. I'm at the farmhouse where James and his team are based. There are eight males and four females in his little family. They all seem friendly enough, but isn't that so often the case with murderers? What's that saying? It's the quiet one's you have to watch. I'm still in paranoid mode.

The only reason I came along with James is because the zombie population decided to hold a town meeting just outside the house I was in and he and two of his pals did a good job of mowing a lot of them down with their Mitsubishi shogun.

I'm sharing a room with two other guys, Tom and Ivan. Tom the spark (electrician), as he's known around here, looks a few years younger than me, maybe early to mid-thirties, and is quite funny. He can pull his face into all sorts of shapes as well as do funny voices. His impressions of famous people are rotten, so I can see we're going to get on well. Ivan hasn't really said much to me yet. I don't know if it's me, or if it's just the way he is. Tom tells me I need to give Ivan a a while to come out from his shell. Ivan and his parents arrived in the UK three months before the outbreak began, fleeing the poverty of the Ukraine. While his dad managed to find work in a hotel as a porter, his mum struggled to hold down a job going from restaurant to restaurant, takeaways to pubs and clubs, and anything else that would provide quick, tax free, cash. Things really did get pretty desperate for her, and sometimes she would come home, not only with money, but with bruises and bites and scratches as little reminders of her day's work. That's how Ivan lost his mother and father. Even when the virus was spreading itself through the country, felling people and reanimating them, Ivan's mother still had to pay the bills. She had always tried to shield Ivan from her ?orkand for the most part of it, she did, but one day she couldn't. She had been with a client that was on the turn, a carrier of the virus, still alive but with the virus coursing through him. The man was one of the rougher clients, who liked to bite during his sexual performances. This was enough for the virus to be transmitted into the veins of Ivan's mum. When she returned home that day, she went straight to bed with a fever. Ivan's father tended to her and sat at her bedside unaware of changing state. She died and very quickly came back from the dead only to bite him.

As luck would have it, Tom was rewiring their kitchen at the time and heard the commotion. Ivan came running into the kitchen and almost knocked Tom over in his haste to escape his zombie mum and dad.

Tom took great pleasure in telling me the next part. He waved his hand as though to shrug it off, being something that any decent person worth their salt would have done in a live threatening situation.

Tom, who works out and keeps fit and is a good six inches taller than me demonstrated in an overly animated fashion how he grabbed a length of cable from the spindle on the floor, wrapped it round Ivan's dead mum's head and in between her teeth, pulling it tight, dislocating her jaw and slicing into her spine. He told me how the body fell to the ground and how he quickly grabbed his nailgun and fired four tungsten nails into the skull. ?ight night zombie number onehe said, not being very tactful in front of Ivan. He then went on to describe how Ivan's dad, not a small man himself, came bursting into the kitchen and made a b-line for Ivan. Tom kicked the dead man in the knee causing him to fall, his own weight forcing him down on the floor at speed. Ivan's zombie dad had three tungsten nails shot into his head even before he hit the ground. Tom finished with a smile, blew the tip of his finger and put his gun hand back in its imaginary holster. Let's hope he's not a cowboy by trade otherwise there'll be a lot dodgy wiring around the country.

22:00

The Merc is still outside the house at the other end of town. I hope it's safe, as I've left the folder in glove compartment, you know, the one with info on Connie and Steph's whereabouts. I have the keys with me, and I managed to engage the remote-locking when we passed by in the Mistusbishi. I still don't know if it's safe enough to tell anyone about where I'm heading. I still remember trusting that fucker Robert, until he stole the silver sphere that I acquired from the upstairs flat. Oh, and let's not forget the slaughter of God knows how many people - I don't know if they were innocent or not so I can't say, besides that's a very cliché thing to say so many innocent people, boo hoo!

One of the girl's in the group, Tess Miller, she's a looker, and that's not me being sarcastic. She is a lovely looking girl, 28 years old, long black straight hair and breasts not too large. What is it they say, anything more than a handful is a waste. I've only spoken to her a couple of times but there's a definite spark there, well, I think there's a spark. Then again, I'm a horny sonbitch. She hasn't told me anything about herself, and I haven't really opened up to her, but there was no awkward silence when we did talk. That's always a good sign. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect to jump into bed with her I've still got Connie to find but it's good for the ego to know that at my age (I'm over 35 and that's all you need to know) I'm not totally repulsive to the opposite sex.

The others in the group introduced themselves but I'm afraid their names and faces were instantly forgettable. It's not a conscious thing, forgetting faces and names, it's just that they may not have made enough of an impact on my psyche to leave a lasting impression, therefore my brain sticks them to the rear of the old grey matter.