Stay or leave?

I wish Craig would talk more. Not that I want non-stop conversation, but he barely responds to anything. Is this grief, mourning, shock or just how teenagers behave? I found him watching the Infected family this afternoon. He had managed to lure and trap them all in one room upstairs. Craig just lays there in the roof space spying on them through a hole.

He misses his family. I understand that. But what does he get from this? They do not even act human anymore. Maybe that's it. Perhaps he is trying to find some remnant of humanity, or its return. I wish I knew better how to reach out to him, if even that's what he wants or needs. But the truth is that we are both broken inside. For me, putting every lucid moment into planning is all that keeps me sane.

Which brings me to the big decision; what next? I do not feel it is safe to simply stay put, but travelling around with the Infected is nothing less than a death sentence. With Manchester destroyed, but Leeds and the towns we passed spared, can we assume that Manchester was a desperate attempt to stop or slow down infection? That Leeds is still here suggests to me that plan failed or resources have been directed elsewhere. Perhaps the authorities have taken their fight elsewhere or are no longer even in control.

I have to assume there are other survivors. Where? Refugee camps? Possible. Stuck in their houses, they would be starving by now. Stuck in cities, and they would face starvation or large numbers of Infected. Cities and large towns are going to be death traps, and alas anybody stuck in them will be better off dead. In this area, farmhouses and the smaller villages and hamlets are the safest destinations.

Back to the real question; do we stay or leave?

Pros to staying -

• relatively safe shelter
• passive wait for help to arrive
• roof-space is impossible for Infected to get into

Cons to staying -

• limited food supply
• hard to defend individual houses if Infected do notice us
• going insane waiting

Pros to leaving -

• better able to find food and supplies
• chance of finding other survivors (is this always a good thing?)
• chance to gather more information

Cons to leaving -

• being killed

On the other side of the glass

I guess I fell into a depression. I haven't written in here for a week. I can't say that too much has happened in that time, just our exploration of our tiny six house nation. We've a small mountain of supplies that we have liberated from the other houses. Had to leave the fourth terrace down alone; family of four in there. I think the Infected children are far more terrifying than the adults. The last house in the row had a broken back door. We were surprised by a walker that must have come in from the outside, because we looked everywhere and followed our routine to the letter.

Oh, our Routine. See, the worst thing, after being killed that is, is being surprised by an Infected. In a house, they can come out of nowhere and be on you in the blink of an eye, walker or runner, it doesn't make a difference. So we have our routine for trying to winkle out any Infected in the house below us when we come in via the roof. It helps that all the houses have the same room layout.

• Make inspection holes over all upstairs rooms and visually inspect for Infected.
• Open loft-trap and make some noise.
• Wait 5 minutes.
• Make some more noise.
• Wait another 5 minutes.
• Lower rope, climb down, find stairs.
• Make noise, descend one stair.
• Repeat previous until no more stairs.

It's not much, but the Infected, simple beasts that they are, will investigate almost any noise. It only fails when the Infected cannot hear. The very last house in the terrace had one such old lady. Fortunately she was so infirm that she could only crawl across the floor. She's shut in her bedroom now. While we searched that place she scratched at the door like mad, but we were quite safe.

The empty houses were creepy. I expected something behind every door, and every creak was another Infected waiting to pounce. We pretty much cleaned out everything we could though. Starting with perishable goods, we took everything into the third house. The food went into the kitchen and everything else was piled into the master bedroom.

We blacked out the downstairs windows. Stupid of us not to do this first, but curtains are not enough. Luckily for us our mistake was in the old lady's house. Not sure if we were too loud or we nudged the curtain or were just unlucky enough to be seen, but without warning the glass exploded inwards and an Infected got itself mangled up in the window frame. The cuts from the glass didn't bother it at all. The noise attracted a couple more Infected wandering by. They got caught up in with the first walker too, but you could tell it was only a matter of time before they got inside.

While we got a good amount of food, it is mostly rice and lentils. The old woman had a couple of tins of Spam. One other house had a half tin of dried milk. I guess most people just ate through their supplies. We did score a assortment of vitamin pills. Otherwise the rest was a decent treasure trove; painkillers, plasters, bandages, toothpaste, dental floss, toilet tissue, bleach, soap, and some clothes that fit me and Craig. We pilfered all kinds of things, but past the euphoria of finding the food, there's only going to be so much of this other stuff that's going to prove useful. I mean, how many pen knives do I really need?

Finally got a chance to clean up as well. While it was a pity we couldn't use the shower or bath as intended, I did manage to heat up enough water with a camping stove to use. Didn't even have to use our drinking water as there was some in one of the tanks in the roof-space. I thought they were all empty, but the tap worked for a bit in one of the empty houses. Or, I'm stupid, there must be hot water tanks somewhere as well as the water tanks in the roof space Cleaned up and shaved, I felt human again. Even Craig seems happier.

 

It's been seven days of eating, looting, resting, and wallowing in self pity. I have to get out of this depression. Need to start thinking about our next move. We can not stay here. Gone through half the food and it would be nice to find more before we run out. There is probably a little food in almost every household, but not everywhere is going to have a convenient roof-space to clamber through that gives us easy access. The idea of fighting Infected door to door and room to room does not appeal.

Sister

My sister is dead. I wrapped her body in her best bedsheets and left her in her bedroom. A note simply read, 'Hope I stay dead.' There are dozens of bottles of pills on her bedside table. All empty.

I never envisioned this. I had thought about our reunion, my being the hero, rescuing my older sister, getting away together. I can feel her embrace. Feel her warmth and joy as we swap stories of this disaster.

But she died, alone.

I don't even know if there was a boyfriend. I haven't found anything that that looks like it belongs to anybody else. There are even some of my old things here from my last visit.

Is this self-loathing and emptiness what Craig feels?

Getting in proved to be easy. The ladder was easy to find. Getting the Infected to follow us in the car was no problem. Getting back to the terraces and up the ladder before more returned was nerve wracking. But we managed it. We lost the ladder. Lost as in it's on the ground. An Infected tried to climb it and just would not let go. Throwing roof tiles down at them was rather cathartic, even fun in its own way. Craig continued after I made the initial hole, practically stripping the roof over the end terrace. Didn't know then what I do now of course.

For whatever reason (perhaps its how they are always built) there was no partition between the roof spaces of the different houses. That meant access was simply no problem. It also meant that we didn't have to risk making too much noise breaking through whatever a partition might be made of. I freely admit now that I had little idea how we were going to break through beyond kicking the wall in. A crowbar is something I need to keep an eye out for.

All the water tanks were empty. Wishful thinking. There's so much junk in the roof space. We'll go through it later. I hope there is camping and travel gear up there more than anything. When we do finally leave here we need to be very mobile.

Craig used a knife I hadn't seen him with before to make holes in the ceiling. Under the insulation it's just plasterboard. Need to make sure we keep to the beams. One misstep and we are straight through. It didn't happen, but its something to remember. Industrious kid, made holes so that we can see into all the houses, and where possible all the rooms.

Death is cruel to the flesh. Looking down on my sister I was not even sure it was her. She looked ancient. Nothing on TV prepares you for a real dead body. Lifeless means just that. She was laying on her bed, face up. There was a book under one hand, still open. And all those empty bottles.

What we did next still makes me feel sick. We had to be sure she was dead. Certain that the moment our presence was felt that she was not going to leap up and attack us. So we dropped things into the room to make noise. Then we even dropped some lighter items onto her body in case that jolted her awake. She was dead of course. Nobody remains to forgive our sacrilege.

 

The noise we made would have alerted anybody else in the house, so we were more than careful in making our way down and searching for others. But she lived alone. Died alone. Alone alone alone. While my sister lay there I snuck around like a thief. Finally after being so afraid of everything I went to her. Jane Eyre, that's what she had been reading. That's what she wanted her last thoughts to be. And in the pages, her bookmark; an old photograph of me. Something inside me broke.

 

I have said my goodbyes. And my apologies, useless as they are. Tidying up, I leave her with her book. We will not disturb this room again.

 

I hurt inside, a deep twisting ache that threatens to overwhelm me constantly. Craig gives me space. He knows. And he envies me her final rest.

The Ladder

Zombies. That's how Craig described his parents' friends when they had fallen ill. Once they had gone through the violent stage of the illness, they just slowed down. The man tied to the bed lay there doing nothing. The other woman would just stand in her room, swaying a little otherwise remaining motionless, only moving when some noise disturbed her.

Films and fantasy always depict the zombie as some dead thing risen from the grave, or infected by the bite of another. These, thinking Craig's analogy through, are more like the Voodo idea of Zombie. I just don't see anybody controlling them though. The Infected, Ghoul, or Zombie, it doesn't matter. They are still in our way.

We don't have the fuel to just drive around looking for a ladder. A building site would be the best bet, and there was some construction work going on a couple of roads before my sister's one. Get out, get ladder, get back, lash it to the roof-rack (thankfully Craig's parents car had one fitted), and be off before the car is surrounded by Infected. The rest of the plan is still sound; lure the Infected away, rush up ladder and onto roof. Bring ladder behind us, or toss to ground if being used by Infected. Get inside roof space and then we can relax.

Have realised that this might be a great opportunity to stock up. We can go through the entire terrace and dig holes through the ceiling to see if there are any Infected in the rooms below. Any houses that are clear can be looted.

Did I really write that? There might be people still alive in there. Who knows what the authorities will do once things return to normal. Will this be overlooked as an act of survival? Our need is all right now. Right, time to put this away, get Craig to concentrate instead of staring out of the window, and find that damned ladder.