Paul Wilcock [Wilcock - Don’t Be Dead- Heartache After The Outbreak

Im 27, its September 2006 and shes nagging at meagain, she does this every time, we should be enjoying our last moments togetheras best we can; in the movies this is where people declare their love for eachother because they know deep down that they wont get another chance, but here,in reality, in somebody elses bedroom, the walls streaked with dried blood,parts of a body, chunks of leg I think, rotting in the corner, and the infectedclawing at the door, she screams and blames and hates and she'll leave thisworld pissed off at me about something stupid.

I knew youd get me killed you worthless piece of shit,youve managed to screw up everything ever since I met you, look at myarm, you bastard, look at my arm!

Im looking at her arm and I admit, its pretty fucked upand shes definitely infected and sooner or later will become the same as them;no emotion, no feeling, wanting to bite and claw and generally tear apart anyliving flesh they can get their hands on. I look around the room for a way out,too many infected outside the door, our weapons were lost in the struggle andthe window is boarded up.

Listen Kelly, I know youre upset so Im going to stay ascalm as a person can in the situation I find myself in right now but how the fuckwas I supposed to know thered be a bunch of infected locked in the kitchen?

Kelly gargles, chokes and coughs, trying to talk, spitsblood on the floor and over her legs (Ill miss those legs), then deliberatelyspits blood at me, I dodge to the side but some still lands on my trainers,Nike Air Force high tops, white with a red tick, now white with a red tick anda dirty red smear that probably wont come out; this pisses me off more than itprobably should, considering.

She screams at me There was a big padlock on the door! Who padlocks a doorunless theyre keeping something locked inside?

She has a point, the bitch, but I wont back down Theycould have had a stockpile of food in there, locks keep people out tooyou know and weve been pretty desperate for food lately!

Shes looking at me like Im scum so I focus on getting thewindow opened up and look for something to pry the boards from the windowframe. The doors starting to bow inwards from the weight against it and Imworried that it wont last much longer. I find a hammer, that I presume wasused to board up the window in the first place, amongst the flesh chunks in thecorner, as Im rummaging through the body parts a cloud of angry flies risesinto the air and around my head, some of them go into my mouth and that,combined with the smell, the fear and the feel of dead flesh in my hands, makesme vomit. I lurch away as fast as I can and start working on pulling out thenails.

As each nail falls to the floor Im distracted by twothings, the danger of the door bursting open admitting eight infected to tryand fend off, and the constant bitching and crying coming from Kelly. The dooris my main concern so I grab the chest of drawers from against the wall, itsnot as heavy as Id hoped, cheap flat pack furniture thats already beenemptied of all of its contents, presumably when the owners tried to pack up andflee. I drag it over against the door anyway hoping it buys me a few moreminutes. Then I turn to Kelly; she looks like shit.

The last thing she says to me is that I was a lousyboyfriend and that Im a dick, then I swing the hammer at her temple as hard asI can, my eyes closed, cutting her off mid-insult. Thankfully I dont see ithappen but her head snaps to the side at a sharp and unnatural angle and thewet crunching noise that this creates makes me feel nauseous again for asecond. I tell myself that I was doing her a favour, she would definitelyhave started turning soon and nobody wants that, better to have your head cavedin. I go back to the window and start clawing the planks away from the framewith the back of the hammer, blood starts to run down the handle, inchingtowards my hand, but Im not looking at the blood, I dont want to see theblood. Then all of the planks are off but I can still hear splintering wood andits coming from behind me, but Im not looking at that either so I smash theglass in front of me, covering my face with my free arm, the ground below seemsa long way down and Im really scared of breaking my legs and beinghelpless, just lying in the garden, legs made of jelly, waiting to be tornapart. I look for something softer to jump to or a way to climb down buttheres nothing and I can hear the chest of drawers scraping across the woodenfloor behind me as the door is slowly forced open so I climb out and danglefrom the sill.

Im falling and my stomach lurches making me feel nauseousyet again and it feels like a long drop even though I land a lot faster thanexpected. My legs arent ready for the impact and fold up underneath me, myknees slam into my chin and I fall onto my back and it really hurts and I wantto just lie there for a while but I cant and I really dont want to see aninfected face looking down at me from the bedroom window so I force myself up,but I fall back down to my knees and half crawl, half stagger for a few metresuntil I can pull myself up against a greenhouse that no longer has any glass;just a metal frame thats rusted and sharp against my hand. Now Im up andrunning back to the car, its an Opel Manta, flame red, 0-60 in eight seconds,it feels longer.

I head for home, my thoughts keep wandering back to Kellyslast words, lousy boyfriend, maybe shes right, to be honest I didnt loveher, didnt even like her a lot of the time and Im pretty sure she felt thesame, but neither of us wanted to be alone in the world. Like I am now.

The days are passing slowly now, the house feels bigger thanit did before; empty. I have nothing to fill my time, my mind keeps thinking,turning things over, going back to Kellys face at the end. Ive never had toend a relationship by smashing a girls brains out with a hammer before. Iusually try not to think of the past, theres no point, every memory of beforethe infection reminds you of someone youve lost or something that you cant doanymore, but now, all I seem to be able to do is wallow in misery and dredgethrough my previous relationships and how they ended and what theythought of me, did they all think I was a dick? I try drowning out mymemories with my iPod but every song seems to be a love song and it doesnthelp.

Looking back at my past relationships, from before theinfection, when I didnt have the added stress of surviving the end of theworld to complicate matters, Natalie, Gemma, Emma and Sarah, they were the mainones, the ones that left an impression, or a mental scar in some cases. I tryto recall how they ended, was it because I was a lousy boyfriend? Thinkingabout it now, with the benefit of hindsight I probably did screw up afew times but I dont know if my exs would agree with Kelly. I make a mentallist of each of them in my head and try to remember what went wrong, whosefault it was, but its fuzzy, all feels like such a long time ago, it alwaysseemed to be me that was dumped and upset but I dont know if that was becauseI was a lousy boyfriend, I always assumed it was a problem with them ratherthan me. I never really got a proper explanation from them even the ones that Istayed in touch with after. Maybe I should ask and find out, maybe visiting thescenes of the relationships would trigger some missing memories; maybe Im morebored than I first thought.