Zombie theme part 1

Lively’s Condition

“You’ll have give yourself the injection,” says Hargreaves as he tightens the band on my upper arm. “Ethics of the suicide mission and all that.”
“I understand,” I reply.
He hands me a syringe labelled “007”.
“It’s smaller than I expected,” I say, just to delay the inevitable.
“It has to be concentrated, a small volume I mean,” he says. “It’s effective at the tissue level so we have to be sure you can inject all of it quickly without, you know…..”
“Dying too soon?”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that, old chap, but yes, for your purposes.”
I take a deep breath and put the point against my arm.

And then I wake up. Must have been dreaming.
I’m lying on my back and I can see a box of sky. Where am I? Need more information.
I sniff. Nothing. Of course not, I have no sense of smell any more. No proper sense of smell that is. I mean I can recognise the smell of brains. No brains here.
I lean up on one elbow and look around. I’m in some kind of metal chamber, open to the sky. Next to me is a corpse.
The corpse is lying face down, although there probably isn’t much of an actual face judging by what’s where the back of the head should be. All that’s there is a two halves of a skull. Both halves are covered in short hair, blood and some stringy bits and bobs. There’s nothing inside. Now I remember eating the brain. And before that splitting the guy’s head open with an axe. And before that smashing him on the bridge of the nose with the same axe, blunt end that time. And before that he shot me. That’s further back though.

I was on fire and he shot me in the chest.
To my left another man shouted “La tête, la tête.”
The head he’s saying. I must know some French.
The shouting man was standing on deck near the gunwale of the boat. Under his arm was a gas cylinder rigged up to a rubber pipe with a cigar lighter taped to the end. The French love their bricolage, eh?
He grimaced and blasted me with burning gas again. The fire doesn’t hurt, nothing does, but it is a concern. I could feel my flesh charring. Much more of this and I wouldn’t be able to move. Then I might actually get shot in the head and then there’s a good chance I’d be dead. Dead dead, not moving dead.
I’m calm in a combat situation. I have no idea why.
My other assailant was to my right, also backed up against the gunwale. He was raising the pistol. He was not calm. His hands were shaking.
I was on the deck in between them. Had to charge one or the other. They both reeked of brains. If I went for the fireman, burning as I was, there would have been a good chance of his DIY flamethrower exploding and blowing both of us to pieces. I hurled myself to the right.
My arms wrapped around the man, “mon dieu” he screamed, and my momentum carried us both over the side of the boat into the sea.
Immersion put out my burning flesh, which was useful. Air bubbles burst from the man’s mouth as we descended, not far.
Something touched my temple. The gun! I pushed myself back as he fired. The bullet missed me just barely. Apart now, we both stood up. I was too slow though. I straightened up to find him already standing, up to his waist in water, with the gun held in both hands pointing into my face. He squeezed the trigger and the gun clicked.
“Merde!” He turned and dived into the water.
I tried to follow but it was no good. He was swimming faster than I could wade. Any other prey, I wondered.
On the beach was a screaming scrum of zombies and Frenchmen. I was the leader of these zombies, the Picnic Crew I called them. I say leader, but it was less formal than that. There had been no election or other appointment. It was just that I was in better condition than any of them, physically and mentally.
There they were, picnicking on the rest of the French crew. Twenty or so zombies and three live humans, not much of a contest. My plan had been that they would get the three brains to share between them, whilst I would pursue the two on the boat and get at least one brain all to myself. The plan was not looking good at that point.
The boat had already motored away some distance. Far beyond the boat, I could just see a plague buoy, bobbing in the distance. When the zombie pandemic had struck they had quarantined off the UK mainland with a perimeter of these buoys.
Nobody was supposed to cross the line of course, but there was always somebody willing to take the risk in the hope of finding something valuable. Somebody like these Frenchmen.
The swimming man started shouting. I don’t know enough French to understand what he said but I saw the boat come about and stop. Could I catch up? Maybe if I could swim.
And suddenly I was swimming. Quite fast too. Every now and then my dead body surprises me with a skill remembered from when I was alive. Like the French and the calmness in combat. It’s never surprised me by remembering any events from when I was alive though, just skills.
As I drew closer to the man the smell of brains thickened. My arms and legs moved faster. I saw his boots, kicking, and above them his sodden overalls. That won’t be helping him, I thought. The charred fragments of my own clothes had fallen away by then. I was swimming in nothing but the tool belt that held my axe.
I could have caught him in the water, but I realised that, if I did that, the other man would motor away and take his brain with him. Being able to realise stuff like that is part of what makes me the leader of the Picnic Crew. Another part is that I can suppress my hunger long enough to act on a plan.
Right then I planned to allow him to reach the boat, with me in close pursuit, and get on board. Once there I would kill both men and eat their brains.