For Sarah, who brought me back.

1

They’re keeping it alive in the room next to me.

I’d been in the hospital for three days when that thing arrived. It rolled into my ward on an ancient wheelchair, the front wheels emitting an ear-piercing squeak on every rotation. The sound was horrendous, but it was a distant second compared to the one conjured by the dusty, papery lungs of its passenger.

It had been years since I’d seen one in the flesh (pun heavily intended). I had a limited field of view from within my private room. But I could see that some of the other patients had already grabbed their drip stands and piss bags and wandered to the corridor to catch a glimpse of it. They all wore the same expression – the same one I was no doubt wearing: What the hell is that thing doing here?

Aware but unresponsive to all the eyes that flitted between him and his ghoulish cargo, a bored looking porter pushed it down the corridor like it was just another day, just another patient. Well, it didn’t look like just another patient; just another patient wouldn’t have his arms secured in straps.

Behind the porter followed a nurse who wore her feelings plainly upon her face: she needed this new patient on her ward like another hole in her arse. The nurse in turn was flanked by another man wearing a slightly shiny suit and bluetooth headphones – despite clearly not being on a phone call at that time. He had the look of one of those self-proclaimed zombie experts, hired by the local authority on a stupidly large day rate. I bet he knows as much about caring for the undead as our esteemed MP’s drinking partners knew about manufacturing PPE during Covid. Before this, he was probably a very gifted, self-taught GDPR specialist, prolific on LinkedIn no doubt. I’m not sure why I take such an instant dislike to him, I don’t know the guy. I really need to be less judgemental.

Though I’ve got my own room, I spent my first three nights suffering at the hands of the elderly woman with a fondness for watching TV at all hours and at stupidly high volumes. She was particularly enamoured with a shopping channel that seemed to be staffed with an endlessly inane array of presenters, all of whom operating under the constant threat that their contracts would be terminated with immediate effect should they end a sentence with anything other than an exclamation mark.

This old lady’s TV was pumped up so much that through the not so particularly thick walls, I could easily make out every word, every saving, every BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! To preserve sanity, I started playing a game with myself: I’d listen to the presenters describe the item, then try and guess the price. I started to get quite good, then I stopped playing, mainly because there was no one to brag to.

Only when the nurses would find her sleeping with the TV on would they grant me a reprieve.

“It helps me sleep,” I heard her say to a nurse once.

“You do you, sweetheart,” came the infuriating reply.

I longed to complain, but never could. It irritated me to my bones and eroded my sleep like acid. But from what I could tell, her family visits were quick and infrequent.

They’re not 100%, but the doctors are pretty sure that it’s viral meningitis that’s landed me in here. Apparently, it’s either that or herpes, which I really don’t want it to be. Meningitis elicits sympathy; herpes: judgement. They take my blood on a daily basis. I have become quite adept at bleeding.

My private room is one of only two isolation rooms in the hospital. They’re normally reserved for people with TB (still a thing apparently), and to be honest, I was initially grateful for the ambiguous infectiousness of my disease that affords me my own space. All things considered, I was feeling pretty smug. I wouldn’t do well on a shared ward. I lack the confidence and the common interest in my fellow humans to make small talk. And here in my room – when there are no other overbearing sounds – I can drift off to the constant and not unpleasant whirl of the air recycling units in the ceiling.

I must admit, as far as hospital stays go, I was riding high. Literally. These drugs they’ve got me on; I’ve been technically high-as-fuck the whole time. Shopping Channel Lady had recently departed (with family, alive) and I found myself beginning to feel the sweet tug of sleep. I was feeling particularly spacey on account of the anti-inflammatory steroids they were pumping into me, and the accompanying whirl of the recycling units provided a lovely ambient noise that was guiding the way to blissful unconsciousness.

I watched the clouds ride across the sky like a herd of mighty, benevolent animals migrating across the plains of an infinite blue savanna. I’m not going out of my way to sound overly poetic here – it’s just the drugs.

Is it pleasant, interesting thoughts, or the complete lack of them that provide the quickest route to sleep? I don’t know, but that afternoon, as I lay in bed watching the clouds, the delicious, syrupy pull of slumber was interrupted by a distant but undeniable sound.

At first I wasn’t sure if I’d tumbled swiftly into a bad dream. Either way, I found myself suddenly alert. I listened, but initially could hear nothing but the agreeable whirl of the aircon units de-meningitising the room.

Yes, there it was: the piercing squeak of a hospital wheelchair, distant but growing louder. Annoying as it was, it wasn’t what had triggered my brain to start pumping out adrenaline. And then it came: Another noise. The noise.

A moan. Not a sexy one either (sorry). This one’s about as far away from sexy as it gets. It’s been called the mating call of the undead – bit much, especially as there’s no actual recorded sightings of zombies fucking – thank Christ. But there’s no denying I heard it in the waking world. That horrid, bone-dry rasp that seemed to go on forever, mocking the living with their rotting lung capacity.

My first thought was to mourn my nap. Alas, I never got to know you, but we could have been really great together. But then, as my nearly-sleep-addled brain came fully back online, I did the maths: a zombie on the ward – sure as hell wasn’t a visitor. And a zombie patient would require isolation; one of only two isolation rooms in the whole hospital. And to think that I thought nothing of it when I saw a handyman installing a lock onto the outside of the opposite room’s door the other day…

Any smugness I had regarding my dwellings departed like a fart in a hurricane. I grew suddenly nostalgic for Shopping Channel Lady, for exclusive Tupperware sets, cheap jewellery, and high-tech bread bins that will LITERALLY change your life. If I was correct, I would have a new sound to drift off to sleep to.

It was then that I made the first in a long line of mistakes. I rose unsteadily from my bed just as the squeak and moans seemed to reach a crescendo. The moan is bad – really, really horrible to listen to. But the squeak of the wheelchair? Jesus… it’s loud yeah, but entirely avoidable. Part of me thinks the zombie is just moaning in protest to it. If someone spoke zombie and could offer a translation, I dare say they’d tell us that the creature is simply enquiring about the possibility of procuring some WD40.

The two isolation rooms share an entrance way that separates them from the rest of the ward: a sort of lobby that has delusions of being an airlock; though even a casual glance would tell you that it is in no way an airlock. There’s no air recycling units or anything like that. Just a hand wash station and a shitload of laminated posters that protest too much that strict hygiene measures are in place. As you face them, my room is the one on the right. The doors to both are angled at ninety degrees to each other and have a square pane of glass in each, through which you can view the shared lobby-cum-fake-airlock from your bed. For privacy, these little door windows are adorned with some tatty roller blinds. I don’t have a clue why – I get told off every single time I try to put them down. We need to see patients at all times. Fair enough I guess, but it’s all very confusing. Anyway, if I choose, as I came to do on many occasions, I could stand at my door and look into the room opposite. And, if I crane my neck like a weirdo (current position) I can just see a little slice of the rest of the ward beyond. From this limited view, I can see the other patients lining up to see the thing. It comes into view. The thing’s head is slightly turned to its left, mercifully away from me. It sits slumped forward in the wheelchair. The posture of a surly teenager. It’s not just a phase mom, I like being undead.

Long, white, thinning hair covers a small portion of its face. I say face… yellowed, impossibly taut death mask would be a more apt description. It’s like it got an all-you-can-eat facelift and forgot to say ‘when’. Eye sockets and cheekbones that would be the envy of any catwalk and a top lip pulled up in a permanent snarl over his gums and teeth. Dribble pours from its mouth and sticks in its beard; a byproduct of the body still fighting a losing battle against the infection. It wears a bib, like a decaying baby: an unsettling juxtaposition. The bpm of the squeak slows as the wheelchair nears the door.

I can see the white mottled flesh of its back, exposed through the top of the haphazardly tied hospital gown. Its hands are strapped to the arms of the wheelchair, albeit very loosely. Almost pointless really, the thing is harmless of course, disgusting, haunting to look at, but ultimately harmless. Though if inclined, (it’s not) it looks like it could do some damage with its long fingernails, they could do with a cut.

The porter spins the wheelchair around to back into the room. This is the exact moment that I should look away. The exact moment I should turn around, go lay on my bed and stare out the window at those majestic, unknowable cloud-beasts; will they ever find a place to call home? (Sorry, drugs).

Instead, I stay where I am. I watch as the zombie spins: its head flops over to its right shoulder and kinda looks left and up-ish. In other words, straight at me.

We’ve devoured (intended) zombie films and TV shows for decades now, all without the faintest idea what a real zombie event/happening/uprising would look like should it actually come to pass. In terms of predictions, we got most of it wrong. But one thing the films got right? The eyes. Those milky little blobs of hell. Bloodshot and jaundiced. If eyes are the window to the soul, then, well… fuck that, I’m not going in. I’m pretty sure heaven doesn’t exist. But looking into its eyes, right there and then, I couldn’t, in good faith, swear that hell doesn’t.

I should not have looked. But I did, and it has now seen me. It knows I exist. If it dreams, it will dream of me, of my face, my soft cheeks fattened with mash potato and ambiguous hospital meats. In some dim part of his brain it is already gnawing my nose off.

Why did I look? Why?! I’d seen a few zombies in real life and a shitload on the news. Perhaps I just wanted to know the face of my tormentor. I wanted to put a face (deathmask) to the thing that was going to keep me awake for the rest of my time here.

The thing is, I am in no way worried about getting my nose chewed off. Nor am I worried about getting bitten or infected or being press ganged into the legion of the undead. Right now, I’m just worried about my sleep. My head and my back are killing me and I’m averaging about two hours of sleep a night. It seems that number is set to decrease.

But wait, I hear you cry, shouldn’t you be worried about the zombie that’s just moved in next door? Is that the drugs? Chilling me out waaaay too much and messing up any sense of self-preservation that I should have?

No. It’s not. It’s because zombies, as horrible and disgusting as they may be, are fucking useless.

2

A quick word on the ‘Zombie Uprising’.

Specifically, how underwhelming and frankly disappointing it was. No, wait… disappointing feels like the wrong word – though maybe not if you harbour a not-so-secret gun fetish? No, sorry, disappointing definitely isn’t right. I take it back. Maybe replace it with… unexpected? I dunno. It’s tricky because a lot of people died, all around the world, and the vast majority of them simply didn’t need to.

As I mentioned before, our minds had been fattened up and corrupted with over half a century’s worth of zombie fiction. Whereas in the real world, you’d have to go very far out of your way to be killed (or even infected) by a zombie. Don’t get me wrong. People hate zombies. Hate them. Not because of the carnal pleasure they would unashamedly take in ripping apart and feasting upon the flesh of your nearest and dearest – they don’t, and to be honest, can’t. And it’s not because they are repugnant to look at (though that’s perhaps part of it).

No, people hate zombies because of the complete lack of challenge that they represent. To be killed by a zombie, you have to either be a fucking idiot or a literal baby. Zombies are just… boring. The masses hate them in the way that they hate the flu. Sometimes, on very rare occasions, if the circumstances are right, the flu can be deadly. But mostly it’s just a massive, boring inconvenience. I hate being laid up in this hospital bed. I hate this headache, etc. When the first reports of infection started appearing online, then on the actual proper terrestrial channel news – the point at which it eventually sunk in that this was no hoax – the human race seemed, almost overnight, to order itself into two groups.

For better or for worse, Group One wanted the world to more or less stay the same. Be it an investment banker who would very much like to keep making obscene amounts of money trading fossil fuel commodities, or a happily married parent who spends a lot of the day thinking about their beautiful children. To both these people, and everyone in between them within Group One, the status quo was their friend. Group One watched the news and did not like what they saw. A variation on ‘This zombie apocalypse sounds a bit shit. No thank you.’

Fear.

Fear could be neatly summarised as the primary emotion that Group One felt when they watched the zombie story break.

Then there was Group Two. Oh, bloody hell, Group Two. Smaller than Group One (thank fuck). These guys (and they were mostly guys)... not so happy with the status quo. Resentment bubbles under just the surface of the average Group Two-er, spilling over more often than not.

They feel aggrieved, like they’d been unfairly treated in this life, looked over and forgotten. And let’s be honest, a lot of them had. I really shouldn’t judge. We are all products of our environment, and what do I know of the economic and social demands of Group Two? All I know is that at the time of the outbreak, the cards of this world – no doubt shuffled by that vexatious entity referred to as ‘The Man’ – were stacked against them. So where Group One watched the news and felt the biting chill of fear crawling up their spine, Group Two watched the news and felt the tingle of excitement, er, twirling around their… balls? I don’t know, they just liked what they saw, OK? This zombie uprising was the big shake up! Furk-Yerh! A grand reckoning for turning our backs on God/letting the gays marry/insert grievance du jour.

It was at this moment that Group Two’s mundane, relatively insignificant lives took on meaning. And thus began the origin story of how each one of them became the hero they always knew they were deep down inside. Suddenly there was something to fight for, and more importantly, a socially acceptable enemy to fight against. This was the chance to tool up and band together with their fellow man (along extremely narrow demographic fault lines, of course) and overcome terrible, insurmountable odds to defeat an unrelenting and unknowable terror that defied science and religion. In layman’s terms: time to go out and buy a big fucking gun.

We thought this was the human race’s ultimate test. And it was, but not the one our pop-culture-engorged imaginations had been gearing us up for. It turned out to be a totally different test, one that we, as a collective species, failed spectacularly.

However, just as supplies of bog roll and ammunition were flying off the shelves, calmer heads were busy probing and poking around the newly ‘undead’. It was quickly starting to become clear that this wasn’t a zombie apocalypse so much as a zombie inconvenience.

70%. That was the figure that seemed to stick. There are still quite a few different numbers floating around out there, and the infected themselves were in various different states of fitness and mobility at the time of infection, but once infected, the virus seemed to slow the motor functions of the infected down by approximately 70%. Cognitive functions were severely dampened, though that’s almost impossible to quantify given the spread of intelligence across the hundreds of test subjects.

One of the first recorded experiments was that of a particularly rank looking zombie trying and failing to open a jar full of raspberry jam. Not sure why the jar had to be actually full of a red editable substance – bit on the nose. Not to mention a total waste of jam. I mean, they couldn’t get into it, but still, no one’s buying that jam afterwards, no matter how heavily discounted it is, it’s just – anyway, the video was immediately branded fake by large portions of Group Two. A new front in the information wars had just opened up and not everyone was happy with the !!CLEARY FALSE!! narrative that the zombies posed little risk to the population.

Despite the fact that once infected, you’d become about five times slower and stupider. Yes, sure, you would yearn for human flesh. But my yearning for driving a Ferrari doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to be able to chase one down on the street. Zombies moved like they were underwater and parsed thoughts like they’d just sank a bottle of whisky.

And then there was the hysteria about the whole brain thing.

OK, here’s a question for you. Have you ever tried getting into a coconut without a machete? Have you ever tried with one?! Exactly. The infected did not suddenly gain the ability to pop someone’s head open like a Pez dispenser and help themselves to the delishy grey snack residing within. The brain thing is another pop-culture bum steer. They don’t even like them, probably because they’re chewy as fuck. The infected ate muscle, just like us. Well, those of us who can still stomach it these days.

Zombie’s eating brains made the leap from film trope to genuine mortal fear thanks to a couple of bored teenagers who happened to be in the right place at the right time (or wrong place, wrong time depending on your point of view). It was an unfortunately common event in the early days; a zombie stumbling out into a road, or a motorway… One day, one poor infected soul got absolutely toasted by a truck, like, legitimately obliterated into numerous pieces. Meanwhile, several metres down the road, in the forecourt of a disused service station, another zombie (one that, it must be said, bore more a remarkable resemblance to Dave Mustaine of the thrash metal band Megadeth, he had the hair and everything) was being filmed by a teenager as his mate prodded it with a stick – alas, youth is wasted on the young.

So when pieces of his undead compatriot came showering down upon the group, Zombie Dave Mustaine’s hair acted as a kind of natural net, catching all sorts of horrible bits and zombie bobs. These kids couldn’t believe their luck. This was damn good content. The kid with the camera ushered his mate out of the way, checked his framing and went in close on Zombie Dave Mustaine just as it slowly started to pick the bits of poor Truck Zombie out of its hair and popping them straight into his mouth. It just so happened that the nearest to hand was a bit of grey matter complete with a side serving of skull still attached. Zombie Dave Mustaine gave it a little chew but let it fall out of his mouth moments later.

A quick bit of editing and one upload later, the video went viral (unintended) within an hour. Camera kid clearly had an intuitive sense for filmmaking because he seemed to be aware of the screenwriting maxim: arrive late, leave early. He chopped out all the stick prodding prologue and just showed a tight ten second clip of a zombie eating brains, cutting just before Zombie Dave Mustaine gave up on the tasty threat.

This was fairly early on in the outbreak. Can you imagine how much this freaked people out? The narrative that the undead are actually after your brains spread like wildfire. Obviously the kids were just messing about at the time, but little did they know that they were probably responsible for more deaths than any other event in the whole sorry affair.

Dave Mustaine was forced to release a statement saying that he was alive and well and that a new Megadeth album would be out next year.

Did the virus suddenly make the average Joe’s teeth super sharp overnight? No, it did not. Their teeth remained relatively dull whilst their saliva glands went into overdrive. The body’s first line of defence against infection just served to lubricate the whole biting process and stop the teeth from getting much purchase. The power in their jaw was the same but just moved way slower.

But it wasn’t all death and decay. One curious side effect of infection was the noticeable improvement of hearing within the legions of the undead. The virus had an odd regenerative effect on the tiny sensory hair cells that reside in one’s cochlea, apparently. Normally over time these cells get damaged and generally start to fuck off. Hence why old people get deaf. But the virus seemed to rejuvenate and supercharge these cells, endowing the zombies with what scientists have come to refer to in no way whatsoever as Mad Good HearingTM. Of course, to big pharma, this just sounded like MONEY. With varying degrees of success, companies have tried to distil and bottle this essence that improves hearing without infection. ‘Zombie Ear Drops’, as they quickly became nicknamed, are still available from any good pharmacy, but you’d have to order them in, because no one is touching them with a bargepole. Marketing just hasn’t figured out the sell on that one. Not exactly ‘natural plant extracts’ is it?

Most people became infected from a sneeze or a cough from the infected (they sneeze like crazy). A face mask was infinitely more powerful at stopping infection than a gun or baseball bat. Another common occurrence in the early days: a have-a-go-hero would would punch a zombie in the face, breaking the zombies nose (which did nothing) whilst also breaking just enough skin on their knuckles to let the infection in.

The chances of a zombie walking out in front of your car and causing a road traffic accident are astronomically higher and a very real and annoying danger. Zombie insurance cover became a thing. Iggy Pop even did another insurance ad.

But the collective sum total of all these facts didn’t stop America from going shopping. A large number of survivalists continued to tuck their boners into their Walmart combat pants and thank their lucky stars that they had the opportunity to protect their family from the undead with lethal force.

But then it came: the great revelation.

Only a few weeks into the outbreak, the virus showed to be extremely responsive to basic, over the counter antiviral medicines. Group One rejoiced, Group Two called !!BS FAKE NARRATIVE!!

But the facts were the facts. If caught within the first month of infection, a fairly simple two-week course of antivirals could literally turn zombies back to their old selves. It wouldn’t be an overnight recovery; you’d feel like absolute shite for about three months afterwards. And aesthetically… well, you weren’t getting laid for a while. That said, you’d be surprised at the number of sexual niches the outbreak spawned. Porn got really weird for months afterwards. Apparently.

Either way, destroy the head. Remove the brain quickly turned into pop down the chemist. This wasn’t the news gun owning patriots wanted to hear. They wanted headshots. Tracer rounds. Killboards! Not oral antivirals that you could even drink.

And so began one of the most shameful chapters in America’s complicated love affair with the gun. Now, I’m not talking about the proper zombies who’d been infected for months. Rake thin, missing the odd limb. What’s dead is dead, and no amount of drugs in the world is going to bring those rangy fuckers back to the land of the living. Corpses belong in the ground, or the furnace. No, I’m talking about the multitude of infected people who were put down when a simple course of antivirals could have been administered to them.

This was the true zombie war. It is still being fought in the courtrooms of America and across the world today, with no let up in sight. Families are seeking justice for loved ones lost who could have been easily cured. Gun owners plead that they were simply exercising the 2nd amendment to protect their families from a hoard of Satan’s zombies. In some cases this was partly true, in others, the hoard turned out to be made up of two zombies, fifteen minutes drive away in a predominantly black neighbourhood.

Once again I shouldn’t judge; I’m sure if we had guns over here in the UK we’d probably have acted exactly the same.

But we don’t. So we sat on the sofa and watched it play out on the tele. Government advice on avoiding a bite basically boiled down to wearing a face mask and washing your hands like a mad cunt. It all felt tediously familiar. If you contracted the virus and received treatment, congrats, you were now immune for the rest of your life. There were also no variants. Parents organised chickenpox style parties (HEAVILY supervised of course).

Some celebs contracted the virus on purpose to shed some pounds quickly. Everyone had a point of view on what it felt to be ‘go zombie’. These opinions, often posted on social media, were plentiful and dull.

Very soon, prophylactic measures were available worldwide that would stop you becoming infected. Just as soon as it had begun, the zombie uprising was over. Antivirals and face masks were weapons that ended it. Not very rock and roll, I’ll concede, but these days, even our apocalypses can’t help but disappoint.

It didn’t take long for all this ‘zombie nonsense’ (as my mum liked to call it) to fall out of the news cycle. Over the years, it fell out of the public’s psyche altogether. We were all happy to see the back of it. I hadn’t thought about zombies in months. And then that thing moved in next door.

3

I watch through my window as the porter and nurse slowly transition the zombie to the bed. It makes a pathetic attempt to get its teeth into the nearest forearm, but it’s moving so slowly that its arms are secured to the straps on the bed before it gets anywhere near.

The porter places a battered, ancient looking hiking backpack and hiking boots on the side (seemingly the thing’s only belongings) and promptly gets the fuck outta there, taking the world’s most extroverted wheelchair with him.

The nurse checks the straps on its arms before connecting the antibiotics, antivirals and anti-sickness meds (zombies love to vomit) to its cannula. I continue to watch as she plumps its pillow and double checks the arm straps (mainly to stop it accidentally pulling the drip out). Is there a family out there on the way to visit? I hope not – that thing should be in the ground, it’s too far gone. I don’t know what its story was before becoming infected but that thing is not turning back. Why are they wasting taxpayers money on keeping it in here?

I wait for the nurse to finish up, confident that she’ll knock on my door for a courtesy call, just to explain that there’s a zombie next door, but there’s no need to worry; there’s a lock on the door, he’s very secure, etc, etc.

The nurse finishes up in the thing’s room and walks straight past my door on the way out. I am parched. I ring the call bell to ask for some water. I wait thirty-five minutes before someone comes. God forbid I was an older patient who’d fallen out of bed or something and used their last ounce of strength to press the call button.

This place feels like an understaffed bar. You want a drink (literally in my case). And you end up directing all your anger towards the few people who are actually doing the job, when really you should be calling up the tight-ass bar owner who refuses to hire more staff, content as they are to let the ones actually doing the job choke on their workload to save cash. You get where I’m going with this, I won’t labour the analogy.

The first couple of nights pass without real incident. My brain is dulled by the meds and the days squash together into one shapeless form. But as I feared, my sleep is suffering. I am woken often by my new friend’s moans and – despite the anti-sickness meds I presume it’s on – the occasional vomit.

Sometimes I manage to cling to sleep. In these instances, my brain incorporates the noises from next door into the narrative of my dreams. Last night, I dreamt of a scarecrow dropping overripe, fetid fruit from the top of a building and laughing maniacally as it exploded on the pavement below.

Sometimes I think I would have preferred to wake up. And often I do, to the sound of the cleaners entering and mopping the mess. They rarely wear face masks. Such is the threat of infection. They certainly have them on when they pop in to see me. The zombie poses no real threat, but meningitis does. And herpes, but I don’t have that, so drop it, OK?

On the third night, I hear a new noise.

But first: The only way to truly ascertain whether a patient has meningitis is to perform a procedure called a lumbar puncture.

Via a sizeable syringe (that has no right to be anywhere near the body), a small amount of fluid is removed from the patient’s spine. That sample is then whisked off to the lab where some clever people analyse the tits off it. Unfortunately however, this procedure can sometimes result in fluid leaking out of the spine. Not like an open wound – it doesn’t give you a freaky little blowhole or anything – so don’t get excited. It just leaks out into the body. In the medical world, I believe the technical term for this is known as ‘Not Ideal’.

This leak is particularly irksome as the brain is enveloped and supported in a cushion of this spinal fluid. So when said fluid leaks out of the spine, the pressure in the cushion drops and the brain effectively stops floating and starts rubbing on the bottom of the head like a boat on low tide.

Painkillers and caffeine help alleviate the pain, but the only real sure fire way to relieve a lumbar puncture headache is to lie perfectly flat. That way, the remaining fluid is distributed along the body allowing the brain-boat to rise again on the tide. One stays like that until the spine hole(?) heals and the body produces more spinal fluid thus restoring the pressure. This is actually fairly common amongst women who have had an epidural during childbirth. You can go ahead and add that to the list of things they have to deal with that you didn’t know about.

Right now, I have a lumbar puncture headache. It came on yesterday and it is just as fun as it sounds. It feels like I’m wearing a gas mask made of lead. I lay flat in bed because that’s all I can do to be free of the pain. Every degree that I sit up buys me one more metric unit of discomfort.

Two days ago, my sleep was a vulnerable animal in the wild. Now it is being hunted to the point of extinction. And when I do drift off, oh boy, I sorely wish I hadn’t.

Last night I dreamt that I was the one strapped to the bed. There were straps across my ankles and neck, all across my body, all horrendously tight. Gone was the gentle, constant whirl of the air recycling units from above. They were replaced with the sound of scratchy, laboured breathing. Though I couldn’t see it, I knew that that thing was lying face down on the other side of the suspended ceiling. Patiently waiting for the ancient foam panels to give way so he could crash down upon me and chew bits off me at leisure.

I wake up. It’s the dead of night. I’ve been asleep for maybe forty-five minutes? All of it pure nightmare. But the fog quickly clears and I hear a sound that chills me. I mutter a prayer that I am somehow still sleeping, whilst simultaneously mourning the times when it was just a moan, or even the wet slushy-slap of the thing’s insides hitting the floor. I almost weep with nostalgia thinking about the shopping channel.

Aware of the pain it will bring, I slowly manoeuvre out of bed and press my ear to the wall. I hear the raspy breath of the half-dead thing directly on the other side. What the fuck is it doing? And then I hear the unmistakable sound that cuts through me. It probably took it half the night, and God knows how, but it figured out how to slip the straps off and now it’s scraping its fingernails down our shared wall in long, slow swipes. I should never have looked it in the eye; a costly mistake, and the invoice has just arrived.

I try to get some perspective. My IV meds are due to finish in a couple of days, thank the Lord. They said they’ll give me some pills to take home. It’s fine. I can outlive this ghoulish prick. Literally. I can survive a couple of nights here without sleep if I have to. I’ll be fine.

4

It’s the next morning. A neurologist stands in my room and blabs on about the blood brain barrier (fuck knows) whilst I lay flat on my bed. I’ve stopped listening. I stopped listening five sentences ago because I’m still processing what she said six sentences ago.

“Please, don’t get up,” she said by way of a greeting when she came in. I looked at her from my perfectly flat position, honestly unable to tell if she was joking or not. She was unfortunately not joking when she dropped the news that I’d be staying here for at least another week. The medical powers that be want to keep me on the antivirals to make sure the suspected meningitis doesn’t come back. And to do that, the meds need to be given to me intravenously. Because antiviral pills don’t cross the blood brain barrier. What this is exactly is never explained to me. But does it matter? It just means I’m stuck here.

“OK, but…” I begin, possibly interrupting her mid sentence, I’m not sure, and I don’t care. “Set aside the whole ‘tomorrow you can go home’ thing. Parking that creation and immediate destruction of hope, I really do need you to do something about that.” I point at the wall vigorously.

She nods and instantly snaps into Placate Mode: Her palms press out towards me as if I’m about to leap and attack her. Like I would do such a thing… with a lumbar puncture headache as bad as this.

“I understand your reservations, I do.” she replies. “I know this is not an ideal situation. But we’re very short handed at the moment.” She speaks slowly and deliberately with an inordinate amount of eye white on display. At the end of each sentence, she nods solemnly and brings her hands together in a slo-mo clappy-clasp action. “It’s just a while longer, whilst we continue the treatment and the search for family.” There’s a sad smile and a tilt of the head on ‘family’. Don’t you want him to see his family again?

Suddenly I feel like the arsehole for wanting more than an hour’s sleep every night. For the record, I would love the man next door to see his family again. I would. But there’s a small problem that lies in the fact that that isn’t a man next door. That pathetic, rotting epilogue to a life expired, is not a man. It retains no memories. It has no family. If its former relatives do visit, it will recognise them as nothing other than food. I should not be losing sleep because of it, and we should not be wasting money keeping it… functioning.

The doctor clasps her hands together one final time and checks her watch. “I can assure you, his door is locked. You are perfectly safe.”

“Oh, I know,” I say, halting her turn towards the door. “I know that I’m safe from it, physically,” her face twitches in a wince at ‘it’. Whatever. “But I’m not safe from the insomnia it’s causing. I got to sleep at two am last night, then it woke me up at three.”

“We’ve upped his anti-sickness meds as of this morning—”

“It was running its fingernails down the wall.”

She looks at me like I’m cracked.

“I’m being serious.” I say.

“Mr Harper is secured— ”

I wave away the name like it’s a fly in my face. I don’t want to know what it used to be called. He’s an it until he turns back. Which is never. “Trust me, it was up and about. Perhaps you could tighten its straps a little. Maybe a lot?”

Another nod and sponge clap. “There are strict regulations on securing the infected. We’re tied down to some pretty heavy pre-mandated guidelines.”

She looks at me with a kindly smile. My eyes narrow. She just gonna leave that pun out there, unattended? Unbelievable.

“Look, I appreciate you guys looking after me, I really do. But, I’m not sleeping. I’m going mad, I’m kinda… on the edge here.”

“We can give you something to help with that.”

I know the walking corpse formerly known as ‘Mr Harper’ poses no danger, and I should get me some sweet sleeping pills… but after that dream I had the other night, the thought of being completely out of it, in deep, unnatural sleep, scares the shit out of me. And so, I decline, mumbling something about not wanting too many drugs in my system.

“Perhaps you could cut his nails?” I offer.

“I’ll have a word with the nurses. But let’s focus on your recovery.” She shoots prayer hands in my direction. “Your infection markers are great. The fever’s gone.” Her hands move in a wide, open arc, then scrunch into fists. “We’re in a good place! I’ll be back to check on you later.”

She does not come back later to check on me. And frankly, I do not blame her. I wouldn’t want to deal with me either. I was admitted into hospital last week, a white hot pain searing through my head. I was then pumped full of drugs and essentially cured by a bunch of strangers who don’t know me from Adam. I am incredibly fortunate. How would I fare if I was in another country? America, For example? (Sorry, I know I keep picking on you lot). In my mind, I keep a running total of how much money I would owe for a hospital stay in the U.S. I wouldn’t be sleeping full stop because I’d be freaking out worrying about whether my insurance would cover it.

There are people in this building who are literally dying of cancer. The lucky ones are surrounded by their family; others are just getting on with it all by themselves. I am lucky beyond all recognition and I need to get a grip.

I realise this, of course, hours after the doctor has left, incapable of self-awareness in real time as I am.

‘Mr Harper’ has been wheeled off for some tests. I try to savour the moment. I cannot. I know the glorious silence will not last for long and I now see another long sleepless week stretching out ahead of me.

I haven’t told my mum I’m here. There’s no point. She would split down the middle with worry. I wonder if there’s anyone out there, worrying about my friend next door? Is there anyone out there looking for a lost dad, brother or grandad? Is there anyone on this planet giving Mr Harper as much thought as I am right now?

I never really thought of that vomiting, walking corpse as having a family. Only in an abstract, long-gone, AncestryDNA type sense. Though if I’m honest with myself, I never allowed the thought to germinate. Afraid to face the paradox it presents: I either see him as a human, and therefore should open myself up to his suffering, or conversely, truly see it as some inhuman, non-sentient ghoul, incapable of choice. In which case he/it can’t help the way he is. Either way it breaks down, I should consider not being such a dick.

What if Harper’s family find him? Would they want to see him like this? I’m actually not sure how it works. Would they only get notified only if he was responding to the antivirals? If he was starting to turn back? No one looks good on a deathbed. But seeing someone you care about for the last time, in that abhorrent state of physical (and mental) decay? Hm. Not for me, no thanks.

Ending’s cast a long shadow. How could that goodbye not distort and contaminate your precious archive of memories of that person?

Maybe because it’s the middle of the day, and I’m furthest away from the long, lonely, sleepless night. Maybe because outside, the sun is shining and the clouds are looking ON POINT, but I sense a seed of sympathy growing within me. I decide to cut him a little slack.

5

That fucking cunt of a corpse has been running its nails down the wall again. It’s three forty-five in the AM. The noise is quieter than its moans and vomiting yet somehow, so much louder; packaged within some grim intention that sails straight through my ear plugs. Clearly my plea to the doctor about cutting its nails was a non-starter.

I react… badly.

Though it all sounded very non-committal, and was probably only offered up to offset the bomb she just dropped about me sticking around for another week, the doctor did make some noises about me being able to have a walk around the hospital grounds. So, after she departed, I too set sail on a Magellan-esque odyssey. To the hospital pharmacy.

Whether I was technically allowed or not, who knows? But I needed to get the hell out of that room. I was also genuinely curious to see if my legs still worked properly. I wouldn’t be gone for long anyway, the lumbar puncture headache would see to that.

I initially went to see if I could upgrade my ear plugs. I’ve only had one visit from my flatmate, there was only so much he was willing to bring in one go and he’s since gone on holiday. Cheers pal.

I was at the counter paying for my plugs (and a shit-load of Haribo) when I noticed a pair of nail scissors hanging next to the counter. I didn’t think twice about buying them. It’s not that I thought I’d actually use them on anyone (thing) other than myself. Just nice to have in the locker, you know? Well, that’s what I told myself.

Fast forward to the present moment. It’s four o’clock in the morning and I’m standing next to a zombie, about to give it a non-consensual manicure. I feel like I’m watching in the third person. Like I’m standing behind myself, thinking: Mate, what are you doing? I guess you could call it a kind of mindful paralysis.

The nurses came round to take our observations at two am. Shortly afterwards, as I was being courted by sleep, I heard the first scrape. And well, I guess that’s when I snapped. Mr Harper is a pro at slipping its restraints off. Once it does, it wastes no time in ambling over to the wall and getting its scrape on. From what I can see and hear, the nurses rarely seem to catch it up and about. Or if they do it’s during my hour’s beauty sleep for the night.

I went to the door and looked through the window, craning my neck to view as much of the ward as possible: not a soul around. I returned to my bed to make a rough body shape out of my spare clothes. I did all this as quickly as I could; the clock was ticking and the lumbar puncture headache express had already left the station.

I enjoyed the small act of rebellion as I opened my door and stood in the world’s shittest airlock. From here, I could see further into the ward proper. There was still no one about. I continued to stand there. Why? Was I hoping that someone would come by to challenge me? Engage me in a heated conversation so I’d have an excuse to vent back loudly in return? Or did I just want to be caught before the act so I was forced not to go through with it? Either way, I had no such luck. I entered its room.

It’s now that I see myself in the third person. Question myself in the most literal sense. Mr Harper’s re-animated demi-corpse (MHRADC) is pressed flat against our shared wall. Its hands and arms are raised above its head, which in turn is pressed flat to one side against the wall, as if a fire and brimstone preacher was suddenly tasked with cracking open a huge safe mid-sermon.

The room is dark. I’m gonna need at least the reading light on to see what I’m doing. Don’t wanna take a bit of finger off now do I?

The logistics of cutting MHRADC’s nails suddenly dawns on me. I have a moment of doubt (clarity?) and turn to leave.

But what would I be going back to? My bed and no sleep? MHRADC would continue to play its greatest hits on the wall and I’d lose this chance to avoid losing my mind. I re-commit.

Turning back around, I see its hands are slowly moving down from up high and its peeling itself from the wall.

I realise two things at once: 1) I need to get it secured to its bed; 2) MHRADC doesn’t work as an abbreviation. I stand by the bed, and let it come to me.

It moves with the urgency of glacial custard. Agonisingly slow. I think about how I can expedite this process but draw a blank. Slow as it is, I can’t risk cutting its fingers whilst its arms and body are free. I’ve just got to be patient and let it come to me. I should have slipped in whilst it was still secured to its bed. I chide myself for not thinking this through then immediately give myself a break; I’m definitely not quite in my right mind.

Harper’s body is making progress, nearly halfway there. But, God, it’s taking forever. This needs to happen much faster. I’m starting to feel the weight of my lumbar puncture headache. I change gears, moving forward then slipping behind it. As I do, I get a face full of the thing’s breath and immediately want to vomit. It is like nothing I have ever smelt, tasted or experienced. It’s so odious I feel like I can reach out and touch its serrated edges.

Stood behind Harper’s body now, I put my hand up into its armpits and lift. On the big screen, we’re all used to seeing the soft, rotting flesh of zombies tear apart with ease, like pulled pork. I momentarily panic that my hands are going to slide straight up through Harper’s shoulders and take its arms off like a hot knife through butter. My worries are ill-founded, and Harper’s body flies comically high up into the air – you know when you pick up an empty cereal box you mistakenly thought was full? We’ve all been there.

God he’s light. There’s nothing to him! It, sorry, it. This zombie is a joy to manoeuvre, handles like a dream! I’ve never worked in the retail sector, but I can imagine this is exactly what removing a mannequin from a shop window would feel like. I drop Harper’s body back down where it suits me, in front of the bed, grateful that its legs take the weight again without complaint.

Now for the tricky part. I move from behind to its front. I give it an armpit lift from the front (breathing exclusively through my mouth) to try and lift it onto the bed in a sitting position. Whilst I was grateful for Harper’s sturdy legs taking its weight when I moved it forward, its body now refuses to bend as one naturally would when they pull themselves up to sit on a bed. I guess we’re a long way away from natural now…

I try again. Same reaction. Again, more force this time… nothing. I feel like I’ve been here for hours. I’m in quite a lot of pain now and every second that passes puts me in more of a precarious position.

Though I’m literally keeping it at arms length, Harper has been slowly trying to take a bite out of me all this time. I move away and to the side before its breath-ray turns me to stone. Its head turns slowly like an automaton in my direction.

An idea forms. I squat down at its feet, as if I was going to tie its shoelaces. Its feet stay planted, but it bends at the hip down towards me – it’s working. I wait. Just a bit more… a bit more… Harper’s body is nearly at a forty-five degree angle. It teeters, then falls forward towards me… but my hands are ready and waiting; I get them up into its armpits once again and lift him onto the bed. Still bent at the hip, it’s now in a natural sitting-on-the-edge-of-the-bed position. With the bedside manner of a sacked prison guard who’s being forced to work the rest of his shift, I spin Harper’s body around so it’s aligned lengthways on the bed. Naturally, my brain thinks this is a pertinent time to conjure up an image of Kylie Minogue, whirling around on her arse on top of that bar in the music video for Spinning Around. YOU KNOW THE ONE. My brain then decides to return its own serve and flash up a delightful mental image of Harper’s frail, rotting body wearing a pair of outrageously small, gold hot pants. Cheers, brain.

I push its head back onto the pillow. Look over my shoulder to glance down the corridor. Jesus Christ what must this look like? Thing is, you cannot fuck with someone’s sleep… I imagine shouting this at the judge as I’m sentenced.

I grab an arm, push it into the straps, secure it. Then the other one. I breathe a sigh of relief. I turn to leave. This has been such a colossal undertaking, I’ve nearly forgotten the true mission. Harper has been mercifully silent. Almost like it’s enjoyed being literally pushed around. I think the old fella’s just enjoying the stimulus.

Now fully secured on its bed, Harper’s mouth gnaws harmlessly in my general direction. I touch the cold flesh of its hands and am instantly transported back to my grandmother’s funeral. It was the first time I had seen a dead body. It was decades ago and I was young… too young. She was laid out in her Sunday best. Caked in death makeup. They did a pretty good job, she looked alright, you know. But there was nothing they could do for the hands. They had become claws. My mother wanted me to kiss my grandmother on her forehead. I really, really didn’t want to, but she was delirious with grief, so I planted a quick peck on her mother’s cold, tight skin.

I’m on borrowed time here. My skull feels like it’s sinking into my neck and one of the nurses could swing by literally any second. I grab each of Harper’s fingers using the pad of my hand and remove each nail in two cuts, the last of which I take slowly so I can grab the nail with my thumb and index finger. The actual act takes no time at all. I stuff the clippings in my pocket, but they suddenly feel like spent bullet casings from a murder scene. A nurse tasked with cutting its nails would simply just chuck them in the bin. So that’s what I do.

Meanwhile, it seems Harper’s body has stopped trying to gnaw at me. It’s just looking at me, still doing its trademark slow-mo horror-breathing, but a kind of calmness has descended over it. My mission is complete. I should leave. I should really, really get the hell out of there.

I don’t. I just stand there, staring at it. It’s in that moment, searching the ghastly extrusions of his face, that I realise the searingly obvious: He didn’t ask for any of this. There are many, many things he’d rather be doing than keeping me up at night. Many, many other places he’d rather be. I doubt it’s top of the list, but lying peacefully in the cool earth is probably one of them.

Once the world figured out that reversal was not only possible, but relatively simple and inexpensive, the focus quickly shifted from physiology to neuroscience. More specifically, what did the infected remember once they had been turned back? Was anything carried over?

Well, nothing, apparently. Through several thousands of interviews conducted with the Returned, it appeared that no lucidity survived the infected state. Mercifully, they had no recollection of their, shall we say, shenanigans? There were, however, a number of psychologists that criticised the timing of these interviews for taking place too soon after reversal. And, in a way not too dissimilar to the anxiety-inducing flashbacks that sprout like weeds the day after getting blackout drunk, a similar thing happened to the Returned.

Years later, they reported fragments of memories rising unbidden from dark recesses of their minds, like half-remembered scenes from a movie you can’t recall the name of. As you can imagine, these memories were unpleasant and usually involved animals – I won’t elaborate. But if you see someone suddenly drop a carton of milk in the supermarket, or freeze at the green light in traffic, give them a bit of space; their brain could be randomly serving up a vignette of them biting into a street fox. Ah bugger, I elaborated, sorry! But don’t just ignore them either. They could just be straight up having a stroke, in which case, phone that shit in.

My point? Is Mr Harper recording this strange scene to store it in some dark, dusty archive in his brain? A stranger, cutting his nails and going through his shit.

Oh yeah, so after I cut his nails, I started going through his shit.

Not sure how long I’d been standing there, thinking these thoughts about memory and stuff, looking at Harper and wondering how much of him is still in there. Perhaps, if I was able to think of him, more as a human, with experiences, memories and a life lived – albeit one that has all but passed – I could stop viewing him as some kind of gruesome, sleep-eating tax-sponge?

He clearly can’t help the things he does that keep me awake. I’ve never heard of a zombie scraping his nails down the wall, but surely it’s just a variation on the basic zombie operating system directive of bite/eat.

Perhaps if I find some connection to the humanity that he once had, I would rest easier? That’s what I tell myself as I open his tatty old rucksack and look inside: Spare clothes; water bottle; a couple of OS maps; a copy of Britain’s best hikes – well thumbed and older than me; a broken compass… Is that how you got into trouble, Harper? Somehow I think not. Judging by these contents, He was the kind of guy who could tell you what the soup of the day was in Pret a Manger just by studying moss growth on trees.

So far I’ve only learnt that Harper liked hiking. Not really the connection I’m looking for. I check the side pockets, and for the second time, I see myself in that third person view; acutely aware of what I’m doing but powerless to stop myself. Harper’s just staring at me. He’d be well within his rights to let off a big old rattly death moan right now, but he stays quiet. Like the rest of us, I think he’s just after a bit of company.

In the front pocket of the rucksack I find some blank manuscript paper, it’s folded in half and preprinted with musical staves ready for notation. I unfold it. A piano score has been hastily penned in blue ink on the other side. It takes up nearly a whole page before stopping towards the bottom, not abruptly, more like it stuttered out, like the composer had used up all their inspiration for the day.

I hear a noise from down the hall. I don’t hang around to hear what it is. My lumbar puncture headache is running white hot. In the space of five seconds, I’m out his door and back into my own room. It’s then I realise I’ve left Harper’s door unlocked. I run out and quickly lock it then dive back into my room just as a nurse rounds the corner.

I roughly eject my blanket-self from my bed and take his place. I’ve barely made it in before I can see a darkening at my door through half closed eyes. I see the shape move away from my door slightly. I open my eyes a fraction more to see a nurse now peeking into Harper’s room. She seems suspicious that he’s not up and about. Have they just been letting him roam free all this time to piss me off? I continue to feign sleep til I hear her footsteps recede. I lay on my bed, enjoying the silence, whilst simultaneously waiting for it to be destroyed.

6

I’m jolted awake by the knock on the door.

“Morning!” says a nurse as she enters my room, “Sorry to wake you, my darling. Just gonna take your obs.” She pulls her little observation trolley in behind her.

I manage a nod; befuddled and half-blinded by the daylight streaming through the window. “What time is it?” I ask.

“Nearly nine.”

Whoa. I slept. Four and a half hours. The manuscript paper is still in my hand. I quickly stuff it into my pocket of the sweat shorts I have been living in for the last week.

The nurse takes my blood pressure, temperature and pulse whilst I sit there, staring out the window, still stupored by sleep.

“Looking good.”

“Hm?”

She smiles. I must look like a state; punchdrunk on four hours of sleep. I think I had too much to dream last night.

“Everything’s looking good.”

I nod. “How’s he doing,” I ask, jerking my head toward the wall.

The nurse continues to smile but the warmth leaks from her eyes.

“There’s still time for him,” she says.

“No family, or anything yet?”

She pats me on the shoulder. “Go back to sleep, my darling.” She piles up her wires and pumps into her trolley and rolls on out the room. I lie back and let sleep reclaim me until my breakfast arrives shortly afterwards. I eat it quickly before my head reminds me that it’s time to lie down again.

I pull the musical scribblings out of my pocket. I stare at the crotchets and semiquavers as if the three years of piano lessons I took two decades ago would allow me to conjure forth the tune from the paper.

Why did I take it? I honestly don’t know. Is it because I’m drawn to things that are beyond my understanding? How the hell do people write music? I find it fascinating. And the fact that the shambling corpse next door was once capable of such a feat (I presume he wrote it) well, it feels cruel beyond belief.

I should return it. But there’s no way I’m going back in there again. I’m not a superstitious person, but I used up all of my luck units whilst cutting his nails.

I have a mate, a musician. I iron out the paper as best I can, take a picture and send it to him. ‘Could you play this?’ I write, the only context I offer.

He texts back minutes later: ‘A waltz! Tasty!’

I’m not really sure how to reply. I don’t really want to ask him the question again. I’ll text him again later. I go for a long overdue shower. When I return, there’s a message waiting for me: ‘Very nice… very cheeky! A little slow at the start but a jolly little thing once it gets going.’

An audio recording is attached. He must have got to work on it straight away. Talented bastard. I fire back a shitload of thank you emojis, assure him he’s The Man, then sign off with obligatory vague plans for a pint.

I download the audio, press play.

All hell breaks loose.

My phone’s at around mid-volume – it’s certainly not pumping out the recording of my muso mate playing the waltz on piano – but it can’t be more than ten seconds in before my decomposing composing pal next door starts going absolutely bananas. Howling, thrashing against his straps. I can hear it all through my wall. I think the whole hospital can. I don’t know what the collective noun for nurses is, but I’ve never seen one pound down the hall faster. I’m not surprised, Harper sounds like he’s set himself on fire or something.

Fuck, the hearing! I forgot about their stupid, superhuman, undead hearing. I pause the audio. Doesn’t matter, the howling continues. My heart’s thumping in my chest, primed for security to pile into my room and appropriate my phone. Even though there’s no way that anyone else heard, or would even be able to link the two things together if they did.

I move to my door window – it would be suspicious if I didn’t. Harper’s still secured to his bed, but he’s thrashing about as fast and wildly as any zombie can. The slowness of his movements

lends the scene a certain am-dram quality. It might be well comical were it not for the horrendous sounds he’s emitting.

He’s acting like a wild animal, yet it’s the most human I’ve seen him look. I pull myself away from the window and sit on my bed. What have I done to him?

It takes around ten minutes, but he eventually calms down, but he’s still making noise; the howls have just downgraded to moans. Whatever this piece of music is, it’s definitely struck a chord (intended). But I’m not sure if it was delighting or tormenting him.

Yes, they’ve tried playing music to zombies. Music that should mean something to them: favourite songs, first dances, etc. When an old author got infected, they famously played an audio book of his bestseller – narrated by his actor wife and you know what happened? Shit all. There’s been no record of audio stimulus ever doing anything to a zombie. So what’s got Harper so hot and bothered? Why’s he got such a rotting hard on for an unfinished waltz? And what the hell do I do with this information?!

I do nothing with this information. I do not want to cause another reaction like that again. I felt like I was torturing him, and he’s got enough to deal with. I’m so shaken by it that I wait two days before listening to it again, and even then, only when they take Harper away for some tests and I’m 100 percent sure that he can’t hear it.

Despite the moans and the odd vomit from next door, I feel like I’m clawing back a little more sleep each night. My back pain has receded a little and I can be upright for longer before the lumbar puncture hell-claw reaches up and tries to pull my head off through my arse.

Harper makes no progress. LinkedIn Consultant Wanker is about more and more. I still can’t quite pinpoint what his deal is in all of this. Even though he has given me exactly zero reasons to, I continue to nurture a strong dislike of him. Virtually everyone who works in this hospital is here to help people get better, but not this guy, he doesn’t give off that vibe. He isn’t a doctor or a nurse, he doesn’t wheel patients to x-rays or even clean the floors. So what does he do?

There’s still no sign of any of Harper’s family and the three weeks of antiviral treatment are nearly up. Harper will soon pass into the zone known as the unresponsive infected. Basically, it’s the same as being declared brain dead, but with far less rights.

I’ve been reading up on it in my massive abundance of spare time, and it’s actually quite savage. Once you enter the fourth week after treatment, you essentially cease to become a person. And when there is no next of kin, the end of life protocols fall to the state.

There’s a battle raging in the court of human rights as to whether this method of dealing with the unresponsive infected is correct. I don’t know what the alternative is, but this just seems wrong. I can’t imagine saying goodbye to a loved one when they are still moving around and making a racket. I’m just glad that his family, if he has any, aren’t here to see him like this.

7

Harper’s family have turned up. En masse. I return from a chest x-ray to see (hear) that his room is full of Australians. Huh. I just assumed he was from the UK. If his moan has an Antipodean twang, I haven’t picked up on it. Would an Aussie zombie moan sound massively different? Probably just a tiny bit more annoying I guess – I’m joking, calm down.

The room is packed: We’ve got two men: late forties; two women, roughly the same age – the daughters, I reckon; they flank Harper on either side of his bed, holding his hands as he tries to bite theirs. Three grandkids sit and stand awkwardly around the room: two of them look barely in their teens, heads buried in phones; the third, the youngest, looks a bit too young for this.

The radio’s playing Classic FM I think. Though I don’t recognise any of the tunes from TV adverts so it’s probably Radio 3… who are they trying to impress?

On paper, it should be a sombre tableau. But they’re generating a fair amount of noise between them – noise. I hear it bleeding through the wall. But it all sounds healthy, given the circumstances. Sobs and laughter blend and eddy together as the Harpers try to reconcile the wasting collection of matter laying strapped to the bed before them with their dad/granddad. All the while, Harper looks at his family… ‘longingly’.

I steal glances through the window, never hovering for long. Harper’s head moves slowly from family member to family member: an indecisive man holding up the queue at the carvery. Have they come halfway around the world to see him in this state? Jesus.

The husbands stand a little further back, their hands occasionally floating down to their wives shoulders. From what I can see – their heads are mostly turned away from me – the daughters just look at their dad with love. They’ve somehow managed to parse the taut skin of his death mask, the snarl, those horrible-bastard eyes, plucked straight from the devil’s pick ‘n’ mix. They just seem glad to see their dad again.

Under the pretext of brushing my teeth and going to the toilet, I continue to grab snapshots of – incredibly difficult and private – moments from next door. Harper lies at the centre of it all. Skin sagging from bones here, yet murderously taut there. Eyes unknowing and a mind that has no distance left to run. Yet, he’s surrounded by those who love him. There is perhaps no finer way for a human to meet his end. Such a terrible shame that Harper isn’t here himself to see it; his ghoulish stand-in will just have to pass the message on.

I start to feel like I’m intruding somewhat, even just by passively listening through the walls. I journey out in search of snacks. Radiology and the vending machine in one day. I’m spoiling myself. I take another scoop of the family reunion as I walk past. There’s heartbreak etched onto the daughter’s face, the one that I can see: Willing her dad to come back to them; so close yet so very far away.

In other news: the vending machine is a complete piece of shit.

I initially gave props to the hospital for keeping it fully stocked. But it just turns out it’s so completely unintuitive to use, I think only ten percent of users have the persistence to get at its goods. It’s like its user journey was designed by Franz Kafka.

The machine invites a user to present their card, then make a selection, then… well, nothing, it just basically ghosts you. Through a lot of trial and error, I learnt that it’s at this point that the user needs to press ‘OK’ (fair enough) but then, make their selection again… and then press ‘OK’ twice more, FFS. They could make the crown jewels available for purchase at £2.99 and they’d still be safe overnight.

I am not surprised, therefore, to find someone at said machine, wearing a look upon their face that suggests they are seriously thinking about throwing a chair through the glass front. I stand a respectable distance away as a woman in her late twenties – pertinent: I really don’t wanna sound ageist, but anyone north of sixty is going to struggle with this infernal machine – offers her phone up to the machine again and again. I don’t want her to suffer as I suffered, but at the same time, I don’t want to be That Guy. Plus, if she works it out for herself, she’ll carry a warm, satisfied feeling around with her all day. I don’t want to take that away from her. But as things stand, I can see she’s about to give up.

I approach, noticing two things in the same instance: she is pretty and she has been crying. The first point has no bearing on anything, but that doesn’t stop my brain shining a laser pen on it all the same. Is she crying because of the vending machine? Normally I would think: of course not, this is a hospital. But then again, this absolute shitbag of a vending machine nearly broke me a week ago. She turns to me: It’s not a friendly look. Any plans for small talk are immediately jettisoned. “Press ‘OK’ again.” I say, all business. “Selection. Then ‘OK’ twice more.”

She raises her eyebrows on ‘twice’. I return a weary nod. I know. Turning back to the machine, she copies my instructions without comment. The machine whirls into life. The metal coil on row 206 starts to revolve, ushering the cheese and onion crisps (really?!) forward toward their destiny. The woman flashes up a faint but sincere smile as thanks.

The crisp packet edges forward, approaching the drop. It tips forward and falls about two centimetres before wedging itself against the glass.

Her face hardens. She stares at the crisps. If she punched straight through the glass to claim them I would not be surprised. Then she erupts, unleashing a salvo of curses whilst rocking the machine back and forth on its heels. She really needs those crisps.

I step into the theatre of conflict. “Two-oh-six,” I say.

She stops, breathing heavily. The vending machine wobbles to a stop. I make a mental note to Google if people actually do get squashed under these things when I’m bored later. That’ll block my calendar out for a cosy two minutes.

“Two-oh-six. Cheese and onion, me too.” I point to the number pad. “May I?”

Without looking at me, she gives an irritated shrug and steps back. I make the same selection (like an absolute pro) knocking her crisps down with mine. It’s a classy move.

She bends down to retrieve the crisps. “Do you even like cheese and onion?” she says, deadpan, throwing one of the bags of crisps at me.

A would-be reply catches in my throat; kinda because I was expecting a thanks, sure. But mostly because I note the Australian accent. It takes me a couple of seconds to recover. “Sure.” I tap the side of the machine. “I’ve completed this guy, so I think I know what I like, thanks. And yes, I might make another, completely different selection straight after this, but don’t read too much into it.”

My attempts at joviality crash and burn onto the granite expression she wears upon her face. But in that moment, I can’t help but take it in. How old is she? What is Harper to her? She’s young enough to be his daughter, but too old to be a granddaughter? Thus, I mentally baptise her, the Confuser.

She responds with a clipped nod. “Well, thanks,” she says, before taking the furthest seat away from me in this weird little waiting room-cum-snack-zone. Clearly, she wants to be alone. She’s either just been to see her dad/granddad or she’s steeling herself to do it with a fortifying bag of halitosis.

I watch myself in the third-person as I purchase some chocolate covered cranberries. Uh-oh, this isn’t good. I’m clearly about to start do something stu— “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help notice the accent.” Fuck. Shut up— “I’m really sorry about your, erm…?”

“Why?” She fixes me with a stern glare. “Did you infect him?”

“No, obviously I didn’t infect—”

“So there’s no reason to be sorry is there?”

Eh? I take a breath. Re-group. “I mean, just, you know the state – sorry, the condition he’s in, I mean.”

“State?”

“Just an expression.”

“Not a very good one. And you knew all this because of my accent? So you’re what…spying on us?”

I put myself on a war footing. “Yeah. Unintentionally. Thin walls.”

“Bet you’ve loved having him around them,” she says, pushing crisps into her face.

“No,” I say, too quickly. “I mean, not ‘no’, you know? No to your question.” Ugh, fucking hell. I’m stumbling through a minefield, wearing stilettos. I should have just left it at the crisps. Sorting her out with the crisps was a solid win!

“Don’t worry, you’ll only have to put up with him for one more day.”

“Hey, come on, that’s not fair, I wasn’t—”

“Thanks for the crisps, really.” She walks away, then rounds the corridor, heading back towards the rest of her family. I give her a couple of minutes head start, seeing as we’re basically going in the same direction. My first real conversation I’ve had in weeks, and what a beauty it was.

The sun has set. The last traces of its presence are now indistinguishable from the blanket of light pollution that’s settled over the city.

Rather than fully setting, I much prefer to think of the sun as just sitting below the horizon, like it’s hiding behind the couch, ready to spring back up once the scary scene on the TV has played out. I take a lap of the hospital grounds to stretch my legs and get some outside air. My room has never felt more like a prison.

On leaving, I saw there was just a skeleton crew around Harper. The eldest daughter, grandkids, and the Confuser must have gone back to wherever they are staying to get some proper sleep. I guess that’s one small mercy of the unresponsive infected. They’re not going to slip off quietly while you go and grab some sleep. There’s a set time. Like a reverse C-section. It least allows for preparation on the family’s side. They’re now keeping a round the clock vigil, hoping Harper will somehow find his way back to them. Though no zombie has ever reversed this far into the unresponsive zone. They cling to hope where deep down they know there is none.

I think about the Confuser. I think about telling her about the Waltz. How would I even begin that conversation? Sorry love, I accidentally wandered into the wrong room, before accidentally going into the wrong bag, accidentally removing a piece of manuscript paper – I’ve got a piece just like it at home, I swear – then bugger me, if I didn’t accidentally get it accidentally transcribed… I could come clean of course, but that somehow sounds way dodgier.

She tore me to shreds after rescuing her crisps so I’m not exactly pumped about coming to her with this. The eldest daughter also scares the shit out of me. But this is their dad (or granddad, I need to find out the Confusers relation, it’s driving me mad). I can’t stop thinking about Harper’s reaction to the music. It’s like I’m holding something from them. Even if it means absolutely nothing; I’m certain it’s not going to do anything to Harper other than torment him (and them) in his final-ish moments.

Still, I have something of his and I should give it back. But how could I get in there? There’s at least two of them with him at all times and I’m quite sure they won’t appreciate the annoying neighbour that is meningitis-man poking his head in, let alone the deplorable sex-criminal that is herpes-man.

My lumbar puncture headache won’t quite fully bugger off. Or is it guilt?

8

I can leave today. Very good news, but I still shoot the doctor that delivers the message. “Leave-leave?” I say, “or, leave-actually stick around for another week-leave?” Hey, they can’t blame me for adopting a ‘fool me once’ attitude.

“The former,” he replies. “Just a few forms to sign, then you’re free to go.”

That was two hours ago. And it seems that mine and Harper’s hospital timelines have coalesced; it’s his last day in here today, too.

You would have thought they’d want to get me the hell out of here as to give the family a bit more privacy. God forgive me, but their noise starts to grate on me. At least I have the self awareness to know why. I’ve had a ten minute visit from my flatmate who couldn’t wait to get out of here. We have a ships-in-the-night relationship and this clearly overstepped some boundary. Sure, texts from a few friends but that’s it. No phone calls.

I’m approaching thirty and that’s the sum total of collective concern over my wellbeing. I worry that somehow, I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Fact is, I think I’m jealous of Harper. For all my short-sighted judgments, he’s the one surrounded by people who’ll cry and laugh when they tell stories about him when he’s gone. Not sure if anyone’s going to do that about me. And I had the audacity to pity him?

It’s starting to kick off next door. A muted desperation hung around the room earlier on in the day, fragments of conversations, sobs and sniffles bled through the wall. Then, LinkedIn Consultant Wanker rocked up and things got decidedly louder.

I start to glean the role he and his cheap polyester suit are here to perform. It’s a job that’s half a funeral director, half bailiff. He’s the guy who pulls the plug. The guy that tells the family that their time is up, whilst informing them that they were lucky to have this room for so long. He probably thinks he’s a great negotiator when he’s simply telling people to pack their bags and get out. Who would take that job? I was bang on about that prick. I need to listen to my instincts more.

Where the hell is that paperwork? I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to see how this unfolds. I’d happily just walk out, but I need the sick note for work. A young doctor knocks and enters, carrying a few sheets of loose paper. Before I know it, I’ve signed and passed them back, keeping the sick note – which looks so basic I could have just photoshopped it myself.

So here we are. It seems I’ll make it out of here just before Harper. I grab my bag, search the room for any loose belongings/pants, before finally stifling an urge to blow a kiss out the window to the clouds and leave.

Not a moment too soon. I have to push my way through the burgeoning crowd made up of family and security that is forming outside of his room.

A small group of security are having to literally drag the eldest daughter away. They’re trying anyway; she’s hanging on tight to the door frame with the strength of a bull and the finger dexterity of a mountain climber. If I ever had someone physically exert themselves to such a degree, just to spend a few more moments with me, well… I’d consider it a life well lived.

Her husband, ever the peacemaker, tries to ease her off and nearly gets an elbow in the face from her for his diplomatic efforts. He backs off and leaves it to the professionals.

It’s all quite cartoonishly horrible to watch (obviously, I’ve turned back to watch). The other family members cooperate by staying out of the way, but they sure aren’t going to help either. Security have now divided into two teams: Omega Team pull at the eldest daughter’s legs whilst Alpha Team try to prise open the ninja grip that’s clutching the door frame with the power of ten free solo rock climbers. She’s almost horizontal now as Team Feet pulls with a collective effort. She reminds me of Bill Paxon in the movie, Twister. At one point towards the end of the film, he has to tie himself to a water pipe or something or avoid getting sucked off into oblivion. And yeah, I know Helen Hunt’s in the scene, too, but, I dunno, eldest daughter’s just giving me mad Paxton vibes.

I think I’ve seen quite enough. I walk down the ward, waving a thanks to the doctor on the ward desk – no one responds, those that are too busy to notice me are watching the scene play out outside Harper’s room. I notice the thank you cards on the desk. It didn’t even occur to me to get one. What a dick.

Just before I exit the ward, I take one look back at the desperate scene behind me: security have finally managed to restrain Paxton on the floor. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a chunk of door frame in her hand. But I can just see enough to tell me that the fight’s gone out of her now. Tears paint her face. I feel a sudden urge to be as far away from this place as possible.

Leaving the ward, I grab a terrifyingly noisy old lift down the ground floor. I exit the lobby of the hospital to stand on the pavement in the drop-off and pick-up zone. Hospital moments play out in front of me. A new dad places a baby carrier into a car like it’s an unstable nuclear bomb. A couple of wizened, grey patients, sit on a bench, smoking their fucks away. I sit on an empty bench next to them.

I soak my face in sunlight and try to savour the warmth. This moment should feel like a release. I should feel lighter, happier, freer. I just feel heavy; tethered to the building I’ve just left. It’s the steroid withdrawal kicking in, I tell myself.

I gaze absently at the tatty manuscript paper in my hand. At some point I’ve put my hand in my pocket and pulled it out.

I’m not sure how long I sit there, paper in hand, flapping lazily in the breeze, as if it’s trying to fly back to Harper. Then it happens: my viewpoint switches and I’m watching myself from behind. I re-enter the hospital.

I would dearly like to tap myself on the shoulder and enquire as to what my intentions are. But I wouldn’t have been able to provide myself with a satisfactory answer on account of me not having a bloody clue what I am doing. All I know is that I want rid. I want rid of the feeling that I’ve taken something that didn’t belong to me, and missed the chance to give it back.

I work my way up to my old ward (I take the stairs, fuck that lift). I’m buzzed back into the ward. No one challenges me. I’m a familiar face.

I mutter something about forgetting something to the doctors and nurses on the ward desk. I don’t stop walking and they don’t question me. I catch a glimpse of LinkedIn Consultant Wanker running through some paperwork with a doctor, in a side room. There’s no sign of the Confuser, Paxton, or the rest of the family. Thank God. I honestly think that if I saw one of them I’d simply turn around and run out of there.

There’s a guard posted outside the shit air lock. He raises a hand as I approach. Ah crap. Of course they were gonna have a guard there after what happened. I recognise him. He was on foot detail with Omega team. As I get closer, he looks at me with doubt. Wait, no, not doubt… recognition. He recognises me, too! I roll with it.

“A lot quieter here,” I say.

He just shakes his head, “Mate…”

I point to my old room, by way of asking permission to enter. “Phone charger.” Adding a ‘what am I like?’ tut on the end.

He nods. I enter the shit air lock, though it feels like I’ve just scored entry to Berghain after that exchange. A cleaning lady has just finished running a mop around my old room. And now that his family’s gone, I can see that they’ve left Harper by himself in the room. He looks peaceful: Laid on the bed, head turned to the side, watching the clouds roam free in their beautiful, ephemeral forms. Drink it in, Harper. Does he know, somewhere deep down, that this is the last time he’ll see clouds?

I duck my head into my old room and grab the mop whilst the cleaning lady is in the toilet/shower room. I sneak a look behind me. Airlock Bouncer’s still facing forward, eyes down the ward, not on me.

I don’t know how long I’ve got but I know it’s seconds, not minutes. I’m running on pure instinct now. Fully aware that the very best case outcome for this endeavour is probably a police caution. That, and making a complete and utter arse of myself, of course. I don’t want to think about the worst case scenario. No one likes to think about prison.

I test the strength of the broom in my hands, happy and surprised that it’s metal with a plastic coating. Metal’s good. Metal equals time. I don’t know how much time I need – because I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing – but, I’m gonna need as much of it as possible.

I enter Harper’s room and push the broom through the door handles. I take my phone out. The audio file is already prepped, set to loop once it finishes. I put the phone down on a side table, crank the volume, and press play.

Bananas.

I call time on Harper’s pleasant cloud gazing in the worst way possible. His eyes bulge in recognition as the Waltz sings out from my phone. Phones have been capable of annoyingly loud volumes for some time now. And this alone would have been more than enough to draw attention to the room. Airlock Bouncer spins around. I see the betrayal in his face – I’ve just taken a shit on his entire week. I genuinely feel bad for precisely three tenths of a second because it’s at that point that Harper empties his lungs in a blood curdling howl. His whole body convulses as if his arm straps were pumping 12,000 volts into him.

I stand by the door as the ward descends on us. Airlock bouncer’s already trying the door. It opens a fraction but then the broom holds… which won’t for long. I take a jumper out of my bag and tie it around the handles. LinkedIn Consultant Wanker arrives and tries to look me straight in the eye. I’m too busy for his Poundshop psyche-out tactics, I’ve got a jumper-sleeve-knot to weave here, goddammit. He has to shout over Harper’s anguish, “I don’t know what this is, but you need to open the door, right now.”

This would probably be a good moment to say something cool. Something to piss him off and shake the door in a mad frenzy. Instead, I just stare at him, well, more like through him really. I should have passed the music on to the family. If this doesn’t work – and I highly doubt it will – it might have worked three days ago when I first took the music paper. But I didn’t do shit about it.

LinkedIn Consultant Wanker has stopped trying the door now. He’s probably overheating in his cheap suit. He steps back, allowing Airlock Bouncer a shot at redemption whilst a doctor tries the diplomatic approach. I’m not really listening. My mind has gone to a different place. I can’t really hear her anyway, such is the ferocity of Harper’s pipes.

I hold the door closed now. The broom’s shaft has put in a good shift, but its structural integrity is severely compromised. To coin a wholly unnecessary (and potentially confusing) pasta analogy, the broom has turned from load-bearing Penne into vulnerable Tagliatelle. I hold the door with what little strength I have. Despite their progress, the crowd outside seems to be growing more agitated. Annoyed that my Home Alone style defences have confounded them for this long.

My arms burn with the effort as I hear the stitches of my jumper rip apart. There’s no sign of the family but I doubt that will be the case for much longer. Harper’s howling is physically painful to listen to. This reaction he’s having… it can’t mean nothing, right? Again, I don’t know what I’m expecting, I just want to show the people on the other side of this door that there’s something still inside him, something that means he needs just a little more time.

Porters and security take turns at the door. They’re all shouting over each other at me. I can’t make out anything.

My arms are fire. When one particularly massive doctor bundles down the hall, the crowd parts for him like the sea did for Moses and I know then I’ve only got a matter of seconds. 6’ 5” and knotted with muscle (when does he find the time to maintain that muscle mass?) the doctor takes a short run before putting his full weight against the door.

I grimace and turn my head to the side but I don’t release my grip. The broom all but snaps in two and a sleeve is halfway ripped off the jumper. The short, unfinished waltz continues to loop and behind me, Harper’s moans get louder. Outside, everyone’s shouting over each other to shout at me. I can’t make out anything.

LinkedIn Consultant Wanker’s face is pressed to the glass. He’s pointing to Harper, like somehow I’m not aware of the stress I’m causing. He’s just worried about his payday no doubt. The buff doctor porter takes a few steps back. And that’s it, time’s up. I let go of the door handles, no point in hurting myself; this barricade will not survive another shoulder barge from this giant. He starts his run up.

“Get out of the fucking way!” shouts LinkedIn Consultant Wanker, and for once, I agree with him.

“STOP!” screams a voice above all others. It’s Paxton. The family has turned up. She and the Confuser push themselves to the front. LinkedIn Consultant Wanker doesn’t have the energy to stop her. I see pure horror in their faces as they assess the scene behind me. Harper’s howling is turned up to eleven.

“I’m sorry,” I shout at Paxton and the Confuser in turn.

“Stop!!” shouts Paxton again. But it’s strange, she’s not looking at me.

“Dad!! NO!” shouts the Confuser. Ah! He’s your dad! I have time to think, just before Harper sinks his teeth into my neck.

9

Zombies are useless creatures. You have to be either a literal baby or a complete idiot to get bitten by one.

Jesus Christ, our Lord God. That fucking hurt.

Singularly, easily, the most pain I have ever experienced. Nothing else in my life has come close. My initial meningitis headache paled in comparison. When I was fourteen I fell out of a tree and broke my arm pretty badly; my radius nearly tore through my skin. It was excruciating, and though I was only fourteen, I thought I had a rough idea of where the pain ceiling was for humans. Surely the body wasn’t capable of experiencing much more than that? But this bite, oh Lordy, that was so much worse. It’s a scary thought, and one that I’ve been mercifully ignorant of for the past few decades, but it turns out there was still so much more pain out there waiting for me.

Whilst all my strength and mind was bent on keeping the doors closed, Harper slipped his restraints and slid off the bed, under the covering fire of the waltz and the rabid crowd of people shouting at me. I mistook their concern for me as concern for Harper. Thinking back, I should have seen it really, the look in their eyes: crazed children at a pantomime, furiously trying to warn the idiot protagonist where the enemy is.

Apparently Harper wasn’t in me for long (eeeugh). It was Paxton who got the door open. My attention was obviously elsewhere at this point, but I like to imagine her drop kicking it off the hinges (I have no facts to support this, but no one’s said otherwise, so this is the version of events I’m going with).

It’s three, maybe four hours later. The police questioned me, but honestly, it just felt like they were going through the motions. I don’t think they really knew what to charge me with. And so here I am, in a curtained off corner of the hospital, handcuffed to a bed. I should really feel like a badass.

I just feel like an ass.

I’m back on a drip again; precautionary antibiotics and antivirals. I only needed a few stitches. Harper was able to have a half-decent nibble at me, sandwiched between him and the door as I was. There’s a bulky dressing plaster on my neck. Pain pulsates from underneath.

I’m grateful for the bad jokes the nurses make; all variations on ‘you just don’t wanna leave do you!’ I think they see what I was trying to do. Even if I don’t know myself… even if it didn’t work.

I’ve been waiting for hours for the coming storm. The police didn’t really scare me. Maybe I was still too in shock to care. But Harper’s family, particularly Paxton, continue to scare the shit out of me. And that was before I waltz-napped their dad.

A curtain flies open. Paxton, her husband, the middle sister and the Confuser – oh wait, she’s the daughter. I need a new call-sign for her. Let’s see, Harper must have been around fifty when she was born… OK, so Paxton, her husband, the middle sister and the Accident enter. I swallow with difficulty. My guts, already on ropes thanks to three weeks of hospital food, turn to water. Paxton is a sight. Her eyes are red. She’s been crying so much it looks like she’s being maced. She allows her eyes to rest on me and slowly shakes her head. I see then, what I have taken from her and her family: On his last day on earth, I have shown them the monster that their father truly was at the end.

It happens too quickly. Paxton comes at me. I close my eyes instinctively. Pain ripples through my body.

I cry out. Two octaves higher than I would have liked.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” Paxton pisses herself laughing and releases me from her bear hug. The throbbing pain from my bite starts to recede; my confusion and fear remain. I can taste salt. I wipe her tears from my cheek.

She draws back and takes me in, smiling, holding my shoulders gently. My whole body remains tense. It’s the tenderness exhibited by a gangster, seconds before teaching a wayward subordinate a lesson he won’t forget. She senses my discomfort and tilts her head to the side, suddenly curious. “No one’s told you.”

I shake my head and pull a face. God, I wish she’d take her hands off me. I look at each of them in turn for a long second. The husband and middle sister have nothing new to add, he just raises his eyebrows and smiles maddeningly. Paxton’s crying again. I slowly take her hands off my shoulders, still unconvinced she’s not going to drive her forehead through my nasal bone. I bring my hands together, interlocking the fingers, as if in prayer. I plead. “What the hell is going on?”

The Accident steps forward and throws something in my lap. “Let’s just say you earnt these.”

I look down at the bag of cheese and onion crisps in my lap, then back up at her. “Yeah, still confused because I hate cheese and onion.”

“I know,” she replies with a smile.

10

Three weeks later, and I am once again surrounded by the Harper tribe, though there’s way more of

them now and the setting is thankfully much different.

I sit on a wingback armchair in the living room of a 1950s semi. The room has an overabundance of house plants and lamps with frilly shades. The walls are wrapped in an inky-blue William Morris wallpaper that is itself entombed behind overstuffed book cases, shelves bent with knowledge, stories and family photos. The room is so incredibly outdated it might have actually looped back around to ride the bleeding edge of cool once more.

“I was never any good with words,” says Harper, extending me a saucer of chocolate covered biscuits. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve eaten since I’ve been here. I’m trying to be a polite and cultured gues— ah fuck it, I push another one into my face.

Having moved to Australia from the UK in his thirties, then back again with Paxton’s family a few years ago, he doesn’t share the soft Aussie accent of his family.

“Music was my means of being understood.”

The strangeness of meeting Harper for the ‘first time’ was overwhelming, as if I was coming face-to-face with an A-list Hollywood celebrity. It was Paxton who opened the front door to me. I knew what was coming but she still caught me off-guard, lurching forward to pull me into a back cracking bear hug. She released me moments later, only to yank me through a house packed with extended family who’ve visited from various corners of the commonwealth. They all smiled at me as Paxton nearly yanked my arm off.

And there he was: sat in a wingback chair, half a chocolate biscuit sticking out of his mouth. He politely broke off his conversation with a son-in-law (I think) and rose unsteadily, crumbs raining down from his mouth and crotch onto the carpet. Paxton was off the mark far quicker than me, giving voice to my thoughts and cautioning him against standing up, he batted that away along with the offer of any help.

In hospital he was a desaturated demi-corpse, coloured grey and yellow with decay. I hadn’t really given it much thought; I’d just presumed he’d look roughly the same. But as he rises, I’m suddenly reminded of old World War Two footage that’s been digitally coloured in. There’s reds and oranges, blends of pinks and purples; a whole host of hues that were previously off limits to him. Even the blue of his irises are fighting to come through. His whites still seem a little jaundiced. Whether this will completely fade, who knows? He was under for a long time. Perhaps a new world record. Not that that would be something you’d want to shout about; there’s still a lot of poor, misguided people out there. People who believe you can never truly turn back.

Josie was on shift that day in the hospital. She’d been a nurse for seventeen years and had seen it all – worked all the way through the Zombie crisis – but the reaction from Harper after hearing that music was new to her.

After the dust settled in the hospital, once they’d finally muted that bloody waltz, once I was forcibly removed and once Paxton was restrained, again. Josie persuaded a junior doctor to order some blood tests. He wasn’t having any of it at first, but he soon relented when he realised that Josie was simply not going to let this go.

Mercifully, the lab was quiet, and when the results came back an hour later, they noticed that the numbers had shifted ever so slightly.

It was enough to make Josie reconnect the IV drip, restoring the flow of antivirals to Harper. The episode had drained him – he seemingly didn’t have the energy to gnaw at her as she took yet more bloods. But what everyone took for fatigue, Josie saw what it actually was: Harper was losing his appetite for humans.

Time to send this up the chain, thought Josie. She briefed a senior doctor on what she had been doing. He immediately berated her for acting without instruction and wasting people’s time. He wanted that zombie off his ward and this whole sorry business behind him.

Josie – in shock that this arrogant, silly man was pouring cold, fizzy water on her discovery – told him, in extremely clear and explicit terms, what she thought of him, where he should go and what he should do with himself once he got there. Such was the veracity of her outburst that Josie took herself off to a cleaning cupboard afterwards and shat out a couple of decades of the rosary as penance. But, would you believe it, none other than LinkedIn Consultant Wanker had been listening to their entire exchange; he wasn’t having any of it. He reversed the processing order and ordered the senior doctor to take a closer look at Harper. The rest is history. Deep down, I knew he was a good guy. Probably should think of a new name for him too… Harper rose and greeted me with a smile. I extended a hand. He scoffed and knocked it away before pulling me into yet another ferocious hug. If this is how the Harpers hug, I’d hate to see them hit. It’s like they’re falling off a cliff and you’re the nearest thing to hold on to. My back has never felt so good.

On the train over here, I wondered what he’d be like. What if he was an old bore? A terrible racist? It takes me far too long to realise that I’m just running through the cliches that people throw against old people. He is utterly charming. Shame on me.

We sit and we talk. He apologises for biting me. I say sorry for nicking his stuff and cutting his nails. Just your run-of-the-mill small talk really.

I’d already regaled my tale of insomnia and subsequent actions to Paxton et al in the hospital, so none of this is news to him. The old bastard still makes everyone gather round for story time and forces me to regale the tale once again. I will gladly confess that I am not one of those psychopaths that don’t bat an eyelid when forced to speak to a crowd of more than seven people. I try to rattle through the story as quickly as possible, but Harper's daughters don’t make it easy for me. They pull me up if I go too fast or skim over certain embarrassing details of the story. Sorry, but I think everyone wants to know why were you cutting his nails again? The Accident seems to be particularly enjoying making me squirm. I quickly cottoned on to the fact that the Harper’s like a verbal spar. They lose interest in anyone who doesn’t fight back. And, I admit it. I don’t want the Accident to lose interest in me. There, I said it.

“Sorry, but why were you going through my dad’s bag again?” she interjects with mock confusion. She delights in my unease, but there’s no malice in her eyes.

“Er… drugs,” I lie with a shrug.

“Excuse me?” says the Accident.

Harper raises his eyebrows.

“Come on” I say to her, gesturing to him.“Long hair, beard – if I opened your wardrobe upstairs, I’d probably get buried under a pile of Birkenstocks. Not to judge a book by its cover, but your dad looks like he can do two things really well: play the flute and roll a spliff. The Accident laughs. I’ve passed some sort of test it seems.

Harper says, “Don’t be daft. I’d already smoked them, how’d you think I got into this bloody mess.”

“What?!” says Paxton, genuinely surprised.

“Since when do you smoke weed?!” The Accident says.

Harper laughs, “the sixties.”

“How did I not know that?” The Accident searches the room for answers. She looks at me like I’m some kind of oracle. I just shrug and gesture to his long hair and beard again. The pleasurable, spiky conversation rolls along merrily and the hours tumble away. Harper forgets himself every now and then (don’t we all?). I suspect a result of what he’s been through rather than age – seventy-five, it turns out. His family are patient but they don’t pander to him. They treat him as I imagine they always have, never changing their tone, or softening their edges when they speak to him. It was jarring at first, being in their company: they’d sooner call him a foggy old cunt than finish his sentences for him. He feigns the victim, but it’s clear he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Harper tells me the tale of how we came to meet.

“Music was my means of being understood,” says Harper. “The notes and the clefs just made sense. They always seemed to be at my fingertips. Much to my wife’s annoyance.”

“Not just hers,” says Paxton, passing by.

“You can ignore her from now on,” he says to me. “I’m sure if I put my mind to it I could have had a very successful career in the jingle business. But you know, like all good quantity surveyors, I felt the call! Anyway, this day, on this hike… it’s like there was a cloud of melancholy hanging over me. The weather was miserable, gloomy, but it was more than that. I just had this feeling that I was approaching an end. I was thinking a lot about Syl – sorry, my late wife. Would have been our fiftieth this year.”

I smile weakly, not really knowing what to say as he points to a photo of them together. Maybe thirty years old, the pair of them. Harper still rocking the same long hair and scraggy beard. “It wasn’t a bad feeling per se. I guess I was just feeling very… reflective. I’ve had a good life. But I certainly didn’t want to die. I wanted to see my daughters grow up.”

“I’m forty-five.” says Paxton, reappearing with more snacks for the visitors.

“I said ‘grow up’, not ‘get old’.”

Paxton shakes her head, and mutters under breath. I only make out a couple of words. One which begins with a ‘C’.

“But I worried about the future. I was fit and healthy for someone my age, but for how long? Everyone says that the future is unknown, but is it?” He points at me. “You know you’re going to have to work and pay taxes. Probably marry someone, probably have some kids. Different paths, sure, but they’re all running in roughly the same direction. But when you get to my age the future truly is unknown, because you’re gonna die. And no one has a clue about what happens then. It was this thought that kept reverberating around and around in my head, and, erm, well, that’s when it, you know, kicks in.”

“What kicks in?”

“The thing in my head. Bear with me on this, but if a thought gets stuck in my head for too long, my brain gets bored of it and converts it into a tune. It’s like a strange little coping mechanism that sucks in emotions and spits out tunes. Not necessarily good ones, mine you. Mostly waltzes. I was always writing them for my wife.”

Jesus, Harper must have rolled a fat one for this hike…

“She hated them,” says the Accident out of the side of her mouth.

“Shut up and get some more biscuits,” Harper says, chucking an empty saucer at her like a frisbee.

She catches it then fires back,“I preferred you when you preferred humans.”

“I preferred you when you shut up and got me biscuits.”

Harper turns back to me. Straight back into story mode. “So I had this tune rattling around in my head… and then I got bit.”

“Shit,” I offer.

“Shit,” Harper agrees.

The other extended family members have quietened down. I realise that a lot of them might be hearing this story for the first time.

“What happened to the other one?” I say.

“The other what?”

“The zombie, that bit you? ”

Harper shakes his head. “Not a zombie. Not a human anyway, it was a little bastard ferret!”

“No way!” I laugh, far too loudly.

He nods. “Got me just above the ankle on the inside of my leg.” He rolls his right trouser leg up to show me a small bite mark.” I was shaking my leg like mad but the little turd wouldn’t come loose. You could see the determination in its tiny little devil eyes. I swung my other leg back and gave a big old kick. I’m not proud, but I connected beautifully. It flew down the hill into a creek, sounded like it landed on something hard. I’m not proud, like I say, but it was a bloody good shot. Came at a price mind you. I overdid it with the follow through, slipped and rolled over on my other ankle. I’m laid on the ground, and I swear, half a minute later the biblical rain started. It was like God was saying, ‘OK Harper, time to come with me’.”

“I found shelter under a rock shelf. But I could tell by the clouds it wasn’t going to pass quickly. I started to feel the symptoms. I checked my pulse, it was so slow. It chilled me. I remember laughing. As a youngster I’d survived polio. Now I was going to get taken out by a bloody ferret. I laughed til I cried and, then, well… I just cried. I knew then, I should probably write a note to the girls “A note?” I say. “Why not—”

“Dad doesn’t have a mobile phone,” replies the Accident.

I look between the sisters.

Almost in unison, they just raise their palms and shake their heads. Just, don’t. Clearly a sore spot.

“I don’t like those things, it’s like cheating. Anyway, I had the pen, I had the paper. I just didn’t have the words. They all just felt so shallow and…” He churns his hands in front of him, “frothy. I was terrified any attempt at sincere prose would fall short. Does that make sense?” The room nods in unison.

“My vision was beaching. I couldn’t walk. I tried to make a splint as best I could. I really didn’t wanna reanimate and shamble around on a busted ankle. But I did the sums. I was miles from anywhere. I didn’t know how long I had. But still, this tune was going round and round in my head. It was driving me crazy. That’s when I decided to do what I always do and commit it to paper. It felt like the right thing to do. I thought to myself, if this is the last thing I ever write. I’ll be happy with that. Music carries more emotional information, and it would have been exactly how I felt in my last moments.

“But how did you get infected? You didn’t have the prep?” I say.

“I did, but my levels were low. I was due a booster, and I just never got round to it.” “Twat,” say Paxton and The Accident together. Harper holds his hands up, pleading no contest.

“I transcribed as much as I could in the time I had. Next thing I remember, I’m strapped to a hospital bed. Still hearing that waltz, except this time, it’s not in my head. There were weeks between that hike and the hospital. But not for me. The music was a continuous, unbroken line.”

“And that’s what pulled you out?” I say.

Harper simply upturns his palms and tilts his head. Maybe. He’ll leave that for the experts to figure out. Harper’s happy with the destination, he doesn’t care how he got there. The poor guy had to face an army of doctors and neurologists, radiologists and a thousand other ‘gists’ once he Returned. Legions of experts, all around the world were quick to formulate a theory on what turned Harper back after so long.

The “unfinished symphony” theory became the most popular. When a chord isn’t resolved at the end of a song it creates a tension, a longing. It feels wrong and the brain yearns for completion. One neurologist said it was like he’d hit pause on his final thoughts, and when I played the waltz from my phone, it tricked his brain into thinking it was back into its pre-infected state, jumpstarting his immune system and giving the meds a fighting chance to do their thing.

Of course, there’s zero way of replicating an extremely unique set of circumstances such as these in a way that would form any kind of treatment. Should everyone carry around notebooks and jot our last thoughts down? Surely it would just be a variation on Ah fuck, that fucker just bit me! Not that it matters. Harper’s probably the last zombie any of us will ever see. Still, there might be a rabid little zomferret running around out there somewhere in the British countryside. You have been warned.

Harper’s talking again about how much happier he is with twelve musical notes, rather than the thousands and thousands of words we have at our disposal. He does himself a disservice by saying words aren’t his forte whilst writing his (frankly extreme) musical talent off as an ‘odd quirk’.

He has a unique, beautiful brain. I glance quickly around the room. Were all our brains to be plucked from our heads and laid upon a laboratory counter in a neat row, they wouldn’t look all that different. They’re often thought of as a computer, constantly processing and distilling information, as they slowly degrade over time. But I prefer to think of them like a hard drive. Full and rich with experience and memory. Heavy with all the things that they’ve felt, loved and lost. If you were to view a brain under such a lens, I believe Harper’s would shine like a precious stone amongst the rest. I am lucky to be in its company.

Author’s Note

Thank you so much for reading my book. I really appreciate it and I really do hope you enjoyed it.

For those of you who get a kick out of purchasing books and skipping straight to the authors note at the back… well, it’s a baller move and I applaud you.

If you did enjoy my rambling collection of words, it would mean the world to me if you left a review. Or better yet, tell a friend. Or better better yet, a tiny little post on social media? Such small actions mean a great deal to authors like myself.

Though this story was inspired by actual events (I contracted viral meningitis in the summer of 2023; two stars – don’t recommend) the lapses in hospital care that I have described are as fictitious as my zombie friend. Here in the UK, we’re extremely lucky to have the NHS. It should never be taken for granted and we should do everything in our power to protect it.

Thank you again,

Daniel