Hey Paul.
For me, it isn’t the hordes of the walking dead that make here being intolerable, it’s the loneliness. Although everybody I’ve spoken to has lost someone close to them, at least they have the scant comfort of being surrounded by their countrymen. Two weeks in the states had been your idea, something to lift my spirits after a long and miserable battle with my ex-employers over an injury claim.
They had eventually settled out of court, and you had suggested that some of my settlement be spent on a holiday. I agreed with you, as the legal tug of war I’d spent three years fighting had exhausted me, mentally and emotionally. At first, you had insisted on accompanying me, but I had always been a fairly solitary man, and two weeks alone, thousands of miles from home, sounded like bliss. God, how I regret that decision.
The trip itself had been refreshing, if unremarkable, with a week spent sightseeing and relaxing, and I was feeling better than I had in months, if not years. I was seriously considering extending my stay when the panic set in, with reports of heavy rioting and serious civil unrest on American soil. Similar reports had been circulating for weeks, but of course nobody was overly concerned with uprisings in China, or food rioting in Africa, and the hysterical rantings of those at home that claimed judgement day had arrived were studiously ignored.
Well, you know what happened next, I suppose. It all got very real, very fast. The dead had stopped being dead in the U.K at around the same time as the states, and even though I didn’t quite believe it, I decided to get home as quickly as possible. It was on my way to the airport that I caught my first glimpse of a real, honest-to-God ghoul. My taxi was crossing an intersection, with the driver angrily informing me that he was getting out of this hellhole just as soon as he’d finished this job, when a heavyset man in combat fatigues stumbled out into the middle of the road.
The driver slammed on his brakes and shouted at the man. “get outta the goddam road, asshole!”
I cringed inwardly and peered through the windscreen at the obstacle in our path. That’s when it hit me that it was real, that this was really happening, because although the man in the road was moaning and stumbling awkwardly toward us, he clearly shouldn’t have been able to. When I leaned forward, I could see that his stomach had been torn open from his lower ribs down to his groin. Greyish-green loops of bloody intestines hung from the ragged cavity, and what was left of his trousers was covered in blood and lumps of indeterminate matter.
The driver saw this at exactly the same I did, and without a word, wound up his window and drove around the ghoul, who reached out toward us with an almost pathetic desperation, moaning in that hollow yet mournful way that we all know so well now. To his credit, the cabbie got me to my destination, both of us silent and pale for the few miles it took.
Inevitably, there were no flights out of Syracuse. There were no flights out of anywhere. People kept arriving, more and more by the hour, from harried looking husbands with their crying wives and children, to solitary travellers like myself, until this place was full.
Well, that was almost two months ago. Slater and his squads have this place pretty well fortified, and although food is extremely scarce, nobody has starved to death yet. Considering all that’s happened, I suppose we’re the lucky ones, the hardy few that made it this far. As I said before, it’s the loneliness that gets me. Loneliness and homesickness. I know how that sounds, everyone in this place has lost their home, but unbelievably, I seem to be the only Englishman.
I can barely understand some of the people here, their accents are so thick. Everybody has had to band together, there’s a genuine spirit of camaraderie, but I feel like an outcast here, it’s not where I belong. I know it sounds cliché, but I would sell my soul just for a decent cup of tea, which I made the mistake of mentioning to Crayford, a loud-mouthed bear of a man from a place with the unlikely-sounding name of Phoenixville. Bloody Phoenixville. Crayford not only found my longing hilarious, he made sure everyone within earshot knew just what a ‘pussy’ I was. Apparently, it’s also inconceivable to some here that I have no idea of how to hold a gun properly, let alone fire one.
So there we have it. I have no tale of how I saved my family by single-handedly holding off a horde of ‘Zack’, no awe-inspiring saga of how I made it here through insurmountable odds to the relative safety of the airport. I’m just a lonely man, surrounded by people I find almost as alien as the walking dead. Sometimes I wish I’d been caught, that mindlessly shambling in search of living flesh might have been preferable to this.
More than anyone here, I’ll never see home again.
Paul, I know you’ll never read this, that you’re probably dead. I hope you went quickly, and that you stayed where you fell.
I miss you, I love you, and I wish you were here with me.
Goodbye.
11 responses to “An Englishman in New York”
Hey Zedheads,I wasn’t sure how to submit a story, is this how it’s done? This is my first attempt at writing anything, I really enjoy the other stories i’ve read here. I know it’s not very bullets n brains, but I hope anyone who reads it enjoys it, please let me know:) cheers!!
Jay,
Sorry for the slow response. I’m normally more on top of things.
Great debut. Would you consider sending us an MP3 of you reading it so that we can put it up on our audio page? I love the international point of view, and I’m glad that you found us.
Anyone who lives in Central New York could share the agony of a person who is stuck here.
The beginning is a little expository. By telling Paul information he would already know, you’re actually addressing the reader. It doesn’t sound like a letter when you tell him about the lawsuit.
I think you may have hybridized two towns: Phoenix and Baldwinsville. But your comment on the accent is correct. Central New Yorkers make short a’s like the bleating of a sheep. The first time I heard the word aunt pronounced by an outsider, I thought that they were faking being British. We pronounce it ant, like the bugs that consume the food all over the Zone. Baaehldwinsville is even shortened by people who live in that village to something like Baalwsvile.
I especially like that you work in the Great Panic. These foundational stories can be hard to produce. Give a break to some of our writers with their gun stories: they tend to be written by teenagers who are just starting out. We’re constantly trying to remind them that life is not a video game…
Welcome to the site. It’s been slow around here lately. I hope you can help to get something going again.
Hey Dave,
Thanks for the response! I completely agree with you about the letter format of the story, but as I mentioned, this is my first attempt at writing, if I try anything else, I’ll definitely work on that. The Phoenixville thing was something a friend of mind told me about years ago after visiting the states, I guess i misremembered that, I’ll research properly in future!! I wasn’t criticising the gun stories, I like them a lot, I just thought that not every survivor is going to be armed to the teeth, and have the fortitude to fight. It’s the sideline characters like that which often interest me. I’m really happy to have my story here, and to add just a little to the Zyracuse mythology.
Thanks again for your helpful response, hopefully I’ll submit something else soon 🙂 Cheers!!
We like the sideline and unarmed characters too. In fact, we have a whole category for No Zombies with thirty stories in it.
Please keep writing. I’m hoping that you inspire something, because I’ve had really bad writer’s block (and website layout repair block) for a while now.
Not that I mind Dave, but where the hell have you found this new blood? When you told me about this place I would have put good money on it staying a strictly JE phenomenon.
Ye of little faith. We have always wanted it to move out farther, but that’s been a real struggle, as you know.
Hey k, forgive my ignorance, but what’s JE?
Tallon, Chris, and I are all teachers at the Jordan Elbridge High School. Of our 51 members, the overwhelming majority are somehow connected to the school. K and Matt Hart, for example, are graduates and two of my all-time favorite students. We tend not to talk about it so much so that the site doesn’t seem so parochial and so that Tallon, Chris, and I don’t get referred to as “Mister”. The influx of students got us some stories and members, some better written and some more active than others, but at the same time it never really spread very far. We’ve been really frustrated in our abilities to attract writers from other parts of Central New York, but I know they follow the site. Therefore, we’re really glad to have you.
I thought I was your all time favorite student!
I said “two of”.
It’s not easy for me to talk about how much I like my students. Taken out of context (which never happens around here) it can sound really weird or creepy, which ironically would make it harder to interact with my students.
I still believe that to be paid to do what I do, given how much I like it, makes me the luckiest guy in the world, and I want you to be able to say the same thing in 20 years. Of course, with your training, you’re far more likely to be able to survive the Zombocalypse than I will. When it comes, just promise you’ll pour a bottle of some good stuff on my corpse.
Thank you for the explanation, Mr Sipley! I wondered why there was so much onus on not viewing this site at school within the forums. For what it’s worth, I’ve been telling my friends about this site, so hopefully soon you’ll have some more new blood.
Cheers! 🙂