King of Zombie Heath

Day 12 - Snowed in with a fruicake

About time. Sat down properly today. Ground zero tender but no longer radioactive.

Dick, Nimby, Tubbs and I spent the morning in the conservatory chatting and putting the world to right. Dick had a newspaper and was updating us on the trouble and strife outside our fifteen foot redbrick walls. I should probably watch the news more, or read a paper now and again but, to be honest, I just don't give a fuck.

It's such a sheltered bubble in here, with instrumental versions of Dream a Little Dream and Feelings piped through the wards sixteen hours a day, that I didn't realise how rough it was out there in zombieland. Sounds like hell. You can ski from Dunmore Head to East Mongolia. Not counting the ferry between Dublin and Holyhead and the train through the Channel Tunnel, of course. Dick says the Riders of the Apocalypse are out and about reaping souls. I disagree. If they're smart they'll still in hell where it's still nice and warm.

From what I managed to glean, reading over Dick's shoulder, the government's winter contingency plans collapsed after a surprise engagement with the enemy proving, when the grit ran out in mid-November, to be about as effective against snow as the Maginot Line was against German Panzers sneaking through Belgium. It was a shock to read that natural gas ran out weeks ago. That was news to me. We must use electricity in here. It's rationed now. China's buying up the world's diesel. So what? So our transport system's on it's last legs. Footy-moms can't get their "FU"-V's out of the garage and supermarkets have empty shelves. Sounds like Moscow in the eighties. People can't pay their bills, can't heat their houses, can't drive their cars, partly because there's nothing to buy and partly because prices are going up so fast. Dick did try to explain hyperinflation, and how all the problems outside are connected, but after half an hour's blablabla my ears began to hurt and it started to sound like a load of middle-class whingeing and scaremongering. Besides, it's not our problem.

Poor Dick. I think Morpheus gave him a purple pill and got him stuck halfway between red and blue worlds. He's still raving about conspiracies, experimental drugs and illegal clinical trials. He wouldn't shut up about it. We were in craft, and when he started on about an alien invasion I decided I'd had enough. I told him if he didn't shut the fuck up I'd staple his gob shut. He pointed to the TV and said, all mystical, watch and believe. I don't usually watch the TV (toxic), just DVD's, but I couldn't resist a glance.

Wow. I can't say I'm a believer, but I was surprised. Countrywide blackouts. In a gesture of friendship, Ukraine shut the Druzhba pipeline and Turkey the Nabucco. The EU threw a wobbly and threatened to burn their applications. (I doubt the Turks care. They're all in Germany anyway.) The Big Issue has folded. (The two-month cold spell finished off all the homeless). And there's the flu epidemic. Hospitals overflowing. Zombies dying like flies. Bodies stored in shipping containers like so many sides of beef. It's a disaster. The end of the world. Dick says there will be riots. We can but hope. That would be something to watch on TV.

Warms my heart to see the plebs suffering. They deserve everything they get, the spineless, mindless fools. And they say crime doesn't pay!

I'm quite getting into this journal thing.

Rhubard crumble today. There's nothing I hate more than tinned rhubarb. Bogies and string in sawdust. Cook's got it in for us. Someone must have complained about yesterday's custard.