King of Zombie Heath

Day 28 - Containers full of corpses

Still quiet, ominously quiet, outside. Hardly any movement at all, except for the helicopters buzzing back and forth in the distance. One landed on our helipad the other day. Dropped off four guys - I'm assuming they were guys - in matching puffy white togs. They stayed a while, had a look around and went away. Medical, police or army, don't know, couldn't see very well from the window.

Power cuts are daily occurrences now. Only last a few seconds before our generator cuts in.

Had a couple of deliveries too. The salaried pack-horses are all off skiving or on holiday, so Hulk deputised us all and had us lugging the boxes for free. At least without shackles. The screws are all AWOL and Hulk said if we wanted to run, we were to feel free. But warned he wasn't coming after us. At any other time in history, that would have been music to our ears, but not now the thermometers have all frozen. He even pointed out the best way to go; after we got over the wall, a mile and a half thataway to the nearest village. Wished good luck to anyone that wanted to try. There were no takers. We may be insane, but we know which side our breads buttered on. Even if the butter has run out.

One lorry was food. Cans, cans and more cans. I'm developing a gag reflex every time I see spaghetti loops. Another was drink. Enough Coke and Tizer to refill the hydro-gymnastics pool (someone drained it because the water went cold and turned green. Same colour as the Tizer, incidentally. Wonder what happened to the red stuff?) Why is it we can't get proper food like milk and juice, but we can get lorry loads of Coke and Tizer? The other was meds. I doubt the stock keeping's what it was these days so I pocketed a few boxes of Thorazine for Dick. He prefers the injectables, but beggars can't be choosers.

It was nice to get off the ward. There were ten of us. Three from our ward and five from four and one each from two and three. I was hoping to get a handle on what was going on chatting to the other guys, but since wards five down are numbered after the average IQ of their inmates, I didn't learn much, only that there were very few of us left.

I did get one interesting titbit from the guy from two. He wasn't much help lifting, he spent most of his time manically poking a stick in his ear, like a chimpanzee hunting for termites, trying to smash the transmitter "They" implanted in his head to give him instructions. Why is it these wackos can't even come up with original delusions? I asked him who "They" were, if they were reptilian aliens. He looked at me as if I was crazy and said no, they were the "Theys" that left the ten containers in the rear car park. Now, I can't see the rear car park from our ward, but he can, and he swore blind bulldozers had spend a day digging cars out of the ice and snow to make space for them. Why? I asked. Iceboxes, he said. Iceboxes for all the bodies. Makes sense. Walt's always looking for ways to reduce costs. Why use the fridges in the morgue when you can dump the stiffs outside?

Talking of stiffs, we found Albert and La Page dead in their beds this morning.

Albert was alive yesterday. He was a nice old chap whose only crime was to have mutilated a couple of his old school teachers in the sixties. By a couple I mean maybe half a dozen. Or was it a baker's dozen? But who's counting? It was ages ago, and hardly something to lock him up and throw away the key over. That's both malicious and unchristian. I'm sure there's something in the bible about casting the first stone, and who hasn't fantasised about a couple of their old teachers? I know I have.

La Page was just a perv with no class at all. A low-life insurance salesman that met lonely women through Internet dating sites, took them off to his cabin-in-the-woods and, well, you can guess the rest. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Fool got caught cos he took out policies on all his victims. How thick can you get? He must have shuffled off this earthly coil a while ago because he was starting to hum. Shows how much we cared. We assumed a rat had died under a cupboard outside his doors. Normally the cleaning ladies sort that stuff out, but they haven't been in in a while, so we just got used to the pong. The atmosphere in here's improved already, and not just because of the smell.

And then there were five. Me, Dick, Nimby, Tubbs and, of course, Eddie.

Hulk keeps us fed and meded (and carts off the bodies). He's a nice guy once you get past the gruff exterior. I asked him about Lemmy. He got all shifty and said he wasn't allowed to talk about it, but that neither Lemmy or Annie had been in to work since the "incident". His words. He said he suspected they'd caught the flu. What he meant was, that they'd caught it off the Lecter triplets. I asked if he was OK and he said he was, so far, thanks to Dr Mbadinuju. He didn't elaborate. When I asked about the triplets he clammed up and glanced up at the camera. More than my job's worth, he said.

Big Bro, the Security Liason Manager, is still around too. He's now in charge of keeping all the right doors locked, since there seems to be a dire shortage of staff, and he's all too diligent. It's as though, even after all this time together, he still doesn't trust us. It's like being in jail. True, we couldn't actually go anywhere before, but it's the principle. He wanders round the wards "checking stuff". He's no longer his usual cocky self, and he's stopped wearing his trademark one-size-too-small, button-down, short-sleeve blue shirt with a Bic in the breast pocket, and flashing his biceps and pecs, which he does to show everyone he works out and remind us that he's a crack at Krakatoa or Krav Maga or some other ass-kicking Israeli Kung Fu. In fact, he's lost weight, and it's the first time I've seen him without a tie and with more than a few hours' stubble. He looks like a zombie on a permanent downer, if there is such a thing, and always seems to be on the verge of exploding with rage or bursting into tears. You'd think his whole family was dead or something. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if staff can't keep their problems at home, they shouldn't come in. We're not obliged to put up with their bad moods. That's not part of the treatment.

The cameras seem to be working fine, they pan from side to side and you can see the lenses zooming in and out, so I guess some of the Control Room Voyeurs are still recording our every move, desperate to find out who's wiping the bogies on the door handles (Tubbs).

My Bad - the Rock - has become a permanent fixture. She's a dab hand at finding snacks to break the monotony of spaghetti and beans on toast and polyfiller. Mars Bars, Twixes, Kit Kats and the likes. She's either got a piggy bank full of fifty ps or she knows how to diddle the vending machines. She even "found" a box of teabags and a jar of Nescafe in one of the other wards. We take everything black now. Milk powder and sugar are like gold dust.

At first I thought she was an angel fallen from heaven, sent to look after us in our hour of need, then I discovered she's moved in and been sleeping here for over a week with a couple of the younger nurses. Dick says she's got no family and is too scared to go home. He tapped the side of his nose and said that she knows what's going on and that here, behind our walls, with an inexhaustible supply of frozen bread and Heinz baked beans and a space-age robotic dispensary jam packed with enough drugs to see her through the coming apocalypse (he's so melodramatic), is the safest place to be.

Now, staff sleeping over is totally against regulations, though, given the staffing problems at present, I'm sure even Walt, who's a stickler for rules (and off sick) would commend her dedication. My Bad'll deserves an MBE for actions above and beyond the call of duty. At the very least, honorary British Citizenship. I'll put in a word for her when all this is over and things get back to normal.

Spaghetti loops on toast tonight. God, I miss prunes. The food in here has gone to shit. If there was anyone to complain to, I would. In fact, I told My Bad I was thinking of writing to the Prime Minister. She said not to waste my time. Why not? I asked, you think he won't read it? She said no, I know he won't read it. Apparently, rumour has it, he's dead, along with half the cabinet. I hope it's true. At the risk of repeating myself, good riddance to bad rubbish. Maybe now someone who actually knows how to run the country will step up and run the country.