King of Zombie Heath

Day 37 - N-n-n-n-n-nineteen. Up shit creek.

Finally, there are four compadres from wards two, three and four, all of whom I met when we were used as ponies to unload the lorries. Ward Two's rep is LT, or Loony Tune, the annoying, middle-aged psychotic that told me about the containers in the car-park. He's new here, transferred in six months ago from another hospital for exhibiting threatening behaviour towards the staff. He was still muttering to himself and jamming a pencil in his ear. At one point he asked me if I could hear it. I made a show of listening and asked: You mean the pencil tapping on the transmitter in your brain? Yes! he said, over the moon that someone finally believed him. No, I replied. All I can hear is a pencil perforating your ear drum.

The only survivor from Three is a mopey artistic sort in his late thirties, probably a failed poet, broken by one too many bad reviews (or none at all) on Wattpad or some other on-line poet's display forum. For some reason no one's ever got to the bottom of (other than the fact he's nuts) he had a Michael Douglas "Falling Down" day a few years after the film was released. He put half a dozen random strangers in hospital and two in a morgue. I call him Gloom and Doom, or G 'n' D for short. He brings to mind that character, "Pig Pen", from Snoopy, the one with the broken hair and personal cloud. "Pig Pen's" cloud was a whirlwind of dirt and fleas and tended to accumulate around his feet. G 'n' D's is more of a black, cheerless fog that darkens and suffocates any room he's in.

Ward Four's final occupants are a jolly couple, Tim and Brendan, both in their late teens or early twenties and more likely to harm themselves than anybody else. No surnames proffered. I get the impression My Bad's keeping them high. That or they're delusional. They're annoyingly chirpy and seem convinced this is some kind of religious workshop. They're soul mates (or lovers) and self-hurters, both decorated with tattoos, piercings and scars crisscrossing their arms and legs. Tim's got a nasty red one around his neck. I suspect he tried to hang himself not so long ago, unless someone, and this wouldn't surprise me at all, tried to do it for him.

Action Man, Chimp and Freckles lounged around on the floor at the back like feral children being reintroduced to human society, still not sure whether they were their own group or part of ours. They're all under twenty and, if I understood right, Action Man and Freckles are skilled in digging holes and filling sandbags whilst Chimp can pull funny faces and fix engines.

So, once we'd all been introduced, My Bad gave us a run-down of our situation.

Food: A month of dry and canned stuff, a walk-in freezer full of soon-to-be thawing frozen stuff, and three months of MRE's, courtesy of Major Sanders.

Drink: Three thousand cans of Coke and green Tizer, and all the snow we can melt. Juanita said something in Spanish that My Bad translated as a suggestion to keep the hospital's water tanks full with melted snow and to clean and refill the hydro pool for bathing and flushing. Not as backward as she makes out. Have to keep an eye on her. Perhaps being from the third world gives her an advantage when it comes to subsistence living.

Fuel: The hospital's emergency tanks are empty. Chimp told us Colonel Sanders' petrol tanker is three quarters full with diesel. About seven thousand litres. Enough to run one of the hospitals 1500KVA generators on half power for two days or the 15KVA army generator on full power for seventy days. No contest. Chimp and Dick volunteered to try and join the army generator to the hospital electrics. If it gets too cold we can burn the floorboards.

Security: The walls and fences are more for keeping people in than out, and with the snowdrifts, it's not impossible that Angel Dusters might try and climb over, or for survivors who saw the second series of The Walking Dead to confuse our high-security psychiatric hospital with a prison, and we certainly don't want any Mad Max survivalists coming in and taking over. We'll need to check the walls are all secure. Also, since there are so few of us, we'll divide up and sleep in Wards Five and Six. At night the door to Six (henceforth the dorm for all those not here by choice) will be locked to keep the wackos safe from the genocidal doctor and her edgy minions.

Meds: Several weeks supply for two hundred and fifty dead patients shared between the eight of us survivors should last a while.

Entertainment: Monopoly, chess, draughts, dominoes, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, cards, pool, table tennis, a selection of arts and crafts, a piano, a large stock of two-year-old women's and gardening magazines, Doc's abandoned Penthouse collection, a library stocked with donated books the donors didn't want to read and every book on mental illnesses under the sun. And, if we get the electricity on, Secret Agent on the Nintendo and a CD of instrumental elevator music to calm our nerves.

Tomorrow, the women disconnect everything electrical in the hospital that doesn't need to be on. Dick and Chimp suss out the electrics. We men clean the pool and fill the water tanks with snow and Action Man and Freckles set up a perimeter, or whatever it is military types do when they make camp.