King of Zombie Heath

Day 43, part 1 - Heeere's Eddie!

People were still pissed with X at breakfast the next morning when . he stood up and told us it was time to get real. We were kidding ourselves if we thought we could just stay behind our walls and hope the world outside would go away. What was out there was there to stay and, for the time being, Angel Dusters were the least of our problems. What would we do when the food ran out? How would we cook it when the diesel was all gone? More importantly, when the snow melted, and the tanks were empty, or our precious water had gone green and was swimming with bacteria, what did we plan to do when we got thirsty? Call Thames Water?

The general civilian consensus was that we were pretty well set up and that things might have improved by then and, if not, we should cross that bridge when we were nearer to it and the weather was better. The military assessment was that our heads were so far up our arses anyone looking down our throats would think our tonsils were hairy. The only way things could get better was if we made it so, planning for the worst and preparing for the long haul. That meant getting organised. It meant collecting equipment that would help us survive for years, not the next three months. It meant building our stocks. Building our skills and learning new ones. Building self-sufficiency. From now on, he said, what you see it what you get. There is no one coming to save us. There is no one putting things back together. There is no one but us. We are on our own. The world as it was is broken beyond repair and it was up to us to make a new one.

That being so, but mostly because I'd been locked up for so long and the other day's blood-sport had wet my appetite for action, when X asked for a volunteer for a mission to the outside world, I was all in, no questions asked.

Sadly, Eddie's hand went up faster.