Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Martin Cheese: The Saviour

It's not like the whole week was chaos. I know that what I saw wasn't real, but I think because I met the soldiers first, I kind of had some idea what was going on. Maybe what I saw was closer to the truth than it would otherwise have been, and I think that puts me in the best position to make some sense out of the events of that week. I've worked out the different alliances, the factions that came together, I've pieced the truth together from what I saw and what was in the papers later. Maybe I'll show you the truth some time, but it's pretty hard to believe. It's not just criminals or anarchists, I can tell you that much. The real story goes all the way to the top, to some of the highest echelons of government.

There's just one part of the story I can't understand, so I'll tell you that first. Maybe the opinion of an outsider will give me something I can use, jog my mind in just the right way. I can't expect you to really understand, you're standing so far from the truth, but you still might see something I'm too close to get. So I'm trusting you guys, right, I want to know your opinions on this.

It was the day after the experimental jet did its fly-by. Or maybe the day after that, when the bombs started going off. It wasn't so clear anymore, everyone was out of their skulls and time just seemed to stretch like caramel. I've been back a few times since that day, walking round the five monuments where the craters were, so I know five was the magic number. But at the time it felt like so much more, with the drugs in the air and all the smoke and everything. It felt like the whole campus, maybe the whole city, was being shaken apart, and there was this thing looming over the city, so weird even I can't think of the right words to describe it. But the real action was on the ground.

People were calling them zombies, and everyone wanted to barricade themselves in whatever safe space they could find. The zombies marched through the streets, flesh hanging from their bones, shambling on even after injuries that should have killed them. And of course, that's a story right out of science fiction. They were regular people really, but the drugs had done something to their brains. They were so angry they wanted to destroy everything, and the ones who locked themselves and a few friends in a small room were most susceptible, so the outbreak seemed to spread. Like cabin fever on steroids, your brain giving in completely as a response to what seemed like sensible precautions.

It was much later I worked out the details, though. I just knew what I could see, these shambling corpses. But I knew we had to be hallucinating, to believe anything else would be crazy, so I guessed their injuries weren't as bad as they seemed, that grey-green rotting skin was just an unhealthy pallor. I guessed that these people were on some kind of drugs, that they were high enough not to notice they'd lost blood, and once someone had mentioned zombies the combination of adrenaline and hysteria was enough to make us see what we wanted to see, exaggerating every detail. I even tried telling people that, but they were too scared to listen. Every group was boarding themselves up, inside the restaurants, in the bar, even holing up in lecture theatres and store rooms, too panicked to think ahead to when somebody needed the bathroom.

I was walking the halls. Most of the zombies – I know it's not the right word, but I didn't have a better name for them at the time – were on the ground, seeming to be attracted to where there was noise and chaos. The quads were filled with them, but enough of the buildings had bridges across the main streets, it was practically possible to get from one end of campus to the other without going down to ground level once. So I kept to where it was quiet, running from one department to another in search of other people who might need my help. I had a fire axe in my hand, not much of a weapon but enough to scare away a zombie if I ran into one of them alone, maybe two. They were crazy and enraged, but they weren't suicidal. A couple of days before, I would never even have imagined myself patrolling the corridors armed, but the chaos had changed me. It can do that, you know, and it takes weeks before you can act normal again afterwards.