X: A Short Story

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  Jack Croxall

  X

  This eBook edition published 2017

  Copyright ? Jack Croxall 2017

  All rights reserved

  www.jackcroxall.co.uk

  What follows are the contents of a journal, the journal itself found in a farmhouse cellar somewhere in the English countryside.

  I spend all of my daylight hours in this musty old cellar now. It's woeful, and I bet it smelled this bad even before everything turned to crap. Great. My second sentence and I've already resorted to swearing. When I decided I'd start this diary (five minutes ago), I thought it would be my poetic and deeply-moving goodbye to the world. Maybe I'd write about love and loss, or maybe the splendour of nature. Then, if anyone ever found it, at least I'd have left something to be remembered by. As well as my corpse, of course.

  This was a bad idea.

  Okay, I'm an idiot. There's nothing else I can do down here. I've rooted through every cardboard box a hundred times, organised and reorganised my supplies until I can recite the labels on the cans off by heart, I've even built a fort. So, I'm back. Hello. Again.

  God, this diary is going badly.

  But there's just enough light coming through the boards I nailed over the cellar's tiny window to write by. So I may as well write. Stops me staring up at the window just waiting for a shadow to pass by.

  Where to start? Well, my name is - actually, I think I'm going to refer to myself as 'X'. That sounds mysterious. If you're reading this and want to know my real name, I still carry my purse. Stupid, I know. But my railcard is in there and, if you really want to know who I am, go find me and fish it out. I won't bite ...

  So, my name is X and I'm fifteen. Before all this happened, I was at school, doing pretty well. I didn't really know what I wanted to do afterwards, but I think it might have been fun to do something in the movies. Not act. I can't act. But I love the sets used in those period movies. I think I might have liked to be the person who designed those. That's a job, right?

  What else? I had a mum, a dad, a sister and there was a boy I liked, his name was Jonah. That's about it. Or was it, at least.

  I couldn't think of anything else to write so I waited until I came back from my rounds. That's the stupid name I have for when I go outside at night scrounging for stuff. Drinks are the hardest. I only trust bottles or cans, or did, and I was running out of places to search for them. But I guess that doesn't matter now.

  My leg is doing alright actually; didn't hold me up at all. I saw Jonah too. He's looked better, I have to say. It's strange because this is only the second time I've seen him since we came here. Maybe his ears were burning.

  Anyway, I found some tinned pineapple in a caravan I hadn't searched yet. Had to bust the door open with Old Trusty - which I thought might attract some unwanted attention - but it was fine. I'm actually eating the pineapple right now, tastes good. I also found a radio in there. I already have three down here, but none of them work. Not that the caravan radio works either, all you get is static. It's just nice to collect something. You know, to have a hobby.

  I suppose I can't stay down here eating pineapple and collecting radios, though. 'Try to think long-term.' That's what the careers people at school said. I guess it doesn't really apply now, but my parents did always want me to listen to them.

  I can tell the sun is rising. I managed to sleep for a couple of hours, but I woke up after a bad dream. I know some people can remember their dreams, but I never do. I wake up and grasp at them, but I never manage a hold before they fade away. It's like trying to pinch the corner of a wisp of smoke; the harder you try, the quicker it fades to nothing. I'm just left with a sensation, a kind of imprint which sums up the most intense part of the dream. And a cold sweat. That's new.

  I've been through the box of photo albums I found at the back of the cellar again. I've looked through them a few times now, but I always notice something new. Or maybe I'm getting so bored I'm finding increasingly boring stuff not boring. Does that make sense?

  There's a photo of this little girl playing with a pretend guitar. I can tell it's pretend because it doesn't have strings, only brightly-coloured plastic levers. Kind of like My First Guitar Hero or something. The girl has dark hair and she looks a tiny bit like my sister did a million years ago. I don't have a picture of my sister. I suppose I could go and get one from my old house, but it's right in the middle of the village. I'm lucky I wasn't torn to shreds the last time I went back. So, what I've done is put this girl's photo in my back pocket as a substitute.

  I guess I should probably write something about my real sister now. But I don't think that's a good idea just yet.

  Daylight is starting to fade and I'm getting ready to go out on my rounds. I always take my school satchel with me, but, instead of books and pens, I half-fill it with things that are useful. As in things that are useful to this new existence of mine.

  I have Old Trusty (a crowbar) which sticks out of the top for easy access, a small toolbox (full of screwdrivers, tin openers, matches and other handy things), a pair of heavy-duty gloves (there's a good story about how I got those, I might write that one down later) and a hammer. I carry a penknife I found down here in my pocket, my purse, and a torch in my hand.

  I don't like to use the torch because its battery is running out and there's always the chance it might attract them. I probably shouldn't have used it last night when I got back. Maybe I'm starting to enjoy this writing malarkey? I need to be careful with luxuries.

  Actually, ever since all this happened, it's been a lot easier to see outside at night. That seems like a really stupid thing to write but I'm sure it's true. The light from the stars and moon seems brighter, and I think that's because there's no light from the village or any of the nearby towns. I think we humans are more adept at using ambient light than most of us realise. It just takes a few weeks of being back in the Dark Ages to recalibrate your senses.

  Anyway, my satchel is packed and I'm ready to go.

  Okay, that could have gone better.

  Picture the scene: I'm using Old Trusty to try and lever a kitchen window open, when one of them just walks right through the garden hedge. Seriously, straight through it. It's not the mightiest of hedges but, still, it just appeared like it was walking through one of those Japanese paper walls. My satchel was on the floor, but I legged it anyway. I'm not stupid. I know I can go back for it tomorrow. I felt strangely naked without it on the way back here though.

  Like I said before, I need to be careful with the torch so I think I'll try and get some sleep now.

  I slept pretty well last night; no nightmares or cold sweats. Maybe a midnight chase was just what I needed to blow away the cobwebs.

  I actually woke up wondering about you. If you've found my diary and you're reading this, who are you? Another survivor of course, but how have you managed to go this long without being killed or whatever? Maybe you're Army or some such. Maybe you're just some kid who's played so many videogames that surviving all of this was already second nature to you. Or maybe you're like me; living on borrowed time and searching for a good place to die.

  Here's an idea. Maybe you can carry on this diary from whatever page I left it at. God, I really hope this isn't my last one, although I suppose any page might be. But I digress. If you do carry the diary forwards, and then another doomed survivor carries it on after you, maybe it will become cursed. Spooky.

  I've been preparing for my next excursion.

  If I know I'm going somewhere I'll likely run into an ugly, I like to take extra precautions. And I want my satchel back. It was a present from my dad, and I know it cost him a lot of money.

  So, I'm taking a pair of shears from the shelf of old tools down here. I've used a few len
gths of garden string to create a kind of torso-sized loop. Now I can have the shears hanging behind my back. That way, if I lose Old Trusty, I'll have a backup weapon.

  I wonder how you like to kill them? Pretty morbid question I know, but everyone seems to have their preferred method. The last person I saw alive carried a pair of rounders bats and seemed to have bludgeoning down to an art form. He never saw me though, I was watching from a grove of trees as he killed his way along the main road near the village.

  That was before I decided to stay inside during the daylight hours. As I was saying before, we can see okay at night. They can't though. I've seen them; they bump into things. It's pretty funny to be honest. If they hear a noise, they walk in the direction of the sound, never trying to avoid any object in their path. They either bash said object out of the way, or, like that hedge, blunder right through it. Obviously bigger things stop them dead (ha!) though. If that happens, they sort of shuffle backwards and then try again a few times. Eventually - and I've seen this too - they just give up and stand there, waiting for something else to attract their attention.

  That's not how it works in the daytime though.

  I think it's about an hour before the sun sets so it's nearly time to head out. I'm going to change my bandage. One minute.

  Okay, it didn't look that bad really. The original scratch wasn't too deep and now the wound seems to be