Day 93

Its all gone bad, everything has completely gone wrong, Steve has been bitten, he's fucking infected! We made our plan to go out and collect vegetables from peoples gardens which seemed easy enough, but it went bad, really bad. We were going to leave first thing in the morning, but the rain was pretty hard and decided to wait it out. The sky cleared up late afternoon so we got ready and left via our usual route down the stairs and out the overhang. The rain slightly covered the putrid smell of rot and death and was soothing to yet again get a clean lung of fresh air. Everything outside seemed fine, there was no sign of any zombies up close. We spotted a single roamer down the road, but he was too far away to see or smell us so we paid no attention to him. After crossing the main road we came to the houses we needed to get into. We followed the path round to the cul-de-sac where the back garden fences were. I was lucky that I had lost over 2 stone in the last few months so It was a lot easier than if I tried when I was 21 stone. The first garden had nothing in except a kids trampoline and knee high overgrown, unkept grass. The adjoining garden was the one that had all the goodies, so at lest the fence was much smaller at waist height. We were careful to keep an eye on the houses to make sure there were no zombies or even worse, angry and armed survivors ready to kill us for stealing their produce. Luck was on our side because there was no sign of life or undead life anywhere. We waded through the wet grass towards the greenhouse. it was locked with a heavy duty Yale padlock, which seemed a bit pointless when the whole thing was made from glass. Steve took off his hoodie, covered it over a pane of glass and smashed it with the shower curtain pole. The hoodie muffled out most of the noise and also prevented him from getting cut. He then pulled out the large jagged piece still sticking in the pane and placed it on the grass. Steve was smaller than me, so he climbed through the hole and started packing up the bag with anything he could get his hands on. I told him to slow down as there wasn't any hurry, due to being in a safe area with no sign of zombies being able to spot us. Steve managed to bag 7 cucumbers a whole crate of strawberries, some rhubarb, a whole tree of grapes, and an endless amount of carrots. After we cleared out the greenhouse of anything edible and ripe, Steve climbed back out the hole he made and we agreed we had enough to return home with.
Trying to be as quiet as possible we cleared both gardens and made it back into the street, then it happened. As we turned the corner, leaving the cul-de-sac and onto the main road, the zombie we saw earlier snapped out from behind the wall. Steve was in front and looking back at me to say something funny, I tried to warn him, it kind of happened in slow motion, well slow motion for me to act but fast forward for the zombie as he leaned forward towards Steve. As soon as he turned back, he was faced with a rotten face of death, Steve put his arm up in a defensive pose, and the zombie sunk his teeth into his arm. Steve let out a bloodcurdling scream of pain, despair and realisation that his life now had a short timer. Without a second heartbeat, Steve forced off the Zombie with every ounce of strengh, making him lose balance and fall on the floor. He dropped the bag and Swung the pole over his head repeatedly, while also shouting Bastard! you fucking Bastard." The undead fiend had no chance as his skull inverted with each strike. Blood pissing out of the cracks made from the force of the curtain pole. I tried to pull Steve away, but he pushed me aside to throw more and more hits. The final blow cracked open the zombies skull so far you could actually see its brain, beside the empty eye cavity, where Steve took out his left eye in one of his earlier strikes. I threw up all over the pavement, because the gore was far too much for me to take. Its weird, I can sit through any horror film with blood and guts spraying everywhere while happily eating a burger, but here and now, the sight of someones brain leak out onto the pavement made me regurgitate last weeks food. when I turned round, Steve was holding himself up on the pole he had dug into the pavement, he was hyperventilating and looking down at the bloody pool growing around this mashed up mincemeat mess that used to be a head. I rubbed my vomit stained mouth and looked up at him giving him the stare that could only be described as fear. He looked back at me and said "Don't look at me like that, we need to clean up the wound, if we are quick I will be okay."
Without warning he picked up the pace and marched towards the tower block as far as he could. I tried my best to keep my eye open to see if anymore undead were lurking around but saw nothing. Steve scaled the pole outside the building and onto the overhang as if he was Spiderman. I followed, but much slower due to my weight, and as I reached the window, Steve had already climbed 3 flights of stairs. It was like a race and he was determined to win, out of breath and out of energy I followed the hike up to the 12th floor where he was already inside using the last of the bath water to wash out the bite. I almost screamed out "what the hell are you doing? we have to drink that!" but I knew it was a waste of time because his life was more important. He used the metal scourer from the kitchen and was scraping layers of skin away from his arm as he desperately tried to clean the wound of any infection passed on from the zombie. It almost looked liked someone with OCD cleaning a draining board, he scrubbed so hard that he cut himself open even worse, washing it in the stale water, now turning red, scraping some more and rinsing again. I just stood there looking helpless, but told him that it was as clean as it could possible get. I knew that if the infection made it into the bloodstream it would pass around the body within 30 seconds and his violent scrubbing was in vain, however he had hope, which is something I could not take away from him. His arm was now seeping blood all over the floor, made even worse from the metal brush he used. He could see my look I gave him but stood defiant. "I am not going to turn into one of those, I cleaned the bite, I'm fine!" I think deep down he knew that wasn't true, but he was so scared that I was going to stab him when his back was turned that he wanted to do anything to prove he was okay. I humored him by saying that he should be fine and must have cleaned away any infection, if he sensed that I knew he was doomed, it would cause a final showdown. I didn't want to fight Steve and I didn't want him to think he was backed into a corner and I was going to finish him off when he least expected it, so I told him what he wanted to hear.
I knew that the infection slowly ate away at you to the point where you were unable to move through sickness so if he were to get to this stage, he wouldn't be able to do anything to defend himself anyway, so I felt safe enough to let him believe he was okay. At the moment he is in the kitchen sorting out the fruit from the vegetables, I pray he doesn't find this blog.