Imagining the zombie apocalpyse

As I cycled to work this morning I tried to ignore passing cars, and instead replace them with eerily deserted day-time streets, imagining instead of the light day-bag on my back (Goruck Echo) a loaded out survival kit (Goruck GR2). ??The occasional slosh as I dodged a pot hole of a salvaged can of vegetables in the pack reminding me of the day-by-day nature of survival.

Tensing as I pass a side-road in case a hoard of rage-infected sprint after me and I have to, in the words of a now presumably long-dead cycling friend “click click boom” (a double gear change that allows for an ‘explosive’ change in speed) and leave the area immediately.

Would they be rage-infected? ??Would they be a more traditional zombie, as seen in Day by Day Armageddon,??The Walking Dead, or World War Z? ??The rage virus makes the more terrifying creatures, capable of sprinting after their meal, running it down like a deranged wolf before tearing its exhausted flesh from its bones in hungry, meaningless mouthfuls. ??

I’d stop every half hour or so of slow cycling to turn on my radio to scan for any other survivors, and make sure the solar panel on the top of my pack was charging batteries for it. ??Long rendered useless by its dependence on stonily silent servers my iPhone and Nexus S have been discarded, the few resilient cell sites in the UK having drained their generators a few days after the National Grid failed to be able to black start, probably due to a loss of workers in the designated sites. ??It’d almost make sense to stay on high-ground, but getting to the top of anything sufficiently high burns a lot more calories than it appears to be worth: I thought Brill would be a good safe-spot, but after cycling up there in small sections, the zombies owned the commanding view. ??The radio only has a range of a few miles anyway, so like my fortnightly attempts at shaving it’s more for moral.

I think about cycling up to London, now the motorways are clear, that ascent through the cutting aside it’d be novel but what’s the point?

Then I roll into work, to attend to another hoard of mindless creatures with a never ending hunger.