So what would you do if there was a zombie apocalypse? Like, honestly. Have you sat down and thought about it? I have. Loads of times. I wouldn’t say it was one of my favourite pastimes but it’s at least in the top 10. I’ve thought about the friends and family members I’d save, which ones would be too much of a liability (I don’t want anyone who sings at the top of their voice in the shower). Strategic places to go and campout for the first couple of days. Transport. Where to stay when things start getting crazy (a shopping centre, obviously.)

To be fair, this is the only apocalyptic scenario I’ve considered. And there are so many variables. Will they be the slow, shambling zombies of the classic films? The superfast ones from World War Z? Will the virus be transmitted through blood, a la 28 days later? Or will a curse awaken them and I’ll have to be the Bruce Campbell of our group and replace my hand with a chainsaw? There’s a lot to take in.

So when it eventually did happen, man I was pumped. I was telling people it would, I could feel it in my bones. The signs were all there. Nobody believed me at first. “THE BEES ARE DISAPPEARING.” I said. That was the first sign. No good was gonna come from a lack of bees. But the scientists got it wrong. They weren’t dying out from global warming or having their magnetic sensors or whatever messed up. They were hibernating. Biding their times. Bees are super smart, you see. It was all those African bees. The super aggressive ones. One mutation and then bam. One by one the bees were generating an even bigger sense of pack mentality. Millions upon millions grouped together in the middle of Africa. And once every bee had been affected they unleashed themselves upon the world.

But I was ready. I had my first-aid kit. Golf clubs. Rechargeable batteries. Canned food. Knives. Tonnes of water, enough for drinking, cleaning, toilets. I’d had all of that prepared for months, upstairs in a room that I could easily barricade and also had a safe route outside since I’d already pushed my bed out of the window for a soft landing. It didn’t take 28 days, though. There were about 2 bees for every one person on the planet. I mean, bees are pretty easy to kill so it’s not like everybody was infected within minutes. And of course, once the first few was infected the news stories were everywhere. Worse than the ebola crisis they said.

And holy shit you should have heard the buzzing. I mean this in both the literal and figurative sense. It started in England pretty late, all things considered. We weren’t super scared at all. We should have been. These were tiny little demon flying killing machines. I mean, bees can fly like, I dunno, I think the maximum a bee can fly is 5 miles (thank you Google) but these weren’t just regular honeybees. I don’t know if I’ve stressed that quite enough. These were bees that turned people into fucking zombies. But back to the buzzing for a second. I remember there was this one time I was in a place called Anglesey, in Wales. This was, wow, this was probably about 10 years ago now.

Let me pause for a second. I’m gonna get one thing absolutely clear. I figure I’ve drawn this out long enough. I am absolutely shit-scared of anything that flies and buzzes. This includes, but is not limited to: bees, wasps, hornets, flies, dragonflies, some types of moth, horseflies, gnats and ladybirds. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that my utmost fear is wasps, with bees coming in a close second. There’s just something about them. The way they move, the way they sound. It’s funny, I’ve actually never been stung by one. They’ve brought me to tears on many an occasion.

And anyway, back to Anglesey. i can\t quite place what time of year it actually was, but I don’t think it was summer. I was on holiday with my Mum in Wales and we’d taken a day trip to Anglesey. We’d gone on a boat and as we arrived, I think it was the sound that hit me first. It was like a low humming noise. I couldn’t place it at first but the minute I stepped off the pier I knew. It was wasps. This is not an exaggeration, although it’s going to sound like one. There were thousands of them. It felt like I was swimming through them, they’d whip and buzz around. Occasionally they’d zip right by your ear. I actually shivered as I was writing this down, remembering that moment. For me at least, the sound was maddening. Now it might not have been summer, but it was still hot. And even though the sun was blazing down, I didn’t want any part of my skin to be exposed to these hellspawn. So I shoved my arms down my tshirt. My mum remembers the day vividly, she said (and I’m aware of how un-politlcally correct this is) that I looked like one of those special needs kids. Running around with my arms tucked down my tshirt, terrified of the wasps. Another time, on a different holiday, we were at a pub and a wasp stung my mum on the leg. I nearly threw up. I reacted worse than she did and I didn’t even get stung.

Wow we went way off track there. All this is to say that when the news hit that there were terrifyingly mutated, bloodthirsty, zombie-creating bees about to hit the world, I was hit with two emotions. Firstly, I was fucking pumped. I’d been waiting for this day ever since I watched George A Romero’s seminal Dawn of the Dead. But on the other hand, it was fucking bees, man. Bees. All the news stories hyped up how you would definitely be able to hear them. They were about 3 times the size of a regular bee, engorged and fat, but agile and aggressive. And that was sort of what they turned the people into, as well. That’s something they never really stressed in the films. Like, have you ever eaten a person? They’re like, real big. So most people were just huge balls of fat, like the boomers from Left 4 Dead. And they weren’t any faster, either. Why would they be? It wasn’t like a superpower, this was literally dead people walking. Constant pain, constant hunger.

I’m getting ahead of myself. So, this news stories hits England that says that these mutant bees are gonna hit the shores down south in the next week or so. That was how fast they were working, the severity of it was only totally clear when most of Africa had been overtaken, which took, I think, 3 days (details are totally hazy because, let’s be honest, nobody was paying that much attention to specifics because it was the fucking zombie apocalypse.) Anyway, all I remember is that all flights, boats, everything were cancelled starting immediately. There were like World War style bunkers that people could head to, but they were ridiculously expensive and also, it turned out, decidedly ineffective. Bees can get in pretty much anywhere. A whole 2 days after the news stories, the first people were infected.

It wasn’t slow. It wasn’t drawn out. It was a massacre. And what was I doing? Well, I think I had about a day to put all my plans into action. I live up north, Leeds, it’s a little bit colder. Weirdly, as far as I can tell, we actually didn’t get all that many bees in England at all, at least compared to the horror stories that I’d read about places like Spain and Italy, where it was apparently like the scene from 300 – the Sun was totally blocked from the sky. But here the virus was very much spread person to person. Sure, the bees were ever-present (I’ll get to that) but it was the people, their hunger, that spread the virus most drastically.

So, I set myself up exactly how I planned. Gathered my supplies, went upstairs, barricaded my door, pushed my bed out the window, turned off all the lights, turned on my wind-up radio, put my earphones in so the sound didn’t attract anything, sent or replied to all of the goodbye texts, the #lolZombees was trending, so I posted my final tweet. And then I waited. I wasn’t entirely clear on what was going on outside of my house. I know that the Church over the road was offering a final sermon. I knew that in other countries that there were mass suicides, mass shootings, chaos reigned. I imagine it was a similar state here. Nobody was working, there was no reason to. Scientists couldn’t work quickly enough for a cure. If the Guiness Book of Records have enough staff to publish a book this year, I’m sure they’ll give this pandemic the ‘Fastest Spreading Infection’ award. It’s funny, they never actually came up with a name for the virus. I’m not sure if it even is a virus. It’s not like I can Wikipedia it. Internet went down after a couple of hours, the radio broadcasts stopped after 6. As far as I can tell, the entire country was ‘wiped out’ 4 days after the news hit that it could be a bit of a problem.

I bet you think I’m exaggerating a lot of this. How could it spread that fast, right? It took the plague 5 years to spread across Europe. Science can work crazily quickly now, surely we could eradicate an apocalyptic event like this, because all the world’s scientist’s could work together to create a cure. But the problem is, the Black Death was spread by, well, rats. (I know that isn’t totally scientifically accurate, the rats were like vessels, but still). But there are, I think, about 6 billion bees in the world. Plus all the ones that we thought had gone missing or died out. But there was at least 1 bee per person. And it was almost like they knew that. If a person was infected, other bees wouldn’t attack them. They worked with a determined, pack mentality. Spreading to as many people as quickly as possible. And what do people do when they’re in danger? Panic. Huddle together. Form groups. Even in the movies, the survivors always end up in a group. And, yes, you’re right. Surely we killed a lot of the bees. And people did, we used sprays and chemicals, we swatted them. But it was no use. Did you ever hear that old wives‘ tale that if you kill a bee, then more bees show up? It worked exactly like that. And so the virus was being spread in 2 separate and equally infective ways, through the bees and through the people who were attacked by them. That’s why it happened so fast and that’s why science couldn’t keep up with them.

Anyway. That got pretty heavy. So. What was I doing while the world was ending outside my window? Well, I had a can of cold soup. I drank about a liter of water. And I thought, fuck it. My chances of survival are slim. I’m gonna have a Mars Bar. My windows and door were both blocked, so I wasn’t really sure what was going on outside. Even with my headphones in, I could here screams of pain and anguish and hunger. Banging and ripping and fires. I turned the volume up all the way, but the radio only lasted for a couple more, I think hours, but it’s hard to be sure. The last thing they said was ‘May God have mercy on our souls’. Very poetic. So I shoved some music on. I think that was probably my first mistake. You should always be aware of your surroundings. That should be the first lesson they teach you in Zombie Survival Class. The second lesson should be ‘WHAT TO DO IF A KILLER ZOMBIE BEE IS INSIDE YOUR ROOM OF PROTECTION HOLY SHIT GET IT OUT.’

So, yup. I still have no idea how it actually got in there. It could have been laying dormant from the night before. Maybe the room wasn’t as secure as I thought it was. Maybe bees are just really good at weaseling into small spaces. But it was there. I heard it before I saw it. Even with my headphones on, the buzzing was unbearably loud. It wasn’t flying either, it was crawling, as bees do when they’re about to die. It was swollen to bursting point. It’s stinger was dripping blood, it must have stung somebody and was seeking refuge for it’s final moments before it sensed me. I think sensed is the right word. All I knew was it was coming straight at me and the buzzing was maddening. I can’t think of a simile that portrays accurately how loud it was. Obviously, I was shit-scared. In fact, I pissed myself.

And the bee stopped. Now this wasn’t like a peeing on a jellyfish sting, neutralizing type of thing. It stopped because my piss was full of sugary Mars Bar goodness. It was drinking my pee. Gross. So I jumped out of the window. That’s what any other rational person would do when a killer zombie bee drank their pee, right? (man, that was a sweet rhyme). I landed on my bed, pushed myself back up and sprinted as fast as I could towards the church. I didn’t look around, didn’t know if I was being chased. I just Forrest Gump’d it. But you know like when you watch a slasher film, and the hero is running from the knife wielding maniac and just as they’re starting to make some headway, they trip. They’re scrabbling to get up and the killer is gaining on them.

Yeah, no, that didn’t happen. What did happen was I ran face first, and I mean literally face first, into a swarm of bees. I was about 10 steps my house. I was stung once in the chest, once on the ear and twice on the cheek. I fell to the floor clawing at my face. It was too late. The damage was done. From start to finish I didn’t even last a day on my own.

The changes were fairly rapid. After pulling out the bodies of the bees, the holes yawned on my face, oozing blood and pus. Gross. The hunger set in within the hour. It was a deep, famished hunger. Nothing else changed though, to be honest. You’d be surprised really. The hunger could be satiated in other ways, too. People are best, obviously. But there was nothing wrong with a cat or a dog, or a bird if you could catch them. Fluids are fluids, after all. It was a nice pack mentality that we all had, too. You’d never eat one of your own. You’d holler atcha boy if you found a good source of food. But, unless the hunger gets really bad, it’s fairly normal – hence the blog post.

Yep. Underwhelming, right? Well, I mean, you are reading the final moments of a person before zombie-itis overtook them, which must be fairly cool. But. Yep. Truth be told, it’s way, way harder to survive a zombie apocalypse than one might first think. I guess the only morals of the story are don’t be cocky, don’t trust bees and don’t forget to like, comment, and reblog!