Confessions of a Hollywood Star

My dear friend Andrew Campbell suggested I do this, although I still have my doubts. He is a noble man and plays down his part not only in the defence of our country, but also his part in what can only be described as the saving of my soul. He is a true British soldier and a true friend. He is also usually right.

This is not an interview, merely a collection of words that I hope may finish off a journey I started at the commencement of the Outbreak, a journey that lead me to the darkest place I have ever been.

Before Zombies, I had made it. I was a Hollywood star, local lad made good, hard man of many an action movie, able to handle myself in any situation on the silver screen.

If only that had been true at the start of the outbreak.

Andrew and I had been friends for many years before the war, I married his cousin, and we hit it off at the various family events we went to, often going fishing together or seeing what odd ales we could find in some of the better London Inns. He, along with my wife and family, provided me with a modicum of sanity in an otherwise mental Hollywood life.

On the day everything kicked off, I'd just finished my latest film and had flown back to see my wife. I often used to hang around after a film and do a bit of networking, see what the wind brought me, or just hobnob with my fellow actors: the after-film parties were always a bit of fun. But I'd felt terribly homesick after the most recent one, and had wanted to get home as soon as I could. Vague rumours of a new virus had started circulating during the last few days of filming which had gotten me worried, and I wanted to get home and make sure everyone was okay, and then maybe sink a couple of decent beers in a quiet pub somewhere.

My mother had called as I landed and said she was at our house, so I'd had the vague inkling that perhaps I should be expecting a surprise party. They quite often did that when I finished a film and it was becoming less of a surprise and more of tradition as time went on. I took a taxi, got him to drop me off at the nearby shops so I could grab a bunch of flowers - roses were her favourite - and walked the last few streets home, happy to be back.

As I turned into the street, my world descended into chaos and I got the most unwelcome surprise party in history. A small group of Zombies were ripping their way into various houses at the far end of the street. In hindsight, we suspect they may have all been members of a local drug gang who had had a recent drug carrier come back carrying something else entirely. The whole gang had gone Zed, together. As I stood frozen in horror, the door to my house opened and she stepped out into the street. She took one look at the blood-soaked and moaning horror that approached and turned quickly to go back inside. As she did she caught a glimpse of me standing there, my mouth open in shock, my little bunch of flowers in hand, and screamed at me to run. My mother joined her and screamed something at me too, desperately trying to drag my wife back inside. They were too late. The screaming attracted the Infected, and two Zeds were on them before I could move. It was only then as the two people most dear to me screamed again, this time in agony and shock that I started to run towards them. The moaning increased, more and more people being Infected, killed, and re-animated, as I desperately tried to cover the few hundred yards that separated us.

I never made it. I felt a hammer blow to my leg as a bullet ripped through my thigh and smashed me to the floor in debilitating agony, and then the whole street erupted in machine gun fire as the army arrived. Andrew had shot me to prevent me from getting closer. He then shot the two Zeds who had attacked my wife and my mother, then shot them too as they reanimated in front of him, their throats gaping in a bloodied death smile.

This is why we need people like Andrew, people who can make the right choice in the darkest of situations, even if it means making a choice like that.

After howling with rage and agony, and trying desperately to catch up with the man I perceived as my betrayer, I went catatonic with shock. He found me there a few minutes later, staring blankly at the roses as they lay untidily on the ground, their blooms crushed and the blood-red petals mingling with the gore that surrounded us. Once the area had been cleared, my dear friend came back and held me in his arms, trying to comfort me as I sat there, unmoving and unresponsive, while he mourned the loss of his cousin, my wife.

He took care of me for a long, long time. He marshaled the forces around London, evacuated the government and people of import to the Isle of Wight, and fought hard to be allowed to bring me along with him.

Months went by, and I sat and stared out of a hospital window as people around me died, fought, lived, and desperately tried to do something that could make a difference. I did nothing.

Andrew came in whenever he could, bringing little gifts, talking endlessly, and keeping me company.

It was the scent that did it. Scents are utterly evocative of memory and when he walked in with a freshly cut rose one day to try and brighten the room, it dragged me screaming out of my catatonia.

He held me again for a long time as I relived the moment in fresh detail, murmuring quiet, soothing words over the howls of despair that echoed through my soul. So many people ended up as I did, so few were given any solace other than a brief moan of apparent sympathy from a hunting Zombie before they themselves joined the ranks of the undead.

As has been said by so many people, so many times during the course of my travels: I was lucky.

Andrew was the one who gave me a new purpose. He was the one who suggested my voice become a weapon. I do have a fairly well-known voice, and so I became part of the UK propaganda and information machine. Andy often likens me to Troy McClure in the Simpsons.

"Hi I'm John Power; you might remember me from such Actions films as...", and so on. I never saw action during the main part of the war, in fact, I never saw another Zed in my whole time on the Isle of Wight. Only when I joined the forces that were liberating the cities of the UK did I see one again.

It had a terrible effect on me.

I'd joined Andrew as a roving reporter for the BBC. We were coming down through the midlands and we hit Derby, or rather Derby hit us. For once, the intelligence officers got it wrong.

The tank unit Andrew and I were in got caught in a small swarm. I say small, there were about ten thousand of them. We buttoned up and kept moving, shooting as many of the damn things as we could. When we ran out of ammo, we started to drive over them instead, trying to take out as much of the swarm as possible. Then we ran out of fuel.

We sat there, in muggy, sweaty silence, surrounded by the moaning remnants of the once alive. Hundreds of them were banging their deadened limbs on the tank walls, climbing all over us and trying to batter their way in. Thousands more waited for their turn, moaning in a nightmarish orchestra of sound that seemed to shake the tank on its collapsing tracks. It was too much for me, and all the terrors of the day I lost her piled back into my head. I sat on the floor of the tank, tears, and snot dribbling from my face, soiling myself in renewed terror as I had flashback after flashback to the past. I curled into a cringing little ball of terror in the corner, and let the others deal with the situation.

Andrew, as always, remained utterly calm, talking to the men under his command, reassuring them, and me, that reinforcements would come. We waited twelve long hours. To me, it felt like years. Years where I sat and cried for all I'd lost, years where the small child that was now me was reassured by the only person I had left.

He was right as usual.

Yet again, he pulled me out of the pit. Yet again he clawed his way back through the emotional wall I tried to build up in front of me by using twin hammers of patience and love.

This time I managed to find some strength from somewhere deep inside me, and I suggested to Andrew that perhaps I should try and live up to my old image. He laughed with me but did suggest that perhaps a little army training might help.

It was like something out of Rocky. He taught me how to fight, how to believe in myself, and how to have confidence in my new skills. We took it steady though. I watched videos of Zed attacks to try and desensitise myself to the moaning and the sheer visual spectacle of them, although even a TV picture of them had me shaking with terror. I learned how to use a gun, how to fight hand to hand, and learned to be the man that I always thought I was, and that I now wanted to be.

Until, eventually, I stood on the front line with Andrew as we cleared out the last of the land-borne Zeds from Dover. It had been a long road, for me, for the army, and for the remaining people of the UK. Symbolic perhaps that I finally regained mastery over myself as we, the people, regained mastery of the mainland. We cheered as we sent the last of them tumbling over the edge of the cliffs at the point closest to mainland Europe.

I smashed heads, I blew out brains. I killed Zombies.

I shook like a leaf for days afterward.

Even now, if I hear a Zombie moan via the TV, or more recently as I visited the CERN labs, I have to fight myself to stay calm, stay rational, and allow myself to live. I fight to keep my breathing measured and calm, fight against my body's instinctive reaction to run, and fight desperately against the urge to succumb to the terror that claws its way up from the pit of churning acid in my stomach. Every day is a fight. But now the only enemy left is me.

Now is when I give something back.

Following the exorcism of the Infected from our rolling hills, I joined the UN and now I act as a well-known face to support the campaign to maintain the fragile peace that thankfully reigns over the planet in the wake of the World War. I work closely with the Government and have the great honour of using what skills I have to represent the British people.

The night terrors still haunt me and I will forever have the moment of my greatest loss etched in searing cauterised pain across my mind, but I know that I have largely conquered my fears. I still live with the fear in me, but it no longer owns me. If I have to, I know that I can fight. I might shake with terror, but I will stand firm as I have done, as my friend Andrew has always done. We as humans are nothing if we stand alone, but together we can accomplish virtually anything.