001

There are zombies at Tottenham Court Road station. I know, I found them. My throat is dry and my lips are parched, but for different reasons. My throat – it's like that first feeling of a cold. There's a rawness at its top, near the start of the sinuses, that no amount of saliva or phlegm or swallowing will heal, though it feels like they should. Not even heal, sooth. No soothing from the moistness. Maybe it's not like a cold, it is a cold.

There are zombies at Tottenham Court Road station. That's why they put up the big metal sheets at the platform edge and told us that the Northern Line wouldn't be stopping there until late November 2011. The ceiling-high slabs of metal, with the little divots that aren't holes but look like they should be, like they should be ventilated or something but that's stupid because zombies don't need to breathe. I saw these metal sheets blocking the platform from view every time the Northern Line train would slow down on its journey between Goodge Street and Leicester Square and crawl past them and I knew what was behind the sheets because I would see them shudder occasionally and would hear faint groans and the sounds of tearing flesh. I knew that there were zombies at Tottenham Court Road station.

I knew then and I know now what the truth about the platform closure until late November 2011 was and still is really about. Shuffling, thoughtless, all-consuming hordes of the undead. It happened late one night in February (why not?) after the station had closed and the only people left there were Barry Trickles, the station master, and his partner Martha Vestoon. They're satanists, obviously. And after the station had closed, Barry and Martha, they let their congregation of twenty like-minded souls into the station and lead them down onto the Northern Line platform and there they consumed the seven pints of blood that they'd drained out of the six-year-old child that was Barry and Martha's son and performed the dark rites over it and once they all had consumed it they felt the change come upon them and then they were zombies.

So a lot of commuters died the next morning.

But that was part of the plan.

And to stop it getting out, they (who?) barricaded up the Northern Line platform of Tottenham Court Road with large metal sheets and told everyone that it was due to planned engineering works. It wasn't, it was because there were around 30 unholy undead stumbling around underground looking for human flesh to devour. It was almost sexual, no, it was sexual, the sense of arousal that they got every time a train of fresh meat would crawl past just on the other side of the metal that blocked them off from the outside world.

I had just been to see a bit of farce at the theatre with my wonderfully connected friends and as they exchanged stories in the bar afterwards about a world that I could never inhabit involving people doing things that I could never accomplish I decided that I had to go to Tottenham Court Road station to see the zombies for myself. I wanted to touch one. I hid in a dark corner of Leicester Square station until the last train had departed and then I walked up the underground line until I got to the metal sheets. I had a crowbar with me. And I prised the sheets apart just enough so that I could crawl under them and I got on to the platform. And there were the zombies, and entrails, and blood, and gore. But they ignored me. They just stood in rows, swaying slightly, staring directly at the metal sheets, waiting for something to come. I touched one. He rocked slightly with the pressure. I tried getting in front of them, but they just looked straight through me.

But I saw them, and there are zombies at Tottenham Court Road station. Now my lips are parched and my skin is flaking and I feel fine.