Season 5 Radio Mode

Phil and Zoe return, along with more transmissions from everyone's favourite travelling couple.

Cast

• Phil Cheeseman
• Zoe Crick
• Hugh Caulfield
• Eloise Caulfield
• Jody Marsh
• Amelia Spens
• Ollie Oxford

Crew

• Writer: Naomi Alderman
• Director: Matt Wieteska
• Sound Designer: Mark Pittam
• Series Created By: Naomi Alderman

Transcript

Right After This

PHIL CHEESEMAN: We’re really going to do this?

ZOE CRICK: Yeah. Yeah, I think we’ve got to, don’t you?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah. It’s uh, it’s what this show’s always been about, in a way, even when it was Radio New Tomorrow. … Sorry, I was just waiting for you to say what it was always about. “You mean fart jokes and bad puns?”

ZOE CRICK: I’m not, though. [laughs] You’re right. This is what it’s about. This is why we always did it. Well, to be honest, it was why you did it. I was forced into it by the Permanent Advisory Council. I thought it was a waste of time, but you were right and I was wrong. … Phil?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [laughs] Sorry. Just savoring the moment. I’m not going to hear that again in a while. All right, ci-ti-zens! We’ll be back with more right after this.

Don't Believe

ZOE CRICK: That song certainly is appropriate. Because the thing is, listeners, we’re… well, we’re not saying goodbye, but we’re saying goodbye for a little while.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: We know what’s going on back home, with Abel and New Canton. We know that the Ministry’s saying terrible things about Abel – and none of it’s true, none of it! After everything the people of Abel have sacrificed, all the times that Abel and New Canton together saved the whole country’s collective asses -

ZOE CRICK: It’s all lies. But lies get easy to believe if there’s no one around the contradict them.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: So that’s what we’re going to do: contradict all those lies. We’ll be back, citizens, giving Abel’s side of the story. We’re going to tell you the truth about what’s really going on. We can’t be shut down. We won’t be. Until we’re back, remember: don’t believe everything you hear.

Radio Cabel Out

ZOE CRICK: Sorry, um, one more thing. While we’re gone, we’re going to leave this station broadcasting the transmissions we picked up around the country, because… well, mainly because Phil’s a giant nerd, and doesn’t like the idea of leaving dead air. [laughs]

But also because people should hear what other people are going through. Not the little carefully-selected snippets the Ministry lets you hear, but the real deal, raw and unedited.

So yeah. Keep listening. And we’ll be back as soon as we can. Unless we die. [humorless laugh] Then we won’t be back, but you know. Expect the worst and hope for the best. Anyway, take care of yourselves, and I’ll try to take care of my idiot sidekick until we can both be with you again. This is Radio Cabel, out.

Good Shot, Dear

HUGH: Is it still on us, Eloise?

ELOISE: Yeah!

HUGH: A blue Ford Fiesta?

ELOISE: Of course it’s a blue Ford Fiesta, you wazzock. You think they stopped to switch cars?

HUGH: It’s zombies! They behave in unpredictable ways.

ELOISE: Hugh, it’s not zombies!

HUGH: You hear these stories – zombies driving trains, zombies doing street theater. Who says they don’t do high speed pursuits?

ELOISE: You don’t hear stories about zombies driving trains. That was a dream you had. And the street theater zombies turned out to be art students doing an ill-advised performance art piece. It’s militia from the last settlement. They saw all the supplies in the back of the van and they - [screams]

[gunshots, tires squeal]

HUGH: I still have to fix this bugger after the last time!

ELOISE: Concentrate on your driving!

HUGH: Do you know how hard it is to find camper van parts now? New tires, replacement headlights? [glass shatters] Windows?

ELOISE: I could radio ahead and get somebody to set a trap.

HUGH: Great. How close is your nearest contact?

ELOISE: Um… 150 miles.

HUGH: We ain’t going to make it.

ELOISE: I’ve got a plan B, but you’re not going to like it.

HUGH: What?

ELOISE: You know we started the vegetable garden on the roof again? The box is just big enough.

HUGH: Not my beetroot.

ELOISE: Sorry, love. Here, find a blind corner and I’ll drop it. Just let me get into the back.

[tires squeal, gunshots]

HUGH: Get ready… now!

ELOISE: It’s away.

HUGH: Good shot, dear.

ELOISE: I found a jar of pickled beetroot.

HUGH: It’s not the same.

Won't See It Coming

ELOISE: We’ve taken some time out of our busy schedule to have a catch up with you, the listeners, from this scenic spot. Where are we today, Hugh?

HUGH: I don’t know, love. I was aiming for [?], but you wanted to turn left.

ELOISE: Yes, because I could see a roadblock in the distance.

HUGH: It weren’t a proper roadblock. That was just kids having fun.

ELOISE: Like the last time, when kids were having fun with demolition explosives and nearly blew us off the road?

HUGH: I did worse myself, in my day.

ELOISE: That, I do believe. Whereas my childhood was split between science and the fine arts.

HUGH: You told me you used to post dog poo to people you didn’t like!

ELOISE: And that was a fine art. Anyway, we need to update the listeners on what we’ve been doing.

HUGH: Right. You’ve been tinkering with your network, haven’t you?

ELOISE: I have not been “tinkering” with it, I have been maintaining it. And Hugh has made some special modifications to the van to keep us on the road.

HUGH: Well, I painted it. I never got around to the other stuff.

ELOISE: Oh, I thought you did.

HUGH: It took a long time to do that camouflage pattern. It’s three different colors.

ELOISE: I did at least one of them.

HUGH: And you did a superb job, dear.

ELOISE: So you won’t notice us now when we park in the woods. But remember, we’re also looking for your letters in every postbox we pass!

HUGH: I’ve still got my keys! [keys jingle]

ELOISE: We’ll keep answering your agony aunt questions on the air, of course. But there’s been a great demand for a certain new feature -

HUGH: Thanks for your suggestion, Lenny from Barnsley.

ELOISE: - to find out what that is, you’ll have to tune in next time!

HUGH: You won’t see it coming.

ELOISE: I notice what you did there.

Censorship

ELOISE: Welcome back. Now, you know that Hugh and I have been providing our little agony aunt service on the show, and we’re going to keep doing that.

HUGH: Except for what’s-her-name.

ELOISE: Eh?

HUGH: The one that said -

ELOISE: Oh, yeah. Amelia, from a castle - not sure where – the answer to your question is no, it’s not all right! It’s never all right, and you are a bad person for even thinking about it!

HUGH: Thank you for your question.

ELOISE: I don’t know where we find them. Seriously!

HUGH: Tell them about the thing.

ELOISE: Yes, right. See, Hugh and I always try to do something constructive with our time, to put something back into society. Well, we were talking the other day about all the stuff that’s been lost.

HUGH: Horse racing. Hot lunches. Them times when the news is broadcasted live, and daft bugger starts waving in the background.

ELOISE: Yes. But we were talking about oral traditions. The myths and legends that have grown up in a place. The local stories that have been lost over time with nobody to pass them on.

HUGH: It’s true. Zombies have just one oral tradition, and that’s trying to bite you in the head.

ELOISE: So, we’re going to compile and pass on the stories we hear along the way. Some from the books, and some from the locals. Think of it as a sort of backup to the cloud, where you, the listener, are the cloud.

HUGH: It won’t be all that werewolf and St. George stuff. We’ve heard some good ones about screaming skulls and doors to other dimensions.

ELOISE: Hey, when did you hear those?

HUGH: It was that time when you went off the lady in Grimsby and I stayed with her husband.

ELOISE: You just drunk scrumpy and watched horror films on his video.

HUGH: They were documentaries.

ELOISE: They were not.

HUGH: You don’t get to decide what stories get passed on, love. That’s censorship.

ELOISE: I knew I was going to regret this.

Me Neither

HUGH: Pen-ger-sick. Pen-jer-sick. Penger-sick.

ELOISE: As soon as I saw that name, I knew I was going to have trouble with you.

HUGH: Who calls their castle Pengersick?

ELOISE: Mister and Misses Pengersick? There was a whole family. After his first wife died, Mister Pengersick remarried, and apparently the new wife was a wicked stepmother.

HUGH: It doesn’t really say that.

ELOISE: It does! Now, normally, I would dismiss that kind of label as a patriarchal commentator trying to keep women down. But on this occasion, she did persuade him to have his son kidnapped and sold as a slave.

HUGH: I think that qualifies as wicked.

ELOISE: Then she poisoned her husband.

HUGH: Definitely wicked.

ELOISE: She shut herself in the castle, where she became covered in scales from all her poisons. She ended up chucking herself into the sea.

HUGH: Sounds like the best place for her.

ELOISE: And then the son, young Pengersick, became an enchanter. Rides about on a big horse thought to be demonic, feared by all.

HUGH: See, that’s not what this area needs. Not after that business with the wicked stepmother and the scales.

ELOISE: Young Pengersick brings a Saracen lady, who shuts herself in the castle tower, and the love songs of the land are so beautiful that the fish all come to the surface to listen.

HUGH: Just like you, love.

ELOISE: I don’t think “Suspicious Minds” quite measures up. Oh, one more thing: there are rumors of secret passages and an incredible treasure bricked up within the castle’s walls. You want to go back and get it?

HUGH: Nah.

ELOISE: Me neither.

Gibberish

ELOISE: Oh, this one is definitely for you.

HUGH: Go on, then.

ELOISE: Roberta writes in from Penrith, and she says, “Dear Hugh and Eloise, I used to enjoy a sociable drink of an evening, often at the local pub. However, with living in an armored bunker covered in razor wire nine miles from the nearest town which is abandoned, it is no longer so easy to pop out for a quick one.

At first, I enjoyed the consequent health benefits, but lately I have experienced cravings for beer. In fact, I now often dream I am at a beer festival, walking from counter to counter without the correct tickets for the golden ale which is tantalizingly close but still just out of reach.”

HUGH: She’s got it bad.

ELOISE: “Are there still pubs? Do you drink yourself, and if so, where do you get it?”

HUGH: Well, Roberta, let me say: I feel your pain. A person can cope with many things, even the fall of civilization, as long as there is a warm booze around the corner and a couple of tenners in your pocket.

ELOISE: Yeah, apparently the comforting presence of your beloved is not enough.

HUGH: It’s a different thing, dear. To answer your question, Roberta, to our knowledge, there still exist four fully-functioning pubs on the mainland. Three are in walled settlements, and the fourth is actually inside the Tower of London.

ELOISE: I thought your sudden interest in Anne Boleyn was suspicious.

HUGH: I’m still partial to a drink myself, but due to a number of bad experiences with these walled settlements, who often want to steal the van or shoot us, I get a carry-out these days.

ELOISE: I am partial to a small gin myself.

HUGH: To get any, you’ll have to go on the road looking. Any off-license or supermarket will have been cleared out. I feel bad saying this, but I get my booze by breaking into people’s houses.

ELOISE: Only dead people’s houses.

HUGH: Yeah. Look for neglected gardens and peeling paint. And watch out. Often there’s a zom or two trapped inside. But you might find a wine cellar, spirits, or even a small stash of agreeable home brew. [ELOISE coughs] Just remember to take it easy. You’re not likely to be prosecuted for drunk driving anymore, but you don’t want to put your vehicle in a ditch with the zoms closing in.

ELOISE: And you don’t want to get to the stage where you talk total gibberish on the radio.

HUGH: Thank you, dear.

Paying Attention

HUGH: Tell them that story about the well.

ELOISE: I’m driving. You tell it.

HUGH: We met a couple in that last place. What was it? [?]?

ELOISE: Yeah.

HUGH: Told us about this local well. And when you get married -

ELOISE: Hugh! Set the scene first!

HUGH: Uh, there’s this well, and uh -

ELOISE: The woman -

HUGH: [sighs] Right. [?]

ELOISE: [?]!

HUGH: [?]. She built this well, and

ELOISE: She doesn’t build the well! She travels the country performing miracles because she is so pure.

HUGH: Right.

ELOISE: And she settles by the well, and she plants four trees.

HUGH: Right.

ELOISE: And when she’s dying -

HUGH: Right, right. She gets carried to the well, and they chuck her down it.

ELOISE: They don’t chuck her down it.

HUGH: I know. But I’m fed up with this bloody story.

ELOISE: She blesses it, so that after a wedding -

HUGH: After a wedding, the first of the couple to drink from it become the master in that relationship.

ELOISE: Now tell the church bit. What?

HUGH: This couple get married, and he leaves her on the porch of the church and he runs to [?] well. Since he gets there first, he thinks he’ll be the master. But she took a bottle of the well’s water to the church.

ELOISE: Clever girl.

HUGH: And after a year, she falls in the well and dies.

ELOISE: I don’t remember that bit.

HUGH: You must not have been paying attention, dear.

Quit It

ELOISE: You catch us retracing our path on a B road in the middle of Dartmoor. We came here because Hugh wanted to see a place called Frenchbeer. And we turned around because -

HUGH: Look, it’s just because of how much I paid that time in Paris!

ELOISE: Ah, yes! Our fifth anniversary. A big, romantic getaway, with all them dreamy bridges. Me, in a swishy red dress. A summer breeze blowing off the Seine. And Romeo here spends the whole weekend complaining about the price of his first beer.

HUGH: First and last beer.

ELOISE: So today -

HUGH: 75 francs. Nearly eight pound for the bottle. This was back in the 90s. It wasn’t even a big bottle!

ELOISE: And we’re still hearing about it today.

HUGH: He knew. With his stupid mustache. The way he looked at me! He knew! But they bring it to your table, don’t they? So I’d already drunk it.

ELOISE: Although civilization has fallen, and the remaining humans scrabble for survival in the ruins, Hugh is still annoyed about how much he paid for a beer once.

HUGH: Oh, come on. Eight pounds.

ELOISE: What we must explain is that we are now not driving to this mysterious place called Frenchbeer because Hugh has refused to cross the river Dart.

HUGH: It’s a collapsed bridge. It’s not safe!

ELOISE: It’s a collapsed bridge, rebuilt into a ford, which has many tire tracks visible across it, and is obviously safe.

HUGH: You don’t know, Eloise. The van’s got a bigger wheelbase, extra weight. We can’t be sure.

ELOISE: Hugh is actually freaked out by a story we heard that the River Dart drowns one person every year.

HUGH: No, I’m not.

ELOISE: Supposedly, it calls out to them. Not many people around. Probably hasn’t happened yet this year.

HUGH: Eloise -

ELOISE: River of Dart, river of Dart! Every year, thou claimest a heart!

HUGH: Stop that!

ELOISE: Hugh Caulfield, [imitates bubbles]. Come to my watery clutches! [imitates bubbles]

HUGH: Quit it!

[ELOISE laughs]

Running With The Wolves

ELOISE: Well, it’s been a day themed around two things: standing stones, and female sexuality.

HUGH: I thought it best to let her drive.

ELOISE: First, we went to the dancers. I think this was the furthest we’ve been from the van in two years. It was a long walk over the moor. Just the long grass, and the wind in our hair, remembering the freedom of all those wild places.

HUGH: I was sure we’d get killed.

ELOISE: You could have seen a zombie coming from miles away. We need to get away from the van sometimes for our mental health. And we found this lovely stone circle.

HUGH: Weren’t exactly Stoneheng], though, was it? Barely two feet tall. Six inches for every mile we had to walk.

ELOISE: When we went to Stonehenge, you said it was too commercial.

HUGH: Oh, tell your story.

ELOISE: Hmm. Supposedly, one Sunday, 25 girls went out to dance on the moor, and a young man came by, so they started playing kiss-in-the-ring. He goes around, picks one, kisses her, then she joins up with him, and they go around again, until all the girls are joined up.

HUGH: I hope nobody had a cold sore.

ELOISE: But the girls became overcome by passion, forgot themselves, and just went crazy kissing him.

HUGH: 25 women.

ELOISE: And of course, he got scared and ran away, and they chased him, and they had nearly caught him, when they all got turned to stone. They say it was punishment for breaking the sabbath, but I think it was for expressing themselves as healthy young women.

HUGH: The other stone circle was better.

ELOISE: Oh yeah, Spinster’s Rock! A neolithic burial chamber. One big stone on three uprights. Supposedly, the capstone weighs sixteen tons. Sixteen tons! And you know how it got there? Three energetic, unmarried ladies raised it one morning before breakfast. Shows what you can do when you don’t give away your power to some husband.

HUGH: The book says “spinster” means spinner, like spinner of cloth. They could all have been married.

ELOISE: The book? Psshh! We’ve been to the source, here! I don’t want to hear your patriarchal propaganda. I’m running with the wolves!

HUGH: But it’s -

ELOISE: Shh!

Country Lanes

ELOISE: We have a cautionary tale for you today, told to us by an armored woman on a motorbike.

HUGH: She said, “If you’re going to wear armor and ride your motorbike at the same time, be sure to keep up your tire pressure.”

ELOISE: She did say that, but that’s not the cautionary tale.

HUGH: It’s good advice, though.

ELOISE: No doubt. She told us a story about a plow boy who had to go into town to get his plow mended. In town, he met a butcher’s boy, who scared him with stories. According to this butcher’s boy, the devil would sometimes appear with his horns and tail in the lane beside Croydon Hill. The plow boy tried not to think about it while he was waiting for his plow to be mended.

HUGH: Which is hard, with the red hot furnace and all that infernal hammering.

ELOISE: Meanwhile, the butcher’s boy got the hide of a freshly killed bullock with its head, horns, and tail, and headed to the lane. You can see where this is going.

HUGH: Perhaps you can also imagine the smell in there.

ELOISE: The plow boy set off for home, but in no time at all, he rushed back into town, shouting about how he had killed the devil! The townsfolk worked it out, and they rushed to the lane. There, the found a bullock’s hide with a great big bloodstained gash in its skull, but no sign of the butcher boy. Do you know why?

HUGH: Well, bearing in mind if he was crawling home, bleeding to death, they would have passed him on the road.

ELOISE: They found no sign, because the Devil of Croydon Hill had taken his own. And on stormy nights, when that devil rides over Croydon Hill, among the thunder and lightning, you can still hear the butcher’s boy groaning and screaming in eternal torment!

HUGH: So the moral of that story is don’t climb inside dead animals and hang around in country lanes.

ELOISE: Thank you, Hugh.

Happy Travels

ELOISE: Why do they build these huge hedges at the side of winding roads?

HUGH: We’ve had our first letter in a while. From Miguel of Ealing. He says -

ELOISE: Every corner a blind corner! And the roads are so narrow! It’s like they want you to crash into oncoming cars.

HUGH: We haven’t seen another car for three days, love.

ELOISE: Yeah, they want you to let your guard down.

HUGH: Miguel says, “Dear Hugh and Eloise, my partner and I would like to go on the road like yourselves, but I’m worried about security. Everybody in the settlement seems to have a gun, and you hear about these armed gangs going around attacking vulnerable people. Do I need to get a gun?”

ELOISE: You take this. I need to concentrate.

HUGH: It’s okay to slow down a little.

ELOISE: And leave ourselves open to attack?

HUGH: That’s just Eloise’ little joke. Well, Miguel, it’s good you’re thinking about these things. I’ll tell you a secret: we don’t have a gun.

ELOISE: Should you be saying that on the air?

HUGH: We – the human race – face a common zombie enemy, and yet, as always happens with these things, some people would rather prey on their fellow humans than work together to make things better. The obvious response would be try and find a gun, and come down to their level. Maybe there would be an exchange of fire, and the human race would lose another two or three survivors. But a wise man once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I think it was Jerry Garcia.

ELOISE: It was Elvis.

HUGH: I’m sure you’re right, dear. So, we take our chances, and try and do positive things. That’s not to say we don’t get hijacked, and we do have precautions in place. For instance, last time a guy pulled a gun on us, I confounded him and distracted him by saying strange things.

ELOISE: Which gave me enough time to smack him in the face with a spanner!

HUGH: By using a non-lethal method, and confiscating his weapon, we hope he might think again about his behavior and become a productive member of society.

ELOISE: You can totally survive a head wound if you wake up in time and crawl to a settlement with a doctor.

HUGH: Hope that answers your question. Happy travels!

Cream Cheese

HUGH: I don’t know why so many of these stories are about saints.

ELOISE: I don’t know why so many are about stepmothers.

HUGH: You tell it. I’ll never get the details right.

ELOISE: Right. This is the story of Saint Juthwara.

HUGH: Nice girl.

ELOISE: How do you know? She’s been dead for a thousand years.

HUGH: Just setting the scene.

ELOISE: Her father died when she was young, but still she kept up her good works – like praying, fasting, and offering hospitality to pilgrims. However, one day she had pains in her breasts.

HUGH: See? This is really why I didn’t want to tell this story.

ELOISE: So her stepmother advised her to apply a compress of moist cream cheeses.

HUGH: A specialty of local farms.

ELOISE: She didn’t just have a wicked stepmother. She had a wicked stepbrother, too. And the wicked stepmother told the wicked stepbrother that Juthwara had disgraced the family by becoming pregnant, because look at the cheesy stains on her shirt.

HUGH: This was long before cheesy nachos in them plastic trays.

ELOISE: So the wicked stepbrother cut off her head, just like that.

HUGH: Wicked.

ELOISE: But a spring of pure water gushed up where the head fell, and the body reached down, picked up the head, and carried it to the church at Halstock, where she put it on the altar. And then she died.

HUGH: The kind of scene which would be repeated during the zombie apocalypse a thousand years later. Apart from the water thing. And the cheese. Other than that, could have happened yesterday.

ELOISE: And do you know what happened to the wicked stepbrother?

HUGH: He, uh, was struck down by -

ELOISE: Nothing! He became a monk and it was all fine. Bloody typical.

HUGH: So, be careful when you eat cream cheese.

ELOISE: Thank you, Hugh.

An Old Witch

ELOISE: Peace and quiet. I’m enjoying it today because Hugh is off fishing in Wookey Hole. That’s not dirty like you Star Wars people are thinking. These are caves, lived in for thousands of years! They found rhino bones and mammoth bones and all manner of archaeological marvels.

Of course, latterly, it was commercialized, but now you can get into the caves and have a good look around. And most importantly, there don’t seem to be the hungry moaning corpses of a coachload of kids on a doomed school trip.

Of course, I haven’t forgotten about you listeners. I’ve dug out a couple of legends of Wookey Hole to entertain you. And I’ve thrown away the first one because it’s the same old thing about a witch who got holy water chucked over her. She was an evil woman and she was turned to stone, blah blah blah.

Here’s something more enlightened. There’s a cave in there full of water that they think was a holy well. Now, you or I might think that means you’re not allowed to so much as stick your finger in, but no! Apparently, it connects to a lake like Glastonbury, and in times past, everybody fished in there. The whole town! They caught trout, loaches, flukes, and a bunch of other stuff I frankly can’t pronounce, but however much they caught in a year, however much they took out, the next year, it was full of fish again. Lovely!

Now, a bishop comes along, Master Thomas Beckington. He says, “Bugger off! These fish are just for my kitchen.” For two years, nobody else was allowed to fish there. But during those two years, the hole produced no fish at all. So eventually, the bish gives in, and the common people came back, and then, by the grace of God, the well is full of fish again! Enough for everybody!

It just shows… oh, wait a minute. The old man of the sea is coming back. [van door opens] You’re back early.

HUGH: There’s a lot of bats hanging off the ceiling. I got freaked out.

ELOISE: Catch anything?

HUGH: Just this sodden polybag with a bunch of schoolbooks in it. Hey, did you know there’s a rock down there that looks like an old witch? What?

Fair Enough

HUGH: Eloise, how’s your Bible knowledge?

ELOISE: Not too great, to be honest.

HUGH: There’s a thing in Genesis, right at the start, where God makes the dome and separates the waters under the dome from the waters above the dome.

ELOISE: A dome?

HUGH: It’s the sky. All the waters under the dome become the seas.

ELOISE: Fascinating as that is -

HUGH: Stick with it! There’s a story about a village near here. One Sunday, it’s a real foggy day, and all the villagers come out of church, and what do you think they see around the tombstone?

ELOISE: A snake.

HUGH: No.

ELOISE: The devil?

HUGH: No.

ELOISE: Somebody’s stepmother.

HUGH: No. An anchor. And there’s a line that goes up into the clouds, and it’s jumping around like someone’s trying to get it free.

ELOISE: I like that!

HUGH: A guy shimmies down the rope, and he’s about the free the anchor when they grab him. But he can’t breath. The air seems to choke him, and he dies, just like a man drowning.

ELOISE: There’s a ship up there!

HUGH: Right! And when he doesn’t come back, they cut loose the anchor and sail off.

ELOISE: So all this rain is just stuff spilling from another sea up above.

HUGH: That’s the idea.

ELOISE: So why can’t he breath?

HUGH: Because air and water are the other way around for them. They sail on the air and breath the water.

ELOISE: Fish people!

HUGH: Except they look human.

ELOISE: No gills?

HUGH: It doesn’t say.

ELOISE: So how do they get back all the water that leaks down here?

HUGH: Evaporation! The water cycle, isn’t it?

ELOISE: Fair enough.

Throw Me A Bone

HUGH: This is it! This road is the A3098 from Westbury to Frome. And below us, that’s the A36 from Bath to Warminster. Which makes this Black Dog Hill.

ELOISE: Seems, uh, unremarkable.

HUGH: Well, once you dig a cutting for a major road and stick a steel and concrete bridge across it, you have destroyed something of its folksy charm.

ELOISE: So this was Dead Maid’s Corner.

HUGH: You tell the story.

ELOISE: There’s a farm down the road.

HUGH: Black Dog Farm!

ELOISE: The farmer’s daughter was beautiful, and she was courted by two different young men.

HUGH: One of who had a black dog!

ELOISE: Are you going to let me tell this, or are you just going to say “black dog!” all the time?

HUGH: Sorry.

ELOISE: Thing is, neither of these young men knew about the other, and she never told them, because she liked having two suitors, which would make her no different from a lot of young men throughout history.

HUGH: By the way, I don’t think the farm was called Black Dog until after this story.

ELOISE: Anyway, the young men inevitably found out the truth, and being of high passions, they fought a duel, and the one with the dog was killed. When the dog saw this, it jumped to the attack and ripped out the victor’s throat, so they were both dead!

HUGH: It’s often the way when women get involved.

ELOISE: She comes along, and sees the bodies, and she’s so upset, she kills herself. Hence, Dead Maid’s Corner!

HUGH: So the black dog was the only survivor, and some say it’s still out there today, watching the A36 for stuff it don’t like.

ELOISE: No, they don’t. You just made that bit up.

HUGH: Its eyes might be on you even now.

ELOISE: It is just typical of you to derail a story about an independent and adventurous woman’s tragic death with dog nonsense.

HUGH: Come on, love. Throw me a bone.

ELOISE: Oh! [starts van]

Problem Solved

HUGH: Watch those speed bumps, love.

ELOISE: Oh, cluck cluck cluck. Make yourself useful and read a letter.

HUGH: [opens letter] Whoa, this one’s on House of Commons letterhead!

ELOISE: Wow, really?

HUGH: Of course not. I knew you’d fall for that. Watch those speedbumps.

ELOISE: You are a master of deception.

HUGH: It’s true. This one’s from Echo - Echau? - in Hampshire. He says, “Dear Hugh and Eloise, we are a small settlement with only 15 members. One of us – let’s call him Brad – has become rather unstable. He is restless inside the walls. When we’re out on supply runs, he takes unnecessary chances with the zombies. He won’t discuss the situation, and we think he may have a death wish. How can we calm down Brad and ensure the security of our community?”

ELOISE: Tough one.

HUGH: You start.

ELOISE: It sounds like Brad feels he doesn’t have a lot to lose, so one approach is to create something at home that he’ll care about.

HUGH: Like a baby.

ELOISE: You can’t get pregnant just to cheer up your neighbor.

HUGH: And it’d take nine months.

ELOISE: I meant like an art project.

HUGH: Or doing up an old car.

ELOISE: I feel like we might be failing on this one.

HUGH: Echau, this is a matter of perspective. Don’t think of it as having a loose cannon inside your walls. Think of it as having James Bond on your team.

ELOISE: What?

HUGH: Send him out alone on dangerous missions. If you have a craving for fresh beetroot, send him out to find beetroot, no matter what. He’ll get to express his wild side, and you’ll get beetroot!

ELOISE: Or the next time you see him, he’ll be gray and trying to eat you.

HUGH: Either way, problem solved!

ELOISE: Thanks for the question.

Back In The Van

ELOISE: This is the stupidest thing we’ve done in a while!

HUGH: Shh!

ELOISE: At least tell the listeners what’s going on.

HUGH: We are waiting for midnight, when we hope to see King Arthur.

ELOISE: But right now, we’re parked on a B road staring up at some trees on a hill.

HUGH: It’s a Roman hill fort called Badbury Rings. They say this was where King Arthur won his greatest battle against the Saxons. The legend has it he did not truly die, but his soul passed into a raven, and the raven now lives with all his knights right here.

ELOISE: Can you actually see any ravens?

HUGH: It’s pitch dark, isn’t it? How am I going to see a raven at night? Being black is a kind of thing for them.

ELOISE: No need to be tetchy.

HUGH: They say at midnight, King Arthur and all his knights ride around the fort in a ghostly cavalcade, and it’s midnight in three, two, one… right now.

ELOISE: … I can’t see anything.

HUGH: Maybe they’re on the other side.

ELOISE: … Hugh, I see something!

HUGH: I can’t quite make it out.

ELOISE: It’s a man. He’s come out of those trees, walking down the hill towards us.

HUGH: I see him!

ELOISE: What do we do?

HUGH: They said King Arthur would come back in the time of the land’s greatest need, didn’t they? This could be that time!

ELOISE: I don’t like this, Hugh!

HUGH: Is he saying something? Listen!

[zombie moans]

ELOISE: Oh, it’s just a bloody zombie. Get in the van.

HUGH: Bugger.

Bit Of Work

[van door opens]

HUGH: Did you get anything?

ELOISE: Oh, she told me a lovely story about how Christchurch got its name.

HUGH: I meant any fresh veg.

ELOISE: Oh. No.

HUGH: Right. Let’s eat this story, then.

ELOISE: This what?

HUGH: Just tell it.

ELOISE: Well, the first thing is the location of the priory. They were going to build it up that way, on St. Catherine’s hill, but as the legend has it, every morning they found their materials down in the valley where the priory is now.

HUGH: So St. Catherine didn’t like the architect’s drawings of the priory.

ELOISE: No, it’s more about a divine force leading them to the correct site.

HUGH: I see.

ELOISE: Listen, this is the good bit. Once the builders got to work on the new site, they were joined by a mysterious stranger. A carpenter. He didn’t talk much, just got on with his job. But he was pleasant enough, and he was a really good carpenter. Then one day, somebody made a mistake, and a crucial beam was cut too short.

HUGH: See? That’s why you measure twice.

ELOISE: All the work had to stop until they got a new beam. Everyone went home apart from the mysterious carpenter, who stayed on the site. The next morning, he was gone, and they never saw him again, but overnight, the beam had miraculously increased in length, and it was a perfect fit! And that’s how the town got its name.

HUGH: So was the carpenter a wizard?

ELOISE: No! He was Jesus! Christchurch!

HUGH: I don’t get it.

ELOISE: Jesus Christ! Christchurch!

HUGH: What? Was he doing odd jobs on the side?

ELOISE: No! Jesus was a carpenter. That’s what makes the story good!

HUGH: I thought he was a preacher.

ELOISE: Yeah, but first, he was a carpenter!

HUGH: Not a bad story, love. Needs a bit of work. [starts van]

Let's Just Go

HUGH: Oh, I don’t know. That conversation kind of disturbed me. Treacle mines.

ELOISE: I know! I thought he was pulling our leg, but when I laughed, he seemed so offended.

HUGH: They don’t mine treacle. Do they? They don’t dig it out of the ground. They make it from sugar and something.

ELOISE: What was it he said about the geology bit?

HUGH: He said millions of years ago, it was much warmer, and sugar cane grew here.

ELOISE: Right.

HUGH: And because it wasn’t harvested -

ELOISE: - it rotted, and all the molasses drained away.

HUGH: Treacle is something to do with molasses, I remember that.

ELOISE: What are molasses?

HUGH: I don’t know exactly.

ELOISE: So they all drained into -

HUGH: Right, the valley, and because the soil around here is clay, it couldn’t sink through, and it formed a layer. A layer of treacle…

ELOISE: Did he say something about the ice age?

HUGH: Right, and that’s why it’s underground, because it froze during the ice age, and stuff built up on top.

ELOISE: Was he just – is this just - ?

HUGH: It seems kind of elaborate for a joke, doesn’t it?

ELOISE: Well, that’s what I was thinking! And why would you say your granddad was killed if he wasn’t?

HUGH: Twelve men dead… I mean, mine tunnels do collapse. In the summer, it does get warm and treacle would be runny…

ELOISE: I’m not sure.

HUGH: I’m not sure either.

ELOISE: Is he looking at us now? Is he laughing?

HUGH: No, he’s just going about his business.

ELOISE: You want to go back and ask him?

HUGH: Let’s just go.

ELOISE: Yeah.

Stay Safe

ELOISE: Ah, this is a classic agony aunt letter. Neta writes in from Leeds, and she says, “Dear Hugh and Eloise, is my boyfriend a zombie?”

HUGH: The eternal question.

ELOISE: “He is very sluggish getting up in the morning, and he often starts moaning at breakfast in a thin, nasal, whining tone that will continue all day and only cease when he retires to the toilet, in which he will spend an extended period. Often, he does not react to voices, such as when I ask him to clear up his own bloody dishes, or to stop leaving beard hair in the sink.”

HUGH: Beard hair? A key point. Does hair still grow on zombies? I don’t know.

ELOISE: Me neither. “Normally, he is docile, sitting slumped in an old sofa and rarely changing his clothes. His face has a slight gray pallor. I have on occasion thought he was dead, but then he will display a sudden burst of activity like stretching for a Superman comic he has already read fifty times, or reaching into his trousers to scratch.

HUGH: Gentlemen, please! Always in private.

ELOISE: "This torpor is only interrupted when he becomes aroused, at which point he will begin to follow me closely around the shelter. At these times, I often note that he emits a disagreeable smell, and his normal whine becomes lower and more cajoling. Often after I repel this assault, his behavior becomes erratic, and he clatters around with scant regard for his surroundings. While as yet he has not attempted to devour me, he often nibbles on my neck at inappropriate times, such as when I’m manning the gate cannon or repairing the generator during a thunderstorm.”

HUGH: I would say the data is inconclusive at present, but there are early indications of zombieness, and this girl should monitor the situation. What about you, dear?

ELOISE: Do some experimentation, Neta. Obtain something he wants, such as a packet of crisps or a can of lager. Move it around his vicinity and observe what he does. If he follows on hands and knees, he’s a crawler. You are relatively safe, but he may make sudden springs. If he simply staggers around after you with hands outstretched, he may be a shambler. He will be dangerous, but predictable. What you’ll have to watch is if he generates a sudden burst of speed. Then you need to take him out for your own safety.

HUGH: You can kill a man with a can of lager if you life depends on it. Wedge it in his eye socket, or tear it open and go for the throat.

ELOISE: Yes. The need for safe sex hasn’t ended with the zombie apocalypse. Thanks for your question, and stay safe.

How Rude!

HUGH: You’re going to like this one, dear.

ELOISE: I don’t know if I am.

HUGH: It’s got a dead woman.

ELOISE: Another dead woman? Every story around here’s about dead women.

HUGH: Well, there have been a lot of them throughout history, and they’re all dead now.

ELOISE: Not all of them.

HUGH: Yeah, but with the zombies and that -

ELOISE: Oh, tell the bleeding story.

HUGH: It’s funny you should put it that way! Right, this is from Stanton St Bernard, which we passed half an hour ago.

ELOISE: Okay.

HUGH: A wealthy farmer’s wife dies, and they bury her in the family vault, wearing all her fine rings.

ELOISE: Okay.

HUGH: An evil sexton notices the big jewels on the rings, and that night, he goes to the vault to steal them. He creeps in, and breaks open the coffin.

ELOISE: Psshh, sextons.

HUGH: He takes the rings one by one, but the last one is really tight, and he can’t get it off, so he takes his pocket knife and he cuts off her finger. Can you guess what happens?

ELOISE: The finger goes on fire, floats in the air, and tells him not to break the sabbath.

HUGH: [laughs] She wakes up! She’s not dead, just in a coma, and here’s this sexton holding her finger, blood shooting all over the place!

ELOISE: What happens?

HUGH: Well, he makes himself scarce, doesn’t he? And she walks all the way home with this dripping finger.

ELOISE: Don’t tell me – somebody thinks she’s an unholy spirit, and kills her for real.

HUGH: No. She goes home to her husband, and they live happily for years.

ELOISE: It’s a change, I suppose. Hey, Hugh?

HUGH: Yeah?

ELOISE: I’m thinking of giving you the finger right now.

HUGH: Dear me. How rude.

Play It Safe

(Plays if Season 5 Mission 8: Liar Liar has been completed.)

[static]

ZOE CRICK: It’s on.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: We’re transmitting?

ZOE CRICK: Yeah.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You’re sure?

ZOE CRICK: We’re in a van in a field somewhere I can’t say, with equipment cobbled together from Dixons, and the entire government of the country after us, so we can’t stay in any one place for more than half an hour. So no, I’m not sure. There’s maybe a 23% chance that we are, right now, transmitting.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Okay, good enough. Good morning, ci-ti-zens! You’re listening to Radio Free Abel, fearlessly bringing you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! We’ll be back to tell you how and why after this song.

ZOE CRICK: So we’re still going to play music? Even though we’ve got half an hour in this location? How much time for the truth will that leave us?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Zoe, no one’s going to listen if we don’t play some good tunes.

ZOE CRICK: They might. I mean, they might just listen to us.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, it’s always possible. Let’s just play it safe, eh? We’ll be back after this next song!

A Very Good Idea

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And we’re back. You’re listening to Radio Free Abel, telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

ZOE CRICK: Are you going to say that every time?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: It’s important.

ZOE CRICK: But isn’t it a bit like saying “no offense” before you say something, when that 100% guarantees the next thing to come out of your mouth is going to be super offensive?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Zoe, do you not actually want our listeners to believe us?

ZOE CRICK: No, I do. Of course I do. I definitely want them to believe me when I say that I love cats in a totally proportional and reasonable way, despite what certain people might have insinuated.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, but that actually is a lie.

ZOE CRICK: Okay! I know we’ve both accused each other of lying, but that’s just like, reverse psychology or something. No, you know what? Why don’t you listen to a song, yeah? I think listening to some music might be a very good idea at this point.

Dishonest Sods

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And we’re back. This is Radio Free Abel, telling you the things your government doesn’t want you to hear.

ZOE CRICK: Okay, this is… this is true, and it’s important. For anyone who’s listening, anyone at all, we want you to know that no one is helping us. No one’s harboring us, or giving us food, or any assistance at all. Everything we’re doing and saying – that’s just on us.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And no one knows where we are. We um, we left some people behind, and some of them are children, and they’re safe and happy, and they’ve got no way to get in touch with us, and we’ve got no way to get in touch with them.

ZOE CRICK: So blame us if you don’t like what we’re saying. Punish us. But you’ll have to catch us first.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I think that’s our cue to move on. We’ll be back as soon as we can. In the meantime, here’s a little song that always makes me think of those dishonest sods at the Ministry of Recovery.

Conspiracy

[static]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Hello, citizens! Radio Free Abel is back on your airwaves!

ZOE CRICK: And today, we’re going to play a little game of True or False. I’m going to say something some of you may have heard about Abel, and Phil will tell you if it’s true, or false. You know, hence the name True or False.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, I think they probably got that.

ZOE CRICK: Okay. So, to begin. Abel was responsible for the zombie apocalypse: true or false?

[buzzer buzzes]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Nope. They were working just as hard as they could to cure it, but it was the Minister of Recovery herself, Sigrid Hakkinen, who deliberately created and then released the zombie plague. And Abel have evidence to prove it.

ZOE CRICK: Only they can’t show anyone the evidence because the Ministry’s stolen most of it.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [laughs] We sound like conspiracy nuts, don’t we? The Minister started the zombie plague, and also the moon landings are faked, and 9/11 was an inside job.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, well, you know what, listeners? You don’t have to believe us about the Minister. But then, you shouldn’t believe the Minister about Abel, either. Because that’s just another bogus conspiracy theory.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And sticking to our theme, this next song is Zoe’s favorite karaoke number. True or false?

Jimmy's Jaunts

ZOE CRICK: Abel radio operator Sam Yao is unhealthily obsessed with rubbish kid’s TV of the 1970s that he used to watch on YouTube. True or false?

[bell dings]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, no, that one’s totally true, I’m afraid.

ZOE CRICK: I mean, really, really obsessed. Like, can name every episode of Ace of Wands in order, even the deleted ones, and sing the theme tune.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: To be fair, so can you.

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] But uh, I’m doing it ironically.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Mm. Anyway, don’t even get him started talking about Jimmy’s Jaunts.

ZOE CRICK: Not unless you’ve got a couple of hours to spare.

Just Had An Idea

ZOE CRICK: Janine De Luca was a power-mad homocidal maniac. True or false?

[buzzer buzzes]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: It’s false! It’s so false, it’s almost coming out the other end being true again!

ZOE CRICK: Except it hasn’t. It’s a big fat lie, and it’s… Janine was a good person! It really gets my goat, the stuff they’re saying about her! If I had a goat, which I don’t – where did that expression come from, anyway? I mean, what’s so bad about getting someone’s goat? Maybe you just want to milk it for them, or you know, pet it.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I think we’re wandering a bit off the point, Zo.

ZOE CRICK: What? Oh, yeah. The point is, Janine De Luca was a hero.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Ask anyone who knew her.

ZOE CRICK: Apart from Amelia Spens, since you know, she knew her and also said all that bollocks about her.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Actually, I just had an idea.

ZOE CRICK: What?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh, never mind. Tell you later. Time we were off. This has been Radio Free Abel, telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

One Redeeming Feature

(Plays if Season 5 Mission 10: Wrong Song has been completed.)

JODY MARSH: And then she told me all about how clever she’d been when she tricked three children into giving her their last corn flakes!

ZOE CRICK: Hold on, wait. Wait! I think I just flipped the switch to transmit. [fiddles with switch]

JODY MARSH: Is… that thing that conceals where you’re broadcasting from and, and where I am, is that still working?

ZOE CRICK: It is. Yeah.

JODY MARSH: Then broadcast it. It doesn’t matter if she hears this. I mean, I’m not one to say something behind someone’s back that I wouldn’t say to their face, and I’d tell Amelia to her face that I think she’s completely awful. I have told her that to her face. More than once. Actually, more than a dozen times!

ZOE CRICK: Well, I suppose the point of Radio Free Abel is to let people know about the real Abel. And you don’t get much realer than drunk and disorderly it! Bloody hell, is it really four in the morning? How much have we been drinking? Wait… what was I saying?

JODY MARSH: You were talking about how horrible Amelia Spens is.

ZOE CRICK: I’m pretty sure that was you. Also, isn’t she one of us now? You know, listeners, one of the good guys?

JODY MARSH: Oh… oh yeah. No, I mean, she’s totally loyal to Abel, totally. I mean, maybe fanatically is a better word. It’s just she’s awful in every other way. Except her fanatical loyalty to Abel. That’s her one redeeming feature.

ZOE CRICK: Alright, then. Amelia, this one’s for you.

For Han Solo

JODY MARSH: I just wanna, you know, put my hands around her neck and strangle her - !

ZOE CRICK: So, listeners, we’re still talking about Amelia Spens. Apparently. That is still the topic of conversation.

JODY MARSH: Sorry! She just drives me crazy.

ZOE CRICK: It’s okay. I totally get the appeal of a bad girl.

JODY MARSH: Oh, not like that! Bloody hell, Zoe!

ZOE CRICK: I’ve got to be honest, it sounded pretty “like that.”

JODY MARSH: It’s anger, and you know, contempt. Hatred. That feeling you have about someone who tried to frame you for murder and still thinks it’s dead funny. I just want to shove her into the nearest zombie.

ZOE CRICK: Yep. Still sounding “like that.”

JODY MARSH: Aw, shut up!

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] It’s fine. I mean, there’s a reason everyone loves Han Solo, the rogue with a heart of gold.

JODY MARSH: Amelia doesn’t have a heart of gold. If she did, she’d find a way to extract it and sell it to the highest bidder!

ZOE CRICK: Okay, then. This one’s for Han Solo, may he rest in peace.

A Certain Abel Runner

JODY MARSH: Poor Han Solo! Still makes me well up, which is ridiculous, because you know, zombie apocalypse and that. But him dying left me in bits!

ZOE CRICK: Yep. Rogue with a heart of gold. That’s why Han Solo’s my ideal man.

JODY MARSH: Or woman.

ZOE CRICK: Well, I’m pretty sure Han Solo is a man.

JODY MARSH: You know who I’m talking about.

ZOE CRICK: Not a Scooby.

JODY MARSH: Oh, right!

ZOE CRICK: Seriously.

JODY MARSH: Yeah, no. Obviously, there’s no roguish yet good-hearted lady who you’d like to get closer to? … Okay, okay, time for another song. You got it queued up?

ZOE CRICK: Yes. If it’ll stop this conversation, yes.

JODY MARSH: Great. Alright then, listeners, this one’s for a certain Abel runner that Zoe definitely, definitely doesn’t think about every night.

ZOE CRICK: [sighs] I hate you.

On The Far Side

ZOE CRICK: I miss it. I really do.

JODY MARSH: What, her?

ZOE CRICK: No, I mean not just her. New Canton. Abel. Everyone.

JODY MARSH: It’s not – [sighs] It’s not great right now. It’s hard. I’m glad you’re not here. I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing, that someone’s telling the truth about us.

ZOE CRICK: Do you think anyone’s listening?

JODY MARSH: Yeah. Yeah, I think they are. They’ve got to be, right? We’re not – none of us – we’re not doing this for nothing.

ZOE CRICK: All right, then. For everyone who is listening, this is Radio Free Abel. And that was Jody Marsh, a hero of the resistance. [laughs] Keep safe out there, Jody. The country needs you. Phil and I are moving on tomorrow, so we’re patching you back into some more radio from around the country. Catch you on the far side, citizens.

The Truth

[static, distorted audio]

ZOE CRICK: We’re not sure if anyone can hear us - [distortion]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: What we know is that the Ministry’s jamming our signal wherever they can. They’d rather stop our message from reaching you - [distortion]

ZOE CRICK: What is it Sam says? You can’t stop the signal, so -

[distorted audio]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, yeah. So uh, ask yourselves another thing. If they don’t want you to hear us - [distortion]

ZOE CRICK: What are they afraid we’ll say?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You’re listening to Radio Free Abel, telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Never... Give Up...

[static, distorted audio]

ZOE CRICK: Talk about [distortion] about, you know, what you did in the days of Abel. I mean, of course, yeah, I know that [distortion] we are trying really hard to [distortion] the Ministry.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [distortion] - anything they say about Sam Yao, you can discount. He’s a good man. [distortion]

ZOE CRICK: He wouldn’t hurt anyone.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, he certainly wouldn’t. And plus - [distortion]

ZOE CRICK: And so don’t be afraid of them. Just please keep trying to fight the good fight.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Don’t give up. Never give up the fight.

Back In Business

[audio somewhat distorted and echoey]

ZOE CRICK: Has it worked? They can hear us?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I don’t know.

ZOE CRICK: Then what’s the point? Sorry, sorry. I know we have to try. We have to.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I think it’s worked. I’ve bypassed the frequency and modulated the um, um, uh, never mind. I just, I think this should be able to make it through the Ministry’s blocking.

ZOE CRICK: Okay, good. Okay. So this is Radio Free Abel.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Back on the air! I think. Back in the business of bringing you the truth that your government’s been working very hard to stop you hearing.

No-one's Gonna Stop

ZOE CRICK: Okay, this is…

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah.

ZOE CRICK: It’s… I mean…

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah.

ZOE CRICK: Some of you have… [sighs] Some of you have started broadcasts of your own to let us know that you can hear us.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And to tell us that you believe us.

ZOE CRICK: And it’s so, so cool. It’s amazing. But just, please stop. You’re putting yourselves in danger. You’re putting anyone you love in danger.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: We’re on the road all the time. We never stop anywhere for more than a day. We do everything we can to keep safe.

ZOE CRICK: So it really does mean the world to us that you’re listening, but let us take the risks. And if you want to do something, just listen and keep believing.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And if Abel ever ask for your help… well, you’ve got to make your own minds up, haven’t you?

ZOE CRICK: This is Radio Free Abel, bringing every single one of you the truth, and no one’s going to stop us.

It Was Eight

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Good morning, citizens! You’re listening to Radio Free Abel, and we’ve got a real treat in store for you today. All the way from a secret location, we’re bringing you the famous -

ZOE CRICK: Infamous might be a better word for it.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh, one of the stars of the Ministry’s radio broadcasts about Abel, Amelia Spens.

ZOE CRICK: … Amelia, are you there?

AMELIA SPENS: Oh. Yes, I’m here. I just can’t quite believe I’m doing this.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Well, we’re very glad – and honored – you are.

AMELIA SPENS: Honored, really?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh, yeah. [laughs] Now, Amelia, you’ve had some pretty nasty things to say about Abel Township on Ministry broadcasts.

AMELIA SPENS: I suppose they weren’t terribly flattering.

ZOE CRICK: Can you tell us now why you said those things? Were you coerced?

AMELIA SPENS: Coerced? Does Ian trying to force Viscount biscuits on me count as coercion? I suppose in some embattled regimes, it might.

ZOE CRICK: But the things you said weren’t true, were they?

AMELIA SPENS: Oh, no. They were a dreadful pack of lies.

ZOE CRICK: Right. So why did you say them?

AMELIA SPENS: As I recall, mainly because I thought it was funny. I had a little bet with myself about how many women I could tell him wore eyepatches before he called me on it. Eight. It was eight.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Okay then, listeners, uh, we’ll be hearing more from Amelia right after this.

Everyone Else We've Lost

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And we’re back. You’re listening to Radio Free Abel with our special guest today, Amelia Spens.

AMELIA SPENS: Hello again.

ZOE CRICK: So, Amelia, can you tell people why they should believe you now when you were lying before?

AMELIA SPENS: Well, I’m not sure they should.

ZOE CRICK: Right. But you are telling the truth now?

AMELIA SPENS: Telling the truth about my previous shameless lies? Yes, I am. But now that I think about it, I suppose there was an implicit threat that if I didn’t take part in the broadcast for the Ministry, my life might be in danger. So in that sense, yes, I was coerced to say what I did about Janine.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh, thank God.

AMELIA SPENS: Let me just set the record straight. Janine De Luca never wore an eyepatch, and she wasn’t prone to dressing in leather. Although to be honest, I do think leather would have suited her.

She wasn’t a bad person. Anyone who knew her would know what an absurd claim that was. Janine De Luca was honorable and moral to a fault. And I use that phrase advisedly, because as far as I was concerned, her refusal to bend with the wind was an iredeemable flaw, but there you have it. Satisfied?

ZOE CRICK: Um, yeah. Okay, then. This song goes out to Janine De Luca and everyone else we’ve lost.

Back In A Moment

ZOE CRICK: So if Ian made you tell lies about Janine, what can you tell us about Ian?

AMELIA SPENS: Ooh, he’s a dreadfully amoral little person. Of course, I think morality’s all nonsense, so what would I know?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Y-you’re not that bad.

AMELIA SPENS: Really? According to your colleague here, I’m virtually the Antichrist.

ZOE CRICK: To be fair, that was Jody, not me. [laughs] I felt entirely neutral about you until this broadcast.

AMELIA SPENS: Ah, yes? And what do you think about me now?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Why’d you come on this show if you’re not going to say -

AMELIA SPENS: What you want me to say?

ZOE CRICK: What do you know is the truth? Why did you come here, if not to do that?

AMELIA SPENS: I had a spare half hour and I thought it might be amusing. And it has been, so thank you.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [groans] All right, citizens, this is a song Amelia picked herself. We’ll be back in a moment.

Toodle-pip Everyone!

ZOE CRICK: So, Amelia, I believe we were talking about Ian Golightly, current leader of Abel Township.

AMELIA SPENS: I think he’s actually calling himself Commander Golightly these days. He really is quite an absurd human being.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You’re not a fan, then.

AMELIA SPENS: Oh, he’s ghastly! A ghastly jumped-up little sadist. He’s nothing like as clever as he thinks he is. Also, his breath is quite extraordinarily bad.

ZOE CRICK: Thank you, Amelia. That’s -

AMELIA SPENS: And he has no fashion sense whatsoever. With the amount of luxuries he requisitions for himself as head of Abel, you’d really think he could afford a decent suit.

[sighs] But his biggest problem is that he’s one of those people who is able to believe that they’re good only because they’ve never really had the opportunity to be bad. And even now he’s started doing some quite awful things, he still imagines he’s the hero.

I’ve got no time for people like that. There’s nothing wrong with doing wrong if it’s in your interest, but at least have the decency to be honest about it. Otherwise, how can anyone respect you?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh, yeah. Thanks for that. We’re off now, citizens. You’ve been listening to Radio Free Abel with our special guest, Amelia Spens. Who, um, apparently is an honestly awful person.

ZOE CRICK: Sounds about right to me.

AMELIA SPENS: Toodle-pip, everyone.

Back Right After This

(Plays if Season 5 Mission 20: Stay Alive has been completed.)

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Hello again, listeners. This is Radio Free Abel bringing you all the truth, all the time.

ZOE CRICK: Also some moderately decent tunes, and quite a lot of awful jokes. Ooh, talking of -

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No.

ZOE CRICK: What? I literally didn’t say anything.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You were about to. Finally got a few minutes on air, and you’re not using them to tell any terrible jokes. Especially if they include the words knock, chicken, or shark-infested custard.

ZOE CRICK: Oh, you’ve spoiled the punchline now.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Mm, not a punchline if it isn’t even slightly funny.

ZOE CRICK: Technically, I think it is.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Anyway listeners, we’re not here to tell you what’s yellow and dangerous -

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] You just stole my joke!

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [laughs] We’re here to talk to you about Abel Township, and some of the amazing people that used to live there. You’ve been told also some lies about them, so we’re going to set the record straight. We’re going to give you the real story of Abel’s heroes, the… biogra-truth.

ZOE CRICK: Biogra-truth.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah.

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] Biogra-truth?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah. We’ll be back right after this.

Enjoy It, Mate

ZOE CRICK: That song does always sort of remind me of Sam.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, I know what you mean. Zoe’s talking about Sam Yao, of course. Abel Township radio operator and hero of the resistance.

ZOE CRICK: You’ve been told that Sam’s evil, ruthless, and homicidal, which I mean, come on. Sam’s actually one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet, and I say that as a woman who doesn’t generally like other humans.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Sam was a student when the apocalypse struck. Like nearly all of us, he lost of the people closest to him. His parents died, his sister’s missing, and he nearly died, too, before he was rescued from zoms by Abel Township runners.

ZOE CRICK: Since then, he’s dedicated his life to keeping those runners safe. Well, also to eating a lot of chocolate and playing Demons and Darkness, but [laughs] mainly the safety thing.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Sam’s a good person. If you had a problem and you needed a friend who’d absolutely, definitely care about it, Sam’s your man.

ZOE CRICK: I mean, we’re not saying he’d solve it, necessarily. He isn’t Jesus. But he’d properly care. Not just make the face people do when they want to look concerned but they’re actually wondering which vegetables to have with supper.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: This next song was always a favorite of Sam’s. Hope you enjoy it, mate, wherever you are.

Time For Another Song

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I’ll tell something else about Sam, he’s as bad at geography as I am.

ZOE CRICK: Is that a good thing?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, it’s just nice to meet someone else who always thought Suffolk was south of London.

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] What, seriously?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Well, Suffolk means south folk, doesn’t it? It’s in the name.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, because it’s the southern bit of East Anglia.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, I know that now.

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] How did I never know this about you? Bloody hell, all the opportunities for piss-taking I’ve missed. [laughs] So come on, Phil. Is Liverpool east or west of Manchester?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh look, it’s time for another song.

Which Side Of England

ZOE CRICK: While you listened to that cheerful little number, we’ve established that Phil thinks the Shetland Islands are off the coast of Cornwall, Alaska is floating in the sea somewhere above Canada – hmm, I suppose at least you got the right continent – and Denmark is famous for being landlocked.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You said you wouldn’t tell anyone.

ZOE CRICK: Yes. But obviously, I was lying. [laughs] I’m not complaining. It’s the gift that’ll keep on giving. [laughs] But how did you end up so rubbish at geography? You, the man who alphabetizes his novelty mugs.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh, I don’t know. I can tell my left from my right, but just… I don’t like looking at maps.

ZOE CRICK: Hm. And there was me, thinking you made me navigate all the time so you didn’t seem sexist. What is it, map-phobia?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh, it’s not a phobia. It’s, um… if you look at something on a map, you pin it down. There it is with borders and A roads and bypasses. When it’s only in my head, it could be anywhere. It’s, uh, it’s magical.

ZOE CRICK: That’s actually… [laughs] That’s actually sort of beautiful. Phil Cheeseman, there’s poetry in that soul of yours. Hm. No wonder you and Sam get on so well. He’s a dreamer, too.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Um… anyway listeners, um, it’s time we were off. But remember, Sam Yao’s still out there somewhere, fighting to make the world a better place.

ZOE CRICK: Even though he doesn’t know which side of England Wales is attached to.

Harsh But True

ELOISE: Hugh, right up ahead is one of your spiritual homelands.

HUGH: What, Heslington?

ELOISE: Eh? What’s at Heslington?

HUGH: There was a bloke there did the best black pudding I ever had.

ELOISE: I’m not sure I trust black pudding chefs with all the zoms around as potential raw materials. It’s not that, anyway. It’s Woodstock.

HUGH: Oh yeah, where the Grateful Dead played one of their notoriously worst performances. Constantly getting electric shocks from their gear, their amps blowing up all over the place, and probably tripping out their boxers. Sadly, not Woodstock. Oxfordshire, or I might have actually been there.

ELOISE: There’s a bit of royal intrigue associated with Woodstock. You want to hear it?

HUGH: That sounds just as good as a three-day nonstop Aquarian festival with music, peace, and free love.

ELOISE: Do you want to hear it or not?

HUGH: Yeah, I suppose.

ELOISE: Henry II had a mistress called Fair Rosamund. He installed her at a house at Woodstock, and he didn’t want anybody to bother her, so he built a labyrinth around it. Well, either the house was a labyrinth or the garden was a labyrinth. Or maybe both.

HUGH: Not ideal if you need to pop out for a pint of milk.

ELOISE: No. He also married Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was no pushover, having already divorced the king of France. Eleanor got wind of Rosamund, and as you can imagine, she did not approve.

HUGH: But she couldn’t get in the house because it was a labyrinth.

ELOISE: Right. Until one time – oh, I don’t know if I quite believe this - Henry visited, and he was such a duffer that he got a silk thread caught in his boot. So on the way out, the thread unrolled and left the perfect trail for Eleanor to follow.

HUGH: Which, if I know wronged women, she wasted no time in doing.

ELOISE: Well, that’s right. And when she confronted Fair Rosamund, it was the age-old choice. The dagger or the cup of poison.

HUGH: If you’re ever in that situation, take the dagger. It only hurts for a minute, and then the – what do you call them? - endolphins kick in. You don’t want to die slowly on the floor of a really bad hangover.

ELOISE: Third day at Woodstock, that would have been you.

HUGH: Harsh but true, my love. Harsh but true.

Through The Heart Though

HUGH: You’ll like this story, dear. It’s romantic.

ELOISE: Does it end in violence and heartbreak?

HUGH: You don’t want spoilers.

ELOISE: Oh, they all do. Okay, let’s hear it.

HUGH: It’s about a student in Oxford, the intellectual powerhouse a few miles down that last road.

ELOISE: When does this happen?

HUGH: Oh, I don’t know. The 1800s. What difference does that make?

ELOISE: I’m trying to visualize the outfits!

HUGH: They all wear them gowns and motorboats.

ELOISE: Mortarboards. Okay, I’ve got it.

HUGH: This student, he seduces the daughter of a tradesman. They’re not supposed to do that. They’re supposed to concentrate on their Latin or whatever. So he decides to murder her.

ELOISE: Intellectual powerhouse, my eye.

HUGH: So he arranges to meet her in a field. He shows up early, but she shows up even earlier and hides up a tree. She’s all for jumping down and surprising him, until she sees him digging a grave.

ELOISE: The old smoothy.

HUGH: Unsurprisingly, she don’t come down, and he goes home disappointed. Then the next day, she’s at the door of her father’s house when he comes past and says hello as usual. What do you think she says?

ELOISE: I’m looking forward to it!

HUGH: “One moon shiny night as I sat high, waiting for one to come by, the boughs did bend, my heart did ache, to see what hole the fox did make.”

ELOISE: Haha, you tell him, girl! So what does he do?

HUGH: He stabs her.

ELOISE: Oh.

HUGH: Through the heart, though.

ELOISE: I see.

HUGH: I told you it was romantic.

ELOISE: Yes, you did.

Trade It For A Slow Dance

HUGH: Can you see it?

ELOISE: Just its feet. We’re dragging it along like Indiana Jones.

HUGH: Eh?

ELOISE: When he gets punched out that truck and he hangs on with his whip.

HUGH: Has it got a hat on?

ELOISE: I just said I could only see its feet, didn’t I? It’s not got a hat on its feet.

HUGH: This is the third time. I wonder what it is about the back of the van that fascinates zoms.

ELOISE: It’s the engine, you big [?]. They’re attracted to noise, and that thing goes crr crr all day.

HUGH: I think it’s more of a vrr vrr.

ELOISE: Oh, never mind. How are we going to get rid of this one? We’ve had it for five miles. I’m not fast enough these days to go out there and saw through its arms.

HUGH: Maybe if we drive for long enough, the road will gradually grind through it from the front to the back.

ELOISE: Yeah, and maybe it’ll call all its friends, and we’ll end up on the front of a zombie conga.

HUGH: There’s another reason to be thankful for the zombie apocaplypse. No more dancing at weddings.

ELOISE: You like those slow dances. Get rid of this zom, and maybe we’ll have time for a slow dance after.

HUGH: I tried the U-turn. I’ve tried the quick reverse. I even tried a level crossing and it’s still hanging on.

ELOISE: I’ve got it. Turn up there between the fields.

HUGH: Okay.

ELOISE: We’re looking for um… there’s one! A cattle grid.

HUGH: I see your plan.

ELOISE: Now reverse. [van clatters] Now forward. [van clatters] Now backwards. [van clatters] It’s let go! Oh! Oh, that’s not pretty.

HUGH: Nice work, dear. By the way, it’s your turn to clean the rear bumper.

ELOISE: Trade you it for that slow dance?

HUGH: Yeah, suppose.

Too Late Now

[chickens squawk]

ZOE CRICK: Tonight, listeners, Radio Free Abel is coming to you from the heart of the British countryside, by which I really mean a smelly old barn with a lot more chickens than I generally like. Why are we in a barn, Phil?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh… I don’t know. Uh… it seemed like a good idea at the time.

ZOE CRICK: Did we decide to do this yesterday?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, I think.

ZOE CRICK: After we’d gone 58 hours without any sleep?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, that um… no, that was the night before yesterday. Don’t you remember? Both of us passed out from exhaustion for a couple of hours last night.

ZOE CRICK: Did we?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah. And that Ministry truck nearly caught up with us.

ZOE CRICK: Mm, I remember. That’s why we’re in a barn. We’re hiding.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Right. [sighs] Then, um… should we really be broadcasting?

ZOE CRICK: Mm. Too late now. We’ll be back after this song, when we’ve, um, you know. [yawns] Decided what we’re going to talk about.

Talking About Cats

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [gasps] Zoe. We’re on.

ZOE CRICK: What? Oh um, right. Good morning, citizens.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: So, um… what are we going to talk about?

ZOE CRICK: Mm?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh, leopards.

ZOE CRICK: What?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: They’re cool. They run really, really fast.

ZOE CRICK: I think that’s pandas.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, pandas aren’t even cats. I mean, I suppose they are black and white, and…

ZOE CRICK: So we’re talking about cats. [laughs] That’s good. I like cats. More cats after this.

Got To Drive

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Zoe, are you crying?

ZOE CRICK: [sniffs] Sorry. It’s just… That song really reminds me of them.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Of the people at Abel.

ZOE CRICK: No, my cats! Poor Pushkin. What if they forget to feed her? She could die!

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Don’t be silly. Jack and Eugene’ll be spoiling her rotten.

ZOE CRICK: Oh, I don’t think we’re supposed to say their names.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh yeah, no.

ZOE CRICK: Well, I miss them, too.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah.

ZOE CRICK: Panthers.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: What?

ZOE CRICK: That’s what I meant. Not pandas, it’s panthers that are really fast.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I think we need to go, Zo.

ZOE CRICK: Right. Yeah. Or we could just have a little sleep.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No. We can’t sleep. We’ve got to drive. [sighs] We’ve always got to keep driving.

ZOE CRICK: Right. Yeah. Or the Ministry’s panthers will get us.

Complete Nonsense

ZOE CRICK: So we’re not completely sure if we did a broadcast in the middle of the night. I don’t really remember it.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I think I might have dreamed it.

ZOE CRICK: But if we did, please just forget everything we said.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Unless it was really sensible. For example, if I told you something interesting about the American Civil War, you don’t need to forget that.

ZOE CRICK: It probably was something about the American Civil War. You always talk about the American Civil War when you’re tired, and I definitely always ignore it.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [scoffs] You told me my analysis of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek was really eye-opening.

ZOE CRICK: Hmm. I was being polite.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Don’t give me that. You’re never polite. Anyway, the point is we’re here, and this time, we’re not talking complete nonsense!

ZOE CRICK: Hmm. If we ever did.

Most Romantic Song

ZOE CRICK: I love that song. It always makes me happy.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah. Me, too. Didn’t we work out that’s the only thing we both had on our Spotify cheer me up songs playlist?

ZOE CRICK: That’s right! [laughs] I’d totally forgotten about that. And I had “I Touch Myself” on my one hit wonders playlist, and you had it on your romantic playlist, which you’ve never satisfactorily explained.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: It’s a love song. It’s about overwhelming passion. Of course it’s romantic.

ZOE CRICK: Right. [laughs] Well, by that standard, this next number must be the most romantic song of all time.

Throw It Away

ELOISE: I thought we were goners there for sure.

HUGH: You made some great evasive maneuvers, love. Classic defensive driving.

ELOISE: Apart from those first couple of shamblers.

HUGH: Well, the van needed a wash anyway. You just forced the issue.

ELOISE: I want to park up and get my breath back.

HUGH: Couple more miles first, eh?

ELOISE: Get my mind off it. Tell me something from the book.

HUGH: As a matter of fact, I had been saving up something special. Place over there, Knaphill, famous for death warnings.

ELOISE: Oh no.

HUGH: There was a farmer’s son who dreamed he would be accidentally shot by his own gun. And the following Tuesday, what happened? Exactly that.

ELOISE: I can’t help but feel that one could have been avoided if he had, you know, just not pointed his own gun at himself.

HUGH: [laughs] It’s easy to be wise in retrospect. Here’s another one. An uncle was sitting in bed, and he heard someone slowly lift the latch of the door three times.

ELOISE: What happened?

HUGH: Nothing the first night, but it happened again the next night. At exactly the same time, slowly the latch was lifted three times.

ELOISE: And?

HUGH: Nothing again. So when it happened a third night, old uncle had his stick, all ready to clobber the ghostly intruder.

ELOISE: And?

HUGH: That night, a different guy died of unrelated causes.

ELOISE: That one’s a little unsatisfying.

HUGH: Okay, last try. A teenager saw a little figure like a doll walking along the top of a hedge, dressed in silk and satin. It reached her mother’s house, where it disappeared, and all they heard was the rustling of silk and satin. She told her dad, and he said that is always a warning.

ELOISE: Actually, that is quite creepy. Did the mother die?

HUGH: Mother died.

ELOISE: See that book?

HUGH: Yes, love?

ELOISE: Throw it away.

The Horse Could Talk

HUGH: You like a good murder, don’t you, Eloise?

ELOISE: I like a good murder story. It’s not quite the same thing, lucky for you.

HUGH: They’ve got one in this village coming up. Colnbrook.

ELOISE: Is it about how property prices got so high this close to the M25 that the only way you could get a house here was to murder the existing occupants?

HUGH: No. In fact, Heathrow Airport’s just over there, so it may not have been the idyllic country residence it looks. Remember that thing about the third runway? Practically in their back gardens. They did have an apple fair, though. Colnbrook Apple Fair.

ELOISE: What happens at an apple fair?

HUGH: Well, I’m guessing orchard fruits featured heavily.

ELOISE: Was the murder about apples?

HUGH: No. I think it predates the apple fair. See that old Tudor-looking building ahead on the right? That’s the Ostrich Inn. In the 17th century, the landlord and his wife used to kill their customers.

ELOISE: Ah. The days before TripAdvisor.

HUGH: They waited for a rich guest, then they put him in the best room, right above the kitchen. And the bed was nailed to the floor, and the floor was on a hinge fastened with iron pins. So in the middle of the night when he was fast asleep, they pulled out the pins and down he came. They kept a big boiling cauldron right underneath.

ELOISE: And what was in the cauldron?

HUGH: Hopefully not soup. As my mother used to say, boil the soup, spoil the soup.

ELOISE: I trust your mother never put people in her soup.

HUGH: Tasted like it, sometimes.

ELOISE: They must have got caught eventually. You can’t boil travelers to death every night without a bit of screaming.

HUGH: Indeed. While Thomas Cole, a clothier from Reading, was taking the big plunge, his horse went off to bother a mare in a nearby field, and there is some unlikely twist about his servant finding the horse and tracing it back to the inn.

ELOISE: Well, that’s not unlikely. That’s just good old-fashioned police work.

HUGH: Some say the place is named after him. Thomas Cole. Colnbrook.

ELOISE: Satisfying.

HUGH: Mind you, some people also said the horse could talk.

Nice Warm Bunk Bed

HUGH: We’ve got an interesting question today. And to set the scene, we are parked outside Batman’s house.

ELOISE: I thought he lived in the Batcave.

HUGH: A common misapprehension, Eloise. Batman works in the Batcave. It’s like his office. But he actually, in his secret identity as Bruce Wayne, billionaire playboy, lives in Wayne Manor. Which, during a certain period of the original comic, was drawn in a similar style to the edifice we now contemplate.

ELOISE: You want to read the letter?

HUGH: Nah, that last speech kind of tired me out.

ELOISE: Well done, Hugh. All right. This is from Melinda of Dorking, and she says, “Dear Hugh and Eloise, as a young girl, I always dreamed of living in a big house. But with the rising cost of real estate and government suppression of my public sector wages, I was never able to afford anything better than a third floor two bedroom flat. And now in post-zombie society, it’s even worse, as I live in a repurposed World War II bomb shelter, where the woman in the top bunk yells out terrifying things in her sleep.”

HUGH: Eloise never talks in her sleep.

ELOISE: What do you mean?

HUGH: Nothing. Finish the letter.

ELOISE: Melinda continues, “Lately, I have been thinking, with all the people who are now dead, the house of my dreams must be out there standing empty. I could get on my bike and go look for it. Do you have much experience of uninhabited mansions, and do you think they would let me keep one after society defeats the zombie threat?”

HUGH: I don’t think there’s anyone living in this one.

ELOISE: Melinda, I think I understand what you’re saying. It’s like the doll’s house you had as a girl. Never really goes away. Well, mine did. Because I wired up an electric lighting system to the mains without a fuse, and the resulting fire reduced it and my doll family into a disturbing pile of melted plastic.

HUGH: Their smiley faces still haunt her to this day.

ELOISE: But consider the practicalities. It’s not going to be warm or weather-proof, or near any settlements you can trade with. There’s no butler to bring you breakfast in bed or chauffeur to take you on an assignation.

HUGH: And no matter how many times you check the rooms in the other wing, you’ll never be quite sure there’s not a zombie in the house, trying random doors in search of a midnight snack.

ELOISE: Maybe just learn to appreciate your nice warm bunkbed, all right? Thanks for your question.

Closest To The Devil

ELOISE: We’re coming up to Mayfield, where St. Dunstan built a little wooden church.

HUGH: Wonder if it’s still there.

ELOISE: A thousand year old wooden church? Probably not. In fact, it says here it didn’t properly face east like churches are supposed to, but he gave it one bump with his shoulder and that fixed it.

HUGH: Bit of a bruiser, was our St. Dunstan?

ELOISE: Apparently, he did metalworking to relax.

HUGH: Definitely a bruiser.

ELOISE: So the devil came along. He looked in the window while St. Dunstan was working, and asked him to make something.

HUGH: To make something? What?

ELOISE: Doesn’t say. St. Dunstan just kept working, so the devil started to make baudy and blasphemous talk.

HUGH: Ooh. Like what?

ELOISE: Doesn’t say. St. Dunstan kept ignoring him and working, so the devil began to change shape. First an old lady, then a baby, then a lustful young girl.

HUGH: Blonde or brunette?

ELOISE: Oh, it doesn’t bloody say! But St. Dunstan, irritated by the constant interruptions, turned and siezed the devil by the nose with his red-hot tongs, like this! [HUGH yelps] The devil shrieked, “What is this damn bald-headed fellow doing to me?”

HUGH: Whatever you’re doing to me.

ELOISE: St. Dunstan wouldn’t let go, so the devil turned into a series of hideous monsters, but St. Dunstan still wouldn’t let go. So the devil flew up through the ceiling and high into the air, with St. Dunstan still holding his nose!

HUGH: I get it. Let go.

ELOISE: They landed at St Dunstan’s bridge near Tunbridge Wells, where St. D finally let go.

HUGH: Oh.

ELOISE: The devil stuck his hot nose into the cold springs. They still taste of sulfur to this day.

HUGH: I know which one of us in this van is closest to the devil.

ELOISE: You remember that.

Break Into The Pyramid

ELOISE: Did he tell you?

HUGH: Yeah. You’re going to like it.

ELOISE: We’re stopped by a church in – where are we? - Brightling, because Hugh, in a rare eagle-eyed moment, noticed a mausoleum in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid. Well, what’s the story, then?

HUGH: The name of the dead man is John Fuller, a landowner and MP from the start of the 19th century. But they called him Mad Jack.

ELOISE: Oh, I do like him.

HUGH: He wore a big powdered wig – long after those went out of fashion - and drove around in a coach and four, his footmen armed with swords and pistols. He was very rude, and he bought nine bassoons for a church choir.

ELOISE: Do choirs use bassoons?

HUGH: No. [ELOISE laughs] One time, he boasted he could see some church from his lawn, right? He bet on it, and then he went home and found out he couldn’t. But rather than lose the bet, do you know what he did? He paid a bunch of builders to go over to a place in the skyline and build a copy of the church tower, so that when the bet got called in, he could claim that was it. They called it Sugar Loaf.

ELOISE: Does it, um… look like a loaf of sugar?

HUGH: No.

ELOISE: So what’s with the pyramid?

HUGH: When he built it, he tried to get someone to live in it for a year without washing, shaving, or cutting his hair, without talking to anybody, and he promised if someone did this, they would be rewarded and become a gentleman for life.

ELOISE: Did somebody take him up on it?

HUGH: No.

ELOISE: But he did get buried there.

HUGH: Supposedly, he installed an iron chair and his mummified body was sat in it, wearing a suit and a top hat. They had to leave bottles wine beside him, and cover the floor in broken glass so that if the devil came to fetch him, he’d cut his cloven hooves on the glass.

ELOISE: I think he does qualify as mad. So you want to break into the pyramid and see if he’s still there?

HUGH: No.

Yes Dear

HUGH: This is it. Pluckley. The most haunted village in England.

ELOISE: I really would rather we’d come during the day.

HUGH: Yeah. Sorry, love. I thought we’d make it before nightfall, but you know. I made a few wrong turns.

ELOISE: Suspicious wrong turns.

HUGH: I don’t know what you mean.

ELOISE: Tell the story so we can move on.

HUGH: [flips switch] Oh. Interior light’s gone. Never mind. I’ve got my torch. Here. Oh yeah. There’s a red lady. Her baby died in childbirth, and now she wanders the village, looking in vain for its unmarked grave.

ELOISE: I hope you enjoyed this local legend. Thanks for listening.

HUGH: There’s a lot more, dear. There’s also a white lady who wanders through the churchyard just over there with a single red rose. Her husband wanted to preserve her beauty, so he buried her in three coffins of lead and one coffin of oak stacked inside one another. People hear hammering sounds and a ghostly wailing as she tries to get out of her terrible prison.

ELOISE: I think I can hear zombies! Should we go?

HUGH: In 1970, a group of researchers spent the night in the chapel. They said to the vicar the next day, “Nothing happened. We’re glad your dog came to keep us company.” But the vicar said, “I don’t have a dog.”

ELOISE: That could just have been a stray.

HUGH: There’s the schoolmaster who hanged himself. They say he stares with bulging eyes as he recites the times tables. And an old gypsy woman whose pipe set fire to the haystack she was sleeping in. You can still hear her agonizing cries, smell the burning flesh. Then there’s the young farmer who -

ELOISE: Shine your torch out there!

HUGH: There’s no one out there, Eloise. No one alive, anyway.

ELOISE: Hugh, drive us out of here!

HUGH: Of course, my love. We’ll just have to go past Fright Corner, where a highwayman used to lurk in a hollow oak to ambush travelers. Until one day, somebody knew his trick and skewered the tree first. Some say his impaled body still hangs there, waiting passersby, and he likes to jump out and grab -

ELOISE: I’m sorry I pulled your nose. I learned my lesson. Oh, get us out of here!

HUGH: Yes, dear.

All About That

(Plays if Season 5 Mission 31: Want You Gone has been completed.)

ZOE CRICK: So um… I just start talking into this uh… microphone thing?

OLLIE OXFORD: Gosh, yes. It’s very simple. Sorry, I thought you might have picked up a bit of the old lingo by now. I mean, you have been doing the tour for a few weeks, haven’t you?

ZOE CRICK: Yes, yes. Yes. Obviously. [laughs] I just always get a bit nervous around technology.

OLLIE OXFORD: That’s funny, isn’t it? With how interested you are in video games. Sort of ironic.

ZOE CRICK: Yes, very.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: For God’s sake, Ollie, do the intro.

OLLIE OXFORD: Oh golly, yes. Silly me. [clears throat] Citizens of the United Kingdom, it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you the world-renowned, very knowledgeable, and if you don’t mind my saying so, extremely charming Professor Ellie Maxted.

ZOE CRICK: Uh, hi!

OLLIE OXFORD: And what will you be educating the country about today, Ellie? Or-or sorry. I should say Professor Maxted.

ZOE CRICK: Ellie is fine. [laughs] And after this musical interlude, I’m going to be telling you all about… right, yes. Matrilateral cross cousin marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa. I’m going to be telling you all about that.

Crikey

ZOE CRICK: The thing about marriage is it’s an honorable estate, isn’t it?

OLLIE OXFORD: Well, yes. In the C of E. Are you saying it’s the same in the Sub-Saharan Africa?

ZOE CRICK: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

OLLIE OXFORD: They really use exactly the same wording in their traditional wedding ceremonies?

ZOE CRICK: Oh, don’t be daft.

OLLIE OXFORD: No, no, of course. Silly me. So what did you mean?

ZOE CRICK: I meant in the metaphorical, ontological, epidemiological sense.

OLLIE OXFORD: Oh, that’s interesting. So you’re arguing that marriage is like the spread of a disease?

ZOE CRICK: Exactly! Yes! That’s exactly what I meant. [laughs, clears throat]

OLLIE OXFORD: Crikey! Well, you can tell us more about that right after this little number.

Golly

OLLIE OXFORD: You’re listening to MBBC, the Ministerial British Broadcasting Company. With me today is Professor Ellie Maxted, who has a thing or two to say about marriage and its relationship to infectious epidemics.

ZOE CRICK: Yes. The thing is, love is very much a contagious disease.

OLLIE OXFORD: Goodness. Well, that’s quite a jaundiced way of looking at it.

ZOE CRICK: Is it, though? [laughs] We use the same phrase for both. Falling in love and falling ill. Don’t you think that’s significant?

OLLIE OXFORD: Is that a cross-cultural phenomenon?

ZOE CRICK: Yes, absolutely. Love feels a bit like an illness, too, doesn’t it? Like something alien has taken control of your body, and the one thing the person who’s caught it wants to do more than anything else is make sure they transmit it to someone else.

OLLIE OXFORD: Yes, I see. That’s a really fascinating perspective. And is it - I mean, was it - generally, before the apocalypse, academically accepted?

ZOE CRICK: Not really, no. [laughs] I’ve always been a bit of a maverick, a fly by the seat of my pants sort of um… professor.

OLLIE OXFORD: Golly. Well, time for another break, and after this, Professor Maxted will be explaining how her epidemiological theory of love ties into matrilateral cross cousin marriage, and also explaining just what matrilateral cross cousin marriage is.

Rather Appropriate

OLLIE OXFORD: [whispers] Professor Maxted, Ellie! I’m awfully sorry, but you do have to stop looking at Rofflenet now.

ZOE CRICK: Oh, sorry. I was just, um, cross-referencing a couple of papers. Can I have just one more -

OLLIE OXFORD: [whispers] We’re back on the air.

ZOE CRICK: Right. Right! So yes. Matrilateral cross cousin marriage is, to put it in simple terms, marrying one’s cousin in a matrilateral fashion.

OLLIE OXFORD: And in practical terms, this would mean? And um, if you could just stop looking at Rofflenet.

ZOE CRICK: Oh, thank God. It’s um, an arrangement of marriages between lineages in which a man is encouraged to marry his mother’s brother’s daughter. Yes. I suppose that does make sense.

OLLIE OXFORD: And why did you want to talk to the nation about that?

ZOE CRICK: That’s a good question. A really great question. I mean clearly, I-I thought it was important, since it was on the list of radio lectures I submitted to the Ministry three months in advance, because that’s just the sort of disgustingly organized person I, Ellie Maxted, am.

OLLIE OXFORD: And…

ZOE CRICK: I’m going to tell you right after this rather appropriate song.

Could Do That All Day

ZOE CRICK: Right. Listeners, I was telling you about matrilinear cross-dressing marriage.

OLLIE OXFORD: Actually, it’s-it’s matrilateral cross -

ZOE CRICK: But I think we’ve got more important things to talk about. Because there is a point to this tour of mine, beyond doing a sort of In Our Post-Apocalyptic Time. [laughs] Although obviously, that is very important, too.

Really though, it’s all about you. The listeners, the survivors, the people who will be putting the world back together again from bits and pieces of our past. So I suppose that’s what I want to say. That’s what this has all been about. I want you all to choose those bits and pieces very carefully. We’re in an amazing position here. We’re like -

OLLIE OXFORD: - Europe after the fall of Rome?

ZOE CRICK: I was going to say people starting a whole new planet on Minecraft, but yes. Rome, too. [laughs] We’ve got a unique opportunity. A chance to keep the best of us and throw away the worst. So just… let’s not mess it up, eh?

OLLIE OXFORD: Yes. Golly, yes. Thanks awfully for that very stirring speech, Professor Maxted. Now Ellie will be moving north to talk to a whole new section of the country, but I’d like to say how grateful we all are that you took the time to stop and talk to us.

ZOE CRICK: Oh, it was my pleasure. I could do that all day. Although obviously, I won’t be.

Please Be Courteous

HUGH: We get any letters today?

ELOISE: Yeah, there’s one. Hold on. [paper rustles] Hmm… I think this is for you.

HUGH: Okay. Hit me.

ELOISE: Sid writes in from Canterbury, and he says, “Dear Hugh and Eloise, I failed my driving test eight times.”

HUGH: That shows dedication.

ELOISE: I passed mine first time! What about you, Hugh?

HUGH: All the best drivers fail the first time and pass the second. Read the question.

ELOISE: Sid continues. “I felt very confident when I showed up to sit it for the ninth time. However, it turned out that day was the day of the Gray Plague, and the examiner tried to bite me in the thigh. Consequently, I never got to sit the driving test, and I still have a provisional license. My question is, now society has fallen, do I actually need a license to drive?

HUGH: I do feel your pain, Sid. And I would like to think that this was your time.

ELOISE: Definitely.

HUGH: It’s true there are not a lot of police patrols out there checking licenses anymore. In fact, we haven’t paid our road tax in a while.

ELOISE: Or done the MOT.

HUGH: That’s not true, my love. I apply the same rigorous standards to vehicle maintenance that any garage would.

ELOISE: No, you don’t.

HUGH: No. But it sounded good.

ELOISE: So Sid should just go ahead and drive?

HUGH: He could. But before you do, consider this. If you failed on the emergency stop, will you be able to react to a surprise horde of shamblers, or a spike trap set by ruthless militia? If you struggle with the three-point turn, how will you cope with a roadblock or a collapsed bridge? And if you habitually exceed the speed limit and end up upside down in a field, the recovery services are not as reliable as they used to be. All the skills the driving test covered are still applicable to post-zombie motoring.

ELOISE: And please be courteous to other road users.

HUGH: Thanks for your question.

Single Tasty Filling

[thunder rolls, rain pours]

ELOISE: I sometimes wish our little program had visuals so you could see the magnificent views. Here we are, parked up at dusk just as the light gets that golden glow for a few precious minutes. We’re looking out over Pegwell Bay, storm clouds gathering on the horizon, waves tossing and chopping as far as the eye can see. This is what you never get when you’re working Monday to Friday. A moment which comes out of nowhere, when you’re reminded of how huge the world is, and how precious and temporary your own existence is.

HUGH: I wish they wouldn’t name places after food.

ELOISE: What?

HUGH: This is Sandwich Road, leading presumably to Sandwich. I could go a sandwich.

ELOISE: We just ate an hour ago. Baked potatoes and beans.

HUGH: Yeah, but sometimes I miss sliced bread. You know, you lay down two slices, butter them, and then you can have whatever you want inside. Ham, cheese, tomato sauce, pickle. Anything you like.

ELOISE: Tomato sauce?

HUGH: Ketchup, really. Chuck in a packet of crisps, and you get a real delicacy.

ELOISE: When you weren’t dreaming of ketchup sarnies, did you find any legends of the area?

HUGH: Yes. Hold on. Here we go. In the 13th century, a huge naval battle was held in the very bay we are now scrutinizing. The French were trying to invade and put Prince Louis on the throne. They were commanded by a nobleman’s son, a pirate and a mercenary called Eustace the Monk.

ELOISE: I think you read it too fast.

HUGH: No, he was all those things. He was also something of a sorcerer. He made his ship invisible.

ELOISE: What?

HUGH: But one of his old friends called Stephen knew the secret. So Stephen jumped onto the invisible ship and fought his way through the French sailors. And to the English, he seemed to be standing in midair. But he fought his way to Eustace the Monk and cut off his head. And the ship became visible again and the English swarmed onboard. And then a great storm blew up and wrecked all the French ships. And St. Bartholomew appeared in the clouds to say this miracle was his doing. Sadly, in the meantime, Stephen had been killed by the French.

ELOISE: That is bonkers. You’ve made a mistake and read three different stories at once.

HUGH: Like two crisp outer layers around a single tasty filling.

Nick All The Expensive Paint

[vehicle door opens]

ELOISE: Any luck?

HUGH: Yes. [closes door] And it’s a good one.

ELOISE: Look at it! These intricate patterns all over the envelope. Is that painted?

HUGH: From my years of experience in the postal trade, I should say that was a fountain pen with a flex nib.

ELOISE: It’s beautiful!

HUGH: Well, open it up, then.

[paper rustles]

ELOISE: Oh, the letter has hand-drawn borders, too. It’s gorgeous! This is Judith from Rochester, and she says, "Dear Hugh and Eloise, we have a secure and safe community here, but the price we pay is that we see the same things every day except the occasional group of zoms that we have to massacre at the gate. What I have been wondering is does this current trouble spell the end of the arts?”

HUGH: You what?

ELOISE: “I have not been to a major city since the trouble started, but I imagine all the galleries have been looted or destroyed.”

HUGH: I think the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square is set up as a machine gun bunker now.

ELOISE: “We have no funding, no access to materials, and no critical oversight. Is this the end for artists, and a return to the lowest common denominator, survival?”

HUGH: You’re the arty one, Eloise.

ELOISE: Well. First, Judith, thanks for your letter. I think you may have answered your own question with its beautiful decoration. Yes, you probably won’t get a grant from the arts council anymore, and the Tate Modern doesn’t get the footfall it used to, but these things weren’t the point of art, were they? It’s about self-expression and capturing the spirits of the times.

HUGH: The artists I knew captured their spirits from liter bottles.

ELOISE: What I’m saying is who cares if there’s no art supplements or gallery space? This is the time we need artists like yourself, Judith, to reflect on the predicament humanity finds itself in. You keep working, all right? And if this all gets sorted out, let us know about your posh opening. We’ll come and have a glass of wine!

HUGH: That was lovely, Eloise. Very thoughtful and positive.

ELOISE: And none of the art shops have been looted, so nick all the expensive paint you want.

Talk About New Canton

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh hello, listeners. This is Radio Free Abel, back on the air and back in your ears! As our friend Sam Yao would say, you can’t stop the signal! Or at least, you can, but only temporarily.

ZOE CRICK: We’ve been talking a lot about Abel Township, but I thought, well…

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah.

ZOE CRICK: I thought maybe we could talk a bit about New Canon today?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Oh.

ZOE CRICK: Or no, you’re right. It’s a stupid idea. I mean, they’re collaborating with the Ministry, right? They’re not being all heroic like Abel.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, that’s not true. They’re just… doing things their own way, like they always have. Yeah. Let’s talk about New Canton. Right after this.

And The Lads

ZOE CRICK: The thing is, I kind of hated New Canton when I first got there.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You’d never have guessed.

ZOE CRICK: I mean, you were all so earnest. You still are.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [sighs] Believing in something doesn’t make you a bad person.

ZOE CRICK: No. It can make you a bloody irritating one, though. But then I found the lads.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: That’s right! You used to hang out with Je- I mean, um, yeah. With the lads.

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] And we used to get drunk every Thursday night on Magnus’s terrible potato vodka and play poker and never ever talk about our emotions. It was great!

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You always lost, though.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, I’ve got no poker face. Je-, I mean, the lads used to tell me I had so many tells, it was like I was broadcasting my thoughts telepathically.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Mm, it is always pretty easy to tell what you’re thinking.

ZOE CRICK: Oh yeah? What am I thinking right now?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh, you’re thinking how irritating I am. You think that quite a lot.

ZOE CRICK: Actually, smarty-pants, I was thinking what a shame it is you never fancied that Nancy girl from Farm Rotation 4. [laughs] I always thought you and she would have made a nice couple. Anyway, this song goes out to New Canton, and the lads. I hope poker nights are still fun without me.

Don't Have A Clue

PHIL CHEESEMAN: So what made you think I wasn’t interested in Nancy?

ZOE CRICK: Well, she kept trying to talk to you about Morrissey, and you kept telling her he was overrated.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: He was overrated! [sings mockingly] “It was more fun as a zombie than as a human being.”

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] I mean, A) you’re wrong, and B) you’re really, really missing the point. Oh my God, did you not realize she was flirting with you? You are the most clueless human being since whoever got murdered first on Clue. Professor Plum? [laughs] I can’t actually remember the movie very well.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: It was Mrs. Ho the cook, although it looked like it was Mr. Boddy, but that was just a fake out. And I’m not clueless!

ZOE CRICK: So you did realize Nancy was coming on to you.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No. Why didn’t you tell me?

ZOE CRICK: In retrospect, it was clearly an idiotic assumption, but I thought you couldn’t actually be as oblivious as you seemed. And talking of people who don’t have a clue, let’s have a listen to this.

Utterly Clueless

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Well, okay. But I bet you didn’t know Eric from the advisory council to the advisory council had the major hots for you.

ZOE CRICK: Yes, I did.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, right.

ZOE CRICK: Well, the clue was in the fact that we slept together four times.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You’re lying.

ZOE CRICK: I could tell you about the mole on his wedding tackle, [laughs] but you’d only go the shade of red you’ve just gone, so why don’t you take my word for it?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I didn’t think you even liked him.

ZOE CRICK: That’s because he was a bit of an asshole. But he was fun.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: What happened?

ZOE CRICK: Do you want a blow-by-blow description?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Ew, no. I mean, why’d you break up?

ZOE CRICK: Oh, nothing, really. Just no reason to carry on. We were still mates.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And to think I could have had that with Nancy.

ZOE CRICK: No, you couldn’t. You couldn’t do friends with benefits to save your life! If you’d realized she fancied you, you’d have got together and been married by now. And then you’d have stayed behind in New Canton with her, and I’d have been stuck doing this on my own. But thinking about it, I suppose I should be grateful you’re so utterly clueless.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [sighs] Sometimes, I wonder why we’re friends.

What?

ELOISE: Hugh’s investigating a problem with the van right now. We’re parked up in somebody’s drive and he’s got the back open. I thought I would take this chance to answer one of… hang on. What? No, we don’t have any more sandwiches. That was the last of the frozen bread.

What? You go and check the other houses. I’m busy here. [sighs] Some days when the world gets too tough for him, he likes to find a manageable problem he can deal with. Sometimes, that’s the van. And sometimes, it’s sandwiches. Today, it’s both.

Anyway, we’ve had a letter from Bernadette in Canterbury, and she says, “Dear Hugh and Eloise, there is a zombie in a field next to me, and I have developed feelings of affection for it.” Oh dear, another one of these.

[clears throat] “It has been a while since I have had a loving partner, but that is not what I mean. I just feel sorry for this zombie. It seems stuck in its field, unable to scale the hedges or even get through the gate. It has been there for three or four months, and it has a kind face, as if in life, it was a good person. I feel towards it like I would feel towards a beloved pet. Do you know if it is possible to train zombies, or just to calm them down? I get lonely here, and even the odd moan in the evening makes me feel less isolated.”

Well, Bernadette, first I must remind you that zombies exist only to consume human flesh. That’s you, that is. So forget about sitting in matching armchairs, drinking chamomile tea. It’d be out that chair and chewing through your fingers in a heartbeat.

Having said that, I can understand what you mean. There are times I look at Hugh’s face, and I see an almost human intelligence there. What you must realize is that with the zombie, you are projecting your hopes and needs onto a killing machine. They do say zoms retain some of the characteristics they had in life, but it will never be the gentle companion that you are imagining. Oh, hold on. Here comes Hugh with some insight. [van door opens] Did you find what was wrong?

HUGH: Chunk of zombie wedged between the carburetor and the fan. [closes door] Must have had its head shoved into the engine compartment when we started up. Tore its whole face off in one piece. Look. [flesh squelches]

ELOISE: As I was saying, Bernadette, the companionship you would get from the zombie might not be everything you would hope for, so maybe just leave it. Thanks for your question.

HUGH: What?

Really Quite Boring

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You know, listeners, it’s been funny driving all around the country the way we have. So much has changed, but then you come across this thing that’s exactly the same as when you were a kid. We were driving through York the other, uh… well, let’s just say a few weeks ago, and there was the JORVIK Centre, just the way it’s always been. Obviously, Zoe wouldn’t let me go in there.

ZOE CRICK: We’re on the run from the Ministry! Well, not to mention zombies. But also, no one likes the JORVIK Centre. It’s the kind of place parents drag their kids around because they think it’ll be both entertaining and educational, when in fact, it’s neither.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh, had a bad trip there yourself, did you?

ZOE CRICK: When I was 10. Cried the whole time, and got sent to bed without any supper.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: To be fair, it is really quite boring. It’s just so much is gone, and it’s still there!

ZOE CRICK: Much like this next song.

Just Take The Piss

ZOE CRICK: I’ve been thinking.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Dangerous.

ZOE CRICK: If you could have back one thing that’s gone, just one, what would it be? And I mean not people. Obviously, we’d all get [laughs] a lot of people back if we could. But a place, or…

PHIL CHEESEMAN: A TV show.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, that kind of thing.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, I mean for me, it would be a TV show. Not-not a show exactly. The news.

ZOE CRICK: That’s what you’d get back out of everything? But the news was so depressing.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Well, yeah, when it was the end of the world.

ZOE CRICK: Even before that. No one ever said, “Ooh, I’m feeling a bit low. I know, I’ll watch the news at 10, and that’ll cheer me right up.”

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Not everything’s about making yourself happy. Being informed is important. Now, I don’t know what’s going on anywhere. America could have been wiped out. Bolivia might be totally zom-free. We’d never know.

ZOE CRICK: Because it doesn’t matter. Not to us. We’ve got our own problems to deal with.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: All right. What do you miss?

ZOE CRICK: I’m not going to tell you now. You’ll just take the piss. We’ll be back, listeners, right after this.

Feeling Better And Better

ZOE CRICK: All right. I miss online shooters.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You miss shooting complete strangers in the head? I would have thought there was ample opportunity for that in the zombie apocalypse.

ZOE CRICK: It’s not so much the shooting I miss. It’s the gloating afterwards.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I thought it was only teenage boys that did that.

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] Are you kidding? That’s the best bit. I really liked in Destiny where you could dance over their corpses.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Well, I’m feeling better and better about my choice! And myself as a human being. But if you’re anything like Zoe, you’re probably going to love this next song.

Rebroadcast

ZOE CRICK: The thing is, this stuff doesn’t have to be gone. I mean, I probably won’t be killing any Vex in a while, but you know. I can get my kicks from randomly belittling you.

PHIL CHEEESEMAN: I have noticed.

ZOE CRICK: And for the news, we can… we can bring back town criers.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Uh, it’s hardly the same.

ZOE CRICK: Well, they could do it in the style of the news. [imitates newscaster tone] “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, the headlines tonight. In Abel, a stray zombie was spotted wandering past the west gate. More on that breaking news later. And… um…”

PHIL CHEESEMAN: [laughs] You’re really terrible at that.

ZOE CRICK: Well, I never actually watched the news.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: You’re right, though. Things are only gone if we let them be. I mean, there’s kids being born now. New people who will never remember the world the way it was before.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah. We’ve got to remember it for them. The good and the bad. The truth, which is what Radio Free Abel is all about, I suppose.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: And on that note, this is Radio Free Abel signing off for now. We’ll rebroadcast some more radio from Hugh and Eloise while we’re away, and we’ll be back just as soon as we can.

Haynes Manual

ELOISE: Hugh, I found it.

HUGH: What? Oh, that pair of pants that you dropped -

ELOISE: No. I found the perfect place for us to settle down. Well, perfect for you, anyway.

HUGH: Really?

ELOISE: It might say London Road on the signs, but this is called Bread and Cheese Hill.

HUGH: Ah, how life could be. Get up in the morning, brush your teeth, a gentle stroll up here in the early morning sunshine, take out the sandwich ingredients for the day.

ELOISE: As long as the only sandwich you wanted was cheese.

HUGH: I could make my own pickle.

ELOISE: There’s a story of witchcraft associated with the area. Want to hear it?

HUGH: I don’t know. I don’t like my cheese to be cursed.

ELOISE: This might have implications for the maintenance of the van.

HUGH: Okay. I’ll risk it.

ELOISE: A man was driving his wagon up this hill when he overtook an old woman whose boot lace was undone, trailing along the ground. He called out to warn her, and right at that moment, one of the wagon wheels came off and started rolling backwards.

HUGH: [whistles] That’s a long way down this hill.

ELOISE: He must have been quick off his feet, because he chased after it and set about it with his whip.

HUGH: What?

ELOISE: He whipped the runaway wheel, and every time he struck it, the old woman cried out in pain, “Oh, don’t hit it!”

HUGH: I’m not immediately seeing why this is relevant to our van.

ELOISE: Because witches can get into wheels and stop carts, apparently. But if you hit the wheel, it causes sympathetic pains in the witch, and she is revealed. Makes about as much sense as any other witchcraft nonsense. Here we’ve got some guy who doesn’t look after his cart, and when it breaks, he blames it on some innocent old woman passing by with a cheap pair of boots. She’s probably saying don’t hit it because she means if you hit that wheel, you’ll smash it and your stupid cart will be stuck in the mud until you buy a new one. So yeah, Hugh, next time we get a puncture, whack the wheel until women start shrieking.

HUGH: I might just stick with the Haynes Manual, to be honest.

Missed A Trick There

[door opens]

HUGH: Everything all right?

ELOISE: Yeah. Nice people. Told me a story about the area.

HUGH: Well, go on, then. Entertain us with another unlikely tale.

ELOISE: Well, that bit over there, that used to have a lot more trees.

HUGH: So far, I believe them.

ELOISE: Great Hawkwell Wood. There was an oak tree there that split into two trunks and rejoined further up.

HUGH: Like a portal to another dimension.

ELOISE: They used to pass kids through the hole as a cure for rickets.

HUGH: Did it work?

ELOISE: Probably not. But all sorts of stories grew up about the tree. Some said a woman killed her son there, and if you went there at night, you heard him crying out, “Oh mother, mother, don’t kill me.” He was known as the Shrieking Boy.

Hoaxes moved in, including a ventriloquist who used to scare the living bejesus out of people, and somehow got their money. It got enough attention that they investigated the haunting. They dragged a nearby pond, and do you know what they found?

HUGH: Fish?

ELOISE: Nope. Nothing. But they did identify the source of the mysterious cries. It was a white horned owl.

HUGH: What? An owl that talked?

ELOISE: No, it just hooted, but you know. You hear the legend, it’s dark, your imagination runs away with you, and suddenly it’s a boy crying out about being murdered.

HUGH: Disappointing. Still, I bet the old owl became something of a local celebrity, eh? Attracting visitors from all over to Hockley’s famous shrieking boy. In fact, I bet there’s a pub just around the corner called the Shrieking Owl or something. Yeah.

ELOISE: No. They shot it.

HUGH: Oh. Missed a trick there, then, I think.

Turned On By Zombies

ELOISE: Difficult letter here, love.

HUGH: We’re up for it.

ELOISE: Reggie writes in from Bishop’s Stortford and he says, “Dear Hugh and Eloise, I’m having some difficulty in my relationship with my girlfriend, XXXXX.”

HUGH: Is that her real name?

ELOISE: No, he’s written her real name and then crossed it out.

HUGH: Are we using his real name?

ELOISE: Probably.

HUGH: I can’t help but feel we’d be better at the whole confidential thing by now.

ELOISE: Reggie, or David, as we’ll call him, continues. “I became a runner to spend more time with Tiffany, and at first - ”

HUGH: Is that her real name, then? Tiffany?

ELOISE: No, I just made it up.

HUGH: Well, wouldn’t that be XXXXXXX? Seven X’s?

ELOISE: “I became a runner to spend more time with Tiffany, and at first, it was great. My health improved. We had a few scrapes. We became respected by the community, and the sex was brilliant.”

HUGH: Congratulations, Reggie. I mean, David.

ELOISE: “But of late, the thrill has gone out of the physical side of things, and Tiffany has kind of lost interest. The only time we recapture the old passion is shortly after a zombie chase, when we are both out of breath and exhilarated after once more evading death. At that point, we often rut on the ground like dogs. Yet back at base, it’s like it never happened. Um, can you suggest a course of action to recapture the magic?”

HUGH: Uh…

ELOISE: Well, David, there is of course a biological basis for your situation. Proximity to death has long been regarded as an aphrodisiac. And of course, cardiovascular exercise works the heart, not just in the romantic sense, but in the sense of getting blood around your body. So it stands to reason that the two of you will be more turned on in the field rather than when you’re inactive within the confined walls of your base.

I’m afraid I have to suggest that you should simply take advantage of this and go on more runs together to stock up on supplies and rekindle your relationship at the same. Your neighbors will certainly appreciate it.

HUGH: Maybe she’s just turned on by zombies.

[ELOISE scoffs]

That's Blasphemy Dear

HUGH: Remember crop circles?

ELOISE: Those big shapes people made in the fields?

HUGH: I always thought they were where UFOs had landed.

ELOISE: UFOs? [scoffs]

HUGH: I would gently remind you, my love, that we live in a time where the dead themselves rise to walk the earth. And as such, the idea that beings from another planet might pop by using circular vehicles is not as ridiculous it might have used to seem.

ELOISE: This might be one of the rare occasions where you successfully use logic.

HUGH: Thank you.

ELOISE: Why were you asking about crop circles?

HUGH: Well, there’s a thing here about the Mowing Devil of Hertfordshire.

ELOISE: The who?

HUGH: 17th century, a farmer around here wanted three half acres of oats cut down.

ELOISE: Is that three and a half acres or one and a half acres?

HUGH: It don’t say. The story is the mower wanted too much money, and the farmer refused to pay it. In fact, the farmer said that the devil himself should mow it rather than this poor fellow.

ELOISE: Wait, I know what happened.

HUGH: Go on.

ELOISE: He woke up in the morning and the field had been mowed.

HUGH: Right. And it was a perfect circle. Like those little whirlwinds you see carrying leaves around. Dust devils.

ELOISE: It can’t be that easy. In these stories, the devil never does you a favor.

HUGH: Go on.

ELOISE: Well, nothing ever grew there again.

HUGH: You’re close. All the oats lay neatly in the field, but when the farmer tried to gather them up, it was beyond his power.

ELOISE: How would that work exactly?

HUGH: It’s not very clear on that bit.

ELOISE: Well, maybe you should ask the devil to fix the van next time.

HUGH: That’s blasphemy, dear.

ELOISE: I know.

Could've Been A Therapist

ELOISE: I told you, no more ghosts.

HUGH: Come on, love! We’re spending our golden years exploring the winding ways of the nation that produced both M. R. James and James Herbert. It stands to reason that we’re going to cross paths with the uncanny once in a while.

ELOISE: No, it doesn’t.

HUGH: If you can’t handle a few ghostly tales from the locals, how are you going to react when a glowing face with eyes like deep holes peers in the van window at night?

ELOISE: That is not going to happen.

HUGH: What if I could find you a friendly ghost story that would show you that not all spirits are terrifying monsters hell-bent on vengeance?

ELOISE: Hugh, if I didn’t need both hands on this steering wheel at the moment, I swear -

HUGH: Look, just listen. You’ll like this. Up ahead, that’s Hitchin.

ELOISE: That’s what you’ll be doing soon, hitching.

HUGH: This poet, George Chapman, went up Hitchin Hill and a ghost appeared to him. But it wasn’t evil. It was the ancient Greek poet Homer.

ELOISE: What, in Hertfordshire?

HUGH: Apparently so. And he didn’t do anything scary or mean. He just commanded George to translate the Iliad and the Odyssey into English.

ELOISE: That seems unlikely.

HUGH: It does seem to have coincided with a period when old George was having money troubles.

ELOISE: I suppose that story was all right.

HUGH: See? Now here’s another one. Of a summer evening, the vicar of Hitchin and the rector of Welwyn used to play bowls behind the pub.

ELOISE: You don’t see that game much since the zombie apocalypse.

HUGH: Society had to make some sacrifices. Anyway, if you take a room at the pub on a summer night, you can sometimes still hear the clergymen playing. Just the gentle clink of the bowls as they knock together, and occasionally the soothing tones of the rector of Welwyn as he argues about the score.

ELOISE: That sounds all right. I could fall asleep to that.

HUGH: I don’t know why I was a postman. I could have been a therapist.

Go For It

HUGH: You’ll like this one, my dear.

ELOISE: That’s very sexist, you know. You always assume just because a woman has a starring role in a story that I’ll particularly like it. Do you think I can’t appreciate anything without a female protagonist?

HUGH: It’s about a queen who outwits a king.

ELOISE: Oh, okay. That sounds good.

HUGH: See that bank of chalk across the hillside? This is why it’s there.

ELOISE: Let’s have it.

HUGH: A certain queen was having an argument with a certain king. It got a bit out of hand, and before long, she was betting him that she could camp an entire army within the hide of a bull.

ELOISE: I’ve been in that spot myself from time to time.

HUGH: Every time you drink more than two bottles of that organic scrumpy.

ELOISE: I suppose she knitted a miniature army or something.

HUGH: It’s better than that. The queen got a bull’s hide and she sliced it up into thin, thin strips almost as thin as thread, and she attached them together, end to end. And on the day of the bet, she took her maids up that hill and together, they formed it into a gigantic circle.

ELOISE: Then all she had to do -

HUGH: - was order the army to march inside. She won the bet.

ELOISE: Clever girl!

HUGH: And in an unusual twist, the king, rather than being a dickhead about it, was struck with admiration for the queen. So much that he ordered his soldiers to build a bank of chalk up on the hill along the line of the thread so that the queen’s skill would always be remembered.

ELOISE: And here we are, passing the story on to the nation.

HUGH: Eh, it’s probably made up.

ELOISE: I know.

HUGH: Apparently, the same story gets told about how Dido conned a chunk of land out of some king to found Carthage.

ELOISE: Have we got any bottles left of that organic scrumpy? I feel like outwitting a king this afternoon.

HUGH: Go for it, my love.

Thoughtful Inaction

HUGH: It’s a church. St. Michael and All Angels. All of them? Talk about hedging your bets.

ELOISE: In there, side by side, lie the full-length carved figures of William and Mary [?].

HUGH: I know how they feel.

ELOISE: Oh, shut up, you. Listen to the story. They died in the 17th century, and became known as the warriors, or the worriers. But their monument was disturbed in 1857 to renovate the church building and it was never properly restored. Shortly after, mysterious cracks and groans began to be heard in the church.

HUGH: These days, you’d just assume that was a zombie with its foot stuck in a drain.

ELOISE: To put a stop to all this loose talk, the rector moved the statues to his cellar, but the groaning kept on, and the rectory maid got too scared to go down to the cellar for the coal. So the rector, fed up of being cold of a winter’s evening, buried the statues in the churchyard.

HUGH: Out of sight, out of mind, eh?

ELOISE: But even then, being buried in consecrated ground didn’t stop the noises. Until 1888. Do you know what they found then?

HUGH: I do not.

ELOISE: The roof timbers were all cracked, full of deathwatch beetles.

HUGH: Ah!

ELOISE: That’s not the end of the story. They decided to dig up the statues in 1919, but they couldn’t find them. Until one old lady whose husband had been the sexton remembered him digging up a stone head.

HUGH: [?] of the job, eh?

ELOISE: She showed them where it came from. They dug down, and there were the [?] again. Only this time, William’s missing his head. She gave them back the head, and the two lie in the church now, looking like they’ve been driven over by a bulldozer. So what do you think? The warriors or the worriers?

HUGH: Worriers, definitely. They must be thinking, what next?

ELOISE: Want to go in and see them? We can break down the door.

HUGH: No. I don’t want to stress them out anymore.

ELOISE: That’s my Hugh. Thoughtfulness through inaction.

HUGH: Hey!

Thanks For The Question

HUGH: [yawns] Have we got any letters left?

ELOISE: Just that strange one with the spidery handwriting.

HUGH: The one with the hieroglyphs and arrows all over the envelope?

ELOISE: Actually, I think they’re alchemical symbols.

HUGH: I could do with a formula to transmute moldy pies into unleaded fuel, or any of the other crap we find in the petrol stations.

ELOISE: We could always try shoving those pies in the fuel tank.

HUGH: In a few years, I probably will. Go on, read the letter.

ELOISE: [paper rustles] Okay. This… wow.

HUGH: What?

ELOISE: It’s a bit… uh, stream of consciousness?

HUGH: Give me the shortened version.

ELOISE: Milton writes in from… I’m not sure where exactly, and he says, um, “Dear Hugh and Eloise…”

HUGH: What?

ELOISE: I’m just processing it. “Dear Hugh and Eloise…” quite a lot of stuff. “Humanity is an imperfect species. I have returned to the search for the quintessence.”

HUGH: The Queen’s what?

ELOISE: “We can see zombies as an expression of the divine spark of life as it extends beyond what is commonly regarded as the death of its shell. Indeed, I believe we are at last witnessing the hot infusion of the distant stars into the human vessel and the [?] [paper rustles] [?] property may be responsible for their animation and resilience.”

HUGH: Right.

ELOISE: “Do you think that zombies, in their current form, represent the alchemical liberation of the suppressed subconscious with its primal motivation to survive and consume?”

HUGH: Uh…

ELOISE: “In fact, do you think that we are now witnessing the next stage of human evolution, the phase where body and soul, salt and sulfur, are reshaped by mercury to forge a new human spirit which will, when the transformation completes, allow us to finally assume our full significance in the universe?”

HUGH: Yes. Yes, I do. Keep an eye on that for us, will you?

ELOISE: Thanks for your question!

Keep Them Letters Coming

ELOISE: We’ve had a couple of scrapes in the last week. The zombie kind, not the kind when you hit something parking. So we’re going off the road for a few days to do maintenance, and sleep in a real bed.

HUGH: Which resort did we choose, my dear? [?]? The Greek Islands? Or [?] Beach?

ELOISE: It’s looking like Northampton.

HUGH: Every bit as good.

ELOISE: We’ve got one more letter to answer, though, and it’s a tough one. You ready?

HUGH: Always.

ELOISE: Greg writes in from Warrington, and he says, “Dear Hugh and Eloise, I have been very much enjoying your series on the folklore of England.”

HUGH: Well, thank you, Greg. And how kind of you to write. We do intend to cover Wales and Scotland as soon as we find the right guidebook, or more elusive, friendly locals.

ELOISE: He continues. “Your stories are often from hundreds of years ago. As we, the survivors, huddle in walled settlements, unable to go outside due to zombie assaults, who do you think will provide the new legends of this era to tell the next generation?”

HUGH: I like how sure he is there’s going to be a next generation.

ELOISE: Greg, the answer you want is in the question itself. These stories aren’t told about the people who stayed at home and accepted their fate. They’re about people who did extraordinary things.

HUGH: Even if that meant they got set on fire.

ELOISE: Yes. The stories that will be told this time are about the scientists who risked their lives in vulnerable labs to try and find a cure. The doctors who kept people alive with just their wit and improvised materials.

And especially the runners who chose to leave the safety of their settlements every day to find desperately needed supplies and draw the zombies away from their neighbors and loved ones. Those are the people who are our new legends, you mark my words.

HUGH: Did you say he wrote on the back as well?

[paper rustles]

ELOISE: Oh.

HUGH: What?

ELOISE: I’m embarrassed.

HUGH: What? Read it.

ELOISE: Greg says, “What about an engineer who traveled dangerous roads the length of the country to build our new network and still found time to answer all our little personal problems?”

HUGH: Oh. That’s nice!

ELOISE: “Or a dedicated postman who kept the mail moving even after all his colleagues abandoned their posts?”

HUGH: I, uh… I don’t about that.

ELOISE: I think I might keep this letter.

HUGH: We’re going to read it again next time someone’s shooting at us.

ELOISE: That’s us for now. Stay safe.

HUGH: And keep them letters coming. The Royal Mail’s still got one van left.

Very Appropriate

(Plays if Season 5 Mission 40: The Room Where It Happens has been completed.)

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Is it - ?

ZOE CRICK: Yeah!

PHIL CHEESEMAN: I mean - ?

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, it’s - ! [laughs]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah! Okay, um… oh, I sort of don’t want to say this in case I jinx it, but -

ZOE CRICK: Abel’s been liberated! [PHIL CHEESEMAN cheers, ZOE CRICK laughs] Oh, sorry. I just… Abel’s been liberated! I never actually thought it would happen.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: But we were constantly telling our listeners it’s going to happen.

ZOE CRICK: Yeah, but in my heart of hearts… [laughs]

PHIL CHEESEMAN: We still need to find out more details, but we’ll tell you more as soon as we know it. In the meantime, uh, this song seems very appropriate!

Talk This Over

ZOE CRICK: Okay, it’s 100% confirmed. Abel’s back in rebel hands, [laughs] like the Death Star.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: They blew up the Death Star. Both of them.

ZOE CRICK: True. But then according to Lou, Ian did actually try to blow up Abel, so…

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Do you think there were dancing Ewoks?

ZOE CRICK: [laughs] If Sam has any say in the matter. Also probably the [?] ghost of Ian, who’s apparently dead.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Don’t you need to, you know, get redeemed to turn into a force ghost? Not try to turn everyone within a mile blast radius into a zombie.

ZOE CRICK: Mm, good point.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Also, we’re probably going to have to change our name.

ZOE CRICK: What to? Zoe and Phil Yao-Cohen-De Luca of Abel Township?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No, you muppet. The station. Radio Free Abel doesn’t make much sense anymore, does it?

ZOE CRICK: It was more of a concept than a mission statement.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: How about Radio Freed Abel?

ZOE CRICK: Hmm. So we’re going to carry on, are we? We’re not just heading back to… where we came from?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: No. I don’t think so. Do you?

ZOE CRICK: I think… I’m just going to play this song, and maybe you and I should talk this over.

The Truth Is Out There

ZOE CRICK: Okay. So it looks like we’re going back to Abel. I mean, I haven’t actually asked Janine yet, but assuming she doesn’t scream in horror at the mere idea, that’s what we’re going to do.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: We have to. Abel might be back in the right hands, but the rest of the country… We have to get the truth out there, now more than ever.

ZOE CRICK: And it’s going to be dangerous.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Not that dangerous.

ZOE CRICK: Going back to the one place in the country that the most powerful woman in the country wants annihilated, full of all the people in the country she hates the most?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Yeah, okay. It’s not the safest thing we’ve ever done.

ZOE CRICK: But well, we’ve started now, haven’t we? No point giving up halfway through.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: We’ll be back, citizens. Maybe not immediately, but soon.

ZOE CRICK: So stay tuned for Radio Free Abel.

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Coming to you live from Abel Township itself. Take care of yourselves until then. Remember: the truth is out there.

ZOE CRICK: Did you just quote The X-Files?

PHIL CHEESEMAN: Maybe.

[ZOE CRICK laughs]

Codex

Supplies

The following supplies can be found in Season 5 Radio Mode.

9mm Ammo
Anti-depressants
Axe
Bandages
Baseball Bat
Batteries
Bedroll
Board game
Book
Bottled Water
Box of Lightbulbs
Car Battery
Cricket bat
Cutlery
Disposable camera
Dress
DVD
Flashlight
Football
Fuel Can
Hairbrush
Hammer
Hearing Aid
Laptop
Lock pick
Mobile Phone
Network Cable
Notebook
Overcoat
Pain Meds
Pencil
Pistol
Playing cards
Power Cable
Radio
Rope
Seeds
Shirt
Shorts
Sports Bra
Tampons
Teddy bear
Tent
Thermal underwear
Tinned Food
Tool Box
Toy car
Trainers
Trousers
Umbrella
Underwear
USB Key
Vitamins
Whisky
Wild food