Autumn
David Moody
This book is a work of fiction. The characters and situations in this story are imaginary. No resemblance is intended between these characters and any real persons, either living or dead.

visit www.theinfected.co.uk
the official AUTUMN website

© David Moody 2005
davidmoody@djmoody.co.uk
www.djmoody.co.uk




All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher


First published electronically in 2001 - this edition 2005
Infected Books
www.infectedbooks.co.uk


Copyright © David Moody 2005

2-10-0805-2



















Prologue

	Billions died in less than twenty-four hours.
	William Price was one of the first.
	Price had been out of bed for less than ten minutes when it began. He had been standing in the kitchen when he’d felt the first pains. By the time he’d reached his wife in the living room he was almost dead.
	The virus caused the lining of his throat to dry and then to swell at a remarkable rate. Less than forty seconds after initial infection the swelling had blocked his windpipe. As he fought for air the swellings began to split and bleed. He began to choke on the blood running down the inside of his trachea.
	Price’s wife tried to help him, but all she could do was catch him when he fell to the ground. For a fraction of a second she was aware of his body beginning to spasm but by that point she had also been infected. By that point the volume of oxygen reaching her lungs had reduced to less than ten per cent of her normal oxygen requirement.
	Less than four minutes after Price’s initial infection he was dead. Thirty seconds later and his wife was dead too. A further minute and the entire street was silent.





1
Carl Henshawe

I was almost home by the time I knew that it had happened.
	It was still early - about half-eight I think - and I’d been out of the house since just after four. Looking back I was glad I hadn’t been home. It was bad enough seeing Sarah and Gemma lying there after it had happened to them. Christ, I wouldn’t have coped seeing it get them both. I just couldn’t have stood seeing them both suffer like that. I couldn’t have done anything for either of them. It hurts too much to even think about it. Better that they were gone and it was over by the time I got home.
	I’d been out on a maintenance call at Carter and Jameson’s factory five miles north of Billhampton. I usually ended up going there once or twice a month, and usually in the middle of the night. The bastard that was in charge of the place was too tight to pay for new machinery and too bloody smart to get his own men repairing the system when he knew that he could call us out. Didn’t matter what went wrong or when, he always got us out. He knew the maintenance contract better than I did.
	I was six miles short of Northwich when I first realised that something was wrong. I’d stopped at the services to get a cup of coffee and something to eat and I was just coming off the motorway when the radio started playing up. Nothing unusual about that - the electric's in the van had a mind of their own - but this was different. One minute there was the usual music and talking, the next nothing but silence. Not even static. Just silence. I tried to tune in to a couple of other stations but I couldn’t get anything.
	Like an idiot I kept driving and trying to sort out the radio at the same time. I only had one eye on the road, and the sun kept flashing through the tops of the trees. The sky was clear and blue and the morning sun was huge and blinding. I wanted to get back home so I kept my foot down. I didn’t see the bend in the road until I was half way round and I didn’t see the other car until it was almost too late.
	I slammed my foot on the brake when I saw it. It was a small mustard-yellow coloured car and its driver was obviously as distracted as I was. He was coming straight at me, and I had to yank the steering wheel hard to the right to avoid hitting him. I must have missed him by only a couple of feet.
	There was something about the way the car was moving that didn’t seem right. I slowed down and watched it in my rear view mirror. Instead of following the bend that I had just come round, it just kept going forward in a straight line, still going at the same speed. It left the road and smashed up the kerb. The passenger-side door scraped against the trunk of a heavy oak tree and then the car stopped dead when the centre of the bonnet wrapped itself around another tree trunk.
	There was no-one else about. I stopped and then turned the van around in the road and drove back towards the crash. All I could think was the driver was going to blame the way I was driving and it would be his word against mine and Christ, if he took me to court he’d probably have a good case. I kept thinking that I was going to lose my job and that I’d have to explain what had happened to the boss and...and bloody hell, I didn’t even stop to think that the other driver might be hurt until I saw him slumped over his steering wheel.
	I stopped my car a few feet behind the crash and got out to help. My legs felt heavy - I didn’t want to look but I knew that I had to. As I got closer I could see the full extent of the damage to the car. It had hit the tree at such a bloody speed that the bonnet was almost wrapped right around it.
	I opened the driver’s door (it was jammed shut and it took me a while to get it open). The driver looked about thirty-five years old, and I didn’t need to touch him to know that he was dead. His face had been slammed hard against the steering wheel, crushing his nose. His dead eyes gazed up at me, giving me a cold stare which made me feel as if he was blaming me for what had just happened. Blood was pouring from what was left of his nose and from his mouth which hung wide open. It wasn’t dripping; for the best part of a minute the thick crimson blood was literally pouring from the body and pooling on the floor around the dead man’s feet.
	I didn’t have a fucking clue what to do. For a few seconds I just stood there like a bloody fool, first looking up and down the silent road and then staring at the jet of steam which was shooting up from the battered car’s radiator and into the cold morning air. I felt sick to my stomach, and when the hissing eventually stopped all I could hear was the drip, drip, drip of blood. It had only been a couple of minutes since I’d eaten. I looked back at the body again and felt myself lose control of my stomach. I dropped down to my knees and threw up in the grass at the side of the road.
	Once the nausea had passed I dragged myself up onto my feet and walked back to the van. I reached inside for the phone, realising that although there was nothing I could do for the poor bastard in the car, I had to do something. In a strange way it was easier knowing that he was dead. I could just tell the police that I’d been driving along and I’d found the car crashed into the tree. No-one needed to know that I’d been around when the accident took place.
	The bloody phone wasn’t working.
	There I was, out in the countryside just outside a major town and I couldn’t get a signal. I shook the phone, waved it in the air and even banged it against the side of the fucking van but I couldn’t get rid of the ‘No Service’ message on the display. I wasn’t thinking straight. I tried dialling 999 three or four times but I couldn’t get anything. It didn’t even ring out. The phone just kept bleeping ‘unobtainable’ in my ear.
	So if no-one needed to know that I’d seen the crash, I found myself thinking, no-one needed to know that I’d been the one who found it. It sickens me now when I think back and remember that the next thing I did was climb back into the van with the intention of driving home. I decided that I’d call the police or someone from there and tell them that I’d seen an abandoned car at the side of the road. I didn’t even need to tell them about the body. I guess that it must have been the effects of shock. I’m not usually such a spineless bastard.
	I was in a daze, almost a trance. I climbed back into the van, started the engine and began to drive back towards town. I stared at the crashed car in the rear view mirror until it was out of sight, then I put my foot down on the accelerator.
	There were a couple more bends in the road before it straightened and stretched out for a clear half mile ahead of me. I caught sight of another car in the near distance, and seeing that car made me give way to my mounting guilt and change my plans. I decided that I’d stop and tell the driver about what I’d seen. There’s safety in numbers, I thought. I’d get them to come back with me to the crash and we’d report it to the police together. Everything would be okay.
	I was wrong. As I got closer to the car I realised that it had stopped. I slowed down and pulled up alongside. The driver’s seat was empty. There were three other people in the car and they were all dead - a mother in the front and her two dead children in the back. Their faces were screwed up with expressions of agony and panic. Their skin was pale grey and I could see on the body of the child nearest to me that there was a trickle of blood running from between its lips and down the side of its lifeless face. I kept the van moving slowly forward and saw that a couple of metres further down the road the body of the missing driver lay sprawled across the tarmac. I had to drive up onto the grass verge to avoid driving over him.
	I was so fucking scared. I cried like a baby as I drove back towards home.
	I can’t be sure, but I must have seen another forty or fifty bodies by the time I’d made it back to Northwich. The streets were littered with the dead. It was bizarre - people just seemed to have fallen where they’d been standing. Whatever they’d been doing, wherever they’d been going, they’d just dropped.
	The situation was so unexpected and inexplicable that it was only at that point that I thought about the safety of my family. I put my foot down flat on the accelerator and was outside my house in seconds. I jumped out of the van and ran to the door. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t get the key in the lock. Eventually I opened it and immediately wished that I hadn’t. The house was silent.
	I ran up to the bedroom and that’s where I found them both. Sarah and our beautiful little girl both dead. Gemma’s face was frozen in the middle of a silent scream and there was blood all around her mouth and on Sarah’s white night dress and the sheets. They were both still warm and I shook them and screamed at them to wake up and talk to me. Sarah looked terrified. I tried to close her frightened eyes to make believe she was just sleeping but I couldn’t. They wouldn’t stay shut.
	I couldn’t stand to leave them but I couldn’t stand to stay there either. I had to get out. I put Gemma into bed with her mum, kissed them both goodbye and pulled the sheets up over their heads. I left the house, locked the door behind me and then walked.
	I spent hours stepping through the bodies just shouting out for help.




2
Michael Collins

So there I was, standing at the front of a class of thirty-three sixteen year olds, tongue-tied and terrified. The boss had volunteered me for one of those ‘Industry into Schools’ days. One of those days where instead of sitting listening to their teacher drone on for hours, children were made to listen to sacrificial lambs like me telling them how wonderful the job they really despised was. I hated it. I hated speaking in public. I hated compromising myself and not being honest. I hated knowing that if I didn’t do this and I didn’t do it well, my end of month bonus would be reduced. My boss believed that his middle-managers were the figureheads of his company. In reality we were just there for him to hide behind.
	My talk didn’t last long.
	I’d made some notes which I held in front of me like a shield. I felt quite calm inside, but the way that the end of my papers shook seemed to give the class the impression that I was paralysed with nerves. The sadistic sixteen year olds quickly seized on my apparent weakness. When I coughed and tripped on a word I was history.
	‘The work we do at Caradine Computers is extremely varied and interesting,’ I began, lying through my teeth. ‘We’re responsible for...’
	‘Sir,’ a lad said from the middle of the room. He was waving his hand in the air.
	‘What?’
	‘Why don’t you just give up now,’ he sighed. ‘We’re not interested.’
	That stopped me dead. I’d never have dared speak out like that at school. I looked to the teacher at the back of the class for support but as soon as we’d made eye contact she turned to look out of the window.
	‘As I was saying,’ I continued, ‘we look after a wide range of clients, from small one-man firms to multinational corporations. We advise them on the software to use, the systems to buy and...’
	Another interruption, this time more physical. A fight was breaking out in the corner of the room. One boy had another in a headlock.
	‘James Clyde,’ the teacher yelled across the classroom, ‘cut it out. Anyone would think you didn’t want to listen to Mr Collins.’
	As if the behaviour of the students wasn’t bad enough, now even the teacher was being sarcastic. I didn’t know whether she’d meant her words to sound that way, but that was definitely how the rest of the class had taken them. Suddenly there was stifled laughter coming from all sides, hidden by hands over mouths and pierced by the occasional splutter from those who couldn’t keep their hilarity in check. Within seconds the whole room was out of control.
	I was about to give up and walk out when it happened. A girl in the far right corner of the room was coughing. Far more than any ordinary splutter, this was a foul, rasping and hacking scream of a cough which sounded as if it was tearing the very insides of her throat apart with each painful convulsion. I took a few steps towards the girl and then stopped. Other than her painful choking the rest of the room had become silent. I watched as her head dropped down and thick sticky strings of blood and spit dripped and trailed into her cupped hands and over her desk. For a second she looked up at me with huge terrified eyes. She couldn’t breath. She was suffocating.
	I looked towards the teacher again. This time she stared straight back at me, fear and confusion written clearly across her face.
	On the other side of the room a boy began to cough. He too was suddenly gripped with unexpected terror and excruciating pain. He too could no longer breathe.
	A girl just behind and to the right of me began to cry and then to cough. The teacher tried to stand up and walk towards me but then stopped as she also began to cough and splutter. Within no more than a minute of the first girl’s agony beginning, every single person in the room was tearing at their throats and fighting to breathe. Every single person, that was, except me.
	I didn’t know what to do or where to go to get help. Numb with shock, I staggered back towards the classroom door. I stumbled and tripped over a school bag and grabbed hold of the nearest desk to steady myself. A girl’s hand slammed down on mine. I stared into her face. She was deathly white save for a crimson trickle of blood which spilled down her chin and onto the books on her desk. Her head kept lurching back on her shoulders as she tried desperately to breathe in precious molecules of oxygen. Each uncontrolled spasm of her body forced much more air out of her lungs than was allowed in.
	I wrenched my hand away and threw the door open. The noise inside the room was appalling. A deafening, echoing cacophony of desperate cries which pierced right through me, but even out in the hallway there was no escape. The pitiful noises which came from my classroom were only a small fraction of the screaming confusion which rang through the entire school. From places as remote as assembly halls, gymnasiums, workshops, kitchens and offices, the cold morning air was filled with the terrified screams of hundreds of desperate children and adults, all of them suffocating and choking to death.
	By the time I’d reached the end of the corridor it was over. The school was silent.
	I instinctively walked down the stairs towards the main entrance doors. Sprawled on the ground at the foot of the staircase was the body of a boy. He must have been only eleven or twelve. I crouched down next to him and cautiously reached out to touch him. I pulled my hand away as soon as it made contact with his dead flesh. It felt cold, clammy and unnatural, almost like wet leather. Forcing myself to try and take control of my fear and disgust, I pushed his shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. Like the others I had seen his face was ghostly white and was smeared with blood and spittle. I leant down as close as I dare and put my ear next to his mouth. I held my breath and waited to hear even the slightest sounds of breathing. I wished that the suddenly silent world would become quieter still so that I could hear something. It was hopeless. There was nothing.
	I walked out into the cool September sunlight and crossed the empty playground. Just one glance at the devastated scene outside the school gates was enough for me to realise that whatever it was that had happened inside the building had happened outside too. Random bodies littered the streets for as far as I could see.

	In seven hours since it happened I’ve seen no-one else.
	My house is cold and secure but it doesn’t feel safe. I can’t stay there. I have to keep looking. I can’t be the only one left.
	The phones aren’t working.
	There’s no electricity.
	There’s nothing but static on the radio.
	I’ve never been so fucking frightened.








3
Emma Mitchell

Sick, cold and tired.
	I felt bad. I decided to skip my lecture and stay at home. I had one of those fevers where I was too hot to stay in bed and too cold to get up. I felt too sick to do anything but too guilty to sit still and do nothing. I had tried to do some studying for a while. I gave up when I realised that I’d had five attempts at reading the same paragraph but had never made it past the middle of the third line.
	Kayleigh, my flat mate, hadn’t been home for almost two days. She’d phoned so she knew I felt bad and she’d promised to pick up some milk and a loaf of bread. I cursed her as I searched through the kitchen cupboards for something to eat. They were empty, and I was forced to accept that I’d have to pull myself together and go shopping.
	Wrapped up in my thickest coat I tripped and sniffed to the shop at the end of Maple Street feeling drained, pathetic and thoroughly sorry for myself.
	There were three customers (including me) in Mr Rashid’s shop. I didn’t pay any of them any attention at first. I was stood there haggling with myself, trying to justify spending a few pence more on my favourite brand of spaghetti sauce, when an old bloke lurched at me. For the fraction of a second before he touched me I was half-aware that he was coming. He reached out and grabbed hold of my arm. He was fighting for breath. It looked like he was having an asthma attack or something. I was only five terms into my five years of medical study and I didn’t have a clue what was happening to him.
	His face was ashen white and the grip he had on my sleeve tightened. I started to try and squirm away from him but I couldn’t get free. I dropped my shopping basket and tried to prise his bony fingers off my arm.
	There was a sudden noise behind me and I looked back over my shoulder to see that the other shopper had collapsed into a display rack, sending jars, tins and packets of food crashing to the ground. He lay on his back amongst them, coughing, holding his throat and writhing around in agony.
	I felt the grip on my arm loosen and I turned back to look at the old man. Tears of inexplicable pain and fear ran freely down his weathered cheeks as he fought to catch his breath. His throat was obviously blocked, but I couldn’t tell by what. My brain slowly began to click into gear and I started thinking about loosening his collar and laying him down. Before I could do anything he opened his wide, toothless mouth and I saw that there was blood inside. The thick crimson blood trickled down his chin and began to drip on the floor in front of me. He dropped to the ground at my feet and I watched helplessly as his body convulsed and shook.
	I turned back to look at the other man who also lay on the marble floor, thrashing his arms and legs desperately around him.
	I ran to the back of the shop to try and find Mr Rashid. The shop led directly into their home. By the time I found him and his wife they were both dead. Mrs Rashid had fallen in the kitchen and lay next to an upturned chair. The tap was still running. The sink had overfilled and water was spilling down the units and collecting in a pool around the dead lady’s legs. Mr Rashid lay in the middle of the living room carpet. His face was screwed up in agony. He looked terrified.
	I ran back through to the front of the shop. Both of the men I’d left fighting for breath were dead.
	I walked back outside. The sun was incredibly bright and I had to shield my eyes. There were bodies everywhere - even through the brightness the dark shapes on the ground were unmistakable. Hundreds of people seemed to have died. I looked at the few closest to me. Whatever it was that had killed the people inside the shop had killed everyone outside too. They had all suffocated. Every face I looked into was ashen white and the mouth of every body was bloodied and red.
	I looked up towards the junction of Maple Street and High Street. Three cars had crashed in the middle of the box junction. No-one was moving. Everything was still. The only thing that changed was the colour of the traffic lights as they steadily worked their way through red, amber and green.
	There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of bodies around me. I was numb, cold and sick and I walked home, picking my way through the corpses as if they were just litter that had been dropped on the streets. I didn’t allow myself to think about what had happened. I guess I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find any answers. I didn’t want to know what had killed the rest of the world around me and I didn’t want to know why I was the only one left.
	I let myself into the flat and locked the door behind me. I went into my room, drew the curtains and climbed back into bed. I lay there, curled up as tightly as I could, until it was dark.






4

By eleven o’clock on a cold, bright and otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning in September over ninety-five percent of the population were dead.
	Stuart Jeffries had been on his way home from a conference when it had begun. He’d left the hotel on the Scottish borders at first light with the intention of being home by mid-afternoon. He had the next three days off and had been looking forward to sitting on his backside doing as little as possible for as long as he could.
	Driving virtually the full length of the country meant stopping to fill up the car with petrol on more than one occasion. Having passed several service stations on the motorway he decided that he would wait until he reached the next town to get fuel. A smart man, Jeffries knew that the cheaper he could buy his petrol, the more profit he’d make when it came to claiming his expenses back when he returned to work on Friday. Northwich was the nearest town, and it was there that a relatively normal morning became extraordinary in seconds. The busy but fairly well ordered lines of traffic were thrown into chaos and disarray as the infection tore through the cool air. Desperate to avoid being hit, as the first few cars around him had lost control he had taken the nearest turning he could find off the main road and had then taken an immediate right into an empty car park. He had stopped his car, got out and ran up the side of a muddy bank. Through metal railings he had helplessly watched the world around him fall apart in the space of a few minutes. He saw countless people drop to the ground without warning and die the most hideous choking death imaginable.
	Jeffries spent the next three hours sitting terrified in his hire car with the doors locked and the windows wound up tight. The car had only been delivered to his hotel late the previous evening but in the sudden disorientation it immediately became the safest place in the world. 
	The car radio was dead and his phone was useless. He was two hundred and fifty miles away from home with an empty petrol tank and he was completely alone. Paralysed with fear and uncertainty, in those first few hours he’d been more scared than at any other point in the forty-two years of his life so far. What had happened around him was so unexpected and inexplicable that he couldn’t even begin to accept the horrors that he’d seen, never mind try and comprehend any of it.
	After three hours cooped up in the car the physical pressure on him gradually matched and then overtook the mental stress. He stumbled out into the car park and was immediately struck by the bitter cold of the late September day. Almost as if he was subconsciously trying to convince himself of what he’d seen earlier, he silently walked back towards the main road and surveyed the devastation in front of him. Nothing was moving. The remains of wrecked and twisted cars were strewn all around. The dirty grey pavements were littered with cold, lifeless bodies and the only sound came from the biting autumn wind as it ripped through the trees and chilled him to the bone. Other than the corpses that were trapped in what was left of their cars there didn’t seem any immediately obvious reason for any of the deaths. The closest body to Jeffries was that of an elderly woman. She had simply dropped to the ground where she’d been standing. She still had the handle of her shopping trolley gripped tightly in one of her gloved hands.
	He thought about shouting out for help. He raised his hands up to his mouth but then stopped. The world was so icily silent and he felt so exposed and out of place that he didn’t dare make a sound. In the back of his mind was the very real fear that, if he was to call out, his voice might draw attention to his location. Although there didn’t seem to be anyone else left to hear him, in his vulnerable and increasingly nervous state he began to convince himself that making a noise might bring whatever it was that had destroyed the rest of the population back to destroy him. Paranoid perhaps, but what had happened was so illogical and unexpected that he just wasn’t prepared to take any chances. Frustrated and afraid, he turned around and walked back towards the car.
	At the far end of the car park, hidden from view at first by overhanging trees, stood the Whitchurch Community Hall. Named after a long forgotten local dignitary it was a dull, dilapidated building which had been built (and, it seemed, last maintained) in the late 1950’s. Jeffries cautiously walked up to the front of the hall and peered in through a half-open door. Nervously he pushed the door fully open and took a few tentative steps inside. This time he did call out, quietly and warily at first, but there was no reply.
	The cold and draughty building took only a minute or two to explore because it consisted of only a few rooms, most of which led off a main hall. There was a very basic kitchen, two storerooms (one at either end of the building) and male and female toilets. At the far end of the main hall was a second, much smaller hall, off which led the second storeroom. This room had obviously been added as an extension to the original building. Its paint work and decoration, although still faded and peeling, was slightly less faded and peeling than that of the rest of the rooms.
	Other than two bodies in the main hall the building was empty. Jeffries found it surprisingly easy to move the two corpses and to drag them outside. In the hand of a grey-haired man who looked to have been in his early sixties he found a bunch of keys which, he discovered, fitted the building locks. This, he decided, must have been the caretaker. And the equally grey-haired lady who had died next to him was probably a prospective tenant, looking to hire the hall for a Women’s Institute meeting or something similar. He heaved the stiff and awkward bodies through the doorway and placed them carefully in the undergrowth at the side of the building.
	It was while he was outside that he decided he would shelter in the hall until morning. It seemed to be as safe a place as any in which to hide. It was isolated and although not in the best of repair, it looked strong enough and seemed warmer than the car. Jeffries decided that there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to get anywhere else. The only place he wanted to be was back home, but that was a few hours drive away. He quickly convinced himself that it would be safer to stay put for now and then to try and get petrol in the morning. He’d siphon it from one of the wrecked cars outside.
	As the light began to fade he discovered that there was no electricity in the hall. A quick run to the end of the car park revealed that it wasn’t just the hall that was without power. The entire city for as far as he could see was rapidly darkening. Other than a few flickering fires he couldn’t see any light - not even a single street lamp - and as he watched it seemed that the world around him was being steadily consumed by the thick shroud of night.
	Being a hire car, there was nothing to help inside Stuart’s vehicle. He cursed the irony of the situation - he kept a blanket, a shovel, a toolbox, a first-aid kit and a torch in the back of his own car. If he’d only made the journey in his own car then he would at least have had some light. All that he had now was the hire car itself. He toyed with the idea of leaving the front door of the hall open and shining the headlamps into the room but he quickly decided against it. Although he seemed to be the last person alive in the city, shutting the door made him feel marginally safer and less exposed. With the door shut and locked he could at least pretend for a while that nothing had happened.

	Just before nine o’clock Jeffries’ solitary confinement was ended. He was sat on a cold plastic chair in the kitchen of the hall listening to the silence of the dead world and trying hard to think of anything other than what had happened today and what might happen to him tomorrow. A sudden crash from outside caused him to jump to his feet and run to the front door. He waited for a second or two, almost too afraid to see what it was that had made the noise. Sensing that help and explanations might be at hand he took a deep breath, opened the door and ran out into the car park. To his left he could see movement. Someone was walking along the main road. Desperate not to let them go, he sprinted up the bank to the railings and yelled out. The shadowy figure stopped, turned around and ran back to where Jeffries stood. Jeffries reached out and grabbed hold of Jack Baynham - a thirty-six year old bricklayer. Neither man said a word.

	The arrival of the second survivor bought a sudden hope and energy to Jeffries. Between them they could find no answers as to what had happened earlier, but for the first time they did at least begin to consider what they should do next. If there were two survivors it followed that there could be a hundred and two, or even a thousand and two. They had to let other people know where they were.
	Using rubbish from three dustbins at the side of the hall and the remains of a smashed up wooden bench they built a bonfire in the centre of the car park, well away from the hall, the hire car and any overhanging trees. Petrol from the mangled wreck of a sports car was used as fuel. Baynham set the fire burning by flicking a smouldering cigarette butt through the cold night air. Within seconds the car park was filled with welcome light and warmth. Jeffries found a compact disc in another car and put it into the player in his. He turned the key in the ignition and started the disc. Soon the air was filled with classical music. Sweeping, soaring strings shattered the ominous silence that had been so prevalent all day.
	The fire had been burning and the music playing for just under an hour when the third and fourth survivors arrived at the hall. By four o’clock the following morning the population of the Whitchurch Community Hall stood at more than twenty dazed and confused individuals.

	Emma Mitchell had spent almost the entire day curled up in the corner of her bed. She’d first heard the music shortly after ten o’clock but for a while had convinced herself that she was hearing things. It was only when she finally plucked up the courage to get out of bed and opened her bedroom window that it became clear that someone really was playing music. Desperate to see and to speak to someone else, she threw a few belongings into a rucksack and locked and left her home. She ran along the silent streets using the feeble illumination from a dying torch to guide her safely through the bloody mass of fallen bodies, terrified that the music might stop and leave her stranded before she could reach its source.
	Thirty-five minutes later she arrived at the Community Hall.

	Carl Henshawe was the twenty-fourth survivor to arrive.
	Having left the bodies of his family behind, he had spent most of the day hiding in the back of a builder’s van. After a few hours he had decided to try and find help. He’d driven the van around aimlessly until it had run out of fuel and spluttered and died. Rather than try and refuel the van he decided to simply take another vehicle. It was while he was changing cars that he heard the music.
	Having quickly disposed of its dead driver, Carl arrived at the hall at day break in a luxury company car.

	Michael Collins had just about given up. Too afraid to go back home or indeed to go anywhere that he recognised, he was sat in the freezing cold in the middle of a park. He had decided that it was easier to be alone and deny what had happened than face returning to familiar surroundings and risk seeing the bodies of people he’d known. He lay on his back on the wet grass and listened to the gentle babbling of a nearby brook. He was cold, wet, uncomfortable and terrified, but the noise of the running water disguised the deathly silence of the rest of the world and made it fractionally easier to forget for a while.
	The wind blew across the field where he lay, rustling through the grass and bushes and causing the tops of trees to thrash about almost constantly. Soaked through and shivering, Michael eventually clambered to his feet and stretched. Without any real plan or direction, he slowly walked further away from the stream and towards the edge of the park. As the sound of running water faded into the distance, so the unexpected strains of the music from the car park drifted towards him. Marginally interested, but too cold, numb and afraid to really care, he began to follow the sound.
	Michael was the final survivor to reach the hall.





5

Michael Collins was the last to arrive at the hall but the first to get his head together. More than his head, perhaps, it was his stomach that forced him into action. Just before midday, after a long, slow and painful morning, he decided it was time to eat. In the main storeroom he found tables, chairs and a collection of camping equipment labelled up as belonging to the 4th Whitchurch Scout Group. In a large metal chest he found two gas burners and, next to the chest itself, four half-full gas bottles. In minutes he’d set the burners up on a table and was keeping himself busy by heating up a catering-size can of vegetable soup and a similar sized can of baked beans which he’d found. Obviously left over from camps held in the summer just gone, the food was an unexpected and welcome discovery. More than that, preparing the food was a distraction. Something to take his mind off what had happened outside the flimsy walls of the Whitchurch Community Hall.
	The rest of the survivors sat in silence in the main hall. Some lay flat on the cold brown linoleum floor while others sat on chairs with their heads held in their hands. No-one spoke. Other than Michael no-one moved. No-one even dared to make eye contact with anyone else. Twenty-six people who may as well have been in twenty-six different rooms. Twenty-six people who couldn’t believe what had happened to the world around them and who couldn’t bear to think about what might happen next. In the last day each one of them had experienced more pain, confusion and loss than they would normally have expected to suffer in their entire lifetime. What made these emotions even more unbearable today, however, was the complete lack of explanation. The lack of reason. Coupled with that was the fact that everything had happened so suddenly and without warning. And now that it had happened, there was no-one they could look to for answers. Each cold, lonely and frightened person knew as little as the cold, lonely and frightened person next to them.
	Michael sensed that he was being watched. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that a girl sitting nearby was staring at him. She was rocking on a blue plastic chair and watching him intently. It made him feel uncomfortable. Much as he wanted someone to break the silence and talk to him, deep down he didn’t really want to say anything. He had a million questions to ask, but he didn’t know where to start and it seemed that the most sensible option was to stay silent.
	The girl got up out of her chair and tentatively walked towards him. She stood there for a moment, about a metre and a half away, before taking a final step closer and clearing her throat.
	‘I’m Emma,’ she said quietly, ‘Emma Mitchell.’
	He looked up, managed half a smile, and then looked down again.
	‘Is there anything I can do?’ she asked. ‘Do you want any help?’
	Michael shook his head and stared into the soup he was stirring. He watched the chunks of vegetable spinning around and wished that she’d go away. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to start a conversation because a conversation would inevitably lead to talking about what had happened to the rest of the world outside and at that moment in time that was the last thing he wanted to think about. Problem was, it was all that he could think about.
	‘Shall I try and find some mugs?’ Emma mumbled. She was damn sure that he was going to talk. He was the only person in the room who had done anything all morning and her logic and reason dictated that he was the person it would be most worth starting a conversation with. Emma found the silence and the lack of communication stifling, so much so that a short while ago she’d almost got up and left the hall.
	Sensing that she wasn’t going to go away, Michael looked up again.
	‘I found some mugs in the stores,’ he muttered. ‘Thanks anyway.’
	‘No problem,’ she replied.
	After another few seconds of silence, Michael spoke again.
	‘I’m Michael,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry but...’
	He stopped speaking because he didn’t really know what it was he trying to say. Emma understood, nodded dejectedly and was about to turn and walk away. The thought of the stunted conversation ending before it had really started was enough to force Michael to make an effort. He began trying to think of things to say that would keep her at the table with him. It was involuntary at first, but within seconds he’d realised that he really didn’t want her to go.
	‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘It’s just with everything that’s... I mean I don’t know why I...’
	‘I hate soup,’ Emma grunted, deliberately interrupting and steering the conversation into safer, neutral waters. ‘Especially vegetable. Christ, I can’t stand bloody vegetable soup.’
	‘Nor me,’ Michael admitted. ‘Hope someone likes it though. There’s four tins of it in there.’
	As quickly as it had began the brief dialogue ended. There just wasn’t anything to say. Small talk seemed unnecessary and inappropriate. Neither of them wanted to talk about what had happened but both knew that they couldn’t avoid it. Emma took a deep breath and tried again.
	‘Were you far from here when it...’
	Michael shook his head.
	‘A couple of miles. I spent most of yesterday wandering around. I’ve been all over town but my house is only twenty minutes walk away.’ He stirred the soup again and then felt obliged to ask her the same question back.
	‘My place is just the other side of the park.’ She replied. ‘I spent yesterday in bed.’
	‘In bed?’
	She nodded and leant against the nearest wall.
	‘Didn’t seem to be much else to do. I just put my head under the covers and pretended that nothing had happened. Until I heard the music, that was.’
	‘Bloody masterstroke playing that music.’
	Michael ladled a generous serving of beans into a dish and handed it to Emma. She picked up a plastic spoon from the table and poked at the hot food for a couple of seconds before tentatively tasting a mouthful. She didn’t want to eat but she was starving. She hadn’t even thought about food since her aborted shopping trip yesterday morning.
	A couple of the other survivors were looking their way. Michael didn’t know whether it was the food that was attracting their attention or the fact that he and Emma were talking. Before she’d come across he’d said less than twenty words all morning. It seemed that the two of them communicating had acted like a release valve of sorts. As he watched more and more of the shell-like survivors began to show signs of life.

	Half an hour later and the food had been eaten. There were now two or three conversations taking place around the hall. Small groups of survivors huddled together while others remained alone. Some people talked (and the relief on their faces was obvious) while others cried. The sound of sobbing could clearly be heard over the muted discussions.
	Emma and Michael had stayed together. They had talked sporadically and had learnt a little about each other. Michael had learnt that Emma was a medical student and Emma learnt that Michael worked with computers. Michael, she discovered, lived alone. His parents had recently moved to Edinburgh with his two younger brothers. She had told him that she’d chosen to study in Northwich and that her family lived in a small village on the east coast. Neither of them could bring themselves to talk much about their families in any detail as neither knew if the people they loved were still alive.
	‘What did this?’ Michael asked. He’d tried to ask the question a couple of times before but hadn’t quite managed to force the words out. He knew that Emma couldn’t answer, but it helped just to have asked.
	She shrugged her shoulders.
	‘Don't know, some kind of virus perhaps?’
	‘But how could it have killed so many people? And so quickly?’
	‘Don’t know,’ she said again.
	‘Christ, I watched thirty kids die in just a couple of minutes, how on earth could anything...’
	She was staring at him. He stopped talking.
	‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.
	‘It’s okay,’ she sighed.
	Another awkward, pregnant pause followed.
	‘You warm enough?’ Michael eventually asked.
	Emma nodded.
	‘I’m okay.’
	‘I’m freezing. I tell you there are holes in the walls of this place. I stood in one corner this morning and I could push the bloody walls apart! It wouldn’t take much to bring this place down.’
	‘That’s reassuring, thanks.’
	Michael shut up quickly, regretting his clumsy words. The last thing anyone wanted to hear was how vulnerable they were in the hall. Shabby, ramshackle and draughty it might be, but today it was all they had. There were countless stronger and safer buildings outside, but no-one wanted to take a single step outside the front door for fear of what they might find there.
	Michael watched as Stuart Jeffries and another man (whose name he thought was Carl) sat in deep conversation in the far corner of the room with a third figure who was hidden from view by Jeffries’ back. Jeffries had been the first one to arrive at the hall, and he’d made a point of telling everyone who’d arrived subsequently that he’d been the one who had found their shelter as if they should be grateful. In a world where position and stature now counted for nothing, he seemed to be clinging on desperately to his self-perceived ‘status’. Perhaps it made him feel important. Perhaps it made him feel like he had a reason to survive.
	The conversation in the corner continued and Michael began to watch intently. He could sense that frustrations were beginning to boil to the surface by the increasing volume of the voices. Less than five minutes earlier they had been mumbling quietly and privately. Now every survivor could hear every word of what was being said.
	‘No way, I’m not going outside,’ Jeffries snapped, his voice strained and tired. ‘What’s the point? What’s outside?’
	The man hidden in the shadows replied.
	‘So what else should we do then? How long can we stay here? It’s cold and uncomfortable in here. We’ve got no food and no supplies and we’ve got to go out if we’re going to survive. Besides, we need to know what’s happening out there. For all we know we could be shut away in here with help just around the corner...’
	‘We’re not going to get any help,’ Jeffries argued.
	‘How do you know?’ Carl asked. His voice was calm but there was obvious irritation and frustration in his tone. ‘How the hell do you know there’s no-one to help us? We won’t know until we get out there.’
	‘I’m not going out.’
	‘Yes, we’ve already established that,’ the hidden man sighed. ‘You’re going to stay in here until you fucking starve to death...’
	‘Don’t get smart,’ Jeffries spat. ‘Don’t get fucking smart with me.’
	Michael sensed that the friction in the corner might be about to turn into violence. He didn’t know whether to get involved or just stay out of the way.
	‘I know what you’re saying, Stuart,’ Carl said cautiously, ‘but we need to do something. We can’t just sit here and wait indefinitely.’
	Jeffries looked as if he was trying desperately to think of something to say. Maybe he was having trouble trying to reason the argument. How could you apply any logic and order to such a bleak and inexplicable situation? Unable to find the words to express how he was feeling he began to cry, and the fact that he was unable to contain his emotions seemed to make him even angrier. He wiped away his tears with the back of his hand, hoping that the others hadn’t noticed, but knowing full well that everyone had.
	‘I just don’t want to go out there,’ he cried, finally being honest and forcing his words out between gasps and sobs. ‘I just don’t want to see it all again. I want to stay here.’
	With that he got up and left the room, shoving his chair back across the floor. It clattered against the radiator and the sudden noise caused everyone to look up. Seconds later the ominous silence was shattered again as the toilet door slammed shut. Carl looked at the man in the corner for a second before shrugging his shoulders and getting up and walking away in the opposite direction.
	‘The whole bloody world is falling apart,’ Michael said under his breath as he watched.
	‘What do you mean falling apart?’ Emma asked quietly. ‘It’s already happened, mate. There’s nothing left. This is it.’
	He looked up and around at his cold grey surroundings and glanced at each one of the empty shells of people scattered about the place. She was right. She was painfully right.








6

Dead inside.
	Henshawe sat alone in a dark corner of a storeroom with his head in his hands, weeping for the wife and daughter he’d lost.
	Where was the sense in going on? Why bother? Those two had been the very reason he existed. He’d gone to work to earn money to keep them and provide for them. He’d come home every night to be with them. He’d been devoted to them in a way he thought he’d never be with anyone before he and Sarah had got together. And now, without any reason, warning or explanation, they were gone. Taken from him in the blinking of an eye. And he hadn’t even been able to help them or hold them. He hadn’t been there when they’d died. When they’d needed him most he had been miles away.
	Outside in the main hall he could hear the moans and cries of other people who had lost everything. He could smell and taste the anger, frustration and complete bewilderment of the other survivors which hung like the stench of rotting flesh in the cold, grey air. He could hear fighting, arguing and screaming. He could hear raw pain tearing each one of the twenty or so disparate, desperate people apart.
	When the noise became too much to bear he dragged himself up onto his feet with the intention of leaving. He was about to get up and walk and leave the hall and the rest of the survivors behind when his mind was quickly filled with images of millions of lifeless bodies lying in the streets around him and he knew that he couldn’t go. The light outside was beginning to fade. The day was almost over. The thought of being out in the open was horrific enough, but to be out there in the dark - lost, alone and wandering aimlessly - was too much to even consider.
	He leant against the storeroom door and peered into the main hall. The brilliant orange sunlight of dusk poured into the building from above his head, illuminating everything with vibrant, almost fluorescent colour. Curious as to the source of the light, he took a few steps out of the room and turned back around. In the sloping ceiling just above the door was a narrow skylight. The storeroom he had hidden in had been added as an extension to the original building and when he had arrived he had noticed that it had a flat roof. Sensing that his escape was at hand, Henshawe climbed onto a wooden table, stretched up and forced the skylight open. He dragged himself through and scrambled out onto the asphalt roof.
	The coldest wind he had ever felt buffeted and blew him as he stood exposed on the ten foot square area of roof. From the furthest edge he could see out over the main road into Northwich and into the dead city beyond. By moving only his eyes he followed the route of the road as it splintered away to the left and headed off in the general direction of Hadley, the small suburb where he had lived. The small suburb where the bodies of his partner and child lay together in bed. In his mind he could still picture them both, frozen still and lifeless, their perfect bodies stained with dark, drying blood, and suddenly the icy wind seemed to blow even colder. For a while he considered driving back to them. The very least they deserved was a proper burial and some dignity. The pain he felt inside was unbearable and he dropped to his knees and held his head in his hands.
	From his vantage point he could see countless bodies, and it struck him as strange and unnerving to think that he was already used to seeing the corpses. Before all this had happened he’d only ever seen one dead body, and at that time it had seemed an unusual and alien thing. He had been at his mother’s side when she’d died. As the life had drained away from her he had watched her change. He’d seen the colour blanch from her face and her expression freeze and had watched the last breath of air be exhaled from her fading body. He’d seen her old and frail frame become heavy and useless. She’d had little strength towards the end, but even then it had taken just a single nurse to help her get around. When she died it took two male porters to lift her from her bed and take her away.
	Parts of the city in the distance were burning. Huge thick palls of dirty black smoke stretched up into the orange evening sky from unchecked fires. As he watched the smoke climb relentlessly his wandering mind came up with countless explanations as to how the fires could have started - a fractured gas main perhaps? Or a crashed petrol tanker? A body lying too close to a gas fire? He knew that it was pointless even trying to think about reasons why, but he had nothing else to do. And at least thinking like that helped him to forget about Gemma and Sarah for a while.
	He was about to go back inside when one of the bodies in the road caught his eye. He didn’t know why, because the body was unremarkable in the midst of the confusion and carnage. The corpse was that of a teenage boy who had fallen and smashed his head against a kerb stone. His neck was twisted awkwardly so that whilst he was lying on his side, his glazed eyes were looking up into the sky. It was as if he was searching for explanations. Carl felt almost as if he was looking to him to tell him what had happened and why it had happened to him. The poor kid looked so frightened and alone. Carl couldn’t stand to look into his pained face for more than a couple of seconds.
	He went back inside, and the cold and uncomfortable community hall suddenly seemed the safest and warmest place in the world.








7

Carl eventually returned to the other survivors and found them sitting in a rough circular group in one corner of the dark main hall. Some sat on chairs and benches whilst others were crouched down on the hard linoleum floor. The group was gathered around a single dull gas lamp and a quick count of the heads he could see revealed that he seemed to be the only absentee. A few of the poor bewildered souls glanced up at him as he approached.
	Feeling suddenly self-conscious (but knowing that he had no reason to care) he sat down at the nearest edge of the group. He sat down between two women. He’d been trapped in the same building as them for the best part of a day and yet he didn’t even know their names. He knew very little about anyone and they knew very little about him. As much as he needed their closeness and contact, he found the distance between the individual survivors still strangely welcome.
	A man called Ralph was trying to address the group. From his manner and the precise, thoughtful way that he spoke Carl assumed he’d been a barrister or, at the very least, a solicitor until the world had been turned upside down yesterday morning.
	‘What we must do,’ Ralph said, clearly, carefully and slowly and with almost ponderous consideration, ‘is get ourselves into some sort of order here before we even think about exploring outside.’
	‘Why?’ someone asked from the other side of the group. ‘What do we need to get in order?’
	‘We need to know who and what we’ve got here. We need food and water, we need bedding and clothes and we should be able to find most of that in here. We also need to know what we haven’t got and we should start thinking about where to get it.’
	‘Why?’ the voice interrupted again. ‘We know we’ll find everything we need outside. We shouldn’t waste our time in here, we should just get out and get on with it.’
	Ralph’s confidence was clearly a professional facade and, at the first sign of any resistance, he squirmed. He pushed his heavy-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of his nose with the tip of his finger and took a deep breath.
	‘That’s not a good idea. Look, I think we’ve got to make our personal safety and security our prime concern and then...’
	‘I agree,’ the voice interrupted again. ‘But why stop here? There are a thousand and one better places to go, why stay here? What makes you any safer here than if you were lying on the dotted white line in the middle of the Stanhope Road?’
	Carl shuffled around so that he could see through the mass of heads and bodies and identify the speaker. It was Michael, the bloke who had cooked the soup earlier.
	‘We don’t know what’s outside...’ Ralph began.
	‘But we’ve got to go out there eventually, you accept that?’
	He stammered and fiddled with his glasses again.
	‘Yes, but...’
	‘Look, Ralph, I’m not trying to make this any more difficult than it already is. We’ve got to leave here to get the supplies we need. All I’m saying is why bother delaying it and why bother coming back? Why not go somewhere else?’
	Ralph couldn’t answer. It was obvious to Carl and, probably, to pretty much everyone else, that the reason Ralph didn’t want to go outside was the same reason Stuart Jeffries had admitted to wanting to stay trapped in the hall earlier. They were both scared.
	‘We could try and find somewhere else,’ he began, hesitantly, ‘but we’ve got a shelter here which is secure and...’
	‘And cold and dirty and uncomfortable,’ Carl said quickly.
	‘Okay, it’s not ideal but...’
	‘But what?’ pressed Michael. ‘It seems to me that we can pretty much have our pick of everywhere and everything at the moment.’
	The room fell silent for a few seconds. Ralph suddenly sat up straight and pushed his glasses back up his nose again. He seemed to have found a reason to justify staying put.
	‘But what about the music and the fire?’ he said, much more animated. ‘Stuart and Jack managed to bring us all here by lighting the fire and playing music. If we did it again we might find more survivors. There might already be people on their way to us.’
	‘I don’t think so,’ said Michael. ‘No-one’s arrived here since me. If anyone else had heard the music they’d have been here by now. I agree with what you’re saying, but again, why here? Why not find somewhere better to stop, get ourselves organised there and light a bloody big bonfire right in the middle of the road outside?’
	Carl agreed.
	‘He’s right. We should get a beacon or something sorted, but let’s get ourselves safe and secure first.’
	‘A new beacon somewhere else is going to be seen by more people, isn’t it?’ asked Sandra Goodwin, a fifty year-old housewife. ‘And isn’t that what we want?’
	‘Bottom line here,’ Michael said, changing his tone and raising his voice slightly so that everyone suddenly turned and gave him their full attention, ‘is that we’ve got to look after ourselves first of all and then start to think about anyone else who might possibly still be alive.’
	‘But shouldn’t we start looking for other survivors now?’ someone else asked.
	‘I don't think we should,’ he replied, ‘I agree that we should get a beacon or something going, but there’s no point in wasting time actively looking for other people yet. If there are others then they’ll have more chance of finding us than we’ll have finding them.’
	‘Why do you say that?’ Sandra asked.
	‘Stands to reason,’ he grunted. ‘Does anyone know how many people used to live in this city?’
	A couple of seconds silence followed before someone answered.
	‘About a quarter of a million people. Two hundred thousand or something like that.’
	‘And there are twenty-six of us in here.’
	‘So?’ pressed an uncomfortable looking Ralph, trying desperately to find a way back into the conversation.
	‘So what does that say to you?’
	Ralph shrugged his shoulders.
	‘It says to me,’ Michael continued, ‘that looking for anyone else would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
	Carl nodded in agreement and picked up where Michael had left off.
	‘What’s outside?’ he asked quietly.
	No response.
	He looked from left to right at the faces gathered around him. He glanced across the room and made eye contact with Michael.
	‘I’ll tell you,’ he said quietly, ‘there’s nothing. The only people I’ve seen moving since all of this began are sitting in this hall. But we don’t know if it’s over. We don’t know if we’re going to wake up tomorrow. We don’t know if what happened to the rest of them will happen to us.’
	Ralph interrupted.
	‘Come on,’ he protested, ‘stop talking like that. You’re not doing anyone any good talking like that...’
	‘I’m trying to make a point...’
	Michael spoke again.
	‘Since this all started have any of you heard a plane or helicopter pass overhead?’
	Again, no response.
	‘The airport’s five miles south of here, if there were any planes flying we’d have heard them. There’s a train station that links the city to the airport and the track runs along the other side of the Stanhope Road. Anyone heard a train?’
	Silence.
	‘So how many people do you think this has affected?’ Carl asked cautiously.
	‘If this was the only region affected,’ Michael answered, ‘logic says that help would have arrived by now.’
	‘What are you saying?’ a man called Tim asked quietly.
	Michael shrugged his shoulders.
	‘I guess I’m saying that this is a national disaster at the very least. The lack of air traffic makes me think that it could be worse than that.’
	An awkward murmur of stark realisation rippled across the group.
	‘Michael’s right,’ Emma said. ‘This thing spread so quickly that there’s no way of knowing what kind of area’s been affected. It was so fast that I doubt whether anything could have been done to prevent it spreading before it was too late.’
	‘But this area might be too infected to travel to,’ Tim said, his voice strained and frightened. ‘They might have sealed Northwich off.’
	‘They might have,’ Michael agreed. ‘But I don’t think that’s very likely, do you?’
	Tim said nothing.
	‘So what do we do?’ an unsure female voice asked from the middle of the group.
	‘I think we should get away from here,’ Michael said. ‘Look, if I’m completely honest I’m just thinking about myself here and the rest of you should make your own minds up. It’s just that I’m not prepared to sit here and wait for help when I’m pretty sure that it’s never going to arrive. I don’t want to sit trapped in here surrounded by thousands of bloody bodies. I want out of the city. I want to get away from here, find somewhere safe, make myself comfortable and then just sit and wait and see what happens next.’








8

Michael spent the first five and a half hours of the following morning trying to find somewhere comfortable to sleep. When he finally managed to lose consciousness he only slept for forty-five minutes before waking up feeling worse than ever. He’d been lying on the cold hard floor and every bone in his tired body ached. He wished he hadn’t bothered.
	The main hall was freezing cold. He was fully clothed and had a thick winter jacket wrapped around him but it was still bitter. He hated everything at the moment, but he quickly decided that he hated this time of day most of all. It was dark and in the early morning shadows he thought he could see a thousand shuffling shapes where there were none. Much as he tried he couldn’t think about anything other than what had happened to the world outside because absolutely everything had been affected. He couldn’t bear to think about his family because he didn’t know if they were still alive. He couldn’t think about his work and career because they didn’t exist anymore. He couldn’t think about going out with his friends at the weekend because those friends were most probably dead too, lying face down on a street corner somewhere. He couldn’t think about his favourite television programme because there were no television channels broadcasting and no electricity. He couldn’t even hum the tune to his favourite songs because it made him remember. It hurt too much to think about memories and emotions that, although only gone for a few days, now seemed to be lost forever. In desperation he simply stared into the darkness and tried hard to concentrate on listening to the silence. He thought that by deliberately filling his head with nothing the pain would go away. It didn’t work. It didn’t matter which direction he stared in, all that he could see were the faces of other equally desperate survivors staring back at him through the darkness. He was not alone with his painful insomnia.
	The first few orange rays of the morning sun were beginning to edge cautiously into the room. The light trickled in slowly through a series of small rectangular windows which were positioned at equal distances along the longest wall of the main hall. Each one of the windows was protected on the outside by a layer of heavy-duty wire mesh and each window had also been covered in random layers of spray paint by countless vandals through the years. Michael found it strange and unnerving to think that every single one of those vandals was almost certainly dead now.
	He didn’t want to move, but he knew that he had to. He was desperate to use the toilet but had to summon up the courage to actually get up and go there. It was too cold and he didn’t want to wake any of the lucky few survivors who were actually managing to sleep. Problem was the hall was so quiet that no matter how careful he was in his heavy boots every single footstep he took would probably be heard by everyone. And when he got there it wouldn’t be much better. The toilets didn’t flush anymore because the water supply had dried up. The group had started to use a small chemical toilet which someone had found in the Scouts' supplies. Even though it had been in use for less than a day it already stank. A noxious combination of strong chemical detergent and stagnating human waste.
	He couldn’t put it off any longer, he had to go. He tried unsuccessfully to make the short journey seem a little easier by convincing himself that the sooner he was up the sooner it would be done and he would be back. Strange that in the face of the enormity of the disaster outside, even the easiest everyday task suddenly seemed an impossible mountain to climb.
	Grabbing hold of a nearby wooden bench with his outstretched right hand, he hauled himself up onto his unsteady feet. For a few seconds he did nothing except stand still and try to get his balance. He shivered in the cold and then took a few tentative stumbling steps through the half-light towards the toilets. He would be twenty-nine in three weeks time. This morning he felt at least eighty-nine.
	Outside the toilet he paused and took a deep breath before opening the door. He glanced to his right and, through a small square window to the side of the main entrance door, he was sure that he could see something outside.
	For a moment he froze.
	He could definitely see movement.
	Ignoring the nagging pain in his bladder, Michael pressed his face hard against the dirty glass and peered out through the layers of spray paint and mesh. He squinted into the light.
	There it was again.
	Instantly forgetting about the temperature, his aching bones and his full bladder, he unlocked the door and wrenched it open. He burst out into the cold morning and sprinted the length of the car park, stopping at the edge of the road. There, on the other side of the street, he saw a man walking slowly away from the community centre.
	‘What’s the matter?’ a voice asked suddenly, startling Michael. It was Stuart Jeffries. He and another three survivors had heard Michael open the door and, naturally concerned, had followed him outside.
	‘Over there,’ Michael replied, pointing towards the figure in the near distance and taking a few slow steps forward. ‘Hey,’ he shouted, hoping to attract his attention before he disappeared from view. ‘Hey you!’
	No response.
	Michael glanced at the other four survivors before turning back and running after the unknown man. Within a few seconds he had caught up as the solitary figure was moving at a very slow and deliberate pace.
	‘Hey, mate,’ he shouted cheerfully, ‘didn’t you hear me?’
	Still no response.
	The man continued walking away.
	‘Hey,’ Michael said again, this time a little louder, ‘are you all right? I saw you walking past and...’
	As he spoke he reached out and grabbed hold of the man’s arm. As soon as he applied any force the figure stopped walking instantly. Other than that it didn’t move. It simply stopped and stood still, seeming to not even be aware that Michael was there. Perhaps the lack of any response was as a result of shock. Maybe what had happened to the rest of the world had been too much for this poor soul to take.
	‘Leave him,’ shouted one of the other survivors. ‘Get back inside.’
	Michael wasn’t listening. Instead he slowly turned the man around until he was looking directly into his face.
	‘Fuck...’ was all he could say as he stared deep into the cold, glazed eyes of a corpse. It defied all logic, but there was absolutely no doubt in his suddenly terrified mind that the man standing in front of him was dead. His skin was taut and yellowed and, like all the others, he had traces of dark, dried blood around his mouth, chin and throat.
	Repulsed and in shock, Michael let go of the man’s arm and stumbled backwards. He tripped and fell and then watched from the gutter as the figure staggered off again, still moving desperately slowly as if it had lead in its shoes.
	‘Michael,’ Jeffries yelled from the entrance to the car park. ‘Get back inside now, we’re closing the door.’
	Michael dragged himself back up to his feet and sprinted towards the others. As he approached he could see more figures moving in the distance. It was obvious by their slow, forced movements that, like the first man he’d seen, these people weren’t survivors either.
	By the time he reached the car park the others had already disappeared back into the community hall. He was vaguely aware of them yelling at him to come inside but in his disbelief, confusion and bewilderment their fear and panic failed to register. He stood staring out towards the main road, preoccupied by the impossible sight he now saw in front of him. 
	About a third of the bodies were moving. Roughly one in three of the corpses that had littered the streets around the community centre had become mobile again. Had they not been dead to start with? Had they just been in a coma or something similar? A thousand unanswerable questions began flooding into his mind.
	‘For Christ’s sake, get inside!’ yelled another one of the survivors from the hall, their voice hoarse with fear.
	As if to prove a point, the corpse on the ground nearest to Michael began to move. Beginning at the outermost tip of the fingers on one outstretched hand, the body started to stretch and to tremble. As he stared in silent incredulity, the fingers began to claw at the ground and then, seconds later, the entire hand was moving. The movement spread steadily along one arm and then, with an almighty shudder, the body lifted itself up from the ground. It tripped and stumbled as it raised itself up onto its unsteady feet. Once upright it simply staggered away, passing within a metre of where Michael stood. The bloody thing didn’t even seem to realise that he was there.
	Terrified, he turned and ran back inside.
	It took less than thirty seconds for the news to spread to all the survivors. Carl Henshawe, refusing to believe what he’d heard, clambered out onto area of flat roof that he’d stood on last night.
	It was true. As incredible as it seemed, some of the bodies were moving.
	Carl stood and surveyed the same desperate scene he’d witnessed less than twelve hours earlier and saw that many of the cold and twisted corpses he’d seen had disappeared. He looked down at the place on the cold ground where the boy with the broken neck had died.
	There was nothing. He had gone.








9

Almost an hour passed before anyone dared to move.
	The survivors, already shell-shocked and beaten by all that they had been through, stood together in terror and disbelief and tried to come to terms with the morning’s events. Surprisingly it was Ralph, the solicitor who had seemed so authoritative and keen to take control last night, who appeared to be having the most trouble accepting what he had seen and heard today. He stood in the centre of the room alongside Paul Garner (an overweight and middle-aged estate agent), struggling to persuade Emma, Carl, Michael and Kate James (a thirty-nine year old primary school teacher) not to open the door and go back outside.
	‘But we have to go out, Ralph,’ Emma said, calmly and quietly. ‘We’ve got to try and find out what’s going on.’
	‘I’m not interested,’ the flustered and frightened man snapped. ‘I don’t care what’s happening. There’s no way I’m going to go out there and risk...’
	‘Risk what?’ Michael interrupted. ‘No-one’s asking you to go outside, are they?’
	‘Opening that door is enough of a bloody risk in itself,’ Garner muttered anxiously. He chewed on the fingers of his left hand as he spoke. ‘Keep it shut and keep them out.’
	‘We can’t take any chances by exposing ourselves to those things...’ Ralph protested.
	‘Things?’ Emma repeated, her tone suddenly venomous and agitated. ‘Those things are people you selfish shit. Bloody hell, your friends and family could be out there...’
	‘Those bodies have been lying dead on the ground for days!’ he yelled, his face suddenly just inches from hers.
	‘How do you know they were dead?’ Michael asked, perfectly seriously and calmly. ‘Did you check them all? Did you check any of them for a pulse before you shut yourself away in here?’
	‘You know as well as I do that...’
	‘Did you?’ he asked again. Ralph shook his head. ‘And have you ever seen a dead body walk before?’
	This time Ralph didn’t answer. He turned away and leant against the nearest wall.
	‘Jesus Christ,’ Garner cursed, ‘of course we’ve never seen fucking dead bodies walking, but...’
	‘But what?’
	‘But I’ve never seen anyone drop to the ground and not get up for two days either. Face it Michael, they were all dead.’
	‘Look, Paul,’ he sighed, ‘let’s be straight with each other for a second. None of us have got the first bloody clue what’s happening here. The only thing I know for sure is that I’m interested in looking after myself and the rest of the people in this hall and...’
	‘If you’re only interested in the people in here why do you want to go out there and...’
	‘I’m interested in looking after myself,’ Michael repeated, still somehow remaining calm, ‘but I need to go out there and see if I can find out what’s happening and to see if any of those bodies pose a threat to us. I’m not interested in helping them, I just want to know what’s going on.’
	‘And how are you going to find out what’s happening?’ Ralph demanded, turning around to face the rest of the group again. ‘Who’s going to tell you?’
	For a moment Michael struggled to answer.
	‘Emma’s studied medicine,’ he replied, thinking quickly and looking across at her. ‘You’ll be able to tell us what’s wrong with them, won’t you?’
	Emma shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot and shrugged her shoulders.
	‘I’ll try,’ she mumbled. ‘I can try and tell you whether they’re dead or not but after that I...’
	‘But can’t you see what you’re doing?’ Ralph protested, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes. ‘You’re putting us all at risk. If you’d just wait for a while and...’
	‘Wait for what?’ Carl interrupted. ‘Seems to me that we’re at risk whatever we do. We’re sat here in a hall that we could knock down with our bare hands if we tried hard enough, and we’re surrounded by thousands of dead bodies, some of which have decided to get up and start walking around. Staying here seems pretty risky to me.’
	Sensing that the conversation was about to stray into familiar waters with yet another pointless debate about whether to go outside or not, Michael made his feelings and intentions clear.
	‘I’m going outside,’ he said. His voice was quiet and yet carried with it an undeniable force. ‘Stay in here and hide if you want, but I’m going out and I’m going out now.’
	‘For Christ’s sake,’ Ralph pleaded, ‘think about it before you do anything that might...’
	Michael didn’t stop to hear the end of his sentence. Instead he simply turned his back on the others and walked up to the main door out of the community centre. He paused for a second and glanced back over his shoulder towards Carl, Emma and Kate. The rest of the survivors were silent.
	‘Ready?’ he asked.
	After a second’s thought Carl nodded and made his way to stand next to Michael, closely followed by Emma and Kate. Michael took a deep breath, pushed the door open and stepped out into the bright September sunlight.
	It was surprisingly warm. Carl (the only one who had been outside for any length of time recently) noticed that last night’s bitter wind had dropped. He shielded his eyes from the light and watched as Michael cautiously retraced the steps that he had taken earlier, walking away from the dilapidated wooden building and towards the road. When the first moving body staggered into view he instinctively stopped and turned back to face the others.
	‘What’s the matter?’ asked Emma, immediately concerned.
	‘Nothing,’ he mumbled, feeling nervous and unsure.
	The three other survivors walked towards him and stood close. Carl noticed that a crowd had gathered to watch them in the shadows of the doorway of the community hall.
	‘So what are we going to do now?’ Kate James wondered. She was a quiet, short and round woman with a usually flushed red face which had suddenly lost much of its colour.
	Michael looked around for inspiration.
	‘Don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Anyone got any ideas?’
	Three faces returned three blank expressions. A few seconds later Emma cleared her throat and spoke.
	‘We need to have a good look at one of them,’ she whispered.
	‘What do you mean?’ Kate asked, her voice also quiet. ‘What are we supposed to be looking at?’
	‘Let’s try and see how responsive they are. We should see if they can tell us anything.’
	While she had been speaking Michael had taken a few steps further forward.
	‘What about her?’ he asked, pointing at one of the nearest moving bodies. ‘What about that one there?’
	The group stood together in silence and watched the painful progress of the pitiful creature. The woman’s movements were tired and stilted. Her arms hung listlessly at her sides. She seemed almost to be dragging her feet behind her.
	‘What are we going to do with her?’ Kate wondered nervously.
	‘Do you want to get closer and just have a look?’ Carl asked.
	Michael shook his head.
	‘No,’ he said, ‘let’s get her inside.’
	‘What, back in there?’ he gasped, gesturing at the building behind them.
	‘Yes, in there,’ Michael replied. His voice still remained calm and unflustered and it was beginning to annoy Carl who silently hoped that the others shared his mounting fear and unease because he certainly wasn’t as together and as sure as Michael appeared. ‘Is that a problem?’
	‘Not to me,’ said Emma. ‘Try convincing the others though.’
	He obviously wasn’t concerned.
	‘I think we should get her indoors and try and make her comfortable. We’ll get more out of her if we can get her to relax.’
	‘Are you sure about this?’ muttered Kate. Her nerves were obviously beginning to fray.
	Michael thought for a moment before nodding his head.
	‘I’m sure,’ he said, sounding confident. ‘What about the rest of you?’
	Silence.
	After a few awkward seconds had passed Carl spoke.
	‘Bloody hell, let’s just do it. We’re never going to achieve anything just standing out here like this, are we?’
	That was all that Michael needed to hear. With that he strode up behind the woman, reached out and rested his hands on her shoulders. She stopped moving instantly.
	Emma jogged the last few steps and moved round to stand in front of the body. She looked up into her glazed eyes and saw that they seemed unfocussed and vacant. Her skin was pale and taut, as if it had been stretched tight across her skull. Although she was sure that the body couldn’t see her (she didn’t even seem to know she was there) Emma respectfully tried to hide her mounting revulsion. There was a deep gash on the woman’s right temple. Dark blood had been flowing freely from the wound for some time and had drenched her once smart white blouse and grey business suit.
	‘We want to help you,’ she said softly.
	Still no reaction.
	Michael gripped the woman’s shoulders a little tighter and shuffled closer.
	‘Come on,’ he whispered, ‘let’s get you inside.’
	Carl and Kate watched the others with a morbid fascination.
	‘What the hell is happening?’ Kate asked, her voice gradually becoming noticeably weaker and more unsteady each time she spoke.
	‘No idea,’ Carl admitted. ‘Bloody hell, I wish I knew.’
	He surveyed the desperate scene around them. Not all of the bodies had moved. The majority still lay where they had fallen.
	‘Carl,’ Michael shouted.
	‘What?’ he mumbled nervously, turning back to face the others.
	‘Give us a hand, mate. Could you get hold of her legs?’
	Carl nodded and walked over towards Emma and Michael. He crouched down and grabbed the woman’s bony ankles, one in each hand, and, as Michael pulled back on her shoulders, he lifted her feet. She was surprisingly light. There was no weight to her at all and she didn’t react to being moved.
	The two men scuttled back to the community hall, closely followed by Emma and Kate. As they approached the doorway the survivors (who had continued watching intently throughout) quickly realised what was happening. They scattered like a shoal of frightened fish that had just been invaded by the deadliest predator shark.
	‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ Ralph stammered as Carl and Michael barged past him. ‘What the hell are you doing bringing that in here?’
	Michael didn’t answer. He was too busy directing the others.
	‘Group yourselves around her,’ he said authoritatively. ‘Try and cage her in.’
	Obediently Kate and Emma drew closer, as did another two survivors whose names Michael did not know. Carl gently lowered the sick woman’s feet to the ground so that she was standing upright again and then took a couple of steps back so that he was level with the others. Once something resembling a circle had been formed and he was happy, Michael let go.
	For a second the body did nothing. Then, without warning, it lurched towards Kate who screwed up her face in nervous trepidation and stretched her arms out in front of her to prevent the woman from getting too close. As soon as she made contact with Kate’s outstretched hands the woman turned and staggered away in the opposite direction towards another survivor. This continued every time the edge of the circle was reached.
	As the woman stumbled towards Michael he allowed himself for the first time to look deep into her face. For a dangerous few seconds he found himself transfixed, looking at the pitiful creature in front of him and wondering how she might have looked just a week earlier. A few days ago he might have found her attractive but, today, her emotionless gaze and drawn, almost translucent skin immediately dissipated any beauty or serenity that her face had previously known. There was an unnatural sheen to her exposed flesh. Michael noticed that her skin had a grey, almost light green tone and a greasy shine and it was tightly stretched over the bones of her skull. What had at first glance appeared to be dark bags under her frozen eyes were, in fact, the prominent ridges of her eye sockets. Her mouth hung open - a huge, dark hole - and a thick string of gelatinous saliva trickled continually down the side of her chin. He pushed her away.
	The woman turned and began to stagger towards Carl. Clearly unable to control or co-ordinate her own movements, she tripped over her own clumsy feet and half-fell, half-lurched towards him. He recoiled and pushed her down to the ground, feeling a cold sweat prickle his brow as the pathetic and diseased creature scrambled back up onto its feet.
	‘Can she hear us?’ Kate wondered. She hadn’t really meant to ask the question, she’d just been thinking out loud.
	‘Don’t know,’ Michael answered.
	‘She probably can,’ Emma said.
	‘Why do you say that?’
	She shrugged her shoulders.
	‘It’s something about the way she reacts.’
	Ralph, who had until then been watching nervously from a corner of the room, found himself being drawn closer and closer to the circle of survivors.
	‘But she doesn’t react,’ he stammered, his voice uncharacteristically light and shaky.
	‘I know,’ Emma continued. ‘That’s what I mean. She’s walking and moving around, but I don’t think she knows why or how.’
	‘It’s instinctive,’ Carl muttered.
	‘That’s what I’m starting to think,’ Emma agreed. ‘She probably can hear us, but she doesn’t know what the noises we make mean anymore. I bet she’s still capable of speaking, she just can’t remember how to.’
	‘But she reacts when you touch her,’ Paul Garner jabbered anxiously.
	‘No she doesn’t. She doesn’t react at all. She turns away because she physically can’t keep moving in a certain direction. I bet she’d just keep walking in a straight line forever if there wasn’t anything in her way.’
	‘Christ, look at her,’ Kate mumbled. ‘Just look at the poor cow. How many millions of people like this are wandering around out there?’
	‘Did you check her pulse?’ Michael whispered to Emma who was standing next to him.
	‘Sort of,’ she replied, her voice equally low.
	‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he hissed, annoyed by her vagueness.
	‘I couldn’t find one,’ she answered bluntly.
	‘So what are you saying?’
	‘I’m not saying anything.’
	‘So what are you thinking?’
	Emma glanced across at him and shrugged her shoulders.
	‘Don’t know,’ she admitted.
	‘Get it out of here,’ Garner hissed nervously from his vantage point in a doorway a safe distance away.
	Michael looked around the circle and noticed that the others were suddenly either looking at the ground or looking at him. Sensing that it was up to him to make the next move he took a step forward and grabbed hold of the diseased woman’s arm. He pulled her gently out of the hall and back towards the door which he opened with his free hand. He pushed her out into the sunlight and watched as she staggered away from the building and back across the car park.








10

The isolation and desperation of the situation affected all of the survivors, some much more than others. Carl spent most of the afternoon trying (unsuccessfully) to catch up on missed sleep and (also unsuccessfully) to forget everything that was happening outside. Time was dragging at an unbearable and painfully slow rate. An hour now felt like five and five hours more like fifty. As the sun began to sink back below the horizon he clambered out of the community hall once more and stood alone on the small area of flat roof he’d discovered the previous evening.
	For a moment the air was pure and refreshing and he swallowed several deep, calming breaths before the now familiar smells of death and of burning buildings quickly returned, blown towards him on a cool and gusting wind. There was a sudden unexpected noise behind him and he span around to see Michael struggling to climb through the tiny skylight.
	‘Did I make you jump?’ he asked as he dragged himself out onto the roof. ‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t mean to. I was looking for you and I saw you disappear up here and...’
	Carl shook his head and looked away, disappointed that his little sanctuary had been discovered. In the community centre private space was at a premium and they had all been limited to just a few square feet each. Almost every move that every person made indoors could be seen by everyone else. Carl hated it and he’d been looking forward to getting out onto the roof and spending some time alone. The small square roof had been the only place so far where he’d been able to stretch, scratch, stamp, scream, punch and cry without feeling that he had to hold back on how he truly felt because of the effect it might have on the others. Stupid that almost everyone else was dead and yet he still instinctively found himself considering what the few remaining people might think of him rather than just being honest and true to himself. The effects of years and years of conditioning by society were going to take more than a few days to fade away.
	‘You’re okay,’ he sighed as the other man approached. ‘I just came out here to get away for a while.’
	‘Do you want me to go back inside?’ Michael asked anxiously, sensing that he was in the way. ‘If you want me to go then I’ll...’
	Carl slowly shook his head again.
	‘No, it’s okay.’
	Glad to hear that he wasn’t intruding (although not entirely convinced that he really was welcome) Michael walked across to stand next to Carl at the edge of the roof.
	‘What the bloody hell is happening?’ he asked, his voice so low that Carl could hardly hear what he’d said.
	‘Don’t know,’ he mumbled in reply, equally quietly.
	‘Christ, it’s just the speed of it all,’ Michael mumbled. ‘A few days ago everything was normal, but now...’
	‘I know,’ Carl sighed. ‘I know.’
	The two men stood in silence for a while and surveyed the devastation around them. No matter how long and how hard either of them stared for, they still couldn’t accept the sight of countless bodies lying face down on the cold ground. Even more difficult to accept were those pitiful corpses that were now moving. How could any of this nightmare be happening?
	‘Almost makes you envy them, doesn’t it?’ Carl muttered.
	‘Who?’
	‘The bodies still lying on the ground. The ones that haven’t moved. I can’t help thinking how much easier it would have been to be...’
	‘That’s a fucking stupid way to talk, isn’t it?’ Michael spat.
	‘Is it?’ he snapped back angrily.
	In the heavy silence that followed Carl thought about his words. Bloody hell, how low and defeatist he suddenly sounded. But why not, he thought? Why shouldn’t he be? His life had been turned upside down and inside out and he’d lost everything. Not just his possessions and his property, he’d lost absolutely everything. And when he thought about poor Sarah and Gemma, lying there together in their bed at home, the pain he felt became immeasurably worse. But were they still there? Had they been affected by this new change? The thought of his beautiful little girl walking aimlessly through the dark streets alone was too much to bear. He tried unsuccessfully to hide the tears which streamed freely down his tired face.
	‘Come on,’ Michael whispered, attempting to reassure him (although he already knew that there was no way he could).
	‘I’m okay,’ Carl sniffed. It was patently obvious that he was not.
	‘Sure?’ the other man pressed.
	Carl looked into his face and forced himself to smile for a fraction of a second. He was about to reply with the standard ‘yes, I’m all right,’ when he stopped. There was no point in hiding the truth anymore.
	‘No,’ he admitted. ‘No, mate, I’m not all right...’
	Suddenly unable to say another word, he found himself sobbing helplessly.
	‘Me neither,’ Michael admitted, wiping tears of desperation and pain from his own eyes.
	The two men sat down on the edge of the roof, their feet dangling freely over the side of the building. Michael stretched, yawned, and then ran his fingers through his matted hair. He felt dirty. He’d have paid any price to have been able to relax in a hot bath or shower and follow it up with a night spent in a comfortable bed. Or even an uncomfortable bed. Just something better than a hard wooden bench in a cold wooden building.
	‘You know what we need?’ he asked.
	‘I can think of about a million things that I need,’ Carl answered.
	‘Forget about all the practical stuff for a minute, and all the things that we should have like warmth, safety, security, answers to a million questions and the like, do you know what I need more than anything?’
	Carl shrugged his shoulders.
	‘No, what?’
	Michael paused, lay back on the asphalt and put his hands behind his head.
	‘I need to get absolutely fucking plastered. I need to drink so much fucking beer that I can’t remember my own name, never mind anything else.’
	‘There’s an off-licence over there,’ Carl said, half-smiling and pointing across the main road. ‘Fancy a walk?’
	He glanced down at Michael who was shaking his head furiously.
	‘No,’ he replied abruptly.
	Another long silence followed.
	‘Christ, look at him would you,’ Carl said, minutes later. Michael sat up.
	‘Who?’ he asked.
	‘That one over there,’ he said, nodding at a solitary figure in the distance which tripped and stumbled along the edge of the main road. The shadowy shell had once been a man, perhaps six foot tall and probably aged between twenty-five and thirty. It was walking awkwardly with one foot on the kerb and the other dragging behind in the gutter.
	‘What about him?’
	Carl shrugged his shoulders.
	‘Don’t know,’ he sighed. ‘Just look at the state of him. That could be you or me, that could.’
	‘Yes but it isn’t,’ Michael yawned, about to lie back down again.
	‘And there’s another. See that one in the newsagents?’
	Michael squinted into the distance.
	‘Where?’
	‘The newsagents with the red sign. Between the pub and the garage...’
	‘Oh yeah, I can see it.’
	The two men stared at the body in the building. It was trapped in the entrance to the shop. A display rack had fallen behind it, blocking any movement backwards, and a crashed car prevented the door from opening outwards. The body moved incessantly, edging forward and then stumbling back, edging forward and then back.
	‘It just hasn’t got a clue what’s happening, has it?’ Carl muttered. ‘You’d think it would give up, wouldn’t you?’
	‘It’s just moving for the sake of it. It doesn’t know how or why or what to do. It just needs to move.’
	‘And how long will they keep moving? Bloody hell, when will they stop?’
	‘They won’t. There isn’t any reason to stop is there? Nothing registers with them anymore. Look, watch this.’
	Michael stood up and looked around. He walked over to where the slanted roof of the main part of the building met the flat roof they were standing on and pulled away a single slate. Carl watched bemused as he walked back to the edge of the roof.
	‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ he smirked.
	‘Watch,’ Michael said quietly.
	He waited for a few seconds until one of the wandering bodies came into range. Then, after taking careful aim, he threw the tile at the staggering corpse. He was surprisingly accurate and the tile hit the body in the small of the back. The body tripped and stumbled momentarily but carried on regardless.
	‘Why did you do that?’ Carl asked, still bemused.
	Michael shrugged.
	‘Just proving a point I suppose.’
	‘What point?’
	‘That they don’t react. That they don’t live like you and me, they just exist.’
	Carl shook his head with despair and disbelief. Michael walked away again. In a strange way he regretted throwing the slate at the body. No matter what it was today, it had been a living, breathing human being just a few days ago. He felt like a mugger, preying on an innocent victim.
	‘Do you think it was a virus that did this?’ Carl asked. ‘Emma seems to think it was. Or do you think it was...’
	‘Don’t know and I don’t care,’ Michael replied.
	‘What do you mean, you don’t care?’
	‘What difference does it make? What’s happened has happened. It’s the old cliché, isn’t it? If you get knocked down by a car, does it matter what colour it is?’
	‘So what are you saying?’
	‘I’m saying that it doesn’t matter what did all of this. Okay, it matters in as far as I don’t want it to happen to me, but what’s done is done, isn’t it?’
	‘Suppose so.’
	‘Look, I’ve lost friends and family just like the rest of them. I might sound like an uncaring bastard but I’m not really. I just can’t see the point in wasting any time coming up with bullshit theories and explanations when none of it will make the slightest bit of difference. The only thing that any of us have any influence and control over now is what we do tomorrow.’
	‘So what are we going to do tomorrow?’
	‘Haven’t got a fucking clue!’ Michael laughed.
	It started to rain. A few isolated spots at first which, in just a few seconds, turned into a downpour of almost monsoon proportions. Carl and Michael quickly squeezed back through the skylight and lowered themselves into the ominously silent hall.
	‘Does you good to get out now and then, doesn’t it?’ Carl mumbled sarcastically.
	‘There’s a lot of truth in that,’ Michael replied, fighting to make himself heard over the noise of the rain lashing down.
	‘What?’
	‘You’re right. I think it would do us good to get out. Have you stopped to think about the bodies yet?’
	‘Christ I haven’t thought about much else...’
	Michael shook his head.
	‘No, have you stopped to think about what’s going to happen when they start to rot? Jesus, the air’s going to be filled with all kinds of germs and crap.’
	‘There’s not a lot we can do about that, is there?’
	‘There’s fuck all we can do about it,’ he replied bluntly. ‘But we could get away.’
	‘Get away? Where to? It’s going to be like this everywhere, isn’t it?’
	‘I don’t know.’
	‘So what good will leaving here do?’
	It became immediately apparent to Carl that Michael had been doing more logical thinking than the rest of the survivors put together.
	‘Think about it. We’re on the edge of a city here. There are hundreds of thousands of bodies around.’
	‘And...’
	‘And I think we should head for the countryside. Fewer bodies has got to mean less chance of disease. We’re not going to be completely safe anywhere but I think we should just try and give ourselves the best possible chance. We should pack up and leave here as soon as we can.’
	‘You really thinking of going?’
	‘I’d go tonight if we were ready.’








11

Despite the fact that each one of the survivors had reached new levels of emotional and mental exhaustion, not one of them could even contemplate trying to sleep. This lack of sleep meant that the disparate body of frightened and desperate people were becoming even more frightened and desperate with each passing minute. The hall was lit only by a few dim gas lamps and the odd torch, and this lack of light seemed to compound the disorientation and fear felt by all of them. By midnight the tensions and frustrations felt by even the most placid members of the group had risen to dangerously high levels.
	Jenny Hall, who had held her three month old baby boy in her arms as he died on Tuesday morning, had dared to complain about the food she’d been given earlier in the evening. Although she’d meant nothing by her innocent comments, the cook - the usually quiet and reserved Stuart Jeffries - had taken it personally.
	‘You stupid fucking bitch,’ he screamed, his face literally millimeters from hers. ‘What gives you the right to criticise? Fucking hell, you’re not the only one who’s had it tough. Christ, we’re all in the same fucking boat here...’
	Jenny wiped streaming tears from her face with shaking hands. She was convulsing with fear and could hardly co-ordinate her movements.
	‘I didn’t mean to...’ she stammered. ‘I was only trying to...’
	‘Shut your mouth!’ Stuart shouted, grabbing hold of her arms and pinning her against the wall. ‘Just shut your fucking mouth!’
	For a second Michael just stood and watched, stunned and numbed and unable to quite comprehend what he was seeing. He quickly managed to snap himself out of his disbelieving trance and actually do something to help. He grabbed hold of Stuart and yanked him away from Jenny, leaving her to slide down the wall and collapse in a sobbing heap on the dirty brown floor.
	‘Bastard,’ she spat, looking up at him. ‘You fucking bastard.’
	Michael manhandled Stuart across the room and pushed him down into a chair.
	‘What the hell is going on?’ he demanded.
	Stuart didn’t respond. He sat staring at the floor. His face was flushed red. His fists were clenched tight and his body shook with anger.
	‘What’s the problem?’ Michael asked again.
	Stuart still didn’t move.
	‘Not good enough for her, are we?’ he eventually muttered.
	‘What?’
	‘That little bitch,’ he seethed. ‘Thinks she’s something special, doesn’t she? Thinks she’s a cut above the rest of us.’ He looked up and stared and pointed at Jenny. ‘Thinks she’s the only one who’s lost everything.’
	‘You’re not making any sense,’ Michael said, sitting down on a bench close to Stuart. ‘What are you talking about?’
	Stuart couldn’t - or wouldn’t - answer. Tears of frustration welled in his tired eyes. Rather than let Michael see the extent of his fraught emotion he got up and stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.
	‘What was all that about?’ Emma asked as she walked past Michael and made her way over to where Jenny lay on the ground. She crouched down and put her arm around her shoulders. ‘Come on,’ she whispered, gently kissing the top of her head. ‘It’s all right.’
	‘All right?’ she sobbed. ‘How can you say it’s all right? After everything that’s happened, how can you say it’s all right?’
	Kate James sat down next to them. Cradling Jenny in her arms, Emma turned to face Kate.
	‘Did you see what happened?’ she quietly asked.
	‘Not really,’ Kate replied. ‘They were just talking. I only realised that something was wrong when Stuart started shouting. He was fine one minute - you know, calm and talking normally - and then he just exploded at her.’
	‘Why?’
	Kate shrugged her shoulders.
	‘Apparently she told him that she didn’t like the soup.’
	‘What?’ asked Emma incredulously.
	‘She didn’t like the soup he’d made,’ Kate repeated. ‘I’m sure that’s all it was.’
	‘Bloody hell,’ she sighed, shaking her head in resignation.
	Carl walked into the room with Jack Baynham. He’d taken no more than two or three steps when he stopped, quickly sensing that something was wrong.
	‘What’s the matter?’ he asked cautiously, almost too afraid to listen to the answer. The atmosphere in the room was so heavy that he was convinced something terrible had happened.
	Michael shook his head.
	‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s sorted now.’
	Carl looked down at Emma on the floor and Jenny curled up in her arms. Something obviously had happened but, as whatever it was seemed to have been confined to inside the hall and resolved, he decided not to ask any more questions. He just didn’t want to get involved. Selfish and insensitive of him it may have been, but he didn’t want to know. He had enough problems of his own without getting himself wrapped up in other people’s.
	Michael felt much the same, but he found it impossible to be as private and insular as Carl. When he heard more crying coming from another dark corner of the room he instinctively went to investigate. He found that the tears were coming from Annie Nelson and Jessica Short, two of the eldest survivors. The two ladies were wrapped under a single blanket, holding each other tightly and doing their best to stop sobbing and stop drawing attention to themselves. Michael sat down next to them.
	‘You two okay? he asked. A pointless question, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
	Annie smiled for the briefest of moments and nodded, trying hard to put on a brave face. She nonchalantly wiped away a single tear which trickled quickly down her wrinkled cheek.
	‘We’re all right, thank you,’ she replied, her voice light and fragile.
	‘Can I get you anything?’
	Annie shook her head.
	‘No, we’re fine,’ she said. ‘I think we’ll try and get some sleep now.’
	Michael smiled and rested his hand on hers. He tried not to let his worry show, but her hand felt disconcertingly cold and fragile. He really did feel so sorry for these two. He had noticed that they had been inseparable since arriving at the hall. Jessica, he had learned from Emma, was a well-to-do widow who had lived in a large house in one of the most exclusive suburbs of Northwich. Annie, on the other hand, had told him yesterday that she’d lived in the same two bedroom Victorian terraced house all her life. She’d been born there and, as she’d wasted no time in telling him, she intended to see out the rest of her days there too. When things settled down again, she’d explained naively, she was going to go straight back home. She had even invited Jessica over for tea one afternoon.
	Michael patted the old lady’s hand again and stood up and walked away. He glanced back over his shoulder and watched as the two pensioners huddled closer together and talked in frightened, hushed whispers. Clearly from opposite ends of the social spectrum, they seemed to be drawn to each other for no other reason than their similar ages. Money, position, possessions, friends and connections didn’t count for anything anymore.
***

	Emma was still sitting on the floor two hours later. As half-past two approached she cursed herself for being so bloody selfless. There she was, cold and uncomfortable, still cradling Jenny Hall in her arms. What made matters worse was the Jenny had herself been asleep for the best part of an hour. Why am I always the one who ends up doing this, she thought? Christ, no-one ever bothers to hold me and rock me to sleep. Why am I always the one giving out? Emma didn’t really need any help or support, but it pissed her off that no-one ever seemed to offer.
	The hall was silent but for a muffled conversation taking place in one of the dark rooms off the main hall. Emma carefully eased herself out from underneath Jenny and lay her down on the floor and covered her with a sheet. In the still silence every sound she made, no matter how slight, seemed deafening. As she moved Jenny’s body she listened carefully and tried to locate the precise source of the conversation. She was desperate for some calm and rational adult company.
	The voices seemed to be coming from a little room that she hadn’t been into before. Cautiously she pushed the door open and peered inside. It was pitch black, and the voices stopped immediately.
	‘Who’s that?’ a man asked.
	‘Emma,’ she whispered. ‘Emma Mitchell.’
	As her eyes slowly became accustomed to the darkness of the room (which was, surprisingly, even darker and gloomier than the main hall) she saw that there were two men sitting with their backs against the far wall. It was Michael and Carl. They were drinking water from a plastic bottle which they passed between themselves.
	‘You okay?’ Michael asked.
	‘I’m fine,’ Emma replied. ‘Mind if I come in?’
	‘Not at all,’ said Carl. ‘Everything calmed down out there?’
	She stepped into the room, tripping over his outstretched legs and feeling for the nearest wall in the darkness. She sat down carefully.
	‘It’s all quiet,’ she said. ‘I just had to get away, know what I mean?’
	‘Why do you think we’re sitting in here?’ Michael asked rhetorically.
	After a short silence Emma spoke again.
	‘I’m sorry,’ she said apologetically. ‘Have I interrupted something? Did you two want me to go so you can...?’
	‘Stay here as long as you like,’ Michael answered. Emma’s eyes were slowly becoming accustomed to the darkness and she could now just about make out the details of the two men’s faces.
	‘I think everyone’s asleep out there. At least if they’re not asleep then they’re being very quiet. I guess they’re all thinking about what happened today. I’ve just sat and listened to Jenny talking about...’ Emma realised she was talking for the sake of talking and let her words trail away into silence. Both Michael and Carl were staring at her. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, suddenly self-conscious. ‘What’s wrong?’
	Michael shook his head.
	‘Bloody hell,’ he sighed, ‘have you been out there with Jenny all this time?’
	She nodded.
	‘Yes, why?’
	He shrugged his shoulders.
	‘Nothing, I just don’t know why you bother, that’s all.’
	‘Someone’s got to do it, haven’t they?’ she replied nonchalantly as she accepted a drink from the bottle of water that Carl passed to her.
	‘So why does it have to be you? Christ, who’s going to sit up with you for hours when you’re...’
	‘Like I said,’ she interrupted, ‘someone’s got to do it. If we all shut ourselves away in rooms like this when things aren’t going well then we haven’t got much of a future here, have we?’
	Emma was immediately defensive of her own actions, despite the fact that she’d silently criticised herself for exactly the same thing just a few minutes earlier.
	‘So do you think we’ve got a future here then?’ asked Carl. Now Emma really was beginning to feel uncomfortable. She hadn’t come in here to be picked on.
	‘Of course we’ve got a future,’ she snapped.
	‘We’ve got millions of people lying dead in the streets around us and we’ve got people threatening to kill each other because someone doesn’t like soup. Doesn’t bode well really, does it?’ Michael mused.
	Another silence.
	‘So what do you think?’ Emma asked. ‘You seem to have an opinion about everything. Do you reckon we’ve got any chance, or do you think we should just curl up in the corner and give up?’
	‘I think we’ve got a damn good chance, but not necessarily here.’
	‘Where then?’ she wondered.
	‘Well what have we got here?’ Michael began. ‘We’ve got shelter of sorts, we’ve got limited supplies and we’ve got access to what’s left of the city. We’ve also got an unlimited supply of dead bodies - some of them mobile - which are going to rot. Agree?’
	The other two thought for a moment and then nodded.
	‘And I suppose,’ he continued, ‘there’s also the flip-side of the coin. As good a shelter as this is, it’s fast becoming a prison. We’ve got no idea what’s around us. We don’t even know what’s in the buildings on the other side of the street.’
	‘But it’s going to be the same wherever we go...’ Emma remarked.
	‘Possibly. Carl and I were talking about heading out to the countryside earlier, and the more I think about it the more it seems to make sense.’
	‘Why?’
	Carl explained, remembering the conversation he’d had with Michael a few hours ago.
	‘The population’s concentrated in cities, isn’t it? There will be less bodies out in the sticks. And less bodies equals less problems...’
	‘Hopefully,’ Michael added cautiously.
	‘So what’s stopping us?’ Emma asked.
	‘Nothing,’ Michael replied.
	‘Are you sure that you want to go?’
	‘Positive.’
	‘And what if no-one else does?’
	‘Tough. I’ll go on my own.’
	‘And when are you going to go?’
	‘As soon as I can. I’d go tomorrow if I could.’
	Emma had to admit that, arrogant and superior as he tended to sound, Michael’s logic and reasoning made sense. The more she listened to and thought about his proposals, the more hopeful she became. Fired up with a new found enthusiasm and purpose, the three survivors talked through the first few long, dragging hours of the new day. By four o’clock that morning their plans were made.








12
Michael Collins

Bastards.
	Spineless, fucking bastards.
	Once I’d decided to leave that was it, I was going. It made so much sense. No-one could be sure what was going to happen next and no-one knew how safe we were going to be. Problem was the rest of them all seemed to agree that we should move on until the time came to actually do something about it. Until it was time to walk out the door they all agreed that getting out of the city made sense. When it came down to it though, none of them had the nerve to go. They were scared just sitting and waiting in the community centre for something to happen, but the thought of taking those first few tentative steps outside their new found comfort zone seemed to be even more terrifying. I stood there in the middle of the hall right in front of them all and told them why we should leave and like fucking sheep they nodded their heads and mumbled in agreement. Five minutes later though, when Paul Garner and Stuart stood up and had their say and told them why they thought it was better to sit still and wait for fucking eternity, the deal was done and the matter was closed. Suddenly it felt like it was me, Carl and Emma against the rest of them. I was beginning to identify more with the bodies outside on the streets than with the empty, lifeless bastards I found myself locked up with.
	But that was it. Long and short of it, that was it. We could stay there and rot or we could go. It wasn’t much of a choice.
	That morning Emma stayed behind to pack our stuff together while Carl and I went out into the city to try and get everything we might need for our journey to God knows where. Once we were outside the stupidity and short-sightedness of the people hiding in the community centre became even more apparent. It was a bloody gold mine out there. Just about anything we wanted we could have, we just had to look for it. It was like shopping with a credit card that didn’t have a limit, and the dead shop assistants were infinitely less irritating than they had been before they’d died. The strangest thing though was standing in the shops and looking out onto the silent streets. There were plenty of staggering bodies drifting about aimlessly. Truth be told, there wasn’t much difference between the hordes of dead creatures today and the hordes of equally aimless consumers that had trampled the same streets less than a week earlier.
	We found ourselves a decent sized car from a high-class garage. It was one of those people carriers with seven seats. We didn’t have much stuff to take with us but it seemed to make sense to get the biggest car we could find. We decided that if push came to shove we could use it as a temporary shelter. We thought for a while about getting a Transit van or something similar but we decided against it. There didn’t seem to be much point roughing it when we could have a little bit of comfort for no extra effort and at no extra risk.
	We collected food and clothes because none of us had brought very much with us. From time to time while we were out in the open the option of actually going home to get our own things cropped up. At first I wasn’t bothered about going back but Carl was certain that he didn’t want to. He’d already told me a little about his wife and child and I understood why he didn’t want to go anywhere near his place. I lived alone and the more I thought about it the more unnerving the thought of going back to my empty house seemed. The memories and emotions stored there were enough - I couldn’t have coped if I’d left anyone behind. At the end of the day apart from my past all that was there were possessions which could easily be replaced. Just about anything I wanted I could take from the shelves of one of the desolate shops we looted.
	I was losing all track of time. We had been up and out since nine o’clock but it felt like it was much, much later. During the week my days had lost all form, structure and familiarity. No-one slept much. People woke up whenever they woke up and kept themselves occupied as best they could until they couldn’t keep their eyes open any longer. There were no set mealtimes, rest times or bedtimes, there was just time. Each hour dragged and seemed longer than the last.
	Just before eleven Carl and I drove our silver van loaded with supplies back along the silent streets to the community centre.





13

Emma had managed to pack all her belongings into two carrier bags and a cardboard box. She did the same with Michael and Carl’s things. Between the three of them everything they had was condensed into the sum total of five carrier bags and two boxes.
	She breathed a sigh of relief at three minutes to eleven when Carl and Michael returned. The others had hardly spoken to her in all the time that the two men had been away from the community centre. It was almost as if she had suddenly ceased to exist. The rest of the survivors seemed to think that they were being abandoned, and Emma had real difficulty trying to understand why they felt that way. The invitation still stood for any of them - all of them if they wanted - to leave with Michael, Carl and herself. She guessed that the only thing stopping them was uncertainty and their personal and irrational fears of stepping outside the creaky wooden building. Countless times in those few hours she looked up and made eye contact with other people, only for them to look away again quickly. Countless times she heard people whispering behind her back. She knew that they were talking about her because nothing was private anymore. The eerie silence inside the hall amplified every spiteful word.
	‘Everything all right?’ she asked as Michael parked the van in front of the building and clambered out and stretched.
	‘Fine,’ he replied quietly, flashing her a quick and reassuring smile as he did so. ‘You okay?’
	She nodded.
	Carl walked around from the other side of the van.
	‘We got everything we need,’ he said. ‘What do you think of the transport?’
	She nodded again and slowly walked around the large family car. There were seven seats inside, two at the front, two at the back and three in the middle. The front two seats and the seat behind the driver’s were empty. The others were piled high with supplies. 
	As she looked through the tinted glass windows it suddenly occurred to her that they were standing outside and, for the first time since it had all began, none of them seemed to be giving a damn about what had happened to the devastated world around them. They were surrounded by bodies - some still, some moving - and yet today she wasn’t the least bit bothered. Perhaps it was because they were about to leave. Maybe deciding that she didn’t need the protection of the hall anymore had subconsciously changed her way of thinking.
	‘Have any trouble while you were out there?’ she asked, snapping herself out of her daydream.
	‘Trouble?’ Carl replied, surprised. ‘What kind of trouble?’
	She shrugged her shoulders.
	‘I don’t know. Christ, you spent the morning in the middle of a city full of walking corpses. I don’t know what you saw. Did you...’
	Michael interrupted.
	‘Nothing happened,’ he said abruptly. ‘There were plenty of bodies walking around, but nothing happened.’
	‘Not as many as I expected though,’ Carl added.
	‘That’s because they’re starting to spread out,’ Michael grunted as he shoved their carrier bags and boxes into the back of the van.
	‘Spread out?’ said Emma.
	‘It’s the blotting paper effect, isn’t it?’
	‘Is it?’
	Michael stopped and turned to face her.
	‘When all this started there was a high concentration of bodies in the middle of the city, wasn’t there? People were at work and school, weren’t they?’
	‘Yes...’ she replied, unsure where the conversation was leading.
	‘So if those of them that are up and moving around are walking randomly, it stands to reason that they’ve spread out from the centre of the city like ink spreads across blotting paper.’
	‘I see...’ she mumbled, far from convinced.
	‘It might take a while, but it’s started and I bet that’s what will happen.’
	He returned his attention to loading the last two bags into the van. Emma continued to think, trying hard to follow through the route of his logic.
	‘So,’ she eventually continued, ‘if what you’re saying is right, given time there could be equal numbers of bodies all over the country?’
	Michael thought for a moment.
	‘Suppose so. Why?’
	‘Because if that’s the case,’ she said quietly, ‘why the hell are we bothering to run?’
	‘We’re not running,’ he snapped, deliberately avoiding the very valid point of her comment. ‘We’re backed into a corner here. What we’re doing is giving ourselves a chance.’
	Sensing that the conversation had opened up a particularly unpleasant can of worms, he slammed and locked the van door and headed back inside.
	The silence which greeted Michael as he walked back into the main hall was the most ominous silence he’d heard since he’d first arrived there days earlier. The rest of the survivors - all twenty or so frightened individuals - stopped and stared at him, Carl and Emma in unspoken unison. Some of those people hadn’t acknowledged him in all the time they’d been at the community centre. Some hadn’t even spoken a word to anyone since they’d got there. And yet, suddenly and unexpectedly, Michael got the distinct impression that it was the three of them against the rest. There was real animosity and anger in the room. It felt like betrayal.
	The wave of hostility stopped Michael in his tracks. He turned around to face Emma and Carl. The three of them found themselves exposed and stood together in the centre of the room.
	‘What’s all this about?’ he asked, keeping his voice low.
	‘It’s been like this since you went,’ Emma replied. ‘The rest of them seem to have a real problem with what we’re doing.’
	‘Fucking idiots,’ Carl snapped. ‘It’s because they know we’re right. We should tell them that...’
	‘We’ll tell them nothing,’ Michael ordered. The surprising authority in his voice silenced and stunned Carl. ‘Let’s just go.’
	‘What, now?’ Emma said, surprised. ‘Are we ready? Do we need to...’
	Michael glanced at her. The expression on his face left her in no doubt as to his intentions.
	‘What are we going to gain from waiting around?’ he hissed. ‘We’re better off travelling in daylight so let’s make the most of it. Let’s get out of here.’
	‘Are you sure...?’ Carl began.
	‘You sound like you’re having doubts?’ Michael snapped, the tone of his voice seeming almost to carry a sneer. ‘You can stop here if you want to...’
	Carl shook his head and looked away, feeling intimidated and pressured.
	‘Oh bollocks to it,’ Emma said, her voice now a fraction louder. ‘You’re right. Let’s just get out of here.’
	Michael turned back to face the rest of the survivors who still stared at him and his companions. He cleared his throat. He didn’t know what to say or why he was even bothering to try and say anything. It just didn’t seem right to walk out without trying one last time to persuade the rest of them to try and see the sense in what they were doing.
	‘We’re leaving,’ he began, his words echoing around the cold wooden room. ‘If any of you want to...’
	‘Fuck off,’ Stuart Jeffries spat, getting up from his chair and walking up to Michael. The two men stood face to face. ‘Just get in your damn car and fuck off now,’ he hissed. ‘You’re putting us at risk. Every second you spend here is a second too long.’
	Michael looked into his tired face for what seemed like an eternity. There were countless things he could have said to Jeffries and the others - countless reasons why they should follow and not stay locked in the community centre - but the anger bordering on hate in the other man’s eyes left him in no doubt that to say anything would be pointless.
	‘Come on,’ Emma said, grabbing his arm and pulling him away.
	Michael looked around the room one last time and stared back at each one of the desperate faces which stared at him. Then he turned his back and walked.
	Carl led the way out, closely followed by the other two. Just seconds after taking their first steps out into the cold afternoon air the door of the community centre was slammed and locked shut behind them. Sensing that there was no turning back (and feeling suddenly nervous and unsure) the three survivors exchanged anxious glances and climbed into the van. Michael started the engine and drove out towards the main road, pausing only to let a single willowy-framed, greasy-skinned body stagger oblivious past the front of the van.





14

Less than an hour into the journey and Carl, Michael and Emma found themselves wracked with fear and scepticism. Leaving the shelter had seemed like the only option but now, now that they had actually left the building and the other survivors behind them, uncertainty and unknowing had begun to set in and take over. Doubt which bordered on paranoia plagued Michael as he fought to keep his concentration and to keep the van moving forward. Problem was, he decided, they didn’t actually know where it was they were going. Finding somewhere safe and secure to shelter had seemed easy at first but now that they were outside and could see the shattered remains of the world for themselves it was beginning to seem like an impossible task. The whole world seemed to be theirs for the taking but they couldn’t actually find any of it that they wanted.
	Emma sat bolt upright in the seat next to Michael, staring out of the windows around her in disbelief, looking from side to side, too afraid to sit back and relax. Before she’d seen it for herself it had seemed logical to assume that only the helpless population would have been affected by the inexplicable tragedy. The reality was that the land too had been battered, savaged and ravaged beyond all recognition. Countless buildings - sometimes entire streets - had been razed to the ground by unchecked fires which even now still smouldered. Almost every car which had been moving when the disaster had struck had veered out of control and had crashed. She counted herself lucky that she had been indoors and relatively safe when the nightmare had begun. She silently wondered how many other people that had died in a car crash or some other sudden accident might actually have gone on to survive had fate not dealt them such a bitter hand? How many people who shared her apparent immunity to the disease, virus or whatever it was that had caused all of this had been wiped out through nothing more than misfortune and bad luck? Something caught her eye in a field at the side of the road. The wreckage of a light aircraft was strewn over the boggy and uneven ground at one end of a long, deep furrow. All around the wreck lay twisted chunks of metal which freely mixed with the bloody remains of the passengers the plane had been carrying. She wondered what might have happened to those people had they survived their flight? It was pointless to think about such things, but in a strange way it was almost therapeutic. It seemed to help just to keep her mind occupied.
	With unnerving speed the three survivors found that they were becoming impervious to the carnage, death and destruction all around them. But, even though the sight of thousands of battered and bloodied bodies and the aftermath of hundreds of horrific accidents were now almost commonplace, from time to time each one of them still saw scenes that were so terrible and grotesque that it was almost impossible for them to comprehend what they saw. As much as he wanted to look away, Carl found himself transfixed with a morbid and sickening curiosity as they passed a long red and white coach. The huge and heavy vehicle had collided with the side of a red brick house. Carl stared in disbelief at the bodies of some thirty or so children trapped in their seats. Even though they were held tight by their seat belts, he could see at least seven of the poor youngsters trying to move. Their withered arms flailed around their empty, pallid faces, and the sight of the children made him remember Gemma, the perfect little girl that he had left behind. The realisation that he would never see or hold her again was a pain that was almost too much to bear. It had been hard enough to try and come to terms with his loss while he had been in the community centre but now, strange as it seemed, every single mile they drove further away made the pain even harder to stand. Sarah and Gemma had been dead for almost a week but he still felt responsible for them. He’d just left them lying in bed together. He felt like he’d failed them.
	Conversation had been sparse and forced since the journey had begun and the silence was beginning to deafen Emma. She could see that Michael was having to concentrate hard on his driving (the roads were littered with debris) and Carl seemed preoccupied but she needed to talk. The ominous quiet in the van was allowing her far too much time to think.
	‘Have either of you two actually thought about where we might be going?’ she asked.
	Neither of the men replied at first. Silently all three of them had been thinking about that question intermittently but there had been so many bizarre distractions that it had proved impossible for anyone to be able to decide anything.
	‘I’ve tried to think about it,’ Carl admitted, ‘but I can’t think straight. I get so far and then I see something and...’
	His words trailed away into silence. He sounded lost and helpless. Michael glanced into the rear view mirror and watched the other man’s tired eyes as they darted anxiously around. He looked like a frightened little boy.
	‘Well we’ve got to decide something soon,’ Emma said. ‘We need some kind of plan, don’t we?’
	Michael shrugged his shoulders.
	‘I thought we’d got one,’ he replied. ‘Keep driving until we find somewhere safe and then stop.’
	‘But what does safe mean?’ she asked. ‘Is anywhere safe?’
	‘I don’t know,’ he sighed. ‘You could argue we’d be safe anywhere. There’s only the bodies that are moving to watch out for and they don’t react to us.’
	‘But what about disease?’ she continued. ‘They’re starting to rot.’
	‘I know they are.’
	‘So what are we going to do?’
	He shrugged his shoulders again.
	‘There’s not a lot we can do. We can’t see the germs so we’ll just have to take our chances.’
	‘So what you’re saying is we could stop anywhere?’
	He thought for a second.
	‘Yes.’
	‘So why haven’t we? Why do we just keep driving and...’
	‘Because...’ he snapped.
	‘Because we’re too bloody frightened,’ she interrupted. ‘Because nowhere is safe, is it? Everywhere might well be empty and we might well be able to pick and choose but that doesn’t matter. Truth is I’m too fucking frightened to get out of this fucking van and so are you two.’
	With her sudden and unexpected admission (which both Michael and Carl silently agreed with) the conversation ended.








15

Three minutes past four.
	The slow and laborious afternoon was drawing to a close and Carl knew that it would only be a couple of hours before the light began to fade. When he’d handed the driving duties over to Carl, Michael (who was now curled up on the empty seat in the back of the van, sleeping intermittently) had estimated that they should have reached the west coast in an hour or so. It had now been two and a half hours since they’d swapped places and still there seemed to be nothing ahead of them but endless road and aimless travelling.
	It was a cool but bright afternoon. The brilliance of the sun belied the low temperature. It shone down from a slowly sinking position in a sky which was mostly blue but which was dotted with numerous bulbous grey and white clouds. The road glistened with the moisture which remained from a shower of rain they’d passed through a few minutes earlier.
	Emma still sat in the front passenger seat, still sitt