The City

Part II

20

In the desolate, dead and diseased shell that the city had become very little changed from day to day. Thousands of corpses continued to shuffle endlessly through the shadows, their bodies gradually decaying but their mental strength and control somehow continuing to slowly return. Although the survivors remained quiet and largely out of sight, the absence of other sounds and distractions throughout the surrounding area continued to draw unwanted crowds of ragged, stumbling figures towards the university. Inside their shelter the frightened, desperate people sat and watched and waited for something -

anything - to happen. For two painfully long and drawn out weeks nothing changed.

Without any warning the precarious equilibrium was upset.

On a cold, grey and wet Sunday morning some nineteen days after everything had begun, something finally happened.

Thirty miles west of the city where the survivors sheltered, in a bleak and nondescript field, lay the concealed entrance to a military bunker. Waiting underground inside the dark and grey building, shielded and protected from the dead world outside by thick, concrete walls and industrial strength air purification systems, were almost three hundred soldiers. As tired, frightened and disorientated as the bewildered survivors left out in the open above ground, they too had struggled to cope with the uncertainty of each passing hour. Inside the bunker no-one knew what had happened. From the most senior officer in the base down to the lowest in the ranks, no-one had anything more than a few scraps of unconfirmed information to go on. They had been acting on hurriedly given orders when they’d been scrambled on the first morning. There were many rumours about disease, weapons of mass destruction, germ warfare and contagion but no concrete facts to substantiate or confirm the hearsay. The men and women in the bunker didn’t need to know the details of what had happened and neither, for that matter, did the officers in charge of the base. All they knew - all they needed to know - was that sooner or later they would be sent up to the surface to try and take control of whatever was left.

The orders had finally been given by the base commander.

Today was the day the first troops would go up to the surface.

21

Cooper

Nineteen days we’d been underground.

More than four hundred and fifty hours without seeing daylight or being told what was happening or why we were there.

There had been little to do in the bunker from virtually the moment we had arrived. Once our equipment had been unpacked, stored and checked our general duties were done save for occasional mundane domestic tasks. No-one left the base so there was nothing to get ready or repair. We ate, cleaned, exercised and slept but other than that we did little else. Time and time again I had thought about the moment when the orders would finally come and, occasionally, I had actually looked forward to it happening. In many ways it seemed preferable to just sitting there and waiting. No-one talked much about what might have happened above ground. Whether anyone actually knew or not I wasn’t sure. There was a small part of me that didn’t want to know because there seemed to be some bizarre safety and comfort in ignorance. I tried not to think about my family and friends that were left out there but with nothing else to do it was difficult not to remember them. The not-knowing made me question my priorities - I had joined the forces to protect people and yet there we were, tucked up safely underground while the rest of the population - and everyone that had ever meant anything to me - endured whatever it was that was happening to the world. Good or bad (and we all knew in our hearts that what was happening was a million times worse than just bad) we all needed some answers. I might even have deserted if I’d been able to get outside.

When the orders finally came I didn’t want to move. It had been rumoured that the first party was about to leave the base but I hadn’t expected to be among them. The hours between being told I was going and the moment we left the bunker disappeared with incredible speed.

The briefing before we went above ground answered a handful of questions, but it also left me asking countless more.

The base commander pleaded ignorance, and I had to admit that he was convincing. I had known Richardson - or I had, at least, been aware of him and his reputation - for more than seven years since I was first posted out of Danford and I had no reason to doubt his honesty. What would he hope to gain from lying now that we were about to leave? The situation up on the surface was obviously so dire and hopeless that hiding the truth from the troops would only hamper our mission.

He talked in very general and nonspecific terms about a disease or virus. He couldn’t tell us where it had come from or how, but it had swept across the country with unprecedented speed and ferocity on the morning we came below ground. We had been close to being caught ourselves, he told us. The soldiers heading to other bases had not been so fortunate. Richardson explained that the disease had also been found in other countries and that its virulent nature made it likely that the rest of the world had been infected. Much of what he told us was presumption and some of it little more than pure speculation.

Nothing he said could be quantified or substantiated.

Tests and air samples had shown that the disease was still present outside. Whatever kind of germ it was, it sounded stronger and more resilient than anything anyone had come across before. We were to wear full protective gear whilst outside. Any contamination and we would be unable to return to the bunker. There were orders to shoot and kill any of us who did not comply. A minimum of two days in the decontamination chamber would follow our planned five hours outside.

One of the medical officers fumbled his way through a briefing on the physical effects of the disease. It was obvious from his manner and the lack of any hard facts or statistics that most of his words were uncertain and, in all probability, untrue - they had to tell us something. He talked about a violent infection causing internal swellings and leisions which would most probably result in death or, at the very least, severe pain and secondary infection. He talked about many thousands of people being killed outright. He talked about the possibility of others surviving, but in what condition it was not clear. He told us to be prepared to come across many, many casualties. Our mission was to assess the situation in the nearest city and then report back. No further operations could take place until our initial assessment had been made.

After the briefing we spent an hour preparing our kit and the transport and putting on our protective gear. I was scared. I sat in the transport with the others and shook and sobbed like a child.

22

The quiet of the countryside was suddenly shattered as the bunker doors opened and the armoured transport emerged at speed into the dull light of a cold and wet Sunday afternoon. The heavy and powerful machine roared up the access ramp, climbed a steep incline and then followed the track away from the concealed base.

It took the troops more than an hour to travel the thirty or so miles to the city. They followed a direct route along major roads littered with the wrecks of crashed cars and the decaying remains of countless bodies. Occasionally figures appeared in the near distance and at the sides of the road but they were lethargic and painfully slow, seeming to drag themselves along with considerable effort. The soldiers didn’t stop to offer assistance or investigate. The driver of the transport had his orders, and those orders were to go directly to the heart of the city. It didn’t seem to matter anyway. What could they do for these first survivors?

What could fifteen soldiers possibly do to help millions of plague victims?

Cooper turned to look at Mark Thompson sitting next to him.

He looked frightened. Even though the tinted visors on their cumbersome full-face breathing masks Cooper could see that the other man was scared. He could see it in his eyes - the way that although his head remained perfectly still and fixed forward, his eyes were darting frantically around the inside of the transport, never daring to settle on any one thing for fear of catching sight of whatever it was that was terrifying him. And that was still the problem, Cooper decided, it was not knowing. They’d been trained to deal with the aftermath of nuclear war, conventional war, terrorism and many other types of conflict or attack, but it was obvious that this was very different. The details of cause and effect were sparse, but it was already clear that no-one could have been trained to deal with anything like this.

It was uncomfortably hot in the protective suit. Cooper knew that his life depended on the protection, of course, but the oppressive atmosphere beneath the layers of treated material and rubber did nothing to calm his nerves. The initial burst of adrenaline he had felt on leaving the bunker had died down now that they had been away from their protective prison for some time. He now felt claustrophobic and wanted to return to the base. His mouth was dry and he needed to drink but he was afraid to risk compromising his suit. Eating, drinking, going to the toilet and many other simple and ordinary tasks would be difficult and risky until they were back. To remove any part of the suit for even a few seconds might be enough to let in the vicious virus that, if the information his officers had was correct, could quickly end his life. Judging by the number of bodies scattered on the ground around them as the drove through the suburbs and into the city, this was a disease that had killed many, many thousands more than it had spared.

Heavy rain clattered down constantly on the metal roof above the soldier’s heads, echoing around the transport. There was next to no conversation. Other than the rain and the sound of the machine’s groaning engine there was an oppressive and all-consuming silence which was only disturbed by sudden brief explosions of static conversation from the radio and equally brief and factual reports to the officers back at the base.

The soldiers were sat in two rows along either side of the transport, facing into the middle. Thompson suddenly got up out of his seat and leant across the inside of the machine to look out of a small square window between the heads of the two troops sitting directly opposite.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said, loud enough for the others to hear.

There was sudden movement throughout the vehicle as rest of the soldiers immediately turned to see what it was that their colleague had spotted deep in the murky-greyness of the late September afternoon. All around them they could see movement.

Slow and laboured but still very definite movement.

They had reached what Cooper called the ‘inner-suburbs’ of the city - a ring of small shopping areas and high streets which had once been villages in their own right but which had since been swallowed up and consumed by the ever-expanding city centre. These areas were the first real pockets of civilisation that the soldiers had driven through since leaving the base. There were many more bodies on the ground here, and there were many more figures moving nearby too.

‘Why ain’t they moved any of the bodies yet?’asked one of the soldiers, thinking out loud, his voice muffled by his facemask.

‘And what the hell are those others doing outside? said another, watching through a back window as a quickly growing crowd of moving figures dragged themselves pointlessly along the road after the transport. ‘If these people are sick then what the hell are they doing out here in the open? It’s pissing down for Christ’s sake.’

‘Who says they’re sick,’ asked Thompson. ‘These are supposed to be the survivors, aren’t they?’

‘Have you seen them?’ the other soldier replied nervously, his mouth suddenly dry. ‘Jesus, look at the state of them.

They’ve got fucking scraps of clothes on and they don’t look like they’ve eaten for weeks. Bloody hell, this lot look as bad as the dead ones on the ground.’

Cooper shuffled around to look out of the window nearest to him. The temperature outside was low and the thick glass was smeared with condensation. He wiped it clear with the back of one gloved hand and peered out into the afternoon gloom.

‘Christ…’ he muttered under his breath.

The world outside the window looked as if it had been totally drained of all colour. Perhaps naively he had expected to find a disorganised and unkempt but otherwise relatively normal city scene - after all, he thought, there hadn’t been any fighting on the streets, had there? This didn’t sound like it had been a war or battle which would cause damage to buildings and property.

Where he had expected to see a thousand familiar colours, however, he instead saw little more than a thousand different dull shades of grey and black. And the same was true of the people he could see too. Devoid of all energy, they were dragging themselves along with painful effort and a lack of any speed and almost all coordination. It was as if they’d given up all hope.

They had reached the city centre.

The driver slammed on the brakes and for a second the only sound which could be heard inside the transport was the driving rain pounding against the metal roof just above the soldier’s heads. The troops sat back into their seats and waited apprehensively for the order to move to be given.

‘Okay,’ the officer in charge yelled from his position at the front of the powerful machine, ‘I want you outside now. Get a perimeter formed around the transport. Move!’

The nearest soldier pushed open the heavy door at the back of the vehicle and led the others outside. In a well rehearsed manoeuvre the troops fanned out and formed a loose circle around the machine. The driver remained behind the wheel -

ready to get them away quickly - while the officer in charge stood shoulder to shoulder with the men and women under his command.

Cooper stood motionless and stared into the city. Torrential rain drenched the grim scene like a mist. He watched the water run down a gutter towards him. A short distance from his feet lay several rapidly decomposing bodies. The world looked completely alien and unfamiliar. He had been to this city before.

He had driven along this road. Today it was unrecognisable.

The people were approaching. Difficult to see at first because of the gloom and the low light of the day and their drained and ragged appearance, they dragged themselves towards the soldiers. Silent, awkward and desperate, they neared the troops.

‘So what are we supposed to do?’ hissed Lance Jackson, a twenty-two year old soldier who looked no older than seventeen.

He shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot, holding his automatic rifle tight against his chest.

The commanding officer forgave his lack of discipline. He was scared too, although he didn’t allow himself to show it.

‘Keep your nerve, son,’ he said from close behind, resting a reassuring hand on Jackson’s shoulder. ‘Just remember that these people are going to want help and answers from us, and we’re in no position to provide either. Stay calm and alert and we’ll…’

His words faded into silence as he watched the first bodies stagger ever closer. They were near enough for the soldiers to be able to see their pained faces, ravaged by disease and decay.

Each one of the troops seemed to focus on whichever one of the pitiful, bedraggled creatures was nearest. The commander watched a dead thirty-eight year old office worker lurch towards him. What remained of the woman lifted its weary head to look in his direction. It seemed to fix him with a cold, emotionless stare from dark, sunken eyes.

‘Fucking hell,’ the commander cursed, letting his guard and his nerve slip for the first time in seventeen years of active service with the forces.

The bodies continued to shuffle forward. The soldiers were becoming increasingly anxious. Amanda Brice, standing four men round to Cooper’s right, lifted her rifle and took aim. Others did the same. Cooper cleared his throat and readied his own weapon.

‘Stop moving,’ the commander shouted towards the helpless people. ‘Stay where you are. We’re here to…’

No response. The figures continued to move.

‘I repeat,’ the commander bellowed again, ‘stay where you are and no harm will come to you…

Still no response.

The nearest body was now little more than a couple of meters away from Brice. Terrified by the cold and unnatural expression on its drawn and pallid face, she aimed her rifle into the air just inches above the diseased man’s head and pulled the trigger.

Ignorant to any danger, it staggered forward again.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she cursed under her breath. ‘What the hell is the matter with them?’

The figures continued to advance, closing in on the circle of soldiers. Filled with fear and confused and disorientated by her increasing panic, Brice aimed at the body in front of her and fired, sending a single bullet thudding into the dead flesh just above the creature’s right knee. It crumbled and fell to the ground but then immediately began to drag itself back up again, seemingly oblivious to its injury. Brice stared into the dead face approaching her. There was no expression of pain or any display of emotion whatsoever. She fired again. And again. And again.

The bodies were close now, just feet away, and a decision needed to be taken.

‘Get back inside,’ the commander shouted, already on his way into the transport. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

The troops turned and ran. Thompson was caught by the arm as the nearest few creatures reached out for him. He began to beat at the pitiful figures hanging onto him, battering them away with his fists and the end of his rifle. As quickly as he could break their hold, however, more gripped onto his suit.

The only other soldier left outside, Cooper tried to pull his colleague free. Out of the corner of his eye he was aware that the others had disappeared into the back of the transport, crowds of grey figures following close behind.

‘Come on,’ he yelled, ‘move!’

Terrified and disorientated by the mass of rotting faces in front of him, Thompson panicked and tried to force his way further forward through the ever-increasing crowd. Cooper tried again to drag him back. Still swinging his fists furiously, the first soldier battered his way through the decaying hordes, his comparative strength meeting with little resistance. He had quickly pushed his way through the main mass of cadavers to an area where they were considerably fewer in number. Still surrounded, Cooper glanced back over his shoulder and saw that the transport had been swallowed up by more of the abhorrent figures. Obviously aware that his path back to their armoured vehicle had been cut-off, Thompson swung out at another few random corpses before pushing his way through the crowd and running deeper into the dark shadows of the centre of the city.

‘Shit,’ Cooper snapped. The transport was beginning to push through the growing crowds and move away, the roar of its powerful engine filling the cold afternoon air. More and more of the shell-like bodies began to drag themselves after the machine as it began to move. The situation was dangerously unpredictable and Cooper knew that the others wouldn’t wait or try to collect Thompson and himself. Their only priority now would be to return to the base and report back. It didn’t matter how many of them made it back there, as long as someone returned the mission objectives would have been achieved.

Cooper looked back and watched as Thompson rounded a corner and disappeared from view. Bloody idiot, he thought as he wrestled himself free from still more of the bodies that grabbed and clutched at him incessantly. With the transport quickly moving away in the opposite direction he knew he had little choice but to follow his colleague into the centre of town.

As he ran after the other man, smashing weak and clumsy figures away on either side, he began to silently make plans to get himself and Thompson back to the bunker. He knew the way back out of the city and the route to the base. It would just be a question of finding a car or some other form of transport and…

He could see Thompson again now.

What the hell was he doing?

The soldier was running up the middle of a sloping street lined with shops and cafes. There were several nondescript figures advancing awkwardly towards him. Seemingly ignorant to their presence, Thompson stopped moving and turned back to face Cooper.

‘For God’s sake,’ Cooper yelled, his voice muffled by his breathing apparatus but still loud enough for the other man to hear, ‘what are you doing?’

Thompson ripped off his mask.

‘I’m not going back,’ he shouted, his tired face flushed red and full of emotion. ‘Look at this bloody place! It’s a fucking nightmare. These people are…’

He stopped speaking abruptly and bent forward and began to cough violently. Doubled over with shock and sudden agony, the lining of his throat began to burn and swell, quickly cutting off his air supply. By the time Cooper had reached him he was already choking on the blood running down his windpipe and draining into his lungs. He dropped to the cold, wet ground and shook and convulsed next to Cooper’s feet, spitting crimson blood onto the wet tarmac.

Distracted by movement, Cooper saw that more bodies were approaching from every direction, dragging themselves towards the stranded soldiers. As the sound of the transport’s engine faded away into the distance, he glanced down again and saw that the man on the ground was dead. As the bodies neared he stepped over the corpse of his colleague and began to run deeper into the town, hoping that he could find somewhere to shelter before making his move and heading back to the base.

The torrential rain was falling harder than ever, hissing down all around him and bouncing back up off the pavement. Cooper ran up a steady hill towards a small square shopping precinct littered with rotting human remains. There were many of the staggering survivors (if that was what they really were) around the scene, their reaction to him dulled and delayed by whatever it was that had happened to them. As Cooper brushed past it was all they could do to painfully turn themselves around and stumble after him hopelessly. As a soldier it was his duty to defend and protect these people, but it was clear that they were already beyond hope. As a human being, therefore, his priorities became infinitely more selfish and personal. He needed to get away from the unrecognisable hell that this city had become. His own safety was his only remaining concern.

A sharp right took him down a dark and narrow passageway, lined on either side by tall office buildings. There the driving rain echoed louder than ever before in the confined space. There were people ahead. The passageway was tight and he knew it would be difficult to get through them. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that still more of them were following him from the other direction. He was boxed-in and, although these poor creatures seemed individually weak and unimportant, there were far too many of them for him to simply dismiss them as not being a threat. By the same token, however, he didn’t want to cause them any harm. They were suffering. They were obviously very weak and undernourished. They were innocent and hadn’t done anything wrong.

Halfway down the passageway was a large waste bin which Cooper scrambled onto. From there he was able to haul himself up onto a metal fire escape ladder. He climbed to a first floor window which he smashed with a single kick from one of his heavily booted feet. Clambering through the splintered wooden frame and shattered glass he found himself standing in a large, open-plan office. There were more silent people inside, all in a similar condition to those walking the rain-soaked streets. They immediately turned and began to move towards him, their dark, clouded eyes following his every move. As they approached him he found himself wondering why, after living through the hell which had obviously taken place just under three weeks ago, these people were still at work. Why hadn’t they left to find their families and homes?

‘Look,’ he began, struggling to know what to say, ‘please don’t be afraid. I’m not going to…’

It was pointless. The people in the building were as withdrawn and catatonic as those dragging themselves along outside. Cooper stared with mounting horror into the nearest face. Once a young and attractive graduate trainee, this woman’s blistered, peeling skin was now tinged with an unnatural blue-green hue. He glanced down at one of the inert bodies slumped across a desk next to him. Even though he was looking through a tinted visor, it occurred to him that those bodies which were still moving and those that were motionless seemed to all be in the same despicable condition. He’d seen it before when he’d been out in the field on active duty. This was the look of death. These people were rotting…

With panic and bile rising in his throat, Cooper ran diagonally across the room, jumping up onto desks to avoid making contact with the shadowy creatures around him. He jumped down to the floor and slid and crashed through a heavy fire door into a dark corridor. Pushing his way past another wandering body he reached the nearest staircase and began to climb up. He moved as quickly as he could until he had reached the top floor and could go no further. After trying three locked office doors he forced his way into a small, square store room. He slammed the door shut behind him and pulled a metal storage rack down to block it and prevent the people outside from getting in.

Twenty minutes later, when Cooper had caught his breath and managed to calm himself down slightly, he walked across the room to a single window and peered out over the remains of the world outside. He could see bodies drifting aimlessly along the otherwise silent and deserted city streets. He could hear them moving around in other parts of the building too.

His transport was long gone and Thompson was dead. He was completely alone.

As time dragged slowly on, it wasn’t so much the surroundings that frightened the soldier, it was the unknown and invisible killer which obviously still hung in the contaminated air like a predator poised for the kill. He had witnessed for himself the speed at which it had attacked and destroyed Thompson.

Cooper knew that his life depended on his protective suit. He would have to make his move and get back to the bunker sooner rather than later in order to avoid it being compromised.

And as the long afternoon wore on towards evening Cooper’s thoughts steadily became more morose. He began to wonder whether there was any point in going back to the base at all?

What was there for him? Was a comparatively long life spent underground in hiding any better than a few hours or days of freedom on the contaminated surface?

23

The dead world was like a vacuum. Even the slightest noise travelled huge distances, carried for miles on otherwise undisturbed gusts of wind. The movement of the soldiers in their powerful transport created waves of interest along the entire length of their journey - from the rolling and exposed hills around the bunker itself right through to the cold heart of the city.

In the university accommodation block every single survivor had been stirred and encouraged by the sounds outside. More than just another random crash or unexplained disturbance as they had heard many times before, the noises they heard through the rain today were different. They were purposeful, intentional, mechanical noises. They were sounds which were obviously being made by other survivors. And the gun shots and shouting that filled the air had confirmed beyond doubt that other people had managed to continue to exist through the mayhem.

The survivors sheltering in the university had become cocooned in their hideaway. Too afraid to leave the relative safety of their building, the bravest of them had climbed up onto the roof, battling against violent weather conditions. From their high and precarious vantage point they had been unable to see the other people. They had, however, watched with mounting excitement as vast crowds of rotting bodies had begun to drift away from the university site and head back deeper into the city.

Although thousands remained, the number of bodies left wandering outside the accommodation block had reduced reassuringly. The survivors knew, however, that it wouldn’t take much to attract the collective attention of the dead and bring them staggering back to them.

And that was the quandary that split the group in two.

‘I’m not going to do anything that’s going to bring those bloody things back here,’ snapped Bernard Heath. The sudden force and nervous energy and volume in his voice belied the fact that fear was the only reason he was opposed to the plan that had been put forward.

‘For God’s sake, Bernard,’ Donna sighed, ‘can’t you see what we’re saying here? We know that whatever we do will bring the bodies back, but chances are it’ll bring those survivors to us as well. Do you really think we can afford to stay out here on our own for very much longer?’

‘But we’re not out here on our own, are we?’ he argued.

‘There are more than forty of us here.’

‘That’s as maybe,’ she replied, ‘but how many of them are in this room with us now? How many people do you actually see each day?’

Heath looked around the assembly hall. She was right, less than half of the total number of people in the building were in the room with them. It was rare to see more than ten of them together. Most continued to cower in silence in their individual rooms.

‘We’re stuck here,’ Phil Croft volunteered from across the hall. ‘Okay, that’s not proved to be too much of a problem so far, but give it a few more weeks and this shelter we’ve got here could well turn into a prison.’

‘No matter what we do those bodies will keep returning here,’

Donna continued. ‘The rest of the city is silent. We can’t help but draw attention to ourselves, can we?’

‘We can try,’ Heath protested. ‘We could…’

‘We could what? Shut ourselves in a single room up high and hold our breath so they can’t hear us breathing?’

‘No, I just think…’

‘You’ve seen how those things are beginning to behave, haven’t you?’ she asked, her voice weary. ‘They’re becoming more and more active every day. I know they’re not particularly strong on their own but given with the numbers we’re dealing with here…’

‘And we’re going to need to go out for supplies again soon,’

said Croft. ‘And as time goes on we’ll need to go further and further afield to get those supplies. We’re going to be spending longer out in the open.’

‘We need to start getting ourselves organised,’ Donna continued. ‘Get some kind of routine and order to what we’re doing. We need to find a way of letting those other survivors know we’re here without…’

Sat in the corner of the room, Nathan Holmes got up and walked towards the nearest exit.

‘You’re a bunch of fucking idiots,’ he spat. The rest of the people in the hall turned and stared at him. ‘Look at you. What are you trying to do here? Think you’re going to build some brave new fucking world out of…

‘We’re not trying to do anything except………’ Donna began before Holmes interrupted.

‘What you’re trying to do is pointless. It’s all pointless. You shouldn’t even be wasting your time talking about it. As soon as I can I’m getting out of here and I’m going to…’

‘We all know exactly what you’re going to do,’Donna sighed.

‘You’re going to drink yourself stupid so that you can forget everything. We’ve heard you say it a thousand times. You don’t give a damn about anyone but yourself.’

‘Too right I don’t,’ he replied, ‘why should I?’

‘Can’t you see how our chances will improve if we work together?’ Croft asked.

Holmes looked up to the ceiling in despair.

‘But that’s my point, what chance have we got? Everybody in this damn building has lost absolutely everything. Getting out of here and trying to forget everything is the best option for anyone who’s got any degree of sense left…’

‘You’re confusing sense and selfishness,’ Donna mumbled under her breath.

‘Look,’ Croft said, the patience in his voice wearing thin, ‘all we’re talking about doing here is setting up some kind of beacon so that if and when those others come back they’ll know where we are and they’ll come to us. We’re not trying to make great plans for the future because we don’t know if any of us have got a fucking future!’

‘But your beacon will attract the bodies,’ protested Heath.

‘For Christ’s sake, man,’ Croft seethed. ‘Can’t you see that’s a risk we’re going to have to take?’

Jack Baxter had been watching the increasingly tense conversation develop.

‘What if we put a beacon on the roof?’ he asked.

‘What’s that going to achieve?’ Heath wondered.

‘Think about it, if we put some kind of beacon up on high then it’s not going to be immediately obvious to the bodies but a survivor…’

‘…a survivor would know that anything up on the roof would probably have been put there intentionally,’ added Donna, completing his sentence for him. ‘If we’re talking about lighting a fire, then a survivor would know that any blaze would most probably start somewhere inside the building and work its way up, it wouldn’t start on top, would it?’

‘I understand that,’ moaned Heath, sitting down on an uncomfortable plastic chair, ‘but if and when those other people get here, they’re going to bring the bodies with them, aren’t they? It’s not going to matter how careful you are with your bloody beacon, is it?’

Donna looked at the frightened lecturer for a few long seconds before turning her back on him in frustration. She understood what he was saying, she just couldn’t understand why it was such a issue for him. To her the solution to their problem and the potential side-effects were obvious and unavoidable. Increasing the number of bodies outside the building seemed to be a small price to pay if it meant they could make contact with other survivors - people with transport and weapons who, it seemed, were surviving out in the open.

Just over thirty miles from the city, and two and a half miles away from the concealed entrance to the underground bunker, two survivors sat together in nervous silence. Hiding in a relatively well-appointed motorhome they had taken from outside another dead town just three days ago, the couple had driven out to the most exposed and isolated area of land they had been able to find.

Since being forced to leave the farmhouse where they had previously sheltered, Michael Collins and Emma Mitchell had lived from hand to mouth like scavenging animals. Five days ago the building where they had hidden in relatively safety for the best part of two weeks had been overrun by hundreds of wandering corpses, attracted to their remote and otherwise inconspicuous location by the activity and sounds the survivors had made simply by existing. They had taken many precautions to separate themselves from the rotting remains of the population, but all their efforts had ultimately been in vain.

Michael and Emma had learnt to their bitter cost that there was no way of escaping the unwanted attentions of millions upon millions of desperate, diseased and increasingly vicious corpses.

The couple had heard the engine in the distance when the soldiers had emerged from their hidden base earlier in the day.

At first it had seemed impossible to believe - since leaving the farmhouse neither of them had seen any indication that other people remained alive - not a single sound or movement that might have pointed to the existence of other survivors. But the noise of the engine had been definite and unmistakable, and it had filled them both with sudden unexpected hope where before they had felt nothing but pain, emptiness and desolation.

By the time they were out of the motorhome and were able to look for the source of the sound the soldiers had been long gone.

They did, however, stumble upon a straight gravel track at the bottom of a hill near to where they were parked. In the absence of any other roads or pathways for miles around, the track seemed logically to be a good starting point in their search for other survivors. Michael had supposed that anyone else attempting to survive in this brutal, inhospitable world might have found themselves a base similar to the farmhouse where he and Emma had hidden. It followed that if these people were heading out for supplies, there was a fairly good chance they would be back again before long.

He was right.

The darkness of early evening had all but swallowed up the last light of the gloomy afternoon when they heard the sound again. Distant and faint at first, it had quickly increased in volume. Ignorant to the dangers of being outside and exposed, Michael threw open the motorhome door and jumped down the steps. He sprinted across the long, rain-soaked grass and crouched down on a small rocky outcrop from where he was able to get a clear view of a long stretch of the track below. And then he saw it - a huge, powerful military transporter which roared defiantly along the track. Michael couldn’t see the driver of the vehicle, or how many people were inside, but it didn’t matter.

More important than just finding other survivors, he now knew that these people were strong and well organised. And if they really were the military, what did that mean? How many hundreds of them could there be nearby?

The transport disappeared into the darkness. He stood up and ran cautiously along the exposed brow of the hill, following the machine until it was completely out of view. Where did the track lead? He stared into the darkness and contemplated what he had seen for a few silent seconds before remembering the danger of being alone outside and running back to the motorhome.

‘Well?’ Emma asked as he let himself back inside.

‘Well what? I saw a bloody big army machine. Don’t know exactly what it was but…’

‘The

army?’

‘Looked like it,’ Michael said breathlessly as he locked the door behind him and drew the thick curtains which they used to stop any light from spilling out into the darkness and revealing their location to the rest of the world. ‘Couldn’t be sure, but it was definitely some kind of armoured machine.’

‘Where did it go?’

He shrugged his shoulders. Emma had an infuriating habit of asking questions which she knew he couldn’t answer.

‘It was following the track we found earlier,’ he sighed, ‘so I guess it was going wherever the track leads.’

‘And where’s that?’

‘How the hell am I supposed to know? I suggest we should try and find out tomorrow.’

‘Don’t you want to look tonight?’

‘No,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘The light’s almost gone.

It’s too dangerous. We’ll wait until morning.’

24

Cooper was becoming increasingly claustrophobic in his protective suit. Made from a number of layers of rubberized material, as well as preventing any contamination from getting inside, it also stopped everything from getting out. Although it was cold in the building he was dripping with sweat. He decided he would make a move in a short while but, for now, he wanted to rest and gather his thoughts and prepare himself for the journey back to the base. He didn’t relish the thought of having to fight his way back out of the city. And what if he couldn’t get access to the base when he finally made it back there? What if they wouldn’t let him inside because the decontamination process had already started for the others? What if they hadn’t even made it back? He imagined having to wait outside on his own for days - unable to eat or drink or even to breathe freely.

Christ, what exactly had happened to the world?

He had been understandably preoccupied with the situation that he suddenly found himself in, so much so that the fate of the rest of the world seemed to have somehow temporarily passed him by. The effects of the virus had been devastating beyond compare, that much was clear, but what had the deadly disease actually done? Why had some people survived when others had died, and had those people actually survived at all? Their skin bore the same telltale signs of decomposition and decay as the corpses on the ground and they were unnaturally lethargic and slow. He stopped and checked himself. What was he actually saying here? Cooper shook his head and laughed and leant back against the nearest wall. Did he really think that those people he’d come across in the city were dead? Maybe the air had been filled not with disease but with some particularly effective hallucinogenic drug that had somehow breached the protection of his suit? Perhaps nothing that he thought he’d seen had actually happened? That was a marginally more plausible explanation of the bizarre events of the day so far.

The world outside was relentlessly dark. He wondered whether he would be better making his move at night? Perhaps he would be safer under the cover of darkness? Whatever the people he’d come across were - contaminated survivors, reanimated corpses or hallucinations - he was clearly stronger and quicker than they were. He also had the advantage of having been trained to survive in the most extreme conditions. He was confident - or at least as confident as he could be in the circumstances - that he would be able to get out of the city.

His stomach growled angrily with pangs of hunger. He’d done his best to ignore the mounting pain for the last couple of hours but it was getting worse. The gentle rumblings had now become severe cramps which twisted his gut and, to add to the discomfort, his bladder was full to capacity despite the fact that his throat was uncomfortably dry. He needed a distraction, and short of leaving the store room he couldn’t immediately think of one.

In a desperate attempt to occupy his mind for a while, Cooper began to look around the metal racking which surrounded him.

Even a pen and paper would be sufficient - he could write his will or scribble pictures or do anything to distract himself until the time was right to leave. Using the light from a small but powerful torch he’d carried strapped to his belt he peered dejectedly into the gloom.

Up high on the opposite side of the room he could see cardboard boxes. Most of the racking was loaded up with basic office supplies and stationery, but from where he stood he couldn’t see what these boxes might contain. A mixture of inquisitiveness and sheer boredom and frustration drove him to climb up and check the boxes out. Disappointingly they held nothing more than printer cartridges and supplies.

Cooper lowered his foot to step down but lost his balance as the racking (which was not attached to the wall as he’d presumed) tipped forward slightly. He dropped down heavily and landed awkwardly on his back on top of a photocopier with a crash which, in the silence of the night, sounded disproportionately loud. Wincing with pain and surprise he then rolled off the top of the machine and tumbled onto the floor in an uncoordinated heap, smashing his head against more racking on the way down. Numb with surprise and breathing heavily, he lay where he had fallen for a moment and listened to other sounds which had suddenly begun to echo around the building, the clattering and crashing noises he’d made having disturbed the office’s other occupants. With considerable effort he slowly dragged himself back onto his feet and brushed himself down.

He could feel air on his face.

Thrown into a desperate panic, Cooper scrambled around in the darkness for his torch. Switching it on, he shone it across the room and, in the light it gave off, saw that the visor of his facemask was damaged. With his heart pounding in his chest his eyes followed the route of a snaking crack across the visor from bottom-left to top-right where he saw that the protective glass, perspex or whatever it was that the mask was made of had chipped.

An immediate, suffocating nausea washed over the soldier as he realised the implications of what had happened. His suit had been compromised. He had seen what the disease had done to Thompson earlier and he knew full well how quickly and violently his colleague had been infected and had died. After a split-second pause as the cold reality of his situation sunk in, he panicked. He covered the chip in the visor with his hand, hoping to prevent the disease from getting inside. With each second that passed so his fear increased. He struggled to find some tape with which he could repair the damage, knowing full well that, in all probability, his lungs had already been filled with the deadly germs. All that he could do now was wait for the inevitable to happen.

Cooper screwed his eyes shut and waited.

He held his breath for as long as he could, hoping to prolong his life by a few precious seconds and knowing that the next time he breathed in might be the last.

A few seconds longer still and he ripped off the face-mask.

He was already contaminated - he decided he might as well breathe his final breath freely and not through the sterilising filters in the breathing apparatus.

He leant against the window, breathing in the cold autumn air, and waited.

After five minutes had passed he began to wonder why he wasn’t dead. Or was he? Was this how the people who were still able to move had been affected? He didn’t feel any different. It didn’t hurt. He wasn’t suffocating or choking as he’d seen Thompson suffering earlier.

It was several hours later when Cooper finally allowed himself to accept the fact that he so far seemed to have been left untouched by whatever it was that had ripped apart the rest of the world.

25

‘They’ve got to be somewhere down that track,’ Michael whispered, knocking back the last dregs of a mug of lukewarm black coffee. ‘Whether they’re a mile away or ten miles away, they’re going to be down there somewhere.’

‘So what do we do?’ Emma asked, leaning across the melamine covered table and watching the shadows dance across his face in the dull light of a flickering gas lamp. She was tired.

It felt like they’d been talking about this for hours.

‘Find them,’ he said simply.

‘But is that wise?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If this really is the army or airforce or whatever, do we really want to get involved with them?’

‘Do we have a choice? Whoever they are, they’re obviously well organised. You never know, they might have an antidote or something. There could be bloody hundreds of them holded-up somewhere.’

‘But we don’t need an antidote.’

‘I know that,’ he snapped. ‘All I’m trying to say is that this whole thing might not be as hopeless as we’ve been thinking…’

‘And anyway,’ she continued unabated, ignoring everything he’d said, ‘everybody’s already dead. It’d need to be a bloody good antidote to help those poor bastards out there.’

‘Okay,’ Michael sighed, annoyed by her flippancy and her reluctance to try and find some good in the day’s events, ‘you’ve made your point.’

A brief moment of silence followed. Emma looked around the cramped motorhome where she’d spent virtually every minute of the last few days. She hoped with all her heart that Michael’s optimism was justified. After the relentless grief, despair and fear which had burdened them both constantly since the nightmare had begun, the possibility that some semblance of normality might somehow be about to return to their lives was welcome and unexpected. But it was so unexpected that she wouldn’t allow herself to believe it was true until the fragments of possibility and hope had been evidenced and cemented into reality.

‘You okay?’ Michael asked, concerned by how quiet and reflective she had suddenly become.

‘I’m all right,’ she answered sadly.

‘Sure?’

She shook her head and looked down at the table.

‘No,’ she mumbled.

Suddenly uneasy and self-conscious, Michael shuffled awkwardly in his seat. He’d spent weeks with Emma now but there was still an occasional distance between them. He grew more and more relaxed and assured in her company each day, but moments like this felt uncomfortable. Truth was he didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know how to make her pain go away.

‘What’s

wrong?’

She wiped her eyes and looked up at him.

‘Sorry,’ she sobbed, ‘I can’t help it. Most of the time I’m okay, but then sometimes I…’

‘What?’

Emma looked around the caravan, searching for the words to express how she felt.

‘I just want this to stop,’ she explained. ‘I want to go to sleep tonight and wake up in the morning and find everything back as it used to be. And if that’s not going to happen, I want to wake up and find the bodies gone and the uncertainty gone and the fear gone and…’

‘Shh…’ he whispered, worried that her voice was becoming loud enough to be heard from outside. ‘Listen, you know as well as I do that the only certainty round here is that things are never going to get back to normal, don’t you?’

She

nodded.

‘Yes,

but…’

‘If this is all we’ve got left then we’ve got to make the most of it. We’ll get used to living like this and…’

‘But this isn’t living,’ she protested tearfully. ‘How can you call this living? This is barely existing for Christ’s sake. Look at us, Mike. Look at what’s happening to us. We smell. We’re dirty. We haven’t washed properly for weeks. Our clothes are filthy. We both need to cut our hair and you need to shave.

We’re not eating properly or exercising or…’

‘We’re making do,’ he interrupted. ‘And when we can we’ll find somewhere to live where we can wash and relax and grow our own food. We’ll get new clothes and we’ll build ourselves a bloody palace somewhere, okay?’

She sniffed back more tears.

‘Okay,’ she replied.

Michael stared into her tear-streaked face. She was right, but what could they do? As far as he could see there was no immediate way out of the situation they found themselves in.

They had to remain mobile and go without some base necessities in order to survive. He truly believed that things would change eventually, they had to. The bodies would decay away to nothing in time.

‘Hungry?’ he asked, looking for a way to distract Emma from her dark and difficult thoughts. She nodded and sank back into her seat.

‘A

little.’

‘I’ll get you something.’

She watched him as he stood up and walked the short length of the motorhome to the cramped kitchen area. Their vehicle shelter was safe but stifling. She might have been able to cope with the confined space had she been able to venture outside occasionally. As it was she was trapped, and she was finding the motorhome increasingly claustrophobic. Even though they had intentionally driven out into the middle of nowhere, for safety’s sake they had draped thick blankets over every window and door to prevent any light from seeping out into the darkness and giving away their presence.

Almost three weeks had passed since the day the disease had struck but Emma still couldn’t adjust to the way she was having to live. She’d known from the start that she’d probably never fully come to terms with the devastation and loss she’d experienced, but there were other much more subtle ways in which she was struggling. Having to remain deathly silent was harder than she would ever have imagined. She was growing tired of having to think about everything in terms of how much noise she was going to make.

Michael came back to the table and sat down. He carried with him more coffee and two pots of dehydrated snack food. Steam snaked up into the air from the top of each pot.

‘Beef and tomato or sweet and sour?’ he asked.

They had found a job-lot of these snacks in the storeroom of a small corner shop they’d looted earlier in the week. The food tasted awful but it was hot, easy to prepare and relatively nutritious.

‘Can’t stand sweet and sour,’ she answered, ‘but I prefer it to beef and tomato.’

He passed her the sweet and sour flavoured food and a fork.

Still sniffing back tears she began to eat hungrily and without further complaint.

‘I think they’ll be back,’ Michael said between mouthfuls of tasteless food.

‘Who will?’ asked Emma.

He looked at her in disbelief. How could she have forgotten already?

‘Whoever it was I saw today,’ he sighed. ‘Remember?

Bloody hell, Emma, anyone would think you didn’t mind living in a shit-hole like this eating plastic food out of a plastic pot!’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m tired. Look, I know how important this is to you…’

‘Do you?’ Michael snapped.

‘Yes,’ she insisted, ‘of course I do.’

‘Have you stopped to think where these people might be from? This might not be as widespread as we’d thought. Maybe it’s only this country that’s been affected……’

He stopped talking, aware that Emma had put down her fork and that she was staring at him.

‘Don’t do this,’ she said softly, reaching her hand out across the table and gently squeezing his. ‘Please don’t let your imagination run away with you. Until we know more let’s just keep our feet on the ground and take every day as it comes. I don’t want to start thinking things are going to change only to find that we’re back in the same damn mess again and nothing’s happened. Do you know what I’m trying to say?’

‘No, not really.’

She sighed and squeezed his hand again.

‘As far as I’m concerned you’re all I’ve got left. You’re the only thing left that I can count on. My family and friends are gone. I don’t have a home any longer and I don’t own anything other than what’s in this van. The only thing I seem to be able to hold onto is you, and I’m not about to let you go.’

‘You don’t have to. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not suggesting that we do anything that’s going to…’

‘I don’t want to take any chances, Mike. You know how much I hate all of this, but if this is as good as it’s going to get then it’s going to have to do. Let’s just keep our heads, take our time and not take any chances, okay?’

He looked across the table and into her eyes and nodded.

Much as he wanted to follow the track and try and find the other survivors he knew that she was right. He felt strangely guilty for a moment. Did he give their relationship and need for each other the same importance that Emma appeared to? For a split second he tried to imagine being without her. He couldn’t. She was all he had too.

26

Cooper woke up.

He couldn’t remember falling asleep. He remembered sitting by the window last night, staring out into the darkness and listening to the rain but, other than that, nothing. He noticed the discarded face-mask on the floor and recollections of what had happened to him came flooding back. He felt okay. He was still breathing and he still had a pulse. As far as he could tell he was still fit and healthy and alive. Surely the disease would have affected him by now if it was going to affect him at all?

The morning outside was dry and, despite the sky being dull and overcast, relatively bright. The heavy smell of death and decay hung over the city like a dense cloud of polluting fog, tainting everything with its abhorrent scent. Now that he had discarded his breathing apparatus the stench was inescapable.

Regardless, Cooper quickly decided that it was just about preferable to the processed and recycled air that he’d been forced to breathe for most of the last two and a half weeks. He reminded himself that he was in the middle of a large city and that the air would surely be cleaner and more palatable elsewhere. There would undoubtedly be better places than this.

For a short time he allowed his mind to wander. Instinctively he thought about making the return trip to the base. He’d already made basic mental plans and preparations before the realisation dawned on him that he didn’t actually have to go back there if he didn’t want to. It was only the sense of duty and misguided loyalty instilled through years of military service that had made him think that he should return. No doubt the other soldiers who had left the base with him yesterday would have given him up for dead by now - the officers would be more surprised if he did find his way back there now than if he remained missing in action. He suddenly found himself in a relatively fortunate position. He was free from the restrictions of military life and the confines of the bunker and, it seemed, immune from the germ that had destroyed pretty much everything else. What remained of the rest of the world was potentially his for the taking.

For a while Cooper alternated between feeling free and feeling compelled to return to his duties. He looked down into the alley below the window and watched a single bedraggled figure trip and stumble along. Should he do something to try and help here? Could he really disappear selfishly into the distance and leave everyone and everything else to rot? It was the scale of the disaster that ultimately convinced him there was nothing he could do. What did he think he could possibly hope to do for the thousands of diseased people? It had been indicated that this was a global crisis. Even if he returned to the base, what could a handful of soldiers possibly do to help millions upon millions of dead or dying citizens? From where he was sitting it was painfully obvious that society and civilisation was as dead as any of the decaying bodies still lying face down in the gutter.

Feeling suddenly stronger and more confident Cooper decided to move. He didn’t know what he was going to do or where he was going to go, he just knew that there had to be somewhere better than this cramped and cluttered storeroom.

Still sweating profusely in his heavy suit (it had kept him warm through the night just ended) he peeled it off and dropped it to the ground, stripping it of any useful equipment. He felt cold and the sudden uncomfortable drop in temperature brought him crashing back to reality and reminded him of the enormity of the catastrophe that had befallen the country. For a while he considered trying to find his friends and family. Much as it hurt him to do so, he knew that it was better to believe they were already lost. If he did try and find them, chances were they’d be dead or dying and there would be nothing he’d be able to do for them. But then again, he thought, he seemed to have survived the disease, so why shouldn’t they have done so also? What if his immunity was linked to his genetic make up? Strange to think that his survival this morning may well have only been possible because of some combination of DNA handed down to him unknowingly by his parents.

He cautiously moved the metal racking blocking his way and, with his automatic rifle held out in front of him, gently pushed the door open and peered out into the corridor. He glanced left and right and, once he was sure the way was clear, stepped out into the shadows. His footsteps echoed loudly on the linoleum floor and he soon heard muffled sounds nearby. Somewhere in the building something was reacting to his movements.

As he crept cautiously towards the staircase he had used yesterday, Cooper found himself thinking about the other troops who had been sent into town with him. If they had made it back to the bunker then he knew exactly where they’d be now - locked tight in the decontamination chamber. And how would they be feeling? Empty. Lifeless. They had seen the extent to which the world had been destroyed and they were probably more aware than anyone else of the apparent hopelessness of the situation.

He guessed that they would be locked in the chamber for at least another day before being let back into the main complex. He was sure that the hours and days which then followed would be spent being debriefed by the senior officers. And what was there to look forward to after that? Nothing. Just more of the same - more dangerous excursions beyond the safety of the underground bunker followed by more excruciatingly slow decontamination followed by more questions. And then it would begin again.

Cooper slowly made his way down the stairs, one at a time, taking care with each individual footstep to avoid making even a single unnecessary noise. As he moved towards ground level he questioned what it was the senior officers in the bunker thought they were going to achieve? As far as he could see the human race was over. Destroyed in less than half a day by a virus of unimaginable ferocity.

The soldier’s stealth and silence allowed him to creep through the building without being seen or heard. He pushed open a heavy glass door and stepped outside. The morning was cold and the dull grey cloud so prevalent earlier was now beginning to break up letting occasional patches of blue appear. It was an exhilarating feeling seeing daylight again. It had been good yesterday to get out of the bunker but this was a thousand times better. For the first time in weeks he was free. For the first time in weeks Cooper was almost beginning to feel like a human being again.

He turned towards the heart of the city, moving down the alleyway in the same direction in which he had run yesterday.

Another listless, bedraggled figure traipsed towards him awkwardly, its face and features made indistinct by bright autumn sunlight which had suddenly spilled across the scene.

Cooper thought carefully for a moment, not sure how he should deal with it. Should he attack it before it attacked him? The pathetic creature looked so weak and weary that he was instinctively sure it didn’t pose a serious threat to him. Keeping his guard up he stood still and watched with morbid fascination as it moved closer and closer towards him. He remained routed to the spot, moving only his eyes. The figure stumbled past, seemingly oblivious to his presence. The unexpected sunlight disappeared when the pitiful body was alongside him. Despite the shadow he was still able to clearly see the full extent of the decay and deterioration of the creature’s skin.

Once his way was clear Cooper moved forward again, taking care to stay pressed against the wall to his right, hiding in the relative darkness he found there. At the end of the alleyway was a junction. He followed a long, gently curved stretch of road round and found himself at the entrance to a large public square.

In spite of all that he had already seen, the sight which greeted him took his breath away.

Cooper had last been to this city on a warm summer’s day a couple of years ago. The tiered square had been a popular public meeting place and a well-known city landmark. He remembered sitting with friends outside a bar, drinking, laughing and generally wasting the day. His mind wandered momentarily as he surveyed the scene and thought about the time he’d spent here. He could almost hear the sound of the running water which had previously cascaded from a huge, modern fountain at the top of the square and run down decorative steps to a large shallow pool just a few meters away from where he stood. Today the steps were dry and the waterfall and fountain eerily silent. Last time he’d been here the water had been clear and bright. Today what remained was green-grey and stagnant. There was a bloated body floating in the deepest part of the pool.

There were figures nearby. He started to move again. It appeared that as long as he matched their slothful speed he didn’t seem to attract any unwanted attention. These people were catatonic - moving but not thinking or reacting to anything but the most obvious stimulation. Occasionally pigeons would land in the square with a sudden burst of unexpected noise and movement. The arrival of the scavenging birds would cause the bodies to turn awkwardly and lurch and stagger towards them pointlessly.

Cooper felt strangely invincible. His immunity to the disease or virus or whatever seemed to set him apart from the remains of human beings he could see around him. The fact that he could still control his speed and movements gave him an irrefutable advantage, almost like an unexpected shield of protection or a cloak of invisibility. It really was as if the people couldn’t see him unless he made it obvious that he was there.

The lone soldier’s choices were endless but also strangely limited. In theory he had the rest of the world at his disposal, and yet at the same time nowhere was safe. Too much remained unknown and uncertain. Whilst he was as sure as he could be of his apparent immunity and relative strength today, who could say what might happen tomorrow? Allowing himself to become dangerously distracted, he tripped up one of the large concrete steps and dropped his rifle. It landed on the paving stones with a loud clatter that shattered the silence.

‘Shit,’ he cursed as he stooped to pick up the weapon. Before he had even lifted his head again he was aware of them.

Approaching from all directions were sickly, diseased figures, pouring out from the shadows. For a few seconds it was all he could do to look around helplessly, desperately searching for a way out of the exposed public area. There seemed to be fewer bodies to his right and so he ran, pushing his way past the nearest few. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that more and more of the bloody things were stumbling after him. Their speed was not a problem but their sudden sheer volume and apparent determination was. He struggled to contain his mounting panic.

Instinct forced him to run, but he knew that it was his noise and movement that had given his presence away. There were buildings on either side of him but swarms of bodies prevented him from getting to them easily. Desperate, he wrenched open the door of a telephone box and forced his way inside. Pushing away rotting hands that reached after him, he slammed the door shut and sank down to the ground. With his back pressed against one side of the box and his feet pushed hard against the other, he looked up and watched with disgust as body after body smashed into the small glass cubicle. In seconds he was in almost total darkness - the light outside blocked out by the mass of diseased flesh that was pressed against the phone box. Cooper dropped his head and closed his eyes. Wait for a while, he thought, and they’ll disappear.

27

Michael woke up with a start. It was just after ten in the morning.

‘Listen,’ he hissed.

Drugged with sleep, Emma propped herself up on her elbows.

‘What?’ she mumbled.

‘Listen,’ he hissed again.

In the distance, and disappearing quickly, was the sound of an engine.

‘More people like we heard yesterday,’ he said, jumping out of bed and struggling in the gloom to find his clothes and put them on. ‘I’ve got to get out there and see where they’re going.’

‘Why?’ asked Emma, confused.

‘Stupid bloody question,’ he snapped. ‘You know why. These are survivors. These people could…

‘These people are leaving here,’ she said, her voice still tired and heavy with sleep. ‘There’s no point going out now. All you’re going to be able to do is watch them disappear.’

‘That’s got to be better than just sitting here and…’

‘Why not wait? They came back yesterday, didn’t they?

Surely they’ll come back again today?’

‘Not necessarily,’ he said as he pulled on his jeans and fastened his belt.

‘No,’ she yawned, ‘not necessarily, but probably. You’ve got to admit, there’s a damn good chance they’ll be back later.’

‘Yes,

but…’

‘But

what?’

Michael stopped what he was doing and peered at Emma through the early morning gloom. Dejected, he threw his T-shirt down onto the bed in front of her and sat down heavily next to her feet. He knew she was right. In the time it had taken him to put on his jeans and socks the noise outside had already disappeared. Whoever these people were, he had to agree it was likely they’d be back again later.

‘Come here,’ Emma said quietly.

Michael looked up at her with sad, childlike eyes. She could see that he was struggling. As strong, resilient and brave as they both tried constantly to be for each other, it was becoming harder and harder just to get through each day. The lack of any news, direction or purpose was slowly killing them, and that was why Michael had reacted to the sound of the engine in the way that he had. Every last fibre of his body wanted to believe that the survivors they had heard would bring an end to the bleak and relentless nightmare that their once ordinary lives had become over the last few weeks.

Michael lay down on the bed next to Emma and rested his head on the pillow close to hers. She rolled over onto her side and looked deep into his tired face. He stared up at the ceiling, excited by the sound he’d heard but also angry and infuriated that he was still no closer to finding out who these survivors were and where they’d come from. He knew he’d probably get the answers to his questions in the near future but that wasn’t good enough - he wanted to know now.

Emma wrapped her arm around him and pulled herself closer.

He could feel her breath on the side of his face. It relaxed him.

For a moment it made what was happening outside feel somewhat less important.

‘They will be back you know,’ she whispered again with real belief and conviction in her voice. Michael knew that she was right. ‘I’m sure of it. It’s too much of a coincidence for us to hear them travelling past here twice in two days and back again last night. They must have a base nearby.’

‘I know,’ Michael grunted.

‘We should move the van,’ she suggested. ‘Move it into a place overlooking the track.’

He

nodded.

‘Suppose

so.’

‘Look, that’s what we’ll do,’ she said gently, still trying desperately to keep him positive and focussed. ‘We’ll drive across the hills until we find somewhere we can see the track from and we’ll sit and wait. We can sit in the front and watch and as soon as we see them we’ll try and follow them back to wherever it is they’ve come from.’

Michael nodded again. Her well-meaning words, although perhaps said more out of duty than belief, were welcome and appreciated. He was lucky to have Emma. He glanced across at her and lifted his hand and brushed a fallen curl of hair away from her face. She smiled and pulled herself even closer so that their faces were almost touching. He kissed her lightly on the cheek and then kissed her lips. He kissed her again and then pulled back slightly and stared deep into her eyes. Much as they both craved warmth, comfort, protection and countless other things, to be safe and to be this close to each other was enough for now.

28

Exhausted by the effort of moving silently through the diseased crowds, Cooper dragged himself on through the bleak remains of the city. Despite all of his training and preparation for dealing with nightmare scenarios, he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep moving forward. Every single step he took required more concentrated effort than it ever should have. Every time he turned his head he saw something else which shocked, repulsed, disgusted or terrified him. The cold, grey streets were littered with the abhorrent remains of broken, decaying bodies - the residue of thousands of innocent and unsuspecting plague victims. If he half-closed his eyes and tried to ignore the sickly, shuffling bodies that milled hopelessly around him then it felt like he was walking through a bizarre still photograph. It was almost as if the world had been frozen in an instant of time, and that every part of it was now dying the slowest and most painful death imaginable. He could no longer see any goodness around him, nothing positive. Death, decay and destruction dominated everywhere.

In half an hour he had reached the ring road which ran around the perimeter of the city centre. His geography and knowledge of the local area was fair but far from comprehensive. He looked hopefully at every road sign he passed, trying to find the name of a suburb or nearby village that he recognised or at least remembered something about. It made sense for him to head for somewhere right on the outskirts of the city, somewhere where the buildings were spread out over a decent area rather than being packed tightly together as they were in many of the closer inner-city districts. He’d had plenty of time to think about what he was going to do, but the constant distractions around him had prevented him from coming up with anything resembling a sensible or coherent plan of action. All that he really wanted was to find somewhere relatively safe and comfortable where he could stop and rest for a few days and take stock of everything.

More than anything he needed to spend some time trying to work out what it was that had actually happened. He didn’t expect to be able to find many answers (if he found any at all) but for the sake of his sanity he needed the opportunity to stop, take a deep breath and at least attempt to understand.

On Cooper’s left as he trudged slowly down the middle of the ring road was the city centre proper and, just ahead and to his right, the first few buildings of the hospital and university complex. The road slowly dropped down and arched lazily to the left, and as he followed it around he became aware of something bizarre and initially inexplicable that made his blood run cold.

Up ahead, little more than a quarter of a mile away, was an immense crowd of bodies. Instinct urged him to turn around and head in the opposite direction but at the same time he knew that he didn’t dare make such an obvious move. A sudden stop or an unexpected change in direction might attract the attention of the numerous random bodies moving close around him. From what he had already seen this morning he knew that something as simple and innocent as such a movement might cause him to be noticed, and the resulting disturbance would inevitably attract more and more of the rotting corpses to him like moths around a single light burning in an otherwise pitch-black room. Like it or not, he seemed to have no option but to keep moving forward, to keep walking towards the huge crowd.

He neared the bodies with the initial intent of shuffling around the furthest edge of the massive gathering and carrying on out of the city. As he approached, however, he began to ask himself why such a gathering had built up there in the first place? The answer, it occurred to him, was simple. The creatures seemed to be devoid of virtually all decision making capabilities and they only appeared to react to the most basic of stimuli.

Something was drawing them to this place.

The wide road was strewn with the remains of wrecked cars and other vehicles, making it difficult for Cooper to be able to accurately estimate the number of bodies ahead of him. They appeared to be dragging themselves towards a large, modern building on the other side of the road, each one of them advancing forward painfully slowly until the sheer weight and number of tightly packed creatures ahead prevented them from getting any closer. Cooper made a slight alteration to his course so that he drifted towards the far side of the road where there were slightly fewer figures. He noticed that more and more of them were appearing almost constantly, dragging themselves out from the shadows of the city centre. The vast crowd was largely silent, save for the constant slow shuffling of rotting feet being dragged along the ground. Over this low background noise, however, he thought he could hear something else. Too wary of drawing attention to himself by lifting his head to dare look up, he stared at the ground in front of him and concentrated so that he could distinguish and identify this new sound. It took only a few seconds for it to become apparent that it was the cracking and popping of burning wood, accompanied by occasional snatches of human conversation. When he heard someone shout -

even though the noise lasted for only a couple of seconds and was unintelligible - he knew beyond doubt that there were other survivors nearby. Unable to contain his curiosity and desire to see other living, breathing people like himself, he cautiously lifted his head and looked into the distance. A pall of dirty grey smoke was drifting lazily away from the top of the large building opposite. He squinted and saw that there were people on the roof. Although he only dared look for a few seconds, he thought he could see between five and eight of them and, despite having seen each of them for only a moment, he knew that they were survivors. He’d seen the remains of many offices and shops that had been scarred by fire, but the fact that this blaze was on the roof of the building left him in little doubt that it had been started deliberately.

Against his better judgement, Cooper allowed himself to drift deeper into the crowd. He didn’t dare shout to the survivors to make them aware of his presence, knowing instead that his only option was to slowly and cautiously make his way closer to the building. Just a few short footsteps further forward and he found himself deep within the bulk of the rotting crowd. Random decaying figures collided with him constantly and it was all that he could do to keep his nerve and not lose control. The smell of putrefaction was appalling. He’d been around death many times before during his years of service, but never anything like this.

The cloying, relentless smell of decay hung like a thick, disease-ridden blanket smothering everything. Keeping control of his stomach was beginning to take almost as much effort and concentration as keeping control of his speed and his movements.

The density of the crowd added to the confusion. All that Cooper could now see were shuffling bodies on every side.

Although the creatures were withered and relatively slight, there were so many of them and they were packed so tightly together that it was impossible to see clearly in any direction. Generally the heads of the figures hung heavily on their weary shoulders but Cooper knew that it was too dangerous for him to again look up and over the top of the crowd. He had to keep moving with the flow of the obnoxious masses and hope that luck would eventually push him in the right direction.

Although he tried for a while to convince himself otherwise, there was no escaping the fact that, after a few minutes, he was not making any real progress towards the building. There was very little that he could immediately do about it. He felt himself being pushed and buffeted away from the front of the building and out to his right, back along the ring road in the general direction from which he had just arrived. Again there was nothing he could do except keep moving and hope that chance would eventually allow him to drift back the other way. He stumbled and tripped over an inert body on the ground. In a fraction of a second he was able to regain control, keep his balance and not panic. Even as his boot smashed down onto decayed flesh and exposed bone he forced himself to remain steady and emotionless.

A

subway.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw it. Just over to his right he became aware of the entrance to a subway which, he guessed, provided a pedestrian connection between the buildings on the side of the road he was heading towards and the rest of the city.

Before the events of a few weeks ago the ring road would have been far too busy for people to try and cross by foot - it was proving awkward enough to negotiate now with the wreckage of hundreds of cars and other vehicles and countless bodies strewn randomly across the cold tarmac. Sensing that he was still going nowhere, Cooper decided to take a chance and head underground. Although there would surely be more bodies trapped down there, it would be darker and, he presumed, safer.

Cautiously he began to veer off towards the sloping concrete entrance. His nervousness increased as he stared down the ramp into the approaching darkness. As he descended the light steadily faded and the smell intensified. Unnerved, a sickly sweat broke out across the soldier’s brow - it reminded him of the moment he entered the bunker on that first morning three weeks ago.

Inside the subway was almost pitch black, much darker than he had expected. He was aware of some degree of movement around him but it seemed that most of the bodies had by now dragged themselves up above ground, their limited attention captured, no doubt, by the light and sound and the movement of the rest of the crowds out there. No more than twenty meters down and he came upon a T-junction where a second tunnel crossed the path of the one he’d been following.

The lack of light was disorientating. His eyes were slowly becoming accustomed to the low gloom but as he followed the second tunnel (moving, he hoped, towards the building with the fire on the roof) the light continued to fade. The smell outside had been bad enough but down here it was appalling - the sharp, musty stench of festering, rotting flesh which had been trapped underground, unable to easily escape out into the relatively fresh air on the surface. He could see slight shadows and movements all around him and, at times, it seemed as if the dark walls of the subway tunnel themselves were moving. He shuffled forward a step at a time, dragging his feet along the ground and clearing a path through the endless decaying human debris with his heavy boots. He was fairly sure that the tunnel he now followed was leading him along the length of the road and closer towards the front of the building he was aiming for. He needed to turn right again to reach the survivors.

A sudden unexpected collision sent Cooper tumbling heavily to the ground. He had walked into one of the stumbling bodies and, although there had been virtually no force in the impact, the surprise had sent him reeling. He fell awkwardly, landing on the chest of an indistinguishable corpse which collapsed under his weight.

‘Fucking hell,’ he yelled instinctively as he struggled to pick himself up and get his balance. His clumsy boots slipped and slid in pools of sticky gore causing him to lose his balance again.

Seconds later and he was steady on his feet. Breathing heavily he stood completely still in the middle of the subway, hoping to remain invisible and undetected in the darkness. He didn’t need to be able to see to know that no matter how still and quiet he was now, it didn’t matter. The damage had already been done.

His fall and sudden outburst seemed to have attracted the unwanted attention of every one of the sickly bodies that remained underground. He could hear them turning awkwardly in the darkness and beginning to lurch towards him.

In a second the first grabbing hands were upon him.

Outstretched, clumsy and easy to deflect, he brushed them off with his left hand and grabbed the rifle which had been slung over his shoulder with the right. He didn’t know what effect the rifle would have on the creatures, it was just another instinctive reaction. He glanced back and caught sight of more shadowy movement in the nearby darkness. They were coming from all directions. He was surrounded.

Cooper dropped his shoulder and ran forward. He moved as quickly as he dared in his half-blind and panic-stricken state as he smashed body after body to the side. He tried to feel his way ahead with the end of the rifle, frightened that in the blackness he might be about to run headfirst into a wall or some other obstruction. He knew that he had no alternative. He had to keep moving or risk being trapped underground in almost total darkness, buried under the weight of the ever increasing numbers of rotting bodies swarming around him.

The end of his rifle effortlessly pierced the withered torso of another corpse like a bayonet and then hit a wall, sending a sudden jarring thud running through his body. Cooper had reached another junction. He had seconds to chose between turning right into another pitch-black tunnel or going left along another equally dark passageway. Although disorientated, his sense of direction suggested he should move right and, as he had no other information to base his decision on, that was what he did, pushing the cadaver off the end of his rifle and forcing his way through still more bodies towards where he believed he’d find the building and the survivors.

Another body crashed into him, then another and another.

With his shoulder dropped and his head down he charged forward, determined to keep moving at all costs through the sea of rotting flesh, terrified that he might be overcome by the unknown number of figures milling around him. At the back of his mind the nagging fear that his exit out of the subway might be blocked forced him to try and move faster and faster while his military training and commonsense pleaded with him to slow down. For a fraction of a second he looked up and saw a chink of light ahead through a gap between more lurching creatures. And he began to run with even more determination and speed.

He was getting closer to the light. Visible for fleeting moments between shadows and clumsy, staggering shapes, at that moment it was all that Cooper had to cling onto. He squeezed the trigger of his rifle and fired off a short round of shots, just enough to blast most of the bodies out of the way momentarily. With his path marginally clearer he sprinted forward with increased speed, watching the light around him increase steadily until he finally burst out into the open again.

Relieved he stopped and shielded his eyes from the sudden brightness of the day as he looked anxiously from side to side.

Already there were hordes of decaying shells advancing towards him, their interest having been aroused before he appeared by the noise of the shots echoing along the subway passages. His mouth was dry, his heart was pounding and his legs were heavy but he knew that he had to move and keep moving. The survivors were just ahead of him now. He knew that his survival depended on him reaching the building and attracting their attention.

More bodies spilled out of the subway after him and grabbing hands reached at him from behind, spurring him into action.

With his rifle still gripped tight he raised the barrel of the weapon up into the air and fired off another volley of shots.

After spending hours trying desperately to remain faceless and anonymous he was now ready to do all he could to make his presence known.

‘Over here,’ he screamed, looking up at the side of the tall redbrick building just ahead of him. ‘Can anyone hear me?’

Down at ground level it was impossible for the lone soldier to be able to know if his cries had been enough to illicite any response. On the roof of the building, however, the second round of gunshots had triggered a flurry of excited and slightly anxious movement. Survivors moved nervously towards the edge of the roof and peered down, hoping to catch sight of the person that had fired the rifle amongst the countless thousands of vacuous bodies.

Cooper pushed himself towards the building, constantly looking for an entrance or open window or some other way to get inside. He could see plenty of doors but there were bodies pressed hard against them. There were plenty of windows too, but he knew that smashing them open would do more harm than good. He’d be letting himself into the building but, at the same time, he’d also be paving the way for a flood of decomposing figures to follow him through.

‘Round the back,’ a hoarse and directionless voice yelled at him. Cooper didn’t waste time trying to locate the source of the sound, instead he sprinted away from the front of the building as instructed, smashing more of the lumbering cadavers away as he did.

Inside the accommodation block the frenzied activity continued as the survivors who had been up on the roof clattered down the nearest staircase to get to the ground floor. Some - Jack Baxter and Bernard Heath included - instinctively ran towards the assembly hall, intending to alert the rest of the survivors there and, perhaps, to find a way of distracting the bodies outside. A handful of others led by Donna Yorke and Phil Croft continued around to the back of the building where they pushed open an inconspicuous looking door and ran out into the daylight.

Slipping and tripping up a steep and wet grassy bank, Cooper heard the door open. He anxiously looked around and caught sight of the survivors who themselves were already surrounded by bodies. He could see six of them, three of whom were armed with large sticks and other makeshift weapons which they were using to batter the shuffling figures out of the way. He stumbled and fell before picking himself up again and continuing to push forward.

‘There he is,’ shouted Nick Braithwaite, a man who had hardly spoken since arriving at the university. He swung a snooker que around his head like a sword, sending another three cadavers crumbling to the ground. Croft and another survivor moved forward slightly, hoping to clear a path for the soldier.

Cooper smashed the butt of his rifle into the jaw of another corpse before pushing past the survivors and disappearing inside.

‘He’s in,’ Donna yelled from just inside the doorway. ‘Shut the bloody door!’

The survivors outside began to retreat, still swinging their weapons furiously, the bodies still grabbing and reaching out for them. Braithwaite was the last man in, bringing in with him two of the desperate figures which clung onto him with diseased, claw-like hands. He dragged them further along a grey corridor before hitting out at them to try and release their relentless grip.

As Donna slammed the door shut and bolted it Keith Peterson grabbed the nearest corpse and lifted it up.

‘Shit,’ he said under his breath as he held it tightly by its spindly wrists and stared into its cold and expressionless face.

The empty gaze which the creature returned chilled him to the bone. The decaying flesh around its wrists gave way under the force of his grip which nervously increased with each passing second.

‘Just get rid of them,’ Croft shouted nervously. Cooper yanked the body away from Peterson and pushed it against the wall. He lifted his rifle and put a single bullet through its head, right between the eyes. As the corpse slid down the wall (leaving a trail of black-red blood and shards of splintered bone behind it) the soldier turned and did the same to the second body. The remains of a dead vicar dropped to the ground in front of him.

The sound of the final gunshot echoed along the corridor and was gradually replaced by the ominous sound of body after body after body hurling itself against the door, trying desperately to reach the survivors safe inside.

29

‘So where the fucking hell did you come from?’ Nathan Holmes spat as the exhausted soldier and the group of six survivors entered the assembly hall. There were several other people in the room. They each individually stopped what they were doing and stared at the unexpected arrival.

‘We were based just outside the city. Look, is there any chance that I could get…’

‘Was it you who was shooting yesterday?’ Holmes interrupted.

‘Not me personally, but…’

‘And the engine we heard, that was you too?’

Cooper nodded, exhausted. Much as he understood why it was happening, this sudden interrogation was the last thing he needed.

‘That was us,’ he answered.

‘Us?’

‘That’s right.’

‘So where are the others?’

‘Back at the base I hope.’

‘And why are you still here?’

‘We got separated.’

‘How come you can breathe? Are the others immune?’

Cooper shook his head.

‘Don’t think so. I don’t know for sure. I only found out I was by chance. Look, could somebody please tell me exactly what happened here? I’ve been…

‘Aren’t you the one who should be telling us what’s happened?’ asked Donna. She walked across the room to stand directly between Holmes and the weary soldier. Cooper shrugged his shoulders.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘None of us knew. We had a little information, but nothing……’

‘What information?’ Jack Baxter asked, moving closer.

‘Like I say, no-one knew very much,’ he explained. ‘We were told there was a disease. We knew that it was widespread and that it had probably killed thousands but nothing like…

‘So where were you when it happened?’

‘What?’

‘If you didn’t know that you were immune until you got here, where have you been hiding for the last few weeks? How come the rest of you didn’t get infected?’

‘We were in a bunker.’

‘You want to be thankful you didn’t see any of it,’ Bernard Heath sighed, sitting down a short distance away.

‘What?’

‘I said you ought to be grateful you were underground when it happen,’ he continued. ‘It was more than thousands of people that died, it was millions of them. Bloody millions of them just dropping dead where they’d been standing. Christ, I don’t expect there’s a thousand people left alive.’

‘So what about the ones outside? Are they…?’ Cooper let his words fade into silence. No matter what he’d witnessed out on the streets, he couldn’t bring himself to ask the impossible question which had played on his mind since he’d first arrived in the city.

‘They’re dead,’ Baxter answered. ‘If I hadn’t seen it myself I probably wouldn’t believe it. They all died on the first morning.

A couple of days later they started to move again.’

‘But how could they…?’ Cooper mumbled pointlessly.

‘Don’t know. Christ, we’ve got a doctor here and he doesn’t know either. No-one knows.’

Phil Croft took Baxter’s comment as his cue to become involved in the conversation.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he said quietly. ‘No-one’s ever seen anything like this before so there’s no point asking me what’s happened. Tell you the truth, there’s no point even trying to work it out.’

‘Do you know what did it?’ asked Paulette, the large and relentlessly effervescent lady who had been hanging on every word of the difficult exchange, hoping for answers. Her normally bright and energetic voice was suddenly quiet and uncharacteristically serious and flat.

Cooper shrugged his shoulders.

‘No,’ he admitted.

‘Bloody hell,’ Heath protested, ‘you must have some idea.

Were we attacked? Was it an accident?’

The soldier shook his weary head.

‘I really don’t know. It can’t have been a missile attack because you’d have seen or heard something. I’d have heard something. We would have known if we were being attacked.

We were trained to deal with that kind of situation.’

‘So what are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that this was different.’

‘What about the speed of it?’ Donna asked. ‘I was nine floors up. I watched it move across the city. How could that have happened?’

‘I’m starting to wonder whether it was already here,’ Croft added. ‘There’s no way a disease or a virus could be carried on the wind that quickly, is there?’

‘I’ve got no idea,’ Cooper sighed. ‘Look, I’ve got no reason to hide anything from you. If I knew anything then I’d tell you.

Like I said, no-one that I was with seemed to know anything.

There might be people somewhere who understand it all, but the officers in our base knew about as much as you do.’

Weary, Cooper collapsed into the nearest chair. Donna handed him a bottle of water and pulled another chair across the floor to sit next to him. There was a look of intense concentration on her face. Much as she was interested in the superficial and relatively unimportant details that Paulette and probably many others wanted to hear from the soldier, she wanted answers to other questions from him. Already her mind was working frantically, analysing what he had so far said and wondering whether this stranger might be able to bring some safety and stability into their bizarre and dangerous world. He had, it seemed, arrived in the city from a protected oasis of relative normality.

‘So how many of you were there?’ she asked.

Cooper drained the bottle of water dry and wiped his mouth and cleared his throat before responding.

‘Where? How many of us were here yesterday or…?’

She shook her head.

‘In the base. How many of you were in the base?’

‘Couple of hundred I think. I’m not completely sure. Three hundred at the most.’

‘Room for any more?’

‘Don’t know. Could be.’

‘And are there more bases?’

He nodded.

‘There were supposed to be more, but I don’t know if anyone managed to get to them. I’m not even sure where they are.

There’s bound to be one close to the capital.’

‘You must have some idea.’

‘Why? I didn’t know where our base was until I was in it.

Look, these are the kind of places you don’t know you’re reached until you’re standing on top of them. I’ve heard that some of these bunkers are in the middle of cities, others are more remote. Christ, you might have lived next door to one for the last ten years and not known anything about it.’

Phil Croft sat down next to Donna.

‘If we could get to your base,’ he began, the tone of his voice tentative and uncertain, ‘would you be able to get us inside?’

‘You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m burying myself underground with the fucking army,’ Nathan Holmes hissed from a short distance away. ‘Completely out of your fucking mind.’

Croft shot a quick, disappointed glance in his direction and then turned back to face the solider again.

‘Would they let us in?’ he asked again.

Cooper couldn’t answer with any certainty.

‘They might,’ he said quietly, ‘but on the other hand they might not. They might not let me back in. It depends if the decontamination process works, I suppose. I left the base but I never made it back, did I? The others that left with me might not have been able to get back inside. If they couldn’t remove all traces of the disease then they’d have left them on the surface.

For all I know they might have let it in when we left. The whole bloody base might be dead by now.’

‘What kind of protection did you have?’ Donna asked.

‘Inside or outside?’

‘Outside.’

‘Full body suits and the best breathing kits the government could buy,’ he answered.

‘So,’ she continued, ‘while you were away from the base you couldn’t eat or drink or……?’

‘Theoretically we could,’ he interrupted, finishing her sentence for her. ‘The suits were designed to let you eat and drink and get rid of waste but we didn’t carry much in the way of supplies. We weren’t intending to be above ground for too long.’

‘What if those others can’t get back into the base because their suit or their equipment’s contaminated…?’

‘They’ll have left them on the surface.’

‘To die?’

‘Suppose so.’

‘And did you know that when they ordered you to go outside?’

‘No-one said as much but it doesn’t take a genius to work it out, does it?’

‘No wonder you’re not rushing to get back.’

‘Part of the job,’ Cooper mumbled nonchalantly.

‘And are you still on duty?’ Croft quipped.

The soldier shook his head.

‘I quit,’ he said, deadpan. ‘I quit the moment I found out I could breathe. You don’t have to spend long out here to realise the whole planet’s dead. I figured I might as well try and make the most of the little freedom I’ve got left. They probably think I’m dead anyway.’

‘Might as well be,’ muttered Holmes.

30

Ignorant to the potential dangers of being out alone, and with a sense of smug satisfaction warming him against the cold late autumn wind, Michael stood on top of a bleak hillside and watched as another truck full of soldiers clattered down the overgrown track back, he presumed, towards their base. He’d found the track again earlier and had followed it as far as he’d dared to go on foot before heading back to the relative safety of the motorhome. He and Emma had then driven to the point where he’d stopped walking. Michael sensed that they were near to finding the base and the return now of more troops in their transport was proof that they were close. Feeling more positive than he had been for days he turned around and put his thumbs up as a salute to what felt like a small but significant victory. The afternoon light was fading and cold rain was beginning to spit down. From the comparative warmth and comfort of the motorhome a short distance away Emma watched and waved back, acknowledging his achievement.

Before turning and going back inside, Michael looked down at the track for a little longer. There was a body walking along it now. A single pathetic, rotting, disease-ridden cadaver that pointlessly dragged itself along after the long gone transport.

Even now after so many days and weeks had passed Michael found it hard to accept what had happened. He watched the lone figure with equal amounts of fear, hatred, pity and pain.

Although they had intentionally stayed as far away from the rest of the remains of the world as possible, coming into contact with the corpses was inevitable. As they had earlier watched the behaviour of the creatures change from the shelter of their farmhouse hideout, so they had since seen that change continue unabated. Whereas originally these reanimated bodies had been empty shells, now emotion, control and direction was undeniably beginning to return. It was almost as if their brains had been anaesthetised by the disease and the numbness was gradually fading. Originally hollow and unfeeling, the bodies now seemed to be gaining a purpose. First the ability to interpret and respond to basic stimuli had returned, then something resembling base emotion - the need to protect themselves and find an answer to their pain perhaps? More recently Michael had sensed a vicious inquizitiveness about the bodies which was quickly mutating into anger and hate.

It was cold. The wind, rain and low temperature reminded him that he wasn’t safe. He ran to the motorhome.

‘Well?’ Emma asked as he let himself inside and closed, locked, barred and blacked-out the door behind him.

‘More of them,’ he answered, quietly and breathlessly.

‘We’re close, aren’t we?’

He nodded and wiped the rain from his face and hair.

‘We must be.’

A moment of silence followed. Michael took off his wet outdoor jacket and kicked off his muddy boots. Now that he was safely indoors Emma busied herself with what had become a nightly ritual - covering every window, vent and door with wooden boards and heavy black material. They knew that even the smallest pinprick of escaping light might be enough to attract the bodies. Emma didn’t mind the gloom. It helped her to forget the cramped and squalid conditions that they found themselves living in.

‘Tomorrow morning we should try and get closer again,’

Michael whispered as he sat down opposite Emma at the small table. ‘It doesn’t matter how long it takes, does it? We’ll take things one step at a time. I’ll walk a little further down the track then we’ll drive the van down when we know what’s there.’

‘Are you sure this is the right thing to do?’

‘Of course it is, why?’ Michael was surprised by her comment.

‘Because this is the army we’re dealing with here,’ she explained. ‘Do you think we’re going to be welcome? They might not have come across any survivors yet. And look at the state of us. They’ll probably think that we’re dead and that we’ve just…’

‘Do you really believe that?’ he interrupted. He sighed and shook his head and looked down at the table.

‘I don’t know,’ she stammered, unsure. ‘We’re the odd ones out around here, aren’t we? They’re not going to be expecting…’

‘They’re not going to be expecting fucking corpses to turn up in a camper van, are they?’

‘No, but…’

‘But what? They’ll see the van, they’ll see us and we’ll be okay.’

‘What if they see you when you’re walking?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Sounds like you’re just trying to find reasons not to do this.’

‘Come on, that’s not fair. I’m just worried that this won’t work out.’

‘It’ll work out.’

‘There are a hundred reasons why it might not. Christ, you told me they were wearing suits. They can’t even walk out in the open. They can’t breathe the air because it’ll do to them what it did to the rest of the population.’

‘Yes, and that’s our get out, isn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If things don’t work out the way we want, we’ll walk.’

‘You think they’ll let us?’

‘You think they’ll have a choice?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Emma sighed, holding her head in her hands.

‘I’m not trying to be negative. I just think we need to play this whole situation very carefully.’ She knew that she was going to have trouble trying to contain Michael’s eagerness and excitement. She knew where he was coming from, but his cavalier approach and lack of concern worried her. They both knew what the risks were. They had already lost just about everything they had. At the farmhouse they had fought to build themselves some kind of shelter and protection from the rest of the world, and despite their huge physical and mental advantage over the countless scores of plague victims they had lost it all in the blinking of an eye. One mistake was all that it had taken.

And although sitting in a cold motorhome in the middle of a field was far from ideal, at least they now had some degree of control again. Emma had an unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach that they were dangerously close tò.

Every night felt like an eternity. The dark hours dragged endlessly. With no distractions or entertainment it was all that Michael and Emma could do not to dwell on the problems outside their door. Occasionally the situation became slightly lighter and more bearable. Most of the time, however, the musty atmosphere in the cramped motorhome was tense and overbearing.

Conversation had continued to be sparse and difficult throughout the evening. As the couple had discovered on many occasions recently, there was very little they could talk about that didn’t somehow lead them back to discussing everything that they had been doing their best to forget about and ignore. Going to bed sometimes brought temporarily relief, but much of the time it was of little help. The survivors would either lie there, unable to sleep, or they would manage to lose consciousness only to be jolted back into their bizarre reality by a dark nightmare or a sudden noise from the other side of the motorhome’s paper-thin metal walls.

The only true comfort that Michael had found in the days and nights since his life had been turned upside down was Emma. As they lay in bed together, holding each other tightly, keeping each other warm, he relaxed in the comfort of her closeness. He loved the sound of her voice whispering in his ear late at night, and the gentle tickle of her breath on the side of his face somehow managed to remind him that, no matter how it often felt, he was still very much alive. The smell of her, the feel of her body against his, the warmth that she brought to the long, cold nights, all helped reassure him that the effort of survival had been worthwhile and that, despite the considerable odds stacked against them both, there remained a faint glimmer of hope that their situation would eventually improve. He clung to the thought that, one day, the two of them might be free to walk out in the open again without fear. He knew that it might happen someday. The rotting bodies were deteriorating and couldn’t continue to function indefinitely, could they?

It was twenty past two in the morning. The wind was buffeting the side of the motorhome, rain was driving down and crashing onto the metal roof above them and they could hear a solitary body tripping and sliding randomly through the mud outside. It didn’t seem to matter. For a few precious moments none of it seemed to matter to Michael. He was close to Emma and, for a couple of relaxing, refreshing and unexpected minutes he was somehow able to forget the hell outside.

31

‘We should get out of here now,’ Donna said, her mouth half-full of food. ‘We’re not going to gain anything from staying here. We should get out and head back to the base with Cooper.’

‘What’s there for us?’ Bernard Heath asked anxiously.

‘More than there is here,’ she replied before returning her full attention to the scraps of food on her plate.

‘Who says I’m going back to the bloody base?’Cooper muttered to himself, just loud enough for the others to hear.

Nine survivors sat together in semi-darkness and ate a scraped together meal in one of the university lecture rooms. The atmosphere throughout the building had changed noticeably since the soldier had arrived there earlier in the day. To many of the desperately frightened people gathered in the accommodation block his appearance had brought a faint glimmer of unexpected hope into their dark lives. To an equal number of others, however, his presence in the building had increased their unease and anxiety. Claustrophobic, monotonous and uncomfortable their world may well have become, but with the rest of the country lying in ruins around them, this was all they had left.

The soldier’s sudden unannounced and unexpected interference in their fragile existence was disproportionately unsettling. To make matters worse (if they possibly could get any worse) the noise and commotion that had accompanied Cooper’s arrival had whipped the crowds of disease-ridden bodies outside into an unprecedented frenzy. Even now, many hours later, the creatures still fought to get closer to the building, banging hopelessly against exposed windows and doors with their rotting fists.

‘Isn’t it about time we started trying to make some decisions here?’ Jack Baxter said suddenly, pushing away his plate of cold food and taking a swig from a can of drink. ‘I mean,’ he continued, ‘we can’t just sit here and wait indefinitely, can we?’

‘We can if we want to,’ Heath disagreed. ‘It makes sense to sit tight and wait for…’

‘Wait for what?’ Donna wondered.

Sitting in the chair next to Donna, Clare looked from face to face in the low light. First Heath, then Baxter, then Cooper, then Donna and then back to Heath again. She waited for him to say something. In the gloom he looked haggard, old and weary as if he was carrying the weight of everyone’s problems on his shoulders. She sensed that he was struggling to keep himself calm and controlled. She could see fear in his eyes.

‘What I mean is…’ he stammered. It was obvious that he didn’t know what he meant.

‘What are you planning to wait for?’ Donna asked again.

‘What exactly are you expecting to happen?’

Obviously uncomfortable and wishing he’d stayed quiet, Heath played with his food and picked up a paper towel which he screwed into a tight ball before throwing it into a nearby waste bin. He sank back in his chair and looked up for inspiration but nothing came.

‘Don’t know…’ he finally admitted.

‘Something’s got to give eventually, hasn’t it?’ Baxter said.

‘Like what?’ asked Cooper.

‘Well, things can’t stay like this forever, can they? Nothing ever stays the same for too long. I mean, you turned up here today, didn’t you? There will be more like you and…

‘There are more like me,’ Cooper explained, ‘but don’t assume they’re going to come back here. As far as they’re concerned this is a dead place.’

‘They might.’

‘Yes, they might, but on balance they probably won’t. As far as I was aware we were sent out on a reconnaissance mission and that was all. If the others made it back to the base and reported what they’d found then…’

‘Then what?’

‘Then they’ll know that there’s no real reason for anyone to come back here, won’t they?’

‘So what do you think they’ll do?’ Donna wondered. ‘It doesn’t matter where they go, they’re going to find the same thing.’

Cooper shrugged his shoulders and continued eating.

‘I really don’t know. Like I said earlier, there were supposed to be other bases. I suppose they’ll try and group together. But then again, maybe they’ll just stay underground.’

‘Christ, imagine spending the rest of your life in a bunker………’ Phil Croft mumbled, finally making an effort and becoming part of the conversation.

‘Better than not having the rest of your life,’ Clare said quietly.

‘You think so?’ Cooper asked. ‘You didn’t see what it was like down there. Anyway, we don’t know for sure if those are the only options. Whatever happened here might not have happened everywhere. I think it did, but it’s always possible that there are some safe areas people could get to.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Croft.

‘But do you see what I’m saying?’ Baxter continued, seizing on a lull in the conversation and picking up from where he’d last spoken. ‘You’re talking about all these different scenarios but the bottom line is that something’s inevitably going to change, isn’t it? It’s damn unlikely that nothing’s going to happen. The law of averages says that things will never stay the same.’

‘What the bloody hell are you talking about?’ Steve Richards sighed from his seat in the darkness.

Baxter stared across the room in the general direction of the younger man. It was too dark for him to see exactly where he was sitting.

‘Have you looked outside recently?’ he asked, his voice suddenly cold and deadly serious.

‘I try to avoid looking out of the window,’ Richards smirked.

‘Too fucking grim for my liking.’

‘Do yourself a favour and go and take a look out front will you? There are bloody thousands of those things out there now and none of them are going anywhere. For whatever reason they’re attracted to us and there are more and more of them arriving every hour.’

‘What’s your point?’ Richards asked.

‘Seems to me there’s going to come a time when the sheer volume of them outside is going to start causing us real problems.’

‘Why? Do you think they’ll get in?’ wondered Heath, his voice low and nervous.

‘They might,’ Baxter replied, ‘but I don’t think it’s very likely. I’m thinking more about us trying to get out. We’re going to have to leave here for supplies eventually, aren’t we? There’s only so much we can store here.’

‘He’s got a point,’ Donna agreed.

‘The more I think about it, the better the argument is for packing up and getting out of here right now,’ Baxter continued.

‘There’s also a lot to be said for sitting still and waiting,’ Phil Croft added. ‘But you are right, Jack, things are going to change no matter what we do. The bodies will change for a start.’

‘How?’

‘They’re decomposing, aren’t they? No matter how determined or persistent those bloody things are, there’s going to come a time when they physically won’t be able to do what they’re doing any longer.’

‘And how long’s that going to be?’ Donna pressed. ‘How long do you think it will take them to rot completely?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Six months,’ he suggested although he was far from certain.

‘Six months!’ Heath protested.

Croft shrugged again.

‘Could be. Might be longer. Might happen in half the time.

There are a lot of unknown factors we’re dealing with here.’

‘Such as?’

‘The disease for a start, we don’t know what effect it might have on the speed of decomposition. And then there’s the fact that they’re above ground. I guess they’d rot quicker if they were buried, but it might be that exposure to the elements and the physical effort of moving around wears the bodies down at a faster rate. I don’t know for sure.’

Donna suddenly stood up. The other survivors watched her.

‘This is bloody brilliant,’ she said with genuine excitement in her voice for the first time in weeks. ‘Do you hear what you’re saying?’ She looked around at the blank faces staring back at her. ‘Six months and we could be over the worst of this. Six bloody months and we might well be able to do whatever we damn well like again!’

‘So we just need to find somewhere safe to hide out until then,’ said Baxter.

‘Stay here,’ Heath immediately suggested. ‘We can stay here until it’s safe to move.’

‘You haven’t been listening, have you?’

‘We need somewhere better than this, somewhere stronger and more isolated,’ Donna announced.

‘You need the base,’ decided Cooper, his voice filled with resignation.

32

He didn’t know how he had let it happen. In just a few minutes he had experienced a full range of emotions – from glorious realisation, joy and fulfillment through to shame, utter despair and regret. All of the confused and pent up feelings which Michael had forced himself to hold onto and suppress for weeks had now, in a moment of rash madness, been allowed to bubble to the surface and show themselves. The situation he now found himself in was painfully awkward and unexpected. He felt frustrated and embarrassed, exposed and naked.

It was early morning. Michael didn’t wear a watch anymore but he knew by the low level of light beginning to trickle in through the skylight that it was about five or six o’clock, maybe a little later. He’d managed to sleep for a while but, ultimately, the night had been as long and interrupted as most other nights in the motorhome had so far been. But the last few hours had been subtly different. Lying next to Emma (who, in comparison, had slept relatively soundly) he had spent much of the hours just gone watching her. She had rolled over to face away from him in the darkness. Instinctively he had snuggled down behind her and put his arm around her body. His hand had brushed her breast.

Both survivors were fully clothed, but just the sensation and the slightest touch of her warm, soft bosom had been unexpectedly exciting and had reminded him in an instant of feelings of desire and lust which had been forgotten for what felt like forever. He had pushed himself closer to her in the darkness, pressing himself against her, praying that she wouldn’t wake up but, at the same time, wishing that she would respond. He had wished that she’d turn around and hold him and kiss him and stroke him and caress him and tell him that everything was going to be all right.

For a long time Michael had wrestled with his conscious.

How could he allow himself to think about love and sex when the world outside was dead? What kind of a human being was he to even consider his own lust and sexual desires ahead of the devastation that had taken place beyond the fragile walls of the motorhome? But regardless of how his brain and his conscious screamed at him and demanded that he should behave, his heart and other more basic, carnal instincts drove him to act differently.

In the semi-darkness he reached down under the bedding and unzipped his trousers. Troubled and nervous at first, he began to touch himself in a way that had been forgotten since the nightmare had begun. Initially uncertain, with each passing second his quiet excitement had mounted steadily and soon he was moving quickly, enjoying the unexpected freedom and holding onto Emma as tightly as he could without waking her.

She was the reason he was doing this. He knew that he didn’t dare risk telling her how he felt for her and how much he wanted her but, for the first time, he finally allowed himself to consider, admit and accept the depth of his feelings for the only other human being remaining in his world.

His hand movements became quicker. Faster and faster as he reached the moment. Caution and control gave way to excitement. He couldn’t stop. He knew that the silence and movement might betray him but he didn’t care. He’d had a need

– a physical lust – which needed to be fulfilled. And then it happened. The movement stopped, a split second pause and then sheer pleasure followed by relaxation.

Suddenly paranoid and self-conscious, Michael did up his trousers and immediately began trying to work out how he was going to clean the bedding and his clothes without Emma asking questions or discovering what he had done. A once-familiar feeling of post-ejaculation regret bordering on disgust washed over him. What had he done? Christ, billions of people dead and there he was, wanking under the bedclothes like some dirty little schoolboy. He felt ashamed, and that shame increased infinitely when Emma rolled over. She was awake. Worse still, he could tell from her eyes (not that he dared look into them for any longer than a second) that she’d been awake for a while.

‘You okay?’ she asked.

Embarrassed, Michael nodded.

‘Fine,’ he grunted awkwardly. ‘You?’

She smiled and rolled onto her back.

He looked away, too ashamed to dare make eye contact again. A heavy silence descended on the motorhome which seemed to Michael to last for hours but which only lasted seconds. Covering his groin with his hand and a discarded T-shirt he got up quickly and headed towards the confined bathroom space where he began to clean himself up, wincing with the cold as he sponged his clothing down with bottled water. How had he let it happen?

A hundred dark thoughts began to manifest themselves in his confused and guilty mind. Did Emma really know what he’d done? Was it such a crime? Would she want to leave and be apart from him? Had he actually done anything wrong? Could she trust him now? Would she despise him? Did she think he was some kind of pervert?

All of his questions were answered when he plucked up courage to return to the other room.

‘It’s all right, you know,’ she said softly as he approached.

Even more ashamed than he had been when it had first happened, Michael was now mortified.

‘What? You mean you…?’ he stammered.

‘It’s perfectly natural,’ she soothed, getting up from the bed and walking across the room to him.

‘I just…’ he began, not really knowing what it was that he was trying to say.

Sensing that any conversation would be difficult, Emma instead wrapped herself around Michael, burying her face in his chest for a moment before looking up into his eyes and then gently kissing his unshaven cheek. She ran her hands up and down his back and squeezed him tightly.

‘Don’t be ashamed,’ she whispered. ‘I understand.’

‘Do you?’

She kissed his lips. She had kissed him before, but this time the contact between them was undeniably stronger. She stared into his face.

‘I know how you feel,’ she whispered.

33

The vast crowd outside the university building was still growing.

Even now, several weeks after it had all begun, still more slothful, deteriorating bodies dragged themselves through the wreckage of the city centre and out towards the university complex. For the survivors gathered in there it was impossible to appreciate just how obvious their presence had become. The rest of the nearby locality remained shrouded in almost complete silence. The only sounds to be heard there were either natural or accidental – the noise of wind gusting through brittle-branched trees or clumsy, staggering corpses colliding with random objects and sending them crashing to the ground. In this dense and relentless vacuum even the slightest disturbance became amplified out of all proportion, and the reactions such disturbances provoked were similarly exaggerated. The population of the city had once numbered more than a million before being struck down en masse. Of those killed, more than a third had subsequently begun to move again and each one of those had slowly regained the ability to react and to respond to base stimulation. Seeing one body react would cause another to lurch instinctively towards the first, and then another would follow and another and another. A single unexpected sound would often cause more than a hundred of the pathetic creatures to herd inquisitively in the same direction. The survivors, with their frequent but unintentional noise and movement and their occasional bonfire beacons, had succeeded in attracting the unwanted attention of a rotting crowd in excess of ten thousands bodies.

From a glass-covered landing three floors down from the top of the building, Yvonne, the once prim and proper legal secretary, stood next to Bernard Heath and looked down on the vast hordes below. It was early morning. As usual neither of them could sleep.

‘What are we going to do, Bernard?’ she asked quietly, pulling a thick overcoat around her tightly to keep out the cold.

As winter approached she was really beginning to feel the drop in temperature, perhaps because she hadn’t eaten properly for almost a month. Both of the survivors were in their fifties and the physical strain of their ordeal was beginning to become painfully apparent. For no more obvious reason than their similar ages they had become close and had spent much time in each other’s company over the last few long days.

‘I don’t know,’ Heath replied sadly, staring intently into the crowds which stretched out in front of them.

‘Do you think they’re right, the people that say we should get out of here?’

‘Don’t know,’ he mumbled again.

‘I can’t stand the thought of it. I can’t bear the idea of being out there with those things. There are hundreds and hundreds of them. How are we supposed to get past?’

Heath didn’t answer. Instead he simply slumped forward and rested his head against the cold glass. It was raining outside, a heavy and continuous drizzle which soaked everything and which made the dull and lifeless world seem darker, colder and ever more empty. Christ he was tired. He hadn’t done any physical work to make him feel this way. Just existing in this nightmare was a continual strain that required constant effort.

Down below the bodies continued to push closer towards the building. So many had arrived now that those at the very front were being crushed by the sheer weight of the extraordinary volume of corpses behind. Despite the lack of space those creatures pressed against the windows and doors still tried hopelessly to move even further forward. They had neither the strength, space or ability to get inside the building but still they tried continually to reach the survivors on the other side of the wall.

‘Hungry, Bernard?’ Yvonne asked.

He shook his head.

‘No. And anyway, even if I was, there’s nothing left worth eating.’

He was right. The survivor’s food stores were running dangerously low. They had ransacked every square inch of the university complex and had managed to survive so far by finding sufficient canteens, restaurants and vending machines to strip bare of food and other supplies. Although they had ventured into the city frequently during the early days to get provisions, the risks had increased substantially since then. Even men like Nathan Holmes who had originally seemed so full of bravado and contempt for the bodies had now become reluctant to even take a single footstep outside.

The longer Bernard and Yvonne stared into the rotting masses below, the more the horror and complete hopelessness of their situation became apparent. Down and just to their right was the body of Sonya Farley, still somehow holding onto what remained of her baby. Sonya’s body was decaying as quickly now as the corpses surrounding her. Deeper into the vile crowd, at the point where those bodies still able to move forward reached the many thousands who were rammed tight against the walls of the university building, more base animal instincts were beginning to be displayed. Yvonne watched with morbid curiosity and mounting disgust as the occasional corpse ripped and tore at the others around it, seemingly desperate to get closer to the building. She had never been able to stomach violence, and this angry hate chilled her to the core. This hate was uncontrolled and directionless. As much as it seemed that the bodies were directing their sudden aggression towards the countless cadavers preventing them from moving forward, it was clear that was for no other reason than just because they were there and in the way. Yvonne knew that she too would doubtless be a victim of the same venom if she ever found herself face to face with one of the abhorrent creatures.

Bernard too was watching the behaviour of the bodies. They were changing, and he found himself wondering why they were reacting in this way. He was an intelligent man and, much as confusing emotions such as fear and despair had tainted and distorted his view of the world, he knew that the rapidly changing behaviour of the creatures must have been following a logical pattern. As he peered down into the disease-ridden sea of shuffling figures below, he considered the chronology of their decline. He’d thought about this countless times before. Since they had risen after their bodies had died on the first morning there had been a gradual but marked change in their condition.

The corpses were rotting. Even from the distance the survivors were observing from, that much was obvious and undeniable. It seemed that the virus or disease or whatever had initially killed the bodies outright, but that something inside them had somehow survived. It was almost as if parts of the brain had been anaesthetised, and that the effects of the anaesthetic were gradually wearing off. The ability to move again had been the first sign, soon followed by the unwelcome ability to again react to external stimulation. And for a long time that was as far as the creature’s limited recovery seemed to have progressed. Other basic needs remained unfulfilled – they apparently had no desire to eat or drink or rest – they seemed just to exist in a permanent state of constant and pointless animation. Heath concluded (as he had done numerous times before) that the only part of the creature’s brains to have survived was that area which governed base, primordial instinct.

But there was another change now manifesting itself.

Heath had noticed it beginning to develop over the last few days, perhaps even as long ago as last week. The bodies were now more aggressive than before. There was a new determination and energy about them. Physically they continued to deteriorate, but mentally they had changed. He looked down into the area of the immense crowd where the bodies were struggling with each other again. Some of these creatures were beginning to fight.

‘See what they’re doing?’ he said quietly. ‘Just watch them.’

Heath looked up and saw that Yvonne had gone. He hadn’t heard her leave. Unconcerned, he looked out of the window again and returned his attention to the dead. Where a cold and emotionless apathy had previously prevailed, new energies were beginning to show. The bodies were exhibiting signs of rage and anger. Whereas they had so far swarmed around the survivors because, he’d presumed, there were no other distractions, he now wondered whether they wanted more? Could these bodies now be gathered around the university looking for answers from the living, or were they blaming them for what had happened? Did the bodies now see the survivors as the enemy?

As dawn approached and the morning light increased revealing more and more of the scarred world, the university lecturer’s thoughts gradually became darker and more sinister.

He found himself dwelling on thoughts of the pain the figures below must be enduring. Their bodies were rotting around them.

In his former life Heath had lectured in English Literature. He often considered the emotions of the characters he had studied and about which he had taught. Pain so often seemed to go hand in hand with any number of other emotions. Heath remembered experiencing pain himself. Not a particularly practical man, he’d frequently hit his thumb with a hammer when trying to hang pictures, and he often caught his head on one particularly badly placed shelf in his office. His first reaction to sudden pain had often been to curse – sometimes even to lash out and punch a wall or throw something in anger. Perhaps that was what was happening to the decomposing bodies traipsing constantly through the city streets? Perhaps their increasing anger and violence were direct reactions to their suffering?

His line of thinking continued down into even darker territories. The displays of violence he’d noticed recently may well have been the first signs of further changes. With decay and disintegration tearing apart the remains of the corpses, their pain and, logically, their anger, hate and frustration would be likely to increase rapidly. If the anger and hate he had witnessed was connected to pain, then it was likely things were going to get much, much worse before they started to get any better.

There were more than ten thousand of the damn things out there.

34

The long day dragged unbearably. After many hours of arguments, counter-arguments and frustration, the atmosphere in the assembly hall was deteriorating rapidly. By early evening tempers were wearing dangerously thin.

‘Have you looked out of the bloody window recently?’

Baxter spat angrily. ‘Do you know what’s out there?’

‘More to the point,’ Donna interrupted angrily, ‘have you seen what’s still in here? Have you seen the level of our supplies? I tell you, we won’t last long if we don’t do something soon…’

‘She’s right,’ Cooper added from across the room. ‘Staying here isn’t going to be an option for much longer.’

‘And what the fuck do you know?’ Nathan Holmes yelled, his voice hoarse and strained with emotion. This argument had been raging for the best part of an hour with, it seemed, much of the venom directed towards him personally. ‘I’m sure you know a hell of a lot more than you’re letting on,’ he snapped. ‘I bet you know exactly what caused all of this fucking mess to happen.’

‘I wish I did,’ the soldier sighed. ‘Then at least I might know what to do.’

Frightened faces peered out from every corner of the hall, illuminated by numerous candles, torches and lamps. The light in the room was dull and uneven leaving even more people hidden in darkness. For once almost all the survivors sheltering in the building were gathered together – even the most reclusive of them having been drawn out of hiding by the events surrounding the soldier’s recent arrival. For many others the hall had become the only room they used. Being alone in the individual rooms they had previously occupied had become too unsettling for most. Better to snatch a few moments of sleep in the company of others than to spend endless hours alone, wide awake and on edge.

‘Look,’ Donna continued, ‘Phil reckons that in six months time the bodies will have rotted away to just about nothing. Isn’t that right, Phil?’

She peered round in the darkness, trying to find the doctor.

He was sitting on the floor just a few meters from where she was standing. He’d been trying to avoid getting dragged into the conversation. Instead he’d been busying himself by trying to keep a seven year old boy interested in a jigsaw puzzle and hoping that he’d be able to stop him crying.

‘Something like that,’ he grunted, ‘give or take a few weeks either way.’

‘So we’ll wait here for six months,’ Holmes announced.

Donna shook her head. Once full of macho pretense, the odious man was now letting his true colours show. His plans to get out of the building and take what he wanted from the dead city had been forgotten. He was as scared as the rest of the survivors, but he didn’t have the intelligence to deal with his feelings. His fear displayed itself as antagonism and anger.

‘Which part of this don’t you understand, Nathan,’ she sighed. ‘We haven’t got enough supplies here to last for six more days, never mind six months. We’ve got to go out into the city now, whether you like it or not.’

Holmes didn’t respond. He’d never admit as much, but he was intimidated by Donna. He didn’t have the ability to able to reply to her words with anything that resembled a sensible and coherent argument as to why they should lock themselves down and stay put until the countless bodies outside had finally fallen again.

‘She’s right,’ Baxter said, stepping forward out of the shadows into which he’d subconsciously retreated as the argument had become more heated. ‘We don’t have an option really. If you stop and…’

‘What the fuck do you know?’ Holmes spat, suddenly feeling more confident. He knew that he could handle Jack Baxter.

Refusing to rise to the other man’s anger, Jack ran his fingers through his hair and stared at him through the darkness.

‘I know as much as you do, Nathan,’ he said, pointing his finger accusingly and shaking his head. ‘But if you forget about how you’re feeling and take a look at the whole picture, it seems we don’t have any choice.’

Several hours later and the anger and raised voices that had filled the hall had been long forgotten by many of the survivors.

Nathan Holmes had disappeared into the depths of the building and with him much of the conflict and hostility seemed to have gone too. Apart from a few mumbled conversations and the low and dull but ever-present noise of the bodies outside the assembly room was largely silent. Jack Baxter sat with his back against the wall doing his best to fade into the already drab and inconspicuous background. The benefit of darkness, he thought to himself, was that he could hide without having to move. He could observe things happening nearby whilst still managing to feel like he was a safe distance away.

Baxter was sitting in a corner of the room near to Cooper, Croft and Donna. Clare lay next to him on a makeshift bed made from folded blankets. She was sleeping relatively soundly. He frequently watched her when she was asleep, feeling as if he had a responsibility to protect her because he was the one who had been with her the longest. She was a pretty girl with soft, delicate features which, for once, looked untroubled and relaxed. It wasn’t often that…

‘What do you think, Jack?’ he heard Phil Croft ask. At the mention of his name he looked up.

‘What?’ he mumbled.

‘You’re not with us, are you?’ smiled Donna.

‘Nothing against any of you,’ he smiled, looking deeper into the darkness and trying to focus on the others, ‘but I wish I was anywhere but here.’

Cooper kept the conversation on track.

‘We were talking about getting out of here,’ he began.

‘What, still?’ he moaned. ‘Christ, haven’t you got anything better to talk about?’

‘No,’ Donna replied abruptly. ‘Bloody hell, what else is there to talk about?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Decided where we’re going yet then?’

Silence. It was one thing talking about what they should do, but when it came to actually making decisions it was difficult to get any of the survivors to speak out with any conviction.

‘We’re not completely sure whether……’ muttered Croft before Cooper interrupted.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he sighed.

‘There’s only one place we can go, isn’t there?’ Donna added.

‘Your base?’ ventured Baxter.

‘Much as I don’t like the thought of going back there, we don’t seem to have much choice at the moment.’

‘So will your people let us inside?’ he asked.

‘They might. I don’t know.’

‘I don’t think they will.’

Everyone looked at Jack.

‘Why not?’ Donna asked.

‘I know we seem to be immune to whatever’s done all this,’

he explained, his voice tired and low, ‘but I bet we’re still carrying it. If it’s a disease then we’re going to be full of it, aren’t we? It’ll be in our lungs and in our blood. There’s no way they’re going to let us inside if we’re going to bring it in with us.’

‘We’ve just got to hope the decontamination process is good enough to clean us up properly then, haven’t we?’Cooper said.

‘Do you think it will be?’

‘Don’t know,’ he admitted after a moment of careful consideration.

‘There’s another problem of course,’ yawned Croft. The doctor was incredibly tired but he knew it wasn’t worth trying to sleep.

‘What’s that?’ Cooper asked.

‘How the hell are we going to get there?’

‘How many people are here?’

‘Between forty and fifty,’ he replied.

‘And how many will leave with us?’

‘No idea. Probably not that many. Say half.’

‘Theoretically we can take our pick of just about anything we can find in the city,’ said Donna.

‘If we can get to it,’ interrupted Baxter.

‘So what do you suggest?’ Cooper asked. ‘We need to be sensible about this. We’re not going to be able to just drive out of here in a convoy of cars, are we?’

‘What did you arrive in? We heard it but we didn’t see it.’

‘Armoured patrol carrier. I could probably drive one of those if we had one, but I don’t expect we’ll find anything like that round here…’

Baxter managed half a smile.

‘You might be surprised,’ Donna said quietly. The other faces turned to look at her.

‘What have you got in mind?’

‘There’s a courthouse near here,’ she replied.

‘And?’

‘And round the back there’s a loading bay.’

‘A loading bay?’ Croft mumbled. He wasn’t at all sure where her logic was leading.

‘We could see it from the office where I worked. We used to watch them unloading when there was a big trial on,’ she explained. ‘The prison vans used to pull up around the back and reverse inside to deliver and collect the prisoners.’

‘So?’

‘Think about it. Prison vans are designed to carry people.

More than that, they’re strong and they’re safe. They’re as close to a bloody armoured patrol carrier as we’re going to get.’

‘Are there any vans there now?’

‘How am I supposed to know? There’s a good chance there will be though. Just about every morning you’d see at least one of them pulling up. Logic says that if the courts were going to be in session when all of this started, there would have been prisoners there.’

‘I know the court,’ Baxter whispered secretively. ‘But how are we supposed to get there? It’s halfway across town.’

‘Don’t know,’ Donna admitted.

‘I can’t see how we’re going to get past the crowds out there.

And even if we do manage to get through, how are we supposed to get back here again? Christ, imagine what the noise of a load of prison vans will do to them?’

Cooper took a swig from a cup of cold black coffee that he’d made almost an hour earlier. He winced at its bitter aftertaste.

‘Seems to me that whatever we do is going to drive them crazy,’ he said, ‘but there isn’t any alternative. We’ve already decided that we’re going to have to go out at some point.’

‘Any suggestions?’ asked Donna expectantly.

‘I came up through a subway.’

‘That’s going to help us get out there,’ she sighed. ‘Getting back without them seeing or hearing us is going to be impossible if we manage to get our hands on some kind of transport.’

‘We could go out at night,’ Croft offered.

‘Not a good idea,’ Cooper responded. ‘I know what you’re saying, but you’ve got to add up the risks and balance them all out, haven’t you? Whatever we do we’re bound to attract attention to ourselves because of the noise we make if nothing else. If we go out in the dark then we’re just going to make it harder for ourselves. They’ll still react to us so we might as well go out in the daylight and give ourselves the best possible chance.’

‘If we’re really going to do this,’ Donna continued, ‘then we need to think very carefully before we put a single foot outside.

From what I’ve seen of those things out there they seem to be getting more and more aggressive each day. We have to get everything we need in one trip.’

‘We can do it,’ Cooper insisted. ‘A few of us need to get out there, get what we need and get back. Once the excitement’s died down again we can get everyone who wants to leave together and we can move.’

Jack Baxter lay down on the cold, hard floor next to Clare and listened as the conversation continued. He agreed with everything that was being suggested, but the fact that it was right didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Within the walls of the university it had to an extent become possible to isolate themselves from events outside. The sudden realisation that they were about to leave the safety of the building and head back out into the unknown was terrifying. Unavoidable, necessary and terrifying.

35

‘What you doing out here?’

Donna turned round and saw that Nathan Holmes was standing behind her. She was sitting on a wooden bench in a small enclosed courtyard just to the side of the assembly hall.

She often sat there to think and be alone, and after the long conversations of the last few hours she craved a change of surroundings. The three meter square area of concrete buried between university buildings was as close as she could safely get to being outside.

She didn’t want anyone’s company, least of all Holmes. She turned her back on him. Unperturbed, he sat down next to her.

‘What do you want?’ she sighed.

‘Nothing,’ he answered. ‘Just thought I’d come and talk to you, that’s all.’

‘Why would you want to do that? It’s three o’clock in the morning for Christs’ sake.’

He shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette.

‘Don’t know,’ he replied, leaning back and looking up at a patch of dark and cloudy sky between the tall buildings which stretched up around them.

‘I haven’t got anything to say to you anyway,’she mumbled.

‘You had plenty to say earlier.’

‘You asked for it. You’re a fucking arsehole.’

Holmes shook his head in mock disapproval.

‘Don’t know why you’ve got it in for me,’ he grinned. ‘Just because I stand up for myself and don’t want to risk…

‘Your fucking problem,’ Donna hissed, standing up and moving away from Holmes, ‘is that you don’t think about anyone but yourself. And worse than that, all the things you say and the decisions you make are based on fear. You’re too damn frightened to even think straight.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he snarled. The tone in his voice had suddenly changed. He sounded angry and yet also strangely defensive. Donna had obviously touched a nerve. ‘You haven’t got a bloody clue what you’re talking about.’

‘Let’s be honest,’ she continued, ‘the only reason why you’ve been making such a noise about staying here is that you’re too scared to leave. You can’t face the prospect of…

‘Bullshit,’ he snapped. ‘Are you serious? The reason I’m staying here is…

‘The reason you’re staying here is because you haven’t got the balls to step outside.’

‘I don’t want to be attacked by a thousand bloody dead bodies, that’s why I’m not moving,’ he protested.

‘Rubbish.’

‘You take a single step outside and they’ll swallow you up.

There are fucking thousands of them.’

‘So what would you do if they get inside?’

‘They won’t.’

‘They might. They probably will at some point.’

‘I’ll deal with that when it happens. I tell you now, I’m not going out there to risk my neck unless I’ve got no other option.’

‘You haven’t got any other options.’

‘I’ll decide when I’m going to make my move.’

‘You’ll never do it. You’re a bloody coward. You’re just going to sit here and rot……’

‘You shut your fucking mouth or I’ll……’

‘You’ll do what? Come on, big man, what exactly are you going to do? You’ll still be sat in here when the rest of us leave.

You’ll die in this fucking place.’