ࡱ>  @B789:;<=>?` lbjbj r@+$P<:$Jj"!Lɡˡˡˡˡˡˡ$hhZÐ!ÐÐ]]]Ð ɡ]Ðɡ]]]^ ǂZ]D0J]¥R¥]¥](]6XJÐÐÐÐ|   AUTUMN: THE CITY DAVID MOODY INFECTED BOOKS www.infectedbooks.co.uk AUTUMN: THE CITY Published by INFECTED BOOKS www.infectedbooks.co.uk This edition published 2005 Copyright David Moody 2003 All rights reserved This book is a work of fiction. The characters and situations in this story are imaginary. No resemblance is intended between these characters and any real persons, either living or dead. Condition of Sale This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A catalogue record for the paperback edition of this book is available from the British Library Paperback ISBN 0-9550051-1-6 4s-2-0505-1 Prologue No warning. No explanation. The alarms began to ring and we were up and on the move in seconds. We had been conditioned to respond at speed. The routine was familiar from a thousand drills but I sensed immediately that this was different. I knew this was for real. I could taste fear and panic in the early morning air. I didnt know why. I didnt know what had happened. I had a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was happening that was about to change everything. In silence we collected our kit and assembled at the transports. I could see trepidation and uncertainty in the faces of everyone around me. Even the officers - the men and women who took orders from above and controlled our every action - appeared bewildered and scared. Their fear and unexpected confusion was unsettling. It was clear that they knew as little as I did. We were on the road in minutes and the journey took less than an hour. The early morning darkness began to lift as we drove through the city. We brought chaos to the rush hour, stopping traffic from moving and preventing unsuspecting people from reaching their schools, offices and homes. I saw hundreds of people but I didnt allow myself to look into any of their faces. I didnt know what was going to happen to them. I forced myself to avoid remembering that somewhere out in the fragile normality of the morning were the people that I had known and loved. We continued through the heart of the city and out through the suburbs following major roads and motorways which eventually ran deep into green and uncluttered countryside. The sky was grey and heavy and the light remained dull and low. The road narrowed to a rough and uneven gravel track but our speed didnt reduce until wed reached the bunker. We were among the first to arrive but within fifteen minutes the last transport sped down the ramp and into the hanger. Even before its engine had stopped I heard an officer give the order to shut the doors and seal off the base. Whatever it was that was happening to the world outside, I knew it was a disaster of unimaginable proportions. The very last shard of daylight disappeared as the bunker doors were closed. I picked up my kit and walked deeper underground. Part I 1 For most of the last forty-eight hours Donna Yorke had hidden under a desk in a corner of the office where shed worked since the summer. Without warning her familiar surroundings had become alien, nightmarish and cold. On Tuesday morning she had watched the world around her die. Along with the rest of her work colleagues Donna worked an early shift one week in four. This week it had been her turn to get in first and open the post, switch on the computers and perform various other simple tasks so that the rest of her team could start working as soon as they arrived at their desks. She was glad that everything had happened so early in the day. Shed watched four of her friends die. If it had happened just half an hour later shed have seen the other sixty-or-so people in the office suffer the same sudden, suffocating death. None of it made any sense. Cold and alone, she was too terrified to even start trying to look for answers. From her ninth floor vantage point she had watched the destruction wash across the world outside like a tidal wave. Being so high above the city she hadnt heard anything. The first sign that something was wrong had been a bright explosion in the near distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. Shed watched with morbid fascination as a plume of billowing fire and dense black smoke had spewed up into the grey air from the gutted remains of a burning petrol station. The cars on the road nearby were scattered and smashed. Something huge had ploughed through the traffic, crossed the dual carriageway and crashed into the pumps, immediately igniting the fuel stores. Had it been an out of control lorry, truck or tanker perhaps? But that had just been the beginning, and the horror and devastation that followed had been relentless and of an unimaginable scale. All across the heavily industrialised east-side of the city she saw people falling to the ground. She could see them writhing and squirming and dying. And more vehicles were stopping too - some crashing and hitting each other, others just slowing to a halt. Donna watched as the destruction moved nearer. Like a shock wave it seemed to travel quickly across the city below her, rolling relentlessly towards her building. With fear making her legs heavy with nerves, she stumbled back and looked round for explanation and reassurance. One of her colleagues, Joan Alderney, had arrived to start work but by the time Donna had seen her the other woman had dropped to her knees, fighting for breath. Donna was at her side in seconds but there was nothing she could have done. Joan looked up at her with huge, desperate eyes and her body shook with furious, uncontrollable spasms and convulsions as she fought to draw in one last precious breath. Her face quickly drained to an ashen, oxygen-starved blue-grey and her lips were crimson red, stained by blood from the numerous swellings and sores that had ripped open in her throat. As Joan died on the ground next to her Donna was distracted by the sound of Neil Peters, one of the junior managers, collapsing across his desk, showering his paperwork with spittle and blood as he retched and choked and fought for air. Jo Foster - one of her closest friends - was the next to be infected as she walked into the office. Donna watched helplessly as the other girl clawed at her neck and mouthed a hoarse and virtually silent scream of bitter pain, suffocation and fear before falling to the floor. She was dead before she hit the ground. Finally Trudy Phillips, the last of the early shift, panicked and began to stumble and run towards Donna as the searing, burning pain in her throat began. She had only managed to move a few meters forward before she lost consciousness and fell, dragging a computer off a nearby desk and sending it crashing to the ground, just inches away from where she now lay. Once Trudy was dead the world became still and terrifyingly silent.. Donnas instinctive first reaction was to get out of the office, but as soon as she was outside she regretted having moved. The lifts still worked to take her down to the ground floor (although they had stopped by the time she returned to the building) and their sliding doors opened to reveal a scene of death and destruction on an incomprehensible scale. There were bodies all around the reception area. The security guard who had flirted with her less than half an hour ago was dead at his desk. One of the senior office managers - a man in his late forties called Woodward - lay trapped in the revolving door at the very front of the building, his lifeless face pressed hard against the glass. Jackie Prentice, another one of her work colleagues, was on the floor just a few meters away from her, buried under the weight of two dead men. A thick and quickly congealing dribble of blood had spilled from Jackies open mouth and gathered in a sticky pool around her blanched face. Without thinking she pushed her way through a side door and stepped out onto the street. Beyond the walls of the building the devastation had continued for as far as she could see in all directions. She could see hundreds, perhaps thousands of bodies whichever way she looked. Numb and unable to think clearly she walked away from the building and further into town. As she approached the main shopping area of the city the number of bodies had increased to such an extent that, in places, the ground was completely obscured - carpeted with a still warm mass of tangled and twisted human remains. Donna had naturally assumed that she would find others like her who had somehow survived the carnage. It seemed unlikely, even impossible, that she had been the only one to have escaped, but after some two and a half hours of tripping and picking her way through the corpses and shouting for help she had heard nothing and had seen no-one. Occasionally she stopped walking and just stood and stared at the seemingly never-ending disintegration of the world which had appeared so normal and uneventful such a short time earlier. How could this have happened? What had happened? The sheer magnitude of the ruination was too much for her. Numbed by the massive scale of what had happened she eventually stopped and turned round and stumbled back towards the tall office block. Home was a fifty minute train journey away - more than an hour by car - but Donna had known that going back to her flat would have helped little. Three months into a one year work experience placement from business school, she had chosen to live, study and work in a city over a hundred and fifty miles away from her family home. What she would have given to have been back with her parents in their nondescript little three bedroom semidetached house on the other side of the country. But what would she have found there? Had the effects of whatever had happened here reached as far as her home town? Would her parents have survived like she had or would she have found them dead and and she knew that she couldnt bear to think about what might or might not have happened to them any longer. The fact of the matter was, she decided, that she was where she was and there was little she could do about it. As impossible, unbelievable and grotesque as her circumstances were, she had no option but to try and pull herself together and find somewhere safe to sit and wait for something - anything - to happen. The most sensible place was the office she had just left. Its height provided some isolation and it was clean, spacious and relatively comfortable. She knew the layout and she knew where she could find food and drink in the staff restaurant. Best of all, security in the office was tight. Access to the working areas was strictly controlled by electronically tagged passes and from a conversation shed had with an engineer last week, she knew that the security system itself ran independent of the mains electricity supply. Regardless of what happened to the rest of the building, therefore, power to the locks remained constant, and that meant that she was able to securely shut out the rest of the world until she was ready to face it again. The advantage may only have been a psychological one but it was enough. During the first few long hours of the nightmare that extra layer of security meant everything to her. Much of the rest of the first day had been spent collecting various supplies, initially from around the office and then, later, from several of the silent shops nearby. She found herself some warmer clothes, a sleeping bag and gas lamps from a camping store, food and drink and a radio and handheld television. By early evening she had carried everything up the many flights of stairs and had made herself a relatively warm and comfortable nest in the furthest corner of the office. As the light quickly faded away into darkness she tried every means available to her to make contact with the outside world. Her mobile phone didnt work. She couldnt even get a dialling tone on any of the office phones (and she tried more than twenty different handsets) and she couldnt find anything other than static and silence on the radio and television. When the city had become completely dark she gave up trying. The first night took an eternity to pass and the second day even longer. She only emerged from her hiding place on a couple of occasions. Just after dawn she crept around the perimeter of the office and looked down onto the streets below, initially to check whether the situation had changed, but also to confirm that the bizarre and inexplicable events of the previous morning had actually taken place. During the dragging hours just gone Donna had begun to convince herself that the death of many thousands of innocent people couldnt really have happened so swiftly, viciously and without reason. From where she hid underneath the desk Donna caught sight of the foot of Joan Alderneys body, lying where she had fallen and died less than twenty-four hours earlier. Seeing the womans corpse unnerved her to the point where she was unable to stop staring at it. The closeness of the body was unsettling - whenever she began to think about something else she would see it and it would remind her again of everything that had happened. Eventually she plucked up enough courage to take action. Fighting to keep her emotions and nausea in check, one at a time she dragged the stiff and contorted bodies of her four work colleagues down to the far end of the office, lay them side by side in the post room and covered them with a dust sheet taken from another floor where decorators had been working. The third morning began in as bleak and hopeless a manner as the second day had ended. A little more confident, Donna crawled out from underneath the desk again and now sat in front of the computer that she usually used, staring at the monochrome reflection of her face in the screen. She had been attempting to distract herself by writing down song lyrics, addresses, the names of the players in the football team she supported and anything else she could remember when she heard the noise. It was coming from the far end of the floor. A tripping, stumbling, crashing sound which immediately made her jump up with unexpected hope and nervous concern. It seemed that her painful isolation was about to end. Cautiously she crept towards the other end of the long, rectangular building. Hello, she hissed, her voice little more than an anxious whisper. Is anybody there? No response. She took a few steps further forward and then stopped when she heard another noise. It was coming from the post room. Donna pushed open the heavy swinging door and stood and stared in petrified disbelief. Neil Peters - the man she had watched fall and die in front of her just two days earlier - was moving. Swaying unsteadily on clumsy, uncoordinated feet and stumbling about lethargically, the dead man dragged himself across the room, stopping and turning awkwardly whenever he hit the wall or a desk or other obstruction and was unable to move any further forward. Instinctively Donna reached out and grabbed hold of him. Neil? The body stopped moving when she held it. There was no resistance. She looked into its face, its skin greasy-grey and its eyes dark and misted with pupils fully dilated. Its mouth hung open and its chin and neck appeared bruised and were splattered with flecks of dried blood. With her disgust and abject fear quickly rising she released her grip and, immediately, the dead manager began to move again. It tripped and fell over the bodies of the other three workers on the floor and slowly struggled to pick itself up. Terrified Donna stumbled back out through the doors which swung shut after her, trapping the moving corpse inside. She looked to her right and pulled down on the top of a filing cabinet, sending it crashing down in front of the door and blocking the way out. For a short while longer Donna watched through a small glass window in the door as the shell-like remains of her colleague staggered helplessly around the cluttered room. It moved continually. By chance the body occasionally looked in her direction. Its dry, emotionless eyes seemed to look through her and past her but never directly at her. Disorientated by the inexplicable reanimation, Donna left the office and began to climb the stairs. The corpse of Sylvia Peters, the office secretary, lay just in front of her on the landing where it had fallen earlier in the week. As she neared the body a slow but very definite movement caught her eye. Donna watched as the fingers on the dead womans left hand began to slowly move. Sobbing with fear, she turned and ran back her hiding place on the ninth floor, pausing only to glance out of the nearest window and look down onto the world below. The same bizarre and illogical thing was happening again and again down at street level. Most bodies remained motionless on the ground but many others were moving. Without reason, explanation or any real degree of control, cadavers which had lay motionless for almost two days were now beginning to move. Picking up her things, Donna made her way to the tenth floor (where she already knew there were no bodies) and locked herself in one of the buildings training rooms. There was no sign of the body of the secretary on the landing. 2 Every door and window in the small end-terraced house was locked. Jack Baxter stood in silence in his bedroom and peered out from behind the curtain as another corpse tripped down the middle of the road and staggered away into the inky-black darkness of the night. It had disappeared from view in seconds. What the hell was going on? Coming home from a night shift early on Tuesday morning, he had been outside and unprotected when it had begun. Jack worked at a warehouse just outside the city centre. The bus route which he used to get home followed a loop past the warehouse, through the city centre, over to the other side of town and back again. The bulk of the passengers usually got off when they reached the main part of the city and, when it had happened on Tuesday morning, he had been one of only eight people left on board. The first sign that something was wrong had been an old man. Sitting two rows of seats in front of him he had started to cough and wheeze. His pain had increased dramatically in just a few seconds. Initially haunched forward, the pensioner had suddenly thrown himself back in his seat with violent force, terrified and fighting to breathe with his already inflamed throat burning with pain. Before Jack had fully appreciated the seriousness of his condition the pensioner had begun shaking and convulsing uncontrollably. He had been out of his seat and about to help when a twenty-five year old mother of three had yelled out in agony from the back of the bus. Her children had been screaming and crying too. Helpless, Jack had run towards them but had stopped and turned and moved back the other way when he realised that the driver of the bus was now also coughing and choking. He sprinted the length of the swaying, lurching vehicle and had reached the driver in time to see him retch and gag on the blood running freely down the inside of his throat. He collapsed over the wheel, losing control of the bus and sending it swinging out in a clumsy arc across the carriageway, smashing through traffic coming the other way and eventually ploughing into the front of a pub. Jack had been thrown to the ground, his head thumping against the metal base of one of the seats and knocking him out cold. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious for. When he finally came round his vision was blurred and he had struggled to regain his balance on unresponsive, unsteady feet. He had picked himself up and dragged himself towards the front of the battered bus. The driver was dead. The rest of the passengers were dead too. Using the emergency release he had managed to force open the door and had stumbled out onto the street. A sight of unparalleled and completely inexplicable carnage had greeted him. As the people on the bus had died so, it seemed, had everyone else for as far as he could see. Numb, Jack had stood motionless for a good few minutes, his body remaining frozen and still while his eyes darted around the macabre scene. He began to count the bodies - ten, twenty, thirty and then more and more The destruction around him appeared to be endless. He had waited expectedly for the silence to be shattered by the wail of approaching police, fire and ambulance sirens but nothing had arrived. With each passing minute the ominous quiet had become heavier and heavier until he had been able to stand it no longer. A breathless ten minute run through a suddenly alien landscape had got Jack home. Sights which had been ordinary, familiar and nondescript when hed left for work the previous evening had now become twisted, bizarre and grotesque. The supermarket where hed done his shopping the previous afternoon had been on fire and hed watched as unchecked flames devoured the glass-fronted entrance which hed walked through a thousand times. In the playground of the primary school at the end of his road he had seen the fallen bodies of parents surrounded by the uniformed corpses of their small children. A car had driven into the front of a house seven doors down from his own. Through the rubble and dusty debris he had seen the body of the owner of the house slumped dead in her armchair. What had happened made no sense. There were no obvious explanations. There was no-one else left to ask for answers. Apart from Jack there didnt seem to be anyone else left alive. Somehow in all of the destruction he seemed to be the only one to have survived. Jack had lost his wife Denise to cancer some fifteen months earlier. In many ways having suffered such an immense loss then somehow made it easier for him to accept what had happened and continue to function now. He had already grieved. He was already used to coming home to a cold, quiet and empty house. That was why hed been happy to work nights since shed died. He had frequently avoided mixing with the general population since his wife had been taken from him. No-one understood what shed been through and no-one could make it any easier to accept. Even now, four hundred and thirty-seven days after shed passed away, the memory of the physical and mental anguish that hed witnessed her suffer hurt a thousand times more than any pain or fear hed felt whilst stepping through the bodies that first morning. Once hed arrived back home Jack had tried to make contact with the rest of the world. He had tried every one of the thirty or so phone numbers in his address book and had managed to make a few calls before the line finally went dead. No-one answered. He had listened to the radio for a while. The sound it had made was unsettling. Hed expected to hear hissing static but for a long time there was nothing, just an endless and empty silence. One station he had come across was still playing music. He had listened hopefully and nervously as the last few notes of a final song faded away, only to be replaced again by the same relentless silence that had descended everywhere else. In his mind he had pictured radio presenters, newsreaders, engineers and presenters lying dead in their studios, by default still broadcasting the aftereffects of whatever it was that had killed them. He had spent much of his time upstairs just watching the world outside, hoping and praying that something would soon happen to explain or even end the nightmare. But it didnt. Looking out from one of the back rooms he had seen the body of his elderly neighbour, Stan Chapman, lying twisted and motionless in the middle of his cold, wet lawn. No-one, it seemed, had been spared. Because of his working hours Jacks days worked in reverse to most people. In spite of everything that had happened, by noon on the first day he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He had drifted and dozed through a long and disorientating afternoon and evening and then had spent what felt like a painful eternity sat on the end of his bed in the darkness, wide awake, alone and petrified. And the next day had been even harder to endure. He did nothing except sit and think dark, frightening thoughts and ask himself countless questions which were impossible to answer. For a while he had contemplated going outside and looking for help but he had been too scared to venture any further than halfway down the staircase before turning back and returning to the relative safety of the upstairs rooms. As the early light of Thursday morning began to creep across the ravaged landscape, however, what remained of Jacks devastated world had been turned on its head once again. Just before seven oclock a sudden metallic crashing noise had shattered the quiet. With everything else so silent and still the clattering sound had seemed to take forever to fade away into nothing. For a few seconds Jack hadnt dared move, paralysed with nerves. Hed waited anxiously for something to happen and, now that it finally had, he had been almost too afraid to go and see what it was. Gradually, as his curiosity and the pressure of his isolation had overtaken his fear, he had made his way down to the front of the house and, after peering through the letterbox, had opened the door and cautiously stepped outside. Rolling down the middle of the road was a metal dustbin. Strangely relieved, Jack had taken a few steps away from the house to the end of the drive and had looked up and down the deserted street. But it wasnt deserted. In the shadows of the trees on the opposite side of the road he had just about been able to make out a solitary female figure moving slowly away. Suddenly more confident he had sprinted the length of the street and grabbed hold of the womans shoulder. She had stopped moving instantly and just stood there, her back to Jack. Overcome with anxious emotion he hadnt stopped to wonder why she hadnt heard him or reacted to him in any other way. Instead he had simply turned her around to face him, desperate to see and to speak to someone else like him who had survived. But it had been immediately obvious that this poor soul hadnt escaped the nightmare, and that she had been another victim of the scourge that had torn across the city. She might have been moving, but was as dead as the thousands of bodies still littering the silent streets. Jack had stared into her black and cold, emotionless eyes for an explanation. In the low light her skin had appeared taut and grey, waxy and translucent. Her mouth hung open as if she no longer had the energy to close it and her head had lolled heavily to one side. He had let the body go and it had immediately stumbled away, moving in the opposite direction to the way in which it had previously been travelling. Jack turned, sprinted back to his house, and had locked and bolted the door behind him. In a petrified, trance-like state he had wandered through his house and had spent an age in the kitchen, propped up against the sink for support, staring out into the garden and trying to make some sense of this bizarre new development. His dark and disjointed thoughts had been disturbed by the sudden appearance of his dead neighbour at the window. The body had tripped through a gap in the hedge that Jack had been meaning to repair for the last three summers. The old mans clumsy corpse had dragged itself around the garden constantly, changing direction whenever it came in contact with the hedge, a fence or the house. More than twelve hours had passed since Jack had seen the first body moving this morning. He had spent the rest of the day upstairs, hiding in his bedroom again, terrified. He packed a bag with clothes and food but when it came to moving he was too scared to leave. He knew hed have to go outside eventually, but for now the familiarity and relative security of his home was all he had left. Even now he could occasionally hear the body of his next-door neighbour crashing aimlessly and relentlessly around the back garden. 3 Another endless night and morning alone was all that Jack could take. He sat at the top of the stairs and reached the inevitable conclusion that it was time to get out. The sooner he did it, the sooner he could get back he reasoned. With his rucksack already packed he nervously locked up his home and stepped outside shortly after one oclock that afternoon. For a few precious moments the autumn day felt reassuringly normal. It was typically cold and dry yet threateningly dull and overcast. A brisk, gusting wind was fresh and welcome, disturbing the silence and occasionally disguising the smells of death and burning which otherwise hung heavy in the air. Less than fifty meters into his journey and Jack stopped, turned around and took a few hesitant steps back towards his house. It looked temptingly safe and certain back there. He knew exactly what hed find behind the locked door and where everything would be. Out here in the open, though, he didnt know what was going to be waiting for him around the next corner. Too frightened to move forward into the unknown, but equally afraid of the consequences of turning tail and hiding alone in his home for days, possibly even weeks on end, he didnt know which way to turn. He stood in the middle of the street and cried like a child lost without its parents. Jack gradually managed to placate himself by settling on a compromise. He decided that he would walk a little way further towards the town centre and that after an hour or two he would turn round and come back home. Tomorrow he would venture a little further, then further still the next day and the next day after that until he found other survivors. There had to be others, of that much he felt certain. Feeling a little better he began to walk towards the end of the road, wishing that hed learnt to drive like just about everyone else he knew had done before theyd reached the age of twenty. He would have felt much safer in a car. Jack stopped walking when he was halfway down Turnhope Street as the first moving body hed seen since leaving home stumbled into view. He was just about able to cope with the corpses that littered the ground, but the ones that moved were still too much for him to stand. Despite the fact that they didnt seem to react to anything, he still felt undeniably threatened by their unnatural presence. As the body (the uniformed remains of a male traffic warden) approached, he instinctively stood still and pressed himself against the side of the nearest building, hoping that he would blend into the background and go unnoticed. His fears were unfounded. The corpse staggered past without even lifting its head. It dragged its feet along the ground painfully slowly and Jack watched as it listlessly walked further and further away, its arms hanging heavy at its sides, swaying with the rest of its uncoordinated movements. The complete and utter silence of the morning was overpowering. The darkness last night had been much the same - intense, relentless and uninterrupted by even a single street lamp. This morning apart from the sounds of the occasional gust of wind blowing litter and waste down the desolate and empty streets there was nothing. No cars. No planes. No music. No voices. Just a heavy, ominous and painfully empty silence. The noise his feet made as they scuffed along the pavement sounded as if they were being amplified a thousand times. Once or twice he cleared his throat, ready to shout out for help, but at the last moment his nerve had gone and he had decided against it. Much as he wanted to attract the attention of anyone who had survived, he was desperate not to attract the attention of anything else. And despite the fact that there didnt seem to be anything else left to attract, he didnt have the balls to take the chance. It all boiled down to the fact that he was scared. No, he wasnt just scared, he was damn terrified. Portdown Park Road ran into Lancaster Road which led into Haleborne Lane which then merged with Ayre Street, the road which eventually widened and became one of the main routes into the heart of the city. In an hour Jack had walked the best part of three slow miles and he hadnt seen anything or anyone, apart from another twenty or thirty of the silent, stumbling bodies. Some of them - the majority of them in fact - he had been able to ignore and pass with little difficulty. They looked, to all intents and purposes, relatively normal, just a little dishevelled and unkempt and lacking in colour, almost monochrome. Once in a while, however, one of them would come along which instantly filled him with nervous nausea and fear. The reanimation of the dead, it seemed, had been completely random and without any obvious logical criteria. Five minutes ago Jack had passed a body that had clearly been involved in a horrific accident. It had been male, he thought, but he couldnt be completely sure. The body was covered from head to toe in vicious burns. There didnt appear to be a single area of skin that hadnt been charred beyond recognition. The hair had been burned away from the scalp and the face - or the black hole where the face had been - was completely unrecognisable, just a mangled, burnt mass. Some clothing still hung around the creatures desperate frame, flapping in the breeze. Most of it, however, had either burned away or melted into the twisted, blackened flesh. But somehow it kept moving. Ignorant to the damage and deformation it had suffered and oblivious to any pain or shock it should have felt, the bloody thing just kept on moving. Its eyes were burned out empty sockets and it had no coordination but still it kept on dragging itself forward, clumsily crashing into walls, parked cars and other obstructions. It had been the smell more than anything that had tipped Jack over the edge. Hed caught a taste of the scent of scorched flesh on the breeze and had immediately dropped to his knees and emptied the contents of his stomach into the gutter. Although hed decided to turn back if nothing happened, an unpredictable combination of curiosity and morbid fascination coupled with the desperate desire to actually find someone else alive kept Jack moving towards the centre of town. The further he got from his home, the more confident he gradually became but, as he neared the main hub of the city, the full enormity of what had happened was made painfully apparent. The small and insignificant suburb where he had lived had been brutally scarred by what had happened but that had been nothing compared to the city centre. Here, where there were far more tightly packed shops, offices, factories and other buildings the death and destruction appeared immense and unending. Jack was overcome by the magnitude of it all. Nothing seemed to have been left untouched by the silent killer early on Tuesday morning. Walking down one side of a wide dual carriageway, he finally plucked up enough courage to shout out. Hello, he yelled, frightening himself with the volume of his own voice. Hello, is there anybody there? Nothing. No surprise. He tried again. Hello He stopped shouting and listened as the echoes of his words reverberated around the desolate city street, bouncing off the walls of lifeless buildings. Now that he seemed to be its only occupant, the world suddenly seemed vast and empty. In the far distance he heard a lone dog bark and howl. Hello he shouted again. Dejected, he wondered whether it was worth going on. He had left his home with some hope, albeit a minimal amount, but now that had evapourated away to nothing. But how could he possibly be the only one left, he asked himself? Out of millions - possibly billions - of people affected, how could it be that he had survived when the rest of them had fallen and died? Did it have anything to do with where hed been when it had happened? Did he just have a natural, inbuilt immunity? Was it because he worked nights? Was it something hed eaten or not eaten? Nothing seemed beyond the realms of possibility anymore. More pathetic, staggering bodies were all that he could see. Now that his initial fear and uncertainty at being out in the open had subsided, Jack was beginning to feel stronger and less threatened by those bodies which moved. He could see, hear, think and react. They, it seemed, could do nothing more than stumble about aimlessly. He was getting closer and closer to the heart of the city with every step. Was it safe to go in there? Should he turn back now and head home? The main road gradually narrowed to a single lane in either direction and the sudden closeness of the buildings around him made him feel hemmed in and uneasy. He decided against shouting out again. There were even more bodies up ahead. He managed to walk past them with a new found nonchalance, even plucking up the courage to push one of them out of the way when it staggered randomly into his path. Jack glanced over to his right where he saw one of the pathetic creatures sitting in the shadows of a shop doorway. He hadnt seen any of the corpses sitting still before, they seemed to move about constantly. Perhaps this was one that had fallen and died in the doorway where it had remained until now. He stopped and walked a little closer. As he approached the body raised its head and looked up at him, lifting its hands to shield its eyes from the bright autumn sun which had appeared momentarily through an unexpected gap in the heavy cloud cover. The figure in the doorway - a young girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age dressed in a creased and crumpled school uniform - slowly stood up and began to walk towards him. It took the two desperate, frightened individuals a good thirty seconds to realise and fully accept the fact that they had both found another survivor. Moving slowly and with caution at first, the girl broke into a run for the last few meters before wrapping her arms around Jack and sinking to her knees. He crouched down and held her as tightly as he could, as if hed known her for fifty years and not seen her for ten. Hed finally found someone else alive. After a few long and emotional seconds of silence, Jack looked around anxiously before taking the girls hand in his and leading her towards the nearest building. It was a dental surgery. A cold, dark and small private practice which smelt of dust and decay still tinged with a sterile, antiseptic edge. The two survivors sat down together in a musty waiting room on hard plastic seats, surrounded by three motionless corpses that had been waiting to be seen by the now dead dentist since early Tuesday morning. A nurse was slumped across a counter to their right. The presence of the bodies didnt seem to matter. Being indoors helped Jack psychologically, regardless of how grim and desolate his new surroundings were. At first neither survivor knew what to say to the other. Im Jack he eventually stammered awkwardly. I heard you shouting she began to sob. She shook as she leant against him. The warmth of her body was welcome and reassuring. I didnt know where you were,she continued. I heard you but I couldnt see you and Doesnt matter, he whispered, stroking her hair and gently kissing the top of her head. It doesnt matter. Have you seen anyone else? the girl asked. No-one. What about you? She shook her head. Feeling fractionally better and more composed, she pushed herself away from Jack slightly and sat up in her seat. He watched as she wiped her face. Whats your name? he asked softly. Clare Smith, she mumbled. And are you from round here, Clare? She shook her head again. No, I live with my mum in Letchworth. So how did you end up in this part of town? Id been stopping at my dads this weekend. We didnt have any school on Monday so I stayed with him an extra day and She stopped talking when the memory of her parents and the recollection of her sudden, unexplained loss came flooding back. She started to cry silently. Jack watched helplessly as a relentless stream of tears ran down her pale cheeks. Look, he soothed, trying to make it easier for her, you dont have to tell me anything if you dont want to. If you want we could just What happened? she asked suddenly, cutting across him and turning to look him square in the face for the first time. What did this? Jack sighed, stood up and stepped over a corpse lying at his feet. Dont know, he replied, looking through a frosted-glass window into a small office area. I was on my way home when it happened. I didnt see anything until it was too late. Clare leant forward in her seat and held her head in her hands. Dad was driving me to school, she said quietly as she stared down at the floor between her feet. He lives right on the other side of town so we were coming through the city centre She paused to wipe her eyes and clear her throat. We pulled up at a set of traffic lights and Dad started to choke. I tried to help him but there was nothing I could do. We drove into the car in front and the car behind hit us. Dad just kept coughing and shaking until he died and I couldnt do anything Clares composure cracked and she lost control again. Jack took a few steps closer to her and knelt down in front of her chair. She grabbed hold of him tightly and pulled herself towards him, burying her face in his chest. Still feeling a little awkward and unsure, he put his arms around her again and rocked her gently. Come on he soothed. Clare wiped her eyes and continued to talk between heavy sobs. I got out of the car to try and get some help for Dad. I didnt even stop to think about what had happened to him. And when I got out I couldnt believe what I saw. Everything had stopped. We were stuck in the middle of the biggest crash youve ever seen. It looked like there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cars all smashed into each other. I had to climb over them to get to the side of the road It happened so quickly that no-one had time to react, Jack mumbled. After a few long seconds of silent reflection he cleared his throat and spoke again. Ive been heading into the centre of town, he explained. I live out in the suburbs. I thought I might find a few more people that had survived round here. And you havent found anyone? Clare asked. Jack shook his head. Youre the first. So why have we survived? No idea. I dont know anything more than you do. I mean, I was just sitting on the bus trying to get home and He stopped talking suddenly. And what? Clare pressed. Shh he hissed, lifting a finger to his lips. He could hear something. He stood up and walked out of the waiting room, beckoning Clare to follow close behind. A twisting wooden staircase led from the ground floor up to the rest of the dental surgery. At the very top of the staircase were three doors leading to separate consulting rooms. Jack cautiously pushed the nearest door open. It swung forward, opening into a small square room dominated by a large treatment chair complete with dead patient. A dental nurses corpse lay at his feet. On the other side of the room the lethargic body of a dentist - wearing once hygienic white overalls covered with dribbles of blood - was trapped, its path blocked by the chair and an upturned cupboard of medical equipment. The corpse staggered helplessly from side to side. Lets go, Jack said under his breath. He turned and led Clare downstairs and back out onto the street. 4 Almost a hundred feet above the city centre Donna watched the world around her begin to decay. Although she constantly felt anxious, nauseous and ready to break into a nervous panic at any moment, she somehow managed to maintain a surprising degree of control and, generally, was able to continue to think and act relatively rationally and sensibly. She wondered whether it was because she was in the place where she used to work? She had become used to switching off and detaching herself from her emotions in this grey and oppressive environment. In the same way shed spent the last few weeks and months here processing work, she now found herself having to process the remains of her life. Had she been at home with its comfort, familiarity and memories she felt sure her emotions would have overtaken her by now. Hunger and other more rudimentary needs had eventually forced her from the training room at the far end of the tenth floor of the office block. Locked in a cabinet that she had smashed her way into in the building managers office on the ground floor, she had found a collection of safety lamps and torches. She presumed they would have been used in the event of an emergency or an evening evacuation of the building perhaps. She added the lamps from downstairs to the collection of lighting equipment shed already gathered and, slowly and methodically, she spaced them around the windows on the tenth floor, eventually managing to work her way around three-quarters of the perimeter of the building. There was a new found purpose to her actions. Just after six oclock, when the evening light began to fade away noticeably, she lit every last lamp and switched on every torch. Her plan was simple. She was desperate to find other survivors but she was also too scared and uncertain to go outside and look for them. She guessed that anyone else left alive in the city would probably feel the same. She decided that the most sensible thing she could do would be to let the rest of the world know where she was hiding. In the otherwise utter blackness of the cold and lifeless night, the lights in the windows of the office block lit up her location like a beacon. It worked. Paul Castle, a music shop sales assistant in his early twenties, was painfully hungry but had been too afraid to leave the store where he had worked and where hed watched customers and colleagues die in agony last Tuesday morning. Hed searched the entire store and, until now, had been able to find enough scraps to eat and drink from the vending machines dotted around the building. Hed known all along that going outside was inevitable, but hed done all that he could to prevent it from happening for as long as possible. Now he knew he had no choice but to leave. Paul waited until the world was dark before venturing out. He figured that the darkness should offer him some protection from the wandering bodies that he had watched staggering aimlessly up and down the desolate streets outside. He knew that in their present state they didnt seem to actually pose a threat to him, but the additional camouflage that the blackness of the night provided brought him some welcome comfort and reassurance. As long as he managed to avoid dwelling on the fact that these awkward and unpredictable figures had laid dead at his feet for the best part of two days before rising again, he was just about able to keep his fragile emotions in check. In the shadows and low light of early evening it was somehow easier to ignore the desperate condition of the rest of the world. From across the street a staggering dead body looked almost the same as someone who was still alive and who still possessed control, coordination and independence of thought. He had seen more than enough drunkards, addicts and down-and-outs in the city centre at night to be able to convince himself that what he was seeing now was just more of the same. Despite his fear and uncertainty, his comparative speed and agility made it possible for him to move among the bodies as if they were normal people trapped in a bizarre slow motion replay of their lives. There was little in the way of supermarkets and food stores in the city centre. This was a place where people had worked and shopped for gifts and luxuries, where they had studied and partied and where they had been entertained in cinemas, theatres and clubs. Paul quickly ran down a long concrete ramp close to where he had worked and then turned right and sprinted across the road in the direction of a newsagents and a high-class department store where he knew he would find a well stocked food-hall. Rather than reassure him, now that he was outside he found the darkness unexpectedly unnerving. It unsettled him to see so many huge shop fronts and expensive window displays standing dark and unlit. Even the street lights were off. He found himself running through blackness and into more blackness. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath and climbed up onto the top of a huge and, in his opinion, tasteless lump of concrete and steel street art. Light rain fell around him as he stood there with hands on hips, looking down over miles and miles of pitch-black city suburbs. Breathless he peered as far as he could into the distance, desperate to see something that would give him a little hope. Dejected he jumped down and walked away. There was nothing. Numb and uncaring, Paul continued towards the department store where he forced his way in through a pile of fallen elderly shoppers. Although he had never shopped there himself he quickly found the food hall and filled numerous plastic carrier bags with food which he loaded into a shopping trolley and pushed out through the silent checkouts. Pausing only to allow another one of the pitiful cadavers to drag itself past the front of the building, he stepped back outside into the night and wearily began to work his way back to the store where hed been sheltering. For a while he thought about trying to get home. Hed considered it a few times before but it seemed too great a distance away for him to think about trying to cover alone while the situation remained so uncertain. Truth was he was a coward looking for excuses not to take risks but that didnt make any difference to his decision. What did it matter what anyone else might think of him, he thought, when there didnt seem to be anyone else left alive to care? Maybe hed find a car and try and drive there in the morning, but then again maybe not. The trolley made a deafening rattling and clattering noise as he pushed it along the block-paved city street. Still disorientated by the darkness, he paused to get his bearings. He pushed the trolley to one side and leant against a nearby bus shelter to drink from a carton of fruit juice which hed taken from the department store. He opened the carton and drank from it thirstily, the strong, citrus flavour suddenly revitalising him. Hed hardly drunk anything all day and he practically emptied the carton in a short time. It was when he tipped his head back to drain the last few precious drops of juice that he saw the light. Christ, he thought, he could see light. Throwing the empty carton to one side, he got up and took a few steps away from the bus shelter. At the far end of the road adjacent to the one hed been following he could see the silhouette of a tall office block which had been obscured from his view by other buildings until now. And there was no mistaking the fact that he could definitely see light. Halfway up the massive structure, in the midst of all the darkness he could definitely see light. And where there was light, he quickly decided, there had to be people. Suddenly filled with energy and a new found determination, he pushed the shopping trolley further into the shadows and turned and ran towards the office block. A body appeared from out of nowhere, its random path crossing his own by chance. Without thinking he shoved it to one side and it tripped and crumbled to the ground, silent and disaffected. Paul continued to move and to increase his speed. He had covered the length of the street and was outside the building in seconds. He glanced up, shielding his eyes from the spitting rain, making sure that he could still see the dull yellow glow coming from the windows high above. The main revolving door was blocked by fallen bodies but a side entrance remained clear and he pushed his way inside. The silent, mausoleum-like place smelled of must and the early stages of decay but Paul was, by now, becoming used to the scent of death which seemed to have permeated almost everywhere and soaked and stained everything. He didnt bother to try the lifts, choosing instead to head straight for the stairs. He climbed the first three flights at speed but then slowed dramatically as nerves and exhaustion quickly overcame his initial rush of adrenaline-fuelled excitement. With every step he took further up the building, so his unease and anxiety steadily grew. But he couldnt stop. For the first time since all of this had begun there was a very real chance he was about to find someone else alive. Fourth floor - nothing. Fifth floor - nothing. Sixth floor - bodies. Paul stepped over a corpse which was sprawled on the ground at the bottom of another flight of stairs before reaching out for the plastic-coated handrail and dragging himself up again. His mind was starting to play tricks. Had he actually seen a light at all? Was he going to be able to find the right floor? He forced himself to keep on climbing and clung on to the faintest glimmer of hope as he moved. Seventh floor. Eighth floor. Ninth floor. Tenth. This was it. He could see the light even before hed stepped off the staircase and onto the landing. A warm yellow glow which shone through the small windows in the doors which separated the office from the rest of the world. Panting heavily with the effort of the climb, Paul shook and yanked furiously at the door handle. It didnt move. Inside the office Donna froze. She was back in the training room again, curled up in a sleeping bag, sitting on a comfortable swivel chair. Every nerve and fibre in her body suddenly became tense and heavy with nervous fear. She didnt dare move. Paul shook the door again and banged at it with his fist. He couldnt see or hear anyone but that didnt matter, the light alone was more than enough reason for him to keep trying to force his way inside. Not making any progress he took a couple of steps back and then shoulder-charged the door. It rattled and shook in its frame but still it didnt open. None of the bodies shed come across possessed anywhere near enough strength to make that kind of noise, Donna thought. She wanted to believe that there was another survivor on the other side of the door but in her heart she didnt really think that would be the case. She hadnt seen or heard anyone else. She knew that she had no option but to leave the relative safety of the training room and go and have a look. The landing was about twenty feet long and five feet wide. Double doors at either end gave access to the open office space. Paul had turned left at the top of the stairs but the training room where Donna had been sheltering was to the right. Cautiously she picked up a torch and tiptoed to the door nearest to her. She shone the light through the small window and peered into the darkness, sure that she could see some movement at the far end of the landing. Suddenly aware of the light shining at him, Paul stopped what he was doing and slowly turned around. Donna instinctively pointed her torch down to the ground, frightened that she had been seen. Paul ran the length of the landing. Let me in, he yelled, banging his fists against the door furiously. For Christs sake, let me inside He leant against the door and pressed his face against the glass, frustrated, frightened and breathing heavily. For a few moments Donna did nothing. Then, slowly, the reality of the situation dawned on her. The bodies that moved couldnt speak. They couldnt make decisions or move with any amount of control. The person on the other side of the door had to be a survivor. She flicked her pass at the sensor on the wall at the door unlocked and opened inwards. Paul fell into the office and collapsed in front of her. Are you? she started to say. He looked up at her, tears rolling down his face, and then picked himself up and reached out for her. Locked together in an awkward, uncomfortable but ultimately welcome embrace, the two survivors stood in silence, both revelling in the sudden closeness of another living human being. 5 By the time Clare and Jack reached what had been the main shopping area of the city it was almost completely dark. Neither of them wanted to be outside at night. The world had been turned on its head and ripped apart in the last week and nothing could be taken for granted. In daylight it was difficult enough to try and keep track of what was happening around them. In darkness it would be virtually impossible. Jack gently pushed Clare towards Bartrams department store. A huge and imposing building at the best of times, it had long been a focal point for city shoppers. Now, drenched in crimson-black gloom and crisscrossed by angular shadows cast by the moon above, its tall, grey walls and many small, square windows made it appear unnervingly prison-like. We can stop here tonight, Jack whispered. Therell be food and stuff inside. Well be okay here. Clare didnt reply. Exhausted and dejected, it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. She hadnt said very much since theyd been together. A few tearful sentences when theyd first met and a few grunted words since then had been all. Jack didnt push her to make conversation. He felt and understood her pain. He was hurting too, of course, but hed suffered loss like this before. Clare, he assumed, hadnt. He tried to help her but his well-meaning words appeared to have very little positive effect. I know its hard, hed said a while back as theyd followed the main road into the remains of the high street. My missus died last year. I know what you feel like. You think youre hurting so much that youll never get over it but you will. Believe me, it will get easier. How can it get better? shed cried. How can it get better when Ive lost everything? Other than that Clare hadnt responded. Even Jack didnt know if he really believed what he was saying. At least hed had a reason and an explanation for the loss hed suffered when his wife passed away, even if it had been impossible for him to accept why Denise had died. Clares loss had been completely unexpected and without any justification or obvious cause. Jack had looked long and hard into her drained and emotionless face as they had walked. How scared and bewildered she must have been feeling inside. Hed never had kids of his own but hed often wished that he had. His brother had a couple of boys. Stuart was eight and Danny had been five a fortnight ago. It hurt to think about them now because he knew in his heart that they were gone. Thoughts of families and children filled his mind with a multitude of nightmare scenarios. As far as he could see there didnt seem to be any reason or pattern as to who had survived this disaster, who had died or who appeared to at first have died but who had then dragged themselves back up again. What if young children had survived when their parents had died? How would they cope? How would they feed and look after themselves? For a second he pictured Danny, his youngest nephew, alone at home. Danny had done well in reception class at school. Hed learnt to read a handful of simple words and he could write his name. He could dress himself, he could count up to twenty and, if he really tried, he could just about tie his shoelace in a proper double-bow. But Danny couldnt cook. He couldnt find medicine if he became ill. He couldnt light a fire to keep himself warm. He couldnt defend himself against attack. He simply couldnt survive Their eventual arrival in the department store in the dead heart of the city brought Jack a welcome distraction from his increasingly dark, morbid and hopeless thoughts. The large store had just opened for business when the disease or virus or whatever it was had struck on Tuesday. A row of large glass doors along the front of the building were open and it seemed, fortunately, that the vast majority of those dead shoppers who had risen up again inside the shop had managed to stumble back out onto the street. Tired and emotionally drained, Jack and Clare wearily worked their way up through the store floor by floor. From the ground floor they collected scraps of food and extra clothing. On the first floor there was a small hardware department from where they took torches and lights. Using the now stationary escalators running up through the centre of the building as a staircase, they then climbed up to a second floor furniture department. It seemed that the higher they went, the fewer bodies they came across. The clumsy figures couldnt easily cope with climbing up stairs but they were, of course, prone to tripping and falling down. Jack and Clare felt safer the higher they managed to get above ground level. The solitary moving body that they did find on the second floor (trapped between a chest-of-drawers and a fallen wardrobe in a bedroom furniture display) offered no resistance as Jack reluctantly bundled it into a nearby toilet and blocked its way out with a set of bunk beds. They spent a long hour together sitting on an expensive leather sofa, picking at the food theyd collected and sharing a few moments of fragmented conversation. Although it was relatively early (around half-past eight) the darkness, silence and strain of the day combined to make it feel much later. They were both exhausted. In what remained of their world everything seemed to take a hundred times more effort to do than it had done before. And added to that, nothing could be done which didnt remind them both of all they once had but which now they had suddenly lost. By torchlight Jack flicked through a TV listings magazine hed found in a dead shoppers bag. Most probably all of the celebrities pictured in the glossy pages were now dead. In any event none of it really mattered. What good were actors, presenters and celebrities now? Well have more luck tomorrow, Im sure of it, Jack whispered hopefully (although not entirely convincingly). What do you mean? Clare mumbled. Well find someone else. Where? I dont know. Look, this is a huge city. There must be more people left alive somewhere. You and I cant be the only ones left, can we? She shrugged her shoulders. Well we havent seen anyone else, have we? They must be sheltering. I stayed at home for a while before I went out, I bet there are hundreds of people sitting in their houses waiting for something to happen. Theyll have to come out sooner or later to get food and drink and Clare wasnt listening. She was crying again. Although he knew that he couldnt do anything to relieve her pain and fear, and even though he knew he wasnt the cause of her suffering, as the only adult around Jack couldnt help but feel responsible and protective towards her. Cautiously he rested a gentle hand on her shoulder, and then reached across and pulled her closer. Half-expecting her to recoil and pull away, he was surprised when she did the opposite and leant her weight against him fully. When is this going to stop? she sobbed, drawing her knees up and making herself as small as possible. Dont know, he grunted honestly. But what caused it all? I dont know, he said again. Will it happen to us? Is it just taking longer for us to? I dont know, Clare, he sighed with a hint of resigned frustration clear in his tired voice. I dont know anything and I cant give you any answers. I know as much as you do. But I dont know anything, she protested tearfully. Exactly. A brief silence. No-one had a chance, did they? she mumbled. There wasnt any time, was there? I mean, from the little I saw whatever it was that did all of this seemed to spread across the city like a fire. We dont even know how far widespread this is. How far do you think its gone? Jack stopped to think for a second. It was the first time for a day or so that hed actually been able to stop and think about the possible extent of the disaster. No idea, he admitted. But if this was a local thing then youd have expected people to have arrived to help us by now. Maybe they dont think anyone survived? Possible. Or perhaps they cant get here? What? Maybe whatever it was that killed everyone is still in the air. Perhaps were immune to it and they cant come here until its cleared? Dont know. You might be right. A difficult few minutes followed as both Jack and Clare stopped talking and withdrew to think about what had happened again. It was a natural reaction but thinking didnt seem to help anyone. There were no easy answers and, even worse than the frustration of not being able to understand, thinking inevitably turned into remembering. And remembering hurt. Do you like this sofa? Jack asked suddenly, making a deliberate attempt to start talking rubbish and stop trying to make sense of a senseless situation. Surprised, Clare managed half a smile. Not bothered, why? Seen the price of it? She was sitting on the price label. She sat up and looked at it. Is that expensive? Ive never had to buy a sofa. Expensive? he said, shaking his head in mock despair. Its outrageous. Me and Denise kitted out our whole house for just a little bit more than that. And that was a few years back. Its this shop, he continued. This shop was always for people that had money or those that thought they had. My mum liked this shop, Clare said quietly, still smiling faintly. She used to bring us here when we were little. I think everyones mums used to bring them here. What, yours too? He nodded and sat back in his seat. Yes, been here for years this place has. It used to be the only place around that sold school uniform. I used to get dragged here once a year in the holidays to get kitted out. And shoes too. We used to get our shoes from here. Me too. Hated it. Me and my brother both hated it. Me too. You could see the other kids going through exactly the same thing. There would be loads of us all lined up against the wall to have our feet measured. And wed all start the next school term with the same shoes Clare managed a stifled laugh and sniffed back another tear. Im tired, she said quietly. Lets go to bed, he grinned, shining his torch across the store to a line of seven double beds for sale. The survivors gathered their belongings and silently made their way across the shop floor to the beds. Jack found duvets and pillows from another nearby display and tore off their plastic packaging as Clare sat down on the bed in the middle of the row of seven. You sure youre going to be all right here?he asked as he passed her a pillow. Ill be fine, she replied as she settled back and attempted to relax. What about you? Oh, Ill be okay, he said as he opened more bedding and threw it down on the bed next to Clares. He dragged a small bedside table across the room and put a lamp on top of it. The small circle of yellow-orange light it produced was comforting. Goodnight then. Goodnight. Jack lay down and, after a few seconds of uncertainty, eventually closed his eyes. He was asleep in a surprisingly short time. He was exhausted. The mental and physical effort of just getting through each minute of the day had been relentless. Now that their conversation had ended the world was silent again save for the occasional noise made by one of the few bodies left trapped in one of the stores lower floors. Clare didnt like being alone. Unable to sleep as easily as Jack, she picked up her duvet and pillow and curled up next to him on his bed. Her hurried movements woke him for a moment. He knew she was in bed with him but he didnt react. Having her close was as reassuring for him as it was for her. 6 So there I was, Paul Castle explained, Im sat on the train and its coming into the station. I knew that something wasnt right. I remember hearing the first few people starting to panic around me but I wasnt thinking straight. All I could think about was the speed. I mean, we were just minutes away from the station and the driver hadnt started slowing down. Ive done that journey five times a week virtually every week for the last eighteen months and Ive got to know where the train should start slowing down and where the brakes should kick in and He stopped talking and turned to look out of the window at the darkness outside. Donna and Paul were sitting in the training room, both still trying to get used to the fact that they had found someone else alive. So what did you do? Donna asked. By then people were dying, he continued, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye and hoping that she hadnt seen him. Everywhere I looked they were just dropping and dying around me. I knew we were going to crash. I wasnt thinking about what was happening to the rest of them, I just got down on the floor and covered my head with my hands and And? And we hit something, but we got away with it lightly. Nothing seemed to happen for ages and then I felt the impact. It was a real fucking wrench. It threw me right forward and I could hear metal groaning and snapping and breaking. I swear Id have been badly injured if it wasnt for the bodies. There were so many of them they were like padding all around me. Once the train had stopped I managed to smash my way out through a window. When I got out I saw that wed gone into the back of another train that was still at the platform. Christ knows how we managed to stay on the rails. Were you hurt? I did this, Paul replied, lifting his shirt and turning around to show her his back. Even though the light was poor Donna could clearly see a huge purple and brown bruise running diagonally across the entire width of his back. Painful? He shrugged his shoulders. Not really, he replied. Truth is Ive hardly thought about it since everything happened. So what did you do next? I went to work. Christ, theres conditioning for you. I didnt know what else to do. I mean, I couldnt get home and I couldnt think of anywhere else to go. I figured that if I was at work then Id at least have some shelter and protection. I knew where everything was. I know what you mean. Thats why Im still here. You worked here? She nodded. Typical, isnt it, Paul grinned. You spend most of your life trying to get out of work then you end up trapped there when everything goes belly-up. So was there anyone else around when you got there? There were plenty of people there, he replied, but no-one else was alive. Jesus, all the people Id been working with just the day before were dead. All those people that Id known for ages just gone You get to know the people you work with, dont you? I had mates there and wed been out drinking at the weekend and now theyre He stopped talking and looked up at the ceiling to avoid eye contact before losing control and starting to cry again. Donna sat and watched from the other side of a wide grey desk. She said and felt nothing. Somehow she had managed to distance herself from the pain. Perhaps it was the shock of everything that had happened? Whatever the reason, inside she felt as dead as the thousands of bodies lying and rotting on the streets. It was as if every nerve in her body had been cauterised. She didnt seem to feel anything anymore. She knew that was a bad thing but, at that moment, it helped. Have some food, she said, unable to think of anything else to say. She pushed a packet of biscuits across the desk. Paul shook his head. You should eat something. No thanks. Drink? She offered him a half-empty bottle of water. He nodded and wiped his face on his sleeve before taking the bottle from her and drinking thirstily. So what do we do now? he asked as he screwed the lid of the bottle back on and passed it back. Donna shrugged her shoulders. Dont know, she replied bluntly. I mean we cant just sit here, can we? What else is there to do? Christ, we should do something. We should get out there and find other people. See if we can actually find someone who knows whats going on Bloody hell, I havent seen anyone else alive apart from you. I havent found anyone whos still breathing, so what chance have we got of finding anyone who knows whats happened? I know, but I Look, I dont want to go out until I have to,she continued, interrupting. Until I know whats caused all of this I want to stay as far away as I can from those bloody things out there. Her voice was cold, flat and tired and her message abrupt and definite. Paul didnt bother trying to argue. He got up and made himself a makeshift bed from clothes and blankets underneath a desk. He lay there in silence and stared up into the darkness for hours. Donna sat in her chair and did the same. 7 Less than half a mile from the office block stood the first few buildings of a modern university campus. Separated from the rest of town by the six-lane ring road that ran along the front of a large and recently built accommodation block, the university grounds were vast. The medical school located at the far end of the complex formed part of one of the citys main hospitals. With specialist dental, childrens, skin and burns departments, the hospital itself had been fundamental to the continuing health of the citys population. Tonight only one doctor remained on duty. Tonight there was only one doctor left alive. The modern accommodation block had individual rooms for several hundred students. During the days since the disaster somewhere in the region of fifty survivors had gathered there. Some had been near the hospital or university when it had happened, others had found their way there by chance, a few dull lights and occasional signs of movement revealing the survivors presence to the otherwise empty world. Dr Phil Croft, the last remaining medic, had just started his morning rounds when it had begun on Tuesday morning. Hed helplessly watched an entire ward full of people around him die. He had just discharged a young boy called Ashley with a clean bill of health after an appendectomy two weeks earlier. Seconds after finishing his examination of the boy the helpless child had fallen at the doctors feet and was dead. And it hadnt just been the children. The nurses, parents, cleaners, helpers, his fellow doctors and consultants too - everyone else on the ward had been struck down and killed within minutes. But even now, now that the population had reduced from millions to, it seemed, less than hundreds, Croft was still on duty. It was something that came naturally to him, an instinctive, inbuilt response. One of the survivors needed medical attention and he felt duty bound to provide it. He walked slowly through the quiet building towards the room where the woman who needed him lay. The corridor he moved along was dark and shadowy and was lined with doors leading to individual student rooms on either side. Using his torch to guide his way he glanced into a couple of the rooms as he passed them, the unexpected light causing mild panic amongst the survivors cowering in the darkness. There may have been more than thirty or forty people sheltering in the building, but many of them were sheltering alone. Apart from a handful of people who had begun to group together, the majority of survivors chose to remain in frightened isolation, too afraid to move or to speak. The doctor found the room where the woman was resting. She was very attractive - tall, well-toned, strong and nine months pregnant with her first child. Croft was strangely drawn to Sonya Farley. His girlfriend - Natasha Rogers, a nurse in one of the burns units - was dead. In those painful first few minutes on Tuesday morning he had run from his building across to Tashs unit and had found her cold and lifeless on the ground with the rest of them, dead like everyone else. She had been eight weeks pregnant. They hadnt had chance to tell anyone about the baby, not even their parents. Theyd only just got over the shock of the unexpected pregnancy themselves. Now Croft found that focussing his efforts and attention on Sonya helped his constant, gnawing pain to ease slightly. It somehow made it easier for him to cope with his loss, knowing that he would still be able to help Sonya to bring her baby into what remained of the battered world. And Christ alone knew that Sonya deserved help. When the disease had struck shed been sitting in the middle of an eight mile traffic jam on the main motorway leading into town. Shed walked through more than four miles of unremitting horror and devastation to reach the hospital. Satisfied that she was well and leaving her sleeping soundly, Croft made his way downstairs. He entered a large rectangular assembly hall where a few survivors had gathered together. He found the lack of any noise or conversation more difficult to handle than the solitude and he kept moving, crossing the room diagonally and leaving by another exit. The fact that everyone had become so painfully withdrawn somehow made the situation harder for him to deal with but, then again, what was there to talk about? Did any of the survivors have anything in common? Even if they did, chances were that whatever interests they may have once shared were gone now. What was the point of talking to anyone else about your taste in food, clothes, film, music, books or anything anymore? And as every survivor who did speak quickly found to their cost, it didnt matter who you tried to talk to or what you talked about, every single conversation inevitably began and ended with pointless conjecture about what had happened to the rest of the dead world. Croft needed nicotine. He walked the length of another corridor then turned right and sat on a step halfway down a short staircase which led to a glass-fronted entrance door. This small, secluded area had become something of a smokers corner and two other survivors - Sunita, a student who lived in the building they were sheltering in and Yvonne, a legal secretary from a firm of solicitors on the other side of the ring road - were already stood there, smoking their cigarettes and staring out into the darkness. Croft had successfully kicked the habit five months ago but had started again yesterday. It didnt seem to matter anymore. He lit his cigarette and acknowledged the two women who turned around to see who it was who had joined them. You all right Dr Croft? Yvonne asked. He nodded and blew a cloud of smoke out into the still air just in front of his face. Im okay, he replied, his voice quiet and tired. You two? Sunita nodded instinctively but otherwise didnt reply. My Jim, Yvonne said softly, he used to love the dark. Sometimes, when he couldnt sleep, hed get up and go and sit in the bay window at the back of the house and watch the sun come up. He used to love it when the birds started singing. If he was feeling romantic hed wake me up and take me downstairs with him. Didnt happen often, mind. Yvonne smiled momentarily and then looked down at the ground as the sound of bird song in her memory was swallowed up and overtaken by the all consuming silence again, leaving her feeling empty, vulnerable and lost. She wiped a tear from her eye. She was in her early fifties but the strain of the last few days had left her looking much older. Her usually impeccable hairstyle was frayed and untidy, her once smart business suit now crumpled and unkempt. Sunita sensed her grief and put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close. She knew that Yvonnes husband had worked in an office across town and that, on the first morning, shed gone there and found him dead at his desk, face down in a pile of papers. I can handle the dark as long as Im not on my own, Sunita said. When Im on my own my mind starts to play tricks. I start convincing myself that theres someone else there. Youd be lucky to find anyone these days, the doctor sighed. Anyway, never mind the dark, Im having enough trouble trying to deal with whats happening in the light, he admitted. You any closer to working out whats happened yet? Yvonne asked innocently as she turned to look out of the window again. Croft shook his head and looked away, trying to hide his sudden frustration and annoyance. Why did everyone assume that just because he was a doctor hed somehow be able to find a reason and explanation for their impossible situation? Christ, no-one had ever come across anything like the virus or disease or whatever it was that had killed so many people in such a short period of time. And to his knowledge no-one had ever risen after two days without moving or breathing either. Nothing had ever happened like this before so of course he didnt know what the bloody hell had caused it. With his sudden anger close to boiling to the surface he forced himself to bite his tongue and remain calm. Inside he felt like screaming at Yvonne and telling her to go and look for the answers to her questions in a fucking medical encyclopaedia but he knew it wouldnt achieve anything other than to make an already unbearable situation more tense and unbearable still. He took a deep breath and sucked in another lungful of smoke. She wasnt trying to wind him up. He silently reminded himself that she was just trying to get through this like everyone else. You checked on Sonya? Sunita asked. He nodded. She all right? Shes fine. Shes sleeping. Lucky cow, mumbled Yvonne. I havent slept properly for days. Croft finished his cigarette and dropped the glowing stub onto the floor before putting it out with his foot. He held his head in his hands. Without power it was as dark inside the building as the night was outside. The brightest lights were the glowing ends of Sunita and Yvonnes cigarettes moving through the cold air. Exhausted, the doctor closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. Hed tried several times in the last few hours to completely empty his head of all conscious thought and switch off but nothing seemed to work. Even the smallest, most insignificant noise or the slightest thought was enough to bring him crashing back to reality in seconds. And even though he was one of only a handful of people left alive, the disturbances and distractions were constant and unending. You see that young lad who came in this morning? Yvonne asked Sunita. Poor little bugger. Could only have been six or seven years old. One of the others spotted him running down the ring road. Said his mum had died and hed come into town to try and find his dad. Wouldnt be told that he was probably dead too How are we supposed to explain this to the children? Sunita sighed. If we cant make sense of whats happening, how are we supposed to make them understand? Depends how old they are, Croft said, lifting his head and looking up again. Why? Because kids of a certain age will accept anything you tell them,he explained. I envy some of them. A two year old will grow up thinking this is how its always been, wont they? Bloody hell, imagine how much easier the last few days would have been if you hadnt had to spend hours and hours trying to work everything out? If wed had someone who could have told us what had happened and why, even if they werent right, we could have just got on with sorting out the mess instead of trying to reason it out and explain it to ourselves. But those poor kids, Yvonne continued. Imagine losing your parents and being on your own like that. Weve probably all lost our parents, Sunita mumbled. I know, but Yvonnes words were interrupted by the noise of a body suddenly crashing into the glass double-doors directly in front of her. Nervously she stumbled back and tripped. Croft jumped to his feet and steadied her. Strangely curious he took a couple of slow, cautious steps closer to the corpse. Its gaunt face was pressed hard against the cold glass and it moved slowly along from left to right, leaving behind it a long smear of grease and a trail of bloody, germ-filled saliva. When it reached the end of the glass it clumsily turned around and began moving back in the opposite direction. What the hell is going on here? Croft asked under his breath. Whats the matter? Sunita asked. She stared at the creature, her face screwed up with disgust. It didnt look any different to any of the thousands of other diseased bodies shed seen. I dont like this, the doctor admitted. He moved closer still and studied the figures staccato movements. This one isnt like the others. Why? Sunita whispered. Because it isnt going away. What? Look at it. By now it should have turned around and wandered off into the night again. Its staying here for a reason. Its almost as if it knows that were in here. Like hell Give me another explanation then? I tell you, this body is watching us. As if to prove his point, he moved still closer towards the glass until his face was just inches away from that of the cadaver. He then moved across to his right and then, slowly and with painful lethargy, the body did the same. He moved back and, after a few seconds delay as it shuffled itself around, the corpse followed. Yvonne was scared. She found it almost impossible to bring herself to look at the diseased shell which had, less than a week ago, been a perfectly fit and well human being. She had crept halfway up the staircase and was peering down through the railings like a frightened child. So what does it mean? she asked from a cautious distance. One of two things, Croft replied, not taking his eyes off the body. Either this one has somehow been less affected than the others Or? Sunita pressed anxiously. Or theyre changing. 8 Paul got up when the sun began to rise through the tenth floor windows of the office block. His movements werent through choice, his temporary bed had proved less than comfortable and the pressure on his bladder had become too much to stand. Using a security pass which Donna had taken from a corpse earlier in the week, he dragged himself out onto the landing and climbed the single flight of stairs to the nearest toilet. Stumbling over an inert body in the half-light he crashed noisily through the door into the little room which was as cold, dark and unpleasant as hed imagined it would be. Another body was slumped on the ground in one of the cubicles and a musty, stagnant smell hung heavily in the air. Still drugged with sleep and hurrying to get away from the bodies and back to the office, Paul tripped again on his way out of the toilet, falling clumsily down the last three steps and kicking a cleaners bucket against a radiator. The sound of metal on metal echoed up and down the entire length of the staircase, seeming for a few lingering moments to fill the entire building with noise. When he returned to the tenth floor Donna was awake. More than just awake she was up and alert, quickly changing her clothes and tying up her long hair. Whats the matter? he asked, immediately concerned. She had no reason to get up so quickly. She had no real reason to get up at all. I heard something, she replied breathlessly as she tucked her shirt into her jeans. What? Dont know. It was upstairs. But you told me youve already been upstairs, havent you? You said there was nothing there. Apart from a couple of bodies thats right. So what did you hear? She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. I dont know what it was. It sounded like It was me, he interrupted nervously. Its still dark out there. I tripped over a body on my way up the stairs and I almost went right over on the way back down. I bet it He didnt bother to finish his sentence. Donna was still shaking her head. I heard the bloody noise you made, she sighed. The sound I heard was before that. An icy chill ran the length of Pauls spine. He watched with mounting anxiety as Donna put on a jacket and did up the zipper. She walked towards the door out of the office and stopped just a few feet short of the exit. Look, she said, it was probably nothing. Im just going to go and have a look around. Ill only be a couple of minutes. It must have been me you heard, Paul continued to babble. Like I said, I kicked a bucket into a radiator. It made a hell of a noise. Tired of listening to him moaning, Donna turned round, reached out for the door handle and then froze. Through the small glass panel in the door she could see a face staring back at her. Even though the light was poor she could tell that it was a cold, emotionless, rotting, dead face. The bloody thing was just stood there, staring at her. Christ, she cursed as she stumbled back in surprise. What is it? Paul hissed. Theres a body here, she whispered, rooted to the spot. So? So the damn things watching me! What the hell are you talking about? He began to walk towards her, stopping short when he saw the corpse. Completely silent and otherwise unnervingly still, the only visible movement came from its misted eyes which moved from side to side, looking from Donna to Paul and back again. It hadnt been there when hed returned from the toilet minutes earlier. Could it have followed him? Why doesnt it go? Donna asked. It should just wander away like the rest of them. Whys it staying here? Paul crept forward slightly to get a better view of the cadaver on the landing. I dont know, he mumbled, maybe its He stopped speaking immediately when the creature outside slowly lifted up a single diseased hand and smashed it down against the door. As the two survivors stood and watched in terrified disbelief, it thumped the door again. And again. And again. And again. And then with both hands, raining down a sudden torrent of weak, comparatively clumsy and completely unexpected blows on the door. Im going to let it in, whispered Donna, her mouth dry and her pulse racing. What? screamed Paul, unable to believe what he was hearing. What the hell do you think youre doing? You dont know what that thing will do if you let it in here You dont know what its going to do either, she snapped back. For Gods sake, this thing is trying to get to us. It wants help, it must do. This ones different to all the others Ive seen But you cant just assume that Pauls words were wasted. Donna wasnt listening and, besides, shed already made her decision. The body in front of her looked pathetic and emaciated. Its movements were slow and laboured. But more to the point, it appeared to have some level of control, and that separated it from the hundreds of other corpses shed seen. The creature continued to thump against the door. Donna flicked her pass at the sensor to her right and pulled the door open. The body dropped its arms and, for a second, stood still again. See, she said, relieved. I told you it The creature lunged towards her, knocking her off balance and sending her thudding into the wall. With sudden energy - uncoordinated but unmistakably savage in intent - the remains of a rotting fifty-two year old man threw itself at Donna, its weak limbs flailing in the air around her face. Instinctively she lifted her hands to protect herself. Paul ran towards the obnoxious cadaver and grabbed it from behind, wincing in disgust as he tightened his grip and felt cold, hard, leathery flesh give way under the increasing pressure of his grip. With surprisingly little effort he yanked the body away and threw it down to the ground. Regardless of its unexpected speed and intent, it was still little more than a diseased and wasted shell. Bloody thing, Donna spat. She pushed Paul to one side and stood over the corpse which was already struggling to pick itself up again. It leant over to one side and with claw-like, almost skeletal hands, made another lunge towards her. Weve got to kill it, Paul wailed. How do we do that? Donna yelled. Fucking things been dead since Tuesday. It was only after shed spoken that she realised how ridiculous her words sounded. I dont know! he screamed back at her. He looked around. Mounted on the wall just to the side of the entrance door was a fire extinguisher. He picked it up and raised it above his head. Donna, shaking with fear but fully aware of what Paul was doing, put one of her feet down hard on the creatures bony chest. Half of her body weight was more than enough to keep it pinned down. It didnt have the strength to reply. Do it, she urged frantically. For Gods sake, do it! Paul held the extinguisher high above the corpse. He watched its head thrashing helplessly from side to side with terrified fascination. Ashen, almost translucent skin was drawn tight across the emotionless face and its black, gaping mouth opened and closed continually without making a sound. Do it! Donna screamed again. He couldnt move. Frozen. Terrified. Again the body tried to lunge and the sudden movement forced him into action. With his eyes screwed tightly shut Paul slammed the base of the metal cylinder down onto the head of the corpse on the ground. It hit the side of the face with a dull thud and a faint cracking sound as the cheekbone fractured. Slightly more confident in what he was doing, but with the sickening taste of bile rising in his throat, he lifted the fire extinguisher once again and hammered it down, this time smashing in the back of the skull. Finally the body lay still. Lets get it out of here, he said as he dropped the extinguisher. Donna held the door open as he dragged the creature out by its feet, leaving behind it a thick trail of dark, almost black blood on the pale purple carpet. Driven by a nauseous combination of shock, fear and adrenaline, he dragged it out through the landing door and left it on the staircase. There were more bodies on the stairs. Jesus Christ, he could see another three of the damn things - one tripping down towards him from the floor above, two more dragging themselves up painfully slowly from the floor below. Filled with panic and cold fear he turned and sprinted back to the office. For more than an hour they were too afraid to move or even to make a sound. Hiding behind desks in the training room, Donna and Paul sat close together. Occasionally one of them would pluck up the courage to peer out into the main office again. They could just about see onto the landing through the precious doors which separated them from the rest of the world. Although indistinct and unclear, they could see movement outside. Donna sat upright and looked up and out of the window at the grey sky, trying to make some sense of what was happening. Paul lay on the carpet next to her, curled up in a ball. Why did it attack you? he mumbled, finally able to bring himself to speak about what hed seen. Dont know for sure if it did. What do you mean? Of course it attacked you! Are you really sure? How do you know it wasnt trying to get us to help? How do you know I dont know, he whined, covering his head with his hands. All I do know is that you should never have opened the bloody door in the first place. There was a sudden crash outside. It sounded like something falling down the stairs - the cleaners bucket Paul had kicked earlier perhaps? He decided that one of the bodies must have tripped over it. Its like theyre coming back to life, Donna mumbled. What? They died last Tuesday. I know thats true because I watched it happen and I checked enough of my friends to know that they were all dead. And then they started to move. Its like theyre beginning to function again. They walked on Thursday, now Now what? How did they know we were here? Dont know. I think you disturbed them when you went to the toilet. But weve both been off the floor before now, havent we? How come they didnt react to us then? I walked past a hundred of those damn things outside on the streets and not one of them reacted I know, she interrupted, growing increasingly annoyed by his mounting hysteria. Thats exactly what Im saying. They couldnt move, now they can walk. At first they had very little control and coordination, now that seems to have improved. They couldnt hear us and I dont know if they could see us before, but now it seems that they can. But why did it attack you? he asked again, repeating his earlier question. Did it attack me? If their control is limited, what else could it have done? It couldnt ask for help, could it? Christ, Paul, look whats happening to them. Theyre full of disease. Their bodies are beginning to rot and decay. Imagine the pain they must be feeling. But can they feel it? I dont know. If they can move, my guess is that they must be able to feel something. Paul sat up and drew his knees up tight to his chest. So whats going to happen next? Donna shrugged her shoulders. Her head was spinning. She didnt want to think about it until she had to. Dont know, she muttered. So what do we do? For now we keep our heads down and we keep out of sight. Dont let them know were in here. 9 Music woke Jack from his light sleep. He thought he was imagining it at first but no, there it was again. Faint and tinny, for the first time in almost a week he could definitely hear music. Once he was fully awake it took him a couple of seconds to get his bearings. He looked around and let his eyes slowly become accustomed to the low morning light. The department store looked very different in daylight - completely different in fact to how hed pictured it last night when it had been filled with nothing but shadows and darkness. He then remembered that he hadnt been alone last night and he sat up quickly and looked around for Clare. Over here, she shouted from the other side of the store. Shed been watching him stirring for the last couple of minutes but hadnt wanted to wake him. Stiff, aching and tired, Jack swung his legs out over the side of the bed, got up and then slowly shuffled over to the dining room furniture display where she was sitting. He sat down opposite her at a large mahogany table. In the middle of the table was a small stereo unit. Clare was playing a CD. He didnt recognise the music. Although he didnt say anything to her he wished shed turn it down. It wasnt particularly loud, he decided it just seemed that way because everything else was so deathly silent. How are you this morning? he asked. She nodded and smiled sadly. Im okay, she replied. Look, I didnt mean to wake you up. I hope you dont mind the noise. I couldnt stand the quiet any longer. I found the stereo in the electrical department just past the beds. Jack looked back over his shoulder and noticed a huge bank of dead television screens a short distance behind the row of beds where theyd just spent the night. Still drugged by sleep he stood up again and walked back to where hed left their belongings last night. After searching through his rucksack he found a little of the food which hed brought with him. He took it back to Clare and sat down again. Hungry? he asked. She shook her head. Not really. You should try and eat something. We both should. He opened up a plastic lunch box and took out some chocolate and fruit which he laid out on the table between them. Clare took a chocolate bar and unwrapped it. It was surprisingly good. The rich taste and smell of the food was reassuringly familiar and strangely comforting. Shed hardly eaten since Tuesday. After days of feeling nothing much more than sickening hurt and constant disorientation, the food provided a welcome distraction. For a moment it seemed that although they appeared to have lost everything, there was a slight chance that it might be possible for them to rediscover something resembling normality amongst the rubble of what remained of the lives they used to lead. I love this song, Clare said as the next track on the CD began. She chewed thoughtfully on her chocolate and turned up the volume. She closed her eyes and for a precious few seconds tried to imagine she was somewhere else. To Jack the music sounded no different and no less processed and manufactured than the last bland track hed heard. He remembered the days when music was played by real musicians and when talent mattered more than appearance and and he could hear something else. He slammed his fist down on top of the stereo and stopped it playing. Hey Clare protested. Shh he hissed. He pushed his chair back and walked towards the escalators which snaked up through the centre of the department store. He could hear movement on the first floor below. Cautiously he peered over the top of the staircase and saw that a crowd of bodies had appeared. Unlike the clumsy bodies hed seen earlier, these seemed to have a modicum of control. The light was poor but he could see, incredibly, that two or three of them had begun trying to climb up the motionless escalator towards him. They tripped over shop displays and random fallen corpses as they tried awkwardly to move forward. Clare suddenly appeared at his side, startling him. Whats going on? she asked anxiously. Look, he answered, nodding down in the direction of the figures beneath them. He concentrated his attention on the diseased body which had made most progress towards the second floor. It was now almost halfway up the escalator but had been forced to stop, its way ahead blocked by an upturned babys pushchair. Although it had been considerably darker last night it had been fairly easy for Jack and Clare to negotiate their way around such obstacles. The stilted movements of the desperate creatures below were nowhere near as controlled and precise as those of the survivors. As they crouched in silence in the shadows and watched, the crowd below them began to dissipate. Those bodies on the outside of the gathering were beginning to trip and stumble away. Was it the music? Clare wondered. The corpses on the escalator seemed to be losing interest now. They were staggering back down to the first floor again. Must have been. But why? What dyou mean? Well yesterday and the day before I spent ages shouting for help and they didnt react then. I didnt think they could hear us. Jack thought about what shed said. She was right. He remembered the first moving body that hed come across - the woman in the street outside his house. Hed run towards her breathlessly but she hadnt reacted. The rest of the world had been quiet and there had been no other distractions that hed been aware of. Surely the woman would have heard him approaching if shed been able to? Clare moved around Jack and took a couple of steps down the escalator. Where you going? he hissed, concerned. At the raised volume of his voice the nearest body stopped moving and slowly turned back around again to face the survivors. Both Clare and Jack froze and hoped that they would merge into the shadows and not be seen. The body continued down the escalator. Reaching over to one side, Clare wrestled a handbag free from the grip of an old woman whose lifeless corpse was sprawled across the escalator. She threw the bag down to the first floor, past the few remaining bodies and into a greetings card display. The display rattled and crashed to the floor and, almost instantly, the bodies returned. The survivors watched with increasing fear and uncertainty as the dead gathering regrouped around the sudden distraction. Clare turned and ran back towards Jack, her footsteps echoing loudly on the metal steps beneath her. Bloody hell, mumbled Jack as he watched the bodies react to the sound of Clare moving. The listless figures were converging at the bottom of the escalator again. She pushed past him and ran back over to the table where theyd been eating just a few minutes earlier. Jack marched over to the beds, grabbed his bag and began frantically packing everything away. A familiarly sickening feeling of helplessness, panic and disorientation had suddenly returned. What are you doing? Clare asked, instinctively starting to gather up her own things. Getting out, he replied in a hushed and frightened whisper. Getting away from those things. But where are we going to go? Dont know. Clare stopped and sat down at the table again. She held her head in her hands. They wont get up here, will they? I dont know, Jack answered. Give them enough time and they might. Who knows what theyll do? But we can block the escalators off, cant we? We can use some of this furniture. Theyre never going to be strong enough to get through, are they? Her simple logic stopped him in his tracks. He stopped packing and stared at her, struggling to answer. His throat was dry and he could feel beads of cold, nervous sweat running down his back. You might be right, but But what? But we dont know for sure. We dont know anything really, do we? Clare rubbed her eyes and started to mess with the food Jack had left on the table. Im scared, she admitted. I dont want to go anywhere. Jack put down his rucksack and collapsed on the end of his bed. She was right. What would they gain from running? The top floors of the department store seemed as safe a place to hide as any. A short time later Jack had calmed down enough to be able to creep quietly across the floor to the top of the escalator and look down again. He couldnt see any bodies. In the silence of the morning they had all drifted away. 10 Shortly before noon the unexpected roar of an engine ripped through the silence. Clare and Jack jumped out of their seats and ran over to the huge display windows at the front of the department store which looked out over the citys main shopping street. They watched as a single car forced its way down the middle of the crowded road, ploughing into random staggering bodies and smashing them to the side or simply crushing them beneath its wheels. Lets get our stuff together, Jack whispered in a surprisingly calm, collected and matter of fact voice before turning and sprinting frantically across the room, desperate to get out of the building before the car disappeared. Inside the car Bernard Heath and Nathan Holmes looked anxiously from side to side, trying desperately to see something through the rotting crowds which converged on them from all directions. From their low vantage point there seemed to be no end to the hundreds of bodies around them. Where the fucking hell are we going? Holmes, a stocky security guard, cursed from behind the steering wheel. I dont know, the educated and comparatively well-spoken Heath replied. Until the world had been turned on its head last week he had been a university lecturer. More than twenty years spent in the company of students and other academics had left him dangerously under-prepared for the sudden physical danger and conflict he now found himself facing. There are a couple of restaurants just up here, Holmes said breathlessly. Theyll have food. Heath didnt respond. He was transfixed by the absolute horror he was witnessing all around the car. On every side there was nothing but relentless blood, death and disease. Spending the last few days sitting in the relative safety of the university accommodation block with the rest of the survivors hadnt prepared him for any of this. He knew that he had to keep calm and not let his concentration wander or lose his nerve. All they had to do was fill the back of the car with food and whatever other useful supplies they could find and get back to the others. And even if these countless creatures looked abhorrent and grotesque, he had to remember that individually they were weak and could easily be brushed aside. But there were thousands upon thousands of them, and more seemed to be arriving with each passing second. How the hell did this happen? Holmes mumbled to himself as he struggled to keep the car moving forward through the apparently endless devastation. Heath lifted himself up in his seat to try and see over the heads of the mass of bodies and look further into the distance. This isnt going to work, he muttered. It was a mistake coming out here. What the hell were we thinking of? Christ, there are so many of them we wont be able to get out of the bloody car. Holmes didnt answer. Instead, as they approached the useless traffic lights at what had once been one of the busiest junctions in the city, he wrenched the steering wheel to the left and turned the car. He pushed his foot down hard on the accelerator and winced in disgust as they collided with body after rotting body, smashing them beyond recognition. They were weak and they were beginning to decay and it took little effort to destroy them. The constant thud, thud, thud of diseased flesh against metal was sickening. Where are we going now? Heath asked anxiously. I thought you said we were heading for a restaurant? Ive had a better idea, Holmes grunted as he forced the car up the steep ramp entrance to a multi-storey car park built over a shopping mall. I used to come here a lot, he said as he steered around the tight climbing curve of the entrance road, well get what we need here. Heath relaxed back in his seat momentarily. Now that they had left the main road the number of bodies had reduced dramatically. Still numerous on the lower levels of the car park they passed through, by the time they had reached the top only one or two figures remained to be seen. The sudden relief the university lecturer felt was immense. Holmes stopped the car directly in front of the door which opened onto the staircase leading down to the mall. Climbing out into the open Heath allowed himself to briefly look down over the side of the car park into the chaos in the streets below. A large mass of dark, shadowy figures had slowly begun to climb the steep access road after the car. Although he had spent long hours looking at the remains of the world through the windows of the university, seeing how the city had been inexplicably raped and destroyed from a different perspective shocked Heath. It seemed that nothing and nowhere had escaped the destruction. He turned back to face the car and saw that a handful of bodies had emerged from the shadows and were lumbering awkwardly towards them. As soon as the engine of the car was switched off and silence returned, however, they began to drift away again. Come on, Holmes snapped. He was already on his way down to the shopping area. Heath followed close behind. We should try and get food first, the older man gasped breathlessly as he ran down a dark and dank staircase, trying not to lose sight of his younger and fitter colleague. Well take as much as we can carry. We can come back down for more if its safe. Holmes wasnt listening. He crashed through a pair of heavy swinging doors at the bottom of the stairs and ran the length of a short, marble-floored corridor towards the shops. He paused at a second set of doors to let Heath catch up before pushing them open and stepping through. The mall was silent. In the near distance he could see a few shuffling bodies, but other than that there was nothing no movement, no sound. It was surprisingly dark. Being in the centre of a once busy and vibrant city, prior to the disaster the mall had been brightly illuminated at all times. This was the first time that either man had set foot in such a place without being surrounded by crowds of shoppers and without the benefit of artificial light and air conditioning. It felt cold and unnatural. It was alien and unnerving. Theres a supermarket over in the far corner,Heath gasped, still fighting to catch his breath through a combination of fear and sudden physical exertion. From the shadows of an open-fronted jewellers shop behind them a body lurched towards him and knocked him off balance. He yelped with surprise and disgust and struggled to push the obnoxious figure away. Without speaking Holmes pulled it away from him and threw it down to the ground. He kicked its head and then stamped on its face. He felt a certain degree of baseless vindication and satisfaction when it lay bloodied and battered at his feet. The men ran towards the supermarket. The body dragged itself up off the ground and followed. Theyve got to be in there, Jack whispered as he crept along the front of the high street shops with Clare at his side. From their department store lookout they had quickly lost sight of the car. Fortunately the trail of devastation and the huge mass of desperate bodies following in the vehicles wake revealed the route it had taken. Even from a few hundred meters back along the road they could see that a vast collection of ragged figures had stumbled along the street and gathered close to the entrance to the multi-storey car park. Theyve got to have gone into the shopping centre, Clare said quietly. They must have. In silence the two survivors continued to cautiously make their way towards the immense crowd of bodies. The events of the morning had allowed them to quickly deduce that it was primarily sound that the creatures were reacting to. Having braced themselves for some kind of bloody struggle once they were back out on the street, they discovered that as long as they were silent and moved at a painfully slow pace which matched that of the dead, they didnt seem to arouse any unwanted attention. Moving slowly between the rotting corpses and stepping through a sea of decaying human remains took more self control and determination than either Jack or Clare had imagined. The tortuous pace left them feeling exposed and vulnerable. A journey which should have taken thirty seconds took more than fifteen minutes. Still silent, and daring to communicate only with subtle nods of the head and momentary facial expressions, the two survivors stayed close together. With almost unbearable disgust and trepidation they worked their way through the bulk of the emaciated crowd and began to climb the entrance road which led to the car park. What colour was it? Jack asked, allowing himself to speak with a little more volume now that they were away from the majority of the bodies. What? The car? What colour was the car? Dark red I think, Clare replied quietly. They had only managed to see the vehicle for a few seconds, and they had only really seen its roof at that. It had been surrounded by a constant shroud of bodies, making it almost impossible to see anything clearly. They didnt know what size, shape, make, model or style it was. There were hundreds of cars in the car park, all abandoned when their owners had perished. This is pointless, Clare whined. Theyre probably long gone by now. Jack shook his head. No, we would have heard them. I dont like being out here. What if those things on the street start to Shh Jack interrupted, turning round and lifting a finger to his lips. Theyll be here somewhere, they have to be. I havent seen any other crowds like the one downstairs, have you? He didnt wait for her answer and instead kept moving forward. The same logic that had guided Jack to the top floor of the department store last night was now making him gravitate towards the top storey of the car park. It seemed sensible to presume that a survivor would have gone up as far as they could, knowing that the lethargic bodies below would struggle to follow. Thats it, he said suddenly as they rounded a corner and reached the top level of the car park. How do you know? asked Clare. He walked towards a single car parked next to the staircase. Three reasons, he explained quietly. First, you wouldnt normally park here, would you? Second, he paused to lean down and touch the bonnet, the engines still warm. And? And look He pointed at the number plate and radiator grille. The front of the car was dripping with blood and gore. So what do we do? We wait for them to come back. The two survivors crouched down in the shadows to the side of a large van. Thats enough, Heath protested. Come on, Nathan, were never going to get all that up those stairs, are we? Holmes wasnt listening. He was busy loading more food and drink into boxes and bags which he then stacked into shopping trollies. Shaking his head with despair Heath continued emptying a shelf of dehydrated snack meals into a cardboard box. He carried the load over to Holmes and then stopped to complain again when he realised that the other man had filled most of his boxes with cans of beer. Now come on, he protested, were here to collect food. We can take some drink back with us if weve got enough room but Holmes leant forward until he was only inches from the lecturers face, immediately intimidating and silencing him. Shut up, he hissed. Look, Im the one whos put their neck on the line to come out here and get this stuff. If I want beer, Ill take beer. And if Ive forgotten anything that anyone else wants, well they can just get in the car and come and get it for themselves, cant they? He turned his back on Heath and began pushing the first of the trolleys out of the supermarket and back towards the stairs. The older man watched for a good twenty seconds before realising that he was alone. Suddenly anxious and uncomfortable he quickly made his move, pushing one trolley ahead of him and dragging another one close behind. Holmes slammed into the first set of double doors which opened out into the short corridor between the mall and the car park stairs. He pushed his trollies in and shoved them towards the far end of the corridor, groaning with effort as he struggled with the cumbersome load. Im going back for more, Holmes said. Ill be a couple of minutes. He was gone before hed given Heath chance to answer. Tired and struggling, Heath moved his two trollies towards the car park staircase. He stood and stared at the huge pile of supplies they had gathered. Breathless, he tried to work out how much they would actually manage to get into the car and how they were going to get any of it upstairs. Holmes was back. The sound of him crashing through the doors again startled Heath. Come on, he hissed as he pushed two more trollies towards him. Start getting stuff up to the car. Picking up several badly packed carrier bags and a heavy cardboard box, Heath began to climb the steep grey stairs back to the top level of the car park. Becoming increasingly annoyed by the older mans lack of speed and fitness, Holmes followed close behind. Get a bloody move on, will you? he shouted. With his legs and arms heavy with effort, Heath pushed his way back out into the car park and dropped his bags and boxes on the ground. Holmes unlocked the car and they began to cram their supplies into the boot. Hiding behind the van, Clare started to get up. Wait, Jack mouthed. He turned back and watched as the two men disappeared back down the stairs. Let them load up the car first. A couple of minutes later and Holmes returned. He threw more goods into the boot of the blood-splattered car and then turned and ran back down again. Another couple of minutes and Heath emerged from the shadows again, closely followed by Holmes making his third trip. Jack couldnt wait any longer. Hey, he said, standing up and stepping out into the light. Are you? Holmes reacted instantly to the presence of an unexpected body. The fact that this body was communicating with him didnt register. He turned to face Jack and, giving him as little regard as he would any one of the thousands of corpses dragging themselves along the streets, he dropped his shoulder and charged into him, sending him flying across the car park. You stupid bloody idiot! Clare screamed, jumping up and pushing Holmes back against the car. What the hell did you do that for? Realisation dawned. Holmes stood and stared at Jack as he rolled around on the cold ground, doubled up with pain. Heath pushed past him and helped Jack to his feet. Get in the car, he shouted to Clare. Stunned and in considerable pain but nevertheless relieved, Jack slowly made his way over to the car and opened the back door and collapsed onto the seat. Clare sat down next to him. You okay? she whispered. Im all right, he replied, still clutching his chest and with his face screwed up in agony. His breathing was heavy. Heath paced up and down anxiously in front of the car. Holmes had disappeared again. Moments later and he re-emerged from the staircase, carrying yet more provisions including, Heath noticed, his precious beer. They loaded the boot until it was filled to capacity. Holmes casually threw the remaining carrier bags of food at Clare who grabbed hold of them as he slammed the door shut. Heath introduced himself as he sat down in front of them. Im Bernard Heath, he said as Holmes started the engine and turned the car in a quick, tight arc. He drove at speed back towards the entrance to the car park as the sweat-soaked and overweight university lecturer next to him struggled to turn round and face Jack and Clare. Im Jack Baxter, he replied, still wheezing, this is Clare. Thanks for You with anyone else or are there just two of you? Holmes interrupted. Just the two of us. What about you? There are about forty of us, Heath answered. Does anyone know whats happened? Jack asked hopefully. Heath shook his head. Havent got a clue, he replied and, with that, the brief conversation abruptly ended. Holmes drove back down the entrance ramp and deep into the crowds of bodies, destroying any of them unfortunate enough to stumble into his path. 11 I cant do this, Paul said suddenly. It was the first time that either he or Donna had spoken for more than an hour. Cant do what? Stay here like this. I cant handle it. I cant just sit here knowing theyre out there waiting Well youre going to have to handle it, arent you? Theres not a lot else we can do. Still crouching in the training room where theyd hidden since the incident hours earlier, the two survivors knew that there were still bodies out on the landing. Occasionally Donna plucked up the courage to peer out through the window, immediately moving out of sight again at the faintest sign of activity in the corridor outside. She had spent the last hours trying to work out why the creatures were there at all. Had they been trapped by the heavy landing doors swinging shut, or had they made a conscious decision to wait there for the survivors to emerge again? Were they even capable of conscious decision making? It was impossible to tell. Assuming that it had been sound that first attracted them to the tenth floor, Donna had come to the conclusion that it had been a domino effect of sorts that had drawn others to the scene. It seemed logical that the noise made by the first body trying to force its way inside had attracted another which in turn had attracted another and another and so on So what are we going to do? Paul moaned. Christ, he really was beginning to irritate Donna now. Jesus, she sighed, I dont know. We cant sit here forever, can we? But what are we going to gain from leaving? Were ten floors up here. The only way out is to go down the staircase and if any more of those things appear then were going to have a hell of a job trying to get through them when we need to get out, arent we? He was right. She didnt bother to acknowledge him but she had to admit that he was right. Much as she wanted to stay hidden in the office, she knew that if she followed her earlier line of thinking through, then more and more of the bodies could be attracted to the scene until it became impossible for the two of them to get away. Her options looked decidedly bleak; take her chances with the diseased population or sit here and wait endlessly with this whinging mouse of a man. For a few seconds she sat and weighed up the odds before deciding it was time to move. All right then, she said, lets do it. Well try and find somewhere safer, if anywheres going to be any safer, that is. She watched Pauls face. He looked terrified. Although he had been the one who had suggested they leave, it was obvious that the grim reality of his suggestion was only just beginning to sink in. But how? he stammered. How are we going to get past them. We dont know how many of them are Donna thought for a moment. Distract them, she said eventually. There are doors at either end of the landing, arent there? Well draw them towards one end of the office and then get out through the other. Paul looked into space, thinking carefully. The expression on his face slowly began to change and Donna started to wonder whether shed been hasty in her judgment of him. He had listened and he suddenly looked ready to overcome his obvious nervousness and take what was left of his life in his hands to leave the relative safety of the office. Okay, he said quietly, his voice a little more positive and purposeful than it had been all morning, so where do we go once were out there? Dont know. From what I can see we can pretty much take our pick of the entire city, maybe even the country. We could find ourselves a car and try and get away Donna shook her head. I dont think thats a good idea. If those things outside are able to hear us now, all wed be doing is drawing more attention to ourselves. What we need is to find somewhere secure like this place, but with more than one way out. There must be hundreds of places like that round here. This is a city centre for Gods sake. Theres the main police station round the corner for a start. Then theres the hospital, the university, shops, pubs If we could find somewhere with food supplies and drinks Christ, I could murder a drink Or beds? What about finding somewhere with real beds? Bloody hell, a decent-sized house would do, wouldnt it? There arent many houses round here, Donna said, suddenly feeling a fraction more positive about their situation. But youre right, when were ready we could head out into the suburbs, maybe even further? Paul stopped to think again. Theres one thing that were not taking into consideration here, he sighed. Whats that? The bodies. We both saw what that one tried to do to you. As soon as we go outside well be I still dont think that body tried to do anything to me, she interrupted, it just reacted to me being there. I think if Id stood still and stayed quiet it would have walked straight past. Im not sure They dont seem to be attacking each other, do they? I dont know. I havent seen enough to be able to say Look, assuming their senses are gradually returning, how would they know that were not like the rest of them if we played dead? Were stronger and we look in better condition than they do, but after everything thats happened to them are they really going to be able to tell? Paul shrugged his shoulders. I dont know. Can we afford to take a chance like that? Can we afford not to? Youre right, Paul, we could be trapped in here. T