Autumn

We’re not going to sit here like fucking prisoners for the rest of our days. Something’s going to happen tonight.
    When I was running back to the house I was faster than the lot of them. I could outrun them. They’re nothing, just bags of skin and bone. They don’t have any strength and there isn’t a single one of them that can hurt me.
    I keep seeing Sarah and Gemma’s faces and I can hear Sarah telling me what to do. She’s telling me that she wants me to make a go of this. She’s telling me that she wants me to get off my backside and make a stand.
    I can hear Emma and Michael talking about getting away again.
    The only way we can do it is if we fight.
    When I’m ready I’m going to show every last one of those bastards outside who’s in charge. They’re weak and they’re sick and I’m strong.
    I’m going to take them out.
    One at a time.

46

    Quarter to ten.
    Michael was sitting in a chair in the corner of the bedroom with his eyes closed. He was tired and he needed to rest but there was no way he could sleep, not even for a second.
    Emma sat on the edge of the bed where Carl still lay. She had taken care to position herself so that even though it was dark, she could still clearly see both men. She watched them anxiously in the dull light, waiting either for Michael to open his eyes and decide that they should move or for Carl to return to full consciousness. She was a little less worried about Carl now. He seemed much calmer. He was generally still and quiet, but his face now seemed relatively untroubled, almost to the point of appearing relaxed.
    Taking care not to make any more noise than was absolutely necessary, she stood up and walked over to the window. Peering down cautiously into the yard below she saw that the seething mass of dark, heaving bodies remained. An apparently endless sea of bobbing, rotting heads. Hundreds and hundreds of them clamoured to get closer to the house and their sheer number was still the overriding concern because, individually, the corpses were slow and dumb. While she watched she saw five or six of them lose their footing on the muddy bank and tumble helplessly into the stream, unable to get up and get out again. She saw another one of them become caught on the jagged remains of one of the gateposts on the bridge, trapped and unable to move. The remnants of its ragged clothing had become snagged on a large wooden splinter but it couldn’t see how to pull itself free.
    There was another reason why the bodies terrified her.
    It was more than just their horrific appearance and the fact that their rotting flesh was host to many unknown and deadly diseases. Emma was morbidly fascinated and repulsed by the creatures because, less than a month ago, each one of them had been like herself. An individual. A person. A human being with a clear and identifiable personality and individual tastes, skills and beliefs. What scared Emma - what chilled her to the core in fact - was what these once ordinary, normal people had become. Chances were many of her friends and family had gone the same way. And who was to say that when she died, she too wouldn’t spend the rest of eternity dragging her decomposing body aimlessly around their dead world?
    One or two of the bodies weren’t a threat. A group of between, say, ten and fifteen was a concern, but nothing they couldn’t deal with. But in the cold darkness outside the farmhouse tonight there she could see hundreds upon fucking hundreds of them.
    ‘No better?’ an unexpected voice asked from the shadows behind her, startling her momentarily. She span around quickly. It was Michael. He was up and out of his seat.
    ‘They’re still here,’ she replied with her heart thumping anxiously in her chest. ‘They’re still coming.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice low, sensing that he’d startled her. ‘I didn’t mean to make you jump.’
    She nodded and turned back to look out of the window again.
    ‘Do you think they know we’re in here?’ she asked.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I think they sense that there’s something different about us. It might just be because of the noise we make, it might be because of the way we move...’
    ‘But what do they want from us?’
    ‘I don’t think they want anything.’
    ‘So why are they here?’
    ‘Instinct.’
    ‘Instinct?’
    ‘Yes. Like I said, we’re different, that’s all. Whatever’s left of their brains is telling them we’re not the same as