Autumn

Michael.
    There was no time to think. He kicked open the door and ran back towards the house, fighting his way through a thick sea of clumsy bodies. He kicked and punched and powered through to the back door which he lunged towards. As he tugged and pulled at the handle more than a dozen pairs of twisted, rotting hands grabbed at him, catching hold of his hair, his clothes, his shoulders and his legs and arms. He screamed and writhed to free himself but it was useless. He could struggle free from the grip of one corpse, only to be caught by countless others. He began to feel himself being pulled back into the disease-ridden crowd.
    ‘Michael!’ he heard Emma scream. He looked up and saw that she was on the other side of the back door. She was pushing at the door, struggling to open it against the sheer volume of sickly cadavers outside. Michael managed to shuffle a couple of steps to his right and get one arm back inside the building. With a strength and determination that she had never before possessed, Emma grabbed hold of him and dragged him back into the house. A body was pulled inside with him and, while Michael kicked and punched at the wretched thing, Emma slammed the door shut, severing an emaciated arm in the process.
    The body on the floor stopped moving momentarily and Michael crouched down, struggling to catch his breath.
    ‘Okay?’ Emma asked, shouting to make herself heard over the noise coming from the frenzied crowd outside.
    He nodded.
    ‘Think so,’ he gasped.
    She turned to look out of the window in the door. The small pane of glass was filled with a mass of dark, dangerous shadows, every last one of them clamouring to get inside.
    ‘We need to...’ Michael began before being interrupted by another noise, this time from the front of the house. He looked at Emma for a split-second before standing up and running down the hallway.
    It was Carl.
    ‘Shit!’ Michael yelled to Emma. ‘What’s he doing?’
    The two survivors watched helplessly as their friend unlocked the front door. He lifted his hand to the latch and then stopped and turned to look over his shoulder when he heard the others approaching.
    ‘Ready?’ Carl asked, grinning with excitement and misguided anticipation. His face was grotesque and almost unrecognisable. Already scratched, bloodied and bruised, his features were distorted further by the dark shadows of the besieged house. He seemed blissfully unaware of what was waiting for him on the other side of the door.
    ‘Fucking hell,’ Michael gasped, ‘he’s going to open it! He’s lost it. He’s completely fucking lost it!’
    Emma was rooted to the spot with fear. She couldn’t move or even think. Her lips formed silent words of desperation and terror.
    Carl lifted up the rusty rifle they had found and smiled again at Michael.
    ‘Come on, Mike,’ he yelled. ‘We’ll have them. You and me’ll have the fucking lot of them!’
    Michael could hear the bodies fighting to get into the house with a new found purpose and ferocity. He was about to try and talk to Carl and make him understand when he opened the door.
    ‘Get upstairs now!’ he screamed at Emma. He grabbed hold of her arm and half-dragged, half-threw her up the staircase. He followed close behind but stopped and turned back when he was only a couple of steps up.
    Blissfully unaware, Carl opened the door fully and, for a single second which seemed to last longer than ten, nothing happened. A moment of stillness and unexpected calm which was suddenly shattered by a tidal wave of rotting flesh and bone which powered into the house. The force of the surge was such that Carl was lifted clean off his feet and smashed against the nearest wall. In seconds the hallway was filled and Carl had completely disappeared from view, swallowed up and destroyed by the vast and unstoppable crowd.
    Turning quickly, Michael ran up the stairs after Emma. She was hiding in Carl’s attic bedroom. He slammed the door shut behind him.
    ‘Get the fucking bed!’ he screamed. ‘Help me push it in front of the door.’
    Taking one end each, the two of them shunted the heavy wooden bed down the length of the room and turned it sideways so that it completely blocked the door.
    ‘Where’s Carl?’ Emma asked, although she already knew the answer. Michael didn’t bother to reply. He ran over to the window and looked out. The bedroom was at the front of the house. It was dark but he could make out their Landrover and car in the yard