Autumn

right hand which he held out and pulled him towards her. But the collective strength of the creatures was too much and they took him from her, dragging him down onto the ground.
    Michael sensed that he was about to die.
    But fucking hell, he thought, he’d survived so much, why the hell should he give up now? And even more importantly perhaps, he knew that he couldn’t leave Emma to suffer alone. With the very last dregs of energy that he could summon from his frightened and exhausted body, he scrambled to his feet and kicked and punched at the figures around him. He reached inside the van, grabbed hold of the steering wheel and pulled himself in. He yanked the door shut behind him, leaving countless carcasses to smash their decaying fists against the metal and glass.
    ‘Ready?’ he asked breathlessly.
    Emma nodded and swallowed hard.
    Michael forced the van into gear and lifted his foot off the clutch. For one desperate moment it seemed that the volume of bodies surrounding the Landrover might prove too much for it to overcome. The engine roared but it did not move. He accelerated again, this time increasing the power steadily until the engine screamed to be released. With one sudden, juddering movement they began to edge forward, carving a bloody passage away from their home and out through the rotting masses.
    Emma glanced back over her shoulder at what remained of Penn Farm. Through her tears she could already see that the farmhouse was now little more than an empty shell. There were dark, shadowy figures moving at every window.

Epilogue
    Michael Collins

    We drove for hours, only stopping once in all that time to siphon more fuel from a crashed car on a deserted stretch of road.
    We gave up for the night when I couldn’t keep awake to drive any longer. We’d been following a twisting road which led along one exposed edge of a high mountain valley when I spotted an empty car park. Emma didn’t want to drive. We decided to rest.
    I parked the car, stopped the engine and got out. A stupid thing to do, perhaps, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. If any bodies were near by (and I couldn’t see any) then what could they do to us? What could they take from us? We had nothing and we could lock ourselves into the Landrover if we needed to.
    We were in a beautiful place, and for a short time nothing seemed to matter. The moon was high and proud in the sky and the night was still. Across the valley a steep, jagged mountain-face climbed away from us. It was as remote and inhospitable a place as we could have hoped to find.
    ‘You all right?’ Emma asked as she walked round to stand next to me. I nodded and instinctively pulled her close. The warmth of her body was comforting.
    ‘Want to keep going?’ she asked me suddenly.
    ‘Don’t know,’ I answered truthfully. ‘Do you?’
    She shrugged her shoulders.
    ‘Is there any point?’
    ‘There’s got to be somewhere we can go,’ I said. ‘Somewhere they can’t get to. Another Penn Farm...’
    I looked down into her face and stopped talking. She was half-smiling, and her expression seemed to be telling me that although she really did want to believe me, she didn’t. Tears of pain and frustration began to roll down her delicate cheeks from her tired eyes.
    In silence we clambered into the back of the Landrover together and lay there on the floor, holding each other tightly.
    ‘We’ll be okay,’ I heard myself say.
    She smiled briefly and then buried her head in my chest.
    We had nothing left to lose but our lives. We lay there in the darkness and waited for morning.

FOLLOW THE COMPLETE AUTUMN STORY IN
    THE BEST-SELLING NOVELS

    AUTUMN: THE CITY

    AUTUMN: PURIFICATION

    AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION

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