Autumn

dropped my shopping basket and tried to prise his bony fingers off my arm.
    There was a sudden noise behind me and I looked back over my shoulder to see that the other shopper had collapsed into a display rack, sending jars, tins and packets of food crashing to the ground. He lay on his back amongst them, coughing, holding his throat and writhing around in agony.
    I felt the grip on my arm loosen and I turned back to look at the old man. Tears of inexplicable pain and fear ran freely down his weathered cheeks as he fought to catch his breath. His throat was obviously blocked, but I couldn’t tell by what. My brain slowly began to click into gear and I started thinking about loosening his collar and laying him down. Before I could do anything he opened his wide, toothless mouth and I saw that there was blood inside. The thick crimson blood trickled down his chin and began to drip on the floor in front of me. He dropped to the ground at my feet and I watched helplessly as his body convulsed and shook.
    I turned back to look at the other man who also lay on the marble floor, thrashing his arms and legs desperately around him.
    I ran to the back of the shop to try and find Mr Rashid. The shop led directly into their home. By the time I found him and his wife they were both dead. Mrs Rashid had fallen in the kitchen and lay next to an upturned chair. The tap was still running. The sink had overfilled and water was spilling down the units and collecting in a pool around the dead lady’s legs. Mr Rashid lay in the middle of the living room carpet. His face was screwed up in agony. He looked terrified.
    I ran back through to the front of the shop. Both of the men I’d left fighting for breath were dead.
    I walked back outside. The sun was incredibly bright and I had to shield my eyes. There were bodies everywhere - even through the brightness the dark shapes on the ground were unmistakable. Hundreds of people seemed to have died. I looked at the few closest to me. Whatever it was that had killed the people inside the shop had killed everyone outside too. They had all suffocated. Every face I looked into was ashen white and the mouth of every body was bloodied and red.
    I looked up towards the junction of
    Maple Street
    and High Street. Three cars had crashed in the middle of the box junction. No-one was moving. Everything was still. The only thing that changed was the colour of the traffic lights as they steadily worked their way through red, amber and green.
    There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of bodies around me. I was numb, cold and sick and I walked home, picking my way through the corpses as if they were just litter that had been dropped on the streets. I didn’t allow myself to think about what had happened. I guess I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find any answers. I didn’t want to know what had killed the rest of the world around me and I didn’t want to know why I was the only one left.
    I let myself into the flat and locked the door behind me. I went into my room, drew the curtains and climbed back into bed. I lay there, curled up as tightly as I could, until it was dark.

4

    By eleven o’clock on a cold, bright and otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning in September over ninety-five percent of the population were dead.
    Stuart Jeffries had been on his way home from a conference when it had begun. He’d left the hotel on the Scottish borders at first light with the intention of being home by mid-afternoon. He had the next three days off and had been looking forward to sitting on his backside doing as little as possible for as long as he could.
    Driving virtually the full length of the country meant stopping to fill up the car with petrol on more than one occasion. Having passed several service stations on the motorway he decided that he would wait until he reached the next town to get fuel. A smart man, Jeffries knew that the cheaper he could buy his petrol, the more profit he’d make when it came to claiming his expenses back when he returned to work on Friday. Northwich was the nearest town, and it was there that a relatively normal morning became extraordinary in seconds. The busy but fairly well ordered lines of traffic were thrown into chaos and disarray as the infection tore through the cool air. Desperate to avoid being hit, as the first few cars around him had lost control he had taken the nearest turning he could find off the main road and had then taken an immediate right into an empty