Autumn

come back here. We need to talk about this.’
    Halfway up the stairs he stopped and turned back around to face her.
    ‘What’s left to talk about? What’s the point.’
    ‘The point is we’ve got to do something and I think we should do it now,’ Michael said. ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen next, do we? Things could be a hundred times worse tomorrow.’
    ‘He’s right,’ agreed Emma. ‘We’ve got enough stuff here to last us for a few days but we need enough to last us weeks. I think we should get out now and barricade ourselves in when we get back.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ asked Carl, now much quieter and calmer. He sat down on the stair he’d been standing on. ‘I don’t want to shut myself away in here...’
    ‘Maybe we shouldn’t,’ Michael said. ‘Maybe we should try it a different way, try and seal off the farm from the outside.’
    ‘And how are we supposed to do that?’ Emma wondered.
    ‘Build a fence,’ he replied, simply.
    ‘It’d have to be a fucking strong fence,’ Carl added.
    ‘Then we’ll build a fucking strong fence,’ Michael explained. ‘We’ll get whatever materials we need today and make a start. Face it we’re not going to find anywhere better to stay than this place. We need to protect it.’
    ‘We need to protect ourselves,’ said Emma, correcting him.
    ‘Let’s go,’ he said, picking up the keys to the van from a hook on the wall by the front door.
    ‘Now?’ said Carl.
    ‘Now,’ he replied.
    Michael opened the door and made his way to the van, stopping only to pick up the rifle from where Carl had left it in the yard in front of the house.

25

    Carl drove the van while Michael and Emma sat in the back together drawing up a list of everything they could think they might need. It had been a conscious move by Michael to hand the keys over to the other man. He hadn’t liked the way Carl had been acting this morning. Sure all three of them were right on the edge at the moment, but his position seemed more precarious than that of the other two. There was an undeniable air of uncertainty and fear in his voice every time he spoke. Michael’s logic was that by distracting him and giving him a definite role to concentrate on, his mind would be occupied and any problems could be temporarily avoided. He could sympathise with the poor bastard entirely. He knew that he personally could just about handle what was going on around him at the moment, but if anything else happened he wasn’t so sure that he’d be able to cope.
    Less than two minutes trying to draw up the list and the two survivors stopped, both of them quickly realising that it was a waste of their precious time and that they couldn’t afford to even try and be specific anymore. Truth was they couldn’t risk wasting time trying to find the things they thought they might need, instead they had no option but to fill the van with whatever they could lay their hands on and only stop when there wasn’t space for anything else.
    Carl drove towards the village of Byster at a phenomenal speed. Michael silently wished that he would slow down but he knew that he wouldn’t. He’d found himself accelerating at a similar rate whenever he’d driven recently. Driving was deceptively difficult because although silent, every road was strewn with hundreds upon hundreds of random obstacles - crashed and abandoned cars, burnt out wrecks and the remains of collapsed buildings. There were scattered, motionless corpses and scores of other wandering bodies everywhere. When Michael had driven he’d found that a nervous pressure had forced him to keep accelerating. He felt sure that Carl was feeling that same clammy, noxious fear too.
    Before they reached the village they passed a vast, warehouse-like supermarket, brightly painted and completely at odds with the lush green countryside which surrounded it. Carl slammed his foot on the brake, quickly turned the van around and drove back towards the large building. It was a crucial find. They guessed that pretty much everything they needed would be inside. More importantly, filling the van with supplies there meant that they didn’t need to get any closer to the centre of the village. More to the point, it meant that they could keep their distance from the sick and diseased remains of the local population.
    ‘Brilliant,’ Carl said under his breath as he pulled into the car park and slowed the van down. ‘This is fucking brilliant.’
    He gently turned