Autumn

hundreds of diseased figures.
    ‘Get back to the house,’ he screamed as he bundled Carl into the back of the car and pushed Emma into the front. Before he had even closed the door she had accelerated away again and was careering down the final incline towards the gate spanning the stone bridge.
    Michael shoulder charged his way back through the sickly throng to the Landrover and managed to force his way back into the driver’s seat. He slammed and locked the door and then looked up and down the track. More and more bodies were converging on the road ahead. The frequent noise from the house over the last day or two must have attracted them. Perhaps their brains were beginning to function with more clarity and reason than before? Maybe these hundreds of corpses had actually stayed close to the farm and laid in wait because they knew that the survivors had been hiding in there? And now the combined noise from the bike, the Landrover and the car that Emma was driving seemed to have brought every last one of them out into the open.
    He put the Landrover into gear and drove forwards, obliterating any of the corpses that foolishly remained in his way. But there were literally hundreds of them now, maybe even more than a thousand. He noticed that Emma had stopped a little way short of the gate and already her car was being swamped by ragged figures. Why didn’t she open the gate and go through? Cruel realisation suddenly dawned. He had the keys.
    Like a man possessed he sped down the track. There were just too many of the damn creatures around. There was no way he could get out of the car and unlock the single padlock which they used to secure the gate when they left the farm. There were too many bodies around for him to risk being out in the open. There was only one option. He drove on and smashed through the wooden gate, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. He drove across the dusty yard and skidded to a sudden halt right outside the steps leading up to the front door of the house. He anxiously looked back to make sure that Emma was following. She careered into the yard with a body clinging onto the bonnet of the car, trying desperately to smash the windscreen with a tired and wizened hand.
    Knowing that he literally had just seconds to spare, Michael grabbed the keys to the Landrover from the ignition and took the house keys out of his jacket pocket. He jumped out of the car and ran up the steps and tried to unlock the door. His hands were shaking with nerves.
    ‘Open the bloody door,’ Emma screamed.
    The lock clicked and they were inside. Michael gestured for Emma to get in while he went back for Carl. The other survivor could hardly move. He was physically and emotionally destroyed.
    A few seconds longer and the three of them were back inside the farmhouse with the front door locked and secure.
    ‘Get him into the kitchen,’ Emma ordered. Michael dragged Carl through and lay him on the cold and hard tiled floor.
    ‘Think he’s going to be all right?’ he asked breathlessly.
    She shrugged her shoulders.
    ‘Don’t know,’ she mumbled as she checked his injuries. Nothing too deep. Nothing obviously serious. Just flesh wounds.
    They were distracted by a dull thumping sound from the other side of the room. Michael looked up to see that a crowd of bodies had gathered at the kitchen window. With heavy, uncoordinated hands they began to bang relentlessly on the glass.
    ‘Upstairs,’ he shouted. ‘Move!’
    Emma didn’t argue. Between the two of them they grabbed hold of Carl and hauled him up to the bedrooms.
    Once they had laid him down on Emma’s bed Michael left the room and slowly walked around the top floor of the house. He looked out through virtually every window and stared out at in horror at the nightmarish sight which greeted him. His worst fears had been realised.
    The house was completely surrounded.

43

    ‘Jesus,’ Michael hissed as he stared down from the window in Emma’s room. ‘There are more and more of those fucking things coming in by the second. There are bloody thousands of them down there.’
    Emma had been sitting with Carl who lay motionless on the bed. She got up and walked over to where Michael stood and glanced down over his shoulder into the farmyard below. He was right - there was already a dense crowd of hundreds of detestable figures surrounding the house and their numbers were increasing constantly. They continually poured in through the gap where the