The Human Condition

down at the foot of the stairs and stormed back up to try and inject a little life and motivation into his lethargic family. He could hear something happening in Matthew's bedroom. At least he was up.

    `Are you ready for school, Matt?' he asked as he pushed his way into his fourteen year-old son's room. What was left of Matthew was on the other side of the door, trying to claw its way out in reaction to hearing its father's voice. Walters shoved the door back and sent the wasted body of his son tripping backwards. `Sorry about that, son,' he mumbled. The corpse regained its footing and lurched forward again, crashing into him. `Steady on,' Walters laughed, `take it easy!' Matthew's corpse grabbed at him with rough, uncoordinated hands. `I haven't got time to mess about now,' he sighed wearily, assuming that the body was play-fighting with him, `I've got to go to work now. I'll see you when I get back, okay?'

    Laughing, Walters picked up the light, emaciated body and carried it across the room and dumped it on its bed. The corpse immediately stumbled back onto its feet and began to awkwardly stagger back towards the door.

    `Make sure you change your sweatshirt before you go to school,' Walters ordered, pointing a disapproving finger at the dribbles of blood and other bodily emissions which had seeped down the front of his dead son's dark blue jumper. He left the room and pulled the door shut behind him, ignoring the heavy clump and clatter as what remained of his son smashed into the other side of the wooden barrier.

    Just like her mother, he thought as he peeled back the bedclothes in the next room to reveal the head and shoulders of Emily, his daughter. She'd just turned seventeen when she'd died and had started work in a hairdressing salon three weeks earlier. He gently shook her shoulder and the lifeless body fell over onto its back. Its unmoving, vacant eyes stared through him unblinking.

    `Don't you be late for work,' he whispered. `You don't want to give them the wrong impression, do you?'

    No response. Walters leant down and kissed his daughter's cold, discoloured cheek. There was a spider in her hair. He picked it out and flicked it across the room.

    `See you tonight, love. Have a good day.'

    Walters paused and took a deep breath before going back into the bedroom he shared with June.

    `I'm off to work now,' he said quietly. `I'll see you tonight. Maybe we could talk later? I'd like to know what it is I'm supposed to have done...?'

    For a moment he stood and stared sadly at the body in the bed. She didn't move. Eighteen years of marriage (some of them pretty good years too) and she couldn't even bring herself to acknowledge him. What had he done wrong?

    Walters pushed his way through the growing crowd of rotting bodies gathered around his front gate and began the short walk to work. He didn't know why these people were there or what it was they wanted. They'd been there for days now. Didn't they have homes to go to? More to the point, didn't they have jobs to go to? Was he solely responsible for keeping the country running? It was certainly beginning to feel that way this morning. There wasn't a single car out on the roads. He couldn't see any of the usual faces he saw heading off to work or taking the children to school or walking the dog. All he could see were more of these dirty, ragged people. Some of them had tried to grab at him and pull his clothes as he passed them and he couldn't understand why. What did they want from him? What had he done to them? He ran to the end of the road, hoping that they would disappear by the time he got home tonight.

    His first port of call (as it was every morning) was the newsagents on the corner of Marshwood Road and Calder Street. The shop was quiet. Walters picked up his usual paper (last Tuesday's again � bloody annoying � he'd bought the same paper seven times now) and dug deep in his pocket for some change. There was no-one about to serve him (again). In temper he slammed the coins down on the counter (next to the coins he'd left there yesterday morning) and left the shop, yet again cursing the desperate state of the country under his breath as he stormed back outside.

    More bodies. He pushed them out of the way and marched towards the high street, a man on a mission.

    Walters hated his job. As he did every morning, he felt his guts tighten and churn and his bowels loosen as he neared the bank. A tall, traditional and imposing late-nineteenth