The Human Condition

reaching for him and grabbing at him tirelessly. With tears of panic in his eyes he span around, terrified and disorientated. Out of the corner of his eye he spied the dark silhouette of the garden shed and he ran towards it, pushing and kicking bodies out of the way. He reached out for the door handle, knowing that the end of his life was close but too scared to let it happen. He knew that he was doing nothing but prolonging the inevitable (perhaps only by a few minutes) when he flung the door open and crashed inside. The door flapped shut in the wind behind him, the sudden noise leaving the mass of bodies in no doubt as to where he was hiding. Now sobbing uncontrollably, Lester collapsed into his deckchair in the corner and waited.

    So many memories. The garden shed, the coldest, weakest and most exposed part of his property, suddenly felt reassuringly strong and warm. In the half-light he looked around and remembered all that he was about to lose. The tools with which he and Janice had lovingly tended their small plot of land. The battered wooden tea-chest on which he used to leave his paper or his book and his drink when he dozed in the shed on long, relaxing Saturday afternoons. The plastic table and chairs which had been dragged out onto the patio each year when they'd entertained family and friends. And finally the box of garden games and the buckets and spades and all those memories of being with Janice and Maddy. All about to be lost forever. Most of it already gone. Lester knew that not long remained now.

    More through luck than judgement a single skeletal hand managed to wedge itself between the flapping door and the door frame and threw it open. The first body dragged itself into the shed, followed by an apparently endless queue of others. Do I know you? Lester stared at the rotting shadow which lurched towards him. Were you once a friend or someone I used to work with, he wondered? Have I passed you on the street or did I work on your accounts? The creature's face, repellent in the cold moonlight and shadow, was vacant and unrecognisable.

    Lester stood up to try and push the bodies away but their numbers now were too great. Forced onto his back foot, he struggled to stop himself moving back further into the shed. One of the bodies trying to get inside tripped and fell, pushing those in front of it forward with surprising force and speed. Like dominoes they fell, crashing into Lester and knocking him back. He slammed against the back wall of the shed unexpectedly, feeling a sudden stinging pain between his shoulders as the ten steel prongs of his garden rake punctured his skin. It was more a disorientating discomfort than pain as such. Lester lifted his arms and shielded his face from the rotting bodies which continued to advance, pushing him back onto the wall and forcing the spikes deeper and deeper into his back.

    Warmth, he thought to himself as blood from the puncture wounds seeped down his back. The heat from the blood was strangely comforting. Unable to move or help himself, Lester's legs gave way underneath him and he crashed to the ground, taking several bodies down with him. The rake dislodged itself in the fall, and Lester was able somehow to roll over onto his back. He closed his eyes and screwed up his face as an unknown number of rotting feet trampled down on him.

    Lying in parallel with the bodies of Maddy and her mother outside, Lester looked up at the roof of the garden shed for as long as he could keep his eyes open.

ROBERT WOOLGRAVE

    I'm starting to think I might have got this all wrong. I've gone about it all the wrong way. I thought I was so bloody clever to start with, thought I knew what I was doing. I was too quick off the mark. Think I might have fucked it all up for myself.

    Fuck the lot of them. That was the attitude I took from the minute all of this started. Didn't seem to be much point doing anything else. I had to be selfish, didn't I? If I'd have spent all my time looking out for the thousands of fuckers lying dead on the ground then I might as well have just given up and laid down with them. I had to try and give myself a fighting chance. It's pretty bloody obvious that it's every man for himself now. How could it not be when I'm the only man left?

    Hindsight is a fucking great thing. If I'm honest though, I probably wouldn't have done anything any different if I'd had the chance to do it again. I did what pretty much everyone else would have done in the same