Day 105, Longshanks Manor

 

15:07, 25^th June

After everything I've been through since the outbreak in February, I didn't think I'd have to worry about anyone firing a gun at me. Now, and in the space of only two hours, I have been shot at fifty times. I've been counting. The first bullet was a surprise. I didn't think Longshanks Manor was still occupied. Then came the second shot. That was when I realised what was happening.

I ran into the maze. I knew there was a wildlife park, and remembered the Manor was one of the more imposing stately homes in southern England, but I didn't know they'd put in a maze since I was last here.

Last year, when the maze must have rung with the sounds of happily lost children and frantic parents, the hedges reached over seven feet high. After half a year's sun and rain they've grown ragged, with fresh growth sprouting up so high that these new branches are bent over under their own weight. Ducking behind the large hedges was an instinctive response. Finding my way to the relative shelter of the gazebo at the centre of the maze was pure luck, but whether it was the good kind or bad, I’m not sure.

It's been one hundred and five days since the power went out in London and I started this journal. It's been a lifetime.

 

Fifty-one times. They're using a silencer so there's no sound of the shot, just a splintering crack as the bullet impacts against wood. Or perhaps it's a suppressor, I don't think I ever knew the difference.

As long as I keep my head down, I think I’m safe here, behind this gazebo. There's wooden panelling, about three feet high, running around the base to hide the concrete supports. Above that is a large open sided structure, about as big as a bandstand, made of ornate, hand-carved sections of seasoned pine. Every time a bullet strikes it, I can't help wishing they'd gone for something far uglier, but made of steel instead.

They can't see me and I’m giving them nothing to aim at, but whoever they are, that doesn't seem to matter. Sometimes the bullets come a few seconds apart, sometimes it's almost long enough for me to think they’ve forgotten I’m here. Almost long enough to make me want to stick my head up and check. Almost…

 

It's about three p.m. I found the watch, a wind-up one, in the house I took shelter in last night. It was hidden in a bedside cabinet, beneath a pile of old photographs and other similar keepsakes. Everything else of any worth, all the food and bottles, they were gone. Not consumed there, but taken away.

I had to guess at the time, and decided that dawn was as good a time for five a.m. as any other. So now it's about three in the afternoon, and I've been here for two hours.

 

I left Brazely Abbey three days ago. I didn't have to leave, everything there was fine and I had everything I needed to survive. Food, water, walls and solitude, what more can a survivor want? But surviving isn't the same as living, and it's not enough for me. Each day, first thing, I would go out and kill the few zombies who had wandered close during the night. Then I would tend to the vegetable patches and fruit bushes just outside the walls, repairing any damage caused by undead, trampling feet. Sometimes I would cycle off to loot one of the many houses nearby. The rest of the time I would climb up the scaffolding to the little platform where the stained glass windows once stood.

Looking out over the abandoned countryside my thoughts soon turned to the files sent to me by Sholto, and the one labelled ‘Lenham Hill Trials’. It was on the laptop I'd brought with me from London, but without power I couldn't view it. Instead, I would look at a spot on the map, about thirty miles north of the Abbey, on the other side of the Thames, and marked down as an old aerodrome, where I know the facility is. The more I stared at the map, the more restless I became until, three days ago, I woke up and just started cycling north.

In the end I didn't reach Lenham Hill. As much as the ground allowed, I travelled across country, cutting through fields and along footpaths on which I was less likely to encounter the undead. Even so, by lunchtime I was growing anxious at how few zombies I had seen. I spotted an old barn at the top of a shallow hill. I climbed up the slight rise. Hidden by the building, and from a distance of about a thousand yards, I saw the M4 motorway.

 

On my way to Brazely from London, I crossed half a dozen reinforced roads. Those had fences barely seven feet high, often made of nothing sturdier than wire and wood. Every few hundred yards, there would be a gap where the fence had been broken. The M4 was different.

This was no flimsy barrier like on those other roads, nor even like the more desperately haphazard agglomeration of concrete and steel I'd seen along the bank of the Thames. This was a truly professional effort of interlocking concrete, with regularly spaced steel pillars supporting a double row of chain link topped with razor wire.

From that distance it was hard to tell its height, but abandoned in the middle of the road was a lorry, and the razor wire stood at least twelve feet higher than the vehicle's roof.

The walls hemming this roadway in, as impressive as they were, were not what first caught my eye. Inside this ribbon of steel and concrete, a grasping arms-reach apart, waited thousands upon thousands of undead evacuees, trapped by the walls they thought would protect them.

 

Approaching the motorway my spirits had been buoyed by the sparse number of undead I had come across. There were a few stuck in hedgerows or trapped by debris and obstacles on the road but otherwise, for a depth of about two miles this side of the M4, the countryside was nearly empty.

Looking at the motorway I saw why. In front of the fence, with nothing but a few weed filled fields between me and Them, were hundreds upon thousands of zombies. They weren't as densely packed as those caged inside the fence, but to me, standing there by that old barn, They were far more dangerous.

The nearest creature was less than five hundred yards away. If I were to shout or scream, or just cough loudly, then, within minutes, They would descend upon me. Hurriedly I turned around. I scanned the tree-line behind me, peered at the copse to my left then at the overgrown paddock to the right. All was still. There were no zombies, no animals, nothing. There was barely even any movement from the trees in the dry summer air. The reason for the nearly empty countryside was clear enough. The low atonal moan, the whispering of rotten cloth, the occasional scrape of flesh against concrete and chain link, magnified by the tens of thousands trapped in the motorway, taken together those sounds had summoned all the undead from the countryside around. Never have I felt both so exposed and so alone as when I stood there, surveying this final testament to my evacuation plan.

It was such a depressing sight that, at first, I didn't notice the bodies. Within the walled-in motorway and right next to the fence, there is at least one corpse every few hundred yards. Initially I thought that these were zombies killed by the evacuees during the panic. As I looked, though, I came to realise that, no, these are the bodies of the immune. Bitten, infected, they didn't turn, they tried to escape, but they couldn't. They were trapped, and they were torn apart.

 

I edged around the barn to the cottage next door, climbed up onto its roof and crawled along to the chimneystack. Hidden there, the extra height gave me a clearer view of that lorry. On its roof I could make out two bodies, more skeleton than flesh. Around them, half a dozen crows fought over the meagre scraps of sinew and tendon that remained on those sun-bleached bones.

In all these months I have never seen a bird, any bird, try and eat the remains of one of the undead. When I went to the muster point I saw, scattered amongst the bodies of the murdered evacuees, dozens of dead carrion birds. That same poison that the refugees had been told was a vaccine had killed those birds whose misguided opportunism had seen the thousands of corpses as a feast.

Those people on top of the lorry, they had not been infected, nor had they taken the vaccine. Immune or not, they must have climbed up, and taken refuge there, waiting for a rescue that was never going to come. Surrounded by death, they waited to die. Whether it was by dehydration or suicide, it must have been a dismal end.

I tried dividing the road up into sections, tried every trick I could remember, but there were literally too many zombies to count. Inside the motorway there are fifty thousand per mile, perhaps a hundred thousand, and it really doesn't matter which. Outside there are fewer, but there are still thousands of the undead. I don't know how long They will just stay there, or what might trigger Them to start roaming through the countryside. All I know is that it is just a matter of time and distance between me and Them. And if I want to get to Lenham Hill I've got to go over Them, and then through whatever awaits on the other side of the motorway.

 

One of the crows pecking at the bodies on the lorry’s roof flapped its wings, flew up and then down towards the road. I watched as a dozen undead arms stretched up towards it in a macabre parody of a Mexican wave. I watched as other zombies raised their arms and the movement was copied for three hundred yards in both directions. I watched as the crow circled once, a few inches above their grasping hands, then returned to its perch on the lorry's roof.

I could have crossed the motorway then. Or I could have tried. There was an access bridge for farm traffic less than half a mile away. There were some zombies on it, but not so many I couldn't make out each individual one. I examined the road leading to the bridge carefully, judging distances, assessing which of the undead would be able to make it to the road and be able to attack me before I made it to the bridge. I stopped counting when I reached a hundred. “Zombies to the left of him, zombies to the right…”

Would I have made it? I don't know. I wanted answers and I wanted to get to Lenham Hill, but right then I didn't want to get there badly enough. Call it cowardice, call it prudence, call it whatever you want, that instinct that has kept me alive so far told me not to take the risk. But I couldn't just go back. Instead I climbed down from the roof and cycled west, following the motorway, to find out how far the fences still stood.

 

I travelled across country lanes, down bridleways and through fields, staying out of sight of the motorway but always within that two-mile empty corridor this side of it. It was slow going. Sometimes I came across a solitary zombie. Sometimes I stopped and dealt with it, other times I took a detour, so I ended up travelling a circuitous zigzagging route that got me one mile west for every three miles travelled.

Then I spotted a car. It was a saloon with a swept back roof designed to make a family run-about look like a sporty coupé. It had crashed into the soft earth of the verge, coming to a rest angled at ninety degrees to the road. The metal bodywork, exposed when the paintwork was scratched during the crash, was beginning to rust. A blanket of leaves and dirt covered the roof. Brambles snaked out from the hedgerow, trailing up the mud-covered windscreen. In short, there was nothing to distinguish it from the dozen or so similar vehicles I'd seen that day. Until the banging started.

She must have died whilst at the wheel. Then, the zombie she'd turned into was trapped inside the car. I think it was a she, though it's so hard to tell with those that have been dead more than a couple of months. Judging by the growth of vegetation on and around the vehicle, this one had been there since around the time of the evacuation itself.

The sad story of the end of her life was clear enough. She’d begged, borrowed and stolen enough petrol to get out of somewhere to the assumed safety of somewhere else. Sometime after the evacuation, when she thought the roads would be clear, she'd driven off. Then she had to stop, perhaps to help someone, perhaps just to stretch her legs. She got out of the car, was attacked, and infected.

She'd driven off at full speed, probably to find the vaccine in the hope it would be a cure, but then she died. The car crashed. She turned. Unable to open the door, the zombie was trapped. It became dormant, hibernating, waiting for someone, some prey, to come by. Then I did.

All of that flashed through my mind, but what really interested me was the petrol. With the weeks of rationing before the evacuation food is scarce, but fuel, well, that's rarer than life these days. With the petrol from the cars I'd found at the Grange Farm Estates, and the little I'd found in vehicles around Brazely, I had barely enough to get about twenty miles. Not enough to get from Brazely Abbey to Lenham Hill, let alone to get back afterwards.

Bang. Bang-bang. Bang. Its head and hands drummed out an arrhythmic staccato against the driver-side window. It wasn't loud, but in this silent world, it didn't have to be. Soon others would come, unless it was stopped. I dismounted and unslung my pike.

I've been modifying the weapon on an almost daily basis since I settled at the Abbey. It now has a two-foot long blade that previously belonged to a set of long-handled tree shears, bolted on at a right angle to the handle. At the tip is a foot long spike, and the base of the hollow pole is now filled with lead as a counterweight. It resembles a scythe more than anything else, but out of grim superstition I think of it as my pike.

I took a few practice swings. I'd hoped that with one blow I could break the glass, and with the next, impale the creature's brain. The position of the car was wrong. The spike kept getting tangled in the creepers trailing out from the hedge. I leaned the pike up against the bicycle, took out my hatchet and swung.

As soon as the glass broke the zombie's arm shot out. Its claw-like hand grasped towards me. It couldn't reach. The seat belt, which had stopped it from getting in the right position to break the glass, now prevented it from reaching me. I took another step forward, waited until it lunged again, and brought the hatchet down on the top of its skull. Bone cracked, and that reddish brown ooze They have instead of blood sprayed out, over the car, my sunglasses and the scarf covering my face.

I wiped the hatchet clean, then began a quick search of the vehicle. I'd been right in my guess at this woman's story, up to a point. There had been a veritable treasure chest of biscuits, cereals, pastas and what I think had been a circle of cheese. Time had done its work, though, and inside the steel sarcophagus was nothing but decay. I grabbed at the bag on the passenger seat and hauled it a dozen yards away upwind. There were photographs, keepsakes and once treasured possessions, all useless to me.

It was a disappointment, but not a great one. There was nothing I really needed, and there is little spare room in my bags to carry much. I just enjoy looting. It's one of the few pleasures in these dark times. I checked the fuel tank. It had been punctured during the crash and was empty, the fuel long evaporated.

I got back on the bike and continued heading west, keeping close to, but always out of sight of, the motorway. Every five or so miles I would dismount, creep closer and find a concealed spot from where I could survey the road, its fence, and the numbers of the undead within. Nowhere was the fence broken. Nowhere were the numbers less dense.

After a depressing day and a half, I'd covered close to ninety miles to get the thirty or so miles west as far as Swindon. There, within sight of that city, I stopped. I could see no point going any further.

 

15:45, 25^th June

Fifty-two shots now, but I’m not worried. It's not bravado, it's the knowledge that it will be getting dark soon. For some reason these snipers don't want to come out here, so I just have to wait until nightfall and then I'll be able to slip away. They do seem happy enough to waste ammunition, though. That must mean they have a good supply of it, and I think that at least one of them knows how to use the gun. I think that he or she is teaching someone else how to shoot. That would explain the inaccuracy and odd length of time between shots.

Probably the only one who'd feel confident enough to come down here and take someone on hand-to-hand is the same one who knows how to shoot well enough to offer covering fire. It's conjecture, of course, but it's the only explanation I can think of right now. So long as I stay put, and literally keep my head down for the next six hours, I'll be fine.

It's funny. I mean really funny, I’m being shot at by snipers, and what I can't help thinking is that I have genuinely been in worse situations than this. Doesn't that say it all?

 

I reached Swindon, a day and a half ago. There is an atmosphere to towns and cities now, something intangible and forbidding. To me they have become nothing more than a testament to a world that was lost so recently yet already seems ancient and forgotten. These silent mausoleums of concrete and steel are a lifetime away from the cacophonous roar of civilisation whose memory has faded with each passing day, until now it seems less real than a fairy tale.

It’s connected to the way that life seems to flourish all around me. The trees are overgrown, the fields are filled with weeds, and brambles encroach on roads slowly being reclaimed by grass and moss. All about me, the countryside is untidy, unkempt and not at all English, but it is alive. There are birds, there are insects, occasionally, and all too rarely for my tastes, there are even some small mammals. Not in the cities. They are dead.

Leading into Swindon is the motorway, the fence unbroken, the undead, undisturbed within. These were the evacuees heading to Bristol. Their fate should have been a life of drudgery on a farm or down some Welsh coal mine. It should not have been this.

I was at a loss as to what I should do. The motorway changed everything, but at the same time it changed nothing. That desire to know the truth of what happened still burnt strongly. As my mind danced with schemes to get around or over this barrier, I tried to come up with a plan that didn't involve returning to Brazely Abbey, however temporarily, with nothing to show for the trip.

Then I remembered the laptop. I had it, and the hard drive, in my pack. I carry them everywhere. It's totemic, I suppose, my last link with the past. Looking at Swindon, looking at the motorway, I made a decision. I needed to know what was on the computer, what was in the ‘Lenham Hill Trials’ file. I thought that, perhaps, I might discover that I didn’t need to go to Lenham Hill, that I could just return to the Abbey and make my home there.

I have looked for laptops in the houses I’ve looted, though if I’m honest, I didn’t look that hard. I had found tablets, desktops and phones galore, but the few laptops I found were all drained of power. I decided I would venture into some small town, or even into one of the cities, if I had to. I could begin a systematic house-to-house, office-to-office search. I took out my map, unfolded it and began to scan the place names. I searched my memory, thinking back on the places I’d visited, trying to remember the government statistics on internet usage that might give some clue as to where would be best to look. Then I saw it, Devizes, and I smiled with pleasure at the memory of a vicarious triumph.

 

During the last election, I’d been volunteered into doing some mid-campaign speech polishing. My job, after that incident in Burnley that the press described as ‘a gaff too far’, was to rewrite the stump speeches to make sure that the references tallied with the places the politicians were actually in, not those they'd just left.

It was a tedious job, and one I got by being one of the few outsiders the party trusted not to sell anything I heard or saw to the press. One of the stops on this mind-numbing round-Britain coach trip was Devizes. I remember it well, because it was the stop after the Chief Whip spilled mustard over my laptop. The computer froze, locking away that afternoon's speeches. Fortunately, there was a computer repair shop in the town, which managed to retrieve the documents just in time for the Whip to stand up in front of a crowd made up mostly of reporters and give them a few seconds of B-roll. He had the speech, but he’d forgotten his reading glasses, so he improvised. They didn’t win that seat and the Chief Whip, after that clip was aired over and over, lost his. I felt really good about that.

The point is that I remembered there was a computer repair shop on the edge of Devizes. More than that, during that anxious half hour wait to find out if anything could be saved, I had noticed, and asked about, the stack of odd shaped boxes in the rear of the shop. They were portable power supplies, giant batteries that could be recharged from a car. What’s more, the shop didn’t sell them, they rented them out, mostly during the festival season to music-lovers who couldn't bear a night under canvas without the knowledge of a kettle full of boiling water the next morning.

I headed southwest, and had covered the fifteen miles or so before nightfall. The scene I found in Devizes was unlike any other I have seen since leaving London. Barricades had been thrown up across the roads, windows were boarded up, and about the streets, and inside the shops and houses, lay the dead and undead alike. A battle had taken place there, and it was clear the humans had not won.

The computer repair shop was still there, but only just. A fire had been started at the other end of the row, leaving half a dozen shops nothing but burnt-out remains. The door to the repair shop had been blocked from the inside. I had to break in through a window around the back, all the time listening out for the sounds of the undead.

I found only one power supply unit left. It was too heavy to carry on the bike, but it worked. That night, as I was waiting for the battery to charge up, I finally saw the files Sholto had sent to me.

 

16:05, 25^th June

Fifty-three shots. It's such a waste. How much ammunition do they have? A lot clearly, but that's just a guess.

Around four a.m., yesterday, I realised there wasn't much point looking at the same video over and over again. I turned my attention to the map, once more trying to come up with a way of getting to the other side of the motorway that wasn't as suicidal as just cycling over some footbridge. I couldn't find one.

It was putting off the inevitable, just delaying the time before a return to the Abbey to face some hard choices. As I was leaving the town, unsure which direction to go, I saw a sign for Longshanks Wildlife Park, and thought, why not? If anywhere in the neighbourhood had become a refuge for survivors it would be here. It was only another fifteen miles out of my way. I thought it would only add an extra few hours to the journey.

I was wrong. It took all day to cover the distance. I had to keep backtracking to avoid roads blocked by trees, vehicles or the undead. After about the ninth diversion, and running low on water, I decided to stop for the day. I was only five miles away, but something about the houses I’d investigated was making me hesitate. The closer I got, the more I found that they’d already been looted, everything from food to herbs to bottles, even the jewellery, had been taken.

 

The last time I spent any real time at this rambling old estate on the western edge of Salisbury Plain, was about twenty years ago. Jen Masterton was packaged off here one summer and I, who usually spent my school holidays with her family, had to tag along. Back then, the wildlife park was little more than a home for animals rescued from crumbling zoos across the world. By the time the world ended last February, it had grown into one of the largest safari parks in Europe. I’d always meant to come back, but there was never the time. It was just one of many places I knew would be around forever, so what was the hurry?

With its lake and thick walls, and abundance of fresh and tantalizingly exotic meat courtesy of the wildlife park, it had everything going for it. At least, it did on paper. It was almost on the way, I thought, not really a diversion at all.

The bodies littering the ground should have been a warning sign. It's just that the only time I’ve seen zombies who have been shot was at that muster point. Even in Devizes, the undead had been killed with blade or blunt instrument. I suppose I didn’t really know what I was seeing. Britain was not a country of guns. I just saw the bodies of the undead, the boarded up windows and lifeless house and came to exactly the wrong conclusion.

 

Fifty-four shots, now. There are at least two snipers. When the wind shifts I can hear the occasional snatch of conversation. I’ve tried working out the distance, tried to remember how cosines and tangents work, but if I ever knew how to do those kinds of sums, these are not the conditions to remember. All I’ve worked out is that they are either in one of the top floor bedrooms or in one of the towers that jut out above the roof, and that they are not worried about running out of bullets.

The hedges are a mixed blessing. They provide some cover, but with the elevation the snipers have, it’s not much. More importantly, my only way out is going to be by pushing my way through those densely interlocked branches. Will they be able to see that at night? There's no cloud in the sky right now. It looks like it will be a clear night. Will they be able to see the rustling of branches above my head? I suppose I'll find out.

 

16:30, 25^th June

I think this forced rest is actually good for me. I know that sounds odd, but I’ve spent so much of the last few weeks worrying over what I should do next, that I haven't really just stopped to think about where I am now.

Not that I plan to make a habit out of this kind of thing, but at the very least I'll make sure I carry more water in my pack. My water bottle was only half full when I first ducked into the maze, now there's barely two inches left. The rest of my supply is in the bag on the bike, and that's by a wall outside the grounds, about half a mile away. I thought it was better to approach on foot, leaving my hands free, less encumbered. You live and learn.

There's about another five hours to go until dark. That's not too bad, I'll be in the shade for most of that. It’s hot, but not quite heat wave hot, though I can tell that’s on the cards. Five hours, then I'll crawl through the hedges, sneak back to the bike and disappear into the night.

As a rule I don't do much travelling after dark. The undead don't seem to rely on sight as much as the living, but I won't need to go far. There’s a ticket booth near the entrance to the safari park, just a few miles down the road, if I can get there, I can climb onto the roof and wait for dawn. Then it’s back to the Abbey for supplies and then, with no more diversions, straight to Lenham Hill.

 

17:50, 25^th June

“Look mate, we've got a night sight on this rifle. Make it easy on yourself and just stand up,” a guttural voice called out about an hour ago.

That's the first human voice I've heard in… months, I suppose. Do I believe them? Yes. As to why they want to kill me, I don't know. I tried talking to them. They shot at me. I tried telling them I only wanted supplies. They shot at me. I tried saying I wasn’t who they thought I was, whoever that might be. They shot at me.

Each time I tried to say something, they fired. Then I realised what they were doing. They didn’t want me to talk. They wanted me to shout. They wanted the undead to come here and finish the job for them, but they were out of luck.

What’s the longest you've gone without speaking? All I managed was a throaty rasp, barely intelligible as words even to my own ears. So now I’m silent again, and trying to come up with a new plan.

I could wait until nightfall and hope they were lying about the night sight, but if they were why waste so much ammo? Why do they want me dead? No, those kinds of questions can't be answered from here.

How long did the exchange go on for? I wish I'd checked my watch. Say it was fifteen minutes. Was that too long, did the undead hear us? The rifle might be silenced, but the impacts of the bullets aren't. How long before They come?

It seems I've a choice between heading towards the lake and being shot in the back, or staying put and hoping the undead don't find me. Neither is particularly appealing.

 

19:00, 25^th June

Or I could head towards them. Or towards the house, at least. I’m almost positive they are in one of the bedrooms, which means they’ve got a pretty limited angle of fire. If I can make it to the house, and follow the wall around, I can make a run for the treeline from either the north side or the west. They won’t know which side of the building I’m on until they've picked a bedroom and looked. So I’ve a fifty-fifty chance they'll pick the wrong one. Or, to put it another way, a fifty-fifty chance that I’ll make it to the trees before they shoot me.

Are they good enough to be able to shoot a moving target? One of them probably is. Too many guesses and assumptions. What I do I know?

The only thing I know about night-sights is that they don't work in daytime. Obvious, right? But nor do they work in well-lit buildings or when a light is shining on them. Do you remember all those movies where the bank robbers would use a flash-bang to blind the SWAT teams? Well, I’ve no flash-bangs, and with no electricity except in a thunderstorm, there's no prospect of the floodlights suddenly coming on, but I do have my torch.

It’s about a hundred yards of lawn between the edge of the maze and the house. Probably about the same distance on the other side of the building. Perhaps more. Probably more, I don't know.

My right leg didn’t heal properly from the break I sustained on the same day the outbreak started in New York. Now it’s slightly twisted, an inch or so shorter than the left, and I have to wear the leg brace for support. I can walk, I can hop, I can skip out of the way of the grasping arms of the undead, but I can’t really run. The limping lope I manage instead is still faster than any zombie can manage and up until now that is all that has mattered.

 

 

Day 106, Longshanks Manor

 

10:00, 26^th June

Last night, I waited until about half past nine. It wasn’t fully dark, but in the still night air I heard something approaching. The undead were coming. Fighting off one, or even two, whilst staying hidden from the snipers would be possible. Not easy, but possible. Except, when it comes to the undead, where there is one, soon after, there are more. If it’s a choice between a bullet and being torn apart, well, what choice is that?

 

I took off my coat, wrapped it around the pike and raised it so it was just peeking above the corner at the other end of the gazebo. I moved it about for less than a second, then pulled it down just as a shot was fired. They weren't lying about the night-sight, but clearly it wasn’t powerful enough to distinguish between a person and the oldest trick in the book.

Trying not to expose anything more than the tips of my fingers, I reached up and placed the torch on the gazebo’s wooden handrail, pointing it towards the house. Then I tried the trick with the coat once more, this time raising it higher in a sudden jerking motion that I hoped would be interpreted as an attempt to clamber up over the railing. A bullet flew through the jacket, hitting it dead centre. It folded over in what, even to me, looked like a fair imitation of a collapsing body. I let go of the pike, reached up and turned the torch on. Then I dived from cover towards the hedge.

In the near dark, with so much new growth, there was no point wasting time looking for a path through the maze. Three seconds after I'd left the shelter of the gazebo I heard a bullet striking wood. I dived at the hedge, shoving and pushing as the branches tore at my hands and face. Five long seconds later and I was through, just as another shot was fired. This time it must have hit the railing because the torch moved, rolling so its light now shone directly on the branches above my head.

I dropped to the ground and began to crawl, my hands outstretched, searching for a gap in the undergrowth. I found it as a third shot was fired, and the light went out.

 

As darkness suddenly returned, it seemed as if a deathly stillness settled on the grounds through which every last little sound seemed amplified. The water lapping against the shore of the lake, the trumpeting call of some far off animal, the wheeze of the approaching undead, even the click-clack of the next round being chambered in the rifle. I crawled on.

I was on my hands and knees, halfway out of a hedge when a sudden weight pushed me down. My chin smashed into the soft leaf litter, my teeth jarred upwards biting into my tongue. I could taste blood but I ignored this small pain, waiting for the agonising spasm when my brain realised I had been shot. It didn't come.

I breathed in, and it hurt to do so, but there was no bubbling rasp of a punctured lung, no numb collapse of a severed spine, no spreading cold of a mortal wound. I began to pull myself along, faster and faster. I was surprised to find that as my hands pulled at the branches and weeds dragging me closer to the next wall of the maze, my legs and feet started kicking out, pushing me along. I was sure I'd been shot but, somehow, I was still alive. Everything still worked, and though it ached to breathe, I knew I wasn't going to die. Not then, not yet.

 

At the next hedgerow I crawled along for a dozen feet before forcing a path through. This time, fighting my instincts, I didn't rush. I carefully brushed the branches out of my way, trying to make the hedge move as little as possible. When I heard a bullet whistling through the leaves I breathed a sigh of relief. It was nowhere near me, they didn't know where I was.

I kept crawling, my hands constantly searching out for gaps through which I could squeeze. Then I heard the sound of a body hitting gravel. The undead must have reached the grounds and the snipers must have seen Them. Perhaps they thought I was dead, perhaps they hoped the undead heading towards the maze would flush me out. Either way I knew I was no longer the focus of their attention. I waited until I heard another body thump to the ground, then I stood up and half dived, half fell through that hedge and the next and the next, until I fell flat on cool grass.

I picked myself up and hurried across the parched meadow that had once been a manicured lawn. I kept my eyes fixed on the house, holding my breath, gritting my teeth against the pain I knew must come when the bullet hit. But it didn't. I made it to the wall.

Standing with my back against it, I listened. I heard more gravel scatter, as another body fell. I gave a silent cheer. I was safe. Relatively speaking, of course. It sounded as if the undead were approaching from the same direction in which I had left my bike. That meant that I was leaving the Manor on foot. It dawned on me that with my pike broken, still wrapped in my jacket at the centre of the maze, I would also be leaving virtually unarmed.

I checked my belt. I had my hatchet and chisel and an empty water bottle. I was still wearing my pack, with a day's worth of food left, the laptop, the hard drive, the first volume of my journal, a rope and a few other essential supplies. All in all it wasn't much, but it was enough. I could find another bicycle, I could find more tools and make another weapon, I just had to get away.

 

I crept along the wall, listening carefully to the noises around me, expecting at any moment to hear the sound of the approaching undead. When I heard a soft scratching sound, it took me a moment to realise it was coming from inside the Manor, from a room just a few windows away. I slowed as I got closer, and I saw that one set of windows was boarded up, not from the inside like the others, but from the outside.

Someone, or something, was trying to lever a window open. One of the undead, perhaps, trapped in the room for some macabre purpose. It had heard my approach and was now scrabbling at the glass, scraping at the paintwork, trying to get out. Except, what zombie would do that? Wouldn't it just hit at the glass until it broke? It made no sense. Then I heard a more familiar sound. The undead were coming. They were close.

I stopped a couple of yards away from the window. The sounds inside ceased but the sounds of the approaching zombies were getting closer. Whatever was inside, I didn’t want to know. I was more than half way around the building, in a spot as good as any other. I braced myself and got ready to dash to the treeline. It was, I judged, less than two hundred yards away. If I could just…

“Hello?” a voice called from inside the room. A woman's voice. I paused. “Hi.” The voice came again, slightly louder this time.

“Hi?” I replied and then closed my mouth, unsure what to say next, uncertain even how to say it.

“Can you help me?” the woman asked.

“You were shooting!” I replied, the words barrelling out in a rushed slur.

“You think if I had a gun I’d be trying to break out of here?” That was a fair point. I was having difficulty processing all of this, though. People, conversation, they're not what I’m used to.

“Would you mind?” There was an edge of impatience in her voice. “Let me expand on that. Would you mind levering off the board blocking this window?”

“Right. Sorry. Yes,” I said, still off balance. I took out the chisel, raised it to the board covering the window frame and hesitated. I tried to work out whether or not she was a prisoner. If she was, should I let her out? The other windows were all boarded up from the inside, but if she was in league with the…

“Whenever you're ready.” This time the impatience was coupled with sarcasm. That sealed it, I don't know why, but there’s just something trustworthy about anyone who can be sarcastic in the face of adversity. I pushed the chisel into the gap between the wooden board and the window, hammering it into place with the hatchet.

“I meant quietly!” she hissed. “I assumed you'd understand.”

“No time,” I said. “Zombies.” I heaved at the chisel, levering the board back. I repeated the action on the other corner. In the distance, another body thumped to the ground. Somewhere far closer, I heard the shuffling dragging step of feet on gravel.

I had both of the corners free, and began to pull and tug at the bottom of the board until there was a foot wide gap. I reached as high as I could and hammered the chisel in once more. There was another thump. I started counting.

The nails gave, and the board fell to the ground. Now all that was between us was the glass window.

“Stand back,” I said. It was too dark to see, I just had to hope that she'd heard me. I swung the hatchet at the window. It broke. The tinkling of glass on the floor of the room seemed to echo all around the grounds.

“Well,” I said. “Climb out.”

“Can't. Chains. Wouldn't get far,” she replied, stepping closer to the window. Under the reflected moonlight, I glimpsed an unkempt, haggard face. “Here, give me that.” Her hand snaked out and snatched the hatchet.

I stood there, uncertain. Then there was a shot and the sound of a bullet hitting stone, but there was no corresponding thump of a body falling. I peered out into the night, wishing she'd hurry up. It was fifteen seconds before the next shot, and again it was a miss. The snipers had switched. I didn't know what that meant. I didn't like it, though.

“Hurry,” I said, turning back to the room, but it was too dark, too filled with shadows to make out more than her outline.

“Stand by the window,” she hissed back. “Get ready.”

I couldn't see what she was doing, nor could I hear any sound of her breaking whatever chains were holding her. Unsure what I was getting ready for and because I had no better plan, I did what she said.

Close by, I heard the tread of a foot on dry grass. I turned to stare out into the night just as the door to the room opened. The light of a torch shone out onto the back of my head and out around the window frame, and into the night. Behind me, I heard a meaty thwock, and a man screamed, but I didn't turn to look. Before the light disappeared, as the torch was dropped, it had illuminated a zombie less than three feet away from me.

The torchlight had taken away my night vision. I was blind. I swung the chisel in a violent sweeping arc in front of me. Left to right. There was a second wet crunching sound from inside and the screaming stopped. Right to left, left to… It scored against something soft. I swiped again, slightly lower, and the chisel jarred against flesh. I pulled my hand back, ready to thrust it forward into where I thought the zombie's face was, but then it was on me.

Its mouth clamped down on my wrist. The chisel fell from my grasp. I pounded my free hand down on its skull. I pushed and I shoved and I pulled my wrist free. I grabbed at the creature, my hand closed around a handful of dank rotting hair. I twisted my grip, half turned and slammed its head into the brick wall of the house again and again and again, until it stopped moving.

 

I felt around on the ground for the chisel, found it, stood and listened for the next creature. Torchlight came through the window to illuminate the grounds. I turned.

“You al—” the woman began, and stopped as the torch in her hand shone down on my wrist. “Oh, hell,” she murmured softly.

“What?” I looked down at my wrist. The bite wasn't that deep. “It's okay. I've had worse.”

She looked at me with an expression of pitying disbelief. Then I realised why.

“No, really it's okay. I’m immune,” I said into the silence, as I fumbled in my pockets for a bandage. I tied it off. It was a crude affair, but sufficient for the moment. Then I rolled up the sleeve of my other arm. “There, see,” I said, and waited until the light was shining on the unmistakable, though no longer fresh, teeth marks. “So…” I waited a moment. “Look, this isn't the time to explain more. Help me in, or I’m clearing off.” I tried to say it bluntly, but even to my ears it sounded petulant.

 

“I'm Kim. That's Cannock,” she said, pointing the torch at the body when I was inside in the room. His right hand, still gripping a pistol, was almost severed at the wrist, a thin strip of flesh and gristle all that kept it attached. “Sanders is the one upstairs,” she added, as she bent down over the body.

The scream must have come after that first blow nearly severed his wrist. The second blow had killed him. The hatchet was still embedded deep in the man's skull.

“Is there anyone else here?” I asked.

“No. Just them and me,” she replied, as she fished in the dead man's pockets. She pulled out a set of keys. That was when I first looked at her. It was too dark to make out her features, but I could see that her clothes were ragged, torn and ripped into wretched shapelessness. Around each ankle was a pair of handcuffs, cuffed together in the middle.

“Who was he?” I asked.

“Cannock? Ex-military. Or claimed to be. He was a good shot, so who knows. Sanders… He's just…” she unlocked the cuffs. “He's…” she stalled again, unable to find words to describe the man upstairs.

I looked around the room. It was beyond spartan, it was bare. There was no furniture, not even a blanket. There was nothing to secure the window with and nothing to keep us here a moment longer.

“Come on,” I said. “We should go.” I walked over to the window. With the torchlight flickering around the room it was difficult to see far, but I could just make out the slow moving silhouettes making their way towards us. “Not this way,” I muttered. “Sanders, he's in one of the bedrooms?”

“Top floor. Corner bedroom,” she said, bending over the body once more. She gripped the hatchet and tugged at it. It came free with a sucking wet sound unlike anything I’d heard from the bodies of the undead.

I didn't like the feeling of being unarmed. I walked over to the corpse stepped on the hand until the fingers popped and the gun was released. I picked it up. It felt unfamiliar, flimsy compared to the hefty weight of the weapons I had grown used to.

“I think there's a back door,” I said, “in the kitchens on the other side of the building. We should be able to get out there.”

“I’m not leaving Sanders here,” she said.

“You want him to…” I stopped. I was going to ask if she wanted him to come with us, but I could see in her eyes that was not what she meant.

 

I don't know why I stayed. Why I didn't just find a door and leave. It would have been easy. It would have been sensible. But I didn't. I moved the pistol into the torchlight, and checked where the safety-catch was.

“You know how to use that?” she asked. I hesitated and looked down at the gun. It was an automatic, the same kind I had found in the cottages at Grange Farm next to the former police sergeant who had died from the vaccine. I knew the theory well enough, but except for firing a shotgun at clay pigeons, theory was all I knew.

“Swap?” I suggested.

The hatchet was heavier than the gun, but it was a reassuring, almost comforting weight. We left the room, closing the door quietly behind us. Now that we were inside the Manor, silence descended. With it came a realisation of what it was I was about to do, what I had to do.

I have killed the undead, and these days I have few qualms about it, for I no longer see Them as human, but I have not killed another person. Until a few months ago, it would have been unthinkable, since then I have had neither the reason nor the opportunity. My mind replayed the perennial parliamentary debates about reasonable force, and the differences between self-defence and murder. I shook my head, trying to rid it of those unhelpful thoughts. I tried to focus on the journey, on moving stealthily, on each step, one at a time, and not on its terminal conclusion.

 

Halfway along the corridor Kim pointed at a section of wall. I looked back at her, puzzled. It seemed identical to all the others, until she pushed at an otherwise nondescript wooden panel. A door swung open revealing a hidden staircase. I was almost shocked. I'd always taken the stories about the secret passages to be no truer than those of the monster that lived in the lake.

Kim raised her finger to her lips, pointed at the stairs, then raised a hand with all fingers extended, then lowered it, then raised it again another eight times, then once with only three fingers showing. Forty-eight stairs. She turned off the torch.

I stepped in front of her, to go up the stairs first. Though it was almost impossible to see in the near darkness, I think she rolled her eyes when I took the lead. As we climbed, I began to hear more clearly the sounds from the sniper's nest. There was a click-clack each time the gun was reloaded. There was an odd muffled bump of wood against wood, an occasional flat tinkling as a spent cartridge fell to the floor, all against an incongruous, off-key humming.

I had to feel for the stairs with my hands. We reached a landing. The stairs twisted and climbed once more. Another landing, another twist, and with each step upwards the noise from the room grew. After the last twist, the stairway was illuminated by the thin ray of light flickering through the gap in the door, now only a few steps away.

Kim tapped on my ankle, once, twice. I don't know whether she was indicating that she was right behind me or telling me to hurry up. I ignored her.

 

I waited until I heard the soft thud of the rifle’s recoil and a triumphant hiss. Then I pushed the door open and half fell, half ran into the room.

In such a silent world I’d misjudged how far those little sounds had carried. The bedroom was far longer than I’d thought. Sanders, half turning towards me, was still a good dozen feet away.

His expression, illuminated by a sputtering oil lantern on the floor, seemed determined as he swung the rifle towards me. I was ten feet away when he levelled the barrel of the gun at my chest. Eight as his lips curled in sneering triumph. Seven when he pulled the trigger. Six when he realised the gun wasn't loaded. Five when I twisted my arm behind me. Four when he let go of the rifle and reached for his belt. Three when my arm reached the top of its arc. Two when it bit deep into flesh.

His scream was terrible. The wound was fatal. In our old world it wouldn't have been, but here, now, where medical treatment is limited to bandages and antiseptic, he would die a long slow death. I remember thinking that, as I stared at him screaming and convulsing on the floor. The axe had dug into his shoulder, breaking the bone. From the way the blood was bubbling up around the blade, it must have nicked his lung.

There was a concussive explosion from behind me. Sanders slumped to the ground, dead, a bullet hole in his forehead. The headphones he'd been listening to fell out, and the room, now seemed to fill with the sound of tinny thrash metal.

“It's over,” Kim said, before dropping the gun and collapsing to the floor.

13:00, 26^th June

After Kim collapsed last night I didn’t really know what to do. Unable to lift her, and unsure where I would carry her to even if I could, I covered her with a duvet. I threw a blanket over the corpse and picked up the mp3 player. As I turned it off, I saw that a corner of the room was littered with discarded smart phones, mp3 players, tablets and laptops. Going by the number of devices and variety of brands, they must have been taken from every house in the neighbourhood and beyond.

I was thirsty. I was hungry too, but I’m used to putting hunger to one side. I glanced around and saw a porcelain jug of clearish liquid by the table. I lifted it and took a sniff. It was water, but not fresh. It probably came from the lake. Would Sanders and Cannock have thought to have boiled it? I put the jug down and glanced around. There was a cooler by the bed. I rooted around in it and found a solitary bottle of iced-tea.

 

Unscrewing the cap, I walked over to the window and peered out. Perhaps it’s the lack of light pollution, but the moon seems brighter these days. I could clearly make out the individual zombies heading down the drive towards the house. The sound of the two men’s screams, the single, unmuffled shot, and the constant thumping of bodies hitting the ground, all put together it had been enough to summon the undead from miles around. There weren’t enough to call it a pack, let alone a horde, but enough that I was beginning to feel that familiar sense of being under siege.

I lifted the rifle. Through the scope’s green and white magnification the living dead resembled nothing more than a ghoulish parody of the horror They represented. My injured arm began to twitch with pain. I set the rifle down and picked up the torch, intending to go and ensure the house was secure. I walked over to Sanders' body, and hesitated over the gruesome task of retrieving the hatchet. Instead I picked the pistol up from the floor, telling myself that it was better, that if I needed to use it, the sound would wake Kim. I didn't believe the lie.

 

I went back downstairs, listening out with each step, but all I could hear was the creaking of wood and the sound of my own laboured breathing. I found the door to Kim’s cell easily enough. It was still closed. Standing with my ear pressed against the wood, I thought I could hear the undead outside, pawing at the broken window frame. I looked around for something with which to barricade the door, just in case. There was an abundance of ornamental furniture dotted along the corridor. Ornately embroidered chairs that were never meant to be sat on, well-polished benches and delicately engraved cabinets containing now worthless antiques. I half carried and half dragged them all over to the doorway. The barrier was up to chest height before I realised how stupid I was being.

They can't climb, so there was no way that They were going to get through the broken window. If the zombies did, then the door wouldn't open unless They were able to turn the ceramic door knob. If They managed that, then since the door opened inwards, all They would need to do to get through the barricade is push. That is something the undead do well.

I collapsed into one of the chairs, throwing up a cloud of dust, and just sat for a while. I don't know for how long. Perhaps an hour, perhaps more.

When I came back to myself, I remembered the keys that Kim had used to remove the cuffs. The same keyring would surely have the door key on it. I was certain that it was still in the room, discarded next to the handcuffs. Wearily, I unstacked the pile of furniture and opened the door.

The moment I entered, the noise from the undead increased. The hissing groan of air, the snapping of teeth, the ripping of flesh and cloth on the jagged fragments of broken glass in the window frame, it seemed to fill the silent house.

Reaching through the window, a forest of arms grabbed at empty air as I frantically scanned the floor. I tried to keep the torch pointing downwards, but a shadowy sea of hands kept playing against the walls as undead arms grasped through the broken window. They shoved, They tore, They pushed, and the noise grew until… you remember that expression, ‘loud enough to wake the dead’? Never was that more appropriate than when, with a splintering crack, the window frame broke.

I saw the keys, grabbed them, and ran from the room. I pulled the door closed, locked it, and slumped back onto the chair. Thirty minutes passed. This time I kept count. The noise didn't subside, but nor did it get any closer. I told myself They weren't getting in. I tried to believe it.

I stood up and walked a short way along the dark corridor towards where I thought the main doors were. I slowed, then I stopped. I physically couldn't go any further. I tried to force myself to take another step. I told myself it was stupid, foolish, childish even. That I was compelled by nothing more than a metaphorical desire to pull the blankets up to hide from the monster under the bed. Still, I couldn't take another step. I turned, went back down the corridor and piled the furniture back up outside the door.

I know it won’t do any good, or the rational part of me knows that, but that’s a very small part these days. Afterwards, looking at my barricade of once-priceless antiques, I felt better. Perhaps that is all that matters.

 

The main doors were more than secure, they were nailed shut. It would take at least a day’s work to open them again. I found the old kitchen door, the one Sanders and Cannock must have used to get in and out of the house. The door was bolted, with a fridge dragged in front of it, but from the scuff marks on the floor I could tell that it had been frequently moved back and forth.

When you revisit places you knew as a child, they're meant to seem smaller. Not so with the Manor. In the dim torchlight it seemed to have grown. No matter which way I turned, which passageway I took, I never seemed to end up where I wanted. I tried to be systematic, tried to check each room in turn but really didn't do anything more than wander the halls with a disconsolate lethargy.

Tiring, and genuinely worried I might get lost and end up wandering the building all night, I retreated back upstairs. I moved a few benches to block off the top of the staircase, and moved some cabinets into the corridor on either side of the bedroom door. On top of this flimsy barricade I placed a pair of antique vases. My hope was that if the undead did get into the house, and upstairs, then I would be woken by the sound of breaking china. Only then did I go back into the bedroom.

Kim was still unconscious. Passed out or sleeping, I couldn't tell which. I stood watching her just long enough to reassure myself that she was still breathing. Then I closed the door and pulled a chest of drawers in front of it. I looked over at her again. The noise hadn't woken her.

 

I have found another survivor. More than that, I found three and whatever fantasies I had about this moment, they couldn't have been further away from the reality.

In the end, I didn't kill a man. I tried to, and I think that amounts to the same thing. I feel as though I should be examining my conscience, asking myself ‘how I feel’. I don't feel anything, at least not about his death. I didn’t know him, and from all I can infer, my world is a safer place without him in it. That isn't an answer, though, it’s just finding an explanation for my lack of emotional response. Sanders and Cannock tried to kill me and now they are dead. That really is all that needs to be said.

It’s this waking nightmare we are in, where none of the old rules apply. I feel I can’t be certain about anything, that I can no longer even trust the evidence of my own eyes. It’s not paranoia. It’s just part of this never ending cycle of horror for which there will never be any therapy, never any happy endings, nor any prospect of it ever being over. With those, and a million other dispiriting thoughts running through my head, I collapsed into a chair.

 

I must have fallen asleep, because when I next opened my eyes dawn was just beginning to creep over the treeline. It was the sound of the rifle being reloaded that had woken me. A few feet away, the gun propped up on the table by the window, patiently taking aim at the undead below, was Kim.

“Morning,” I muttered, standing up. The duvet I’d thrown over her, that she in turn must have placed over me when she woke, fell off and onto the floor. I looked around. Sanders’ body was gone. She must have already moved it. So much for me waking up if the undead got into the house.

Kim had found some new clothes, or, rather some old, not-recently worn ones. A set of hard-wearing gear, more suited to a rain drenched autumn than the start of a hot summer.

I walked over to the window.

“How’s your wrist?” she asked.

“What? Oh.” I flexed it. It was sore, but I really had had a lot worse. “Fine. Thanks,” I added, and feeling that was insufficient I went on. “How's… ah…” I stalled and decided to change tack “How many. Out there, I mean?”

“About a hundred,” she said. “Give or take.” Then she pulled the trigger.

“Are you familiar with guns?” I asked.

“Not really,” she replied as she reloaded the gun with casual ease. I looked down at the grounds.

“I can only count about forty,” I said.

“The rest are around the side of the house,” she said.

“By the window to the… your…” I stalled again, unsure how to finish the sentence.

“About thirty. Another ten are stuck in the maze, a few others are scattered around the back. I checked first thing.” She fired again. Now that I was looking in the right direction I saw her target collapse. Then I saw it try and move, its arms waving, its legs twitching.

“Chest,” she said. “It’s the suppressor, I think.” She reloaded, shifted her aim and fired again. The bullet entered the zombie’s head as it was trying to stand. “Less accurate, but less noise. Noise is definitely more important.”

“I’ve never fired a gun before,” I said, half to myself. “Well, I did fire a shotgun, once. At some clay pigeons. I fell over. The recoil.”

“Right,” she said, and fired again. I looked over to the table next to the rifle. One box of ammunition was opened, and already half empty. On the floor, other boxes were scattered about, all empty. Around her feet the carpet was littered with spent cartridges. Counting the shots fired at me yesterday, hundreds of rounds had been wasted on little more than target practice.

“It would be better to conserve ammunition,” I suggested.

“Sure. Better. But you just said you don't know how to shoot, and I’m out of practice.” She turned to look at me, and for the first time since we'd met, I saw her eyes properly. They were cold, hard, unforgiving, hidden beneath a haunted depth of recent experiences I can only hope I never understand. “And,” she went on, “can you think of a better time to practice than this?”

Knowing that whatever she was doing, it wasn’t target practice, I left her to it and went off to find some clean clothes for myself.

 

The more I loot, the better I'm getting at reading the signs left by the previous inhabitants. Washing still in the machine or dirty crockery in the dishwasher is a sure-fire indicator the occupants fled the night of the outbreak. A house that's immaculately tidy, with the beds made, the washing-up done, everything unplugged and the valuables inexpertly hidden under a floorboard, belonged to someone who went on the evacuation. A note on a kitchen counter or stuck to the fridge shows someone who left sometime in between. A note pinned or nailed to the front door shows someone who left soon after.

Then there are the places like this, which have been occupied since the collapse. The fireplaces, whether they worked or were just purely decorative, are full of ash and half burnt furniture. Usually, though not here, it’ll be just the one fireplace, with chairs and stools pulled up close to it, giving a rough estimate of the number of survivors at that refuge’s peak. The chairs aren’t gathered there for heat, not entirely anyway, but primarily for light to read by, during the long sleepless nights.

The books, lying discarded by the chairs, provide an interesting insight into the specific crisis that the group faced and feared most. Encyclopedias, histories and historical fiction, biographies, maps, travelogues, cook books, DIY and how to guides, anything and everything that might provide even the most tenuous of clues to surviving another fear-filled day. The books closest to the chairs are the ones that seemed most helpful, or perhaps the most reassuring. Those whose charred remains lie in the grate, they are the ones found wanting. It is amongst those ashes that, if they had any in the house, you will find the zombie books. I did the same in the end, burning them out of desperate frustration when it became clear how far from this stark reality even the best fiction is.

Usually, in the room with the fire, there will be a table. On it will be every item that could possibly be conceived of as a weapon, but which was rejected when the survivors left. Cricket bats, hockey sticks, hammers, axes, knives, ornamental sabres, shovels, spades, the improbable and the implausible, all heaped next to open packets of nails and rolls of wire. The only thing missing will be the poker, usually left by the fire next to a sharpening stone, where someone has tried to add an edge to wrought iron.

These are the homes of the people who thought they could stay put and ride out the storm. They are the people who thought everything would work out. They waited for help that they were sure must come. At first they expected our government, then it was any government, that somehow, someone, somewhere in the world would come to save them. Then they were forced by hungry desperation to leave.

The Manor is like that, but on a bigger scale. It’s hard to say exactly who was here after the outbreak, or, with the exception of two of them, who they were. When the evacuation day came, some left, some stayed on, perhaps for a week or two. Probably, judging by the bones in one of the kitchen bins, until the easily caught wildlife had been eaten.

The cupboards here are empty, but that’s normal too. Long before the food ran out, packets of anything and everything with any calorific value, from herbs to toothpaste, would have been gathered together. There's always a notebook next to the treacherously inaccurate kitchen scales, where the survivors have laboriously poured over the nutritional contents of every morsel in the house. A menu of the inedible, for this time of the unthinkable, devised sometimes with loving inequality, sometimes with distrusting fairness.

Usually I find these grimly fascinating, here though, I recognised some of the names. Arch and Bell, Archibald Greene and Annabella Devine, the butler and housekeeper. When I knew them as a child, Mr Greene was always apparently furious with “these young'uns, messing up my house”. Mrs Devine would always be ready with a kind word for a torn shirt or bruised eye after my almost weekly fights with Sebastian over my being orphaned and him being about to inherit one of the largest estates in the UK.

They can't have been more than forty back then, though that seems ancient enough to a child and they’d had a wedding anniversary that summer. I don't recall if it was celebrating ten years or fifteen or twenty or, perhaps, just one. The Duchess threw them a glorious party, for one night treating them and their guests as if they were royalty. Jen, Sebastian and I were decked out as footmen whilst the Duke even attempted to wait at table. It was my happiest of memories, now made eternally sad by seeing their names written down on that scrap of paper. I wished, then, that I’d never come to this house.

 

There is one aspect of the Manor that is very different from anywhere else I have been, the weapons. The gun cabinets were empty. Not that there were ever many here. The Duke had been invalided out of the service, returning home as a pacifist. He kept a few ornate shotguns, more antiques than firearms, but they had gone. The others, the older mementoes of ages gone and wars long forgotten, they adorn almost every room. If one wants a weapon, all one has to do is take it from the walls. I’m trying to remember what used to hang in the gaps. Morning-stars, maces, long-swords and lances, all already gone. There are plenty of weapons left, though.

I found six pikes hanging from the wall of one long overtly splendid room that was just as I remembered it. The twenty foot long, five inch thick, teak table, the ten foot tall portrait of the eighth Duke hanging over the fireplace, the Persian rug with its pile so deep you could lose a whole canteen of cutlery in it, and the candelabra to illuminate a room that had no electric lighting. It had been designed to awe and intimidate, a place to dine when unwanted guests arrived and needed to be dissuaded from staying the night. That was why, I had been told, every inch of wall space was taken up with ancient steel.

I don't think the pike I chose is a genuine antique. It looks and feels slightly different to the others. The blade is less pitted and discoloured, the handle doesn't have that worn-smooth-by-use feel and it feels lighter yet somehow more solid. Perhaps it is a genuine replica, an old replica certainly, but something made a few decades ago to replace an even older piece that rotted beyond service even as a decoration.

I found the sharpening stone exactly where I expected to. It was on the hearth next to the fireplace. A plain oak chair I once remembered as having sat by the window in the Butler’s study, stood pulled close to the only spot in the house with warmth and illumination once the power went out.

 

Pike in hand, I returned upstairs. Kim was still in the same position, still firing.

“You should let your shoulder rest,” I said. She looked up. “The recoil,” I added.

She fired off one more round. I watched as one of the undead outside collapsed. It didn't get up.

“Head shot,” she said, as she laid the rifle to one side, stood, and stretched. “Four in ten. My hit rate.”

“Have you done much shooting, then?” I asked again. There was so much to ask, so many questions, but where is one meant to start? All those old conversational gambits about family and hobbies and jobs and schools, it all seems supremely irrelevant now.

“University,” she replied, almost with an effort, as if she was reluctant to share anything personal, even something so pertinent to our immediate survival.

“What? A shooting club?” I asked.

“No. Year abroad. Oregon,” she shrugged. “Host family were gun-toting, redneck, Republican stereotypes. Nice people. Really nice people,” she added with emphasis. “Shooting range on Saturday, church on Sunday and hunting as soon as the season started.” Her expression softened. “And there was me, a hippy liberal.” She paused. “It was fantastic. I got very good at bowling, expert at charring meat on a grill, and moderately okay at shooting. Not good, not bad, but okay. It comes back to you. Like falling off a bike.”

“Um,” I stumbled trying to think of a response. The short utterance was enough to draw the veil back over her eyes. Desperate to say something, anything, I asked, “Do you want a cup of tea?”

She laughed. I didn't think it was that funny. Perhaps she was so highly strung, she was looking for, needed, any kind of release. The shooting was a manifestation of that, I think. The laugh was another, and I guess I also needed a release, because I started laughing too.

 

We found a bedroom that, going by the thick smell of mothballs and even thicker layer of dust, had lain empty since long before the outbreak. I opened the flu, letting out a shower of dirt and soot onto the ornate rug, doused the coal stacked decoratively in the grate with lighter fluid, and lit it. Despite the warmth of the day, we each pulled a chair close to the fire and sat.

“Cold toast,” I muttered after a while.

“What?” Kim asked.

“Cold toast. I was looking around the room and imagining what it would have been like a century ago. Picturing the Dowager Countess lying in bed, spreading warm butter on cold toast whilst listening to a maid’s downstairs gossip.”

“Oh,” she replied. “Why’s the toast cold?”

“They toast it in the kitchen. By the time it gets up to the bedroom it’s always cold. That’s one of the things they used to say about the Lords and Ladies of those times. They didn’t know toast came out hot.”

“Huh.” She poked the fire.

“The Duke, he told me that. Said it was why he had a toaster on the sideboard in the dining room. The Duchess hated it. Said it wasn’t in keeping with an ambience of stately nobility. That didn’t stop her using it, of course.”

“The Duke of this place? You knew him?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

“Sort of. I spent a summer here with someone. Her family knew the Duke’s family. I tagged along. It’s… complicated.”

“Right,” she said.

Wanting to steer the conversation away from the past and the inevitable question of who that girl grew up to be, I changed the subject. “No water. I mean there’s the water they were bringing up from the lake, but I didn’t know how safe it would be to drink, even after boiling.”

“So you're making tea with lemonade?” she asked as I cracked open a tin and poured it into a small saucepan I'd brought up from the kitchen.

“Yup. It works well. Think of it as tea with sugar and lemon,” I added, pouring in a second can. The saucepan went onto the fire, and I sat back.

“It’s old-fashioned,” I said, as we waited for the saucepan to boil.

“Sorry?”

“The scene. Us. The fire, the saucepan, the setting, the whole thing. It’s like the last two hundred years never happened. Thousands of years, even,” I said. “I found some bones in the kitchen. One of them was at least three foot long. Giraffe, or Elephant, perhaps. I think they were eating the animals from the wildlife park.”

“Wasn’t us,” she said. “Them. Those two, I mean. Whichever.” She stared into the fire.

“You knew them, before?” I asked. There was a long pause before she answered.

“They thought we were the last,” she said, and the words came out in a rush. “That of all the people in the whole world, only the three of us were left. They were certain of it, so convinced I think it drove them crazy.”

“You knew Sanders?” I asked.

“Yes. Sort of. Not really.” She grimaced. “That’s exactly how to describe him. He was a friend of a friend of someone I used to work with. He was the kind of guy you’d just see around. I think Sanders was a nickname, but when you've been saying hello to someone for years you can’t suddenly ask ‘What’s your real name?’ Then he moved into a place on the next street, and I’d nod to him at the bus stop, or say ‘Hi’ when I saw him at the supermarket, you know? Nothing more than that. When the evacuation started, when they said everyone had to leave, we decided to head off together. Or he did. There wasn’t anyone else close by, and he was familiar. He was safe, I guess that’s what I thought. That’s why I went along. And it was safe. Safer than if I’d been on my own.” She stirred the fire with the poker until sparks danced up the chimney.

“We got trapped on the motorway. The M3. About five hours out of London. I don't know how far that was, there were so many people, all trying to go the same way, no one could get very far very fast. There was meant to be a lane free for buses and coaches to collect the stragglers, but the road was clogged. This great heaving, sobbing, swearing, shouting, mewling mob, all heading out to who knew where and who knew what.

“Then the screaming started. I think it was from in front at first, but a few minutes later it was coming from behind as well. Then everyone was screaming. Most of them, I don’t think they knew why. They were screaming because everyone else was screaming. You know how people are. Were. Then it changed. Everyone started pushing. Everyone. Those behind, in front, to the sides, it seemed like every single refugee in that column, all wanted to be exactly where we were standing.

“Sanders saved my life. He dragged me through the crowd, over to the fence and practically threw me up it. I managed to claw my way to the top. It wasn’t difficult, I mean, they’d not built this thing to stop people getting out. I got to the other side and didn’t know what to do. I watched him as he helped other people climb up and over, and I was just standing there, unable to decide if I should wait for him or run or what. Then the screaming changed. Or maybe that was when it really started. Pain and terror, that’s what it sounded like. Before it had been anger and fear, but now, now it was filled with desperation, and it seemed to be echoing up the entire length of the motorway.

“I worked it out, since. Thought about it a lot. Didn’t have much else to do, but think. Those first screams, that's when the infected died. Someone standing next to one, when the body dropped, they screamed. Then the pushing, the shoving, that was when they realised what it meant. They wanted to get away, before the bodies turned. That last lot of screaming, that was from the people who hadn’t managed to escape when those zombies started standing up.

“All those people who’d been infected, the ones who thought they were special. Who thought they were different, immune.” She glanced at me. “If they’d just stayed at home, then maybe the evacuation would have worked. Of course if they’d done that, we’d have made it to the muster point and the vaccine. So, small mercies, right?

“Sanders managed to climb up and over, and then we ran. The last time I looked back I saw this huge section of fence just collapse outwards under the weight of about two-dozen people. Or zombies. Or both. I couldn't tell.

“We kept running, kept hiding up when we found food and water and moved on when we ran out. Then we met Cannock. That's when it went wrong. Some people are good, some people are bad, but most live their lives with their souls balanced on a knife’s edge, just waiting for circumstance to push them one way or the other. Cannock was different. He wasn’t just bad, he was truly evil. When he pushed, well, I guess Sanders didn’t really stand a chance.

“It was Cannock’s idea to come here. When we arrived there was an old couple here. Not old old. Maybe in their sixties or seventies, but made a lot older by the rationing and the power cut and the fear of the undead, you know? Cannock killed the woman. Made Sanders kill the man. Said it was survival of the fittest. Said there was no room for passengers. Afterwards, he said it was the merciful thing to do. Sanders believed him, he wanted to. He needed to.”

“The, uh, the man. Did he have a fussy little moustache? A Poirot sort of thing?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “You knew him?”

“And the woman,” I asked, ignoring the question, “was she short, rake thin, with a mole on her left cheek?”

“I think so. Who were they?”

“The butler and housekeeper,” I sighed. “Good people. They didn't deserve to die.”

“No one does,” she said. “Not like that. I think that’s when Sanders and Cannock both started to go mad, when the whole ‘last men on Earth’ thing started. It got worse, each day that no one came, each day they had nothing to look at but the empty skies. That’s when I should have run, but where to? As days went by and we didn't see anyone, didn’t hear anyone, I think I started to believe it too.” She stabbed the poker into the fire.

“They’d go out sometimes for supplies, in that first week or so we were here. That’s when Cannock brought back the rifle. I can’t remember what it's called, but he knew the name and everything. He said it was the one the British Army sharpshooters had, said he’d used one of them in Iraq. I think he was lying, I don’t think he was ever in the Army. He said he found it in the MOD Armoury on Salisbury Plain, and I think he was lying about that too. He was a good shot, though. He knew about the suppressor, knew it would make the rifle less accurate, but he also knew enough that silence was important. Everything had to be done quietly. Everything.

“The rifle made him happy, kept him… occupied, I suppose is the best way to describe it. Right up until they went out hunting. They made a big deal out of it, how they were the last people on the planet who’d ever bag themselves a rhino. I wasn't to go with them. I had to stay, prepare the fire, get everything ready for a feast that evening. Woman’s work!” she spat, bitterly. “I should have run. They came back empty handed and soaked through. I said I should go out. That I’d been hunting, that I knew how to use a rifle. Cannock hit me. Then… well, you saw the cell, the handcuffs, you can work out the rest.”

She stopped, lifted the saucepan off the fire and poured the boiling liquid into an antique china teapot we’d liberated from a glass display stand on the ground floor.

“Last men on Earth, Ha!” she went on. “That’s one too many. They didn’t go out after that, just stayed in the house, day after day. Cannock would have killed Sanders soon enough. Or maybe it would have been the other way around. Then I would’ve killed whoever was left.” She poured the tea, and as she handed me a cup, our eyes met. There was no point putting it off any longer.

“I need to tell you something,” I began. “About the evacuation—”

“That you came up with the idea? I know, Mr Bartholomew Wright, I read your journal.” She shrugged. “Some of it anyway. Whilst you were sleeping.” She sipped at her tea. “Too much angst for my taste.” She took another sip. “It’s how I knew about the vaccine. Cannock wasn’t interested in it. I wondered what had happened to all the people, why no one had come. A house like this, I mean, fresh water, walls, I think I was expecting someone to come. Helicopters and Army or something. Maybe that’s why I didn’t run when I could.” She shrugged. “I thought about killing you, I mean, that’s what I’m meant to do, isn’t it? I’m meant to blame you for everything. I’m meant to take it all out on you. At the very least I should be conflicted or something… something.” She took another sip “I think,” she said slowly, “that whatever happened, it was bigger than you. You were just another pawn, and me? I didn't even make it onto the board. I should say thank you, for rescuing me.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I am, for everything.”

“Save it,” she said, but not unkindly. She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. After a while, eyes still closed, she said “So. Bart.”

“I prefer Bill.”

“Hmm, yes, I can see why. Bill, then. What are your plans now?”

I hesitated. I didn’t know whether I should tell her, but for some reason I trusted her, and besides that, she'd already read the journal.

“I'm going to Lenham Hill,” I said. “I have to.”

“Okay. Why?”

“It’s hard to explain. There’s a video on the laptop, it would be easier if I just showed you,” I said, standing up.

“But didn't you realise?” she asked. “You were shot, or your bag was. Your laptop’s broken.”

I didn’t reply, just hurried from the room. My pack lay where I had dropped it. She was right. That blow that had knocked me to the ground, when I thought I had been shot, I had been shot. It was just that the bullet had come in at an angle and had been deflected by the bag and its contents. The laptop was broken in two. Shards of plastic and circuitry were mixed up with the dirt and grime at the bottom of the pack. I knew at once it was broken beyond repair. The files on it were lost forever.

I emptied the bag out onto the bed. The external hard drive looked fine, I turned it this way and that, and couldn’t see any damage, but without a computer to plug it into I had no way of knowing. I glanced over once more at the pile of mp3 players, net-books, tablets and laptops that lay discarded amongst the shell casings. I tried every device that had a USB port. The batteries were all dead.

“They kept their haul somewhere downstairs. I don’t know where, but they brought back a lot of stuff,” Kim said from the doorway.

It didn’t take long to find the room she was talking about. It was filled with electronic gadgets, jewellery and even clothes. I remembered the house I’d spent the night in, how it had been stripped of anything that might once have been considered valuable. It must have ended up here, amongst this heap of worthless wealth.

I tore through the piles until, finally, I found an Apple laptop. I turned it on. Victory! It had power. I rushed back upstairs.

Click-clack. I heard the rifle being reloaded as I approached the bedroom.

I ignored Kim, as she fired off another shot, grabbed the hard drive and plugged it in. I waited, my fingers crossed until I heard the drive starting to whir. It was working. The green power light came on. A dialogue box came up on the screen.

“Disc unrecognised. Would you like to format disc? Yes. No.”

I slumped despondently onto the bed. It wasn’t a set back, not really. I hadn’t looked at the files on the hard drive, but after what I’d seen on the laptop, that didn’t really matter. I knew where I had to go, and why I had to go there. Everything else was just a distraction, a way of delaying the inevitable. I repeated those and another dozen similar sentiments and tried to believe them.

Click…

“Would you leave that rifle alone! Please,” I added though it came out through gritted teeth.

She turned, and looked at me. “Alright,” she said. “So tell me what was in those files. What’s so important that you have to go trekking across the country?”

“There was a lot of stuff,” I said, standing up. “There were accounts, supply lists, shift rotas and spreadsheets filled with millions of pieces of raw data, and those might be important, but I didn't have time to look at them.”

“So what did you see that was important?”

“There was a video. It was a reply to some other message, a walk-and-talk presentation, explaining why the facility needed more funding. Obviously it was recorded before New York, but I don’t know how long before.”

“And?” she prompted.

“Out of context, without knowing to whom it was sent, what questions it was answering, it’s hard to draw much from what they said. The scientist, the same one who was in that hospital in New York—”

“The one where the outbreak started?”

“Right. The same guy, he was giving a tour, I suppose is the best way of describing it. The camera was following him around Lenham Hill as he explained the facility’s limitations. One thousand doses per day. That was the maximum they could produce. He was stressing that wasn't enough. He was explaining, in a lot of depth, why they couldn't increase production beyond that. It was to do with air filtration systems, the need to focus on testing and refinements, on how the facility couldn't be run both for R&D and production at the same time.”

“That doesn't explain why you think you need to go there,” Kim said.

“I was getting to that. Like I said, it was hard to follow him without the context. I was trying, right up until he stopped outside of a room. It was one of those walk in vaults, containing rack upon rack of vials of this super vaccine, the virus that started it all.” I stopped, and waited. When she didn't say anything, I continued. “Don't you see? What if it's still there? What if someone else finds it? It has to be destroyed. That's why I've got to go to Lenham Hill.”

She continued looking at me for a long moment, then turned back to the window and picked up the rifle once more. Click-clack, pause, click-clack, pause. I stood there as she fired off three rounds and then I stormed from the room. I was furious. Couldn't she understand? Didn't she want to?

The fury quickly evaporated, turning to morose despondency as I turned down corridors I recognised as ones I’d run down as a child. I stopped by a portrait of the third Duke. Someone, I assume Cannock, or possibly Sanders, had slashed it. The canvas now hung limply from the frame. I stood there, looking at this wanton, purposeless destruction, until my resolve returned, and I marched back to the bedroom.

Click-clack. Pause. Click—

“We should go,” I said decisively.

“We?” she replied, not turning to face me but pausing, one hand on the rifle bolt.

Of course, I had assumed she would want to leave with me. Not thought or considered or even asked, I had just assumed. “You want to stay here?”

“Alright, no,” she said without much of a pause. “But I don’t like the idea of some wild chase across the countryside to some research facility that may or may not still exist.”

“But…” I began, and then stopped. “There's Brazely Abbey. I was going to head back there to get some supplies before heading north. It’s a good spot. There’s a well, fruit trees, and strong walls. You could stay there. If you want.”

“Thank you, that’s very kind,” she said. I couldn’t tell whether she was being gracious, sarcastic or a mixture of both. “But why the rush?”

“To get it over and done with, before someone else—”

“If it's still there now,” she interrupted, “then another few days won't matter. Besides,” she slid the bolt forward and removed the cartridge, “how much do you reckon one of these weighs?” She twisted slightly and threw the round to me. I fumbled the catch, dropping the cartridge on the bed.

“Well?” she asked again. I picked it up.

“I dunno. Half an ounce, maybe.”

“So, in the real world we’d say between ten and twenty grams, right? How many do you think a thousand would weigh? Because that's how many are here. There were over two thousand, when they found the rifle. Now there's half that, but it's still too many to take out on foot and since there’s no car here we will be on foot. Water, food, weapons and ammunition, it all adds up.”

“Between ten and twenty kilos. I should get the scales, get an accurate weight for them.”

“You're missing the point. Weight, size, call it what you want, but we're not going to be able to take all of them.”

“We can leave them here then, come and collect them sometime in the future.”

“Even if we were to come back, what is it you think you'll be doing with these bullets? One zombie is as good as any other. Kill Them all now, or kill Them all later, but they all have to be killed.” She turned back to the window and slid another round into the chamber. “I’d like to stay a day or so. To recover. Then we can go to the Abbey, and you can head off on your quest. A day won’t make any difference, will it?” She asked, and the edge to her voice had now gone.

“No,” I admitted. “I suppose not.”

She pulled the trigger.

 

19:00, 26^th June

There's a line in Macbeth, “If it were done, when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.” That sums it up really. I want sanctuary, I want to get to Lenham Hill and destroy those vials, I want answers, an explanation for all of this nightmare, and I want it all now. I don’t want to hang around, waiting, when there's a job in front of me. There's nothing wrong with that, that’s who I am.

I didn't remember the quote, not exactly, and fine, I'll admit I’m mangling the meaning of the line to suit the circumstances, but so what? I’m hardly the first person to do that with Shakespeare. Why I feel I need to be honest to this journal, I don't know. It's something to do with Kim. I can't say exactly why, but somehow just knowing that there is someone else, another survivor, someone not that different from me, that changes things. It doesn't alter my resolve. I still need to go to Lenham. Someone needs to make sure that the place is destroyed, and if not me, then who?

I did remember the line was from Macbeth, so I went looking for a copy in the library and ended up spending the afternoon leafing through the plays.

I tried Julius Caesar first, but somehow the way the language has changed over the centuries makes the opening few scenes almost comical. Macbeth though, I can relate to that. It's strange that the distance of time, the almost alien nature of the language, makes it somehow more relatable than more recent works. Dickens and Solzhenitsyn, Steinbeck and Orwell, no matter how great and skilled the writing, the subject matter is now less relevant than the cheapest pulp science fiction. What does ideology matter when the species is virtually extinct?

 

 

Day 107, Longshanks Manor, Wiltshire

 

14:00, 27^th June

I was woken by the sound of an elephant. I've always liked elephants, liked how they seem completely indifferent to the existence of us humans. Perhaps it was a hippo. Or a rhino. My knowledge of animals, and the noises they make, comes more from animated films than nature documentaries. It sounded big, though, and it's pleasing to know that at least some other animals have survived thus far.

It was refreshing, this morning, being able to wake up and do nothing. A reminder of those weekends, few and far between in recent years, when I had nothing to get up for. I spent an hour or so finding some new clothes, since there's no water to spare to wash my old ones.

There's enough tinned and dried food for about ten weeks for the two of us, and I'm not talking about crates of tinned peaches either. Breakfast this morning was kumquats in grape juice. If I had toast I could spread some ‘By Royal Appointment’ lychee and crab-apple marmalade on it. But I don't have toast. Spooning it out of the jar brought back some once happy memories, now bittersweet with all I've seen.

Then I wandered the halls, but the more time I spend here, the more the memories of happy times come back, and with them the realisation that everyone in those memories is probably now dead. Perhaps I do just want to get things over with, but by mid-morning I’d had enough.

 

“I think we should leave,” I said. It had taken me an hour to find her, lying on the floor of one of the attic bedrooms, staring at the sky through the high, dirt encrusted window.

“Yes. I was thinking that too,” Kim replied, sitting up. I'd been expecting a fight. I don't know why, perhaps I’m finding it hard to adjust to another person in my life. “Tomorrow morning,” she said. “We'll need to pack first.”

 

Bags were easy enough to find. There was a stack of them in the room with all the loot. I took another moment to look at that pile of jewellery, ornaments, trophies and the electronic gadgetry that would never work again. Other than the bags, there was little of any practical value, no first aid kits, no fire extinguishers, and no toilet paper. Sanders and Cannock had done nothing more than build up a dragon's horde of the shiny and worthless.

Next came weapons. I kept my hatchet and chisel at my belt, with the pistol in one of the many pockets of a thigh length jacket I'd found hanging in the Duke's bedroom. A set of carry-on luggage provided the strap for the pike. The contrast of nylon and plastic with the steel and wood was pleasingly incongruous.

Kim found an axe that she liked the heft of, hanging in the same room I'd found the pike. I don't know how a historian would describe it, but I would call it a killing axe. It has a three foot long shaft, with a single broad tapered blade and a flattened hammer head criss-crossed with grooves, surely designed for the crushing of armoured limbs and skulls. Too sharp to chop wood, too heavy to hammer nails, it is no workman's tool.

Added to the weight of food, the hard drive, can openers, rope, saucepan, matches and kindling, the last of the lemonade, and we were nearly overloaded. Kim thought my suggestion of taking a wok from the kitchen was proof I'd been on my own too long. Those were her actual words. I tried to explain how useful they were as portable fire pits. She just gave me a look. In the end, I had to concede that with everything else it was far too heavy.

Then we turned to the ammunition. Kim had been right. Weight wasn’t so much of an issue as where to put it all. The bags were unpacked and sorted once more, with anything that could possibly be found elsewhere being discarded as we re-packed our gear for the first of many times.

 

18:00, 27^th June

A light drizzle has begun to fall. It would be refreshing if we could walk outside. Water in the lake, water falling from the sky, water, water everywhere, but not a drop we can touch.

We've reached a compromise on the ammo and the food we can't carry. It's now hidden in a cupboard in the main kitchen. Hidden is probably an exaggeration. It's stacked neatly behind an ice cream maker, a waffle iron and what is either a deformed whisk or the world's largest milk frother. They're all still in their boxes and have the look of unwanted gifts from people seen too frequently for them to be thrown away. Any half decent looter would find our stash.

I want to leave a note, an apology and explanation in case anyone ever comes back here. I feel I owe them that, but Kim is adamantly against it. I think this is more to do with her experiences here than it is to do with effectively handing these supplies over to whoever may come here next.

 

Once we'd finished packing, we retreated to that small bedroom to eat tinned fruit by the unlit fire.

“Why?” Kim asked.

“Why what?”

“All of this. Everything. The zombies, the virus or vaccine or whatever it was…” she hesitated “I mean, you saw a video of the Foreign Secretary in New York. What's his name? Quigley?”

“Sir Michael Quigley. Former Defence Minister, Shadow Minister for Health before that. He's the one who took over after the Prime Minister disappeared during those first couple of weeks.”

“Yeah, I wondered why he stopped appearing on the TV.”

“I thought he'd had a breakdown, but now?” I shrugged. “I don't know. Quigley took over, he always wanted the top job. He was a career politician. I don't mean he went into politics straight out of university, I mean the other kind. The kind who mapped out their path to Number 10 whilst they were still at school. He did eight years in the Army before being invalided out, then spent just long enough in what was euphemistically called logistics to afford the sizeable donation needed to buy himself a safe seat and a cabinet job for life.”

“Yeah, he was the one the press always described as dedicated, wasn’t he?” Kim said. “Except they never say to who, or what, he'd dedicated himself to. I remember him. Wasn't he a friend of Masterton's?

“Lord Masterton, yes. They were old Cabinet colleagues.”

“And he's the father of Jen. The one you worked for?”

“Worked with. I grew up with her. Sort of. During the holidays at least. Term time I spent at boarding school. I think it was Lord Masterton who paid for that, though I never asked, and could never work out why.”

“Right. But you knew these people, you worked for them?”

“With them, but I don’t think Lord Masterton had anything to do with this. He's been retired for years.”

“Yeah, well you know what they say about retired politicians. So Quigley, then. And the PM and the rest of the Cabinet and whoever else that knew. The Americans, I suppose, since it was in New York. What were they doing? Was this an accident or a mistake or some kind of weapon gone wrong?”

“I really don't know.”

“But you have an idea. You can make an educated guess. You've seen the footage, you know these people.”

I thought for a moment but I didn't need to think for long because in truth I had been thinking about little else since I first saw that video. “It's a puzzle. I don't mean it's puzzling, I mean that there are all these little pieces that somehow are connected and whilst I've got some of them, I’m missing others. I’d thought if I put them together I might get a sense of the whole, but no matter how many different ways I arrange them I can't see beyond the outline.” I shook my head and tried to gather my thoughts, whilst Kim just sat there, patiently waiting.

“Yes, it started in New York. That was the beginning,” I said, carefully. “Those initial reports, the train stations, the freeways, that shopping mall, they all add up to it starting somewhere in the city. That video from the hospital ties it all together. I don’t think those officials who were there to witness it knew what was going to happen. If they did, there's no way you'd get representatives of China, Britain, the US, and whoever the others were, within a thousand miles of that room.”

“Why New York, then? Why not some out of the way lab in the middle of the desert or somewhere?”

“Easy. You can get pretty much any cabinet minister of any government in the world there on the pretext they're going to the UN. No one asks. No one questions it. It's how a lot of peace talks and back room deals get done. Got done. That's why it wasn't in the UK.”

“But it was created here.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “The virus, the super-vaccine, they're connected, but whether creating and releasing it was deliberate? I don't know.” She opened her mouth to speak, but I went on before she could say anything. “I could guess, sure, come up with a plausible hypothesis, but it'd still be just a guess.”

“It was the planes,” she said, after a while. “Diplomats on planes. That's how it spread so quickly.”

“Probably. Almost certainly,” I said. “After the whole bird flu thing, there were procedures in place to quarantine planes, and even entire airports. No one talked about them, but they were there. Didn't matter how important you were, didn't matter if it was a private jet and you were the principal donor to your country's ruling party, you'd get stuck in a plastic tent just like the guy travelling in coach. Except if you were a politician on a diplomatic flight. No one can ground that plane, not even in China if the passenger's on the Central Committee.”

Silence settled between us once more.

“So what's your plan?” she asked, eventually.

“I told you,” I said. “To go to the facility and make sure that everything there is destroyed.”

“Yes, but how are you going to do that?”

“I don't know,” I admitted

“And what'll you do if the place is still occupied?” she asked. “I mean, hasn't it occurred to you that of all the places in the world, that is the most likely one to be either a smoking hole in the ground or surrounded by soldiers?”

“Yes,” I said, and it had. “That doesn't matter. I've got to at least try. There's just so much I don't know. Someone, and I don't really know who and I certainly don't understand why, but for some reason they dragged me into their grand scheme. I want to know why.”

“So this is just about you then, not about those vials in that vault, or the future, or making the world a safer place.” She stood up. “You just want to know why someone had to go and mess up Bartholomew Wright’s little life.”

“No. Of course not, it's more than that,” I said, though the words didn't sound sincere.

“An evacuation could have worked,” she said, seemingly changing the subject.

“What? Well, perhaps if—”

“No. It could. It was worth trying, and you must have thought so, otherwise you wouldn't have suggested it.”

“I was different back then.”

“Perhaps,” she echoed mockingly. “But it could have worked. And it was worth trying. But it failed. It was sabotaged and that had nothing to do with you. It's over. Your part is done. You don't need to go chasing after pieces of the past because they don't matter. None of it does, not anymore.”

“The past is all I have.” I looked at her then, into those dark seemingly bottomless eyes. “It's all we have, you, me and whoever else might have survived. We're never going to build a new Camelot. There's never going to be that city upon a hill. All those people, those that became the undead, those who were murdered, and those who starved or froze or just gave up. Billions of people, an entire race, are dead. We need to know what happened, and then someone has to make sure it can't happen again. It's all there is now, at least for me. Ever since I saw the bodies at the muster point, I understood that there's no one else who can do it, no one, just me.”

Kim walked over to the window.

“Except,” she said, “you could have left yesterday. No, if you really believed that, you would never have come here. You would have crossed that motorway.”

 

 

Day 108, Salisbury Plain

 

19:00, 28^th June

This morning, I was woken again by that bizarre trumpeting bellow, more suited to the savannah than the English countryside. Though in many ways I wish I had never gone to Longshanks Manor, rescuing Kim notwithstanding, I will miss that sound.

In the end we did leave a note. It made no mention of Kim, or of the stash in the kitchen. Instead, we included a simple explanation of what Sanders and Cannock had done to the previous inhabitants and what we in turn had done to them. Perhaps someone will come along and find the food and my bike, and perhaps it will help them to survive. I hope so.

 

We gathered our gear and quadruple wrapped everything in plastic and cling film. I ran a dry test, so to speak, in a bucket filled with the undrunk lake water, just to make sure the hard drive would be fine. Then we checked and rechecked that we weren't leaving anything behind, nor taking anything extraneous with us. Then we escaped.

It was almost as simple as that. We'd taken two of the large oak doors off their hinges and carried them down to the kitchens. Then we placed them on top of two serving trolleys that had that old-fashioned sturdiness of an age when dinner was served with a dozen courses for two-dozen guests.

Kim had spent half an hour with the rifle thinning out the undead around the kitchen side of the house. The trick, we've learned, is not to shoot the zombies immediately in our path, as the sound of the body hitting the ground will attract the others. Instead, by taking out six to the left and right of the door, we created a zombie-free corridor down to the lake. All we had to do then, was open the doors and, pushing the trolleys in front of us, run straight down the path, onto the jetty and let momentum carry us out and into the water. That was easy. A lot easier than trying to clamber onto our improvised rafts once we were in the water.

They floated well enough, but every time I tried to pull myself up and onto it, the door would just sink and twist round. It was the weight of the brace, I think. In the end, I held on as best I could. Using the door like a float, I half swam, half drowned my way across the lake. Kim had it easier, and I swear she was grinning when she pulled me out of the muddy shallows. Then we just hurried away.

 

It took us all day to find two bikes. The first we found at lunchtime but didn't find the second until about an hour ago. We would have been quicker, but I wanted to check the cars. Brazely Abbey is about forty miles directly east, across Salisbury Plain. Without knowing where we'd shelter for the night, that's an impossible distance on foot. By bike, however, it's two days at most, perhaps one, and possibly far less than that. By car, with all the detours due to the blocked roads, it wouldn't be much quicker. That wasn't why I wanted a car. I’m starting to think that the only way across the motorway is at speed, preferably shielded on all sides by carbon-fibre and steel. No, that's not really it, either. That's an explanation, but since there was no way we could carry the extra weight of fuel, it doesn't explain why I felt compelled to check vehicles that were little more than scrap metal.

“Where will you go after?” Kim asked, when I was running some wire into the sixth fuel tank of the day. Of those we'd tried, only one had had any fuel. Not much, but even if it had, there was no way we'd be able to drive it anywhere. It had a flat battery an even flatter tyre, and scrapes and dents along the sides suggested it had been driven there with no consideration for anything but speed.

“After?”

“After you've been to the facility and done your saving the world bit. What then?”

“Back to the Abbey, I suppose,” I said. “I think, with some work, it could hold up through the winter. It'll be hard with just the two of us, but perhaps we can find some other survivors. Or maybe we look for somewhere better, somewhere safer. I don't know.”

“I think I've worked it out now,” Kim said. “It's the future, that's why you’re obsessed with the past.”

“I'm sorry?” I asked.

“The future, it's uncertain, and you want to escape from the uncertainty. You think that if you keep running away, then one day you'll arrive somewhere. What you don't understand is that sometimes away is all that matters.”

Kim doesn't talk much. Perhaps that doesn't come across in what I've written, but what I've written down includes pretty much everything we've said to one another. It's not that we don't have anything to talk about, rather it’s that neither of us has anything that needs to be said. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed this quiet companionship, right up until she goes and says something like that. She didn't say another word as I went on to check the cars at the next three houses we searched.

This last one, where we found the second bicycle in the garden shed, and where we’ve decided to spend the night, has a little runabout in the garage. A four-door car with barely enough space for two. The battery wasn't flat, the fuel tank was half full, the tyres needed a bit of inflating, but otherwise it seemed sound. I thought about turning the engine over. But I stayed my hand. It would have been easy to take it, and really, how much noise would that engine have made? Surely we could have driven back to the Abbey with only a few zombies following. Two or three, or five or even ten wouldn't be a problem. We have the rifle, after all. Then, there would still be enough fuel left to get to Lenham, and back. Probably I would have taken the car, if it hadn't been for the note, sealed in a plastic folder, nailed to the front door.

“Dear Andie, we've gone to Maeve's. We'll be all right, you know us. But if you read this, come and look for us there. We left Gertie for you. We love you, Mum and Dad.”

We found the car keys, along with six bottles of water, half a kilo of pasta, a jar of honey and two tubes of concentrated tomato purée, hidden in a box underneath a pile of ancient teddy bears. The one on the top, a hand stitched ragged thing, missing an eye and half an ear, had a ribbon around its neck that read, ‘Love, Grandma Gertie’.

We took half the water, left the keys and I added a message of my own. I apologised for the theft and broken door and included a note about the Manor and the supplies there. I doubt, after all this time, anyone will ever come looking, but even so, I felt I couldn't do any less.

 

Day 109, Stonehenge

 

20:00, 29^th June

I woke as the first light of dawn was playing through the avenue of trees by the edge of the road, causing eldritch shadows to dance along the walls of the bedroom. In that moment of half-sleep, staring at that immaculate white painted ceiling in that strangely quiet house, everything seemed, for one blissful second, to be normal once more. Then my leg began its morning round of twitching, forcing me to get up. Kim was already awake. I don't know if she slept. Perhaps she can't. I didn't ask.

We breakfasted on pasta with redcurrants, blackcurrants and some not quite ripe blueberries we'd harvested from the gardens of the neighbouring houses. Truly, the breakfast of champions! At least we had some coffee to go with it.

 

There was a narrow lane at the bottom of the garden that meandered vaguely in the direction we wanted. We followed it for a half mile or so, sometimes surrounded by trees, occasionally by fences, and sometimes by once cultivated hedges now grown ragged with a season's unchecked growth. We were quiet. We were cautious. We took our time. There was something in the air that made me reluctant to hurry up and leave it behind. I wanted to drink it all in, to saturate myself in this beautifully peaceful, so very English, summer day.

Eventually we did reach the end of the lane, and a small cottage whose garden backed onto Salisbury Plain. There were no signs of life, or the undead, about the house, but out in the rear garden, nestled between a mountain of flowerpots and a folded up cold-frame was a chicken coup. The wire was intact, no foxes or cats or anything bigger had come to prey on these animals. They had starved, or died from dehydration, when no one was left to care for them.

That brought us back to Earth, or at least it did me. Kim had maintained a stolid silence all morning. I stood looking at the dead birds for a moment, thinking about all that they represented. Then, as I turned to Kim, I spotted a gate half buried in the hedgerow. It was an old wooden affair, the supports tinged green with moss, which added an ominous shadow to the faces still visible in the once ornately carved pattern. It was ajar. Through it I could see fields and the wide expanse of the Plain beyond, but between us and the grassland squatted a solitary, stationary zombie.

It hadn't heard us and I don't think Kim had spotted it. I had. I wanted to test my new pike and here was the perfect opportunity. No, that's just an excuse and a weak one at that. I could say that it was some subconscious response to finally finding company and realising that everything, or nothing, had changed, but in truth I don't know what came over me. Perhaps it was just another one of those weird compulsions, something that doesn't have a reason, or if it does, where the reason doesn't matter. I motioned for Kim to stay where she was and cautiously stalked through the gate and into the field.

 

I was bent over, with the pike held parallel to the ground just a few inches above the grass. The zombie had its back to me, the tattered remnants of a red thigh length jacket blowing in the morning breeze. I kept my breathing shallow, as I took step after cautious step toward it.

I was twenty paces away when its back straightened. I stopped, counted slowly to five, then took another step. The creature didn't move. My eyes fixed upon its shoulders, I took another pace forward. Its head tilted suddenly to one side. I froze, my foot in the air. I couldn't hold the position for long, but I wanted to get closer. I could have attacked, right then, I could have moved quickly and swung the pike and finished it. But I didn't.

I breathed out and lowered my foot, but this time I hadn't checked my footing. As my weight shifted, a branch snapped with a crack that seemed to echo for miles, though probably it only carried a few hundred yards. The zombie heard it, though. It stood and turned in one quick motion. I shifted my stance and brought the pike up. As the blade reached the top of its arc, as sunlight glinted on the blade, as I changed my grip and altered my balance, the creature suddenly collapsed, a bullet through its skull.

“Don't do that again,” Kim said, reloading the rifle.

 

Even on the bikes we couldn't travel quickly. Rabbit holes, mounds, and dips concealed by the tall grass continually brought us to a jarring halt. We got bogged down in the forests of weeds that made the corrugated earth of the fields beneath seem deceptively flat. Impenetrable hedges, and sturdy chain-link fences denoting the Ministry of Defence training grounds forced us to detour and double back. It was agonisingly slow progress, and as the sun rose in the sky and the dawn warmth turned to an early-morning simmer, I began to regret this tourist's detour.

Then we would come to some small ridge, clear enough of obstructions that we could pump away at the pedals, whilst all about us we could see nothing but a great open expanse of newly-wild splendour. We'd cover half a mile or so in little more time than it takes to write, but then the ridge would twist and we'd be forced to plunge, once more, into the morass of vegetation. Occasionally we'd stop, pause and look behind us at the flattened path we'd ploughed through the long green and yellow grass. As far as the eye could see, this furrow was the only sign of mankind in the encroaching wilderness.

 

It had been my decision to go to Stonehenge, at least I suggested it, and Kim didn't object. Actually, she didn't say anything at all, so we went.

It wasn't much of a detour, being only a few miles off our direct route to the Abbey. The stones may have stood for over five thousand years, and with the decline of our species they are likely to stand for five thousand more, but I felt this might well be the last chance I would ever have to see Stonehenge. The world has become much smaller now, stretching no further than the horizon, and often not nearly as far as that. Who knows if I will ever pass this way again? That, and without any barriers or bylaws preventing me, I'd finally be able to get close enough to see the graffiti Christopher Wren carved into the ancient monument a few centuries ago.

 

There aren't many undead on the Plain. There are a few who have drifted onto the grassland, but until we got closer to Stonehenge we'd seen only a few dozen, and usually from miles away. At first, I was concerned that with all this open space, with no brick walls and shrubberies to hide behind, They would be able to see us from further away, that as soon as one did, we would become surrounded. Images of a last stand on some hill whilst They came staggering towards us in numbers too great to count played across my mind. It turns out we had little to fear. Over distances of more than a few hundred yards They are effectively blind.

Now I've seen it for myself, I should have realised this earlier. Their bodies become desiccated with time, drying up as the virus absorbs, or converts, or burns off, or whatever, the fluids within it. Without tears, grit and dirt would build up and scratch corneas, blinding Them.

In London, when I climbed to the roof of that office block, and saw the barricades along the riverbank and the sea of ghoulish faces turning to stare at me, I was wrong. They weren't staring. They hadn't seen me. They’d heard me.

I can't really stress how important a discovery this is to us. Knowing that, as long as we keep the bicycle oiled, our gear wrapped and a safe distance from Them, we can pass by unseen, unheard and undetected, is a great relief, but this discovery means so much more than that. It's another part of the reason I need to go to Lenham Hill. What else don't we know that could help us do more than just exist in this world, and where else can we find the answers?

 

We reached Stonehenge at around ten a.m. We missed the dawn, and this close to mid-summer it would be tempting to throw caution to the wind and camp out just to see the stones at sunrise. But even without the undead it would be too dangerous to stay here. The stones have a new guardian, one that has long been a danger to man, and judging by the evidence about us, one that is even more dangerous than the undead.

We knew something was wrong from a couple of miles away when we saw the first body. It was definitely that of a zombie, but it had been mauled. The face had been torn off, the skull crushed and most of a hand had been chewed away. Chewed, but not eaten. We found the discarded fingers a few yards from the body, where they had evidently been spat out. We stared at those remains. We looked around, wondering what new monster we faced, what horrific abomination the undead might have mutated into, and more importantly, in which direction it lay.

We couldn't tell, and since one direction was as good as any other, we headed on, faster now, until we crested a ridge and saw the animals, there amongst the ancient stones. There are lions at Stonehenge.

 

I always used to hate lions. Not just lions, I had a rule that anything that could, and often did, kill humans should be exterminated, not conserved. Polar bears, sharks, grizzlys, pretty much everything that lived in Australia. As for lions, to me they were nothing more than tigers with better press.

We watched them for a while, taking it in turns to use the rifle’s scope. There's a male, a female, and at least one cub. They must have come from the safari park, but whether they escaped or whether they were purposefully released, I can't tell. It doesn't matter. That they are there, that is enough.

I watched the lioness disembowel one of the undead with its claws. I saw the male pounce from one of the stones, knocking a zombie down then crushing its skull between its jaws. I watched as the cub darted out between the two adults to nip at a zombie's ragged legs. I saw the female swat it back towards the ring of stones, before turning on the undead creature and ripping its throat out.

Again and again, the zombies came, in ones and twos, drifting in from the countryside. Again and again the lions dispatched the undead. They didn't rush, they took it in turns, they could have run at any time, but I think, no, I’m certain, they had decided that this was their territory, that they were in no danger, and that they were not going to flee. And that is why I am terrified of lions.

“The lions aren't infected,” I said, handing the scope back to Kim. “They're not eating the zombies. They're biting Them, and they're not getting infected. So if lions have survived, why not goats and sheep and cattle and who knows what else.”

Then we heard the lioness roar. That truly echoed for miles.

“We should go,” Kim said.

“Sure,” I said, making no move to leave.

“That noise travelled for miles,” She said.

“Yep.”

“We didn't hear it before. The lioness didn't roar until we arrived. We should go. Now.”

 

After that we had to head further south than I would have liked, leaving the Plain and returning to the roads. We've stopped for the night a few miles from the city of Salisbury. Tomorrow we'll have to go even further south just to avoid going through the city itself, but then we'll be able to head back to the Abbey, and perhaps just a few days after that, I will be at Lenham Hill.

 

 

Day 110, Raysbury, Hampshire

 

09:00, 30^th June

We're about twenty miles north of Southampton, and even from here I can tell the city is nothing but ruins. Smoke, drifting thinly into the sky, speaks of some great conflagration, perhaps one that engulfed the entire coast.

The main enclave for the south of England was meant to stretch from there all the way along to the nuclear power station at Dungeness in Kent. I've not thought much about the enclaves and the fate of those living there. After I saw the mass murder of the evacuees at the muster point a few weeks ago, I assumed that those in the enclaves must have faced a similar fate. Nowhere have I seen any signs that even the merest fragment of our old civilisation remains. I've seen no helicopters, no planes, no evidence of any gangs clearing roads or organised in state sponsored looting. If I needed it, then those few wisps of oily black smoke are all the proof I needed that if there is some bastion of humanity left on this planet, it is not in southern England. That isn't to say there is no life at all.

Raysbury Gardens is a building site that, up until a year or so ago, was the Raysbury Park House Hotel, and was in the midst of a conversion into the Raysbury Gardens Assisted Living Facility. It's a U-shaped building, with four storeys at the front, three on either side and a partly finished enclosed conservatory area connecting the two. Even if it wasn't for the brochure, or rather the seven unopened boxes of brochures, stacked in one of the downstairs rooms, it would have been easy to guess at the building's intended purpose. It's full of panic buttons, sit-down showers and stair-lifts. There was no food here, but we're four meals away from hungry and two litres of water away from being thirsty.

Outside the house is a stretch of would-be gardens. String squares, rectangles, and circles litter the ground, mapping where future flowerbeds and lawns now will never be. On the far side, ringing the grounds, is a twelve-foot high brick wall, covered in moss and ivy. It looks deceptively fragile, but in that way only bricks that have stood for a century, and will stand for a century more, can.

We came in through the main gates, to the southwest, on the other side of the wall, to the east, the road meanders along for about six hundred yards until it comes to a junction. The road continues east and south, until it eventually meets an A-road heading to the sea. But if you were to turn left at the junction, you would drive into Raysbury, with its award winning high street, and its pack of the undead.

 

We were cycling along the road when we saw the gates. We stopped. With a high wall on one side of the narrow road, and impenetrable scrub encroaching from the other, we were both getting a little nervous. Or at least I was. Kim's expression was as blank as ever. The gates were padlocked, but with the appearance of disuse that suggested it had been done before the outbreak. We broke in and re-secured the gates. The house looked empty, there were no odd footprints in the loose earth and none of the windows or doors had been broken.

We were about to go inside when the wind shifted, bringing with it the unmistakable susurrus of the undead, and with it something far more chilling.

They weren't close, but if we could hear Them, then the undead were far closer than I would have liked. We broke into the house and made our way to the top floor. We went from room to room, looking out the windows until we saw the zombies.

The high street is bracketed by a pub at each end. In between is a smattering of barber’s, hairdresser’s, bridal shops, florist’s, tweed outfitters and a fish restaurant. Even from this distance I could tell it was a restaurant, not a fish and chip shop. It looks like the type that had pressed linen table clothes, squid ink risotto on the menu, and if they did do takeaways, they would very definitely not be served wrapped in paper. It's outside that restaurant that the zombies are most densely gathered. It's against that door that They are pawing and clawing, trying to get in.

“How many? A hundred?” I asked, handing Kim back the scope.

“Closer to a hundred and fifty. Factor in those we can't see, and I'd say two hundred. Probably more.”

The wind shifted, and through the open window we again heard the unmistakable sound of a baby crying.

 

11:00, 30^th June

“Two, maybe three survivors. No more,” Kim said, still peering out the window. She'd barely moved from there. I’d walked the grounds, found a rusted gate on the village side of the wall, searched the house and taken the time to update my journal. She’d just stood and watched and, I assume, thought. What of, she didn't say.

“How do you know? Can you see them?” I asked, standing up and peering into the distance.

“Someone's comforting the child. That's why the crying is intermittent. That makes two. Any more than three and some of them would have tried to escape. Maybe they did. Either way, now there's two of them, maybe three, no more. And that's counting the baby.” She emphasised the last word.

I followed her gaze to the high street. The pack wasn't moving much, some were clawing at the door to the restaurant, some at the walls and doors to either side. There was some heaving and shoving as those at the back tried to push through the others, but broadly speaking, They were static. No more seemed to be coming in from the countryside, and of course, none that were there had any intention of leaving.

“We have to do something,” Kim said flatly, her eyes still fixed on the high street.

If it wasn't for the baby, if it had been an adult's cry of pain then I honestly can't say what I would do. But it was a child. Even if Kim wasn't here, with her clear determination to act, I would have done something, but standing there looking at the great mass of the undead, I just couldn't think what.

“There's nothing in the house. Nothing in the grounds,” I said. “No car, no truck, no tractors.” I had an idea that if we could find a heavy enough vehicle, a front-loading digger, perhaps, we could just drive through, crushing any zombies who got in our way. It was a disturbingly pleasing image, but there was no vehicle. “No. Nothing here,” I repeated. “No chemicals for fire.”

“Fire's too risky. Have you seen what happens when a zombie catches fire?”

I thought for a moment “No,” I admitted.

“Neither have I,” she said. “Probably They just stand and burn. You can't control fire. You can't stop it spreading to the restaurant.”

“What about shooting Them?” I suggested. “There's enough ammo isn't there?”

“Maybe. If we had time. If I could see Them all. If I got Them with one shot each. Maybe. But probably not.”

“You take out as many as you can, then I'll go in and kill the rest,” I suggested.

“You'd be facing at least a hundred,” she said. “So, no.”

“Then,” I said slowly, as an idea was beginning to form, “what if we could lure Them all away?”

 

Day 110, Heritage Motors

30 miles south of Brazely Abbey

 

21:00, 30^th June

The rescue plan worked. Sort of. What we needed was a sound louder than an infant, and to hope that whoever was in that restaurant would realise what we were doing and quieten the child whilst we lured the undead away. An ice cream truck would have been ideal, but where do you find one of those in a world that came to an end in February. What we found worked just as well, at least as far as getting the zombies away from the village.

We left Raysbury Gardens, headed back out the main gate and in a long arcing loop across the empty fields to the north. We deposited the bicycles in the garden of an empty house on the road along which we planned to escape. Then we headed back towards the village, searching for a likely looking property. It took the best part of an hour. We ignored the places that looked like holiday homes, skirted those which looked as though they had been occupied since the evacuation and avoided the all too many which were now occupied by the undead.

In the end we picked a farm on the other side of the main road. The gates were closed and there were two zombies in the yard, but after a few minutes of observation we were both certain there were no more. They appeared battered, as if They had already been in a fight. The one furthest from the gate had an arm hanging at an odd angle suggesting the bone had been broken in at least two places.

With most of the ammunition left with the bikes and uncertain of what we may face later in the day, I motioned for Kim to put the rifle away. Leaving the relative safety of an old barn, I loped across the road and climbed the five-bar gate. Rain, sun, and inattention had caused one of the supporting posts to shift and break free of the cement anchoring it to the ground. The gate buckled and collapsed. I jumped forward, and as it fell to the ground with a resounding clatter of gravel, the two zombies stood up and began to move towards me.

As Kim had cut short my attempt near Stonehenge, this was the first opportunity I had to test the new pike. Its more professional construction made it far more manoeuvrable than my homemade one. Perhaps because of that, complacency had set in and I'd neglected to sufficiently sharpen the blade.

The first zombie staggered forward. Its clothes were mostly tatters except for a long, stained scarf, that kept tangling in the creature's arms as it swiped and grasped at the narrowing gap between us. I swung.

As the pike arced towards the creature, its head jerked towards me at the last second. Its teeth snapped out and bit empty air as, instead of slicing into its neck, the blade bounced off the top of the its skull, ripping off a chunk of its scalp.

The force of the blow spun the zombie sideways. It fell to its knees. Without the human reflex to put its hands out in front, it smashed chin first into the gravel driveway, an arc of brownish gore spraying out onto the sun-bleached stones.

I changed my grip and stabbed downwards with the spike. I missed. Some instinctive part of me had assumed the zombie would be stunned, that it would stay prone. But it didn’t. It was already rising to its knees as the point dug into the dirt.

As it stumbled to its feet, its hand batted out at the wooden shaft, knocking the pike sideways. I was gripping it so tightly that I spun with it, and as I was staggering backwards, trying to regain my balance, the zombie was already standing up. The second creature was almost at its side. Kim tugged at my elbow, pulling me back a step, just as that first zombie snapped at me once more.

I levelled the pike and speared it forward just as the creature lunged, its own weight, adding to the force of my blow, drove the point through its skull. It collapsed, taking the pike with it.

The second zombie, the remains of a solitary ski boot on its left foot making its movement slow and awkward, tripped forward. I took another pace backwards, and another, as I tugged at the hatchet in my belt. My eyes still on the creature, I staggered sideways as Kim roughly pushed me out of the way.

She let the axe fall to her side as the zombie got closer. It was five paces away when its mouth opened and it began to snap. She gripped the axe, two-handed, and brought it round in a huge sweeping arc, down onto the creature's skull. It collapsed to its knees, its face split in two, the axe blade buried deep in its neck.

It was brutal. It was efficient. It was, in its way, stunning. Above all, it was terrifying. I had done something similar myself more times than I can count, but watching someone else do it is different. Truly, we have become the barbarians inside the gates.

“They move fast,” Kim said, as she cleaned her axe.

“Not much faster than walking pace,” I replied, retrieving the pike. “Maybe five miles an hour. Perhaps a little more. They haven't the co-ordination to run.”

“Huh,” she grunted.

“That was the first one you've killed. Hand to hand I mean?” I asked clumsily.

“Huh,” she grunted again and headed towards the house.

The doors and windows were still closed and secure. The house was neither infested with the undead nor had it been looted, though rodents and insects had been there long before us. Anything edible and not impervious to small teeth had been devoured, right down to the labels on the tins in the cupboards.

“The glue,” Kim said as she placed the last of three unidentifiable tins into her bag. “They eat it. The paper they shred for their nests.”

 

We found the mp3 players upstairs in a pair of bedrooms that had once belonged to two teenagers. The portable speakers took longer, and we were about to give up and try a different house when I found two sets hidden, perhaps as a sanction during some inter-sibling war, in the back of one of the living-room cupboards.

We tested the players by me taking them into a cupboard in what we reckoned was the centre of the house, whilst Kim barricaded the outside with cushions, ready to hammer loudly the moment she judged the sound too much. I turned them on. They worked.

“If we had time,” I said when I came out, “I'd prefer better equipment.”

“Or a different selection of music?” she asked. “But we don't have time.”

 

We left the house and parted ways. Kim went back towards the village to get in place to do the actual rescuing of the baby. I headed west, back the way we'd come, to create the diversion.

I needed somewhere close enough that the sound would carry to the village, but somewhere far enough away that the undead wouldn't be able to hear the baby if it cried whilst they were making their escape.

I found a low-slung shed, about a mile from the village, which had once been used either by pigs or cattle, or perhaps even turkeys for all I could tell from the scattering of small bones about the floor. I created a ramp out of some old planking and crates and climbed up to the roof.

Decades of rust had eaten away the bolts holding two of the sheets of corrugated steel together. I levered them apart, taped the mp3 player to the side of the speakers and jammed them into the gap. Then I climbed down and headed east towards the town.

 

It was pleasant being on my own again. Not nice, not good, way short of great, just pleasant. It was the solace of solitude. As I walked through the fields, I had that feeling of being alone in a vast world. I can see how it turned Cannock and Sanders mad, but not me. I felt alone, but not lonely, not the last man on Earth, because whilst it was pleasant to be out there on my own, it wasn't anything more than that. Company, stilted and awkward as it was with Kim, was far better than what I've known these last few months. No, I was relishing the brief pleasure of temporary isolation in the knowledge that companionship was only a short breadth of time away.

 

About five hundred metres to the north and west of the village is a field in which there is some kind of weather monitoring gear. I think the miniature windmill thing is for calculating wind speed, and the enlarged test tube possibly measures rainfall, or it might be humidity. I’m not sure.

During most school holidays, except the one I spent at Longshanks Manor, I stayed with Jen Masterton at her family pile up in Northumberland. We had the run of hundreds of acres, getting underfoot of dozens of tenant farmers desperately trying to provide for their families.

When, a few decades later, we were looking for a portfolio for her to specialise in, it seemed only natural to pick agriculture. It was when we were trying to put together a press release that we discovered that spending our childhood covered head to foot in dirt, was not the same as understanding anything about the crops grown in it. We stumped for nuclear power instead.

So that array could have been part of some RFID system to track the movement of a herd, or for monitoring the frequency of crop-circles, or counting the number of bees per field or any of a million other things. I’m going to assume it had something to do with the weather.

I stood up, careful to stand with the equipment between the village and myself. I thought I was far enough away that the undead wouldn't be able to see me, but I didn't want to take risks, nor be rushed. I strapped the mp3 player and speakers as high as I could reach, making sure they were secure. Then I hesitated.

This was the first music I was going to listen to since that dreary choral stuff they'd played on the emergency broadcast. I scanned the playlists, looking for some tune I recognised. I found nothing. I settled on the list with the most tracks and let the music play. A tinny base beat came from the mp3 player's built in speaker. I checked that it was set to shuffle and repeat, plugged in the speakers and turned them on.

As a guitar squealed, and the bass beat sped to a cacophonous crescendo, one by one the heads of the undead turned. I knew They weren't looking at me, not really, but it did seem like it. As the sound, surely the loudest heard since the death of our society, certainly the loudest in our silent world, seemed to bounce off the clouds themselves, the undead started moving towards the hill.

It wasn't an orderly march, as a director might have elicited from a cast of extras. Rather it was the shoving, pushing scrum of the mob. Some at the back, what had been the front of the crowd gathered around the baby and its refuge, now pushed through to the front. By dint of being less desiccated, or with fewer injuries or just by virtue of being younger when They turned, They were the ones with the greater strength. Some zombies were knocked down, and were trampled underfoot. Others staggered, and were shoved along as the pack shifted and started to flow away from the village.

I was standing, about thirty metres higher than, and two fields and a scraggly hedge away from, the road. I watched as the first zombie walked straight into the gate at the bottom of the hill. It was a small creature, possibly a child when it had turned. Its arms waved through the gate, not trying to push it open but trying to walk through it. The gate held. I hadn't considered that. I watched another walk into the hedge and become stuck in the brambles and thorns. I hadn't considered that either.

I panicked. I took two steps down the hill, as another zombie, a much larger one, walked into the gate. This time it moved with a jarring clang I could hear even over the music. Then another, and another and another, then the weight of a dozen bodies was pushing at the gate.

The track finished. I saw the gate start to shift and twist. The next song began, and as a saxophone began a soulful lament, the gate toppled into the field.

I turned and started to walk along the crest of the hill back towards the shed. I didn't hurry, though. I didn't feel any need. I thought I was safe, and I didn't want to tax my leg, not until I had to. Then I spotted another creature coming from the northeast, angling across the fields towards the music. That was just one more thing I hadn't considered, that I'd be calling the undead not just from the village, but from every direction around. That was when I began to hurry.

 

I was half way across the field, still half a mile from the shed by the time the first zombie from the village reached the weather station. It stopped. It wasn't intelligence. I know it looked like it at the time. That's something I keep looking out for, some sign that perhaps They are learning, even evolving, and when that zombie stopped I thought it had. I've thought about it since, and now realise that it had heard the sound, but when it was close enough to use its eyes, it could see no prey. I’m sure that's what it was. Others reached the top of the hill, some stopping closer to the music, some further away. More arrived, and a weird milling about began as They looked, or seemed to look, for the cause of the noise.

I hurried now, running in that skipping lope that my leg brace forces upon me. It took five minutes, maybe more, to reach the shed, long enough for another track to finish and the next one to start. After I'd climbed up onto the roof, I could see at least a hundred gathered around the meteorological gear. It wasn't nearly enough.

 

I set the speakers to full and turned the music on. I didn't bother to select a playlist, just continued playing from wherever its previous owner had left off. It was an upbeat piece about love in the summertime. Thoroughly depressing under the circumstances, and totally unsuited to my darkening mood, but it was loud enough to carry to the weather station. Heads turned. Then about a quarter of Them started heading towards me. This time They moved more slowly. I watched as a zombie stopped and turned back. It walked for a few paces towards the monitoring station before turning once more and began, with a more purposeful stride, heading to the shed.

I counted to twenty, watching as some of the slower undead only reached half way up the hill before changing direction. Then I climbed down, and headed to the road.

I don't know how far that music was carrying. Miles at least. The discordant battle between the two playlists would have, in the old world, been drowned out by traffic and tractors, people and planes and all the other symphonies of life. Now, it reverberated off the landscape in a discordant jumble of sound. It was beginning to give me a headache. Worse, it was calling in the undead from every direction. None that I could see were close. I think all the zombies nearby had drifted into the village over the last few months. The ones heading my way were from much further afield. They were still too distant to see me, or so I hoped, but if I stayed out in the open, one would spot and then pursue me. And where there's one…

I picked up my pace, and made for a tumbledown cottage that had been on the verge of collapse long before the outbreak. I didn't have time to check whether the house was occupied, I just dived into a gap between a woodpile and a broken-down shed. Then I waited.

Sometimes, during the occasional quiet sections of music I heard the shuffling sound of the undead walking along the road mere feet away. Occasionally I would hear rotten cloth tear or dead branches crack as They tried to walk through the impenetrable thickets of brambles and briers bordering the fields. Sometimes, during the brief gaps between songs, I thought I heard something else, a knocking sound close by. I sat. I listened. I waited.

It took a bit under two hours, for the batteries at the weather station to run out. Then there was a brief, glorious and wonderful time, when it was just the music from the old shed. Crouched there, hidden, my leg aching from cramp, my whole body tensed to spring up if I heard any sound closer than a few yards, I got to listen to seven songs.

I couldn't tell you their names. I couldn't even tell you if they were objectively any good. To me it was sublime. It was beautiful. It was transcendent. Music's always done strange things to me, and after so long with nothing but my thoughts playing inside my head, the effect seemed amplified tenfold. It was a watershed. It was the moment when I started to think that we could do this, we could do more than survive, we could actually live. It was as if these songs were shining a light onto the world that was and the parts of it that, one day, we could have again. Like I said, music does strange things to me.

And then, as the batteries died, the music stopped. I waited. Without any other sounds, except that of the undead, I could hear the knocking more clearly. It was coming from the cottage and now it was the loudest sound I could hear.

 

I was about two miles from where we'd stashed the bikes. The plan was that if I arrived first I'd backtrack into the village to find out what was delaying Kim. If she arrived first she'd wait as long as she thought prudent, depending on who it was she'd rescued and, if necessary, we'd meet up at Brazely. We'd mapped out a route, and the assumption was that since it was unlikely that whoever she rescued would happen to have a bike, or that there was likely to be one in the restaurant, they would use mine and I would have to find another one somewhere else. It wasn't much of a plan, but there hadn't been the time, and there were too many unknowns, to come up with a better one. The question for me then was had Kim managed to get out of the village?

 

The knocking got louder. I crawled out from my hiding spot and looked over at the cottage. The windows were smeared with something a lot worse than dirt, but behind it I could just make out the humanoid outline of at least two undead. That wasn't the worrying part. It was the way that the window was partially boarded up, with tape stuck to each pane of glass. I looked over at the door. It too showed signs of reinforcement. I wasn't getting in, They weren't getting out, so there was nothing I could do to stop the noise. I had to go, somewhere, anywhere, before more zombies came.

 

The rendezvous was two miles away, but that was two miles in a straight line. I could make out the sound of the undead, still moving through the countryside. A straight line wasn't going to be possible. The Abbey was closer to forty miles away than thirty. On foot, with the undead now roused from their torpor, that suddenly seemed a lot further than it had earlier in the day. I needed speed.

There was nothing but weeds in the cottage's driveway and I couldn't see any sign of a bike amongst the detritus strewn about the garden. Going by the state of the shed and the roof, if I did find one it would be more rust than metal. I had to look elsewhere.

I crawled away to a gap between two pine trees that marked the edge of the property. I vaguely remembered spotting a cluster of newer looking houses near a wider road on the other side of the hill. It was less than a mile. I glanced up and around. I could see movement in the hedges where the undead had become entangled. The idea of trying to head across the fields didn't appeal. If I stuck to the roads, then I would only have to face those zombies that had managed to push through the hedges. Of course those were the tougher, stronger ones, but what other choice was there?

I made sure the pistol was loaded, the safety was on, and that it was secure in my pocket. Easy enough to get out in need, but not likely to fall out. I checked my gear was tight, that there were no easy-to-grab straps, then I got up and I ran.

 

Running, or as close to it as I can get with my twisted leg, turns a mile into a marathon. It's a never ending cycle of one more step, one more step, one more step, just to push through the pain. I can't fight whilst I’m running. The pike has to be a staff, a third leg, it becomes all that's keeping me up. The further I get, the more the brace jars and rubs and abrades my skin, until blood mixes with the sweat seeping down my leg.

There weren't many of Them at first, just one every fifty yards or so. A hop-skip sideways was all I needed, then it was a straight bit of road until the next zombie. Then there were two, then three, then five, and then I stopped counting.

My vision narrowed. My world closed in. I danced left to right, right to left, forward and even backwards to avoid the grasping forest of hands and snapping sea of teeth. They seemed to be everywhere. In front. Behind. Coming through the hedges to the sides. I waved my free left arm, punching at their faces, pushing at their bodies, clawing back at Them. I screamed with the pain shooting up my leg. I yelled as I felt their hands tug at my clothing. I swore as nails clawed at my hands and face. I roared my anger and hatred at all They represented, all They had done to me, to my world, until my voice was hoarse and I needed all my effort just to keep going. One more step, then just one more, then one more after that.

Then there were no more zombies. I glanced around. They were all behind me. I looked ahead. The road seemed clear. I looked down and saw the surface of the road had changed, becoming darker, the lines less faded. I saw the turning into the small development. There were six five-bedroom houses, clustered in a crescent around a pair of converted barns. Not a large development, far smaller than I’d remembered it being. I ran down the cul-de-sac, stopping by the small roundabout, turning a full circle, looking about for a bike. I saw none. What was I expecting?

The garages, I thought. In February bikes weren't left outside, they'd be locked up in a garage. I turned around once more, looking with an indecision borne of desperation. I had so little time, barely enough to look in one garage, but which?

“Act,” I told myself. “Just pick one.”

I ran to the nearest and slammed my fist against the metal garage door. All I achieved was a resounding echoing gong and a bloody smear on the flaking paintwork. Of course it didn't move, didn't open. The keys would be somewhere inside the house. I glanced back towards the road. They were two hundred yards behind, and getting closer. I didn't have time to search for keys.

I could stay and fight, except I knew I would lose and I would die. I could keep running, except now that I had stopped I didn't know if I'd be able to start again. Desperate, terrified, angry at having come so far, having gained so much, determined not to lose it, not so soon, I stuck the tip of the pike in the gap between the bottom of the garage door and the ground. I heaved.

The door didn't move. What was it Archimedes said? Give me a lever long enough and somewhere firm to stand, and I'll move the world. I looked around. I made the mistake of looking back along the road. They were one hundred and fifty yards away. Almost too close. I spotted an old zinc-galvanised watering can by the drainpipe. Fulcrum, I thought. I grabbed it, threw it close to the door and tried again. Something snapped. For a moment I thought it was the pike, but no, it was something inside, some part of the mechanism. The door shifted, clunked forward a few inches. I grabbed the bottom, scraping my knuckles on the concrete drive, and heaved at the door. It swung up and inwards, sticking about halfway. There was a gap of about three feet. I looked behind, They were less than a hundred yards away. My hand went to my pocket, checking the now reassuring weight of the pistol was still in easy reach, as I ducked into the gloom of the garage.

There was a bicycle. The garage was packed with boxes and old time junk that would, in my universe count as a looter’s paradise, but there was no time for it. No time for anything but the bike. I half dragged, half threw it outside. It wasn't even an adult's frame, it was one of those cheap BMX knock-offs, the kind you gave to placate a kid at Christmas when you know they'll have outgrown it before spring.

Seventy yards. I was tired. Dog tired, dead tired, whatever expression you want to use, I was beyond exhausted. I was drained, but I wasn't going to give up. I half carried, half wheeled the bike away from the road, through the back garden opposite, over the small fence and into the lane beyond. I kept on, until I got to the top of a slight rise, then I got on the bike and let gravity carry me down the hill and away.

 

I travelled east then south then west then north, a huge circling of the compass before I found a familiar looking road. I don't know how long it took, but surely it can't have been more than thirty or forty minutes. Perhaps it was, because when you add to it the time spent waiting for the music to stop, by the time I got to the rendezvous I wasn't surprised to find both the bicycles were missing.

A note, pinned to the door with a kitchen knife, read ‘Bill. Gone to Abbey.’ And that was it. I didn't stay any longer than it took to read that note. The undead were on my heels. We'd woken all the dormant zombies in the neighbourhood and now They seemed to be on every road, down every lane and I was barely keeping ahead of Them. I kept going, with no real plan except to head towards the Abbey, not thinking about the distance, not thinking about anything but the few yards of road in front of me.

 

The further I travelled, as yards turned to miles, as I outpaced the undead chasing me, I began to notice something different about the zombies on the road ahead of me. More and more were heading in the same direction I was. I realised that They must be following Kim. What else could explain it? I tried to pick up my pace, tried to catch up, tried to work out how far ahead she was. But the saddle was too close to the pedals. To push down I had to half stand. With my leg twisted, I could only manage that for a minute at most before I had to sit, rest, and freewheel until I caught my breath, gritted my teeth and tried again.

Once I had to dismount, at a spot where an old tractor had been abandoned in the middle of a country lane. Three of the undead were standing in the narrow gap between it and the hedgerow. I was too tired to use the pike. I took out the pistol.

The first shot hit the tractor. The second missed the leading zombie, hitting the outstretched hand of the one behind. The third shot hit the first zombie in the chest. With the fourth I killed it. It took nine rounds to kill those three and They were barely moving. Kim must have done more than just a little target shooting or casual weekend hunting to have become so proficient.

 

After that, twice, when the undead blocked the road, I dismounted and used the bike to push a way through the hedgerows, and took to the fields. It was slower, but safer.

I arrived here, at the garage, four hours after Kim. It's an odd little place, a mixture of high-end extravagance and fourth-hand wrecks. I'd seen the undead outside, six of Them, by the main gate. I was going to give it a wide berth, to head across the fields to shelter in a house I could make out in the distance when I heard the baby crying. I knew it was the one Kim had rescued, I don't think misfortune would extend to trapping two infants in this nightmare land.

 

 

June 30^th – 10:15 p.m.

 

Instead of watching Bill exhaust himself even further, I’ve said that whilst he sleeps, I will write down the account of how I rescued Annette and Daisy.

Escorted, sorry, not rescued. Annette is reading this over my shoulder and she wants me to make that clear. This, then, is how I escorted Annette and Daisy out of the village. Where to begin? Daisy is the baby. I would say she is around nine months old. She's just working out how to crawl, and except when she's crying, finds everything absolutely fascinating. Annette is thirteen. She rescued Daisy from London, but that is another story.

 

After Bill and I split up, I headed back to the village. What didn't dawn on me until I was halfway there, was that I was also halfway between the zombies and the music that was going to start any second. We didn't think of that, either, did we Bill?

In the village, there is an annex to the old Post Office, which I think had been used for depositing parcels outside of opening times. In the building's new incarnation as a set of cramped flats, this partially enclosed hut was the home to a multi-coloured plethora of wheelie-bins. That was at the east end of the village, not on the high street itself, but off a side road. Through a knothole, across the road and along the alley between two cottages, I had a reasonable view of the edge of the pack of zombies.

I was concealed from the undead, that's true enough, but the bins, overflowing before the evacuation, were now filled with a sodden rotten mess. The ground was carpeted with a thick layer of moss and mud, which fractured under the merest pressure. Each shifting footfall, every tiny adjustment of weight, and the surface would crack, exposing the foul smelling slime underneath.

The music started. Through the knothole, I saw the undead slowly stream out of the village. That disorderly procession seemed to take forever.

The house opposite had a flat roof with a view of the high street. Once the stream had turned to a trickle, I left the annex, crept across the road, and climbed up. I shot the undead that I could see. It wasn't easy. Twenty-three bullets to kill thirteen zombies. It was wasteful, but it's not like target practice, it's not even like hunting. I'd learned on a rifle with a comically large calibre, a ‘let's give it to the girl to teach her a lesson’ gun. The hole one of its bullets would leave in a deer would kill the animal regardless of where it hit.

With the undead, though, it has to be a head shot every time. Not just that, but a good, centre shot. I hit one of them with a glancing blow. It was a lanky gangling thing, wearing the remains of a tattered kilt or tartan skirt, I couldn't even guess which. Its head kept bobbing back and forth, its neck twisting, craning round, whilst its feet seemed anchored to the same spot. I tracked its movement, tried to get a feel for the rhythm of it before I fired. It bobbed right when I was expecting it to go left. The zombie went flying, and I didn't realise, until it stood up a few minutes later, that the bullet had only grazed along its face, taking off its ear. No, it's not easy.

When I was sure I couldn't see any more, knowing that wasn't the same as killing them all, I climbed down and went into the village. I don't know how to describe those few minutes. How do I get across the feeling of isolation and impending dread as I walked down the narrow alleyway? How can anyone explain that gnawing expectation of pain and death as I stepped out into the street? How do I express the fearful doubt as the zombies turned towards me, the nausea, the almost overwhelming desire just to turn and run? I can't. If you've lived this long, if you've been through it, you know, and if you haven't, then be thankful.

There were three of the undead left in the high street. I unslung the axe. It was over in minutes. I went over to the restaurant, called out, and waited for a reply. That was when our plans hit another hitch. Annette had so thoroughly barricaded the door that there was no way in, not from the high street. We met up around the back. We had to leave the buggy behind. With the music still playing we couldn't risk taking the road, instead, with Annette carrying Daisy, and me carrying my axe, we headed off out through the village, and cut across the fields. Not all the undead had gone.

Practice doesn't make it any easier. I don't mean physically. This axe was designed for fighting knights in armour. The undead, they seem to burst under its weight. Each time, though, I can't help thinking that this is a person, someone like me who just picked the wrong straw. With the rifle, I can see their faces. I can take the time to apologise first, to wish them well on their journey. Walking through that waist-high grass, not knowing at what moment or from what direction a desiccated mouth would snap up at us, there was no time to do anything but swing the axe and hope.

Twice in that field we were attacked by the undead. They had been stationary for so long that the grass and weeds had grown up to ensnare them, trapping them in place. Even the sound of distant music hadn't been enticing enough to get them to struggle free of their organic chains. The sound of humans close by, of a girl crooning gently to a baby, that was different. One moment we were walking along, the next a snarling apparition, all teeth and hands, jumped up, appearing from nowhere. I swung. They died. I apologised afterwards.

 

By the time we got to the rendezvous I knew we couldn't wait for Bill. It wasn't safe there. It wasn't going to be safe anywhere that wasn't far away. We took the bikes, both of them. I felt bad about that, even though Bill and I had agreed it might be necessary. I rigged up a sling for Daisy, and carried her on Bill's bike. Annette took mine. There was no way of fighting, no possibility of doing anything but cycling as fast as we could. When we set off I'd actually been worried that Annette wouldn't be able to keep up. She outpaced me in seconds.

 

The sight, yesterday, of Bill checking for fuel had reminded me of being carted around car showrooms as a kid. I remembered how the cars were always ready for a test drive. How the sales reps even had the keys in their pockets, ready to throw a potential punter into a car where they'd be a captive audience for a long hour's drive of hard selling. I knew we weren't going to make it back to the Abbey on the bikes, not with so many of the undead on the roads. We needed a car and I could think of nowhere else to look.

No. That's not quite right. Bill was honest with what he's written, I suppose I owe it to him, or someone, or maybe to myself, to be honest in turn. I was scared.

It was suddenly being responsible for these two other lives. I can't explain exactly why, but everything then, and now, it isn't about me, it isn't about survival or escaping or anything else. It's about Daisy and Annette and their future. I’m not explaining this very well. I mean that it is ensuring that they get to have a future, and that there is a future for them to have.

This is the second car showroom we tried. Someone had already been to the first and taken all the petrol. They'd even left rubber tubing in half a dozen fuel tanks. That's a sign of planning, I suppose, and of a hurried exit. When that was and who they were, I didn't bother trying to find out.

When we arrived here, I closed the gate, checked we had a car that worked and enough fuel in the tank to get us to the Abbey. Then we decided to rest and wait until morning. Safer to drive then, when we could see the undead on the roads.

Then Bill turned up. We helped him climb over the fence, using the same improvised rope Annette had insisted on making in case we needed to make a sudden escape and couldn't use the front gate. And that's about it. We're safe, for now. We'll siphon off the fuel in the other cars, then drive back to the Abbey. What more needs to be said?

 

 

Day 111, Heritage Motors

30 miles south of Brazely Abbey

 

08:15, 1^st July

I was woken at around five by the sound of Kim singing. We'd spent the night in the windowless break-room, and by the look of her I don't think she'd slept at all. She was holding the baby, crooning a quiet lullaby, Annette curled up on the seat next to her. I got up, and as quietly as I could, went into the relative privacy of the workshop to clean the leg and repair the brace.

There's a veritable foundry's worth of steel in there, more than enough to turn any car into a tank, if you know how to do it. I certainly don't. After I'd replaced the padding around the straps, I went from window to window, counting the undead outside the car showroom’s fence, until I heard Annette wake.

“How many are out there?” Kim asked, when I returned to the small office.

“Not many. Perhaps a dozen around the gate,” I replied. “About the same number scattered along the sides.”

They're active as well, trying to get in,” Kim said. “They won't, but it just doesn't feel safe when you can see their arms flailing through the gaps in the fence's metal supports. I've tried telling myself that there aren't that many, that, really, we are in no danger. It doesn't work. How far is it to the Abbey? Thirty miles?”

“About that.”

“We'll have to drive back,” she said. “What do you think?”

I took a moment before I answered, not to think about the question, but about the way she’d framed it. “It would be six hours by bike. At best,” I said. “But we'd have to do it in one day. I can't think of anywhere between here and there that would be safe to stop for the night. On the other hand, a bicycle is quieter, and it would only be half an hour before we'd be far enough away from here that these undead wouldn't be a threat.”

“Yes. Maybe,” Annette said. “But then there's going to be more. There's always more. What happens when you find the road blocked and you have to take a detour, and then you're still a day away from the Abbey?”

I took a moment to work out what the question actually was. Kim stifled a laugh. It was a pleasant sound, at least from her and at least in that it made a change from her usual dour stoicism.

“If a road's blocked,” I said, “it'll be blocked just the same, whether we're on bikes or by car. You're worried about Daisy—”

“No. That's not what I meant,” Annette said testily. “I mean the unknown. You don't know what's out there, none of us do. However we get there, we don't know what's going to happen on the way, so why take the risk of an extra day or two when you can do the journey in a few hours? And it's not just Daisy. It's you as well. You wouldn't make thirty miles on a bike.”

“It is dangerous—” I began.

“What isn't, these days?” Kim said. “Besides, you were looking for a car just a few days ago, so what's changed?”

Everything and nothing, I thought, as I looked over at Annette. She was studiously emptying individual sachets of coffee creamer into the saucepan. Of all the places one might expect to find food, a car showroom is not near the top of the list. All we had found to add to our meagre supplies was the coffee creamer and half a kilo of sugar, left open to the air so long it had turned into a syrupy glue.

“We should take all the fuel then, not just fill the tank, but every can and container we can find,” I said, because I still mean to go on to Lenham, and there is still the question of what happens after that.

Four mouths to feed come winter. We'll need a lot more supplies, not just food, but clothes, crockery, books, and whatever it is that babies need. That's if I can make it back from the facility to the Abbey. The more I think about that motorway, the more certain I am that once I cross it, I won’t be able to come back. Is it fair to leave Kim with the responsibility for these children? Don't I also have some kind of duty to Annette and Daisy? Perhaps I can persuade Kim and Annette that we should all go to Lenham and after that, well, perhaps just going away will be enough.

Terrified activity followed by tedious boredom, that's what life has become, and right now I really want a few days rest and boredom. Yes, driving is a very good idea.

 

14:00, 1^st July

That's five hours so far, spent siphoning the fuel from the cars. We've been taking it in turns. One of us on the roof of the office, keeping watch, the other with the rubber tube. Five hours and we've only managed a third of the vehicles. Probably less. I stopped counting an hour ago. I just didn't realise it would take this long. The only plus side to it all is that since my mouth tastes like petrol, I don't have any appetite. Are there any calories in petrol? If so I won't need to eat for a month.

18:00, 1^st July

We're staying the night here. There's a good four hours of daylight left, but that might not be enough to get back to the Abbey. A couple more undead appeared during the day, but there are still few enough that it's safer here than being stuck out on the road. Yes, it's safe, even if it doesn't feel that way.

 

 

July 1^st – 7 p.m.

 

Annette has asked me to write down her story:

 

“When they told us we'd have to leave home, Mum wanted to stay. She said it was safer. Daddy said no. He said the city wasn't safe. He said we should trust the government. They shouted. They were shouting all night. I must have fallen asleep because Daddy was shaking my arm, saying 'Wake up!' They had three bags packed. One for Mum, one for Daddy, one for me. The streets were full of people. I'd never seen so many before.

“Once, at Christmas, we went up to London to see the lights, and we went shopping to Selfridge’s because Daddy wanted to buy Mum some chocolates. We'd had a family meeting and decided we weren't doing big presents that year. It was because Christmas had become too commercial, except I knew it was because Mum had lost her job and then Auntie Carla's boiler broke.

“She wasn't really an Aunt. She lived next door with her son, Maxy. He was two. Carla didn't have the money to pay for a babysitter so we'd look after him when she worked nights. Auntie Carla didn't have anyone else, just Maxy and us. It was sad. She was always sad.” She paused for a moment.

“So that Christmas we went up to London. We were going to look at all the shop windows and see the lights and get some chocolates and it was going to be fun. It was going to be like Christmas without the cleaning up and the cooking and the mess and the spending money on things we really didn't need. It was meant to be fun, but it wasn't.

“There were so many people on the buses we had to wait an hour until one came by that we could fit into. Then, when we got to Oxford Street, we found they'd closed off the road, so it was just for pedestrians. Except there were so many people that you couldn't even get near the shops. Then there was the music, all these carollers all singing different songs, all competing so you couldn't hear any single one. Mum didn't like it, so we came home and got a takeaway instead and shared it with Auntie Carla. Which, actually, was fun.” A smile briefly flitted across her face, before the memory was replaced with a more recent one.

“I think it was about a week after the zombies started, that Carla disappeared. One evening she came over to talk to Daddy. The next day I went round to see if I could help with Maxy. That was what I'd been doing all week, since the schools closed. The lights were off. That was normal though. Carla never had the lights on, even when she was in. Too expensive. I knocked. There was no answer. I went back and told Mum, and she didn't know where Auntie Carla was. When Daddy came back, he'd been out trying to find a friend he knew who would sell us some food, he said that Carla had told him she was going away. Then I was sent to my room and they had another row. One of the bad kind, the one where they didn't shout at all.

“When we opened the door, when we had to come out to join the evacuation, it was worse than London at Christmas. Everyone was carrying bags. Not shopping bags, but suitcases, piled onto buggies, prams and wooden carts. I saw at least two people who'd tied boxes and things onto skateboards and were just pulling them along. It wasn't right, not for London. Everyone kept looking around and bumping into people and shoving, but no one said anything. I mean, everyone was silent, even the people travelling together. No one said 'excuse me' or 'sorry' or helped someone if they fell over. It was like everyone was walking down the same empty street together.

“I don't know when I lost Mum and Daddy. We'd been walking for hours, but we were still in London. Probably it was hours. No more than four, though. We'd left at about seven and I wasn't hungry. I don't know where we were, either. It was the same shops on different streets. I was in front, you see. Mum and Daddy were behind, and Daddy had a hand on my shoulder. It wasn't like I needed to know where to go. We were just following everyone else. Step, step, step, step. I tried singing but Daddy shushed me. I don't know why. I think everyone would have been happier if they sang.

“Then I realised his hand wasn't on my shoulder. I turned around and he was gone. I looked for Mum but she was gone too. I tried to walk backwards, to find them. But I couldn't. There were too many people. Too many prams and buggies and bicycles. No one offered to help. I cried. I stood there and I cried and no one cared.

“So I stopped crying. What was the point? I pushed my way across to the side of the road and climbed up onto a bin. I couldn't see them so I shouted. I called out. They didn't answer. They were gone.

“I thought I might make it back to the house. Or I thought I should try. I knew we'd been walking for hours, but we can't have got far. I mean, how big can London be? It was all those people, all walking so slowly, that was the problem. I climbed down and tried to get back up the road. There were too many people. I knocked over this one man's suitcase. It was the kind with wheels, and on top he'd piled up a box with this blanket over it. When I knocked it over the blanket fell off and these tin cans rolled across the street. He started shouting at me. He tried to grab me with one hand and with the other he was trying to gather up his cans. I ran to the side of the road, and ducked under the barrier to a side street.

“I didn't know what to do. Daddy said if you get lost look for the police. Mum didn't trust the police. She said look for a firefighter or an ambulance. But I couldn't see one. It was just street after street filled with people leaving London. Too many people. I saw a pharmacy. Its door was broken. I went in. Bottles and boxes were everywhere. It was like someone had come in and swept everything off the shelves and dumped them to the floor. I went through to the back. The drawers and cabinets were open, and the medicines were all over the floor. It was such a waste. There was a storeroom behind there. It was filled floor to ceiling with nappies and shampoo. I hid. I waited.

“When I got hungry I'd go out into the shop for food. Rusks and baby food. Not nice, but better than what we had been eating. We'd not had a decent meal since the rationing started. We'd not really had a decent meal since Christmas.

“Once I heard people come into the shop. They were looking for something. When they saw all the medicines on the floor they swore and said someone had beaten them to it. Then they left. They didn't see me. Then it got dark and I slept.

“When I woke, I filled a plastic bag with some food. Mostly baby food, but food's food, right? I went outside. The streets were empty. Everything was quiet. It was wrong. London shouldn't have been like that. London should have been busy. But it wasn't. It was dead.

“I thought about heading home, but if I did, if Mum and Daddy were there, then we'd only have to walk this way again. If they weren't, then I couldn't wait there for them. There was no food in the house. If they waited and I didn't turn up then sooner or later they'd go out to join the evacuation. So I decided to follow everyone else. I'd go south and I would meet up with them in the enclave.

“It was easy to see where everyone had gone. The road was full of clothes and bags and all sorts of rubbish. Buggies and prams were pushed to the side of the road where people had left them. All of their contents were scattered over the pavement where other people had emptied them out looking for who knows what. Food, probably. Everyone was hungry before the evacuation.

“They said, on the TV, that there would be buses and lorries coming along to collect the people who'd not been able to keep up. No buses had been along that road. I could tell from the way that none of the rubbish had been crushed by the tyres. Sometimes I thought I saw a curtain twitch, but I can't be certain.

“Then I heard Daisy. It was from a window above a row of shops. The door to the flats was open. I went in. I went upstairs. I thought she was alone. She wasn't.” Annette rolled up a trouser leg to show a small, perfectly formed set of bite marks.

“Daisy's brother. He must have been seven or eight. Daisy was on top of a wardrobe, out of reach.” And that was all she said for a while.

 

“I don't know her real name. Daisy was what grandad called grandma. I always liked it. So that was what I decided she should be called. I found a buggy for her. There were lots to choose from in the street. Then I found another pharmacy. I had to bandage my leg. We stayed there for a couple of days, until I felt better. Then we left. I thought if we could get to the coast, to the enclave, it would be okay. We'd find my parents and there would be help for Daisy. I didn't think we'd have to walk the entire way. They said there was going to be coaches and buses, and I thought there would be helicopters out looking for people like us.

“It took ages. Weeks. Daisy would start crying and then we'd be chased and I'd have to pick her up and we'd have to hide somewhere until she quietened down. That would take a day or so, and then we'd have to go and find another buggy and more food. Pharmacies were the best place for that. All the medicines and bandages and stuff had gone, but never the nappies or baby food.

“It took about a month. Maybe less. I’m not sure. It was hard to keep track of days. Sometimes we'd manage to go for an entire day without being chased, and sometimes, if we found somewhere safe, we'd stay there for a few nights so I could rest. So maybe it was a bit more than a month, maybe it was less, but one day I was walking down a road, pushing the buggy, and I saw it. I'd been looking at it for hours, maybe even for a day, but I hadn't really seen it because I'd been watching out for zombies. It was a fire, a big fire. We got to the top of a hill and we saw that there was a city in flames. A whole city, and all along the horizon there was nothing but smoke and flames. I think that was Southampton. We turned around. I mean, what was the point of going on?

“I decided we needed to get away. I had an Aunt, a proper Aunt, my mother's sister, she lived in Wales. She didn't get on with Mum. I was about five when we went to see her. Just before the evacuation, Mum and Daddy were up late, talking. They didn't know I was listening. Daddy suggested we go there, that it would be safer, but Mum said it was too far away. I didn't know exactly where she lived, and Wales is big, but it's not as big as England, and where else was I going to go?

“Then Daisy got sick. She wouldn't stop crying, not even to sleep. We found a school, a really old, rambling one, built with red brick and with a tower at the top. We stayed there. It was empty and big enough inside that Daisy's crying didn't carry far outside. I was exhausted. I slept when she'd let me, which wasn't often, and sometimes I'd climb to the top of the tower to look out. Then one day, in the distance, I saw smoke. Not smoke like at the coast, but this thin wisp from a chimney. I went up to watch it each day. I liked being up that tower. It felt safe. Then, a few days later, I saw a flag, and it hadn't been there before. A flag and smoke from a chimney, I was sure that had to mean people.

“It wasn't far away. I was sure I could reach it, but not until Daisy stopped crying, except she wouldn't stop crying. We were running out of food. I had to leave her there. I had to go out to find food and hope she'd be safe. I placed her high up, on top of a bookshelf, way out of reach and went out. I…” she stopped and rubbed at her shoulder.

“I found food. It took a while,” she went on, “but I mustn't have closed the door properly when I left. They had gotten into the school, dozens of Them. Daisy was safe. I grabbed her and again we had to run. I tried to make for the house with the flag. I tried to remember where it was, but it wasn't like I had a choice which way to go. When Daisy stopped crying, when I found somewhere to hide for the night, I'd become completely lost.

“I found a new buggy and we went off looking for the house. I’m sure we'd have found it eventually, but we kept running out of food. It was too heavy to take much with us and I didn't like leaving her. That's why we were in the restaurant. I had a new plan. This time I wanted the zombies to hear Daisy cry, I wanted Them to all gather outside the chip shop, then we were going to sneak out through the attics to the end of the street. We'd have been able to take enough food to last us weeks. Enough time to find that house.” She paused and took a breath. “So, you see, we didn't need rescuing, but thank you anyway.”

 

22:00, 1^st July

Annette has gone to sleep now, so there’s no danger of her reading this over my shoulder. She had less than a week's worth of baby food left for the two of them. That's more food than Kim and I were carrying, but still, it's not much. Whether she'd have been able to escape or not, I can't say. She had more of a plan than I did when I climbed through that window at the Manor, and she's survived well enough so far. It's not my place to criticise, certainly not to judge. I doubt I'd have done nearly as well in her position, nor acted half as calmly. Luck, I suppose that was it. The luck to be immune, but there's something else as well. What's that word they used in those old war movies? Grit, that's it. Luck and grit.

Before she turned in, we had a discussion about what we should do next, none of us quite sure whether it was “we” or not.

“I think we should find the house with the flag. That's what I’m going to do, anyway. Find other survivors. That's important,” Annette said. She sounded determined. I didn't know that I could stop her, either. Not if I was intending on leaving her and Kim and going off to Lenham.

“But, after the Manor—” I began.

“I've got the rifle now,” Kim said flatly. “From the sound of it, there's fresh water, and food at the Abbey. We'd just need more people and it could work. For all of us.”

“There's food now,” I said. “But in the winter, it's going to be cold and hungry just like anywhere else.”

“Here,” Kim said, pulling a small sachet out of her pocket. “Vinegar. To preserve the food through the winter.”

“Right,” I said, taking it sceptically. “Of course, we'd need more. A lot more. Perhaps we could cycle back there. Perhaps in a week or two the zombies would have dispersed.”

“The point,” Kim said, with exasperation, “I was making, is chip shops. There's one in every street of every town, or near enough. Salt and vinegar in every one, and who'd've looted it? Sugar too. Except Annette had eaten all that there was in that place.”

“We should find her a toothbrush,” I muttered, automatically, but I was thinking about that house, about how easy it would be to find. All we needed to do was go to a library and find a directory of private schools, then drive or cycle around until we found one with a tower. It wouldn't take long, just a couple of days. Then, as Kim said, with more people the Abbey could be turned into a fortress. The walls could be extended, more crops planted, the fruit preserved, furniture and fittings could be brought up from the houses in the village. It could be turned into so much more than just a pile of ruins. And all it would take was a just a little more time.

It seems the sensible thing to do, but it also seems like just another diversion, just a few more days of putting off what I have to do.