CHAPTER THREE

 

 

17.32 pm

 

GABE KNOCKED GENTLY on the door but entered without waiting for an answer. He didn't acknowledge the other occupant in the room at first, merely took a dining chair from beside the fireplace and carried it over to the bay window overlooking the gardens. He positioned it next to the woman in the armchair, silently staring out at Flowers' manicured greenery, equally unresponsive to her guest. Gabe sat down and gazed out on the lawns below for several hushed moments, the gloom of evening stealing in and sapping the light from the afternoon. Beyond the treetops at the far end of his employer's estate, blue-black clouds massed threatening a downpour, hearkening the approaching darkness. Already, shadows were gathering in the room, and when he turned finally to face her it was difficult to discern her expression; her profile was partially obscured by a heavy blonde fringe. She was propped against several cushions, and although her eyes were open she was utterly motionless.

"Anna," he said, his voice catching in his throat. He felt uncomfortable breaking the quiet, and his words felt strange leaving his lips and inhabiting this place. A clock ticked in the background, spacing out the seconds. "Anna, I just thought I'd come say hello. I haven't had a chance to see you recently."

No reply; indeed, if it wasn't for the slightest twitch in her pupils as they remained fixed on the view through the glass it would be impossible to tell if she was conscious.

"I hope you've been keeping well," Gabe persevered. "I'm sure you're being well looked after, but if there's ever anything you need, you know you only have to ask and I'll do everything I can to help. You know that, don't you?" With the question hanging in the air between them unanswered, he tried another tack and followed her gaze to the gardens. "I must've said it before, but you do have a beautiful outlook to wake up to every morning. Especially at this time of year. The splashes of bright yellows and mauves, the scent of honeysuckle... Harry sure does have green fingers."

Smiling despite himself, his expression froze when her head turned suddenly and she looked at him. There was no emotion behind her smooth, pale face; no anger, or longing, or disgust, just an achingly perfect mask framed by her blonde ringlets. Her skin was soft and delicate, but painfully lacking in colour; even her lips were drained of blood. An observer standing at a distance might suggest that she was wearing foundation, so uniform was her whiteness, but Gabe knew that there wasn't a touch of make-up on her. Her ice-blue eyes were all the more startling for the contrast to her complexion, as sharp and flawless as a spring morning; he could not gaze into those twin shards for long without his own orbs pricking with a desire to hold, comfort and protect her. They looked instantly sad and knowing, innocent and troubled.

"Anna?" he started, aware that the volume of his voice had dropped even further, now little more than a whisper.

"What do you want from me?" she said tremulously, her stare unwavering. "What do you think I can give you?"

At first he couldn't reply, as the accusation rang in his head. What possible recompense could he offer her for what she had lost? As ever, the suggestion nagged at the back of his mind that his interest in her well-being was as much a salve to his guilt as it was a natural wish to watch over her. At best it meant he could rest easy in his bed, satisfied that he had at least made the effort. The fact that there had been no visible improvement in her condition for the past five years was clearly evidence that his guardianship made no difference. Yet still he made these visits, attempting to engage her in conversation, but rarely waking her from her daze. Perhaps she was torturing him, conscious of him squirming beneath her cool gaze, aware that as long as she was withdrawn from him, she was forever beyond his reach... If it was punishment, did he deserve any less?

"Anna... you don't have to give me anything, other than to accept that all I want is the best for you," he finally said. "I'm not here to demand or cajole anything out of you. I just want you to know that I'm always here for you."

"You're looking for forgiveness; that's what you're after, isn't it?" He flinched at the flecks of spite that flew in his direction. She turned her head away from him, as if to dismiss his presence. "Don't you understand nothing can change what has happened? Not your words, not your actions, and not your honourable intentions. What's done is done and we're trapped in the consequences."

"I'm trying to help us all move on—"

"What for? Where is there to move to?" Any emotion that had blossomed in her words now drained away, replaced by an inaudible murmur. "The time for living is over."

"Gabriel."

He turned to see Flowers standing in the doorway, then glanced back at Anna; she had retreated back into herself, her eyes hooded, her breathing shallow. He inched his hand out to rest it upon her forearm, but it hovered a few inches above her before he pulled it back. Gabe quietly got to his feet and walked over to his boss, who nodded for him to leave the room, pulling the door shut after him.

"What did you talk to her about?"

"Nothing," the younger man replied. "Just offering my support, like always."

"She seemed upset."

Gabe shook his head. "She refuses to open up. I want her to progress past the state she's in. I want to help her to develop. But it's like she's... locked."

"Son, you know her condition. Even the bods in the lab are struggling to understand her psychological mindset. You think you can get her to snap out of it?"

"What's the alternative?" He could feel his anger rising. "Keep her shut away in there like a pet? Like one of your caged test subjects?"

Harry's expression darkened. "Anna will stay with me at my discretion, and I'll treat her as I see fit. Don't overstep the mark, boy, or you'll find your little visits curtailed indefinitely. You'll have to make your heartfelt confessions to somebody else."

Gabe clenched his fists and stared at the floor, saying nothing.

"Assemble your team," Flowers ordered, striding away from him down the corridor, "and let's focus on the here and now."

An hour later, Gabe led his squad in a two-vehicle convoy down the mansion's driveway and through the gates. Before it passed out of sight, he glanced back at the house in his rear-view mirror and saw a solitary figure watching from a second-floor window. For a moment, he thought he saw it move, as if reaching out to the glass; but seconds later it was lost to shadow.

 

 

19.46 pm

 

AS FAR AS Eric Richards was concerned, when he was behind the wheel of a vehicle, he was solely in charge. It was his dominion. He'd been a contract driver for St Thomas' for the past twenty-seven years and once a man occupies this kind of position for such a length of time - or so Richards liked to believe - he could be expected to exude a certain authority and command a little respect. He'd bowed before others with a similar weight of experience in their chosen fields - the medical staff he'd dealt with briefly, the admin office he'd answered to - and wouldn't have dreamt of telling them how to do a job they'd been performing perfectly well, and often for several decades. So it was that, considering his history, having first been employed as a porter in 1959 and moved sideways into transporting supplies, he felt he had the right to assume he could occupy a level of efficient autonomy. And up until recently, that had indeed been the case.

But when the dead rose, all boundaries shifted irrevocably, and Richards was someone who liked the comforting structure of routine and the knowledge of his place in the scheme of things. He'd been working when he received a call from his wife Doreen that the news was reporting cases of mass hysteria and murder taking place all across the country. It was impossible not to be aware that something was going on, with his colleagues' blasted mobile phones chirruping every few minutes, but he'd underestimated just how widespread the crisis was. TV reports and newspapers were always blowing up situations into full-blown catastrophes, then forgetting about them the following week to focus on another scandal, so when she first spoke to him, her voice breathless with worry, he'd calmed her with platitudes and told her to take such stories with a pinch of salt. They lived in Blackheath, for heaven's sake; very little of consequence affected them in the heart of suburbia. Doreen had been persuaded to view it all with a healthy degree of scepticism - drug addicts on a rampage on a council estate, no doubt, or maybe some kind of sickness brought on by an outbreak of food poisoning - and when he said goodbye she sounded halfway convinced. He'd returned to his duties, trying to brush off the uneasy pall that had settled over him, but word was snowballing through the hospital that something was definitely very wrong.

News filtered back that Casualty was being inundated with patients - those suffering from bite wounds, mainly, complaining of being set upon by complete strangers in the street - and that numbers were rising. Richards had always prided himself on his pragmatism and his ability to stand firm when others around him were flustered, but even he couldn't dismiss the sense that they were being catapulted towards a major disaster. He'd borrowed one of the other driver's mobiles to ring Doreen. After half a dozen failed calls, the network jammed solid, he ran to a nearby phone box and tried once more. She'd answered after it had rung for a full two minutes, sounding distant and distracted, claiming she and their fourteen-year-old son Max - sent home from school as news began to spread - had been hiding upstairs because somebody had battered on the front door attempting entry. He'd told her to stay where they were and that he'd come get them. Those were his final words to her. Richards never saw or spoke to his wife or son again.

His efforts to return home were thwarted at every turn; roads snaking out of London were rammed with traffic, and the police started closing off areas considered dangerous. He abandoned his car at one point, seeing if he could perhaps make it there on foot, but every route he took saw him turned away by an official, who refused to listen to his pleas. A policeman advised him against travelling alone, and that he should seek the safety of a well-lit, well-fortified building, adding that the army was being consulted on containing the out-of-control individuals. Richards had trudged back to St Thomas', not knowing where else to go, the radio offering similar recommendations that citizens should find shelter with others in libraries, sports centres, churches, shopping malls and office complexes to ride out the coming storm. Public transport was grinding to a halt as train and underground operators abandoned their posts. All around him was chaos. He had never witnessed panic before, not in its purest form; as a child in the Blitz, every adult had seemed so reserved and resolute, waiting patiently in the Anderson shelters for the Luftwaffe to finish their night's work and then returning in the morning to pick up the pieces. Walking the city streets back to the hospital, crowds surged in every direction, equally lost and hopeless, shouting and screaming as they barged past each other, sheer fear etched on their faces. None of them, as far as he was aware, had even seen what it was that had ignited such anarchy, but the terror passed between them like a viral agent, spreading to all it touched. The monster didn't even have to raise its ugly head, and still its victims tore themselves apart to escape its approach.

He'd helped out where he could at the hospital, keeping himself busy in an effort to force from his mind the image of Doreen and Max cowering in the master bedroom, waiting for rescue. He consoled himself that it surely had to be a temporary situation, that the trouble would pass. The radio said as much, its resident experts speculating that once the armed forces entered the fray everything would be brought under control. That was until the broadcast stations went dead and they lost all contact with what was going on in the outside world. Richards felt as if he were adrift, cut off from his former life; the daily routines that he relied upon, everything he trusted and founded his beliefs upon, had fallen apart before him and he didn't have anything else left to hold on to.

Then the full horror hit, when the doctors tending the injured discovered that those bitten by the assailants became infected with their madness. A wave of violence washed through Casualty with a shocking suddenness, the corridors echoing with the cries of nurses as the bedridden abruptly rose and began to attack their carers. Richards hadn't believed the stories he was hearing from those fleeing the scene; that the bite victims had actually died, that their breath and pulse had ceased, that no brain activity could be detected, before their terrifying resurrection moments later. And the maniacs weren't merely lashing out indiscriminately, they were tearing chunks from those they could overpower, consuming the flesh with an unholy relish. Other patients - the elderly and infirm, those plugged into drips and heart monitors - could only watch helpless as the killers rounded on them too. Richards had listened to these reports, shaking his head, unwilling to accept each fresh tale of atrocity.

He plunged into the mêlée, intent on helping where he could, but was faced with a slaughterhouse, bodies littering the wards, the shiny floor now slick with blood and viscera. One of those touched by the insanity - a bearded man in a trench coat, a large portion of meat missing from his neck - dropped the flap of crimson matter he was gnawing on and staggered towards him, a moan issuing from the back of his ravaged throat. Richards grabbed a fire extinguisher without hesitation and stove in the degenerate's skull, before retreating to the bright safety of the car park.

Army and police arrived within minutes, setting up a perimeter around the hospital's entrances, allowing none of the murderers to escape. They also corralled the survivors away from the building, telling them not to go near it until they pronounced it safe. Richards sensed St Thomas' had become strategically important for some reason, or why else would the authorities be so quick to come to their aid? Armed flak-jacketed soldiers strode into the reception area, and seconds later bursts of automatic gunfire and the dull thud of explosions ripped through the walls. He overheard an officer asking an administrator where the mortuary was, and then relaying the directions into a walkie-talkie.

For several long hours, two to three hundred staff stood in the hospital grounds behind a cordon of police, waiting for someone to explain what was going on. Eventually, a ruffled soldier emerged and nodded at his captain, and the lawmen relaxed their position. A smart, severe-looking woman Richards didn't recognise - one of St Thomas' directors, he guessed - seized the initiative and demanded to know the truth. A sergeant stepped forward and, with remarkable honesty and brusqueness, replied that an escaped virus had brought the dead back to life, with cannibalistic tendencies. Infection was passed on through the saliva of the undead, and those bitten would inevitably suffer cardiac arrest and join their ranks. They could only be stopped by destroying the brain, be it either by bullet or blunt instrument. Richards had glanced at those around him as they tried to assimilate this information, their incredulity tempered by the inescapable events of the day. Many began to weep. How could they argue against what they had seen with their own eyes? He himself didn't know what to feel, a cold, heavy rock in his chest where his heart used to be.

The sergeant went on to say that the plague wasn't just localised but spreading throughout the country, and a state of national emergency had been declared. The military needed to assume command of St Thomas' as a base of operations, and was requesting that all hospital staff remain to assist them. He warned them that right now the city was a no-go zone, and that they would be better served by staying put. Richards looked at the machine guns that each soldier carried and came to the conclusion that they weren't going to be letting anyone go anywhere. So under the supervision of the soldiers, the remaining workers returned to the deathly silent wards and began the slow, laborious process of removing the corpses, or at least clearing them to the fully stocked mortuaries so makeshift control centres could be established. The hours that Richards spent carrying cadavers indelibly seared images in his mind that he would take to his grave; both the victims of the Returners - looking like they'd been set upon by wild animals - and the remnants of the ghouls themselves, riddled with bullets, chilled his blood. Each new room held a particular horror. They found a few survivors hiding in locked linen cupboards and offices, only now summoning up the courage to put their heads around the door, but for the most part the corridors were carpeted with a red morass of bodies. Noting many of the wounds on the dead, Richards suspected the military had purged the entire building with little distinction between zombies and patients; any injured were similarly blasted in the head without a second thought.

The strangest discovery was in the morgues themselves, where the catalogued cadavers that had been residing in the drawers - the DOAs from the previous few days, the flatliners - had attempted to punch their way through their steel coffins upon their resurrection. Fist-sized gouges were visible in the metal as they'd been torn open from the inside. Each slab had to be pulled out with an armed soldier standing close by, ready to put a round through the carcass within if it had somehow missed the cull.

Toiling day and night, the authorities gradually reshaped the hospital into a research base; military personnel used the wards as barracks while escorted Ministry of Defence scientists began to arrive in batches to conduct experiments on the dead they'd kept aside. Richards could not sleep for thinking of his wife, but news brought in from the outside was not good; the city was a mess, lawlessness running rampant as the plague spread with frightening rapidity. With communications failing daily, there was no way he could get word to see if she was out of harm's reach. The military posted a permanent guard, as much to stop those inside from straying as to protect them; staff were effectively warned that they would not be allowed to leave the facility. Thus Richards found himself employed on what became, over the following months, a government outpost, receiving his instructions from the captain in charge. Many of his colleagues voiced their disapproval at the military suddenly assuming command of what had been a civilian organisation, but short of staring down the barrel of a service revolver there was nothing much they could do about it. It was clear that this wasn't an isolated case; the authorities were struggling to maintain control across the country, and if it meant the boys with the guns were running the show, then everybody else had better fall in behind them.

It was errands such as tonight's delivery that Richards was tasked with: driving a truckload of medical samples to another of the MoD complexes across town. It wasn't a million miles away from the job he'd had in his previous life - that regular existence in which he'd been embedded seemed centuries ago - but it was now shorn of any shred of independence. He was accompanied in his cab by a Sergeant Perrington, who ordered him at what speed he should drive, the directions he should take, and constantly advised on what safety tips he should adhere to. Richards found it utterly demeaning for a man of his years but was as powerless as a prisoner. There were half a dozen armed guards riding in the back with the cargo, and an army van was tailgating his vehicle. In fact, the only reason they bothered to use him at all, rather than have a squaddie drive the supplies, was because he knew best how to handle the truck's temperamental gears and spongy clutch.

They were crossing Westminster Bridge when he first caught sight of something in his headlamps. He glanced in his wing mirror, and checked that the escort was still following; in fact, it was so close that if he stopped suddenly it could rear-end him. If that were the case, he would have to flare his brake lights and warn them. It was raining lightly, a sprinkle of drops peppering the windscreen, so he scraped the wipers once against the glass to get a better view, peering out into the night, the headlights casting a pool of illumination onto the road ahead. The edge of their limit just brushed against a silhouette that was jogging towards the truck, its outline barely discernible from the surrounding blackness. He could sense Perrington looking at him questioningly.

"What is it?" the sergeant asked.

"Not sure. I think there's somebody out there."

Perrington leaned forward. "A stiff?"

Richards shook his head. "I don't think so. It's moving towards us too fast. I think he's alive." He expected the army man to respond to that but there was no reply. "You want me to stop?"

"Keep going."

"But he might be in trouble—"

"You keep going," Perrington ordered sternly. "We stop for no one."

As the truck progressed across the bridge, the figure emerged into the light: he was indeed one of the living, and he looked terrified. He was little more than a teenager, probably barely into his twenties, and he was sprinting towards the truck, his arms waving in the air in an effort to get them to slow down. The rain had plastered his hair to his forehead, and Richards could even see the puffs of condensed breath blown out with each exhalation. The kid was exhausted, as if he'd been running a great distance.

"He's scared about something," the driver remarked. "I don't think he's going to take no for an answer."

"He'll soon get out of the way when he realises we aren't stopping."

"What if he's warning us about something? Could be the road's blocked."

"Then we'll find out for ourselves."

"You think that's wise?" Richards started, then fell silent for a second. "Oh shit." He tapped the brake, hearing the van behind him screech as the tyres skidded on the wet tarmac.

"What the hell are you doing?" Perrington snapped, momentarily ignoring his two-way, which barked into life on his lap as the other driver demanded to know what was going on. "I gave you an explicit order not to slow down."

"Look!" the older man yelled and lifted one hand from the wheel to point. The truck was still moving, but now coasting to a halt. The runner saw the vehicle had altered its speed, and dropped his arms, casting a glance over his shoulder, his gaze resting on the same sight that Richards was focusing his attention on.

Shuffling into the truck's beams of light was a gaggle of Returners, at least thirty in number. They shambled forwards, the kid their object of interest, their groans echoing amidst the metal stanchions of the bridge.

"Goddammit," Perrington breathed. "Put your foot down. We can go through them."

"We can't leave him here."

"I'm not going to tell you again. Now bloody drive!"

"The hell with you. Some of us are still human," Richards snarled and stomped on the brake, bringing the vehicle to a stop. Before the sergeant could lean across and grab him, he tore open his door and stepped down onto the road. The chill evening air cut through his cotton jacket and rain glued his shirt to his chest. Out here the sounds of the approaching dead carried further, their footsteps dragging along the ground in unison, the moans seemingly coming from every direction, reflecting off the surface of the Thames below them. The youngster marched quickly over to him, gulping in deep lungfuls.

"Thank Christ," he said quietly, putting a hand on Richards' shoulder as he bent double to recover. "I thought I wasn't going to make it..."

"It's OK. You'll be all right. You'll be safe now." The driver turned at the sound of boots on tarmac, and saw a handful of squaddies take up a position at the head of the truck, sighting their rifles on the throng of ghouls that were growing nearer. There was now perhaps only a hundred or so yards between them.

"Clear a path for us," Perrington instructed his men from the passenger seat, glaring at Richards. "Since we've lost our momentum, we'll have to thin them down a bit so we can plough through."

The guns barked rapidly as each soldier selected his target and fired, the deadheads at the front dropping face down with each impact, brains squirting out of their skulls. Their kin behind them hardly reacted, merely took their place and walked into the wall of bullets without a glimmer of fear or understanding. The bodies stacked up almost instantly.

"Sarge?" a voice called out. "Something weird here..."

"What do you mean?"

"Fuckin' pusbags are muzzled. Every one of 'em."

Richards looked back at the kid, puzzled, his mouth dropping open as the youngster yanked an automatic from his belt, hidden beneath his shirt.

"Game's over for you, old man," Hewitt said with a smile as he put a slug between the driver's eyes.

 

 

19.49 pm

 

GABE ORDERED HIS team to move in immediately, with the intention of overpowering the soldiers while they were still dealing with the gaggle of deadheads. The half-dozen triggers jumped out of the Bedford van they'd been tooling up in and began to move across the bridge, the van coasting slowly alongside them, providing cover. Time was of the essence; it wouldn't take long for the military to deal with the stiffs, and they had the advantage of numbers and superior firepower. If Gabe's squad were to have a chance of pulling off the hijack successfully, it would mean attacking when their opponents were otherwise engaged. He clicked the safety off on his pistol and followed the others.

As he reached the scattered remains of the zombie distraction lying in a tangle on the road, he fleetingly looked at the bridles that were wrapped around their jaws. It was a ruse that he'd adopted on several occasions in the past, and he had found it was an effective means of instilling panic in the enemy. They rarely saw that the mouths had been clamped shut before it was too late. Even so, despite the muzzles, there was always a lack of volunteers to play the 'victim'. Gabe had made sure that Hewitt had drawn the short straw, a result that the kid had responded to furiously, but the older man had felt this was just the brush with danger that could encourage a little responsibility in the youngster.

The rattle of gunfire echoed through the still night air, ear-splittingly loud. The army men had formed a cordon around the truck and were shooting at will; the last of the ghouls were now only a few feet away, but a handful of the military had switched their attention to the bushwhackers. One of Flowers' enforcers - a bear of a man named Duvall - let rip with a full automatic, punching holes in the lorry's windshield and passenger door. Each time the squaddies cowered from the rapid-fire assault, the team advanced, tightening the circle, forcing them to retreat. Gabe scanned the haze of smoke for Hewitt, who should've infiltrated their defence, and spotted him putting his gun to the back of a soldier's head and pulling the trigger at point-blank range. He'd told each of them he wanted the minimum of casualties, with deaths acceptable only as a last resort, but the kid was drilling humans without compunction.

Gabe began to jog over towards him to pull him back before the whole operation became a slaughter. He stopped when he caught sight of what was behind the truck: a military escort vehicle that was unloading armoured-up soldiers but not deploying them, remaining hidden at the rear. Gabe guessed the strategy; they were drawing the hijackers forward, giving a false impression of defeat, before doubling their defence. The robbers needed to even the playing field a touch.

He signalled to Hanner, who had a small grenade-launcher holstered across his back, and pointed over the truck, indicating to drop the explosive behind it. It would scatter the reinforcements and hopefully disorientate them enough for his squad to surge ahead. Hanner nodded, unslung the weapon and sighted the necessary angle. But moments before the grenade powered from the barrel, a bullet slammed into his shoulder, pushing him backwards, his finger squeezing instinctively on the trigger. It threw his aim off, the missile ricocheted against a bridge stanchion and fell short, hitting the truck's bonnet and igniting its engine. The front of the vehicle exploded in a ball of orange flame, pulsing out a wave of heat that knocked Gabe to his knees. Others were flung sideways, some toppling into the icy waters of the Thames below. Seconds later, the petrol tank blew, and the blast was deafening, throwing the lorry upwards a couple of metres as everyone within its radius shielded their faces from the white-hot blaze. Gabe's ears rang as he woozily watched fire lick the starlit sky.

 

 

19.52 pm

 

THEY HEARD THE noise even in the depths. It vibrated through the water, accompanied by a rapid succession of loud splashes. There was not enough rational thought left in their core cerebella to assimilate what the sound indicated, or its cause; but one instinct that still reverberated within them was that when the silence was broken, it meant life was close by, and where there was life there was flesh. It had been a theory that had been proven right time after time, to the point where they sought out the living through some primitive radar rather than by any other kind of recognition.

They were crossing the riverbed, their hungry search forever unfulfilled. Fluid flowed in and out of their still lungs with the ebb of the tide, their already cold skin untouched by the immense chill. Their surroundings meant nothing to them, just terrain to travel. But once they heard the sounds, they suddenly had direction. As one, they turned and waded through the silt and darkness towards the bank, the crackle above them leading them like a beacon.

 

 

19.55 pm

 

"OH CHRIST."

The words snapped Gabe free from his trance. He shook his head, trying to reboot his senses. Everything was as it had been a minute before: the truck was still burning in the middle of the road, and the injured were crawling away from it, clothes and limbs blackened. The odd burst of gunfire still erupted now and then as each side tried to take advantage of the confusion, but Gabe - hunched against the bridge wall - was trying to hear what somebody was shouting about. Duvall was looking out beyond the thoroughfare and pointing. Gabe followed his gaze and attempted, by the light of the flames, to make sense of the black shapes that were emerging from the water. There were hundreds of them, dripping silhouettes that rose from the deep and were shuffling up a causeway towards the bridge. Realisation slapped him seconds later. All he could think was: The dead are coming. We've awoken the dead.

"We gotta get out of here," Duvall yelled. "We can't fight that number. Abandon the operation."

Gabe nodded slowly, and began to call for his team to retreat. The soldiers had spotted the zombies coming their way by now too and had all but stopped firing, watching with horror as the shambling dregs of the river came ever closer.

"Move it," Gabe cried. "Grab what injured you can and go."

They stumbled backwards away from the truck towards their own vehicles. Gabe made a vain effort to count how many of the squad were missing, but couldn't keep track. He looked around for Hewitt, who must've been near the lorry when it went up, but couldn't see him. He began to run, knowing that personal survival was now imperative.

Then the bullet caught him in the leg.

He gasped with shock, and collapsed onto his front, grit stinging his hands and face. It had come from behind, and passed through his calf, shattering the bone. Agony lanced up his knee and thigh as he felt his trouser filling with blood, but even so he tried to crawl, desperate to get away. He kept hoping that one of his comrades would spot him and drag him to safety, but nobody seemed to be around. He tried to scream, but couldn't find the voice.

His leg was numb now, and every movement was torture. He slid, inch after painful inch, refusing to give up. He didn't want to die at the hands of the dead; he couldn't accept such a fate. He felt for his gun, but it had gone. Desperation clawed at his mind to escape, but fatigue and blood loss were swamping his muscles, slowing him to a standstill.

He closed his eyes, an image of Anna framed against the window his last thought before he lost consciousness.