Autumn

‘All we’re doing is…’ Carl had replied.

Michael had stopped and turned back around.

‘All you’re doing is wasting time. The two of you are standing out here risking your necks trying to do something that doesn’t even need to be done. I’m going back inside.’

With that he had gone, and Carl and Emma had been left alone with the two lifeless bodies at their feet. They had stood together in silence, both unsure as to what they should do next. For a second Emma had been distracted. She thought she’d seen movement deeper in the forest. She wasn’t sure, but she thought that she had caught a glimpse of another body staggering through the trees a short distance away. The thought of more bodies being close by made the cold night feel colder still and had returned her attention to the corpses on the ground.

Emma had been a

In the fading light they had reached a silent compromise. Rather than bury the bodies they had instead just placed a light covering of loose soil and fallen autumn leaves over the two dead men.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Carl asked, suddenly distracting Emma and bringing her crashing back into the cold reality of the living room.

‘Nothing,’ she lied.

Carl stretched out in the chair and yawned.

‘What do we do next then?’ he asked.

Emma shrugged.

‘Don’t know. If you’re talking about tonight I think we should try and get some sleep. If you mean in the morning, I’m not sure. We need to decide if we’re going to stay here first of all.’

‘What do you think? Do you think we should stay here or…’

‘I think we’d be stupid to leave right now,’ said Michael, surprising the other two who turned to look at him. He had been sound asleep just a few moments earlier and his sudden interruption had startled Carl and Emma.

‘How long have you been awake?’ Carl asked.

‘Not long,’ he yawned. ‘Anyway, in answer to your question, I think we should stay here for a while and see what happens.’

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ Emma mumbled.

‘I bloody well hope you’re right,’ he said, yawning again. ‘I think we should spend tomorrow trying to find out exactly what we’ve got here. If we’re safe, sheltered and secure then I think we should stop.’

‘I agree,’ said Carl. He kept his motives hidden well. It wasn’t that Carl particularly wanted to stay in the farmhouse, it was just that, for a few days at least, he didn’t want to go anywhere else. In the journey from the city he had seen more death, carnage and destruction than he’d ever thought possible. The old, strong walls of the house protected him from the rest of the shattered world.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Michael said as he stood up and stretched. ‘I could sleep for a week.’

18

Emma was the first to wake up next morning. It was Saturday – not that it seemed to matter anymore – and she guessed by the amount of low light which was seeping in through the crack between the curtains that it was early morning, probably around four or five o’clock.

After a few seconds of disorientation she remembered where she was and how she’d got there. She gazed up at the ceiling above the bed she’d been sleeping on and stared at the numerous bumps, cracks and bubbles. Her eyes drifted towards the walls where, in the semi-darkness, she began to count patterns on the wallpaper. The design was made up of five different pastel-pink flowers (which looked grey in the half-light) printed on a creamy white background. The flowers were printed in a strict and repetitive rotational sequence.

Emma had counted twenty-three rotations of flowers on the wallpaper before she stopped to question what it was she was doing. She realised that, subconsciously, she had been filling her mind with rubbish. She realised that it was much easier to think about patterns on walls and other such crap than it was to have to think about what had happened to the world outside Pe

There was a sudden groaning noise from the side of the bed and she instantly froze rigid with fear. Lying perfectly still she listened intently. There was something in the bedroom with her. She was sure that she could hear something moving around on the floor next to the bed and for a moment she was too frightened to move. Her heart pounded in her chest with an anxious ferocity and she held her breath, petrified that whatever it was that was in there with her might sense her presence.

Ten long and terrifying seconds passed before she managed to pluck up enough courage to lean across to the side of the bed and look down. A wave of cool relief washed over her when she saw that it was Michael, asleep on the floor, curled up tightly in a thin sleeping bag. She lay back on the bed and sighed.

She was certain that Michael had begun the night sleeping somewhere else. They had talked together on the landing outside her room for a few minutes after Carl had gone to find a bed. There were four bedrooms in the house – three on the second floor and one in the attic – and she could clearly remember Michael going into one of the rooms adjacent to hers. So why was he sleeping on the floor next to her bed now? Was it because he thought that she might need him there for protection, or was it because he himself had found himself in need of company and reassurance in the dark hours of the night just passed. Whatever the reason she decided that it didn’t matter. She was glad he was there.

By that point she was wide awake and there didn’t seem to be any prospect of her getting back to sleep. A

Tiptoeing carefully so as not to wake up Michael, she crept around the cold room to the window and opened the curtains. Michael stirred and mumbled something unintelligible before rolling over and starting to snore gently, blissfully ignorant to the fact that Emma was watching him.

Leaning up against the cool glass she looked down onto a dull world. An early morning mist clung to the ground, settling heavily in every dip and trough. Birds sang out and flew between the tops of trees, silhouetted in black against the dull grey-purple sky. For a few short and blissful moments it was easy for Emma to believe that there was nothing much wrong with the rest of the world today. She hadn’t often been up and about at four twenty-five (that was the precise time according to an alarm clock next to the bed) but she imagined that this was pretty much how every day must have started.

She spied a lone figure staggering aimlessly across a recently ploughed field just north of the farmhouse. She had seen thousands of the pitiful creatures over the last few days but she instantly decided that this one particular stumbling bastard was the one she hated the most. Her heart had sunk like a stone when she’d first spotted it tripping clumsily through the mist. If she hadn’t seen it then perhaps she’d have been able to prolong the illusion of normality for a few minutes longer. But that was all it was – an illusion of a normality that was long gone and which would never be restored. And there she was, trapped in the same desperate and incomprehensible nightmare that she’d been stuck in last night and the night before that and the night before that… She began to cry and wiped her eyes, upset and a