Autumn

Just for a fraction of a second I pictured her face, and the memory of all that I had lost and left behind suddenly returned. With this torrent of unexpected memories came an equally unexpected torrent of pain and raw emotion.

For what felt like hours I sat alone on the steps outside the porch of the farmhouse and wept. I pictured the faces of my family and friends, of my colleagues from work, my customers, the people at the garage who had fixed my car a couple of weeks ago, the woman who’d sold me a paper on the morning it had all begun… as I saw each one of them the bitter realisation that they were gone forever felt like nails being driven into my flesh. And each dull pain was followed by a second hurt. While everyone I knew lay rotting in the streets – either lying motionless on the ground or dragging themselves around in endless agony – I had survived. Why me? Why should I have lived over all those others? I thought about my two brothers – Steven and Richard. I hadn’t seen them for a couple of months. I hoped that they were like me and that they had survived. The thought of them being like those fucking monsters I’d seen this morning was too much to take…

But what could I do?

Why should I feel this way?

There was nothing I could have done to have changed any of it.

I picked myself up and went indoors. I was filled with a deep hurt that I knew would never completely disappear. But I owed it to myself to try and build something from what was left.

27

The barrier around the house took the three survivors all of the following day to complete. They worked almost constantly – begi

Despite his earlier apparent apathy, Carl worked as hard as the other two to complete the vital barrier. For much of the time Emma stood guard with the rifle and, in some ways, that job proved to be the hardest of all. She had never held a loaded firearm before and, although Carl had shown her how to load, prime and fire the weapon, she doubted she would actually be able to use it should the need arise. Frustrating, often contradictory thoughts flooded her mind with an infuriating regularity. She had come to despise the wandering corpses which dragged themselves lethargically through the remains of her world. They were now so sick, diseased and dysfunctional that it had become almost impossible for her to comprehend the fact that a short time ago they had each been human beings with names, lives and identities. And yet, should one of them stumble into her sights, she wondered whether she would be able to pull the trigger and shoot it down. She wasn’t even sure whether a bullet would have any effect. She had witnessed those creatures being battered and smashed almost beyond recognition, only to continue to move constantly, seemingly ignorant to the pain that their injuries and sickness must surely have caused. No matter what physical damage was inflicted, they carried on regardless.

It was fortunate that the house was so isolated. In the long hours spent outside only a handful of bodies had appeared. Whenever they became aware of movement the three survivors would drop their tools and disappear into the silent shadows of the farmhouse and wait until the withered creatures passed or became distracted by another sound and drifted away again.

Michael had impressed himself with his ingenuity and adaptability. As he had pla

In other places the barrier was little more than a collection of carefully placed obstructions. Piles of farm machinery and u

As Monday evening drew to a close and the early dark hours of Tuesday morning approached, Michael stood outside checking and rechecking that the barrier was secure. Everything he could find that they wouldn’t need was placed against the fence or used to build it higher. As he worked in his cold isolation it occurred to him that it was one week to the day since the nightmare had begun. The longest seven days of his life. In that time he had experienced more pain, fear, frustration and outright terror than he would ever have thought possible. He refused to allow himself to think about what might be waiting for him tomorrow.

28

Wednesday night. Nine o’clock.

Michael cooked a meal for himself, Carl and Emma. He seemed to have allowed himself to relax slightly now that there was a decent physical barrier between them and the rest of the world. Emma noticed that he had now started to occupy his time by doing odd jobs around the house. She had casually mentioned that a shelf in an upstairs room was coming loose from the wall. By the time she’d next walked past the room Michael had completed the repair. Each one of the survivors had an increasing, burning desire – almost a guttural, basic need in fact – to keep themselves occupied. Keeping busy helped them to forget (almost to the point of denial) that the world outside their door had crumbled and died.

The three of them had been sitting in the kitchen for the best part of two hours before the meal was ready and Michael was finally in a position to serve di

Emma found some wine. She had discovered a few bottles hidden in a dusty rack wedged between two kitchen units and she’d wasted no time in uncorking a bottle of white and pouring out three large glasses, passing one each to Carl and Michael. Carl normally didn’t drink wine but tonight he was ready to make an exception. He wanted to get drunk. He wanted to be so fucking drunk that he couldn’t remember his own name. He wanted to pass out on the kitchen floor and forget about everything for as long as was possible. He wasn’t even that bothered about waking up the next morning.

The food was good – probably the best meal they’d eaten together – and that, combined with the wine, helped perpetuate an uneasy sense of normality. That sense of normality, however, had the unwanted side effect of helping them to remember everything about the past that they had been trying to forget. Michael decided that the best way of dealing with what they’d lost was to try and talk about it.