Day Thirty-One - Winchester (Season 5: The Rain)
Author: R R Haywood
Date: 2024-06-07 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Zombie Apocalypse
Description: The Undead. The UK's Bestselling Horror Series. The Undead Winchester Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Amazon & Audible bestselling author, RR Haywood. One of the most downloaded indie authors in the UK with nearly four million books sold and over 25 Kindle bestsellers. *WINNER OF DISCOVER SCI-FI BEST RELEASE OF 2023 * The Battle For Gatwick is over, but the team are broken. They desperately need rest. But rest is not to be found because the darkest days still lie ahead in season five of The Undead. This book was authored by Richard Haywood and not generated by any machine or artificial i

THE UNDEAD THIRTY ONE

RR HAYWOOD

1899 INC LTD

Copyright © 2024 by RR Haywood

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

CONTENTS

Untitled

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Also by RR Haywood

SEASON FIVE: THE RAIN

WINCHESTER

“My pigeon!”

1

Friday, July 15th

Day One

Winchester

A hot day.

Crowded streets full of tourists walking slowly through the ancient town of Winchester. Once the capital of England. The city where William the Conqueror built a palace in the year following his victory at the Battle of Hastings eighty miles away in 1066.

Now it’s the same as everywhere else. Coffee shops and boutique stores with plate glass windows, and five-star dining hidden behind railings where headwaiters greet their millionaire patrons with the same smiles used by the weaselly courtiers to the visiting kings and dignitaries in years gone by.

The same then. The same now, and those places of wealth sit alongside the charity shops and betting places, and the budget stores where the hungry and desperate go to scavenge or bet their last coin because they’ve got nothing left to live for.

Scottish Mike bet his last coin a long time ago.

Now he doesn’t notice the wealthy elites walking past in their designer clothes or the middle-classes trying to be more than they are, or the working classes frothing at the mouth at the posh twats getting in their way, or worse, the jobless scum on benefits living in social housing with everything paid for. And yet, as trapped in the class system as everyone else, even they look down their noses at Mike because at least they’re not homeless.

Not that Mike cares as he lies on his back, tucked into a small recess at the base of a wall in a narrow medieval lane just off the High Street, where the old buildings on both sides grow larger as they go higher, with the top windows within arm’s reach of each other. Old bricks and old stones. White walls, black timbers, and lead lined glass windows.

He stares at the pigeon cooing within her nest. Her beautiful round head twitching this way and that. Streaks of purples and pinks, and greens in her plumage. She doesn’t care about the city or the people either.

But at least she has a home, and soon she’ll have young to feed and care for, and love, and nurture.

Mike could have had that. He had a wife once. He might still be married. He never signed anything to agree to a divorce, but by then he wasn’t engaging with anyone or anything.

He was on that slope.

The slope that took him all the way to the bottom and lying on a filthy, torn sleeping bag in the sweltering heat while stinking of piss. Late forties. Maybe fifties. It’s hard to tell from his long, straggly, greying beard and unkempt hair, and the filth ingrained on his weathered face, and dressed in old tracksuit bottoms and a filthy Man United t-shirt.

Mike doesn’t support Man United.

He found the t-shirt next to the River Itchen. It was with a pair of trainers and a wallet, and the tracksuit bottoms he’s wearing now.

Mike took the money from the wallet and the clothes. The trainers were too big.

He heard later that a guy had committed suicide in the river and that some vile piece of shit stole money from the dead guy’s wallet.

Mike showed no reaction when he heard that. He didn’t feel guilty because guilt is an emotion, and at this place in life there are no emotions. There’s no joy or happiness, but then there’s no sadness either.

Mike felt all those things at times in his life. Anger too. He had a lot of anger, and that anger twisted inside of him and made him full of self-pity. It turned him into a victim while at the same time allowing him to become an offender and a perpetrator, without guilt or shame. Because it wasn’t his fault. Nothing was his fault.

But then, everything was his fault.

He can’t see sense in it now when he thinks back. Which is very rare. Self-reflection hurts, and it only reminds him of what he lost.

So now, he has no self-reflection.

Nor does he have any emotional state.

What he does have, is a bad pain in his liver. But then, he’s spent the last decade and a half drinking anything he can get. And it’s not like he could do anything about it, even if he wanted to. Paramedics won’t treat the homeless anymore for fear of being verbally abused.

It’s the same at accident and emergency at the local hospital since Mike went in while off his face and shat himself in the waiting room, then told the nurse to piss off when she called him a filthy cunt. Scottish Mike got banned, and so did every other homeless person.

But then somewhere within that void of nothingness, Mike accepts that he brought this on himself, and that he is nothing more than a streak of shit stinking up the city, and so the worsening pain, which is no doubt something very serious, can just go ahead and get worse, and finish him off.

‘Scottish Mike!’ a sing song deep voice of toxic masculinity cuts into the memories. ‘What did we say, you Glaswegian prick?’ Roidy Brian asks like he’s talking to a child with learning difficulties.

Mike doesn’t reply.

‘We said no rough sleeping down here. Come on. Time to go. Time to move. On your feet. Huh, huh, huh.’

A stream of overly forceful words from Brian, finished off with a military style grunt like’s he leading Mike over an assault course.

Mike gets slowly to his feet, grimacing at the explosion of pain in his liver while staring at the big arms and shoulders of Roidy Brian, the Winchester Ranger, in an extra tight top underneath his bright blue tac-vest. An unarmed rent-a-cop paid for by the council to replace the teenage police officers that don’t deploy anymore.

‘Jesus, you bloody stink. Get a wash,’ Brian says as Mike goes by and heads out onto the main throughfare.

‘Fucking hell,’ a guy in construction trousers with tattoos up his arms and neck says when Mike shuffles out into the guy’s smelling radius. ‘You dirty cunt! Get a wash!’

‘That’s what I said,’ Brian says. Admiring his own reflection in the beauty store window while the pretty, young things inside fall in love with their own selves and pose for pictures to post online while people in The Ivy dine on tiny plates that cost more than the benefits the social housing people get in a month.

Mike stops at The Butter Cross to sit on the ancient stone steps that the hawkers and traders used to sell their butter, eggs, and wares for the last six hundred years.

‘Not there either!’ Brian yells nearby and pushes his muscled arms out as though to send invisible waves to take Mike away. ‘And maybe find a hose? Or a river?’

Laughs sound out. Chuckles and jeers.

‘You can’t say that!’ a young woman shouts from outside a coffee shop while enjoying avocado on sourdough with an oat milk Americano.

‘Can he come to yours for a shower then?’ Brian asks as he strolls over and rests his hands on the table to flex his triceps. ‘I’ll come with him to keep you safe, darlin’.’

‘That was really rude of that man to say that to you,’ another woman tells Scottish Mike. White. Dreads. Earthy clothes. Holistic and new-age, with a made-in-China yoga mat rolled up under her arm that will take over a thousand years to break down. Saviour energy pours from her desperate soul, and she comes in close. Thinking to show empathy and kindness but inhales the acrid stench of stale urine and has to suppress the urge to gag.

‘Got any money?’ Mike asks in his strong Glasgow accent.

‘Money?’ she asks with a sudden glimmer of hope, seeing the exit strategy offered because she can’t just walk off without doing anything. ‘I’ve only got ten pounds. Sorry. It’s all debit card now, isn’t it? But er, yes, you have that, and I am sure you can find a suitable place, you know, to freshen up.’

Mike walks off. He doesn’t say thank you.

‘And focus your energy into peace!’ the woman calls to display her care and generosity to the needy peasant as she rushes on past Brian and the woman, both trying to show each other their TikTok fitness videos at the same time.

Mike walks on without conscious thought. The pain in his liver hurts like hell. He had frostbite on his toes again this winter.

He stumbles into an off-licence and grabs three plastic bottles of cheap cider, strong enough to strip paint. Sona, the Sri-Lankan owner behind the counter, scans the bottles and glances at him. ‘You look sick, Mike,’ she says. ‘You’re turning yellow. Want me to phone the surgery?’

Mike shakes his head.

‘Use the shop as your address if they get funny. I can call them.’

‘Be alright,’ Mike says as she pulls a face and puts his booze in a white, plastic bag and hands it over.

‘Have you eaten?’

‘Aye…’ he trails off. Losing the energy and the will to keep going. Wanting only the booze to stop the shakes already hitting his body.

She tuts sadly and grabs a pair of tongs to take a hot pastry slice from the display cabinet, and hands it over in a paper bag. ‘You want some medicine?’

Mike shakes his head and mumbles something. He heads outside with the slice and his booze, and thinks for a moment about where he should go.

Brian will be in the town centre all day, being a show-off prick, so that’s best avoided. South then. The Abbey gardens next to the Guildhall are a good spot. Plenty of leafy trees to give shade, and it’s peaceful, plus the public toilets are nearby. Only downside is the passing foot traffic is low, so he’s unlikely to get any more money from begging.

He sticks to the back roads and passes through The Square and past Winchester City Museum. Old buildings everywhere, built alongside ugly 1970’s grey office blocks and red-brick monstrosities.

Into Colebrook Street, then out onto the High Street next to Winchester School of Arts tacked onto the end of The Guildhall. A large gothic-style building dominating the end of town.

But he stops and stares at the excavators working away. Digging the road up and dropping bucket loads of broken tarmac into a huge dump truck. Men in orange hi-vis wearing hard hats and sweating profusely on the hot day. Mike doesn’t go any further. Grafters tend to hate the homeless.

He doesn’t feel any reaction to that. Instead, he makes his way through the bus station and onto Silver Hill to go back into town all the way to St Peter’s Street, then into his narrow and ancient passage from the other end and back to his recess.

‘Food,’ he says and rustles the paper bag holding the slice. The pigeon flutters down to land on his foot and takes the torn off chunks of pastry from his hand without fear or hesitation.

He should eat some of the pastry, but he knows he won’t.

The pigeon needs it more than him.

She’ll have young to raise soon, so it’s only right she gets the rations.

He drinks the first bottle while watching her eat and slowly falls back to a fitful sleep, where the dreams of his old life haunt his every second.

Silence when he blinks awake in the passage. The dreams and memories fading in his mind. His heart still racing from being back there.

An urge to piss. He won’t do it here. The pigeon shouldn’t have to smell that, and besides, these buildings are ancient. It’s disrespectful.

He walks to the end of the lane and urinates in a bush.

‘Dirty bastard!’ a woman snaps, walking by in a tight dress with her friends. Bangles and hoops, and fake tan. Legs and cleavages. Loud, harsh voices. ‘Just kill yourself, mate!’ she yells over her shoulder as her mates burst out laughing.

‘And she works for the Samaritans,’ one of the others yells amidst the cackles.

Mike doesn’t care.

His belly rumbles. He should have eaten the slice. He fumbles in his pocket and pulls some coins out to count while dribbling piss over his legs and feet.

Less than a quid left.

He could go and see Sona at the Sri-Lankan shop again. She’d give him something to eat. But Mike won’t do that. She’s got kids, and times are hard.

He heads back up the narrow passage and out onto the High Street, into the heart of the city. People everywhere. Walking through and marvelling at the soft, glowing lights within the wine bars and bistros. Al fresco dining, with cutlery scraping plates, and music playing from speakers. Bouncers on every door giving him looks of disgust.

A couple stand up from a table outside a boutique eatery. Half a T-bone on one of the plates. Greasy and bloody. The man bends to gather a bag. Mike swipes the T-bone and walks on as he starts gnawing at it.

‘That’s it! We’re here,’ a woman says from ahead. Her friend tuts and motions the cigarette she just lit before stubbing the end on top of a bin before rushing after her pal.

Mike snatches it up and sucks it back to life.

‘Filthy prick,’ a bouncer says, shaking his head at the beggar in piss-stained baggy clothes clutching a beef bone and a cigarette.

The words have no impact.

‘Ain’t you dead yet?’ Roidy Brian says, still in his tac-vest while puffing himself up to show off to the nearby bouncers. ‘I said he needs a dip in the river. A non-surfacing dip,’ Brian adds in delight at his own intellectual joke as the lads guffaw and share fist bumps. ‘Yeah, so anyway, this bird, right. She had a go at me for calling Mike a dirty tramp, then literally, and no joking. Literally thirty minutes later, she’s noshing me off in the bogs.’

‘Fuck off!’ one of the other bouncers says. ‘So full of shit.’

‘Am I? Am I? Yeah? Look at this then,’ Roidy Brian says and brings a video up on his phone showing the woman from earlier on her knees in a filthy toilet cubicle.

‘Why’s your dick so small?’ the bouncer asks.

‘It’s the fucking angle!’ Brian says.

Mike walks on. Not part of it. Not here.

He stops at The Butter Cross to gnaw on his T-bone and puff on his skanked smoke while the piss dries on the trousers he stole from a dead guy.

Hundreds of people in immediate view. Thousands spread through the High Street and the city centre. A vibrant, bustling place on a hot summer evening. A few people frowning at the news feeds on their phones. A tall, lean, yuppie- looking guy walking past, talking to his French wife at home in Paris. ‘They’re biting who?’ he asks in English. ‘I can’t hear you? Is that gunfire? What’s happening? Is it another riot?’

The guy walks past a pub with a large screen TV on the wall showing worried looking news anchors cutting to live feeds of European city centres ablaze with carnage and violence, and rampaging people with red eyes. The same footage that a supermarket night manager called Howie is watching somewhere else on the south coast in Boroughfare.

But the people here don’t pay any attention.

Why would they?

It’s Friday night.

Mid-July.

A train speeding along the track from London. The driver shouting into the comms system for help. ‘Control! Control! Can you hear me? I’ve got a riot on my train!’

She gets no response because the control room has already fallen from the same rampaging, red-eyed monsters seen on the silent TV screens.

The train driver curses, having heard the emergency report from the guard that the middle carriage was in full riot. She starts to brake. The door behind bangs loudly.

‘Sally! Let me in!’ the guard shouts in a voice filled with panic. ‘I got no key! I dropped it!’

Sally leans back to unfasten the latch as Kenneth, the guard, falls inside with a yell and tries to get up to close the door as one of the rioters slams into it from the other side. Sending Kenneth flying into Sally, who falls over the speed controls, and the train surges on with a burst of acceleration.

Sally yells in horror at the attacker sinking his teeth into Kenneth’s neck. Blood spaying high. Spattering the windows and Sally’s face. She kicks down with her solid boots, but the guy bites her calf. His eyes red and bloodshot. A wound on his shoulder. Blood everywhere. Kenneth already on his side, clutching his stomach. The train going faster and faster. Sally kicking out and getting her other foot up to stamp down. Breaking the attacker’s nose and jaw. Pain in her stomach. Intense and searing. She doubles up with a gasp and only then sees the speed they are going as they approach Winchester train station and a train already in situ in front of them.

She covers her head as the front of her train slams into the back of the stationary carriage so hard, the whole front end is crushed, with Sally and Kenneth, and the infected eviscerated from existence.

The noise of the impact sounds far and wide as the speeding train rams the stationary carriages off the tracks and sends them flying into both platforms and the cafes, and ticket offices and out onto the car parks and the waiting taxis. Dozens killed instantly, with many more wounded as carriages fly through the air to land upside down on roads. Slamming through cars and into a double-decker bus, toppling it over.

Mike hears the impact half a mile away in the city centre. Everyone does, and for a minute, the whole street falls to silence as everyone listens.

‘My wife’s driving probably,’ Roidy Brian quips, earning laughs that spread out as the people go back to dining and drinking, and vaping, and not giving a shit.

At the train station, the nearby people run to give aid. Many of them trying to dial 999 and getting no response from the already crashed systems. A man reaches the first carriage in the road and clambers up to look down in horror at the mangled bodies inside as a snarling woman launches out, with her teeth already biting through his nose. More pour out from the carriage. Red eyes, and hands like talons. Dozens and dozens of them still alive from the crash. Not suffering from concussions or shock. An infection inside all of them driving them into a frenzy to take more hosts.

Not that anyone in the city centre notices.

Mike doesn’t either.

Still gnawing on the bone as a group of lads go by, with one flicking a half-smoked cigarette to the ground.

‘You want a ticket for littering?’ Brian calls as the lad turns to pick it up and spots Mike already grabbing it.

‘Jesus, you dirty fucker,’ the guy says as his mates turn. ‘He just grabbed my ciggie.’

‘What, out yer hand?’ one of them asks, already puffing himself up into righteous rage.

‘No! From the fucking ground. Dirty cunt!’

‘Here, mate. You want some kebab?’ one of the lad’s asks, blond hair. A big tattoo on his neck.

The lads laugh and jeer as the kebab holder grabs a slice of meat to throw at Mike. ‘Go on then. Gobble it up!’

‘No way! He’s fucking eating it. What a cunt!’

‘Oi! Don’t feed the animals!’ Roidy Brian yells, earning more laughs and jeers as Mike gets pelted with meat and salad. The first chunk was okay. It landed on his arm. But the rest slap into his face and hair, with hot sauce and mayo sliding over his cheeks.

He doesn’t react. There’s nothing inside to care about. There’s no sense of self, and without that sense of identity, there simply isn’t anything to defend. So he sits and stares without expression. Being pelted with food by young men while bouncers laugh and diners either smile or tut, and roll their eyes.

‘Guys, guys, guys!’ a handsome Indian man calls out while rushing over. ‘Stop that! He’s a human being. I said stop!’ the man shouts as another chunk of meat flies past to slap on Mike’s cheek.

‘I’m filming them all,’ a woman calls, holding a phone up. ‘Good luck keeping your jobs when this goes viral,’ she tells Brian. ‘And FYI. I’m a YouTuber with a million plus.’

‘Are you okay?’ the nice Indian man asks Mike. ‘I’m a doctor. Are you hurt?’

Mike doesn’t say anything. There’s no point. People don’t listen, and the guy’ll get a whiff in a moment and back off anyway.

‘You’re looking very jaundiced,’ the doctor says with a show of worry. ‘Are you alcohol dependant? Are you getting pains?’

‘Turn that fucking phone off!’ one of the lads shouts as a loud yell sounds out further up the street.

‘Right. Okay, listen,’ the doctor says. ‘Don’t go into A and E. They banned displaced people after the incident with the man who defecated. Monday morning, go into the emergency treatment centre. It’s right next door. I’ll be working. Ask for Doctor Patel. That’s me. Will you do that?’

‘Got any money?’ Mike asks.

‘For more booze?’ Dr Patel asks as Mike nods.

‘And food.’

‘No!’ Roidy Brian shouts. ‘Giving money to homeless is banned.’

‘There’s no such thing,’ Dr Patel says, pulling a note out of his wallet.

‘City bylaw. You give him that money, and I’ll stick a hundred quid fine on you.’

‘Are you being serious?’ Dr Patel asks, turning away with the twenty-pound note in his hand that Mike stares at with longing as more shouts and screams, and bangs come from further up the street. People start turning to see what’s going on while Dr Patel and Roidy Brian argue, and the YouTuber films the lads, and Mike stares at the twenty-pound note.

‘Why don’t you do your job and go, and deal with whatever that is,’ the doctor says, motioning the increasing noise up the street as a woman sprints towards them in the grip of wild panic. Her shoes gone. Her once white blouse torn and bloodied from a wound on her neck. She risks a look back, but the motion throws her off, and she slams over the railing to the eatery, sending two diners sprawling from their seats, with tables full of plates and glasses flying everywhere.

‘NO!’ someone else yells. A male voice that cuts off into a strangled yelp as two men crash through a plate glass window further up the road just as a car veers across the pavement, mowing two more people down before slamming into a wall. The airbags popping instantly.

Everything happening at once, with the mass of people all moving at speed towards The Butter Cross as Mike keeps lifting his hand to take the twenty-pound note flapping about in the doctor’s hand.

‘She’s having a fit!’ a waiter shouts from the eatery, with people staring down at the woman in the bloodied blouse on her side writhing in agony.

‘I’m a doctor!’ Doctor Patel shouts and sets off, with Mike panicking at the prospect of losing his donation and running off after him. ‘Let me through. Someone, call for an ambulance.’

‘There’s no answer,’ someone else says with a phone at their ear.

‘Stand back!’ Roidy Brian bellows. ‘I am a trained medic.’

‘I just said I’m a bloody doctor,’ Dr Patel says, on his knees at the patient’s side. ‘Take it easy. Let me see the wound… Is that a bite? Did something bite you? She’s in cardiac arrest! Commencing CPR.’

He rolls the dead woman onto her back and starts chest compressions. Oblivious to the twenty-pound note stuck to his hand.

‘Can I have that?’ Mike asks, reaching for it as the dead woman inhales sharply, making everyone flinch and yell.

‘He saved her!’ someone says.

‘That’s another five million followers right there,’ the YouTuber says as the woman they all thought was dead opens her red, bloodshot eyes, and her mouth starts drooling with bloodied saliva.

‘Stay calm! The ambulance is on its way,’ Dr Patel tells her.

‘I said I can’t get through,’ the person with the phone says as another piercing scream rips through the air, with two women crashing through the eatery’s barrier, with one biting into the other’s neck.

‘Doc? Can I have that?’ Mike asks as Dr Patel gets to his feet with a look of shock.

‘Sorry, what?’ he asks.

‘The money,’ Mike says as the woman in the bloodied blouse snarls and lunges at the man still trying to call the emergency services, ripping him off his feet, with her mouth biting into his cheek.

‘Oh, god!’ Dr Patel yells and runs to drag her away. Roidy Brian backs away in fear while a slim sixteen-year-old waitress beats another attacker away with a chair.

‘Oh, my god! This is incredible,’ the YouTuber says, turning the camera on herself to film the carnage behind her. ‘So, like, this is literally happening right now…’ she says in a fashionably croaky voice as one of the train passengers staggers towards her with stiff legs and red eyes. His head lolling, but his eyes fixed on her as his hand seem to curl into claws. ‘Er, excuse me! I am an influencer! Right. So, this guy is literally staring straight at me. Er, invading my visual space much?’ she says in a scathing tone as the guy charges and slams her down to bite into her shoulder. ‘I’m literally being attacked!’ she screams while still trying to point the camera at herself.

‘I’ll just take that,’ Mike says, ignoring the YouTuber and everyone else as he reaches out to pluck the twenty-pound note from the doc’s hand.

Mike sets off out of the al-fresco area filled with brawlers and biters as a uniformed cop walks backwards in front of him. Her assault rifle up and aimed. Shots fired. Loud and awful and making people scream and drop to hide while others turn and flee.

Mike just tuts and tries to go around the back, but the cop darts backward and fires again, making Mike run sideways to try and get past as the assault rifle clicks empty, and the cop yells in fear and lets it go, and draws her sidearm to fire at the incoming mass of red-eyed beasts that slam her down.

Mike finally gets past, and he rushes into an alley as the shouts and yells detonate behind him, and a minute later, he’s back at the counter with Sona scanning the vodka and a pouch of rolling tobacco.

‘What’s going on out there? Someone setting off fireworks? Bloody kids. Feels like the end of the world sometimes.’

Mike doesn’t reply but takes the bag holding his booze and smokes, and rushes back across the High Street in the grip of a mass riot. People fighting everywhere. Smashing through windows and using pool cues to beat at each other, and he has to stop again from a man going past, throwing a takeaway food carton down and screaming in terror at being chased by a woman with red eyes on fire. Her body engulfed in flames.

Mike pounces and grabs the ditched wrapper holding a double cheeseburger, and takes a big, satisfied bite as two people crash through a first-floor window and land on the road with a sickening crunch of breaking bones.

‘Gherkins,’ Mike says with a wince, spitting the sliced pickle out with a yack.

‘Please… Please, no.’

A woman goes down next to him with a gasp of pain and twists onto her back, and tries scooting away from a big male with red eyes limping fast towards her on a mangled and bloodied leg. The dead cop a few feet away. The assault rifle still held on a strap. The pistol on the ground.

‘Please! I have children!’ the woman begs as the man lunges. Biting into her hands as Mike rushes past into his passage to his recessed area.

He puts the burger on his knee and starts rolling a smoke as the pigeon flutters down onto his leg and starts pecking at the brioche bun. Shouts and screams, and yells come from the town centre. The smell of fire in the air. Gunshots sounding out. Glass smashing.

The sounds of war and death, and destruction.

Sounds Mike has heard before.

His eyes do grow dark at the noises, and he pushes it all back because society rejected him, and so he rejects everything.

He takes a long drink of the vodka and sags against the wall.

Maybe that woman from earlier was right. The one who said he should just end it.

Maybe it is time. He takes another drink and thinks about what Sona and that doctor said about him looking yellow. His liver is fucked. God knows what else is FUBAR. Probably his heart. Arteries. Stomach from drinking and not eating. Lungs from smoking. Bad circulation. Jaundice can last for months, but it can also be fatal quickly.

Mike hopes it’s fatal quickly.

Maybe even tonight if he drinks this vodka down in one hit.

Or he could throw himself into the river, and then maybe someone else can take this Man United t-shirt.

‘Fuck off!’ a voice pleads as someone runs into the passage, jarring him from his thoughts. A terrified voice pleading. ‘Get off! No… NO!’

Two guys sprawl into the recessed area, knocking the bottle of vodka over. Mike scrabbles for it in panic as one of the men grabs the bottle and smashes it over the head of the attacker, but the red-eyed, wild man pays no heed. He bites into the screaming man’s neck deep enough to sever the artery. Blood sprays out. Soaking both of the fighting men, and with enough pressure to jet across Mike’s face and chest as he cries out at losing his booze, then spots a flash of green and purple within the melee.

‘Pigeon!’ he shouts and grabs an ankle to wrench the attacking man away. Giving space for the panicked pigeon to escape, but her wings are soaked with blood, and she flies in panic straight into the wall, then scoots along the passage in panic. ‘Pigeon!’ Mike yells again, setting off after her in a drunken, lumbering run. ‘Come back, Pigeon!’

Motion from the right. A man sprints past Mike trying to get away from an infected woman with red eyes chasing after him as the pigeon flaps into their path. ‘No!’ Mike yells and shoulder slams the infected woman away. Sending her tripping and falling through the tangled barrier of another outdoor eatery. ‘Don’t worry, Pigeon!’ Mike rushes towards her as a man slams into him from the side, knocking him down.

It makes Mike drop with a gasp. Stunned at the speed of it. His brain addled from the booze, but he sets off crawling through blood and dropped kebabs towards the pigeon still flapping her wings in panic. Smashing into spilled chairs and overturned tables. ‘It’s okay… It’s okay…’ Mike whispers, hoping his voice will make her calm. She settles under a chair and coos softly as he takes her in his hands and starts to rise, but another couple slam over his back with fearful screams and fearsome snarls.

Mike sprawls out again, with the pigeon flapping fee and hopping over the road with Mike in pursuit. Bent double, with his hands stretched out, but a flailing foot from another brawl catches the bird and sends her scooting along.

‘Don’t kick her!’ Mike shouts and dives like a goalkeeper, and scoops the bird into his hands. ‘Got you!’ he cries out as two more people stagger into him.

He twists onto his back with the pigeon clasped in his hands and sweeps the legs out to take one of the brawlers down, then kicks up hard into the knee joint of the other one with a crunch of bone. The guy drops. Snarling and drooling with red eyes, but Mike’s already rising and turning to avoid another red-eyed person lunging in. He gives it a kick and sends it tripping over the other two he kicked down, and staggers away.

‘Help!’ a woman cries out with a strong accent. Carrying a boy in her arms too big to hold. His feet bouncing and kicking into her legs as she runs with a look of pure panic. She reaches The Butter Cross and cries out at seeing more red-eyed monsters coming from that way. She spins back, but the way she came is blocked.

Mike tries to run too. But he can’t reach his passage from the red-eyed people coming up the street. He does the same as the woman and tries to turn and go back while still holding the pigeon, but the retreat is blocked. He spins and turns, and looks for exits, but there’s no way out and too many attackers.

‘Cock it!’ he says and double takes at the sight of the woman holding the kid. ‘Hold my pigeon,’ he growls and pushes the pigeon into the boy’s hands.

A snarl from behind. Mike ducks as an infected woman lunges at him from behind. She misses his body but snags his ankle. Taking him down hard. He kicks out to knock the infected woman away, then sets to crawling on his knees. Snarls and hisses coming in from all sides. The woman whimpering and praying. Holding her son while the boy holds the pigeon, and Mike crawls through the blood and kebabs.

Motion from the left. One coming in fast. Stiff-legged but gaining ground. Another on the right. The one he kicked coming in from behind.

Three targets. Three directions.

Mike dives and snatches the pistol up, and rolls onto his back to aim up in a two-handed grip. Double tapping the centre of mass at the attacker on the left, then twisting to get two more into the one on the right.

They both shunt from the rounds but keep coming, and the intelligence gleams in Mike’s yellow, jaundiced eyes as he adjusts aim and puts one through the first head, blowing the skull out, then twisting to repeat. Then he aims at the woman crawling towards him. Putting a round into her head at near point-blank range. Three down. Three dead.

Body shots negative.

Head shots work.

‘Aye. You weren’t expectin’ that, ye wee bastards,’ he mutters, pushing up to his knees to reach for the dead cop’s belt.

Magazine out. Fresh one in. Slide pulled back. Pistol tucked into his pocket. Assault rifle grabbed. Heckler and Koch G36 chambered with a 5.56 NATO round. Single fire only. Mag out and ditched. A fresh one taken from the cop’s tac-vest. Snarls coming in. Right side closest. Left side secondary. More behind them.

Mag in. Bolt back on the top. Into the shoulder as he rises. He fires to the right side first. Head shot. The body drops. He twists to the left. Shots fired. Twist again to the right. The target presents and is taken down. Left and right. He paces back to keep clear aim. Sweeping his feet to avoid tripping or tangling.

The shots counted. The mag empties. Tactical re-load. Mag out. Spare already in hand. Pushed in. Bolt back. Two more dropped. Enough clearance gained.

Safety on. Weapon lowered. He checks both sides while slinging it overhead and grabs the pistol, and sets off towards the wide-eyed, now silent woman.

‘Where’s my pigeon?’ he asks and pulls the boy back to see she’s safe and gently takes her from his hands. ‘Ta. Bye then.’

‘Wait!’ the mother says as he sets off. Mike ignores her. She looks at the bodies, then at the filthy beggar man, and lifts her son to run after him, following him into an ancient and old narrow passage.

‘Bugger!’ the man says and stops, and turns. ‘She won’t like it with the bodies.’

The woman blinks as he squeezes past and spots two more dead bodies further along the passage.

She runs after the man as he goes back out onto the street and into an eatery and comes out holding a big meat cleaver and two bottles of vodka, but he stops on seeing a breadbasket still on a table and grabs that too. Then spots a half-eaten steak on a plate and a bowl of fries, and a whole untouched, fancy, posh chicken burger in a brioche bun.

The woman watches the filthy homeless man with his long, straggly beard perform a strange dance as he tries to hold the pigeon and the pistol, and the meat cleaver, and the vodka, and the basket of bread and then pick up the steak, and the fries, and the posh chicken burger in a brioche bun.

Which is never going to work, and the woman looks around at the bodies of the things the man killed as animalistic screeches fill the air. Screams of pain and the sounds of windows smashing, and cars crashing, and guns firing. Someone big and too heavy to run fast rushes out from an alley further up the street and turns with an awful scream as several people slam the figure down and start biting into limbs and the person’s stomach.

The sight prompts her to action as she grabs a fallen basket used to carry dirty plates and glasses and rushes over to the man.

‘She’s got a tray,’ the man says as though amazed at such a thing could happen as he starts filling it with the bottles of vodka and the half-eaten steak, and the bowl of fries, and the posh chicken burger in a brioche bun. And then another bowl of boiled new potatoes. And some veggies. And then more bread. And then a bottle of wine. ‘Ach. It’s red. I’ll drink it mind, but I’m no a fan.’

‘Quickly,’ she whispers urgently, pulling the bottle from his hand to add to the pile.

‘Aye,’ he says and sets off, then stops, and turns back, almost crashing into the woman holding the heavy basket with her son clinging to her side. ‘Dessert,’ he says.

‘Desert?’ she asks.

‘No,’ he calls from inside and comes out holding a big cheesecake. ‘Dessert. Pudding. Afters.’

She makes a desperate sound and looks ready to fling the tray and run away, which finally prompts Scottish Mike to get a wriggle on and head over to a discreet wooden door next to the eatery, where he then takes an age to put the cake down and gently put the bird under his arm before deciding that won’t work. He finally turns and pushes the bird into the boy’s hand. ‘Hold my pigeon,’ he growls again.

He turns back to wedge the sharp blade of the meat cleaver into the edge of the door near the lock, then hits it hard with the butt of the rifle two times, and the door swings in.

‘Ta,’ he says again and takes the bird before heading inside and closing the door.

‘Wait!’ she says, getting her foot into the gap. ‘I have child!’

‘Aye. And the whiskey,’ he says as though he forgot and steps aside to let them squeeze past before closing the door and pushing a bolt home on the inside.

Then he’s off again. Going up some rickety stairs into a set of disused storerooms and over to a counter next to a sink.

He puts the weapons down and busies himself running water and cleaning the bird. ‘Put that here,’ he says in a low growl, motioning the side as the woman puts the basket down and watches him take a bottle of vodka and unscrew the cap. He takes a big drink with a long-satisfied sigh before pulling his t-shirt off and tearing it into rags and douses one of the strips in vodka, and sets about using it to wipe the bird down. Gently washing the blood from her wings and back, and head. The pigeon flaps and coos, but the man speaks softly, and the bird calms.

‘Who is that, momma?’ the boy asks in their native tongue.

‘Just a man,’ the woman says, holding her son to her chest in the dark room with only the light of the moon coming through the windows. ‘He’s washing the bird, and now he’s using his shirt to dry her.’

She watches the man work quickly and efficiently. His thin body filthy and grimy with old tattoos hidden beneath the dirt.

‘Stay there,’ the man tells the pigeon and clambers onto the counter and grunts to unfasten an old latch on a lead-lined window until it grinds open. He leans out, gasping with effort until the woman thinks surely the man will fall. But he pulls back, holding a fragile straw nest in his hands. Two eggs inside.

‘The bird has eggs,’ the mother whispers to the boy as Mike puts the nest on the counter and slowly places the pigeon into it.

She flaps her wings. But Mike rubs her head and whispers, and she calms and finally rests on top of her clutch.

‘The man put the bird on her eggs. She was scared, but now she is fine,’ the mother whispers, knowing her son hates it when he doesn’t have the details.

‘Right,’ Mike tells the pigeon. ‘Ye’ve got some bread here, and it’s the nice stuff with seeds. And I’ve closed the window, so you can’t fly off.’ He rubs the pigeon’s head again and finally turns to look at the people with him bathed in moonlight. A woman in her mid to late twenties. Dark hair. Dark eyes sunken with exhaustion. Mike has seen the look before. The haunted look of a refugee. The boy at her side. The same dark hair. Small and fragile looking. Anything from eight to twelve. But his eyes aren’t like his mother’s. His don’t work. But the child cocks his head over and seems to stare without seeing in a way that Mike will come to find mesmerising.

But not yet.

And not here.

2

Day Two

‘RPG!’

A shout. A yell.

The blast comes with a solid whump of power and energy, and a mud wall blowing apart, sending chunks into the courtyard where the soldiers take cover.

It makes their ears ring, and the dust and shit in the air fills their mouths and throats.

‘INCOMING! BAYONETS!’

The training kicks in. They drilled for this with instructors screaming abuse to teach their soldiers to work calmly in the worst conditions.

Scottish Mike doesn’t have an assault rifle to slot a bayonet onto. He’s the machine gunner, and for a second, Mike thinks maybe they won’t come.

Then it happens, and the terror fades, and time slows while every detail becomes crystal clear at the first Taliban coming into view. Mike stares at the look of fear-driven hatred in the man’s eyes as he brings his Kalashnikov assault rifle up to aim.

And there it is.

That split-second between life and death that seems to hold forever, with Mike on his belly, in a country he has no connection to, fighting for a cause he doesn’t entirely understand as a man he has never met prepares to murder him.

He squeezes the trigger, and the 7.62 NATO rounds spew from the GPMG and tear through the guy’s gut and chest and send him flying off his feet with a spray of blood.

Assault rifles firing on all sides. Grenades being lobbed. Shouts of anger and rage. Screams of pain. The word ALLAH. The word GOD. The words FUCK YOU! Noise and heat, and spent cartridges.

Hot, wet blood hits Mike’s face. Jamie sprawls in front of the GPMG.

‘Fuck,’ Mike mutters. His aim blocked by his own comrade lying dead in front of him, but more of his mates are at risk, and so he heaves the gun up to brace on Jamie’s body and fires into the breach. Gunning them down and repelling the attack.

It lasts forever.

It lasts for seconds.

Silence comes.

An awful and terrible silence, and they all pray and promise that they’ll never do it again.

Saturday, 16th July

Day Two

Mike wakes to another silence. Sitting up bathed in sweat with a yell dying in his throat from the dreams that plague his life. The siege of Sangin. Afghan. 2006. That was the first big one. There were more after that, but you never forget the first one. The first close quarter kills, and the first time seeing your mates getting shot down.

Daylight now.

He exhales slowly and shuffles to rest his back against the wall, and stares across the room. Dust motes dance and hang, and he frowns with alarm showing at the empty counter where the nest was. He starts to rise but spots the boy and his mother in the far corner. The nest on the floor in front of the boy’s crossed legs, and his thumb gently stroking her head.

Mike sinks back down and gropes for the bottle of vodka. Lifting it up to take a last swig of the dregs before grimacing at the burning sensation in his stomach. Acid and bile. Used cigarette butts stubbed out at his side, and a pressing need to pee.

He finds an old toilet cubicle on the landing and urinates with a never-ending stream of piss splashing into the bowl. A mirror on the wall in front of him. Stained and old, and cracked, but clear enough to show his awful state. Long, straggly beard. Wild hair. But the yellowness looks like it’s faded a bit. He blinks and figures maybe it’s like one of those weird things, where somebody suddenly looks healthy before they drop dead.

The vomit comes without warning. Leaving him gasping in shock because he rarely pukes.

That steak must have been dodgy.

Yeah. Blame that and not the decade and a half of alcoholism and rough living.

He snorts a dry laugh at his own self-mockery and flushes the bowl, then immediately curses himself.

On his feet and moving with purpose.

‘Fucking idiot,’ he growls, rushing into the main room with the woman tensing in alarm.

‘Are you okay?’ the boy asks in lilting English.

‘No, I’m fucking not. I flushed the bastard toilet like a twat,’ he says as he clambers up onto the counter and pushes the window open to stare down into the narrow passage. Two dead bodies still there but nothing else.

‘Is the toilet broken?’ the boy asks as his mother tries to shush him.

‘I wish it was! They’ll bloody hear it. The enemy. I should know better than to use a toilet while covert. We need eyes on the front.’

‘My eyes don’t work,’ the boy says as Mike stops to stare at the boy cocking his head over, not entirely sure if he was being sarcastic or genuine.

‘Aye,’ Mike says, figuring such concepts are too much for his mind right now, and he sets off into another room filled with dusty, old furniture and a big rat sat on a shelf twitching his nose. ‘Morning,’ Mike whispers, rushing by with a wave of his hand to peer slowly out through the filthy window overlooking the High Street. ‘Shit! Cocking, wanking, twatty pissflap shit.’

‘What can you see?’ the boy asks, making Mike jump out of his skin and turn to see the lad right behind him.

‘Samir, I said no,’ the woman whispers, rushing in to start pulling her son back.

‘They’re outside,’ Mike says, sinking down beneath the window to rub his face. ‘Fucking flushed the toilet like a twat. Big Chris’d chew me out for that. Let me tell you that for free. Eh. But mind, though,’ he adds and gets back onto his knees to peer out again as his brain finally computes what his eyes saw the first time.

People in the street. The same types of people as last night.

Red eyes and covered in blood and injuries. Bites and awful ragged wounds. Wounds so deep, they should have bled out. Except they’re still up and moving.

Only they’re not moving like they were last night.

Now they’re slow and stiff, with their heads lolling about as though they can’t control them. And they’re bumping into each and falling over, and moving so awkwardly, it’s hard for them to get back up.

There’s a lot too. Dozens of them, and from the speed they’re moving at, it’s not possible they all gathered from the noise of the toilet. Which means they were here before that.

Why?

What’s drawing them?

‘Sitrep,’ he says, glancing back to the woman and the boy. ‘We’re royally fucked.’

‘Why are we fucked?’ the boy asks.

‘Don’t swear,’ his mother chides.

‘Cos there’s a whole street of those weirdo twats. That’s why. Bugger. Arse. Right, think. Ach. I cannae think until I’ve had a drink and a smoke. Back to the Alamo,’ he says and crawls away from the window before rising and waving at the rat still up on the shelf. ‘Alright, mate.’

‘Who is the man speaking to, Momma?’

‘A rat,’ she says with a look of disgust.

‘Where is the rat?’

‘Up there,’ she says, lifting his hand to aim in the direction.

‘Alright, mate,’ Samir says and waves, and the rat twitches his nose, with the woman pulling her son after her as she crosses back into the room to see the man holding two empty bottles of vodka.

‘Did you drink my vodka?’

‘You drank the vodka.’

‘I didn’t drink two bottles. Even I can’t drink two bottles. I’d have a go, mind.’

‘You drank one. I used other to clean.’

‘A whole bottle to clean? Aye. Fair one, I guess. Was there some wine? Did we bring red wine back? I recall we did.’

‘It’s here,’ she says, fetching it over as he grimaces.

‘I don’t like red wine. And not an empty stomach. But what can you do?’ he asks and takes a big swig.

‘We have some bread left,’ she says, holding the basket out for Mike to take a roll.

‘Did you eat?’ he asks with a mouthful while his belly gurgles and churns, and the acid burns his stomach and throat.

‘I had a chicken burger,’ Samir says.

‘Aye. That was a posh one in a brioche bun. Did we have cheesecake? I recall we had cheesecake.’

‘It’s here. We had only a small piece,’ she says as he grabs it and uses a fork to start shovelling it in.

‘Can I have cheesecake, Momma?’ the boy asks in their native language.

‘Does he want some?’ Mike asks, taking another fork as he steps closer, with them both taking an immediate big step away in a way that Mike has come to recognise as being from his stench. ‘Here. You have it,’ he says, holding it out.

A churn inside. A surge up his throat. He gags and rushes to the toilet to vomit the wine and bread, and cheesecake up. Seeing the blood and figuring this is really it. He’s really dying. Oh, well. It’s about time really. ‘Take care of the pigeon,’ he croaks.

‘What?’ the woman asks as her son starts wolfing the cheesecake down. ‘Don’t eat too much.’

‘I said take care of the pigeon. Open a window if you leave, so she can get out.’

‘Are you going?’ she asks, edging out onto the landing. ‘Samir! Don’t eat so much.’

‘Aye. My time is up,’ Mike says.

‘Time? Time for what?’ she asks, peering around the door frame to see him on his knees hugging the toilet.

‘You can’t bleed that much on the inside and not die,’ he tells her and draws air as he prepares to meet his maker.

She goes closer. Peering into the bowl. ‘Is wine.’

‘Eh?’

‘Is red wine. Not blood.’

‘Is it now?’ he asks, getting up to look inside. ‘I thought it was blood.’

She rolls her eyes and walks out. ‘Samir! No more.’

‘Blood,’ Mike says, tutting at himself and wondering why he keeps puking. He doesn’t feel that sick. The usual aches and pains, and that dull throbbing thing in his liver is still there. Albeit not so much.

He goes back into the main room and crosses to the sink, with the boy and his mother both taking big steps away to stay clear of the foul stench.

‘If at first you don’t succeed,’ Mike says and takes another big swig of the wine, and then again, two minutes, later he’s rushing for the toilet to vomit. But still, he comes back and tries again, and pukes again.

When he comes back out from the third time, he scowls at the red wine bottle not being where he left it and narrows his eyes at the woman hiding it behind her back.

‘You are wasting it,’ she says in a tone that brings him up short. He nods with shame burning his cheeks. Selfish, greedy Mike with no control, taking what he wants again, regardless of anyone around him.

He goes back to his corner and lights a smoke, and sits down.

The foot comes down and the explosion is near instant. Pink mist and filthy dust hang in the air. An old Russian landmine. Widger’s legs shorn off at the knees. A stunned silence that seems to last forever until Widger screams, and the lads all recover from the shock.

‘MEDIC!’ the corporal yells, the first up and running to the casualty. Then he disappears in another blast of blood and gore, and dust. Two down. Two screaming.

‘Get a fucking casevac!’ Stevo shouts as Billy, the radioman, starts to transmit, then cuts off from his skull blowing out.

‘SNIPER!’ Mike yells, heaving the gimpy over to put fire into the building line. Chaos. Dust. Screams. Death. Blood.

Then always the silence that follows.

That awful silence.

Mike wakes in the room with another gasp at the memories fading quickly. A crippling urge inside to drink. The addiction sending waves of compulsion through his very core and soul.

But there’s only the wine left.

What’s happening?

It must be a pandemic of some kind. Big too.

He lies on his back, figuring he was still too drunk to think properly this morning. Now his head feels clearer, although the rest of him feels like shit. Aches and pains, and throbs, and that urge to drink makes him want to clench his fists and kick, and scream.

Whatever pandemic this is, it’s highly contagious. That’s obvious. But the contagion must be from bodily fluid to bodily fluid.

If it was in the air, then Mike and the other two would have got it from their close proximity to the infected people.

But that also suggests the contagion can’t live for long outside of the body, otherwise they could have got secondary transmission from the blood and fluids on their hands and body.

That’s something to think about.

Not that Mike can do anything about it anyway, and it’s clearly very widespread from the lack of sirens and noise from outside, which suggests the authorities have not been able to mobilise. Winchester isn’t a big city now, but it’s still sizeable. And Hampshire Police have their HQ in this town, which would mean plenty of armed offices ready to deploy. Who have clearly not deployed. Which then suggests this thing spread too fast.

‘Are you awake?’ the woman asks softly, seeing him stirring as he gropes for his tobacco and rolling papers and sets about making a cigarette.

‘Aye.’

‘It is afternoon now. What do we do?’

He squints at the awful misshapen cigarette and figures it’ll do, and lights it while still on his back. ‘Just got to wait.’

‘Wait for what?’

‘For someone to come maybe,’ he says, figuring that might not happen. But what’s the alternative?

‘We cannot stay here,’ the boy says.

‘Why?’ Mike asks, turning his head to look over at them still in their corner.

‘They will come,’ the boy says.

‘Who will?’

‘We need to leave,’ the woman says.

‘I just said we have to wait.’

‘Samir said they will come.’

‘I don’t care what Samir said. We cannae go outside. There’s too many at the door.’

‘We must leave,’ she says again.

‘Leave then,’ he says and rolls his head back to stare up while that craving spikes inside, and his hand trembles.

‘Is there another way out?’ she asks.

‘No.’

‘But we cannot stay here.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asks, turning to look at her. Seeing determination mixed with fear and worry. ‘Whatever that infection is. Inside of them. It’s weakening. They’re all slow now. Maybe they’ll pass out or something, and you can get away.’

She nods and swallows.

‘You live near here?’ he asks.

The woman shakes her head. ‘We don’t live anywhere.’

‘You don’t look homeless.’

‘Refugees.’

‘You in a hostel or something?’

She nods while the boy rubs the bird’s head.

Mike smokes his badly made cigarette, and the seconds tick by, becoming minutes as they stay in silence.

‘Where do you live?’ the boy asks.

‘Me?’ Mike asks, turning to look at them with a snort. ‘Downstairs in the street. Right below that window actually.’

‘You don’t have a house?’ the boy asks.

‘Nah. I don’t have a house.’

‘We don’t have a house. We had a house in Albania, but we came here.’

‘Samir. I’m sure this man doesn’t want to know.’

‘Did your ma just tell you to stop telling me?’

‘Yes,’ Samir says as his mother tuts, and Mike almost cracks a smile.

Silence again as Mike smokes, and the woman gets up and heads out onto the landing.

‘Don’t flush if you’re peeing,’ he calls softly.

She hesitates. Looking stricken for a second.

‘Do you need to defecate?’ he asks. She nods, looking appalled. ‘Just do it, but don’t flush.’

She pulls a face. Worried sick that he will use the toilet and see her waste in the bowl.

‘I’ve seen much worse. Trust me. I shat on a nurse once in hospital.’

The boy sniggers. The woman shows distaste and goes into the toilet, closing the door behind her.

‘What’s your mum’s name?’

‘Debora.’

‘That’s not very Albanian. My mate’s wife was called Debs, and he was from Sunderland.’

‘Where is your friend now?’

‘Ach. He died.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Terry Taliban shot him at close range.’

‘Why?’

‘Cos we were trying to shoot them, I guess.’

‘Why?’

‘I have no fucking clue. The war on terror or oil, or fucking who knows why.’

‘Was Terry your friend too?’

A snort from Mike as Debora comes out and closes the toilet door behind her. ‘No. Terry wasn’t my mate. Debs, there’s no toilet paper in there. You need to clean down below. Put some water in an empty bottle and rinse your bits. You’ll get infections if you don’t wash in this heat.’

‘Debs?’ she asks.

‘Aye. Debora. Samir said your name. You clean your ass too, Samy.’

‘Do you clean?’ Samir asks as Debora gives Mike a look.

‘Touché, Samy. But my body is used to it. Yours ain’t.’

‘What does tooshay mean?’ Samir asks.

‘It’s when you say something smart, and some other fucker says something smarter and puts you in your place.’

‘They are still outside,’ Debora says when she comes back in from rinsing in the toilet.

‘You looked?’ Mike asks.

‘I stayed low and was quick. There are more now.’

‘Are they still slow?

‘Yes. What do we do? We cannot stay here.’

‘We have to wait.’

‘They will come,’ Samir says.

‘The door’s locked. We’ll be fine. Just stay quiet,’ Mike says as Debora thinks to argue, but she goes back to her corner.

Mike goes out to pee later and checks the window again, seeing Debora was right, and the street has a lot more of the infected people.

He stares down for a long time. Clocking how they move, and that none of them seem capable of looking specifically at one thing, and they’re so clustered together, a can of petrol and a match would finish them off. Or a few grenades. Or better yet, a gimpy set up on this window ledge. That’ll finish them off quicker than anything.

That urge spikes again. The absolute need to drink. His hands ball to fists, and the tremble spreads through his whole body. The eatery is literally below this room, and it’s full of booze. He even thinks about going through the floor, but that would cause noise, and he’s already breached the first rule of being covert by flushing the stupid bloody toilet.

He goes back into the main room, noticing that the light is starting to fade, making the corners darker and the shadows deeper.

‘They will come,’ the boy says again as Mike blasts air from his nose and rolls his hands from the compulsion raging inside.

‘Have you got that wine, Debs?’

‘We need this.’

‘But you’ve got water to drink. What do you need the wine for? Let me have a drink.’

‘It make you sick.’

‘I’m sick cos I’m not getting any. I’m a drunk, love. I’m addicted.’

‘Then stop.’

He reverts in an instant, with years of habit ingrained in his whole being. ‘I just need a little drink,’ he says in a pleading tone. Broken. Needy. ‘Just a wee drop to rid the shakes. Will ye spare me a wee drop now?’

Debora stares up at him. Finding it hard to remember he is the same man that shot the infected last night and got them inside. He was so fast and seemed so sure of what he was doing, and his eyes were alive. Now he looks wasted and thin, and pathetic, and his hands shake. She sighs and pulls the bottle out from the corner, and hands it over.

He rushes in to take it as they both turn their heads from his smell, and he backs off to upend the bottle. Taking a long, deep drink, with the warm, acidic wine hitting his empty stomach.

A sigh when he lowers the bottle, and just in that time, the room grows darker from the night once more charging across the sky to push the sun back.

‘I think it’s staying down,’ he says a second before his belly churns, and he rushes to the sink to vomit red wine into the stainless-steel bowl.

‘I said make sick,’ Debora says as the world outside erupts from every infected turning their head to face up and howling at the same time.

Thousands of voices all doing the same thing as the infection inside of them turns them back into the beasts they were last night.

‘We must go!’ the woman says as Mike holds a hand out, signalling for her to be quiet. His head cocked over and listening. The same as the boy while Debora feels the panic surging up inside.

Then it ends.

All of the voices cutting off at once, and the silence that follows seems charged.

‘They will come now,’ the boy whispers, prompting Mike to turn towards them, with the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as the silence seems to stretch. A silence so profound they can hear each other breathing.

A smash.

Something slamming into the front door. Forcing it open and crashing into the wall with a vicious snarl sounding out.

Mike moves fast, taking two steps to gain sight of the first one coming up the stairs across the landing. He throws the wine bottle hard. Getting it full on in the face, but the woman doesn’t flinch. She keeps coming. Not stiff. Not awkward. Fast and filled with rage as Mike dives for the rifle and twists to aim, and fires rounds into the doorway as she comes through. Blowing her back off her feet.

On his feet and advancing. Ears ringing. Deborah pulling her son into her body. Mike pacing forward. The rifle braced. Firing into the next one on the landing. The first shot misses. He gets the next one into the head. Dropping the elderly male, and still Mike goes forward. His instinct urging him to take the landing and hold the higher ground.

‘DEBS! FURNITURE!’ Mike shouts while dropping to a knee for a tactical reload. ‘TO ME! NOW, DEBS!’

She hesitates. Terrified and not wanting to leave her son, but she summons the courage. ‘Stay here,’ she tells Samir and runs to the landing.

‘Furniture out of that room. Quickly!’

‘What?’ she asks, too panicked to think.

‘Get the furniture!’ he yells, seeing she’s too shocked to think, and he fires again. Dropping another, with more cramming into the front door to force through. Slipping and clambering over the ones already shot down.

A flash of understanding hits Debora, and she darts into the room to grab a wooden chair and comes back to throw it, but slams the edge into the back of Mike’s head, hitting him hard enough to almost send him down the stairs.

She ditches the chair and helps him up, with more infected getting through and rising. He yells and fires. She grabs the chair and throws it hard, and rushes to grab another, doing the same again as the rage of survival gives her strength and power. Making her grunt and snarl, and lift a heavy table off the ground and heave it down the stairs. Desks and rugs, and plant pots. An armchair and finally a heavy, worn, old Chesterfield until the stairs are blocked completely.

Mike holds still. Gasping for air, with his hand on Debora’s arm. Keeping her still as they listen to the infected slamming into the furniture. Driving hard enough to make even the heaviest items shift and move.

‘It won’t hold them,’ Mike says, rushing back into the main room and over to the counter to force the window open. ‘We’ll have to climb down the drain.’

‘He is blind!’ Debora whispers.

‘He doesn’t need to see. It’s dark anyway,’ Mike says, rushing over to lift the boy.

‘No!’ Debora says, blocking his path and trying to pull her son free. ‘He can hold onto my back.’

‘I climbed a tree before I was blind, Momma.’

‘See. He climbed a tree.’

‘It was a tiny tree!’

‘It’s a tiny drainpipe! Do ye want to stay here and get eaten?’

Debora feels crushed inside. Glancing to the landing door as the furniture blocking the stairs starts sliding up from the sheer weight of the infected driving into it from behind.

There is no choice.

‘You go first and catch him if he falls. I can’t do it. I’m heavier and might pull the pipe away from the wall. Pigeon!’ Mike yells suddenly and drops off the counter to run over to the nest. ‘Shitting, wanking fuck! How are we going to carry it down? Bugger, bugger, bugger. My shirt! Shit, it’s been used. Gimme yours.’

‘No!’

‘We need to carry the pigeon down.’

‘You can use my shirt,’ Samir says.

‘No!’ his mother says, tutting at the sheer absurdity of it as she pulls her top off overhead.

‘You’ve got big boobs!’ Mike says as she double-takes. ‘That’s perfect. We can use your bra.’

‘No! No… I said no!’ she says firmly, shaking her head and bringing a hand up to show she really means it.

‘Told you it would bloody work,’ Mike says five minutes later as he climbs hand over hand down a drainpipe while wearing a bra with a pigeon’s nest complete with eggs and brooding pigeon inside one of the cups.

Debora tries not to look at the stinking dead bodies left on the ground since last night. Flies hovering over them. Buzzing angrily at being disturbed.

‘Okay. This way,’ Mike says, setting off away along the passage away from the High Street as a snarl sounds out behind them. He glances back. Seeing one lurching into the passage and gaining speed. ‘Quickly!’ he says, with Deborah lifting her blind son to run as fast as she can to the end. ‘Stay at the side,’ Mike urges. Knowing that to open fire now will attract every single one of them to come running.

But that still leaves this one to deal with, and he listens to the footsteps coming closer. Mike goes low and sticks his foot out as the infected male trips over his ankle and goes flying, with his face taking the full impact. Breaking his nose and smashing teeth from his mouth. Mike doesn’t hesitate but rushes in, and strikes the back of the head hard with the butt of the rifle until the bone caves in and splinters the brain.

They run into St Peter’s Street. Buildings on the left and right with smashed windows and broken doors. Blood smeared everywhere. A dead body to the left. An abandoned car crashed into a wall nearby.

A big building on the right. The Winchester Royal Hotel. They pass the old mews entrance, with Mike stopping at a chest height wall that he knows leads the hotel gardens.

‘Over,’ he whispers to Debora. He goes first. Taking care with the eggs in his bra and then helping Samir over, and waiting for Debora to drop at their side. All three of them gasping for air and hunkering down. A few lights shine in the hotel rooms butting onto the garden. But no cars or music, or people. No planes overhead. No anything.

Footsteps.

Debora tenses. Looking wide-eyed at Mike. Their faces bathed in the moonlight. He presses a finger to his lips and motions the wall behind them. Signalling the infected can’t get to them.

The footsteps come closer. Snarls and hisses. The sounds of a beast. An animal. Something that isn’t human anymore.

Mike expects it to keep going.

Except it doesn’t.

The footsteps stop on the other side of the wall, and they stay frozen, listening to the thing sniffing as it twists and turns, and finally launches itself at the wall. Making them all jump and back away. Hearing the infected throw itself bodily at the other side of the wall.

‘Let’s go,’ Mike whispers, turning to leave as he bumps into Debora, and even right then, in the midst of that panic, she can’t help but gag from the stench coming from him as they both look at each other. Realising the same thing.

‘You,’ Debora whispers.

‘It’s me,’ Mike says at the same time. ‘They can smell me.’

More footsteps sound in the street. More and more, and many more. All of them locking onto the stench of piss and shit, and stale, unwashed body wafting from Mike like a pheromone trail left hanging in the air.

A moment in time.

Mike’s eyes alive and gleaming. ‘I know what to do.’

‘You have to go,’ Debora says.

‘Aye. But not here. You won’t last the night. I can take you somewhere. Somewhere safe.’

‘We can’t be with you,’ Debora says, pulling her son away from Mike.

‘Momma. No. We go with him.’

‘They are following him, Samir.’

‘We must go with him.’

That same tone again. One of certainty and sureness, and the way the child speaks, it is simply a thing that must be done.

‘It’s not far. But we’ll have to run, and I know I smell,’ Mike says. ‘But put the boy on my back and stay behind me.’

A second of hesitation in Debora.

But then Samir was the one who said she must leave her husband. Samir’s father.

Samir said they had to go before too.

On the night they left Samir’s father.

Samir said something bad would happen. He ran out of the house. Samir could only just see then. Debora chased him down the street and grabbed him. She started to take him back when the men pulled up outside in a van and opened fire with assault rifles on their house. Breaking all the windows and blowing the doors apart. They threw Molotov’s inside and drove off.

A revenge attack for Samir’s father killing members of their gang the week before in a turf war over drugs and guns, and human trafficking.

Debora fled to her parents’ house.

Samir’s eyes were already bad. The local hospital had said Samir had a tumour, but if he had an operation soon, they might be able to save some sight in one eye, but it had to be very soon, or it would be too late. But she couldn’t go there now. Samir’s dad was alive and hunting them. Going to the hospital would alert him, and she had no money to pay for it.

Someone said the UK had free healthcare for everyone.

You just have to go there.

She said no. She wouldn’t be one of those people.

‘We must go, Momma. We must go there,’ Samir said, and he had that same tone. Something about it that willed her to comply.

She stole money and made it to Calais on the French north coast. Migrants from Africa and Pakistan, and the Middle East lived in camps and tried daily to board lorries.

‘We must go by boat, Momma,’ Samir said.

She couldn’t afford the trafficking fee. One of the organisers called her into his shack. He told her what she could do to earn passage.

She took the humiliation, and a few days later, she got on a flimsy boat meant for eight people. Over forty were on board. They set off. The wind was up. The sea was churning. They linked arms and prayed. The boat rose and fell. Samir was nearly fully blind by then. He held his mother’s shaking hands and told her not to worry.

‘The boat will sink, Momma. But we will live.’

A wave took the boat over. Everyone fell out. Many drowned instantly. Samir had the only life jacket on because his mother did things to earn it. They stayed in the sea until a British lifeboat came and took them out. The people were nice. They wrapped them in blankets.

They arrived on the shore and went into a bus, then to a place where the people were not nice. They slept in an old, wooden building for many nights with eight other families. Dysentery broke out. Everyone got sick. They finally saw an immigration worker who processed their application and said they could have emergency accommodation in a bed and breakfast.

Debora knew the British people hated the migrants coming over. She hated being part of it, but Samir’s eyes were rapidly losing their colour, and she had to get him the operation before it was too late.

She took him to the hospital. The woman behind the desk said they can’t treat them without an NHS number and that there were sick British people that needed help more than they did.

They went to leave, but an Albanian nurse took them into a side room. She wrote her own name down and her own NHS number and told them to go to Winchester to see an Albanian eye doctor. Debora said she didn’t have the money to travel. The nurse gave them one hundred pounds and said that was all she could afford.

That was yesterday. Friday morning.

Debora took her son straight to the train station and went into London, then out to Winchester. But they arrived late. When it was almost dark. That meant finding somewhere cheap to stay until Monday.

They came out of the station and started walking into town when the speeding train slammed into the one they’d come from, and the carriage they’d been in missed them by a few feet as it slewed across the road.

They ran for cover, with Debora scared that the police would arrest her for leaving her immigration hostel, but the trouble followed them.

All the way into town and down the High Street.

All the way to a foul-smelling, filthy homeless man with a long, grey beard now standing in front of them with an earnest look in his eyes.

The same man that kept them alive all last night.

‘I can get you out of this. But ye’ve got to trust me,’ Mike says.

‘We must go with him,’ Samir whispers as Debora lifts her son and puts him on the back of the strange man.

‘I know I stink, but cling on, and watch my pigeon doesn’t fall out,’ Mike says, feeling the lad’s arms and legs tighten, and he checks the rifle and nods at Debora. ‘Stay right behind me and do not stop.’

He sets off into the back of the hotel through the bar. Smelling liquor and booze and wanting nothing more than to stop and drink. But not now. He’s got a mission to do, and by God, he’ll see it through, and if by some divine miracle he survives, which he won’t, but if he does, he’ll come back here and drink the whole fucking place dry. But he does pause long enough to grab two bottles of Tequila that he tells Debora to hold.

‘They make you sick,’ she hisses angrily.

‘Just bloody hold them!’ he snaps and forces them into her hands before setting off into the reception. An infected man surging out from a side room. Pause. Aim. Fire. Headshot. Move on. Debora close behind him.

Back onto St Peter Street. Rifle up and ready. Motion at the front. A lumbering beast of a man charging into the junction. Pause. Aim. Fire. Move on.

Back across the road and into the passage he called home for so long. Knowing this will either work or it won’t. But sometimes the element of surprise is exactly what’s needed.

He rushes out into the High Street. Taking a hard left towards The Butter Cross.

A woman on the left charging in. He aims and fires. Another on the right. Aim and fire. Always moving. Constantly moving. More infected react and start their lumbering charge. Screeching and howling, with Debora thinking they’ve made a terrible mistake coming back into the centre of the city.

But Mike drives them on. Firing only to keep the path ahead clear. Knowing he’s attracting every infected within miles to come charging.

But that’s okay.

That’s what he wants.

On he goes. Firing single shots. Killing and killing as the pigeon coos in her cup, and the boy clings to his back, with his mother close behind.

Tables and chairs across the street. Plate glass windows broken in. Death and destruction everywhere.

More infected coming at them. More and more, and many more.

‘Stay with me!’ Mike shouts, speeding up to reach The Butter Cross. Taking a hard right into another tiny alley running beneath old medieval buildings. The exact spot where William the Conqueror once built a palace. Infected behind him. Screeching and charging.

‘Smash the bottles! Right here! Smash them now!’

She does as told without getting why. Throwing the bottles down to smash on the ground in the narrow lane.

‘Move!’ Mike yells and pushes her away as he lowers and pulls his lighter out to ignite the Tequila. Flames shoot up. Burning hot and bright and blocking the path as he backs away and takes the boy over to the thick stone arched doorway of The Church of St Lawrence. A door that’s always open, but more importantly, a door made of thick, strong wood, and he ushers Debora inside, slams the door, and drops to his knees for Samir to let go.

All of them gasping for air.

‘That door behind me is the only way in. You keep it shut and locked. There’s another door over the side that leads into the back of an old pub. It’s probably sealed up now, but beat a way through it and use that to get food and drink.’

Debora goes to speak. Sensing what’s happening.

‘No time,’ he says over her. ‘You stay here now. It’s safe. The windows are high and narrow, and the walls are thicker than my head. Will you do that? Samy? Will ye keep your momma here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good lad,’ Mike says, struggling to unclasp the bra. ‘Been a long time since I had to do this,’ he says and gently hands it over for Samir to take the cup holding the bird and her eggs. ‘You keep her safe for me. And you take this,’ he adds, giving the pistol to Debora. ‘You know how to shoot?’

‘I shoot before. Where you go?’

‘You said it love. It’s me they want because I fucking stink. So I’m gonna give them what they want.’

‘No! You said they can’t come in here.’

‘Aye. But I’m not putting that to the test. Covert means quiet. Silent. No noise. Stay low. Stay silent. Say it back to me.’

‘Stay silent,’ Samir says.

‘Aye, lad. That’s it. Right. I’m going,’ Mike says and smiles for the first time in years as he leans over to kiss the pigeon’s head. ‘I love you, you daft bird. Be good lad,’ he adds, ruffling Samir’s head as he rises and turns for the door. But he pauses again. Seeing the boy framed by moonlight cast through the church windows.

A small boy with eyes that don’t work. Dark hair and a manner about him. A sense of fearlessness. A sense of something else. Something that can’t be touched or named. An essence that commands with an energy burning inside of him.

‘Stay,’ his mother pleads in a whisper.

‘He must go, momma,’ the boy says, his head cocked over.

‘Aye. And if I see you again. I’ll tell you about that time I shat on a nurse.’

The boy sniggers. Mike smiles. Then he’s out the door and slamming it shut, with his voice sailing clear.

‘COME ON, YOU FUCKS! THREE PARA! COME AND SNIFF MY MANKY PITS, YE WEE BASTARDS…!

Gunshots. Shouts. They go further away until it falls silent. Then they lower down into a corner, with the boy holding the nest. His head cocked over as he stares sightlessly into the night.

3

Saturday, 16th July

Day Two

‘It was an organic transition of events that led to the current almighty clusterfuck,’ Scottish Mike says with a gasp as the initial burst of speed born from his heroic endeavour to save Debora and her blind son Samir vanishes. Leaving him breathless, with heavy legs from the decade and a half of alcoholism and rough sleeping.

‘Ye daft fucking twat,’ he calls himself in his gruff Glaswegian accent. Hence being called Scottish Mike when he joined the Parachute Regiment many years ago. There were two Mikes. Cockney Mike and Scottish Mike.

Now Scottish Mike glances at the horde with a flashback to running through dusty streets surrounded by mud walls and dry ditches in Afghan with Widge and Jamie, and Stevo while being chased by Terry Taliban. Shots fired, and shouts all around them. It was dark then too. They’d got cut off out on patrol and couldn’t reach the base. But they were young and batshit crazy. They hid behind a wall to get their breath, and Jamie let rip with a wet fart. ‘I think I’ve shat myself,’ he whispered, which set them off giggling, which only got worse the more they tried to stop it.

The Taliban heard the laughing and attacked, and the chase went on.

One of Afghan liaison assets later said that single action of hearing four young soldiers laughing while surrounded by an enemy cut off from their base sent terror through them all. ‘The paras are devils. They don’t feel fear!’

That wasn’t true. They did feel fear. Most of them spent their entire deployments in a state of terror. That’s what war was. Only psychopaths didn’t get scared.

But it just wasn’t a crippling fear that rendered them useless. They were fit and very highly trained, and in small teams of mates. That’s what got them through when Jamie died and when others got shot or blown up by IED’s.

It’s the same now, with Mike knowing he can’t run very far. Not in his state, and he glances back to the horde behind and knows in his core that he must draw them further away to give Debs and Samy a chance at life. He knows he has fatal liver disease, and he’s been vomiting all day, which means the end must be close.

Fuck it then.

Might as well make it count and take a few of these cunts with him.

He stops to draw air and turns to fire the G36 into the horde. Aiming for headshots, having seen that body shots don’t kill.

But shooting the head on a moving target is hard. So he reverts to dirty tactics and aims down to shoot into knees and legs cos while the wankers might not feel pain, humans cannot run or walk on shattered leg bones.

Several drop and trip the ones coming after. Making Mike grin and wish he was back on patrol in the regiment with a radio operator, so he could pass the intel on. Shoot their fucking legs.

Except there isn’t anyone to tell.

‘COMING TO YOU ON YOUR SIX!’

A female voice from behind. A glance around to a woman striding towards him. Black police uniform. Police baseball cap and holding a G36 assault rifle braced and ready.

‘Shoot their legs!’ Mike yells and takes a knee to recommence fire. Putting rounds into the horde as the cop reaches his side. Sending shots in. Casings flying out. Hitting the ground. ‘I’m out,’ Mike says, expending the last rounds in his last mag.

‘One to you,’ she says calmly, passing a mag from her tac-vest.

A tactical reload as they pace backwards.

‘Military?’ she asks.

‘Three Para.’

‘RMP before I joined the civvie cops. ARV now,’ she replies as he takes a quick glance to the woman in her fifties. Frizzy, blond hair streaked with grey pulled back. A tanned and weathered face. Blue eye make-up. Red lipstick. A name tag on the front of her vest. PC Bev Knight.

‘Beverly Knight?’ he asks as she rolls her eyes. Long used to the comments.

‘Where did you get that?’ she asks, nodding at his rifle.

‘Female cop. High Street.’

‘She two eight?’ the woman asks.

‘Two eight?’

‘Dead?’

‘Yeah. KIA. Sorry.’

Bev winces with a grim tut. ‘She was pregnant. Only just found out. Got survivors in the Cathedral.’

‘How many?’

‘About a dozen.’

‘The Cathedral’s too big.’

‘For what’

‘To defend,’ he mutters, turning to see the horde clambering over their fallen comrades, and he sets off at a brisk jog. Enough air sucked down to recover his wits and get moving again. She rushes after him into the cathedral grounds as he aims for the west end section of the long nave. ‘We need to get them out. I know a place, but they’ve got to move and stay silent. Get in front and tell them.’

‘Why can’t you tell them?’

‘And ye think they’ll listen to a homeless, beardy cunt?’

‘A homeless, beardy cunt with a gun,’ she says, but jogs ahead to the main central entrance.

‘We’re moving out,’ Bev relays. ‘Get everyone ready. Now! Go!’

‘Shit, too late,’ Mike says, seeing the horde already charging through the grounds, still locked onto his smell. ‘Get in!’ he orders, sweeping back towards the doors and firing rounds to drop a few more as Bev grabs his belt line and guides back through. Slamming the door closed and shooting home a single metal bolt. ‘That won’t hold them. Get them going. Everyone up!’ Mike orders, striding into the main hall to see Dr Patel holding a pistol.

‘Okay, guys,’ the doctor calls, trying to be calm and controlled. ‘So, the advice we’re being given by the law enforcement professional is that this specific location is not suitable in the long term and that an orderly evacuation is probably for the best.’

‘Fuck that,’ Mike says. ‘RUN!’ he yells at the faces of people, all strangers to each other. Caught up in the carnage who managed to flee and reach the cathedral. ‘Move! Now! Go!’ Mike says, brutal and harsh. Kicking at them to make them move. Experienced in knowing that getting panicky people to move is like herding cats. A bang at the door. The first impact from the infected. A collective shout of alarm inside, but it gets them moving.

Another bang. The door slams open. The snarling horde spills inside. Mike turns and fires. The gunshots horribly loud in the vaulted room. Bev joins in as Dr Patel ushers them on with Bev’s pistol in his hand.

‘Go!’ Mike shouts as he and Bev set off running and provide rear cover for the group. They reach the end, with Mike pausing to heave the end of a pew out behind him. The weight of it catching him out and making him shout in alarm until Bev and Dr Patel help, and they pull it across the aisle.

They run on, with Mike glancing back to see the horde slamming into it. A low pew that they could easily vault or climb over, but they don’t.

He logs the intel mentally and keeps going, and grabs chairs and old tables to throw out behind him. Bev does the same, heaving a series of craft tables set up for a local arts display over onto the path. ‘Get them to the east entrance and hold!’ Mike orders, waving his hand at Doctor Patel to take them through a narrow section and across a meeting area while he and Bev heave more benches out and kick tables over. A computer and EPOS payment system. Both with extensive wiring that will snag feet and trip ankles.

On they go. Into the next section, dragging more pews out to block their path. Both of them heaving for air.

‘I could have retired last week,’ Bev gasps.

‘Why didn’t you?’ Mike asks as they back up.

‘Cos I’m an idiot! That’s why,’ she mutters. Turning to bump into Mike. ‘God, you stink!’

‘It’s what’s making them chase us.’

‘You being serious?’ she asks with a sudden hardening in her expression.

‘Aye. We’ll get these safe, then I’ll lead the wee sods off.’

He runs on. She follows behind. Reaching the others whimpering in fear at the east entrance.

‘We go first,’ Mike says to Bev. ‘Doc, you’re right behind us.’

‘It’s you!’ Doctor Patel says, blinking at Mike.

‘Not now. Stay up front with us. We don’t stop. If someone goes down, we leave them. Do you all understand me? You want to live, then you run like fuckers.’

He pushes to the front. Not giving them time to think or let the terror take over, and he kicks the door open and charges out. Rifle up and aimed. Two outside, turning fast. He shoots one down. Bev fires over his shoulder. Gunning the other one down. Mike’s ears ringing from the gunfire so close to his head.

‘Quickly now!’ Dr Patel urges. Holding the unfamiliar weapon as he grabs the hand of a young woman and pulls her along, and they run out as a group onto Paternoster Row. A small lane threading across the rear grounds.

Darkness overhead, but a hot, sultry night with a bright moon and gleaming stars. The streetlights still working. A few lights left on in houses nearby. The power lines still running.

They exit the grounds onto Colebrook Street. A car park ahead underneath an ugly, squat, modern brick building that contrasts so starkly against the exquisite architecture all around. A bog-standard chain hotel.

‘This way,’ Mike says, veering off to go through the car park built under the building. Using the dark shadows and parked cars to obstruct the view of their chasers, and from years of rough-sleeping, he knows every back door and rear-entrance in this city.

He aims straight for the staff door they always kept wedged open for their smoke breaks, and he wrenches it open. Gasping for air and surging in with his rifle up.

Shouts inside. A scream from the bar. He strides in, seeing four survivors at the back behind an old man with a thick, grey handlebar moustache and army tattoos on his arms swinging a chair to batter an attacker down.

‘COVER!’ Mike yells. The old man drops instantly. Giving Mike the clearance to fire rounds. Taking the infected down. ‘Three Para. On me.’

‘Rifles!’ the old man says, taking Mike’s hand to rise to his feet.

‘Doc, give the sidearm to Rifles.’

‘Gladly,’ Dr Patel says, handing it over as the old man blinks and pauses, remembering his training from many years ago. Drawing air before quickly checking the moving parts to familiarise himself.

‘Spare mag,’ Bev says, handing it over to the old man.

‘We’re bugging out,’ Mike says, turning to see the bar on display. ‘Grab bottles of liquor! Anything flammable. Brandy. Whiskey. Vodka. Quickly now.’

A screech from the back door. He grabs a bottle of tequila and smashes it in the corridor they came through, then ignites the liquid. Sending blue flames searing up.

‘Go!’ he yells.

A back door open in front of them. The dead body of an old woman lying across the doorway. Mike goes quickly over it, forcing his way inside to the back of a restaurant owned by a famous TV chef. Fine dining and stupid prices. A pub-grub based interior. Industrial and rustic, but posh, and fake.

‘Smash every bottle!’ Mike yells as they start breaking the bottles of liquors. He rushes behind the bar, smashing more across the top and over the tables, and pauses to take a deep hit of whiskey. The fiery liquid burning his throat and belly. He gasps and breaks the bottle, and the room soon stinks of pungent booze, and the back soon fills with howls and bangs.

‘To the front,’ he orders, making them go ahead. Men and women crying in fear. Trapped in a nightmare. He brings up the rear. Slinging his rifle when he spots a packet of cigarettes on the floor. He slides one out to light as the urge to puke comes fast. Making him bend double and vomit the whiskey. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he mutters. ‘Can’t even go out drunk…’ he draws a deep hit from the smoke as the first infected comes into view. A big bouncer with bulging muscles and red eyes, and he roars when he spots Mike in the doorway. Giving voice as the others behind him screech and start piling forwards.

‘Aye. You roidy twat,’ Mike says, giving him a wink as he sucks one last drag, then flicks the cigarette that bounces off the bouncer’s head and lands in a glass of wine. ‘You are shitting me.’

‘Shot,’ Bev says, earning a middle finger as Mike rushes to bend and use his lighter to try and ignite something. He sets fire to a paper napkin and throws that, but it goes out and the bouncer reaches halfway as the old soldier leans over to take Mike’s lighter and ignites a rag poking out of a bottle, and throws it hard. The bottle smashes into the bouncer. Engulfing him in flames as the rest of the booze goes up in sheets of fire.

‘Had a few of those thrown at me,’ the old timer comments as they bug out and once more set off.

‘Not that way,’ Mike says as they head up the High Street. He takes them back into Colebrook Street and into Market Lane to go behind the building they just went through. Doubling back to confuse the scent trails and whatever else the infected are using to track them.

A moment or two later, they reach the end and go back into The Square with a full circle complete when they pass The City Museum, and Mike leads them to the small door in the narrow passage. Banging on it three times.

‘Debs! It’s me. Scottish Mike.’

A few seconds, and the door opens to Debora looking stunned.

‘Mike!’ Samir says, pushing past her.

‘I found some more people,’ Mike says, scuffing the lad’s head. ‘All of yous. Get inside and block the door. Debs has got a pistol. She said she knows how to shoot.’

‘What’s your plan?’ Bev asks as the others rush gratefully past them to get inside.

‘I told you already. I’m gonna lead them off with my stinky pits.’

Bev looks at him. Taking in the long, grey beard and his filthy lined face, but she can see the para wings tattoo on his shoulder under the dirt. ‘Here,’ she says, pulling a mag out from her vest. ‘My last one.’

‘Keep it. You got a car somewhere?’

‘Train station.’

‘More mags in the car?’

‘A few,’ she says, pulling the gun box keys off her belt.

‘Got it. If I see any survivors, I’ll send them this way.’

‘Roger that.’

‘Before you go,’ he says as she turns away. ‘Beverly Knight? Seriously?’

‘Twat,’ she says, snorting a grim laugh. Terrified. Confused. Her colleague dead. But that dark humour is the only thing to keep you going sometimes.

He heads off with a last smile and wink at the boy before the door closes. At which point he remembers the kid is blind and wouldn’t have seen it.

‘You fucking twat,’ he calls himself as the howls and screeches once more sound close, and he jogs back to see the horde coming through the square. ‘Over here, ye wee fuckers!’ he shouts with a two-handed, double-fingered salute and once more turns to leg it into the night.

A strange silence inside the church as they hold frozen and still and listen to Mike’s thick, Scottish accent get further away while footsteps pour past the door. Snarls and hisses and the most terrible sounds that make them all shake with fear.

Bev grips the rifle and aims at the door. The old soldier at her side. His pistol aimed. Debora on her other side. Aiming her gun. Dr Patel behind them, motioning everyone else with his hands to stay still and stay silent.

The footsteps go. The snarls fade. The hisses are no more. Silence outside. Silence inside.

A distant gunshot elicits a whimper, but it tells Bev Mike has drawn them a good distance, and she finally lowers the rifle.

They take seats on the hard pews or on the hard floor made from the gravestones of ancient burial sites.

A bottle of water gets handed round. Someone produces a tube of hand sanitizer. A small dollop for each.

A bang at the door makes them freeze, with hearts hammering instantly. Bev moves fast. Striding into the tiny entrance to aim her rifle. Another bang. Then another and another.

‘Come on! Please…’ a whispered voice on the other side. ‘Scottish Mike sent us.’

‘Get it open,’ Bev orders as the others pull the heavy pews away and unbar the door, with another five people spilling inside. Gasping and sweating from sprinting through the town.

‘He’s leading them down the High Street,’ a woman says as they close the door, and the last man in dumps three plastic bags on the ground.

‘He told us to bring these. He said make sure Bev or Rifles is in charge of the supplies.’

‘I guess he means me then,’ the old soldier says, taking the bags over to the font in the middle. Bottles of water inside and dozens of high energy chocolate bars.

They barricade the door and once more settle. Everyone too scared and shocked to even whisper or share words. All of it too new and too awful.

‘Shit!’ Bev whispers when she jumps at the door banging again an hour later. She rushes over. Rifles and Debora with her. The doc taking his position between them and everyone else.

‘They are survivors,’ Samir says as every head turns to look at his face bathed in moonlight pouring through the high windows. His head cocked over, and his voice filled with certainty.

‘Hello? Is this the right place?’ a whispered call comes from outside. ‘I think he meant the cathedral,’ someone else whispers.

‘Bang on the bloody door!’ Mike’s voice shouts from somewhere before gunshots ring out, and they unblock the door, with another group of people rushing inside. Gasping for air. One of them clutching his chest. Obese and red-faced, and struggling to breathe. A few more bags of supplies. Wet wipes. Toilet rolls. Toothbrushes and paste.

Again, they settle.

Again, they wait.

‘They are survivors,’ the boy says, and a second later, the knock comes.

Another group spill inside. Only three of them this time, and on it goes all night, and before each knock comes, the boy speaks out.

How he knows is beyond any of them because none of them hear a thing until the knocks come.

But the child sits cross legged on the floor. Rubbing the pigeons’ head as she sleeps on her eggs. His head cocked over as though he can see while his eyes stare lifelessly.

‘They are the last for tonight,’ the boy says later, and the knock comes. Five more people spill inside, with Scottish Mike coming in last.

‘I still haven’t got to the train station,’ Mike says to the others.

‘How’s it looking though?’ Rifles asks.

‘Like fucking Armageddon and the apocalypse had a baby and called it Satan.’

‘What the fuck?’ Bev asks, giving him a look.

‘I dunno! I’m an alcoholic, and I cannea drink. Doc, why am I puking when I drink?’

‘Have you tried water?’ Debora asks.

‘Water? I can’t get drunk on water.’

‘This will stay inside you,’ Samir says, feeling his way over to hand a bottle of water to Mike who tuts and shows disgust at being made to drink it, but he unscrews the cap and takes a sip, then a drink, then glugs the whole bottle down in one go. Not realising how thirsty he was.

‘Mind yourselves, it’ll come back up in a mo.’

‘It will stay inside,’ Samir says.

‘You are a strange little guru, you are,’ Mike tells him. ‘How many have we got inside here now anyway?’

‘Twenty-eight,’ Doc Patel says.

‘There are more,’ the child says.

‘Do you know where they are?’ Mike asks.

‘How would he know where they are? He can’t bloody see,’ Bev says.

‘I just said. He’s a little guru.’

‘I don’t know where they are,’ Samir says.

‘He’s not that much of a guru then,’ Bev says.

‘Aye. Well. Just look after my pigeon. Doc, have you checked her.’

‘Who?’

‘My pigeon!’

‘Why would I check a pigeon?’

‘You are not so yellow now,’ Debora says, frowning as the first light of dawn comes through the windows, and she frowns at Mike.

‘Yes. The jaundice has reduced,’ Doc Patel says, coming closer to examine Mike’s eyes. ‘How do you feel?’

‘I’m stone cold sober after fifteen years of drinking. How do you think I’m fucking feeling? Right. Well. Bugger this. I’ll go to the train station and find these other hidden people. You sure you can’t draw a map, Guru? I know he’s blind!’ he whisper-snaps at them all telling him at the same time.

Mike slips back out.

The door closes behind him, and he advances back into the High Street. Bodies everywhere.

Another horde a few dozen metres away. Mike sighs heavily. Wishing more than anything that he could have a drink. The addiction clawing his insides. He tried several times to get some down. Vodka. Gin. Whiskey. All of it was puked up.

But Samir was right though.

The water has stayed down.

He whistles to the horde and watches how they react as one. Snapping their heads over and starting to charge without any sign of being tired or hurt, or thirsty. All of them moving at the same pace. Pensioners and obese people as fast as the young and fit. It’s a strange sight for sure, and he starts backing away, ready to turn and flee, and not wishing to use his last few rounds, but the sun lifts, and the street fills with light, illuminating the infected, and as one, they slow to a shuffle with an instant loss of coordination.

‘Fuck a duck,’ Mike says. This happened yesterday too. A pattern already forming, and one they can use to their tactical advantage.

But it will mean one important thing must happen.

A thing that hasn’t been done for a long time.

Scottish Mike has to take a shower and get new clothes.

‘Fuck another duck,’ he mutters at the concept and turns away, thinking to head to the train station to find Bev’s car and get more ammunition.

He walks on a dozen steps and stops at the sight of the door he went through with Debs and Samy on the first night. The barricade still in place. The furniture they threw down the stairs worked a treat.

Then he spots the eatery next door. ‘If at first you don’t succeed,’ he whispers and heads inside to the small bar at the back. Dancing his hand over the lines of spirits. ‘Tried vodka. Tried whiskey. Tried gin… Tried rum… Hey now, how about this then?’ he asks, lifting the bottle of Irish Cream Liquor up. Nowhere near as strong as spirits. Hell. It’s practically medicinal.

He twists the top off and takes a big drink. Savouring the taste and sagging back with a big sigh as he hears a whimper.

He tracks the noise to a figure curled up on the floor clutching a frying pan at the same instance as the urge comes on, and he pukes over the floor.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ he mutters while wiping his mouth. ‘I cannae drink a fucking thing,’ he tuts again and finally looks down at the piss-stained man sobbing on the floor. ‘And what did we agree? We said no rough sleeping down here, Roidy Brian….’

4

Sunday, 17th July

Day Three

‘Fucking, wanky, pissflap, cunty, cocking, bumhole shitfucker bastard!’

It’s not bad enough that he’s withdrawing so badly he wants to scream and cry, but now this, and Scottish Mike glares at himself and summons the courage to grab the fucking thing and pull it hard.

He grabs it and pulls so hard he bangs his head on the hair-washing basin.

‘My fucking head!’

There’s nothing for it. He’s fucked. Royally and absolutely, and completely fucked.

He leaves the beauty salon and delves into the lanes and alleys, and back roads to reach the discreet wooden door to The Church of St Lawrence.

‘You’re back,’ Doc Patel says with a double take at Mike.

‘Look at you,’ Bev says, staring in shock at Mike’s new outdoor boots and his cargo trousers, and dark checked shirt. Then she sniffs the air at the complete absence of stench coming from Mike.

A long, hot shower taken in the Royal Winchester Hotel. The first shower in years, and the water ran black for a long time while he scrubbed and used a whole bar of soap.

Then he dressed in the new clothes and boots looted from an outdoors store, with another large holdall stuffed with clothes and kit the others might need.

After that he made his way to that same beauty salon to brush his hair. Which is when it all went horribly wrong.

‘What the fuck,’ Bev says when she finally looks up.

‘What is that?’ Doc Patel asks, coming forward to peer at the strange object poking out of Mike’s wild and matted hair.

‘Is hairbrush?’ Debora asks, touching the handle.

‘You bloody twat!’ Bev says, unable to stop the grin despite the sheer exhaustion. ‘What did you do?’

‘I had a wash,’ Mike says in a gruff tone that sets her off and makes Rifles and Debs smile. ‘I tried to brush my hair, but it got stuck, and I pulled it so hard I banged my head on the sink. Aye. Go on. Have a good laugh then,’ he says at Bev laughing hard enough to bring tears. Rifles chuckling away, and Debora smiling for the first time since Mike met her. ‘And you too, Doc?’’

‘Oh, shut up, it’s funny,’ Doc Patel says, young and handsome with a fashionable cut to his own hair.

‘What is funny?’ Samir asks, feeling his way forward.

‘Mike’s got a brush stuck in his hair,’ the doctor says.

‘Show me,’ Samir says as Mike takes a knee and guides the child’s hands.

‘Don’t you bloody laugh,’ Mike growls as the boy smiles and feels the spokes and tangles, and snorts a giggle.

‘Are paras that thick, they can’t use hairbrushes?’ Rifles asks.

‘Ach. Go on. Get it out of your system then, pull it out.’

‘You want me to pull it out?’ Rifles asks.

‘It can’t stay on my head now, can it.’

‘No. Don’t pull!’ Debora says as Rifles grabs and yanks, and sends Mike flying, with Bev bent double at the sight, and Doc Patel laughing while Samir grins and chuckles at the sounds. ‘I get scissors. We cut it free,’ Debora says.

‘No. Seriously. Just leave it in,’ Bev says, earning a middle finger from Mike as he takes Samir’s hand to lead him back into the main hallway, with the difference showing stark and instant, with everyone else still cowering and full of fear. Clinging to each other and looking terrified and haunted.

Roidy Brian with them. Sitting like a child with his ridiculously oversized arms hugging his bent knees.

Debora puts a chair down and motions Mike to sit as he clocks the way the rations and supplies have been stacked and sorted while he was gone during the night. He tried to send a few bits back with each set of survivors he found. Water. Snack food. Hygiene supplies. First aid kits. Anti-bac and disinfectant.

‘There’s spare clothes in that bag,’ he says, nodding at the holdall he brought back with him.

‘Good. We’re starting to smell like you,’ Bev says.

‘Like I did,’ Mike points out with a wince as Debora starts work on trying to untangle the brush. ‘But don’t use deodorants or anything with fragrance,’ he adds. ‘The wee sods track smell. I’m smashing bottles of booze around this area to stop them scenting near the door.’

‘Did you reach the train station?’ Bev asks.

‘Nope. Big group of the buggers at the top of the High Street.’

‘How big?’ Rifles asks.

‘Big. Hundreds.’

‘We’re fucked,’ Roidy Brian mutters, shaking his head. ‘We’re so fucked.’

‘Are the army coming, though?’ a young woman asks.

‘They’ll come, Sophie. We just gotta wait,’ a man says, his taxi driver ID card still clipped to the front of his shirt. ‘Shit like this takes time to sort, but they’ll get our boys out soon enough and get it boshed.’

A look between Bev and Mike as Rifles winces. The three of them experienced enough to know the truth. Doc Patel spots the shared expressions and deliberates internally between being honest and selling hope. ‘Do you think help will come?’ he asks them carefully.

Bev exhales, shaking her head with a grim look.

‘It happened too fast,’ Rifles says. ‘I mean. I ain’t been in service for decades, but it don’t change that much, and this happened too fast to get any kind of response rigged up.’

Mike exhales as Debs works on his hair. Figuring things haven’t changed that much in the years since Rifles was in service, nor since his own time either. ‘Was there any intel it was coming?’ he asks with a glance to Bev.

‘Negative,’ Bev says, sitting down on a pew. ‘We were shouting up to control room cos of the headlines coming out on the news, but they didn’t know anything. Then the train crash happened, and I heard screaming from inside the control room.’

‘The power’s gone down too,’ Mike says into the silence when she stops. ‘It cut out just after I showered.’

‘Suggests nobody is at the national grid then,’ Bev says.

‘Which means it’s a national incident,’ Rifles adds.

‘International,’ someone else says as they look over to the tall, lean, yuppie-looking man Mike saw in the town before it happened.

‘How do you know, Craig?’ Bev asks.

‘My wife was in Paris. It hit there before here. She said it was in Germany and Italy, and Belgium, and she’d seen footage online from Moscow and Poland. Same thing. Same as…’ he motions the exit door as Roidy Brian rocks back and forth with a sob, and the silence stretches on.

Samir nearby. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with the bird’s nest still in his mother’s bra. The pigeon on her eggs. Cooing softly.

‘What’s the plan then?’ Bev asks, rubbing her face before looking to Mike, then to Rifles and the doctor and Debora as though they are the leaders of the group. But then, they’re not curled up and crying. They’re on their feet and functioning.

‘Get supplies and dig in,’ Rifles says.

‘Amen to that,’ Mike says.

‘Roger. Noted,’ Bev says with a nod.

‘We’ll need meds,’ Doctor Patel says. ‘Get everything you can from a pharmacy.’

‘Aye. Will do,’ Mike says.

‘Sorry. Er? Is that it then?’ a young woman asks. Over six feet in height. Broad and fat, and very entitled, with the elongated croak of the recently graduated.

‘They just said, didn’t they,’ Sophie says. The same age but slim, and earnest, and with a common tone of voice. ‘It happened too fast.’

‘Er. Yes. I heard. Thank you. But for me, personally, I’m not comfortable with that response,’ the other young woman says.

‘What response is that then, love?’ the taxi driver asks.

‘My name is Olivia, not love. And I really don’t think it is appropriate to tell people no help is coming.’

‘But there is no help coming. They literally just said that,’ Craig says as Olivia pulls her head back an inch.

‘I don’t need to be mansplained. Thank you.’

‘I wasn’t mansplaining! I was relaying what they said.’

‘There’s no help coming,’ the taxi driver says.

‘Okay. Wow. I’m being attacked,’ Olivia says with a triggered expression.

‘Nobody’s attacking you, Liv,’ Sophie says. ‘I know you’re scared. We all are. Do you wanna hug?’

‘No!’ Olivia snaps.

‘Ssshhh,’ Mike says, putting his finger to his lips at her voice going up.

‘Excuse me!’ Olivia snaps.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Bev hisses, on her feet in an instant and jabbing a finger towards Olivia. ‘You are not in a safe space now, you entitled bitch. We keep our voices low. Got it? Have you bloody got it?’ she asks, going closer, with Olivia looking away and nodding quickly. ‘That shit is toxic to a small group. Ideas are welcomed, but you pull that entitled act in here, and I will put you outside. Are we clear?’

A few murmurs. A few nods. Bev paces back to her pew and sits down with a blast of air.

‘Guess we know who’s in charge now then,’ Mike quips, earning a snort from Rifles as Bev flicks him a middle finger. ‘Owowow,’ he winces as Debora works on the final few strands until she yanks the brush free.

‘Needs wash,’ Debora says at the state of Mike’s hair. ‘With conditioner, and not this brush. I make a list.’

‘Tell you what, Debs. Why don’t you make a list. Ouch. Samy, your mother just hit me. God, I need a fucking drink.’

‘Is it still coming up?’ Doc Patel asks.

‘Aye. Not with water, though. Just booze.’

‘That’s not a bad thing, Mike,’ Bev says.

‘It is a bad thing. It’s a very bad thing.’

‘Does your liver still hurt?’ Doc Patel asks, peering into Mike’s eyes.

‘Everything bloody hurts.’

‘But your liver, Mike? Does that hurt?’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know. I cannae focus, the withdrawing is so bad. Like my insides are trying to claw to the outside.’

‘I would give you a sedative but…’ the doctor says, showing empty hands.

‘We need him alert,’ Bev says. ‘Sorry, Mike. You’ll have to suck it up. Right. I suggest a few hours of sleep, seeing as we’ve been up all night. I’ll take first watch. Rifles, you do after me. Doc, you do after Rifles. We let Mike sleep as he’s been out two nights running.’

‘Is better to get supplies now, no?’ Debora asks.

‘Aye. They’ve gone slow now. And I really need to reach the train station,’ Mike says.

‘Negative. Sleep now,’ Bev says. ‘We rest for a few hours, then go out early afternoon. They’ll still be slow then, but we need rest if we’re to get through this. Mike, there’s a bathroom down the back if you need it. We don’t have bedding, so find a spot wherever you can.’

Scottish Mike was married.

They got hitched just before he deployed to Afghan in ‘06 in case he was KIA. It meant his wife would get more money and a death in service payment.

She was waiting for him when he got home. It was alright for the first few weeks.

But then it wasn’t because it wasn’t Mike that came home. It was someone else.

Someone who couldn’t connect. Someone who was both numb and terrified, and angry, and full of impending doom and dread while being unbothered about anything all at the same time.

Mike had passed the application for selection training to the SAS prior to going out on deployment. He was already part of an elite team within the Parachute Regiment Pathfinders.

He started the selection training. It was brutally hard, but he got through until the interrogation phase, where he kept showing anger and defiance when he should have been passive, and so he failed.

He let his fitness slip. He drank too much. He smoked on nights out and ate kebabs. He played Xbox until late into the night and woke his wife up to have sex at 4am, and got angry if she said she was sleepy. Then he’d be consumed with guilt and burst into tears, which would lead to feeling ashamed.

Things slipped. He failed the fitness test to requalify for selection to the SAS.

That pissed him off so much he went out and got wankered, and did some lines of coke.

He was drug-tested two days later.

The army said he could quit instead of being dishonourably discharged.

He left and tried to work security, but nothing fitted. Nothing worked. His brain. His mind. His attitude.

He tried to wake his wife up in the middle of the night for sex again, but he couldn’t get hard. She said he needed help. He flipped out and punched a mirror. She called the police. They took him into custody. He was released with no charge, but his wife kicked him out. He sofa surfed. He drank too much. He smoked and ate bad food, and the slope got steeper until one day, with no idea how he got there, he woke up on a bench in Winchester, and he’d transitioned from Scottish Mike, the highly trained soldier, to Scottish Mike, the filthy homeless guy.

He kept telling himself he could still turn it around. He could still go back to being a somebody. But then, one day within the blur of years, he became like a prisoner serving a life sentence, who finally accepts the term and stops the denial. And in a way, that acceptance allowed Mike to achieve a functioning state of calm that he’d never had before.

He didn’t have possessions to worry about or bills. He sat on busy walkways, and people put money in the cup, which he used to buy alcohol and cigarettes.

He saw the seasons pass in ways he hadn’t seen before. He became a part of those seasons and the world around him. He didn’t watch television, and he didn’t have a phone, but he’d spend hours every day watching people. He saw the changing fashions and attitudes, and the increasing toxicity of general life. He saw the anger in people too. The loss of tolerance, and the force within which people would counter the views of others while demanding instant acceptance of their own ideologies.

He saw that in protests and marches. In groups that got together, and in the conversations of the pious and self-righteous at the boutique cafes and diners that were springing up with owners who all thought they were so original and edgy. While really they and everyone else were buying into the system.

That was the thing that Mike came to realise.

That he’d stepped outside of the system.

His life was often desperate. But there was a weird sense of freedom to it and as the years went by, he met other homeless people and listened to their stories. Many, sadly, had ended up rough-sleeping through mental-health or substance addiction. But a few, like Mike, had been places and done things, and seen life, and now found themselves apart from the system.

And so, when he wakes up on the hard floor of the church to the glorious sunshine pouring through the high windows, casting shades from the coloured glass, the instant recall of the world ending and the loss of all order and structure doesn’t have the same impact on Mike as it does the others.

They’ve all lost houses and people, and things, but if anything, Mike’s circumstances have improved. He’s got new clothes, and he was allowed to sleep inside the church, which he was never allowed to do before.

‘I was hungry!’ Olivia’s whispered, angry tone sails over as he turns to see her and Debs arguing next to the supplies.

‘Don’t take,’ Debora tells her. ‘Is for everyone.’

‘Er. Yeah! For everyone, and I was hungry, which means I am entitled to it.’

‘No! It is given. Not taken.’

‘What’s going on?’ Bev asks, waking up nearby as Rifles comes out of the foyer, and the others rouse.

‘She take three of these,’ Debora says, lifting one of the chocolate bars.

‘Three?’ Bev asks as more people show concern and start sitting up.

‘Oh. My. God,’ Olivia says with pure outrage showing in her croaky voice and manner. ‘I was hungry!’

‘You greedy cow,’ Bev says, getting to her feet with a look of disgust.

‘I beg your pardon! Are you fat shaming me? I am body positive,’ Olivia snarls with fury in her eyes.

‘What the fuck does that even mean?’ Bev asks.

‘Guys. Okay. Let’s not bicker,’ Doc Patel says. ‘Livvy, could you put them back, please.’

‘It’s Olivia, and my pronouns are-.’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Bev snaps, marching over to snatch the three bars out of her hands. ‘We ration, so we all have enough. Nobody takes anything without asking first. Clear?’

‘Apart from water,’ Doc Patel says quickly. ‘It’s very hot and hydration is important.’

‘Yeah. Hydration is vital,’ Olivia says, taking a bottle of water in a clear act of spite.

‘There’s a tap in the bathroom,’ Bev says.

‘Yes. Good point. Very good point,’ Doc Patel says. ‘Okay, guys. Listen in. You’ll be just waking up after sleeping on a hard floor. And that will cause aches and pains, so stand up slowly and stretch gently.’

Mike doesn’t want to stand up.

All Mike wants to do is drink.

It’s all he can think about.

He struggled to sleep and sweated, and fidgeted, and wound himself up until he wanted to run from the building and be alone in his narrow passage, but a small hand touched his, snapping him from his angst, and he looked to Simar sitting next to him. Staring down without seeing. His head cocked over. His face so free of fear or worry, and just that touch seemed to make the demons vanish.

He sits up and watches Olivia strop back to her spot next to the other girl called Sophie. Kev, the taxi driver, and Craig, and the thirty or so others all spread across the room. Roidy Brian still clutching his knees and looking like he hasn’t slept a wink.

‘Brian, you need to drink something,’ Doctor Patel says, crouching at the body-builder’s side to offer a bottle of water, but Brian just screws his face up and starts sobbing again, with the veins in his arms and neck pushing out through his skin. ‘Brian. Come on. Drink,’ the doctor says like he’s trying to coax a scared child.

‘Get some water on board,’ Bev says in a harder tone. ‘You’re a big unit. We might need you.’

‘We’re gonna die,’ Brian says, sobbing the words out in a broken whisper.

‘Everyone dies, big boy,’ Bev says, taking the bottle from the doctor to bonk it on the side of Brian’s big skull. ‘Drink. All that crying is losing fluids.’

He doesn’t take it. Bev ditches it in the gap between his head and knees and turns away to address the room. ‘Everyone, make sure you wash your bits. Vaginas. Arseholes. Cracks. Penises. Armpits. Groins. We get drilled on this in the military. Hot, humid weather breeds bacteria. Wash and make sure you dry properly, including your feet and toes.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ Olivia says, screwing her face up.

‘So are vaginal infections and dick rot,’ Bev says.

‘It’s called a squaddie wash,’ Rifles says.

‘We’re not squaddies,’ Olivia points out.

‘She’s a ray of sunshine, that one,’ Mike mutters, rolling his eyes to Debora as he gets to his feet with a groan. ‘Ach. You’d think I’d be used to it from rough sleeping.’

‘My back is killing me,’ Rifles admits as the others murmur the same.

‘It’s alright if you’ve got a padded arse,’ Mike says.

‘Fat shaming again,’ Olivia says like she’s talking to herself while projecting her voice.

Mike just looks at her. Knowing the troubles someone like that can cause within a group situation. No discipline and no sense of team. No sense of belonging or pride in the self. Angry and frightened, but with a degree of intelligence and entitlement.

‘It might help if you try and integrate,’ Craig says.

‘What?’ Olivia snaps when she realises he’s talking to her.

‘I specialised in corporate training methods and how to achieve the best from a team in high-stress and highly competitive environments.’

‘Wow. Another straight white, male belonging to the patriarchy.’

‘Jesus, really, love?’ Kev, the taxi driver, asks with a groan.

‘What’s patriarchy?’ Sophie asks.

‘They are,’ Olivia says, motioning the men around her.

‘Oh. Is it a posh word for blokes?’ Sophie asks.

‘No! It means when men try and tell everyone else what to do, and like, you know, boss everyone around.’

‘Bev’s not a bloke though, and she’s in charge,’ Sophie says as Olivia’s face flushes with irritation.

‘She’s an agent of the patriarchy.’

‘Sure,’ Bev says. ‘Thanks, guys, for allowing me to gain this position of awesomeness.’

‘Ach. You’re very welcome, wee lady,’ Mike says, giving her a wink as a few of the closest snort dry laughs.

‘Patronising!’ Olivia says.

‘He was joking!’ Kev says. ‘Don’t bite so easy.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do!’

‘Guys. I think it’s vital we don’t descend into infighting,’ Doctor Patel says.

‘That’s what I mean about integrating,’ Craig says, addressing the room. ‘We all need to contribute to gain a feeling of inclusion.’

‘My family are all dead,’ a woman says in a vicious tone while glaring at him through swollen eyes and a face made puffy from lack of sleep and crying. ‘I watched my husband kill our son!’

‘Right. Yes. That’s what I mean about feeling included,’ Craig says like he’s leading a seminar.

‘Mate. Too soon,’ Mike says, giving him a look.

‘But extensive research has shown that the earlier a group can bond, the greater benefit it will be to all.’

‘Her family just died. Shut up,’ Mike says.

‘That’s what I’m saying. We can start the healing process and-.’

‘I don’t want to FUCKING HEAL! I WANT TO DIE!’ the woman screams, pushing to her feet to launch a bottle of water at Craig before storming out of the main hall into the bathroom.

‘Say another word, and I’ll fucking deck ya, pal,’ Mike says, glaring at Craig who goes to speak but stops, and sits down when Rifles and Mike take a step towards him.

‘My wife died too,’ Craig mutters.

‘Enough,’ Rifles says.

‘I’m just saying,’ Craig says, then lifts a hand with a begrudged apology, and shoots a look to Kev as though what’s wrong with them.

‘You’re a prick, mate,’ Kev says bluntly and looks away, and the silence stretches out, with Mike heading to the bathroom to see people queuing outside the locked toilet door.

‘She still in there?’ Mike asks, getting worried nods. ‘Debs? Knock on that door, will you. She needs to come out.’

‘Is only one toilet. You come out now,’ Debora says, tapping on the door.

‘Fuck this. I’ll pee outside,’ Mike says, turning to go.

‘Is blood!’ Debora says quickly. ‘Mike! Is blood.’

He spins back, seeing blood seeping out beneath the door, and rushes over to turn the handle and rattle the locked door, and slams a shoulder into the middle.

‘Bev!’ Debora calls, rushing back to the main hall as the others come running into the corridor.

‘Door’s too thick,’ Mike says, grunting at the pain in his shoulder.

‘Together,’ Bev says as Mike turns the handle, and they both try and shoulder it open but bounce off. ‘Get Brian,’ Bev guys. ‘The big guy! The bodybuilder!’

‘Brian,’ Debora says, rushing over to grab his wrist, but he stares vacantly. His lips quivering, and the tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘Get up! We need you.’

‘Three of us,’ Doctor Patel says, rushing to the toilet door with Rifles and Kev, the taxi driver, all pushing in to join them.

‘One… Two… Three!’ Bev says as the huddled mass slams into the door and tears the inside bolt from the frame. The woman inside. Slumped next to the toilet bowl with her wrists cut deep and bleeding out from the pair of nail scissors Debs used to trim Mike’s hair.

The doctor reaches her first. Grabbing her wrists to try and clamp the wounds. Seeing she’s hacked deep and hard in what must have been a frenzied self-attack, and the blood pours out around his hands. She doesn’t speak but swallows once, and blinks slowly before the final breath escapes, and she slumps deeper. Her eyes glazing over. Her heart stopping.

‘Fuck,’ Bev says, turning away.

‘Aye. We’ve only got the one toilet,’ Mike says, then realises she meant the sadness of the death. ‘And aye. Terrible loss. Thoughts and prayers.’

‘What do we do with the body?’ Debora asks.

‘Bind the wounds so she’d doesn’t drip, and we’ll put her outside somewhere,’ Mike says.

‘That’s cold,’ Kev says with a grimace.

‘What choice have we got?’ Bev asks him as the guy shrugs and shakes his head. Not knowing what else to do.

The doctor wraps her arms, and they cover her face and carry her through the main hall to the foyer as Mike and Bev get ready with their rifles.

Mike goes out first. Checking both directions to be sure. A hand signal to Bev. She comes out ahead of the doctor and Kev straining to carry the woman.

‘We could do with one more,’ Rifles calls into the church having been ordered to stay behind.

Nobody moves until Sophie lifts a hand as though asking a teacher, then clambers up to rush out and help. Grabbing a leg with a muttered thanks from Kev.

Shush. No talking. Bev mouths to them as Mike signals for them to move out into The Square and past the museum, to the edge of the cathedral grounds. Mike motions the side in the shade of a tree and gives cover with Bev as the others lay the woman gently down and turn to go.

‘Oi,’ Kev whispers, flapping his hands out at them and motioning them back before clasping his hands to his front and closing his eyes. ‘Dear, Lord. Take this woman into heaven. She killed herself, but it’s a fucking nightmare down here so, you know, don’t be a cunt about it. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ the others whisper and run back to the church to bundle inside.

‘Don’t close it,’ Bev orders, her voice low. ‘I’ll go with Mike. I want to see how bad it is. Rifles, you’re in charge.’

‘I have actually got a name,’ Rifles says.

‘Aye. It’s Rifles,’ Mike says with a wink as he heads out.

They don’t get close to the train station.

The closest they get is halfway along the High Street near to the junctions with Jewry Street and Southgate Street. The ancient Westgate museum glimpsed ahead near to The Great Hall and remains of Winchester Castle, but the road through is clogged with hundreds of infected groaning and shuffling as though they’ve all gathered in one place.

‘They smell worse than you,’ Bev whispers. The two of them inside an abandoned flat overlooking the High Street. The top floor jutting out, giving them a view of the horde.

‘Did,’ Mike whispers from behind before Bev hears the sound of drinking and turns to see him necking a bottle of rum.

‘Fuck’s sake. Really?’

He drinks half the bottle and lowers it with a big sigh. Relishing the taste of the booze while praying that he can keep it down. Which, of course, he doesn’t, and within a few seconds, he’s vomiting into the kitchen sink.

‘You’ll bring your stomach lining up if you keep puking,’ she whispers.

‘That’s a myth,’ he gasps.

‘Is it bollocks. Drink some water.’

He drinks some water, and they head back into the city centre and try, and work sideways to go north to the train station where Bev left her Armed Response Vehicle. The gun box inside with spare mags, but they turn back as they near The Royal Winchester Hotel from another horde ahead.

Another in the next street over blocks them again. Another few hundred blocking the way out.

They go south, seeing more large groups gathered on side streets, which, in turn, funnels them back onto the High Street and down past the fancy TV chef’s restaurant, which miraculously, didn’t burn out despite trying to set it on fire. Although the inside does look somewhat charred with quite a few crispy bodies on the floor.

But even that way is blocked with another few hundred just south of The Guildhall and spread through the Abbey Gardens.

They work back through the route they took when they escaped the cathedral, seeing more in the grounds preventing them from getting out, and within a moment, they’re hunkering down back in The Square.

‘We’re sealed in,’ Bev whispers. Mike nods. His hands trembling, and his insides crawling about from the intense withdrawal. But even that isn’t right. Fifteen years of hard drinking and going sudden cold-turkey should have left him unable to function, and although he feels like shit, he’s still moving.

‘Okay. We get the supplies and go back to figure it out,’ Bev says.

A hard day. A hot day. Running back and forth from the shops they can access. Taking sleeping bags and air mattresses, and more clothes from outdoors stores. Underwear, socks, and clothes. They break into a pharmacy, wincing at having to smash a window and make noise, and going in fast to empty shelves and break locks on the cabinets holding the controlled medication. Taking everything they can and ferrying it all back to the church.

‘That’s it,’ Bev says on the final journey as they get back inside. ‘It’ll be dark in an hour. Let’s lock it down.’

Mike sags onto the pew after it’s shoved against the exit door. His body exhausted from moving more in a few days than he has in over fifteen years. His mind screaming for a drink. His soul demanding it with every inch of his being.

He tried a few more times, but it kept coming back up. There was blood the last time, and he figured Bev was right. He had to stop.

A hand on his knee. He lifts his head to look at Samir and can’t help but smile at the kid’s face. His dark hair and soft expression staring keenly as though he can see. But, of course, he cannot.

‘You alright?’ Mike asks.

‘Momma is making you tea.’

‘Tea? Aye. A brew would be good. How’s the pigeon?’

‘Her eggs have not hatched yet. I touch them gently, but they are not cracking.’

‘They’ll come, nipper.’

‘Can I see you, Mike?’

‘See me?’

The boy smiles and reaches up to cup his hands on Mike’s face, and feels the beard down to Mike’s chest with changing expressions of interest and wonder. Then he goes back up to feel Mike’s nose and eyes, and forehead, and cheeks, and ears, and his head.

‘You are honoured,’ Debora says, passing Mike a camping mug full of tea. ‘Samir only wants to see the people he really cares for.’

‘Is that so?’ Mike asks, taking the scrutiny with good grace. ‘My beard needs to come off. It’s too long.’

‘No. It is yours,’ Samir says, touching it again.

‘I could put the pigeon nest in it,’ Mike says, making the boy grin before taking his hand and going back into the main room.

The pews pushed back to create zones. Bedding on the floor. Clothes folded and stacked. The central supplies area now full of crates and boxes.

‘He hasn’t moved all day,’ Rifles says with a nod to Roidy Brian. The big guy still in the same place. Clutching his bent legs and muttering almost silently to himself.

‘I might offer a sedative to take the edge off his anxiety,’ Doctor Patel says.

‘I’ve got anxiety,’ Olivia says quickly as Kev rolls his eyes. ‘And depression, and I’m neurodivergent.’

‘Anxiety and depression are symptoms of greater life imbalances,’ Craig says. ‘Which, I think, as a group we can start to address with-.’

‘Craig,’ Rifles warns.

‘I’m just saying we can address most concerns without the need for harsh chemicals or medications.’

‘I need my meds though,’ Olivia says. ‘I want Sertraline and Diazepam.’

‘I haven’t gone through them yet,’ Doctor Patel says.

‘But I need my prescription!’

‘Olivia. I’ve told you already. I don’t know where they are,’ the doctor says with an exasperated air. ‘You could always help. You’re clearly educated. Sophie hasn’t stopped all day.’

‘Er. If Sophie chooses to let the patriarch control her, then that is down to Sophie.’

‘She asked to help!’ Rifles says.

‘Have you even asked Sophie what her pronouns are?’

‘You just bloody said her!’ Kev snaps.

‘I did not!’

‘You bloody did,’ Bev says.

‘You know, in corporate team training, the key thing is communication.’

‘Shut up, Craig!’ Kev snaps as more do the same.

‘So?’ Olivia says, ignoring anything other than her own needs. ‘When will my prescription be ready to collect?’

‘I don’t know!’ the doctor says. ‘I’ll bring them to you. Okay?’’

‘Er! You could have said you do delivery.’

‘I might go back to sleeping rough,’ Mike says. ‘Good brew, though. I wonder if I could sneak a chaser into the tea.’

‘Give up, Mike,’ Bev says with a groan. ‘Your body doesn’t want you drinking. Accept it.’

‘Eh. I’ll have you know I’ve got fortitude in the face of adversity. I’ll not give up easily,’ he quips, then glances to the window. ‘We’ve got about half an hour of light left.’

‘Half an hour!’ Rifles calls softly. ‘Eat. Use the toilet. Then it’s lights out. How about you two? Did you reach the train station?’

‘Negative,’ Mike says as Bev eats hot dog sausages from a tin. ‘We’re sealed in on all sides.’

‘We’re digging in then,’ Rifles says with a grim expression.

‘Correct,’ Bev says. ‘Which means rationing. We need to control our supplies,’ she adds, handing the tin to Mike for him to eat the rest.

‘I told you. We’re fucked,’ Roidy Brian says, making them all look over to his puffy, red eyes and terrified expression.

‘But we’re alive,’ Bev says, ‘and we don’t know what this is or how long it will last. So all we can do is hunker down and be smart, and wait it out.’

‘How long will that take? Olivia demands. ‘I’m starting my internship in London next week. I’m not missing that!’

‘Olivia, the world is over,’ Kev says, softening his tone. ‘Everyone is either dead or one of those things.’

‘Er, no. Thank you,’ she says with that same offended expression.

‘I was gonna start my new job next week,’ Sophie says as she stacks tins of food. ‘Got a part time place at a salon. They said they wanted full time, but I had to care for my nan cos they cut her funding, and she’s got dementia.’

‘This is very sad,’ Debora says with a tut.

‘Where you from then anyway?’ Sophie asks.

‘Albania.’

‘You one of those migrants then, are you?’ Kev asks.

‘Yes. We are migrants.’

‘What. So. You come over on a boat from France then?’ Kev asks.

‘Yes. The boat tip over. All the people die.’

‘Oh, my god, that’s awful,’ Sophie says.

‘Which wouldn’t have happened if they’d claimed asylum in France,’ Kev says.

‘Don’t start that shit,’ Bev says.

‘No. It’s true. I’m just being honest, and people don’t like that. And how do we know they didn’t bring it over?’

‘Bring what?’ Mike asks.

‘This! The fucking zombie thing.’

‘Are you being serious?’ Mike asks. ‘Don’t be a bellend.’

‘Unvetted, unchecked migration was ruining this country.’

‘Well. I think the social economic reasons are actually quite complex,’ Craig says.

‘This is a bad topic. Change the subject,’ Bev says.

‘Right. So you control the food and what we can talk about, yeah?’ Kev asks.

‘I thought you were really nice,’ Sophie says, giving Kev a look.

‘I am nice!’

‘It takes a few days for people to show who they really are,’ Bev says.

‘Why? Cos I said we have problems with migrants? Why did you even come here?’ he asks Debora.

‘My son. If he has operation, he save his eyes.’

‘Oh. Gotcha. Got it. Come over to use our free health service then,’ Kev says as a few more people stop and listen.

‘Yes,’ Debora says without shame as she lifts her chin defiantly. ‘I am mother. I do anything for my son.’

‘Yeah. Right. Only my Sharon couldn’t get a hip operation for two years cos of the backlog,’ Kev says.

‘My mum died cos they couldn’t treat her,’ someone else says. ‘They said a Somalian refugee was in front of her.’

‘Get off. They wouldn’t say that,’ Bev says.

‘They bloody did say that!’ the woman snaps.

‘And Albania’s not even a third world country,’ Kev says.

‘Does it really matter right now?’ Bev asks.

‘Are my meds ready yet? I can’t sleep without them,’ Olivia says.

‘Guys. I think tomorrow we could really do with some talks on how to communicate and how to listen effectively,’ Craig cuts in.

‘It’s almost dark. It’s almost dark,’ Brian mutters as Mike rolls his eyes at the characters of people starting to show. Figuring the next few days will get very tense very quickly unless they are careful. There are a lot of strong personalities and views emerging already.

‘I mean. And I’m just putting this out there,’ Kev says as though reluctantly suggesting it. ‘But should the illegal migrants even get the same rations?’

‘Kev?’ Mike says.

‘What?’

‘Shut up before I punch you in the face.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Aye. You will be if you carry on with that shite. Samy and Debs are my pals. We clear on that?’

Craig and Olivia go to speak while Sophie stacks tins, and the doctor tries to peer at labels in the near darkness, and Roidy Brian rocks back and forth, and the people move and listen, and chat – with all of them flinching with terror surging inside when the howls rip through the air outside.

Worse than the last few nights. Worse than ever. Louder and longer, and nothing like a human would do. A noise from a movie. From a nightmare. A most terrible and awful sound as the infection learns to use fear to make survivors emit greater stress pheromones and scents they can sniff out.

Mike puts the empty tin into a bin liner as the others quickly find their spots and hunker down in silence.

It goes on too. Seemingly forever. Stretching on, with Roidy Brian banging the back of his head into the wall. The terror consuming him inside.

Then it ends.

Silence.

An awful silence of nerves and fear, and Mike wishes he’d snatched a ciggie while he had the chance.

He exhales for a long few seconds and lowers down onto a pew as the pigeon coos quietly in her nest.

The room dark.

The shadows deep.

The moon already up and streaming silver light through a window that falls upon the face of the blind child. His head cocked over. His thumb frozen on the bird’s head.

Mike stares at him as the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Sensing what is about to come as the boy whispers into the night.

‘They will come…’

5

Sunday, 17th July

Day Three

‘What did he say?’ Sophie asks as the alarm starts spreading the dark room.

‘He said they will come,’ Kev says. ‘Who will? Who does he mean?’

‘Oh, god. Oh, fuck,’ Roidy Brian says, banging the back of his head against the wall.

‘Did he really say that? Samy? Say it again,’ Sophie says.

‘I heard him!’ Kev says.

‘Shush!’ Bev whispers angrily. ‘They won’t come anywhere near here. We put smells down all over town to confuse them.’

‘Samy, tell me what you just said,’ Mike says, going closer to the boy staring sightlessly with his head cocked over.

‘They will come.’

‘Fuck!’ Roidy Brian says, his voice rising in panic.

‘He said it again,’ Kev says. ‘You need to tell him to shut up! He’s freaking everyone out.’

‘He’s blind! How can he know anything?’ Craig asks.

‘He weren’t bloody wrong before,’ Mike says, grimacing into the darkness as he rubs his chin. ‘Lad? I need you to be specific. Will they come here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fuck! FUCK!’ Roidy Brian calls.

‘Shut up!’ Bev whispers. ‘Debs, tell him to be quiet.’

‘He is never wrong,’ Debora says, getting to her feet to grab the rucksack she discreetly packed earlier. ‘Samir. Stand up.’

‘You are not going outside!’ Bev whispers.

‘Samir said they will come,’ Debora says.

‘How?’ Bev asks. ‘They can’t smell us, and they can’t get inside. That door is inches thick with a bloody great big wooden post across it.’

‘Oh, god. They’re coming,’ Roidy Brian says over her. His voice rising with panic. ‘He fucking said it. He’s jinxed us. He’s fucking jinxed us. Is he one of them?’

‘No!’ Deborah whispers.

‘He hasn’t got eyes. How do you know?’ Roidy Brian asks.

‘Oh, god,’ Kev says. ‘Is he infected? I fucking said they’re the ones bringing it over.’

‘Just shut up and sit down,’ Bev says.

‘Okay, guys. We need to communicate through this,’ Craig says.

‘He’s one of them!’ Roidy Brian says. ‘He’s fucked us… They’re gonna get in…’

‘Er. And I still haven’t had my prescription.’ Olivia says.

‘Everyone, shut the fuck up!’ Bev says as the tension rises quickly, escalating faster than they can stop it.

‘They need to go,’ Kev says, pointing at Debora and Samir. ‘No. I’m not being racist, but they need to leave. That boy’s infected. He doesn’t even have eyes.’

‘He has eyes!’ Debora says. ‘They are not red. He is not infected.’

‘Samy, listen to me,’ Mike says, on one knee in front of the child. ‘Will they get inside? How does this work?’ he asks Debora.

‘I don’t know! He only do this for few months. The doctors said is growth on his brain that ruins eyes.’

‘Oh god, bless him. He’s going a bit doolally then,’ Sophie says with a sad tut as though that explains it all.

‘No! He is never wrong,’ Debora says. ‘We need to go.’

‘You are not opening that door,’ Bev says.

‘They need to leave!’ Kev says.

‘Nobody is going!’ Bev says.

‘We gotta get out. We gotta get out.’

‘Brian, stop it! We are not going outside,’ Bev says as the big man starts shaking his head faster and faster.

‘No, no, no. That little freak’ll bring them here. We gotta get out!’

‘He is not freak! He has tumour,’ Debora says, holding her son’s hand. ‘We will go.’

‘I just said nobody is leaving!’ Bev says.

‘Oh god! Oh god,’ Brian says, pushing to his feet. ‘That little cunt has brought them here.’

‘Do not call my son this word,’ Debora whispers angrily.

‘I gotta go. I gotta go,’ Brian says, the panic attack getting worse by the second, and he steps out, aiming for the foyer.

‘Brian, sit down!’ Bev says, trying to get his wrist, but he pulls away with ease. Over six foot tall, with huge shoulders and a broad back, and solid legs. She tries again, but he doesn’t even feel it.

‘Nips. You go and sit down,’ Rifles says, blocking his path.

‘Gotta get out!’

‘Nipper! I said sit down,’ Rifles says, but Brian pushes him away, sending the older man flying over a pew and into the supplies that scatter over the stone floor.

‘Too much noise!’ Bev says.

‘I just stacked those,’ Sophie says as they all speak at once, with Bev and Doctor Patel rushing to get in front of Brian, but he pushes through them. Too big for them to stop, and he grabs the end of the heavy pew that normally takes two of them to drag and heaves it away with ease.

‘Help us!’ Bev snaps at the others while trying to stop Brian.

‘We need to get out!’ Mike says.

‘We’re not going anywhere!’ Bev says, slamming her hips into the pew to knock it out of Brian’s hand, but he lashes out, sending her into the wall.

‘Whoa. No violence,’ Doctor Patel says, grabbing Brian’s arm. but the big guy’s panic keeps rising, and he shoves hard, sending the doc staggering back into the main hall. ‘I’ll get a sedative for him.’

‘Can I have one?’ Olivia asks.

‘Have you got the pigeon?’ Mike asks, seeing the bird in her nest inside the bra. He grabs it quickly and wraps the material around Samir’s chest, and guides his hand to hold the cup containing the nest. ‘You know the drill, Samy. You both stay close behind me. At least I don’t stink this time, eh?’

‘You are not leaving!’ Bev calls to Mike. ‘And put that pew down!’ she snaps at Brian, going for a double-handed shove to his chest, but he’s simply too big, and the push has no effect as he drags the pew noisily over the stone floor.

The other people in the main room cry out in panic. Whimpering and sobbing, and all telling each other to be quiet.

‘Stop him!’ Bev says as Brian heaves the pew away and grabs at the big locking bar across the inside of the door. Sophie, Kev, Craig, and Rifles all rush forward to help Bev and grab at the big man, but Brian’s steroid ramped strength is astonishing, with the anger and fear only making him stronger, and more people run into the foyer. Seeing the sudden danger in the dark rooms. The moonlight shining through the high, narrow windows.

‘I will fucking shoot you!’ Bev says, trying to knee strike Brian’s solid thighs with no reaction.

‘Mind out from his head,’ Rifles says, grabbing a rifle, and he slams the butt into Brian’s skull, but the guy just cries out like a scared child. Whimpering and sobbing, and shouting no over and over as he claws at the locking bar, impervious to the people trying to stop him.

‘They are here,’ the boy says, his voice nearly lost in the chaos. But Mike hears it and braces as the howls erupt outside, going past the windows, and the first impact comes at the door. Making everyone in the foyer cry out in fear, with even Brian stopping and backing off.

The bangs come again. Deeper and louder, and more of them, with the infected slamming their bodies into the door. Snarling and hissing in pure, hungry rage. Desperate to get inside and pass the virus.

‘He’s killed us!’ Brian shouts and turns in full rage to glare at the child. ‘He’s one of them!’

‘NO!’ Bev shouts. But it’s too late, and Brian moves fast as he screams and sprints at the child with a look of pure murder on his face. Mike lashes out as hard as he can, with the blade of his hand into Brian’s throat. Sending him crashing into the pews, but Brian erupts. Surging to his feet and not feeling the punches Mike slams into his head. Seeing only the child in the midst of his terror. On his feet, and Mike headlocks him, squeezing hard to cut Brian’s air off, but his neck is too thick and packed with muscle, and Brian stands up easily, lifting Mike bodily, then twisting, and throwing him to the side as the infected slam into the door.

‘They’ll get through!’ Rifles shouts from the foyer. Seeing the old door is already starting to crack.

A roar from Brian lunging for the child as a gunshot rings out. Deafeningly loud in the stone room. People scream and yell, and drop for cover as Debora holds the pistol, and Brian stops and stares down at the blood coming from his chest. He blinks stupidly as though confused, then his face twists into a vicious snarl, and he screams with everything he has and strides forward. Slamming pews aside.

‘Shoot him again!’ Mike yells as Debora pulls the trigger, sending another round into Brian’s densely muscled body, but the guy doesn’t flinch. He just screams louder. His mind gone. His eyes seeing only the boy as though that child alone is responsible for everything. Debora screams and runs towards Brian, aiming for his head, but she misses and gets smashed aside by a meaty arm.

‘ARMED POLICE! GET DOWN!’ a huge shout from an experienced voice, and the loud rifle shots sound out. One. Two. Into the body. Bev puts another round into Brian’s head as he dives for the child. The big man finally dropping with a spatter of blood and gore over the stone floor.

‘IT’S BREAKING!’ Rifles shouts from the front.

No time to stop.

No time to think.

Mike on his feet, grabbing the pistol to push back into Debora’s hands as he runs to the foyer. Seeing the old door cracking and falling apart. The thuds coming hard and sustained. ‘Block this area!’ he yells. ‘Get the pews into that door to slow them down.’

‘Where are you going?’ Bev asks when he runs past.

‘That wall. It backs onto the pub in The Square. The old one. It used to be part of the church, like the rectory or something. We can get through.’

‘It would have been blocked up!’

‘Aye, in the fucking seventeenth century or something. Old bricks and shit walls hopefully,’ he says and grabs a chair to bang into the wall. Trying to listen for hollow echoes, but the noise inside the church is too great.

‘Debs! Gun,’ he shouts. She runs over, letting him take it, and he presses his ear to the wall and slams the butt on it again and again as he works along the already old and crusty plaster. But it all sounds solid.

Until it doesn’t.

‘There!’ Mike shouts, hearing a hollow echo. ‘We need tools. Have we got anything? A hammer?’

‘There’s nothing,’ Rifles shouts from the foyer. ‘We inventoried earlier. Get a pew as a battering ram.’

‘Aye! Do that,’ Mike says, grabbing a pew with Debs to try and drag it over. ‘We need help!’

‘Coming,’ Bev says, slinging her rifle to grab at the side. ‘Sophie! Kev! Get over here. Doc, you too.’

They rush over, with Rifles yelling at the other people to push more pews into the foyer to block the door.

‘Grab the sides,’ Mike orders as they bend to lift the long heavy wooden seat. ‘Swing it back, then forward in time. Don’t drop it!’

‘It’s really heavy,’ Sophie says.

‘Craig!’ Bev shouts.

‘Coming!’ he calls, rushing through the bedlam. ‘Okay, guys. This is team building 101 right here. Oh, my fucking god, this thing weighs a ton,’ he gasps in a strangled voice. ‘Swing back… Swing forward… Swing back… AND SLAM IT IN NOW!’

A single impact, but it’s weak and only breaks the plaster.

‘Come on, you lazy cunts!’ Mike shouts. ‘Swing back and hit it.’

They do it again and again as the hordes outside slam into the door. ‘I can see them!’ Rifles shouts as the old wooden door starts breaking away. ‘Can I put rounds in?’

‘Negative!’ Bev gasps. ‘Save the ammo. We’re not hitting it hard enough… Get more people.’

‘It’s too heavy!’ Sophie says, her grip slipping, but she tries again. Gritting her teeth and giving it everything she has. Veins pushing through her skin. Her face flushing red, and she shouts as one of her fingernails rips off. Craig crying out from the weight and the exertion. All of them exhausted from days of not eating properly and not sleeping, and the terror of everything happening.

‘Help them,’ Samir says, tugging on Olivia’s hand.

‘I’ve got a bad back,’ she says.

‘Shit!’ Sophie says, pulling her hand free to bite another nail away with a yell of pain. ‘I’m only bloody little,’ she mutters, going back in while sobbing at her own lack of power and size and grabbing the pew with bleeding fingertips as Olivia looks to the foyer with alarm at seeing the door is slowly disintegrating. A sudden surge of self-preservation, and she barges Sophie aside to grip the pew.

‘That’s it, girl!’ Mike shouts at her, and the pew slams the hardest yet. Smashing bricks down.

‘WE NEED TO EXFIL!’ Rifles shouts as the old door falls apart. Breaking into pieces, with the infected seeing their quarry and surging hard. The locking bar still in place, and the foyer rammed with pews, but within seconds, the whole lot starts sliding back from the immense power being applied.

‘Almost,’ Mike shouts, coughing from decades of filthy dust flying out from the void behind the old, single skin brick wall. ‘Don’t put it down… Swing again… Straight through the plasterboard.’

They work the pew into the boarding, with Mike seeing it’s not plasterboard at all but old sheets of dangerous asbestos.

‘Don’t inhale!’ he snaps at Olivia who holds her breath, and they ram one more time. Smashing through into one of the pub lounges on the other side. Mike struggles through. Using his bare hands to snap boards away to form a big enough gap. ‘Get them through!’

‘LET’S GO!’ Bev orders as Debora motions for Sophie to go through, carrying Samir, with Debs right behind them.

‘It’s giving way!’ Rifles shouts.

‘We’re through!’ Bev replies as the survivors in the church start clambering through the gap. ‘RIFLES! LET’S GO!’

‘I bloody said I have a name!’

‘What is it?’ Bev shouts.

‘It’s Rifles!’ he yells, making her snort a dry laugh, and the horde surges as one, slamming through the door like a tsunami and driving the pews hard into the back of Rifle’s legs. Taking him down with a yell. Bev cries out, running back as Rifles is swallowed by the pews crushing his body.

‘GO!’ Rifles shouts. Firing shots in the darkness until his voice becomes lost from the pews sliding across the ground. Mangling him violently. Bev turns to flee. Running past an old woman on the floor bleeding from her head. Too big to carry, and no time to help.

‘Shoot me!’ the old woman gasps. No hesitation. No delay. Bev aims and fires the rifle.

‘BEV!’ Mike yells, hearing the shots. His rifle ready and braced as Bev finally gets through the hole.

‘Go!’ she yells.

‘Rifles?’

‘Two eight. KIA.’

‘Shit,’ Mike says, pushing to the front of the group and then across the old pub, and out through the already open doors to see broken chairs and upturned tables littering the outside. The back of the horde at the end of the row of buildings. All of them facing away as they try and get through the church door around the corner.

A finger to his lips, and Mike waves them all to be silent. A woman crying. In the grip of a panic attack. Bev shushes her, but the woman starts screaming, with Mike slamming the butt of the rifle into her head. Knocking her clean out.

He moves off. Leaving the woman on the ground. Cruel and vicious, but time and energy can only go to those likely to survive.

They cling to the building line. Staying low and running past the City Museum, with Mike trying to think where to go.

The museum looks big and solid, but it’s the same as the church. They’ll get surrounded with no way out.

They take cover in the deep, dark shadows of the car park underneath the hotel, where they met Rifles. The thirty plus survivors now already down to less than twenty-five.

But even here isn’t safe. Nowhere is. The howls are coming from all around them, and there is no way of moving twenty plus people without being seen, and they’re down to two rifles and one pistol, and very limited ammunition.

A snarl as a large, infected bouncer runs past, then stops on catching scent of the people, and turns fast to lunge in and take one of the survivors down. A man that yells out in pain and fright. Mike fires his rifle into the attacker. Blowing the skull out as the guy underneath scrabbles free. Crying and gasping and clutching the bite wound on his cheek.

‘No… No!’ he cries out, knowing what it means. ‘Don’t! DON’T!’ he screams at Mike taking aim as the pain comes into his gut a second before the round goes through his head.

‘That’s my husband!’ a woman shouts, breaking free from being held and rushing to hug the shot man, with the blood smearing over her hands and spattering onto her face and lips as she breaks into hysterics.

‘They’re coming!’ Doctor Patel calls from the back, when he spots the front of the horde running into view.

‘Oh, god…’ the woman on the ground says with a sudden grunt as she clutches her belly. ‘No…. NO!’

Bev fires once. Shooting her dead.

‘Not that way!’ Mike shouts as three people run off towards the Cathedral grounds and disappear into the darkness, with wretched screams sounding a few seconds later. The others run along Market Street and out onto the High Street. Sophie carrying Samir, with Debora at their back. Holding the pistol. All of them gasping and gripped in terror.

‘Shit!’ Mike says, seeing another horde coming down the High Street from the Buttercross Monument. They turn left to go south, running as fast as they can. Another older man trips and goes down. His head crunching nastily on the kerb. Knocking him clean out, with blood pouring from his ears.

A howl from the left. An infected female bursting out from somewhere unseen. Mike aims low and puts rounds into her legs. Making her fly off her feet and impact face down. Breaking her nose, but she starts crawling instantly. Snarling and hissing.

They run on past Marks and Spencer and the fancy TV chef’s place. Hordes behind them, and another one coming out from Colebrook Street on the right.

There’s no choice. Bev and Mike lower to a knee and put rounds in, with Debora firing the pistol. Shooting a few down to make the ones behind trip. Seconds gained to run, but seconds only.

‘Fuck!’ Mike shouts, seeing more infected at the end of the road past The Abbey Gardens.

Cut off from all sides. Nowhere left to run. They crash to a halt. Bumping into each other.

‘How many mags left?’ Mike shouts.

‘One,’ Bev shouts.

Thirty rounds in the full one. Maybe a dozen in their rifles. One mag left for Debora’s pistol. Nowhere near enough.

‘What about that?’ Sophie shouts as they spin to see her nodding down the road to the high-sided dumper truck left behind the wire safety fencing within the roadworks.

‘Genius!’ Mike yells as they burst to run. Sprinting to the wire fence, with Mike slinging his rifle and yanking at the joint between two sections, cursing at seeing they’re all chained together.

A yell, and Olivia slams into it at his side. Ripping the thin wire fence over as she tumbles through.

‘I fucking love you,’ Mike mutters, pulling her up as they run to the side of the dump truck. The sheer-sided bucket at the back high over their heads. ‘Quickly now!’ he shouts as Sophie reaches him and shoves her foot into his clasped hand, and he pushes hard. Straining with everything he has to give Sophie a boost, with Samir creating a well between his body and Sophie’s to protect the pigeon and her eggs. Sophie grips the sides and screams out, heaving herself up and over to land on the dirt and rubble already inside.

‘DEBS!’ Olivia shouts, hunkering down and clasping her hands for Debora to push her foot, and she heaves with a grunt, sending Debora flying up the side as the rest clamber up over the tyres and spill over the edge.

‘BEV! IN!’ Mike shouts, taking her foot in his hands to heave her up. His body not as strong as Olivia’s, and it makes him stagger and almost fall.

‘Give me your hand!’ Bev shouts, leaning over the top.

‘Mike, quick!’ Olivia shouts, clasping her hands.

‘Negative. You,’ Mike says. ‘NOW’ he screams when she starts to argue, and she brings a big foot up to plant in his hands as he heaves and yells, and pushes her up, with Olivia grabbing the sides to try and help, with Craig and Bev leaning over to grab her arms and pull her up and over.

‘Fuck,’ Mike gasps. Pain in his body. Blooms of white in his vision. The howls closer now. The hordes coming in fast on all sides.

He turns to climb the sides, then stops and glances over. A thought in mind. A fraction of a second and no more. He steps back and unslings his rifle to throw up, then turns, and runs. Staggering and sore. Bev and the others screaming his name. Survivors still trying to get up the side of the dump truck.

He reaches the huge excavator. A 14-ton digger with an eight metre long arm for scooping chunks of the earth up. He clambers up and wrenches the door open, and spills into the cab as the horde reach the roadworks and run bodily into the last few survivors too slow to climb the sides of the dump truck. Ripping them off their feet or dragging them down.

Screams and shouts. Carnage and chaos everywhere. Mike gasps, getting into the seat as he stares frantically at the weird controls.

They had diggers and plant machinery on the bases in Iraq and Afghan. They used them to build fortifications or general construction. Mike and the lads would piss about in them sometimes and get told off.

He thought they’d be the same.

But they’re not. This is way more complicated.

He draws air and closes his eyes. Knowing he has to focus because this is the last chance at anything.

A second taken.

A second and no more; then he opens his eyes and looks again. Calmer. Controlled. He activates the touch screen and punches into the ignition, and the thing starts up with a throaty rumble making the cab vibrate.

He grabs the levers making the extendable arm rise quickly into the air turning clockwise. The cabin rotating with it.

He pushes other directions, making it go the other way, and brings the arm down that slams into the back of the dump truck hard enough to make those inside all fall to their feet.

‘Fucking shitfaced bastard wee cunt!’ he mutters trying to pull the arm back, but it snags on the dumper truck, with both vehicles bouncing violently.

Another heave on the sticks, and he brings the bucket in closer and retracts the arm, with the hard metal bucket slamming into the horde at the side of the truck. Bodies pulped instantly. Heads popping and bellies exploding and bones snapping. A whole swathe of them destroyed within a few seconds.

‘GO ON!’ Bev shouts as Mike works the controls to draw the bucket back through them as the infected behind the first few lines rush in to fill the gaps and get crushed and killed on the return.

He kills dozens. Pulverising human forms with the touch of a lever as another infected gets onto the tracks and slams her head into the glass wall of the cabin. Then another and another as he realises more of them are coming for him.

‘Come on, ye wee fucks,’ he snarls the words out and presses things, and moves levers, and pushes pedals, with the boom and the bucket all moving up and down.

Then it lurches forward with Mike shouting in triumph and pushing the speed to the maximum 5km per hour. Walking pace only, but its motion, and it’s all he has to work with.

He sets off lumbering and jolting while swinging the arm to mow the infected down. The whole machine bouncing and bucking as the tracks roll over bodies. Popping them like melons, with the dry-twig sound of snapping bones heard within the bedlam.

Another idea in mind. A stupid, stupid, really stupid idea.

He shouts loudly, wishing the digger could go faster, but it crosses the road and slams two cars away left parked outside the Guildhall. The alarms on both sounding instantly and drawing more of the hordes away from the dump truck. Charging after the slowly fleeing digger that Mike aims at the ground level, big, plate glass windows of the fish and chip restaurant housed on the ground floor of the Guildhall next to the majestic steps leading up to the big arched entrance.

‘What the fuck is he doing?’ Bev shouts, looking over and thinking the digger will surely turn left or right and carry on up the High Street.

Except it doesn’t, and the bucket slams through one of the big, plate glass windows and doors. Smashing it all in, with the tracks and the cab hitting next. Tearing the bricks away from the ornate Victorian building.

Mike pushes on and drives into the fish and chip restaurant. Turning the boom and bucket within the confined space. Destroying tables and chairs, and stud walls. Glass and bricks falling down. The ceiling collapsing. Dust and plaster everywhere. The air instantly thick and choking, with infected using the downed materials to get onto the tracks, so they can slam their stupid, ugly faces into the toughened safety glass.

‘Fuck you!’ Mike growls at them, turning the machine to go back out, tearing a bigger hole with the windows above smashing down from the loss of support.

But he doesn’t stop.

He can’t stop.

The idea is too stupid to stop now, and so he aims for the end wall. Knowing it’s the solid, internal supporting wall that separates the restaurant from the Guildhall on the other side, but that’s the thing, see. He needs a way through.

‘We’ve got to go!’ Bev shouts outside in the back of the dump truck. Seeing Mike lead the infected after him inside the Guildhall. ‘Can anyone drive this thing? Come on! Someone!’

‘I can,’ Kev says, shaking his head to rid the utter terror. ‘I’ve driven everything before taxis.’

‘Get in the cab. We can get out of here,’ Bev says.

‘We need Mike!’ Debora shouts.

‘Mike is a soldier. He knows the drill. We get the civilians to safety. Quickly, Kev!’

They run to the front, with Kev clambering awkwardly over the front edge and onto the cab and falling down the side with a scream as the dozen or so infected left all surge for him.

Bev aims and fires down. Shooting them away as Kev scrabbles up onto his feet and gets inside the cab. His hands shaking. His whole body thrumming with panic, but he fires the ignition, with the massive vehicle rattling noisily. A belch of black smoke from the exhaust, and in the back, they all fall off their feet when Kev pulls away jerkily.

Inside the restaurant, Mike slams the bucket into the interior wall. A professional would use finesse and leverage and know exactly how to angle and where to hit. But the best Mike can do is swing out and swing in and use the lever to make the fucking bucket hit the fucking wall while more infected pour into the room.

Blood everywhere. Spattering the windows on all sides. Howls and screeches in the air. Thick dust and debris. Lights hanging down.

He drives at the counter and through the end and uses the bucket to tear the display counters apart, then the fish fryers underneath. Oil inside. Cold now from days of not being used, and it splashes out over the tiled floor.

Then he spots it.

The big pipe running at ground level, and he brings the bucket down, cursing at his lack of skill to get the right angle until finally getting the bucket teeth onto the outer edge.

He draws the lever back. The thick pipe snags, with gas hissing as it escapes the system into the room. The gas pipe that fed to the fryers used to cook the fish and chips.

He backs up. Shouting in victory and turning the bucket and arm, and cabin around several times in full circles. Pulping dozens more infected before the machine coughs and shudders. The fuel depleted and not refilled on site until the next working day.

A chance to take.

He seizes it and kicks the door open. Seeing a big gap in the horde, and he drops down. Cutting his hands and knees as he climbs up over the bricks and through the hole he made into the Guildhall. The infected behind him. Screeching as they give chase.

Darkness inside. The moonlight coming through the windows. He lurches on. Gasping and coughing, with his eyes watering from the gas fumes rapidly filling the air. Dust too. Thick, cloying dust.

‘No! Come on!’ Kev shouts when the dump truck shudders. A glance at the fuel gauge. The thing on empty. Fuel is expensive and easily syphoned, and only a fool leaves plant machinery full.

He pushes it on, heading north, back past Marks and Spencer. The horde close behind. The speed not great, but they’re gaining some distance at least.

Then it cuts out and shudders to an almost instant halt.

‘Why have we stopped?’ Bev yells from the back.

‘Fuel!’ Kev shouts, dropping out and climbing down. ‘We’ll have to run for it.’

‘Everyone out!’ Bev orders. ‘Craig. Go first. You’re tallest. Take Samir.’

No time to think. No time for thought. Craig gets over the side and drops down, then joins Kev to reach up as Samir is passed down, with everyone else dropping out as fast as they can.

‘Go… GO!’ Bev shouts, hitting the ground with a hard grunt and pain shooting through her leg. She drops to a knee and aims into the first infected. Shots fired. Striking legs. Making them tumble and fall and buying another few seconds. But that’s all they can do. Buy a few seconds at a time.

Then she’s up and limping after the others past Market Street and into the ancient narrow part of the High Street, and back towards the Buttercross Monument.

‘COME ON!’ Mike shouts into the darkness of the Guildhall. Running through the foyer, then into one of the high vaulted rooms. The exquisite décor unseen in the deep shadows, but the place soon fills with the howls of the infected still pouring through the broken wall from the restaurant. Giving chase as Mike leads them deeper into the building. Buying time and buying seconds for his stupid, stupid idea.

‘Don’t stop!’ Bev shouts when another survivor cries out from falling with a twisted ankle. She runs past with a shot fired into the man’s head. Committing murder to live. Killing others to survive.

A screech from the side. An infected taking another survivor down. Bev doesn’t fire but pushes on. Struggling for air. The others the same. Craig now carrying Samir. Olivia gasping and red-faced. Sophie the same. Debora’s face a mask of terror and determination.

On they go. Staggering and seeing the infected behind are closing the gap.

If they can reach the Buttercross Monument, they can take the alley past the Church of St Lawrence. The same building they fled from just a short while ago, and maybe get into the Museum or somewhere else.

It’s the only chance they have.

So close now.

They can see it.

The ancient monument.

It’s right there.

Another howl. More infected coming from ahead.

They won’t make it.

This is it.

Almost the end, and Mike crashes into the great main hall laden with tables decorated for the wedding of Elaine and Todd. Their names on a banner on the end wall above the head table. The two big seats for the bride and groom. Everything chintzy and cheap, with the Guildhall offering low-cost wedding deals to try and get money in.

The doors crash open at the end.

The first infected staggers inside. The face caught in the rays of moonlight coming through the high windows.

‘Oh, no…’ Mike says, feeling the pain inside at seeing Sona from the Sri-Lankan shop. Nice Sona, who was always good to him. Now she stalks forwards. Hands clawed. Eyes ablaze. Her mind not her own. Her body and mind taken over by a parasitic infection that will soon gain sentience and take the spark of life within the people it takes as its own.

Not that Mike will see past the next two minutes.

‘Go left!’ Bev gasps, seeing their now small group veer off with a cry from the front as Doctor Patel shouts for them to go back. Panic and chaos. People moving everywhere. Bev gets a view with her heart lurching from the sight of Roidy Brian on his feet with a chunk missing from his skull. His eyes red and bloodshot. His hands clawed into talons, and his wide frame lurching at them from the passage.

All three sides converging at once.

From behind. From ahead. From the left.

Bev turns and fires behind them. Doctor Patel with the other rifle firing ahead. Roidy Brian charging out and slamming a woman into a wall. Biting into her cheek and wrenching his head side to side like a dog. Tearing flesh away with his teeth, and he turns and lunges at a man. Driving him down to bite into his fingers. Severing one away and surging up to take another one down.

Debora fires at him. Missing with the first round and hitting one of the survivors behind, who screams and drops, with Brian diving onto her body and biting into her thigh. Debora fires again and again. Getting rounds into Brian, but it has no effect, and the ones he bit start writhing in agony. Turning fast, with the infection replicating inside of their bodies. Taking over every cell until it reaches the host body’s heart and stops it. Then restarts it in the true state of being, and their eyes snap open. Their minds gone. Their whole beings filled with the one driving urge to bite and rake, and take more hosts.

Bev empties the magazine. Tactical reload. Thirty rounds left. She turns to fire into the ones coming alive within their own group from being bitten. Four shot and killed, and she turns back out to shoot more coming in. Doctor Patel doing the same. Missing more than hitting until the rifle clicks empty, and with a scream, he grabs the hot barrel with two hands and uses the gun as a club to smash into Brian.

But Roidy Brian can’t be stopped. The power of the man driving him into the others with ease. Tearing them apart and biting anything he can grip. He lunges for Craig holding Samir as Kev and Sophie ram into Brian’s back, knocking him away. Craig climbs the five big, stone steps and puts Samir into the middle of the monument with his back against the central column. Four others, one at each corner, giving the boy at least some minor protection, and Craig turns with a shout. An infected lunging up the steps. A woman from the church that was one of the survivors until but a moment ago. Craig spoke with her and shared words. Now he boots her in the face and sends her sliding down the steps as Roidy Brian gets up and grabs another survivor. A man that screams and tries to punch out, but it’s no good, and Brian’s teeth sink into his knuckles.

Bev fires and fires. The rounds depleting. The gun clicks empty. She does the same as Doctor Patel and swings it out to use as club.

The last few moments of life.

Most of the survivors screaming in terror. Curling up and praying, and sobbing, and weeping.

But not all.

Sophie on her feet at Kev’s side. The pair of them kicking at Brian’s back. Trying to hurt him. Debora at Brian’s head, using the empty pistol as a club to smash into his already broken skull, but he rises from the man he just killed with such explosive power all three go flying. All of them screaming out. Knowing this is it. Knowing there is nothing they can do because Brian is just too big and strong, and he roars with beastly victory, turning to the boy and lunging for the steps as Craig shouts and stands his ground. Terrified to the core but refusing to leave the child unprotected. Brian lunges. Taking Craig down as an almighty scream fills the air, and Olivia leaps onto Brian’s back. Her natural bodyweight as great as his, and he slews off to the side, tripping over a body and going down hard. Olivia grunts as she wraps her arms. Clamping him in place.

He thrashes and bucks, and rolls, but she holds on. Her eyes ablaze at the fury detonating inside. The same fury in all of them. The same thing. The same surge of energy.

Sophie runs past Bev swinging her rifle to take another one down and grabs a steak knife from the ground, dives and stabs down into Brian’s chest. The small blade plunging in and out over and again as the veins in Sophie’s neck and head bulge through her skin.

Debora does the same. Grabbing a fallen steak knife to stab at the beast still thrashing, with Olivia’s face flushed red from the exertion of holding him down. Her teeth barred.

Kev and Craig join in. Grabbing two more of the knives upended out of the tray, when Mike and Debora scavenged for food on the first night. Simple knives with small blades, but it’s all they have, and they dive into the mayhem. Cutting and stabbing, and screaming out at the murder and death as the hot blood sprays into their faces. Hot, infected blood that enters their bodies and does nothing as they hack Brian’s flesh open.

But still the beast heaves with such effort that he pulls himself to his feet with Olivia on his back and sends the others sprawling away.

A pulse of fear flashes through all of them. That Brian will break free and reach the child, and in that same instant, Olivia sinks her teeth into his ear and chews it off. He pays no heed but snarls, and starts lumbering towards the child. Everything happening so fast. All in an instant. Olivia still on his back, seeing the boy just a few steps away, and so she pushes her mouth into Brian’s neck and bites at his skin. Tearing it open, with hot blood pouring into her mouth, but still she bites and rags, and tears the flesh open to reach the artery. Knives still stuck in his body. The others on their feet, running back in to try and stop him.

Bev beats her last one down and staggers over to help Doctor Patel. The two of them dripping with infected blood. A second to gasp air. A second and no more; then they’re running after Sophie and Kev, and Craig. All of them moving to stop Brian getting to the child sitting between the columns of The Buttercross Monument. Samir’s face as passive as ever. Showing no fear as Brian mounts the first step. His face torn and mangled. Olivia still biting into him. Bev and the doctor beating at his legs. Kev and Sophie, and Craig pushing and hitting, and stabbing.

A moment in time.

A moment seared in time, and the great beast screams with fury, with a meaty arm reaching out to grab the child.

‘No.’

A grunted word from Bev. A pulse of energy, and as one, they find hidden reserves to throw themselves at the bodybuilder, but it’s not enough. He’ll reach the child.

Another surge. Another pulse that awakens something dark and deep, and terrible in Olivia. A fury unlike any other. A fury of old. A berserker fury buried for generations that now detonates, giving her strength greater than any steroids could ever give, and she drops to her feet and rips Brian off the ground like he weighs nothing at all. Flipping him so fast that she knocks the others flying, and they fall away. Stunned at the explosive motion, and when they gather their wits enough to look, they see a giant of a woman in full rage. Stamping down on the beast that was. Breaking his skull and bones, with the dry snaps sounding out in the sudden charged silence.

They get to their feet. Heaving for air. Dripping blood and sweat. Bleeding and hurt, but feeling no pain. Only the adrenaline inside. Only the surge of something primeval that tells them they won this battle. That they are the victors, and still, Olivia stamps and breaks with that fury pulsing inside.

‘He’s dead,’ Bev says hoarsely. ‘Olivia! He’s dead.’

Olivia finally stops and staggers back a step. Her chest rising and falling as she sucks air into her lungs. A grunt. A snarl. She goes back and stamps again, then steps back to look at the others with a glint of mischief and mayhem in her eyes. ‘He twitched,’ she says.

Bev stays silent. Having no words to give as they look around at their fallen foe and then over to the boy sitting atop the highest step of the monument.

His head turned as though he is staring back down the High Street.

As though his sightless eyes can see Scottish Mike sitting in the groom’s chair at the head of the wedding table in the grand vaulted room of the Guildhall.

The former para watching the infected pouring in without a flicker of fear.

More and more, and many more. Snarling and screeching, and coming forward. Slamming into the tables and chairs, and it’s like time slows, and Mike can pick their details out. Seeing the faces of the people they once were.

But they’re not now.

They’re not human now.

Mike used to be something else too.

He was a soldier and a good one at that.

But he lost his way.

He lost who he was.

But now he’s back, and in all honesty, to get this clarity now in his final second of life as he lifts his lighter to the badly made cigarette in his mouth, as the room fills with gas from the ruptured pipes – well, he wouldn’t change a thing.

That boy though.

Samir.

There is something about him. Something special, and Mike gives thanks that the child will have someone like Bev looking over him.

‘Ye wee bastards… Fancy a smoke?’

He thumbs the lighter. The spark flashes. The gas ignites.

And at The Buttercross Monument in the High Street, they turn to the sound of the detonation coming from the Guildhall. Seeing an orange glow bouncing off the night sky and thick smoke billowing up.

‘Mike,’ Sophie says in a voice full of alarm. Young, slim. Working class and sweet natured. She stands dripping with blood while the bodies of her foes lay broken at her feet.

The same with Kev. Fifties. Paunchy. High blood pressure. High Cholesterol. Pre-diabetic. His thick arms now coated in gore. He glances to Craig. A pseudo intellectual beta male with floppy hair that spoke openly against any perceived form of toxic masculinity, but he bends to draw the knife out of Roidy Brian’s sternum and holds it gripped and ready.

Doc Patel behind him. Intelligent. Fashionable. Born and raised in the UK to a family that clung to their traditional Indian values, which meant he could never tell them he was gay. He dedicated his life to medicine and took a vow to only ever heal and never to harm, but he holds the rifle like a club. His chest heaving. His face bathed in sweat and droplets of blood as he stares down the High Street to the fireball curling up into the sky coming from the Guildhall. The huge whump of the explosion a most surreal noise in the now silent street, especially after the blood roaring through their ears in the midst of battle.

‘We should check,’ a voice says, and they all turn to stare at Olivia. Entitled and needy. Selfish and greedy. She had depression and anxiety. She had anger, and was triggered by everything. She hated her body. She hated her fat stomach and big thighs, and thick arms, and she hated her shoulders and thick neck. She hated it all and projected that hate to everything else, but now she stands big and broad, and as strong as a bear with a glint in her eyes that was never there before. Her voice is different too. The elongated, fashionable croak has gone. Now it’s normal.

‘Nothing can survive that,’ Bev replies, staring down the street. She served in war. She saw IED’s take out soldiers and children. She saw missiles hit compounds. She joined the police and saw death in other forms. Car crashes. Fires. Explosions. Stabbings. And so she knows, from all those things, that a detonation so big that it produces a fireball as large as the one they just saw means every living thing in that vicinity is dead.

‘I’m gonna check anyway,’ Olivia says and starts walking.

‘Will you carry me?’ Samir asks from atop the base of the monument. Olivia glances to the boy’s mother looking as exhausted and as filthy as the rest of them. Debora nods, and Olivia lifts the child with ease to hold him in the crook of her arm and sets off. Debora goes with them. A need inside to check.

The same need in the others. All of them walking down the road they ran up. Stepping over the bodies they killed on the way. Stepping around the crawlers still trying to get at them.

‘Wait a sec,’ Bev says and heads into one of the fine dining eateries to grab big kitchen knives and meat cleavers that she hands out to the others.

They set off again.

Seeing the carnage left behind. The building site full of corpses.

They reach the smashed in windows of the fish and chip restaurant at the Guildhall. The digger blackened by the fire. Wooden chairs glowing with embers. The whole place ready to ignite and burn to the ground.

The smell hits them. The stench of cooked meat. Burnt meat. Crispy meat. Death everywhere. Human forms stripped of their flesh. Empty eye-sockets and open mouths showing rows of white teeth in scorched skulls.

‘This way,’ Samir says, pointing into the foyer.

‘It’s not safe inside,’ Bev says as the child squirms in Olivia’s arms to be put down while still holding his mother’s bra wrapped about his thin body. Bev should say no. She should order them to leave, but she feels it too. The same thing that Mike felt. The compulsion to do what the child says without knowing why. Only that she should. Only that she must.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ she mutters, and they go into the hell left by the fireball. Their eyes watering from the stench and fumes. Their bodies feeling the awful heat still within the building and wafting from the wooden furniture smouldering with glowing embers.

Everything blackened and awful. A horrible place to be, but the child urges them on to the back room, where the wedding was due to be held.

‘Oh, this was Elaine Sotheby’s wedding,’ Sophie says with a sad tone. ‘She was meant to be getting married to Todd Driscoll, but I think they called it off after he found out she gave Gary the stripper a blow job on her hen do, but then she was only doing that cos apparently Todd fingered Jenny Dore on his stag night.’

‘And I thought my life was shite.’

A low gruff voice from the end of the room. A hard Scottish accent buried beneath a pile of bodies.

They edge closer and shove the table and bodies away to stare down to the eyebrowless face of Scottish Mike blinking up at them with an unlit roll up in his mouth.

‘How the hell are you still alive?’ Bev asks.

‘How the hell are any of us still alive?’ Jevram Patel asks, looking around at the charred bodies. At the death in this room, then out to the foyer, and the street beyond. He looks to Olivia and the blood still on her chin, but then they’ve all got blood on them. It’s across Bev’s face. The same with Mike. Sophie. Kev. Craig. Debs. Only the boy seems untouched. ‘Why aren’t we…’ he mutters softly with a frown at how he should phrase it.

‘Why aren’t we zombies?’ Kev asks as Jevram nods and tries to think, but it’s all too much.

‘Worry about it later,’ Bev says, holding a hand out for Mike. ‘Can you walk?’

‘No. Carry me.’

‘Stop being a twat,’ she says as he grips her hand and rises to his feet, with her tutting at the state of his face and the distinct lack of eyebrows. Bodies all around them, and the doc was right. Why aren’t they turning into those things. But that’s not for now.

Now they need to bug out and find a defensive point, and take on fluids, and tend to injuries. She grips the knife and nods to the others. ‘Stay together. We’re moving out…’

6

Monday, 18th July

Day Four

They take refuge in a hotel just off the town centre after looting clothes and the things they need. A set of rooms taken over on the top floor. The entry doors wedged and blocked to prevent anyone or anything from getting inside.

They take long, cold showers that run filthy and red while they scrub their bodies with soap. They eat snack food and drink water.

‘What you doing?’ Mike asks when Bev marches into his room to the minibar to remove all the liquor. ‘Can you leave me one at least?’

‘Grow your eyebrows back,’ she says and walks out, leaving him scowling and muttering, or rather, trying to scowl, which isn’t so easy when your eyebrows have been burnt off. Which looks daft as shit, especially with a long beard.

He thinks for a second and goes out his room to dart in the next one along to see Bev already there, emptying the minibar.

He walks out to the next room along and leans through the open door. ‘Have ye got any-.’

‘She took it,’ Sophie says with an apologetic wince.

‘I’ve done all of them!’ Bev calls.

‘But do you want this?’ Sophie asks, holding a pencil up.

‘What do I need a pencil for?’ Mike asks.

‘It’s liner. You can draw some eyebrows on.’

‘I’m not drawing my bloody eyebrows back on!’

‘Do you want me to do them for you?’

‘No! I’m not a bloody drag artist.’

‘Er, men can wear make-up too!’ Olivia calls from the bathroom.

Mike heads back to his room in a foul mood, thinking he’ll never be able to sleep.

Not while he’s craving like this, and not after everything they’ve done. All the killing. All the death.

They all feel the same.

Except that doesn’t happen.

They sleep deeply, and they sleep long.

Day Six

St Peter’s Car Park just off the town centre. A hot day with heat shimmers hanging over the road. Sophie adjusts the sweatband wrapped around her forehead to keep her eyes clear and suppresses the urge to giggle at the sight of Mike’s face.

She pulls a sorry face and nods at the painted eyebrows she drew on him this morning for a laugh, but the big beard and wild hair, and two neatly drawn, arched, black lines just keep setting her off. He smiles back at her. Rolling his eyes. She’s a sweet kid and full of good energy. ‘Ready?’ he whispers.

She nods, and they set off in a crouched run to dart over to the nearest car. An old Skoda. Mike finds the fuel cover and uses a screwdriver to snap it open, then unscrews the cap, and nods for Sophie to feed the already pre-soaked rags into the opening.

He moves off to do the next. Snapping the cover and getting the cap off as Sophie works behind him. Feeding the flammable rags into the holes. A dozen cars done. Both of them pouring with sweat in the intense heat. Mike still craving a drink. Sophie can see it in him. The way he sometimes tenses like he’s suffering intense pain. She tuts sadly and holds a bottle of water out. ‘The doc said to keep flushing your body through.’

Mike glugs it down. Cool and refreshing, but his body wants liquor. Whiskey. Brandy. Gin. Anything. ‘I think we’re ready,’ he whispers. ‘Once we start, we’ve got to be fast, then get out of it.’

‘I know!’ she whispers with her big expressive eyes, never angry, never annoyed. A Zippo lighter in her hand. Mike gets his ready. They planned for this.

They thumb their lighters and hold the flames to the pre-soaked rags which ignite fast, and the pair rush on to the next and the next before they run like hell to get over the brick wall and into the back gardens of the houses abutting the main road.

They hunker down. Biting lips and waiting. Nothing happens. Sophie frowns. Mike tries to frown, but that just sets Sophie off again, and the first fuel tank detonates with a dull whump that sends a ball of flame and filthy smoke into the air.

‘Yes!’ Bev whispers from inside the municipal multistorey car park built into the county council buildings in the town centre on hearing the explosions.

‘We run until we reach the car park. That’s our first objective,’ Bev told her team when they planned the mission.

They reached it without issue. Running along the entry ramp to a dark corner where they hunkered down to wait for the distraction.

They hear them clearly. The loud bangs of car fuel tanks exploding, and as one, the hundreds of infected gathered outside turn with a collective groan and start shuffling towards the noise. Leaving the road giving access to the train station.

Bev peers through a big, metal grille built into the wall.

Another nod, and they set off for the stairwell doors, and another second of high tension because the doors don’t have windows, which means they can’t see what’s on the other side.

Bev pauses. Listening. Not hearing anything. A look to the others. They shake their heads. Not hearing anything either.

Bev grips the handle and pulls the heavy fire door open, with an instant growl on the other side as three infected trapped within the stairwell surge out to attack them.

Bev lashes out with her meat cleaver. Getting the first one through the neck with a deep chop. Two behind it moving fast as Olivia slams into them from the side. Taking them both down to be pinned as the others drive blades into throats and eyes, and hearts.

A few seconds of brutal vicious violence; then it’s done, and they draw back, heaving for air.

‘Everyone okay?’ Bev whispers. Kev, the taxi driver, and Craig next to her. Sweating and nodding.

A hand goes up. ‘No,’ Olivia says.

‘Why?’ Bev asks.

‘I hate running.’

Bev rolls her eyes as the other two snort to vent the tension as Olivia shakes her head to rid the sweat pouring down her cheeks.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Bev whispers as another explosion sounds out in the distance.

‘Bleedin’ hell,’ Kev says when they reach the road outside of the train station. Even now after nearly a week of hell, it’s something to see. Whole carriages that came off the tracks so fast they smashed through the terminal and skidded along the road, taking out trees and lampposts and carving chunks out of houses. He looks across to The Albion Pub, now mostly demolished from a train carriage going through it. ‘I used to drink in there,’ he says in a tone of disbelief.

‘Looks like a dump,’ Olivia says.

‘Yeah, it was,’ Kev says. ‘Cheap beer, though.’

They set off skirting the carriages and bodies to finally reach Bev’s Armed Response Vehicle and the gun box in the back as the smoke curls up into the air from the explosions and fires in the distance.

She finds her keys and unlocks the box with a sense of relief at finally pulling the spare magazines out. Passing one to Kev to reload the other rifle, then quickly reloading her own before slotting a new magazine into her sidearm. She runs over to the next police ARV traffic car parked nearby with a sad tut at seeing the remains of Robbie Dowden. Another ARV officer. They did their firearms courses together. She’d even slept with him before finding out he was engaged to be married. She threatened to break his nose for being a seedy, dirty, cheating prick. He begged her not to tell the job; otherwise, he’d get kicked off the course.

Now he’s dead, with his face and arms eaten down to the bone by rats. His name tag still pinned to his ballistic vest. She sighs and unhooks the keys from his belt, and takes his pistol and rifle, and spare mags before accessing the gun box.

Mike comes to a stop. Holding a clenched fist up as the signal to hold. Sophie behind him. The best at running within their group, which is why she was chosen to go with Mike.

He peers out of the side street, then ducks back quickly as Sophie takes her turn to spot dozens of infected shuffling past the end of the road. She pulls back. Feeling a thrum inside at the mission being executed to plan.

They woke in the hotel after that first battle and realised they’d slept for nearly twelve hours, but when night came, they heard the infected howl and knew more had come into the town centre, which, in turn, made them realise they again needed to find somewhere safer, and they also desperately needed the ammunition from the Armed Response Vehicles.

Now, a few days later, they finally get the magazines out, with Craig, Kev, and Olivia keeping watch while Bev unloads the gun boxes, and Mike and Sophie work their way to the train station, using the alleys and passages Mike has spent fifteen years sleeping rough in.

They clamber over another wall onto Swan Lane with a view to Station Road and the train carriages. Craig spots them first with a quiet word to the others, who look over with nods and waves.

Sophie waves back as Mike grins, spotting Bev coming out of the marked police car with a rucksack. ‘We did it,’ Sophie says.

‘Aye, looks that way,’ Mike says, turning to see the back of the horde still shuffling away.

The pattern of their behaviour now established. The infected go slow and sluggish in the day. If you get too close, they’ll move quick and pounce, but otherwise, they don’t have good control. It’s at night when they become the dangerous predators. That’s why Bev gets her team scavenging in the day and safely hunkered down in time for the night. And that’s after laying false scent trails and using water to douse their routes.

It's given them hope that they can survive. That they can find a way to work around the beasts until they surely die because, as the Doc said, all living things must drink and eat, so it’s only a matter of time before even they perish.

But it looks like this mission at least is a success, and he grins at the others as he and Sophie jog towards them. The heat bearing down. The sun glaring overhead. Mike blinks. Seeing the infected change in an instant.

Kev. Craig. Olivia. All three of them showing the same alarm in the same exact instance at the sight of the horde stopping and turning to stare back. All of them with heads upright and eyes fixed and no longer sluggish. An instant transformation that makes the hairs on their necks stand on end while horror creeps up their spines.

Because it’s daytime.

Not night.

This isn’t the pattern.

Something has changed.

The infected screech as one and commence their charge. Ramped. Hungry. Violent. Evil and fast. Mike runs too as they all aim for Sussex Street.

Hearts hammering, and heads twitching to glance back with cries of alarm at the speed of the infected now charging like they do at night. There was no warning, and nothing has changed, but all they can do is run.

‘We can’t go home!’ Bev snaps the words out. The others getting it instantly. The infected will track them.

They hit the top of the High Street, with Olivia already breathing hard. Kev the same. Screeches in the air. Howls. Animalistic. They speed up and sprint while taking care not to trip over the dead bodies left from the first night.

Mike snatches a look back. Seeing the first infected breach the end of the High Street at full speed. Heedless to pain, and they don’t get tired either.

They can’t outrun them. They need a defensive point. Somewhere to bottle neck them. But where? Everywhere here has back entrances that leaves them open to rear attacks or being flanked.

‘How much ammo?’ he gasps.

‘Not enough,’ Bev says, risking a look back. ‘Shit… SHIT!’

‘Alright. Stay calm,’ Mike says, trying to think of places they can use. ‘I know somewhere!’

He grunts with exertion to run faster along the High Street to The Buttercross Monument and once more into the alley towards the church they hid in for the first few days.

‘That’s no good, Mike,’ Bev says, rushing the words out as she runs.

‘Not there,’ Mike says, running past it with a curse at hearing the infected closing the distance. ‘There! The Museum!’

‘We’ll be trapped!’ Bev says, knowing the city museum has thick stone walls and small windows lined with lead which makes it a strong defensive point, but it’s also detached, meaning it can get engulfed with no way out.

But there is really no other choice. They run towards it. Seeing the glass doors are closed and no doubt locked. Another curse, and she brings her rifle forward and puts a round into the glass. Shattering it to a million cubes of glittering glass and also letting every infected in the whole fucking city know exactly where they are.

But again, what other choice do they have?

They surge through the doorway. The first of the infected mere metres behind and coming in fast as Mike snatches the meat cleaver from Bev’s hand and turns to swipe at the first infected coming through the door, with the blade taking his head clean off.

Another four behind it, all coming in at the same time. Mike shouts and lashes out. Kev at his side with a big blade. Stabbing into their necks. Blood spurting out. Drenching them within seconds. Sophie gets between them, stabbing into bellies and chests as they hold their ground and let the bodies drop and impede the others, and it works for a few minutes.

Until the mass hits them and starts driving them back.

‘Go up!’ Mike yells, lashing into them with the cleaver. Hitting neck after neck. He yanks Sophie away. She stumbles and trips, but gets pulled upright by Olivia dragging her to the curved staircase off to one side.

Kev and Mike hold the door for as long as they can. Sensing the numbers increasing and feeling the pressure pushing them back. Bodies in the doorway, and the stone floor underfoot now slick and slippery. Making them slide and glide as they try and hold position, but it’s no good, and back they go, driven in.

They hit the stairs and start to rise, with Mike kicking out. Getting a hard boot into a mouth and sending the body back into the one behind, but more come. Screeching and hissing. He brings the cleaver down on the next, then the next, and the next as he gets pushed up the stairs to the first floor and the displays of ancient Winchester showing how the Romans invaded and built fortifications on the same sites used by the native tribes.

A scream from behind, and a big clump of rock from the geographical display flies past. Heavy as shit and launched by Olivia. It takes two out and sends them flying down the stairs, taking more with them. Craig and Kev next. Sophie and Bev. All of them launching heavy rocks and early stone age bowls and urns, and the cabinets used to display them.

An explosion of violence. A declaration of war, with both sides screaming their intent. Ready to fight and die.

But still they rise. Still the infected come, and still they throw whatever they can at them as they get beaten across the first floor until their hands become sticky with blood and their blades start becoming dull.

A sudden sense of worry. A sudden surge of energy at the prospect of going down here. A mound of cannon balls gets shot put. Each one cracking a skull open. More chairs. Noticeboards. A foam fire extinguisher emptied at them by Sophie before she swings it out at skulls, smashing them down, but back they go, driven to retreat as Olivia spots the end wall.

A wall of awesomeness.

A wall of majesty and wonder.

A wall filled with weapons.

She falls out of line as the others fight and spill blood, and think to run for the final flight of stairs.

A scream. A yell. A war cry from old as Olivia surges past with her big, wooden replica Saxon shield presented to the front, battering them back before she swings the long, heavy mace out, breaking two skulls instantly and clubbing a third down with one mighty blow.

‘What the actual,’ Mike says as the rest all blink and turn to view the toys on offer with a whole wall dedicated to the art of war from stone age to bronze age to the Romans and all the way up to the Medieval Era. A wall that was protected by glass until Olivia smashed it through.

‘I did javelin at school!’ Sophie shouts, aiming for the spears and grabbing one to launch hard. It hits true but bounces off. ‘They’re blunt!’ Sophie says, fingering the top of the next one.

‘They do school trips in here!’ Kev shouts, grabbing a huge, broad sword off the wall and trying to turn and swing it with a yelp at the ungodly weight, and he lets it go, flinging it into the legs of another infected that goes down, with Olivia clubbing it dead. A Viking warlord in her element. Stout legs and strong arms all attached to a strong back, and she pivots and slays. Using the shield to bounce them off and the mace to bounce them down.

Kev curses and grabs another sword, going for a medium sized, simple looking thing, and he holds it aloft, feeling like Mel Gibson screaming a war cry as he charges in to swipe out with the blade clunking the side of a head as he realises the swords are also blunt. He throws that one and grabs a hefty, evil looking club, and goes back in to use good old fashioned blunt trauma to batter them down.

‘Oh, god, the choice,’ Craig says, flapping his hands as Bev grabs a Roman sized stabbing sword with a nice pointy end and another small, round shield and joins Olivia in the middle of the rooms as Mike grabs a heavy pikestaff with a vicious point.

‘Don’t tell ‘em yer name, Pike!’ he yells and skewers one down, and batters more away while Sophie launches spears, and Craig flaps his hands. Still trying to choose.

‘Sword? God, no. They’re all blunt. Mace then? Oh, wow. That’s heavy. No… Er… Ooh, bow and arrow. Whoa! Crossbow. Oh, god, that’s really heavy too… What’s that thing like, Mike?’

‘Stabby!’

‘Right. Pikey stabby thing it is,’ Craig says and plucks one off the wall with a vicious shaped metal end filled with blades and points, and he test swings it and waggles it about, then finally turns to join in to see Olivia beating the last two down with her mace. Smashing their heads in with murderous blows until the brains spatter out.

‘I think they’re dead, Livvy!’ Bev calls.

‘I’MMAKINGSURE!’ Olivia yells and clubs a few more already dead ones for good measure.

‘Great work though, Craig,’ Kev says.

‘Aye. Awesome,’ Mike says.

‘Guys! Don’t! You know I struggle with decisions.’

‘Who was throwing spears?’ Bev asks.

‘Ooh! That was me!’ Sophie says with an excited hand clap. ‘But they were blunt.’

‘Jesus, Livvy. He’s dead!’ Bev says at Olivia still smashing heads in.

‘IT TWITCHED!’ Oliva yells as she clubs another one and finally stands back, and grins at her shield and her Mace. ‘I love these!’

‘Er, excuse me, I’m just so triggered right now,’ Sophie says, mimicking how Olivia used to speak.

‘Er, excuse me! I don’t sound like that,’ Olivia says as the screeches sound outside from more coming. Drawn by the gunfire. ‘Woohoo! More. Yay.’

‘That’s not a good thing, Livvy,’ Bev says.

‘Absolutely. S’very sad,’ Olivia says with a serious nod and that glint still in her eyes. ‘Are you fighting this time, Craigy? Or shoving your fingers up your bum?’

‘Yes, thank you. I am all piked up. If that’s the phrase. I mean. Is it? Is that what they said? I don’t think saying pikey is right.’

‘Incoming!’ Mike shouts as they breach the ground floor door. ‘Hold the stairs!’

The United Reform Church. Jewry Street. Another old and strong building with thick walls and small, high windows. The doors bolted, barred, and barricaded. Scent trails put down at the far ends of the street, and their route in doused with water.

‘Ach, I’m telling you,’ Mike says as the boy giggles and grins. ‘Livvy was like a mad Viking lady with her shield. She just needs a helmet with horns and a big beard like mine.’

Samir laughs again and reaches up to gently tug Mike’s beard. ‘But what did Sophie do?’ Samir asks.

‘She was throwing blunt spears, and Kev was dropping swords, and Craig was making lists about the pros and cons of each bloody weapon while Bev and I did all the bloody work!’

‘You’re such a fibber,’ Sophie says, coming up to kiss the top of Samir’s head. ‘He’s such a fibber. But Craig was making lists.’

‘I struggle with decisions!’ Craig says, holding two tins in his hands. ‘I mean, do I have corned beef or spam ham? Seriously. It cripples me sometimes.’

‘Have both,’ Olivia says as Craig’s eyes light up at the concept. A few candles on, and a few camping gas stoves heating pans of tinned food. Sleeping bags and air mattresses arranged in a circle within a protective ring of heavy pews dragged around them.

‘Worried about that change, though,’ Bev says, coming out of the bathroom and sitting down with the others as she looks to Doc Patel. ‘Any ideas, Jev?’

Jevram Patel puffs his cheeks out and sits down in the group with a bowl of tinned tomatoes and canned fish, and looks over to Samir sitting in front of Mike. ‘Mutation,’ he says eventually, ‘or evolution, or both as mutations most often occur as a result of the evolutionary process.’

‘You’re still thinking it’s a parasitic infection then?’ Mike asks.

‘Only thing it can be, Mike. It’s transmissible. It uses hosts. Just that alone narrows it down massively. They’re definitely not the people they were, which suggests the bodies are being used as hosts, which, as I said, does lean towards a parasitic entity. They don’t eat. They don’t drink, and in this heat, they should be dead from dehydration.’ He falls silent. Clearly thinking, and clearly worried. ‘And that worries me because it means whatever infection they have is changing how the body works. They don’t feel pain, but they can still see and hear, and their sense of smell is heightened. And we’ve all seen the speed and strength of them, regardless of age or obesity, which again strongly suggests their bodies are being super-charged or ramped up in some way. Evolution never stands still. Perhaps apart from crocodiles, but pretty much everything else is constantly evolving, just not that fast,’ he adds with that worried look again.

‘Maybe they’ll go back to being slow,’ Sophie says, forever the optimist, but Jev shakes his head. Thinking they won’t.

‘Nature doesn’t evolve backwards,’ he says quietly. ‘Mind you, this is something entirely new, so everything I say might be wrong. They might turn into ducks by tomorrow. Who knows?’

‘Quack, quack,’ Mike says with his best impression of a duck that makes the boy giggle. ‘Anyway, beloved leader,’ Mike adds with a smile to Bev. ‘Are we still on for tomorrow?’

‘We are,’ Bev says.

‘Even though they’re moving fast in the day?’ Kev asks.

‘Even more so because they’re moving fast in the day,’ Bev says. ‘We’ll eat and go over the plan again.’

‘Well. I think we’ve probably killed them all,’ Sophie says. ‘We did all those on that third night and then all those today. Seriously! There literally can’t be any left.’

Day Seven

A week since the world fell, and Bev peers over the edge of the old Westgate Tower. The ancient checkpoint once manned by soldiers guarding the inner sanctum and grounds of Winchester Castle, built by William the Conqueror when he established the city as the capital of England.

The quadrant of buildings used by the county council off to the left. Hampshire Police HQ almost opposite, and hundreds of infected below filling the High Street, and it turns out Sophie was wrong because they’re most definitely not all dead. In fact, there looks to be even more now.

But they’re different.

Visibly different.

These are the night beasts. Alert. Predatory. Controlled. Their heads are up, and they’re not shuffling into each other.

Tension on Bev’s face. Beads of sweat rolling down her cheeks. She can smell the stench of them. Rancid and unclean. Why aren’t they dying? Why aren’t they all falling over from dehydration?

The first explosion comes. This time from Middle Brook Street car park. The same as yesterday. Fuel caps prised open and stuffed with rags set on fire, and for a second, Bev worries they won’t fall for the same trick twice.

‘COME ON, YE WEE BASTARDS! THREE PARA!’

She smiles at the amplified voice. Figuring Mike must have found a sound system or electronic megaphone, but it works, and as one the horde turn and run. Moving from static to a full sprint within a second or two.

Bev blinks at them, knowing that means they won’t have long. She runs back to the stairwell and the others waiting with their replica shields and heavy clubs, and maces pilfered from the City Museum yesterday.

Down they go. Rushing out onto the now empty High Street and across the road to the main doors to the Operational Headquarters of Hampshire Police.

‘Keep watch,’ she orders, not that she needs to because they went through the plan several times and until they could each recite it back.

Mike creates the distraction again. Once clear, we get across the road and smash through the door. I’ll do that while you all face out. Once we get inside, we must move fast.

A loud bang as she swings the Mace into the glass, but it’s toughened and holds, and it takes more blows to make it splinter and start to crack.

‘Let me!’ Olivia says, alarmed at the horribly loud bangs, and she pushes Bev aside and swings hard with a grunt, forming a hole in the glass and working hard to hook the end of her mace into the breach and yank the glass out.

‘Quickly!’ Kev urges, hearing more explosions, with another fireball going up from further in the town, and Mike’s voice drifting on the windless air.

It takes vital minutes to beat the safety glass out and form a hole, with Bev going in first and diving to the side from the shot fired within. ‘Hold your fire! Friendlies!’

‘Get the fuck out!’ a man’s voice yells from behind a barricade built around the big reception counter. Heavy desks and tables stacked up. Metal filing cabinets and heavy chairs and sofas. Small firing holes made with the barrel of a rifle poking through.

‘I’M JOB! PC BEV KNIGHT! ARV!’

‘Fuck off!’ the voice screams. ‘You stupid fucking cunt! You broke the fucking door in!’

‘We didn’t know!’ Bev yells as Olivia pushes through the broken door.

‘Said get out!’ the voice yells and fires another round. Striking the wall and deafening them all in the enclosed space.

‘What the hell!’ Oliva shouts. ‘Have you been in here the whole time?’

‘GET THE FUCK OUT NOW! WE WILL SHOOT YOU!’

‘We need ammunition and kit,’ Bev says.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Kev asks, pushing in behind Olivia. ‘Are the things in here?’

‘It’s not us shooting,’ Olivia says.

Chaos inside. Everyone yelling. ‘GET OUT NOW!’ the person orders from the other side of the barricade.

‘We need to go!’ Craig yells. ‘Mike and Sophie!’

‘Shit!’ Bev says, pushing past Olivia and Kev to get outside to the sight of Mike and Sophie sprinting hard along the High Street, with the horde only metres behind them.

‘They flanked us!’ Mike shouts. ‘Get inside!’

‘We can’t!’ Bev starts to yell, thinking to get Kev and Olivia out, but she can see there’s no time and with a curse she drops to a knee to pull her rifle forward. Taking aim and putting rounds in past Mike and Sophie.

‘Don’t fucking bring them in here!’ the voice shouts in panic from the barricade.

‘Get in!’ Bev yells, urging Sophie and Mike past her and through the door to the guy behind the barricade firing another warning shot into the walls.

‘Fuck!’ Mike gasps, diving for cover as he clocks the room and the makeshift wall, and the firing holes. ‘We need to get inside!’

Shouts come back. Angry. Scared. The screeches of the infected now heard over the yells.

Mike grabs Bev’s dropped shield and mace and rushes to block the door as the first one tries to lunge through.

‘Help me!’ Mike shouts, with the others rushing to add their weight as Bev reaches over to put rounds into the front line, with hot, brass spent casings falling on Mike and the others.

‘We need to get through that barricade!’ Mike yells, casting a look back while digging his feet into the carpeted floor and bracing his shoulder into the wooden shield. A flashback to Iraq. To Sangin. To the first man he shot dead. But if Mike hadn’t shot him, the guy would have killed them all.

The same then.

The same now.

‘Hold them,’ he snaps, pulling back as Olivia takes the strain, pushing her back into the shields, with her thick legs driving hard. ‘Let us inside!’ Mike yells.

‘FUCK OFF!’ the guy shouts back, raging, terrified, panicked. Mike ducks to the side and pulls his pistol. One of the spare ones recovered yesterday by Bev. ‘YOU FUCKING WANKERS! YOU’VE KILLED US ALL!’ the guy screams in a voice cracking with fear as Mike’s face hardens, and Sophie’s eyes widen. ‘I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!’ the guy yells, firing a shot that grazes Kev’s arm, making him cry out and fall to the side, with the shields almost dropping from the loss of his weight. Mike’s mind clears, and he steps out, holding the pistol double-handed to put rounds through the firing hole. A scream on the other side. An awful yell of pain and shock, and Mike holsters and clambers over the barricade to peer down, drawing again to shoot the guy dead bleeding on the floor the other side.

‘Get over!’ he yells, heaving a swivel chair down to provide a step and make a gap. Sophie moves first. Up and over, and grabbing the dead guy’s fallen rifle to brace and aim through the firing hole. All of them taught how to reload, fire, and clear weapons with constant drills from Bev and Mike.

‘Kev! Go!’ Craig shouts as Kev clutches his bleeding arm and gets up, with Mike pulling and getting him over. Bev next. Straddling the top with Mike. Her rifle aimed and ready.

‘Craig!’ she yells as he breaks free, leaving Olivia bracing the shields with her back.

‘Rifle!’ Mike says, with Kev passing his up for Mike to brace and aim. Bev the same. A nod between them. A nod to Olivia. No words needed. They know what must be done.

Olivia runs for it. The shields behind her falling instantly, with both rifles firing fast rounds into the doorway, buying seconds for Olivia to get onto the chair to throw herself at the barricade. She hits it hard. Too hard, and the whole thing collapses inwards. Bev and Mike firing as they drop and land, with desks and tables, and all manner of things falling around them. All of them shouting and grabbing each other.

‘Shit fucking barricade!’ Mike yells, changing mag on one knee.

‘I’m just fat!’ Olivia says, and there it is again. The grins and snorts in the face of death. The energy high. The refusal to give up and die as they help each other and fall back along the access corridor. The same energy as Howie and the lads. The same thing between them.

A door at the end. They burst through. A few people on the other side. Cowering in fear. Rations stacked. Bottled water. Tinned foods. Coats and clothes used as bedding. A stench of body odour. Terrified faces. Withdrawn and pale.

‘UP! UP! UP!’ Bev yells, grabbing at them with an instant transition in mind from falling from the barricade to being in this room, and seeing the new risks and tasks at hand. People inside. People that can’t stay here. People that must be protected.

‘Quickly now!’ Kev says, urging them on as Mike and Olivia brace the heavy fire door as the impact comes from the other side while Craig grabs a desk to heave over to push against it. Sophie helps him. Grabbing another.

‘They’re out! Fall back,’ Bev says, taking a knee beside the next exit door. Kev clocks her and does the same the other side as Sophie, Craig, and Mike all run from the first door, with the horde still banging at the door the other side.

They get through and again shut the door, and grab more desks and cabinets to pile in front of it. The people behind them in the main corridor. Stairs leading up. Posters on the walls. The familiarity of the police world so jarring to Bev after years spent in the job.

‘We’ll need to bug straight out,’ Mike says.

‘Negative,’ Bev says. ‘Drag everything out of these offices into this corridor to slow them down. Come on, people! Take responsibility!’

More desks and furniture come out to block and barricade, and slow the horde. ‘Mike, keep them at it. Olivia, Craig, with me!’

She rushes up the stairs and deeper into the building and pulls a security card from her pocket to swipe at the locks, knowing the building uses a protected residual emergency power supply. The lock flashes green, and she rushes into the operational areas. Small stores filled with riot equipment.

‘Grab shields!’ Bev says as Craig and Olivia take the polycarbonate riot shields hanging on hooks. Riot helmets on the side. Body armour and leg and arm guards. Bev planned to take it all, but now there isn’t time.

She runs onto the next section. Again, using her card to get into the armoury.

G36 Assault rifles. She slings one. Then another and another. Then the pistols taken from racks. Mags too. Boxes of rounds. A shotgun and a sniper rifle, and everything else they can grab and carry. ‘We gotta go!’ Bev says. Hearing a bang followed by gunshots.

Out they go. Back to Mike and Sophie, and Kev putting rounds into the infected pushing the hastily thrown obstacles aside to get through the door.

‘Take some!’ Bev gasps. Her air almost cut off from the rifle straps around her neck. ‘Mike, hold this position! I’ll check the egress point!’

She runs off through the building to the rear exit to see two of the panicking survivors hitting the unlocking bar across the door to get out. ‘NO!’ she yells, seeing shapes through the frosted glass, but the door wrenches open, and the two women go down fast. Ripped off their feet and bitten hard. Bev backs up to the internal fire door. Mike behind her at the next door on the other side of the room. Two entry points to now cover. No way out.

‘We’re digging in!’ Bev shouts.

Olivia extends her arm to let the shields slide off as she grabs one of the rifles and runs to Bev’s bag to take a magazine out. Slotting it in. Bolt back. Loaded. Made-ready. Safety off.

‘Cover me,’ Bev says calmly, stepping in as Olivia steps out to take over putting rounds into the infected. Sophie and Kev firing next to Mike. Craig pushing out next to Olivia, and the building fills with gunfire until the once white walls pour with blood and brains, and the spent casings and empty mags lie strewn across the office floor.

Still, they come, and still, they fire.

Calm.

Controlled.

An energy between them.

A refusal to die.

‘Aye, and so me and Bev were shooting all the zombies, and Craig was choosing which gun he liked best, and Sophie was doing her nails, and Kev was eating a porky pie.’

‘And what was Olivia doing?’ Samir asks, laughing at the retelling as night approaches, and they once more hunker down in the church.

‘I was eating Kev,’ Olivia quips as Sophie snorts a laugh while filing her nails. ‘Not like that, you dirty sod!’ Olivia says.

‘Like what?’ Samir asks.

‘Do not tell my son these things!’ Debora says, laughing while shaking her head as they heat tinned food and gather in their circle.

‘Why not?’ Mike asks. ‘Samy needs to know about the birds and the bees. So, lad, what Livvy meant was she-.’

A chorus of low shouts with socks and shoes thrown at Mike chuckling away while the child smooths the pigeon’s head.

‘And the survivors all went south?’ Jev asks. ‘Tell me that bit again.’

‘Said they’d heard a radio transmission on the second day saying people could head to the big fort on the coast,’ Bev says.

‘Should we go this place?’ Debora asks.

‘Well. We do need to discuss it,’ Bev says, looking from the group over to Jev. ‘Doc?’

‘Safety in numbers,’ he says, thinking it does sound like a good idea. ‘We can always check it out and make a decision from there.’

‘But we stay together though, right?’ Sophie asks with instant worry at being split up.

‘Yes, of course,’ Jev says. ‘And I think it will be fairer. You must be fed up with scavenging. I’m happy to take my turn.’

‘No,’ Bev and Mike say together. ‘You’re too important,’ Bev adds.

‘But I can go,’ Debora says. ‘I should work.’

‘Someone needs to look after Samir,’ Bev says.

‘But Jev is with him. I want to go. I want to do my part,’ Debora says firmly.

‘Okay. Well. Let’s bed down tonight,’ Bev says after a moment, ‘and tomorrow, we’ll find transport and go look at this fort. Everyone happy?’

‘Apart from Livvy dropping a barricade on us, we are,’ Kev says as the jeers and laughs start again, and the bird jumps up out of her nest in surprise and stares intently at one of her eggs.

‘What’s up with her?’ Kev asks as Samir gently feels into the nest and places a finger on the egg with a big smile.

‘I can feel it! It’s hatching.’

‘Oh, my god,’ Sophie says as they rush in closer to stare at the eggs, and outside, night falls. Bringing forth the darkness as Howie and his team eat the food Tucker has made for them on the fort walls and prepare for Darren’s attack.

Not that any of them in the church in Winchester know about that.

How could they?

So, they eat and watch in awe as one of the eggs slowly cracks open, with a baby pigeon chick squirming to life. Spiky, yellowish fur and big eyes and feet.

‘He’s gorgeous!’ Sophie whispers with tears streaming down her cheeks as she leans against Olivia.

‘Gently, lad,’ Mike whispers. ‘She might not like you touching it.’

‘But I want to see,’ Samir says, with Mike guiding his hands to the chick, thinking the pigeon will react, but she seems fine with it, cooing and nuzzling her baby as Samir gently runs his fingers over the body. Feeling the fragile creature.

‘The circle of life, Samir,’ Jev Patel whispers. ‘New life comes even with all this death.’

‘Brave, new world,’ Samir whispers.

‘Where do you hear this?’ his mother asks, not having heard him say it before, but Samir doesn’t answer. His mind is filled with the shapes and images his hands are creating by feeling the chick. He touches the second egg and frowns. No sensations. No vibrations.

‘Is it sick like me?’ he asks.

‘Only time can tell,’ Jev says, touching the child’s head. Knowing he has a tumour, which was obviously progressing because the boy’s eyesight failed quickly according to his mother. But to what extent and how dangerous that tumour is, now nobody can tell. But the child seems healthy. He eats. He sleeps well. He isn’t in pain or discomfort.

That said, they all eat and sleep well, and none of them are in pain or discomfort. Which again is odd.

And they all got infected blood on them during that fight on the third day, so why didn’t they succumb to the infection?

‘I’ve been thinking it through,’ Jev told the others when they asked. ‘And my strongest theory, and it is just a theory, is that one of us has antibodies which gives immunity, and given our close proximity, that person passed it to the others. By the way, that theory has more holes than a sieve, but I don’t know what else it could be.’

Jev still doesn’t know now. And from all accounts, the people in the police HQ looked weaker and broken down like refugees and survivors do in times of such things. Whereas all of them here are not like that at all. If anything, Sophie looks radiant, and even Deborah looks far healthier than when they first met. She doesn’t have bags under her eyes now, and her black hair seems thicker. The same with Bev. Kevin has lost weight. Olivia hasn’t – if anything, she looks bigger but not fatter. Which Jev knows can’t be true because muscle doesn’t grow that fast.

Maybe someone at the fort will know what’s going on.

They bed down, with the boy lying on his side with his hand on the nest, and one by one, they drift into sleep.

But the boy wakes.

Deep in the night.

He stares at nothing with sightless eyes, feeling a sense of rising tension until the explosion comes. Far off in the distance. It wakes the others, and they all feel the gentle tremors in the ground.

‘What was that?’ Sophie whispers.

‘Something exploded, but it’s not close,’ Mike says.

‘Must have been something big,’ Kev says.

None of them know it’s the fuel tanker being detonated by Dave as the battle for the fort begins.

They lie still, listening for any more explosions. All of them in clothes and boots with weapons and bags close and ready to bug out should they have to, but they don’t hear anything else.

‘One off. Maybe a fuel station,’ Mike says, trying to think what could have made a bang big enough to be felt. ‘You okay, Samy?’

‘Yes,’ Samir whispers. Lying awake on his side with his hand still touching the nest, and one finger gently resting against the unhatched egg while his mind fills with images he cannot explain.

A flaming car hurtling end over end through the sky.

A man with dark, curly hair and dark, intense eyes standing atop an old fortress.

Another man with pock-marked skin and bulging eyes in a city centre.

A young woman with blond hair and icy blue eyes.

Samir doesn’t know what any of it means. Or how he is seeing such things within his mind, only that he is, and as the image fades, so the egg vibrates from the bird within it moving slightly.

Nothing else happens. The egg doesn’t move, and more images flow through Samir’s mind. Emotions too. Just not his own. He hears gunfire erupting. Loud. Sustained. Many rifles all firing at once. Arrows too. Flaming arrows fired through the air.

Vibration again in the egg. A crack forms, but it’s small and shallow, and again, the movement stops. The bird inside is weak and fragile. The pigeon senses this. She knows the bird won’t survive, and she must focus her attention on the chick that will survive, so she pushes the egg away with an overt show of rejection.

But it moves again. Samir can feel the motions coming in tiny bursts while in his mind, the army of darkness moves across the flatlands. Thousands of people with evil, red eyes.

Cannons fire. Old and loud. Swathes are killed. But more come. Ditches filled with fuel are set alight, and again, swathes are killed, but still, more come, and the egg slowly starts to crack as Samir holds his hand against it. Not seeing the first hint of dawn coming through the windows.

In his mind, he sees the intense man with dark hair and dark eyes gather his army behind a big set of gates. A small man beside him holding two knives.

Samir’s heart beats harder. The tension rising. His finger brushes the egg. Feeling a crack. He gently works at it. Helping the bird inside that’s too weak to fight free.

The gates open.

The man with dark eyes and his army scream out and charge.

A rush inside of Samir. His heart hammering in his chest. Adrenalin. Passion. Violence. His face shows reactions. His sightless eyes staring at nothing. His fingers gently, ever so gently, freeing the bird from the egg one tiny piece at a time.

The sounds of war fill his ears, but only within his mind, and the church stays silent, save for the gentle snores of the others.

Screams of pain. Flashes of images. Snapshots. People dying in agony. Full of fear. The army of darkness and their red eyes are winning.

Pain. Regret. Loss. Grief.

Samir feels the surge of pressure build until his mind fills with the image of the man with dark eyes lashing out at the infected around him, but his blows are weak and frail.

As weak and as frail as the unborn chick barely moving within the egg.

They are losing. Samir can feel the awful feeling of hopelessness within the man that sinks to his knees with the infected all around him.

The end is coming.

The man will die, and all of his army will die with him, and the bad side will win.

Samir can feel all of that as his fingers gently, ever so gently, to free the egg from the chick that lies unmoving within the nest.

The chick too weak to lift its head.

The man with dark eyes too broken to rise.

The darkness closing in.

A sense inside of Samir.

A rising sensation of something strong and powerful.

He scoops the bird into his palm gently, ever so gently, and he brings his hand to his mouth as the tears flow down the cheeks of the man with dark eyes because all hope is lost, and the end is coming.

Samir’s fingers find the bird’s head, and he brings his lips close to touch the chick’s beak, and through his hand, he can feel the bird’s heart weaken and slow. The breathing laboured. Death is coming.

The end is here.

All hope is lost.

And yet.

And yet.

And yet.

Samir closes his eyes that do not work, and his mind expands, opening and spreading far and wide, and his energy changes, surging through him with a great feeling of love and warmth, and pure life, and he exhales a long breath into the dying chick. Passing his energy. Passing his force. Giving life and love and refusing to die.

The bird twitches.

Howie’s head rises.

Samir breathes again.

The bird kicks, and words fill Samir’s mind. Words that were repeated pitifully and weak. The words of the broken. But now they come strong and loud, and Samir speaks them out loud into the church as the rays of dawn stream through the stained glass windows.

‘Our Father, Who art in heaven,’

The bird kicks harder, and the man with dark eyes rises to his feet.

‘Hallowed be Thy name,’ Samir says, his heart roaring with energy that flows out of him. ‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,’ the words flow. Words Samir has never heard before. ‘On Earth as it is in heaven!’

The bird thrashes. The legs kicking. The heart beating strong and hard, and the man with dark eyes swings his axe into the necks of the infected around him. ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ The bird kicks harder still. Filled with life and energy as the man swings again, faster and stronger than he should be. ‘And forgive us our trespasses,’ Samir speaks the words. His mind filled with a place he has never been too, filled with people he has never met. ‘As we forgive those who trespass against us… And lead us not into temptation… But deliver us from evil… For Thine is the kingdom… And the power… And the glory… For ever and ever…’

‘Amen,’ the others whisper, gathered around Samir. Woken by his stirrings, and they watched him lift the dead bird to his lips and breathe life into the fragile body that kicked and thrashed as they felt the surge of energy.

Samir doesn’t react to hearing them. He just smiles, and the images in his mind fade away, and the bird settles in his palm. He places it in the nest. The pigeon stares down for a long second then coos and nuzzles it. Accepting what is, rather than dwelling on what was.

‘That was intense,’ Sophie says with a long sigh. ‘Did you feel it?’

The others did feel it.

But exactly what they felt, they do not know. Even Jevram Patel can’t give it words, and so they sit back as the light streams through the windows in the brave new world.

‘We might as well stay up,’ Bev says as the others nod. ‘We can make an early run for this fort.’

‘No,’ Samir says. ‘We cannot go.’

‘Why not?’ Bev asks. ‘This fort could be safe.’

‘It is not safe. Not for us.’

She looks to the others. All of them confused and not knowing how or why the child speaks these things, or how he could possibly know. ‘That is not our war,’ Samir says as the hairs prickle on necks. ‘Our war is here. In Winchester.’

Silence again.

That energy. That intensity. That urge to comply within them all.

‘Blimey,’ Sophie says. ‘Well. It’s probably safer here anyway. I mean we’ve literally killed all the zombies now anyway…’

7

Day Eight

Friday, 22nd July

On the eighth day, they run fast once more.

Boots pounding the pavement while avoiding the now many bodies strewn all through the High Street. The sun high overhead, and the sweat pours down their faces.

Mike glances back. Seeing the horde are closing the gap.

‘We need an exfil, Mike!’ Bev shouts, seeing the same thing. The squad leader, but when it comes to tactics and battle, they still look to Mike.

‘Go right at the cross,’ Mike says, an idea in mind.

‘Again?’ Sophie calls with a quick grin and wink. Her fitness improving day by day. She could run much faster than this and get away, but she keeps pace as Olivia mutters a foul curse at being made to bloody run again.

‘You’d said they’d all gone!’ Olivia gasps.

‘It’s probably the last lot,’ Sophie says with a smile of eternal optimism.

They turn right at The Buttercross Monument and once more get through the narrow alley that Mike set on fire eight days ago, and run past the church they used and into The Square past the entrance to the City Museum they also pretty much destroyed.

‘Not that way!’ Mike yells, seeing Sophie aiming for the wide entrance to the cathedral grounds. Instead, he runs them into Great Minster Street. Another old and ancient narrow road, buttressed on both sides by high terraced houses. ‘HERE! Firing line!’ he yells, coming to a stop just before the end of the narrow section. Turning fast and going down to a knee to brace his rifle. Flicking the safety off. The first round fired. The sound of it dull and hard. The bullet spinning along the narrow street and through the kneecap of the leading attacker. Smashing it to pieces. The leg losing the ability to function and taking the male down to tumble and spin, with three more tangling behind it.

A split-second later, and the rest of the rifles let rip. All of them in a line, firing at the horde. Sending rounds into the bodies. ‘Legs!’ Mike shouts, clocking the doc’s aim is too high. ‘JEV! Aim at their feet!’

Jev nods and aims low, which feels wrong and counter-intuitive, but he fires, and the rifle kicks, and the bullet slams into a thigh, smashing the bone and dropping another until the whole horde are impeded.

Mike rises to duck over to the left side to see past the end of the horde. No more coming. Just these. ‘Cease fire!’ he yells as all the rifles apart from one stop shooting.

‘Debs!’ Olivia shouts, waving a hand at her. ‘Stop!’

‘What?’ Debora asks, lowering her rifle to see the others aren’t shooting. ‘They are still there!’

‘Hand weapons,’ Mike says, slinging his rifle, and they pull their big, round polycarbonate police riot shields forward and slide the heavy maces and clubs out of their belts. ‘INTO THEM!’ Mike yells, leading the charge, with Bev, Sophie, and Olivia hot on his heels. Now versed and experienced in the art of killing up close. A second’s worth of hesitation for Debora and Jev. Both filled with fright, but they summon the courage and run into the melee. Shields at the present. Using them to push and guide, and slide the attackers off to get the aim ready for the clubs. The same tactics used for thousands of years.

A few seconds.

A few minutes.

Time is weird in a fight.

Then it’s done, and once more, they stagger away, heaving for air and dripping sweat and blood.

‘Jesus, Livvy,’ Bev says.

‘I’MCHECKING!’ Olivia yells, smashing another head open on what might have been a crawler.

‘Why did we go hands on?’ Doctor Patel asks.

‘Ammunition isn’t endless, doc,’ Mike replies. ‘You good, Debs?’

She nods, flushed and sweating, but adds a grin, ‘I was scared but…’

‘You did so well!’ Sophie says with her big smile. ‘And honestly, that’s really probably the last ones now.’

‘Are they fuck,’ Olivia says with a laugh.

‘Look at you, swearing like a trooper,’ Jev says with a nod at Olivia before looking back down to the bodies. Dropping to a crouch to study the lack of pallor amongst the bodies. ‘And you’ve not seen them drink or eat?’ he asks.

‘Nope,’ Mike says.

‘Negative,’ Bev says at the same time.

‘I could eat though,’ Olivia says, with a life now so different than how it was before when it felt like she was trapped in a cycle of gorging and guilt. Binge eating junk food, then starving her body with a rush of panic. Now she eats what she wants and lots of it. Dense, highly calorific food. She’s getting bigger too. She can feel it. Her shoulders. Her arms. Her legs. But it’s not fat. It’s hard muscle, and she loves how it feels.

‘How?’ Jev murmurs. ‘Eight days of this heat, and they look healthy. Well. No. Not healthy. But they’re certainly not malnourished or looking like they should.’

‘Livvy’s putting on muscle,’ Bev says, ‘and in eight days?’

‘Er, excuse me! Body shaming,’ Olivia says in her old, croaky, triggered voice.

‘And Sophie can run like a whippet,’ Mike says.

‘Kev’s losing his belly,’ Sophie adds. ‘He said he’s gone down two trouser sizes.’

Jev blasts air, then frowns at realising he’s in a low squat, which would normally hurt his right knee from a skiing accident a few years ago. Now there is no pain at all. His body is toning too. He can feel it. He glances to Debora pulling her thick hair back into a tail. Her skin flushed. Her lips full. She looked drawn and terrified that first night. Not just from this but from fleeing her country, and the worry over her son and getting into the UK.

‘What you thinking, doc?’ Bev asks

‘I’d say we’re not immune.’

‘Er, and how would that work?’ Olivia asks. ‘I literally bit Brian’s ears off.’

‘Ew,’ Sophie says, pulling a face.

‘We’re covered in claret all the time,’ Mike says.

‘Yes, we are,’ Jev says, looking at Sophie and Debora’s radiance and Livvy’s broad shoulders, and back to Mike looking less like a dying homeless person and more like the Para he was. He thinks about Mike’s inability to drink alcohol, or rather, how his body is refusing to take it down, which is almost like the thing inside can detect the damage it has done and is purging it out whenever Mike tries to take it back in. Which again suggests a level of intelligence or evolution, or something, something. The doc looks to Bev too. Hard-eyed, seen-it-all Bev. Jaded. Cynical. But sharp as a scalpel. She had big bags under her eyes a week ago. Now she doesn’t. She looks healthy and fit. ‘Well. My professional judgment, which based on nothing at all, is that we are not immune, but infected with a mutated variation of whatever they have.’

The silence of a second as they all absorb it.

‘Does that mean Livvy can eat more zombie ears?’ Sophie asks to snorts and laughs, and that too doesn’t go unnoticed by Jev. Their quickness to laugh and use humour to get through it. They should be broken and weak, and full of misery at the world ending like it has.

Which is terribly sad, of course.

And yet.

And yet.

‘And yet,’ he murmurs.

‘Seen enough then?’ Bev asks him. Getting a nod in reply, and they set back off the way they came. Passing the many bodies of the ones they have killed in the last eight days.

‘We need to clear them,’ Jev says as they go back into the High Street, and he looks around at the rotting corpses. The stench of them so very awful. Flies everywhere. Maggots writhing within the bodies, and rats eating brazenly.

None of them want to do that.

But again. It’s just another thing that must be done.

Day nine. They watch in awe as Olivia lifts the body of a fully grown man from the wheelbarrow and throws him easily into the pit while humming away to herself. She turns and takes the next like it’s nothing more than a bundle of bedding, and throws it with a light grunt.

Craig and Kev share a look and heft one from their wheelbarrow by the ankles and wrists, and swing it out.

Mike in the digger, making a hole in the grounds of the cathedral to shove the bodies into. The bodies they’ve scooped up from the town centre and wheeled down to here in barrows taken from the building site next to the Guildhall.

Debs and Jev bring the next barrow over. Sophie back in the church with Samir. The sun shining. All of them sweating, but by afternoon, the pit is full, and the town centre mostly clear.

The smell of petrol rich in the air. The bodies doused in fuel. They back away into The Square, with Mike lighting a cigarette and taking a few drags before flicking it into the pit.

Which does nothing.

‘Fuck me,’ Bev mutters, shaking her head at him as she thumbs her zippo and throws it with a whump of instant ignition and flames spreading fast to all sides.

They head off quickly. Using large sprayers filled with disinfectant to douse the pavements as they walk back the church, pausing to spray the ends of the road liberally to mask their scent.

They go in and bolt, block, and barricade the door, and wash in the toilet, and seal their used clothes in bin liners. They eat and chat, and drink fluids, and marvel at how the second, tiny chick is already so much bigger than the first-born.

‘He’s a Viking pigeon,’ Mike says.

‘What’s a Viking?’ Samir asks.

‘Ach. You know. Like Thor. From the movies.’

‘Thor!’ Samir says with a grin and kisses the baby chick that never seems to leave his hand. ‘Your name is Thor,’ he tells it.

‘We need to get more kit soon,’ Kev says with a big grin while patting his now flatter belly. ‘Eh? Look at this. I’ll be like Thor an’ all. Well, that Hemsworth guy anyway.’

‘Ew, noooo,’ Sophie says.

‘Eh? I thought all the ladies fancied him.’

‘No! He’s all steroidy,’ Sophie says.

‘What’s your type then?’ Olivia asks.

‘Oh. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Funny… Swoon!’ Sophie says, smiling that charming smile. ‘What about you?’

‘Anything with a dick.’

‘Livvy!’ Bev says after spitting her coffee.

‘I’m joking!’ Olivia says. ‘I dunno. Big, though. Like proper beefy. I want to literally break the bed.’

‘Liv!’ Bev says again, pulling a face as the others laugh.

‘I think I could swing, though,’ Olivia adds. ‘Er, excuse me! Sexual orientation is fluid, so don’t like, you know, label me!’

‘Can’t believe that’s how you spoke,’ Jev says.

‘I know, right,’ Olivia says. ‘What about you then, doc? Hemsworth man? Or more of a Tom Hardy?’

‘I never said I was gay,’ Jev snaps as the others all look at him and burst out laughing, and for a second, he thinks to deny it. But it’s already too late, and he can’t help the rueful smile. ‘Not Hemsworth or Hardy,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘Someone suave, intelligent, and driven. But charming and always polite. Like Patrick Stewart when he played the Star Trek guy.’

‘Ooh, yeah,’ Sophie says as Bev and Debora nod at the mental image they’re all conjuring.

‘Sean Connery in his prime for me,’ Bev says. ‘Or Peirce Brosnan. Anyway. Let’s not be sexist. Gents? What’s your type?’

‘Pamela Anderson,’ Mike says instantly.

‘Who?’ Sophie asks.

‘Baywatch. The womans,’ Debora says, holding her hands out to mimic big breasts.

‘Who’s that?’ Sophie asks.

‘God, I feel old,’ Bev says. ‘Craig?’

‘Oh, wow. Pressure. Honestly. I couldn’t choose,’ he says as the others groan. ‘My wife did that a lot,’ he says as the others look at him. Still lean and with floppy hair, but he looks different now. His face seems more angular and less boyish. A few days of stubble, and his eyes look a bit harder. ‘She wanted a divorce. That’s why she went home to Paris. She said, and I quote, you are a pussy, Craig. Always worry. Never make decision. I want a man! A real man.’ he falls silent from mimicking his wife’s French accent.

‘Aw, that’s harsh,’ Sophie says, rubbing his shoulder.

‘True, though,’ Craig says with raw honesty. ‘I wasn’t manly at all.’

‘Define manly,’ Olivia says.

‘You know. Manly. Like Mike.’

‘A homeless drunk?’ Mike asks.

‘No! Tough. Decisive. Capable.’

‘Hang on. No,’ Jevram says while holding a hand up to emphasise his point. ‘That big guy. Brian. I mean, that’s an alpha male, right? Big. Strong. Muscles. Hench or whatever they say. He didn’t stop crying, but you got stuck in, Craig. So you are tough and decisive, and capable.’

‘Yay. See,’ Sophie says with a smile at him.

‘Nah, but I get what he means,’ Kev says. ‘I felt like a right old, fat knacker, and I’d look at guys like that Brian, and you know, I’d take the piss and say they probably had little dicks or no balls, and it was all just roids or whatever, but inside, like, yeah. I felt that.’

‘Try feeling like a disgusting, fat beast and being a woman,’ Olivia says.

‘No! Don’t say that,’ Sophie tells her. ‘You’re so lovely.’

‘I think we all felt it,’ Bev says.

‘No way you felt like that,’ Olivia says. ‘You’re like… I don’t know. Like Superwoman or something.’

‘Get off. Single woman in her fifties? Ex-soldier and an armed cop? I either intimidated every guy I went on a date with or had married men trying to shag me.’

‘It was the bloody phones and the bloody media,’ Mike says as they all tut in agreement. ‘Ach. You think you all knew, but I saw it. I spent fifteen years on the outside, looking in and watching you’s all growing humps from staring down at the screens showing you pictures of women with pornstar bodies and roidy boys all ripped and whatever. I spent every day sitting and watching that drip-feed of poison. Everyone being told all the time to be better and change, and develop or whatever. Nobody could just be who they were. Do you know what I mean? Nobody could just be content because of that shite going into your eyeballs all day. What happened to me in the services was bad, and honestly, I still don’t know why we were at war and killing other people, but if nothing else, it made me step out of it. And I’m glad. Let me tell you that. I’m glad, and this,’ he says, motioning the world around them, ‘this was long overdue. It was shite. You’ve got wee Craig working hard and earning, and paying his bills, and being told he’s not manly, and Kev driving his taxi and paying his bills, and being told he’s not good enough, and wee Sophie looking after her nanna, and nobody helping her, and Bev giving her life to service, and for what? Was your mortgage paid off, Bev?’

‘Fuck, no. In Winchester? I had to switch to interest only because of the rates going up.’

‘See. She did all that and still couldn’t keep up, and then Debs here. With her sick kid, and she runs from her home and gets on a boat that tips over, and everyone drowns, and she did that to save her son and gets called scum for it.’

Shame in Kev’s face as he remembers what he said about them on that third night.

‘And Livvy being the way she was. Just greedy and entitled, but with that shite forced into your eyes and ears from the day you come into the world, no wonder everyone was like that. Listen, and this is just my opinion, but I think fuck that old world. It was broken. Forget what you were and what you did or didn’t have. Forget that. You’re here now and exactly who you need to be,’ he finishes off with a nod as the others stay silent for a moment. ‘Did ye like my wee speech?’ he asks with a grin as the smiles come back.

‘You’re so lovely,’ Sophie says, giving him a peck on the cheek. ‘And you are,’ she says to Kev and kisses him, then does the same to Craig and Bev, and Jevram, and Debs, and finally to Samir. ‘You’re all lovely, and I’m glad we’re together.’

‘Hear, hear, but I still think we should get out of the city,’ Jevram says.

‘I agree,’ Bev replies as they all look to Samir in the barrow.

‘We have to stay here.’

‘We can go out a bit and find a big, detached house, and still be near the city,’ Bev says, but Samir keeps shaking his head. ‘We have to stay here? In the city centre? Can you say why, Samy?’ Bev asks, but the child doesn’t have the answer to give, nor can he say how he knows that. Only that they must.

Bev wipes her forehead. Knowing she could override him. But then they could all do that. They’re all here by choice and can leave or go whenever they want.

And yet.

And yet.

‘And yet,’ she murmurs, sharing a knowing look with the doc. That they all know what they should be doing, but instead, they feel compelled to do what the child says.

Which once more seems to be proven when he cocks his head and turns towards the street outside. ‘They are coming…’

They all freeze, with hairs standing up on necks as the tension ramps, and a second later, they’re grabbing bug-out bags and slinging shields, and the first infected slams into the heavy wooden door, and the street outside fills with screeches and howls.

It jolts them all. Instantly robbing that false sense of security while Samir finds the bra and gently puts the nest inside the cup before wrapping it around his body.

‘Fucking disinfectant!’ Bev mutters. Realising what she did wrong. ‘We led them right here. They can smell it.’

‘No matter,’ Mike says. Controlled. Calm. The first one ready. ‘Livvy, you take Samy on your back.’

‘I got him,’ Olivia says, dropping to a crouch for the lad to wrap his arms around her shoulders while protecting the nest.

‘Sophie, you stay with Olivia. Guard her back,’ Mike says. ‘Bev, you’re on point. Lead them out the rear to the fall-back position. We’ve drilled for this. Stay calm and move fast, and don’t wait for me.’

‘Mike?’ Debora says.

‘Go! I’ll be fine,’ Mike says as the impacts come from the door. Solid and hard, with more of them joining in as the first creaks start to sound from the old hinges buckling and giving way.

‘Honestly! It’s probably the last ones!’ Sophie calls as they run behind Bev, with Mike snorting a laugh and moving quickly to the door to spray the big cans of lighter fluid over the floor and pews, and the door.

Mike works back, knowing they positioned the pews to create obstacles that will trip the infected as they surge inside. Shame though. This was a good base.

A crack. The door splinters. It’s held well and bought them time. Time enough for Bev to lead the others out the back on the route they planned, and from the lack of gunshots, he knows they’ve got away.

‘Just us then, ye wee fuckers,’ Mike mutters, standing back to light a cigarette that he thinks to throw when they get through to start the fire.

But then he remembers the posh restaurant and Rifles setting that fire, and Bev setting fire to the pits and figures perhaps flicking a smoke doesn’t actually work.

So instead, this time, he keeps the cigarette and throws the lighter, and the first few through the door are instantly smothered by roaring flames and heat wafting back.

But it doesn’t slow them, and they burst through to slam into the first pew that makes them spin over the top and fall with the fire spreading fast. Others behind them. Mike turns and runs for it. Legging it to the back door and out before slamming the door closed and heaving the heavy metal cabinet across to block it.

He grabs the length of scaffolding pole to wedge between the door and the wall opposite. Knowing they’ll have to physically beat the door apart to get through while the church burns from the inside. ‘Fuck you,’ he spits the words out and turns to run along the back alley, with two coming in ahead of him. Blocking him off. He turns to run back, but more come in from the other end.

‘Clever fucks,’ he says and spins to shoot the two closest. Gunning them down to get past, but more come, and they come fast. Swarming in as he empties the mag. No time to reload. He slings it and draws his sidearm. Getting shots into heads. Bang, bang, bang. Bodies dropping. More coming. The door behind him being battered from the inside. Smoke billowing out the windows above him. Infected behind him. Clambering over the cabinet.

The pistol empties. Holstered. Knife out, and he steps into them. No time for thought. No time for thinking. A blade into the throat as teeth sink into his shoulder from behind. He flicks the knife over and stabs back to hack into the upper thigh, opening the artery with a powerful jet of blood spraying down. Then he stabs forward again. Into a stomach, and he rags fast. Opening the flesh to spill the innards. He stabs the next one and the next one. Close quarters, furious, dirty, seething fighting. Taking small steps to get through them. The door behind being battered apart. The smoke coming out thick and fast, and above him, the windows blow out from the heat inside the church. Glass falls down, and the fire inside roars like a living creature from the sudden influx of oxygen, and behind him, the door blows out with a thunderous bang and a sheet of flame as Mike gets pushed into the wall and stabs into a gut, then into the neck of another one biting into his arm.

Another infected smothers him. Another behind it. Too much pressure. He can’t move out. His knife stabbing anything in front of him. His teeth finding a neck. Biting deep and tearing the flesh away. Rage inside. Animalistic violence erupting in his core. Another three dead, but still more come. More and more, and many more.

Fire behind him. He can’t go back. He can’t go forward. Too many are coming at him. Fuck it then. To the death, and he vows to take as many down as he can as the pure fury seems to detonate inside. Sending him into a frenzy of violence, and inside his mind, he feels something coming towards him. Like a wave of energy. Powerful. Strong. Then she’s there. Olivia grabbing the back of a collar and wrenching one away to boot back towards the fire coming from the church. Swinging her mace. Craig behind her. Hacking another down. Sophie’s hand on Mike’s arm, pulling him up and dragging him out to see Bev, Debs, and Kev slaying beasts all around them in the street. Shields presented, and clubs swinging. But Mike can’t just see them. He can feel them. Inside his mind with a weird sudden unification.

‘Go!’ Olivia shouts.

They run to the end of Jewry Street to a modern block of stores and apartments built next to St Peter’s Catholic Church. A fire escape at the back. A door prepped and left open in advance with ammunition, food, and supplies stashed inside.

Jevram already inside, guarding Samir with a rifle, and the others burst inside, with Bev taking care to douse their route with water and avoid leaving a trail.

They drop and gasp. The windows already covered. All of them once more coated in blood and gore, but something else stays in the front of their minds. All of them thinking the same thing.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Mike asks, still sucking air in. ‘Did ye all feel it?’

‘I felt it,’ Kev says. Craig the same. Sophie the same. All of them the same.

Even Jevram. Even from here. He felt all of them within his mind, just like they all felt each other.

But more than anything, they felt the strongest of them all.

They felt Samir.

8

Day Ten

Elaine Sotheby feels something too.

Anger. Frustration. Fear. Hunger. Jealousy, and she also feels betrayed at the same time as feeling guilty.

Or at least she did. Now she doesn’t. Not after ten days of being stuck in a tiny flat with her fiancé Todd Driscoll.

‘Oh, god, just bloody drop it!’ she says with a long groan of pure frustration. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘Like, you know, er, some guilt, maybe?’

‘You did it first! You fingered Jenny bloody Dore!’

‘Fingered! With. A. Finger. I didn’t put her dick into my mouth like you did with Gary!’

‘Women don’t have dicks, you twat!’

‘Trans women do!’

And on it goes. The same stupid arguments since they got trapped in their tiny flat on St Peter’s Street right next to the town centre. They were meant to be getting married the morning after it happened. On the Saturday. But they’d both found out what the other had done during their pre-wedding parties, which had started with Todd fingering Jenny Dore, and then Elaine giving Gary, the stripper, a blow job.

‘You started it,’ she hisses the words out again for what feels like the millionth time. Her voice dripping with venom. Her hair greasy and unkempt. Spots breaking out on her chin and cheeks, and she feels bloated and gross from nine days of eating tinned crap and not doing anything.

Todd the same. Patchy stubble on his jaw. His belly hanging over the front of his dirty shorts. He stopped washing and brushing his teeth days ago.

They stayed in their flat that Friday night, trying to decide if they should get married or not. They argued a lot, which got heated and awful. But then, in the midst of that surge of hatred, they ended up doing it on the sofa. It was angry and weird, and what with the TV being on, they didn’t hear the train crash or the gunfire. Or rather, they did hear it, but neither showed any reaction.

‘You sucked his willy!’ Todd gasped in the throes of passion.

‘You fingered her fanny!’ Elaine said with an orgasmic groan.

But then it was over, and they soon realised the world outside was imploding.

‘Oh, god. What do we do?’ Elaine asked.

‘Lock the bloody door,’ Todd said and ran out of their flat and down the communal staircase to lock and bolt the street door. Which prevented their neighbours getting back in when they ran home an hour later.

‘Please!’ the man yelled while his wife and children banged on the door. Elaine and Todd peeked out, but they didn’t unlock the door, and a few minutes later, the zombies were chomping on the family.

Elaine and Todd looted the other flat the next day because all of the TV channels were down, and the internet was offline, and they figured whatever was happening was going on everywhere. Fortunately, the other flat had a lot more food. So they took it all, and then also stole their jewellery and some cash they found in a sock drawer. Then they hunkered down with the full intention of being a self-sufficient, cooperative unit determined to work together to get through whatever it was happening until the council or the government, or someone fixed it.

‘Fucking immigrants,’ Todd said later that day as they ate tinned hot dog sausages and baked beans and watched Friends on DVD. Todd blamed immigrants for lots of things. ‘That’s why they cut my benefits, cos of the immigrants.’

‘No, it wasn’t! It’s cos they caught you working cash in hand on the markets.’

‘Yeah, cos the immigrants took all the proper jobs, that’s why!’

‘Did the immigrants make you finger Jenny Dore too?’ Elaine asked. She didn’t know why she said that because they’d promised not to bring it all up again. But she felt peevish and irritable from eating too much salt and sugar, and Todd was already pissing her off because he said they were only doing season one and then putting Top Gear on.

‘So, did Gary actually come in your mouth then?’ he asked spitefully, and ten minutes later, they had sex again, with both of them getting off on the thought of each other’s sexual encounter with someone else.

But that energy was bad energy, and that passion was bad passion, and it only fed the spite, and so they quickly descended into bouts of self-victimisation while trying to gaslight the other over every tiny misdeed to gain leverage and points.

You started it.

You didn’t clean the bog after your last shit.

You didn’t wash up.

You didn’t make me a cup of tea.

You keep farting.

Don’t eat so fucking loud!

Stop snoring.

Jesus! Brush your teeth; your breath stinks.

Look, just fuck off. I can’t stand being near you.

Don’t touch me!

I’m watching that!

They bickered and sniped, and sulked, and pouted, and within a few days, the incessant arguing and boredom, and bad food diminished all sexual desires, and what was left was nothing but pure hatred.

The way they looked at each other.

The confinement.

Then the power went out, and they couldn’t watch telly.

And it became silent.

They could hear each other eat. The chomping and munching. Todd ate with his mouth open. Elaine spoke with her mouth full. Todd still wasn’t brushing his teeth. Elaine put ketchup on everything. ‘Don’t use it all!’ he told her and watched slyly to see when she finished the bottle, then used it as an excuse to self-victimise when he reached for it, only to find it empty. He gave her a hurt look. She just tutted and told him to fuck off. He pouted and sulked, so she counter sulked, and within a few hours, neither could remember who started it or why.

It didn’t matter.

What mattered was gaining leverage and scoring points on who could be the most hurt.

‘I can’t cope with you constantly gaslighting me, Todd!’ Elaine said while bursting into tears.

‘No! You’re gaslighting me! You know I wanted some ketchup and, and, and… And you used it, and I thought there was more, and that’s gaslighting!’

‘You fingered Jenny Dore, and that’s abuse! You’re an abuser!’

‘She told me I could cos the guys from the market gave her an extra twenty quid!’

‘Not her! Me! You’re abusing me because I had like a tiny bit of ketchup. Oh, my god. That’s so controlling. I’m not even allowed to have sauce now. I have to eat dry food.’

‘No! No! You said… And I asked… And, and, and… Whatever! I don’t even care… And I’ve hid the sweet chilli sauce.’

‘I don’t even like sweet chilli sauce. And not that you care or noticed, but I am on a diet.’

‘Why? So you can suck Gary’s knob again?’

And on it went.

Forever on and on, with neither having the foresight or awareness of the road they were on and that establishing a co-operative form of communication, coupled with restraint, tolerance, and acceptance, would be the only way they could survive.

A few days later, and with what Todd thought was a stroke of genius to counter Elaine’s smug gloating over being on a diet, even though she totally wasn’t because she was secretly binging on the crisps and junk she’d stashed in the laundry basket, that being a place Todd would never think to look or go near, Todd took a book from their neighbour’s apartment and made a whole thing about self-development and being scornful to Elaine cos she only worked part time in a nail salon.

All of which prompted Elaine to also get a book, which set Todd off because the whole book thing was his, and she was trying to ruin that too. ‘Why don’t you just suck the book off then!’ he whisper-yelled at her. Which they both did because while being wholly amoral with a complete absence of ethical decency, they weren’t entirely stupid to their own self-preservation, what with the zombie things occasionally shuffling past outside for the first week or so and then running past after that.

Not that Elaine or Todd really took much notice. But to counter Todd’s book tactic, Elaine announced, very dramatically and with tears, and the weak, shaky voice of a victim, that she could no longer tolerate Todd’s abuse and control, and gaslighting, and she was leaving him, and so she duly went off to sleep in the other flat.

‘No! I’m leaving you!’ Todd said because he knew that whoever the person was that actually left their flat would be seen as the true victim, and so they both slept in the other flat. Then Todd went back to their flat. Elaine hated that because she wanted to piss him off, and so it all started again.

The days rolled on with no end in sight. They heard gunshots and explosions, but they didn’t know what was happening, and they were too scared to leave, and so they waged their own private tiny war that grew in intensity and petty viciousness.

‘I fucking hate you!’ Todd told her.

‘I wish you were dead,’ Elaine told him.

‘Are you threatening me? Is that a threat? I’m writing that one down to tell the police when they get back to work.’

‘I’ll write down that you hit me!’

Todd grabbed the envelope the water company used to write and tell them they were over one thousand pounds in debt and started scribbling in his child-like handwriting, prompting Elaine to grab the debt recovery letter from the loans she’d taken out for the girls’ holiday to Tenerife a couple of years ago and do the same, while still abusing each other.

‘You fingered Jenny Dore!’

‘Yeah. I did. And her vag is nicer than yours!’

‘Yeah? Well. I didn’t spit. I swallowed!’

‘Fuck you!’ Todd said, and Elaine saw the real anger in his eyes, and perhaps their tiny remaining sense of self-preservation kicked in, and Todd stormed off to the other flat, and Elaine stayed put, and they both wrote down, in very bad English as they’d bunked off school a lot, all the bad things the other one had done, so they could tell the police when they finally sorted all this shit out that the immigrants had probably caused.

Now. Ten days after the end of the world, Elaine goes to use the bathroom to find there’s no toilet roll and tuts, and mutters because that’s obviously Todd’s fault. Which, in turn, makes her remember that the other flat has lots of toilet roll.

‘Todd! I need bog roll,’ Elaine calls through the door to the other flat. ‘Todd! Fuck’s sake. I need a shit!’

‘What do I get?’

‘What do you want?’

‘Gimme your phone.’

‘What for? There’s no signal or power.’

‘Just give me it!’

‘Fucking whatever.’

She fetches it from their flat, figuring the thing has been dead for days, and they make the trade in the communal hallway like two spies passing documents between South and North Korea.

She rushes to the toilet, and once the urgency has passed, she sets to thinking about why Todd would want her phone. And why he almost ran off once he got it.

She finishes off, but doesn’t flush to stay quiet, and sneaks across the landing to other flat, and realises Todd hasn’t locked the door. She creeps in and catches him masturbating in front of the lounge window with his shorts around his ankles while staring at her phone screen, which, she then notices, is connected to a solar panel charging unit.

‘You dirty fucker!’ she shouts and snatches the phone up to see he was masturbating to the pictures she took on her girls’ holiday to Tenerife a few years ago and specifically to the picture of Sophie Addison sunbathing topless next to the pool.

Which, obviously, is a serious escalation in the war, and so Elaine retaliates with a surge of violent anger and throws her phone at his head with the first real incursion into combative physical contact, but the throw is too hard, and it makes Todd turn away sharply and crack his skull on the corner of the cabinet behind him.

‘That wasn’t my fault!’ Elaine blurts to disclaim any liability and quickly prepares a new victim strategy for herself as something inside of Todd snaps, and he punches her in the belly. She bends double. Gasping in pain and shock as Todd blinks in fear at the prospect of being arrested and thrown into prison for domestic battery, and he even glances to the window, as though expecting to see the cops running down the street.

But the world outside is no longer functioning, and he realises, in that moment, that he can do whatever the fuck he wants.

‘What are you doing?’ Elaine cries out when he starts pawing at her jogging bottoms. ‘Todd! Stop!’

But he doesn’t stop, and his face has an awful, frenzied look, and Elaine realises that for all the words and psychological warfare, Todd is physically much stronger, and the first real and very palpable surge of fear flares inside. She screams and kicks out into his groin. He gasps and rolls off with an explosion of pain in his testicles, and she scrabbles free and tries to rise, but he grabs her ankle. She goes down and kicks again, and gets him in the face, making his grip loosen, and she staggers up and into the kitchen, but he rushes in behind her, and she grabs a small fruit knife and turns, thinking only to threaten him with it, but he runs in too fast and stops with a gasp, and they both look down to the handle poking out of his belly.

‘You stabbed me,’ he says in shock as Elaine thinks it’s only a little knife, and he could pull it out and use it on her, so she hits him on the head with a heavy pan and runs out of the neighbours’ flat and down the stairs, and unbolts the door, and runs out into the street. Full of panic and fear, and she runs down the road and around a corner to see an old lady zombie outside of the Reform church that is still smouldering from a fire, and she stops with a tiny yelp.

Which the old lady zombie hears and starts running like an Olympic sprinter, which, of course, makes Elaine turn and run back the way she came, although not like an Olympic sprinter but rather wheezier, with her wobbly bits wobbling about all over the place.

She runs back into her own street to see Todd holding the pan and the little knife she’d stabbed him with. ‘Todd!’ she shouts, and he starts towards her with murder in his eyes but stops on seeing the old lady zombie, and legs it back inside, and slams the door in her face.

‘Todd!’ she screams and beats her fists on it as he pushes the bolts home and runs upstairs to look out the window as Elaine tries to run away.

And she tries so hard too. With her filthy joggers and stained top, and greasy hair, and spotty face, and Todd watches in sick fascination as Elaine stops and brings her hands up. Begging for mercy with nothing but terror in her heart and tears in her eyes as the old lady zombie slams her down and tries to bite her cheek with no teeth. Which is all rather wet and gnashy, and slobbery, but the old lady zombie does growl and snarl like a dog, and so Elaine thinks she is being bitten, when in fact, it’s a single ragged fingernail cutting her shoulder open that causes the infection to pass into her body.

Then the pain comes, and it’s so intense it robs everything else from her mind, because all she can feel is the agony in her belly. A terrible, burning pain that she didn’t think was possible. It’s so bad she can’t even scream, and Elaine Sotheby dies while her fiancé watches from the lounge window with his hand clamped over his bleeding stomach.

Todd feels many things then too.

But the overriding emotion is one of self-pity guilt that Elaine was now a zombie, and he was alone. Which totally wasn’t his fault. All he’d done was remember Elaine had a picture of Sophie Addison’s boobs on her phone. How was that even his fault?

Or did it all start before that? Todd isn’t sure. It’s all too confusing in his mind, which only gets worse when Elaine sits up and opens her eyes, which are red and bloodshot, just like all the other zombies.

Except her DNA is different to most other people’s DNA because Elaine Sotheby has a genetic type that enables the infection to mutate inside of her in a way it does with so few others.

What that means is that while she is wholly infected and turned in every sense of the word, she is also able to keep her own mind, albeit a mind now also full of the infection.

‘What the hell,’ she whispers, figuring she’d be a dead, mindless zombie, which wouldn’t be altogether that different from before she was bit. But actually. Weirdly, all-in-all, she does feel really rather well.

There’s no pain anywhere. She’s also felt uncomfortably bloated for the last week, and that’s gone too. She starts standing up, which would normally take a bit of effort, but rises easily, and looks at the old lady zombie standing there all doe-eyed like humanoid zombie puppy, and Elaine’s body secretes many chemicals to ensure she feels that love and loyalty, and the infection in her mind works through her brain and activates the same thing that Howie has and the same thing that Mike and his friends have, and through that hive mind, Elaine Sotheby feels the hosts around her.

Which is only the old lady, seeing as Mike and Bev, and their team have killed all the others.

But even so. What a thing. What a surprise. What a wonderful feeling this is.

A shout from behind with a sudden pain in her head from the heavy pan swung by a very terrified Todd. Who then turns away to beat the old lady zombie down to the ground, and Elaine feels the connection sever from the old lady’s skull being bashed in.

Then Todd swings back. Wheezing and sweating, and clearly very terrified, and he charges at Elaine, thinking to finish her off as she sits up rubbing the back of her head.

‘What the fuck, Todd!’ she says as he yelps and throws the pan at her face in a spasm of terror. ‘What did you do that for?’ she yells, grabbing it and pushing back to her feet.

‘You’re a zombie!’ he shouts with his beady eyes flicking left and right as his brain tries to process it all.

‘Duh!’ Elaine says as Todd blinks. Not knowing if that means that duh, yeah, she is or duh, no, she isn’t.

‘I don’t know what that means!’ he says and tries to think, and reverts to type. ‘You stabbed me!’ he shouts and clutches his stomach as though in very great pain, which isn’t actually hurting that much as it was only a small knife that went into his big spare tyre.

Elaine thinks to say he tried to rape her and that he started the whole thing because he fingered Jenny Doyle.

Except Elaine Sotheby doesn’t say that.

Because she really wants to bite him.

‘What the fuck!’ he shouts when she steps towards him like she’s about to bite into a Big Mac. ‘Elaine! Fuck off!’

‘I’m not doing anything!’ she says, while advancing as her mouth fills with saliva that drools out, and she feels that urge inside to bite him. Like really bite him. Like bite him hard. Right into his arm. No! His belly. No! His neck. Like a vampire, but a zombie. A zombie vampire.

‘Elaine… Stop it… Stop it!’ Todd says as he backs up and looks at the heavy pan in her hand. ‘Give me that! I want to hit you with it.’

‘Twat. I’m not gonna give it now, am I?’

‘S’not fair though, Elaine. You’ve got a weapon. What do I have?’

‘Use your finger, Todd. Like you did on Jenny Dore!’

‘Fuck off!’ he yells and jumps back when she lunges in as they go along the street.

‘Todd! Just bloody stand still.’

‘You’ll bite me!’

‘I won’t! I promise,’ she says as Todd looks for any sign that she actually means it. Which she doesn’t because she lunges in again and actually grabs his arm this time, and clings to it while trying to get her mouth to his skin, which means dropping the pan that falls with a clang as Todd turns fast, swinging her around and around, with him shouting, and her gnashing until he grabs the pan and clunks her head with it. ‘Ow!’ she shouts, and he tugs free and runs backward while armed with the tacti-pan. ‘That’s domestic violence! You’ll go to prison!’

‘You’re going to prison for being a zombie!’ he blurts over her. ‘You were trying to bite me.’

A sudden idea. Her face changes instantly. ‘But Toddy,’ she says in a needy whine and tilts her head down, and looks up, and blinks a lot to look vulnerable and sad. ‘My Toddy… I just wanna cuddly wuddly… You can put your peepee in me if you want to…’

‘No! You’re a zombie, Elaine! I can’t have sex with a zombie.’

‘You didn’t bloody mind fingering Jenny Dore, who’s fuck ugly, though!’ she snaps before remembering to be sweet and needy instead. ‘Aw, but Toddy Woddy. I am vewy sad. Will you give me cuddly wuddlies…’

‘Stop it, Elaine! You know what that voice does to me!’

‘My Toddy Woddy. I don’t mind what you did with Jenny, and your peepee is so much bigger than Gary’s.’

‘Eh? Really? Everyone says he’s got a massive knob.’

‘Well. Yeah. I mean. I couldn’t even get it in my mouth, but I can put all of yours in, my iccle sweetie Toddy Woddy… Cuddles? Yeah? Cuddles? Fuck’s sake! Give me a cuddle, you fat cunt! Stop running and let me bite you! Todd! TODD! You’re so fucking selfish. You won’t even let me turn you into a zombie!’

She stalks after him all the way along St Peter Street, but she doesn’t run. She doesn’t need to. Todd is too heavy and unfit to run and can only manage little spurts of fast walking while glancing back and whimpering.

‘Just leave me alone!’ he cries out.

‘Just let me bite you!’

‘No!’

‘I can catch you. You know I can. I can run faster than you,’ she says and bursts to sprinting with sudden surprise at just how fit and fast she is now, and she sprints past him with ease, laughing at the strength in her legs and how she hasn’t had to stop and cough her guts up. ‘See!’ she says, stopping just before the corner with St George’s Street, and watches the moronic man that was her fiancé still running towards her. ‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

‘It’s too far the other way,’ he whines and tries to sneak past as though she can’t see him, and gets out onto the junction.

‘Oh, my god. That was literally the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen! Todd? Todd! Don’t even bother. Seriously!’

‘Just fuck off,’ he whines, stopping with a wheeze as he realises he can’t run anymore, and he backs away, sweating and still bleeding from his belly as Elaine advances towards him. Her red eyes glinting with victory.

A shout.

A yell.

They both stop and look down the road to see people outside of the DIY Hardware store a dozen metres away. Eight of them, looking cool and awesome with guns and a blind child in a wheelbarrow.

‘You alright?’ Bev calls, shielding her eyes to try and see them better. It looked like the woman was about to attack the man, but now they’ve stopped, and from decades of policing, she takes them to be a couple in the midst of an argument.

‘He tried to rape me!’ Elaine blurts, forgetting she is a zombie and thinking them to be police officers. What with them all having round riot shields with the word police across the front of them.

‘She stabbed me!’ Todd shouts over her and once more grabs his belly as though he’s in tremendous pain.

‘What the fuck,’ Mike says.

‘Oh, my god!’ Sophie says. ‘It’s Elaine and Todd!’

‘Who the hell are Elaine and Todd?’ Bev asks, thinking she said it like it means something.

‘Elaine and Todd,’ Mike says. ‘From the wedding. The Guildhall. Elaine shagged Gary because Jenny shat on Todd’s shoes or something.’

‘He fingered Jenny Dore!’

‘She gave Gary a blow job!’

They both shout from the junction.

‘Oh, that Elaine and Todd,’ Kev says as they all nod and realise who they are.

‘And he wanked off over your tits, Sophie Addison!’ Elaine shouts, pointing at Todd.

‘He did not!’ Sophie says, covering her chest with her arm. ‘I’d never do that. Gross!’

‘The picture!’ Elaine shouts.

‘What picture?’ Sophie asks.

‘From Tenerife!’

A pause as Sophie thinks then frowns. ‘You said you deleted that, Elaine Sotheby!’

‘She showed it to everyone!’ Todd blurts.

‘You’re such a prick!’ Elaine snaps at Todd as he shoots her a look with a flinch at her eyes that makes Elaine remember her urge that comes back a thousand times worse than it was. And not just for Todd but for all of them, even for that bitch Sophie Addison and her perky boobs. Then she spots the boy in the barrow. Small, with dark hair and sightless eyes, and his head cocked over, and Elaine Sotheby has never hated anyone or anything more in her life.

‘She’s a vampire!’ Todd shouts.

‘I’m a zombie, you fucking moron!’ Elaine mutters as the sun dips enough behind the building line to give them all a clear view of her red eyes, and the way she spoke makes Todd flinch. Seeing a woman he doesn’t recognise. The predation within her eyes. The sheer hungry, violent, animalistic intent warping her features as her hands start to curl and claw, and her head lowers, and her body seems to shift position to find the balance needed to make the lunge.

But the others see her red eyes, and they shout and pull their rifles forward as Elaine grunts and from pure instinct lashes out to push Todd into the line of fire, and runs back into St Peter Street, with Mike firing rounds mere inches behind her.

He moves fast, sprinting up the road and past Todd gibbering in confusion, and turns into the side street with his rifle up, and curses at the empty view ahead. No Elaine, and no sign of her anywhere. Garden walls and busted in doors to houses on both sides. She could have gone anywhere.

‘Did you see her?’ Bev asks as the others catch up with Samir now on Olivia’s back.

‘Gone,’ Mike says, and one by one, they all turn to look at the beady-eyed, slack-jawed Todd Driscoll while his ex-fiancée Elaine Sotheby glares back at them through an upstairs window a few houses up.

Her eyes red and bloodshot.

Her hands clawed.

Her mind relishing the hatred she feels inside and the need to kill them all, especially Todd.

And especially that child.

Something about him.

Something that compels her to destroy him.

And so, The War of Winchester begins.

9

Day Eleven

The Winchester Hotel and Spa

‘It’s nearly dawn, Dawn.’ James says.

Dawn shoots him a tight smile. The strain clear in her eyes. Her face pale and drawn. James looks rough too, but then, they all do. Eleven days in, and the stress is showing. The confinement and the lack of sunshine and fresh food.

Twenty-eight survivors. There were more. A lot more. The hotel was packed on the night it happened, but quite a lot of them ran out to the train station just up the road on hearing the crash. Then the outbreak hit, and it was chaos, and those inside were quick enough to cover the bar windows with towels and sheets and barricade the doors with tables and chairs from the restaurant.

A few more left the following day when they saw the zombies had slowed. Then a few more each day after that.

Five left during the morning of the sixth day, and a few hours later, they came back, but they were turned and red-eyed, and wild like beasts and threw themselves at windows and doors until gunshots sounded from the train station. They ran off, and since then, nobody has left.

Another five days later, dawn has come again, and James and Dawn stare through the gaps in the barricade to the sky growing lighter outside. They were both on business trips. James for a conference, and Dawn for a training course. They were both married. They both had children, and the hardest day came when they had to accept they would never see their families again.

They had sex a few nights ago. It wasn’t sensual or erotic. It was fast and driven by fear and desperation, and they both wept when they finished.

Now James makes the same joke, and Dawn smiles sadly, and they think about another day ahead spent counting rations and trying to find ways to keep twelve young children occupied and quiet.

‘Hey,’ Jeremy says quietly, coming into the reception to take over the watch. ‘Anything?’

‘Nope,’ Dawn says, nodding into the silence. They all heard the gunshots coming from the town yesterday. Just three or four; then nothing else and nothing since.

‘Alright. Get some sleep,’ Jeremy says as a tap sounds out. Making the three of them freeze and look to the front doors with hearts whumping in their chests.

‘Hello?’ a voice calls. Soft. Female. ‘Are you there?’

Looks shared between Jeremy and Dawn as James edges to the barricade to peek through. ‘It’s a woman,’ he whispers, seeing a plump woman in jeans and a checked shirt with tinted glasses. ‘On her own.’

‘Hello?’ the woman calls again and looks around as though scared and vulnerable. ‘Please?’ she adds with a desperate tone. ‘I’m so scared… I don’t want them to see me.’

‘Oh, god, let her in,’ Dawn says as the other two nod, and they rush off along the corridor to the emergency exit and the smaller barricade and carefully crack the locking bar and lean out. ‘Down here!’ Dawn whispers as the woman turns with a great show of relief and rushes over.

‘Thank you. Thank you,’ she says, rushing in through the door as they close it behind her and push the barricade in place. The corridor dark and full of shadows. Their voices whispered and low as they gather around the new woman. ‘I was so scared,’ she says breathlessly.

‘It’s okay. You’re safe now,’ Dawn says, pulling the woman into a hug. ‘It’s so good to see a new face!’ she whispers with tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘We can give you coffee or tea, or water. We’re low on rations, but we can share what we have.’

They lead her back through the foyer and into the bar to the others waking up on their bedrolls. The stench of body odour and farts, and unclean bodies rich in the air. The smell of fear too. Strong. Ripe. Inviting.

The news spreads fast, and the others quickly surround the woman, all of them seeming to speak at once.

‘Where are you from? Are you alone? Which way did you come? How did you know we were here? What’s your name? What’s going on? Is it everywhere? Are they fixing it?’

They all look, but none of them see.

They all speak, but none of them listen.

But then, they are scared, and the room is dark, and Elaine put glasses on that grew darker in the light and lighter in the dark, but still they don’t see her eyes, and still they don’t notice that she doesn’t speak, but only looks at them in turn as the urge inside intensifies.

It should be a bad urge.

It should feel wrong.

And yet.

And yet.

‘And yet,’ she murmurs with a gasp at the pure deliciousness of the feelings inside of her, and the smile slowly forms.

Wicked and wide.

The Hyde Tavern

Hyde Street

A man armed with a shotgun stands guard in the road while the others rush in and out of the pub. Taking bedding and belongings to throw into the waiting vans.

Eight of them took refuge the first night. Some left. Some others arrived. They stayed quiet. They stayed alive. Ten remain.

Someone came yesterday. Roger was keeping watch and saw them from an upstairs window. He could see they weren’t infected. They said they were going to the fort and told them it was a place everyone was going to, and that it was safe and had law and order and doctors. Roger told the others. They agreed to make a run for it and spent the day and night preparing. They were low on food and desperate to do something.

Now Roger grips the double-barrelled shotgun and keeps watch as they make ready to go.

Movement up the street. A woman leaning out of a driveway. She darts back in, then appears hand in hand with a child, and looks around as though cautious and terrified, and finally makes a run for it. Sticking to the wall with the small child at her side. She waves at Roger. He checks around and waves her towards them.

‘Got a mum and her kid coming,’ he whispers to the others. They rush out as the woman crosses the road. Jeans and a checked shirt. Tinted reading glasses that grow darker in the light. The kid with a sunhat on, shielding her face.

‘Oh, thank god,’ Elaine gasps. ‘Are you leaving? Can we come with you? She’s not even my daughter. I just found her alone!’

‘Oh, god,’ Betsy says, instantly crushed at the news as she rushes out to scoop the child up. ‘You poor poppet. You’re safe now…’

‘Thank you… Thank you,’ Elaine says, and the grin grows once more.

Wicked and wide.

Ten minutes later, and Elaine Sotheby, who was due to be getting married to Todd Driscoll ten days ago, stands in the sunshine outside of The Hyde Tavern with the most incredible of feelings inside.

A rush of love or joy, or power. She doesn’t even know what the feelings are, only that she’s never felt anything like it.

And she’s popular too.

Elaine was never popular.

She was podgy and unfit, and not that pretty, and she had friends like Sophie Addison, who were like super pretty, and so Elaine chose spite and nasty humour, and being two-faced, and spreading misery by false rumours and gossip.

But now, though.

Now she has forty bezzers. And that’s literally more friends than anyone has ever had and definitely way more than Sophie Addison, and even more than that, Elaine can feel them all.

She can feel each of their minds in hers, and she can see how they are all gazing adoringly at her, and she wishes she didn’t throw her phone at Todd’s stupid, fat head, so she could take a selfie and upload it to show everyone how popular she is now.

Even though the internet isn’t working now.

Whatever.

But wow, though. And so she turns to stride off like the strong, empowered zombie woman she is and marches her mighty army straight back into St Peter’s Street to the junction of St George’s Street, where she last saw Todd with the full expectation that Todd and Sophie, and that freaky, blind kid will still be there.

But of course, they are not. And the street is empty, and so Elaine tuts and curses, and scowls because now she feels a little bit silly in front of her forty new best friends. But they’re really cool and are like totally not judging her or anything.

She leads them into the High Street to The Buttercross Monument and into the alley and looks in the church they used and the museum, then grimaces at all the charred bodies in the cathedral grounds, but of Todd and Sophie, there is no sign.

Which isn’t fair because she’s got nice, expensive fitted jeans on and this super pricey checked shirt, and a push-up bra. She’s even done her hair nicely and covered the zits up with expensive concealer.

And so she huffs and puffs, and potters this way and that, with her horde of forty zombies dutifully following her everywhere she goes, including when she walks into the stupid five star eatery place that she used to hate and say only posh cunts went into. But really, she was jealous. Even though she’d never admit that.

But she goes in and takes a bottle of red wine, which must be expensive because it’s not in a cardboard box with a plastic tap, and she goes outside, and Roger picks a chair up, and Dawn rights a table, and she sits down and pours herself a big glass of red wine. Which tastes like pissy vinegar. But she drinks it anyway and holds the oversized glass the way the posh cunts used to, with her fingers straddling the underside of the bowl.

‘Darling. Ya,’ she says and tries to cross her legs, which isn’t easy with big thighs, and so she sits and sips, and her zombies sit too because she wills them to do so, although on the ground and not on the chairs because it doesn’t seem possible to make them do individual things on mass.

She doesn’t see Todd or Sophie, or anyone, but it’s pleasant enough, and she drinks more wine, which used to make her get pissed really fast, and then she’d get spiteful or more spiteful than normal, but she can’t even feel it now. Even when she finishes the bottle. She’s not hungry either, and Elaine can’t remember a time when she wasn’t hungry.

And so the night comes, and she mostly sits and walks around, and stares at the stars and the moon.

The next day comes, as next days often do, and Elaine Sotheby leads her zombie army back up the High Street and then back into St Peter’s Street, and all over the bloody place, but she can’t find Todd or Sophie.

Although she does hear a yelp inside a house on Parchment Street and knocks on the door. ‘Hello,’ she says in her timid, vulnerable voice. ‘Is anyone there? I’m so scared they’ll see me.’

A scuff from above. She looks up to see an old man and woman staring down at Elaine and the forty zombies behind her. ‘I think they can see you, love,’ the old man says, and he and his wife quickly neck a bottle of painkillers each as Elaine wills Roger to bash the door in, and they all charge up the stairs and into the room to see the man and woman on the bed with deep cuts on their wrists.

‘You ain’t taking us,’ the old man snarls. Pictures of him in military uniform holding a Bren gun and wearing a beret.

‘Don’t gaslight me,’ Elaine says.

‘Did you leave the gas on, Barry?’ the old woman says in a sleepy voice as her blood drains from her body, and she sinks down into death, but Elaine leans close and looks to gently kiss her, but spits at her instead, full in her face, then wipes it over Barry’s gob, and she watches them writhe and die, and come back with red eyes. All loving and adoring.

And so, with forty-two new best friends, Elaine Sotheby continues her search and heads out of Parchment Street to the hardware store she saw them all in yesterday and hears a dull bang of a door being opened or some such sound.

She heads quietly along the street towards the next junction down and hears whispered voices coming from around the corner, and she stops as they come into view.

The boy not with them.

Or Todd.

But Sophie is there. With her perky boobs, and the others, who also all come to a sudden stop, with faces of surprise at seeing a horde of forty-two silent zombies staring at them.

Which is at the exact moment that fifteen miles away, on the other side of the port of Southampton, Fawley power station explodes with a very big bang.

‘Jesus. That’s a big bang,’ Mike says as they look to the very large mushroom cloud rolling up into the sky, and a few seconds later, the windows rattle, and the ground vibrates, and the birds fly up into the air.

‘That’s Fawley,’ Kev says. ‘Gotta be.’

‘Fuck Fawley,’ Bev says to the sound of the bolt being yanked back on a G36 assault rifle, which makes the zombies all look forward as Elaine’s face changes, and she snarls and wills the order, and forty-two zombies burst to sprinting, with seven assault rifles letting rip.

And what with now having twelve days of sustained practise, the assault rifles do deadly work and drop scores of the zombies within seconds, with Elaine instantly realising that forty-two wasn’t anywhere near enough, and so she legs it.

‘Running!’ Mike shouts, spotting her and putting rounds in once more as Elaine wills for her horde to soak up the bullets, which they do by running in the way, and she disappears down the alley next to McDonalds, feeling her beloved new bezzies being severed one by one.

But she also noticed something else.

She noticed the boy wasn’t there. Or Todd or the handsome Indian guy.

Which means they were left at their base.

Which must have been nearby.

And if at first you don’t succeed, and there is no way of cheating or manipulating someone else to do it for you, then she might as well try, try again.

10

Day Fourteen

Three hundred and forty-six zombies.

‘Fuck you, Sophie bloody Addison,’ Elaine mutters, glaring at her beloved horde, even though Sophie isn’t really to blame for any of this. But whatever. And fuck Todd too. Not that Elaine would ever do that again. ‘Ewww,’ she says at the thought of it and can hardly believe she spent so long with him. She’s shredding weight now and is looking slimmer each day, and her complexion is like sooo much better. And she’s already had to go and get new jeans in the next size down.

And also. Weirdly. Elaine has also enjoyed the hard work of gathering a new and much bigger zombie horde.

Elaine hated work. The mere concept of it triggered her into rage and tantrums. Why should she work when so many people were on benefits draining the system? Which literally made no sense whatsoever, but it was a thing Elaine would say all the time. Or that they needed to tax the rich properly. Or stop the immigrants. Or literally anything that meant she didn’t have to work.

But she actually enjoyed the satisfaction of achieving her task. Even though it was rather easy because she found all of them on one posh, middle-class housing estate amidst a sea of BMWs and Teslas, which explains why they’re all mostly dressed like twats.

She heads back into the city centre on Worthy Road as the heat grows crushing and awful and the storm clouds gather in the skies.

Which is kinda cool, cos it makes it feel all Hollywoody, and so she adds a bit more bounce to her stride while imagining it being played back in slow-mo with a cool soundtrack, and without realising it, her horde do the same and sashay, and stride, and bounce, and pout.

Two weeks since it began.

Two weeks, and Elaine Sotheby never felt so good, and by tonight, she’ll have either killed Todd and Sophie or turned them into hosts. But that kid won’t be a host. That creepy little prick is getting chomped to actual death, and not the death that comes before they turn. Like full on permanent death with no head on his body or heart, or arms and legs. She thought to remove his eyes too, but they’re already fucked apparently.

Then she feels bad for thinking that because it’s totally disablist, and Elaine wanted to be registered as disabled with mental health cos someone said you get more benefits, but then there’s no one to cancel her now, so fuck it, she’ll think what she wants.

She reaches the top of the High Street at the ancient, old part near the Westgate tower and The Great Hall that still holds some manky, old, round table or something. Elaine wasn’t into history.

She follows the road down into the town centre with her horde behind her and aims once more for the last place she saw Sophie at the junction of St George’s Street near to the hardware store, but this time, she doesn’t go with the stupid expectation of seeing them again, but because that’s where she heard the dull bang of a door opening the last time she saw them.

Which means they were staying somewhere close to that location.

Which is not something the old Elaine would ever determine, but the infection isn’t just making her fitter and slimmer; it’s making her smarter, which is an uphill task just by itself, but nevertheless, she soon arrives and wills her horde to silence, and she listens.

She listens very carefully.

She inhales too, hoping to scent fear or sweat, but there’s no wind, and her own horde are ponging a bit, so that doesn’t work.

It’s hot. Muggy. Close. And getting dark. Not just from the evening but from the sky filling with low clouds, and the first far off rumble of thunder is heard in the distance.

Then it goes silent again.

Very, very silent.

There.

Her head snaps left, and three hundred and forty-six zombies do the same.

Because they all heard the faint clunking sound.

She heads that way. Into the side street and tuts at her own idiocy because now she can see it, and it’s bloody obvious.

The telephone exchange building. Two levels, but no windows on the ground floor, so it looks like a fortress.

A rush of anger. A need to get them right now. No thought. No planning, and she wills her horde to attack. They burst to charge, running at the building without quite knowing where to go. Instincts kick in. Primeval thoughts that lead them to a fire exit at the rear.

Shouts inside. The sounds of doors slamming. A face appears at a window above; then it’s gone, and Elaine grins in victory. Knowing she’s got them trapped.

‘TODD!’ she yells, hoping he’s shitting himself in fear. ‘AND YOU, SOPHIE!’

Sophie’s face at the window as she pushes it open, ‘Just sod off, Elaine Sotheby!’

‘Send Todd out!’

‘No!’ Sophie says, then looks thoughtful for a second, and turns, then turns back. ‘No, he doesn’t want to.’

‘Well. Whatever. We’ll just come in and get him then,’ Elaine says as one of her zombies dies from smashing its own head against the solid fire door too hard, but that’s fine because she’s still got three hundred and forty-five. Arse. Three hundred and forty-four. Bugger! Forty-three. Forty-two.

‘What the fuck!’ she shouts at them and flaps her hands. ‘Get a ladder or something,’ she says with the realisation that telling three hundred and forty-two zombies to get a ladder is too broad, and she thinks about focussing on just one of them as Sophie calls down.

‘Have you lost weight, Elaine?’

‘I have!’ she says with a grin and looks up as more people appear at other windows spraying liquid down over the horde gathered below. Then someone chucks a bucket of water over them. ‘Like that’s gonna stop us,’ Elain scoffs as the people disappear, then re-appear holding bottles stuffed with flaming rags that they throw down as Elaine realises it wasn’t water in the bucket, and she jumps back as the flames instantly engulf a quarter of her horde.

‘You look good, though!’ Sophie shouts just before the guns start firing, and Elaine runs back down the side while feeling dozens of her hosts severing every second. Burnt to death or shot down.

She thinks to urge them to run away, but anger floods her mind, and she sends them in harder. Making them smash into the door so hard they die almost instantly, but it weakens the frame, and the door catches on fire and starts breaking away.

‘Yes!’ she shouts, sensing the second the breach is made and the first of her zombies get through and pour along the corridor towards the stairs that burst into fire with someone on the stairs gunning them down.

Chaos follows. Noise and heat, and her horde running through fire and being shot. She takes losses but pushes them at it until more get through the door and up the stairs to find the rooms all empty.

Another door at the far end. Another smaller staircase leading to a fire exit on the far side. Elaine shouts and runs out just in time to see them running across the road into the car park of The Brooks Shopping Centre. She chases after them. Urging her horde to do the same. Screeching out and howling to drive fear into the hosts.

She reaches the junction with a last-second instinct to stop before going into the car park and hears the gunfire erupt from within. Shooting the first half a dozen running into the entry point in the legs. Making them drop and hinder those behind.

The shooting stops. Elaine urges more in and goes with them as the thunder breaks properly overhead. Deep and loud, and the wind whips past the entrance to the car park, and the rain starts. Pelting down within a second of starting, and the lightning hits.

Elaine keeps them running. Knowing there’s only two ways out of this car park. Either they leave via the exit onto the road, or they go through the inner door into the shopping centre.

A bang. A shout. More hard bangs. A door being smashed in. They’re breaking into the shopping centre.

She sets her horde to charge. Making them sprint the short distance through the now almost pure dark car park. Gunfire. Muzzle flashes. A few more hosts hit, but they’re closer, and the group turn and flee inside the shopping centre.

Elaine reaches the door a second or so later and again stays to the side, and sends her horde in to soak up the bullets fired from the people lying in wait.

She could back off, but instinct tells her to attack faster, and so she sends more in, and more get shot, but she gains ground, and the guns soon stop as they retreat.

She goes inside to the access corridor strewn with bodies and blood and runs within her horde to the now static escalators, and swarms up to more gunfire erupting at the top, and ducks down to hide. Letting her horde stream past her.

They breach the top, and again, the defenders turn and flee. Firing as they go, but Elaine senses they’ve got them on the run, and she presses her horde harder, making them screech and run with everything they’ve got.

The lightning hits again. Strobing the world as the thunder crashes across the sky, and the rain lashes down. The people ahead. The big woman with the kid on her back. Todd’s fat shape running with them and being urged to keep up.

Another doorway ahead of them. The door out onto the street, but that will be locked, which means she’s got them trapped.

‘FUCK YOU!’ she screams, then blinks as the big woman with the kid goes through the unlocked door with the others right behind her, and the guy that was homeless turns with a grin.

‘Aye. Fuck you!’ he shouts and grabs a bucket to throw the liquid over the ground as the horde run through it, and Elaine screams for them to stop as the Scottish guy runs out and throws his lighter inside.

Flames again. Elaine cries out and drops back while urging her horde to get through, but they hit the door to find it now locked and barred from the outside, and in that second, she realises she was led into a trap.

She screams in fury as her hosts sever one by one. All of them dying until only a few dozen crawlers remain.

All the rest now dead.

Her horde gone.

But her eyes gleam with sick rage, and what she did once, she can do again, only bigger. Much, much bigger.

Day Eighteen

Nine hundred and seventy-three taken from the other sprawling estates to the north of the city, and Elaine Sotheby urges them on to run after the survivors and that creepy, little, blind shit. She thinks more about him than Todd now. Even more than Sophie. Something about him. Something that’s got under her skin.

‘YOU’RE LOOKING REALLY GOOD, BY THE WAY, ELAINE SOTHEBY!’ Sophie yells from somewhere ahead.

Elaine knows she looks good. Hell. She looks amazing. She’s toning more every day and went down another two waist sizes, and she’s got definition in her legs now, and her hair is so much thicker, and her skin is literally glowing.

She even had sex.

One of her zombies was a famous fitness model influencer, and she didn’t have to pay him extra or anything like what she did with Gary the stripper, who said she had to give him a tenner to suck his willy.

Although, in fairness, the influencer was pretty much compelled to shag her, but whatever. He seemed happy enough.

Funny thing is, though; it didn’t give her any fulfilment. No satisfaction. No anything. She wasn’t disgusted either. She was just indifferent about it and realised that cheap, emotionless sex served no purpose, which was because she now had real purpose for the first time in her life. She had an objective and something she was working towards, and so she sent her hot influencer back into the ranks and put her mind back to the task in hand.

Which was to gain a much, much bigger horde.

One thousand one hundred and two.

That’s how many she gained and returned into the city yesterday, and took a spray bottle of paint from the hardware store and daubed:

I Will Find You
on walls and windows as she hunted for signs of them, and it took a full day and night, and most of the next day to achieve that.

She found them in the police HQ building. Which was a stroke of genius because she’d passed it lots of times and saw it had already been ransacked, and figured there was no way they’d go back into a place that had already been attacked.

And yet.

And yet.

‘And yet, here you are,’ she said while scenting the fresh aroma of what she knew was Todd taking a shit because she’d lived with him long enough to know that foul stench anywhere.

She’d also learned her lesson from last time and didn’t attack straight away, but got her horde to surround the building first, and she even positioned other zombies further out to keep watch because she was getting smarter as well as slimmer.

Then the moment came, and she willed the order, with all sides attacking at once. Slamming into fire doors, with the most focus put onto the breach already formed in the main doors. They were quickly inside and over the barricade that had formerly collapsed to find the internal doors screwed shut with thick metal locking bars bolted across the inside.

But she heard the shouts upstairs and once more saw Sophie appear at the window. Elaine grinned and nodded. Sophie waved and then motioned as though this was all nuts. Elaine shrugged as though saying it is what it is, and they held eye contact for a few seconds until Todd appeared next to Sophie, and she remembered what he did that day.

‘Don’t trust him, Sophie Addison!’ she shouted as Todd looked like he was protesting his innocence.

Then they disappeared, and the liquid was poured out like last time.

‘DRAW BACK!’ she yelled and willed the order, and her horde fled from the building as the flaming bottles came out as the assault rifles fired.

But Elaine had them behind cover, and only one hundred and twenty-nine died. The firing stopped, and it went quiet, and she knew she had them.

Hosts died once more breaking through the doors, but they got through and were breaching the interior, with marbles thrown down the stairs, making them trip and slip.

‘Fucking Home Alone,’ Elaine muttered. It felt desperate and cheap, and she knew she had them

Until she realised she didn’t, because the outliers spotted movement, and she ran to see Sophie and the others darting across a gap in front of The Crown Court building next to The Great Hall on the opposite side of the street at the end of the plaza.

Elaine frowned, then looked down at the ground, then back to the police station, and remembered watching a documentary on true crime when she was stuffing her face with Pringles about how most police stations had underground connections to the court buildings.

‘Fuckers,’ she spat and willed the order as her horde turned to give chase onto the Romsey Road with a hard left into the complex of Military Museums and into the first buildings, The Rifles Museum, where the hosts are withered by gunfire and Molotov cocktails.

But she chases them through and out the back, only for two old cannons to explode and send buckets of nails and screws, and bolts flying along the building line.

Over one hundred and thirty are taken out just from that, and how they got two old cannons to work is beyond Elaine, but she still has plenty left.

Until they round the back of The King’s Royal Hussars Museum, and two more cannons are fired, which takes another hundred or so out.

‘I’d suggest you fuck off!’ the Scottish guy that used to be homeless yells. But Elaine can’t fuck off. The thing inside of her won’t allow it, and so she sends her horde after them into The Gurkha Museum, which is set on fire, and then out the other side to see Sophie and Todd, and the others all running across the large, open ground of Peninsula Square.

She’s got them! A rush inside. A sense of preparatory victory as Elaine sends her
remaining few hundred straight across the manicured gardens of the regimental grounds. All of them screeching and howling while she stays at the rear. Which serves to be a good idea when Sophie and her group reach the end colonnades and fire a whole big bunch of cannons all prepped and waiting at the end with a deafening roar and clouds of filthy smoke.

Thousands of chunks of super-heated metal are sent out with a great swathe of hosts snuffed out instantly and turned into minced beef. Or minced zombie.

‘We can do this all day!’ Mike yells from the far end behind the wall of smoke.

One thousand zombies killed within an hour or so, and Elaine stares across Peninsula Square to the others on the far side as the smoke slowly dissipates. ‘Remember what I said, Sophie Addison! Don’t trust him!’ Elaine yells.

‘YOU STABBED ME!’ Todd shouts back, and the sound of his stupid voice makes her grimace at the thought she ever felt anything for him. But then she feels that way about herself too and how little she thought about anything.

‘I have nothing to say to you, Todd!’ she calls in a voice now so different to how it was just days ago. The whining, passive aggressive tone now filled with inflection and intelligence. ‘And to Sophie and the others I will say give me the child, and I will leave you alone.’

‘Not a fucking chance, love!’ The Scottish guy yells.

‘Didn’t you used to be homeless?’ Elaine shouts, thinking she’s sure it was him.

‘Aye. Didn’t you used to be stupid and fuck ugly?’

Elaine snorts a laugh at that, and that alone shows the change because anything of that nature said before would have instantly triggered her. ‘Yes! Yes, I was. I guess we are all changing. What’s your name?’

‘Mike.’

‘I’m Elaine. Are you a soldier or something?’

‘Aye. Was. Long time ago.’

Something in his voice. A gentle sadness that Elaine can grasp and understand the meaning of in a way she could never before.

‘Like you said, Elaine. I think we’re all changing. Todd said you were thick as shit, but you don’t sound it,’ Mike yells. ‘You sound smart.’

‘Thank you. But I’m going to be honest with you, Mike. I will get more hosts, and I will come back and take that child from you.’

‘Why do you want him?’ another voice calls. Female. Older. A hard, direct voice.

‘Who are you?’ Elaine calls.

‘Bev.’

‘I don’t know why I want him, Bev. This thing inside. It tells me I have to kill him.’

‘It’s an infection,’ the handsome Indian doctor calls. Polite. Cultured. ‘Elaine? Can you hear me?’

‘I can hear you.’

‘Elaine. Listen to me. My name is Jev Patel. I’m a doctor. I think this thing is a parasitic infection that is trying to gain sentience or perhaps use the sentience within your mind as its own.’

‘Yes. That’s how it feels,’ Elaine calls, realising it makes sense. ‘Why aren’t you all infected?’

‘My best guess is that we are infected with a different strain.’

Elaine thinks for a second. ‘Is it making you fitter and stronger?’

‘Yes, Elaine. It is.’

‘Me too. I feel good now. I never felt this way before.’

‘Elaine, come over to us,’ the doctor urges, stepping out, so she can see him clearly. ‘I can try and help you.’

‘I can’t do that, Doctor Patel. If I’m near that child, I will kill him.’

‘Fuck me, that’s honest,’ she hears the Scottish guy say as his voice rolls around the buildings, and she knows her hearing has vastly improved.

‘Why?’ Jev calls.

‘I don’t know!’

‘He’s a child, Elaine!’ Jev says.

Elaine doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have the words to give. ‘Just give him to me! One death, and you can all go. I won’t torture him. It’ll be instant. I promise you.’

‘Listen to yourself, Elaine! He’s a child!’ Jev calls.

‘HE’S NOT! The thing inside of him. That’s not a child!’

Silence as they absorb it all.

‘I’m sorry. I can’t control what this is,’ Elaine says. ‘But I will kill that child.’

‘We won’t let you do that, Elaine,’ Jev calls.

‘Then I’ll get more. I’ll come back with more!’

‘Aye, you do that, love. They’ll die the same,’ Mike says as Elaine feels a surge of something that makes her step out with an urge to present herself and spots the rifles lift to aim, but she also sees the boy raise a thin arm.

‘It is not the time,’ he says with his voice drifting over, and through the smoke, they stare at one another.

‘I meant what I said, Sophie Addison. Do not trust Todd! He’s not right.’

She turns and walks off. Expecting to be shot in the back and surprised when she isn’t.

But then nothing about this strange, new world is how it should be.

She reaches the corner of the Gurkha Museum building now ablaze with flames reaching out of the windows into the sky, and she turns back to see them still there while in another place, in a town square bordered by flats, a little girl screams into the silence as Howie and his team drop to their knees.

A moment in time for all of them.

A turning point in the game they are all playing.

Howie snarls. Rising to his feet.

Mike does the same. Staring across to the zombie woman that the boy told him not to kill while she, in turn, stares back, with her upper lip flicking up to show her teeth, and as Howie charges out to kill them all, so she turns and disappears.

To get more.

More and more, and many more.

11

Day Twenty

‘Honestly, though. We must have killed them all by now,’ Sophie says as the others snort laughs. The joke should be old by now, but the way Sophie says it keeps it fresh.

‘Ha, yeah!’ Todd says with a laugh, a second too late and a touch too loud. ‘Good one, Soph,’ he says, offering a fist bump.

Olivia glares at him. She hates Todd, and it shows in her face with a palpable sense of violence. ‘But seriously. What did you do?’ she asks again.

‘Fuck’s sake! I said already. She stabbed me, and I didn’t do nothing,’ Todd says with a whine as his beady eyes glance to see if the elders, Bev and Mike, and Jevram are still buying it, then back to Sophie to look for pity, then to Kev and Craig. He smiles at Debs but avoids looking at Olivia. She’s too intense and too direct. Todd doesn’t look at the boy either. The freaky fucking weirdo blind child, who keeps cocking his head over as though he can see, and that bird of his. The baby pigeon with the pink chest and wings that apparently is only two weeks old but is already way bigger than the mommy pigeon and the other scrawny baby.

‘Why did Elaine say not to trust you?’ Olivia asks again. Like a dog with a bone, refusing to let it go.

‘Liv,’ Bev says with a groan. ‘We’ve asked him.’

‘He’s full of shit,’ Olivia says.

‘What do you wanna do? Beat it out of him?’ Bev asks.

‘Yeah! Can I?’

‘Eh?’ Todd asks in alarm.

‘No. You cannot beat him,’ Bev says before turning back to the others. ‘I know I’ve said it, but it needs repeating. We should leave. Right now. We should get out of Winchester before Elaine comes back. You heard what she said. She’ll bring more and kill Samir. Debs? Jev? Come on. See sense.’

Jevram lifts a hand and in that single motion shows he both agrees with Bev while also that he’s powerless to do anything else.

Debora feels wretched too. She’s risked death many times over to keep him alive, but yet she feels the same compulsion as the others, and although Samir is her son, when they discuss that side of him, that ability of his to see or know things, he’s not her son, and she feels the same for him as the others. That his will must be exacted.

‘Fuck,’ Bev mutters and looks to Mike. ‘I should just take him. I could, you know. I could just pick him up and carry him away.’

Mike pulls a face like go on then. But Bev knows she won’t.

‘We’ve all heard you, Bev,’ Kevin says after a second. ‘And we all feel the same, eh?’ he asks as the others nod.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Todd says.

‘Shut up, Todd. What did you do to Elaine?’ Olivia asks.

‘Nothing! I swear down. I told you! She just went mental and stabbed me, and she was a zombie and-.’

‘She stabbed you when she was a zombie or before?’

‘Yeah!’

‘Which one?’ Olivia asks.

‘Liv,’ Bev says, flapping her hand because they’d done this many times.

A flutter of wings breaks the tension as they all look to Thor once more flapping his wings and trying to fly.

‘He’s so pretty,’ Sophie says as the others murmur in agreement at Thor’s full plumage showing colours unlike his mother’s dull grey and greens. His chest and wings a beautiful, shimmering pink of a shade none of them have ever seen on a bird before, let alone a common street pigeon. He’s big too. Already way bigger than his mother, with thick legs and a large beak. Deep intelligence shows in his eyes. He never leaves Samir either. Not since he was two days old and opened his eyes, and wriggled away from his mother to get onto the child’s lap. Samir put him back with his mother, but Thor kept wriggling free. In the end, Samir started feeding him baby bird formula from a pet shop, and the bird ate and grew, and ate, and grew. And now, at only two weeks old, he’s already flapping his wings with short bursts of flight.

But then they don’t just look at Thor. They look at Samir too, who smiles as though he can see what the bird is doing, which he obviously can’t.

Todd still thinks the child and the bird are weird as shit. Disabilities have always creeped Todd out.

‘Thor!’ Olivia says, beckoning the bird to fly to her. ‘Come on. You can do it.’

Thor flaps his wings harder as though he can grasp what she is saying. His eyes locked on Olivia. Samir’s head cocked over. A wry smile on his lips as though willing the bird to try. Thor flaps harder and shoots forward a few feet, with Olivia catching him mid-air with a whoop and a cheer.

‘Yay! That was the furthest yet. Oh, my god, he’s so heavy now! He’s like me. A big, fat Viking bird.’

‘Er, excuse me,’ most of the others say in mimicry of her former triggered tone.

‘Get screwed,’ she tells them. ‘Fly to Sophie. To Sophie…’ Olivia urges the bird.

‘He doesn’t know our names,’ Sophie says as Thor jerks his head around to stare straight at her.

‘He bloody does,’ Craig says with a laugh. ‘He’s staring straight at you.’

‘Come on then!’ Sophie says as the others urge Thor, and he flaps his wings and takes off with a clumsy knock into Todd, who shouts out in panic and knocks it away, prompting shouts from the others.

‘Oi!’ Olivia says, on her feet as the bird recovers itself and tries again.

‘He’s alright,’ Sophie says as the bird lands in her lap with a flutter of wings.

‘What did you hit him for?’ Olivia demands.

‘Liv, stop picking at him,’ Bev says. ‘The bird scared him.’

‘I wasn’t scared!’ Todd says and tries to reach over to pet the bird, but Thor squawks in a very unpigeonlike way and pecks hard at his hand, making Todd pull it away.

‘Serves you right,’ Olivia tells him.

Todd avoids looking at her and rubs his hand to show how much it hurt in the hope of getting sympathy, but the others don’t show him any attention.

‘He does! He knows our names,’ Sophie says. ‘Go to Jev. Jev!’ she says as the bird looks to the doctor and flaps off again.

‘Have you ever seen a pigeon do that?’ Bev asks with a look to Mike.

‘They’ve got excellent eyesight,’ Kevin says. ‘My dad had ‘em as racers. He reckoned they can see colours we can’t see.’

‘How is that possible?’ Sophie asks in awe.

‘I dunno,’ Kev says with a shrug, and they look to Jevram as their go-to person of science and knowledge.

‘I think they have different lenses or perhaps filters, or eye-parts,’ Jevram says, picking the bird up to stare into his eyes.

‘Very medical,’ Mike says. ‘Is that what you said to your patients? Is something wrong with your body-parts?’

Laughs and chuckles. The energy high despite the ever-present and somewhat looming sense of death.

Elaine said she’ll get more.

She said she’ll come back.

They should be fleeing in fear, not laughing and playing with a mutant pink pigeon.

‘These colours though,’ Jevram says, gently easing one of Thor’s wings out to marvel at the span and length, and the shimmering, pink colours. Samir smiles, and the bird flaps sudden and fast and takes off to go back to Samir’s lap. Cooing and making noises of adoration and love as the boy strokes his head.

‘They can recognise people,’ Mike says, fussing his original pigeon still in her nest with the other baby. A tiny thing still with stubby feathers that takes regurgitated food from his mother. He rubs her head. Listening to her coo softly and thinks of the years she kept him company, and the long, bitter winter nights when she’d snuggle into his arms to keep warm. His tenderness towards her is obvious and clear. He kisses her head often and calls her pigeon, and tells her he loves her. ‘I’d watch them on the ledges up high pick people out in the crowd that sometimes fed them. Saw it many a time. Even in the busiest crowds.’

‘Can’t they read the Earth’s magnetic lines or something?’ Craig asks. ‘That’s how they know where to go, isn’t it?’ he asks with a look to Kevin.

‘No idea, mate. My dad reckoned his birds could smell my mum burning his dinner every night. She said it was his old slippers. Anyway, anyway, anyway. Getting dark by the looks of it. We turning in?’

They get ready to bed down for the night in one of the ancient warehouses made of thick stone and thick timbers in the centre of town. Big, stout doors and large enough to have exits leading out onto different streets, giving them ample escape routes.

Mike brushes his teeth in one of the bathrooms. The craving for a drink still there, and truth be told, if he was presented with booze now, he doesn’t know if he’d be strong enough to resist it. But he does feel better. A whole lot better. The yellowing jaundiced look has gone, and he’s even got some colour back in his skin. He’s filling out a bit too. His limbs and torso feel fuller and harder; mind you, his eyebrows aren’t growing back very fast.

A cough at the door. Low and purposeful, and he looks over to Bev leaning against the frame smiling in a way a woman hasn’t smiled at Mike in a very long time.

‘I’m just finished,’ he says.

‘Take your time,’ she says and nods at his naked upper body. ‘You’re putting some muscle on. Suits you. You look good.’

Mike doesn’t know what to say to that. He thinks to quip or come back with a one-liner, but nothing forms, and so he blinks silently and stupidly, much to Bev’s delight as she walks over to gently hip bump him out of the way. ‘You’re actually blushing.’

He smiles at her. Seeing the lines in the corners of her eyes and around her mouth that speak of a life lived. Of places been and experiences had, and the fact he accepts her leadership without question is testament to the energy she projects. Except right now, it’s a different kind of energy as she glances at him staring at her while holding her toothbrush. Their eyes holding contact for a few long seconds until she smiles and steps in to kiss his cheek, which should be a gentle and kind, and decent, but she also reaches around to squeeze his bum and winks.

‘Cheeky,’ he says with a laugh and heads out, with her smiling as she starts brushing her teeth. The flirtation overt and obvious and growing gently with each day.

Sophie clocks him coming out with an excited hand clap at the look on his face. ‘They are! They’re so gonna get together. That’s so cute. Don’t you think that’s cute, Liv?’

‘No. Why didn’t Elaine say what he did?’

‘Stop going on about it. We saw he had that stab wound,’ Sophie says with a grin at Mike going by.

‘What you grinning at?’ he asks.

‘Nothing,’ she says with an even wider smile.

‘She thinks you and-,’ Craig starts to say.

‘Don’t jinx it!’ Sophie snaps and leans over to swipe at Craig. ‘No! Shut up, Craigy.’

‘She thinks you and-,’ he tries saying again as Sophie launches on top of him, laughing while pushing a hand over his mouth to stop him jinxing the budding romance.

‘Just shush and shush,’ Sophie tells them all. ‘There is nothing happening, Mike. Nothing to report!’

‘Ye fecking weirdo,’ he says in a strong Glaswegian accent, giving her a wink as Bev comes out of the bathroom.

‘I put your bedding there,’ Sophie tells her with an eager nod, pointing to the bedroll next to Mike’s. Bev tuts and rolls her eyes. Well aware of the gossip and jokes doing the rounds, but it’s all in good spirits.

‘Right. I’m going to brush my teeth. No tittle-tattling, Craigy,’ Sophie says with a waggling finger as Craig smiles.

‘I come too,’ Debora says, heading off with Sophie.

Olivia doesn’t smile. She watches how Todd keeps tracking Sophie and Debs everywhere they go. She doesn’t like how Todd licks his lips when he looks at them. Or how he walks slowly past the bathroom as though trying to sneak a look inside because the door doesn’t shut properly.

Night comes, and the world outside grows dark, but the howls don’t come anymore. They haven’t happened for days. Now there is just silence.

Mike takes first watch. Bev takes the second. Kevin takes the last, and the new dawn of a new day soon shines bright outside.

Day twenty-one.

Twenty-one days since the old world fell and the brave new world began.

‘Okay, so today we’ll keep preparing for the next assault,’ Bev tells them over breakfast. ‘We all know what to do. We’ll focus on the bridge. Who’s got Samir today?’

‘Mum,’ Samir says, pointing directly towards his mother standing a few metres away. But then he does that a lot now. It’s as though his other senses have ramped, and he knows where they all are. ‘I want to come too, though,’ Samir adds in his normal voice. The voice of a child that wants to do something, and he turns to face Bev walking behind him. ‘Please, Bev?’

‘I’m sorry, nips,’ she says, scuffing his head.

‘Later, though,’ Mike says as the boy once again turns his head to stare exactly in the right direction. ‘We’ll take you out for some sun and air.’

‘Alright then. Everyone, get ready. We’ll leave in five,’ Bev says as she spots Todd heading for the toilet while rubbing his belly.

‘He said he’s got a bug,’ Jevram says when Todd disappears inside the bathroom.

‘Can we leave him here then?’ Olivia asks with an eager nod.

‘No,’ Debora says with a groan.

‘He’s slower than me,’ Olivia says. ‘And he moans literally all the time. I can’t keep walking. I was stabbed. Boohoo, I’m a victim twat.’

A few minutes later, with everyone ready to go, Bev taps the bathroom door. ‘Todd?’

A groan inside. She rolls her eyes.

‘I think I’m sick,’ his whiny voice says.

‘You think you’re sick, or you are sick?’

‘I’ve got the shits.’

‘Don’t look at me. I’m not checking him,’ Jevram says as Bev blows air through her cheeks.

‘Okay. Fine. You’ll have to stay back. But don’t get in Debora’s way. She’s in charge. You do what she says.’

‘Okay,’ Todd calls with a pathetic whine.

They head out, leaving Debora sagging on the spot at being stuck with Todd all day; then she sags again at the breakfast things that need cleaning up and figures the room could do with a sweep too. But then, actually, staying back will give her a chance to wash her hair and shave her legs and armpits. An image of Craig swims in her mind. They’ve been sharing smiles and looks, and for the first time in years, she thinks about her own appearance with an urge to look nice.

Then she sees it.

How her son, having put his drinking cup down before he kissed Sophie and Olivia and got hugs from the guys before they left, now turns to pick it up.

But he doesn’t grope about.

His hand goes straight for it.

‘Can you see?’ she asks sharply in Albanian. Samir snaps his head over as though caught out.

‘No, mamma.’

Something in his tone that only a mother would detect. She goes closer. Clasping his cheeks and staring into his colourless eyes. The pupils don’t change, and there is no sign he can see her. She kisses his forehead. ‘I love you,’ she tells him.

‘Love you, momma,’ he says.

She steps away to clean and tidy and picks up a roll of fresh socks.

‘Samy?’

‘Yes?’ he asks, turning towards her as she throws the socks at his face, with his hand coming up to bat them away as Thor makes a noise and flaps his wings.

‘Samy!’ she whispers urgently, striding over to grab his shoulders.

‘I can’t see!’ he says quickly.

‘Don’t lie to me. We said we’d never lie. You can see!’

‘I can’t, momma.’

‘I threw the socks! You saw me.’

He shakes his head. His face showing worry and distress. ‘In here,’ he says and taps his head. ‘Not all things and not in colours like before.’

She goes to speak but stops as the words sink in at the same second as Thor flaps his wings to half fly and half jump up until he’s on Samir’s shoulder and staring straight at her. Which is when her son cocks his head over in that way he does. As though he is looking at her, and the connection is made, making her gasp with a hand to her mouth, and she blinks at the bird’s dark shining eyes staring up at her.

‘Don’t cry, momma,’ Samir says as only then she realises she is crying with tears on her cheeks, which he shouldn’t be able to see. A surge of panic inside. An initial fear of it being ungodly or just wrong, but those fears banish within a second, and pure love rushes in. A feeling of joy that makes her lean down to smile and weep as she stares into the bird’s eyes.

But she has to be sure. She has to know for certain, and so she brings a shaky hand up and extend three fingers.

‘Three,’ Samir whispers.

She cries out and scoops her son into her arms, and swings him around. Kissing his head and cheeks and kissing Thor until he squawks and flaps his wings. She doesn’t know how this is happening or why, only that it is.

‘How long?’ she asks.

‘Some days,’ he admits and frowns. ‘I see things. In my mind. Things I don’t know. A man with dark eyes and dark hair. Sometimes they fight like we do, but they kill more than we do. And I see places. A big castle surrounded by the sea and, and, and a big wall of many colours… And then I saw other faces, and I didn’t know who they were, but the colours are different. Colours I never saw before, and then I saw you, momma, and, and, and…’

She hugs him again. Holding him close and kissing him until he squirms like every boy does at being over-kissed and over-hugged.

‘Urgh, my belly,’ Todd says, coming out of the bathroom. ‘Have they gone without me?’

‘Yes! But Samir can see! Through the bird. He sees through this bird,’ Debora says with an excited babble as Todd blinks, not getting it and not that interested either.

‘I’ll stay and protect you,’ he says as though he’d been practising the line, and the smile fades on Debora’s face.

‘Sure. Whatever. We need to clean up.’

‘Can I have a gun?’

‘Why do you want a gun?’

Todd nods as though they just agreed to something, ‘To protect you.’

‘I have a gun,’ she says, tapping the pistol holstered at her side.

‘Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.’

She frowns. Not understanding him at all. But who cares! Her son can see, even if it is by somehow telepathically connecting to a large, pink pigeon. She feels so happy she could burst and wishes the others were here to tell them. Especially Craig. Oh. She likes him. Will Samir be okay with that? Would he even care? But no. Samir loves them all and often chats with Craig. Craig is softly spoken and smart, and he can be endearing. Especially when he thinks of himself as being weak, when in fact he is strong and full of courage.

Debora wishes she could do something for them all. Like bake a cake or make something nice, but they only have camping gas burners and pans. Maybe Kevin can get a gas supply into an oven or something. He’s the group’s DIY expert. Kevin fixes the locks on the doors they break when they force into a new place, and it’s Kevin that goes around fitting bolts and checking escape routes. He’s good with the weapons too. He can strip a rifle and pistol down faster than Bev and Mike.

‘You shouldn’t touch that,’ Samir says, bringing Debora from her thoughts to see Todd near the weapons bags looking guilty.

‘I didn’t touch anything.’

‘You should leave the weapons alone, Todd,’ Debora says.

‘I didn’t touch anything!’ he says again with a roll of his eyes. ‘Jesus. The blind kid heard me nudge the bag.’

‘His name is Samir,’ Debora says.

‘Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.’

Debora doesn’t get the things Todd says. It’s like everything he says has another meaning, and it always leaves her feeling confused. ‘Please, don’t touch the guns.’

‘I’m not!’ he whines as Debora smiles again at her son, feeling that rush inside that her son can see her love for him again. She even finds herself glancing to Thor to make sure she’s in his eyeline, and Samir’s face brightens as he grins back at her, and she can’t help but go over for more kisses and hugs.

‘Momma! Stop it,’ he laughs and squirms as big, meaty fingers rub at his side, and Thor squawks and flaps his wings at Todd being too close and laughing too loud as he tries to tickle Samir.

‘Does he like being tickled? Eh? Does he?’ Todd asks in a loud, slow way of talking to foreigners.

Samir does like being tickled, but not by Todd, and he quickly steps away as the humour drains from him and Debora. Not that Todd notices as he chuckles along like they all just had a great time.

‘We should clean up,’ Debora says. ‘And you can help me,’ she tells her son.

‘But I’m blind!’ Samir says as they laugh again. Todd laughs too, but with no idea what they’re laughing at. He sucks the humour from the room again. A big man. Stocky, with a belly hanging over the front of his jogging bottoms. Spots on his chin and greasy hair. He stank too. The others dropped hints when he joined the group, but Todd ignored them until Mike told him to go and wash or get dragged outside to be hosed down.

Todd didn’t like that.

He doesn’t like Mike at all.

Mike was the filthy homeless guy that slept rough and picked up used ciggie butts. Now he’s like some super soldier or something.

And Kev was that gobby taxi driver Todd used to see around. He was fat too, like Todd. Now he’s slim and not so gobby, and he fixes things, and the others really respect him, and all around him, the people in the group look good and healthy, and Todd doesn’t.

Elaine looked different too. The other night when they saw her. When Kevin had got those old cannons working, and they killed all of Elaine’s zombies. Elaine looked fit. Her boobs looked bigger, and it made Todd feel horny. He was even about to switch sides and go back to her, but then she said she wanted to kill him. She’d said that before. Elaine was literally always saying that, so it didn’t register. But somehow that night it did register, and Todd reckoned she proper meant it.

Still though.

She looked fit.

Not as fit as Sophie though.

Todd thinks back to masturbating at the topless picture of Sophie on Elaine’s phone. It turns him on that he’s around her all the time now, and he’s seen her breasts. He even saw her in her bra the other day. She came out of the bathroom in it and was chatting away, but Kevin stepped in front of Todd and glared at him, and Craig passed Sophie a top and said she shouldn’t walk around like that.

Todd turned away and flinched at seeing Olivia holding her heavy mace while glaring at him, and made a point of rubbing his belly, where Elaine had stabbed him as though it really hurt.

The doc had given him meds and checked the wound, and said it was lucky Todd had a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, which prevented the blade from damaging any organs. The doc was nice to him when Todd first joined the group. But then they all were. They kept asking about Elaine, and he told them she stabbed him for like no reason, then ran outside, and got bit by an old biddy, and Todd clubbed her to death, the old biddy, but then Elaine tried to like bite him and turn him into a vampire, but he fought her off, cos like, he did some Judo and Karate, and he neck-chopped her cos he’s actually really strong.

‘No, hang on. She said you looked at Sophie’s boobs,’ Olivia said.

‘No! I didn’t!’ Todd blurted in his usual way of denying anything he was accused of. ‘I, er, charged her phone up on the solar thingy to call for help and, and… And I dunno, the phone went funny cos of the zombies and opened her pictures, and she thought I was looking at them, but I wasn’t! And she shouldn’t even have the picture of Sophie’s tit… I mean booby breasts, but she was like well jel over Sophie and showed them to everyone cos she’s a vampire zombie, and she stabbed me.’

That was about as much sense as they could get from him, and no matter how many times Olivia tried, she couldn’t nail him down or get any straight answers.

Which is because although Bev was right and Todd is of low intelligence, he is also very cunning.

Cunning enough to see things and remember things. Like when he remembered Elaine had the pictures on her phone. He used to unlock it using Elaine’s face when she was asleep and perv over the photos.

He’s also cunning enough to have learnt the art of misdirection by babbling details and facts along with fakery to confuse anyone ever trying to ask him why he was claiming benefits and working cash-in-hand at the same time.

Like when he joined the team and went back with them, and saw how they lived and how they all had bug-out bags.

They gave one to Todd. A nice rucksack with bottles of water in it and some meds, and clean socks, and a waterproof cagoul, and a tin opener, and a torch. They gave him a big knife but said it had to stay in the bag. He asked for a gun. They said no and maybe later they’d train him how to use one. Todd told them he was aces on PubG and Call of Duty and like totally had great aim.

That didn’t seem to help though.

But the whole thing about the bug-out bag grew roots in Todd’s brain, and over the days, he listened to them talking about Elaine and the whole situation. He felt a bit of panic when he realised Bev was a copper cos of what he did to Elaine. But then she kicked him in the nuts and stabbed him, and so it wasn’t actually his fault. But then he heard the cops didn’t work anymore or the army, or anything at all.

That took a few days to sink in and grow roots too.

There were no cops.

No army.

No anything.

He’d attacked Elaine and hadn’t been arrested cos there were no cops, and nobody was ever going to believe Elaine cos she was a vampire zombie, and he had the stab wound, and Elaine kept attacking them and said she wanted to kill the weird, blind kid, and if she could, then she’d leave them alone. He thought about taking the kid to Elaine as a peace offering. Like how he’d take her a twelve-inch meat feast Pizza when she was proper sulking with him.

But then she kept saying she really wanted to kill Todd, and she looked smart and fit, and hot, and Todd’s sense of self-preservation stopped him from doing that.

But it didn’t stop him thinking about bug-out bags. And Sophie’s boobs. And there being no cops. Which meant no consequences.

Which is why he said he had the shits.

But he’d fucked up.

He thought it was Sophie’s turn to stay back with Samir. Not his mum’s.

Ah, well. That was alright. She was fit too, with much bigger boobs than Sophie.

He watches her move around the room picking up empty wrappers and tidying things away and glances to the boy using a broom to sweep the floor with that bird on his shoulder, and he listens to them jabbering on in whatever language they use, which is rude because this is Great Britain Kingdom of United England, and they should speak British.

But he stays quiet.

On a chair against the wall.

His bug-out bag ready to go.

The bags of weapons nearby.

The zip on the bag of pistols unfastened, which somehow the weird boy heard and ratted him out to his mummy.

She is fit though. Todd watches her bum as she bends over and tidies, and sorts the room, and he likes that it’s hot, which means she’s in a tight vest.

‘Okay!’ she says with a gasp and a smile at Samir. He waves back, and she laughs again as though it’s the most amazing thing ever.

Todd waves too and laughs, and Debs smiles at him, and in his mind, she’s smiling nicely and warmly, and all sexily, and not at all uncomfortably. ‘I will wash my hair,’ she says in English. ‘Samy, you stay in here, yes? Call me if you need anything.’

‘I’m okay,’ Samir says and sits down to fuss the other pigeon and the baby. The proper, normal ones while his weird, pink bird flaps down and struts around the nest. Todd looks back to Debora staring at him for a long second.

‘I can watch him,’ Todd says, all manly and heroic. ‘And er, you know, make sure he doesn’t fall out the window or run out in front of a bus. Haha! We should get him a white stick.’

Debora frowns and offers a tight smile, and heads into the bathroom to use the camping shower Kevin rigged up. Todd creeps her out. The way he stares. That was one thing about her country; men like Todd never lasted long. Albania was often a violent, dangerous country, but weirdly, that overt masculinity prevented guys from being too creepy or perverted. Someone like Todd would have been beaten to a pulp many times over, especially if he dared look at Debora, but then she was connected to the Krye. The feared Albanian mafia.

She figures that’s why she finds Craig so attractive. Because he’s not masculine in the toxic sense. He’s smart and educated and seeks to use reason and understanding. Debora’s whole life was spent around hard men covered in tattoos, who told each other stories of the ugly man and how they’d met him or even worked with him. They’d boast and brag about how the ugly man had told them they were great fighters. That made Debora smile because the ugly man never said things like that. He never said anything unless he had to. That was his way. She knows that personally. She remembers the first time she saw him. He walked into a room full of bruisers and killers. He was lean and quiet. She remembers his energy more than anything. He was a tiger. The way he moved, and the way he quietly projected the belief that there was nothing on this planet he couldn’t kill. He was apex of all apex predators. Everyone in that room knew it, which is why they all boasted and bragged, and made a show of clapping him on the shoulder and being his friend. Debora saw the impact he had on those around him.

He had an impact on her too.

But those days are gone.

That world is gone, and this is the brave, new world, and her son can see. She smiles and hums, and thinks about Craig as she strips off and braces herself to step under the flow of cold water. A shiver. A yelp. She tenses for a minute, then relaxes into it, and realises it’s not that bad. The water in the bag hanging up has risen to room temperature, and this weather is hot. Hot as hell.

She lathers her hair up, not hearing the door open as Todd checks over his shoulder to the blind kid facing away, still fussing over the stupid birds. A thrum inside. A sick thrill. He slips into the bathroom, and his mouth falls open at the sight of Debora naked in the corner. The camping shower head pouring water over her glistening body and going down the drain. Her boobs. Her limbs. The dark hair between her legs. His dick stiffens with a sick lust showing on his face as he clocks her clothes on the other side of the room.

The holster attached to the belt of her trousers. The butt of the gun inside. Loaded. Made ready. Safety on.

A sixth sense hits Debora.

Her eyes snap open with a jolt of horror at Todd standing in the bathroom staring at her.

His eyes glancing down to her body, then up to see her looking at him, and the greatest fright comes when he doesn’t show fear or turn away.

Because he’s planned for this.

The only difference was that it was meant to be Sophie in here with him, but it doesn’t matter. Debs will do just fine.

She thinks to yell, but he brings the knife into view. The one they gave him for his bug-out bag. She glances at it, and in that same instant, she spots the bulge in his joggers, with his intent made obvious.

She whispers no, and it all seems to happen at once, with Todd jolting forward, which makes her try and run from the corner, but the tiled floor is slippery, and she loses grip. He grabs a fistful of her hair, and she flies back into the wall with enough force to knock the air from her lungs. Then he’s pushing into her, with the knife near her throat. His other hand groping at her body while he grunts with heavy breathing.

‘Get off!’ she says.

‘Shut up, or I’ll kill him!’ he whispers over her. Holding the point of the knife close to her eyes, and the sudden fear for her son renders her passive. She nods quickly. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Please. Don’t hurt him.’

‘Bend over,’ he snarls, squeezing her too hard. Hard enough to hurt and make her yelp, and she starts moving to turn around and uses the stainless-steel reflection of the urinal, to see him trying to hold the knife, and her hair, and push his trousers down all at the same time. She holds still. Blinking fast. He grunts in frustration, too turned on and too rushed to think properly.

She turns to look back at him and smiles, making him blink stupidly. ‘I want you,’ she says, trying to make the fear sound like lust. ‘I’ve always wanted you.’

‘Yeah?’ he gasps, nodding eagerly. He knew she fancied him. It was so obvious.

‘Quickly,’ she says, urging him to do it. Nodding her head and reaching back to touch him while hiding the revulsion.

‘Oh, god. I’m gonna come!’ he blurts as even she blinks at the speed of it. He thrusts forward to try and get inside of her. His face blushing red. His body jolting. She seizes the moment. Slamming him back then twisting away but she cries out from the deep searing pain of the knife scoring down her back as he tries to stab her and misses.

She screams out and dives to tug the pistol from the holster as Todd lands on her back. A hard punch to her head jars her brain, then his hands are on hers. Trying to wrestle the gun away.

‘Momma!’ Samir shouts. The bathroom door slamming open. ‘GET OFF!’ the boy shouts, running forward with images in his mind of Todd on top of his mother. The colours lurid and bright, and nothing like they were to his human eyes, but the perception throws him off slightly because it’s not his eyes he is seeing through, and in the panic, he forgets to adjust and launches himself at Todd, but misses, and trips over his mother.

Todd shouts and lashes out with a heavy arm. Hitting the boy hard enough to send him sliding across the floor into the wall and pipes beneath the sinks. Thor squawks and gives flight with his talons aiming for Todd’s face. Scoring marks and drawing blood. Flapping his wings hard. Todd yells and tries to bat it away with one hand while his other stops Debora pulling the gun out.

‘Tell me one thing to do in a fight,’ Debora asked someone once. ‘I’m a woman. I’m weaker than men.’

The man she asked looked at her for a long time. She didn’t think he would answer her because he must get asked questions like that all the time. But he did answer her. In that deep, gravelly voice of his.

‘Not weak. It is the mind telling you this. If you fight. You fight to live. Fight with everything. All of your strength. Take his eyes. Bite him. Like an animal.’

She bites Todd’s hand.

She bites it so hard she severs one of his fingers.

He screams and yanks his hand away while Thor rakes at his eyes, and Samir jumps on his back and gets his arms around Todd’s throat, and tries to pull him away. All of which gives Debora the second she needs to yank the gun from the holster and twist to try and aim it at Todd. But in that chaos of a second, Debora knows her son is on Todd’s back, and she doesn’t risk shooting.

‘Samy! Get off!’ she yells in Albanian as Todd snatches sight of the gun and punches her in the face, then tries to grab it. They wrestle and twist, and turn. Thor still attacking. Samir still on Todd’s back. Todd snatches the gun. Fumbling and knocking the safety off and on and off again. His finger pulling the trigger. Sending a round through the bathroom door into the main room with a deafening gunshot that sends terror into Debora, giving her extra strength to pull Todd off his feet and over the floor until they’re under the still running shower and getting drenched as they fight for their lives. Todd’s face bleeding heavily from Thor’s claws. But in the frenzy of that second he hears Debora cough and spots the water going into her mouth. He grunts and shifts her position. Making it hard for her to draw air. She starts bucking in panic. Her hand slips from the gun. He yanks it free and hits her hard across the face, then twists to slam his back into the wall. Crushing Samir; then he swipes out and sends Thor flying, and gets to his feet. Breathing hard. His trousers still round his ankles. Blood dripping from his face. Debora staring up in fear. Samir the same. Todd grinning evilly as he aims and pulls the trigger to kill her son.

The gun clicks. The safety switched back on during the melee.

Todd frowns and thumbs it off . He aims again, not seeing Debora and Samir looking past him to Olivia swinging the Mace that hits the side of his head.

He drops instantly and blinks up at Olivia standing over him, breathing hard as the others pour into the room.

He blacks out.

He comes to.

Fists hitting his face. He tries to defend himself and realises he’s in the main room with Mike on top of him. Slamming hard fists into his face over and over.

‘My pigeon!’ Mike yells between tears. ‘Ye killed my fucking pigeon!’

Todd blacks out.

When he wakes, Sophie is stopping the others from getting at him.

‘No!’ she yells and pushes them back.

‘He shot my pigeon and her baby!’ Mike yells.

‘I know,’ Sophie says. ‘And I know just what to do with him…’

Todd tries to smile. He knew Sophie fancied him.

12

Day Twenty-One

Elaine gathers two thousand hosts within a few days with an advancement of intellect and proficiency. But then the estates surrounding the fashionable high-end city of Winchester provide rich, and more importantly, easy pickings because it appears the middle-classes, more so than any other, are more akin to remain in their own homes with the entitled belief that the government or army, or some such authority will surely get a grip and come to the rescue.

After all, they do pay higher rates of tax.

She sets off back to the city. Composed and holding her head high, with deep intelligence showing in her red eyes. Lean and fit. Days of walking and running, and eating only sparingly.

Three weeks since it began.

Three weeks into the brave, new world.

Things don’t look that different here on Stockbridge Road. A few crashed cars. A few doors and windows busted in.

She crosses the bridge over the train tracks running near to the station. The broken and derailed carriages now seemingly part of the landscape. Static and unmoving. Some with algae and fungus, and the first tiny blooms of moss showing on their sides that will in time cover them completely and hide all trace of the metallic things made-of-man.

Onto the Upper High Street. Terraced houses. Not one of them intact. Blood stains. Broken glass. Bullet holes.

She reaches the big junction, where the war monument sits proud and symbolic in the middle. Staring towards the town centre proper.

Two roads behind her.

The big quadrant of council buildings to her left. The police HQ on another road beyond the council buildings. The road slopes gently downhill to the Westgate Tower, which butts up to the old stone gothic buildings either side of Castle Avenue. A wide, paved walkway leading to The Great Hall. A place that has stood since William the Conqueror. The place that holds The Round Table. A large wooden thing made nearly one thousand years ago that was repainted by King Henry VIII in his colours of greens and creams.

Another entry point at the end giving access to the lower plaza that, in turn, butts up the Crown Court Building that is attached to the end of The Great Hall.

The Elaine Sotheby of her former life held no interest in history or anything other than immediate gratification.

But this Elaine Sotheby feels the relevance of this place.

The place that William the Conqueror chose to build his palace when he took power after the Battle of Hastings, which is right next to the quaint harbour of Rye.

This place changed the future of the country, and in so doing, it shaped the world because it was William’s lineage that led to the royalty that created the British Empire that, in turn, for good and for bad, touched every corner of the world.

And so it will happen again because that child is still here.

And in the silence. In that heavy, charged silence. A bell rings.

The type of bell held by a hand, swung forward and back.

The sound of it rolling around the buildings within the quiet city, but the source is the High Street, and she knows without seeing that it will be at The Buttercross Monument.

An urge inside to run and charge, and kill, and win.

She suppresses it. She pushes the thing back in her mind and walks instead of runs.

Her horde behind her.

Two thousand hosts being flooded with chemicals to make them fast and mean. Cunning, red eyes, and lips flicking up to show teeth.

She reaches the old pedestrian section leading to the narrow and ancient medieval section of the town.

A single figure ahead, who stops ringing the bell. Elaine frowns as she comes to a stop and stares at Sophie Addison.

Neither of them speak.

Sophie turns and walks down the High Street. Elaine follows but keeps the gap between them. It could be a trap, but something tells her this isn’t.

Sophie stops when she reaches The Buttercross Monument and looks back. Elaine stops too and watches as Sophie points at something and walks backwards.

Elaine goes forward alone.

Her horde held in place behind her.

The air charged and tense.

Elaine comes to a stop and stares down at Todd Driscoll at the base of the steps.

His legs bound.

His wrists bound.

His nose broken.

His eyes blackened and swollen.

One of his fingers severed away. The stump left open to the air.

His face covered in scratches.

‘You were right about him,’ Sophie says.

Elaine stares at her. Remembering the day she was taken into the true state of being and how Todd punched her in the belly, then tried to rape her. She remembers running back to their flat and being terrified when Todd locked her out.

But more than anything, she remembers the sick, frenzied look on Todd’s face when he pawed at her body, and she looks down on him as he blinks up with cunning and fear.

‘I didn’t do nuffin! She’s lying! I’ll tell you where they are! I will! And I tried to bring the boy to you, but they stopped me!’

‘There is no way out of this, Todd,’ she says in a voice and manner he does not recognise.

‘Don’t make him into one of you,’ Sophie says.

‘I won’t. You have my word.’

Sophie hesitates, thinking to ask what Elaine will do, but then decides better of it.

‘He’ll suffer,’ Elaine says, reading her expression as Sophie nods and turns to leave. ‘Wait… Join me, Sophie.’

‘Elaine, don’t.’

‘It’s not how you think it is. It’s the true state of being, Sophie,’ Elaine says as Sophie looks to the horde standing further back. Red-eyed and in torn and bloodied clothes. ‘We’re not evil, Sophie.’

Sophie smiles back. Charming Sophie. Sweet Sophie. Always positive. Always happy. ‘Mike said the devil doesn’t know it’s the devil. It thinks it’s a God.’

Sophie pauses, thinking, then walks towards Elaine. Coming closer. Too close.

‘Sophie!’ Mike calls from somewhere in a warning voice, but Sophie flaps a hand and comes closer until she’s in arm’s reach of Elaine Sotheby and looking at her old friend that was never a friend at all.

‘You’re so pretty now, Elaine. In your eyes, I mean. Your face. You’re not mean now or cruel, but you do cruel things.’

‘And yet,’ Elaine whispers.

‘Any yet,’ Sophie whispers.

‘Any yet,’ they both whisper with a smile shared. They went to school together. They lived and grew up in the same city with the same friends, in the same circles. ‘Let Jev help you, Elaine. He’s literally the smartest man ever.’

Elaine smiles sadly. ‘I was always jealous of you,’ Elaine says as Sophie nods with a single tear spilling down her cheek, and the greatest of surprises comes when Elaine reaches out to gently wipe it away. ‘And I’m sorry I kept that photo of you.’

‘It’s okay, Elaine.’

‘It’s not okay, Sophie. What people did to each other was cruel and sick. But when my kind take over, those things will never happen. We don’t feel pain, Soph. We don’t want to hurt each other. It’s… It’s… Ah, god! I can’t explain it. But it feels amazing. And right! Yes! It feels right.’

‘It’s not right,’ Sophie says while in the shadows Mike grunts and shifts position while aiming through the scope on the sniper rifle.

‘But it doesn’t have to be a war,’ Sophie says. ‘We can-.’

‘We can’t co-exist,’ Elaine says over her. Softly. Gently. Without malice or spite. ‘A lion and a tiger cannot share the same ground.’

‘What about a bear?’ Sophie asks with a flash of a smile that makes Elaine’s eyes glint with humour. ‘Lions and tigers, and bears.’

‘Oh my,’ they both say together, snorting gentle laughs that ebb away until the raw and awful reality comes back.

‘So we are enemies then?’ Sophie asks.

‘Yes, Sophie Addison. We are.’

‘Then if I see you again, Elaine Sotheby, I’ll have to kill you,’ Sophie says as Elaine nods with her own eyes filling with tears. ‘I still don’t get it,’ Sophie admits as Elaine snorts another laugh.

‘There can only ever be one apex species. Life doesn’t allow for two. Humans have had their time. Now, it’s ours. You can still leave here. Go, and I won’t come after you. Just leave the child.’

‘No,’ Sophie whispers, shaking her head. ‘No, Elaine.’

Elaine stares back. A moment between them. An understanding without words and voices.

Then the contact is gone, with Sophie drawing away, and Elaine Sotheby slowly turns to loom over her former fiancé Todd Driscoll, and the violence steals through her as she slowly reaches towards his hands as though to unbind him. The hope gleams in his eyes. The hope that she will spare him, and everything will be okay.

She breaks his fingers, one by one.

Each one snapping audibly as he gasps and screams loud enough for Sophie and Mike to hear it as they jog away. Loud enough for Todd’s voice to roll through the silent city to the others waiting in their pre-selected places. Each one of them grim-faced and showing tension.

Debora the same. Dressed in combat black. Her face a mask of pure hatred for what Todd did to her. For hurting her son and for killing the pigeon and the chick when he fired the gun through the bathroom door. Mike was devastated. He wept openly and clung to Bev, but they all figured the emotions coming out had been held in for a long time and weren’t just about the death of the bird.

Mind you, they all cried when they realised. Even Jevram and Bev, who had seen death many times in many forms. It was weirdly as if somehow the war had only then penetrated their bubble, but with an unfair break of the rules. It was reckless and stupid, and made all the more heart-breaking because of it. Debora also knew that if it wasn’t for the pigeon, she and Samir would not be alive. It was Mike that saved them, and he only did that to save the bird.

So now they listen to the screaming of a man being tortured to death, and while they have enough humanity left to feel repulsed and sickened by it, they’re also deep enough into the war to feel at least some satisfaction that Todd is being hurt slowly.

And he is being hurt slowly. His fingers broken, and he begs his fiancé to let him live.

Except this woman is not his fiancé.

Everything about her is different. And the most frightening thing is the deep intelligence gleaming in her red, bloodshot eyes as she leans over to stare at him.

‘You represent a species that has an inability to think beyond base needs of hunger and sex. You know that, right?’ she asks softly as he gibbers with snot bubbling from his nose and urine soaking his joggers. ‘I look at you, Todd. And I see what I was, and I feel ashamed that I was ever that way. Filthy. Selfish. Corrupt. All we did was cheat and lie, and take. We locked that family out of their home, so we could take their food and steal their belongings. We could have saved them. We could have helped them.’

‘Yeah,’ Todd says, nodding eagerly to show he agrees. ‘S’what I’m saying. It’s the immigrants. They caused it, didn’t they? That kid, yeah? The blind one. You want him dead cos he started it.’

‘No, Todd,’ she says quietly. Softly. Gently. As though to a child. ‘The child has something inside of him that poses threat to us,’ she says, motioning the hosts around her. ‘Although, to be honest, I don’t know what that is. Only that I can feel it. Inside.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. I’m like on your side, and I didn’t rape no one cos she told me to fuck her in the shower, and I said no, and she shot the bird and, and, and…’

Elaine smiles sadly at him. Seeing the worthless creature laid bare for all he truly is. A thing of no consequence that never deserved life and did nothing with the one he was given. The same as her. Except she isn’t that Elaine anymore.

She is the new Elaine in the true state of being.

She does, however, remember what he did to her, and so the smile changes from one of sadness to pure sadistic pleasure in a such a way it sends a surge of fear through Todd. He begs louder. He pleads and tries to squirm away, but she tugs his joggers down and holds his testicles almost lovingly in her hand, and just for a second, the glint of hope shows in his eyes.

Then she twists and pulls with the strength of a beast, and tears them from his body.

He screams in agony, and her horde descend to peel the skin from his still living body. They bite his ears from his head. They push fingers into the stab wound and tear a hole in his belly. A hole big enough for Elaine to reach and pull his insides out. Long, fat, sausage-like intestines that Todd stares at in horror, still living and still seeing. She wraps them around his neck like a scarf and smears the deep red blood of his insides over his face almost tenderly. Relishing the pain he feels. Relishing every second of it. That he’s dying is obvious, but she waits until the last few seconds, then pushes her hand into the wound and up into his chest to grip his still beating heart. He gasps out. Feeling her hand around it. A pressure. An awful searing pain as she wrenches it back and tears it free. Pulling it from his body to show his dying eyes. Biting into it with a sick laugh, knowing that will be the last thing he sees as the life fades from his body.

A rush inside. A feeling of power. Like she’s a god that can do no wrong. She stands up and turns, and as one, her horde do the same. Scenting the trace of shampoo left in the air from Sophie.

Then they charge.

Running fast.

Running wild.

Rage inside. Rage like she never felt before.

Sophie ahead, fleeing fast with Mike at her side. The two of them glancing back and speeding up.

On they run. Towards the statue of Alfred the Great. Another old king that honoured ego and war.

The roundabout on the other side. Sophie and Mike now so much closer. They’re slowing. Elaine can sense it. She surges her pack to start streaking past her. Dozens and dozens of them closing the gap as Mike and Sophie cast wretched looks of fear, knowing they’ve been caught, and they sprint onto Bridge Street over the River Itchen. Wide and deep and flowing fast.

But Bev planned for this. After all, Elaine did give fair warning she was going to come back with more.

Now Bev stares from her position on the far side of the bridge. The others in position and waiting. Watching Sophie and Mike pretend to slow down as though they are winded, only to speed up when they reach the bridge and sprint across. Sophie runs into one of the buildings as Mike drops to a knee beside a low wall.

‘Now, Mike!’ Bev shouts calmly. Giving the order. ‘TAKE COVER!’ she shouts to the others, who drop to the ground with their hands over head. Debora and Craig shielding Samir and Thor with their bodies.

Mike pulls the zippo out and thumbs the wheel to bring flame to the top that he presses to the soaked rags. They ignite fast, with a long line of them acting as a rudimentary fuse running into the City Mill. An ancient structure dating back centuries built over the river to use the power of the flowing water to grind flour.

The squat building now packed with gas canisters. All of them with their valves opened fully. Dozens of them stacked alongside jerry cans full of petrol in every room.

A few seconds for the fuse to run its length.

A few seconds with hundreds of infected gaining the bridge and streaming across.

‘Ye wee bastards,’ Mike says and runs back to dive through the open door of the building. He lands alongside Bev, already down with her head covered. A quick grin between them. A quick wink from Mike.

And the world seems to detonate.

The gas igniting and expanding so fast and with so much energy it blows all the walls of the City Mill out, sending thousands of chunks of masonry flying out like missiles that slam into the horde.

But it doesn’t end there. The petrol ignites, with fireballs shooting up and out. Engulfing the bridge in flame, and a second later, the heat and flames ignite the combustibles stacked under the bridge, and the ground seems to heave. It seems to shake and quake, and tremble, and wobble as the bridge is blown upwards and comes apart at the seams.

Hundreds of human forms are sent hurtling into the air. Many of them on fire.

Many more are killed or taken out by the bricks and chunks of building sent through the air. Decimating the numbers in one vast swathe of murder.

Elaine flies off her feet from the pressure wave and slams into the hosts behind, who cushion her fall while yet many more keep running forward into the flames and smoke. Only to drop into the river and get swept away.

‘UP!’ Bev yells. On her feet, with the others shaking the dust from their heads. Their ears ringing from the detonations. The ground still feeling like it’s trembling. ‘GET UP!’ Bev orders, pulling them to their feet. Knowing that every second counts. She pushes Sophie to a window. Kev and Craig to another. Olivia. Debora. Mike already in position with Jev.

The windows smash out from their rifle butts, and they take aim through the flames and heat, and the gunfire starts. Assault rifles firing rapid single shots into the massed horde still driving forward, pushing the infected at the front into the river.

Elaine gasps and rolls away to take cover in an old, arched tunnel that once led to the Abbey Gardens. Her mind filled with hosts severing dozens at a time. She risks a look. Seeing the bridge down and the mill blown apart, but not entirely.

One small broken section still remains. Narrow but enough. The only other bridge near here is the old wooden footbridge further along the river by The Weirs. A thought. An idea. Sophie’s team prepped this bridge to blow, which means they knew she was coming, but it also means they’ll need a way back into the city. The fact they’re still in the city and haven’t fled doesn’t register.

She smiles with cunning and wills the order, with most of her horde aiming for the broken remains of the big bridge while sending more along the bank on this side.

‘Fuck it!’ Bev says from inside the house on the other side, seeing the bridge is still intact enough to cross. She thought this might happen. Gas and petrol are good, but they don’t work as good as C4 or proper explosives. ‘They’re coming over! Work the retreat. We drilled for this. Stay calm. Stay sharp.’

The guns disappear from the windows.

Elaine senses she’s got them on the run properly. She can still finish it and kill that child.

She runs for the mill. Staying within the middle of the thickest part of her horde for safety. Scrabbling over the smouldering ruins and out onto the road.

There. Ahead. Sophie at the back. The rest all spread out and fleeing in panic and disarray. She wills her horde to go after them as Sophie disappears into a junction beyond the mini roundabout.

A few seconds later, Elaine reaches it and runs over the white painted dot into the next street as she smells the gas in the air.

A second of warning and no more, but enough for her to drop and cover her head as a Molotov cocktail flies through the darkening sky and bursts apart on the tarmac. Instantly igniting the gas within the metal canisters that explode like grenades. Sending chunks of metal into the horde. Killing more and more, and many more.

But it’s not just the gas this time.

Nail bombs too. Rudimentary explosive devices made from ingredients taken from houses and salons, and garden stores. Tubs filled with nails and screws, and scrap metal that blow apart and send scorching hot shrapnel into the hordes.

‘Cunts!’ Elaine hisses the word out. Furious to the core. She rises to run. Too drawn into the chase to stop and draw back.

On they go along Chesil Street, past the old theatre, and another detonation of gas bottles and nail bombs.

But she presses on and sees them ahead, with a thrill inside at how close they are.

A fresh surge of energy pulses through the horde as Elaine wills them on. Knowing there is nowhere left to go.

She spots them take a hard right at the service station and yells in victory because she knows they’re running to go around the back onto the towpath and aiming for the old wooden footbridge. Her eyes glint, and she wills the horde on the other side of the river to run faster.

‘Fuck’s sake, run!’ Bev urges, glancing back to see Elaine too close behind. The horde gaining ground. They hit the towpath running alongside the quaint and picturesque river. The ornate wooden footbridge ahead. All of them aiming for it. Running as fast as they can.

The horde closing the gap behind. Pressure within them all. Pressure unrelenting. Bev glances back and shouts for them to run faster.

‘Fuck!’ Mike yells, glancing right to see figures pouring into the view. Running along the towpath on the other side of the river. Running towards the bridge to cut them off. Only a few metres left, but they won’t make it. They’ll never get across in time.

‘FUCK YOU!’ Elaine screams in victory, willing her hordes to charge. Seeing the survivors are trapped. She’s got them. She’s got the child. She’ll kill them all. Even Sophie. Rage and power inside. Rage unlike anything she could ever imagine as the two hordes run like the wind.

The survivors stop this side of the bridge. They can’t get across. They’ve stopped. They’re done for. The hordes howl. The hordes screech.

The hordes charge in to finish them off.

‘Firing line!’ Mike’s voice. Scottish. Hard. But clear. A second or so later, and the rifles start firing. Single shots but fast and aimed, and the bullets whip through the horde. Smashing leg bones and sending infected flying off their feet. Elaine drops and rolls to cover, but wills her hosts on. Sending them into the bullets because she has enough to finish it. The survivors can’t protect both sides.

‘They’re nearly at the bridge!’ Jevram calls, snatching a look over the river.

‘The bottles! Quickly!’ Craig says, grabbing the milk bottles from the crate. The ones filled with petrol and old oil and stuffed with soaked rags.

He lights his Zippo. Making flame that ignites the rags, and the bottles get quickly passed out and thrown in two directions.

At the horde on this side.

And at the end of the towpath on the other.

Because they’d drilled for this too.

Except this wasn’t Bev’s idea.

This part was Craig’s.

The bottles hit the ground. The liquid splashes out and ignites from the rags. The petrol burning fast, and the old oil producing a thick and nasty black smokescreen.

It doesn’t matter.

They can throw their pathetic bottles and shoot their guns.

Elaine has got them.

She’s won.

She sends her hordes charging forward through the smoke.

The two hordes reach the bridge at the same time, with both sets pouring across. Knowing the survivors must be in the middle, which is when Elaine realises.

But it’s too late. ‘NO!’ she screams out, but the bridge blows apart with a thunderous clap of noise and a mushroom cloud churning up into the sky. Chunks of wood and chunks of infected fly in all directions. A smouldering head and limbs on fire land all around Elaine. She screams again. On her feet and running forward. Seeing her horde now withered and reduced to only a few. The bridge gone.

‘YE WEE BASTARDS!’

The Scottish voice calls as she snaps her head over to see them on a RIB in the river powering away. Craig at the tiller. A skilled yachtsman, who raced every year in Cowes Week on the Isle of Wight. Now he grins at finally feeling like he did something useful and waves back to Elaine.

She thinks to send the few she has left along the banks.

But she doesn’t.

She stops, and her horde stop with her. All of them staring silently at the RIB moving swiftly away. The survivors all clustered around the boy in the middle.

The boy is supposed to be blind.

He doesn’t look blind.

The way he’s staring back at her.

She watches them go, and for a second, she thinks they’ll leave the city, but then something inside tells her they won’t because this is the game, and they are all in it.

And so Elaine Sotheby turns away, with the blood of her former fiancé’s heart still glistening on her chin.

She turns away to get more.

To bring more.

More and more.

And many more.

ALSO BY RR HAYWOOD

Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Amazon & Audible bestselling author, RR Haywood. One of the most downloaded indie authors in the UK with nearly four million books sold and over 25 Kindle bestsellers.

DELIO. PHASE ONE

*WINNER OF “BEST NEW BOOK” DISCOVER SCI-FI 2023

#1 Amazon & Audible bestseller

A single bed in a small room.

The centre of Piccadilly Circus.

A street in New York city outside of a 7-Eleven.

A young woman taken from her country.

A drug dealer who paid his debt.

A suicidal, washed-up cop.

The rest of the world now frozen.

Unmoving.

Unblinking.

"Brilliant."

"A gripping story. Harrowing, and often hysterical."

"This book is very different to anything else out there - and brilliantly so."

"You'll fall so hard for these characters, you'll wish the world would freeze just so you could stay with them forever."

*

FICTION LAND

*Nominated for Best Audio Book at the British Book Awards 2023

*Narrated by Gethin Anthony

*The #1 Most Requested Audio Book in the UK 2023

*Now Optioned For A TV Series

*#1 Amazon bestseller

#1 Audible bestseller

“Imagine John Wick wakes up in a city full of characters from novels – that’s Fiction Land.”

Not many men get to start over.

John Croker did and left his old life behind – until crooks stole his delivery van. No van means no pay, which means his niece doesn’t get the life-saving operation she needs, and so in desperation, John uses the skills of his former life one last time… That is until he dies and wakes up in Fiction Land. A city occupied by characters from unfinished novels.

But the world around him doesn’t feel right, and when he starts asking questions, the authorities soon take extreme measures to stop him finding the truth about Fiction Land.

*

EXTRACTED SERIES

EXTRACTED

EXECUTED

EXTINCT

Blockbuster Time-Travel

#1 Amazon US

#1 Amazon UK

#1 Audible US & UK

Washington Post & Wall Street Journal Bestseller

In 2061, a young scientist invents a time machine to fix a tragedy in his past. But his good intentions turn catastrophic when an early test reveals something unexpected: the end of the world.

A desperate plan is formed. Recruit three heroes, ordinary humans capable of extraordinary things, and change the future.

Safa Patel is an elite police officer, on duty when Downing Street comes under terrorist attack. As armed men storm through the breach, she dispatches them all.

'Mad' Harry Madden is a legend of the Second World War. Not only did he complete an impossible mission—to plant charges on a heavily defended submarine base—but he also escaped with his life.

Ben Ryder is just an insurance investigator. But as a young man he witnessed a gang assaulting a woman and her child. He went to their rescue, and killed all five.

Can these three heroes, extracted from their timelines at the point of death, save the world?

*

THE CODE SERIES

The Worldship Humility

The Elfor Drop

The Elfor One

#1 Audible bestselling smash hit narrated by Colin Morgan

#1 Amazon bestselling Science-Fiction

“A rollicking, action packed space adventure…”

“Best read of the year!”

“An original and exceptionally entertaining book.”

“A beautifully written and humorous adventure.”

Sam, an airlock operative, is bored. Living in space should be full of adventure, except it isn’t, and he fills his time hacking 3-D movie posters.

Petty thief Yasmine Dufont grew up in the lawless lower levels of the ship, surrounded by violence and squalor, and now she wants out. She wants to escape to the luxury of the Ab-Spa, where they eat real food instead of rats and synth cubes.

Meanwhile, the sleek-hulled, unmanned Gagarin has come back from the ever-continuing search for a new home. Nearly all hope is lost that a new planet will ever be found, until the Gagarin returns with a code of information that suggests a habitable planet has been found. This news should be shared with the whole fleet, but a few rogue captains want to colonise it for themselves.

When Yasmine inadvertently steals the code, she and Sam become caught up in a dangerous game of murder, corruption, political wrangling and...porridge, with sex-addicted Detective Zhang Woo hot on their heels, his own life at risk if he fails to get the code back.

*

THE UNDEAD SERIES

THE UK’s #1 Horror Series

Available on Amazon & Audible

“The Best Series Ever…”

The Undead. The First Seven Days

The Undead. The Second Week.

The Undead Day Fifteen.

The Undead Day Sixteen.

The Undead Day Seventeen

The Undead Day Eighteen

The Undead Day Nineteen

The Undead Day Twenty

The Undead Day Twenty-One

The Undead Twenty-Two

The Undead Twenty-Three: The Fort

The Undead Twenty-Four: Equilibrium

The Undead Twenty-Five: The Heat

The Undead Twenty-Six: Rye

Blood on the Floor

An Undead novel

Blood at the Premiere

An Undead novel

The Camping Shop

An Undead novella

*

A Town Called Discovery

The #1 Amazon & Audible Time Travel Thriller

A man falls from the sky. He has no memory.

What lies ahead are a series of tests. Each more brutal than the last, and if he gets through them all, he might just reach A Town Called Discovery.

*

THE FOUR WORLDS OF BERTIE CAVENDISH

A rip-roaring multiverse time-travel crossover starring:

The Undead

Extracted.

A Town Called Discovery
and featuring

The Worldship Humility

*
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