Date: 2013-03-01 04:00:00+00:00
Description: The world as we know it ended on October 7th 2011. There were few survivors as the virus spread to the four corners of the earth. Those unfortunate enough to contract it joined the hordes of flesh-eating undead. It wasn’t long before the dead outnumbered the living a hundred to one.Shane and the rest of the survivors can’t live off the museum forever. The food is almost gone; madness is beginning to set in. It’s time to go outside, to search for some kind of life, to survive as best they can for as long as possible.The frost has thawed…This is the end of the line.
Publisher: Crowded Quarantine Publications

DEAD LINE

ADAM MILLARD

Copyright © 2012 Adam Millard

This Edition Published 2013 by Crowded

Quarantine Publications

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All characters in this publication are fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-9573999-4-5

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Crowded Quarantine Publications

34 Cheviot Road

Wolverhampton

West Midlands

WV2 2HD

For Phoenix

Also by Adam Millard

Dead West

Dead Cells

Dead Frost

Chasing Nightmares

Only In Whispers

Olly

Grimwald The Great

The Ballad Of Dax And Yendyll

Peter Crombie, Teenage Zombie

The Susceptibles

Deathdealers

Skinners

Prologue

The world ended on October the seventh, 2011. Not with a bang, as some theorists predicted, but with a whimper. There was no fruition of a Mayan prophecy, no alien attack, no terrorist uprising, and no supervolcano eruption. It was a simple virus that finished mankind off; a superflu that couldn't be cured once it had been contracted. It started in America, in a place called Burlington, Oklahoma. From there it spread North, taking out the surrounding states within thirty-six hours of the first reported incident. Within three days, the entire United States of America was under attack, the infected people – brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, children – searching the wastelands for human flesh to sate their cravings. The rest of the world soon followed suit, and in less than a week the survivors were outnumbered by the infected a hundred-to-one. By the end of the second week there were barely a hundred uninfected in what were once some of the most populous cities in the world. It has been a month since that first known incident down in Burlington, Oklahoma.

But to any survivors, it felt like years.

CHAPTER ONE

The lurkers were everywhere; as far as Shane could see through one of the upper-level windows of the museum. Shambling, rotting, meat-parcels bouncing off each other, stumbling to the ground, where they rolled around spasmodically for however long it took for another creature to come along and accidentally knock them back onto their feet. It was hard to believe that only a few months ago, Shane was sitting in a prison-cell awaiting his release. Back then he'd had hope; a family.

'Is it still raining?'

Shane, started, whipped around and reached for his gun. It was Marla – of course it was – and she flinched, thought about diving for cover. Shane held a placatory hand in the air and apologised before adding, 'Holy fuck, Marla . . . You scared the shit out of me.'

'Sorry,' she said as she played with her hair, twisting it at the ends; she looked like a little girl masquerading as an adult. 'I thought you might appreciate a little company up here. It's been hours.'

Shane didn't know what time it was. Minutes ran into hours ran into days now; time was irrelevant, obsolete, just one less thing to worry about in a world gone to shit.

Marla was right, though; he could use someone to talk to. The events of the past couple of days had altered everything. Megan – his beautiful daughter – was dead, or at least infected, which was much worse. The thought of her out there, hunting, eating flesh, was enough to drive Shane insane. Unsurprisingly, though, that was all he could think about.

Holly was dead, too, though she might have been lucky enough to escape the terrible fate that had befallen their daughter.

'Pull up a chair,' Shane said, signalling across the room to where there were a stack of red-velvet seats. There was something unnerving about holing up in such exquisite surroundings. Shane almost felt guilty about it. 'How are the others?'

Marla walked across the room, grabbed a chair, and was on her way back when she said, 'Terry's doing fine. He's reading bits of the bible to River; she seems to like it.'

Rebecca – River – the machete-wielding eight year-old who had seen Megan as a lurker, chewing on a finger as if it was nothing but a piece of liquorice. The thought sent a shiver from the base of Shane's spine to the nape of his neck. The girl he had mistaken for his daughter was down in the dinosaur-room with Terry, enjoying his sermon. Was it wrong for Shane to feel so annoyed with her, for looking so much like Megan from a distance, for wearing her hair in childish pigtails, the exact same way his daughter did?

It wasn't River's fault; it was Shane's. He'd placed all of his hopes on finding his family alive, setting himself up for the big disappointment.

Not that River was a disappointment. She was a warrior, and had survived for god knows how long on her own, in streets filled with lurkers. What she couldn't do with that machete wasn't worth knowing, and Shane was actually grateful that they had her, even if she was a constant reminder of what had happened to his daughter.

Marla placed the seat down and glanced out through the fingerprint-tainted window. 'So what are we looking at?' She was, of course, joking; it was her way of lightening the mood, and it worked. Shane smiled.

'What do you think? Lurkers. That's all there is to watch out there.'

Marla didn't want to mention Megan, but it was obvious that Shane was scanning the horde for his daughter. He had been watching for most of the night, anticipating the moment Megan shambled onto the museum-front. There was, Marla thought, something about the way Shane had reached for his gun upon her entrance that suggested he was ready to use it. Perhaps he was waiting for Megan for that very reason.

He wanted to put her out of her misery.

Marla reached into her pocket; Shane turned his head at the sound of rustling. When her hand came back out, she was clenching two chocolate-bars.

'Ahhh.' Shane smiled. Of course, more chocolate. The vending-machines downstairs were an open-source of food, now. It was just a shame that none of it was any good for them. Still, Shane took the chocolate and thanked Marla. His stomach growled in anticipation; the ensuing sugar-rush would be enough to get him through the night.

'I didn't know whether you liked nuts, so I got you a plain.' Marla began to tear at the wrapping with her teeth; perfect white teeth that could have been a billboard advertisement – if such things still existed – for great dental-work or toothpaste. She spat the chewed wrapper-end out; Shane watched as it floated towards the carpet. Marla reached down and picked it up. Smiling, she said, 'I'm not littering; I just forgot that we might be here for some time.'

Shane grinned. He could always rely on Marla to make him feel better. 'You were so littering,' he said. 'I'll bet you're one of those people that empties ashtrays out of their car while it's still moving.'

'Don't smoke,' Marla said, biting into the chocolate and playfully showing the contents of her mouth to Shane, who faux-grimaced.

'You're some woman,' he said.

'Some,' she replied.

Shane tore the wrapper from his chocolate using his hands; three years in jail had done his teeth no good, whatsoever, and he didn't want to show Marla just how terrible they were in comparison to her own.

Despite the fact that Shane would have killed for a burger, or a hotdog, the chocolate tasted great. For a moment he forgot just how much shit they were in. The fact they were trapped inside the museum as the horde listlessly shambled outside seemed to fall by the wayside, and if it wasn't for the brevity of such a relieving sensation, Shane would have happily fallen asleep, comforted.

'She wanted me to tell you that she's sorry,' Marla said with her mouth full.

Shane, for a moment, didn't understand. After a few seconds' contemplation, he figured it out. River. The little girl was sorry for not being Megan, and felt the need to relay the message to Shane, through Marla. If he had felt a fleeting guilt before, he felt like an utter shit now.

'I'll talk to her in the morning,' Shane said, biting another chunk off the chocolate-bar. 'I'll tell her it was my fault, and that I'm sorry for talking to her the way I did. I was out of order, Marla. I think I owe you all an apology.'

She shook her head. 'Uh-huh, you had every reason to be upset. Shane, if we're gonna get out of here in one piece we all need to get our asses back into gear. I don't know whether you've noticed but we all look to you. Terry, Jared – before . . . well, before what happened to him – we all need you. And now we have another person to take care of—'

'Oh, she can take care of herself just fine,' Shane said, trying to distract Marla enough to change the subject. There was something deeply unsettling about being told he was relied upon so extensively. As far as he was concerned they were equal, surviving hell together. He had no idea that the others were placing their trust, their lives, in his hands. It was an uncomfortable position to be in. Especially after what happened to Jared; if that wasn't enough of a reason to seek an alternate saviour, Shane didn't know what was.

'I know,' Marla replied. 'She's something else, that girl. Fuck knows where she learned to fight like that. Maybe she has – had – a lot of brothers.' Marla hated reverting to past-tense, but in this world it was something they all had to get used to.

Shane pushed the remainder of his chocolate into his mouth and savoured it before swallowing. 'Marla, I can't be held responsible for what happens to us all.' He screwed the wrapper up and tossed it onto the carpet. Pointing down at it, he said, 'That's how you litter.'

Marla laughed. 'You've recently got out of prison,' she said. 'I expect there was quite a lot of littering going on.'

'You should know. You were the best goddamn doctor in that infirmary.'

'I was the only goddamn doctor in the infirmary,' Marla spat.

'Therefore, the best.'

'Shane Bridge, do I have to remind you that as a woman, I am liable to fly off the handle at any given moment?'

'I'd expect nothing less,' Shane said, holding his hands up as if ready to spar. 'But do I have to remind you that as a man, I am apt to run away from said argument and hide somewhere dark until it's all blown over?'

Marla was ready to throw a soft jab when something rattled outside. Shane snatched his gun from his lap and aimed it through the glass. Firing, of course, was not an option – at least, not unless it was absolutely necessary. The shot would bring more of them, and they would know that the museum housed fresh flesh. Shane didn't know if the horde currently wandering across the lawn out front was large enough to break through the makeshift barricades they had erected, but he was loath to find out.

'Down there,' Marla said. Shane followed her finger.

On the right-hand side of the lawn, four lurkers had toppled over a fence. They were flailing around, helplessly, snarling at each other; one of them even took a bite out of another, chewing on the rotten tendon for a moment before realising its mistake and spitting it out.

'Clumsy fuckers.' Shane lowered the gun – a gun which he was never going to fire. 'How did we become so overwhelmed by them? I mean, they're hardly stealthy, and they move slowly enough. I just can't believe we succumbed so quickly to a bunch of fucking dead idiots . . . '

Marla shrugged. Shane was right, though he forgot to take into account the speed with which the virus spread. All it had taken was a passenger-flight from LA to New York with one infected passenger, and by the time it landed all three-hundred aboard were undead, including crew. A jail – Shane's jail – had become overrun with those godforsaken things in less than thirty-six hours. It wasn't that the lurkers were formidable – far from it – it was the fact that you couldn't escape the rate at which the infection had spread, especially in close-proximity establishments like jails, airports, shopping malls . . .

'It took a long time before people realised they had to destroy the brain,' Marla said. 'Long enough for them to overwhelm us. Stupid, really, but them's the way the cookie crumbles.'

Shane sniggered. 'Them's the way, huh?'

'Yup.'

Shane settled back into his chair. His back was aching, but he had adamantly convinced himself that he would spend the rest of the night at the window. His eyes stung, watered, as they willed him to close them, but he would not be beaten by fatigue; not if it meant missing Megan's possible – doubtful? – appearance out front.

'Do you want me to leave?' Marla could sense the tension in the room, despite her many attempts to break it. A palpable air of melancholy had once again descended, and the last thing she wanted was for Shane to resent her for her presence. He was officially mourning the loss of his daughter, and that of his wife. Time alone was a privilege he deserved.

Which was why it came as a surprise when he said, 'No. I would like you to stay, if you've got nothing better to do.'

Marla smiled, brushed the back of his hand with her own. 'Well, I am a very busy lady, but I guess I can afford you the time of day. Just promise me something.'

Shane shuffled in his chair, both his back and the wood beneath him creaked audibly. 'What?'

'No more littering. It really is a turn-off.'

Shane grinned. 'You're some woman.'

She rested her head against the mahogany chair-frame. 'Some,' she said, and within two minutes she was sleeping peacefully.

Shane turned his attention back to the window and the flesh-hungry demons beyond. Sleep, for him, would be a long time coming.

CHAPTER TWO

Terry Lewis placed the bible down and slowly lifted the eight year-old frame of River, who was now sleeping, probably for the first time in days. He smiled as he lowered her gently to the carpet before covering her with a sheet that, before the apocalypse, had been worth thousands. Now, it was just a sheet, something to cover a sleeping child with. Nothing had any worth any longer, at least monetarily.

Terry liked the kid, though. She had something about her. He liked the ways she asked questions . . . a lot. As he had read Revelations to her, she had insisted that it pertained to what they were going through, and who was Terry to argue? He'd thought exactly the same thing. He had to smile, however, when she tried to convince him that the devil was not a fallen angel at all, but a sea-monster. “You see,” she'd said in her sweet, naïve manner, “pirates shot the devil with cannons, and he sank like a brick to the bottom of the ocean. When he wakes up, he's gonna be one angry monster.” Terry figured she'd read too much Lovecraft, though it was more likely she got the idea from Scooby-Doo cartoons on Saturday morning television.

'Sweet dreams, River,' he whispered, though he wondered just how she was expected to have such things with everything that was going on around her. The things she had seen; the creatures she had despatched with her very own blade; it was a surprise she was sleeping at all, for her head must have been swimming with horrific images, mind-videos that had no place in such a fragile being.

He couldn't sleep. Not with everything that had happened. In all honesty, he wanted nothing more than to speak with Shane, but the man was broken for the time being. Terry figured he'd come around eventually, but they didn't have long. They couldn't expect to survive in the museum for long; it was only a matter of time before the lurkers managed to get in. River said they'd already been in once, creeping in through the back. She'd almost lost her life that time.

Terry didn't want it to happen again.

'As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.' Terry didn't know why he said it, but he was on automatic; tired and yet wide awake. He could spend the rest of the night spouting excerpts at random, though they left a bitter taste in his mouth, as if he was biting his tongue as he recalled them. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea, after all.

There were three doors leading off from the so-called dinosaur-room. It was River's favourite, for some reason or other. Maybe she felt an affiliation with the extinct creatures, since that was what humans were fast becoming. Terry didn't like being surrounded by all the bones – sharp, jutting out as if intent on removing the eye of a passer-by. The majority of the room was off-white, the colour of bone; endoskeletons – some incomplete – stood tall, defeated but proud. As a man of faith – what remained of it, anyway – Terry was reluctant to believe that such creatures had ever existed, and that God had deemed it necessary to obliterate them so malevolently. His beliefs, and his reliance on the texts of the bible, could be wiped clear if he so allowed them to be, and the dinosaur-room was not a place he felt comfort in.

He took the centre-door, which led into a corridor. There were double-doors leading off somewhere else, but Terry didn't want to stray too far from the girl. If she woke to find him gone, disoriented, she might scream or panic.

Admiring the art hanging high on the museum walls, Terry managed to forget – if only for a moment – that he was once again a prisoner. He had escaped Jackson with Shane and Marla, escaped the clutches of that madman, Victor Lord, and his cronies, only to end up trapped in a new prison. The ornateness of the museum was misleading; it was essentially just a pretty jail. There was a lot of stuff to look at, unlike the penitentiary, but there might as well be bars over the windows and industrial bolts across the doors.

Terry wished there were. They might die inside, but at least they would die human, naturally.

One painting in particular caught his eye. It portrayed a bearded man grasping at a woman's ankles. She seemed indifferent – and, Terry thought, a little dismissive of the poor bastard. At first, Terry saw just a man being spurned by what was once perhaps a loved one; but the more he stared at it, the more his brain began to twist things, contort them to suit the current climate, and then all Terry could see was a bearded lurker, snapping at the heels of an anguished and bloodied survivor. The face of the man had changed from sorrowful to malevolent; the woman no longer had the countenance of a scorned lady, as her mouth was now a gaping O as she struggled to be free of the undead beast beneath her.

Terry blinked, and when his vision cleared everything had returned to normal.

'God help us all,' he said, swallowing hard with what little saliva he could muster.

He made his way back into the dinosaur-room, pushing away the dreadful image of the changing painting, though it hadn't done anything of the sort, not really.

River had shifted ever-so-slightly beneath the priceless sheet which covered her. The bottoms of her muddied jeans stuck out of the end, which reminded Terry of a version of Snow White And The Seven Dwarves that he had once read. She was breathing low and steady, which was a good thing. If she had been whining, or ticking, Terry would have woken her, for they had enough nightmares to worry about in the waking hours.

He sat beside her on the floor, pushing his back up against a marble plinth with a sign announcing whatever extinct bones were on display beside it.

He plucked his bible up from the carpet and began to read.

He managed three pages before the noise came from above; a guttural, mechanical sound that woke River immediately.

'What's that?' she asked, her eyes full of sleep.

Terry was up on his aged haunches, listening. 'I don't know,' he said, straightening up. He reached down and took the little girl's hand. 'Come on. Let's go and find out.'

She resisted as he pulled at her arm. 'Wait.' She reached down and pulled the sheet across. Her machete was there, lying beneath the sheet – of course it was; she grabbed it, flipped it in the air and caught it as if it was nothing more dangerous than a bowling-pin. 'Never go anywhere without it.'

'Good to know,' Terry said, and he meant it.

They raced for the stairs.

Terry hoped it was nothing to worry about, but something told him that the source of the sound would change everything for all of them.

He wasn't wrong.

*

Shane jumped to his feet, his heart thumping inside his chest, threatening to explode. 'Marla!'

She woke with a start, and immediately heard the reason why Shane had so forcefully roused her. A low humming sound from above, and it was getting louder. 'What is that?'

Shane was already halfway across the room, his pistol levelled at the door. 'It's coming from the roof,' he said, breathlessly.

Marla rubbed at her eyes, unsure of how long she had been sleeping. It couldn't have been long, for it was still dark outside. An hour, perhaps . . . two at the most.

'Right behind you,' she said, making her way across to the door. 'But, FYI, never wake a sleeping woman, especially when she's having dreams about a certain Mr. Clooney.'

'Clooney's dead,' Shane said as he pushed the door wide open. 'And necrophilia, the last time I checked, was illegal.'

Marla sighed and followed Shane to the end of the corridor. The metal staircase there led up.

To the roof.

*

They stood, all four of them, glancing into the darkness that was the night sky. Peppered with stars, it would have been beautiful in other circumstances.

The noise was certainly getting louder. River was clinging onto Terry's shirt, her neck craned so far back that it must have hurt.

'Do you see anything?' Marla placed a hand on Shane's shoulder.

'I know that sound,' he told her. 'And there's more than just one of them.'

'Planes?' Terry said, not quite a question. 'Which means there are others.'

Shane was about to respond when three jets roared across the sky. They were in stealth-mode, and barely visible, but the sound was thunderous, and River slapped her palms against her ears and clenched her eyes tight, as if awaiting the aftermath of a nuclear-bomb.

'It's okay, River,' Terry said, stroking the girl's hair. 'It's just noise.' It was remarkable, Terry thought, that the girl was so affected by the racket of three jets, yet could fight a small horde of lurkers with her machete as easily as cutting through butter. She looked up at Terry with doe-eyed innocence, and he remembered, in that moment, that she was just a girl, just a normal eight year-old girl who had seen more of the world and its horrors in the last few weeks than most people suffered in a lifetime.

'What way is that?' Marla pointed in the direction that the jets were flying.

'South, I think,' Terry offered. 'Shane?'

Shane nodded. 'Yeah, that's south. Louisiana way, maybe. There's no real way of knowing where they're going, or why they're flying at this time of night.'

'But it's good news, right?' Marla was suddenly hopeful; her voice had lifted a few octaves, and she turned to face Shane, who remained unflinching, morose. 'Shane, tell me you're pleased to see those jets.'

He glanced across to where the planes had vanished into the darkness. After a few seconds, he shrugged his shoulders. 'Marla . . . they could be going anywhere. For all we know they're from fucking Mexico!'

His expletive shocked River, and she hissed as it fell from his lips.

'Sorry, River,' he said. 'And I'm sorry for treating you so badly.' Though now he was addressing each of them; not just the girl. It was a plea for forgiveness. 'I don't know what you expect me to do, all of you. You want to go chasing after those planes? With those things down there – the hungry bastards?'

Marla looked to Terry, expecting him to say something – anything. Terry crouched and whispered something quietly into River's ear. She looked up at Shane while Terry spoke softly to her. When he was finished, he tapped her on the shoulder and she began to walk across the roof, towards the door leading back down into the heart of the museum. When she reached it, she turned.

'Apology accepted,' she said, flinging the machete into the air and catching it once again with her usual confidence. She turned and disappeared through the doorway, and only when she was gone did Terry turn to face Shane.

'Look, she's just a kid, despite what we've seen her do, so can we keep the level of cussing down?'

'I just don't know what you want from me,' Shane said. He tucked the pistol away in the band of his trousers. 'You honestly think we can go running after those things. What if we don't make it any further than the end of the road? There's too many of them down there. Listen . . . '

They did. Deep, guttural moans filled the night, pierced occasionally by the shrill shriek of a female lurker.

'That's death,' Shane said. 'And if we go out there on a wild goose-chase, we'll be like them. I guaran-fucking-tee it.'

'We stay here, Shane, we'll be dead in a month.' Marla had stepped back, as if she couldn't bear to be in close proximity with the man who they so stupidly relied on. 'Those vending machines will empty pretty quick, even if we ration. Shit, we might fall into sugar-induced comas if we keep eating chocolate.'

If it was meant to be a joke, Shane didn't react.

'Those jets are going somewhere,' Terry added, jabbing a hand toward the darkness. 'And I can guarantee they have a better chance of surviving than we do.' He lowered the tone of his voice before continuing. 'Look, Shane, I know things didn't turn out well the last time we trusted the military. Hell, I don't even think we can refer to them as military; those guys were assholes, mercenaries. The people who have control of those jets could be our key to surviving this. Don't you think we should at least try?'

Shane didn't know what he thought. He knew two things: His daughter was a lurker, and his wife was in the belly of a lurker. Other than that, he hadn't got a clue. If you told him that up was down and black was white he would most likely agree.

'I'm tired,' he said, though he wasn't really. He just wanted to draw a line under the argument. 'I'm going back downstairs.' He turned to Marla. 'I think I need to be alone for a while.'

She didn't have time to object. He was already walking, his shoulders slumped, towards the door leading down into the museum.

'Well, that went well,' Marla said once Shane was out of earshot. 'What are we going to do, Terry? Those planes were going somewhere.'

'Just give him time.' Terry yawned; he was dead on his feet – a term that he didn't like much anymore. 'He's just lost the most important things in his life. He'll come round when he's good and ready.'

'And what if he doesn't?' Marla walked across to the edge of the roof. 'We have to make a decision, Terry. If we stay here, we're dead anyway. If we head south, Louisiana, wherever those jets went, we have a chance.'

Terry knew what she meant.

Leave Shane.

'It won't come to that,' he told her, hoping it was the truth. 'And if it does – if Shane doesn't get his shit together by the time we start running out of food – I want you to know that I'm with you a hundred percent . . . and I'm pretty sure that little girl-stroke-maniac wouldn't put up much of a fight, either. At least, not with us.' He smiled, and it was a grandfatherly smile, one that was infectious.

'Thanks,' Marla said, and it was her turn to yawn. When she managed to close her mouth, she said, 'I'm going to get some rest. Please do the same.'

Terry jumped up and down on the spot. 'I can't sleep; I'm full of beans, now. It's like Christmas Eve to me.'

'You would have made a great Santa,' Marla said as they headed for the stairway.

'What makes you think I'm not him?'

Marla smiled.

The morning couldn't come fast enough as far as she was concerned.

CHAPTER THREE

The snow was almost completely gone, now. In the semidarkness of morning, Shane could only make out a thin sludge on the ground; muddy and slippery, it was the kind of shit that would send you onto your ass quicker than anything else.

And along with the snow, the horde had also attenuated. Last night there had been hundreds of them, bumbling around like the brainless throng they were. Now, as it began to grow lighter, there were only a few dozen, and none of them seemed to garner even a passing interest in the museum or its potential occupants.

Shane knew, as the morning reared its ugly head, he had even more apologies to make. It was becoming a bit of a habit, and one that he wasn't proud of.

Why can't they just understand?

Three years he had spent behind bars, locked away from his family, and just as he was up for parole, what happens? Zombie apocalypse . . .

Typical.

Yet he'd kept faith, even when he should have realised the chances of Holly and Megan being alive were next to nothing.

Because that's what love is . . .

And now they were both gone, lost in completely different ways. Shane felt dead inside. He wondered whether those things out there – lurkers – felt anything like he did right now. If so, he pitied them. It was as if he had been hollowed out with a spoon and fed to the fucking lions; all that remained was a shell, a vessel that would never be full again.

They can't understand, he thought. They can't . . .

Just thinking about it made him feel worse. It was nothing a good bottle of whiskey wouldn't solve, but . . . oh, yes, the apocalypse put an end to that little luxury. All he could do was sit, and watch, and listen to their incessant groans, the fucking imbeciles . . .

'Look, here comes on one, now, and it's a construction-worker of some sort. He's even got a little helmet on just in case something drops on him from a great fucking height. Oh, and he's fallen over, that's just typical. Good job he had that hard-hat on, otherwise he might have smashed his stupid brains in.' Shane was commentating, though he didn't even notice. 'And here's another. Oh, she's a beaut! I'll bet she had a string of men after her.' He wolf-whistled. 'Mmmm, she's certainly something else. Imagine what she looked like with both arms. Woweee.' He turned his head just in time to see a group of scouts emerge from the trees. 'Now, this is what I'm talking about. Look at these little geniuses, with their badges. They must be really clever, except they're as dumb as fuck and just want to eat brains all day long.' He breathed heavily, planted his face in his hands and began to sob.

His entire body racked with pain; he could taste the saltiness of his own tears on his tongue.

Tired. That's all it was. He hadn't slept, and now he was paying the price with emotion. He only had himself to blame, and as he began to frantically wipe the tears away from his eyes – stupid, pointless tears – he knew that he would have to sleep at some point, or risk insanity.

He'd read somewhere that you could go mad from insomnia; that you could lose your marbles and start laughing for no reason at things that were nowhere near funny enough to warrant laughter, or cry for no reason. It was the mind's way of coping, or something like that.

That's what it is, Shane told himself. Just . . . Need . . . Sleep . . .

Somewhere in the museum, one of the others was up and about. Shane could hear footfall, perhaps too heavy to belong to River, and not quite delicate enough for Marla's tiny feet.

Terry.

He was probably up early to bother God some more, Shane surmised. Though why he prayed anymore was beyond Shane. There clearly wasn't a God, a higher-being, a fucking Lord Saviour, amen . . .

There was only here and now.

And here was a nightmare, and now was probably the worst epoch to ever exist in since humanity began.

Shane bit his lip; his temper was flaring once again. It was something he would need to work on, and fast. Those people out there were all he had left, and the last thing he wanted to do was drive them away.

But it's so hard . . .

He slapped his forehead. 'Get it together, man!' Three years in one of the toughest prisons in America and he was reduced to a sobbing wreck at the thought of disappointing a raggle-taggle group of survivors.

He hadn't asked for them to worship him, or look to him for advice; fuck, he was just the same as them. Who did he have to turn to? Marla? She was great, but he couldn't tell her everything. He couldn't tell her that he felt something inside of him every single time he looked into her wondrous eyes.

Now it felt like he was cheating on Holly, his deceased and probably devoured wife, just by thinking about how he truly felt about Doctor Marla Emmett.

He couldn't turn to Terry for advice, not unless he wanted spiritual reassurance – which was the last thing he needed. Terry was a good man, and they'd saved each other's lives so many times in the last couple of months that he'd lost count who was winning; but Terry was not someone he could confide in fully.

He was utterly alone, and he wanted to scream.

He glanced down at the roving lurkers. 'Here's another, just like all the others, except this one is wearing a black suit. Hey, wouldn't it be ironic if he was an undertaker? Wouldn't that be just tickle-my-tits hilarious? And what's this? A little . . . '

He stopped as his words almost choked him.

He pulled himself out of his chair, pushed his face so close to the window that his breath clouded it almost instantly.

He wiped the fog on the glass away with his sleeve and located the girl once again.

It was.

It was Megan.

'Shit, shit, shit, baby-girl, what have they done to you?'

He could barely watch as she staggered into the path of several lurkers. He half-expected them to reach out, grab her, pull her to the ground and start tearing through her, but they wouldn't. They didn't attack their own unless it was absolutely necessary, or by accident.

'Meg . . . Oh, Meggie, Meggie, Meggie . . . '

The tears were back, and this time it was an onslaught that he couldn't control.

She was barely recognisable now as her left cheek was completely missing; her teeth were visible through the meaty flap, and he could see them grinding together, anxiously, the way she once did as a hungry four year-old. Her dress was decomposing along with her flesh; the top half of it was entirely missing. Shane could see festering holes from where she had been partially devoured. Her left leg dragged listlessly behind her; the ankle was unnaturally twisted so that her foot jutted out at an abnormal angle.

'Oh, Megan.' He could hardly speak; the name came out through staccato breaths. He hadn't noticed, but he was sweating so profusely that he was losing his grip on the pistol.

He stood from the chair, though his legs were somewhat recalcitrant and threatened to buckle beneath him.

God, she looked so . . . hurt.

But she wasn't. She couldn't feel a thing, and hadn't been able to since she became one of those things. He had that to be thankful for.

He wiped his sweat-drenched hands on his jeans, and then the pistol grip.

I can't do this . . .

I cant . . .

Down on the lawn fronting the museum, she staggered forward, unaware of anything going on around her, unmoved by the horde which surrounded her. She was amongst friends, there; her flock, her murder, her kind.

Shane held the gun up, watching lurker Megan as she meandered her way across the grass. Why was it that there were fifty of them out there, and the only one he could hear was her? Her sweet, juvenile voice was now a shrill screech. It sounded like she was choking on something, constantly. Perhaps her tongue had fallen into her throat. Maybe that was the cause of that terrible clicking sound.

Her eyes were glazed over. As a child, Megan had been the proud owner of a cat named Clyde. He was a ginger thing – Shane wasn't too keen on it, but it made Megan happy – and she worshipped it. Occasionally, Clyde would go hunting, as was his wont, and return with a dead bird, or half-eaten mouse. Shane would chase Clyde around the garden trying to get it to drop whatever savaged creature it had managed to entrap, and when it did, he would scoop its shattered frame up with a piece of newspaper and check its eyes to make sure it was truly dead.

Megan's eyes were just like that, now. Like a dead rat or a chewed sparrow. The eyes never lie.

Carefully, silently, Shane unhooked the latch holding the window shut and pulled. There was a tiny sound, like a suction-pad being released. He never took his eyes from the lurkers below – from Megan's pure-white orbs – and none of them seemed to notice as he calmly eased the window inwards.

The tears streaming down his face were all but forgotten; he had a purpose, and it was clear what he needed to do.

He carefully positioned the pistol, using both hands to steady his tremulous grip.

He took one deep breath . . .

*

River practically erupted into the dinosaur-room. Her meaningful strides threatened to spill whatever she was carrying.

A sepia bowl, probably thousands of years old, and almost as big as the girl's head. She was smiling, obviously pleased with herself for some reason or other.

'What you got there?' Terry said, pushing himself up from the carpet. His back was sore, and his elbows would have been red-raw with carpet-burns.

'I made breakfast,' River said, feverishly.

Marla clambered to her feet; she was thankful of the little girl's entrance. The conversation with Terry had been pretty much nonexistent for half an hour, perhaps longer. They'd been staring blankly at each other, neither knowing what to say next.

River held the bowl up so that Marla could appraise the food. It was, as expected, a mishmash of junk-food. There were salted chips amongst flapjacks, tortillas on a bed of mints. It was a diabetic's worst nightmare.

'Wow,' Marla said, taking the bowl from River. It must have weighed close to five kilo, and if she hadn't been prepared it would have taken her by surprise. 'This looks like such a good breakfast.'

River smiled from ear to ear. 'I thought we might need it. Especially if we're moving on soon. Need to get our energy up for the fighting.' She pulled her machete out of a makeshift sling she had fashioned and tucked into her trousers.

'Well, none of us need to worry in here,' Terry said, 'so you might want to sheath that little beastie for the time-being.'

As she slipped it back into the sling – was that hundred percent silk? - she looked a little disappointed. Terry, on the other hand, felt nothing but relief.

'Honey, we might need to ration some of this food for later,' Marla said, crouching so that she was level with River. 'We don't know how long it'll be before we move on, and this food has to last.'

The girl's face contorted into something like a grimace; she looked apt to cry at any moment. 'Didn't you like it?'

Marla gasped. 'Oh, the breakfast was a beautiful gesture, honey. Thank you so much for going to all that time and effort.' She paused and offered Terry a glance which seemed to say “feel free to jump in at any time.”

'What Marla's trying to say, River,' Terry said, also dropping to one knee so that they were eye-to-eye, 'is that we may not be moving on as soon as we would like to. You see, it's very dangerous out there at the moment, and—'

'I know,' River interjected. 'I can look after myself. I must've killed like, a hundred of them. Maybe even a thousand!'

It was cute that the girl didn't differentiate between the two numbers, but now was not the time to fall for her adolescent charm.

'I know you did, River.' Terry didn't know whether to quit while he was behind or keep batting at the pinata until the good stuff fell out. 'And we will be leaving soon, but we might just have to hold on for a few more weeks, until it's a bit safer.'

She screwed her face up once again, obviously dissatisfied with the decision. 'I know everyone thinks I'm just a kid, but I'm not.' She wasn't; they all knew what she was capable of. 'I was doing okay on my own, and if I was still on my own, I'd be hauling ass towards those jets.' There was something inherently wrong with River using such a word, but neither Marla nor Terry wanted to be the one to tell her.

'And we will,' Marla said. She couldn't believe that she was having to justify herself – and the other adults – to an eight year-old girl. 'You like Shane, don't you?'

River took a sharp intake of breath, as if slightly embarrassed by the question. 'Course.'

'Well, Shane has just found out that his daughter is one of . . . one of those things out there, and that his wife is dead. We need Shane to be in the right frame of mind before we go out there, and until he—'

She was cut off mid-sentence as the sound of a single gunshot came from above.

Terry straightened up and shot Marla a look of pure horror. River, for the first time since they'd met her, appeared to be terrified; her bottom lip quivered with fear.

'Stay here,' Terry told them both before turning and rushing for the door. Had he really expected them to heed his words? Not really, so when he turned to tell them not to follow, only to find them a foot behind, he simply said, 'Then stay close.'

They headed in the direction of the gunshot. River had unsheathed her machete and held it tightly in her white-knuckled grasp.

They slowly manoeuvred the staircase, unsure of what to expect when they reached the top. It had been a single shot, and all Terry could think of was the state they had left Shane in last night, how upset he had been.

A man could do anything if pushed too far, and even though he had known no man stronger, mentally, than Shane, he was only too aware of breaking-points, and how they creep up on you when you least expect it.

The door leading to the room where Shane had been watching the perimeter was closed. He was in there.

In one piece, Terry hoped.

He turned to Marla and silently, between them, they agreed that he should enter the room alone. Shane had almost shot Marla only yesterday; God knows what he might do now, when forced into a corner and expecting no sudden guests.

Terry began to shuffle across the landing, being careful not to make any untoward sounds. Occasionally, he turned back, as if seeking the approval of the watching girls. They were staring, rapt, tensed as if they were frightened of moving just as much as Terry was of making noise.

Outside, the incessant groans of lurkers could be heard. They sounded disturbed; more than usual, as if something had happened. The single gunshot had been enough to tip them off, and sure enough there came scratching and clawing at the doors and windows on the ground floor.

They couldn't get in, though. The museum had been barricaded most competently. Even a horde of a hundred would struggle to traverse the furniture blockade propping up the windows and doors.

Still, it wasn't nice to hear them skittering away down there, like mice behind skirting-boards.

Terry had almost reached the door at the end of the landing when it suddenly pulled inwards.

Shane, and he didn't appear to be injured.

The pistol in his trembling right hand wasn't a threat to any of the survivors gathered on the landing, looking at him with a mixture of confusion and hope.

Terry stopped. He looked to Shane, who didn't make eye-contact. He simply said: 'We leave tomorrow.”

Nobody asked what had happened. To Marla and Terry – and even, perhaps, little River had an idea – it was obvious who the bullet had been used on. Questions would only dredge up the god-awful memories of what he had just seen . . .

What he had had to do.

Tomorrow they would move, and that was all any of them needed to think about.

CHAPTER FOUR

When River showed Shane the breakfast she had prepared, he brightened a little. It broke Marla's heart to see the expression on his face. It would have been the same way he smiled at his own daughter; the same way he would have reacted if Megan had brought him breakfast in bed.

'You did this?' he asked the girl, who was once again showing signs of increased confidence.

She rolled her eyes. His question perturbed her. 'Duh. It's only a few chips and a chunk of chocolate. It's not like I made you all a Spanish omelette.'

Shane almost choked. He reached in and took a handful of . . . well, whatever it was, before cramming it greedily into his mouth. It was River's turn to laugh, and she followed it up with a snort, which set them all off.

The sense of relief in the room was palpable. It was as if somebody had finally decided to pump fresh-air back into the museum after first sucking out several thousand gallons of Radon.

Terry had spoken briefly to Shane in the corner of the room, but Marla knew that it wouldn't have been with regards to his daughter. Shane had nodded along to Terry's dulcet tones, and they had patted each other, the way in which men did when affection was required.

The lurkers had given up trying to gain entry. It was fruitless, and even they weren't dumb enough to keep at it for long. Marla figured they were clawing for ten minutes, at most, before they forgot exactly why they were bothering and moved on.

'I'm going to teach Terry how to sword-fight,' River said as she placed the bowl down on a chair, its contents spilling a little on the crimson carpet beneath. Terry, as if awaiting River's announcement, strode into the room. He was holding a samurai-sword that Shane recognised from one of the display cabinets.

'Whoa, there, Shinobi,' Marla said as she noticed the sword in Terry's hand. 'Careful where you point that thing.'

Terry smiled; River danced across to where he was standing. He looked, to all intents and purposes, a little lost. It was as if he had been handed a baguette with a bomb attached to it.

'How did you learn to fight?' Terry asked the girl. 'I mean, you didn't pick it all up from watching Jackie Chan movies.'

'Who?' she replied as she unsheathed her machete.

'Jackie Chan. You know? One of the greatest martial arts actors of all time. Does all of his own stunts. Practically broke every bone in his body during his career.'

River tutted. 'Can't be that good, then.' She assumed a stance before continuing. 'My parents made me go to karate class three nights a week. My daddy used to say that I needed to learn how to look after myself, 'cos there are a lot of pricks out there who only want one thing.'

Shane burst out laughing, and only stopped when Marla shot him a reproachful glance. 'That's true, River,' he said. 'Your daddy was a very wise man.'

'So you took karate lessons.' Terry pulled his sword from its sheath. He looked, to Shane, even more lost now that the blade was out. 'Pretty sure they don't use swords in those classes.'

River shrugged. 'They don't. Daddy bought me a bo for my sixth birthday. My mom said it was okay because it didn't have a sharp edge so I couldn't do any real damage.' She rolled her eyes at this. 'Good job my dad went behind her back and taught me how to use a katana. We used to go up behind the tool-shed and train. I think she knew, really, but she never said anything.'

'And you're going to teach Terry?' Marla said, folding her arms in an almost motherly fashion.

River nodded. 'Sure. I know he's old, but you're never too over-the-hill to learn how to sword-fight.'

Terry looked mortally offended; his mouth shaped into a puckered O. 'I'm hardly pushing up daisies, River,' he said. 'For all you know I'm the best sword-fighter never to pick one up.'

She chortled, and it was a wonderful sound. 'Kinda doubt it.'

Shane patted Terry on the arm. 'She's got a point. I've seen you fight.'

'Yeah, but we all have to start somewhere,' Terry said, and now he was smiling at the absurdity of the conversation.

And so the morning gave way to afternoon. Terry and River practised in the dinosaur-room. Marla helped Shane prepare the packs. Nobody said anything about the gunshot, or Megan, and Shane tried his hardest to remain indifferent, though Marla could tell it was eating him up inside.

She watched as he stuffed bottled water – piss-warm, no doubt, since the vending-machine's cooler had long since stopped functioning – into the two rucksacks. She sensed he wanted to say something; he looked, on a few occasions, about to start speaking, only to bite his lip and remain silent.

'Do you think we can make it?' she finally said after much deliberation.

He stopped packing and looked up at her; he had quite a beard growing, now, and she didn't find it altogether unattractive. 'If I didn't, do you think I'd even contemplate going out there?'

It was rhetorical; he had a very valid point.

'What you said last night, about the planes,' she said. 'You were right. They could be going anywhere. We won't know unless we go after them.'

Shane stuffed one last bottle of water into the pack, which bulged from the contents. 'I figure it's about two-hundred miles south before we hit ocean. If we can get a car running we could do it in a few hours, providing we don't hit any roadblocks along the way.'

Marla sucked air in through her teeth. 'We had a lot of snow,' she reminded him. 'We'll do well to find a car that'll start. I don't know a thing about mechanics, but I know what cold weather does to batteries.'

She was right; Shane had forgotten about the snow, the blizzards, the sub-zero temperatures from the previous week. You didn't need to work for triple-A to know that frost and cold was a car-killer.

'On foot it'll take us six days,' he said. 'Closer to seven.' It wasn't a nice thought, but their choices were limited. Shane knew he could keep the pace, but he doubted River, and Terry was – despite their earlier jesting – not as young as he used to be. Shane had seen the guy crack his back after sitting in the same place for too long; it wasn't reasonable to expect him to be able to cover two-hundred miles on foot.

Yet what else could they do?

'The only way to find out is to get out there and see what's what.' Marla grabbed the pack and tried to zip it as best as she could. 'I'm fit, healthy,' she said, 'and I know we don't have to worry about you.'

Shane grimaced and rubbed at his neck. 'I wouldn't say that. Even I could do with a massage every now and again, just to keep the old nerves loose.'

'Is that a hint?'

He hadn't intentionally meant it to be, but now that she said it, he realised what he'd done. 'You ever given a guy a massage before?'

She held both arms up. 'I was a doctor, remember? I've massaged more body-parts than a Thai hooker.'

Shane exploded with laughter; Marla had a way with words that always seemed to cheer him up. Then, as if he had been given the worst news imaginable, his expression dropped once again. Marla knew he was thinking about Megan, and what he had done to her – what he had had to do to her. She changed the subject before it had chance to start.

'So this is all we're taking, huh?' The packs were over-stuffed already, and travelling light was of utmost importance. There was no point being weighed down by needless luxuries – not that they had any – when they were only going to be on the road for a week, less if they were extremely fortunate.

'I'll carry one,' Shane said, feeling the weight of the fattest pack. 'I'm pretty sure Terry can manage the other.'

Marla smiled. 'I'm not a complete girl, you know? I reckon I could manage that.' She pointed at the second pack, knowing that Shane would never expect her to be the second packhorse. Not because he doubted her ability, but because he knew that Terry would be gravely offended if he wasn't utilised.

'Your job will be to keep that little damsel in check.' Shane didn't know which one of the girls would be most vulnerable, but he had to place Marla ahead since she was the responsible adult. 'If something bad happens, I want you to get her to safety as quickly as you can. Don't even look back. Terry and I will be fine.' He didn't like the thought of separating the group, but if it came down to it, there was no point in them all remaining in the firing-line.

Besides, he felt responsible for River, somehow. Not in the same way he'd been responsible for his own daughter, but he knew that River was just as important, in her own unique way. Losing her was not an option.

From the dinosaur-room, there came a clattering of steel on steel. Terry was yelling randomly. “En-Garde,” and “One for all, and all for one.”

'He'll be fucked by the time we leave,' Marla said, giggling childishly through her hand. 'That pack might be mine, after all.'

Shane picked it up and launched it towards her. Instinctively, she plucked it from the air about an inch before it hit her in the chest. She almost dropped it as its full weight became apparent.

'Second thoughts,' she said, carefully lowering it to the ground. 'The old man can have it.'

Shane nodded, hoisted his pack onto his shoulder, and said, 'He'll be happy to hear it.'

As he made his way towards the door, his muscles bulging beneath his tee-shirt from the strain of the pack, Marla wondered how serious he had been about the massage.

She couldn't help hoping that he would take her up on it sometime in the near future.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nightfall came with very little in the way of danger. A few lurkers had decided to attempt entry to the museum through the rear-doors, but the weighty Tutankhamen statuette that had been dragged in front of it was enough to keep them out. Shane and Terry had stood watching as the door rattled in its frame; the woeful groans from the creatures on the other side were quite satisfying to listen to.

Forget your whale-music and those stupid CDs of thunderstorms you could buy down at the local hippie-shop. Lurker-speak was enough to lull anyone into a peaceful sleep, so long as there was no chance of it penetrating the safety of a double-fortified door and a solid-bronze Egyptian Pharaoh.

When the lurkers finally ceded, Terry and Shane made their way back to the dinosaur-room to find Marla and River asleep beneath a silk, ceremonial textile. It was definitely the most expensive bedding either of them had slept beneath, though now it was nothing more than an old object, something with no classification other than the fact it had probably been used to dry one of the apostles' sodden feet.

'I don't know how they can sleep,' Terry whispered, the jealousy in his voice was by no means noxious.

'It's good that they are,' Shane said, opening a bottle of water and sipping. 'We've got a tough few days ahead of us.'

Terry sighed. 'I know it was partly my idea,' he said, 'but do you think we're doing the right thing? I mean, going out there, chasing after those planes?'

Shane swallowed a mouthful of water. 'That's not really the question you need to be asking. The real dilemma is, what good is staying here, exhausting these few little rations? I never did see myself as starving to death.'

Shane was right. It wasn't an option. 'We could go without them,' he said, though he had to force it out as if it was too taboo to even suggest.

Shane didn't react; he'd already thought about it. It would be a lot easier to leave the girls safe in the museum, come back for them later with help, if they ever found it. 'It's a one-way trip,' he finally said. 'You know as well as I do that we're not coming back this way. It doesn't matter if we find what we're looking for. It doesn't matter if those jets are parked up on some military runway where there are other survivors. We head south, we stay south.'

'That's what I thought,' Terry said. He glanced across the room to where Marla and River slept soundly with the sepia blanket draped across both of them. 'Not that they would let us entertain such a thing.'

Shane shook his head in dissent. 'Not a chance. Marla would hunt us down and kick both of our asses, and I don't think River is one with whom to fuck, either.'

Terry smiled at the thought of being chased by the girls. 'No, I'd rather take my chances with the fucking lurkers,' he said, scratching at his silver beard with roughly-gnawed fingernails.

'River seems to like you,' Shane said as he screwed the lid back onto his water-bottle.

'Like me. She practically cut me up this afternoon. Even my bruises have got bruises. I'll tell you, she's feisty. I don't know how she got to be so good, but I almost had a coronary just trying to keep up with her.'

'Blame her dad,' Shane said. 'If he were still alive, I think we'd owe him some gratitude. I don't know who needs who more.'

'I'm just glad she's on our side,' Terry said, considering the alternatives. He hated himself for picturing River as one of the undead, but he had to wonder whether the girl would remain just as knowledgeable about fighting if she were a lurker. Some of them certainly showed signs of past-life recollection. Only a few days ago, Terry had watched a traffic-cop stamp a bloody palm on a Ford Focus windscreen. Instead of a ticket, all that was left behind was a crimson smear, but it only further fuelled his belief that, though the lurkers were just empty shells, their brains retained certain attributes from before they became that way. If River had been a lurker when they ran across her, they would have stood very little chance of getting by her without losing limbs, or far worse . . .

'You're a man of faith,' Shane said, as if from nowhere.

Terry shrugged. 'What's left of it. Look, Shane, I'm just an old fart who believed in God for so long, it's too late for me to change my mind. Don't want to be an old fart that wasted his entire life on something that wasn't real.'

'But you still believe?' It wasn't a question, not really.

'I still have to.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out his bible. Jabbing at the cover, the gilt-edged cross that took up the majority of the book's front, he said, 'I don't want to be the guy to admit that I was wrong. If I do that, I might as well have been reading Lord Of The Rings all this time. So I accept. I accept that this is what I have to believe in. When we were in that prison, this little thing got me through some tough times. Did I always believe that what I was reading was true, that it all happened verbatim? No. Did I trust myself not to take it too literally and take from it the message instead? You're damn right I did.' He held the book aloft; Shane couldn't stop staring at the golden cross on its cover. It was hypnotising. 'So whether I believe is not important. What's important is that without this, I would have died in that cell years before you even came along, before any of this shit happened. Divinity comes in many forms, Shane Bridge.' He lowered the bible, signalling an end to his little speech.

Shane wanted to believe. He had never been overly religious, but things had changed him; Megan being turned had changed him.

Really, what he wanted to ask was if Terry thought there was an afterlife, somewhere for expired souls to go. If Heaven was more than just some fucking idiot's idea of a practical joke. How all of those ghost pictures and Youtube videos could possibly be fake or just trickery of the light.

There had to be some truth to it all. Shane had heard once that all myths stem from somewhere, that mermaids , and Bigfoot, and El-Chupacabra had to, in some form, have existed. People didn't just sit down, draw a few pictures and start a rumour – at least not before the age of the internet. Those ancient mythologies were based on something, and ghosts, spirits, the afterlife and Heaven, in all its glory, were as real as those bastard dead things howling up at the moon right now.

'I'm going to get some rest upstairs,' Shane said, tossing his water-bottle into the air and catching it. 'See how many are out there.'

It didn't matter, really. The ones that were out there now would have moved on by morning, and there could be a helluva lot less or a shit-load more by first light.

'See you in the morning.' Terry gave Shane a three-finger salute that would have been comical under other circumstances.

Shane headed up, hoping that sleep would grab him and pull him down into its welcome embrace.

He could only hope.

CHAPTER SIX

The stench of putrefaction lingering in the air didn't bother the lurkers shambling about out front. It was a fetor that belonged to them, a result of their rotting flesh and gaping wounds. Several of them were gathered around the half-devoured corpse of an unfortunate white-tailed deer. It had stumbled into the horde at just after midnight, and by one it had been reduced to a hollowed-out shape that would have been indeterminable if it wasn't for the unmistakeable architecture of its antlers up near the faceless remains. One of the lurkers had been stupid enough to impale its face upon the jagged horns, but not enough to kill it. It had spent the majority of the morning flailing around, trying to unhook its eye-socket from the right antler and now, with one false move, it accidentally slipped and fell forward onto the horn, which penetrated right through to the calamitous lurker's brain and put an end to its misery.

The lurkers eating from the deer's wide-open belly didn't even flinch; they were too busy feasting on strings of intestines that had been pulled out. Everything else was gone, but the intestine took a lot longer to get through.

The sun was above the trees now and by the end of the day it would melt the remaining slush and ice from the previous week's blizzard. It was cold, but nowhere near as inclement as it had been. Trees dripped as the thaw continued; occasionally, an icicle would drop from the edge of the museum-roof and shatter on the path below. Lurkers would turn in hungry anticipation, then return to whatever aimless business they were embroiled in, disappointed that the promise of fresh flesh had been so short-lived.

Birds chirruped up in their nests; it was almost as if they were aware of their own private sanctuary amongst the branches. Lurkers couldn't climb trees, and even if they were able to, birds simply wouldn't cut it as a satisfactory meal. Sure, if one was injured or fell out of its nest, a creature would waste no time at all in chawing through its tiny broken form, but they wouldn't actively pursue a bird for its flesh.

Bigger animals, like the white-tailed deer strewn out on the museum lawn, were a different story altogether. Lurker numbers were integral to the hunt, and ten or a dozen of them was more than enough to corner and mortally wound a large beast.

And once they had it down, it was pretty much all over.

The horde didn't see the attack coming; the ones that were eating were way too busy to notice the four people emerging from the double-doors at the front of the museum.

River, who had been psyching herself up all morning for the battle, came charging out like a bull from a trap. The deer would have taken some solace in the knowledge that its devourers had been dispatched so violently. Despite the speed with which she moved, she didn't make a sound; yet another quirk as a result of such intense training which paid off. She sliced the machete through the air; the first head flew off, slammed against a tree on the other side of the railings surrounding the lawn. The lurker's decapitated body remained on its knees, bloody entrails slipping through its fingers. The two creatures feeding alongside the first victim were so engrossed in their repast that neither of them saw the blade as it removed their own heads. It all happened in less than five seconds, and three twitching bodies slumped to the side.

The one impaled upon the deer's horn had been fortunate.

'River,' Shane half-whispered, half-snapped. She turned to find him staring through her, his face the epitome of displeased. He pointed to his side, which was where he wanted her to be. She rolled her eyes before heading back to the rest of the group, who were shuffling furtively against the museum's façade. When she reached them, Shane whispered, 'What was that? That wasn't what we talked about this morning.'

The conversation had been composed of rules, lots of rules that River found both patronising and, in all honesty, boring. 'Sorry,' she said. 'I like deer.'

Shane shook his head. 'No more. We need to stay as quiet as possible. We're lucky your little stunt didn't draw any more of them.'

River smiled; it was an adolescent grin that melted Shane's heart. It was impossible to stay angry at her, though she would probably give him ample opportunity to try over the coming days.

Terry was at the front of the group. The samurai-sword which River had been teaching him to use was strapped to his waist , making him look like one of the seven samurai's grandfathers, though not in a bad way. River had told Shane that the “old guy” was getting quite good with it, which allayed Shane's initial apprehensions of Terry using something so dangerous. He no longer feared Terry fortuitously swinging the blade only to sever something on his own body, though he was keeping a safe distance for the time being, in case he was mistaken.

There were only two lurkers in sight. One – a female who was, for reasons unknown, naked – was scratching at the bark of a tree; her bloodied fingers had all but stripped the crust from the entire left side of the oak. God knows how long she had been doing it. The main thing was: she wasn't a threat.

The second one – a male who could easily have been a successful banker or stockbroker before the infection took hold, at least that's what his shirt and still-attached tie would suggest – was picking the bones of a corpse that hadn't seen flesh for some time. The skeletal remains were in the middle of the path leading across to the main road; they would have stepped right over it when they arrived at the museum only a week earlier. The snow had utterly concealed it from them, and the banker/stockbroker who was going at it, fruitlessly, had probably only stumbled across it for the first time this morning.

A lot of things were going to turn up now that the snow had dissipated.

Shane untucked the pistol from his belt and pulled the hammer back.

'Is that wise?'

It was Marla. She signalled to the pistol.

Shane glared across to where the smartly-dressed lurker – apart from the blood and meaty chunks clinging to its collar – chewed at a femur. 'We need to get past it,' Shane told her, keeping his voice at a bare minimum. 'The road's that way, and I don't think we ought to be trying to outrun it.'

He was right. The lurker would spot them, groan out in that annoying way they were inclined to, and they would have more than just the one to worry about. There might appear to be only a few, but that was never the case. A horde was always just around the corner.

They had learned that the hard way.

'I'll take this one,' Terry said. The way his voice cracked suggested he wasn't sure what he was volunteering for.

'You sure?' Shane said. It wasn't the time to start arguing over who got to do what; the easiest way to keep the peace was to delegate, but if people were kind enough to offer . . .

'I need to check this thing's as sharp as it looks,' Terry said as he pulled the sword from its sheath. It came out with a tinny shing! which made Shane eyeball their surroundings, just in case anything had heard it. 'I'm pretty sure I can take that one. Wall Street zombies, from what I've heard, are pussies.'

River sniggered; Terry apologised silently for the slight malediction. It was difficult to regulate his language around her considering she was so mature, and brutal, and it was something they would all have to work on.

Though River didn't mind.

'Okay,' Shane said. 'We'll be coming up behind you. We get to the road, we keep moving. No stopping.' He was talking to each of them now, and they nodded frantically, heeding his orders like soldiers about to go over the top into No-Man's Land.

'Remember, Terry,' River whispered. 'Clean slice, straight through the neck. Cuts off any noise it was thinking about making and severs the spinal-cord.'

Terry nodded. 'Believe it or not, kid, this won't be the first one I've killed.' He looked to Shane, half-expecting him to maintain his alleged lurker-dispatches.

'But it'll be your first one with that,' River said, gesturing with her miniature hand towards the sword. 'It's a little bit different to shooting one in the face.'

Terry sighed, shook his head. To Shane, he said, 'I'm ready.'

'We're right behind you. Don't stop. Finish it, and keep heading for the road.'

Terry turned. The road looked a long fucking way away from where they were standing. It was clear, though, which made reaching it a lot easier.

He stepped away from the museum's façade and was instantly lit by the rising sun. Stepping back into the shadowy cold safety was an option, but not one that he would take.

He began to move towards the hunched creature; the sword in his hand felt heavy, much heavier than it had during the practise yesterday afternoon. He was a hundred-feet away from the creature when something stopped him in his tracks.

A woman . . .

The female lurker had screeched.

He snapped his head across to where she had, until a moment ago, been stripping the bark from a tree, harmless, oblivious. She was no longer facing the oak, or peeling it with savaged fingers; she was facing Terry, and warning the stockbroker-thing of unfolding events.

'Terry! Stick to the plan!'

It was Shane, and he had emerged from the shadows, his arm outstretched, the pistol trained upon the female's head.

Terry rushed for the male – the banker, or whatever the hell he once was – and reached it just before it managed to clamber, listlessly, to its feet. He whipped the sword through the air, the accompanying whoosh was far less satisfactory than it should have been, and hit the creature perfectly on the neck, just like River told him to.

Only the head didn't roll away or shoot off like the ones the little girl had only just killed.

The blade was stuck.

Wedged somewhere between the lurker's collarbone and jaw. Arterial spray filled the air; Terry made certain his mouth was shut tight, fearful that one drop in his mouth would be enough to infect him.

The lurker grabbed the sword's handle as it thrashed around, snarling and snapping at the air in front of its face with broken, discoloured teeth. Black goo dripped from its gaping maws as it tried to get a purchase on the weapon sticking in its throat, but it was no use.

Terry, with one sudden movement, yanked out the blade. Tarry fluid spilled out of the lurker's cleaved gullet, but it wasn't dying . . .

Not by a long-shot.

Terry swung the sword again; this time he heard a crunch as the blade chopped through bone. The creature's head lolled backwards, its neck wide open to the elements. A geyser of obsidian sludge shot into the air, raining back down on that shirt-and-tie combo with a disgusting pitter-patter.

A gunshot reminded Terry about the other one – the tree-scratcher. As the head of his lurker dropped slowly to the grass, the female was following suit behind and to the left of him.

'Terry! The road!' Shane was already running alongside the girls, heading through the thin row of trees onto the path.

Terry pushed the sword back into its sheath and ran after them, the groan of a dozen lurkers behind – alerted to the sudden noise on a silent morning – enough to keep him moving until he caught up with the others.

*

The shotgun erupted, decimating the nun's face in an instant. He loved this; this was what he had been born to do. Before the shit hit the fan, he'd only killed two people, and one of them didn't really count because she'd fallen from the building after he'd chased her up to the seventh storey.

Hardly classed as a kill he could justly add to his tally, though he'd enjoyed it all the same.

'Lukas, behind you!' Abi screeched in that nefarious voice of hers. Lukas whipped around just in time, cocked the gun and blasted the approaching creature. It's scalp lifted, flapped back and forth a couple of times before resetting on the thing's skull like an ill-fitting toupee. The second blast tore through the creature's forehead and it flew back through the air, landing with a thump against the convent wall.

'Whoooooo!' Lukas howled. 'Something fucking awesome 'bout blowing nuns away!'

The girl, who was wearing high-heels, a short tartan skirt and a white blouse that was knotted at the front in a manner that went out of fashion back in the nineties, rushed across to Lukas and threw her arms around his neck. He lifted her, whirled her round in a manoeuvre that would have made Patrick Swayze jealous, and kissed her so hard on the lips that he felt her jaw crack beneath his.

When they finally broke the embrace, and Abi was safely back on the ground, she said, 'We showed them cunts, didn't we?'

'Sure did, baby,' Lukas said as he reloaded the shotgun. 'Did you see the way that bitches head came away? I fucking love it when they do that.'

'How many's that, babes?' Abi took out a notepad and waited for Lukas's response, licking the end of the pen in a way that she knew would drive him wild with lust.

He watched, licked his own lips. 'Erm . . . I make that eighty-six to me,' he said. Watching her, chewing the tip of the pen, sucking it, he could feel himself getting hard.

She scribbled the number down in the pad and pocketed it. 'Not bad. Not fucking bad at all.' Leaning against an overturned car she lit a cigarette. Through the smoky haze, she said, 'Where to next? This place looks fucking dead.'

Lukas walked across, snatched the cigarette from her lips and took a drag. 'Makes no difference. Everywhere's fucking dead.' He turned away from Abi, whistled through two fingers. 'Oi! You little fucker, get your ass out here!'

Across the road a car door opened. Saul – the mute kid they'd picked up in Canton – stepped gingerly out of the car and started walking towards the couple.

'What the fuck's the matter with you?' Abi asked, lighting a cigarette of her own. 'You look like you're gonna fucking cry.'

'Ahhhh, little dummy gonna cry over a couple of dead nuns.' Lukas erupted with laughter; Abi joined in. When he was close enough, Lukas slapped the kid round the back of the head. 'Took your time getting over here. Next time run.' God he hated the sight of the little dumb bastard. He had his uses, but they were few and far between, and Lukas wasn't sure whether it was worth it having to stare at his miserable, retarded face all day long just for a few hours of fun at nightfall.

It would be so easy to shoot him. Be doing him a favour, really. He doubted the kid actually enjoyed what they did to him after dark.

Fuck him; he didn't have a choice.

Abi slapped the boy hard around the face, then leant in and licked it, as if this might somehow alleviate the pain from her strike.

'Oohhh,' Lukas sneered. 'That doing it for you, Saul? That giving your little maggot a fucking heartbeat?'

The boy didn't speak, or respond at all. He hadn't said a word since they picked him up, and he had the look of someone who once rode the short bus to school. The way he didn't react to pain, the way he just glared at the sky all day, it wasn't right.

Lukas lifted his clenched fist. 'I fucking asked you a question, dummy. You saying my woman ain't good enough for you?'

'I'm the best you're ever gonna get, you fucking orphan,' Abi said, looking mortally offended at being unable to elicit a response from the kid.

'We know you ain't deaf, so you can at least nod or shake your dumb fat face. Shit, kid, I'm starting to think we made a mistake in bringing your sorry ass along for the ride.' Lukas lifted the shotgun and jabbed the barrel towards Saul's face.

Nothing.

Didn't he care if he went the way of the nuns? Was he really so fucking stupid that he didn't even realise how close he was to having his teeth shot out?

'Do you want me to do it, kid?' Lukas asked, and part of him wanted the idiot to nod, to fall to his knees and accept it was over. Another part of him – the deviant that liked to do things, things that the kid would enjoy if he ever lived long enough to grow pubes on his shrivelled-up little balls – wanted Saul to shake his head, to admit that he was wrong, that Lukas was in charge and that he was sorry for being such an annoying, useless little cunt-rag.

He did neither; just stared into the barrel, his bottom lip quivering ever-so-slightly, the corner of his eye twitching as the cold morning breeze flicked dust into it.

Lukas sighed and lowered the shotgun. 'You wish I was good enough to end it,' he said. 'Well, I ain't gonna. I ain't gonna do anything you want me to. Abi and me are taking you wherever we go. You see, you're the kid we never got around to having. Only dumber, and a helluva lot uglier. So like it, or not, we've got shit to do, and you're gonna be part of it.'

Abi must have felt excluded, for she whipped Saul across the ear and screeched, 'You hear that? You ain't going nowhere . . . nowhere, and you've pissed me off, right now.' She folded her arms the way a petulant child might after being reproached.

Lukas chuckled. 'Arrrghh, baby, he's just a dummy. I don't hear him complaining when he gets it.' He brushed Abi's arm with the barrel of the shotgun. She pushed it away.

'You didn't answer my question,' she said, to Lukas. 'Where the fuck to next?'

He shrugged. 'Shit, baby-girl . . . any-fucking-place. Don't suppose there are any more convents, or . . . churches around here? I got me a stiffie blowing those penguins away.'

'Check the map,' she said. She turned and headed for the black Oldsmobile from which the mute kid had stepped. It was theirs, the only car either of them had seen moving since the thaw. It was the only car they were likely to see moving . . . ever. Survivors were scarce, now. It was like living a movie, something with Vincent Price or that pile of shit with Will Smith as the last man on earth who talks to fucking mannequins all day long.

Finding the kid had been pure chance. If they hadn't stopped for booze at that particular seven-eleven in Canton two weeks ago, they would have never seen him hiding among the rubble like a discarded teddy-bear. He was filthy then, and he was even dirtier now.

Lukas hadn't tried to clean the little fucker, and it sure as shit wasn't Abi's job.

She retrieved the map from the car and unfolded it on the bonnet. It was almost unreadable; a thick crust of blood and dust covered the majority of it.

'What's in Baton Rouge?' She poked at the point on the map to which she referred.

Lukas walked across and stared blankly down at the map. 'The same as here,' he said, slapping Abi on the ass. 'Nothing, and a whole heap of it.'

'It's as good a place as any.' She refolded the map and tossed it onto the back-seat of the car. 'Always wanted to see Louisiana.'

Lukas turned and whistled through his fingers once again. Saul – who had been fixated on the bodies of the dead nuns – turned and ambled slowly towards the couple. When he reached them, Lukas grabbed him and tossed him into the back of the car as if he was nothing more than a human-shaped balloon.

He weighed about as much.

'Baton Rouge oughtta have some fucking convents,' Lukas said, lowering himself behind the steering-wheel of the jet-black Olds.

Abi lit a cigarette and climbed in. 'I bet it does.'

As the car sped away, screeching as the wheels moved to fast for road-purchase, Abi howled out of the window. And in the back seat, a mute boy said a little prayer for the creatures of the convent that lay, brutalised, in their wake.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The monolithic structures of three steel cranes towered over them. They hadn't moved in a long time; their operators either infected or mauled beyond recognition. It always frightened Marla to stand so close to something so big. She had an unnatural feeling, as if the gargantuan objects would suddenly sprout legs and chase after her. Wind-farms were her worst nightmare, and she tried her hardest to avoid them, if she could. Such things didn't need to fill the skyline, to take up space on the shore.

And now, staring up at the three towering constructs, she felt her heart race.

Shane and Terry were reading the large sign affixed to the steel fencing which trailed around the construction-site.

CAPITAL CITY CONVENTION CENTRE.

The beautifully painted illustration of what the building would look like when it was finished somewhat different to what they were standing before, now.

And it would never get finished.

'Wonder what they would have done here,' Marla said, blinking away her phobia and swallowing hard.

'Meeting-place for industries,' Terry said, though he was reading it off the sign. 'It would have had its own concert-hall, swimming-pool, and sauna.'

Marla sighed. 'What do you think the chances of the sauna being finished are?' The thought of rising steam, warmth and rest, was all she could think about now. It took her mind off the unfathomable steel tonnage looming above their heads like a nightmare, waiting to snap off and drop and crush them where they stood.

She suddenly wanted to move.

Anywhere . . .

Shane must have noticed the change in her countenance. 'You okay? You look like you've seen a ghost.'

'I'm fine,' she said, staring up to the three cranes as if they were tripods from War Of The Worlds. 'I just hate bigass things like that. I always worry they're going to come crashing down. Makes me feel very uncomfortable.'

'Then best not stand here waiting,' Terry said. He pointed across to the open gate. 'Might save some time cutting through.'

Shane didn't say it, but he needed bullets. The .22 was almost empty. Silently, he hoped they would find weapons. Some overzealous construction-site security-guard's secret cache.

He led them onto the site.

Marla's unease about the overhead cranes seemed to be contagious, and he kept staring up, willing the things to remain intact.

*

The building was in the early stages of development. Scaffolding was everywhere, leaning up a rudimentary framework, lying scattered across the ground in uncoupled sections. Glass panels were stacked in haphazard piles, the cellophane still attached to protect them from scratches.

A forklift truck was parked in a bay to the right of the development, and Shane had a ridiculous thought about driving the thing all the way to Louisiana, the other three survivors clinging to the back for dear life.

A bright green portable cabin stretched across the site. Its plastic door swung back and forth, rattling in the wind.

'Stay here,' Shane said. 'I'm going to take a look inside.'

Marla thought about objecting, but bit her lip. Shane would do it, nevertheless, and he was right; there was no point all of them entering the cabin. There had been no signs of lurkers on the site . . . yet. Suddenly, Marla had the feeling they were all inside the cabin, smoking, drinking beer and playing cards. It was a stupid notion, but one she couldn't push from her mind.

Shane approached the cabin cautiously. Sure, he secretly hoped for an over-prepared security-guard, but he didn't want one to appear in the doorway, all guns blazing.

Once inside he breathed a sigh of relief.

The cabin stank, but not of the usual decay and death they were all growing accustomed to.

It was musty. The way a long-abandoned property smelled. Shane remembered the stink from his own foray into house-hunting. Each house he and Holly had looked at had possessed the same odour. It was the stench of being uninhabited for so long.

It was also the stench of anticipation; as if the house was excited about its prospective occupants.

There was a table and four chairs at one end of the cabin. Brown paper and greasy tissues were balled up, as if the infection had occurred at breakfast-time and nobody ever got around to cleaning the place up.

At the other end of the cabin was a dartboard. Pinprick holes peppered the wall around it, as if the players had been beginners.

A television-set sat on the floor in the corner. A bright orange cable trailed out from behind it and disappeared through a hole in the paper-thin wall.

Generator-power.

A cork-board took up the entire back wall. Various bits of paperwork and roughly sketched designs were pinned to it with multicoloured tacks. A single, bloody handprint on one of the pictures caught Shane's attention, as if some poor sonofabitch had been hanging it at exactly the same time as the outbreak reached the site.

Maybe the designer had returned after death to appraise his work. Had looked at the design and thought, “You know what this needs? A bloody fucking handprint,” before slapping one up there and stepping back to admire.

Shane almost tripped over a pile of porn magazines. He glanced down at the girl on the cover of the top one. Very nice, but the thought quickly turned to disgust as he remembered that she was probably dead by now, or worse . . .

A filing-cabinet sat next to the dartboard. Even that hadn't been safe from the miniature missiles and wore the scars of a thousand pock-marks.

Shane checked the top drawer and found nothing useful, not unless they wanted to run around giving the lurkers paper-cuts.

The second drawer was home to a stapler, a half-empty box of multicoloured tacks (the rest were on the cork-board behind him), a coffee-mug that had not seen a sink or water since its inception, a half-full pack of cigarettes and a Zippo, which he pocketed for later, and a small black comb that seemed to belong to a man with terrible dandruff and coppery hair.

The third drawer would have been empty if it weren't for the long-rotten foiled sandwich, which Shane didn't risk moving in case a thousand little beasties crawled out of it.

The fourth drawer – and the one which Shane had held most hope for – was locked.

Of course it fucking was . . .

Shane looked around the portable cabin. This was a construction-site; there had to be something he could use to lever the drawer open with.

Nothing.

He walked to the door. Terry, Marla and River were standing where he left them, looking towards the cabin as if it was apt to explode at any moment.

'Something sharp,' Shane said.

Marla shrugged and turned to Terry. 'What did he say?'

River huffed. 'He wants something sharp.' They all began to walk towards the cabin. River unsheathed the machete and grinned. 'This'll do it, whatever it is.'

Shane took the machete and left them staring in through the door, watching him work on the filing-cabinet.

Marla noticed the porn magazine scattered across the floor. 'Oh, well that's just clichéd. And to think I was unfairly creating stereotypes in my head. Now I don't feel as bad.'

River glanced down at the model on the top cover. 'She's pretty,' she said, filled with innocence. Marla reached into the cabin and covered the girl's eyes; River shook the hands away, turned to Marla, and said, 'Oh, come off it. I've seen these types of magazine before. Did you forget that I had the pleasure of surviving alone for weeks before you came along? There are only so many times a kid can read about Scooby Doo or Garfield and his love for lasagne.'

'Well . . . ' Marla began, but she had no idea what she wanted to say. Eventually, she added, 'That was before. I don't want you looking at filth like this. It's not meant for little girls.'

Terry, next to her, sucked air in so quickly that he almost choked.

Marla faced him. 'What? She's a kid, and there's enough nastiness going on in the world without her having to deal with . . . ' - she looked down at the magazine cover - ' . . . MILF's On Heat.'

Shane, who had been working tirelessly on the drawer, burst out laughing. 'Holy shit! Is that what it's called?'

Marla shot him a reproachful glance. 'Not funny, Shane Bridge. You should know better.'

River wasn't paying any attention. In fact, she thought Marla was being completely ridiculous, and if they weren't in stealth-mode she would have let rip.

There was a metallic crunch as Shane finally broke the lock. When he faced them, his jubilation turned to horror as he noticed that Marla was holding a key.

'What . . . where did you get that from?'

She pointed to an empty hook next to the corkboard. 'I assume it's the one labelled “Bottom Drawer”'

Shane sighed, but it was too absurd to make him angry. He pulled the drawer out – which took some doing as the aluminium was all twisted now from his forcefulness – and hoped it had all been worth it.

It had.

There was one .6mm pistol – a Baretta, according to the stamp on the grip – and three magazines, each with eight rounds. In gambling terms, this would have been considered a jackpot.

He took the gun out and felt the weight of it. It was lighter than his own, but he wasn't used to it. In other words, he didn't want to use it unless it was absolutely necessary.

'You think you can handle this one, Marla?'

She looked at the pistol in his hand. It didn't look like it would do much damage. Shane's was bigger.

'I guess,' she said. 'Will it work on those cranes if they come to life.' She smiled, but in a strange way she was deadly serious.

'Don't go wasting any bullets on inanimate objects,' grinned Shane as he handed her the gun and the three magazines. 'You've got twenty-four of them, and no . . . I doubt if they'll do much damage to a thousand-foot chunk of steel.'

'Pity.'

Shane stepped out into the morning-sun. The air, although not as fresh as it had once been, was a welcome relief. The mustiness of the portable cabin had settled inside his nostrils, and would take the majority of the morning to flush out.

He took out the half-empty (or half-filled, depending on whether you were an optimist or a pessimist) packet of cigarettes and shook one into his hand.

'You don't smoke,' Marla said, stepping out of the cabin.

'I didn't kill things before, either.' He flicked the lighter, and for a moment he expected the flame to be a no-show. Three thumb-strokes was all it took, and he held the flame to the cigarette which he'd poked, nervously, into the corner of his mouth.

'Hoping cancer gets you first, huh?' Marla smiled. Shane exhaled smoke from his nostrils, a thin jet of pollution which somersaulted in the air before dissipating.

River and Terry appeared just in time, shuffling from the portable cabin as if they had done something wrong and were seeking the cleanest of getaways.

'So we got a gun,' Terry said. 'S'pose that's better than a kick in the teeth.'

'Indeed it is,' Shane said. He tossed the half-smoked cigarette onto the concrete; the nausea he felt told him all he needed to know about smoking.

Not good.

Not good at all . . .

'Should we carry on looking around?' Terry asked. It was a very good question. As far as Shane was concerned, they were done. They had twenty-four bullets now, enough to get them out of at least one tight scrape should they be unfortunate enough to find themselves in one.

'I think we should keep heading that way,' Shane said, pointing across the site to where concrete and brick-piles gave way to grass and field. The turf was brown from the recent bad weather.

Shane didn't think it would ever be green again.

'You're not thinking of taking us on a shortcut, are you?' Marla was smiling, but Shane sensed her fears were strong enough to have her chewing on her bottom lip.

It was the cranes . . . she was terrified of them . . . She had a gun now, but it was ineffectual against towering steel constructs, and she knew it.

'I don't care where we're going,' River suddenly announced; Shane hadn't noticed before now the scar the girl wore across the top of her neck and left shoulder, as if she had been burned at some point. Perhaps some desperate cunt had set fire to her as a baby. 'Just as long as we get moving soon. It looks like it's gonna rain, and I don't know what you managed to squeeze into those two packs, but I doubt you managed to make way for an umbrella.'

As if Mother Nature had been listening, the heavens opened up; suddenly the mustiness of the portable cabin didn't seem such a problem.

'C'mon,' Shane said.

He led them across the site, past another forklift truck – this one had nuggets of rotting flesh wrapped round its steering-wheel and handbrake, the remnants of some unfortunate so-and-so. The vestige was inherently gross, but nothing they hadn't seen a hundred time before. None of them could remember, in fact, a time when bloody remains hadn't been such an acceptable sight, such was the world they lived in.

They turned a corner of the half-developed convention centre; Shane felt the unease wash over him, and the palpable air of consternation as the rest of the group realised he'd taken them to a dead-end.

'This shortcut thing might not be such a great idea,' Shane admitted. 'Maybe we should head back onto the road. Stick to plan A.'

'We didn't discuss a plan B.' Marla crouched, picked up a stone, and tossed it towards the dead-end, where it hit a sign announcing that, “NO HATS, NO BOOTS, NO HI-VIS,” meant, “NO JOB.” Somebody had turned the second T into a B with marker-pen; even construction-sites had their class-clown.

Before the stone had stopped rolling, there came a guttural groan – too loud to have come from beyond the construction-site fence – and River, who thrived on such situations, and was ultimately volunteering her services when they discovered the source of the noise, drew her machete.

Shane shushed, although nobody had made a sound. He cocked his ear, held a hand in the air as if it possessed the inhuman ability to detect movement or sound.

An ability none of them needed, though, as the lurker emerged from the shadows next to the graffitied sign. It was slow, docile, as if it had spent too long in the shadows. The drizzle began to stick its hair down; thin, blonde bangs were painted to its face. She – it – might have been beautiful once.

When she had a jaw . . .

It was missing – everything from the nose down – and as it slowly shambled towards them, they could just make out the swinging pendulum tongue as it rocked back and forth, dripping with thick, black saliva.

River looked up to Shane. Whether she was seeking his approval, or not, he wasn't sure. River was the kind of kid who would do just as she pleased, anyway, and to hell with consequences.

But she was. She was asking Shane's permission; the machete was swinging in eager anticipation. Could it be that they had finally managed to tame the formerly savage girl? Had Shane somehow earned a little respect from her?

Those pleading doe-eyes seemed to suggest it.

'Make it quick,' Shane said. 'Best to shut it up before it attracts more of them.'

River smiled and turned to face the shuffling creature. 'It won't know what hit it.' She began to move towards it. The machete was sharper than ever, as Terry had taught her how to maintain its blade in exchange for more swordplay lessons. She was confident it would slice through the lurker's neck with very little force.

Sometimes they were squishy; you had to be careful not to overestimate the amount of resistance you would come up against, or risk going straight through, swinging with momentum, and hitting yourself or, if somebody was stupid enough to be standing around, hitting them.

This particular one looked squishy. It was in the way they walked. If you looked closely, you could see a change in gait, as if their legs might give way beneath them; as if they were being held up by strings belonging to an invisible puppeteer.

River was close enough to spit on the thing – if she had so desired – and knew Shane was expecting her to make a clean, and quick, job of it. She didn't want to piss him off, and swung the machete almost as soon as she could . . .

Too soon.

The lurker slipped to one side, almost falling against a webbing of orange net that had been left dangling from a second-storey. River hadn't expected the sudden change in direction, and felt silly for making a foolish error of judgement.

Lucky for her, though, the creature was caught up by the wrist. A string of the net had wrapped itself around the lurker, which pulled and snarled and frantically clawed at the space in front of it, in front of River.

It was cruel to taunt them, and River wasn't in the mood. She lopped the flailing madwoman's head off, catching it just before it unleashed a death-growl to end all death-growls.

'Fuck, River, RUN!'

It was Terry's voice, and River knew that Terry didn't curse like that unless something was erroneously wrong. Shane and Marla were pointing guns towards something to their left, a place that River couldn't see as the corner of the half-constructed building obscured it. Terry was gesturing to her to get a move on. She ran towards them, her bloody machete still in her hand, ready.

She realised, as she turned the corner and saw what all the fuss was about, that the machete was no good.

Not against a horde of that magnitude.

There must have been fifty – maybe a hundred – drooling corpses staggering across the yard. The forklift truck that had sat at the centre of the site was now completely hidden by bodies; the only visible parts were the overhead guard and hydraulic mast at the front, and that was only due to the fact that the horde couldn't climb . . .

Not yet, anyway.

'We can't shoot them all,' Shane said, 'and I don't want us wasting all our ammo on one horde this close to our leaving-point.' He tucked his pistol into the band of his jeans and grimaced as he tried to think.

'Well, I don't know about everybody else,' Marla said, still training the Baretta on the approaching horde, 'but I'd like to make it to the end of today, so if it's all the same, Shane, I'm gonna start shooting.'

The rain was hammering down, hitting the ground with so much force that it appeared to be raining up simultaneously. Shane stepped away from the building and looked up; Terry knew exactly what he was thinking.

'Over the top?' Terry said.

Shane nodded. 'It's the only way out of here without losing all our bullets. We'll need them for when we actually get moving.'

'What?' Marla said, stepping nervously backwards. She glanced up at the fifty-metre construction – at the partially completed sections, the wooden flooring which was being used, temporarily to traverse from one place to another. 'You want us to go up that?'

River was already climbing. She leaned outwards, holding on with one hand, and said, 'They're getting close, people. You might want to start climbing.'

Shane turned. The horde were staggering forward now, more with momentum than haste, and they were less than a hundred feet away.

Marla sighed before tucking the Baretta into her waistband. 'I used to be a doctor,' she said.

Terry patted her on the shoulder as he walked past. 'We used to be prisoners,' referring to himself and Shane.

They began to climb. River had already reached the safety of the scaffolding on the first storey and was waving down at them.

Below, the lurkers had reached the scaffolding and were hammering against it with fists, feet, teeth and heads. The poles, the wood – the entire building – shook as the considerable horde gawked up at the escaping flesh. A few of them had managed to climb atop other lurkers - who had stumbled and fallen face-first against the building - and grab a hold of the nearest pole, but it was aimless and they fell, hitting the sodden ground with meaty thuds.

The scaffolding was slippery, and the last thing they needed was for it to be rocking as the creatures attacked it below.

Marla looked terrified as Shane climbed up alongside her. 'Are you okay?' he asked, his head pressed against a galvanised pole.

'Been better,' she huffed, struggling at the next pole up with panicked grasps.

'Don't look down,' Shane told her, though it was the kind of obvious thing you told somebody just to annoy the hell out of them, like mind the gap, or, don't try this at home.

'I wasn't going to,' she said, hoisting herself up three feet to the next pole. 'And for the record, if this goes tits up, I think we would've been better shooting through them.'

'Duly noted.' He pulled himself up to match her level once again. 'Feel free to go back down and try out your way.'

Marla didn't look at him, but she knew he was smiling just by the way his words came out.

'I think I'll carry on your way,' she said. 'We're halfway there, now.'

He threw himself up the scaffolding, pulled his weight into a recess and stared down. It was high; a helluva lot higher than it looked from the ground. The lurkers were snarling and biting at the air. Some of them, though not many, had already decided to move on. They must have been the pessimists of the horde. The ones still snapping at the scaffolding were more your, “Stick around, you never know, one of them might slip and fall,” kind of ghouls.

'You guys are slow,' River chided from above. When Shane turned, he saw that Terry was up and swinging his legs onto the safety of storey two. River helped him to his feet, and they both glanced over the edge to where Shane and Marla appeared to be struggling.

'It's not a race,' Shane called up at her.

'Not anymore,' she replied with an arrogance that only a child could provide. 'You want me to come down and piggy-back you up?'

Shane, annoyed with her effrontery, didn't satisfy her with a response. Instead he helped Marla and they continued upwards. Marla only lost her footing once, and Shane had been there to steady her, and she was a little more careful after that.

When they were safely at the second-storey, Shane looked down at the dissipating horde. A lot more of them had decided it wasn't worth their time and moved on. The way they were spread across the construction-site made it appear as if there were thousands of them instead of a hundred.

'Still think we could have shot through them?' he asked Marla, who was appraising the dispersing throng next to him with wide-eyed amazement.

'Do you have to be right all of the time?' she asked, slightly perturbed by his confidence.

'Do you always have to answer a question with a question?' He grinned.

'Do you?' She grinned.

'No. Do you?'

'I hate you.'

They both sniggered.

The cessation of the rattling pipes beneath them was a sign that the last of the horde had deferred and chased after the rest of their dead buddies.

'Now we need to find a way off,' Terry said.

'I've changed my mind,' Marla told Shane. To Terry she said, 'I think I hate you more.'

CHAPTER EIGHT

Saul sat on the road, drawing stick-figures with a shard of white rock. The rain had already washed away two or three of his pictures, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to make the chalky images stick. Ceding defeat, he tossed the piece of rock into the trees opposite.

They were on a stretch of road not far from Ridgeway; at least, that was what the bullet-pocked sign at the side of the road said. It didn't make any difference, whatsoever, where they were. Saul wished he was alone again, away from his abusers, away from the pain.

Hadn't he suffered enough?

From not far away came the sound of rushing water. That would explain the second half of the sign, which read: Ross R Barnett Reservoir 1M.

Saul stood and stretched; the car was parked, locked and alarmed. Even if he ran, where would he go? He was in the middle of nowhere, with no idea of how to survive.

Those people were assholes – especially the man – but they were all he had to keep him alive.

Without them, he would go so far as to say he'd be dead already. They had weapons; knives, knuckledusters, that fucking shotgun which Lukas seemed to favour, and a never-ending supply of ammo. He'd seen the shells in the trunk of the car, boxed and stacked like a miniature armoury.

He hated them with a passion, but they knew what they were doing when it came to taking down those creatures, and he knew what they were doing to him after nightfall was wrong – and it hurt, by God it hurt – but was it really so bad? Did it really make him feel so worthless and pathetic that he would rather run, hide, try to survive on his own?

What, like he had been when they found him? He was a scrawny kid – no more than 65 pound wringing wet – and he had been hiding around that seven-eleven for days, too scared to step too far from it in case he was spotted by the things and chased and slaughtered and eaten.

The thought turned his blood to mercury, and he shivered, glancing around into the surrounding trees. The snow from last week was still clinging to the branches, slowly melting and dripping.

Saul suddenly felt the need to piss.

Don't you fucking move, Lukas had told him a little over an hour ago. There was a house along a trail leading of the road, and Abi and Lukas had stopped to go take a look, get supplies, probably fuck.

They fucked a lot.

Saul walked to the edge of the road, still in full-view of the black Oldsmobile, which the guy loved more than the girl, from what Saul could tell. She'd accidentally put a scratch on the passenger door last week and, after careful consideration and a bottle of Jim Beam, he'd proceeded to punch her in the face. Hard – not as hard as he could have done it – and she had apologised, sobbed, and pleaded throughout the whole sorry episode.

Saul had started off by willing the guy to kill her, to hit her hard enough to put his fist through her face, the same way it would if you connected full-on with one of those creatures. But then he'd felt sorry for her, and even thought about stepping in to stop the guy from doing any more damage.

Thought about it; didn't do it.

There was no sense in both of them taking a beating.

Saul pissed. Some of it went on his shoe, but it didn't matter.

Nothing mattered any more. The world wasn't salvageable; that point was long past. So what if he pissed on his own shoe? It wasn't as if his mother could reproach him. She was dead. And his father . . . well, he was eaten by his grandfather. See, that was what was so wrong with everything; if you couldn't trust your own family not to eat you, who could you trust?

He finished pissing and put himself away, feeling better for the release.

He walked to the edge of the merging trail and stopped. There was no sign of them; he was starting to worry.

Not because he feared they were dead – no, they would be just fucking fine – but because he didn't know how cold it was going to drop, and he was already wet and shivering.

Shouldn't have left my coat in the car, he thought, but it hadn't been raining so heavy when he'd stepped out an hour ago.

Now it was torrential.

He had partial coverage from the trees, but the wind whipped it across from the road and it was that stuff doing the damage.

What remained of the snow in the trees would be gone by the end of the day, and Saul suddenly felt nervous at the thought that he would get to watch it slowly disappear.

He sheltered as best as he could beneath the biggest leafless oak he could find and waited. At first, he wasn't bored. He played a little game in his head where he named as many cartoon characters as he could beginning with the letter A. When he could think of no more, he moved onto B, and so on and so forth.

He got to F before tedium set in and he decided to abandon the game.

It was stupid anyway.

Before he knew what had happened, he'd fallen asleep, the gentle pattering of rain on the road ahead doing nothing to prevent him from succumbing to a much-needed nap.

*

It was a shotgun blast which woke him, and he jumped to his feet so quickly that his head buzzed and he almost went back down.

When he managed to get his bearings – and the white stars stopped dancing behind his eyelids – he heard Lukas screaming at the top of his voice, 'Saul, get by the fucking car!'

Saul could see them, now. Running towards him down the adjacent trail. Lukas turned, fired another shot towards whatever was chasing.

It was then that Saul saw what it was.

A dog, though it was big enough to be considered a bear, was tearing after them, its feet barely touching the underbrush as it raced after the terrified couple.

Now that he'd seen it, he could hear it. Snarling, sniffing at the air as if it was trying to snort them in to slow them down. From where he was, Saul couldn't tell if it was infected or nor. Lukas, cocky prick, had told the woman, Abi, that animals were safe from infection and she should keep her fucking stupid opinions to herself.

That was before they were almost attacked by a particularly infected-looking murder of crows just a couple of days back.

And now this . . .

Saul raced across to the car and waited. It was all he could do. Part of him – the same sensible part which told him to stay put instead of running off to a short life of solitude – suggested climbing up onto the roof of the car. The dog was only a few feet away from the fleeing couple. Luckily, the key had a remote locking system, and just as Saul was about to climb, the locks opened; he looked up to find Lukas pointing the little black key towards the Olds.

Saul pulled open all the doors and clambered into the back seat, shutting his behind him. Again, a voice told him to shut the doors, to let them get eaten by an infected – or uninfected, it didn't matter – dog, but he just couldn't do it. He would be trapped, and the dog would either end up dead, shot by Lukas, or the dog would prevail and hang around, which was just as bad because Lukas had the only key. He'd starve to death in the car, and starving to death was not a pleasant way to go, Saul surmised.. He remembered seeing a film, once, where a rabid dog had trapped a family in their car.

It wasn't going to happen to him.

He wound the window down just enough for a quick glance out, a glance that told him everything he needed to know; they were nearing, they were still running, and the dog was still chasing them. He pulled his head in and wound the window up. He couldn't watch, and he cursed himself for not knowing how to hotwire a fucking car.

Lukas fired one last time, and this one elicited a whimper from the animal. Saul couldn't see anything through the steam and rain-covered back window – and he wasn't winding the window down again – but he saw the blurry silhouettes belonging to Abi and Lukas slow, as if suddenly less threatened.

'YEAH!' Lukas bellowed, fist-pumping at the air like a sophomoric moron. 'Fuck YOU!'

Saul had the feeling that the dog had met its demise, and was just grateful he couldn't see more than just fragmented shapes through the rear window.

A few seconds later and the girl climbed/fell into the passenger-seat. Her breathing was so laboured that the sound drowned out the noise of the rain tapping on the metalwork.

'Fuck yeah!' Lukas lit a cigarette and settled in behind the steering-wheel. 'That was intense.'

Abi smiled, though it was too soon for comprehensible speech, as she discovered when she said, 'Whethefuhdidaahhcofrah?'

Somehow, Lukas understood. 'I don't know. I was in the kitchen with the dead girl when you started screaming. I thought you were a fuckin' goner, for sure.' He sucked hard on the cigarette and filled the car up with its noxious poisons.

The dead girl? What dead girl? Saul guessed they must have run into some kind of trouble in there, other than the fact that the home-owner had a very large dog with anger-management issues.

Then Saul had a terrible thought, and it made a lot more sense than anything else he could think of.

The girl – whoever she was – hadn't been dead when they found her. They made her dead; they did something to her to make her die. That was what they were trying to do to him, only more slowly. They had killed a survivor, done whatever nasty shit they wanted to do to her – which was why Saul had been waiting for so long – and then got chased by her protective pet.

He knew that was right, and it sickened him.

Best not to think about it for too long.

'What the fuck were you doing?' Lukas asked, swinging his head around and filling the space between the front seats. 'You nearly fucking got us killed.'

Saul hadn't, but he shrank away, pushing himself back into the seat, afraid of Lukas's wandering fists.

'We're fine,' Abi said. 'He was probably too busy pissing his pants to concentrate.' She laughed; Saul shrank some more.

'Yeah, pissing his pants,' Lukas repeated, jabbing the cigarette into the corner of his mouth. 'Is that what that smell is? You lost control of yourself?'

Saul did something then that might have earned him a slap upside the head; he turned and glanced out the window. He couldn't look at Lukas any longer. He wanted to punch him, or throw himself forward and bite the fucker's nose clean off.

Ignoring him seemed the more sensible thing to do.

It worked.

'Come on, we've got some miles to cover,' Lukas said, turning the key in the ignition. The Olds roared into life as if it had just rolled off the forecourt.

As the car pulled away, Saul knew that his opportunity for escape, for freedom and a life less painful, had all but gone.

CHAPTER NINE

Crouching behind an industrial bin, Shane could see the car they were going to attempt to start. Since it was only one of three cars left on the lot, and the only one with its door hanging open, they didn't have much else to choose from.

'What is it?' Terry asked, keeping his voice low due to the three lurkers circling the lot.

'Toyota, I think,' Shane said. 'Can't really see from here.' But he could make out the word Camry above the license-plate, and he didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce it was a Toyota.

'Great,' Terry muttered. 'Might we be better off walking?'

Shane shook his head in response before realising Terry was simply making a joke; he must have had a bad experience with a Toyota, at some time or other.

'There are three of them,' Shane said, turning back to the rest of the group, who were unable to see what Shane could see past the corner of the bin. They were staring at him with hopeful eyes; River looked anxious, as if she wanted to go at the lurkers route one and to hell with the consequences.

'You need a distraction?' Marla asked, though she already knew the answer.

'They'll see me heading for the car,' Shane told them. 'I won't have time to figure out what I'm doing if they start coming for me. I just need one of you to get their attention away from me for a few minutes.' He looked to each of them in turn, skipping over River, who clearly didn't appreciate the overlook.

'I am here, you know,' the girl said. 'And I'm sure as hell a lot quicker than Bob Hope and Joan Rivers here.'

Shane smiled as Terry and Marla's expression altered to something akin to shock. 'She's got a point,' Shane said.

'I'm not as old as Joan Rivers,' Marla said, feigning disgust. The corner of her mouth was twitching, which it sometimes did when she was about to crack a smile.

'Nobody is,' River replied. To Shane, she said, 'So, am I up, or what?'

There was never any doubt, really. Despite not wanting to put her in the firing-line, she was the best fighter they had, and the quickest. Plus, he didn't see either Terry or Marla objecting. Their faces were turned to him, awaiting his reply. Terry was nodding his approval, and Marla looked to be in agreement.

'Okay, but nothing fancy.' Shane knew she wouldn't listen to anything he told her, but that didn't mean he could go soft on her. She was more of a hazard to herself than anyone else, which was why he worried so much. 'I just need you to lead them away from the car. Run them around for a bit, until I get it started.'

'If you get it started,' Terry said, as if it needed adding.

Shane had never hot-wired a car before, and the survivors' lack of confidence was somewhat justified, but he had an idea of what to do, and they had to try something . . .

'If I don't,' said Shane, 'and things get out of hand, I want you to—'

'You're not even finishing that sentence,' Marla interjected. 'If you don't start the fucking car, we take care of the lurkers and carry on.'

River smiled. Terry nodded. Shane sighed, relieved that he wouldn't be abandoned if the shit hit the fan.

Shane glanced down into River's eyes. 'Right, so you—'

'Get the lurkers away from the car . . . '

'And no—'

'Funny business or heroics,' she said. 'Shane, I can do this without messing it up.' She held up two fingers like a boyscout. 'Just get the car going and come pick me up.'

Jesus Christ, he couldn't believe he was letting her do this. His sudden urge to protect her was overwhelming, and whether it had anything to do with Megan was still beyond him, but he guessed it might have.

'Okay. Whenever you're ready.' He peered out from the bin, located the three – now four – lurkers, and was about to tell her that he had changed his mind when she ran past, her machete dangling next to her thigh. He reached out to grab her, to pull her back, but it was too late.

'Shit.'

He watched as she scampered across the tarmac, kicking up tiny puddles of rainwater. At the edge of the lot there was a pay-booth, and she headed for it with some temerity, considering the circumstances.

Shane waited; she reached the booth and turned to where the lurkers were obliviously gathered. She coughed – the way people do when they wish to attain the attention of an ignorant party – and leaned against the booth, as if waiting for a cab.

Fuck, it was like watching a Charlie Chaplin movie.

The lurkers slowly turned, groaning as they saw River, their dripping maws wide open so that all the black nastiness could escape.

'What's she doing?' Terry whispered, craning his neck past the corner of the bin.

'Being River,' Shane said, as if it was just a minor annoyance.

The creatures began to shamble towards her, though you wouldn't have thought she was in any immediate danger from her disposition. She was smiling, and Shane wanted to scream at her to run, stop being so fucking silly and run for her life.

The lurkers were moving away from the car, as Shane had asked, and focussing solely on the arrogant eight year-old leaning against the pay-booth.

'I'm going,' Shane said. 'If I don't make it, give her a clip round the ear for me.'

He pushed himself up from his haunches and, doubled over, headed for the Camry's open door. To his right, River was doing everything she possibly could to keep the lurkers' attention. Her arms were flailing, as if she was directing a landing plane, and she had begun to sing a tuneless little ditty about milkshake bringing boys to a yard; Shane had no fucking idea, but it was working.

He reached the open door and dropped to his knees. Leaning in, he knew he would have to remove the panel beneath the steering column – or at least, that's what they did in the films. He didn't have anything sharp – at least, nothing that would prise the plastic cover off – and suddenly realised how badly prepared he was for the job.

He climbed over the seat, into the car, and checked the rear foot-wells. On one side there were empty fast-food packets and a baby's rattle, which he didn't linger upon for fear of going insane. The one behind the driver's seat had a tire-iron, no doubt for the maniacs who would have been trying to procure the car after the infection broke out, and a child's hairbrush.

He picked up the brush, which tapered at one end, and tested its strength with his hands.

Seemed to be sturdy enough, though the tapered end might still be too thick to slip behind the panel.

Why didn't people leave keys behind the sun-visor in real life? Pulling himself back into the driver's seat, he said, 'Fuck it,' and pulled the visor down; it didn't hurt to check.

Receipts fell out onto his lap. The owner of the car must have been tangerine, since all of the receipts were for tanning salons and sunbed centres.

No keys, though, which pissed Shane off.

From the rear window, Shane could see three of the lurkers moving in on River's left; one of them had fallen and was struggling to climb to its feet. River was still; why the fuck wasn't she running yet?

No time. Shane dropped to his knees outside the car again and began to poke and prod at the panel. The first three attempts were unsuccessful, the brush slipping off causing Shane to bang his knuckles on the trunk-lever. He would have cursed, if he thought it would do any good or relieve the pain.

'Come on . . . '

He forced the mini hairbrush between the thin gap, and heard a slight creak as the plastic separated. He began to lever; the brush bent from the pressure, and Shane found himself willing it not to snap.

The gap between the panel widened, the brush – which contained short, curly blonde hairs that tickled Shane's knuckles as he pushed and pulled – looked apt to break, but it held, and Shane pulled, and . . .

The panel came away, dropped into the footwell where there were cigarette-butts from the overflowing ashtray in the centre of the car.

The exposed wiring looked ominous, daunting, and Shane rolled his eyes, knowing that at some point in the next few minutes, he was going to be electrocuted.

Where to start? There were six wires, two of each colour. He knew the red wire was something, either the starter or the power, or something else entirely . . .

'Shit, should have paid more attention in jail,' Shane said, yanking down the red wires and brown wires and yellow wires and deciding which sequence to try first. He stripped the insulation off the wires using a shard of glass he found next to his knee, almost in his knee. The red wires were ready, so he connected and twisted them, expecting a shock and, remarkably, not receiving one. The car beeped, though, as if he had reanimated it, brought it back from death like the mechanical equivalent of Victor Frankenstein. An indicator flickered, creating a heartbeat within the car.

He must have done something right. He reached up and flicked the indicator arm down a notch; the heartbeat stopped, and it was then that he heard screaming for the first time.

He climbed to his feet and stared out across the lot, keeping out of sight just in case any lurkers spotted him.

River was leading them away, over to the side of the lot where there was an opening in the fence. Her screaming was simply a ruse to keep them coming, make them think they were onto something, when in fact she would probably finish them – and any others that decided to get involved.

Shane dropped back down and resumed. The brown wires were next, and he had a feeling they were the bad ones, the wires that would kill him if he wasn't careful, though nobody had ever died hotwiring a car, had they?

Shane didn't want to be the first. It was too ridiculous a notion to entertain: Man survives the zombie apocalypse only to swallow his own tongue after receiving small electric shock from battered Toyota Camry.

Thank God there were no printers or publishers left to print such a story.

He stripped the brown wire, receiving only minor shocks – which was much better than he had anticipated – and as he held them by the insulation with sweaty fingers, trying to decide what to do next, he listened to River's screams as they disappeared further into the distance.

Where's she going? Run them around, I said, not take them on a trip.

With no time to waste, Shane pushed the exposed brown wire against the joined reds. There was a spark, and the engine spluttered as it tried, desperately, to turn over.

Behind him, a voice – Terry – said, 'That's it, Shane. You've got it!'

Shane started and almost dropped the brown wire. He turned to find Marla and Terry crouched low behind him, hopeful expressions painted upon their faces.

'Don't do that,' Shane said. 'What if I'd slipped?'

Terry gestured to the brown wire. 'Try again. Sounded like it wanted to start.'

'Sounded like it wanted to die,' Marla added, unhelpfully.

Shane touched the wires together once again, creating yet more sparks. This time the engine ticked over, and Shane felt a sense of achievement the likes of which he'd never experienced before. He dropped the brown wire and climbed in behind the wheel, being careful not to connect with the exposed wire . It was still dangerous, but they didn't have time to safety-proof it just yet.

Terry raced around the car and climbed into the front; Marla, in the back, gagged at the sight of the overspilling ashtray. Then she saw the child's rattle, put two and two together, and said, 'Oh, great parenting.'

Shane drove off the parking-lot without speaking, going straight over the fallen lurker as it continued to struggle to its feet. It felt good.

The car seemed to be in decent condition, other than the busted panel beneath the steering column. The clutch was a bit light, but Shane put that down to the fact that he hadn't driven for so long.

He would get used to it.

Like riding a bike.

He screeched out onto the main road, the wheels slipping ever-so-slightly on the thin coating of rain covering the tarmac. It was still raining now, though it wasn't as torrential as it had been. He located the wipers and flicked the lever.

As the rain pushed aside on the windscreen, Terry leaned forward and began to scan the street for any sign of River.

'Where the hell did she go to?' Terry asked. The three lurkers that had pursued her off the lot were shambling along the road just ahead. Before Terry had time to suggest it, Shane aimed the Camry straight for them.

Two of them rolled over the hood, and subsequently the roof, before hitting the road behind. The third – a female lurker with a bowl-haircut and shredded tattoos – was caught up on the front of the car.

'Shake it off!' Marla screeched. Shane pulled the wheel left and right, hoping to release the lurker, but she wasn't going anywhere.

'There she is!' Terry suddenly said, pointing across to where River was getting her breath back. 'So much for Bob Hope; she looks tired as hell.'

Shane slammed the brakes on. River was already moving towards the car, and when she saw what was hanging onto the hood, her face brightened. She pulled the machete out of its sheath and asked, silently, whether Shane wanted it off the hood.

'If you don't mind,' Shane said. 'But be—'

She swung the machete, decapitating the lurker instantly. The head rolled down the hood, landed somewhere by the front offside wheel. The body was upright, viscous mess spurting from the agape neck.

'—careful,' Shane said.

River sheathed the machete, grabbed the creature's feet and pulled. The lurker shot forward and disappeared over the edge of the hood. River slapped her hands together, the way one might after an hour or two of intense gardening, before climbing into the back seat next to Marla.

'So, Forrest,' Shane said, 'just felt like running, huh?'

River sighed. 'Something like that.

'Don't suppose you want to fasten your seatbelt?' he asked her, already knowing the answer.

He pulled away; squished the twitching head beneath the front-left wheel.

CHAPTER TEN

The trees drifted along outside the window, and Abi was lost in her thoughts and memories. The half-empty bottle of vodka between her legs had worked its magic – as it always did – and she was just about on the right side of nice with her buzz.

The rain was intermittent, and only a few areas were peppered with the remains of snow, though it was more of a muddy slush now.

They had survived the previous week's blizzard in a pool-hall, which had been fun to begin with. They had spent the majority of the time drunk, or fucking, or a combination of the two. The bar had been fully-stocked, and the pool-hall had been set down in the basement, so it had been relatively secure, with only one way in or out. Abi didn't like pool, and so it had been Lukas and the kid who'd spent most of the time playing, though the kid had purposefully lost every single game to prevent another beating.

Lukas was such a sore loser. She knew it, and the kid wasn't as dumb as he made out. He hadn't made it obvious, but every now and then he would miss a shot or accidentally knock the wrong ball, gifting Lukas extra shots or points, and Lukas had willingly taken them, deriding the boy for his ineptness.

If she'd told him that the kid was making a fool out of him, letting him win, it would have been she that felt his wrath, and so she had remained silent, drinking herself into oblivion and wishing, on a daily basis, for it all to end, one way or the other.

They'd had weed; what was left of Lukas's dead buddies' secret stash, which they had managed to procure for nothing once they were all dead or missing. It hadn't lasted long, down there, and it hadn't done anything to ease the paranoia they were all feeling about what was going on outside. The drugs had intensified everything, and Abi wasn't disappointed in the slightest once they were all smoked out.

But staring out at the passing trees, feeling marginally woozy from the vodka, she could think of nothing better to enhance her current mood than a nice, fat joint.

In the back seat, the kid slept. She could hear him snoring; it was as if somebody had shoved a micro-pig in the fucking car when they weren't looking. It was amazing that he couldn't muster a solitary word, but he could grunt with the best of them when he was unconscious.

Lukas lit a cigarette and handed it to her, before taking the bottle from between her legs and unscrewing it with his teeth.

She smoked, and tried to remember just what it had been like before . . . before everything had rotted and crumbled around them.

It hadn't been much better; of that she was certain. Her life had been a string of silly mistakes, coiled up, tangled, and she had been responsible for all of them. Kicked out by her parents at fourteen for stealing from them, prostituting herself by fifteen to any Tom, Dick, or Harry that had a green bill and a pack of smokes, addicted to crystal meth by sixteen – her face had taken a turn for the worse after that, but she managed to get clean before it was irreversible – and then, along came Lukas. She'd loved him from the moment she met him. He wasn't nice, he wasn't the ideal boyfriend – but who was? – and he certainly wouldn't have met with her parents' approval, not that she gave a flying fuck since they had pretty much written themselves out of her life once and for all.

Lukas . . . the man on a mission, the guy with one solitary purpose in life . . .

To have fun.

It didn't matter what anyone else thought; if what he did pissed people off, he did it more. He antagonised the shit out of anybody stupid enough to cross him – or her – and she liked that.

Even when he started hitting her – as if, once the honeymoon period was over, he felt more comfortable in doing so – she blamed herself. He wouldn't hurt her if she didn't deserve it; he wouldn't dream of harming her if her mouth hadn't run away from her, or she'd looked at him incorrectly. She would make a mistake occasionally, and Lukas would show her the error of her ways so that she wouldn't make the same mistake again.

She loved him for it.

He'd offered to pay her parents a visit, show them that they had made a huge mistake, teach them a few things about how to look after another human being.

And she'd told him no.

She knew what he was capable of, even then. As much as she despised her mother and father for the way in which they had disposed of her, she didn't want them hurt, not the way Lukas wanted to hurt them.

But it was nice, knowing that he would be willing to do that for her. He told her that any time she changed her mind, just say the word and he'd sort it, and she believed him.

On the day of the outbreak, she'd tried to call her parents, to check they were okay, and Lukas had stumbled into the room, drunk on whiskey – which seemed to be the best way to deal with all the mad shit happening outside the window. He'd snatched the phone out of her hand and beaten her with it, not stopping until she was crawling away on all fours, her head spraying crimson blood like a geyser.

She knew why he did it; she knew that he'd taken care of her, earned enough money through dealing to prevent her going back on the street. He'd done all that, and simply expected a bit of respect in return, not for her to go running back to mommy and daddy at the first sign of trouble.

It didn't matter. Even as she was taking the beating, the phone clattering at her temple bringing bright stars to the space between her eyelids, she could hear the call ringing out.

They were already dead. She'd spoken her last with them.

After the infection spread, Lukas had taken her on a kill-spree. The things they had gunned down were no longer human; it wouldn't be classified as murder . . . or manslaughter, not that there were any active courts to convict them.

The law had fallen by the wayside, and they had found themselves with way too much time on their hands, more bullets than they could ever use, and a whole new species to fucking eradicate.

It was the stuff Lukas's dreams were made of.

'You sleeping?'

Abi turned to find Lukas staring towards her. He swigged from the vodka-bottle, grimaced as the booze hit his stomach, and returned it to the space between her slightly-parted legs.

'I wish,' she said. 'I was just thinking how fucking awesome it would be to have a bag of weed, or some coke right about now.'

Lukas nodded. 'That would be something, baby-girl.'

She loved it when he called her that. A shiver, beginning at the nape of her neck, worked its way down her body, terminating somewhere near her uterus. She squirmed in her seat as a sudden, unexpected heat filled her up.

The cigarette between her fingers had all but burned away. Ash had fallen from the tip, scattered across her skirt. She flicked what remained of the butt out of the window and asked for another one.

Lukas lit it, handed it to her, and said, 'Quiet out there today. Think those fucking things might be dying out, or something. We passed a couple a mile back, but they were just wanderers, must've got away from the pack.' He sighed, as if the low population on this particular stretch of road was a bad thing.

'Don't think they've reached this far from the city yet.' Abi knew there would be small pockets of infected out in the sticks, but it was the major population they were more concerned about, and those huge hordes were behind them, shambling through what remained of the urban areas.

What they had discovered at the house that morning was shocking because of the rural surroundings. You expected something like that in the city, not out in suburbia where people ought to know better.

The woman that Lukas had fucked and killed had been unsullied by the virus, or he wouldn't have touched her. She had been a lot of fun, too, and put up quite a fight – which only served to make her demise more enjoyable.

But it wasn't the woman, or what they did to her, that continued to bother Abi. That she could deal with; they had done it a lot since the outbreak, and she was acclimated to it as if it was second-nature.

No, it was the creature the woman had been keeping in the cellar which plagued Abi. An old woman – they guessed it was the woman's mother, though it had been difficult to tell its age by the amount of decay and gore enveloping it – was chained down there, shackled to heating pipes. Its wrists were torn and tattered as a result of such intense struggling and chafing. On a tray, within distance of the creature, was a fine china bowl (oh, not any old tat would be good enough for this particular creature) and it had been filled with flesh and bone.

It hadn't been human flesh, though. The woman had been feeding the thing animals, creatures she had managed to capture from the garden or the surrounding woods. There were feathers scattered throughout the cellar, and tiny beaks attached to shrivelled heads. Lukas had held up the half-devoured remains of a muskrat and gagged, jokingly.

Abi couldn't believe that the woman had been trying to keep that thing alive down there, beneath the house she lived in. It was absurd. She felt they had done her something of a favour by putting her – and her pet zombie – out of their misery.

And so what? Lukas fucked the woman. He fucked a lot of women, but he didn't love them, or whisper into their ear while he did it. They were just meat to him, the same way the birds and muskrats were meat to the cellar-zombie. She didn't like to watch while he did it, though; despite knowing it was just a game, she couldn't help feeling a pang of jealousy at the sight of him working away at another girl.

Abi had had the pleasure of dispatching the cellar-thing while Lukas took care of the woman upstairs. She'd taken great joy in killing the creature. In fact, as the grotesque noises from Lukas's latest escapade drifted down the cellar steps, Abi had made the thing suffer exponentially more, though the creature didn't know the difference.

When she had finished, she'd rushed back upstairs to find Lukas climbing off the woman's motionless body, and that had been when the dog attacked, chasing them out through the back and down the trail . . .

'How about a bit of loving over here?'

Abi started. Lukas, in the seat beside her, had unzipped his jeans. His cock stood straight up, as if he'd been reminiscing about the exact same thing she had.

She smiled. 'You're insatiable.'

'I just love you so much, baby-girl.' He gestured down to his erect length, and placed his head back on the rest, aware that she wouldn't say no to him.

She wouldn't dare.

And she didn't.

He felt the warm, welcoming mouth shroud him and gasped. Closing his eyes, just for a moment, he relished the sensation of her lips around his shaft. When he opened his eyes, there was nothing he could do about the approaching car. He pulled the steering-wheel across, lost his footing on the pedals, and the braced himself for impact. The scream he was working up to never left his throat, and his cock didn't leave Abi's until they were flipping over and over, a never-ending sequence of sky, ground, sky, ground, sky . . .

*

Shane looked down at the fuel-gauge once again. He was trying to work out just how many miles they would cover before reverting to walking, and also trying to work up to telling the rest of the group that they would be lucky if they made it beyond Brookhaven.

They were on a quarter tank, which was enough for now.

In the back, Marla and River were discussing make-up, for some unknown reason. River was intrigued by eye-liner and rouge, and Marla was only happy to tell her which shades worked best with which.

It was . . . normal. A regular conversation, something that none of them had experienced for a long time. Perhaps it was the safety that the car offered them; they were protected so long as they kept moving, and the palpable relief had settled everyone down into a semblance of familiarity.

Shane listened over the monotonous drone of the Camry's engine as Marla described browns and greens, purples and beiges, and River ate it all up. It was funny because nobody, least of all Shane, had her pegged as a “get dolled up and pretty” kinda gal.

And maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was trying to do what was expected of normal girls, so as not to lose touch with who or what she truly was, or would have been if the lurkers hadn't come.

Terry was thumbing through his bible; Shane didn't like to interrupt him when he was so engrossed in the book, though he sometimes liked to watch as Terry read, his lips moving silently along with whatever passage he was working on. His silvery beard was twitching now, which made Shane smile.

'River wants to know whether you've ever worn make-up,' Marla said, which sent both the girls in the back into hysterics.

'Never,' Shane said across his shoulder. 'I once had my face painted at a kid's party . . . ' he paused, for it had been Megan's third birthday to which he referred; the memory hitting him like a brick to the face. Then he said, 'I was a giraffe, but I don't think that counts as make-up.'

'Sounds like it to me,' River said. 'Were you wearing a dress?'

Shane shook his head. 'Despite what you may have heard,' he told her, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, 'not all giraffes wear dresses.'

River laughed. 'No, silly, not giraffes. I meant when you . . . never mind.'

Shane had outsmarted an eight year-old, and it felt good. She was sassy, and he had finally retorted and rendered her speechless. Ah, the way the tables had turned . . .

'Shane's the kind of guy that only puts make-up on when the bathroom door's locked,' Marla said. 'Isn't that right, Shane?'

'Oh, sure. Why not? I prance around in a satin nightgown and sing Abba songs at the same time.'

River exploded with laughter, and then asked who Abba were.

It was things like that – the littlest things – which made her so wonderful to be around. It was impossible to believe they had only know her for a short period of time. To Shane, and certainly to Terry – who worshipped her – and Marla – who seemed to be mothering her in the only way she knew how – it was as if she had been there all along.

'Abba are a Swedish band . . . sorry, were a Swedish band.' Shane struggled, strangely, to comprehend that Agnetha, Benny, Björn, and Anni-Frid were most likely dead, or worse. An image leapt into his head of the group, wandering around in their glittery garb, snarling and dribbling that tarry goo everywhere. Abba as lurkers was not a comforting thought.

'Like Aqua?' River asked.

'Who?' Shane had no idea.

'Aqua are . . . were from that part of the world. Barbie Girl? Remember.' She began to sing a little excerpt from whatever song she was referring to; to Shane it sounded godawful. 'Sounds to me like your band ripped off Aqua.'

Marla giggled. 'Yeah, Shane. Your band totally ripped off our band.' She was really starting to enjoy herself.

'Apart from the fact that Abba formed in the seventies, and your band, Aquafresh, or whatever they're called, are new enough for you to remember them, River, I think it's clear to see who ripped off who.'

Holy shit, he was on a roll. Bettered her twice in less than five minutes. Victory had never felt so good.

'Whatever,' River said, a little perturbed. 'I'll bet your band were nowhere near as big as Aqua. Barbie Girl was at number one for ages.'

Shane didn't even need to run through Abba's hits, or how long they had resided at the top of the charts. And, other than being able to recall the specifics, he couldn't be bothered.

'You're probably right,' Shane ceded. 'I can't even remember one song by my band.'

River grinned exposing a mouthful of tiny, pearl-white teeth. 'You won't beat me at music. I had loads of CDs. Did you know the Spice Girls?'

Oh, now we're getting into it, Shane thought. He would humour her anyway, because it maintained the relief within the car, and that could only be a good thing.

'Oh, I think I've heard of them,' Shane said, sardonically. If River picked up on his sarcasm, she didn't show it.

'Yeah. Well, I had every CD they ever released. Used to drive my mom crazy with it, yet she always got me the newest album for Christmas or my birthday, so I don't think she hated them as much as she made out.'

'While we're talking about music,' Marla said, changing the subject by keeping it the same, 'I don't suppose there are any CDs in the glove-compartment. I haven't heard music since . . . well, since forever. Might be nice.'

Shane hadn't thought to check the glove-box, but that was where he had once kept his music, when he had possessed a car of his own. He had assumed the rest of the group wanted silence after the morning they had endured, but now that the seed was planted, Shane was in agreement.

Music would be nice.

Terry, who had spent the last five minutes silently smiling at the hilarity of the ensuing conversation, closed his bible and pulled the glove-box handle.

He reached in and pulled out a service-manual for the Camry. He doubted they would be using the car long enough to need it servicing, so discarded it rapidly between his feet and continued to rummage. The sound of plastic clicking together was a good sign, and when he retracted his hand the next time it was clutching a handful of CD cases.

'What is there?' River excitedly asked, sticking her head between the front seats.

'I'll bet there's no Aqua,' Shane said. 'Or Spice Girls.'

'We have . . . ' Terry said, flicking through the CDs. ' . . . Ravi Shankar?' He shrugged, put that one to the back. 'We also have somebody called Chet Baker, one from a band called Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, and . . . ooh, this one looks good,' the sarcasm in his voice suggested it wasn't going to be good in the slightest, 'Mahavishnu Orchestra.'

Silence.

'Great,' River said after a moment. 'We get the only car on the lot belonging to a Geography teacher.'

'Hang on,' Shane said, snatching the last CD from Terry's hand. He looked down at the cover, which portrayed the band playing on front of a red, lightning-filled sky. It was garish, to say the least. 'This is the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Oh, River, you haven't heard anything until you've heard this.' He was, of course, playing her, but in the back seat she brightened a little. Whether she believed him or not, it didn't matter.

They were going to listen to some music . . .

Shane flipped open the CD case and unclipped the disc. He was about to insert it into the player on the dash when it slipped between his fingers and rolled across his leg, landing down by his right foot.

'Shit,' he muttered. He reached down, keeping the wheel steady with his left hand and his jaw.

Couldn't . . . quite . . . reach . . . it.

He switched hands, the wheel slipped through his fingers slightly, and as he plucked the CD up from the footwell he huffed.

'LOOK OUT!' someone screamed from the back. Shane didn't know whether it was Marla, or River, but the car about to hit them was travelling fast enough to kill them all so it didn't really matter.

Then came the crunch, followed by the sound of twisting metal as the car rolled down the embankment sideways.

Shane felt pain all at once, as if every part of his body had been simultaneously stabbed, and then there was only darkness, and the slow, ominous hissing of deflating tyres.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was another miserable day in the clouds. The Wave Hawk hovered, ominously, as the increasing wind attacked the left-hand side.

Its pilot, James “Dredd” Foster, wanted the day to be over already so he could get back to his wife and daughter. She'd promised to make him something special for dinner – something that hadn't come out of a tin, which was what they usually ate – and it was all he could think about. His stomach growled now as visions of multicoloured vegetables and sauces taunted him.

'Ain't nobody out here,' he said to himself before repeating it into the microphone perched upon his helmet.

'Roger that, Dredd. Duly noted, but we need to make certain there are no survivors, I repeat, NO survivors.'

The voice that came through belonged to General Frank Pimlico, a man with a military-record longer than Dredd's arm, all of it clean.

'Just thought I'd let you know.'

The general was eager to make sure that all movement below belonged solely to the creatures. It was simply a case of search and rescue, without the rescue; Dredd had not seen a survivor in three days, and today didn't look to be any different.

The guy he'd picked up on Tuesday – he only knew it was a Tuesday because his wife still kept a diary, though why was beyond him – was in a catatonic state, sitting in the middle of Lefleur's Bluff State Park sobbing to himself.

Dredd had taken the Wave Hawk down, even then not eliciting acknowledgement from the hysterical survivor. At first, Dredd thought he was one of them, one of the creatures, but when he reached him, pistol trained on the head just in case, they guy had looked up with human eyes and none of the oily gunk dribbling from his lips that was associated with the creatures.

Carrying the guy back to the chopper had been problematic, since he was slightly larger than Dredd, and seemed to be a dead-weight. But he had managed it, and taken him to safety, which is where he was now, probably enjoying that wonderful dinner Emma was talking about which was meant for him.

Three days.

And that guy had been in no fit state. Dredd didn't think he would have lasted another night out there, battered by winds and cold in the park. He had been fortunate to survive so long, anyway. Lefleur's was sans-zombies – which certainly made a difference.

Dredd glanced out of his window; nothing but trees, a road, more trees, and then a house, which looked as if it had been caught up in a tornado such was the extent of its damage.

No point checking there, he surmised.

Rain flecked the windshield. It sounded like miniature gunfire, bullets from a half-inch gun.

What was happening with the weather? Nobody at the base could explain it, and they had some of the best meteorologists alive – though how many weather experts had there been before the apocalypse? – and not one of them could construct a viable reason for the sudden shift in weather systems.

It was about as predictable as the creatures. The weather, at one time, had been reliable. Granted, there were anomalies whereby it would snow in August, or there would be a heatwave in November. There had always been such occurrences, but this was something completely different.

One of the meteorologists at the base was convinced the creatures and the mysterious weather transitions were somehow affiliated, yet couldn't say how or why. Nobody really paid that guy much heed, and it was for the best.

But the weather was a worry, especially when it affected transport so fundamentally. Today wasn't too bad; Dredd could fly the Wave Hawk for twelve hours in this shit. But last week, and the one before, when it had snowed non-stop – torrential shit that had covered buildings, concealed cars completely, and killed off any survivors caught out in it – it had been almost impossible to go out looking for people.

And Dredd was the only helicopter pilot at the base. You had the guys who flew jets, which he didn't envy them for, and then you had him . . .

Lone pilot . . .

One man, one chopper . . . God it sounded like some shitty YouTube video . . .

Dredd wished he had some music to listen to up here. Something soulful, like Aretha or Wilson Pickett. Yeah, that would be nice. He missed the day when you could slip a tape in, or a vinyl on – he didn't hold much truck with CDs or MP3s – and sing along to something of beauty. Now all he had to look forward to was the constant beeping of the control panel as it flashed green and the thunder from above of the rotors.

He started to sing; Wonderful World by Sam Cooke. It seemed appropriate because the world was nothing akin to wonderful, not anymore.

As the lyrics fell out of his mouth, he instantly felt better. A release, like orgasming through song. He took the Wave Hawk down a little, hovering less than fifty feet above the trees, and started to enjoy the bleakness of everything.

The scenery, the barren fields, the empty houses . . . What a wonderful world this would be. . .

Dredd was one of the lucky ones; most people had lost their entire families, either to the creatures or to the subsequent fallout. If Emma had been taken from him – or Gabriella, their daughter – he wouldn't have wanted to continue to exist in such a world.

. . . such a wonderful world. . .

He steered the Wave Hawk to the right, pulling across a field. There were creatures down there, shambling aimlessly like the fucktards they were. In the beginning Dredd had been accompanied by a gunner, a trigger-happy prick called Alan – though he refused to answer to anything other than Al – and they had taken out as many of those things as they could.

It didn't take long to realise they were wasting ammo; the never-ending torrent of zombies were too much for them to deal with, and pretty soon they stopped shooting at them, conserved the bullets they had, and hoped the things just fucking died of their own accord before long.

As Dredd flew the Wave Hawk across the field, singing the finale of Wonderful World with a little oomph, he wished Al had been in the back. Watching a couple of creatures' heads explode might have livened up an otherwise tedious day.

He passed the things on the ground and arrived at yet more trees.

'I'm coming back to base,' he told the microphone on his helmet. 'There's fuck all out here; I'm wasting time.'

Frank Pimlico's voice came through loud and clear, and so did his disappointment. 'Roger that, Dredd. I guess I'm just a silly optimist.'

Dredd nodded, swinging the chopper over the trees. 'Not at all, Sir,' he lied. 'You're just making sure we don't nuke any survivors. That's something to be proud of.'

'Guess we'll just be nuking folks that are already dead,' the general said. 'Come on back to base, Dredd. I can smell your wife's cooking from here.'

The pilot smiled.

A wonderful world it wasn't, but it was all they had left.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The sound of a helicopter wasn't right in Shane's head. It was fuzzy – disconnected – and yet he knew what he was hearing could only be one thing. His neck cracked as he pulled his head back from where it had been resting on the steering-wheel. He was so disoriented that he called out Megan's name, then Holly's, before recalling that they were dead – one by his own hand – and the world was teeming with the undead. It all came back slowly, and before he had chance to reach for the handle on the door the sound of the helicopter was waning.

'Shit!'

He climbed out of the car. Terry was already doing the same through the passenger door. Shane glanced into the back seat to find Marla and River glancing around, as unsure of their surroundings as he was.

'What happened?' Terry asked.

Shane remembered another car; coming towards them in the middle of the road. It had been so unexpected that he'd been unable to swerve in time, and they'd dropped down the embankment where the car now rested against a tree, totalled.

'Car,' Shane replied. He had a lump on his head, though it didn't appear to be bleeding. 'We hit another car.'

Terry pointed up to the road. His cheek was scratched, and a little bloody, but once again Shane realised just how lucky they had been. 'Let's go find out.'

Behind them, Marla and River were abandoning the mangled wreck. River muttered something beneath her breath – possible an expletive that she didn't want either he or Terry to pick up on – and staggered, woozily, away from the vehicle.

'Is everyone okay?' Shane asked. He could see they were fine, at least visually.

Marla, trembling, said, 'I think so. River?'

The girl checked herself over. Quite what she was expecting to discover – a limb hanging off or viscera on the outside – Shane didn't know. 'I guess,' she said. 'My shoulder's a bit sore.'

'Is it your machete hand?' Terry asked, the expression on his face pleaded for it to be the other one.

'No, stupid, that's my other arm.'

River was fine. Her insolence was intact, anyway.

Suddenly, the sound of voices came from up on the roadside. A male and a female were arguing, bickering like disgruntled children over what had happened and whose fault it was.

Shane pushed a finger to his lips, a signal to the others to remain silent. He slowly took out his pistol and turned to the embankment.

Marla wanted to tell him to be careful, but they were to remain silent. She took out her own gun, as a precaution, and watched as Shane slowly pulled himself up towards the road, to where the voices continued to rant at each other.

River moved across to where Terry stood. He patted her on the top of the head, a gesture that could have been misconstrued as patronizing if he wasn't careful.

She smiled, and then all three of them followed Shane up to to the road.

*

'Don't move!' Shane called out. The moment it passed his lips he felt ridiculous, like some bad TV cop. The guy holding the shotgun flinched, as if he might disobey Shane's words and go for the shot. He caught himself, though, and held out a placatory hand. The girl was staring, open-mouthed, towards Shane. Neither of them looked seriously injured, at least not yet.

'Shit, dude,' the man said, lowering his shotgun a little. 'Take it easy with that thing; we're not infected.'

Shane didn't care. These two idiots had run them off the road, and for a moment it didn't click that they'd actually stumbled across more survivors, the very thing they had been hoping for.

'You fucked up our car,' Shane said, prodding the gun towards the man, who didn't seem to be in any real rush to put his gun down on the ground. 'We had plans. What the fuck were you doing in the middle of the road?'

'Yeah, douchebag!' River snarled just as the guy was about to answer. She meant it, too, and Shane didn't reprimand her for the outburst. . . he didn't need to.

'We've been driving for days,' the man said. Finally, he lowered his weapon and stepped away from it, keeping the placatory hand in the air for all to see. 'You know what it's like, man. I just drifted. Shit, we haven't seen anyone else – well, other than those fucks – in so long; we certainly didn't expect there to be another car on this stretch of road.' He waited, sharing conspiratorial glances with the tartan-skirted girl, as if something unspoken was passing between them. Shane saw it and moved over to where the shotgun sat on the road. The man – whose leather jacket made tiny putputput noises as the rain bounced off it – stepped back, both hands raised.

'Where you people coming from?' the girl said. She was whiny, nasal, as if she had a cold, but it was the kind of voice that needed no affliction to create. It was annoying.

'We were trying to get out of Jackson,' Marla said, moving across to the nasally girl. She proceeded to search her, though there was nothing to search; no pockets, no hidden crevices. This was clearly a girl who placed all of her trust in her man. It wasn't a safe way to live, not anymore. Marla couldn't remember the last time she had been without a weapon. . .

'Us too,' the man said. He looked to Shane, silently asking if he was okay to lower his arms. In truth, Shane wasn't sure. These people didn't look infected, but you never could tell until it was too late. One minute, they could be walking around right as rain, the next, “Oooooh, my stomach hurts,” and then the change. Before you know what's hit you, you've got lurkers snapping at your ankles and you can't believe how stupid you were not to check the fuckers in the first place.

'You haven't been scratched, or bitten?' Terry asked, as if he were able to read Shane's mind.

The leather-clad man shook his head. 'We haven't come into contact with any of those things for days, and whenever we do we keep our distance. I've seen too many men fall from overconfidence, and those things only need half a chance and they're on you.'

Shane walked around the man, who was glued to the spot, though continued to talk as Shane appraised him.

'I swear, man, we'd already be showing symptoms, wouldn't we? All three of us are clean.'

Shane, at first, missed what the man had said, and then suddenly snapped into action, pacing across to where the rest of his group were standing.

'You said three,' Shane said, not a question. 'Where's the third?'

The man slowly twisted his trunk and prodded a finger towards the mangled Oldsmobile a little further up the road. 'He's fine. We left him at the side of the road, just in case you were marauders, or something.' He raised an eyebrow, as if it ask if his assumption was ill-judged.

'We're just people trying to survive,' Shane assured him. 'But we need to see your third all the same.'

The girl suddenly held her hand up, expressing her desire to talk. Shane turned and nodded, feeling rather stupid to be granting another human-being permission to speak when there were so few rules remaining – if any.

'He can't talk,' the girl said.

Shane shrugged. 'We're all a little shocked, here. Some people deal with this kind of—'

'No, he doesn't talk at all,' the girl interrupted. 'He can't speak. . .you see, he's our son and he has never been able to speak.' She sniggered nervously, though Shane could tell she was uncomfortable talking. 'We thought he might grow out of it, didn't we Lukas, but he never did. . . '

The man – Lukas – nodded. 'Yeah, it's been real tough, what with everything going to shit, and all, but we love the little fucker, even if he is a mutey.'

Shane felt terrible. The trio were a family, just a set of parents and a son trying to make it through the day in once piece.

They almost hadn't.

'Can he hear?' Shane asked, though there was something different now; his voice had changed, softened, and he was no longer aiming the pistol towards the man's face. It was teetering a little lower, and if a bullet were to accidentally escape it would simply brush the man's flesh before continuing along its trajectory.

'He can,' Lukas said. 'But he listens more to his mom than me. Ain't that right, Abi?' He nodded to the woman, signalling her to shout after their boy.

She sighed, rolled her eyes – as if annoyed at such an order – and then screeched at the top of her lungs, 'SAUL!' She waited, breathing heavily; recuperating, almost. 'Saul, you come on out, now. These nice people want to say hi.'

Shane didn't know what to expect – none of them did – but the little boy that emerged from the wreckage of the Olds was not much older than River, though he was skinny, gaunt to the point of unpleasantness. It never occurred to Shane that this kid had been relatively well-fed before the creatures came. All he could see were two godawful parents and a neglected tramp of a child. It was unfair to cast aspersions, but Shane had a bad feeling about these people – all three of them – as soon as they stood together as a unit.

The boy was uninjured – which was surprising given the state of the car lying on its roof – and only moved with a tentative gait due to the presence of strangers.

'Say hello to these people, Saul,' Abi urged. There was something about the way she emphasised people that irritated Marla, though it might just have been the adrenaline still coursing through her. . . through all of them.

The boy lifted a hand, and then his head, and when he saw River he appeared to brighten a little. The poor kid had probably resigned himself to the fact he was the youngest survivor, and therefore more alone than any of the grown-ups – including his parents.

'Hey Saul,' River said, waving gingerly. She wasn't a shy girl, normally, but Shane was sure he saw her cheeks redden.

'Are we cool?' Lukas asked. He was still holding his arms aloft as best as he could, but it must have been uncomfortable; the grimace painted across his face said so.

Shane thought for a second, looking towards the girl – Abi – and then Saul, whose gaze had reverted to the ground.

Just a family, a voice inside his head informed him, and it was Megan's voice.

'Yeah, we're cool,' Shane said, slowly lowering his pistol before tucking it into the band of his pants. He pointed towards the wreck which was half-on half-off the road; the portion overlapping the forest was nestled in shrubbery. 'Thank God you all made it out of that okay.'

Lukas turned. 'Yeah, that was a bad one. I fucking loved that car. Bet we don't come across another one anytime soon.'

And then Shane realised just how much their plans had been altered. They had been so close to getting out; so near to leaving the past behind in Jackson and heading for a place of promise, to potential safety, and now. . .

'Hey, look, I'm sorry,' the tall, muscular guy known as Lukas said. He reached down and plucked his shotgun up from the road. 'Coulda happened to anyone, I guess.'

And as Lukas walked away, heading to where his wife/girlfriend and son were standing, Shane was certain he caught a whiff of alcohol on the guy's breath. It was a baleful smell; one that reminded Shane to keep his wits about him at all times, for you never knew what was actually going through a person's mind any longer. He cast the overturned Olds a final glance before joining the rest of the group, though he immediately wished it was just the four of them again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When the rain finally stopped they were all suitably wet and miserable. . .

And they would have been lost if Lukas had had his way; lost, wet and miserable would have been too much for one day.

Shane hadn't told the newcomers about the jets, about how he had heard a helicopter hovering overhead shortly after their collision rendered both of their cars useless. Even he didn't know why he retained this information; though he didn't trust the man – Lukas – and there was something about the way the kid looked, unloved and apprehensive, that made Shane wonder if everything was right with these people.

Perhaps, he thought, the apocalypse had broken them. What had once been a tight-knit family were now practically strangers, surviving together only because they have to, through necessity and not love. The stresses and tribulations of the past few weeks could be directly accountable for their lack of familial traits, though it seemed to be the boy who was suffering the most.

Abi and Lukas were all over each other like love-struck teenagers. It was embarrassing, and Shane could see that neither Terry nor Marla were comfortable.

It was a good thing; it meant it wasn't just him being stupid and reading into something that wasn't there.

Something was definitely odd about the trio, and Shane couldn't quite put his finger on it just yet.

'This road should take us all the way to Brookhaven,' Shane said. 'We're probably looking at a whole day, maybe longer depending on the terrain.' The pack on his back was already digging into his shoulders and armpits, and the thought of eighteen hours of solid walking wasn't just daunting, it made him feel physically sick. He could only imagine what Terry, with the other pack, was feeling. And Lukas was carrying a Bergen filled with ammo; Shane had watched him fill It from the overturned Oldsmobile's trunk. Truthfully, it frightened him how many shells the guy had. It also made him wish that he had more. . .

'It's three now,' Lukas said, checking his watch. 'We're gonna have to find somewhere to sleep before dark, which only gives us five – maybe six – hours of walking-time.'

Shane sighed. Even that sounded too much. 'If we come across somewhere to rest for the night between now and nine,' he said, 'I think we should take it and start early in the morning. That way we'll make it in one go.' He hoped it didn't sound like he was making excuses, but they weren't carrying the weight he was. . . so fuck 'em.

Marla dropped back so that she walked between Terry and Shane; River was up front with Saul, talking at him, bombarding him with questions that he couldn't answer. Marla felt sorry for him.

'What do you think?' Marla mumbled, though she was pretty sure that Lukas and Abi were out of earshot.

'About what?' Terry asked, oblivious to the fact they were being quiet so as not to alert the newbies. Abi turned and smiled; Terry smiled back. It was an exchange that suggested nothing was wrong, even though Marla thought there might be.

'About them,' Marla whispered. 'I don't know about you but I've been treading on eggshells this last hour. It's as if the air around them is twice as dense. I don't even know how else to explain it.'

Shane knew what she meant. The atmosphere had changed since the arrival of the new family. It was tense, as if they were in the company of unwelcome relatives that they just wanted to leave.

'We've not come across anyone else,' Terry said, his voice low enough to be audible to only them. 'I don't think we have the luxury of picking and choosing our allies, not in this world.'

'I know,' Marla sighed, 'but I don't know whether I like it. I was talking to the girl – Abi – and I got the distinct impression she'd been drinking. She was slurring, though it might have been from the crash.'

'I smelt booze on the guy,' Shane said. 'I don't think you were imagining things.'

Marla's mouth fell open. She couldn't believe that two parents would endanger their own son's life by driving drunk. With the roads treacherous enough as it was – with broken-down cars haphazardly scattered and burnt out vehicles from the riots that followed the outbreak – it was impossible to fathom why they would put themselves at increased risk by pounding the good stuff. . .

'We don't know anything,' Terry said. 'All we know is that we have three survivors, and I sure as hell feel a bit safer with the amount of ammo that guy's packed.'

Shane thought about telling Terry that, for him, it was the complete opposite. It put him on edge; Lukas, for all they knew, was a loose cannon, a maniac liable to shoot anything that moved before turning the gun on himself.

He was built like a mercenary, and Shane didn't think it was unfair to treat him as such until they could be sure of his fealty.

'We're screwed, by the way.' Marla said it as an aside.

'We're no worse off than before,' Shane said; now seemed like a good enough time to tell them about the fuel. 'We wouldn't have made it much farther on the gas we had. The crash only slowed us down a little.'

Marla shook her head. 'So you hotwired a car with enough fuel to run a zippo? That's just precious.' She was angry, but Shane's grin lightened the mood and her intense expression eased.

'What we need to figure out now,' Shane said, 'is where to bed down. We'll need to keep watch, so as long as the bullet-hoarder up front doesn't mind taking in turns with Terry and me, we should be able to get through to morning in one two-hour post each. Four hours sleep should be enough for us to hit the dirt again tomorrow.'

'You know me,' Terry said. 'I only sleep when I have to, anyway. I've got no issues with going first, either.'

Thinking about sleep this early in the afternoon was not the best idea, and Shane felt his pack expand with the merest thought of throwing it off and calling it a day.

They still had miles to cover, and with the rain turning the ground to mulch beneath their feet it was best to keep moving, or risk making up for it tomorrow.

The rest of the group up ahead had slowed to a halt on the road and were examining a bullet-pocked brown sign. River was gesturing frantically for them to hurry; whatever it was, she deemed it as quite a find and couldn't wait for the lagging trio to see.

Though they didn't know it, that filthy, pock-marked sign was about to shape their immediate future.

*

'What do you think?' Lukas said dusting the light coating of rainwater from his leather jacket. 'Worth checking out?'

Shane reread the sign, as if it might tell him something new on a repeat viewing. It didn't. CN FREIGHT YARD. It was pretty self-explanatory.

'There might be lurkers there,' Shane said, slipping the pack from his shoulders and lowering it to the road. It felt so good that he was already dreading the thought of putting it back on.

'Lurkers?' Abi asked.

Marla stepped up and examined the sign. 'Yeah, lurkers,' she said. 'You probably call them something else. It's what we call those things.'

Lukas laughed, unexpectedly, and it caused them all to start. 'I like that. . . Lurkers.' He laughed again; this time, nobody flinched. 'You make them sound like paedophiles.'

The distaste on Marla's face suggested she was about to respond. Shane got there before she had a chance.

'What do you call them?'

Lukas thought; he looked surprised that he was being tested. 'We call them fucking dead bastards. Zombies, though I guess you think zombies are the shit from films. Well, they're exactly like the things we used to watch in the movies, so it's a good enough name for us.' Then, under his breath, he added, 'Lurkers, for fuck's sake.'

'Look, it doesn't matter what we call them,' Marla spat. Shane could see that she was doing her very best to show restraint. They all were. 'What matters is that if we go there,' she pointed to the sign, 'there might be some, and we don't need to put ourselves in needless danger.'

Lukas cocked his shotgun and smiled. Abi huddled up to him – her hero – and fluttered her eyelashes like some wannabe pinup from a bygone era. 'Ain't no danger,' he said. 'Not any longer. I don't know what these gentlemen have been doing for you, honey, but Lukas is here now, and ain't none of your lurkers gonna be fucking with you while I'm here.'

Terry thought about intervening, and Shane was too busy staring at the sign to hear, but when it came down to it, Marla needed no help.

'Wow,' she said, biting her lip as if his flattery had done something remarkable for her. 'Well, I'll try to bear that in mind when you're getting your ass chewed off by one of our lurkers.'

'The sign says it's only a mile off the road,' Shane said, interrupting what was quickly turning into a nasty exchange. He turned to face them. 'If there are lurkers there, I doubt there'll be many, not enough to worry about.'

He was asking for opinions, and all he got in return was blank expressions. Lukas's frown and twitching eye suggested that Marla's words had affected him, though he would never admit it.

'Your call,' Terry said as he slowly unfolded his arms and wiped his damp palms on the seat of his pants.

Marla nodded. 'If you think it might be worth something,' she said, 'then, sure.'

Shane didn't know whether it would be worth a shit, but the road ahead was a long and arduous one; a few hours rest and a look around an abandoned freight yard was as appealing as a fortnight in Greece to him right then.

'Let's get walking,' Shane said. 'River, Saul, no more going off ahead. We need to stay close now.'

River turned to Saul and shrugged as if they had been told, sure you can play out, but don't be crossing the road and I want you back at four for dinner. . .

Lukas and Abi went up front and were whispering surreptitiously to one another, though Shane caught two of the words that passed between them, and he knew that he would need to remain vigilant while they were around and remained a part of the group.

The words were shoot and bitch.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

James “Dredd” Foster landed on the Bay St. Louis to the usual gathering of disinterested people. They were busy eating and talking amongst themselves, and as the Wave Hawk's rotors slowed, revealing the incessant drone of chitter-chatter, he wondered if anyone actually cared about what he did day after day.

Not for much longer.

Tomorrow, with a bit of luck, he would be on board one of the ships leaving the port; a new life ahead with Emma and Gabriella, one where the constant threat of being bitten, infected, was no longer a threat at all.

The survivors here, in the bay, were fortunate enough to be surrounded by trained personnel. Snipers were positioned on eight towers running the length of the North Beach Boulevard; if any creatures wandered off the beaten path – which they sometimes did – they were quickly and expertly dispatched with a single shot to the head. Such was the rarity of a shambler, though, that the eight snipers maintained radio-contact just so they could argue which one of them got to take the shot.

It was technically the safest place in America, though not safe enough. The menace was still there, and none of the survivors would rest until there was an ocean between them and the creatures.

Which was exactly what they were doing.

'Took your goddamned time,' a voice said. Dredd turned to find Frank Pimlico striding towards him through the detached crowd. 'Thought you'd stopped for ice-cream.'

Dredd saluted; the general waved his gesture away – as he always did – because rank meant very little and Pimlico was not the kind of guy to stipulate respect; he just got it.

'So I take it you didn't come across a bus-load of day-trippers since the last time we spoke?' He shook Dredd's hand so viciously that it felt like his shoulder had come unhinged.

Dredd nodded dissent. 'I didn't come across anything out there,' he said. It was time, he thought, to saddle up and ride into the sunset; any remaining survivors would have made themselves known as he flew over, and he'd seen nobody. If there were people in hiding – perhaps at the mall or in some derelict apartment-complex – there was nothing he could do to help them now.

'So we're just about done here,' the general said. He was staring at the ground, at the loose sand which blew on a breeze around their feet. 'Pity.'

It was a pity, because come tomorrow, the jets were making a delivery; six B61 nukes, 340 kilotons each, were to be launched strategically from three planes, leaving nothing between Louisiana and the Delta National Forest but smouldering rubble and enough radiation to make Chernobyl look like a gas-leak. It was a manoeuvre meant for only one thing: Destroy all living – or dead – things within a thousand miles. In doing so they would be free of worry for long enough to complete their assignments. Just knowing that all undead close enough to cause problems had evaporated would satisfy the survivors no end.

It was for the good of humanity; for the success of a controlled regeneration of mankind. Excessive, but necessary.

Like taking missiles to a cockroach-infestation.

'Have you seen Emma?' Dredd asked, sensing the moroseness of the atmosphere and needing to be a way from it.

Pimlico brightened. 'Ahhh, the good lady wife. She's been working on a special meal for you over by the base. I don't know what you did to deserve her,' he smiled, 'but you've damn well got the only decent woman left alive in this godforsaken place.'

As Dredd walked away from the general, nodding, his stomach growling to remind him just how hungry he was, he knew that Frank Pimlico was not far wrong with his elucidation.

*

The food was amazing, though it would have been just as delicious if it had been beans and rice again. Dredd didn't know where Emma had managed to find ripe apples, and because he was enjoying himself too much forgot to ask.

Gabriella ate with a few of the other children a little farther down the beach, which made the meal he shared with Emma somewhat romantic. There was a candle in the centre of the table, which continued to flicker even now they had finished their food. It was, Dredd thought, one of the nicest things to have happened to him since the nightmare began.

Emma was without make-up, as she had been for weeks, and Dredd was thankful for it. She was naturally beautiful, the kind of woman who would turn heads just wandering around the cereal aisle of a supermarket. She didn't need any artificial beauty to enhance what she already possessed.

As she sat opposite, the wind flowing through the gazebo causing her hair to flutter, Dredd could see that she wanted to ask something. She had that look about her; the eyes were up and she was chewing the inside of her lip, awaiting the best way to approach whatever it was that needed asking.

He would have to pre-empt her.

'They're doing it tomorrow,' he said, guessing that that was what bothered her so visibly.

She nodded, reached for her glass – water, since wine had become something of a rarity – and proceeded to quaff thirstily from it.

Dredd waited. There was no point embellishing until she responded.

She placed the glass down, keeping hold of the stem so that she had something to play with while they talked. 'And nothing's going to delay them?' She shook her head. 'Shit, James, there could be survivors back there. Hundreds of people, hiding away from those things—'

'I know. Don't you think I know that?' He paused. 'I've been out there scouring the streets for days, and I haven't come across anybody. I don't like the idea of the bombs any more than you do, but they want to neutralize any potential threat from the north, and that's the best way to do it.'

Emma rotated her glass nervously. 'They don't need to make certain, not like this. We're going to the island; those fuckers can't swim. The nukes won't make any difference . . .'

Dredd relaxed back into his seat. It was raining heavier, now, pattering on the polyester above, a rhythmic drum-roll that seemed to ease the tension beneath the canopy.

'Those things terrify me,' Emma said.

'The snipers are doing a good job of—'

'No, the bombs,' she said. 'When we were kids, that was the only thing that frightened me. My dad would tell us about Russia, about how they had more nukes than we did and were more likely to use them. I remember sitting in my bedroom listening to the radio, and thinking to myself just how little we would know about it if someone launched one of those things. If the Russians actually nuked us. I'd seen videos, and it always frightened me how massive the destruction was.' She sipped the last of her water before lowering the glass. 'And tomorrow we're going to launch six of them. Forgive me for freaking out a bit.'

Dredd didn't know what to say; her father's scaremongering had obviously affected her. He reached across the table and grabbed her hands in his, enveloping each tiny digit and stroking the wedding-band with his thumb.

'You know I would never let anything bad happen to you, to Gabriella, to us. Those bombs will be detonated so far away you won't even see them. Honey, we'll be on a boat down the Mississippi this time tomorrow, and when we reach that island we're gonna build us a new life, a fresh start, and everything that's come before won't matter. The future is all we have left, and I know that as long as we have each other, then there is absolutely nothing to be scared of.'

The torrent of rain was dripping all around them now; they were surrounded by their own personal waterfall. Dredd wondered if people could see in, see what they were doing. He sure as hell couldn't see out.

'You been practising that?' Emma asked, her lips curling slightly into a smile.

'All improv, babe,' Dredd said. 'Did it sound scripted?'

'Kinda.'

Dredd squeezed her hand and let go. He glanced around at the cataract beleaguering them. 'At this rate we won't need to get on the boat.'

Just then, Gabriella appeared, rushing through the rain into the gazebo. She was soaked to the bone; her hair was painted to her face. She must have been freezing.

'Honey, what are you doing?' Emma stood and picked their daughter up. She pushed the clingy bangs away from her face and dried her – albeit unsuccessfully – with her palm.

'Lizzie says we're leaving on the boats tomorrow,' Gabriella said. 'Does that mean we're going to our new home?'

Emma shot Dredd a glance, and he shrugged, which pretty much meant the show was all hers.

'If Lizzie says so,' Emma said. She placed Gabriella down on the ground and began to wipe at her with the side of the tablecloth. 'I've told you not to listen to everything people tell you, darling, but this time your friend might be right.'

'So do I need to start packing?'

Gabriella could be a pain in the ass at times; but she could also be adorable, and this was one of the latter.

'How much stuff do you have?' Dredd sniggered. It was true; their daughter had one bag, which she had been living out of since they arrived at the base. There should have been nothing to pack.

'Daddy, a woman needs her luxuries,' Gabriella said, deadly serious. She turned to Emma, who was rubbing the one remaining corner of the tablecloth around Gabriella's forehead. 'Isn't that right, Mommy?'

Emma laughed. 'Don't put me on the spot. Your daddy thinks this apocalypse is the best thing to ever happen. Stops me from going out shoe-shopping.'

They all laughed; even Gabriella, though she had no idea why.

She ran off wearing the tablecloth over her head, back to that little loudmouth friend of hers.

'She doesn't need to know about the bombs,' Emma said, watching Gabriella race through the rain. 'It'll only frighten her, and I don't want her growing up with that fear.'

Dredd leaned in and kissed Emma tenderly on the earlobe, pulling her towards him. 'Shall we finish this the way I've been dreaming all day long.'

Emma laughed. She knew exactly what he meant, and she didn't want to tell him that she had been thinking it too, in case he began to take it for granted.

They headed to their tent, satisfied on food and soon to be sated entirely.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

'Holy shit!' Marla said as they crossed the first row of tracks. 'Have you ever seen so much . . . so much rail?'

She was right; it was spectacular. There were eight tracks in the first block, three of which were clear but the others had static trains sitting on them. This was marked as a receiving yard. Opposite, across a thin platform, were a further eight tracks. Two trains were parked up there, which led them to believe that the other six were still out there, perhaps halfway between destination and here, maybe stuck at the other end.

'Says Departure Yard,' Shane said, pointing across to the battered sign on the cabin wall. 'I guess these two never made it.'

Terry was examining the first train, whistling – which was something he hadn't done in a long time – as he dropped to his knees to check beneath.

Abi and Lukas were sitting on the platform, smoking. Once again, Shane had a strange feeling that these newcomers were going to bring nothing but trouble, with the exception of the kid, Saul.

'Any supplies?' Marla asked Terry as he straightened up and stretched his ageing back.

'These could be full of stuff,' Terry said, pointing to the huge stack of multicoloured containers at the end of the track. 'I'd say they were meant to go somewhere and never made it out. Shit, we might have dropped lucky, here.'

'We can't carry any more,' Shane reminded them. 'I'm struggling as it is.'

'I didn't mean dropped lucky with the containers,' Terry said. 'I used to work for the rail company, back when I was a whipper-snapper. I never really grew out of it, either. This thing's like a big train-set to me.'

Shane shrugged. 'I have no idea what you're trying to say.'

Sighing, Terry jabbed a finger in the direction the two trains on the departure yard were pointed. 'We need to be going that way, huh?'

Shane nodded.

'If I can get one of these things running, we could make it to the coast in a couple of hours, provided the track's clear all the way through.'

Shane heard the words; he just couldn't comprehend what Terry was saying. 'Couple of hours,' he mumbled, though not as a question or acknowledgement, but because it was the last thing he'd heard of any worth.

'I ain't saying I can do it, mind,' Terry added, but Shane wasn't interested in the disclaimer.

'Are you telling me that you might be able to get one of these things running?' Shane asked, still letting it soak in.

'I'm sayin' I can try,' Terry said.

Marla stepped in. 'Hang on a minute. Can I remind you that we've been without electricity since the prison. How in the hell—'

'Diesel locomotives,' Terry interjected. He appeared to be pleased with himself, too. 'These two – or at least that one there,' he pointed at the second, larger engine, 'don't run off electric. They've got a driveshaft, just like a car. So long as there's a couple of thousand gallons of diesel in it, we may be able to get it running.'

Shane placed both hands behind his head; this was the best goddamned news he'd had in weeks. 'What do you need to get started?'

Terry huffed. To Marla he said, 'Well, I'm not counting on a nice massage from this here beauty, so I guess I just need some tools, an hour's rest and a lot of luck from the guy upstairs.'

Shane didn't know about the last one, but he was pretty sure there would be tools; a place like this would have a maintenance departments, a stores where they kept spare parts and refurbished components.

'You go take a nap,' Shane said, knowing that the old man would do nothing of the sort. A rest, to him, meant finding somewhere quiet to sit and read a few passages from his bible. 'When you're ready to take a look, I'll have found you some tools.'

As Terry hobbled across to the separating platform, Marla edged a few steps closer to Shane.

'You think he can do it?' she asked. The tone of her own voice implied that she wasn't sure.

'We need to rest, anyway,' Shane said, rubbing at the soreness across his shoulders. The thought of being without the pack for a few hours was euphoric. 'If, when he takes a look, he can't, then at least we'll be ready for a few more hours on the road. No harm in trying.'

Marla followed Shane along the track to a small industrial unit. A place that looked, to Shane, a dead-cert for maintenance implements.

*

Lukas watched the prick and his bitch walk towards the unit. His cigarette had burned so low that it singed his fingers. When the pain finally registered, he flicked the butt onto the track in front of them and sighed.

'Did you hear the way that bitch talked to me?' he grunted. 'I swear, if she hadn't had her Imperial-fucking-guards standing beside her, I woulda slapped the shit outtta her.'

Abi was miles away; Lukas waited for a response, but it never came.

'Hey! Fuckface, I'm talking to you.'

Her head snapped across. Upon her face was an expression of fear and annoyance, as if she couldn't decide whether to be angry with him, or apologetic.

'Do you think she's pretty?' Abi asked.

Lukas had been expecting an apology, an I'm sorry, I fucked up for not paying attention when I shoulda been, and so when the question fell from her mouth he was a little more than surprised.

'Huh?' he just about managed.

Unmoved, she repeated the question. 'Do you think she's pretty?' This time, though, she emphasised each word. Lukas could tell she was frightened; not of him and what he might do to her for running her mouth, but of his answer.

'You talking about the bitch?' he asked, lighting up another cigarette. As he exhaled a bluish plume of smoke, he said, 'Hell, no! She's lucky I haven't shot her already. Fuck, baby-girl, you're the only one for me. You know that.'

Abi, for a few seconds – seconds which Lukas filled with long, hard pulls on his cigarette and nervous glances into Abi's eyes – didn't speak, didn't move, didn't even look at him.

When her eyes met his once again, she said, 'You love me?'

Without pause, for that could have really fucked him up, he said, 'More than anything.'

It seemed to be the right thing to say; she smiled, took the cigarette from him and casually smoked it. 'We ain't taking them with us, are we?'

Lukas sniggered. 'Not a chance in hell, baby-girl. Fucked up old man wants to try and get that thing running, let him get it running. As soon as we get the chance, we toss their sorry asses off.'

'Not the girl, though,' Abi hurriedly said.

'Aww, you want to take the widdle girl wid us.'

She playfully jabbed him in the arm, and he feigned pain. 'You don't want to take her with us?' she asked.

Lukas, still rubbing at his arm, even though it didn't hurt in the slightest, smiled. 'Of course I do,' he said. 'She's pretty.' Noticing the look on Abi's face, he added, 'But not as pretty as you.'

'That's better,' Abi smiled. 'Now, let's find us somewhere quiet so we can have some you-me time.'

She stood, patted the gravel from her clothing, and helped Lukas to his feet. As they headed off in search of a more secluded area, neither of them felt two sets of eyes on them. Saul and River watched as they disappeared into the trees.

Then Saul turned to River and shook his head; his eyes welled up – months of tears threatened to explode outward – and River pulled him towards her and hugged him as silent sobs racked his body.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was as Terry began work on the locomotive's radiator-fan, as Lukas and Abi returned from the woods all sweaty and flushed, as River and Saul were throwing tiny white rocks at a crushed coke-can, that the lurkers came. At first there were two of them, neither of which were a problem. River took the female creature down while Shane dropped the second with a two-by-four before stamping on the back of its head. Terry climbed up onto the roof of the train and scanned their surroundings from a decent height.

It was then that he gasped; his jaw sagged as if it had come unhinged, and his eyes threatened to bulge so far from their sockets that they would roll down his shirt and dangle there like comedy eyeballs on springs. Boing! Boing!

Shane was still trying to pull his foot free of the lurker's caved-in skull – which seemed to have swallowed his foot up and refused to let go – when he saw the terrified features of the man atop the locomotive. The way his mouth opened and shut told Shane everything he needed to know.

'How many!' he yelled, finally managing to relieve himself of the lurker's squashed head. He dropped the two-by-four – which had only been utilised for stealth purposes, and was now completely obsolete – and yanked the pistol from the band of his jeans. 'TERRY!'

'Eight . . . No, nine . . .' He was spinning on the top of the train like a man possessed. His beard was shaking in the breeze, though it might have been a result of his quivering lips.

In truth, Terry couldn't count them all. They were coming from everywhere. The trees surrounding the track on either side was suddenly swarming with the undead. 'Shane, scratch that,' he yelled down from the locomotive roof. 'Just start shooting.'

Lukas had rushed across to the cabin on the departure yard and was strategically moving crates. Abi, as quickly as she could, loaded his shotgun for him while he worked.

The lurkers shambling along the departure platform had spotted the couple and made a beeline for them.

'ABI!' Lukas yelled, although she was only a few feet behind him.

'I'm almost done,' she said, loading the last shell into the barrel before snapping it shut. She tapped him on the shoulder and he practically snatched it from her.

He dropped down low behind the crate and began firing. The first three creatures' faces exploded in a mist of blood and bone. Abi didn't have a weapon, but she stood behind Lukas with some temerity, knowing that these fuckers better be good to get by him and reach her. She was confident, and had every right to be.

'Shane!' Marla cried from where she had clambered up onto a steel container. She stood atop it, glancing down at the ensuing mayhem; Shane didn't know if she was aware of the two lurkers trying to scale the right-hand side of the container, and didn't want to leave it too late to find out.

'Get down!' he yelled, and with two true shots he hit the lurkers in the back of their heads. Slamming into the side of the container with a metallic thump, they looked like marionettes that had had their strings cut.

The look on Marla's face as she realised just how close she had come suggested that she hadn't been aware of them, and she waved to Shane: thanks.

Terry climbed down from the locomotive roof and began to slice his way through the lurkers as they besieged him. The sword that had once embedded itself in a lurker's neck showed no signs of repeating that unfortunate episode; it slashed through the creatures as if they were butter. Terry turned his head with each strike, being careful to evade the arterial spray that seemed to fill the air, a thick black goo that smelt as terrible as it looked.

One creature – dressed in filthy blue coveralls and still wearing a cap on top of its desiccated face – lunged toward him and managed to grasp his wrist in mid-swing. 'Get the . . . get fucking off, you heathen prick!' He brought his free hand round and grabbed the lurker – whose name was Joe according to the embroidered patch on his breast-pocket – by the hair and yanked him back so hard that the snap was audible. Joe's eyes gaped open as his spine penetrated his throat and poked out into the mid-afternoon as if was afraid of missing something.

The lurker – Joe – toppled backwards, and Terry wiped the darkness from his palm on his jeans. He didn't know whether it was residue from his work on the train, or viscera from the poor bastard at his feet, but he didn't want any of it getting in his mouth, either way.

Shane raced across the tracks, three lurkers hot in his heels. He turned, shot the one in front between the eyes, turned and ran a few more feet. Terry was level with him, trying to catch his breath.

This was ridiculous. Where had they all come from? What the hell were they doing out in the middle of nowhere?

They're everywhere, Terry reminded himself. Everywhere they died, anywhere they remembered . . . and they could remember. They knew that, now.

The second lurker in pursuit of Shane went down on the tracks as gunfire echoed around the yard. Shane turned just in time to witness the creature hit the rubble between the track, its face peeling back grotesquely as a result of the abrasive rocks. Marla had shot it from the container roof, but she had only wounded it, and it continued to drag itself forward, inexorably sliding towards Shane, who was levelling the pistol at the third lurker. One shot to the forehead painted a perfect black dot between the things raised eyebrows and it stumbled a few feet before its feet gave way and it sprawled across the track.

Terry wasn't waiting for Shane or Marla to make their move. They could cover him while he went to work.

He stepped down off the platform and raced as quickly as he could towards the incapacitated creature. Its face hung down, flapped slowly with each move it made, with each gust of wind. Terry couldn't tolerate it, and with one swift whoosh of the sword he lopped the grumbling thing's head off, sending it across onto the adjacent track.

'Where are the kids!?' Shane bellowed. He hadn't seen them, hadn't had time to realise they were nowhere in sight. And now, he felt as if he'd let them down; the worst possible outcome was already playing on his mind, and he scoured the madness for just a glimpse of either River or Saul.

Marla, from on top of the container, glanced around. She had the best possible view; if she couldn't see them, they were gone.

'Perhaps they ran into—' Terry began, but didn't have time to finish as four more undead emerged from the trees behind them.

Shane shot two of them, using three bullets as the second lurker staggered and stumbled at the last moment giving it an extra few seconds of undeath before its scalp exploded upwards; the force of the bullet squeezed the creature's right eye from its socket, and just before it fell Shane had time to ponder just how absurd it all was.

On the departure yard, Lukas was firing at anything that moved. It was a good job that Abi was standing behind him, or she might have taken a bullet to the head just as quickly as the falling creatures.

His gun clicked dry and he passed it back to Abi, who proceeded to load it as quickly as she could. Her hands were sweating, and it was almost impossible to hold onto the shells as she forced them into the gun. She dropped the first two and watched as they rolled over the edge of the platform.

'Fuck, Abi!' Lukas gasped, jumping to his feet. The zombies – fucking lurkers, who came up with that fucking nonsense? – were almost level with the crates; time was running out, and the last thing Lukas wanted to see was wasted shells falling away from them.

Abi managed to get the next six shells into the shotgun and snapped it shut. 'Lukas!' she gasped as one of the creatures crawled up beside them.

He saw it a second later and brought his steel toe-capped boots down on the back of its head. There was a squelch – like meat being tossed down onto a butcher's counter – as his heel slammed through the front of the beast's face and hit the platform.

He grabbed the shotgun from Abi as she gawked down at the still-flailing zombie. When Lukas pulled his foot out, it ceased moving almost immediately, only twitching once or twice before it died for the second time.

Two more were staggering towards them, and Abi was shocked to discover that one of them was missing both arms. That was the one which frightened her the most, though. It should have been dead, not ploughing towards them.

Lukas lifted the shotgun and rested it on the back of his left arm. The first shot took out the armless creature, and he was just about to blow the second one away when Abi screeched into his ear.

Spinning on the spot, he found Abi pushed back against the cabin-door. A female zombie – she must have been seven-foot something, despite the fact she was leaning over his girlfriend so ominously – had both hands around Abi's throat and was snapping at the side of her face, trying to bite her ear off.

'Hey, bitch!' Lukas forced the gun up beneath the lanky creature's jaw and waited for it to acknowledge him. When it did, Lukas was sure he saw something in those eyes; not regret, but something else. As if the thing had already resigned itself to what was about to happen.

He pulled the trigger. The thing's brain shot up and out the top of its head. Blonde hair parted as scalp tore away, and the unnaturally tall creature toppled over backwards.

Abi screamed as the hands wrapped tautly around her throat refused to let go, and she followed the zombie down to the ground, her knee rubbing the concrete on the platform so harshly that she immediately felt the bloody stickiness around her shin.

Lukas, leaving Abi to struggle her way free of the dead undead, turned back and despatched the almost forgotten lurker loping towards him just beyond the crate. Its head flew back as the bullet impacted, and its momentum carried it over.

With their side of the platform clear, Lukas dropped down onto the tracks and began to pace across to the others.

'You guys struggling?' Lukas asked, his arrogance almost too much for Shane to take.

'We got it,' Terry said, slicing through two lurkers as if they were meaty mannequins. His first swoop disabled them, gashing through their bellies and spilling out their guts; without pause, he swung again, decapitating the first one easily. The second was barely able to stand when Marla shot it through the face from fifty feet away.

'Whooo!' Lukas yapped. 'Fucking yeah!'

The yard was clear. They must have fought off thirty creatures, maybe more. They would have plenty of time to count them later on, but for now all Shane could think about was the children.

'RIVER!' he called, slowly walking backwards along the track. 'RIVER!'

As if sensing he should be doing the same, Lukas began to call Saul's name, though he didn't really care if they ever saw the little dumb shit again. He was more trouble than he was worth; to be quite frank, he just wanted the girl now – River, or whatever she called herself. She looked game for anything.

'Marla, can you see anything from up there?' Terry asked.

Marla looked around. Trees, tracks, trees, containers, trees . . . 'Nothing,' she replied. 'Shit, Terry, where did they get to?'

Terry didn't have time to reply, as Shane called from the receiving yard hut. 'Found them!'

Marla sighed; relief had never felt so good. Terry rushed across to where Shane had cornered the tracks and disappeared from view. When he arrived, he could hardly believe what he saw.

Piled up, three- maybe four-bodies high, a stack of lurkers, all headless, all deader than they'd expected to be when their attack was mounted.

Saul was hiding in a niche between the hut and a crate. His tear-filled eyes were bloodshot and terrified; petrified of what he had just witnessed.

River was wiping the blade of her machete on an old beige rag, though it was more black, now, than its natural colour.

'We thought it would be best if we took out these ones,' River said. She was breathless, but not perturbed in the slightest by the battle she had just partaken in.

Shane could think of nothing else to do. He dropped to his knees and pulled River in, hugging her and kissing the top of her head as if it might be the last time he would have such an opportunity.

'Ewww, get off,' River sniggered. 'Don't know where you've been, and you stink.'

Terry grinned. 'She's right, Shane. When was the last time you had a honest-to-goodness wash?'

Shane let go of the girl, who continued to wipe her machete-blade clean; Saul, from the safety of his makeshift recess, whimpered.

There was something not right with that kid; Shane knew it – they all did – and why weren't his parents rushing to his side to comfort him.

It made no sense.

'We need to keep watch,' Shane said as he clambered back to his feet. 'I'll take the receiver yard. Lukas?'

The gut, who was in no apparent rush to make himself useful, sighed and said, 'Yeah, why the fuck not? I'll take that side.' To Terry he said, 'How long d'ya think you'll be trying to get that shit-heap fixed up?'

Terry shrugged; this guy was severely rattling his cage now. 'How long's a piece of string?'

Lukas rolled his eyes and snatched the shotgun from Abi's trembling hands. The thing was: she wasn't shaking as a result of what had just happened; she was frightened of Lukas. Something like that couldn't be concealed easily, and she was struggling to hide how fearful she was of her alleged husband.

As Lukas launched himself across the tracks, she followed. Terry shot Shane a glance which suggested that he too understood which one of the young couple wore the breeches.

'I'd better get on with it,' Terry said, breathlessly smirking and wiping the sweaty sheen from his glistening forehead. 'Keep an eye on things for me, would you?'

Shane nodded and wished Terry luck. The old guy hadn't been referring to the lurkers in his final statement.

It was Lukas that Terry worried about.

Shane climbed down from the platform and began to clear the tracks of undead bodies.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Four-thirty-seven. That was the exact time of the arrival of the first wave of creatures at Bay St. Louis. It was remarkable how quiet they were when they appeared.

And then all hell broke loose.

'Erm, Sniper Two? You seeing what I'm seeing?'

'Is that you, Bernstein?' Sniper Two responded through the crackling radio.

'Uh-huh. Have you checked your nine in the last five minutes?' Bernstein asked the sniper next to him, whose real name was beyond him . . . something like Blanks, or Blanc . . .

'Checking now, Bernstein.' There was a moment of radio-silence, and then came the garbled panic as Sniper Two realised what the caller had spotted. 'Holy shit, Bernstein! Are those all—'

'Dead?' Bernstein cut in. 'Do they look alive to you, Sniper Two?'

More silence as the idiot mounting the adjacent tower took a closer look, no doubt using his sights for clarification. Bernstein hissed, waited for a response, even though the question had been rhetorical.

'Sniper Two, I need you to focus,' Bernstein said. The situation could be controlled if he took charge of it now. This was their gig; their shot at glory. The other six gunmen were out of range, scattered further along the bay. There were two snipers within range of this approaching horde. Bernstein was one, and the idiot know as Blanks – or fucking Blanc, whatever – was the other.

'I'm focused,' Sniper Two finally responded; the radio hissed, threatening to die at any moment.

Bernstein hoped it didn't. That, considering the nervousness of the guy sitting in the tower next to him, would not be good.

'I count thirty, maybe forty undead,' Bernstein said. 'All approaching from the west, all moving slow enough for us to take clear shots at each of them.'

Silence.

'Sniper Two, do you copy?'

The radio crackled; for a moment there was nothing but static. It was enough to make Bernstein anxious, despite lasting for less than ten seconds in total.

'I'd say closer to fifty,' Sniper Two's staccato voice announced. 'There are more along the car-lot at your north-west.'

Bernstein glanced through his rifle-mounted sight and sighed as the emerging horde came into view. 'Roger that, Sniper Two. We'll get to those ones eventually. I want you to open up at the ones directly opposite . . . I repeat, shoot the ones nearest to the bay.'

The radio fizzled. Bernstein pleaded for it to remain functional.

'Roger that, Bernstein,' Sniper Two replied. 'Can we take them all?'

Truthfully, Bernstein wasn't sure. He knew they had enough ammo to sit up in their nests all day long taking pot-shots. What he didn't know, however, was if they had time to take out fifty of the creatures before they reached the bay.

He fired off the first round, connecting sweetly with the unfortunate creature at the front of the horde. Its head erupted; the dollar-sized hole in its forehead was a saucer-sized aperture at the back. As it fell, Bernstein heard the first shots from Sniper Two.

'Don't fucking let me down, Blanket – whateverthefuck you're called,' he muttered as he took aim and fired again.

*

Dredd was up and dressed before Emma had time to figure out what was happening. The gunshots had come so suddenly – and after days of complete silence, unexpectedly – that nobody was prepared for the bombardment just across the way.

'Honey, stay here,' Dredd said. 'That's the snipers, which means that they haven't reached the bay yet. You're safe here. I have to find Gabriella.'

Emma's eyes darted around the tent. The sheer surprise of this attack had rendered her silent.

Dredd blew her a kiss – which seemed a little perfunctory given the circumstances – before unzipping the tent and vanishing through the flaps. Emma listened as the gunshots echoed around; they seemed to be coming from all directions, though she knew that was impossible, that the snipers were lined up neatly along the bay on her left-hand side.

She couldn't just lie there and listen to the mayhem beyond the tent. She threw her clothes on and headed out into the mid-afternoon drizzle.

It was then that she realised the enormity of what was occurring just beyond the bay, as the groans of a hundred creatures drifted along on the wind, piercing her ears, turning her blood to mercury.

*

Gabriella didn't know what was going on. She watched as people emerged from their tents, their makeshift nylon fortresses, to see what all the commotion was about.

'We're gonna get eaten up, now,' Lizzie said as she appeared between the half-zipped doorway of her tent. 'You'd better go and tell your mom and dad that you love them, because the creatures are gonna come and gobble us all up.' The way she spoke reminded Gabriella of her own mother's story-time voice.

'Don't be silly, Lizzie,' Gabriella reproached. 'They can't get in here. We're safe here.' She hoped she was right, because the thought of the creatures breaking the barricades and crawling towards her, hungry, ready to “gobble” her up, made her skin crawl like a thousand tiny spiders just beneath the surface.

'If there's lots of them,' Lizzie said, smiling as if it was all a game, 'then they might get in, and then we're all in biiiiiig trouble.'

Gabriella had had enough. 'If they get in,' she said to her friend, 'I'm going to point them in this direction. I'm going to tell them that you don't mind being eaten, that you actually want to be one of them, and then you're for it.'

She wouldn't tell them anything of the sort, because they don't listen. They don't know anything other than flesh, and how nice it tastes. Besides, how could she tell them anything if she was running in the opposite direction?

Her faux-threat worked, though, and Lizzie's tiny face dropped as the confidence oozed out of her, leaving her just a terrified face between two pieces of cloth.

It was all Gabriella could do not to burst out laughing, though with the gunfire still echoing around the bay it was impossible to feel any sort of assurance, especially not enough to smile.

Over the sound of rifle discharge, somebody was calling her name.

Her dad.

He was looking for her, scouring the site as if she was a little scaredy-cat, which she wasn't. When she turned to face Lizzie again the girl was grinning.

'Is that your daddy I hear calling you?' she chided. 'Come to save his little, sparkly princess from the zombies?'

For some reason – Gabriella didn't know why, but she'd seen people do it to each other when they argued – she jabbed her middle finger up at her friend. Lizzie gasped, threatened to tell on Gabriella for doing a “Naughty sign.”

'Tell on me; I don't care,' Gabriella said, poking the air again with her middle finger.

Just then, her father appeared behind her, filling the gap between two tents as if he was half-a-mile wide. He sighed, relieved with his discovery.

'Thank God, Gabriella,' he gasped as he scooped her up from the ground. 'I've been looking everywhere for you.'

'Not everywhere,' she said. ''Cos I've been here the entire time, with Lizzie.' She pointed towards the gap in the green tent, but her friend's face had vanished.

Yeah, that's what that middle finger does, Gabriella thought, and made a mental note to use it more often.

'Come on,' Dredd said, hustling his daughter through the excited – and petrified – throng towards the base.

When they reached it, Dredd was summoned over to Frank Pimlico by the uniformed man nearest the entrance. Whatever was happening, the general was toying with the idea of sending the Wave Hawk out to assist.

'What is it, General?' Dredd asked. A soldier came along to pacify Gabriella while the men talked war-tactics, though she would have much preferred to stick around, and said as much as the poor grunt tried to coax her away with promise of ice-cream.

'Go with the soldier,' Dredd told her. 'He'll fix you up something nice.' He gave the uniformed man next to Gabriella a stare which said, Don't make me fucking regret this . . .

Gabriella succumbed to the promise of chocolate and escorted the soldier – that's right, she led him out – through the base and into an adjoining room.

It was then that General Frank Pimlico informed Dredd of the situation just beyond the bay, and what they could do to solve it.

'We have two snipers over on that side,' Pimlico said inbetween heavy pulls on a cigarette. Smoke seemed to billow from every orifice as he spoke. 'We're tracking the horde as they get closer, but we're not sure they're going to be able to take them all out, not alone.'

Dredd didn't like the sound of this; he had missed a lot of school as a youngster, but he was sharper than most, and this was one of those conversations that had only one possible outcome.

'You want me to do a flyby.' he said, not a question.

'You'll have a gunner in the rear, of course,' Pimlico said, as if that made everything better. 'And you don't even have to land outside the perimeter. Just hover, and shoot.' He gestured with his hand to show how simple the mission was.

And to him, it was the easiest thing in the world, because he didn't have to get in that chopper and fly out over a horde of insatiable cannibals.

What if something went wrong? What if the rotors jammed up . . . or the engine failed, or anything? Who'd be sent out beyond the perimeter to rescue him?

'Emma's gonna be pretty pissed at me for even considering this shit, General. You know that, don't you?'

'She's a great gal,' Pimlico said. 'She'll love you all the more for it.'

'So do I get to choose the gunner?' Dredd asked. 'Or are you gonna give me any available piece of shit?'

'No, you take who you want, Dredd. So long as they're still alive, they're yours.'

Dredd knew exactly who he needed for this massacre; and that's what it would be.

A massacre of the undead.

*

'Bernstein, can you see an end to them?' Sniper Two's voice fizzled from the small, grey radio at Bernstein's feet. 'I thought we had enough ammo for this shit . . . I'm almost fucking dry over here.'

Bernstein shot three creatures directly between the eyes before answering. 'Negative, Sniper Two. There's a whole clusterfuck of them coming from my three that you can't even see yet.'

Sniper Two made a choking sound into his headset; Bernstein suddenly felt very alone up in his tower. He hoped one of the others was already traversing the bay to relieve the obviously-nervous sentry of his post; this was no time to lower their guard.

Bernstein sighted on the shambling mess that had once been a celebrity. He recognised the face, though it was terribly decayed and gnawed away, now, leaving only partial patches of skin and meat on the skull.

Eric Roberts. That was it; Bernstein had seen some of the guy's films, and they sucked. Shooting Eric Roberts in the face was hardly going to blemish his score-card.

In fact, it would probably go down as honourable; the guy was famous for being the less-talented brother of Julia Roberts, though in some photographs they appeared to be the same person.

Bernstein pulled the trigger. Eric Roberts's eyes rolled up to the sky, as if asking God a question in the last moment before his brain ceased functioning for the second time.

Why did you make Julia better than me?

Without pause, Bernstein swung the sights across and targeted on the next poor bastard in his firing-line. He was almost relieved to stare down on a less-prominent figure, someone who had been no-one in life. If Morgan Freeman had been staggering through the neighbourhood, Bernstein would have been reluctant to pull the trigger.

This creature was black, but it wasn't Morgan Freeman, and thinking it might be was only delaying the inevitable.

Ptttt.

The bullet hit the creature squarely, and it somersaulted backwards, landing in a heap beside a charity deposit-point.

'Are you still there?' Bernstein softly spoke into his headset. 'Sniper Two, do you copy?'

'I'm here,' the tremulous voice replied. 'Did you just take out Eric Roberts?'

Bernstein laughed. 'You saw that, huh? I thought it was him. Didn't know he was was recognisable.'

Two creatures fell as Sniper Two fired beautifully into the horde. It was good to know he was still functioning, albeit slowly.

'I was gonna shoot him myself,' Sniper Two said. 'Falcone sucked.'

'Don't remember that one,' Bernstein said as he fired two shots into the horde, decapitating a creature completely. 'I shot him for Best Of The Best.'

The sea of undead continued to push forward; their groaning was unbearable, enough to drive even the stablest of men insane.

The whole thing reminded Bernstein of a fairy-tale his mother used to read him as child.

The Pied Piper Of Hamelin.

These things were the rats, their insatiable hunger was the piper. They crawled, clambered, shambled and staggered incessantly forward, hoping to find flesh to sate their madness, and Bernstein wanted to end their misery, each and every one of them.

They were fighting an impossible enemy, though. Their sheer numbers were their main advantage. It didn't matter that they were slow, or afflicted; what mattered was: they wouldn't stop to get at you. They would climb over the dead bodies of those fallen in front to reach you.

How could you beat an enemy of such indifference?

As if in reply to his question, something blew by overhead. Bernstein looked up, not knowing what to expect, and when he saw what had been responsible, he knew that they could beat such an incessant beast.

'Is that the Wave Hawk?' Sniper Two's voice crackled down by Bernstein's feet.

'It is,' Bernstein said.

He reloaded and continued to take down the enemy.

*

Being up above them was even worse than existing on the ground-level alongside them. Staring down into the ocean of flailing limbs, bloodied stumps and half-devoured faces served as a constant reminder of the creatures' extended mortality, and also reminded Dredd of the shit they would be in if the chopper malfunctioned on any level.

Al, in the back of the Wave Hawk, had already begun to chop through them with the mounted M60s. There were two M50 grenade-launchers available, but Dredd didn't think they would need them.

Though if Al was in charge, the chances were increased exponentially.

The noise from the M60s was terrific; more than enough to drown out the monotone drone from below and the racket of the rotors above. Bodies fell like dominoes as Al whipped the machine-gun from left to right, spraying into the horde as assuredly as Dredd had anticipated.

The man was a maniac, that was for sure, but he was good at what he did, and Pimlico had had no choice but to reinstate the lunatic in order to get Dredd up in the air to stop the encroaching throng.

Dredd looked down at the snipers on their towers as they flew by. Snipers One and Two – the guys who had been unfortunately positioned over on the side of the fracas and emerging creatures – were no longer firing at the horde.

They were waving.

They were smiling, and waving, happy at the appearance of the hovering, steel saviour taking care of business much more effectively than they could.

Dredd flicked them a thumbs-up before whipping the Wave Hawk away from the towers, deeper into the horde.

It was funny, watching them fall, unable to see the bullets tearing through them but knowing that they were. Dredd could picture Al in the back, having the time of his life.

Like a pig in shit, or something to that effect.

The noise was such that he couldn't hear anything other than guns, but he had a feeling – more of an undercurrent – that Al was whooping at the top of his lungs as the horde dropped to the ground, their lifeless bodies twitching harmlessly as the last of the undeath left them.

*

The word past down the row of snipers like Chinese Whispers. Bernstein relayed the news to Sniper Two – Blanc, he was pretty certain the guy had French ancestors now that he thought about it - and Blanc informed the sniper a quarter of a mile away, and so on and so forth until all eight of them were aware of the Wave Hawk's intervention.

It was like watching something from a Michael Bay movie. The creatures fell; the helicopter shifted and began to attack from a different angle, and in the end there would be only one result.

Bernstein watched. One thought kept running through his mind.

What would've happened if the chopper hadn't turned up?

There was no way they would have been able to hold of the onslaught. They were outnumbered, and even if more snipers had been ordered to Tower One and Two, it just wouldn't have been enough.

'I could watch this all day long,' Bernstein chortled into his headset.

'Many more?' Blanc asked.

Bernstein scanned the ground. The majority of the things had already fallen, and only smaller hordes were emerging from the trees to the west.

'Almost over,' he informed Blanc. Secretly, he was relieved. 'The general made a good call here today.'

Silence, and then Blanc said, 'You can say that again. Shit, Bernstein, I think I need new pants.'

And so the creatures failed to penetrate Bay St. Louis thanks to the fire-power of their only helicopter and the audacity of one pilot and an insane gunner.

It was 5:15 when the last creature fell.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The train was fucked. Terry had stipulated his list of requirements to get the thing fixed, and had been rewarded with only two.

The guy upstairs clearly wasn't helping.

That wasn't to say he couldn't make it run; he could. An hour spent working on the fluid-couplings, another hour flushing the engine and refilling it, and the locomotive would probably run as sweet as a nut.

But it was time they didn't have.

He was worried about the sentries. All of them were tired, though Shane would never admit it, and there was something about Lukas that made Terry's skin crawl.

The guy was clearly unstable. The fear in his own wife's eyes as he ordered her around was enough to clarify that the man who they had no choice but to trust was something of a loose cannon. Terry almost wished they had taken a different road, evaded the strange family completely.

'I used to have one like this,' a tiny voice said from the left side of the busted locomotive. Terry leaned across to discover River and Saul standing down on the track. ''Course, mine was a lot smaller, and made of Meccano.'

Terry wiped the wrench he had been using on a rag and smiled. 'I don't suppose you know how to get one moving, do you?'

River laughed. 'If I did,' she said, 'I'd be the one up there, sweating buckets, wouldn't I?'

She had a point.

'But from what I do know,' she continued, and Terry was all ears, 'the engine needs lubricating. You won't be able to run it from dry.'

Saul stood, mouth agape, unsure of what was passing between the old man and the machete-girl. He would have been rendered speechless if he wasn't already mute.

'Is that so?' Terry said, his silvery eyebrows knitting together. 'And how come you know so much about engines all of a sudden?' It was stupid to ask River anything like this, for she always had an answer that would, nine times out of ten, blow your mind.

'Tractors,' she spat, grinning. 'I was a farm-girl for a while. Daddy used to let me help him clean the tractors up before harvesting. The engines on those old things were in much worse condition than this one.' her smile widened. 'That's a good thing. Means we might get this piece of shit moving before more lurkers come.'

Terry thought about reproaching her for her use of foul language, then decided there was no point. She had every right to swear; she was just as adult as any of the others.

More adult than that prick Lukas.

'Oh, I have no doubt we'll get this badboy running by morning,' Terry said, hoping the news would settle her, or at least ease the nerves of the boy practically clinging onto her for dear life. Saul sighed, glanced across at the hulking machine, before turning his eyes back up to Terry. 'I promise everything's going to be alright,' he said, more to the boy than River.

She could handle herself just fine.

'So what's the deal then?' Terry said as he tucked the wrench into the back of his pants. 'You want me to give you a shout when the engine's ready for a once-over?'

River's face lit up. 'Are you asking for my help?' she smiled. 'I knew you'd need my help.' Nonchalantly, she added, 'Yeah, give me a shout when you're ready.'

Terry nodded. 'There's some oil over in that hut, and some rags.'

She was already running away. Saul, the nervous wreck, chased after her.

Terry went back to work on the couplings, though now he had something that wasn't there a moment ago.

A smile.

*

'Motherfucker ain't gonna get that piece of shit moving. No way.'

Lukas lit a cigarette and stared down the shotgun barrel as if checking it wasn't warped.

Abi was frightened. She didn't like Lukas in this mood; she knew what he was capable of, what he might do. It was like watching a pit-bull get cornered, and God-forbid anyone who tried to corner Lukas in the same way.

She placed a placatory hand on his shoulder. 'Everything's gonna be fine,' she said. 'We'll be rid of them soon, and we can take the girl and run, just like we said.'

She hoped it was that easy.

Lukas hawked on the ground and turned to face her. 'That prick in charge thinks he can talk to me like something he trod in,' he said, his face contorted into pure ugliness. Abi hadn't realised until now, but Lukas had aged ten years since Ridgeland. The corners of his eyes extended out into crow's feet, and his lips were puckered like an old lady's as the cigarette bounced around in the corner of his mouth.

'I should just take care of them, now,' Lukas said.

This was exactly what Abi feared. Her mouth dropped open with shock as the enormity of the situation hit her full-on.

'That's not a good idea,' she said, brushing his arm to soothe him. 'We can slip away in the night; just take the kids and go. There's no need to kill 'em all. We can take their weapons while they sleep. We'll be back on the main road by two. Leave them a note or something telling 'em if they try to come after us we'll kill 'em. They won't have no choice, Lukas. We'll have their guns, and they won't risk it.'

He listened, but his expression told Abi he wasn't convinced.

'Nah, I need to end this before it gets out of hand.' He climbed to his feet, tossed the shotgun up into the air and caught/cocked it.

Abi, sensing she only had seconds to make this right, grabbed him by the leg and began to plead.

'Lukas, please, we can do this without more bloodshed. Babe, please, listen to me. I'll talk to the prick . . . I'll make sure he gives you some respect . . . please.'

Lukas glared down at the sobbing nuisance that was his girlfriend. She was a great fuck, but at times she could be melodramatic.

It was annoying.

He sighed, lowered the gun. 'Why do you care?' he asked. It was a valid question. Why, all of a sudden, was she so concerned about the well-being of this bunch of shits? Back in Ridgeland she would have loaded the gun for him to take care of the same people. The idea that Abi was changing enraged him further, and he wanted to kick her in the head and march on to slaughter each and every one of the idiots standing in his way.

She gazed up at him; her blurred vision reminded her of why she loved him. Through teary eyes the new wrinkles stretching across his face were invisible, and she saw him as he once was: a behemoth, a God . . .

'Let them serve their purpose this afternoon,' she calmly said, biting back more tears. 'We need someone keeping an eye out over on that side. Those fuckers came from nowhere this afternoon; it's safer if we don't put ourselves at any disadvantage.' She paused, rubbed the tears away. 'We'll leave after dark, Lukas. We can do that.'

Lukas pondered in silence. It would have been so simple, so ridiculously uncomplicated, to take the shotgun and blow the three fucking adults away where they stood. With them gone, it would have been just him, Abi, the dummy and that cute little bitch, River.

She was useful.

'If he so much as talks down to me one more time,' Lukas said, poking at the air with the shotgun barrel, 'I'm gonna put a fucking hole in the front of his face so big you'll be able to put your arm through it.'

Abi nodded. 'It won't happen again, babe,' she said. 'You're in charge here, not him, not none of 'em.'

She climbed to her feet and kissed him.

Her behemoth . . .

Her God.

*

Marla sat on the end of the bright-green container, her feet dangling over the edge as if she was on a fishing trip, waiting for something to bite.

The only difference was: a bite on this trip could only be construed as a bad thing.

She reached into the pack and retrieved a water-bottle, which she handed across to Shane.

'Thanks,' he said, unscrewing the cap and swallowing half of it down in two hungry gulps.

'Well, this has turned into something of an adventure,' she said as she peeled the wrapper off a chocolate bar. 'Feel like Indiana Jones yet?'

Shane stared out across the treetops; somewhere off in the distance, the sweet sound of birdsong carried along on the wind. It was out of place – something so beautiful, so . . . normal – in this world.

'I don't think I'll ever feel like Indy,' Shane said, all the time twisting the cap on the water-bottle. On-off-on-off. 'I've always thought of myself more as James Bond, anyway.'

'Bet you'd look good in a tux,' Marla smiled, her chocolatey lips made Shane look away; it would have been so easy to lean across and help himself to some of that chocolate.

'Guess we'll never know,' Shane offered morosely.

'Awww, bullshit. We'll find us a nice wedding store somewhere, get you all shaven and tidied up, spend the afternoon playing dress-up. It'll be fun.'

Shane pictured it. Him wearing a black suit, a bow-tie, a bowler-hat; Marla slipping in and out of the changing-room, each time in a new frock. At one time, such an afternoon would have been the bane of his life – he hated shopping, especially women's shopping – but not anymore.

It sounded heavenly.

'Yeah, I bet the looters didn't hit the wedding-clothes stores when this shit went down,' Shane laughed. The thought of a surviving group, all dressed to the nines, was hilarious. Instead if machine-guns and swords they were just going around, poking at lurkers with fancy umbrellas and canes.

'There you go,' Marla said. 'It's a date. I'll bet when we get to where we're headed, there'll be loads of places like that. Entire stock-rooms full of tuxedos and braces. Hell, I reckon we'll be able to get River into something pretty and pink.'

That, Shane thought, was not going to happen.

Marla glanced out across the trees, chewing chocolate as if it was going out of fashion. She must have stayed like that – completely oblivious to Shane's sideways glances – for five minutes. You wouldn't have thought they were in the middle of the apocalypse, not with the serene smile painted across her face, not with the delicate birdsong just a few hundred feet away.

Somewhere behind them, Terry cursed as he slipped with the wrench. They both turned to see the man in charge of getting them moving again shaking his hand. He looked up, noticed Shane and Marla staring at him, and waved. 'I'm okay,' he said. 'Just mashed my thumb up.'

Shane laughed. 'Be more careful. You'll need those thumbs to drive the train.'

Terry waved, didn't reply.

'He seems confident enough,' Marla said. She screwed the empty foil wrapper into her palm and toyed with it, relieving some tension, no doubt.

'He's good at stuff like this,' Shane said. 'If I remember correctly, he was in workshop at the pen, made some nice furniture, too. Reckon he could have made a decent living out of that shit if things . . . well, if things hadn't turned out the way they have.'

'There's a bit of a difference between knocking up a spice-rack and fixing a diesel locomotive.' Marla squeezed the wrapper so tightly that her knuckles whitened. She was obviously still dubious about them getting on their way anytime soon.

'Yeah, but, come on . . . it's not as if a few hours trying is gonna hurt. I mean, this time yesterday we thought it was just us. Before the jets, we were quite happy.' He paused, realised how stupid his comment was. Happy? He was happier in prison; at least his family – Megan, Holly – had still been alive. 'You know what I mean,' he continued. 'We were none the wiser, and we pushed on regardless. Those jets gave us something to aim for, and we're aiming for it. Doesn't matter if we get there today, tomorrow, or a week next Tuesday.'

Marla laughed. It was always funny to hear Shane go off on a rant. 'Better not take that long,' she said, smiling. 'I don't think I can bear a whole fortnight with Lukas. The guy gives me the creeps.'

From Marla, that was something. She'd been a doctor at the prison, surrounded by the country's vilest, most deviant sonsofbitches ever to commit a crime. She could spot people like that a mile off.

And Shane had sensed it too.

'Don't worry about them,' he assured her. 'I've got my eyes open on the situation.'

Just then, something shook the trees twenty feet in front of them. Twigs snapped as whatever was down there crunched them underfoot.

Shane picked up Marla's pistol; his own was down to three bullets, and they would have to last until they could get more supplies.

Marla handed him a second magazine, just in case he needed it.

He hoped not.

Something moved again, this time a little closer. A branch suddenly poked up from nowhere, freed by the motion of the invisible figure below. Shane aimed the Beretta towards the trees, being careful not to make any sound as he flicked the safety off with his trembling thumb.

Marla didn't take her eyes off the spot where the last noise emanated from; something was there, and only an idiot would make the mistake of losing it.

Shane pushed himself to standing; it was hard to remain stealthy when all you wanted to do was start firing, aimlessly, into the void. Adrenaline was already taking over, and his heart was racing so rapidly that the steady hush-thump of blood in his ears was causing him to miss vital sounds from down on the ground.

Marla pointed a finger across to where she thought she saw something, and then lowered it, shrugging, not sure if she had seen something or if it was just her mind playing tricks on her.

Cruel tricks that were apt to get them all killed.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose as a thick, dark cloud emerged from the trees, accompanied by the fluttering of wings and a terrible cawing.

Crows.

A whole fucking murder of them, aiming towards the sky at a speed so fast that Shane checked their asses for fireworks.

'Something spooked them?' Marla asked, no longer trying to remain quiet. It didn't matter anymore; if there was something there, the crows had undone all their hard work.

'I don't think so,' Shane said, clicking the pistol's safety back on. 'Might be a deer or something, but I've never seen birds fly away from a lurker before.'

The crows disappeared into the distance, cawing and cackling. Shane wasn't sure, but it sounded like the murder were laughing about all the fuss they'd just caused.

Ha, ha, you though we wuz lurkers. You wuz wrong, scaredy-catz!

Shane stretched; his back audibly cracked, so loud that he was afraid he might have done some permanent damage. He was just about to ask Marla what they had left in the way of chocolate when a tiny hand appeared at the edge of the container.

'Look!' Marla whispered.

The hand slowly released what looked like a piece of paper before vanishing over the edge of the steel box.

Shane told Marla to stay where she was and moved across the container, slowly – though his footfall still echoed out, one of the downfalls of keeping watch on top of what was essentially a hollow box.

Saul, who had been odd up until that point – but understandably so if his parents were anything to go by – was running away, back towards River, who was starting to help Terry fix up something on the train. When he reached her, he hid behind her, and she patted him on the head, as if she were an adult and not two years the kid's junior.

Shane picked up the slip of paper – which was actually a printed receipt on one side and a faded, blue watermark on the other.

'What is it?' Marla asked, intrigued.

Shane sat down and slowly opened out the tattered slip.

The kid must have used an old screwdriver dipped in something icky to draw with.

Ten out of ten for ingenuity.

The crude picture was of two big stick-figures and a small stick-figure. The heads on these rudimentary creations were massive in comparison to the bodies, and none of the limbs were equal in length. Shane, once he got past these minor annoyances, tried to figure out what the image meant.

He showed the slip to Marla, whose eyes slimmed down as she, too, attempted to interpret the oily design.

'Looks like he did a picture of him with his mom and dad,' she said. 'Pity we don't have a fridge to stick it on.' She handed it back to Shane, who wasn't convinced.

He scanned it again. Two big stick-figures . . . one small, which must have been Saul. But there were lines through the bigger ones, marks that Shane had originally mistaken as a slip of whatever tool the boy had used to sketch with.

'Look,' Shane said, pointing out the marks. 'These two figures look like they've been crossed out.'

And they did. Both of them had a thin line running through them. The smaller figure was as clear as day in comparison.

Marla squinted once again. 'Maybe he just made a mistake.'

'Uh-huh. Not the same mistake twice. He's intentionally tried to cross these two bigger ones out.'

So he had, but why?

Then Marla gasped. 'You don't think he's going to kill them, do you?' she asked, though even as the words past her lips she realised how silly they were.

'Come on,' Shane said. 'The kid doesn't even make eye-contact with River. He ain't gonna go on a murderous rampage, especially not one involving his own parents.'

'I don't understand it. Shane, what if they're meant to be us? What if those bigger figures aren't Lukas and Abi?'

Shane looked down at the slip again; the more he stared at it, the more confusing it became. It was as if the ink was spreading, the oil was slipping down the page, smearing the evidence, and soon there would be nothing to look at but a Rorschach test from a mute boy.

'This one's definitely Lukas,' Shane said. There was a difference in size between the two bigger stick-figures; Marla and Shane were almost identical in height. 'He's drawn this one larger on purpose, so that we know who he means.'

Marla felt, all of a sudden, they were taking part in some new ridiculous gameshow. Win, Lose, or Die . . .

'But why would he cross his parents out? Why would he draw—'

Shane's expression altered so drastically that it resulted in the cessation of Marla's second question.

'What? Shane, what is it?'

He glanced down at the slip for the final time, knowing exactly what Saul was telling them.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Emma was so angry with Dredd for what he'd done that she made a point of not celebrating with the other rowdy folk at the base when he brought the chopper back in.

How could he do that to them? How could he go out there, playing John-fucking-Rambo with those creatures while she and Gabriella sat waiting in a smoke-filled camp? The only way they'd been able to keep updated was through the antique technology of field-radios, and it had been utter hell listening as hundreds of gunshots crackled on the other end.

When Dredd finally came after her, she was sat in the tent; Gabriella was between her legs. A book lay open in Gabriella's lap, but the girl was not really interested in the exploits of Pinocchio, not anymore, not since she was five.

As her dad came in, she launched herself up to her feet and threw her arms around his neck. He winced in pain, hissed through clenched teeth. The Wave Hawk was not the most comfortable bird he'd ever flown, and as a result he was covered in bruises and scrapes from being tossed around the cockpit.

'Gabriella, go and play with Lizzie,' Emma said, picking up Pinocchio and slamming the cover shut with some authority.

Gabriella released Dredd and was about to object when she noticed the determined expression on her mother's face.

She didn't argue; she kissed Dredd on the cheek before disappearing through the tent-door.

Dredd knew he was in trouble. The tent seemed to have been relieved of all oxygen, and you could cut the atmosphere with a spoon.

'I know what you're going to say,' he said, stumbling forward into the tent proper. 'And I'm sorry. Emma, those things were all over the Bay. Another few hours and they'd have got in. I don't care how stupid they are, or how slowly they shamble around. More than fifty of them is a bit of a problem.'

'Shut up!' Emma said, though she knew he was right. 'Let me be upset for a while. I'm really pissed at you, you big buffoon. You know we had to listen to your Biggles manoeuvres over the fucking radio. While Pimlico polluted the whole camp with his cheap-ass cigars.'

Dredd laughed. 'Yeah, I got him those ones from a looted store in Clinton. All the good ones were already taken.'

He dropped to his knees and grabbed Emma's hands between his own. 'Look, I did what I had to. Those snipers up there were about as useful as a chocolate kettle. I told Frank how much you'd hate me for it.' He grinned, and Emma hated him because of it. She could never stay mad at him, even at his most stupid.

And the general had had no choice; Dredd was the only capable helicopter-pilot. It was a sign of the times, but Emma was coming to terms with the fact that her husband was an extremely useful – not to mention valuable – asset to the cause.

'You might want to train up some of those jet pilots to fly the chopper,' Emma said. Dredd could tell she was deadly serious by the steely expression on her face. It was a look that even he – her husband, who could get away with pretty much everything and anything – would defy.

'I'll do that,' he said. 'In the meantime, we're safe, and we're getting out of here tomorrow.'

Emma should have taken comfort in those words; just the knowledge that they would be out of reach of those creatures, on an island miles from the shore where the threat of infection was minimal and the chances of being bitten were nonexistent, should have soothed her and made her grateful for being alive.

But she couldn't, no matter how hard she tried, shake the thought of those nukes detonating only a few miles away.

A fiery death to anyone unlucky enough to be out there. A hell, she thought, worse than anything those shambling demons had suffered.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Terry almost fell out of the train's cockpit when it rumbled into life on only the third attempt. Had he expected it to start so easily? Not a chance. Had he expected it to start at all? Not really.

But here it was; its thunderous roar the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard.

Shane and Marla were the first across to investigate. The look of awe on both their faces was comical. It seemed that they had had about as much faith in moving the shit-heap as Terry had.

Shane was grinning, his hands behind his head as if trying to remove a recalcitrant toupee. 'I don't believe it!' he yelped, excitedly. 'Don't take this the wrong way, but I had already started warming up for the walk!'

'What?' Terry called back. He hadn't heard a word Shane said.

Shane simply poked both thumbs into the air. 'I said: WELL DONE!'

Terry acknowledged the plaudits with a nonchalant shrug. He was doing something with a lever on the control-panel to keep the train ticking over, but Shane didn't know what.

Nor did he care.

The train was running; they had means. They would be able to move south a lot quicker, and no more fucking pack.

No more back-blisters.

Marla kissed Shane on the cheek, and he shot her a confused look. 'What was that for? I didn't do anything. You oughta save some of that sugar for the man on the train.'

'Oh he'll be getting plenty of it,' Marla said, her grin exposing a mouthful of perfect-white teeth. 'I just thought I'd better get to you first so as you don't feel left out.'

Typical Marla.

He liked it.

River was jumping around at the front of the locomotive. She was chanting something, though whatever it was was being drowned out by the low, steady hum of the train's engine. It was, Shane surmised, the happiest they had ever seen her. She was celebrating because she had played a part in bringing the engine to a workable state, albeit a small one. She would, of course, proclaim that without her expertise in lubricating engines, they would be stuck in the CN Yard for the next hundred years.

Appearing at the rear of the train, Lukas and Abi looked no happier than if they had just been informed of a terminal illness. Lukas began to applaud, patronising Terry as he worked the lever in the cockpit.

Terry took no notice; the guy was an asshole, and not worth the time or effort.

He eased up on the controls, and the steady thrum slowed down. It took almost a full minute for the engine to stop completely, and the silence that came as a result was deafening.

'Well, well, well,' Lukas said to Terry as he climbed down from the train. 'You do have your uses, after all.'

Terry, without making eye-contact, said, 'Yeah. I'm sure you'll find some of your own soon.'

Lukas hadn't been expecting such a quick retort from the old guy, so when it hit him he was too shocked to reply.

Shane smiled; he was proud of Terry. Not only for starting the train, but for holding his own against such a class-A cunt.

As Lukas stepped forward, his shovel-hands clenched into tight fists, Abi grabbed him by the arm. It was a brave move on her part, but it was either her stepping in, or Shane, and Shane had a gun . . .

'Mouthy fucker!' Lukas bellowed. A string of spit leapt from his mouth and caught up on his stubbly chin.

'Let's just get along,' Shane said. He was never the best pacifier, even in prison. His cell-mate, Billy Toombs (God rest his soul) had been the one to take care of him, and he'd just kept his head down the rest of this time.

'Keep your ancient faggot on a fucking leash!' Lukas growled. 'I swear to—'

'It ain't worth it!' Abi screeched. She sounded like a coyote might if it had fallen prey to a bear-trap. 'Lukas, we don't need this shit! We'll be moving soon, and we can all go our separate ways once we reach—'

'Actually,' Terry said, as calm as a cucumber, 'we won't be able to go anywhere until dawn. Too dangerous.'

Shane hadn't though about it until now, but Terry was right. It was already semi-dark; another hour and it would be pitch black. Driving a train when none of them were qualified – though Terry would argue that he was – was fraught with danger as it was.

Doing it in the dark was fucking suicide.

'What? I ain't waiting for shit!' Lukas spat. 'We've been hanging around here all day fucking long for this piece of shit to fix that thing, and now you're saying we're spending the fucking night . . . '

'I ain't saying nothing,' Shane said. 'You don't want to come with us first thing in the morning, by all means start walking, but that's when we're leaving and that's the end of it.'

'There could be things on the track,' Abi quietly whimpered into Lukas's right shoulder. 'It might be best to wait until light. We won't see any obstructions in the dark.'

Lukas pondered this for a moment; his eyes darted from Terry, to Shane, to River, then back to Shane. He looked positively maniacal.

'Look, whatever man,' he said. He turned to Abi and jabbed a finger towards her face, so close that she could have bit it off, and Marla wouldn't have blamed her. 'You need to learn some fucking respect, bitch!'

Abi was about to speak when Lukas turned and rushed away.

'Why do you put up with that?' Marla asked the girl, who was obviously distraught. 'I mean, he treats you like shit, and you just put up—'

'He's a good guy!' Abi interrupted. 'You don't know what you're talking about.'

And then, she was gone, following in the footsteps of her man, her “Good Guy”.

Marla spluttered. 'Well, she deserves everything she gets, that one.'

Shane was still smiling and staring to the train; a functioning locomotive that would – once it was in motion – be safe as houses.

'Roll on the morning,' Terry said. 'The sooner we get moving, the sooner we can find other survivors for that guy to piss off. Maybe they won't be as tolerant and he'll get the kicking he deserves.'

The darkness slowly settled in around them, a black, satin blanket that was nowhere near as frightening as it should have been.

At first light they would be rolling out of the yard with a destination and a plan. In that moment, though, with the evening collapsing upon them so quickly that they barely had time to get a fire going, they didn't know they would be two men light when they went.

*

Shane had been dreaming about Megan when something outside the car woke him. A crack, the sound of something snapping beneath a hefty man's foot. It wasn't the fire; it had barely been burning when he'd decided to get a few hours rest.

Terry was over on the departure yard, and there was more chance of the lurkers growing wings and learning to fly than the old guy abandoning his post in the middle of the night.

He pushed himself up onto his haunches. It was freezing now – although, in comparison to the last few weeks, it could be considered mild – and fog exploded from his mouth as he breathed.

Crack.

Again, this time to the right-hand side of the locomotive car.

Marla, River and Saul were asleep in the next car, the one directly behind Shane's. He'd taken one of his own so that they weren't roused when Terry came to relieve him in an hour or so's time. If one of them had decided to go for a late-night stroll, or if nature called – as it usually did when the outside temperature was unbearably low – then Shane would have heard other voices; Marla, perhaps, telling the urinator, to be quick and quiet – which in Saul's case was a lot easier than River.

There were no voices.

Shane reached down for his gun, and felt the cold, hard steel at the exact same time a shadow appeared in front of him.

With the shotgun aimed at his head, Lukas said, 'Sorry about this, partner, but you fucked with the wrong asshole!'

*

They were rounded up like cattle and forced to kneel around the smouldering pile of ash that had once been a substandard campfire. River didn't seem affected by the sudden emergence of the traitors – murderers? – and made no sound as she assumed the position in the middle of the clearing. The tracks were cold beneath them, and Shane thought they might die of hypothermia before Lukas had a chance to take a shot.

'I'm sorry about this,' Abi said, shuffling nervously from one foot to the other in the darkness. 'I didn't want it to come down to this, but you kept pushing him.'

'Abi,' Lukas snapped. 'Shut the fuck up. They don't want to hear your bitching right now.'

'Why are you doing this?' Marla asked. She sounded tired, unable to speak properly with fatigue. 'We were all getting along so well.'

'Haha, you're a funny bitch, ain'tcha,' Lukas said with all the confidence imaginable. He was, after all, holding all the guns. 'We're doing this because we're a family, and you're just getting in the way.'

'You're not a family,' Shane said, adjusting his position; a rock, no bigger than a quarter, had embedded itself in his kneecap, and it hurt like a sonofabitch. 'Saul isn't your son. You're a pair of fucking lunatics dragging that poor kid across the country. What are you, paedos? You make me fucking sick.'

'Well, look at it this way,' Lukas said, stepping forward in the darkness so that the moonlight dripped from his distorted features, painting him something more evil than Shane had anticipated. 'You won't have to put up with us any longer.'

As he lifted the shotgun, intent on taking out Shane first, Shane lunged to his feet. It all happened so quickly that Marla barely had time to get her scream out.

The shotgun clicked dry.

Shane thumped into Lukas's confused body and dragged him to the ground, punching and pounding with everything he had.

Marla clambered to her feet and grabbed Abi by the wrist, but the girl didn't appear to want to fight. She was too busy watching the battle unfold between Shane and her man.

The Good Guy . . .

Shane punched again, rolled Lukas over onto his front and pulled at his neck. Lukas made a sound – or it came out of him, regardless – that pleased Shane. The guns, his own and Marla's Beretta, were tucked in the back of Lukas's jeans. Shane freed them and tossed them across to Marla.

River was ushering Saul back towards the locomotive car in which they had been sleeping peacefully only a few moments earlier.

Her machete was there.

She would feel better once she had her machete.

Marla pushed Abi across the tracks, away from the guns, and grabbed for them. She held the Baretta on the scuffling mess of limbs a few feet away; biting her lip, she wanted Shane to roll aside so she could blow that fucker, Lukas, away.

'Leave him alone!' Abi screeched. She was sitting on the ground, rocks probably crawling up into her gusset, and watching as Shane unleashed everything he had on Lukas. The noise of each punch made her wince, and she began to sob, no doubt realising that whatever happened – if they made it through the night alive – her man, her Adonis, was going to look a helluva lot rougher than when she fell in love with him.

Shane prised the shotgun out of Lukas's obstinate grip and launched it as far as he could towards the opposite platform. It clattered against the concrete, but was almost inaudible as Shane bombarded the back of Lukas's flailing body with punches and knees.

It felt good.

To Shane, at least.

River returned from the car with her machete; the way she was swinging it should have worried Abi; Marla had seen her utilise the blade like that a couple of times before, and blood had always followed.

Shane finally decided to back off. He was tired, and Lukas was almost motionless. He climbed off the asshole's back and took a few steps away.

'Nice,' Marla said. 'He could have shot you, you idiot.' She was obviously annoyed at Shane's sudden heroics, but also satisfied with how it had turned out.

'Not with the shotgun, he couldn't,' Shane said. 'Let's just say I found a little time this afternoon to make the shells less . . . what's the word? . . . effective.'

'Ahhhh,' Marla smiled. 'Prey tell.'

'I took them out,' Shane said.

Marla's smile faded. 'Wait, you took them out? So the fucker had all afternoon to check or put new ones in?'

Shane nodded throughout. 'Yup.'

Abi, who didn't appear to know what to do with herself so just stood, trembling, said, 'What? You left us exposed over there with no fucking bullets?'

God, she really did grate after a while. Shane didn't dislike the girl – she hadn't really had a choice in what had just gone down between them and Lukas, that was pretty obvious – but he reckoned that given time, he'd grow to loathe everything about her, every inch of her annoying little soul, if indeed she possessed one.

On the ground, Lukas began to stir. He groaned, groggily began to work his way back onto his haunches, his one hand stemming the flow of blood from his left ear, which looked jet-black in the dark of night.

'What if he'd checked the gun, Shane?' Marla whispered, as if speaking it aloud would put ideas into Lukas the betrayer's head, ideas that were a few minutes too late.

'You're a doctor, remember?'

'Yeah, but I never really got to practice much on gunshot wounds at the pen. Those kind of weapons are sorta frowned upon behind bars, so it wasn't part of my core curriculum.'

'Plus, he would have called me on it while we were on our knees. Prick like him would have got off on rumbling my little ruse.'

Shane was right; Lukas was the kind of guy who showed all of his cards at the first safe opportunity, like a shit Bond villain.

'Hey, you got to be Bond after all,' Marla said.

Shane took his gun from Marla and struck a pose. 'What do you think?'

'Think you look like a cunt!' Abi whimpered from the darkness. Even when beaten, the petite scrumpling had a mouth like a veteran truck-driver.

Marla aimed the Baretta towards Abi, who gasped and feared the worst.

Lukas was still groaning, patting the back of his head as if something had crawled into his ear and he was trying to free it.

Just then there was a noise in the trees. Marla whipped her gun across; River raised her machete, and . . .

'What the hell is going on here?' Terry asked as he stepped out of the surrounding woods.

Shane smiled.

With Terry present, they could set to work on Judas and his fake-wife.

'Got ourselves a small problem,' Shane said, though he smiled as the words crossed his lips.

To Shane, one problem had just resolved itself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

'Where are you taking us, you fuck!?' Lukas was, as ever, a charmer. The gun pointing at him made no difference, to him or the annoying little creature that worshipped him. The fact that they couldn't see the gun – or anything, for that matter – probably made them so uncomfortable and disorientated that a few obscenities were to be expected.

'Just keep moving,' Shane said. 'And try to tone the language down, will ya? Terry here's a man of God.'

'Ain't no fuckin' God,' Lukas snapped, the oily rag gaffer-taped to his face muffling his words but not enough to silence him. 'You're gonna wish there was when I get out of this, 'cos we're comin' after you fucks . . . you're fucking with the wrong asshole!'

'So you keep saying,' Shane said. 'And you got one thing right.'

Lukas stopped walking. 'What?'

'You are an asshole. Now one foot in front of the other, and don't even think about stopping until I tell you to.'

Lukas didn't move. In fact, he turned a little as if to provoke Shane into doing something he might regret. 'And what if we don't?'

Shane sighed. 'Look, you're gonna want to do what I say because it's the only thing that'll guarantee you get to wake up in the morning.' He lifted the gun, tapped Lukas's covered forehead with the barrel. 'You don't think I'll do it, do you? Perhaps I won't; perhaps I haven't got the balls to shoot you and your pretty little gremlin, and maybe the reason why I won't is because I know that I'll have to live with it.' He paused, pushed the barrel into the stained rag covering Lukas's head. 'Or maybe I will, because right now all that matters to me is this guy, and those people back at the yard, and you trying to fuck with them has royally pissed me off. So, do you want to test me?'

Abi, who was standing a few feet away, whimpered as if she feared Lukas would push his luck. 'Baby, please . . .'

The next time he spoke, it was with an assurance that belied their current predicament. 'I'm gonna come for you,' he said. 'I don't care if it takes the rest of my fucking life, I'll catch up to you and I'll kill you.'

Shane smiled, although the threat sent a shudder through him. 'Just walk,' he said. 'And keep the pleasantries to a minimum, will ya?'

Lukas turned and began to pace forward again. Level with Abi, they continued into the woods. After about fifteen minutes of walking, Shane pulled them up.

'Here?' Terry asked.

'It's as good a place as any,' Shane said, glancing around the trees. 'It'll keep them lost until we're a hundred miles away. I mean, if we hadn't been leaving signs would you be able to find your way back to the yard?'

Terry shook his head. 'Doubt it.'

Every hundred feet or so, Terry had tied yellow twine around a branch. On the way back they would cut the strings away, leaving Lukas and Abi unclear on the direction leading back to the train.

At least until it had already departed.

'So you're just gonna fucking leave us out here?' Abi whined. Her nasally voice was akin to nails on a chalkboard. 'You're practically killing us without having to pull the fucking trigger.'

'Shut up,' Lukas told her. 'It don't matter. We're gonna kill 'em, either way.'

Again with the threats; anyone would think that Lukas had the gun, the rope, the blindfolds and the gumption to know which way the train was.

Shane reached up to Lukas's shoulders and forced him to his knees.

'Whathefu—'

'Just a little extra security,' Shane said as he pushed the struggling figure back against the tree. 'I'm going to tie a few knots. Not too many, but enough to keep you working for an hour or so. Same for your girlfriend.'

'You cunt!' Lukas snapped, and then spat, but of course the saliva didn't get any further than the rag on his face, if it left his mouth at all. 'What if those fucking things come?'

'What? Lurkers?' Shane said as he wrapped the rope around Lukas's wrist and then the thick trunk of the tree.

'Yeah.'

'Well, I doubt they'll be this far out. Terry, what do you think?'

'Nah,' Terry said. He was binding Abi to an adjacent tree, and Abi was being a good girl for a change, accepting there was nothing they could do to prevent such treatment. 'You might get the odd one, but you should be able to keep one off, big tough guy like you. Just keep kicking it away and working on the knots. Shane, do his extra-tight; he's got nails like a cougar.'

'Will do, Terry,' Shane said, yanking the rope taut.

'And then what?' Lukas asked. 'We're unarmed, you pricks. You just gonna leave us in this fucking hellhole without a weapon?'

Shane leaned back on his haunches. Lukas was right; they could do this, bring them out and tie them to trees in the middle of the darkest night, but could they really leave them without weapons, without the shotgun that was rightfully theirs? Shane thought in silence for a few seconds. The only problem he had was Lukas's intentions when they managed to get free. Leaving the shotgun was analogous to offering permission for retribution. Here, take this and come find us . . .

'He's right,' Terry said. 'Guy's a prick, but we can't take their gun, not in this world, not with those things gnawing around like sewer-rats.'

Shane stood, checked the rope holding Lukas to the tree. 'Okay, Lukas, I'll leave your gun and ammo in the woods; just follow the string. But I need you to acknowledge that I'm doing this as a favour, because as much as I should blow your fucking head off, I don't need your death on my conscience. I'll be leaving the gun so that you, and your woman, can move on. Go, any direction other than ours. How's that sound?'

Lukas growled. If there were words in it, they were incomprehensible.

'I'll take that as a yes,' Shane said. 'Terry, is she secure?'

'About as stable as you're gonna get her,' Terry said, coiling the remaining rope around his wrist. 'Should keep them busy for an hour or so.'

An hour was all they needed. Even if they decided to ignore Shane's good nature and retaliate, an hour on the ropes, another hour trying to figure out which direction they were facing, it would be plenty of time.

'Let's find a place for this shotgun and get back,' Shane said. He turned, glanced down at the two bound figures in the darkness; first at Lukas, who was already starting to kick and struggle, and then Abi, who was whimpering, whining, but very little else. 'I'd like to say it's been a pleasure,' he said, 'but it really hasn't.'

'Fuck you, prick!' Lukas grunted.

Shane and Terry left them there to work for their freedom. By the time they were out of the ropes, the train would be careering south, towards the coast, to where hope lived.

*

The flash came first, blinding her. Ten seconds later and the thunderous roar reached the field in which she stood, alone. Despite being unable to see, she knew there was a prodigious mushroom-cloud forming in the sky, pushing inexorably upwards and outwards, eclipsing the sun entirely and shifting regular clouds aside as if they were encroaching on its territory.

She took a breath, not knowing if it would be her last. She didn't know which would reach her first, the shock-wave from the blast, turning her to dust in the wind, or the thermal radiation – which would cook her where she stood. She didn't want either, and as she tried to blink away her flashblindness – hoping that her retina burn was temporary – she felt her heart speed up so much that her entire body racked with panic.

Why do you want to see? she asked herself. Why would you want to witness what's about to happen?

The whole thing about your life flashing before your eyes at the moment of death was bullshit. She'd had almost an entire minute since the nuke exploded, and all she'd thought about was how it was going to feel . . . melting . . . cooking so fast that she imploded.

Was she wasting time, using her last moments on something that was inevitable. She tried to push the thought of melting away and ignore the approaching rumble, and replace it with images of Gabriella.

Here was the girl dressed in pink for her first birthday party . . .

Here, again in pink, this time she was four and had already started to like boys . . .

Here she was wearing green – a minor blip which would last only a few days before returning to pink – and getting ready for the movies . . .

The roar loudened.

Here Gabriella was dressed as a witch, standing by the front-door with a hollow, empty plastic pumpkin. By the end of the night it would be spilling over with sickly treats and sweets . . .

And now the heat was unbearable.

Here she was with an outstretched hand, a tiny tooth rolling around in her palm, and she was grinning to reveal the gap in her top row.

And now, there was a massive blast all around, and the smell of burnt hair and scorched flesh.

Emma's flesh.

It was peeling from her; she could feel it. Flaps of it pulling away and floating along on the wave.

There was no pain, just the knowledge of what was happening.

Here was Gabriella wearing a yellow tutu, her left leg extended unnaturally upwards. The ballerina-period had only lasted a few days, too, but they had been long and tiresome days.

And then . . .

Blackness.

Emma lunged forward, a panicky gasp escaping her throat. Her sweat-soaked skin had trapped the sheet, causing it to cling to her.

She took a deep breath.

Beside her, Dredd slept on.

She lowered herself slowly down and attempted to regulate her breathing.

Just a dream . . .

But tomorrow it wouldn't be. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. She couldn't sleep, and instead listened to the wind as it pattered around outside the tent.

Tomorrow.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

When they arrived back at the CN Yard, Shane and Terry looked as if they had just spent six months in the wilderness. Various twigs and shrubs had attached to them, and Terry was plucking bits of brush from his silvery beard and flicking them away like boogers.

Marla, who had been sitting around the fire – which they had going again, in a manner of speaking – jumped to her feet as the duo emerged and walked along the platform.

'Thank God for that,' she said. 'I half-expected to hear gunshots. Didn't think that guy would cooperate.'

Shane hugged her, then stepped aside and Terry leaned in. 'He didn't have a lot of choice,' Shane said. 'We gave them their marching orders, so let's just hope they stay true to their word.'

Marla, finishing hugging Terry, stepped back. Her confusion was visible. 'What do you mean?'

'That they forget all about us.' Shane replied. It was at this point that Marla noticed the missing shotgun.

'Oh, please tell me you didn't give them their gun back.' She looked positively distraught. 'Shane, please—'

'Look, we couldn't leave them out there with no means of defending themselves,' Shane said, pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger to stave off the early threat of migraine. 'We'd be as bad as them.'

'Don't worry,' Terry said, arching his back like a cat might after a long sleep. 'They're not getting back here this morning, and we'll be gone within the hour, so let's just concentrate on that for now.'

'You really don't think he'll come after us?' Marla asked. It was apparent that Lukas had affected her with his brutish behaviour, and Shane was annoyed that she was doubting his ability to protect her.

'If he does,' Shane said. 'I'll personally put a bullet in his face, and two in that annoying girlfriend of his.'

'And what makes you think that I'll let you shoot him before I do?' Marla smiled, lifted the Baretta up in much the same faux-Bond pose that Shane had performed earlier.

'I'd prefer you as Lara Croft, if you're asking my opinion,' Shane said.

'Got a thing for that pixelated look, have you?' Marla joked.

'I know I'm not as young as I used to be,' Terry said, 'but who the hell is Lara Croft?'

'She's a very nice . . . You know what?' Shane said. 'It doesn't matter. I'll find a picture somewhere and you can judge for yourself.'

River and Saul walked solemnly along the platform; River was holding her machete, Saul was holding River.

'They gone?' River asked, her tone sharp.

'Yeah,' Shane said. 'You can sheath your blade for awhile. We're leaving on a jet-plane . . .' He sang the last bit, tunelessly, and when he was finished he had everybody's eyes upon him. 'What? That was a classic.'

'It's not a plane,' River giggled. 'It's a train, stooopid!'

'Well, a train's as good as a plane right now,' Shane said. 'So let's get saddled up and ready. We leave in thirty minutes. Make sure you pick up everything we might need and toss it into the back car.'

'How many cars we draggin'?' Terry asked. 'The more we hook up, the slower we're gonna be moving.'

'I figure two cars,' Shane said. 'Since there are four attached, we just unhook the last two. You never know. Might come across some more survivors. You ever been stuck in a lift with twenty people? It ain't comfortable, I'll tell you that.'

Marla smiled thinly. 'We come across any more survivors,' she said, 'we're leaving them where they are.'

Shane didn't blame her for the harsh words. The last time they'd run across others hadn't panned out too well, had it?

They readied for the journey.

Terry shuffled towards the driver's seat, ready to buckle in for what was going to be an interesting ride.

*

When the locomotive didn't start on the first – or second – attempt, River booed from the car in which she and Saul had settled.

'Give her half a chance!' Terry's voice called back to the impatient urchin. 'She's older than you and your little boyfriend put together.'

River, in the semi-darkness of morning, rolled her eyes and smiled at Saul, who had wedged himself tightly into the steel tin's corner. 'He doesn't mean that,' she said. 'He's old, and probably senile.'

Saul nodded, relieved that he wasn't about to marry the blade-carrying young lady with a penchant for decapitating zombies in the vilest of manners. She was pretty, he thought, but you never should trust a girl who kills first, asks questions later. . .

The engine wheezed again, only this time it was followed by the steady thrum that signalled success.

'Yay,' River said, punching the air with fake enthusiasm. 'You okay, you look scared?'

Saul simply nodded – which he did a lot, River thought. She wondered what had happened to him to deprive him of his voice. Something bad, it had to be.

'Have you ever been able to speak?' she asked in her usual insolent, yet somehow cheerful, manner.

Saul nodded.

'Will you ever be able to speak again?'

He shrugged.

River sighed. The poor kid; she wanted to protect him, make sure he was okay at every given opportunity, and she would.

'We're moving . . . ' she said, holding out both arms and staring down to the floor of the car. 'Whoa . . . you feel that?'

If Saul did, he didn't let on. He looked confused, but no longer frightened.

'We're on our way,' she said. 'Let's just hope the tracks are clear.'

Saul, who had been doing so well with the situation and had managed to calm himself down, suddenly had visions of thousands of cars, haphazardly stretched across the tracks . . . strewn like the aftermath of a strong tornado . . .

Or worse.

A horde, staggering forward along the rails.

He pushed himself further into the corner and closed his eyes. It was going to be a long morning.

*

It was gloomy, and the rain had started again, peppering the cars with its incessant rat-a-tatting. It wouldn't be totally light for another hour or so, which was why Shane had asked Terry – without it sounding like an order – to take it slow.

'What you think I'm gonna do?' had been Terry's response. 'Tear-ass across the wilderness like a fun-fair ride?'

Shane had found his analogy funny; he hadn't been to a “fun-fair” since they built the first theme-park. Hell, he wasn't even sure such things existed, or had existed until the outbreak.

So the train was rattling along at a nice, even pace, and they were still flanked by trees on both sides, which was either a good thing or the worst possible thing imaginable.

They were covered, shielded by the woods – at least for now – which meant that they were practically invisible as they travelled along the tracks at twenty miles-an-hour, and would have been undetectable if the locomotive had a fucking mute button.

It was so noisy that Shane couldn't hear Marla as she prattled on about something-or-other. He watched her lips move, though, which was nice. She had beautiful lips, and it was going to be a fun game trying to translate their movements into words.

The bad thing about being swathed by trees was: they couldn't see anything approaching. There could have been the world's biggest horde – a thousand hungry lurkers – nestled just a few feet away and they wouldn't know about it until it was too late.

Though even at 20mph they were moving too fast for the lurkers. If there were any in the nearby woods, by the time they'd shambled across towards the sound of the locomotive, it would be a mile or so further along the track.

No, the only thing they had to worry about was track obstructions, or so they hoped.

'I said,' Marla called as loud as she possibly could. 'We should go to dinner when we get to wherever we're going!'

Shane had been struggling to comprehend his car-companion up until then, but those words had reached him just fine.

'Dinner?' he said. A tiny spot of spittle flew from his mouth, and he thought he would just die from embarrassment as it landed on Marla's right cheek.

She wiped it away, and smiling she said, 'If that was your way of turning me down, you could have just said no.'

Shane shook his head and planted his face in his palms. When he came back up, he came up apologising. 'Dinner sounds good,' he added. 'Just . . .? ' He pointed to himself, then Marla.

She nodded. 'Yeah, just us.'

Shane smiled. 'Bond and Croft?'

'Bond and Croft,' she giggled. Leaning closer so that she didn't have to shout as loud, she said, 'Sounds like an illegal law-firm.'

Shane couldn't believe it; she was asking him out, or at least he thought she was. Maybe she was just being friendly, or trying to remove the tension from what had been an anxious few hours.

Either way worked for him.

As the world slowly drifted by through the open side if the car, it was hard to believe that everything had gone to shit. In the semi-darkness of morning, the trees, the sky, even the breeze blowing in through the aperture all reminded Shane of a simpler time. There was that fresh, dewy smell; that not-so-delightful scent of farmyard shit, and it was all welcome as it wafted around the car.

Necrosis had filled the air for so long that even pigshit was a delicacy.

'What are you thinking?' Marla said, just loud enough for him to hear. She was clinging to the side of the car, countering the rattle beneath them the best she could.

'I was. . . I was just thinking about the way things had turned out.' Shane glared out at the passing woods. 'It wasn't just us,' he said. 'It was everyone, and yet we're so lucky to still be here. . . after everything . . .'

He broke off there as the memories of Megan and Holly came flooding back. He'd managed to keep them back there, out of harm's way at the back of his mind, and yet they would always appear when he least expected it. It was something he would come to terms with eventually; if they lived long enough to deal with their respective demons.

Marla reached out and grabbed his hand. 'I know it's not any sort of consolation,' she said, 'but you've got us.'

And he did, and he knew that was more than most people had any more.

*

Terry was in a self-congratulatory mood, praising himself as he drove along, whistling Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam followed by Shall We Gather At The River.

The latter was quite apt; they were heading directly south and would hit the Mississippi within ten hours at the current pace. It sounded like a long time, but there was no way he could take the train up to its fastest; one car would be enough to derail them; a gap in the track would be enough to kill them all.

Maybe when things opened out a little, and he could see more of the track ahead, he would take her up to fifty, but that was as far as he was willing to push it. At that rate, they would reach Louisiana – providing the train went that far – before two that afternoon.

Not bad.

Not bad at all.

The sun was rising somewhere to the left; a red and orange hue began to appear in the cracks of the treetops. It was going to be light soon, but the sudden appearance of the sun didn't mean they were in for better weather. Rain and wind flicked the train windshield, and Terry scrambled frantically around on the dash for anything resembling wipers.

He couldn't see anything, and so squinted through the rain trailing down the glass. It was a horrible feeling, knowing that there were people back there, relying on him.

He didn't know how Shane coped with the pressure all the time, and suddenly realised how unfair it was to put so much credence in him to do the right thing, to make the correct move.

To make all the decisions.

If he got a chance, he made a promise, standing right there at the helm of the train, to tell Shane how much he's appreciated; how much he admired him.

He started on the first verse of O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing before giving up and concentrating on the track ahead through the rain-spattered window.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

When morning came, bringing with it an ominous silence after the previous evening's mayhem, Emma found herself struggling to get motivated.

They were finally moving to one of the islands; a place where people had already started to rebuild, to create homes and begin their lives afresh.

Three islands – Cat, Ship and Horn – were probably the safest places on the planet. Military had already secured the entire islands with fencing and security, and sentries were posted twenty-four hours.

There was no evidence that the creatures could swim, or even float for that matter, but the army were taking no chances, and for that Emma was grateful. She had Gabriella to think about; Dredd was big enough, ugly enough, and nine times out of ten stupid enough to look after himself.

She stepped out of the tent and hugged herself as the early-morning chill hit her. Gabriella had slept over in Lizzie's tent; once everything had finally died down, Lizzie's parents had promised to take care of Gabriella, make sure she got plenty of rest in time for the big move in the morning.

And now morning was here, and something just didn't feel right.

It should have been momentous, or at least relieving. They were getting off the mainland, putting an ocean – well, part of it – between themselves and the shambling demons who continued to torment them.

To Emma, however, it felt as if they were being forced out. Those fuckers were winning, and they weren't even alive. It made her think about the president, the entire board, and the contingency-plans that had obviously failed.

This was all that remained, now. She was sure of it. A couple of platoons, a group of pissed-off Americans and three islands in the middle of the Gulf Of Mexico. This was everything they had to look forward to, and Emma – despite her fears of what was going to happen in the next few hours – wanted Gabriella on one of the islands as quickly as possible.

'Are you okay?'

She turned to find Dredd standing between the tent-flaps. The steaming cups in his hands shrouded him in a welcome fog.

'Yeah,' she said, forcing a smile and accepting the piping-hot coffee from him. She signalled the tent; the disarray, the mess that she was working up to packing. 'Just got a lot to get done this morning. Should've done it last night, I guess.'

'Nah,' Dredd said, stepping inside. 'Last night was too hectic for tidying and packing.' He remembered the horde, falling all around the chopper as Al sprayed them with bullets. 'Plus, it would have been a bit anticlimactic, don't you think? All that action followed by endless hours of arranging and sorting.'

He smiled; Emma didn't.

'You spoken to Frank this morning?' she asked. Of course he had. Dredd was the go-to guy for the general, and they were in cahoots at all times. Anyone would think her husband was military, the amount of time they spent together.

'I bumped into him fetching coffee,' Dredd said, his eyebrows lowered as if he was confused by her tone. 'Everything's . . . well, as good as can be expected. They're already loading up the first boat, the one going to Horn. We're leaving some time before noon, but he couldn't give me anything more specific than that.'

Noon.

Emma sipped furtively at the coffee, burning her lip but remaining indifferent to the stinging pain.

'We need to get Gabriella to gather her stuff. You want me to fetch her?'

Emma shook her head. 'Leave her for a while,' she said. 'She'll want to say goodbye to Lizzie.'

The thought of her daughter being separated from her best friend was unbearable, but that was the luck of the draw. Each island needed a doctor, a mechanic, a farmer, and it just so happened that Lizzie's father fell into the desired pot as one of only four trained doctors remaining.

Lizzie was going to Ship.

Gabriella to Cat.

'I'll give them another hour,' Dredd said, blowing the steam from his cup. 'In the meantime, let's get this place bagged up.'

And they did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When the trees gave way to industry, Terry slowed the train right down. Factories passed languidly by, the bleakness of the scenery a massive contradiction to the woods from which they had only recently emerged.

This was Brookhaven, the place they would have arrived at if the car hadn't been totalled by an obviously drunken Lukas.

On the left they had dilapidated houses, gone to ruin long before the first person became infected; on the right, large corrugated units and steelyards, flanked by a canal where barges were half-sunk and some even mounted the bank, battered and torn from impact.

Just get through this as quickly as possible, Terry told himself. There was a limit on how fast he could go, though, which set him on edge. This was a place where people were, or had been, and the likelihood of mangled cars on the track was increased ten-fold.

For all they knew, there still were people here, holed up in their homes, awaiting rescue that would never come.

There was nothing they could do for these people except pray, and Terry was the only one likely to even bother.

Something up ahead caught Terry's attention, and he slowed the train even more; it wasn't safe travelling at such a relaxed pace – they were completely exposed, and the deep thrum of the engine would entice any lurkers towards them – but there was something just ahead, and until Terry was comfortable . . .

It was a horse; Terry heaved a sigh of relief as the beast whinnied and snorted at the air. Whoever had left it had done so in the correct way; by setting it free, giving it half a chance to survive among the dead.

And survive it had.

As the train slowly moved past the horse, Terry waved, though he wasn't sure why. Perhaps he was going a bit silly in his old age, or maybe it was because he hadn't seen a horse for so many years that the sudden appearance of one had overwhelmed him to the point of madness.

Needless to say, the horse didn't wave back. It simply bolted along the edge of the track, off to fight another day.

For seven minutes Brookhaven passed gently by. Morning was now in full-swing, and the rain – as if it had been informed of the hour – gently pattered at the windshield once again.

Like clockwork, Terry thought, smiling to himself. The horse had put him in a good mood.

The train crossed over a bridge, a short construction that made Terry's teeth rattle inside his skull.

It got him to thinking; just how long would these things last now that there was nobody to maintain them? How long would the Golden Gate Bridge remain international orange now that everyone who painted it was either dead, or undead?

Terry hadn't spent much time pondering the ins and outs of the post-apocalyptic world in which they now found themselves, but now that he'd started he realised how ultimately depressing it all was.

And then he went a step further and began to convince himself that he wasn't cut out for it. What did he have to offer, anyway? Nobody wanted some crusty old ex-con knocking around the place. He was ageing, desiccating at a rate only marginally slower than the things they were running away from. His back was fucked and the six teeth he had were loose and brittle.

He dry-swallowed and tried to think about happier things.

'The horse,' he muttered to himself. 'She was a beauty.'

And so he thought about the horse.

*

Three hours past without incident. There were lurkers out there, but only in small hordes and too far away to cause panic. The tracks had taken them through more countryside; the dead brown hues of fallen leaves painted the landscape, and it was as if they were floating along on a chocolate river in some places, such was the extent of the wintry decay.

The train carried them through a station, its weathered sign informing them they were now in Foxworth, wherever the hell that was.

The station got smaller behind them, and Terry picked the pace up once again. He'd had no choice but to slow upon their approach, but there was no point maintaining such a lacklustre speed now they were back in the open.

Once again, fields spread out on either side of them. Terry had marvelled, to begin with, at the sheer number of farmyards they were passing. He had no idea so many people had kept the land – their land no more – and the thought of all that acreage going to rack and ruin depressed him.

Now, as they entered Foxworth, there were not so many farms. People, rich investors, had purchased the land and converted it into an endless array of water-parks and country-clubs. A large billboard, visible from the train – of course, the marketers weren't completely stupid – told them about the spectacular new slides at Columbia Water Park. There was a picture of a boy halfway down a tube, water splashing out towards the camera. The boy seemed to be having a great time.

Though probably not anymore.

Terry sighed; the train trundled on.

The track opened out onto a recently-constructed area where bricks replaced grass and solid, brown walls stood instead of trees. Whatever it was, the architects had gone crazy with triangles. Everywhere Terry looked there were three-sided shapes; even the bricks had been formed with a triangle set into them. It was a little excessive, and in this new world a complete waste of time and space.

But that could be said for a lot of things, Terry reminded himself. What had been the point in space-travel, in surgical advancements, in all those years spent paying taxes and feeding a fucking cat who never offered anything in return?

It was all for nothing.

A waste of time, money and effort.

At the end of the day, or the end of time, as it turned out, none of it made the slightest bit of difference. Neil Armstrong got chewed up the same as every other poor soul; Bill Gates's money would have only helped if he had used it to create barricades with to keep the lurkers out, and that damned cat you spent all those years feeding was either dead, dying of hunger, or infected.

Why do I keep thinking like this?

Terry had remained positive for so long, through everything, and now he was being bombarded with detrimental thoughts and ideas. It wasn't like him, and he reached for the bible in his jacket-pocket.

“Thank God,” he sighed as he brushed against its hard leather.

He was still touching it when the train rounded a corner.

He didn't have time to pray.

*

'Where did they come from?!' Shane gasped, pulling Marla away from the open door.

She turned, gasped as she saw the piled-up bodies in the street. These weren't dead, though. The piles were wriggling, clambering to get over the fence holding them away. The way they were stacked up on top of each other – like pancakes with their own special syrup – meant they were a lot closer to clearing the fence and getting to the train and its tantalising contents.

'Don't panic,' Shane said. 'By the time they got over we'll be past them.'

Marla glowered out through the open side. Her jaw had dropped open into a terrified O, and she looked as if she might cry, though that could have been a result of the wind hitting her in the eyes. 'What about those?' she asked, pointing with one hand while holding onto the door with the other.

Shane leaned out.

When he saw what was up ahead, Shane called out to Terry. 'SPEED UP, TERRY!'

Terry's voice came back, loud and clear despite the racket of the engine.

'I WAS ALREADY GONNA!'

*

If Saul had been frightened before, he looked about ready to shit bricks, now. He was shaking his head from side to side; his mouth opened and closed but nothing came out, not that River expected it to.

She turned back to the door. The creatures were climbing, but they would never make it.

'We're okay,' she told Saul, but either he didn't hear her or didn't believe her. He was still panicking. There was nothing that River could do to appease him, so she concentrated on the door. If lurkers were going to try to get in, they would have to get past her first, and that just wasn't going to happen.

The machete in her hand said so.

Then, she heard Shane call out. It sounded like, “Speed up, Terry,” but that couldn't be right. These things didn't have a chance.

She glanced out through the side of the car, and immediately pulled herself back in.

Saul was quivering in the corner, his eyes wide open with fright.

She knew, by the way he was, that telling him about what was coming next would be a terrible idea, so instead she made her way unsteadily towards him, dropped to her knees and pulled him in for a hug.

She wouldn't let go until it was over.

The train picked up pace, just like Shane wanted it to.

*

'Holy shit!' Terry said, before immediately crossing himself. Blasphemy was still something to be wary of. Even more so if you took into account the undefined amount of time you had left.

But it was impossible not to swear looking ahead to the things on the tracks. Hundreds of them, some pulling themselves along the ground as others stumbled over them.

Terry, who had been driving the train with the door open, leaned across and pulled it shut.

This was going to get messy.

'Where the hell did you all come from?' he muttered, but it was quite clear by what they were wearing.

Military uniform. Camouflaged green trousers and tattered beige jumpers. There must be a barracks nearby, and these poor sonsofbitches were all that remained.

Terry pushed the train up to 50mph, knowing that the impact would splatter most of them. No matter how big the horde was; you couldn't fuck with the tonnage of a diesel loco.

'GET DOWN BACK THERE!' Terry managed a second before the train slammed into the lurkers. A black explosion – as if a balloon filled with ink had detonated – and then Terry could see nothing through the windshield.

But the sound, the terrible crunching of brittle bones as they slipped beneath the train, was audible.

Terry gagged at the thought. The endless noise of bodies thumping the exterior was enough to make the vomit rise in his throat, and it was all he could do to keep it down.

There came a screeching noise as lurkers scratched along the side of the train, their claws or the exposed bones of their fingers creating something of a sickening chorus. With the blackness of the initial impact rendering the windshield useless, Terry was driving blind, and he didn't like it one bit.

Thump, thump, thump, screeeeeeech . . .

It seemed to go on forever. If the train was moving at the speed the gauge said it was, these things must trail back to the next fucking city.

Terry looked once again for the wiper. 'Where are you?'

There was something, a lever that he had been afraid to try before in case it did something irreversible to the train. Now was the time to try it.

He reached down, gripped onto it with a sweaty palm, and pulled.

At first nothing happened.

Thump, thump, thump . . .

And then the front window slowly cleared from left to right. Terry could almost see through the glass once again; the inky viscera had moved, but it was still attached. Just below the wiper, a thick, dark mound of intestine flapped around. Terry tried not to look at it.

He was feeling queasy enough without making it worse.

The track out front was clear; Terry knew the one behind them was far from it.

As the wiper brushed away the detritus and blackened remains of an entire squadron, Terry slowed the train once again, not willing to take any chances. These things came from somewhere nearby, which meant army vehicles and fuck knows what else. It was one thing ploughing through a hundred or so soft and decayed bodies; it was something else entirely trying to shift an overturned tank.

His mouth was so dry, he could barely swallow.

Trees flanked the left-hand side of the train, and the right was an open field with a view of some sort of hulking statue made from scrap-iron.

To Terry, it looked like an effigy of Jesus Christ, and he was sticking with that.

If he'd taken a closer look, he would have seen it was nothing more spectacular than a stack of crushed cars.

The mind worked in mysterious ways . . .

Especially when it was still scared half to death.

*

'Are you okay?' Shane asked. She was; he could see that she was just a little shaken up by what had just happened.

'Where did they all come from?' she asked, stepping out of the corner and into the gloomy light of mid-morning. 'I swear to God, in all my days I never want to go through anything like that again.'

Shane smiled. 'Reminded me of those old car-washes. Remember them? They always freaked me out as a kid; thought I was gonna get trapped inside and the car would fill up with water.'

Marla shuddered, as if a goose had just walked across her grave. 'They were all army,' she said. 'Shit, Shane. What if they're what's left of the people we're trying to reach? What if the pilots of those jets were in amongst that lot? We've just squashed the fuck out of 'em.'

'They weren't the ones,' Shane assured her, though he had no reason to believe otherwise. 'I saw some of the faces as the flew by. Those things had been dead for weeks, probably since this whole thing started.'

Marla had seen some faces, too. One of them had clung onto the open side of the car, its face unflinching and indifferent as the rest of its body was severed off by the wheels beneath. All that had remained was a torso, an arm and a head, and a few seconds later – when Marla could bring herself to look again – it had gone completely.

'Shit, Shane . . . River!' Marla rushed to the aperture and began to call out to the car behind. She could make out black, slimy handprints on the steel from where the things had tried to hang on. Down at the front corner, a smashed skull clung to the car as if it still had a chance to clamber aboard.

'River!' Marla called again. Shane joined her, held onto her arms as she called out once again.

He could see – and hear – the panic rising in her, and when she suggested they get Terry to stop the train he knew she was losing it, big-time.

As Marla inhaled, about to yell to the driver to hit the brakes, River's head appeared.

'We're okay!' River yelled as loud as she could. 'That was some scary shit, though, huh?'

Marla laughed; her relief palpable.

Shane smiled, as if River's safety had never been in question.

'I know,' Marla said. 'Just panicked, that's all.'

Shane pulled her away from the edge and gestured for her to take a seat beside him.

She did, and they sat silently, praying that nothing like that happened again.

*

'See, I told you there was nothing to worry about,' River told Saul. The kid looked apt to start screaming at any second, which was the last thing she needed. In such a cramped environment, a hysterical mute kid could cause quite a fuss.

They'd made it through, though. For a minute there, even she had felt a little unsure of how it was going to pan out.

There had been so many of them; a horde that size was capable of anything. Thank God Terry hadn't slowed, or even stopped.

Saul was slumped in the corner, his legs spread out in front of him. As River crouched next to him, she saw what he was doing.

He was using one finger to make letters on the steel floor of the car, trying to spell something out for her.

'Ess,' she said, watching rapt as he shifted his finger round in a serpentine shape. 'Cee.' She followed, hoping that it wasn't going to be a long message. Her legs were already beginning to numb beneath her from crouching in an unnatural position.

Saul – the boy who wanted desperately to be able to speak – continued to make large letters with his trembling finger, and when he was done River grabbed him by the shoulders so that he had no choice but to look deep into her eyes.

The word he had formed was SCARED.

'What did I tell you?' she said, wanting to shake him, make him realise that he was safe. 'I won't let anything happen to you.' She paused, thought for a second. 'Nothing bad will happen anymore. Those people, they're gone. Whatever they did to you, that's in the past, and it will never happen again.'

Saul allowed his solemn gaze to drop to the floor. River, in that moment, wanted to hug him so tightly that every bad memory, every single terrible thing that haunted him squeezed out.

She wanted to, but didn't.

When he finally looked up, a tear had escaped the corner of his eye, but he was smiling.

Finally, he gets it.

And then the smile was gone, and River realised that he was no longer looking at her.

He was looking across her shoulder.

She turned, saw the bloodied torso dragging itself through the side of the car, and gasped in terror.

The thing was barely recognisable. There was a head, but it was almost flat, as if a truck had gone over it. Eyes – if they could be called such things – squinted through the flapping flesh as it pulled itself forward with its one remaining arm. In lurker terms, it wasn't much of a threat, but she had to be quick in dealing with it.

Saul was losing his shit behind her, whimpering.

Just when I had him calm, River thought.

She stood, unsheathed the machete, and stepped over to where the pulped creature was sprawled.

A noise – a faint hissing that would have been a lot louder if not for the racket of the engine – emanated from the lurker's squashed face. The smell of putrefaction was tangible, and brought bile to River's throat, but she swallowed it back down.

Then she apologised. She told the creature sorry for what she was about to do.

The blade came down. River hoped she managed to catch the thing correctly; it was difficult to determine where its head ended and body began.

The hissing stopped the moment the steel sliced through the scabby flesh. A chunk of the creature hit the far side of the car.

Saul whimpered once again, pushed himself back against the car-wall. If he could, River thought, he would keep pushing until he was on the outside.

The severed portion slid slowly down the metal, leaving a bloody snail-trail behind it.

The stench was unbearable now, and River used the machete to force the torso over to the door. She pushed, and the thing dropped out, over the edge.

She stabbed the blade into the head on the other side of the car and tossed that out, too.

Then she sat next to Saul. She taught him how to play slaps, but he was either too slow or too polite to really try.

In the end, the gently swaying of the carriage lulled him to sleep, and she watched him dream.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

As the boat departed for Ship, with Gabriella's best friend on board, Emma stood next to her daughter. It had been tough on the girl, but she knew that it wasn't the last time she would see Lizzie. There would be plenty of opportunities to visit one another; both islands would need supplies, and a team of scavengers would return to the mainland every week or so to gather supplies. The team would also be providing a service back and forth between the islands every couple of days, so it really wasn't the end of her daughter's friendship with Lizzie. It was more of an inconvenience.

'How will we know that they get there safely?' Gabriella asked.

'The base is keeping tabs on them,' Emma said, squeezing Gabriella's shoulder, more for her own assurance than that of her daughter.

'We're next, aren't we?'

Emma smiled, or tried to. 'Yeah, looks that way,' she said. The thought of those bombs once again caused the hackles to rise on the nape of her neck. 'A few hours, so make sure you get everything together. This is it, soldier,' she said trying to lighten the mood. 'Ain't no coming back to this here country.'

Gabriella grimaced. 'You sound silly, Mom,' she said.

Emma feigned shock. 'I'll have you know that that's how all generals speak. Haven't you heard Pimlico.'

Gabriella nodded. 'Yeah, but he doesn't sound like that. He talks normally.'

'Normally! You can hardly understand a word that comes out of his mouth!'

''Cos he's always got a cigar wedged in it,' Gabriella said. 'You'd sound like that if you smoked cigars.'

'Well, that's not gonna happen, sweetie, because it's a disgusting habit and makes you smell funny.'

It was a nice exchange, something they hadn't had for a long time. The pressures of daily life had taken their toll, and Emma couldn't help feeling as though she and her daughter had drifted apart, somewhat.

Dredd, too.

Things would never be the same. Not for them, not for anybody. The only thing a person could do was evolve, make way for the new life they had.

'Go on,' Emma said, patting Gabriella on the head. 'Get started before it gets to raining again.'

'It's always raining,' Gabriella said, dejectedly. 'Hope we have some decent weather in the Summer, so me and Lizzie can play out like we used to.'

With that, she turned and started back to the tent.

Emma turned and glanced up at the sky. She wondered if the nukes would blot out the sun, the way they did in the movies. Dredd told her that these were different, that the yield was nowhere near the same range.

Then why did she keep picturing Hiroshima? Nagazaki? Those were nukes as she saw them; anything smaller should be called something else, something less terrifying, like mini-bombs, or baby-atoms.

'Emma!'

She turned to see Dredd rushing towards her through the campsite. In the first instant she panicked, but when she saw Dredd's calm expression she relaxed a little.

'I just sent Gabriella off to get ready,' she told him as he reached her and stopped.

'I know. I just passed her.'

He looked nervous now, as if there was something on the tip of his tongue that he couldn't bring himself to tell her.

'James,' she said. She never called him by his first name, not anymore, and the fact that she did so now seemed to startle him. Then she said, 'You're going back out there, aren't you?'

He hesitated, which answered the question for her.

Had she thought differently?

No.

'Look, Frank wants me to do one final sweep of the area before the jets leave. I figure it's the last time, so . . . '

'And what about us? What about if something goes wrong on this “last time”, and me and Gabriella have to board that fucking boat without you?'

'Nothing's gonna happen,' he said. 'Look, it's probably going to be a waste of time, and Al's coming with me so—'

'Oh, well that makes me feel better.' The sardonic tone was sharp enough to cut Dredd's face off, and he flinched as she spoke. 'A madman with a machine-gun flying side-saddle.'

She wasn't done yet; a thousand things ran through her mind, biting remarks that she could no longer control.

'And what if you find survivors? Huh? You pile them all into the back of the chopper and bring 'em back here? How many can you carry, Dredd? Ten, five?'

He shrugged. 'Maybe eight, maybe less.'

'So you're just going to go out there on the off-chance you might find a group of less than eight people? Is that what you're telling me? Putting your life on the line for that?'

Dredd hated that he had to justify his reasons for going back out, especially to Emma, who he thought would understand given her own fear of what was going to happen next.

'There might be more doctors out there,' he said, calmly. 'More people who we'll need once we get over to the island.' It was a thin excuse, but all he could think of. 'You won't even know I'm gone, Em. We leave in two hours, and that's not gonna change.'

She sighed. Once Dredd had something in his mind, there was no talking him out of it; a trait that she once found endearing, but not in this case.

'Just remember, once this is all over and we get to the island, no more errands for Pimlico. You're my husband, not his bitch.'

Dredd smiled. 'I'll train the pilots how to handle the Wave Hawk,' he said. 'I'll never have to leave the island again.'

What was meant as a comforting statement actually frightened him as it came out. Never. Leave. The. Island. Again.

Sounded so permanent.

'Fine,' she relented. 'But go say bye to Gabriella first. She'll wonder where you've got to.'

He leaned in to kiss her; her soft, delicious lips were almost enough to make him change his mind.

As he turned to leave, his wife grabbed his hand.

'Dredd!'

He swivelled, his eyes meeting hers. 'Yeah?'

She sighed, then said, 'We always know you're gone.'

With those words rattling around inside his head, he went in search of Gabriella.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The train was riding parallel to a main road now. Cars were haphazardly strewn across the lanes, but they would have been able to get by if their original plan had come to fruition, something that had worried Shane when they'd set out.

Lurkers were few and far between. One horde had staggered after the locomotive, but it didn't stand a chance, and if it had managed to get across in time, each and every one of them would have ended up flattened beneath the wheels, or spread across the windshield like molasses, the way the army squadron had.

'Any idea where we are?' Marla asked, more conversationally than to actually determine a location.

Shane glanced out to the passing stores. Here was a small RadioShack, dilapidated by either the weather or the looting that it must have endured; there was a small brick building with the words PEARL RIVER COUNTY TAX COLLECTOR along the side. Somebody had scrawled graffiti beneath it suggesting the proprietor go fuck himself. Then they past an even smaller brick building. This one had a sign hanging outside: THE POPLARVILLE DEMOCRAT. There was a newspaper box just out front, no doubt selling copies of the paper from the day the world went to shit.

'I guess we're in Poplarville,' Shane said, not knowing where the hell that was nor caring. It sounded like something out of a low-budget horror-movie. The Poplarville Massacre, perhaps. . .

'Doesn't look as poplar as it sounds,' Marla said. Shane rolled his eyes. 'Oh, come on! That was funny!'

'It really wasn't,' he said. 'Your jokes are never funny.'

Poplarville, it transpired, was a relatively small town and they had blasted through it within two minutes, leaving behind the quaint little buildings and stores that had been all but destroyed in the aftermath of the virus.

Shane was almost certain he could detect the scent of the ocean in the air, and as he inhaled he smiled.

'What?' Marla asked.

Shane held a hand up. 'I don't think we've got far to go,' he told her. 'Do you smell that?'

She sniffed, frowned, then said, 'Can't smell anything.'

But he could, and it was definitely sea-air. They were almost there, the edge of the world as far as they were concerned.

Shane stood in front of the open door, facing inwards. Marla admired his silhouette against the hazy morning light.

And then she screamed, but it was too late.

*

The truck came from nowhere, careering off the adjacent road, slamming into the side of their car at an impossible speed. Marla saw Shane's legs go from underneath him as the truck's front smashed into the steel car, and then he was gone, rolling across the truck's hood and out of sight.

Then it was her turn; the impact sent her flying backwards, knocking her from her feet. She hit the steel wall so hard that she bit straight through her lip, her teeth coming together between a fleshy pulp.

The truck rocked back on itself, and slowly rolled down the embankment.

The train continued forward, but the two cars it had been towing were no longer attached. The screech of brakes filled the air, hissing, whining.

It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly that the results were far more spectacular than if it had been anticipated.

The collision had ended the train's journey.

This was bad, this was so very bad . . .

Marla listened to the noises outside the car, which had rolled over onto its side without her even realising.

Ten seconds later, she was unconscious.

*

Three minutes after passing out, Marla opened her eyes and saw the face staring down at her, grinning.

'You alright in there, bitch?'

It couldn't be. But it was.

Lukas hawked and spat, and she watched as the drool strung from his bottom lip for a moment before breaking off and landing on her arm.

'Let's get you out of there, huh?'

She fainted again, and this time she prayed to Terry's God, that he would do the decent thing and let her die peacefully.

*

'This is what you get, motherfucker!' Lukas said, kicking Shane in the stomach once again. Shane lifted from the ground from the force, blood oozed from his mouth.

Marla couldn't watch; Terry's God had decided not to be kind.

'Fucking leave us out in the middle of nowhere,' Lukas continued, pacing around the kneeling hostages. Saul was silent, his eyes wide enough to catch flies. River stared solemnly to the ground. Thankfully, neither were seriously injured. The impact had been concentrated on the middle carriage, and as a result the last one – the one containing the children – had broken off almost as soon as the truck connected.

'Take our fucking boy!' Lukas snapped as he rounded Marla. She feared a swipe from his shotgun, but he resisted and continued to move. 'You think we were just gonna let that go? Leave you to go on your merry fuckin' way?'

He reached Terry, who was also relatively uninjured; he had a gash on his forehead, and his beard was pinking from the blood, but apart from that he looked okay.

But now Lukas raised the shotgun and battered Terry on the back of the head with it. He folded forward, his head bouncing on the gravel in front of him.

'Don't you touch him!' Marla said.

Lukas quickly flipped the shotgun over and jabbed it in her general direction. 'Or what?' He watched as she shrunk back into herself, not as confident as she was a second ago. 'That's what I thought.'

Abi, the bitch in the tartan-skirt, was watching everything from the side, sat on the front of the wrecked truck sucking provocatively on a lollipop.

Am I the only one hurt? Marla thought, feeling the sting of her bleeding lip with two fingers.

Abi was untouched, and Lukas looked better than when they had first encountered him, as if the whole experience had rejuvenated him.

'Now, since you left us with the gun, I'm going to be kind to y'all and give you a choice. You know, like you did for me.' He kicked Shane again, this time a little to the left. Shane hoped those weren't ribs he heard cracking.

'Stop hurting him!' Marla gasped as Shane rocked back on his heels, blood erupting from his mouth.

Calmly, Lukas raised the shotgun once again. 'I'm not gonna tell you again.' He drew a zip across his lips and tossed away an invisible key.

Marla wanted to kill him. Right then, right there, she wanted the means to kill him, and it would have happened.

'Like I said before bitch interrupted,' Lukas continued. On the front of the buckled truck, Abi applauded, obviously enjoying the show her man was putting on for her. 'I'm gonna give you a choice. You didn't kill us; I won't kill you, but the choice is gonna be a difficult one.'

'You fuck!' Terry said, straightening up. A piece of gravel was pressed deep into his forehead.

Lukas turned, grinned and grimaced at the same time. 'Oh, not yet, but we will.' He turned to River and levelled the shotgun at her. 'With her. You see, this is your choice.' He scratched his head nonchalantly, as if the next words to pass his lips would be ordinary, nothing weird at all.

'You can die, here, all of you . . . including the girl, and that dumb fucking idiot.' He pointed at Saul, who showed no emotion at being singled out, at all. 'Or you all get to live, but we take her with us.'

Then he laughed, snorted, hysterical, maniacal. Abi, the willing spectator, applauded louder. 'You can keep the mutey,' he chortled. 'We were bored of him, anyhoo.'

Shane sighed, closed his eyes. He knew, Marla knew, and Terry knew, that Lukas wasn't getting River. They would die first, and might.

'So what's it gonna be?' Lukas asked. 'All live . . . all die . . . makes no difference to me either way.'

Shane wiped the blood from his mouth and grunted. He began to climb to his feet, a move which unsettled Lukas, and Abi – who had been smiling and clapping up until that point – almost toppled off the crumbled hood of the truck.

'No,' Shane said.

One word, as blunt as could be.

'What did you say?' Lukas lowered the gun; its barrel was pointed at Shane's chest. 'I'm pretty sure some shit just fell out of your mouth.'

Shane spat, a globule of blood landed at Lukas's feet. 'I said no.'

Lukas stared down at the bloody saliva with disgust. Behind him, Abi shifted nervously, her petite frame still enough to rattle the wrecked steel beneath her.

'Well I guess we don't have a deal,' Lukas said. He stopped pointing the gun at Shane.

The barrel inched slowly across, set on Terry who merely lowered his head.

'How 'bout I start with the old fucker?' he said. 'Work my way down by age; that way I get to have a little bit of fun with the kids before I blow their faces off.'

'Don't do this,' Shane said, holding a placatory hand aloft as if it would make the slightest bit of difference.

It didn't.

Lukas pulled the trigger.

*

Terry rolled backwards as the shot hit him high. Shane didn't see any of this because he was lunging for Lukas, for the shotgun. Lukas was already swinging the shotgun round, ready to blow Shane to kingdom-come, but Abi's screeching stopped him.

Shane thumped into Lukas, knocking him to the ground. Lukas wasn't struggling,though. His attention was upon the truck.

Shane grabbed the shotgun and clambered off Lukas, leaving him gasping for air and watching his girlfriend.

Seemingly from out of nowhere, three lurkers had sidled up alongside the truck and dragged Abi over the side. Lukas had watched her go over, and now he watched as they tore at her, tearing chunks of flesh from her throat and chest.

'ABI!' he yelled. He turned to Shane. 'Shoot the fuckers!'

Shane glanced across to where the girl was being devoured alive. Her eyes suggested no pain, not anymore. She was already slipping away.

One of the creatures bit down hard on her scalp, pulled it back as if it was peeling a satsuma. With a mouthful of hair, it chewed frantically at the flapping scalp.

'Everyone up on the train!' Shane said, slowly stepping away from the grotesque onslaught. More lurkers came staggering around the truck; some dropped to their knees to join in with the feast, but a dozen continued, shambling forward towards the others.

'GO!' Shane bellowed.

Marla lunged to her feet. 'River, grab Saul.'

The girl did, though she practically had to drag the boy, who was paralysed with fear.

Shane quickly sidestepped to where Terry was slumped. His shoulder was spraying blood, pumping it out quicker than anything Shane had ever seen before.

'Come on,' Shane told him. 'It's gonna be okay.'

He lifted Terry from the ground, which was a lot harder than it looked. For an old guy, he was packing some timbre.

'Shane, I'm fucked,' he groaned. His eyes were rolling back in his head, and he seemed to gain even more weight as his body decided to give up the fight.

'No,' Shane said, pulling Terry's recalcitrant body along. 'We're fine, you sonofabitch. Everybody's fine.'

Lukas was standing in exactly the same place he had been tackled in a moment before. He couldn't tear his eyes away from what was happening.

Abi . . .

His girl, though now she resembled something that you might find out on a busy road in the country, unrecognisable.

Behind him, Marla had climbed up onto the second car's roof. Saul was passed up to her first, and then she yanked River up. She surveyed the melee and watched as Shane staggered back towards them with Terry's dead arm draped across his shoulder. On the way past, Shane said something to Lukas, though she couldn't hear due to the noise the lurkers were making as they fed.

Groans, the sickening squelching of Abi's flesh as it was stripped from her bones, Lukas screaming for them to stop – as if they would listen.

'Shane, hurry!' Marla said. Two lurkers had broken away from the horde, and they were moving with intent towards Shane and his cargo. He still had the shotgun, which probably hampered him more than anything. Marla didn't know whether he would have a chance to shoot if the creatures reached them before they got to the carriage, not with Terry the way he was.

Lukas finally realised how much shit he was in, and turned.

What he hadn't noticed, however, was the creatures flanking him. Now there were undead standing between him and the train, as well as behind him. Some of those ones had fed well on his girlfriend, and were rolling off her, sated, lips bloody.

Lukas feigned a sidestep, but the approaching creatures seemed to be wise to his ploy and went the same way. He reacted with shock. 'No. . . You're just fucking dumb!' he spluttered. He stepped back, almost tripped over himself, and then he called across to where the old guy was being lifted onto one of the carriage roofs. 'Hey! Help me! Fucking don't leave me here!'

The lurkers between him and the car paid no heed to what was going on behind them. Their attention was fixated on the prize ahead.

'You cunts!' Lukas screamed, sounding more like Abi, now, than his previously calm self. 'You absolute cunts!'

A lurker – female once, but no longer determinate – shambled towards him. Lukas lifted his arm and swiped the creature across the jaw, knocking her back a few feet. She snarled, a long, black ribbon of drool seeped from her lips, and then she rushed him.

Lukas whimpered and tried to turn, but he bounced off another creature . . .

'You fucks! You dirty fucks!'

The female wrapped her tattered arms around his throat and dragged him to the ground. He struggled, tried to fight, but when the weight of several more creatures arrived it was fruitless.

He saw, through the circle of grotesque faces above him, nothing but clouds, and then a hand obscured his view completely, a hand clenching meat.

A piece of him.

He screamed, gargled blood in his throat, and was gone before they fished out the remaining viscera from his open belly.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

'Keep them over there,' Shane instructed Marla. She didn't want the kids to see Terry like this, especially River who had grown quite fond of the old man.

'Is he going to be okay?' Marla asked, staring at the horrible wound forlornly. 'Shane, you need to stem the blood—'

'I know what I need to do,' he said, not meaning to snap. Calmly, he said, 'Just keep them over there, away from the edge. Those fuckers'll try to get at us once they've finished down there.'

The guns. If only they had the guns.

Lukas had tossed the guns into a bag and handed it to Abi. Which meant they were over by the front of the truck, somewhere, useless.

Marla turned and eased herself across the car roof towards the children. Once she was gone, Shane removed his shirt and began to tear at the sleeves with his shaking hands.

It looked a lot easier in the films, and he struggled to pull off a scrap large enough to wrap a fucking finger.

'Don't . . . worry about . . . it.' Terry lowered his hand; the wound looked awful, as if the entire arm had been opened up and riffled through.

'It's gonna be okay,' Shane told him, still working on the shirt.

'Shane . . .' Terry said, gritting his teeth and managing to talk through the pain. 'It's really . . . not . . . I, I know . . . that.' He wiped caked blood away from his lips; Shane wished he had some water to offer, but that was in the packs.

Whiskey would have been much better.

'That stupid FUCK!' Shane yelled, meaning Lukas. Marla, who had been trying to comfort the children, started as Shane punched the roof of the carriage. 'We should have, we should have killed him in the fucking woods!'

Terry shook his head. 'We're . . . not kill . . . not killers, Shane. Not . . . like them.' His face was pallid now, alabaster almost. Through his silvery beard, Shane could see blue lips, which was not a good sign.

Terry was going to die.

'FUCK!' Shane bellowed, his anger attracting the attention of the feeding lurkers, not that it mattered. They were either going to get eaten, scratched and infected, or die of dehydration right there on the carriage roof. But not until they watched Terry die slowly in front of them, gradually slipping into the darkness.

'I need to tell you . . . something,' Terry said, beckoning Shane closer with gnarled fingers. 'Come here . . . stupid.'

Shane edged in, his ear cocked to better hear what Terry had to say.

'I had a girl once . . . nice, beautiful, the best . . . the best thing that . . . ever happened to me.'

He took a deep intake of breath before continuing, and Shane realised how difficult it was becoming for him to even speak.

'Liesl,' Terry said. 'Liesl was her name . . . Shane, she was . . . she was a Goddess. I . . . I was not a good guy . . . b-back then. I let . . . my head run away with m-me, and Liesl . . .' he paused, swallowed despite the lack of saliva. 'She went with it . . . I let her go . . . and I regret-regretted it to this . . . day.'

Shane knew what he was being told, what Terry was imparting to him and why.

'Don't let . . . her get away from . . . y-you,' he managed. 'She's a good one.'

A tear rolled down Shane's cheek as he slowly lowered Terry backwards. 'Just relax now,' he said, wiping the blood from Terry's lips. 'We're gonna figure a way off of this thing.'

The rain began once again, a hellish drum-roll on the steel around them.

*

They waited, and watched the lurkers scratch and claw at the side of the carriage upon which they sat. Occasionally, Shane would flick out a leg, his boot meeting fleshy pulp, but they persisted as was their wont.

A matter of time, Shane thought. It's just a matter of fucking time before they reach us.

The shirt he'd torn was wrapped around him once again, clinging to him from the rain.

Watching Lukas devoured had done nothing to ease Shane's anger and hatred toward him. As he'd watched the lurkers pick Lukas's bone, he'd prayed the asshole might wake up to suffer some more.

He'd got off lightly, passing out so fast.

Terry was trembling, his breaths coming in short, shallow gasps.

Not long, Shane thought.

It was strange, Shane thought, how he envied Terry, how he wished it could be him dying on top of the carriage, his friends around him in his final moments.

Terry's death was going to much more pleasant than the rest of them. They were going to starve, dehydrate or die of exposure, whichever got them first.

That was, providing the lurkers didn't wise up and form a fucking pyramid, in which case they were going to be torn limb from limb and cannibalised.

A lurker lunged up at Shane's ankle, and he kicked out, flattening the thing's flaking nose against its face. It topple backwards, landing with a thump on the gravel of the tracks.

Tracks that should have taken them all the way to the coast.

Never mind, Shane thought. Did well to get this far, really . . .

They sat, none of them speaking, for what seemed like forever. The incessant groans of a hundred lurkers – for they just kept appearing – was enough to drive a man insane. Saul had the right idea, sitting with his legs folded in front of him, his hands pushed to his ears to silence the horrifying growling.

Shane wondered if the things would give up after dark. Maybe they would wander off, in search of an easier meal.

Who the fuck am I kidding?

They were relentless entities and would keep coming until they got what they wanted. It was what made them so formidable, and why the world hadn't had choice but to succumb to their attacks.

Shane sniggered.

'What?' asked Marla. She was stroking River's head, which was lying in her lap.

'Fucking lurkers,' Shane said, snorting again. 'It is a funny name.'

Marla smiled. 'Yeah. We should've called them something even funnier.'

'Like what?' Shane asked, kicking another face away as soon as it appeared at the edge of the carriage.

Marla thought for a second, then said, 'I don't know . . . Muppets?'

Shane laughed. 'Yeah, that's much funnier. We'd have spent all this time running away from the muppets.'

'And we could say things like “Remember those muppets at the prison?” or, “Hey, what about those Wizard Of Oz muppets at the school?”' She laughed; River's head rocked gently in her lap.

'Yeah, that would be funny,' River said. 'What's a muppet?'

Shane shook his head. 'Never mind. You never heard of Miss Piggy?'

'I've heard of Lady GaGa,' River replied, innocently.

'Close enough,' Shane grunted.

They sat, getting wet and bullshitting to keep their minds active and away from the inevitable.

Half an hour passed; the lurkers were no closer to attaining their meal, and Terry was just about alive, though for how much longer none of them knew.

Shane cocked his ear. He could hear something, something that wasn't groaning or Terry coughing and spluttering as he waited patiently for death.

Sounded like a drumming, a distant whoomph-whoomph that seemed to be getting louder.

'What is that?' Marla asked. River pushed herself up onto her elbows and listened.

'You hear it, too?' Shane asked, glancing out across the sea of lurkers. If they heard it, they didn't react.

'Sounds like . . . ' Marla didn't know what it sounded like, but she would have said, in that moment – and this was optimistic – it sounded like a helicopter.

Saul, who sat silently to Marla's right, suddenly pointed to the sky, his tiny trembling finger proving just how scared he was.

'What is it?' Shane asked, shifting away from Terry. He squinted and stared out in the direction Saul was pointing.

At first, he saw nothing. Just clouds, gloom, rain and treetops.

But then he saw it just fine.

'I don't fucking believe it!' he said. He climbed to his feet. 'Please keep coming this way, please, please, please . . . '

Marla's eyes adjusted to the sky, and she too saw the tiny black dot. She watched as it moved across the sky. 'Shane, is it coming this way?'

Shane hoped so.

*

Thirty minutes was all he had left. Pimlico had made his instructions very clear. Get out, do a few laps, and get back. The jets wouldn't wait, and neither would the boats.

How very nice of them, Dredd thought. Emma was right; he was an expendable asset. It was time he put his family first and the general second. In fact, forget the general altogether and live his life.

The Wave Hawk was coping well with the rain, and swung gently from left to right as he took it across a row of fields. There were houses down there, but he'd checked them on previous scavenge missions.

Empty, or containing people who didn't want to be found, or helped.

They could do nothing for those people, now.

Al began firing at a small horde beneath them, cutting down creatures for fun, now, rather than necessity.

'Don't bother, Al!' Dredd called over his shoulder. The firing continued for a couple more bursts, then stopped. 'Save the ammo, dude. We might need it.'

He hovered for a few minutes over a church, scouring the ground below for any sign of survivors. He desperately wanted to bring at least one back. Emma hated him for risking his life, but she would be hard pushed to give him shit if he returned with an extra person aboard.

'Wasting time, here,' Al's head said as it appeared on his shoulder.

'Be that as it may,' Dredd said, 'we have thirty minutes, and I'm not turning back until we've used 'em.'

The windshield was blurry from the rain, and it stretched outwards, watery tendrils, as Dredd flew deeper into it.

It was not a nice day for nuclear winter.

'What the hell is that?' Al said, pointing across to the right.

A horde, it seemed, was emerging from the woods. From so high up, they were no bigger than beetles; a steadily flowing river of undead.

Flowing towards what?

'I'll be damned,' Dredd said.

There were people down there, sitting on top of what looked like a train. The creatures were trying, unsuccessfully, to get at them. Dredd swung the chopper across the sky, towards the people – who were frantically waving in an attempt to get his attention.

They had it.

'Wait,' Al said, placing a hand on Dredd's left shoulder. 'You're not thinking of landing down there.'

'You're right,' Dredd said, much to the mitigation of Al. 'I wasn't thinking it; I'm doing it.'

Al sighed nervously. 'Fuck, I knew you were gonna say that.'

Dredd took the Wave Hawk down, watching the creatures topple over as they craned their neck toward the sky.

It was too dangerous to land on the ground, and so Dredd signalled down towards the survivors: move to the other side of the carriage. They started to clamber across, dragged what looked to be an injured guy over.

'If he's bit,' Al said, meaning the afflicted man, 'I'm putting a bullet in his face.'

'Duly noted.'

The creatures were climbing, reaching, trying to get at the survivors – two of which were children no older than Gabriella – as if they were aware that time was running out.

This meal was about to get away from them.

The helicopter touched down on the carriage, sideways-on so that the door faced the survivors. Dredd knew there was no time. 'Get them in here, now,' he told Al, who was standing, watching with his mouth agape, no doubt trying to ascertain whether the injured man was infected.

He moved away from the cockpit, leapt from the open door, and beckoned the people on the carriage roof towards the chopper.

*

Shane couldn't believe it; this was a miracle, an absolute miracle. The guy signalling from the chopper-door might as well have been God, for the relief that Shane felt right then was something divine.

He rushed across to the man, who was dressed in full army fatigues and had a thick, coppery beard. He looked a little like Chuck Norris, Shane thought, from the Missing In Action years.

'Get everyone in,' Chuck Norris said. 'The old guy? Is he bit?'

Shane shook his head. 'Shot.'

'Okay, let's get him in.'

Marla had picked Saul up and was carrying him towards the chopper. The kid's face was buried in her neck, as if he didn't want to see anything around him in fear that it might return to haunt his dreams at a later date. River was first in and helped Marla clamber aboard with Saul.

When Shane reached Terry on the other side of the carriage, he'd pulled his bible out and was clutching it to his chest, cross out as if it might help protect him.

'Come on,' Shane said, leaning and grabbing Terry's arm. He was about to pluck him up, throw him across his shoulder, when Terry spoke.

'Go, Shane.'

Shane pulled back; Chuck Norris was surveying the wound to Terry's shoulder, making sure that he wasn't being lied to.

Shane looked into Terry's eyes. He knew what he was being asked, what Terry wanted, but he couldn't do it.

'Terry, we're going to be okay. Let's just get on the chopper and we can talk about—'

'Go.' Terry smiled; his silvery beard twitched and a crusty of dried blood broke away and fell off. 'Shane, I'm . . . not gonna make it . . . buddy.'

Shane was shaking his head even as Terry struggled to breathe through his words. 'Come on,' he said. 'We'll get some help, ain't that right, Chuck?'

The uniformed man nodded, then appeared confused. Why's he call me Chuck?

'See,' Shane said. 'Everything'll be alright once we get to wherever we're going.'

Terry smiled once again. 'Go. Shane . . . I'm not gonna . . . tell you again.'

Chuck Norris placed a hand on Shane's back. 'You heard the man,' he said. 'I'd say respect his wishes. Seems like he's in good company.'

The bible, pulled to his chest as if it was part of its possessor, and it was.

Shane had no business trying to convince Terry of anything.

'You take care of . . . River for me.'

Shane nodded. 'She'll be taking care if us, I guess.'

Terry opened his mouth, nodding. 'Yeah . . . sounds about . . . right.'

Shane grabbed Terry's hand and shook it gently. 'It's been a pleasure surviving with you.'

'You too, young-blood.'

Shane climbed to his feet, reluctant to release the hand in his. He watched as Terry slowly lay back clutching the book that had survived along with its owner, against all odds.

Shane and Chuck Norris turned and raced for the chopper. The flailing arms of a hundred lurkers continued to scratch at the carriage.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Terry lay there, staring at the dark clouds as they passed over him. They looked so close, as if he could reach up and grab one. He even tried it, and laughed as he realised how stupid it was. Though he wasn't put off; he knew he would get a chance to touch one soon.

The groaning was acceptable once you got used to it. He listened, trying to figure out if there were any words in there amongst the guttural moans. He was sure he heard one of the lurkers say chips, but it might have been a slip of the tongue, just another noise from an undead gullet.

The bible felt good and heavy on his chest. He thought about trying to sit, to read a few passages before, well, before it was too late.

There was no point. It was hard enough just lying there, remembering to breathe; he doubted he had the strength to push himself up.

He had some of it memorised, though, and ran through it in his head.

How long did he lie like that? It felt like hours, but it was likelier only minutes. When he tired of silently reciting passages from the book on his chest, he thought about how things might have been different.

Not with the virus, or the aftermath. Those things were inevitable.

With Liesl; the one that got away.

He saw her face, hovering above him and framed by the encroaching darkness of the clouds. She was beautiful, as vivid as the day she left him. He prayed for one thing, and one thing only.

That she was still out there somewhere, alive and surviving. He could take that comfort to the afterlife with him.

Her face separated above him, split into three, and dissipated like fine mist.

Three jets flying through you would do that.

Ah, the cavalry.

He watched as the jets shot across the sky, and then they were gone, out of his field of vision. The noise was terrific and it drowned out the horrifying sounds from all around him. The lurkers had finally fallen silent.

Terry sighed; gripped the bible.

Then there was a white flash.

And then . . .

Nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

It was craziness when they landed. People were boarding boats, one large and several smaller, what could only be described as military dinghies. Shane had never seen so many survivors in one place.

None of them had.

'We've been here for a while,' the pilot said as he led them across the bay towards a large tent.

'You're lucky,' Chuck Norris – whose real name was Al, which didn't suit him as much – said as he sidled up next to them. 'We're ten minutes off leaving; five if everyone's on board her.' He pointed to the large boat in the middle of the bay.

'So, where to?' Shane asked, following the pilot down a sandy embankment.

'An island,' the pilot replied. 'Somewhere safe. Probably the most secure place on God's green earth. When we get there, we wait. Those things can't last. If they have nothing to feed on, they're gonna start dropping down dead . . . well, you know what I mean.'

He was right. Shane hadn't thought about it before. Lurkers weren't immortal. They were rotting, decaying the same as any dead person; it was only a matter of time before there was nothing left to drag around, and without easy flesh they were doubly screwed.

Just then, a little girl came running along the sand. Dredd dropped to his knees and pulled the girl into a tender embrace.

Standing, he introduced the girl as Gabriella, his daughter. River was already chewing the girl's ear off about everything, and Marla rolled her eyes. It was nice she had people her own age, especially if they were heading off to some secluded island for the foreseeable future.

Three jets suddenly rushed across the sky, the thunderous roar following a few seconds later.

'We have to go,' the pilot said, hoisting Gabriella up onto his shoulders as if she weighed no more than a paper version of herself.

Saul walked alongside River, their feet making tiny indentations in the sand. Shane and Marla followed closely, observing the survivors as they climbed the stairs up to the boat's deck.

'Nice little thing they've got going here,' Shane said. 'So I guess we're going to be spending an awful lot of time together on a desert island.'

Marla smiled. 'You say that like it's a bad thing.'

'Oh, not really.' He reached down and took her hand, and was unsurprised when she instantly began to stroke his palm with her thumb. 'There is one thing, though.'

She screwed her face up, slightly concerned about what he was about to say. 'Go on.'

'I doubt whether there's gonna be too many tuxedo-stores where we're going.'

Marla laughed and was somewhat relieved. 'That's okay. I had you down as a bit of a Tarzan, really.'

He beat at his chest with his free hand. 'You Jane?'

'We'll see,' she said. 'We'll see.'

And they would.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for their support in making this series a success. In one way or another, you've kept me on track with the writing of these books, for which I am eternally grateful. My wife, Zoe-Ray, without who I would still be slumming it in my bedsit, drinking from three-litre bottles of cheap cider. My son, Phoenix – the most amazing gift I've ever received. Chris Taggart, for bringing the world to life with his awesome illustrations. David Moody, Sean Page, Wayne Simmons, Joseph D'Lacey, Joseph Freeman, Adam Baker, Luke Duffy, Ian Woodhead, Craig Saunders, Rich Hawkins, Kim Newman, Conrad Williams, Brian Keene, Jonathan Maberry, Charles Day, Tim Marquitz, Gary McMahon, Lord Probert, Adam Nevill, Jay Wilburn, Thana Niveau, Colin Barnes, Michael Wilson, Simon Bestwick, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, Jack Ketchum, Shaun Hutson, Dacre Stoker, Nate Kenyon, Ed Thurlow, Mike Allwood, Emma Bunn, Donna Chaney, Eric Lowther, Pat Douglas, Waterstones Wolverhampton, and to everyone who has bought, read or reviewed any of the books. If I've missed anyone, it's because you were the most important and a simple mention would not be enough.

WWW.ADAMMILLARD.CO.UK

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Table of Contents

- Copyright
- Dedication
- Other Books
- Prologue
- CHAPTER ONE
- CHAPTER TWO
- CHAPTER THREE
- CHAPTER FOUR
- CHAPTER FIVE
- CHAPTER SIX
- CHAPTER SEVEN
- CHAPTER EIGHT
- CHAPTER NINE
- CHAPTER TEN
- CHAPTER ELEVEN
- CHAPTER TWELVE
- CHAPTER THIRTEEN
- CHAPTER FOURTEEN
- CHAPTER FIFTEEN
- CHAPTER SIXTEEN
- CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
- CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
- CHAPTER NINETEEN
- CHAPTER TWENTY
- CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
- CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
- CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
- CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
- CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
- CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
- CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
- CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
- CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
- Acknowledgements