Chris was the first to emerge from the gloom, blinking at the daylight like a rescued earthquake survivor. Alongside him, now back on her lead and still with the scrap of cloth binding her muzzle - was Pepper.

  ‘Bloody ‘ell’ said Tony, pointing. ‘Look dad. That’s Old Man Smith’s dog...’

  Chris stepped protectively in front of the nervous animal, his eyes darting from one stranger to the other, unsure of what to expect next.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself, boy’ huffed Harry, his open palm held aloft. ‘We won’t take the dog away from you and ‘er old master’s dead. That old bastard only used to beat the shit out of ‘er anyway. Just make sure she stays quiet though...’

  Chris nodded weakly and led Pepper over to the left as Katie and Reg emerged from the basement behind him. Katie fell into Ben’s outstretched arms while Reg moved sideways and leaned nonchalantly against the wall. Ben noticed that the old man’s hand was now wrapped in bandage but as soon as Reg saw him looking he moved his hand behind his back. It seemed that neither of the strangers had noticed but Ben decided to divert their attention anyway.

  ‘So,’ he said, looking at Harry, ‘you’ve met Sarah. This is Chris, her boyf- uh... her friend. This is my wife Katie, and that man there is Reg. Reg helped us get out of Bromley when it all started...’

  Grumbled greetings were briefly exchanged before Harry Skinner spoke again.

  ‘Well,’ he frowned, ‘what the bloody ‘ell do you lot think’s going on?’

  Ben shrugged his shoulders. ‘Terrorists, maybe? Some kind of viral attack? I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does.’ Then he took a step closer to the large kitchen window and looked out into the back yard. A pile of dead bodies, maybe half a dozen or so, were stacked there. He shuddered and looked nervously around the wrecked kitchen. ‘Look, are we safe up here, Harry? Loads of those things came right through here a few days ago...’

  Sarah folded her arms and pointed her chin toward the open basement door. ‘I’m not going back down in that shithole again. I’d sooner die.’

  Harry scowled at the girl’s comment before focusing back on Ben. ‘We ran into a crowd of ‘em just outside our farm yesterday. They got m’nephew and his girl too. Well, if I’m bein’ honest we only got away ‘cos those things were busy eating ‘em up. Any road, we hid in the woods last night and got ‘ere a few hours ago. Four of ‘em were waiting for us but we got lucky, managed to lead ‘em outside and took care of ‘em there. Then we checked the other rooms to make sure they were empty. That’s what we were doin’ when we found you lot...’

  Slowly, the group shuffled around the kitchen, struggling to find a place clear of either broken crockery or stringy dribbles of bloody bile. Ben gulped and looked down at the floor beneath their feet. It was filthy; smeared with dark blood, vomit and stinking excrement. In one corner of the kitchen were more gory remains too: a gnawed spinal column, splintered ribcage and a spherical object covered up by a towel put in place days ago. The only difference now was that the towel was matted with dried blood and the handle of a large kitchen knife was protruding from the top of it.

  ‘We took care o’ that too’ Harry grumbled, unaware that Reg had closed his eyes for a moment to remember his sister-in-law.

  ‘They came up the driveway’ Ben said blankly, recalling recent events. ‘We had no choice but to hide downstairs...’

  ‘You were lucky’ added Tony Skinner. ‘You’d have been proper fucked if they’d got through that door.’

  Ben nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Anyway’ said Harry, ‘from what I’ve seen so far they’ll be ‘ard to stop if they find out we’re in ‘ere. We need to block the driveway somehow and do it without being seen too. If we can keep the place quiet we might be alright. I don’t reckon they think too much like people anymore...’

  Ben paused for a moment. These strangers had just appeared and already they had joined the group and were making plans to secure the property. Something about that made him slightly uncomfortable, but before he could say anything Chris found his voice.

  ‘What about the back garden?’

  ‘Fence panels are still up’ said Harry. ‘They won’t last if too many of ‘em push against it, but that’s another reason why they can’t know we’re ‘ere.’

  Reg, silent for the most part, suddenly stepped into the centre of the room.

  ‘My wife’s down there’ he said, pointing through the open basement door. ‘And she’s dead. I mean, she’s really dead. She’s...not moving anymore.’ Katie reached out to him but the old man waved her away. ‘I want to bury her, alright? I...need to bury her...’

  Harry Skinner looked him up and down. ‘We can do that, old ‘un’ he said, slowly scratching his beard. ‘But first... your name’s Reg, right?’

  The pensioner nodded. ‘Aye.’ His Geordie accent was tired and strained.

  ‘How’d you hurt your hand then, Reg?’

  The question sent a jolt through Ben’s heart as Reg held up his bandaged hand.

  ‘She bit me’ he said, calmly.

  ~ 4 ~

  Reg Herbert glanced down at the quivering barrels of the shotgun and then back up into Tony Skinner’s widening eyes. The younger man bit his bottom lip as his finger feathered the trigger.

  ‘If you’re thinking about killing me, bonnie lad’ mumbled Reg, ‘then you’d best do it now.’

  ‘Now hold on’ said Ben, hastily moving between the two men. ‘Jesus Christ. No one’s killing anyone, okay? Harry, tell him, will you?’

  Harry Skinner took a long, deep breath and stepped forward. Then with an exhalation equally as prolonged he used the barrels of his shotgun to slowly press his son’s weapon down toward the floor.

  ‘But dad,’ pleaded Tony, ‘he’ll die and then he’ll turn, just like Uncle Pete...’

  Ben searched the big man’s face for a reaction, picking up on the slightest of nods.

  ‘He’s probably right, y’know’ Harry mumbled, scratching behind his ear. ‘Seen it ‘appen twice already. First was my brother. He got bit in the neck and bled to death. Took twenty minutes for him to come back, and then o’ course then he tried to eat us...’

  The room fell silent for a few seconds as everyone imagined the scene. Sarah glanced over at Reg but quickly looked away when their eyes met. Then her gaze fell upon the shotgun in Harry Skinner’s grasp and she shuddered.

  ‘Okay’ said Ben, raising his palms aloft to get everyone’s immediate attention. ‘Let’s all calm down a minute. First of all, we don’t know for certain that this happens to everyone...’

  ‘That’s right’ added Katie, quick to back up her husband, stepping forward with her hands on her hips and looking into one pale, cheerless face after another. ‘Everyone’s body reacts in different ways to different things...’

  Tony Skinner shook his head dismissively and spat onto the floor. ‘That’s a load o’ shit’ he muttered.

  Katie gulped. Her argument was weak and she knew it. She knew it because she was having a hard enough job in trying to convince herself. All the evidence so far had suggested that a wound from one of those things, specifically a bite, resulted in infection, death, and reanimation. She thought about what to say next, but before she could take a breath Reg took his chance to speak.

  ‘You’re all talking about me like I’m not here’ he said, making Katie lower her eyes. ‘I’ve seen this thing happen to my own wife, so I already know it could happen to me too...’

  Ben gave him a sympathetic look. ‘Reg-‘

  ‘No. You all listen to me. I know what might happen but I’m not dead yet. If it comes down to it I’ll do it myself if I have to. But I’m not one of those bloody things yet...’

  Once more the room fell silent, only to be broken seconds later by a grunt from Harry Skinner. The huge man leaned back against the wall and rubbed his beard. ‘Taps still work’ he said, waving a giant calloused hand toward the kitchen sink. ‘So I’d try and clean that wound up if I were you.’

  With a sigh of disappointment Tony Skinner shook his head and turned away as Katie quickly ushered Reg over to the sink. She turned the cold tap clockwise as far as it would go and somewhere below the kitchen unit a pipe groaned. The tap quivered and gurgled and moments later it began to splutter with rusty coloured water. Katie paused, waiting for it to turn clear.

  Ben gave an uncertain look. ‘Hang on, are we sure we can trust that..?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘If there’s something in the water then we all might as well give up now. No point in dragging it out. Besides,’ he said, holding up the almost empty plastic bottle, ‘where do you think this came from?’

  Ben flinched. Standing further back Sarah looked suddenly horrified and put her hand to her throat.

  ‘It’s fine,’ muttered Tony, a broken-toothed smile spreading across his face. ‘Probably about the only thing that is...’

  Leaning over the basin, Reg Herbert winced as he uncovered the bandage around his hand. The bite was already a little discoloured and stung with the intensity of a rattlesnake bite - or at least how he imagined a rattlesnake bite to feel. Under Katie’s direction he held it under the now clear water, feeling it soothe a little.

  ‘Hold it down like this’ she suggested, dangling her own hand in a vertical position to show him. Then she rolled back his shirt sleeve and squeezed from the forearm downwards, making the blood from the back of his hand flow more freely into the sink. ‘If any infection has got into it’ she added, ‘we need to try and get it out.’

  Reg nodded slowly but said nothing. His face was ashen, almost mask-like. Katie knew that he was once again thinking about poor Maureen, her mutilated corpse lying cold and dead on the floor of the basement below.

  ‘We’ll bury her properly, I promise’ Katie whispered, leaning close enough to kiss him gently on the cheek. Then she turned around to face the others. ‘Chris?’ she asked, waking the teenage boy from a weary stupor. ‘Can you grab me the iodine from downstairs while I see if there are any painkillers in the bathroom?’

  Chris handed Pepper’s lead to Sarah and gave a weary, reluctant nod. ‘Didn’t think I’d be going back down there again so soon’ he moaned, moving the door aside to slowly descend the creaky staircase.

  ‘We emptied the bathroom already’ mumbled Harry, stopping Katie in her tracks. ‘Whatever there was is in amongst that lot.’ Then he pointed to a large pile of objects on the work surface below the damaged kitchen units.

  Katie stepped carefully across the floor and began rifling through the pile. There were tins of food from the kitchen cupboards as well as the odd chocolate bar and bag of crisps (stuff that the Skinners had already harvested together) but among the assortment there were also two blister packs of paracetamol. ‘Good’ she sighed, snatching them up and handing them to Reg.

  ‘Don’t use ‘em all up’ moaned Harry. ‘That’s all we ‘ave for now.’

  Reg nodded. ‘I’ll just take a couple.’

  As the pensioner split open one of the packs Ben’s gaze wandered to the kitchen window and out into the yard. This time he managed to avoid looking at the pile of festering bodies and focused instead on the rising sun shining above the back fence. ‘Christ,’ he mumbled, ‘I still can’t believe this is happening...’

  At that moment Chris returned from the basement with the bottle of iodine in his shaking hands. He passed it to Katie and took a step back, much like a nervous pupil delivering a note to a teacher.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked.

  ‘Uh-huh. It’s just, y’know, the body...’

  Katie nodded sadly as the teenager took Pepper’s lead back from Sarah.

  ‘Well, I know one thing’ said Tony Skinner, running his finger along the barrels of his shotgun. ‘Whatever happens next, I’m ready for it.’

  Harry rolled his eyes. ‘Go into the bedroom, boy. Get one of those big sheets that we saw in there.’

  Tony looked puzzled. ‘What for?’

  ‘Because we’re going to bury this man’s wife. Now shut up and do as you’re told. And leave the gun ‘ere too...’

  Disgruntled, Tony leaned his shotgun against the wall and moved sheepishly across the kitchen floor. As he passed near to Chris he scowled at the teenage boy and then gave a yellow-toothed smile before sauntering out of the room. Chris, feeling vulnerable, fired a concerned look in Ben’s direction but the other man hadn’t noticed and was instead trying to speak to Harry.

  ‘Uh, what are your plans then?’ Ben asked the big man.

  Harry shrugged. ‘Try’n stay alive, I s’pose. Hide out ‘ere for a while. Wait for things to calm down.’

  Ben rubbed his tired brow. ‘My brother lives in Sevenoaks. We were going to try and get over to him and his family, make sure they’re okay.’

  Harry shook his shaggy mane. ‘Not a good idea. Not yet anyway. You said you’ve been ‘ere since the first day? In that case you haven’t seen how much worse it’s got. We only just made it ‘ere without being seen. You don’t want to go out there. It’s like ‘ell on Earth.’

  ‘But-‘

  ‘Listen to me. Those things are everywhere. If’n your brother’s got any sense he’s ‘oled up somewhere too, waiting it out. If not, he’s more’n likely dead already. Maybe he’s already one of ‘em...’

  Harry’s bluntness froze Ben’s tongue in his mouth. He couldn’t believe that anything could be worse than what they had seen on day one, but now his mind was filled with images of thousands of rampaging zombies. And among them he imagined Matt, Sandra and little Jack.

  Sarah snivelled, her trembling cheeks once again moist with tears. ‘God, why the fuck is this happening?’

  ‘Well’ grumbled Harry, his gravelly voice devoid of warmth, ‘I don’t know the why or the who. So I’ll tell you what I do know - what I’ve seen wi’ my own eyes. Far as I can tell, anyone that got killed has come back from the dead. And then they’ve attacked everybody else...’

  ‘To try and eat them’ added Chris.

  ‘Right...’ Harry paused, his gaze drifting to Katie and Reg. ‘Now, if they happen to bite you...well, from what I’ve seen so far, you get sick and die and then you turn into one of ‘em. So, if’n you think about it, every day there’s getting to be more of them and less of us...’

  At that moment Tony Skinner returned with a large sheet bundled in his arms. There was a submissive twitchiness about him as he looked at his father. ‘Uh, have you told ‘em about Old Man Smith yet, dad?’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Ben, his ears pricking up. ‘Smith? Didn’t you say that was the dog’s owner?’

  ‘Mmm-hmm’ Harry acknowledged, scratching his beard again. ‘He had the place next to us, lived there for years. Kept goats...’ The big man’s mind drifted for a moment before he got back on track. ‘Well, a while after the bombs stopped we went round to see if he was alright. Half of his place had come down, y’see. The thing is...when we found ‘im he was dead in his chair but there wasn’t a mark on ‘im. It was just like he’d fallen asleep. Must’ve been an ‘art attack, I reckon...’

  ‘Yeah, but he still came back’ added Tony. ‘He came back and he hadn’t been bit or nothing. He hadn’t even been outside neither, so he hadn’t even been touched by that red rain...’

  Harry frowned. ‘There were three of us when we found ‘im. Us two, and m’brother Pete...’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Chris, biting his bottom lip like a child wanting the next part of a scary bedtime story.

  ‘Well,’ continued Harry, ‘he jumped up and ripped out Pete’s throat ‘fore we could do anything. We bashed his head in but it was too late for Pete. Then loads more of them things turned up and we only just got away...’

  Ben slumped back against the wall, deflated. ‘Jesus...’

  ‘Right’ growled Harry. ‘So now you know what this means..?’

  ‘What?’ asked Sarah, looking sharply at everyone in turn. ‘What is it? What does it mean?’

  Chris reached out to her but she batted his hand away and asked the question again.

  ‘It means’ said Ben, struggling with every word, ‘that this virus - or whatever it is - is probably in the air. It means that when we die, no matter how we die, we’re going to come back as one of them.’ He took a deep breath. ‘In short, it means that we’re already infected...’

  Starting with a gasp, Sarah began to sob. ‘Then why the fuck are we even bothering?’ she bawled, backing away until she felt the hard kitchen wall against her spine. Folding her arms around herself she slid slowly down to the floor and crouched there, a ball of human misery. Chris took a step toward her again but she shrank away from him. ‘Leave me alone!’ she snapped. ‘You all talk about things getting back to normal but we all know that’s not gonna happen. Someone bombed us and sent some kind of virus to finish us off. They’re not going to leave us alive, are they?’

  Determined to get through to his former girlfriend, Chris McReedy crouched down alongside her. ‘Look Sarah, we can’t just give up. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. You never know, maybe the army and the police will get things under control in a few-‘

  ‘That’s a load of shit, and you know it! Just leave me alone. Don’t touch me! Get the fuck away from me!’

  This time the words hit Chris like a physical blow. Stunned, he climbed to his feet and backed slowly away. At that exact moment Pepper, who had been standing beside him, sympathetically nudged the back of his hand. Sarah noticed and fired him a hostile glare.

  ‘Why don’t you just worry about the fucking dog’ she snapped, turning her head away while across the other side of the room Tony Skinner struggled to suppress a twitching smile.

  ‘Bloody hell’ said Tony, holding the bundled sheet in one hand. ‘There’s tons of stuff down here...’

  He was standing in the centre of the basement, looking around in a circle as Ben lit a candle and passed it to him.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Harry, descending the last few steps on the creaking staircase. He was returning from the back yard where he had single-handedly cleared the pile of bodies, heaving them one at a time over the back fence like unwanted mannequins. ‘We can’t bury ‘em all’ had been his response at the time to Katie’s raised eyebrows.

 

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