Bay of the Dead

She fired again, and another zombie fell, the bullet ripping half of its head away, then spun to her left to take out a bloated teenager in a supermarket tabard. As she did, a boy no older than four, his mouth and hands a mess of gore, threw himself at her leg like a pit bull terrier. Caught by surprise, Gwen stumbled and fell heavily, cracking her shoulder on the metal frame of the bed with enough force to jar the gun out of her hand. She had no time to see where it went because the boy was on her in an instant, his bloody hands climbing her body, his teeth gnashing as he homed in on her throat.

She held him off as best she could, but he was like an eel — slippery, vicious and immensely strong. She was vaguely aware of other zombies crowding around her, reaching down with their clawed and rotting hands.

In rage and terror, Gwen screamed. .

SIXTEEN

Deep down, in the dark and the quiet, Oscar and his friend Leet were talking. Leet had confessed how he had borrowed and moulded Oscar's memories without his permission, and how those memories had subsequently escaped, replicating and mutating like a virus, turning bad.

'Oscar,' Leet said to him — and to Oscar he seemed to speak in thought bubbles, like in a comic book — 'only you can save the world. It's up to you to put it right.'

Oscar nodded slowly, his face grim and determined. 'Leave it to me, Leet,' he said authoritatively. And then he rather spoiled it by asking, 'What do I do?'

So Leet told him, and now Oscar was rushing up towards the light, rushing and rushing, faster and faster. The light was getting bigger. First, it was the size of a pinprick; then an eye; then a football; and then suddenly it was the size of an entire planet.

Oscar burst back into the world with a sound like a thunderclap. He opened his eyes and there on the floor, just a few inches from his outstretched hand, was the gun, exactly where Leet had told him it would be. He curled his hand around it, and it felt good, it felt right. And then, with one bound, he was on his feet and looking around him, taking in everything in an instant with his super-sight.

Everything Leet had told him was true. His memories were out of his head, and out of control. He raised his hands and shouted, ' Stop! '

And the memories did stop. They stopped and they looked at him, as if waiting to be told what to do next. And the four people — the four real people — looked at him as well: the smart man with the chair; the chubby man with the metal stand; the handsome man in the long coat; the black-haired girl on the floor, who immediately scrambled to her feet and shouldered her way out of the memories which were crowding around her.

'Sorry,' Oscar said to them, and then he turned and pointed the gun at the tall window opposite the door. He pulled the trigger, and the window, blind and curtains and all, exploded outwards into the night.

A voice roared, 'Stop!' and, incredibly, the zombies obeyed. The ferocious child pushed itself away from Gwen and stood beside her, almost to attention. The zombies which had been reaching down to tear her apart straightened up. Eerily, they all turned their heads towards the source of the sound. Exhausted, bedraggled and covered in bloody handprints, Gwen turned her head too.

She saw Oscar Phillips standing in the middle of the room, amid the chaos, with a gun — her gun — in his hand. His eyes were shining and his face was serene. When his gaze passed briefly over her she shivered, and then she scrambled to her feet.

'Sorry,' Oscar said, and then he turned and pointed the gun at the window. He pulled the trigger and the glass shattered, the impact causing the blind and the curtains to go flailing out into the darkness in the wake of the falling glass.

Gwen's attention was still focused on the jagged remains of the window when Oscar started to run towards it. He ran fast, with no trace of post-coma lethargy or muscle wastage, zombies stepping aside to allow him passage. Realising what he was doing, Gwen yelled, 'No!' and leaped forward to stop him. But Jack leaped at the same moment, grabbing her arm and hauling her back. She could only watch in horror as Oscar dived head first out of the window, his thin, pyjama-clad body sailing into the night.

For a moment, like the Darling children from Peter Pan, he looked as though he might fly. And then his body twisted and he plummeted towards the earth.

Angrily, Gwen tore herself free of Jack, ran to the window and looked down. Oscar's twisted, broken body lay in a spreading pool of blood on the concrete far below. She heard gasps of shock and surprise behind her, and turned round.

Only Jack, Ianto and Rhys stood there on the blood-smeared floor, amid the broken glass and overturned furniture. All that was left of the zombies were a few spirals of glittering light, which rose into the air and disappeared.

Rhys dropped the metal IV stand, which clattered to the floor. Ianto put down the chair he was holding and sank shakily into it.

'They just. . melted away,' said Rhys. 'Into, like. . twinkly little balls of light.'

'Stardust,' muttered Ianto.

Jack reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and withdrew a creased and crumpled handbill, which he held out for them all to see.

'I think the All-Night Zombie Horror Show is officially over,' he said.

SEVENTEEN

'Help!' came the shout from the bedroom.

Andy jerked awake, and realised that he was slumped on the settee with his arm around the shoulders of a sleeping Sophie. His hand was numb and his back was aching. He tried to sit up without disturbing her, but she stirred anyway.

'Wazzit?' she mumbled.

'Did you hear someone shouting just now?' asked Andy. 'Or did I dream it?'

As if in response, the shout came again. 'Help! Is anybody there? Can anyone hear me?'

'That's Dawn,' Andy said, detaching himself from Sophie and rising to his feet.

Sophie used an arm to push her blonde hair out of her face. 'What do you mean?'

'That's Dawn shouting. She sounds normal.' He ran out of the room and down the corridor to the bedroom.

'Dawn,' he shouted, tugging at the flex he had tied around the door handle. 'Dawn, it's Andy. Are you OK?'

'Andy,' she said, sounding half-relieved and half-angry. 'Where am I? What the hell's going on? Why am I tied up?'

Andy turned to grin at Sophie, who was padding along the corridor, yawning and wiping sleep out of her eyes.

'It's a bit of a long story,' he said.

Trys Thomas woke up shouting and thrashing. He had had the most terrible dreams. He sat up and looked around him, bewildered and terrified.

Where was he? In some kind of dungeon? Three of the four walls of the room — the cell — in which he was lying were made of rough, dank stone. The fourth wall appeared to be some kind of thick transparent plastic with neat air-holes drilled into it. Beyond the plastic was what looked like part of a corridor or walkway with another stone wall beyond that. The entire area was soaked in dim reddish lighting, and there were. . sounds coming from somewhere nearby. Horrible, animal-like sounds. Grunting and shuffling. Trys's heart started to race and he felt panic building inside him.

That was when he noticed the mobile phone. It was propped up against the bottom-left corner of the