Michael looked up and noticed the concern on her face.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
She nodded quickly but it was impossible to hide her fear. Her legs were heavy with nerves. She could hardly breathe.
‘Look, I’m going to try and start the generator,’ he continued. ‘There are fewer of them out the back and…’
‘What, only five hundred instead of a thousand?’
‘There are fewer of them,’ he continued. ‘I’ll see if the noise will distract them.’
With admirable strength Michael seemed to have switched off his emotions and was concentrating all his attention and effort on the task immediately to hand. He walked towards the door and then stopped and turned back to face Emma. He looked ready to say something to her but didn’t.
‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘No,’ he replied with brutal honesty, ‘but I can’t think of any other option. Now do me a favour will you and try and get Carl to wake up. Get him ready to leave. As soon as I’m back inside we’ll have to go for it.’
With that he turned and disappeared into the darkness leaving Emma alone, staring into the space where he had just been, trying desperately to make sense of the sudden confusion all around her.
Michael crept down the staircase, frightened that even the slightest noise might have a devastating effect on the vast crowd outside the house. Perhaps even something as insignificant as stepping on a loose, creaking floorboard would be the final straw that might whip the rotting masses into the frenzy that could see them forcing their way into the house.
With his heart pounding in his chest with cold, dark fear and with his entire body drenched with a sticky, clammy sweat, Michael lowered himself down onto his hands and knees and crawled along the hallway, keeping out of sight of every window and every door. He had reached the back of the house in just a few seconds, and he carefully lifted himself back up onto his feet, hiding in the shadows and keeping his body tight and flat against the nearest wall.
Once upright he had a clear view of the back lawn through a small square pane of dirty glass. There were still many, many bodies outside, but on this side of the house their numbers seemed fewer and much more diffuse. He watched as the shadowy silhouette of one of the pathetic creatures stumbled past. As soon as it had gone by he silently turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. Holding his breath he slipped through the narrowest gap he could and then pushed the door shut behind him. He was outside.
He had seen thousands of the lamentable corpses over the last few days and yet, at this most dangerous time, he still found himself unable to tear his eyes away from them. Standing perfectly still he watched them move. They lurched and staggered, their legs heavy and uncoordinated. For the most part their heads were bowed and it seemed to take more effort than any of them could muster for them to look up.
The shed which housed the generator was some twenty meters away from where he stood. He knew that to run towards it would attract more attention. It made sense to try and walk slowly to match the laboured pace of the cadavers around him. But moving slowly seemed to infinitely increase the mental effort and strain involved with every single step. He was now inches away from the first few bodies and he knew that one false move would be all it would take to set off a deadly chain reaction throughout the enormous crowd.
Step by painful, dragging step he moved across the back lawn. Bodies stumbled past him, some even collided with him, and yet he forced himself to remain focussed and not to panic. He wanted to run. He wanted to kick and punch at the bloody corpses all around him and smash his way through to the generator. This was like playing with fire. The mental pain was like being forced to lie down in scalding hot water and not move. Each second was agony, but every alternative was worse.
Another cadaver lurched into his path. For a fraction of a second he allowed himself to look into its cold and clouded eyes before quickly looking down at the ground. He winced with repulsion as the body crashed into him, and he instinctively lifted his hands to protect himself. The body’s torso was weak and rotten. His hands pushed effortlessly through the creature’s decayed flesh and into the chest cavity. Biting down on his lip to stop himself from shouting out in disgust, he carefully pulled himself free and carried on towards the generator.
Four meters to go. The wind was cold and the air damp with spitting rain but Michael didn’t care. Three meters, then two meters. Almost there. With numb, trembling hands he reached out for the door handle. Resisting the temptation to increase his speed by even a fraction, he pulled open the door and disappeared inside. The gusting wind caught the door and slammed it shut behind him and he cursed the noise which rang out through the silence like a gunshot.
There was a torch in the shed which they had purposely left there for emergencies. Using the dull light from its dying bulb he scanned the machine’s control panel. It had been days since they had used the generator, and he prayed that it would work tonight. He remembered Carl’s instructions (he’d taught both Michael and Emma to operate the system) and began to prime the machine. He looked up and saw through the flapping door (which constantly opened and shut in the wind) that there were bodies all around. He flicked the switch to start the generator and, as it coughed and spluttered and failed, every last one of the bodies he could see immediately turned and began to walk towards the shed. He tried the generator again and, again, it died. Once more and the same response. Terrified and unable to think straight, he tried the machine for a forth time. It finally burst into life and began to chug and thump reassuringly. Clouds of dirty fumes billowed up into the swirling night air.
All around the house and throughout the surrounding countryside, approximately one and a half thousand bodies began to move towards the mechanical noise. Over fifteen hundred bodies staggered towards Michael.
There was no time to think. He kicked open the door and ran back towards the house, fighting his way through a thick sea of clumsy bodies. He kicked and punched and powered through to the back door which he lunged towards. As he tugged and pulled at the handle more than a dozen pairs of twisted, rotting hands grabbed at him, catching hold of his hair, his clothes, his shoulders and his legs and arms. He screamed and writhed to free himself but it was useless. He could struggle free from the grip of one corpse, only to be caught by countless others. He began to feel himself being pulled back into the disease-ridden crowd.
‘Michael!’ he heard Emma scream. He looked up and saw that she was on the other side of the back door. She was pushing at the door, struggling to open it against the sheer volume of sickly cadavers outside. Michael managed to shuffle a couple of steps to his right and get one arm back inside the building. With a strength and determination that she had never before possessed, Emma grabbed hold of him and dragged him back into the
