detect or understand the change in temperature, Amy's corpse does notice the increased light levels. The quality of its eyesight is still rudimentary and poor ? it sees shapes and is aware of movement but has so far been unable to make out any level of finer detail. The sudden illumination allows it to see slightly more, but nothing of any significance. The control the body has over its eyes and its ability to absorb and interpret what it sees is improving, but at the same time its physical condition continues to deteriorate. The eyeballs and the associated nerves and muscles are rotting.
The body has reached a junction where the road it has been following joins a more major route. Here a crowd of bodies has gathered around a young survivor. Caught out in the open looking for food, a ten year old girl has become lost and has found herself dangerously exposed. With nowhere else to shelter she has shut herself in a telephone box. She is on the ground with her back pressed up against the door to prevent it from opening. There are already seven bodies surrounding the girl with a further three approaching. Amy Steadman's corpse is now also close. Whilst the young survivor has learnt that by keeping still and silent she can evade detection by the corpses, her situation is so unexpected and unnerving that she is finding it impossible to contain her fear and emotion. She is sobbing uncontrollably, and the bodies on the other side of the glass are reacting to every sound. Although they don't understand why, they are driven to try and get closer to her. One of them begins to bang on the glass, and this new sound attracts the attention of even more nearby cadavers.
Steadman's corpse has now reached the telephone box. Although it does not understand what it is doing, the body has an instinctive, insatiable desire to reach the source of the disturbance at all costs. It reaches out and grabs hold of the nearest corpse and awkwardly attempts to pull itself nearer to the survivor. Less decayed than some of the surrounding cadavers, it clumsily rips at them and pulls and pushes them out of the way. Their rotting flesh is weak and is literally torn from the bone. Steadman's body keeps moving until it is standing directly in front of the telephone box. It leans forward and presses its decaying face against the glass. The girl inside is now face down, covering her head in fear. Steadman's corpse stares down at it with dry, cold and unblinking eyes.
As long as the girl continues to move or make any noise the bodies will remain.
JACKSON
You can learn a lot about them by watching.
I'm not a biologist or a doctor. I don't know what's happened to them or why it hasn't happened to me. I don't know if I'm immune or whether it will get me eventually. I might only have a day left, I might live for another twenty years. I know hardly anything, except how to survive.
I never had any training for this kind of thing. I did a couple of years in the Boy Scouts but that was the limit of my experience. I could have done with a stretch in the forces, but it wasn't for me. I couldn't stand the shouting and the discipline. I've never been able to handle being told what to do. I work better on my own and I always have done. I get on with other people (not that there are many other people left) but if I'm given the choice I prefer my own company. Especially now. I wouldn't be able to trust anyone else to be quiet enough or still enough when the bodies are about. The world is dead and everything I do is exaggerated by the stillness.
If I move they see me. If I make a sound they hear me. Hear me breathe and they want to kill me.
So what have I learned about them? Well, forgetting about what they used to be before it happened, they're pretty simple and easy to read. There's not a lot of conscious thought going on inside those empty skulls. Actually I've got no idea what's happening inside their festering brains and their rotting bodies, but I have noticed more and more of them following certain behaviours. And those behaviours seem to be changing. What they're doing today isn't necessarily what they're going to be doing tomorrow.
It's almost a week now since it happened. They lay still for a while, and I checked enough of them to know that they were dead. Well their bodies certainly were, but I think that something inside must have survived. And whatever part of them has resisted the disease, it seems to have been growing steadily stronger ever since. It began when they picked themselves up and started to move again, and then they were able to hear and see. Over the last day I've noticed that they've become even more animated and controlled. They're beginning to show some rudimentary emotions too. They're showing anger, although it could actually be frustration and pain. No doubt that's going to make things more complicated for me in the long run.
Enough of this. Thinking like this is a waste of time. Hypothesizing pointlessly about what might and might not be happening to them isn't going to help me. All I can do is respond to the changes day by day and hope that I can stay one step ahead of the game. My comparative strength and my intelligence should be enough to see me through. I just have to keep control and hold my nerve. Start to get jumpy or twitchy and I'll start to make mistakes. Make mistakes and I've had it.
These things don't communicate with each other, in fact they're fiercely independent and I've seen them tearing each other apart. That said, they do also have a strange tendency to move together in large groups. It's almost like they're herding. If something happens which attracts the attention of one or two of them, more and more seem to follow until there's a huge crowd around whatever it was that caused the disturbance. I can use that behaviour to my advantage, but there are disadvantages too. The advantages? When they're together it's easy to pick them off. I haven't yet, but I can imagine being able to take hundreds of them out at a time if I have to. The disadvantages? Pretty obvious really. If I'm the one making the noise and causing the disturbance, I'm screwed.
There are other benefits to be gained from attacking them when they're grouped together. Apart from the obvious plus of getting rid of masses of the damn things with one hit, it also takes the heat off me for a while. Even starting a small fire is enough to flush them out from a wide surrounding area. The stupid things can't help themselves. They stumble towards the heat or light or noise or whatever without giving me a second look. I can virtually walk past them and they don't notice. Their senses are obviously pretty dull and basic. Give them something obvious to focus on and they don't seem to see anything else. It's like they can only concentrate on one thing at a time.
The darkness is my friend. These things are still pretty awkward and clumsy and they'd struggle to catch me, even if I gave them a chance. Take away their sight, though, and the advantage I have over them increases massively. I now travel almost exclusively at night. I only risk walking out in daylight when I'm out in the middle of nowhere and I know there are only a few of them about.
So what am I planning to do? I'm going to keep travelling in one direction for a while, probably north but I might head towards the coast in another direction. It's not going to be easy, but I can't think of anything else to do. Why the coast? Seems as good a place as any. Nowhere's going to be completely safe anymore. The coast strikes me as being rough and inhospitable, and with the ocean on one side I'll have less land to have to keep watching. It will be okay. I expect that as the bodies deteriorate they'll find it harder and harder to cause me any problems.
I'll be all right on my own. Maybe I'll get lonely, maybe I won't. Whatever happens, I'm just glad that I survived. In a strange way I'm almost looking forward to whatever the future brings. It'll be a future without the countless bullshit trappings of my previous daily life. A future without the drudgery of trying to hold down a job and pay bills. A future without politics, crap TV, religion and who knows what else. Who knows what's going to happen. And I know I'm being na?ve, because for every problem the infection has solved, it's created another few thousand. You have to be positive though, don't you?
I often wonder how many people like me are left? Am I the only one, or are there hundreds of us creeping quietly through the shadows, avoiding the bodies and, by default, avoiding each other too. Doesn't matter.
It'll be okay in the end.
More to the point, I'll be okay.
OFFICE POLITICS
There are thirty-seven houses on Marshwood Road. Only one of them has a freshly cut back lawn. Only one has had its dustbins emptied and the rubbish placed neatly in black plastic sacks at the end of the drive. Only one has had the curtains in its windows drawn each night and opened each morning since the infection destroyed more than ninety-nine percent of the population.
Different people deal with stress, loss and other emotional pressures in a wide range of different ways. Some implode, some explode. Some shrivel up and hide in the quietest, darkest corner they can find, others make themselves visible and make as much noise as possible. Some accept what was happened, others deny everything.
Simon Walters is handling what has happened to him particularly badly. The arrival of the infection and its subsequent repercussions and after-shocks has been little more than a trivial irritation which has further complicated his already utterly miserable existence. One of life's perennial victims, in his eyes no-one's misery can
