frame around each entrance and fitted new doors on top of the existing ones. Solid wooden fire doors, separately hinged and able to open independently. Perfect. I did something similar with the windows, making wooden shutters that completely blocked out the light. I couldn't help but make a terrific amount of noise as I fitted them. I had no option but to drill into the masonry around the windows and doors. From the top of the ladder working on the front of the house I could see over the newly raised fence and I was able to see the dramatic effect the noise was having on the crowd of people in the street. Some of them began to bang and hammer angrily on my new gate. At times the noise they made threatened to drown out the sound of my drill. I was almost relieved when the battery pack ran out.
It took the best part of two days to make the house as secure as I wanted it. By the time I'd finished I was exhausted. I worked whenever it was light, knowing that I would have plenty of time to stop and rest once the job was complete. At six-thirty on Tuesday evening ? more than a week since all of this had started ? I sat out on the lawn next to Maddy and her mother and looked back at the house with pride. They would have been impressed with what I'd achieved, I was sure. If nothing else they would have been proud of the fact that I had survived when so many others had fallen. Perhaps Janice wouldn't have been too keen on the aesthetic side of the alterations, but she'd have surely appreciated their functionality. I sat between the graves of my wife and my daughter with a can of beer and the remainder of my daily rations and finally allowed myself to relax. The food and drink tasted better than ever. I had a normal appetite for the first time in days. Rationed food wasn't so bad after all, I decided. I had a fairly wide selection of tastes and flavours in each day's supply. I fully appreciated that my choices might lessen and become substantially more limited as time progressed but, for now, I was doing fine. Tired, but fine.
I slept well last night.
This morning I found that the situation had deteriorated again. Things have suddenly become much less certain and I feel increasingly unsure. Although the house is now secure, today I feel scared and the enormity of what has happened to the world has again become painfully apparent.
I lay lazily in bed for a while, resting after the efforts of the last two days. When I finally got up I went to the front of the house and opened up the new wooden shutters which cover the spare bedroom and bathroom windows. I immediately saw that the crowd outside had more than doubled in size. It now stretched from one end of the street to the other ? filling the entire length of Baker Road West ? and I couldn't understand why. Surely once I had finished work on the house and was out of sight the people outside should have drifted away, shouldn't they? I cautiously prised the bathroom window open and listened. Although not one of them spoke, there was a constant and very definite noise coming from the unwanted gathering. The sound of shuffling feet, bodies tripping and falling, things being knocked over in the street and smashed, tired hands being slammed against my fence... Individually the sounds were insignificant and indistinct but together they were uncomfortably loud. It was obvious that this was no longer a crowd which would simply drift away again. I could see even more people arriving and joining the edges of the huge gathering.
I ran to the back of the house, thinking that if I did have to leave quickly I could use the hardware store truck which I'd left parked on the track behind the fence at the end of the garden. It was no good, the truck was surrounded. Those bloody things had somehow found the entrance to the track and had filled it for as far as I could see in both directions. There were bloody hundreds of them out there, wedged in so tight that they could hardly move.
The front of the house was cut off, as was the back. Increasingly concerned and unsettled I fetched my binoculars from the study and tried to make a full assessment of the situation. The news wasn't good. My house ? number 47 ? is two-thirds of the way down Baker Road West which is a fairly straight road. Looking out of the back of my property there are more houses behind and to the right. To the left, two hundred and fifty yards (ten houses) away, is a large pub, The Highway. To my horror this morning I saw from the bedroom window that the pub car park was full of more of the dark, shuffling people. The crowd was immense, and it dwarfed the gathering at the front of my house. And, worst of all, all that separated them from my garden and my house was eleven wooden fences. The fences around my property are all in relatively good repair, but the same couldn't be said for those belonging to some of my neighbours. I would frequently see their fences wobbling in strong winds and I doubted whether they'd be able to withstand much force. I had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach that the mass of bodies in the car park would be able to exert more than enough collective pressure to bring them down.
At the other end of the road, almost out of sight from where I watched, was another crowd of similar proportions to the one outside the house. What had I done? What an idiot I had been. I knew that I was responsible for bringing the people here. In my haste and enthusiasm to protect the house and make it secure the noise I had made had inadvertently revealed my position to untold thousands of the damn things. Did I sit and wait this out or take my chances and run? My two original choices seemed suddenly to have been slashed to one. There was no obvious way of getting out.
I read through the government booklet again and again, hoping that I would find a page I'd somehow missed previously that might give me some idea of how to deal with my situation. No matter how hard I stared at the pages there was nothing. There was information on dealing with bomb threats, hostage situations, flu epidemics and terrorist attacks, basic first aid advice and a list of emergency telephone numbers (useless as the phone had been dead all week) but nothing to help me with the sudden and very real threat that I was facing. Apart from me the entire population had fallen and died, and now most of them seemed to have returned from the grave and were gravitating around my house. What the hell was I supposed to do?
During the course of the day now ending I have watched the crowds slowly draw closer. Just before one o'clock this afternoon the fence around the pub car park finally gave way under the weight of the countless bodies pushing against it. With the barrier down the people pushed, shoved and surged into the first garden only to stop when they slammed into the fence on the other side. It began to wobble and shake precariously but, for a time, it stayed intact, finally falling about an hour and a half later when it could no longer withstand the pressure being exerted from behind. The size of the crowd was incredible. As each fence collapsed it was as if a dam had burst its banks and the people poured through like an unstoppable wave.
Bill Peters, who lived at number 55, had a good, sturdy fence with concrete posts and a strong base which held up their progress for a while. Even Bill's fence wasn't good enough to stop them. They finally broke through at a quarter past four, leaving them just three gardens away from my home.
Day eight ends and day nine begins.
It's a little before one now and I'm sitting in Maddy's room watching them. I can see them from the end of the bed. I can see hundreds, probably thousands of shifting, bobbing heads moving in the cold moonlight. The recent nights have been overcast and dark but tonight the sky is clear and the moon is full and I can see everything. I wish it would disappear back behind the clouds. I'd rather see nothing.
I can't get out of here now. Even if I could, I'm not sure that I'd want to. This is my home. Everything I've ever worked for is here. The people I did all the work for are here too, buried at the bottom of the garden. This small plot of land is my world. I have nowhere else to go and there is no-one else to go to. I will not give up what is mine. I would rather die here than anywhere else, and as the clock ticks tonight the end of my life seems strangely inevitable.
I'm calm. I feel nervous and unsure and I don't want to face them, but I'm calm and I'm keeping my head. I will maintain my dignity and pride and I will continue to defend what's mine. There will be no kicking and screaming and no shame.
Oh, Christ... The splinter and crack of wood and another fence goes down. I move to the window and I can see that the crowd is closer than ever now, surging awkwardly across Pauline and Geoff Smart's lawn and slamming against the fence on the other side of their garden. They are now just two gardens away from me. It won't be long now.
Three-fifteen. I've sat here uselessly and watched them move closer. The penultimate fence is down now and a few thin wooden panels are all that separates the crowd from my property. I'm standing at the window now, looking directly at them. There doesn't seem to be any point trying to keep out of sight. It won't make any difference. Even if they don't know I'm here, their progress is unstoppable. They're coming here whatever.
I don't feel right. Something's missing. I know what it is ? I shouldn't be stood up here watching them and waiting to mount my final defence, I should be down there. More to the point, I should be with Maddy and her mother when it happens. It's not the house I should be defending, it's my family.
If I'm out there then everything will happen as soon as the fence comes down. If I stay up here I'll be watching and waiting for God knows how long until they get into the house, and I'm not entirely sure they'll be able
