to get inside, no matter how many hundreds of them there are. They don't seem capable of doing anything that requires thought or concentration, they just blunder about continually. I doubt if any of them would even be able to open a bloody door. My provisions are stored out in the garage. I don't think I've got time to bring them all into the house now and even if I did I'd just be sat here with my memories, waiting for them to get in or for the end to finally arrive. Imagine starving to death in your own home. It's not right. That's not how I want to go...
I'll go outside.
Couple of hours and it'll all be over.
Lester Prescott quietly and tearfully left his daughter's room and shuffled across the landing to the bedroom he and Janice had shared for the last twenty-five years. Tired, dejected and with his heart heavy and full of resignation, sorrow and grief, he opened the wardrobe and took out his favourite jumper. Threadbare and tattered, it was the jumper he always used to wear when he was out in the garden at weekends. He pulled it on over his head and then sat down on the edge of the bed to tighten his shoe laces and pull up his socks.
Pausing only to take four cans of beer from his next week's rations, he took one last long look around his home and then went outside. He walked the length of the garden, looking around with pride and even now stopping to pick a weed from between the slabs on the patio and to tidy the edge of a flower-bed where the uncut grass has started to tumble towards Janice's prized plants. He stopped when he reached the garden shed and looked down at the two uneven mounds in the lawn where he'd buried his wife and only child.
Seems a shame that it all has to finish like this, he thought as he disappeared into the shed and fetched a spade and garden fork with which he could defend himself when the fence came down. He then squeezed his backside onto the seat of Maddy's swing and sat and looked back at the house. All that work for nothing. All those years of relentless number-crunching, day after day, week after week. Maybe he should have taken more time off? Perhaps he should have spent more time at home. And when he'd been at home, should he have spent more time sitting doing nothing with his family instead of working on his projects or hiding himself away in the garden shed? Lester opened his first can of beer and drank half of it in a series of quick, gassy gulps. He'd never been much of a drinker and the beer made him feel slightly sick. He belched and wiped his mouth and looked at the fence which was now rocking and shaking with the force of untold numbers of bodies behind it. Hope I can get through enough of these to take the edge off the fear, he thought, shaking his half-full can and stifling another belch. Bloody hell, Lester sighed sadly, this is like waiting to see the dentist. Just wish we could get it over with.
Lester had just started his final can of beer when it finally began. For the briefest of moments he'd actually managed to become distracted with pointless, random thoughts about nothing in particular and he'd almost forgotten what was about to happen. The sudden sharp crack of splintering wood brought him crashing back to reality. He jumped to his feet and grabbed the garden fork, holding it out in front of him like a four-pronged bayonet.
The fence had given way at the other end of the garden, nearer to the house. It was difficult to see much from his present position, but he was vaguely aware of dark, swarming movement around the building close to the garage door. It was frighteningly indistinct and random, but something was definitely happening. The fence ? already weakened close to the house ? now began to bow and buckle about halfway up the garden. Lester watched as it dipped further and further down, finally dropping so low that he could see the heads and shoulders of the dark, relentlessly advancing bodies on the other side. Their direction, although to a large degree random and uncoordinated, was obvious and inevitable.
As the first few bodies began their stilted, awkward walk towards him, Lester took up position in front of the graves of his family. His heart began to thump angrily in his chest. What would they do to him? Were they capable of an attack or would they just trample him down? He couldn't look away. His gut-wrenching fear made it impossible for him to do anything but stare directly at the dark advancing shapes. He wanted to stop them. He didn't care what they did to him, but he wanted to stop them from trampling the graves of his wife and daughter. I might not have been able to tell you how I felt about you when you were alive, he thought, picturing Maddy and Janice in his head, but I can show you now...
As the closest bodies lifted their weak, emaciated arms out for him, Lester lunged forward with the garden fork. He smashed into the chest cavity of the nearest cadaver, skewering it and sending it crashing to the ground. He wrenched the fork back out and swung it around at other shadowy shapes, catching one of them on the side of the head and practically decapitating it. Fuelled by adrenaline and fear he attacked again, diving deeper into the crowd, desperate to defend his family's honour. The final section of fence that had remained standing suddenly came down with a tremendous groan and an ominous heavy thump. Hundreds more bodies dragged themselves into Lester's garden. He wanted to keep fighting but he didn't have room to move. They surrounded him on every side now, reaching for him and grabbing at him tirelessly. With tears of panic in his eyes he span around, terrified and disorientated. Out of the corner of his eye he spied the dark silhouette of the garden shed and he ran towards it, pushing and kicking bodies out of the way. He reached out for the door handle, knowing that the end of his life was close but too scared to let it happen. He knew that he was doing nothing but prolonging the inevitable (perhaps only by a few minutes) when he flung the door open and crashed inside. The door flapped shut in the wind behind him, the sudden noise leaving the mass of bodies in no doubt as to where he was hiding. Now sobbing uncontrollably, Lester collapsed into his deckchair in the corner and waited.
So many memories. The garden shed, the coldest, weakest and most exposed part of his property, suddenly felt reassuringly strong and warm. In the half-light he looked around and remembered all that he was about to lose. The tools with which he and Janice had lovingly tended their small plot of land. The battered wooden tea-chest on which he used to leave his paper or his book and his drink when he dozed in the shed on long, relaxing Saturday afternoons. The plastic table and chairs which had been dragged out onto the patio each year when they'd entertained family and friends. And finally the box of garden games and the buckets and spades and all those memories of being with Janice and Maddy. All about to be lost forever. Most of it already gone. Lester knew that not long remained now.
More through luck than judgement a single skeletal hand managed to wedge itself between the flapping door and the door frame and threw it open. The first body dragged itself into the shed, followed by an apparently endless queue of others. Do I know you? Lester stared at the rotting shadow which lurched towards him. Were you once a friend or someone I used to work with, he wondered? Have I passed you on the street or did I work on your accounts? The creature's face, repellent in the cold moonlight and shadow, was vacant and unrecognisable.
Lester stood up to try and push the bodies away but their numbers now were too great. Forced onto his back foot, he struggled to stop himself moving back further into the shed. One of the bodies trying to get inside tripped and fell, pushing those in front of it forward with surprising force and speed. Like dominoes they fell, crashing into Lester and knocking him back. He slammed against the back wall of the shed unexpectedly, feeling a sudden stinging pain between his shoulders as the ten steel prongs of his garden rake punctured his skin. It was more a disorientating discomfort than pain as such. Lester lifted his arms and shielded his face from the rotting bodies which continued to advance, pushing him back onto the wall and forcing the spikes deeper and deeper into his back.
Warmth, he thought to himself as blood from the puncture wounds seeped down his back. The heat from the blood was strangely comforting. Unable to move or help himself, Lester's legs gave way underneath him and he crashed to the ground, taking several bodies down with him. The rake dislodged itself in the fall, and Lester was able somehow to roll over onto his back. He closed his eyes and screwed up his face as an unknown number of rotting feet trampled down on him.
Lying in parallel with the bodies of Maddy and her mother outside, Lester looked up at the roof of the garden shed for as long as he could keep his eyes open.
ROBERT WOOLGRAVE
I'm starting to think I might have got this all wrong. I've gone about it all the wrong way. I thought I was so bloody clever to start with, thought I knew what I was doing. I was too quick off the mark. Think I might have fucked it all up for myself.
Fuck the lot of them. That was the attitude I took from the minute all of this started. Didn't seem to be much point doing anything else. I had to be selfish, didn't I? If I'd have spent all my time looking out for the thousands of fuckers lying dead on the ground then I might as well have just given up and laid down with them. I had to try and give myself a fighting chance. It's pretty bloody obvious that it's every man for himself now. How could it not be when I'm the only man left?
Hindsight is a fucking great thing. If I'm honest though, I probably wouldn't have done anything any different
