She didn't leave her seat at the window for the next few hours. Sylvia gave her the board and pens they'd been using to communicate with Neil, and they began the process of exchanging messages. She reassured him that she was ok and he her. He asked where she'd been, and she simply wrote 'LONG STORY'. He told her to 'EAT' and 'SLEEP'. She replied 'LATER'.
They exchanged news on what they knew about family and friends, which wasn't much. Neil had been in email contact with her sister, Gina, in Yorkshire for a few days at the start, but since the power had failed and the internet had gone down, that communication had stopped. He'd not heard from either of their parents, his brother, nor her other sister, Judith.
Sylvia came in at one point to report on how Anita was doing. Lisa felt guilty for forgetting about her friend, but Sylvia reassured her that she was sleeping, and that she was going to be fine. The doctor had cleaned her wound and had started her on a course of antibiotics.
Eventually, Sylvia and Michelle persuaded her to rest, and when she messaged him to explain, he replied 'GOOD'. She washed and changed into some fresh clothes that Michelle had found for her, before lying down on a comfy bed in an upstairs room. She slept soundly, blissful in the knowledge that Neil was alive and well, and just a few metres away.
Sylvia woke her just before it got dark. Neil was holding the board up which read 'TOMORROW'. She nodded and blew him a kiss before the light went completely and she could no longer see him clearly. She closed the blind and left the room.
She made her way to the doctor's house to see Anita. The girl was pale, but looked a hundred times better than when she'd last seen her, weak from blood loss and exhaustion, head rolling on her shoulders, clothes covered in dirt and dried blood. She was sitting up in bed. Her hand was wrapped in clean, white bandages and elevated on a couple of pillows. The two women embraced. Lisa felt the girl's body tremble in her arms.
Lisa drew back. Anita was crying.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I should be happy for you but I …" She broke off.
"I know. I know. I'm so sorry."
"But you were right," Anita said, wiping her eyes and smiling through her tears. "You were right all this time. He was waiting for you. You never doubted it, and you were right."
"I did doubt it … sometimes," Lisa said.
The doctor came in to check on Anita.
"She still needs to rest," he said to Lisa. "You can see her again tomorrow."
Lisa took Anita's hand.
"Try and sleep," she said. "I'll come back in the morning.
"And, Nita, thank you! Thank you for everything. I could never have done it without you."
Anita nodded, lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes.
The doctor ushered Lisa from the room.
Anita was right, though. She had been right. He had been waiting for her.
It suddenly hit her properly for the first time. All the anguish and self-doubt about whether she was doing the right thing had been worth it. But there had been a cost, and it had been Anita's to bear. She owed her everything. While she was now on the mend from her physical wounds, her emotional ones were going to take much longer to heal, if indeed they ever would.
She spent the rest of the evening catching up with Sylvia on what had happened in the village since the attack had begun. The outbreak had been fairly slow to take hold at the start, largely because of the rural location. Then, people had become overconfident and thought they could get things under control by themselves. On Day 3, they had begun to venture out.
They started to try and get supplies from the village shops, to board up their homes and dispense with the small number of infected that were roaming the streets. But someone had been bitten and the infection had spread through the village like a tidal wave. Many families had got in their cars and left. Others had barricaded themselves into their homes.
The surviving Park Mews residents had secured the complex. At first, they'd waited to be rescued, but when it was clear that that wasn't going to happen, they'd shifted their focus to long term survival, and it appeared that they'd done pretty well so far.
If there was any such thing as the perfect set-up in an apocalypse, Park Mews seemed to be it. The basic structure of the complex could have been designed with exactly this scenario in mind. The terraced houses and apartment blocks were arranged in a square. All the fronts of the houses faced outwards, their front doors opening directly onto the street. The backs all faced into a secure communal garden, within which each individual home had its own private space, demarcated by decorative iron railings.
The only way to access the gardens on foot was through one of four wrought-iron, lockable gates at each corner of the square, or via the underground car park. The single entrance to the car park was on the main road, where a ramp led down to an electrically-operated shutter.
The ramp was directly opposite the entrance to Lisa and Neil's own parking area, and the
