 
**Amidst the Falling Dust (The Green and Pleasant Land)**

Oliver Kennedy

Copyright 2014 by Oliver Kennedy

Smashwords Edition
Chapter 1, The Last Days of Summer

The cool metal of the deck helped in no small amount to alleviate some of the nausea. You wouldn't have thought after so many months at sea that it would still be like this. Reduced to a quivering jelly, curled up in the foetal position after a bout of retching over the side. The bile and remnants of this mornings measly breakfast have splattered harmlessly down the side of the aircraft carrier and into the uncaring sea. The water had spent centuries absorbing the filth of mankind and had grown accustomed to swallowing up our many failings.

Several of my fellows stand nearby. They have become used to the sight of my huddled form on deck. The brief respite from the nausea that the vomiting has given me has allowed the shame to flood in. They may have become used to it, but I have not, and the humiliation burns me like a red hot poker.

I get to my knees, I stare out over the iron grey waters of the North Sea. Beneath my feet is sixty five thousand tons of steel, the man made monster that was to have been the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier. But like much in the old world that was to have been, it has not come to pass. The vessel is a shell, a hastily assembled life raft to which nearly six hundred men and women are clinging with increasing desperation.

So as we lay here bobbing up and down, I look out at the winding coast of the green and pleasant land, and I think back over this last bleak year of my life....

My name is Patrick Redmayne. I work, or rather I worked for a company called Pendragon Systems. We were in the defence industry, or, as we used to call it while we stood around the water cooler, the 'attack industry'. We supplied the weapons of war to any and all who were willing to wage it, to pay the toll. Business was booming, and we were too ignorant to see that we were supplying the means of our own downfall.

The military buildup by both the USA and China had sent jitters through the Pacific rim and the world. Contracts were rolling in, tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, advanced littoral warships. The nations of the earth were watching the worlds two mightiest military powers square up to each other, and their minds turned to self preservation. Within a matter of months the tentacles of globalisation had been severed, the planet divided into paranoid armed camps, which, when they weren't busy eye-balling each other across the barbed wire, were desperately trying to combat the enemy within, the totem of our downfall, the Deathwalker virus.

Like much of the masses I sat down, idly playing with my cereal, watching it all unfold on the news, watching the song of doom build to its inevitable crescendo. When it got there it broke every window in the world, it shattered glass, and steel, and bone.

My home is in a town called Carlisle, in the far north of England. Sadly I was not there when it all collapsed for good. Sadly I was not with them when it all went to pot. I was ensconced in temporary housing at the Rosyth Shipyard, some portacabins huddled in the shadow of the beast.

I remember the last phone call, the usually tired and worried voice at the other end was fearful now, hysterical. In the background I could hear breaking glass, shouts of rage and pain, my son, my son, at whom do you roar? Wendy, she told me that there were familiar faces in the crowd. Familiar yet alien, neighbours of many years with crazed faces, grey skin and outstretched arms. She begged me then, she begged me for help, she begged me to be there, to live and die with her. She begged me before the phone went dead. That is that last I heard of Wendy Redmayne or my son Gideon.

I stared at the phone for a long time, until shouts and screams from the outside managed to penetrate the wall of grief springing up around me.

You see until then much of what we'd seen, we'd seen through a screen. Clinics in the big cities that were pictures of chaos. Maddened patients, the first to have received the vaccination, with bloodied eyes and bloodier hands they were savaging each other, savaging the doctors and nurses around them, savaging the baton wielding police who attempted to put them down. Hospitals were like warzones in a conflict that soon spread to the streets.

Scientists pondered, prevaricated and gesticulated. They did not provide any answers, they contradicted themselves with every other statement. There was a famous tussle at the United Nations, world leaders and foreign ministers brawling like common thugs in the grand chamber of the UN. That was while the networks were still up, but it wasn't too long after that the world went dark.

So we were witnesses night after night to scenes of civil chaos punctuated by generic footage of military buildups in many of the worlds flashpoints and border zones. We kept on working, though I don't know why, the top brass of the UK military seemed just as content to carry on as the board of Pendragon Systems were. But there comes a point when even the stiffest of upper lips must tremble, when even the most stubborn of lions must be brought low. For the thousands of workers at the Rosyth shipyard, that day was August 19th 2014, the last day I spoke with my wife.

I ran from the portacabin to see what all the noise was about. At the far end of the dock I could see a large crowd of people pushing at the thick iron gates, I could see soldiers pointing guns, some of them fired into the air but it did not seem to have any effect on the desperate souls straining to get in. I started to walk towards them. I wondered what fear would cause people to face down armed soldiers in such a way. Then I looked beyond the crowd, to the hills above Rosyth.

The hills were alive with what looked like people, they did not move with the haste of prey, but with the shuffling gait of the new world predators. Down through the heather, down through the hills they come with their dark hearts and diseased hands. For the last few days the UK's major population centres had been experiencing surges in the numbers of those infected with the Deathwalker virus. And as my colleagues and I spent the morning glaring at screens and shivering despite the summer sun, it turned out that the population of Dunfermline, which had turned pretty much overnight, had descended on Rosyth and added its populous to their numbers.

The desperate crowds at our front gate were those few who'd managed to get out, sadly they assumed that the military protected shipyard would provide some salvation for them. They were wrong, as pointed barrels and the no nonsense commands of the soldiers indicated.

When the hill wanderers reached the rear of the crowd the screams rang out like sirens. The infection rippled through the mob in a flash of blood and flailing limbs like some sort of perverse Mexican wave.

Then came the breaking point. The fence gave way. A nervous soldier fired a confident bullet, dozens more of it's fellows followed it, racing into bodies with the reckless abandon of hot lead. Sirens rang out as hundreds of figures raced into the shipyard, some of them were alive, some were not. It became evident that the gate guards and their rapidly diminishing amounts of ammunition were not going to be sufficient to hold back the horde, I was glad to see I was not the only one to turn and run.

Above the din of the crowd I was aware of helicopters coming in low, I heard the rattling boom of chaingun cannons and the sounds of shredding metal, cracking concrete and tearing flesh. The carrier seemed to represent a beacon of safety and we swarmed towards it like ants. I was only a couple of metres from a boarding ramp when a form reared up in front of me and knocked me to the floor.

This was my first up close and personal encounter with a deathwalker. Though humanoid in shape the stark absence of humanity was apparent on a number of levels. From it's mouth there poured a frothy mixture of blood and white saliva, it's skin was grey except for the veins which stood out as thick black lines which criss-crossed the figure from head to toe. The eyes were dull red orbs devoid of anything but hunger and hate.

Its head shook from side to side and it screeched a piercing scream that sounded like a long undulating 'nooooooo' sound. As the cadaver was about to descend on me a lead pipe from behind smashed right through its head covering me with splatter. As the beast fell to the side I saw Lars Eriksson smile grimly at me. He gave me a thumbs up and looked about to speak when a pair of hands encircled his head. Long fingers with sharp nails penetrated his temples and sank deep into his head behind the eyes.

Lars screamed in pain and fell to his knees at which point the cadaver bit hungrily into the top of his skull, pulling off chunks of skin and hair in its determination to reach the brain of my friend and saviour.

To this day I spare him a thought every now and then. But on that day there was no time for sorrow, I got up and I carried on running. The gangplank I'd been aiming before had been knocked into the churning water beside the carrier, I saw a few resourceful fellows shimmying up the long anchor chains and decided to join them.

As I pulled myself up the chain I became aware of the vibrations emanating along it. The eight newly installed diesel turbines had been fired up and were only moments away from being engaged to propel the carrier and those clambering onto to it to safety. I finally pulled myself up the last couple of feet and grabbed hold of the deck, rolling over onto it with a brief sense of satisfaction.

I stood and looked out over the naval yard. I was witnessing first hand the end of the world as we knew it. Thousands of cadavers now swarmed between the buildings and along the pier. When their prey reached the edge of the dock many chose to simply throw themselves into the water and take their chances in the deep.

Grenades were hurled and sent up red plumes like flares here and there. A few lone soldiers stood firing coolly into the crowd until their ammunition was spent and they became one with the enemy.

Around eight helicopters had landed on the deck of the vessel. Heavy weapons had been deployed around the edge of the carrier and were busy carving a path of destruction through the ranks of the cadavers which was soon filled with more of the same. Eventually the lone figure who stood at the prow of the ship gave his consent, a command was radioed through to the bridge. The engines bellowed and the chains and guide cables protested then snapped as the ship wrenched itself from its holdings, and plunged out into the waters of the North Sea.

I watched in mute horror as we sailed from the shipyard. There were still thousands of people left, many of them lined the edges of the dock and cried as they watched salvation ploughing through the waves away from them. Men, women and children huddled in smaller and smaller numbers as the army of the dead recruited them into its ranks against their will. Smaller and smaller they got, the shuffling, shambling figures who inhabited the Rosyth shipyard. As we bobbed up and down in the open water, I felt a sickness to my core that was little to do with the sea...

And now I am here, one year on. Wandering the metal halls of our floating home. I have stepped off the edge of the earth and this is where I landed, this is certainly not my world, and though they look like my people they are alien in their notions and their intent. I am not sure what is worse. Memories of those early days when we were filled with the dread of not knowing, or these modern times, when we are accustomed to our fate, to the long slow decline we suffer until the sea claims us.

As I make my way up to the command centre I exchange nods with similarly dead eyed fellow prisoners. In the early days, amidst the chaos and the smoke we could conjure illusions of what might be. But the now is advanced in its ages, and has shown us the truth of our demise.

My role in construction of the carrier was concerned with the engineering of the ships advanced weapons and communication systems. As such I had been designated some sort of impromptu 'chief technical officer'. It is for that reason that I am allowed on the command deck and am invited to take part in the weekly meetings of the ships senior officers.

I do not say much, it seems to me that the talking is done by those who still have hope. Less and less is said each week, there will come a time I think when we will all just sit around in silence waiting to sink.

At the start this room was a neat orderly command centre. Manned around the clock by an advanced team of communications officers who would bring in up to the minute information on the state of play in the United Kingdom and the wider world. Captain Skellen, the ranking officer on board would coordinate with his team, lending what limited assistance he could to regular forces on the ground battling against the outbreak.

As time went by there was less and less to communicate, fewer battles, not because we were winning, but because the military had been decimated by the conflict and was waging the war with ever dwindling manpower. Then came the big one, the Battle of London. The militaries last ditch attempt to regain control of the capital. For five days we listened to the screams of the dying over the radio. Then it all went quiet, we heard nothing more from the land, satellite communications went offline, we were alone.

Now after a year of chaos the command room is a mess. It reeks of stale sweat, cigars and liqueur. The shiny console screens are dark, the room is filled with the essence of defeat and despair. As I take my seat in the shadows I look around at the dishevelled officer core who sit and mumble to each other and to themselves.

Just in front of the captains chair I see an open file the contents of which immediately pique my interest. The report inside is entitled 'Provisional theory's on the nature of the Morphid threat'. Morphids, a name which was whispered more and more these days. It had become evident as the conflict waged that we fought not only the dead but other equally foul foes.

Wild ideas circulated about their origins, about the confluence of the deathwalker virus mixed with high levels of radiation. Whatever their source the presence of the Morphids was undeniable, malformed creatures, some which seemed to be hybrid of man and beast, some which seemed to have no discernible earthly origin. Their numbers had grown considerably, to the extent that the foraging missions we launched were entirely prohibited from entering the southern counties due to the extent of the infestation.

I glanced down the document, noting a few designations for the various types of Morphids; the many armed Genglers, Devils Dogs and Vulturion. But my prying ceased when Captain Skellen entered the command centre, closing the file as he sat down. There was an air of excitement about the man, a feverish enthusiasm which had been absent for many months.

The Captain briefed us on a new mission. A three copter squad would fly further west than we'd gone before, their objective, the Brampton Barracks. At the name my attention focused, my heart began to race. The barracks was only about thirty miles outside Carlisle, thirty miles from home, from them. As the Captain rambled on about the potential benefits to be gained from the stores at Brampton I spoke.

"What about Carlisle?" I said interrupting. The captain was a hard eyed man, a thirty year veteran of iron discipline, he alone amongst the officer core seemed to have found the will to maintain a clean shaven look throughout the apocalypse.

"What about it?" he barked. I licked my lips and pondered my next words carefully.

"Pendragon Systems global headquarters at Edenpark is just outside the city" said I.

"Not too far from your home either I believe?" interjected Lieutenant Tasker with a slight sneer.

"Looking to go home Redmayne?" said Captain Skellen quizzically.

"No. The coincidence is just that."

"Explain"

So I told them. I told them about the underground bunker at Edenpark. I told them about the command and control centre it housed which might, just might still have an operational satellite link which could give us an idea of what was happening in the wider world, and allow us to link up the remnants of the Royal Navy in other parts of the globe.

They lapped it up, the thought of not being alone any more was enough to push them over into endorsing my plan. I neglected to tell them that the chances of the building having power, let alone being able to establish a satellite link were slim to nil. Let them have their hope, and I will have mine. The Redmayne house was less than an hour from Edenpark, I would see what became of my dearest after that telephone call, and my fellow lost sailors would be none the wiser.

The meeting started to wind down. Food was short, water was short, morale was low. There had been two more rapes which had led to two more summary executions, two more bodies to feed to the water. The fine details of the Brampton mission were hammered out and most of us made to leave. I heard one of Captain Skellens aides mention a tertiary objective.

"A third mission?" queried Lieutenant Tasker.

"Yes" nodded the Captain. "We have intercepted an unidentified radio signal, as we're heading to Carlisle we may as well expand the mission to investigate that as well"

"Where is it coming from?" I ask. The Captain looks at his notes.

"A remote location, in the Lake District National Park, at a place called Ravensburg".

Chapter 2, Operation Black Rabbit

The Lynx prowled the skies ahead of us. It swooped from side to side across the land like a bird of prey. I followed behind in the Puma while to our rear was the large Chinook where the bulk of the forty person foraging squad were on board keeping eyes on every horizon. Surprisingly, despite being frequently laid low by the motion of the aircraft carrier on the waves, air travel did not phase me in the slightest.

Sadly the same could not be said of all of our entourage. I'd heard Lieutenant Tasker referring to the Chinook as the 'puke wagon' and could well imagine there were a few green faces on board.

They should consider themselves lucky however. The pace of the Chinook was relatively sedate compared with the breakneck sky racer that was the Lynx. It swooped up and down like a peregrine falcon, guns trained on every broken window and swaying tree. That was where Tasker rode, the vanguard, and I was well glad for that fact.

We'd spent a week getting prepared. During that time Skellen asked me a multitude of questions about Edenpark. I told him the truth, the parts of it which I thought he'd find palatable, the rest I left to chew over on my own time. I could sense that he was having doubts about that part of the mission, so I spoon fed him as much as I could, until he was sick of worrying and would go along with it if I could deliver only a fraction of that which I was promising.

Supplies were packed, engines were fuelled and the squad was hand picked by the captain and his lieutenant. We flew by charts and came in over a deserted piece of coast. The ashen ruin of a lighthouse waited for as a greeting, a sign of things to come no doubt. I got a lot of odd looks and very little in the way of conversation. I'd been a suit before the downfall and the ill fitting military fatigues did not erase that from peoples memories.

The people who went on these foraging missions were battle hardened veterans. People who'd become used to killing things with their bare hands. I was not one of them, they knew it, I knew it. But this was an opportunity not to be missed.

The first couple of days were as uneventful as days get in the world beyond the apocalypse. Our birds had been fitted with specialised fuel tanks so staying aloft would not be a problem, but flying at night was not an option. These assets were priceless, to lose any of them would be a setback from which we might not recover.

We took off from the deck of the carrier at first light and flew until the sky started to darken. There had been several theories thrown as to why the days seemed to have gotten a lot shorter since the downfall. The woeful among us said that it was probably because the sun was reluctant to try and shine life onto a dead world, the realistic among us said it was likely to do with the effects of a nuclear winter. Either way the result was the same, sunlight was a precious commodity.

It had been a year since Britain succumbed to the cadaver, not a long time in the grand scheme of history yet much of the former nation was unrecognisable. Very few of the towns and villages we came across had not been gutted by fire. The absence of bodies was a testament to the nature of the death that had come to them. Even so here and there I spied piles of bones with moss growing on them. These mass death sites were too organised to have been the cadaver, perhaps one of the lynch mobs that appeared in the early days and attempted to instil order back into their own communities. Perhaps one of the military 'cleansings' that appeared later on in the conflict when the state grew so desperate as to begin mass slaughter of the infected.

Whatever their origin they, like the rest of the evidence of mankind's existence, were being slowly swallowed by nature. We passed by overhead, we, the remnants of that which came before, we ignored the gathered ghosts who stared up at us. We pressed on along the path that would ultimately unite us with them.

That first night we were going to stay on the banks of Kielder Water in the national park of the same name. Given the remote nature of the lake it was felt that there was a reasonable chance of there not being any cadavers in the area. In the fading light we touched down on the eastern side of the lake.

Appointed teams swarmed out of the choppers and fanned out to create a secure perimeter. I formed part of a rear guard, partly through fear, partly through ineptitude. Here and there off into the trees I saw and heard the sounds of metal meeting bone that indicated the presence of the dead. Fortunately our predictions were accurate. Few rotting ghosts haunted the area and those who had made their way on some uncertain path through the undergrowth were despatched quickly and ruthlessly.

Tents were assembled and guard patrols went out. I found myself down by the water. These shortened days made it feel like the darkness was winning. It closed about the camp with incredible speed, smothering the rampant beauty of natures reclamations with tentacles, which became blankets, which eventually became a vast ocean of unrelenting darkness. A few low lights shone in the camp, but only those which were vital, who knew what kind of eyes might be watching from the forest, what bloody beasts might hungrily regard our mad mortality.

The moon smiled wanly upon us, she still shone bright if a touch hazy at times. By her grace I could see little of the world reflected in the water. Just my own gaunt, drawn features, sunken brown eyes and a complexion pale enough to compete with the silver face in the sky. My hand disturbed the water until all images were lost in the ripples, I stood and moved back to the camp.

A sumptuous feast of the stale and the bland was being doled out by the reluctant volunteers who were called chef by those who truly meant to mock. I swallowed down every last crumb and breathed a sigh of disappointment that I'd failed once more to choke on my meal, I would live to see another, that I might then die and see no more.

The thoughts of excitement which filled my mind when Skellen first announced operation Black Rabbit had faded steadily. The thought of the journey from Edenpark to my house filled me with dread. The thought of what I might find when I got there even more so. Out here in the sea of darkness to entertain a hope seemed as futile a gesture as to try and catch the moonlight, both were out of reach, and were a matter for the heavens alone.

My misery was both compounded and alleviated by the arrival of Sergeant Trowler. Alleviated by the minute contact with another living, breathing, non flesh eating human. Compounded by the fact that he told me that Lieutenant Tasker wanted to see me.

I suspected this might happen, I'd heard rumour of such on the carrier, I dare not call it home. On the ship Tasker was Skellens right hand man, but out in the wilderness he was the king of the night and was to be crossed at your own peril. Whisperings abounded on the ship about expedition members who had fallen out with Tasker and then failed to return from the foraging. Whether or not the captain was aware of these rumours no one knew, whether he believed or not it mattered little, he trusted Tasker and that trust would continue regardless of the path it followed the lieutenant down.

So I was led to the court of the king who sat pretending to pour over maps in order to keep me waiting by his tent door. Taskers face is one of those held in a perma-sneer, maybe he was born with it, maybe some ill fated wind changed on him one day, either way it did little to ease contact with such a jagged, corrosive personality.

"Comfortable?" he says finally, barely glancing in my direction.

"Very" says I to he. He scoffs, there are no answers to anything he can ask me which will not lead to such a response, this I know, this I accept.

"Tell me about Edenpark?" he says. There are no other chairs in the tent aside from the one on which he sits. He does not beckon me closer, I am an ant on his periphery, yet I know his focus is utterly upon me, his dismissive poise is subterfuge, I am his prey.

"What would you like to know Tasker" says I, irritated by the line of questioning. Within a split second he is standing nose to nose with me. His face is calm but I can see the fury in his eyes, it is always there, just like the sneer, lurking in the background and capable of far more destruction than any facial expression. His skin is pockmarked and dry, a single purple vein throbs and bulges on this forehead.

"Lieutenant" he says very quietly just inches from my face "Lieutenant Tasker" he breathes the words into my face accentuating his rank as he does so. I gulp and nod. Lesson learned. Armageddon has not made a brave man of me.

Lieutenant Tasker proceeds to quiz me about the aspect of the mission with which I have been charged. He asks me dozens of questions to which he already knows the answers. He feigns surprise at many of them, he delights in telling me how likely we are to fail. In no uncertain terms does he make it clear that such failure will be my responsibility. He sounds almost gleeful as he tells me that he will be keeping a close eye on me.

Finally I am dismissed. I resist the urge to bow and curse the coward in me as I leave the command tent and head back to my own equally humble shelter.

It used to be that no matter where I lay I could hear cars and trains and planes. Now there is the golden silence after which so many of us yearned, and it is suffocating. I lay for a while listening to the absent owl. I lay there and consider that there are many dangers in the world and some of them are in this camp.

We are one of the tiny lights of civilisation left, and it terrifies me to think of all the darkness in our midst. Sleep does not come easy, and when it finally rolls around it is a haunting experience. Did I even sleep at all?

We are up at first light. No one wakes me. I roll off the pallet bed and poke bleary eyes and a weary head out of the tent. A chorus of frowns and shaking heads greets me. I was not well liked on board the ship, I was not respected. It strikes me that whereas as on the carrier my failings were tolerated out here they may stretch thin the patience of the mob.

By the looks of it most of the camp has been up for some time, many of the tents have disappeared. I lend as much assistance as I am able. My cold fingers prod numbly at many knots. There is little conversation, any laughter is greeted with surprise and does not last long amongst the crowd. These are bleak times, we buried mirth, it rests in a tomb along side joy and hope, never to see the light again.

Helicopters are loaded. Engines roar, rotors spin. Even as we lift into the air I see a couple of ragged cadavers stagger into the clearing where we made our camp. They have become commonplace, they are herds, they are trees. They are the land.

We begin to sail across the sky once more, on our way to the Brampton barracks and an uncertain destiny.

Chapter 3, Ambush, Sir!

The journey is not a long one. We follow an A road, a long line of decaying cars marks the path. Where they ran to no one would know. As we get closer there is chatter across the short wave radio. I lean in as close to the cockpit as I can. The Lynx has spotted several tendrils of smoke on the horizon, they can see nothing to indicate its source. A suggestion to strafe the area is dismissed, it would not do well to attract any more attention than the whirring rotors already would be.

We reach our target and I look out of the window and take in the sight of the much vaunted Brampton Barracks. The site was said to have been home to almost two thousand military personnel and their families.

I spot the long lines of military housing on the outskirts which transform into large grey concrete blocks which make up the barracks proper. No flags fly. The whole area looks deserted and overgrown. Some heavy vehicles have been abandoned and barricaded across the main gate. There are signs of fighting everywhere, much of the perimeter fence has been breached, pot holes that could only have come from explosive ordinance are dotted here and there. But this battle was been finished long ago, its contenders, both the victor and the dead had moved on many days prior.

We hovered for some minutes while what I thought was an overly cautious Lieutenant Tasker had his Lynx crew circle the base a number of times. Finally the order to land comes. There were three courtyards, one on the north, one on the east and one on the south side of the base. One chopper was directed to each. Pilots would remain on standby.

The giant weeds whose strength had broken through the paved floor of the parade ground are blown away as the Puma descends. I look around at my fellow adventurers. There was now at least a vague air of anticipation. Many of them were military personnel themselves, though none had come directly from here to them I am certain this must feel like home turf, familiar ground, a reminder of better days. I saw the odd flash of a smile even, a rare sight and a treasure to spot these days.

Though I had not bonded with my fellow sailors this did not mean that I was uncaring. I saw their faces, I studied their expressions and tried to discern what might be lurking underneath. When they caught me staring I would look away, I would look upon another, but I contemplated them all and I contemplated what this mission might mean to them. Fuel, food. Fresh supplies of anything. Weapons to defend themselves, medicines to heal themselves, memories of the world to comfort themselves.

There was so much that could come of this mission to Brampton that for a stark moment as the transport helicopter lowered through the air I felt guilt. These people would come to Carlisle, these people would guard me along the way to Edenpark, they would walk beside me as we hunted for some form of salvation. Deep down I knew we would not find it, deep down the lies I'd told were screaming. But they rested so far down inside that only I could hear them, only I could free them.

I am sat in the cold embrace of such melancholy when the first rocket fires from one of the residential properties on the edge of the base and blows the tail end of the Puma to pieces.

Screams. Bellows. Controlled panic. The radio squawks and warbles unintelligibly. I can smell the smoke. We were about twenty feet from the floor when the attack came. The graceful descent turns into a crazed, spinning, metal death dance. We hit the ground but we do not stop, the perverse fairground ride carries on, the main rotor skids and skates the helicopter across the ground until we tip over and it too smashes into thousands of tiny slivers of metal.

We spin and roll for a while more. Here comes the nausea I have missed so much. My head bangs against the inside of the cab, it strikes my fellow passengers, we break each others noses, we crack each others ribs. Within such a small space we are as much dead projectiles as our kit.

Eventually the screeching of torn metal subsides, the sound of scraping on concrete ceases. Other noises start to filter in, sounds that were there before but could not make themselves heard. A voice on the radio is raging about an ambush, it is telling everyone to make for the northern parade ground. At this moment in time I am having difficulty telling up from down.

There is the less than comforting sound of the rear of the helicopter burning, this, coupled with the acrid smell of aviation fuel adds to the ear splitting array of alarm bells that are already hammering my senses. Other people are moving. Some of them are still. Perhaps this is the part where you imagine I turn into a rescuer, that I bravely drag several of my fellow passengers to safety out of the burning wreckage. I will not lie to you, the chances of this are very slim.

My head is still spinning as I crawl across the broken glass. I can hear several mute cries for help from back inside the helicopter. I do not know what to do, I am not an action man. I stare stupidly at the blood on my hands for a minute. More sensations are inbound, trying to overload an already overloaded system. I look up at the body of the helicopter and see small jagged holes start to appear in it. I am dazed and dizzied and it takes me longer than is safe to realise that there are bullet holes appearing in front of me.

I spin around and through the thin tendrils of smoke I register the score of armed men running across the tarmac towards me. Some of them are firing their weapons, the rest are waiting until they can get in nice and close so they don't miss. They are a haphazard bunch, beyond the faded mismatched clothes there is only one uniform identifier. Gasmasks. Despite the fairly clement day and the absence of anything directly toxic in the air, as far as I know, each of them wears a shiny black gas mask, the jet black eye balls are glinting in the sunlight as this death squadron races to meet us.

I hear calls of help from the helicopter get quieter the further I run. I move around so that the chopper is between me and the masked men. I briefly debate what will stay with me for longer, those forlorn calls of help from the Puma or the noise about ten seconds later as a dozen machine guns open up behind me, it's not me their aiming at, their victims are closer and unable to run like I do.

There is faint relief as I reach the closest complex of buildings and begin to think about which way is north. I look at the sun and try to work it out from there, but I never paid enough attention to Crocodile Dundee and I cannot for the life of me remember whether the sun rises in the east or west. Whichever way I go it will be a guess, and a potentially deadly mistake.

Hoping that the pain in my chest is from an injury sustained in the crash and not my heart about to give way I begin to hobble my way around the small grey buildings. Sweat is pouring off me, panic has well and truly set in, I run blindly until I bump into an equally surprised figure. We are both knocked to the floor, I curl up in a ball and wait for the inevitable gunshot, or the inevitable gnashing of hungry dead teeth. I have been waiting for that for over a year now. I will continue to wait it seems. I am not shot, I am not bitten.

I look up to see Fiona Sanders, it would appear that I was not the only survivor from the crash, it would appear I was not the only one to run. It looks as if I am not the only coward left in the world, my relief is brief.

Fiona kneels against a wall to catch her breath. She seems to be concentrating on something beyond our immediate grey surroundings. I can hear it too, the cackle of gunfire, the occasional boom. Finally she looks at me, finally I am acknowledged.

"Redmayne" she nods.

"Fiona" I return. "What's happening?" comes my rather ridiculous question. She manages to keep the scorn from her voice when she replies. "Ambush."

"Who?" I ask, somehow expecting her to know. She shakes her head and looks sternly in my direction. "It doesn't matter any more Redmayne, we don't live in the world where you know who your enemy is, they simply are, and it's kill or be killed". I have barely opened my mouth to respond when she starts again, "Bank robbers, drug smugglers, rapists, murderers and paedophiles. Violent men who are no longer contained by the boundaries of civilisation, now they are free, now they are here".

No more words pass between us, we catch our breath for a moment or two more before hearing the sound of many pairs of nearing footsteps. We exchange a glance and silently agree that we do not wish to stand around and find out if they are friendlies.

Being the brave old soul that I am I let Fiona lead the way. We weave in and out of a couple of buildings before she leads us inside a two story structure that must have been some sort of administrative office for the barracks at one time. I see over turned desks and pieces of rotting paper strewn everywhere, kettles which have not been ask to boil in well over a year and pictures of fallen comrades in broken frames.

Fiona leads the way upstairs, we crouch as we move along the damp creaking corridors. Fiona carries a solid looking black side arm, I have faith that she knows how to use it. We move through the building before reaching a fire escape.

From this vantage point it is obvious we are not far from the northern parade ground, I see the tail fin of the Lynx sticking out behind some buildings. A quick glance down reveals no one below and we make a run for it down a fire escape. As we make the dash across the gap between buildings I hear the roar of a weapon from our left, Fiona seems to stumble as she is making her way through an open doorway just in front of us. I catch her as she falls, she is only petite and I am able to drag her in with me fairly swiftly.

Periodic bursts of fire ricochet off the walls outside. I look down as I feel a warm liquid substance running over my hands, the hands currently holding onto Fiona. Her left hand is firmly clutched on the side of her neck but such a poor compress does little to halt the litres of blood steadily pumping from the wound there.

Her words turn to gargles and she has the look in her eye. It is the look of someone who knows, it is the fear, it is inevitable death captured in the capillaries, muscles and coloured orbs of the human eye. Unfulfilled dreams fall from these orifices and spill over my hands with the blood.

"I am so sorry" is the only weak comfort that I can afford. She nods. She lifts the gun up towards me and for a foolish, fearful second I think that she means to pull the trigger, but she turns it and thrusts the weapon into my hand. I release her to take the gun and we slide down unceremoniously to the floor. I look at the weapon and say thank you. She never heard the words.

Gently sliding Fiona's body right to the ground I stand up bloody and afraid. Our assailant fires another burst, some of the bullets find their way in the doorway. He is close, only metres away. I envision myself stepping confidently from the doorway, coolly lifting the gun and blowing the mother away in a style not unlike that of James Bond. It will remain a vision, I turn and run, Fiona will lay there unavenged, until she rises, perhaps to take her own retribution.

This was some sort of utility block, I run past big old industrial sized washers and driers, piles of dress uniforms are neatly folded and covered in insects. A gasmasked villain has followed me, I hear his muffled shouts start to fade as I duck and dive and weave through the building.

I exit a rear door to find myself on the field of battle. In the middle of the parade ground sits the Lynx. Its crew have abandoned her and appear to be sheltering behind some concrete bollards off to my left. They exchange frenetic bursts of gunfire with the masked men who seem to be swarming out of the buildings to my right like ants. Just as I am about to retreat back inside and find somewhere to hide someone rears up and slams me into the wall.

I see the sun glinting on the knife as it heads for my throat, I close my eyes and piss myself in the same instant. Where is death? I sneak open an eye. Then another. The blade is millimetres from my throat. I look into the eyes of a berserker, a product of war, a machine for killing. I look into the crazed eyes of Lieutenant Emmanuel Tasker.

"Redmayne" he growls at me with a note of disbelief, "God damned Redmayne". I am shoved aside and follow him as he heads into the utility building from which I just emerged. The warrior is already moving away from me down a corridor, I am a distraction, nothing more. I think about following him, hiding within his shadow, but I sense his shadow is heading for a dangerous place. I let him go and within a few moments I am alone again.

The solitude does not last long. The battle outside still rages and is about to enter the building. I start to run again and as I pass through the main corridor I see my old friend the gasmasked killer who murdered Fiona. In his right hand he holds a large hunting knife and I note that he has started to strip the body of my former comrade. Upon seeing me he curses. I do not fire, I run away and he gives chase once more. You must think me a coward, you don't know what this is like, we live in different worlds.

This time he manages to keep up with me as I race through the building. When it seems that he is only a few seconds behind I take a gamble and almost fall as I race down the darkened stairway into the basement below the barracks.

Deep down in the dark the din was dimmed to a dull and distant roar. The battle was a far off thing, the guns ring out with a hollow hate that cannot reach me here. Drip, drip, drip. The damp and dank dungeon below the barracks is a foul smelling and inhospitable place. My gas mask clad adversary followed me down here. His footsteps boomed with great confidence down the stairwell, but caution has staid his tread as it did mine. This is not somewhere that one runs lightly, and that goes for the hunter and the prey.

If I meet a cadaver down here I am finished. If the bandit finds me I am finished, to them both I will be another hunk of meat just like Fiona. If I never get out of here then I am finished also. After a time it becomes obvious that the basement level goes down to several sub basements which run under the entirety of the barracks. Within a few minutes I am lost, within a few more I begin to wonder whether or not lost is an adequate term to describe the hopelessness of my predicament. It is a despair which is compounded by the whispers from my pursuer.

I assume from their clarity that he has removed his gas mask. He calls out to me every now and then, perhaps trying to elicit a reaction that will not come. He whispers to me of all the things he will do to my body with his blade. He tells me that I can't get out. He tells me that he is coming for me.

If his intention is to frighten me there is no need, I will not get much more scared than this I hope.

"You may as well come out little man", comes the sibilant hiss.

"Surrender now, quietly to me, down here in the dark, I will make it quick, I promise".

His accent is untraceable. Just another Englishman who has turned away from the horizon. I wonder a year and a half ago what this man would have been doing. Rotting in a deep, dark hole at her majesties pleasure; or sitting in an office, discussing the news over a mug of tea. Fiona was right, it mattered less and less with each passing day, who we were and where we came from. There were no ashes from which to rise, just more and more fire to fall into.

There are many puddles down here and more than the occasional rat. I tiptoe as quietly as I am able, up and down this way and that. The noise of the fighting has gone now, we won or we are dead, or I am just too far underground. Though my eyes adjust to the gloom somewhat I still find myself bumping into pipes every now and then. I use the wall to navigate through the dark until I get to a point where the wall stops. The air changes and I sense that I am in a very large underground room.

There is a stench down here, not the smell of something rotting, the smell of a thousand things which have rotted away and left only an angry, putrescent vapour to pollute the air, odorous ghosts which clog the senses.

The smell has been getting worse the further I have come. I stand at the edge of the large vault and sniff the foul air, from somewhere close by I hear a movement, a slippery, wet, sound.

A few steps back and I feel a cold metal barrel against my head.

"Hello little man" whispers the voice, he follows up his greeting with a short sharp whack against the back of my head which sends me to the floor.

Suddenly a light shines in my face, I am blinded again. I can hear the sound of a weapon being unsheathed, the blade rubs against a whetstone. "Where have you lot come from then?" asks the Englishman in a conversational tone. I do not answer him. Beyond the shining light my other senses still probe the room. That sound is still there, louder, more pronounced. I look around for the weapon I dropped when he hit me, it has been swallowed by the gloom.

The light moves, it seems to wedge itself in a hole in the wall. My attacker walks forward. I need to stand up, I need to fight, I scream at my limbs to react. They ignore me, they are being governed my a more powerful imperative. A silhouette is framed in the light of the powerful torch. I see a gas mask slung over one shoulder. In both hands he holds knives. "You may not feel like talking now but you will in a minute my friend, of that I can assure you".

He stops mid stride. He's heard it too. This is not a background noise, it is the sound of something close by, something alive, something large. I can make out some of my attackers features, he is nondescript, plain and mundane looking. He is staring off into the dark behind me.

What was a slopping, slow, wet sound changes. Now there is a noise like a cracking whip and suddenly my assailant collapses beneath his own nemesis. Some fiend labours over him in a crazed attack. The light is not good and nor are my senses, but it looks like a cadaver. An armless, legless cadaver, just a body, just a head, just teeth. How can it be that such a creature moves? It is mounted, mounted on the end of what I could only describe as a giant tentacle.

All down the thick, slimy arm of the beast there are spikes which flex as the cadaver at its end devours the now dead marauder. It seems there is no air to breath, my lungs are struggling, does it see me? This question rotates around my mind at ten thousand revolutions a second. I close my eyes to calm the whir. Slowly I rise to unsteady feet. I start to creep around the edges of the torchlight, to stay outside the dining area.

I am halfway to false freedom when I see the second tentacle arrive, an equally hungry and deformed cadaver sits on its tip, it begins to feed alongside its fellow. From the darkness behind me I hear the sound of much writhing. I turn and squint against the blackness. Something huge sits there, I have seen but one part of this horror.

I start to run again. I am getting good at running. As I pass I snatch the torch from the wall. I press my hands to my ears as the beast lets me know its anger. I am reminded of the undulating 'nooooo' of the cadavers I have heard before, but a thousand times louder and of a depth that could swallow cities whole.

My lungs start working again, my legs pump as they have never done before. I am surprised there is still moisture left to sweat, but its presence is undeniable as it runs into my eyes and soaks my fatigues. Every now and then I turn and flash the light at my pursuer, this is a mistake I cannot help repeat such is my thrilling, morbid fascination. What looks like dozens of cadavers follow me, each and every one of them sits on the end of a tentacle, that leads back into the darkness, back to something else....

Walls give way with a tumbling crash, pipes are snapped apart like matchsticks. The creatures strength is matched only by its desire to feed. Is it chasing me or guiding me? I know not but my ascent back to the world is by some murky fate far quicker than the slow escape down. I come upon a stairwell up which I am instantly racing. My feet pound against the metal, now and then I stumble, my shins accrue more bruises. Looking down I see them rising, thick slimy tentacles fill the stairwell behind me like a flood, at their tip the cadavers scream through sharp and rotting teeth.

The sunlight blinds me as I stumble from the metal cellar like doors and out into the open. I am greeted shortly by gruff shouts and a blow to the head. Recovering eyes take in several sights. The smouldering wreckage of the Chinook with dozens of burned bodies around it. Many men in gas masks standing around the parade ground. Around fifteen of my fellow sailors are knelt upon the ground with their hands on their heads. Most are weeping as a gasmasked villain goes down the line and ends their coil with a single round to the back of the head.

"We have to run" I gasp to the stranger who stands over me, looking down at my wretched form through impassive black lenses. "Your running days are over bitch" he muffles as he lifts his weapon. There is so much to be seen down the barrel of a gun, so much life that can fit into such a small dark space. My would be executioner is almost decapitated by one of the doors through which I excited as it flies from its hinges.

A roaring mass of tentacle cadavers surges from the opening. The rumbling in the ground is a testament to the size and strength of the beast. Indeed even as its long arms unfurl through the opening the ground around the entrance begins to crack and splinter, such are the insufficiencies of its dimensions. Guns roar. The gas masks appear from many directions. The death sentences that were being carried out against my tearful fellows have ceased. Four of them get a reprieve.

The cracks in the ground get bigger. The cadaver tentacles flay this way and that. Men are swiped aside, flung up high over the buildings by the force. Others are pinned to the floor and many mouths descend, rending and tearing. Blood sprays from the tentacles painting the concrete red. But still they flail, still they emerge, not only from the cellar doors but now from the large cracks which appear here and there. Bloodied and mangled cadavers punch through the floor and begin to hunt.

I make it to my comrades and we start to run together. The gasmasks ignore us, they have bigger problems. The whole area feels like it is becoming unstable. As we race towards the edge of the parade ground I see movement between the buildings, in the buildings and curling up around them. Dozens, no hundreds of tentacles are rising up from all directions.

Alleys are blocked, entrances burst open to reveal gaping maws and bloody saliva. I turn and see a similar picture unfolding around the large parade ground. Fifty foot long tentacles fill the air, swooping down every now and then to pick off a marauder. Their numbers are dwindling, the maws descend in packs like rabid dogs, pinning a meal to the ground and tearing it apart within seconds.

From deep in the ground there are rumbles now and then. The creature roars from far below, though unless I am mistaken the noise gets louder each time. It rises. I fear we will soon be part of the feast. I look to my beaten fellows, they are resigned, they have drunk their last cup of melancholy, it fills their veins until the weight drags them to the floor, the world has become a monster and there is no point fighting any more.

Then there meets my ears a familiar sound. The sound of something man made, the sound of something that is engineered, powered by a fuel that human hands prised from the earth. I hear the sound of rotor blades, I look up and see a bird of prey, sleek, metallic and bristling with mass destruction.

The Lynx swoops in. Chainguns trail fire across the parade ground, rockets spray through the air and sever whole tentacles with a mighty boom. In the cockpits he sits, my most hated fellow traveller, battle hardened, battle maddened, battle-god. Lieutenant Emmanuel Tasker. His face is a mask of precision focus. The Lynx glides effortlessly towards us. Several tentacles dart towards it but are driven off by the hail of fire which screams barely inches above our crouched heads.

The chopper lands and we half stumble, half drag each other towards it. Tasker barely looks back to check we are all in before gunning the engine and lifting us into the air with such force that we roll around in the back like downed bowling pins.

I get enough leverage to be able to pull myself up and gaze out of the window. Tasker angles the chopper and its main rotor blade cuts through a mass of tentacles which bar the way. Behind us the few remaining gasmasks have turned their weapon to the sky. They will not escape their fate and their resentment at our flight fills them with a raging despair. Then we are up and away. I look back to Brampton Barracks. The last I see is a huge fissure appearing in the middle of the base, from it something begins to emerge, a gigantic, logic defying mass. I do not see its entirety, we fly too high and too fast, the base and the monster are soon left behind. All I will carry is a hint, a flash of memory of the thing that emerged from the deep.

Chapter 4, Eden

Tasker, Patricia Jones, Sergeant Trowler, Mark Kirby, Daniel Sutton and me. Patrick Redmayne. This is not like the solemn flights of before. Too much has occurred for us to wade about in it inside of our own heads. We splurge, we weep, we theorise. Each of us checks our version of events against the others, we are checking to make sure we saw the same thing, we are trying to ascertain that we still have our sanity and that what we just witnessed is real.

I tell them about what happened in the basement. About the chase. About Fiona and about what happened to the Puma. I hear a similar tale about the Chinook, shoulder mounted missiles fired from the residential blocks. A perfectly executed ambush. Only expert piloting and advanced countermeasures had allowed the Lynx to evade a similar peril.

Judging by their apparel and weapons the gasmasked marauders had been at the base for some time. We were not the first to have thought about raiding Brampton and we paid for that second place with many lives.

Of the monster we can only theorise. A radiation freak, a result of some warped branch of the deathwalker virus. These were the most sensible options for such a senseless concept. We did not talk of other possibilities, the darker corridors of definition through which such horror might have emerged into the world.

There does not seem to have been any debate about our direction. I ask Tasker who flatly informs me that the mission will continue, we are making for Carlisle. None of us object out loud. About half way there Tasker says that Edenpark will be our final destination. "Why?" asks Patricia fearing some alternative agenda which the lieutenant has conceived. Tasker indicates out of the offside of the chopper, we look out to see fuel pumping steadily from the side of the tank. A stray bullet, a fond farewell from our gasmasked friends. We have been steadily leaking fuel, the only cold comfort is that the man who fired the shot is now probably being digested in the belly of the beast.

We limp into the skies above Carlisle. The engine has been sputtering with increasing frequency, the fuel gage has sunk low enough to no longer be an indication of the fumes left in the tank. My chest tightens as we cross the city. My home. There is so much familiarity, shopping parades, cinemas and traffic lights. We move north, to the other side of town. After a couple of miles of open fields we see our final destination. Edenpark is a grand complex.

The main central building is a large glass pyramid, at each corner there rises up a tower, from the four towers are skybriges which link into the pinnacle of the pyramid. At the apex of the structure is the boardroom from which the Pendragon Systems masters used to stare out over the land. The Pendragon flag still flutters atop the pyramid. A red background with a golden sword held in an armoured hand. Miles of empty car parks surround the structure.

Tasker guides the bird down into an empty space. We sit and listen as the engine winds down. Finally there is silence. Tasker turns to look back at his sorry passengers. "It won't start up again" he says matter of factly.

"There is a helipad atop one of the towers, they may have fuel stored up there" I offer up helpfully.

"Let us hope so" says Tasker. We deploy. Not with the military precision that we did at Kielder Water. Nor with the battle driven haste that we did at Brampton. A weary and depleted group clambers clumsily from the helicopter. Ammunition is lugged, SA-80 assault rifles are dragged along, hand guns are checked and loaded, grenades are fastened to belts.

As we creep across the car park I cannot help but notice the fading light. We reach a service entrance and I bid my fellows stop. "We need to keep moving Redmayne" growls Tasker.

"The light fades, I do not know what we are going to find inside, but one thing I do know is that whatever it is, we do not want to find it in the dark." The others nod in agreement. I have angered him, not because I am not right, he just doesn't like to be contradicted. "What do you suggest?" I point at a storage container near the roller shutter doors. "It will be dark, but it will be safe." It is agreed. We search the small dark space inside the container with torches, content that it is clear we climb inside in order to wait for the sun to come again.

Talk of a guard watch comes up. I volunteer to go first. There is surprise, some raised eyebrows. Tasker eyes me suspiciously but acquiesces. I agree to wake him after a couple of hours in order to relieve me. Lights are extinguished. Breathing deepens. The minutes tick by. I give it half an hour. By then I am content that even Tasker will have nodded off. The sound of snores masks the slight creaking of the container door as I ease it open and slip outside. The moon is bright and I move as fast as I am able, back across the car park and fields, away from Edenpark, I am going home.

At the main entrance there is a large security hut. Relief floods in when I see several vehicles still sitting beneath the eaves outside the building. I procured a large military issue knife from the Lynx. I am pleased to have done so. Donny, the head of security greets me as I go inside to find the keys. He lunges towards the torchlight. My new found sense of purpose has filled me with a false bravery, or perhaps the looks of the others when they smelt my piss stained trousers on the flight up here has shamed me to action.

Either way, I resist the urge to turn tail and run as Donnie lumbers in my direction. The knife slides as if through hot butter, it parts his rotting skin and munches through his skull, pulverising the diseased brain that drives him. Donnie falls to the ground, dead again. I have no time to celebrate the small victory. I select some keys from the locker and head out to the parked vehicles. The first couple of button pushes unlock large security vans which I discount due to their size and lack of stealth. The third key chirps and unlocks a sturdy looking dark coloured Jeep.

I get in, hit the lights and start driving. It is not long until I am passing through the outskirts of Carlisle. The fact that I have not driven in over a year is not the only reason I move slowly. As soon as I see the first of them I kill the lights. It rolls harmlessly up and over the bumper. Most definitely not something they teach you about during your driving theory test. The main roads in town were too clogged with cars and military vehicles for me to even attempt driving through. I stick to the back streets, the closes and the avenues. I roll the odd cadaver, I pass through without incident.

My house is on a hill on Tolsbury way, number nineteen to be precise. It sits on top of the hill. Pendragon Systems paid me well. The secrets I stored for it levied a heavy financial toll which the company was keen to pay, with each gold piece they forged the chain which bound me to their machinations. I park up at the bottom of the rise.

My hands are shaking. I have thought of little else but this moment for the last year and a half. Eagle House, which I pretentiously labelled my abode is as dark as all the other large properties in the area. What am I hoping to find? I am certain that I want to know what happened after that phone call, just as I am certain that such knowledge might defeat me. I sit in the car for many minutes. I know you see. This is it, this is the place I want to die. That is why I am here. I have come to learn that which I already know, because realising the world is already dead will allow me to join it.

I get out of the car into the crisp air of the night. Each step is a hesitation. I do not have the key for the electric main gate so I use the side entrance and trudge up the hill. So much familiarity comes running down the slope to greet me. The three story structure has a hint of Gothic to its architecture. Dark wood, black stone, spikes and curves and tiny statues that peer down at me as I approach the house.

The front door is broken off its hinges. There is blood upon the frame, and bite marks. There is detritus here, the filth of the world has blown in through the empty portal into my home. There are many footsteps in the dirt. Some of them look like they belonged to people, some to something else. This is a cold lifeless place, a void. In the dining room there are several animal carcases.

The torchlight moves slowly back and forth across the marble worktops and the oak beams. I see some unopened mail upon the side. Credit card bills, wedding invites and suchlike. The once royal blue carpets of my home are now stained and soiled. The dining room table has been overturned, every window has been broken. Pictures have been ripped from the walls and flung face down on the floor. Whoever did these things did not want anyone watching them.

The stairs creak unwelcomingly as I make my way up to the first floor. Gideons room is empty. An unmade bed, star charts on the wall and a telescope on the window box. He has not slept here for many nights, but still when I look at that crumpled duvet I half expect him to emerge from beneath it, and complain about the hour of my intrusion. He does not appear, only rats peer at me from beneath the covers.

My study is as it was, a mess. An engraved pen sits uncapped on the desk, the ink as dry as the dust, rotten pieces of paper flap about in the night time breeze. I stand in front of the bookshelf and run my fingers over the dusty volumes that I will never read again, Salingers Catcher in the Rye, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbord, Lucello's Dance by R. Winthrop, an old Italian book about the giant slaying folk hero. But, the power and beauty of the words was gone, it existed as it turns out only within the imagination, its effects on the real world were minimal. Imagined good was as effective against real evil as anything else we'd manufactured.

The bathroom is a sea of mould and mirror shards. I look around. I draw in the despair, I suck woe from the decayed remnants of all that I loved. My hand shakes as I turn the handle to the master bedroom. It is with great trepidation I walk into the room. It is empty. I know not what I expected to find, I think I am foolish enough to have believed that there may have been a body here, there are no more bodies anywhere. The bodies are walking around just like the rest of us.

The room has the same dank smell as the rest of civilisation. But the bed is still neatly made. I kneel down at the end of it. I weep into the mouldy bedsheets that were once so fresh, I think of all the times I laid here with her in my arms. I think of all the plans we made together and the one dream which came true.

A rage takes hold of me, I crash my fists down on the bed over and over again, not for the first time I look upwards, through the ceiling, through the roof and the sky above, I look directly to heaven and I scream a curse at any gods who are still there.

I weep as I stagger through the house. A part of my mind is looking for a way to end this pain, this grief which I have been building for myself ever since that call. I stagger into the garden. The flowers are dead and gone, the weeds rule now. In the middle of the garden is a dry fountain with a statue of a seraph in the middle. I sit on the stone steps which surround the water feature. I cry tears over the picture of Wendy which I procured from the bedside table.

I continue to feel sorry for myself, I am building the will to do it. I draw the hunting knife from its sheath. Reflected in the blade I see moonlight, dark scudding clouds and sad eyes which have stared too long into the abyss. I lift the knife and envision the act. I bring it closer, daring it, tempting it to tear its own way into the bulging veins on my wrist.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK.

I pause my task. I look up and about. I cannot see the source of the sound. I wait a while imagining that I imagined it until...

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK.

I stand and hold the blade away from me. I search the shadows of the garden, the overgrown bushes and the dying trees. I see nothing, but I wonder, does something see me? I walk down the fountain steps.

CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. It sounds like the drumming of nails on a hard surface. Impatient nails. The fear rises again as I hear the noise several times in quick succession. There is nothing quite like fear for rolling back the woe, for storing it up until a later date. As my eyes scan the dark they settle on the outhouse, a pair of eyes stares back. My legs tremble in terror, the eyes move forward, to reveal a nose, and ears, covered in deep black fur. The terror turns to fascination for this is a face I recognise.

"Vincent?" I whisper. Vincent, a gorgeous black Labrador, a faithful hound who accompanied me on many sly Sunday afternoon trips to the pub. Vincent, who would keep my feet warm on cold winter mornings, Vincent who would bring me the remnants of the Sunday paper with a wagging tail. How? How could he be here still?

"Vincent" I whisper again, beckoning him to come forward out of the shadows. As I walk towards the outhouse my mind tells me something is wrong. I stop. Why is he so tall? Vincent's head is level with my own. Then I hear it. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. Then I hear the growl. Not the growl of a small dog. Not the growl of a Labrador. I take a step back. He takes a step forward. Then I see the huge paw, and the long black claws.

I take another step back and he takes two more forward. By the pale light of the moon I examine our household pet. He opens his mouth to reveal multiple rows of gnashing teeth which stand out in a sea of saliva. His nails click on the ground as he walks forward. The thing that used to be Vincent stands nearly six feet. The four rear legs are attached to a bulky, bulbous, and hairy body which works up into a hardened muscular torso. From either side of the torso protrude long arms that seem to bend both ways and end in cruel looking sting like claws.

"Vincent, no" I utter as I turn and run. Moving to the side gate I glance up as I stumble. I see a figure, a ghost I think standing in the window of the attic stairwell. He holds a candle but I cannot examine him further for Vincent dogs my steps. I run down the side of the house and climb over the gate.

The devil dogs roar is terrifying and will wake the dead neighbourhood. He clears the fence with one jump and barrels into me. I am on my feet in seconds but a swung claw tears across my back releasing a shower of blood and sending me sprawling down the hill. My momentum is slowed to a stop as I thud hard into the side of the Jeep.

My former hound bounds down the hill towards me. It looks as if my reluctant wish will be granted. It is time to die I think. He is close, close enough for me to feel the heat of his breath when the gun sings out over the growl. I open my eyes. The dead Vincent lay there, still enormous, still a grotesque malformation of my old pet.

"Hello Redmayne" I look up to see Taskers angry, sneering face just as the butt of his weapon comes down and sends me into the darkness.

Chapter 5, Under Heaven

I'm being dragged. Voices are arguing. Trowler and Tasker going back and forth. A heated exchange, about me, and what I gather Tasker sees as a betrayal. This is Edenpark. I can tell by the intricate pattern on the glass floor depicting leaves with swords for stems. I can tell by the picture on the wall of Stefan Kessler shaking hands with the queen at the opening of the complex in 99.

"He's awake" says Mark Kirby as he and Sutton hoist me to my feet. No sooner have I dusted myself down and felt gingerly at the large lump on my head and the itching cut on my back, then Tasker has my chin in a vice like grip and is boring into me with a thousand yard stare from very close range.

"Nice trip down memory lane Redmayne?" he growls.

"I was going to come back before dawn." My voice is embarrassingly shrill. The cool calm collected lies I told aboard the aircraft carrier have been replaced by this.

"Bullshit"

"We don't know that Manny" says Trowler.

"We do know that John because the bastard would have been torn to shreds by the devil dog and shat all over his own lawn. It's pretty hard to go anywhere when your resting in the pit of a morphids stomach".

"I intended to come back" says I, "Truly". "How..." The question is swiftly cut off.

"Please don't insult us further by trying to imply that we would have had any difficulty in figuring out where you'd gone." Sneered the lieutenant. I was still baffled until Patricia spoke. "The carrier had personnel files for all those on board, both military and civilian contractor." Perhaps my master plan hadn't been so subtle, someone had evidently taken the time to look up where I lived in the event I went 'off the reservation'.

"What now?" says I, feeling groggy and drained. The discoveries at the house had pushed me beyond the barrier of my mental endurance, I was in a psychological abyss and would roll out of it either stronger or dead, at the moment I didn't care which and Taskers knock-out blow and the aching from the wound on my back had simply been the icing on the cake.

"Now you're going to live up to your word and pray that there was something to it". The sun is peeling over the horizon as we start to make our way through the complex. Up here it's all reception suites, canteens and cleaning cupboards. The doors are all on standard maglocks and give way after a few firm kicks and shoulder barges. As we start to descend into the lower levels of the building we encounter issues. A number of thick security doors with electronic dead locks bar the way. In the before times a casual swipe of an access card would have had us through in seconds, now there is a good thirty minutes of chopping and hammering for each one.

One thing that surprises me is how neat everything is. No graffiti, no blood stains. No broken glass or spent cartridges. Somehow this place seems to have avoided the main thrust of ragnorak, to have survived the end but been left with no purpose. I can only assume that Pendragon evacuated in good order before the main outbreak and the building has been lucky enough to avoid marauders or morphids.

We are trying to reach the utility station on sub level 3. It houses the generators and an array of other building control systems including some security access points. It takes three hours to hack our way through. Fire axes become sledge hammers by the time we get there but eventually we reach our destination and I start to shine the torch around.

My office was up on the fifth floor. I was a technical project leader, not the boiler man. Even so I am educated and experienced enough to start to see some familiarity amidst the systems here. I reach the primary generator to see Tasker already standing there. He looks back at me and sneers before continuing to examine the control panel. "I think that you have to..." my sentence is cut off by a glare of pure venom from the lieutenant who the slowly primes the pump at the side of the generator before engaging the power handle.

After a lot of silent tiptoeing around the in dark the noise comes as a shock. One by one the sleeping diesel giants rumble each other awake until all four of them are humming away with gusto and we are standing bathed in the light of man made illumination. I cannot hide my surprise but no one is interested enough in me to notice it. They look in wonder as light floods the utility centre and console screens burst into life registering all sorts of data.

I make my way to one of the security consoles.

Redmayne P. - Codeword – Bucephalus.

The computer greets me and logs me in with a friendly welcome screen which tells me to have a nice day. The system is sluggish. The desktop displays the Pendragon logo, more data scrolls in a window to the left, one oddity I notice is something telling me that 'Haven protocol is in effect', I was not aware of any such contingency.

Good fortune in life had landed me a position of considerable influence and savvy within the global defence corporation that is..was...Pendragon Systems. As a member of the building emergency planning committee I was one of the few people privy to the process of disabling the buildings internal security locks so that the facility could be exited quickly. A few command lines and some GUI clicking later and I hear several satisfying clunking noises. The doors to the utility centre have already been demolished but at least now those beyond them were unlocked which would save a great deal of time.

The military types who eyed me suspiciously whilst I was tapping at the keyboard fall in line behind me as I set off down the corridor. They are in my eyrie now and I will draw forth a little respect from them before this escapade is over I hope.

It is with confidence that I lead us through the dizzying maze of corridors that make up Edenpark. We stop for a time to take on some fluids and grab a few dried biscuits. The building housed an impressive store to feed its thousands of workers, it will definitely be worth exploring before we leave but for now I am aware of the tension and the need to press on with the primary mission.

Four floors down and deep in the centre of the pyramid we reach the lift that will take us down to two hundred feet below the ground to Pendragon Systems state of the art global command centre. A circle of light falls down upon the open sided lift that appears to be just a part of the floor. The light is directed down by a series of cleverly designed mirrors from the pinnacle of the structure to here.

I usher my companions to stand within the silver circle before going to the operation console. I type in my password. I allow my retina to be scanned. I press my palm against the hand scanner.

'Welcome Patrick Redmayne, how may I help you?'

"We want to go down Shiva" says I to the automated building control AI.

"Of course" replied the metallic sounding female voice. "What killed Arthur?" it asks.

"Pride" I say before stepping onto the silver disc as it begins to lower into the floor. Trowler looks at me with an eyebrow raised. "A final line of defence, if I am compromised and somehow an infiltrator is able to get me to activate the lift. Pride is the default answer, in the event of a situation then I tell Shiva a sword killed Arthur".

"What happens then?" asks the sergeant.

"Fifty high powered injectors fill the lift lobby with non-lethal, knock-out gas within zero point eight seconds. This renders anyone in the lobby unconscious". A few seconds of silence pass before Tasker speaks. "What if they're wearing gas masks?" he sounds genuinely intrigued and it's the first time he's spoken to me without sounding like he addressing something being scraped from his shoe.

"The gas isn't something that you will have heard of before, it can affect you through your skin and is pumped in at such high pressure and speed that it will soak in through the clothing almost as quickly as it would get in to the lungs." This is food for thought. The journey down takes a couple of minutes and I know as military types they are mulling over this new found weapon that I have unveiled.

"Was this something that the UK military had access to?" asked Sutton.

"Not yet" comes my reply as the lift enters the disembarkation lounge. There are things I know which I can share with no other, I have come close a few times. Fortunately the end of our journey is a welcome distraction which ends any further questioning. What the armies of the world often failed to understand is that they were just clients and customers. We built this stuff, we created the demons, they simply unchained them.

We walk down a short corridor and out onto a balcony which overlooks the command centre. "Shiva, illuminate". There are several gasps. The command centre is a large underground dome which is nearly a thousand feet in diameter. There are hundreds of screens, some of them sit in small individual consoles, some of them are nearly thirty foot wide. This was the nerve centre, this is where Pendragons board monitored the world, electronic surveillance, drones, satellites, undercover operatives.

Pendragon Systems was a company built on war, on discord and chaos. They didn't sell people multi billion pound armies in order for them to sit around domestic bases and play tiddlywinks. The company made its money from conflict, so wherever conflict was found there would be the crimson sword and the mailed fist. Such a presence requires a great deal of money, and a great deal of organisation. Hence, the command centre.

At the centre of the dome there is a raised area surrounded by thick blue glass. It is here we head. The arrogant part of me has surfaced now I am in more comfortable territory. I tell myself that the silence of my comrades is because they are in awe of this place, in awe of what we built.

The Core houses the primary control boards and it is from here that I begin the lengthy process of trying to establish a satellite uplink. The worry which has dogged me is beginning to fade, I feel less and less like the deceiver, the building still had power, which meant that other things were possible too. The others hover in the background. They are out of their depth and I decline their polite offers of assistance. After much button tapping and several hundred command line instructions I manage to tap into the satellite feed algorithm. It is at this point I am confident in using Shiva to assist.

"Shiva, display visual confirmation link for Eagle Knight One."

"Eagle Knight One visual reply" she echoes in the large room. We all look up expectantly at the large screen in the Core. It stays blank, just the occasional static flash. "Shiva, display visual confirmation link for Eagle Knight Two".

"Eagle Knight Two visual reply" says the artificial lady. More empty pixels. We cycle through. Three, four and five yield similar results. After the sixth satellite feed has failed to reveal anything Tasker can no longer bite his tongue.

"What the pissing hell is going on Redmayne?" he asks eloquently. For a moment or two I consider how to frame the complexities of the satellite system to him in words he will understand. "The uplink was a system which required around the clock monitoring and maintenance. Tiny adjustments to the satellites trajectories and alignments were made in order to keep the uplink functioning. The system has been out of action for too long and is too far out of synch to give any kind of visual feed."

"Sounds like bullshit" comes the sneer.

"Keep trying Patrick" says Trowler.

We cycle through the next five without any success. We have flown hundreds of miles out of our way, and put ourselves in the position where we may never make it back to the sea going tomb waiting offshore for us. For nothing. It has been futile and only seeks to hammer home just what a waste our every action since the downfall has been, mankind is finished, the dead have risen and this is their time.

"Shiva, display visual confirmation link for Eagle Knight Twelve",

"Visual link confirmation" says the machine in the same tone as she has the previous eleven times. A tone that belies what comes next. There is no static this time, the screen bursts into life and reveals a satellite feed of the ball of rock and gas that is Earth. Data streams down either side of the image, but none of us pay it a single iota of attention. We are transfixed, hypnotized by the cruel brilliance of what we see. This is a picture that will turn in my mind for the rest of my numbered days.

Thirty seconds later the picture is gone. I try to re-establish. No luck, I work at it for a few minutes, then ten, fifteen, twenty. The next thing I know I have spent over an hour trying unsuccessfully to get the feed back up. In the background I am forced to listen to the mixed reactions of the others. Tasker rages, at me, at the world. Trowler just keeps saying that he doesn't understand while the others are silent, pensive, demon wrestlers. I give up. The chair creaks as I sit back.

I look around the command centre, I dazzle myself with the lights which cut through the darkness of the dome. Then a thought hits me, it sucker punches my consciousness so hard I nearly fall off the chair. "Shiva, is it dark outside??" I ask frantically.

"Can you clarify the query?" she asks me with not a hint of panic.

"Has the sun gone down???"

"Sunset was twenty two minutes ago" she states.

"Shiva, switch off all internal and external lights above ground level",

"I am sorry Patrick, the manual overrides that you put in place to power the system prevent me from doing so, you will need to use the main junction box in the utility centre to turn off the lights". I start to run with the others hot on my heels. I am given a taste of Lieutenant Taskers brutal physical strength as he grabs me by the scruff of the neck mid run and pulls me from my feet.

"Where are you running to?" he bellows.

"Let go of me you fool" says I which with hindsight was a mistake. The words are barely out of my mouth as the barrel of his weapon presses against my skull. I raise my hands in a placating manner. "Lieutenant Tasker, buildings like this give off a lot of light, which is bad enough, but this building in particular was designed in such a way to maximise the use of that light to create a pillar, a beacon of light which shines high into the sky".

"A beacon" whispers Patricia sounding horrified. Deep inside Taskers eyes I see that same horror, though the man masks it with many other hardier emotional constructs. Now we are all running. The lift up is agonisingly slow. The corridors do not seem to end as we race to the utility centre. I locate the physical breakers for the lighting systems and flip all twenty of them down in quick succession. The room goes dark. We breath deep for just a few moments. "Were we in time?" asks Sutton.

"No" says Trowler from the security console where screens display a feed from the buildings external cameras. We all go over to look despite knowing full well what we will see. There is a line of Cadavers all around the building, with hundreds more joining them every minute.

Chapter 6, Off to the lakes

The rattling of empty fuel drums is like a death knell. A gong signalling the cadavers below to be seated for the final meal. Tasker throws down the last empty drum in disgust. "They're inside" says Trowler from the edge of the helipad as if the noise of breaking glass hadn't been enough of an indicator.

Carlisle had risen. Tens of thousands of crimson eyes which had been aimlessly shuffling through the streets several miles away had looked up from their activities when the light went up. The Sword of Pendragon, as it had been known, had been the cause of much controversy and conflict between the company and the people who lived there. Some saw it as a welcome symbol of a thriving British industry and a company which supplied thousands of local jobs. Others saw it as ostentatious light pollution. The cadavers saw it as the dinner bell and had flocked towards the light.

"Stefan Kessler" the thought comes to me suddenly.

"What about him?" says Tasker.

"He, and several other top execs had access to the secure underground car park, he drove a bomb proof Rolls Royce with bullet proof windows, he drove the kind of car that we might be able to get out of here in".

"Keys?"

"His office, on the penultimate floor, just below the board room." We sprint down the stairs. As I go I look down and far below I can see shadows dancing within the low level emergency lighting. The cadavers were shambling their way up to meet us.

Stefan's office is opulent. I am reminded that no matter how high I thought I might have risen within Pendragon I was still a long way from a top spot that I would never see. The paintings on the walls were not replicas and the carpet underfoot was as expensive as it felt. Three of the walls were glass, the fourth was home to book shelves and a door which led to the CEO's private bathroom suite.

We ransacked drawers and upturned ornaments looking for the keys, but they stayed hidden or were not there. Tasker was becoming angry. He smashed the butt of his gun through a glass tabletop for no other reason than to apparently try and alleviate some of the rage, it did not work.

I was not immune to the feeling, after going through the empty drawers of Stefans three hundred year old, gold inlaid oak desk, for about the tenth time, I slammed my fist down on the unforgiving surface in frustration. I was surprised when I looked up to see a face looking back at me from Stefan's computer monitor, the face was that of the man in whose chair I sat.

"Patrick?" said the figure with a slight Scandinavian twang to his voice. The fifty seven year old looked in remarkably good health, he was well groomed and dressed in an expensive looking suit, I could make out little of his background, though I was certain that I could see shadows shifting slightly behind him.

"Mr Kessler" I returned his greeting. The others came running as soon as they heard the voice from the speakers. "Patrick" said my former CEO in a friendly tone "What are all these people doing in my office?"

"Trying to survive Mr Kessler...sir, where are you?" I ask still in disbelief at what I am seeing. "Far away Patrick, far away and safe".

"Well that's good to hear sir, I wish that the same could be said of us, Edenpark has been infested Mr Kessler, we are in here looking for the keys to your car in order that we might escape?" The blond billionaire mulls this over thoughtfully.

"My heart, my heart goes out to you Patrick, truly it does...but survival, survival is not for everybody my boy, sometimes it is easier to accept your fate, in times such as these, really there is no escape." I do not get a chance to respond. I have felt his hot breath coming over my shoulder the whole time and after what was just said there will be no containing him.

"Well bugger you very much Mr CEO but some of us want to survive anyway if it's all the same to you, so be a good chap and tell us where the god damn keys are would you?!" Tasker almost screams into the webcam and covers the screen in spittle as he does so.

"And who are you?" says Kessler apparently unphased by Taskers rage.

"Lieutenant Tasker, British Army"

"Ah, a military man, well I am sorry to hear that your brave endeavours are coming to an end, perhaps you should turn that weapon on yourself, after putting your comrades out of their misery first yes?" I can scarce believe that I am hearing, Stefan Kessler had always seemed like a mild mannered compassionate man. Despite his calm smiling demeanour there was no mirth or mercy about what he was saying, he seemed to be speaking to us in the same way that a scientist would address a lab rat.

"Mr Kessler,"

"Yes Patrick,"

"Eight years ago on a company retreat in Eastern Europe we went white water rafting on the Danube, do you remember that sir?" Stefan nods.

"You will recall that you fell from the raft and struck your head. By the time you came to you were in the hospital, do you remember that also sir?" Again he nods.

"Stefan, I was one of the people who jumped in, I helped pull you from the water, I pressed my mouth to yours and I literally breathed life back into your body". I let the silence hold for a moment or two before adding "That sir, was an act of compassion." I do not need to elaborate, he gets the point, I just hope it is enough. I hear several voices from the background on his end of the transmission and Stefan appears to be listening and nodding to someone off camera.

When he looks at me again the smile is gone and a slight frown furrows that surgically perfected brow. "In the private bathroom there is a towel cupboard. The wall at the back is false, behind it is a ladder which goes down to an escape tunnel which leads out to the hills well beyond Edenpark." The others move straight away. I sigh a relieved sigh which is cut short by the banging on the office door. They have arrived.

"Thank you sir, goodbye and I hope to see you again one day", the smile is back on Stefan's face but he shakes his head at my statement. Just as I make to move away he speaks. "Patrick" he calls.

"Yes sir?"

"Fey Le Nar raen" he says before the screen goes dark. I carry my confusion with me as I reach the bathroom, see the broken panels at the back of the towel cupboard and follow my comrades down the ladder which leads into the gloom of the escape tunnel.

There is a light on the horizon as I exit the tunnel into some hills just to the north of Edenpark. The site is far away, yet I can still see the terrain around it shifting slightly as the cadaver swarm ebbs and flows around the pyramid. The tunnel had been long and dark but the passage was smooth and well built. I tripped and stumbled under my own steam not because of any architectural flaws in Kessler's escape route.

The others did not wait for me, I was not surprised, I could hear them getting further and further ahead the whole way up the tunnel but I did not call out, I would not shame myself any further. There is relief as I see them sitting waiting for me as I emerge, the relief does not last, as soon as I am in the open they are on their feet and start surging down the hillside towards a nearby farmhouse. Thanks for the rest guys.

Edenpark was a revelation on more than one level. Pendragon Systems was a progressive company, it did not believe in standing still or having its progress come about as a reactionary measure. Pendragon wanted to control the market, to control the scenario. I'd always been a supporter of this proactive approach, but the events of the past day led me to question whether or not the lines had become blurred. Stefan Kessler and his company seemed to have been remarkably well prepared for an apocalyptic nightmare which no one, apparently, had seen coming.

I shiver as I stand under a tiny canopy on the side of one of the farms outbuildings. The rain pours steadily down the corrugated corridors and splashes noisily at our feet. Across the way Tasker and Trowler are fiddling with the engine of a run down looking Range Rover. Patricia, Mark and Daniel stand with me, they do not seem to be shivering, but all of us are silent, alone with our thoughts. Any attempt at conversation is struck down, for all I know we are all standing here thinking the same thing but we're just too afraid to broach the subject.

Or perhaps it's just me, perhaps I alone am worried and filled with fear, perhaps they are stoically staring out at the rain and thinking of successes to come, planning a way out of the mire. Perhaps not. But I am not yet dead, and will not be reaching into anyone's brain to seek out their thoughts any time soon.

There comes a throaty rumble from the car. Trowler gives us a thumbs up, Tasker pays us no heed at all, I honestly don't think it would make any difference to him if we came along or not.

The vehicle is cramped. We still carry a fair amount of munitions and supplies, gun barrels dig painfully into peoples ribs, boxes of ammo weigh heavily on our feet and will lead to a numbness that the rest of the body would envy if it knew what other kind of fates might be in store.

We drove to the top of the drive which leads out on to the main road. I volunteered to open the gate, once the vehicle was through I closed it back up and jumped in the car. Tasker was scowling, the others had grins painted on their weary faces.

"What?" I ask of the amused collective.

"Felt the need to close the gate eh old chap" says Mark Kirby.

"Ah" said I realising the source of their mirth "Old habits die hard"

"Old soldiers die harder" intoned Trowler and Daniel Sutton almost in unison. I nodded my head at the old saying and then with our fearless leader muttering to himself from behind the steering wheel we pulled out and started our journey.

Had these been better times then we would have jumped on the ring road outside Carlisle, pootled onto the M6 and zoomed south at high speed. But these are not better times, nor the same times, these are the hard times of our times. These are the days about which the poets would write and the prophets would be prophesying, if it wasn't for the fact they are all dead and trying to eat those that aren't.

So we took the little winding back roads. We were stopping constantly to force unoccupied vehicles or vehicles being driven by the truly dead, off to the side.

Back at the farm the discussion about our next step had been a short one. Trowler and Pat had floated the possibility that given our predicament the mission was effectively over and that perhaps the time had come to begin the long cross country hike to the east in order to try and somehow get back to the aircraft carrier.

Tasker said that the mission went on. He further explained that someone was broadcasting the radio signal from Ravensburg. If they had access to transmission equipment then they might have access to other things, like aviation fuel. Mark and Daniel had stayed silent because they agreed with him. I stayed silent because I was afraid of him. And so we headed south.

By back road and dirt track we eked our way south. I nodded off on occasion, I'd come to and look out at another field, another hedgerow, the patchwork of green and brown that was as much a symbol of Britain as all the other stereotypes. After many more hours than it should have taken we reached the first of the great lakes of the County of Cumbria.

It was getting dark as we came through Pooley Bridge at the north end of Ullswater. The wide body of the lake stretched out like a long black slug winding its slimy way south.

"We're stopping?" I said feeling like an idiot as soon as I'd said it. Tasker had pulled the car over to the side of the small road into some trees, of course we were stopping.

"It's getting dark, and much earlier than usual, my guess would be that we're in for a storm" said Trowler giving me an explanation. I nodded. The first rumble of thunder came and the rain started to lash down on the vehicle, some of the rain drops fell freely down onto the car, others cascaded in miniature waterfalls off a dozen different leaves before striking. Conversation was nearly impossible given the noise of the lashing rain, we lit no light that would give us away to any foe in the dark.

The only real option was to close my eyes and try to sleep. Dreams did not come easy and when they did they were a mimic of the horror of real life. Over and over my subconscious mind confronted me with images of what I'd seen on the display screen at Edenpark. Over and over I saw Vincent, as a puppy which morphed into a monster and ate me whole. Over and over I imagined my wife and sons last moments. Then just as the nightmare was at its deepest, just as my dream self drowned a welcome drowning another thought, a thought of razor sharp clarity entered my head and shook me awake.

The others were all sleeping or pretending to be asleep. Except for Patricia. She was looking up at the thunder split sky through the trees, watching the lightning intersect with the few visible stars in a display of destructive beauty.

"Patricia" said I leaning in close and whispering right into her ear. She nearly jumped out of her skin but recovered quickly. "What?" she hissed leaning in, seemingly annoyed at my intrusion.

"Back at the house, when I was attacked by the hound, why were you in the attic?". Even in the low light of the night storm I could see her confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"When I was in the garden running away, I saw a figure and a light at the attic window?" She fixed me with a level gaze. Though she tolerated me with a little less open disgust than someone like Tasker I knew that she, like them all considered me to be a weak link in an unsteady chain. Even so there was a curious pity in her eyes as she leaned in.

"We never went into the house Patrick, we only arrived minutes before the incident and just stayed on the perimeter. No one went inside".
Chapter 7, Little green men

There were plenty of rational explanations. Plenty of logical paths which I could have guided myself down. It could have been a vagrant, it could have been a cadaver. It could have been a trick of the light or it could have been a ghost. No. There was someone standing in the attic window with a candle. Cadavers have no interest in candles and as far as I know neither do ghosts. a living breathing person stood there, a person who up until now, in the middle of all the madness which had conspired against us since, I'd just assumed in the background of my mind was one of my fellow travellers.

In the hours since Patricia told me that they never set foot in the house I'd gone over it again hundreds of times. I'd fixated on that tiny blurred scrap of memory in my head. I examined the fleeting moment from every single angle, and as the mind has a tendency to do so, I started to make changes to my memories, where there was no face before I started to imagine many different faces. But it always came back to two, the two most prominent faces in my life, the faces who I had watched over in their sleep many times in my life, him and her, the wife and the son.

The thought that I might have tiptoed around inside the house, sniffing at the mouldy memories whilst one or both of them were in the loft brought me a mixture of hope and despair. I'd been so close, close enough that a man with wit and wisdom might have checked up in the attic, what with it being one of the more obvious hideouts in the house. Instead I'd stayed downstairs weeping into a rotten pillow, curse myself for a fool.

I must get back, I could think of nothing else as I sat there in the lonely dark. The storm passed and we had a brief respite beneath the stars. But barely had the last of the raindrops finished diving down from leafy heights that the clouds started to roll in from the west again. Within hours of the death of one storm nature gave birth to another right above our heads.

My mind resigned itself to a logical if slightly depressing fate. Should such a twisted luck have been suffered, should my wife or my son or my wife and my son live, still in our house. Then they had been there for many months, and hopefully they would remain, for as long as it took me to get back there. For as long as it would take me to gather the courage to flee from Emmanuel Tasker again.

Thinking about the lieutenant made me look up and glance in his direction. My eyes darted at each of them in turn, taking in the five silhouettes and pondering briefly the ridiculousness of our scenario. Cooped up in a car, in the middle of the nights second storm, the world had ended, all purpose had been lost. But still we sat here anyway, pretending. That's all we'd ever done, made a show of carrying on, giving ourselves missions and then clinging to them like life rafts.

Whereas the previous storm heralded the coming of an early sunset, its brother seemed to introduce us to a late dawn. The day barely climbed from the dark auspices of the weather front, but after a time I realised with shock that a new day was upon us. Barely a wink of sleep had been mine, but still I had the cramp and stiffness to show for a long stormy night in the car.

As they woke one by one they shared a look. A look that said they'd woken from a bad dream and wished that they could go back. A look that asked what they'd done to deserve to wake at all.

Breakfast was miserable. We climbed from the illusory protection of the car in order to relieve ourselves. Personally I also spent a considerable amount of time staring off into the trees imagining running through them to safety, then I recalled the anger Tasker had shown during my last sojourn. I imagined his face prowling through the undergrowth behind me, hunting knife in hand.

I got dutifully back into the car and we trundled on. The puddles caused huge splashes as we went. We saw a couple of cadavers by the side of the road, shuffling along, the undead hitchers who would not find a willing ride.

Through Dobbin Wood we went, through the spidery, slick trees. As we neared the end of the lake we came across the idyllic English village of Glenridden, the villages populous had ambled together in the centre of town to great us by the time we got there. This was one of the few occasions that the others were forced to open up with heavy ammunition in order to clear a path.

Barrels poked out of windows and boomed at the cadavers. Grenades made red puffs and loud cracks here and there. I put my hands over my ears to protect them from the roar, the guns were mere inches from my head. I looked out of the window at the lame Ullswater Steamers, they bobbed up and down, bereft of passengers and crew. Destined to rust and break down into the water, one day they would be nothing, it was likely that not even the history of what they were or the pleasure they brought would be remembered.

Eventually the guns went quiet. We rolled with slick, red tyres through the rest of the empty village and carried on down the road. When we got there Ravensburg seemed slightly less idyllic than Glenridden. The water of the Ravenpool was grey and murky. The tiny stone cottages seemed cramped and cold, meagre dwellings which, unlike those of Glenridden, did not give the impression that there was a warm and welcoming fire beyond the door.

Fortunately the village was cadaver free, those dead souls who once dwelt here must have wondered off some time ago, into the wild to savage squirrels and unwary travellers. We pulled to a stop just outside the village. On the other side of the small body of water that was the Ravenpool I could see a cluster of buildings, they looked deserted but I noted with interest the large antenna tower in their midst.

Tasker had his long range radio in hand which was connected to his ear via a headphone. Both he and Captain Skellen had been sketchy about the nature of the radio signal coming from the area. As far as I knew only a handful of people had been allowed to listen to it back on the carrier. Certainly as far as I was aware no one else had heard it since we started the mission which seems like many days ago now.

Always Tasker would listen to it privately. Right now he seemed to be incredibly agitated by what he heard.

"What's wrong Emmanuel?" asked Trowler. After a few moments Tasker shook his head and pulled the earpiece out.

"Nothing, there has been no sign of the signal for several days now" he said banging the radio down on the dash.

"Well what was it when you did hear it?" asked Mark Kirby. At this Tasker adopted a furtive posture.

"Different things, nothing clear and coherent, nothing tangible" he evaded.

"We've come all this way for 'nothing tangible'?" said Daniel Sutton voicing an annoyance I sensed was becoming universal.

"The message is irrelevant, just the fact that someone was here transmitting was the key factor, and it still is," said Tasker starting up the engine and revving loudly to cut off any more conversation.

We drove slowly up to the cluster of buildings down the lake road. They stretched off into the valley beyond the Ravenpool, this was a much bigger complex than was apparent from the village and the main road.

Ravensburg Secure Hospital was what it read on the signs. It was not an area which any of us were familiar with. We drove around the ring road but the site looked as dead as the village. When we heard about a radio signal I think everyone assumed that perhaps a bastion of the old world was still here. An operational base where there would be people with a plan that we could leech off for some hope. Instead there was just another of the civilised worlds ten million tombs.

We got out and skimmed the perimeter on foot but this yielded nothing. We were just about to return to the car when Sutton spoke up.

"Blood here" he said indicating some bushes just outside the main fence. We walked out to where he stood and sure enough there was an unmistakable sanguine sheen to a number of the leaves on the bush.

"More here" said Patricia a few feet into the undergrowth. The trail of blood went off into the woods near the hospital and the further along it we went the fresher and more plentifully it was daubed on the flora and fauna.

We were a few hundred metres into the trees when I saw him. He was just laying there in a clearing. His chest moved slowly up and down, he wore some sort of white gown that was covered in blood. The others moved in as a circle, their eyes and their guns scanned the undergrowth until they surrounded the wounded man. Trowler reached him first. I saw the sergeant reach tentatively to the persons neck. I walked up behind him and gazed down upon the wound ravaged form.

That he still breathed was a miracle. I could see the shards from where his shoulder bone had once been. The old me would have vomited, but the new me has a harder stomach. Even so it is difficult to look at the injury, the burned, mangled flesh around the shoulder is what has given our friend away, the steady trail of blood it left behind has now become a pool in which he lays, dying slowly in the woods.

Trowlers hand has not moved from the man's neck, which is strange but I think nothing of it. I look at the face, there is a horrific injury to the victims cheek. An aperture through which I see a dark tongue flailing slowly.

It is impossible to place his age, old I would say, but the ageless old, like your favourite filmstar, who reaches a certain peak in years and seems to stay that way for decade after decade.

Thus far his eyes have stayed closed, but as I stand fully over him, as he lay in my shadow they open. With green brilliance they shine on me and it feels like I am falling. They look like eyes which have watched me through time, eyes whose gaze has pierced the veil of the centuries, eyes which have seen things they should not have seen. My legs are unsteady but I do not notice as I fall with a leafy thud into the undergrowth.

I am experiencing a dream that I know I will never remember yet I sense it is vital that I try. I see a world that is illuminated by a green shadow. Vast towers poke out from the clouds and yearn to touch the moon and sky. Circles of gold pulsate around the planet. Ravens whose wings cover cities float majestically in space.

Fields of white ash stretch as far as the eye can see. Pits are filled with bodies. They are so deep that with my hands I could never reach the bottom, I would crush myself in a sea of limbs and torsos long before I got there. Long before I gave up in my search for a non existent radioactive phoenix.

I can see every fruitless ambition that came before, every woe that came after. They follow one another yet are completely unaware of each others existence. They stand on opposite sides of the circle, close enough to touch yet without a chance of meeting except on the pages of a book, except in the minds of those unlucky enough to live through both.

"Redmayne. Redmayne wake up" Patricia's voice pulls me back. I am hauled from the edge of a void. I open my eyes. She looks worried. I am too. But not by her, nor by the vision of an ever expanding doom which was sparked by the eyes of the prone injured man. No, I am worried by the black clad figure who has appeared at the edge of the clearing, I am worried about the hulking giant whose long barrelled silver cannons are pointed straight at us.

"Don't move" spoke a voice that was so deep it sounded like it could have only been generated by a machine. Indeed it seemed to warble with an echoing, metallic flux.

How he managed to get the drop on such a highly trained and vigilant group I do not know. Tasker, Kirby and Sutton are tense but they adhere to the strangers instructions. Trowler still has his hands on the wounded man's neck, he does not respond in any way. Patricia stands very slowly.

"Who are you?" asks Tasker.

"A friend perhaps, an enemy I hope not" says the giant. Perhaps it was the after effect of the dream trance, perhaps it was the fact that I was still sunk down on the muddy forest floor, but my mind reels from the size of this new player in our game. I would have put him at eight feet at least. But he was not just tall, his bulk dwarfed that of any rugby player or sumo wrestler that I'd seen. Judging from his catlike poise and that way in which he held rigid the massive silver guns it was a bulk comprised of muscle and not fat. Not that it was possible to tell given the thick black clothes he wore which were further smothered by an enormous cloak of a similar shade.

"Friends don't tend to point guns at each other" says Tasker, I could see the lieutenant was itching to raise his weapon and squeeze the trigger. But Tasker wasn't an idiot, he hadn't stayed alive this long by being rash. There was something about this newcomer that reeked of death, the capacity for violence oozed from every obsidian pore and the lieutenant knew it.

"These are unusual times, as well you know" replies the stranger cryptically. The chalk white skin of his face gave away nothing of any emotional content, neither did his pure jet back eyes which looked like something from a horror film.

"I'm going to need to take him with me", speaks the stranger indicating with one of the guns at the injured man on the moss.

"What is he to you?" I find myself asking. The stranger turns his eyes on me. As he assesses me there is a faint hint of surprise in his reply.

"You have the look of a Redmayne" he speaks, I am shocked and can find no words to reply, the stranger continues.

"He is a parasite and a criminal, I will take him to meet his justice". Tasker glares at me, then the stranger, then his fellows.

"I don't think so" says the lieutenant. Suddenly I notice something. Ever so slightly the black clad figures arms are tensing. They quiver in the air and I can see the fingers holding the triggers of the long barrelled weapons he has trained on us are taut with pressure. If I did not know better I would swear that the stranger is trying with all his considerable strength to pull the triggers, to send us on our merry way to hell, but he can't, some force restricts him.

"Our mercy will be our undoing you know" says the black clad man to no one in particular. As he speaks he lifts the heavy looking cannons and points them into the air, adopting more of a relaxed posture. Almost as soon as this happens one of our group strikes. It's not me, or Tasker, or Dan or Mark or Patricia. No, Sergeant Trowler who has to this point avoided all interaction with the stranger springs up, SA-80 in hand, he is firing as he brings the weapon to bare, the others react a split second later, aim is taken, lead is loaded and flung through the air at hundreds of miles an hour.

I look to the stranger, I expect to see him fly back through the air punctured by half a hundred bullet holes. Few of my expectations are being met these days. He moves, I will not say he moves quickly, I will not say he moves with inhuman speed for even this does not do him justice. He moves so fast that my eyes can barely track his movements. The stranger bends around trees like the wind, they cannot track him with their heavy leaden barrels.

Over fallen logs and through the undergrowth he moves with grace that would fill the eyes of every dead ballet dancer with green envy. It seems like only moments and he is gone. A few wisps of vapour hang in the air from the rapid fire machine guns which have collectively failed to hit their mark as they vandalised the trees and the air.

"What the shitting hell was that?" asked Tasker after a few moments of dumb incomprehension.

"I don't know, but I don't fancy being here when he comes back" says Kirby. Tasker nods.

"Too bloody right, lets move".

"We have to take him with us" says Trowler quietly.

"No way, bugger him, lets go" says Tasker starting to stride of into the trees.

"We have no choice" says Trowler moving to the body of the blood soaked man.

"I wasn't putting it up for debate" says Tasker intercepting the sergeant. They stand eyeball to eyeball for quite some time. No one else knows what to do. I sense that this confrontation has been building for a while. I am surprised to see Tasker back down.

"Fine, but he's your responsibility" says the lieutenant, storming off into the trees without a word to anyone else. Trowler picks the injured man up into his arms in an almost reverential fashion and follows Tasker. I exchange looks and shrugs with the others and then we fall in line. About ten minutes later we are all stood together on the edge of the woodland. We are all staring in dismay at our carriage and the billowing cloud of smoke which wafts up from it into the sky. The car is a shell, our belongings are less than that.

At that moment a cadaver comes stumbling from the trees behind us, it has seen the smoke and smelt the burning. It has sensed life and has moved to extinguish it. The manner in which Patricia pulls out her hunting knife and rams it through the fiends head is almost casual. Off in the trees we hear more noise, the sound of multiple things stumbling towards the roaring fire.

"Run" says the lieutenant. We obey.
Chapter 8, The Disfigured Dream

Just when you think things can't get any worse, any more strange and cruel, they inevitably do. The past twenty-four hours have been bizarre and uncomfortable. We avoided the cadavers. Trowler made up a makeshift stretcher, which nice guy Dan Sutton offered to help carry.

The strangers condition did not change, his every breath was a struggle, he would occasionally open his eyes, though after my first encounter I avoided going anywhere near him. The dream which had seemed so real had been reduced by my feeble mortal mind. Now just scraps and shreds remained, torn pieces of metaphysical cloth which I could not weave into anything coherent.

We spent an uncomfortable night in the undergrowth. I did not have the heart to ask where we were going, I don't think anyone knew. Everyone seemed to be undergoing some sort of psychological adjustment. The robust and unwavering Tasker was becoming withdrawn, as if even he was beginning to sag under the weight of our predicament.

We walked all through the next day down the valleys of the Lake District. I would say we were lost but it is difficult to be so when you don't seem to have any true destination in mind. Morale is gone, burned up with the car and all our kit. Boiled bark and muddy water do little for the appetite.

Darkness has fallen again and we have found a cave, nestled in some trees at the bottom of a large stony hill. My mind brings forth an echo of the past, it tells me that perhaps we are near Scafell, but such memories are unreliable and of little use in the here and now.

Patricia looks like she is asleep, or pretending to be so. So does Mark, I envy them. Tasker is apparently on guard though to be truthful I cannot see him and he might have just run off into the darkness hours ago for all I know.

Trowler and Sutton. They are very much awake. They are starting to disturb me. They are knelt over the green eyed man, they have been for hours. Their heads are bowed and their hands rest upon the dirt. They say nothing out loud but I am sure as can be that I can hear muttering and murmuring coming from the triad. Some conversation to which even the shadows would have to lean in if they wished to be privy to it. Against Taskers insistence a small fire lingers there at the entrance to the cave, another sign of his eroding authority.

My eyes begin to droop. My head dips every now and then and I can feel the blessed burden of sleep about to take me away for a time. But just as I am about to succumb I look up one last time. I start to shake and sweat. My heart flutters, my blood pounds. Sitting on a rock only a few feet from me, there is a cadaver.

It is a brutal looking beast. Though I am surprised by the neatness of its attire and its apparent lack of a desire to immediately start eating me. A grey shirt and trousers it wears. As I look on I start to notice other anomalies that do not fit with the profile of the living dead. Bandaged stumps protrude from the end of its shirt sleeves. And though its face is a lipless wreck that has had the humanity carved from it with a blade the eyes are pure and clear, and they stare steadily at me with the contemplative look of one who lives.

"Who are you?" I whisper.

"A man once, like you Patrick, now, a ghost perhaps, a ghost of the flesh," its voice is halting, the sounds warped. The inside of his mouth reveals a torn stump of a tongue which slides uneasily over broken teeth. Even so, I can pick out the words.

"What do you want from me?"

"What do you have to give?" he slurs. My eyes glance over at the green eyed stranger. If Trowler and Sutton are aware of the conversation taking place they give no outward sign.

"Him?" I query.

The mutilated man nods but says. "He is not yours to give, which is much a pity, a great deal of change might come to the horrors in front and behind us if that was not the case".

"What did he do?" I ask. The man considers the question.

"He broke the cycle, he broke me, and he..." the sentence cannot be finished, the man tails off.

"What is your name?" I quiz him uncertain of what to do, and curious as to how he seems to know me.

"My name is Robert Locklear." The sound of the name sends a chill through me, I have a memory, a faint recollection of a dream, a dream of ravens biting at the dead, it is gone as soon as it arrives. We sit in silence for as long as I can bear until the discomfort prompts me into more questions.

"I have another question," Locklear nods.

"What do the words 'Fey Le Nar raen' mean?" I can tell by the wide eyed stare that I have surprised him, there are still things he does not know.

"Where did you come by those words?" he asks me. I tell him of the encounter in Stefan Kesslers office. "Raen, as a literal translation means rise, as for the rest," before continuing Locklear looks around, assessing the shadows for who might be listening. "The Fey Le Nar, is a group...whose history goes back further than any known to the established civilisations of the world".

My question is answered but the revelation has caused a dozen more to take its place. I am trying to decide which one to ask next when he interrupts my decision making with a query of his own.

"Tell me of your travels Patrick, tell me of how you came to be at Edenpark and all that befell you there, perhaps there are yet more secrets to be shared between us."

I told him, about all that had taken place since we left the carrier. He nodded through most of it. Then I got to the command centre, to the topic of the satellite feed, to the images which we'd seen which I'd been reluctant to share with anyone, even myself. He leans in close at this point. "We saw the world, for just a few moments, we saw the storms. Dark clouds, swirling hurricanes that stretched from one side of the planet to another, lightning flashed constantly. Vast clouds of ash obscured the world, where the cloud thinned we saw fire, fires that engulfed entire nations. The planet, the planet is dead Robert Locklear, the world has been swallowed by a maelstrom of fire and ashen darkness..."

"All except here", he finished.

"All except here", I repeat. "Why? The abyss has smothered all life from the face of the Earth, all bar Britain, the clouds hovered around our land, but they do not cross the seas, they do not breech some damned, blessed barrier which prolongs our agony."

"This is a sacred land, Patrick, a special land."

"What does any of this mean, why are we still here?" I implore him for some answers. Locklear stands unsteadily. I can see the bulge of heavy bandaging on his knees and he grunts in pain as he staggers towards me. A bloody stump lays on my shoulder as he leans in close, I lose my gaze in the horrible gaping wounds on his face, fascinated and reviled in tandem.

"Patrick, Patrick, Patrick" he whispers in a distant voice over and over and over.

"Patrick" shouts Patricia and I come to. She is leaning over me as is Mark Kirby. Of Robert Locklear there is no sign.

"Whats wrong?" I ask,

"You were screaming in your sleep", says Patricia. I can see Tasker standing near the entrance to the cave. I climb to my feet shaking the sleep from my head. Light has started to creep over the horizon, winding its way down through the canopy and into the eyes and minds of we surviving few. What the day will bring I do not know. But all of a sudden Trowler and Dan Sutton pick the stranger up on his stretcher and walk out of the cave with him. As they pass I am certain I can see a smile on the face of the green eyed man. With little choice or alternative the rest of us follow them off into the woods.
Chapter 9, Down by the sea

We trudged through the forest. Every now and then I could see Tasker shaking his head, the unmistakable sound of disgusted tutting followed in his wake. Conversations were short, abrupt things, built on no more than absolute necessity.

We spent another uncomfortable night in the wild. Though no more dreams came my way for which I was thankful.

"Got any particular idea where you're going?" sneered Tasker to Trowler and Sutton.

"West" came the unhelpful reply. Night fell. There were whispers all through the darkness. Arguments in hushed voices about how people had changed and where did their loyalty lie. There was conspiracy and consternation all through the night. None of it comes my way first, for I was a minnow, a coward who would likely run. Until the dawn that was when Tasker came slithering over a log and crept close to my ear.

"Just don't get involved" he hissed. "Things are getting out of control, the time has come to end this, we must get back to what we know". I just nodded and stammered out a hushed affirmative.

The light came, he sloped off. We all rose. The injured man was lifted up and we started to make our way along. After a time I heard the seagulls and realised how close to to coast we were bearing.

We stop for a break around midday. As we made to stand Tasker made his move, I did as I was told, I did not get involved.

"Stop" said the lieutenant forcefully. Trowler looked at him. The sergeant had changed over this last couple of days. So had Sutton. A look of haunted zeal was in their eyes, as if they were no longer their own men but belonged entirely to an ideal which they'd embraced. Trowler had always been the calm voice, the placid sergeant, a man of prodigious strength matched by his compassion. Now he was a fanatic, a wandering soldier who moved forward with great purpose to a destination that only he seemed to know. I don't know why we'd followed him and Sutton so blindly these last couple of days. Perhaps it had been nice to see someone who had some idea of what they were doing.

The wave of events which had destroyed our world and carried us along since were dizzying in their embrace. It was easy to be swallowed by apathy, to follow for the sake of following, to dog the steps of the person in front of you simply because they were there. Taskers patience with such an approach had come to an end.

"We need to keep moving" said Trowler patiently.

"No, we don't. What needs to happen is for you to remember who is in charge." Taskers voice got louder as he went on. "What needs to happen is for you two to explain to me what is going on with our friend there and where on this cursed earth you think you're going. I am the lieutenant...".

"Emmanuel" started Trowler raising his hand and pointing at Tasker. That was as far as he got. Taskers hand lashed out like a knife and chopped into the sergeants neck. Trowler staggered back clutching at his throat. Then he ran in aiming a clumsy roundhouse at Tasker. The fist failed to connect, the arm was grabbed and twisted with a crack that made me wince.

Trowler fell to his knees with the pain, the last thing he saw was Taskers knee as it came smashing up into his face. I felt sorry for the sandy haired sergeant as he fell down into the leaves holding onto the remnants of his nose. The silence was total in its grip. Only Tasker had the guts to break it, he was in charge of the moment.

It was to me he looked as he spoke. "Well, it's nice to clear the air" said he. I suddenly saw all his weakness laid bare. Violence was his only tool, he'd been so reluctant to use it until this point, all his life he must have seen the dead ends down which it had led him. There was such a relief on his face, it had all worked out, and all he needed to do was hurt people.

Behind him I saw Dan Sutton lift his arm. Tasker was still smiling. The bullet was travelling at around eight hundred miles an hour as it burst from the middle of his forehead dragging with it a trail of mushy brains and tiny skull fragments. The lieutenant died smiling as I was splattered with gore. Still he grinned as he fell to the ground, down into the leaves where he would rot with everything else.

"Dan, my God no" shouted Mark Kirby who scrabbled at his waist frantically trying to draw his own Glock 17 from its holster. Mark Kirby had three daughters. Three more lost children. He had a cat which he'd been rather unoriginal in naming Whiskers. His wife was a secretary at a solicitors. His Grandfather had been in the merchant navy. He had a fear of wolves and he enjoyed quad biking. The facts regarding Mark Kirby could fill a book, but none of them mattered, and none of them could help stop the bullet which went in through his throat and came out the back of his neck.

He fell to his knees and uselessly tried to halt the spraying blood. Dan Sutton marched over to him, jammed the already hot barrel of the Glock into his old friends eye socket and pulled the trigger, feeding yet more grey matter to the forest.

Patricia had looked on dumbfounded. I don't think her training had covered what to do when your fellow soldiers start murdering each other following a zombie apocalypse. She sucked in a few deep breaths and started to back away. I think she'd made a decision. She looked at Dan Sutton. At those cold blue eyes. She knew what was coming next. As she started to lift the barrel a form reared up next to her.

Trowlers hunting knife bit deep into her arm eliciting a horrible scream as the gun fell to the floor. There is no such thing as a comforting scream, but there is something about the scream of a woman, the giver of life, the sound of terror carried in every octave. A backhanded punch sends Patricia falling to the ground. Trowler has his back to me as he climbs on top of her. I see the serrated hunting knife plunging down time and time again throwing globules and strips of blood high into the air. Screams become gurgles, gurgles turn to one last breath before the silence. Even then he does not stop.

After an age he rises, the crimson man. There is a huge smile on his face, a twisted contorted grin. I prepare myself as best I can.

"Make it quick" is all that the pathetic form who is me can muster as I drop to the ground. I see the sergeants red boots come into view as I gaze at the ground.

"Leave him". I would do anything to have gone back in time to a place where I could end my life, just so as not to have to hear him speak. The words are like poison in my ear, I vomit just at their uttering. When the retching is done I look up. The injured man is off his stretcher. His skin is aglow with life, thin silvery veins give light to the life there. He looks like Tasker, it takes me a minute to realise that a part of him is Tasker. I look over at the lieutenants mutilated body and sure enough it is evident that this creature has carved off as much of his face as was possible and is now wearing it.

I'm idly aware of Sutton and Trowler stripping the bodies of the others, taking from them anything that might be useful. The green eyes have me, I am caught in their hate filled tractor beam.

Finally Trowler hauls me to my feet. "Go with the Harlequin" he says gruffly.

"What?" I get a back hand to the face for that.

"Go with him, understand?" he bellows. I nod. I whimper. I am so sorry. I am vaguely aware of my gun being removed from the holster at my side as Trowler and Sutton lope off into the woods. The bodies are left to lay where they have fallen.

The Harlequin he looks at me and beckons gently. I follow like a hypnotised rat. We walk through sunny glades and through mossy hollows until I can hear the sound of waves lapping at the shore. We emerge from the trees and I look up and down the deserted beach which looks out onto the Irish Sea.

A boat waits there, a simple rowing boat. The Harlequin has but to point to it. I know my purpose, I help him into the boat. My skin crawls at the sensation of touching him. I feel sick to my core and am forced to vomit once more, this time my bile goes into the sea and floats there on the top like some pathetic mutant jellyfish.

I push the boat out into the waves and clamber aboard feeling soaking wet and confused. The Harlequin points out to sea. I turn my back on him, take up the oars and begin to row. My mind is hazy, a fuzz filled mess. I am blinded by the chaos of what just happened, I think I may have broken something, a part of me has snapped, deep down inside my mind.

I keep rowing. It is a nice day. The salt sea air and the sense of purpose start to ease my nausea. The seagulls they circle beneath a cloudless sky, miles of beautiful green and yellow coastline fill the horizon. The further I get from my nation the more beautiful it looks, the greater the distance between myself and the horror, the less the horror seems.

We are a couple of hundred metres out from the shore when I see him. He comes walking down out of the trees. He wears a backpack and saunters as if on a summer holiday. I would know him anywhere, even if I was to stare at him from the other side of the heavens I would know that figure.

"Gideon!" I shout with all I have. It is enough. My desperate and elated cry carries across the water like a skimming stone. "Gideon!!" I cry again. One can spend too long questioning how the impossible has come to be, sometimes it is best to embrace it and never let it go, and at some point within that embrace you may come to know how miracles occur.

I must turn this boat around. He has seen me. He waves and I start to turn the bobbing vessel. What is that pain? It was so fleeting, like a wasps sting at the base of my spine. Why is the boat not turning? Why have my arms failed me? I can see my son still waving. I will come for you my boy.

I am laying down, gently I fall backwards into the boat. This is not right. I need to go back, I must go back. The Harlequin has my head resting on his legs. I see he holds a scalpel with blood upon its tip. He is smiling at me. I cannot feel a thing. The gulf, the sadness, it is too wide, too deep for me to factor in any other feeling. So I become the sadness, woe is me and I am woe, we know nothing else beyond each other, and I cannot miss a happiness I can no longer conceive.

The scalpel descends towards me. It feels like he is drawing on my face, lines and curves that work their way all around. Finally he stops and I can feel tugging as he peels at something. I see a flat and flopping item pulled from my head. My eyes are filled with blood but even so I see as the Harlequin lifts the mask which melds messily with the one of Tasker he already wears. His own features are hidden but not forgotten.

It is like looking in a mirror. I stare back at myself. Bloody tears mark both the real me and the reflection. I look up at the blue sky one last time. I imagine the clouds and form them into the shapes of everything that has come and gone. I have so many questions. "Fey Le Nar?" I say. He nods and grins with delight. "We rise" he says excitedly. Then the scalpel comes down. It is with slow delight he takes my eyes. Once I am in the dark I am vaguely aware of more blows as they rain down on me. Then the darkness is total and I cease to be aware of even that which was me. Goodbye.
