

**Old World (The Green and Pleasant Land)**

Oliver Kennedy

Copyright 2014 by Oliver Kennedy

Smashwords Edition

Chapter One, The Dark Inside

Where would you like me to start? Shall I begin at the beginning, the genesis of our nightmare. Maybe I should recount every single footstep and the consequences of each stride that has brought me here today. Maybe I should tell you what it feels like to wake up at three in the morning with good old uncle Richard frantically trying to claw your face off with his bare hands? maybe you would like to know what it feels like to scoop up that odd looking bedside ornament and stave his head in with it?

Deep breaths. It's a nice day, I don't want to ruin it.

A year ago I found out what it is like to become a part of the news story. To step inside the bubble. I could not channel hop away from what was happening. The sky was filled with helicopters and the streets were wreathed in fire. The Deathwalker Virus was in town for lunch and it appeared that the general populous was on the menu.

Family had been the first thing that sprung to mind. Family is god. Not for everybody, but it is for me, and nobody wants to lose their god if they can help it. The only problem was that after a frantic dash across the city, after gathering my family to me I realised that our problems had only just begun. I was relieved, for about ten seconds. Then started the long flight out of the city. Then started the traffic jams. I don't know what was worse, the early days when we were bombarded with news about the cataclysmic nuclear exchange between the US and China or the times after, when there was radio silence, a cacophony of static and recorded emergency broadcast messages which told us nothing.

After days of people sitting in their cars peering at each other through smeared windows and exhaust fumes, the fuel started to run out. As peoples cars died they just got out and wondered up the embankment into the trees, out of sight, out of the mind of the world.

Eventually our own trusty family car went the same way. I looked at my darling Sue, I looked in the back seat at my sons Mac and Zachary and my beautiful daughter Ellie, I looked at my best friend Greg who'd been with me on his teabreak when civilisation collapsed. We didn't speak, we got out of the car, grabbed the belongings which we'd salvaged, the tents and the sleeping bags and the meat cleavers. We joined those who had already passed from the memory of the world, we climbed the embankment and lost ourselves in the pines.

We walked forever, over the hills and far away. We encountered cadavers, fortunately in numbers small enough that we could sufficiently deal with. In the before times on long journeys we played I-Spy and such like. Now there was another game, 'name the cadavers'. Deathwalkers was a moniker coined by the popular press and derived from the designation of the virus which had caused our downfall. But I was quite impressed with some of the names the kids came up with, 'Maggot men', 'Graveborn', 'Wormwalkers' to name but a few, it was a way to pass the time.

This was an existence which had never been planned, every day was improvised at first, but we soon fell into a routine. Up at first light, walk all day, steer clear of towns, if we came across other travellers we would hide from them while they hid from us, and eventually we would creep past each other, casting furtive, suspicious glances across clearings and over fences. Avoid the roads, kill the cadavers, scavenge and walk, walk, walk and walk some more. We would set up a tent in the undergrowth and huddle inside listening to the imagined horrors of the night until sleep came.

At first I'd been glad of Greg's presence, he'd helped us deal with the cadavers and the odd traveller who was not content to hide from us and thought they would try and add to the trouble of the world. But as time went by I started to get an uncomfortable feeling, especially in the tent at night when we were all squashed in together, I knew that they'd all fallen asleep except for him, without even looking I knew he was awake, laying there waiting for something.

Greg had been my friend since senior school, he'd also had a crush on Sue since senior school, a fact he never hid but always spoke about with self-deprecation and a smile on his face, but it was a statement which could never fully conceal the wound in his eyes, the resentment which he harboured.

We were living in a changed world and I hoped sincerely that Greg had successfully let go of the emotional anchors which held him to the old world in the wake of the bigger concerns we had. My hope was in vain.

It started innocently enough, helping Sue wash clothes down by the lake, helping Sue cook the dinner, helping Sue dismantle the tent. She laughed off my attempts to start an argument over it, she told me I was being silly, so I bit my tongue and kept my suspicions in check. In truth I'd lost track of time, but it had been only a matter of months when Greg decided to fully turn away from the civilised life somewhere on the horizon behind us, like a dying sun whose light would soon be lost.

It was during one of Greg's 'I'll help Sue gather firewood outings' that it happened. I heard a scream, very faintly on the wind. I told the kids to stay put and followed that scream and the ones that followed to it's origin some distance off into the trees.

Sue's blouse was ripped, her face was red on one side and a thin trickle of blood was coming from one of her nostrils, Greg stood over her, busy loosening his belt. Sue saw me, I saw the fear and the relief in her eyes, Greg didn't notice either. Several images of the past flashed before me, Greg at school, the crying girl in the toilet who we never saw again. Greg on nights out barely saying a word as he watched the girls go by, the secretary at work who lost her harassment case. Years of denial crumbled in front of me.

I am not a violent man, or should I say I was not a violent man before. The weight of everything that had happened came crashing down upon me, it mixed with the red mist which had descended when I saw her laying on the ground in the leaves and the dirt. My despair and my rage merged, the death of who'd I'd been occurred in the same instance as the man I needed to become was born.

I never saw Greg's living face again, he died from the first blow of the meat cleaver as it burrowed its way into his head from behind. I didn't stop there though, I was overcome by the maelstrom of grief and fury, I was petrified at how I was going to stand up against the monster the world had become, I channelled all the rage and fear down the arm which held the cleaver. When I'd finished, when I sank exhausted to the floor there was not a whole lot of Greg left, I could feel pieces of him congealing between my fingers, but I did not move to immediately clean the stain of my best friend from me, I just lay there for a while in the dirt with Sue cradling my head in her hands until the sun went down.

The kids asked surprisingly few questions, which was nice. Maybe they'd had that same uncomfortable feeling as I'd had for the past few months, maybe they thought things would be better now Greg was gone, they were wrong of course.

We kept going, ever further north, following an elusive dream of sanctuary. Autumn waned in it's vigour. Winters hand would soon hold us all and I knew that we couldn't keep sleeping in tents. Eventually we reached lake Windermere. We avoided the town itself and scouted over the hills of the western shore. Just as we were about to descend onto the lowlands to the north of the lake Ellie spotted the house.

It was nestled within the trees and backed onto the lake around a bend, a long way from the town and out of sight of any other dwelling. It looked perfect, but then so did Windermere itself from a distance, yet I knew up close we would find infection staggering through the streets looking for someone to devour. But this house, this house might just be the sanctuary we were looking for.

We scouted it for a couple of days, there were no comings or going, no fires were lit and no movement could be seen. The cold was setting in and I decided that time to be bold had come. It was me and Zak who stormed the place. Zak, my eldest son who I'd always hoped to have passed more on to than how to effectively decapitate a cadaver.

Inside we found an old lady and a dog, neither were alive but both were consumed by hunger. The dog was tiny, probably a poodle before it turned, I could not tell for now it was hairless, grey, bloody and missing large chunks where its once loving mistress had taken bites out of it after she'd turned. I used the machete and pinned the poor mutt to the floor such was the force with which I ran it through. I looked up to see Zak executing a poor attempt to despatch the shuffling form of the old lady who had once been.

He slashed upwards through the abdomen and ribcage, slicing apart the frock which she had once laboured so hard to keep nice, the move succeeded in covering Zak in blood splatter, however he made up for it with his next move. The old ladies head bounced and rolled for a few feet across pristine carpets before coming to a rest.

Her name had been Mrs Robinson and when I opened up a pot in the kitchen to find a plentiful supply of earl grey I whispered a silent prayer to her, where ever she might now dwell.

So we had a home, we cleaned up the blood, buried the bodies, thoroughly, and hunkered down. Winter came and went and we saw not a single soul, alive or dead, the entire time. Snow covered the land and ice made a prisoner of the lake. We were alive and we were together, and by the time spring came around, Mrs Robinsons amply stocked larder was now just a sparse cupboard, but still hope managed to bloom.

So that's that, the last year of my life, but I will not dwell on the past, this is the now so let me tell you about it. Let me tell you what I see. Clear water gently lapping at the shore. Birds over head. Long grass bending in the wind. Let me tell you what I hear. The children are playing, their shrill cries of mock terror are a little too loud for me, as I have warned them many times. I call them children, and I sorely wish they still were, but at fourteen and sixteen and having lived through the end of the world I don't think I can call them that any more. I hear the occasional quiet plop as a curious fish comes up for air before weaving its tiny ripples across the lake and diving back down into the darkness. The birds are singing a merry song and this is as close to perfection in an imperfect world as I have been in many a day.

I had no maggots to use, so rough, home baked bread is my bait, a tiny ball of yeast and flour on the end of a hook. They will bite or they will not. This is the first time I have embarked on leisure since the madness began, I am in no hurry to end the contentment.

A duck makes it way across the water. They are a rare sight these days, ducks are too slow, too stupid to run, it's the same with the swans and the geese and all the water birds. They take too long to get in the air. Not the fish though, the fish are safe, cloaked in the darkness beneath the water.

A car rumbles up the driveway. Sue and Mac have returned. Given how long it's been since we've seen a living soul we have started to use Mrs Robinsons little run-around to scavenge the local area. They will have fuel, hopefully, to refill the butane gas canisters the Robinson's had installed. Now all we need is some fish. But I am in no rush, if I can wait they can wait.

After a few minutes I hear the patio door slide open. I crane my head and smile. There she is, this could be any Summer. Her low cut dress shows off her gorgeous legs and those soft smooth thighs. Sunglasses hide beautiful blue eyes that would make the sky above me jealous if if had the wit to look upon her, if it had the privilege of gazing into them as I do.

Lush auburn hair frames a pale freckled complexion. She stops in her tracks, her smile is frozen, strained, struggling to maintain its presence on that most beautiful of faces. She's brought out two bottles of lager, looks like Budweiser, I don't mind so much, I can drink American. Besides, it's all limited edition these days.

But she has stopped, and the smile has gone. In slow motion I see the two perspiring bottles fall from her hand and break apart on impact with the patio. She pulls the tortoise shell sunnies from her face. Then I see the terror. That's where it lurks for us all, behind the eyes, behind the beauty. But it's not me, it's beyond me she's looking.

Dazzled to distraction by this wife of mine who makes me weak with her walk I barely noticed the tension on the line, the tug of the fishing rod which I have left dangling in the water. Her terror jolts me out of contentment. I spin around and watch the placid water break as something emerges from it.

It's a fish. Or rather it's half a fish. The poor bugger has already been half consumed by the thing which emerges with the fish in its maw. A cadaver. Grey, bloody skin. A dead thing which doesn't know it's dead. Who it may have been is irrelevant these days. It and it's kind have eaten apart the world and now it's eating my god damned fish.

The slow, shuffling thing walks up out of the water towards me, my sons shout warnings from behind me, Sue just gasps and her heart beats so loud I think can hear it from twenty feet away, or maybe it's my own heart and I am no longer able to distinguish between the two. I don't move, too sullen, too morbid. I realise then the false hope that my contentment had given me. I can hear the boys running across the patio behind me, they wouldn't be in time, it was only a couple of feet away.

As its shadow falls over me I look up into the cadavers eyes, eyes which once bloomed with the ambition of a mortal man. There is no beauty there. Once maybe, but now, now those orbs are torn, ripped up by bulging capillaries which have shed their blood and made it look as if the thing has been weeping. But those sanguine tears, laced over dead skin do not fool me, it is as incapable of crying as it is of anything else besides killing and eating.

In a blur of motion I sweep up the machete that's sticking up out of the ground beside me, in a heartbeat the blade cleaves clean through the skull of the person who used to be. Grey matter flies here and there, what little blood is left splatters onto the long grass. Bits of dead thing float away across the surface of the lake. The cadaver falls back into the water and is gone from sight within moments until only red ripples remain. I look down at the half eaten fish at my feet. Damn.
Chapter 2, The thing in the garden

"Are you feeling better?"

The patient did not answer. The patient thrashed on the table. The man in the white coat moved to the other side. He administered some more medicine.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked again.

The patient did not answer. The patient could not answer. The patient struggled feebly against the restraints. The man in the white coat administered an extra large helping of medicine. This elicited an audible response. Not words. It is hard to form words when your tongue has been severed by a half a hundred cuts from a rusty scalpel. No, no words would escape the patient, but he managed a low guttural retching sound, an attempt at a scream perhaps, or an unutterable curse maybe.

The man in the white coat moved around the table continuing to administer healthy doses of the medicine. The patient cried a lot, when he wasn't trying to scream or spit blood and bits of tongue at the face of the man in the white coat.

At one point he who held the medicine stopped and pulled off his protective face mask. His kindly green eyes held a feigned concern, he smiled a cold old smile. "Are you feeling better? Are you feeling better? Are you feeling better?"

The patient did not answer. The patient could not answer. He could only watch as the blade plunged home again and again, as his lifeblood filled the slippery surface of the metallic table on which he lay, before dripping to the floor like a slow red rain.

Eventually the man in the white coat moved away from him, to another table, another of the many patients in the room, but still he could hear the soft voice asking the same question over and over and over.."Are you feeling better"

Ellie had a cough. When she'd been younger she'd got coughs and we used to worry. Me and Sue would lay together listening to her coughing through the wall, we would chew our nails and we would worry and then we would take her to the doctor. There was nowhere to take her now. So we just lay there and listened and worried.

Following the attack from the cadaver in the lake the air of relaxation which had settled upon us over the winter months disappeared. We were again held in a state of constant vigilance. There were more cadaver attacks, perhaps they'd been there through the winter but the ice which had covered the lake prevented them from surfacing? who knows. But now the sun was shining longer and warmer and we noticed more deathwalkers than we did before, not enough to make us move on, just enough to keep us permanently on edge, constant fear will get to you after a time.

And now we had Ellie's cough to worry about. I can hear it right this moment, making its way down through the floorboards, assailing my position as a responsible parent, but there was no one to take her to any more, no doctors and nurses, so all I could do was listen to a cough which more and more was starting to sound like mocking laughter.

Sue was going around blowing out the candles. It turns out that the dearly departed Mrs Robinson was a big fan of candles as well as earl grey tea. And not cheap candles which burn themselves out of existence in a couple of hours, the old dame had a horde of big, fat, tallow candles, the kind that can hold back the darkness for days and days and yet barely break into a waxy sweat.

We'd planted vegetables in the garden, we'd turned the house into a castle, we scavenged, we inventoried, we decapitated and we survived. Cough, cough, cough. I was sitting staring deep into flame which earnestly danced this way and that to avoid scrutiny when she spoke. "Rob" said my wife, my darling Sue.

There comes a point, when you have been with someone so long, when so many sentences and feelings have passed between you that even with the space of a single word you can hear a hundred different meanings based on the tiniest alterations of inflection. There is the "Rob" that she would say if she wanted me to help with the drying up. There is the "Rob" she would say if she wanted me to help with a crossword puzzle. Then there was this "Rob", the one she'd just said, the one I hated, the one that contained all the fear.

My machete never left my side these days. It came to hand as easily now as say a pen or a mobile phone had done before. I joined her by the kitchen window. She'd just blown the candle out and a thin wisp of smoke was rising up and bumping against the glass as it slowly dissipated and became one with the universe. I put a comforting hand on a shaking shoulder, I looked out into the garden to try and spy what made my lady love tremble so.

Something moved out there, between us and the lake lapping gently at the shore. The problem was that this wasn't cadaver movement. For all their horrific nature the maggot men are slow and easy to despatch provided they don't get the drop on you. This was different, this shadow did not shuffle or shamble it's way mindlessly through the bushes. It seemed to jump and leap with speed, it looked like a squat bulbous thing which bent the darkness to its form and scurried here and there with a malign yet unpredictable purpose.

"Wake the boys" whispered Sue.

"Let them sleep" came my foolhardy response.

"Rob" she said. This was the 'Rob' that was half plead half command, this was the Rob that had been the cause of many disagreements, it was the 'Rob' which overruled me and I was often glad it did. I crept quickly and quietly up stairs which desired to creak but could not such was my knowledge of their weak points. The boys were together whereas my coughing girl had a room all of her own. I laid a hand on Zak who was instantly awake, we sleep lightly these days, Mac was roused from his slumber a few moments later.

"There is something in the garden" I whispered. My heart soared with pride at their response, Zak was eighteen and Mac four years younger, but there was no fear, they nodded and drew meat cleavers and knives from beneath their pillows before following me downstairs.

Sue had maintained a vigil by the window. "Still there?" I asked. She nodded.

"Still there, trampling through the tomato vines" she said, sounding mightily offended that our night-time visitor was causing damage to the cherry plumbs.

"Graveborn?" asked Mac in a voice that became less a boys and more a man's every day. "I don't think so, it's moving too fast, and it looks.." Sue hesitated "Different, not right somehow". We all spent some time peering out into the darkness catching the occasional glimpse of what is what out there, however a waning moon was shedding little light this night and there was only so much we were going to be able to descry from inside.

Though I was confident that all the entrances to the house were well protected I was not comfortable letting that thing have free reign outside. I pondered for a only a few moment more. Cough, cough, cough.

"Zak, with me, Mac stay here with your mother" No objections, no arguments, just obedience, it was the only thing which had kept us alive at times. We removed the barricade from the side entrance of the house together, Zak and I slipped out into the darkness, the door closed behind us and I heard the scraping of tables and chairs being moved back up against it.

We crept almost on all fours around the side of the house and into the back garden, my ears were attuned to the sounds of the night, none of which seemed untoward. We moved slowly to the vegetable patch, I felt squashed tomatoes as my fingers grazed the ground. I stood up to get a better look around. Then came the attack.

This was definitely no cadaver, it leapt out of nowhere with incredible speed and flexibility. I lost my balance and went down under the weight of it, I lost my grip on the machete and turned as I fell pushing the bulbous thing away from me. It's skin did not feel cold and lifeless like the cadavers, it was warm, hot to the touch even, it seemed to writhe and pulsate beneath my grip. Zak shouted as he bulldozed into my attacker, knocking it from on top of me before it had a chance to sink in tooth and claw.

As it rolled away, Zak helped me to my feet and handed me one of the spare knives from his belt. At that moment the waning moon managed to free itself from the restricting cloak of the clouds, even in the slim silver light of the crescent I was able to see it. My heart almost stopped before proceeding to beat faster than it had before. This wasn't a cadaver, this wasn't anything that I'd seen or heard of or even imagined before.

There was no time to lose, we both rushed in, the thing launched another of its leaping attacks, this time I ducked slashing up at it as the form sailed over the top of me, it had barely landed when Zaks meat cleaver thudded into it. A horrifying scream pierced the night, a clunky bulging fist on the end of an elongated bony arm lashed out and sent my son sprawling to the ground clutching his chest in pain.

I threw the knife, I'd never been much of a knife thrower in the before times but practise makes perfect and there had been plenty of practise on the road. Though the creature was squat and bulky I still outmatched it for size. As it was trying to remove the knife which was solidly embedded in it I seized the meat cleaver still jutting from its back and then jumped onto top of the writing mass forcing it to the floor.

The gurgling screams echoed out into the darkness as I continued to hammer the cleaver into flesh and bone, the mist had descended again, as I continued to strike I saw images of Greg, flashes of my friend, I saw him underneath me pleading with me stop the attack, but I did not, I brought the blade down repeatedly until he was in pieces. The screaming stopped, the thing was not moving any more. I looked up at the house, I could see two faint silhouettes at the kitchen window.

I pulled the thing down to the lake and rolled its body into the water, making a mental note to remove fish from the menu entirely.

I grabbed Zak and we headed back to the side door where we already heard scraping as the barricade was being moved, the screaming could well have attracted cadavers and it would not do well to be caught out in the dark by a horde.

We made our way inside and Sue hugged me despite the blood soaked shirt.

"A cadaver?" she asked.

"Yes" I replied quickly cutting Zak off and giving him a look that spoke volumes. He looked surprised but nodded in agreement at my lie.

"Only a little one, possibly not long turned and that's why it moved like that" I said. Sue nodded and forced a smile, she knew I was lying but she also knew that I would not do so without reason.

"Lets all get some sleep, we can go over what happened in the morning" They didn't take much convincing, Sue kissed me before tiptoeing up the stairs after the boys. I would see her soon. First I sat and poured myself a large helping of Mrs Robinsons whiskey. I sat and drank until my heart rate slowed and the panic abated. I thought about what I'd seen in those moments of moonlight, a creature from a nightmare, there had been no face, no legs, just arms, lots of long spindly arms around a fat round body, like some warped spider. Where the hell it screamed from I had no idea. One thing was for certain, alive or dead it was certainly not human.

I continued to drink, later than I had intended but still I could not bring myself to surrender to sleep. It was the wee small hours when I took Mrs Robinsons old ham radio down from the shelf and started to cycle through the static. I did this often, a couple of times a week, kidding myself that maybe the world out there had come back to life and was waiting for us to rejoin it.

I listened to the static for a time until suddenly the dial clicked onto silence, it was a mid range FM frequency, but gone was the familiar hissing. Maybe I'd had too much whiskey, maybe the radio was knackered. I leaned in close to the speaker, I could hear something and the longer I listened the more convinced I became that I could hear breathing, when a voice spoke I nearly jumped out of my skin. There it was, clear, concise, and soft reaching across the radio waves, a voice asking a question over and over again, "Are you feeling better?"
Chapter 3, The old man

More time passed, decisions weighed heavily upon me. Sue wanted to move, to find help for Ellie who grew paler by the day and whose cough grew into a spectre more threatening than any cadaver. I wanted to go and find help also, but there was nowhere to go, after seeing the world fall to pieces I could not responsibly believe that it had sewn itself back together in such a short space of time.

Everyday I scanned the radio waves, finding nothing but that strange station with the question repeated over and over, mixed in with occasional bursts of manic laughter and the sound of blade on blade. I kept that discovery of the station to myself, it seemed the kind of revelation that would only add to the worry.

My sons were restless. They bickered, the fought for attention, they fought to prove themselves despite having already done so many, many times. We were all restless. It exacts a heavy toll when the totality of your life comes down to sitting around waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I took to ranging, further and further afield, I found a boat moored nearby, I rowed around the lake, as much to vent the some pent up frustration as to explore. Time was running out...

Lungs were burning, old lungs which had seen better days many years ago.

Then, about a week after the fight with the freak of the many arms I went on a wide range over the hills to see what I could see, I took Mac with me, usually I took Zachary but my younger son was becoming jealous, besides, he need to learn what was out there just as much as his older sibling. It was high summer and the green and pleasant land had become just that, bathed in light and teeming with life.

The trees were the cadavers of nature, except they had the good grace to die and decay away before being resurrected in a different form and a different time, unlike the victims of the Deathwalker Virus, dead who did not know they were so, who clung to life with lifeless fingers, driven by a dark purpose that even they did not know.

Despite the heat and the sun I could not help but note the hazy field in the sky, a grey tinge to the glorious blue of the before times. I'd watched plenty of documentaries and disaster movies which talked about a nuclear winter, but a nightmare described and not witnessed is a nightmare that is hard to recognise for what it is. Is this as they had described? Would this be the last summer as the heavens slowly filled with the ash and dust of the world. I had no idea, it could go on the list of such.

Stretched and stringy muscles filled with acid. He was not built for this kind of punishment. But he must keep going. He must survive for just a few moments more, because each moment is valuable, though moment is a footstep which exacts a heavy toll on the life span of he who runs.

I didn't know it when I got up this morning but today would be the day when an event would come to pass. Life is not a straight line, life is a memory which we are forgetting even as we live it. Events occur which sent us spinning this way and that, they are not so much stepping stones, for they trip us as often as they aid us along the way.

Walking along with Mac I was reminded of many walks which we'd taken when he was a young boy, I used to take them out alone sometimes for I wanted my children to know that though we were whole as a family, each of them had my love and my time as individuals. As we gazed over the Lake District national park I caught hold of such a thread of recollection, I closed my eyes and followed it back in time, I breathed deep the warm air of the Summer and I almost forgot, I came so close to peace, then I heard the cry for help and the horror descended, the grey film of dust that hung above us choked off the blue sky of memory.

From what have I escaped? I have traded one nightmare for another. My heart beats as if to deafen me. Ah, and I am done, the last of my strength fades from me. Even as I collapse down into the shelter of the shade I can hear their slavering maws coming for me. But alas, it seems I have a few moments more to treasure, for a few rays of determined light do pierce down through the ceiling of the trees, and through them I see the living, a man and a boy, a father and a son.

We are insane. This is a very bad move. The arrogant part of me thinks that we are driven by nobility, some desire to preserve life. The realistic part of me knows that I am doing this out of combination of bloodlust and desperation. The anger which was unleashed during Greg's demise has not abated, it rests sometimes but it has been born and will be denied life by no will that I possess. Also, you never know who you might end up saving in this kind of world.

There are about a dozen cadavers in all bearing down on the old man who has collapsed into a sweating gasping heap on the floor. It is a group that we would normally have hidden from, too big to handle with just the two of us. What kind of idiot would endanger his son like this?

"Circle around, hit them from behind, don't put yourself in the middle" I shout to Mac as we rush towards the scene of unfolding violence. The seconds are whizzing by with unseemly haste. I am saddened to see that we will not be in time to fully save the old man's life, one of the cadavers has already reached him and has sunk its teeth into the flesh of the old timers calf. There is a weak scream in response, judging from the condition of the victim the bite will only serve to hasten the inevitable conclusion, but perhaps we can buy him a few more breaths.

Mrs Robinson had an old hatchet for chopping wood which judging from the rust on it when I found had not been used for many years. But after some vigorous cleaning and my developing skill with a whetstone it was now a razor sharp implement of cadaver destruction. In my left hand it complimented the old faithful machete in my right very nicely indeed. The dance began.

It was cooler here in the shade of the trees which covered the foothills around Windermere, though I think the goosebumps are very little to do with the temperature. The first cadaver I took was busy chewing on pieces of the old man's leg to notice me, not that it would have defended itself if it had, they were empty of any intellect that might pertain to a desire for self preservation.

The hatchet took off half of its head, my exultation was brief for I was now surrounded by a sea of growls and outstretched arms. In such a remote area it was odd to see this many cadavers gathered together in the wild. Some had thick grey fingers and short stubby nails, others had long sharp nails which had once held pretty pictures and an array of garish colours.

I slashed here and there like a madman, they painted me with blood so dark that it was more black then red. They lost hands and arms but they still shuffled in. I would equate fighting cadavers to what it must be like to fight a maddened dog which has moved beyond the ability to feel pain. Attacks to the knees, the groin, the chest, these are largely ineffective, a heart that does not beat will not burst with enthusiasm for causing death in its host.

Taking the head, destroying the brain is the only way to ensure victory. But in these circumstances, with eleven of the things crowded around me, I take what I can get. Severed fingers can no longer claw at me, the kneecaps shorn off by the sweeping arcs of my machete cause their owners to at least fall to the floor where they are forced to crawl towards their prey.

Despite my furious slashing I can still feel my will being undone. I trip over the old man who I've almost forgotten about behind me. The shadows of the cadavers loom over me, mixing in the shade of the trees which loom over us all, looking down from their lofty boughs in revulsion at the bloody mortal madness that has become this world.

Then he is there, my son. Mac favours hammers. He has two, salvaged from Mrs Robinsons old tool box, the tools had once belonged to her husband Reg, who had used them to tend to the home of his lady wife, and more often than not fix damage to his model boats which he sailed on the lake in his retirement. They passed from him to her and now they had passed to my son who used them for a very different but still entirely worthwhile purpose.

We were not warriors before, but have become so through necessity, I have seen him practising this deadly dance in the garden, now implemented with devastating effect. For a few moments I lay in awe at my boys martial prowess. Cadaver heads explode like melons, steel claws crush long dead skulls, pulling them apart as if they were eggshells. But he is in amongst them and is in need of my help. I surge to my feet with blades in hand, together we paint the woodland red, gore and grey matter splatter across the trunks of trees who have never seen such vile slaughter in all their long years of looking down upon the savagery of nature.

It is over quick enough, the maws have been sated in their lust by the blood of their own bodies, they will not feast again, they will join the earth as they were meant to. I look at Mac, once I have assessed him from head to toe for any hint of a bite or scratch then I allow the pride to show in my smile. "Well done" he returns the smile and the compliment with a nod of recognition at my own violent endeavours.

Then I remember the old man, the purpose of our heroism. He is of an age, which would explain why such slow shuffling enemies had been able to keep up with him. Where he had come from I could not guess, his clothes were soiled tatters, flecked with as much dirt as blood.

"Can you hear me?" I ask him. He is struggling to breath and I fear it unlikely that he has the energy for words. I roll him onto his back with his head resting on my knees, I give him some water from my canteen before questioning him again.

"Does that feel better?" Wrong question. I cannot think why but asking him that seems to have terrified him, what little strength he has left is wasted as he thrashes on the floor. I shush and calm him as best as I can. I look up at Mac. A look of acknowledgement passes between us, this man is at the end of his path. But as his breaths become shallow and intermittent he manages once last interaction with the world. The old man reaches up a calloused hand to my head and pulls it closer to him.

He smells almost as bad as the decayed ones, his defeat at the harshness of the world is embedded in every bloody contour of his old wrinkled face. With my own face but inches from his own he whispers his last words, words which struggle to escape him, words which threaten to be carried away without a recipient even by the calm air on a day like this. "Ravensburg, the hospital at Ravensburg, it is..."

Whatever it is I will not find out from him. The sentence remains unfinished. The last breath and the last words rattle from him entwined in one another and never to reveal what may have come after.

We did not bury the body, nor did we set it alight for we had not the tools to dig or burn. We left him there, leaning against the trunk of an old oak tree, there he may lay still, or maybe he is walking by now. The fate of the old man's corpse is less of a concern to me than his final words, as we walk home in silence I dwell upon them, examining them from this way and that.

Back at out requisitioned homestead Sue can tell that something is amiss, as if the blood on our clothes is not enough of a give away the darkness in our eyes speaks volumes. But I have not the time for lengthy explanations, I ask the family to gather around the kitchen table. As Mac regales them with the story of what happened I am hunting through the pages of Mrs Robinsons old map of the UK.

They are so gathered and as Mac finishes his recollections I stride into the room. Zaks eyes are brown like mine, Mac has the green gaze of her mother, but it is to my blue eyed girl that I look, my pale Ellie, wrapped up in one of Mrs Robinsons hand sewn blankets, it is for her that this must be done. I put that map book down on the table and point at a circled place upon the old yellowed pages. "We are going to Ravensburg"
Chapter 4, On the road

Mrs Robinsons car was a tiny old beetle. It was a lurid green and though we could all fit into it, it was a squeeze. It was not the kind of automobile that you would want to be driving through a dead world in, it was not the kind of car which you would desire to sail up the deserted highways of the apocalypse in. It was not the kind of rig which you could mow down large numbers of cadavers with, it wasn't the car for us.

Fortunately there were a number of remote neighbours dotted about the hillside around the lake who had more suitable means of transport. I shopped around like a common car thief before pulling up to the homestead in a heavy duty range rover I'd relieved the owner of which would be our chariot as we made out way to Ravensburg. It was sturdy, spacious, secure and it had a massive steel bumper that was just screaming out to be covered in cadaver entrails.

We'd all spoken about coming back here once we'd visited this hospital, once Ellie was better. Even so we packed as if it was the last time we would see the little white cottage, hidden by a fortress of trees and thick thorny bushes.

Several days after the death of the old man and with the car fully loaded we prepared to say goodbye. I walked down to the lakeside and stared out over the water for a time. We'd seen an increasing number of cadavers emerge from beneath the glittering gateway of the lake. It was this increasing cadaver presence along with Ellie's worsening cough that was giving them the impetus to move on. That and the many armed creature which I'd killed.

I had in the end told Sue about what I'd seen, I lay in the soft glow of the morning light one day and told her about the nightmare, about my worry about what it might mean. That rather than healing in any way the world out there was becoming sicker every day. She managed a few hollow comforts in return. Too busy with her own dark dreams, uncertain which malign fate to curse with greater fervour, the death of the species or the death of the family.

I skimmed a stone and turned my back on the water. I joined the rest of the Locklear clan in the car and without a word or a backwards glance we set off from Windermere, back out into the big wide world.

Ravensburg wasn't far from where we were. Maybe an hour and a half's drive, dependent on traffic of course, I smiled despite myself at my rather inappropriate inside joke. There would be no traffic. The only obstacle we might encounter on the actual road was a queue of stationary cars, dead metal boxes which had long ago ceased to be traffic and were now just part of the terrain.

However the road we were taking was not a major one and unlike the arteries which snaked their way out the cities I hoped to find it relatively clear of obstructions. The owner of this particular vehicle, Mr Dan Holly, a neighbour of Mrs Robinson, had very kindly left me a pair of tinted driving glasses for the journey today. I remarked to the kids that I looked quite cool in my dark glasses, they remarked that I was a delusional sad case. It was just like old times.

During the long flight from the city when the shit had been fairly consistently hitting the fan every single day we'd seen a lot of carnage. Many fires had burned with no one to put them out.

Similarly even after we had escaped the concrete leviathan we'd stood on many hilltops and watched the towns and cities burning. The combination of unattended accidents, looting and a general desire to destroy things had painted a picture of a nation in flames. By day columns of smoke could be seen rising up into the sky like slow moving tornadoes of ash and grime. By night the horizon was illuminated by constant false dawn as the orange glow of burning Britain lit the sky and filled our nostrils with the scents of destruction from dawn to dawn and dusk to dusk.

Up here, in the more rural part of the world things seemed remarkably different. Fences were still standing, bluebells danced and swayed by the side of the road. To our utter amazement at one point we passed a field in which there stood a herd of cows, absently chewing the grass and staring vacantly at the infrequently seen car as we passed by.

Despite the normality of the country idylls at which we marvelled there were some very stark reminders of the kind of world in which we now lived. As we neared the north part of the lake we passed just south of the town of Ambleside. The national express coach which had been blockaded across the main road going into the town was covered in bullet holes and a large crudely written sign which simply said 'stay away'. Whether this was a threat or a warning the Locklear family did not want to find out.

Those parts of the town we could see told a grim tale. Burnt out buildings, burned out cars and bodies hanging from lamp posts. Some of them had signs wrapped around their necks but it was impossible from this distance to read them. We even saw the occasional cadaver roaming the streets, their bloodied eyes turned hungrily in our direction as we passed, but this A road was far enough south of the town that we did not need to worry unduly. We did find a couple of cadavers on the road here and there, but they did not last long against the thick bumper on the front of the land rover.

After about half an hours driving from the Robinson house we came to a crossroads and a decision had to be made. If we continued south on this main road then we would have to drive through the outskirts of the town of Windermere. As settlements went it was not huge, and housed only about ten thousand people. But it didn't matter how strong the bumper on the front of the car was, if we got stuck in a herd of cadavers that might easily have gathered in a population of that size, then we would be finished.

The other option was to go left, a thin winding road through some woodland which held its own perils, if they encountered any kind of obstacle on such a road then it would be a hard task to come back, we were also open to more hidden ambushes on a path, where cadavers might stumble from the undergrowth or fell men might lay in wait to take that which was ours and subject us to all manner of man made horrors.

In the end we went left, with all four passengers on strict instructions to maintain a vigilant gaze against any foe that might come against us.

Everything seemed to be going well. Until I beheld the grey horse, it had no rider, and it was death. I instinctively slammed on the breaks coming to a stop a few feet from the beast. Whatever fields and dunes it might have ran across with fleet footed abandon in life this was a creature of a very different makeup in death.

Its eyes were white and bloody, the similarly pale froth which foamed around its sharpened teeth was flecked here and their with crimson. Its skin had fallen off in many places as the creature had decayed, here and there ribs could be seen, poking out of rotting flesh, a darker grey then that off its skin.

Too late did I spy the fact that the dead horse had a rope around its neck which led off into the bushes. I yanked the gearstick back into reverse just as they struck. I heard one of the rear passenger windows break and saw hands reaching at Ellie. They weren't dead hands, they were dirty and filled with violent intent, but they were very much alive. We started to reverse just as one of the other windows went, this time on the front passenger seat. Sue screamed, Ellie screamed, I felt my heart start to race.

I back up too far, we went up onto the verge and I cursed loudly as the rear wheels became lodged, jutting over a mound of rocks and roots. I glanced up to see our ambushers. They were all male, their eyes were almost as empty as those of the cadavers. Their clothes were shabby and all of them sported the same scraggly beards and unkempt hair that I did.

Aside from the old man this was the first human contact we'd had in a year, the first interaction with someone outside the family since Greg, and it was evident that very little had changed. It was no surprised me that civilisation had fallen, my outlook had always contained an element of melancholic nihilism which I'd tried to shelter from my loved ones, no, what surprised me was the speed with which it had fallen and the finality with which the ties which used to bind us had been severed.

They seemed to be all around us, though there were only half a dozen of them it felt like a swarm, they carried clubs and knives and it was obvious that this robbery would also involve five executions.

The only advantage to us I could see was that these men were emaciated to a large degree, they had evidently not wintered on the veritable feasts which had come out of a larder like Mrs Robinsons. They were hungry men in a desperate world, and one of them had just reached in and half dragged my sickly daughter from the car.

Time seemed to slow down, the gruff shouts of the attackers, the bellows of pain and rage from my sons, the piercing screams from the female members of the Locklear clan, it all came through dulled and stretched and unreal. In the space of a few heartbeats I saw so many details, I saw Zak drive the point of a Stanley knife blade into the eye of an attacker on his side of the car, I saw Ellies back start to bleed from the cuts she was sustaining from the broken glass of the window, I saw Mac run a kitchen knife across the hand of the man who was trying to pull his sister from the car, the man shouted and let go and Ellie hung half way out the car like a rag doll.

Then I heard it, I heard it cut through the mental quagmire like a blade "Rob!!" she screamed, my lady wife. This 'Rob' this was not the fearful, or the demanding or the cajoling or the submissive. This was the 'what the hell are your doing just sitting there 'Rob'.

I pushed the door open with as much force as I could muster sending one of the attackers sprawling onto the tarmac. He'd barely got to his elbows before I was upon him. The kick hit his chin so hard that his neck snapped back with enough force to break. The man with the bloodied hand who'd been trying so vainly to take my daughter ran at me, I blocked his poorly aimed blow before ramming his face into the roof of the car, even as he fell I grabbed him and wedged his head in the door way before slamming it shut with all the ferocity I could summon.

I pulled Ellie from the window and opened the door allowing Zak and Mac to climb out. Then we were on the offensive. Hammers, knives, machetes and cleavers, the remaining four assailants put up a poor fight, three died quickly, the last one tried to climb back up the embankment into the bush, he fell twitching with my eldest sons meat cleaver between his shoulder blades.

I looked around, sizing each of them up from head to toe, I looked for scratches and bizarrely I looked for bites, I'd become so used to fighting cadavers that it took me a moment to realise that the evil of men was of a different nature to the evil of the dead, though it would not have surprised me to find that the living had reached such a level of depravity as to feast on their own.

Contemplation of my bloody but very much alive family was cut short by a snort from behind me. The strange grey horse which had been our bait eyed me balefully. I severed the rope holding it with a single swipe of the machete, the creature did not flinch as I did so. It stared for a few moments more, then it wandered off into the undergrowth with the odd maggot wriggling its way to the surface and falling to the floor, soon it was lost from sight and we were alone and surrounded by empty silence.

It took three of us pushing to dislodge the car from the embankment and get it back onto the road. We left the bodies for the flies and for each other dependent on which one rose first. We continued on and were all relieved when we exited the trees and were surrounded by open country side again. Up the road a way we saw the high hills of the northern part of the Lake District national park were rearing up. Nestled deep within them were some of the other bodies of water that gave the area its name, like Ullswater and Grasmere.

Our objective was closer than that but we still had a bit of a drive. Sue started to fiddle with the radio but I switched it off straight away which earned me a long steady glare for the next several hundred metres. I ignored it and we all retreated to within our own thoughts. I didn't want the others to hear the strange messages and the manic laughter.

At one point we passed some wreckage in a field, a downed plane of some kind I assumed, had I paused and considered the wreck I might have thought it odd that whispers of smoke still climbed from it here and there, and that fires burned within the metal shell. But we did not pause, I was deep in thought and much of it ill. We left the wreckage behind along with the fields and the cows and the long dead horses.

I'd never been a violent man, in the old world it had filled me with revulsion and on the rare occasions when I was confronted with it I often felt sick and dizzy. These days it seemed that all you had to step out the front door and violence would find you. There was no time for dizziness and sickness, I could not revile something which I was forced to do with such regularity lest I end up reviling myself.

I told myself over and over that we were still good people, that my sons were good men, men of necessity who in another life would be writing bad poetry, serenading pretty girls and buying flowers for their mum. But there was always that nagging doubt, that same voice which had fallen silent with death of principle, the one which looked on in horror from behind the red mist as my sons sliced peoples faces in half with meat cleavers and beat them to death on the open road. What were we becoming?

The maudlin lay heavily on me in a mirror of the sky above which darkened as we drew closer to out target. The pitter patter of the rain did not comfort me as it once had, I heard Ellie complain as the droplets came in through the broken window, this was not what she needed right now, the sooner we found that hospital the better, provided there was any one there to help of course.

Between the grand lakes of Windermere and Ullswater there is a lesser know and inferior body of water called the Ravenpool, named as such for its popularity with ravens which inhabited the area. The dark wings could oft been seen flitting here in there on the banks of the Ravenpool, taking on water and keep a wary eye on the long grass for enemies.

It was next to this body of water, just off the beat and track for a way that the settlement of Ravensburg could be found.

We turned off down the road towards the dwelling, a number of large buildings could be seen on the other side of the lake. The sky had darkened to an angry, inky black and the steady downpour was illuminated by the car headlights. I would one day look back on this moment and curse my own stupidity. I would curse myself for not asking a very simple question, why on earth would such a small and remote place have its very own hospital? We were about to find out.

Chapter 5, Ravensburg

The first impression was not a great one. It might have been dampened by the weather unfolding in the sky above us but Ravensburg did not have the look of a functioning anything about it. The huge gates which sat across an opening in the equally foreboding walls had been torn off their hinges by a tremendous impact at some point. They lay bent and mangled on either side of the entrance and their demise made our passage onto the grounds of Ravensburg that much easier.

Following our trauma on the road and the fact that poorly blockaded window frames which once contained glass were letting in water I was keen to get inside as soon as possible. For that reason I did not take the time to clarify the rain blurred signs which I squinted at as the land rover bumped its way through the puddles of the hospital car park.

What we were looking for was not hard to find anyway, the grand entrance to the hospital was marked by the tall doors beneath the colonnade and the intimidating statue of a raven with its outstretched wings which sat above it. Below the bird in large letters written across the lintel were the words 'Healing begins in the mind'. A nice little aphorism probably coined by one of the hospitals patrons.

The rest of the family disembarked and huddled in the shelter of the large grey columns while I parked the car. I even managed to park between the lines. Why? I do not know, for not a single other vehicle could be seen there, but old habits die hard. I got a strange feeling as I jogged through the rain and up the half dozen or so steps leading to the entrance. I remembered dropping Sue at the entrance to County General when Zak was born while I parked up nearby. She was sat waiting patiently in a wheelchair for me with an orderly who was grinning broadly at some jape about my parking I was certain she'd just made.

I recalled dropping her at that same entrance each time she brought another miracle into the world. She'd radiated such calm. In my recollections they were all sunny days, a marked difference from the grey and miserable turning of the clock under which we made new memories this day.

I ushered them through the tall red wood doors of Ravensburg Hospital and we surveyed the domain which lay beyond. The storm which had settled itself comfortably above us had made a bid to rob this day of all its sunlight, even so we could make things out in the murk. Long dusty corridors filled with the hustle and bustle of imagined spectres only. The nicely mosaicked floor was covered in broken glass and twisted metal, the foyer looked like a tornado had gone through it. The damage did not seem consistent with neglect or even the ravages of a cadaver outbreak, this looked more like deliberate and focused destruction.

"Where now dad?" whispered Mac. I didn't know why he was whispering and neither did he, it was just one of those places, the places where silence commands obedience to its law. Where the quiet will brook no contest to its mastery and will weave a hard fate on anyone who shatters its solitude with their own vocal chaos.

"Let me think" I responded peering into the gloom. Ellie coughed, and then coughed some more. I felt a creeping sensation behind me, it was nothing of the real world, it was regret, my old friend, he'd been absent for some time now. In this life the kind of decisions that you regret are not the kind of decisions that you live to see the other side of, which I sincerely hoped would not be the case for us today, for I was beginning to feel that familiar cold feeling of regret festering my mind.

This was not a place where lives would be saved. Like most of our land life had deserted this hospital long ago, there were no teams of experts waiting on had to assist us. No wise and learned men who would know the malady of my daughters lungs by listening to just one of those wracking coughs, which of late had started to leave little pin pricks of blood on her hand when she raised it. She hadn't said anything to me, but I'd seen the crimson fingers and I felt the pain she felt with each cough. It was the pain that drove me here, the blood which fuelled my worry and now added its weight to my regret.

But we were here now and we must try. "Doesn't look like there is anyone home" voiced my wife in a whisper which even at low volume could not disguise the 'I told you so hidden in it'

"We had to bloody try" I said with too much aggression. She looked wounded, though not wounded enough to stay a retort

"We didn't have to do anything" she snapped. I bit my tongue. It hurt. A lot. She'd been perfectly amenable to the idea of coming here, it had been a joint decision right up until the point it was the wrong decision, now it was slowly being painted and relaunched as my decision. Zak headed of any further arguing.

"There might be medicine" he offered helpfully. I nodded using his bright idea as a shield to ward off some of Sue's daggers. "Should we split into teams?" croaked Ellie in a tired and sickly voice. "No" said Mac straight away, "We don't split up, it's not our way" he looked at me and I handed out another approving nod. I looked around again, a plan forming in my mind, it was not the best plan, but it was the only one which my worried mind could muster right now.

"This main building works its way around a courtyard" I said peering out through a broken pain at the rain soaked plaza in the middle of the building.

"Lets do a circuit if this corridor, we will work our way around and check rooms which lead directly off of it only, we don't go wondering down any other long dark corridors and if we get back here without having found anything then we will hunker down in reception, wait for the rain to stop and come up with a better idea, okay?" I received a collective of much appreciated nods.

"Torches?" I quizzed looking at a Zak. He nodded and pulled a number of torches from his rucksack and handing them out to the others. They all seemed surprised that I'd suggested deploying the artificial illumination. Even before the apocalypse I'd been stickler for conserving power, and that was back in the days when I could nip to the shops and buy some Duracell. Many things had changed in the new world, and one of them was that I'd gone from being a stickler to being the grand arbiter of all draconian rules regarding torches. Many nights in the early days had been spent sitting in a cold light less camp with my families hostile glares directed at me through the dark. But I hadn't relented and thanks to that here we were, eighteen months beyond the end of the world and we still had working torches.

I sheathed my machete in exchange for a hefty silver maglite. With the hatchet in my other hand we started to make our way down the right hand corridor which would bring us around the large courtyard.

The hospital was huge, beyond this central compound there were a number of wings and dozens of outbuildings and tenement blocks. It would take days to search the whole place, days of exposure to the hidden dangers which lurked beneath every shard of broken glass which crackled like frosty snow beneath the tread of my size ten boots.

I did not switch on my torch just yet. That would be a last resort, when the dark had grown so powerful as to rob me of the sight of the hand in front of my face.

The ramshackle nature of the place did not improve. The building was by no means new and had fared badly in this era of doom. The rain formed puddles not only from the leakage which came in through broken windows but also from all the droplets which cascaded to the floor from many points in the ceiling. In places the mould had grown so thick and so black that it resembled a monster pulsating out of the wall, eating away at the old lead paint and sending the spores of its invasion force to cover the walls around which had yet to feel the force of the conflict.

There were other things on the wall. Things I hoped that the others were not seeing but that I knew they were. Blood, plenty of blood, and shit by the looks and smell of things. There were words too, words written in blood and shit as well as words written in traditional ink, which looked something of a cop-out against the backdrop of bodily fluids which some enthusiastic souls has used to daub the place. Much of what was written was nonsensical ravings, the same mad desperate phrases which we'd seen covering the sides of thousands of buildings in our journey into doom. 'God save us' 'God help us' 'Where is my family?' etc etc.

There was some originality here, sadly it was fairly negative in its outlook 'I will eat the eaten' 'blood rivers run not dry' 'welcome to the hall of the shadows own accord'. So many people became writers when the apocalypse happened, yet they all seemed to be able to write only about the doom that was occurring, very few spoke of hope or salvation, I could not blame them, but if they did not look for it then how would it every find them?

We darted off into a hundred side rooms on the way round. We ransacked cupboards which had already been ransacked many times by hands equally as desperate as ours. Some cotton wool, many pieces of obscurely shaped plastic that I could only imagine where to insert. The dirt of the world had been blown in through thousands of tiny cracks into this place which had once been a centre of healing. Things scurried in the dirt, they hurried this way and that beneath the rotten mass of the world, but they paid us no heed and we did not pursue them. Though my mind had entertained such thoughts more than once they were far from a reality, the remainder of the Robinson larder as well as the bounty of our vegetable patches were in the back of the landrover, I would eat rat one day maybe, but I would be much closer to death than I was today.

We'd reached the top of the central corridor which led back down to reception. We'd just rounded the corner to make our way empty handed back down to our starting point when I saw it. The silhouette was hundreds of metres away, standing in the light of the doorway which we'd come through an hour before.

I put my arms out and we all stopped, we all peered but could make out nothing of the figure but its dark outline. Something was not right, something hadn't felt right from the moment we'd left Mrs Robinsons, I felt a very real sense of dread wash over me, it came from every crack in every wall, through every broken window, it infused my being, I stood and watched the figure at the end of the corridor, transfixed by the patient silhouette which swayed gently from side to side.

Then came the scream. It made its way up out of the earth, from some dark room beneath us, far away yet close enough to pierce the dread. It was a soulless bestial noise. It was pain the likes of which can only come from a body whose spirit has already escaped it in madness. Then the silhouette started to run towards us, it was joined by more, some from the left, some from the right. They looked like shadows as they ran through the gloom towards us, but they cackled with a cruelty that only men can muster.
Chapter 6, Howling mad drums

"Dad, dad?!" shouted Zak.

"What?" I said tearing my gaze from the group running down the corridor towards us.

"Fight or run?" It was a good question and one I needed to answer quickly. I listened to the sounds of the rapidly approaching group. They howled as they came. It was not a friendly greeting.

"Run" The decision was made. I was panicking, we all were. In my indecision about whether or not to lead the charge away from danger or hang at the back to make sure it never caught us I drifted between the two, which was probably a bad idea. We ventured down one of the corridors which led into the west wing of the prison. We turned this way and that.

Without saying anything the torches had all been lit up, it looked like a disco was making its way down through the stained insides of the old hospital. The fact that we had run only seemed to excite the group behind us, their hollering and feral bellowing had become more enthused and filled with perverse joy when we'd bolted.

The place was a maze of confusing twists and turns. We ran up and down stairs, around corners and down long narrows which led to more of the same. We fell at times, we staggered. With each step I heard the pack closing in. They chanted as they came, not words, just grunts and growls like designed to inspire more fear and add to their own lust for the hunt. It worked.

My poor Ellie she was struggling, her legs were dragging and her ailing lungs were finding it hard to keep up. This was not the girl who I'd watched cross the line in first place in her school cross country a few years ago, this was a sickly ghost who I could love no more than I did but for whom I grew more afraid with each passing moment.

In the end we ran into a large room on one of the upper most levels of the hospital. The frosted windows all along one wall at least let in a fair amount of the grey light from outside, enough of a light to see that this was a dead end. Had I been in the frame of mind to analyse small details then I would have noticed that the windows in here, like all those which we'd seen in Ravensburg hospital so far, had thick wrought iron bars across them.

Neither of the two other doors in the room opened. It was empty bar for what looked like the ragged ruins of some playing dolls which lay here and there, perhaps this was some sort of child's playroom. These dolls had seen better days however, most were twisted and quashed and had suffered the tread of many a foot.

We turned to retreat but too late, this was our dead end, this was out last stand.

They did not hurry through the doorway. We backed up slowly towards the windows weapons at the ready. They entered the room with at a purposefully leisurely pace. They sauntered and strolled in to face us.

Since the world ended I'd looked upon the many horrors, since before then I'd seen things gazing back at me from the other side of a television screen that petrified me. I'd seen the dead walk and I'd seen things which should never have existed this side of damnation come running at me in the night. But this group, these foul creatures exuded an air of malice and dark intent that could not even touch upon the foulness that the world had thrown at us so far.

They were all male. Every one of them was dirty beyond belief, covered in their own filth, in each others, sweat and blood and piss and shit, they smelled as bad as they looked and they looked like they'd just crawled up out of a well of blood and faeces. Some of them moved with catlike grace, some of them jerked spasmodically. Some of them fixed us with hungry level glares, some of them twitched and shuffled and could barely keep their eyes on us.

Like a procession of doom they seemed to keep coming through the door. With each one of the pack who stepped into the room a little bit of my hope that we would get out of here faded. Fifteen, in the end there were fifteen of them.

For a long time no one spoke. They sized us up and we glared right back at them. The air between us filled with all sorts of unspoken dialogue. With their eyes, with their lingering stares they filled the space with threats of all that they planned, all that they desired to do with their hapless prey. And we retorted, with the steely eyed gaze of a group that was far from hapless. A group which had hacked and cleaved its way for many miles across the war torn land and would hack and cleave its way out of this room if need be. The problem was the yawning pit of fear in my stomach that told me this was a long way from an even fight, no least because of the great worth of all we had to lose. These men, these beasts, they'd had very little to lose before the apocalypse, all that it had robbed of them was their fear of persecution, their fear of punishment.

"Come to join the crazies, the crazies, the crazies, the crazies, the crazies.." the speaker, who emitted a certain amount of crazy himself with his manic grin and contact bouts of furious nodding, only stopped when cuffed round the back of the head by one of his pack.

"We want no trouble" I said immediately regretting the words, they sounded hollow and ineffectual, they sounded afraid and they bounced off the walls and spoke back to me in low mocking tones of the power I'd given up by speaking. They knew then that I was afraid, they could not see it in my stance, nor the faint glint of the sharp, sharp blade I held between us, but they could hear it in my wavering voice.

"No one ever wants trouble" said one of the men, the poor and threatening attempt at humour drawing out a few grunting laughs from his fellows.

"Most people who don't want trouble refrain from driving around in storms" said another.

"We were looking for shelter" I retorted. Sue was just behind me, I felt her try and reach a hand into my, looking for some hope, some solace to still the trembling. I pushed her hand away, I wanted to maintain an façade of strength, I am an idiot. Several of the pack laughed at my words. One of them, a hulking brute at the back who had a number of hideous scars around his eyes rumbled in a deep thunderous voice "What kind of madman looks for shelter in a loony asylum". There were several more laughs and I closed my eyes and cursed myself a thousand times within a split second.

The rumbling giants statement brought together a number of faint warnings and obvious failings which had been dancing around the edge of my subconscious ever since that stupid bastard old man had died mid sentence in the woods. I'd been ignoring these shouting voices but there was no ignoring them any more.

A huge hospital in the middle of nowhere, bars on all the windows, very little in terms of that which you would class as normal medical paraphernalia. Then there were the jump suits, the faded blue, covered in blood and dirt, identical jumpsuits that the men before me were wearing. It was the loony asylum remark that hammered the last piece of the puzzle into my stubborn mind. I saw myself, five years ago, sitting on the sofa channel hopping on one of the rare quiet evenings, I remembered the hour I'd whittled away watching 'World Most Dangerous Criminals'. I recalled with grim clarity the section on Ravensburg Secure Hospital, home to some the United Kingdoms most notorious killers who had deemed to be suffering from insanity by the courts. And now here they were, standing between my family and the door, and every one of them held a razor sharp scalpel in their hand.

The lunatics seemed quite content to continue the standoff, allowing the tension to build. Then she coughed. My little girl. A scraping, harsh cough which danced around the room in a similar fashion to how my words had done a few moments before.

"She's sick" said one of the pack, "She's infected" said another, "We can't allow sick people in the hospital". Piped up a third with a wicked smile on his pockmarked face.

I charged. And I screamed. A horribly spotty man with thin ginger hair was the first to go down, he stared dumbly at the stump where his hand had just been attached as he sank to the floor. The blood was a red flag to the chaos which surged into the room. They went in with me, my brave Locklears, my brave family. I'd held each one of them to my chest many times in my life, they'd all listened to my beating heart and had I hoped known comfort in the fact that it beat for them. Now I watched them go to battle as they'd done many times over the past year, my heart beat still but they could not hear it above the cacophony of screams.

Mrs Robinsons hatchet took half a face off. Everything was so lucid, there was no mist this time, no rage swallowed me, the part of my mind that was still thinking realised that it was because this time I was more afraid, too afraid to be angry.

I saw Mac and Zak leap in at the madmen, hacking, cutting, but they were cut back, scalpels lashed out, they draw blood like steel fangs from the soft skin of my children. Then events spiralled beyond my control. I saw the slight form of my teenage daughter dart through the opening in the enemy ranks which had occurred in the fighting. She fled the room, out of immediate danger, my relief was short lived however as I saw three of the pack chase after her.

I slashed my way through to the doorway. As I looked back I could see that half a dozen of the mad men were down, it was not enough. Then I saw the hulking brute deliver a right hook to my wife's face which sent her sprawling to the floor, my sons were overwhelmed, their fight had descended into an on the floor grappling match which they would not win. There were shouts and screams and cries of pain and then there was me having to make the most agonising decision I'd made since this whole nightmare started. I ran out of the room, I ran after my sick little girl and I choked on the guilt for the ones I'd just left.

I had no idea where I was going. I followed the screams, I followed the feral laugher and the furious footsteps racing away from me into the darkness. I had a dozen cuts that pained me, and dozen more I didn't know about such was the cocktail of adrenaline pumping around my body. I left my blood upon the walls here and there, leaving it to dry and join with others who had suffered the hunt, I left my sweat to mingle with the cracking paint, the only evidence that I was ever there.

I stumbled in the gloom and realised after a time that the screams and the laughter were getting further away with each moment. I ran up and down stairwells hopelessly. Too many minutes had passed. Too much time had gone by, hope breathed its final breaths, this was not right, this just was not right, after all we'd endured. Then I stopped dead before a shadow filled doorway.

I was at the bottom of a flight of stairs. This was below ground level and the darkness was almost total. My heart beat so fast I could barely hear the still raging storm outside. I felt my way into the shadows, it was a long corridor again, one in which I feared to tread but knew that I must. There was a pinprick of light in the distance which grew bigger as I stumbled towards it. The light was red, or maybe that was just the blood in my eyes. Either way it felt like I was walking into a photography dark-room.

I still could not see the source of the light, but in the low ruddy glow which it cast I could make out the large underground vault into which I'd walked. There were row after row of metal tables, each one held a body which might once have been a person but was now a mound of gore and bone. I heard a cry, a sniffle, I would recognise that sniffle anywhere.

"Ellie" I whispered.

"Dad" she whispered back. I crept to the back of the vault and saw her huddled there against the wall. Then I saw him step from the shadows, the brute, the big man from upstairs who looked like he could snap me in half like a twig. Well he could try. But he didn't look ready for a fight, he smiled a gap toothed smile at me as he stood over my little girl. Then I heard another whisper, very faintly from behind, words I'd heard before "Are you feeling better" came the sibilant hiss. I turned too late, I saw nothing of the snake as a blow was struck and my world descended into darkness.

Chapter 7, The mad harlequin

You will often hear of the human body being described as swimming in a sea of pain. But until you have taken a dip yourself then you will never be able to truly comprehend those words nor have any notion of such pain. Such was the level of agony I felt that it swam around my body, which was bereft of enough pain receptors to convey the hurt in its entirety. So they took it in turns, my injuries, to inflict their presence on my mind.

In a minute I'm going to open my eyes, then you will see as I see and we can live this together. That way, I will not feel quite as alone. My other senses are in disarray, all I can feel is the pain, all I can hear is the sound of my own mind screaming. My nostrils are clogged with so many dark scents that I could not possibly prise them apart. No, only when I open my eyes will I be able to make some sense of my fate, only then will we see what has become of me...

Night had fallen. I was tied to a chair in the courtyard that we'd circled around during our hunt for medicine and doctors and many other things that evidently were not here. After the basement I no recollections, which was a good thing, being able to remember the ruin that had been done to my body during its doing would have probably left me as mad as the inmates.

I could feel a wet sticky feeling all over, I hope that it might be sweat but I knew that it was not. My clothes were sticking to me, in the places where they had not been torn by the ravages of my captors.

"Wakey wakey" came a voice I recognised. It was the brute, the gap tooth hulk hovering in the shadows of the courtyard. Despite being high Summer I shivered in the open air.

"Nice of you to join us" came a voiced I did not know. With difficulty I moved my head to the other side and stared at another madman. This one was stick thin, with long bony arms that reminded me of the horror I'd killed in the back garden at Mrs Robinsons. Much of his skin was sagging and discoloured, he looked like someone who'd lost a great of weight since the end of the old world.

His bespectacled eyes were grey and shining in the light of the low fires burning around the courtyard. In his hands he was holding something, every now and then he brought that thing to his red red lips and nibbled on it. "Thank you for this" he said sounding almost genuinely grateful. It took a long time for my mind to process what I was seeing, for me too see the shape and texture of that on which he fed, my arms were tied to the arms of the rickety wooden chair, I looked down almost dispassionately at my hands which had once been home to fingers and thumbs but from which there now protruded ten bloody stumps and a few bits of gleaming white bone.

I vomited long and hard while I listened to their laughter. After I was done retching I looked around again seeking out some sign of the other Locklears. There was none but the brute leaned in as if he'd read my mind.

"Want to go see your family?" he said with feigned friendliness. I nodded dumbly. And he produced a scalpel. I expected another cut to add to the hundreds I'd sustained while I was out cold. But instead he slashed at the thin biting ropes which held me to he chair until they fell away. I felt dizzy and wired. Despite the pain there were moments of intermittent clarity and focus. Had I been conscious half and hour ago I would have seen them injecting me with a cocktail of drugs from the asylums stores that were designed to keep me alive, for just long enough to see what they wanted me to see.

"Come on then matey" said brute walking away from the chair and gesturing for me to follow. I lifted myself out of the chair and then fell straight to the floor much to the amusement of the inmates in the courtyard. The pain in my legs was agonising, bloodied stumps where there had once been fingers scrabbled and rubbed uselessly against knees which once had caps and ankles which once held intact tendons.

"The harlequins done a right number on you pal" laughed brute who then leaned in close with all humour gone from his voice. "Who do you think you are eh? Where do you think you are eh? What the hell are you going to do now? What the fuck are you going to do now?" he ended his last unanswered question with a solid boot to the ribs which broke several of them.

I coughed and spluttered and started to crawl across the courtyard. This is the nightmare. I'm going to wake up, I'm going to wake up back at Mrs Robinsons, or further back, maybe I will wake up in the tent and Greg will still be there and we can talk about the things men talk about. Maybe I will wake up in our family home on Dovecoat Road. Maybe not.

"Get him up" said Brute. I felt hands, oily, slimy hands that hoisted my ruined form up between them. "Time for the grand tour" said the man munching on my fingers with a titter. I lapsed in and out of consciousness as they carried me through the asylum. We proceeded down a long flight of stairs, down into the bowels of the old hospital, the dusty places where doctors who'd known best once employed their own brand of mad medicine on the sick.

We did not go near the red room. All the lights down here were made of fire, and they made as many dancing shadows as they did illuminations. I could not tell how long we'd been moving but we eventually came upon a larger underground room in the middle of which they was a large round circular hole. There was a lot of dirt and debris piled here and there around the hole, it was not something which had been a part of the asylum before, this was a renovation.

The hole was about thirty feet wide and as we reached the edge more terror met my eyes. Down inside the hole was a beast, it was death walker, but one on which three heads sat on its shoulders, huge eyes the size of fists bulged out of those heads obscured here and there by strange pointed horns that made it look like some sort of very twisted unicorn. It was injured. Around a dozen of the inmates stood around the hole cheering, but they were not the source of the injuries. On the other side of the pit swayed a second figure who held a club in his right hand.

This one looked familiar, his head was covered in blood, his hair was matted with it, barely an inch of his skin was not tainted by the sanguine plague.

"Daddies little boy, daddies little boy, daddies little boy, daddies little boy.." screeched one of the inmates over and over until one of his fellows silenced him with a cuff to the back of the head. Then I saw the eyes of the fighter in the pit, I'd seen those eye but seconds after he'd been born, after he'd been brought forth into the world from his mothers womb. I tried to speak his name but no words came. The sea of pain still swam within me, it masked the very specific nature of many of my wounds. It was only now as I tried to voice Mac's name that my ruined tongue made itself know, a shredded mound which flopped uselessly inside a mouth which no longer had lips.

I do not know what is worse, the unfolding knowledge of just how ruined I am or the look in my youngest sons eyes as he recognises what is left of me.

"He's done well your little'un" says brute. "Come on" he says and we move on. At the end of the next corridor there are a set of strangely ornate wooden doors, they looked like a great deal of intricate craftsmanship had gone into them, a level of care which had been desecrated by the carvings. There were numerous references to satan and death, the obligatory pentagrams and six, six, sixes scrawled here and there. But in the centre there was a carefully carved image of a face, a smiling friendly face that seemed oh so welcoming. The face broke in two as Brute pushed open the doors and we passed into the scene of my final act.

It was a grand hall. Around the edge ran a balcony which looked down upon a vast space with a stage at one end and rows of benches which met it from the other. Many of those benches had been piled up at the side of the hall to create a large opening at the foot of the stage. The walls of this place were not a part of the asylum above, they were older, much older, seemingly hewn from the bare rock of the underground. They spoke of a purpose far removed from that of Ravensburg Secure Hospital. This had the look of more of a church, though what kind of church would be set deep in the earth I could not fathom, I'd never been a religious man and would be hard pressed to tell one demon from another.

I was vaguely aware of the inmates from around the pit behind us dragging my son in with them as I was pulled along the ground like a rag doll down the aisle between the benches, down towards centre stage, down towards destiny.

I could still cry, and cry I did. The tears poured freely from me, in them was all that had been good, desperate to escape before my body and soul were cast into whatever dark fire the inmates had prepared.

As we reached centre stage I saw two more of my darling Locklears. Zak was propped up against one the front benches with his chin against his chest. Whether he was alive or dead I could not tell, but judging from the amount of his own entrails cupped in his hand the candle of hope burning for him that I held flickered out.

I saw Sue. She was chained to the floor like a wild animal. She'd been stripped naked and her once beautiful skin was now etched with a tale of brutality. A mass of bruises, cuts and lash marks covered her from head to toe. I gurgled and gasped but despite the fact that I could see her body rising and falling with breath she did not look my way, her eyes were open but they were empty orbs which did not lift themselves from the cold stone floor on which she lay.

Then I looked up at the stage and I saw him. The good doctor. The man in the white coat, the face from the carving on the door, the image of a million nightmares which I'd had but always remembered to forget.

Something stirred in me when I looked upon him. He exuded a strange welcoming aura, he had such patient eyes brimming with compassion. As I looked into them I saw memories, but they were not mine, they belonged to the world, they belonged to the future.

I saw a greatness that was such in name only, I saw the changing face of the land which had taken place under the watchful gaze of the carrion. I saw blood drawn and seep into the earth and I saw the ground sickened by the touch of such unwanted sacrifice. Centuries of greed, millennia of avarice stacked upon one another became too much for the world to bear. They toppled over and the hands which had laboured so long to build them fell down with their creations into the abyss.

I saw battles take place in far away lands, I saw the rise of the clansmen and the rebirth of an era of smoke and fire when men built a world of iron and sweat. I saw the tiny grains of sand tumbling by, etched on the side of every single speck was a version of the future, all of them building up to a single event, the linchpin of destiny from which all the other events sprung. I saw the high towers of the raven and wars which were fought to the sounds of singing, a song which sung of the emptiness between the stars and the few virtues which linked us across the distance. I saw all this and so much more, but the vision disappeared in an instant when he spoke, when the harlequin said those words "Are you feeling better?" he asked excitedly. I slowly shook my head and he clapped his hands in delight.

The veins on his hands had a silvery tinge which I noted as he rubbed them together. There were about thirty inmates gathered before the central stage. All of them were on their knees with their heads bowed. Brute and his cohorts propped me up on on the front bench and the joined their fellow inmates briefly before they all got up and moved to either side giving me full view of the stage and leaving nothing between my ruined form and the man in the white coat.

He stared at me for a time, swaying, dancing even from side to side, pondering, considering me with his kindly gaze. There was a deadly silence in the hall. I stared back at him, barely able to comprehend the horrors Id already looked upon this night, I could not begin to fathom what might come next.

Then he clicked his fingers and smiled again. At that signal several of the inmates moved to behind a thick velvet curtain at the back of the stage area. They had one last punishment for me. My daughter was dressed in a plain white smock, she did not struggle as they carried her and placed her on her knees before the man in the white coat, before the harlequin. I thought back to all the school plays I'd been to see, all the musicals, all the award ceremonies, how could this sick perversion of all those pure moments have been allowed to come to pass by any god real or imagined, how could the universe in all its infinite majesty allow itself to be infested by such dark plagues as the one which was here before me.

Her her was almost torn out by the gruff hands which held her head up to look upon the harlequin. Those same hands held her still as the kindly doctors hand beat her face from side to side several times, with each strike he would ask her if she was feeling better and with each question she responded with more tears, and more blood.

During a brief pause from the beating our eyes met, she made contact with the broken form of her father sitting on the front row. Then she spoke, the last word that would ever part her lips, the last gasp of desperation. "Dad" she whimpered. And the walls of my sanity came crashing down, her voice, her last word was the epitaph for the man who was Robert Locklear. All that was good and noble was gone, a nothing sat where I had sat but moments before, a beast, a ghost, and a madman. The father was gone, the husband was gone, I was now flesh and bone and little else.

The show continued. Through dead eyes I watched as brute came forth bearing a long sharpened stake. She struggled in vain as the inmates held her up and brute put the sharpened end into her mouth and started to impale her. My daughter died the moment the stake pierced her heart and carried on through. Even so her eyes were open still and her body spasmed as the stake finished its grisly work, emerging with a wet cracking sound from her lower back.

The dead thing that was me could not see how the situation could get any worse, a testament to the lack of imagination that ghosts possess. For the good doctor, I think that he'd barely begun to do his work. He gestured to his craven who started to build something on stage. As they did so he reached a hand into his pocket and brought forth something flat and soft.

He unfolded the mask and placed it onto his face, held in place by some artifice I could not glean. The dead me saw that it was a mask of skin, taken from some former victim, or a dozen former victims, sewn together and bound even in death to be a part of the mad harlequins dark machinations of misery. With the mask in place his smile was hidden, but I could see his pale green eyes gleaming from behind the sockets.

It did not take the inmates long to get the fire going. Within minutes the foul stench of burning flesh filled the room. But their purpose was not to burn the body of my angel, the stake with which they'd impaled has was used to turn her over the flames. They cooked her for some time until her beautiful silken hair was burned away, the ruins of the white smock were ash amidst the tendrils of fire, and her skin began to crackle and split.

Brute smiled as he did his work. Eventually the grey eyed vermin from upstairs took a wicked blade to the body, carving off a slice and depositing it on a ceremonial looking gold plate. They passed it around, the vultures, each taking a bite and passing it on until eventually it got back to Brute who walked with a casual air down from the stage to stand before me. "Eat" his said with venom.

The ghost inhabiting my body struggled from side to side but it was to no avail. Oily arms seized the body of Robert Locklear and held it still. "Eat" said Brute again, slowly emphasising the word as he pushed a mouthful of the cooked flesh between the lipless mouth, between the teeth until it touched against the frayed end of the tongue. I choked as it got to my throat, I choked and gagged and vomited the meat into Brutes face, he laughed and wiped the gore from his features before lifting another slab of flesh out of the bowl. "Moooore" he said pushing it towards me.

I was never made to take a second taste. Even through the last lingering moments of my death madness I was aware enough to see as Brutes head exploded, sending an ocean of brain, bone and dark thoughts washing over me and his fellow inmates. The rest of the madmen scattered and I was mesmerized by the site of Brutes body as it slowly toppled to the side. Then the hall was silent again bar the odd crackle from the fires which burned here and there set in the walls around the hall. Even the harlequin was stopped in his tracks, his green eyes searching the shadows for something.

Then came the voice, a voice filled with such benevolent power that even the sound of it banished some of the darkness, each syllable threatened to pull me back to the land of the living despite my souls desire to be free of the hall.

"Sat astride this pale horse, I could see nought but fear and desolation in the land, and not one mortal man could look me in the eyes, not one of them could tell me of a reason for what was done".

From the balcony which ran around the hall a figure leapt to land upon the centre stage, it was a giant raven to my maddened mind, the wings of vengeance descended and now it was evil that fought for its survival. A silver barrel emerged from beneath the cloaked darkness of one of its wings, it boomed and the harlequin was thrown from the stage by the force of it, I saw him land only a few feet from me, his hand clutched his shoulder from which blood pumped freely.

The inmates rushed the stage. A second weapon came forth from under the ravens other wing, in unison they boomed and I watched the inmates turned to red dust in front of my eyes. The silver cannons erupted with endless caged fury, arms, legs and heads flew about the hall as vengeful bullets seared flesh and tore bone, there was no mercy looming down the barrel of the gun, its aim was a death sentence. With the first dozen of them down the zeal of the inmates began to falter and a number of them started to run.

It did not matter, whether they attacked or whether they ran the raven danced through the air and dealt death from every direction. Two of the inmates ran past me, such was their desire to be free that they trampled over the squirming form of the harlequin. Then I saw something which I thought had left the world, I saw fight in the hearts of the Locklears. From nowhere Sue sprang up, she tripped one of the inmates with the chain which held her before leaping on his back and proceed to choke him with a rage that only a mother in vengeance can bring to bear, the inmate screamed as she dashed his head against the stone floor whilst choking the breath from him.

Then suddenly Mac was there, armed with the club which I'd seen him wielding in the pit, the second inmate went down from a single blow, then Mac was on him delivering a series of the punches and kicks. The greatest surprise was the sight of Zak on his feat, entrails still in hand he stamped and stamped the head of the inmate.

Something happened. I heard my heart start to beat again. I could feel the sadness and I knew that my soul was reinserting itself back into my body, along with that physical connection there came washing back all the pain, pain which poured from every pore. But there it was, deep within me the flame had started to burn again.

I staggered and fell from the bench, I dragged myself across the ground, the few feet between myself and the harlequin felt like forever, but then I was there, my prize was beneath me. The wound to his shoulder was horrific, much of the architecture of that part of his body was missing, but he was still conscious, though barely. I had no fingers to form fists, I had no strength left in me with which to beat the life from my enemy. But I had one weapon left.

The harlequin screamed as my teeth sank through the mask of skin which he wore. It came off along with his nose which I spat to the side. I leaned in close to his ear, the words I uttered were a miracle given the damage to my tongue, they were a halting and warped whisper, but he knew the words. "You should have taken my teeth" I said into his ear as I bit into it and tore it from his foul head. I got one more bite out of the bastard, a large chunk of cheek which created such a deep hollow in the side of his face that I could see the inside of his bloody mouth through it.

Then I felt kicks and punches, more of the retreating inmates, these ones with enough loyalty to stop their leader from being massacred by my angry mouth. One of them pulled the harlequin to his feet and they staggered off together. The other had it in his mind to finished me off, but from the stage a cannon thundered and another dark soul left the hall. I looked to where the harlequin fled, the gun boomed again and the inmate who assisted him went down, the harlequin turned and look at me, there was a look of homicidal rage on his face, the kind of anger you would reserve for a lifelong enemy, it was an anger which surprised me, for I knew him not before this day. He turned away and disappeared through a doorway at the side of the hall.

To the sound of the cannon and the dying screams of the inmates of Ravensburg Secure Hospital I started to to claw my way across the cold stone floor.

Every moment had been agony. Each step had been a mountain, but no precipice had the ability to break my will or keep me from my vengeance. Only when I reached the stop of the stairwell did my faith in retribution falter. The stairway led to another door and beyond that was the world, the great outdoors looked back at me. The trail of blood from the harlequin had been a steady flow coming up the stairs.

But now it was lost, it died off in the long grass and the trees and the rain of another storm which had chosen to follow its fellow and erupt over Ravensburg. I propped myself up against the doorway and looked out at the trees and the shadows sheltering beneath their canopy, I looked for one that was darker than the rest, but he was gone. I wept for all that was lost, I wept until I heard a noise on the stairs behind me.

I looked up and he was there, the raven. The face of a man was revealed beneath the folds of his cloak, my addled mind had seen a carrion descend in the hall, but this was surely a human, taller and broader than any I'd known, but human nonetheless. The silver guns with which he'd despatched the mad men had been sheathed and he squatted down next to me, looking out into the storm through eyes that contained not a hint of colour in their inky black orbs. His skin was markedly pale in contrast, ageless skin that seemed to glow in the same way that the skin of the harlequin had done. For a long time he regarded the woodland before finally meeting my gaze.

"I am sorry for what has befallen you Robert Locklear, it was a fate of which you were undeserving". I looked out into the storm, I could not find the will to speak again but he read my thoughts within the silence. "We will find him my friend, so do I speak the words, so shall it be". This time I made to speak, another malformed whisper which wriggled its way from my desolate mouth. He nodded grimly and gave me his answer, "My name is Lucello, and I have come further than you can imagine"
Below is the first chapter from the sequel to Old World, Amidst the falling dust. There are also several short stories from the green and pleasant land.

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 prone 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 hear bobbing up and down, I look out at the winding coast of the green and pleasant land, and I think back over this 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 wider pacific rim region 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, 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, 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 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 faces 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 through 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 who 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 you see we were witnesses night after night to scenes of civil chaos punctuated by generic footage of military buildups in many of the world flashpoints and border zones. We carried 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 affect 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, but they did not move with the haste of prey, but with the shuffling gait of the new world predators. 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 me and my colleagues 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 out 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 crowd along a wave 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 its 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 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 onto 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 across the buildings and along the pier. When their prey reached the edge of the dock many chose to simply throw themselves in to 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 carrier. 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 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. Wondering 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 the look like my people they are alien in their notions and their intent. I am not sure what is worse. 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 wagering 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 the command room is a mess. It reeks of stale swear, 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 and 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 Mophids; 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 object, 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 operation 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, a place called Ravensburg".
The Wheels on the Bus

A Tuesday morning. Unlike any other. It was a hot night and cold morning, which means fog. Thick blankets of suffocating fog that writhed and clung to the forest of concrete and metal. Here and there a stubborn street light shines through the whiteout, refusing to admit defeat to the sun. On a day like this neither of them are winners, the fog is so thick that day and night have merged to create some grand elemental monster which blinds us to everything outside our own slowly beating hearts.

I make this journey every day, and every day I take this bus. I go nowhere but there and back again, I help make circles, I help the tyres turn. I'm old now I think, much older than I was and much older than I feel or seem to be. Does that makes sense? I hope so, it would be nice if, on a day like this, at least my thoughts made sense. Because what is beyond them, that which is outside the mind and the beating heart, is today truly senseless in every sense of the word.

The current driver is called Jeff. I don't get on with Jeff, but when you have been riding this bus around as long as I have you realise that drivers come and go, there will be more Jeffs no doubt, but there will also be plenty more Terrys. Terry was my friend, we used to share Worthers originals and talk about the football, he was my friend, but he's gone now, gone for good.

I don't watch the news much anymore. All just filled with people killing each other, just got to let them get on with it really. But, well, the news isn't the news anymore. And there is no ignoring it when they are killing each other just outside your window.

So, let me tell you what I see, let me tell you how I feel and maybe you can shiver with me, because I am cold now, colder than cold.

We are creeping along in the fog through town. Jeff has the lights on full beam but even so visibility is poor. He picked me up at the usual shelter just outside town by the lake. I am surprised to see a few other people on the bus. These are nervous times and I guess that people are just trying to carry on as normal, but honestly, who sends their kids to school when there is talk of war and rumour of sickness and worse raging through this nation of ours. They just sit their the kiddies, the fog has silenced the world, who are they to fill it with noise again, but if they won't then no one will.

The sirens have stopped, don't know if that's a good thing or not to be honest. One minute it seemed that all hell was breaking loose, but it seems that even the devil himself cannot compete with such fog.

There's a young lad with a skateboard whose got music piped into his ears, he's got his feet up on the seats, Terry wouldn't have had that, Jeff didn't care before the fog, and he sure don't now. The lady in the nurses uniform half way down turns and looks at me every now and then, she smiles a nervous smiles, I dip my cap and do my best with regards to smiling.

As we pull into the town proper I can make out looming shadows, buildings, angry giants glaring down at the noisy bus. No lights though, just a deeper darker gloom. Then I see the people, or what look like people. Walking funny, not running, not talking, just shuffling along, minding their own business.

Someone taps at the window, no, someone claws at the window. Halloween is a long way off. They have grey hands, they must be cold I reckon, I reckon the fog has done them in. No point tapping at me, I'm not the driver.

Jeff slows us right down and then stops. I don't know why, there isn't a stop here, when you have been riding the bus as a long as I have then you get a feel for that sort of thing. I think I might say something, might call down the bus, but me and Jeff don't get on. He called me a smelly old man once, it hurt, I hid the hurt of course, with a laugh, just like me old gaffer taught me to.

I think he's broken down you know. He's turnin that key and I can hear the engine screech but she can't roar no more. Bloody Jeff, useless, hopefully there will be a new Terry soon.

Then Jeff leans out from his drivers box and looks back at us. He looks terrified, I tell you, I ain't never seen a bloke look so scared.

More people out there now. Turned grey by the fog the whole lot of them it seems. All tapping, no not tapping, clawing at the windows. Somethings wrong, somethings been wrong for weeks, I've just ignored it, just like me old gaffer taught me. But now there's more wrong than right. Why won't they stop tapping, and clawing, and growling like hungry dogs, angry dogs.

Bloody hell. Jeff has switched the lights off. It's a dark day, shadows pouring in here. I can see them on Jeffs face, on the nurses face and the faces of the little kiddies in their neatly pressed uniforms. I can see shadows on the the face of the kid with the skateboard. Looks like his music has stopped, he looks just as scared as everyone else.

The bus starts to move. Not from the engine, nah, the engine's dead I think, killed by the fog, killed by bloody Jeff. No, the bus is rocking gently from side to side, pushed and pulled by hundreds of hands. I can see them out there in the fog, grey and cold.

There is a familiar hiss as the doors open, looks like Jeff is doing a runner, hows that for loyalty. Doesn't get anywhere though. They push him back on, the grey hands, who I note, as they shuffle onto the bus, also have grey faces, and red, red eyes.

Jeff screams, so do the kiddies. I start to lose sight of Jeff, I can see his blood though, flowing down around the feet of the shufflers walking up the bus. His screams are weaker, poor Jeff. Everyone else is shouting away. Skateboard, he's whacking at the window with his board, I don't know why, there's a lot more of them out there than there are in here.

Then he goes down, skateboard and all. The grey hands pull him from his seat, he screams a young man's scream, he dies the death of someone who has some inkling of all that he is now denied. The nurse she goes to try and help him, she lashed out with her bag, they grey skins, they do not seem to care. The bus is only little, just a little run-around. But it seems bigger now, like a long hall, filled from top to bottom with grey dead things. Poor nurse, she slows them down a bit, long enough for the ones at front to start to eat her. Poor love, I can see her chest rise and fall with those last few pained breaths, even while they peel bits of her face of with cold hungry teeth.

More of them come, the climb over the sits in a haphazard fashion. The shuffle and shamble past the feeders. The kiddies, they have climbed up onto the back ledge behind me. Maybe they want me to protect them. I don't know why, I'm just an old man whose pissed himself with fear. At least I know I am afraid now, I've been so uncertain for so long. I don't think the terror is going to comfort me much though.

The first of them reach me. I slap its hand away, how dare it, how dare any of them. My cap gets knocked off, most rude. Ten sets of teeth descend. Screams and growls, screams and growls, this is the end of us for sure. I can feel them eating me. The doctor told me I had a weak heart, lying bastard, not weak enough to give out though is it. Strong enough to pump the blood out of my body as ten sets of teeth set about destroying this stringy old man.

Well we're done then. I can see the fog still, and the dark, and the tall shadows of the empty buildings. Not long left. Long enough to see the kiddies go, torn apart by grey hands and red mouths, nice neat uniforms all ruined in a shower of piss and blood. Their screams go quiet then.

Takes me a while to realise I can still hear a sound, still hear a scream. It's mine, a weak and feeble thing, stays with me until the end, follows me into the long dark.
Appearances

I like to dust. It is a conflict. I dust, I send the dead skin sailing off, it looks for somewhere to land, but I deny it safe passage. I dust and then I dust some more. Then I polish. Then I hoover. Then I scrub, and wipe, and cleanse.

We are unlikely to meet you and I, and if we do no words will pass between us. I am too old to be leered and I am too afraid to want to get to know you. They say an Englishman's home is his castle. Well I am an Englishwoman and I can assure you that my husbands castle is a facade beneath which is the monument to fastidiousness that is my palace. A place for everything and everything in its place.

This is a nice part of town. This is a place of nods and hellos, of umbrellas hanging on arms, of responsible dog owners. This is an area in which houses have names, far grander than their inhabitants.

Harold is out. Harold does as he is told, he has gone to pick up Molly from the bus station. Her parents are worried because of all the goings on, they do not have our resolve, we did not breed it into them, we are not concerned, our lips have never been stiffer. We will weather this as we have weathered all other storms, with tea and discipline.

I dust, I dust with my old feather duster. The radio blasts out classical music, I pretend I know who the composer is, I name them as a familiar name, I may be right, I may be wrong, but I will act the former and would lie to the dead before admitting the latter. It took me a while to find this station, all my favourites have been seized by maddening fools. Worriers, the pedlars of misery and gloom. They are of our daughters generation, they are not weather beaten, but rather are beaten by the weather. Molly will be here soon, perhaps we will teach her better.

I hum to myself as a send the dust scattering to the four corners of the palace. I adjust pictures, I ensure that chairs are sitting in their three decade carpet grooves. I clean the glass to such invisible perfection that we shall likely have flocks of birds apparently offing themselves by flying into them.

Then I stop. I switch off the radio, I kill the violins and the cellos and the trumpets. They had been superseded by frantic voices, by the naysayers and the doomseers. Fine then. I will clean in silence.

But the absence of music reveals other sounds. The helicopters, the endless drone of the watchers in the sky. Up to no good, peering down, gazing into the castles of lesser men and greater women. They have not stopped for days.

I approach the living room window. The thick red velvet curtains have been drawn for a week, Harold's insistence. Every now and then he puts his foot down, and I let him, even façades need maintaining after all. I raise a hand hesitantly and take hold of a fold of the thick dark fabric, a part of me longs to pull them back. To fill the room with sunlight and to fill my eyes with the truth of what is happening outside.

My hand drops. My ears know the truth already, and the sun does not shine today. I take in a deep breath of British determination, I fill my lungs with and hold it for as long as I can. Things rumble up and down the street which cannot be cars. No car squeaks and thuds in that manner, only a vehicle with heavy metallic tracks can emit such a noise.

I have heard the sounds of so much breaking glass that there cannot be single window left untarnished in the neighbourhood. I have heard so many screams that the whole town must be hoarse. Ever now and then gunfire bursts out, sometimes far away, sometimes from the bottom of the garden. On occasion the thunder rumbles, and it talks louder than all the rest.

Still I clean. Still I do dishes, and laundary, I iron and while I am steaming I watch the clock, I imagine Molly and Harold's footsteps up the driveway, but in my imaginings they were home long ago. But I cannot show weakness, I cannot show fear even to my own direction, for if they see it they will know it to be true and will refuse to hide me any longer..

Then I hear a car outside. I hear a crash accompanying. I shudder at the thought of the casualties among the gnomes. The hesitant hand is brushed aside, the curtains fly back along the railings. Old Mrs Andrews across the street seems to be missing a foot. She is crying as she pulls herself through misery and down the street. The Potters battle desperately to keep the enemy from the door.

I see men in uniform running, in the wrong direction, I believe. Empty vehicles, burning houses, dead bodies, spent cartridges and broken gnomes.

The street is full of strangers, members of some strange parade, they shuffle and shamble with a twisting gait, they move as if uncomfortable in their skin, which is a pallid and maggoty affair across the board.

They see me, they move to greet me. Harold has fallen from the car, a wounded man he staggers too, but from injury as opposed to affliction. I walk quickly to the front door, I do not run, one must take ones time come the end of days, lest the sun sets too quickly on our demise.

When I open the door Harold has gone, replaced by something that looks like Harold. "Where is Molly?" I ask it. No answer comes the reply. Harold has gone grey and his eyes have begun to bleed. My attempts to slam the door are futile. Now I do run, the time for prim and proper has been and gone.

I return to the living room and consider drawing the curtains, for quite a crowd of red eyed spectators has gathered at the watching window. They tap upon the clean, clean glass. The glass does not have my resolve, it weakens in many places forming inelegant splintered cobwebs.

Harold puts his arms around me from behind. For a moment I imagine it to be a protective gesture, an act of love and affection, I feel young again. I feel his warm breath on my neck, I turn from the window as it shatters and the audience invades the stage. I meet my own reflection and see the weakness that has always been there. Thoughts of Molly, thoughts of England fade away to less than dust. His hard teeth meet my soft neck, and I wonder what regrets await me after the meal.
The Grey Republic

She wouldn't leave him. He was sick, to move him would be to kill him. So she stays, as do we all. The begging of sons and grandsons will not be moved. She is a rock on which a nation rests, well, she was.

Him, he is so sick that he won't know it even when he's torn limb from limb. She will though, she will feel his death, and her own, just as she seems to have felt the deaths of all those who have fallen to the cadaver.

I could tell you my name I suppose, but that wouldn't matter would it. We are both waiting for the same thing, though it will be different for each of us, you the watcher, me the sufferer. So, I guess this is the point where I tell you what I see, where I tell you how I feel. Think of long red carpeted corridors, think of the very definition of the word palatial.

Think of gold on the walls used to separate the tapestries from the portraits. Think of mirrors that could swallow you whole, think of chandeliers and crystals. Think of opulence. Now imagine what that looks like with no one around to maintain it. Imagine blood splattered here and there, think of those nice well kept carpets being marred by the impromptu barricade me and my fellows have put across the corridor. Now we are there, now we are looking at the same world.

The lights are still on because this is one of the few buildings in all of London which has backup generators to the backup generators for the actual backup generators. The corridor like most of the palace is filled silent lions, filled with roses which never age. We have piled the chairs and tables high against the doors at the far end. I cannot see the handles but I can hear them clicking now and then as fingers lock around them, dead but still curious, they will sniff us out soon enough.

There was a time when the cool metal of the gun in my hand would comfort me, it would instil me with a sense of pride and power. Now all I can feel is the weight of it, now all it fills me with are thoughts about whether or not I might be better off using it on myself rather than what is on the other side of that door.

Behind us is the master bedroom. A sanctuary for none, a tomb for two old people, one of whom is sick enough to be dead already, the other who did not need to go out like this. Her loyalty is exemplary, her love for her husband a shining light which cannot hope to pierce the darkness outside the palace. We would expect no less from her, but still I think I am not the only household guardsman in this corridor who wishes she had shown just a little less integrity this time around.

There is a loud crash against the barricaded door. We all jump, it is not that we were idle, but now we are a little more tense. There is a part of me that wants to look around at the others, to seek some reassurance from them. But I know that cannot come to pass, all I will see in them is a reflection of myself.

Another crash, the splintering of wood. Too big to be a cadaver, I suspect one of their large cousins has come across them gathered outside the door and decided to investigate. I think I can hear sobbing from the bedroom, but I'm not certain, I try to focus on something else. I look at the writing desk overturned in front of me. I look at the ornate carving around it and the secret draws located underneath. I cannot recall which room that we requisitioned it from but it is likely to have been from one of her personal chambers. I ponder the monarchs who must have once sat here, plotting, pandering, or general meandering. I wonder if any of them ever dreamed that it would come to this, that there kingdom would one day be swallowed by darkness.

That they could have seen a time when there palace was invaded by enemies certainly, but could they have begun to imagine an enemy such as this, I think not. A third crash disturbs my reveries. Several of the piled chairs tumble down away from the door.

A dozen of us heft our weapons. We drew straws for this, but ah, we did not get the shorts ones, we got the choices, did we choose badly? It seems unlikely we will be given a chance to dwell on out fate.

There are several more loud impacts in quick succession, the doors explode inwards in many pieces and dozens of chairs fly through their and bounce down the corridor. I think I hear a wail from the bedroom. The sound is cut short as we release the thunder. Bullets streak down the corridor into the dark portal at its end.

We pause briefly, long enough to see the line of cadavers start shuffling towards us, arms outstretched, imploring us to join them, soon enough you greedy bastards. We mow them down with ease. Still they come at us, they are fearless as they are less all else.

Like a spent cloud soon the hail of fire stops, this is our last stand. The ammunition left to us by the rest of the household battalion is embedded in the walls of this once great palace of Buckingham. Every stairwell, every dining room, every bedroom and every corridor has been a battlefield. And now we are here and have barely a bullet between us.

I am proud of my brothers as they surge over the barricade with their bayonets and lay waste to the first few ranks of the endless march of the dead. I do not join them, for I made perhaps the hardest choice of them all.

The bedroom door clicks shut behind me as I leave my brothers to their nobility. They gun is like lead in my hand. The sun is streaming through the windows bathing the golden four poster in the glory of the morning.

She has been crying. I see why. A prince lays dead upon the sheets. The tears are dry now, they did not last long. No words pass between us. She knows I think why I am here, but I think she knows as well as I do that I cannot accomplish the task I gave myself.

From the bedside table she draws a weapon of her own, a tiny pistol that looks almost like a toy. She nods at me and we both turn towards the door as it bursts open and foulness invades the room. A swarm of cadavers pours through the opening, but in their midst is something much larger, a king among the dead, how fitting.

The fiend scuttles across the bedroom when it sees us. Its skin is a waxy, shiny carapace, dark caramel in colour and swirling with patters and thick black veins.

It does not pause, it does not hesitate as one of the three foot spikes on the end of its arms punctures through my liege and pins her dead against the wall. My gun barks pitifully at the creature. In slow motion I watch another of the massive arms unfurl and curve around towards me. I am lifted and pinned alongside here, we are puppets and playthings. My lady and her protector, dead upon the wall, how did it come to this, how did old England fall?

