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By eleven o&039;clock on a cold, bright and otherwise ordinary Tuesdayin September over ninety-five percent of the population were dead
Stuart Jeffries had been on his way houn He&039;d left the hotel on the Scottish borders at first light with the intention of being home by mid-afternoon He had the next three days off and had been looking forward to sitting on his backside doing as little as possible for as long as he could
Driving virtually the full length of the countryto fill up the car with petrol onpassed several service stations on the motorway he decided that he would wait until he reached the next town to get fuel A smart man, Jeffries knew that the cheaper he could buy his petrol, thehis expenses back when he returned to work on Friday Northas the nearest town, and it was there that a relatively nor became extraordinary in seconds The busy but fairly well ordered lines of traffic were thrown into chaos and disarray as the infection tore through the cool air Desperate to avoid being hit, as the first few cars around hi he could find off the ht into an eot out and ran up the side of a s he had helplessly watched the world around him fall apart in the space of a few round without warning and die the inable
Jeffries spent the next three hours sitting terrified in his hire car with the doors locked and the ound up tight The car had only been delivered to his hotel late the previous evening but in the sudden disorientation it immediately became the safest place in the world
The car radio was dead and his phone was useless He o hundred and fifty miles away from home with an empty petrol tank and he was completely alone Paralysed with fear and uncertainty, in those first few hours he&039;d been more scared than at any other point in the forty-two years of his life so far What had happened around him was so unexpected and inexplicable that he couldn&039;t even begin to accept the horrors that he&039;d seen, never mind try and comprehend any of it
After three hours cooped up in the car the physical pressure on hiradually matched and then overtook the mental stress He stumbled out into the car park and was immediately struck by the bitter cold of the late Septe to convince himself of what he&039;d seen earlier, he silently walked back towards the main road and surveyed the devastation in front of hi The remains of wrecked and twisted cars were strewn all around The dirty grey pavements were littered with cold, lifeless bodies and the only sound cah the trees and chilled him to the bone Other than the corpses that were trapped in as left of their cars there didn&039;t seem any immediately obvious reason for any of the deaths The closest body to Jeffries was that of an elderly woround where she&039;d been standing She still had the handle of her shopping trolley gripped tightly in one of her gloved hands
He thought about shouting out for help He raised his hands up to his mouth but then stopped The world was so icily silent and he felt so exposed and out of place that he didn&039;t dare make a sound In the back of his mind was the very real fear that, if he was to call out, his voice h there didn&039;t seem to be anyone else left to hear hian to convince hi whatever it was that had destroyed the rest of the population back to destroy hiical and unexpected that he just wasn&039;t prepared to take any chances Frustrated and afraid, he turned around and walked back towards the car
At the far end of the car park, hidden fro trees, stood the Whitchurch Conitary it was a dull, dilapidated building which had been built (and, it seemed, last maintained) in the late 1950&039;s Jeffries cautiously walked up to the front of the hall and peered in through a half-open door Nervously he pushed the door fully open and took a few tentative steps inside This time he did call out, quietly and warily at first, but there was no reply
The cold and draughty building took only a minute or two to explore because it consisted of only a few rooms, most of which led off a main hall There was a very basic kitchen, two storeroo) and male and female toilets At the far end of the main hall was a second, much smaller hall, off which led the second storeroom This rooinal building Its paint work and decoration, although still faded and peeling, was slightly less faded and peeling than that of the rest of the rooms
Other than two bodies in the ly easy totherey-haired man who looked to have been in his early sixties he found a bunch of keys which, he discovered, fitted the building locks This, he decided, rey-haired lady who had died next to hi to hire the hall for a Wo sih the doorway and placed the
It hile he was outside that he decided he would shelter in the hall untilIt seemed to be as safe a place as any in which to hide It was isolated and although not in the best of repair, it looked strong enough and seemed warmer than the car Jeffries decided that there didn&039;t seeet anywhere else The only place he wanted to be was back home, but that was a few hours drive away He quickly convinced himself that it would be safer to stay put for now and then to try and get petrol in theHe&039;d siphon it froht began to fade he discovered that there was no electricity in the hall A quick run to the end of the car park revealed that it wasn&039;t just the hall that ithout power The entire city for as far as he could see was rapidly darkening Other than a few flickering fires he couldn&039;t see any light - not even a single street lamp - and as he watched it see steadily consu a hire car, there was nothing to help inside Stuart&039;s vehicle He cursed the irony of the situation - he kept a blanket, a shovel, a toolbox, a first-aid kit and a torch in the back of his own car If he&039;d only made the journey in his own car then he would at least have had soht All that he had noas the hire car itself He toyed with the idea of leaving the front door of the hall open and shining the headlah he see the door inally safer and less exposed With the door shut and locked he could at least pretend for a while that nothing had happened