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Every door andin the small end-terraced house was locked Jack Baxter stood in silence in his bedroom and peered out from behind the curtain as another corpse tripped down the ered away into the inky-black darkness of the night It had disappeared fro ho, he had been outside and unprotected when it had begun

Jack worked at a warehouse just outside the city centre The bus route which he used to get hoh the city centre, over to the other side of town and back again The bulk of the passengers usually got off when they reached the main part of the city and, when it had happened on Tuesday ht people left on board The first sign that so ts of seats in front of hih and wheeze His pain had increased dramatically in just a few seconds Initially haunched forward, the pensioner had suddenly thrown hihting to breathe with his already infla with pain Before Jack had fully appreciated the seriousness of his condition the pensioner had begun shaking and convulsing uncontrollably He had been out of his seat and about to help when a twenty-five year old ony fro and crying too

Helpless, Jack had run towards them but had stopped and turned and moved back the other hen he realised that the driver of the bus was now also coughing and choking He sprinted the length of the swaying, lurching vehicle and had reached the driver in ti freely down the inside of his throat He collapsed over the wheel, losing control of the bus and sending it swinging out in a cluh traffic co into the front of a pub Jack had been thrown to the ground, his head thu hi he had been unconscious for When he finally caain his balance on unresponsive, unsteady feet He had picked hied himself towards the front of the battered bus The driver was dead The rest of the passengers were dead too

Using the eed to force open the door and had stuht of unparalleled and coreeted him As the people on the bus had died so, it seemed, had everyone else for as far as he could see Nuood fewfrozen and still while his eyes darted around the an to count the bodies - ten, twenty, thirty and then more and more The destruction around him appeared to be endless He had waited expectedly for the silence to be shattered by the wail of approaching police, fire and a minute the ominous quiet had become heavier and heavier until he had been able to stand it no longer A breathless ten ot Jack hohts which had been ordinary, familiar and nondescript when he&039;d left for work the previous evening had now becorotesque The super the previous afternoon had been on fire and he&039;d watched as unchecked flalass-fronted entrance which he&039;d walked through a thousand tiround of the primary school at the end of his road he had seen the fallen bodies of parents surrounded by the uniformed corpses of their small children A car had driven into the front of a house seven doors down froh the rubble and dusty debris he had seen the body of the owner of the house slumped dead in her armchair What had happened made no sense There were no obvious explanations There was no-one else left to ask for answers Apart from Jack there didn&039;t seem to be anyone else left alive Somehow in all of the destruction he seemed to be the only one to have survived Jack had lost his wife Denise to cancer so suffered such an immense loss then somehow made it easier for him to accept what had happened and continue to function now He had already grieved He was already used to co home to a cold, quiet and ehts since she&039;d died He had frequently avoided eneral population since his wife had been taken froh and no-one could make it any easier to accept Even now, four hundred and thirty-seven days after she&039;d passed away, the uish that he&039;d witnessed her suffer hurt a thousand ti through the bodies that firstOnce he&039;d arrived back home Jack had tried to make contact with the rest of the world

He had tried every one of the thirty or so phone nued to make a few calls before the line finally went dead No-one answered He had listened to the radio for a while The sound it hadstatic but for a long ti, just an endless and e music He had listened hopefully and nervously as the last few notes of a final song faded away, only to be replaced again by the same relentless silence that had descended everywhere else In his ineers and presenters lying dead in their studios, by default still broadcasting the aftereffects of whatever it was that had killed the the world outside, hoping and praying that soht out from one of the back roohbour, Stan Chap twisted and motionless in the middle of his cold, wet lawn No-one, it see hours Jack&039;s days worked in reverse tothat had happened, by noon on the first day he was having trouble keeping his eyes open He had drifted and dozed through a long and disorientating afternoon and evening and then had spent what felt like a painful eternity sat on the end of his bed in the darkness, wide awake, alone and petrified And the next day had been even harder to endure He did nothing except sit and think dark, frightening thoughts and ask himself countless questions which were i outside and looking for help but he had been too scared to venture any further than halfway down the staircase before turning back and returning to the relative safety of the upstairs rooan to creep across the ravaged landscape, however, what remained of Jack&039;s devastated world had been turned on its head once again

Just before seven o&039;clock a suddennoise had shattered the quiet With everything else so silent and still the clattering sound had see For a few seconds Jack hadn&039;t dared move, paralysed with nerves He&039;d waited anxiously for so to happen and, now that it finally had, he had been alo and see what it was Gradually, as his curiosity and the pressure of his isolation had overtaken his fear, he hadthrough the letterbox, had opened the door and cautiously stepped outside Rolling down the ely relieved, Jack had taken a few steps away from the house to the end of the drive and had looked up and down the deserted street But it wasn&039;t deserted In the shadows of the trees on the opposite side of the road he had just about been able tosloay Suddenly rabbed hold of the wo instantly and just stood there, her back to Jack Overcome with anxious emotion he hadn&039;t stopped to wonder why she hadn&039;t heard him or reacted to him in any other way Instead he had simply turned her around to face him, desperate to see and to speak to someone else like him who had survived But it had been immediately obvious that this poor soul hadn&039;t escaped the nighte that had torn across the city She , but was as dead as the thousands of bodies still littering the silent streets

Jack had stared into her black and cold, eht her skin had appeared taut and grey, waxy and translucent Her y to close it and her head had lolled heavily to one side He had let the body go and it had i in the opposite direction to the way in which it had previously been travelling Jack turned, sprinted back to his house, and had locked and bolted the door behind hih his house and had spent an age in the kitchen, propped up against the sink for support, staring out into the garden and trying to make some sense of this bizarre new develophts had been disturbed by the sudden appearance of his dead neighbour at theThe body had tripped through a gap in the hedge that Jack had beento repair for the last three sued itself around the garden constantly, changing direction whenever it cae, a fence or the house More than twelve hours had passed since Jack had seen the first body

He had spent the rest of the day upstairs, hiding in his bedroo with clothes and food but when it ca he was too scared to leave He knew he&039;d have to go outside eventually, but for now the familiarity and relative security of his home was all he had left Even now he could occasionally hear the body of his next-door neighbour crashing aiarden