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Sheer physical and emotional exhaustion had drained Sonya to the point of collapse The cocktail of drugs hurriedly prescribed by Dr Croft had knocked her out for the best part of four hours, giving her body tith When she woke it was shortly after five in theand it was dark, save for the first few rays of e cautiously into the roo on the bed where she&039;d delivered The body of her baby daughter lay in the crib at her side, wrapped in pure white blankets As soon as she&039;d regained consciousness she reached out and picked the little girl up and held her tightly, keeping her safe Instinctively but pointlessly she still wanted to protect her lifeless child Whenever Sonya moved it hurt, but the physical pain and the other aftereffects of childbirth were nothing coony she felt inside She felt e of value inside her had been scraped out and throay She felt detached fro herself move but she wasn&039;t actually there

She didn&039;t know if she arm or cold She didn&039;t know if she was tired or wide awake She felt as if everything - her ability to coh or cry, to react or to hide - had gone Her aching body was filled with nothing but relentless pain and reer and bitterness Why did this have to happen? Croft was asleep on a chair in the corridor outside the rooh the half-open door The pain she felt inside see hter had died, Sonyawith effort and discos out over the side of the bed She was bleeding heavily and had to wait for the blood to stop before lowering herself down The floor beneath her feet was hard and cold She grabbed a towelling dressing gown froled to put it on whilst still cradling her lifeless child First one arm in, then the next, and then she wrapped the thick material around both herself and the baby The corridor was even colder Dragging her feet, Sonya sloalked past Dr Croft

She could hear Paulette stirring in the next room Apart from the woman&039;s muffledon a different floor, the building was icily silent What do you know about pain, Sonya silently asked whoever it as crying If only they kne she felt The staircase was colder still Sonya found it difficult to climb the stairs She was tired and she hurt and she felt nauseous The doctor see he&039;d been able to find to help her get through the labour and then the grief That, combined with the blood loss and drowsiness, had left her feeling bilious and faint But so The fifth floor, then the sixth, then the seventh She wasn&039;t sure how tall the building was, but she was certain that she had to be somewhere near the top floor now She stopped and walked down another corridor to her right She tried a few doors until one opened It led into a small, square rooht

In one corner there was a single bed with a suitcase on top, next to that a cheap dressing-table On the table was a collection of letters and a couple of photographs of a group of happy, sarden somewhere Presumably the pictures were of the room&039;s now deceased occupant and their dead family Sonya tenderly cradled her baby close to her chest and looked down into its grey but still beautiful face She stood in the centre of the roo her dead child Slowly she opened up her dressing gown and lifted the baby up to her face

She kissed its cold head and carefully laid it down on the bed next to the suitcase Before irl warh theThe silent world was suddenly filled with unexpected noise as the glass shattered and the chair dropped into the rotting crowds gathered around the front of the building Their unwanted interest ied towards the building again Sonya didn&039;t look at them She could hear other survivors down on the lower floors now, running around frantically, desperately trying to find where the sound had come from and terrified that the safety of their precious shelter had been conorant to the extent of the sudden movement and panic she had caused both inside and outside the building, Sonya dragged another chair across to the brokenShe picked her daughter up off the bed and, holding her close to her chest again, cli carefully onto the sill and sitting down With her bare legs hanging out of the building and dangling in the coldair, she sat in silence and surveyed what remained of the world and its devastated population

There was abodies below her - the vacant shells of ordinary people who had fallen and died last week before sonified resting places And beyond the where they had died on that firstBut none of them mattered Even the bodies of the people that Sonya had known and loved and ere out there so ainst the wall and leant forward and pushed herself out of the

She fell headfirst, falling through three-quarters of a turn as she dropped heavily through the disease-filled air, crashing down on her back onto the roof of a parked car and killing herself instantly The nearest of the sickly cadavers instinctively took slow, lu steps towards Sonya&039;s body With dull, clouded eyes they stared at her battered and smashed remains In spite of the force of the ihtly

The sound of theshattering echoed around the empty town Paul and Donna heard it and it prompted them toin a third floor, glass-fronted pizza restaurant Their earlier supposition that slowthe attention of the wandering bodies had thankfully proved to be correct What they hadn&039;t bargained on, however, was the effort involved insuch a slow and tedious pace in close proxied both of them to either hide away from the bodies or destroy them but they could do neither The creatures were obnoxious, repellent and, for all that Paul and Donna knew, potentially lethal but they couldn&039;t afford to let their eures and being forced to pass theh he didn&039;t dare speak out loud and say asforced to hold his hand in a bowl of boiling water

After spending several hours outside, exposed and vulnerable, the survivors had staggered into the restaurant to calm themselves and try and rest for a while Half of the restaurant had been destroyed by fire, and the vicious flaled and misshapen An explosion in the kitchens had blown a hole in the wall of the building the size of a sh the hole that they heard the sound of thebeing s onto the twisted and blackened re and looked up and down the desolate street below The light was low and a single figureaway from the scene was all that he could see at first Gradually his eyes becaloom Then he saw the crowd Hundreds, possibly thousands of bodies were gathered together in an area perhaps half aseconds before the iistered &039;Christ,&039; he said as he pulled himself back inside

&039;What?&039; mumbled Donna &039;There&039;s a cron there,&039; he explained &039;Bloody hundreds of the da road They&039;re down by the university I think&039; &039;So let&039;s go the other way&039; Tired, Donna picked up her belongings and started to get ready to leave &039;We should go towards it,&039; Paul said There was an unsurprising lack of certainty and conviction in his voice He knew that what he was saying was right, but he also knew that they would be taking an i water, he thought, thinking back to his earlier analogy, with diving into a swi pool full

&039;Why?&039; Donna asked She was exhausted All she wanted to do was stay still and sleep &039;Because if these things are attracted by sound and move over there that&039;s keeping them interested&039;