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The vast crowd outside the university building was still growing Even now, several weeks after it had all begun, still h the wreckage of the city centre and out towards the university coathered in there it was impossible to appreciate just how obvious their presence had become The rest of the nearby locality remained shrouded in almost complete silence

The only sounds to be heard there were either natural or accidental - the noise of wind gusting through brittle-branched trees or clu with randoround In this dense and relentless vacuuhtest disturbance became amplified out of all proportion, and the reactions such disturbances provoked were sierated The population of the city had once nu struck down en un to ained the ability to react and to respond to base sti one body react would cause another to lurch instinctively towards the first, and then another would follow and another and another A single unexpected sound would often cause more than a hundred of the pathetic creatures to herd inquizitively in the same direction The survivors, with their frequent but unintentional noise and movement and their occasional bonfire beacons, had succeeded in attracting the unwanted attention of a rotting crowd in excess of ten thousand bodies Fro three floors down fro, Yvonne, the once prial secretary, stood next to Bernard Heath and looked down on the vast hordes below It was earlyAs usual neither of the to do, Bernard?&039; she asked quietly, pulling a thick overcoat around her tightly to keep out the cold As winter approached she was really beginning to feel the drop in temperature, perhaps because she hadn&039;t eaten properly for almost a month

Both of the survivors were in their fifties and the physical strain of their ordeal was beginning to become painfully apparent For no es they had become close and had spentdays &039;I don&039;t know,&039; Heath replied sadly, staring intently into the crohich stretched out in front of theht, the people that say we should get out of here?&039; &039;Don&039;t know,&039; he ht of it I can&039;t bear the idea of being out there with those things There are hundreds and hundreds of theet past?&039; Heath didn&039;t answer Instead he silass It was raining outside, a heavy and continuous drizzle which soaked everything and which made the dull and lifeless world seem darker, colder and ever more empty Christ he was tired He hadn&039;t done any physical work to htmare was a continual strain that required constant effort Down below the bodies continued to push closer towards the building Socrushed by the sheer weight of the extraordinary volume of corpses behind Despite the lack of space those creatures pressed against the s and doors still tried hopelessly to th, space or ability to get inside the building but still they tried continually to reach the survivors on the other side of the wall &039;Hungry, Bernard?&039; Yvonne asked He shook his head

&039;No And anyway, even if I was, there&039;s nothing left worth eating&039; He was right The survivor&039;s food stores were running dangerously low They had ransacked every square inch of the university co sufficient canteens, restaurants and vending h they had ventured into the city frequently during the early days to get provisions, the risks had increased substantially since then Even inally seemed so full of bravado and contempt for the bodies had now becole footstep outside

The longer Bernard and Yvonne stared into the rotting masses below, the more the horror and complete hopelessness of their situation becaht was the body of Sonya Farley, still so onto what remained of her baby

Sonya&039;s body was decaying as quickly now as the corpses surrounding her Deeper into the vile crowd, at the point where those bodies still able to ht against the walls of the university building,to be displayed Yvonne watched with ust as the occasional corpse ripped and tore at the others around it, see She had never been able to story hate chilled her to the core This hate was uncontrolled and directionless

Astheir sudden aggression towards the countless cadavers preventing the forward, it was clear that was for no other reason than just because they were there and in the way Yvonne knew that she too would doubtless be a victim of the same venom if she ever found herself face to face with one of the abhorrent creatures

Bernard too atching the behaviour of the bodies They were changing, and he found hi in this way He was an intelligentemotions such as fear and despair had tainted and distorted his view of the world, he knew that the rapidly changing behaviour of the creatures ical pattern As he peered down into the disease-ridden sea of shuffling figures below, he considered the chronology of their decline

He&039;d thought about this countless times before Since they had risen after their bodies had died on the first e in their condition The corpses were rotting

Even fro from, that much was obvious and undeniable It seemed that the virus or disease or whatever had initially killed the bodies outright, but that so inside them had somehow survived It was almost as if parts of the brain had been aneasthetised, and that the effects of the aneasthetic were gradually wearing off

The ability to n, soon followed by the unwelcoain react to external sti time that was as far as the creature&039;s liressed