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My heart is thu down ht God kno I&039; with nerves and I can hardly keep the wings of the plane level I&039;ve got to keep going I&039; direction but it doesn&039;t matter There&039;s no-one else left up in the sky I can&039;t see anyonedown there Surely someone should have been out here to help by now?

I have to leave er than I&039;d like What&039;s left of Ellis&039; glider is strewn across thestrip There are pieces of plane and God knohat else scattered all over the place I can&039;t risk hitting any of the debris I e to put the plane down in half the distance I&039;d usually need I kill the engine and sit and wait for the propeller to stop o out there I can&039;t see anything or anyoneI can&039;t sit here all day I slowly cli and just stand there for aand terrifying silence I&039;ve ever heard

What the hell has happened here?

There are bodies at the side of the airfield Without stopping to think about what I&039; towards the There are a couple of faces that I recognise - Meade&039;s daughter is one of them The rest, I think, are the re They&039;re dead They&039;re all dead As cold and lifeless as the rest of their colleagues who are scattered in pieces around here

Inside the office I find Chantelle Prentiss, our Adirl, dead at the front desk The phone is off the hook next to her upturned hand It looks like she was in the middle of a call when it (whatever it was) happened I pick up the phone and lift it toup and try to dial out but there&039;s no answer on any nu completely

The world is dead

I&039; to find someone else who&039;s left alive There&039;s no-one

The whole damn world is dead

JULIET APPLEBY

&039;So what ti with frustration at her daughter across the breakfast table Soet inforet blood out of a stone

&039;I don&039;t know Mu voice that her mother had to strain to hear

&039;Because you kno your dad gets if you&039;re not back when he&039;s expecting you,&039; Mrs Appleby interrupted

&039;I know, but I can&039;t help it if I have to stop back&039;

&039;He has to have his ht And you kno he likes us all to eat together It&039;s an important part of family life&039; &039;I know&039;

&039;Dad just likes his routine, that&039;s all And he likes to knohere you are He likes to know that you&039;re safe&039;

&039;I know that too, Mum, but&039;

&039;But what, love?&039;

&039;I&039;m thirty-nine for God&039;s sake&039;

Juliet Appleby closed the front door behind her and walked down the garden path to the car, pulling on her coat and brushing her long, wind-swept hair out of her eyes She glanced back at the house before unlocking the car and getting in There they were She could see the not to watch - Mu just behind her Hiding behind Mum, that here he seeht Inside the house he was king, and he let the two of them know that constantly and in no uncertain terms Stick him outside and force him to face the rest of the world, however, and he couldn&039;t cope The accident twelve years ago (which was still a taboo subject that they weren&039;t allowed to talk to him about) had destroyed his confidence and unbalanced his temperament He didn&039;t seem able to interact properly with anyone outside the sht circle of the iressive or angry or confrontational with so person and it would inevitably be left to Mus out

Juliet sat down in the car and started the engine Poor Muht She&039;d dedicated her life to Dad She&039;d put up with years of his h, she was just as bad as he was As Dad relied on Mum, so Mum seemed to rely on Juliet And as there for her? No-one On the few occasions that she&039;d been brave enough to start talking about leaving ho up on her own it was usually Mum who played the sickness card and who came up with a list of reasons why she couldn&039;t leave and why she had to stay and why they needed her around She believed it Each and every time she heard it she believed it Why would they lie to her? Her friends at the nursery told her that she should just pack her bags and leave But it was easy for them She&039;d left it too late, and now she was trapped, spending her ti paid to look after other people&039;s children when she should have been raising her own Fat chance of that ever happening She hadn&039;t ever had a &039;proper&039; relationship Men were either put off by the fact that she behaved like a tier person&039;s body, or Dadsince stopped dwelling on all that she had gone without physically, but she often thought about the cruel irony of her situation - there she was, a thirty-nine year old virgin, surrounded constantly by the fruits of other people&039;s sexual encounters

A quick wave to Muht she couldn&039;t see them) and she was off A ten minute drive into the centre of Rowley and she&039;d be there

Juliet always seemed to be the first one to arrive at work She was always there ages before anyone else At the ti there were usually only one or two other people around - usually just Jackson the caretaker and Ken Andrews, the deputy head of the infant school to which the nursery was attached

&039;Morning, Joanne,&039; sround Bloodyin and around the school he&039;d never got her naht he did it on purpose to try and wind her up, other tinorant But the fact of thebecause he rarely had any reason to speak to her about anything of i to correct hi more embarrassment on her part than his To say that Julietof an understate parents had virtually destroyed her self-esteem Juliet had reached the point where she preferred it if no-one noticed her

As usual the caretaker had opened up the prefabricated hut they used for the nursery class The classroo, even in su was no exception Her breath condensed in billowing clouds around her mouth and nose and the low tehtly nulanced up at the clock on the wall Half an hour until the children were due Probably twenty-five minutes before any of the other classroorace her with their presence As low, depressed and dejected as she could ever re&039;s activities

What the hell was that? Juliet stopped what she was doing and looked up Fifteen minutes now to the start of class and she&039;d just heard an al noise just outside the door It sounded like kidsaround on the concrete steps which led up to the classrooainst the door Juliet didn&039;t like confrontation She kept her head down, hoping that whoever it ould go away as quickly as they&039;d arrived Maybe they&039;d just

Suddenly another sound, this one very different to the first It sounded like so, but it couldn&039;t have been, could it? Juliet crept cautiously towards theand looked outside The playground was e fro and the rubbish bins and back again She was about to turn round and go back to what she&039;d been doing when she noticed it She had to stand on tip-toe and crane her neck to see properly, but she could definitely see a foot sticking out over the edge of the steps So there were kids(she didn&039;t like it when she didn&039;t knoas happening) she walked over to the classrooainst it She couldn&039;t hear anything outside Very slowly she pushed the door open Lying on the steps in front of her was the dead body of Sam Peters, one of the boys who had been in the nursery class last year Panicking, she iainst it Not knohat she was going to do, and overcome with sudden nervousness and disorientation, she slid down to the floor and held her head in her hands There was no question that the boy was dead She&039;d never seen a body before but she kneas dead His frozen face was all twisted and contorted with pain and there were dribbles of blood on the front of his yellow school sweatshirt

No-one&039;s co

Twenty minutes later and still no-one else had arrived at the school Juliet had been counting on so Sam&039;s body on the steps She&039;d planned to act dumb and pretend she hadn&039;t known he was there

Someone else should have been here by now Where were the other children?

Marie and Dorian, two of the other nursery helpers (who travelled to work together), should have arrived at least five o So where were they? Were they outside? Had they found the body and had she just not heard them? Unlikely She crept towards theand peered outside again She could still see Sam&039;s foot He was still there

As the ot the better of her fear She had to do so that the poor boy was out there on the steps

The round from the nursery hut Juliet decided she&039;d have to make a run for it She&039;d open the door, run down the steps and then find the headteacher or the deputy head and tell them what had happened, despite the fact that she didn&039;t knohat the hell was going on herself

She had to do it now

Juliet put on her coat and, taking a deep breath, opened the classroo herself to look anywhere but down at the body on the steps she half-ju aardly, twisting her foot and al to keep her balance she ran across the playground with the sounds of her footsteps, her heavy, frightened breathing and the thu in her ears