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Cox turned back to face the front door and put his key in the lock He stopped and took a deep, cal in Inside the house was as quiet as everywhere else

&039;Marcia,&039; he called hopefully, &039;Marcia, are you here?&039;

She should have been there She hadn&039;t said that she&039;d planned going out anywhere on TuesdayHe walked further down the hall He instinctively started to take off his coat but then stopped and quickly pulled it back on It was almost as cold inside the house as it was out on the street

&039;Marcia?&039; he called again

He peered through the doors into the living roo room and kitchen All empty They all looked just the saan to cli that his ould most probably still have been in bed when it had happened Christ, he hoped she was all right But she would have answered him when he&039;d called, wouldn&039;t she? Cox prepared hiaps between the wooden banister posts he could see into their bedroom Their duvet lay in a heap on the carpet at the side of the bed He climbed the last few steps two at a time and burst breathlessly into the room but she wasn&039;t there The bed was e et Water had seeped out fro virtually the entire length of the landing It was obvious nohere Marcia was Cox walked up to the bathroo beneath him, and knocked on the door

&039;Marcia? Marcia, it&039;s me, love I&039;m home&039;

He tried the handle It was locked He pushed and shoved at the door to little effect before taking five or six splashing, sliding steps back down the landing and then running back and trying to shoulder-charge his way into the bathrooave way alainst it Marcia had been e it He pushed the door fully open (sending a loave of water rippling back across the bathroom floor) and there, in front of him, stood what remained of his wife Cos it walked blindly towards the durabbed hold of his dead wife&039;s arhtly Her eyes were dark and vacant and she felt cold to the touch He pulled her close to hiainst the wall and watched in heartbroken silence as she lurched past, staggered the length of the landing and then crashed into the door of the spare bedroo rooround floor door andWednesday night turned into Thursdayas he busied himself around his ho a bath when it happened) had caused e both upstairs and down in the kitchen below The cold water made the house smell of must and decay, or perhaps that was just the smell of his wife? Cox wasn&039;t sure At least she&039;d left hiht prove to be useful

Very occasionally, and only for the briefest of moments each time, Cox allowed himself to think about what had happened What could have caused the deaths of hundreds, ed theain? Why hadn&039;t it happened to him? Why had he been spared and ere there no other survivors? Why hadn&039;t anyone come to help yet? Surely this couldn&039;t have happened everywhere, could it?

Despite his vocation, thinking about other people wasthat cah, he had come to the conclusion that the most sensible course of action for him to take would be to just continue to concentrate on his own safety and wellbeing and sit tight and wait Despite the fact that the gas, electricity and water supplies were all off, his house was still relatively comfortable and, as far as he could be sure, safe There was a shop round the corner froet food and drink supplies It made sense to stay at home What use would he be to anyone else, anyway? One man to help hundreds, possibly even thousands? It would be farafter himself That was, after all, what he was best at

A strange sense of nor one hurried trip to the shop around the corner to fetch food early on Friday ht until dusk He checked on Marcia a couple of tie in her condition He dressed her and e that her endless and pointless staggering around was causing in the living rooet annoyed She couldn&039;t help it Somehow the noise and inconvenience his wife&039;s corpse caused wasof the body he&039;d left behind in the bunker

With little else to do to occupy his tie to his holad the electricity supply was off It was safer that way The light fitting in the kitchen was full of water which had dripped through the ceiling fro bath He&039;d drained as much of it off as he could By the time the water supply came back on, he decided, it would probably have dried out He&039;d have to get soe later No doubt they&039;d charge hi Cox sat at his desk in an alcove at the side of the dining rooht until his eyes began to droop and close It was good to be occupied and distracted It was a relief to have so positive to think about and do for a while He was finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the relentless silence of the dead world around hi he found a battery powered cassette player upstairs and used it to play a tape of loud classical music to drown out the quiet

At a quarter to two on Saturday hbour froered over to Cox&039;s house and sla Startled, he leapt back, his pulse suddenly racing He quickly began to regain his composure when he realised it was only one of the du nition when he realised it as left of Malcollass pressed its lifeless face against the , leaving behind a greasy, bloody s hand into the air and slapped it down on the glass Strange, thought Cox as he watched the wizened, decaying shell of his friend hitting the glass again and again It didn&039;t bother him unduly In fact he felt quite sorry for it The ere double-glazed and thatto little more than a dull thud Tired, Cox turned up the volume on his cassette player and carried it upstairs with hi Day five

Cox slept well It would have been wrong to say that he was happy with his situation but, all things considered, it could have been un to accept what had happened and was deterardless of what had happened to everyone else, he remained relatively safe, warm and well protected For a while he lay there and didn&039;tabout how everything had changed

What was he going to do today? He really needed to start thinking about getting more supplies in He&039;d noticed earlier in the week that workmen had been at one of the houses down the road when all this had started last Tuesdayand their van was still parked outside the house Perhaps he should borrow it and drive it round to the local super the van with absolutely everything he&039;d need, it would save hi as a couple of weeks By then he was sure that the situation outside would have iet any worse, could it? In a couple of weeks time, he decided, the other people who had survived like hianised

Cox forced his out of bed and winced at the sudden drop in te the house was icy cold He tiptoed across the landing to the toilet (stepping gingerly over the still damp carpet) and relieved hi to use since the toilet cistern had dried up Once a day he carried it down to the bottoarden and eht as he shook hiet dressed

He was half-dressed and halfway down the stairs when he noticed that soe and he struggled for a er on exactly what it was that was different It was dark That was it, the ground floor of the house was unusually dark this htly uneasy, but not overly concerned, he continued down the staircase

He saw the shapes through the frosted glass, he could see the heads and shoulders of at least three or four corpses,up his trousers and tightening his belt as he walked As it was every , his next port of call was the kitchen at the back of the house Still half asleep he walked barefoot across the cold, tiled floor to fetch himself some breakfast cereal from the cupboard next to the sink The cupboard door sla) and the sound echoed through the eed and then frowned He could suddenly hear Marcia e Was it just coincidence, or had what remained of his wife just reacted to noise for the first tio and see her when he caught sight of soround floor of the house this , that room also seemed darker than usual, and Cox was sure he could see some movement He put his head around the door and then quickly drew it back again Bodies Hundreds of the bloody things, or that was how it seeh the narrow gap between the open door and the door frame and saw that the entire width of the wide bayat the front of the house was packed tight with dead flesh He could see countless ghastly, cold faces pressed up against the glass, scouring the room with their dry, clouded eyes Why were they here? What did they want? Cox leant his head against the wall and tried to understand as happening None of the creatures had shown the slightest interest in him before, so why now? Were these somehow different to all the other bodies he&039;d so far seen? His mind wandered back to what had happened just before he&039;d gone to bed Malcolht them here He must have tipped them off that he was from the council Did they think he&039;d be able to do so for them? Before he&039;d died Worsley had asked Cox to do favours for hih planning peret a parking fine overturned Cox had no reason to think he would have changed his ways now just because he&039;d died He peered through the gap again There he was, the sly bugger, his dead face pressed hard against the , letting everyone knohere Cox rongly assu that he was the ile confidence rattled, Cox felt suddenly uncomfortable and unsure He ran back upstairs and peered out of thein the spare rooe, ragged crowd of diseased, decoathered in front of his property The nearest corpses had been raainst the front of the house by the relentless pressure of countless others behind, and the whole mass had spilled out into the middle of the road His car - his escape route - had been surrounded and sed up by the dead hordes

The nervous counsellor considered his suddenly limited options As he continued to watch fro shapes dragging the the nearby streets towards his house Individually they seemed weak and distant and he had no reason to believe that they would intentionally do him any har? These things were dead, for Christ&039;s sake He never thought that his constituents would resort to et action from the council They&039;d never shown any interest before He began to regret the day he&039;d stood for election

Cox crept round to the back of the house and sat down on the edge of the bed I&039;ll stay here and keep out of sight for a while, he thought Maybe they&039;ll get tired waiting and go somewhere else

By th of the street, and still ainst the s and front door, and the sound could most probably be heard for e to creep back downstairs and had quickly coht now prove longer than he originally expected, his supplies were far froh food for a fewthere with his throat dry and his sto at the breakfast bar in the kitchen (well out of sight) he ca realisation that, because of the bloody public outside, his situation was nohere near as coht Disconsolate he stood up, walked across the rooe to see Marcia Maybe her condition would have changed today? Perhaps she h to be able to offer her husband soly difficult tih thein the door and saw that his dead as still crashing tirelessly around the rooain Bloody hell, she looked awful Several stones overweight, wrinkled with age, lireen He wished she&039;d stop As long as she wasthis much noise the people of Taychester would know there was someone in and would continue to beat a slow (but very definite) path to his door Perhaps if he went in there and found a way of keeping her quiet? Christ, as he thinking? He&039;d never been able to keep Marcia quiet when she was alive and she&039;d been able to listen to hiet her to cooperate now?

Maybe he needed to get away and lie low for a while But hoas he going to get out and where was he supposed to go? The ansas disappointingly obvious He anxiously glanced up at the clock on the wall It was already close to ht would start to fade He could either sit tight for another night or make his move today Hiscrowd on the street If there were hundreds of theot up to? Or the day after that, or the day after that? It wasn&039;t so much the size of the crohich bothered him, instead it was the fact that they wanted him to help them As a counsellor surely he had a public duty to help and protect them? As he&039;d done for most of his life in public service, he decided to turn his back on that responsibility and run

Get soround

Alhtened Counsellor Cox, on foot and with a heavy holdall full of spare clothes in his hand, approached the supermarket that he and Marcia usually shopped at His way out of the front of his house blocked, he&039;d sneaked out of the back door and claarden Bloody hell, so for him there too! He&039;d found himself in the middle of a crowd of between twenty and thirty of them For a moment he&039;d tried to reason with the he could do to help so many of them but they wouldn&039;t listen To his shah the crowd in tears, unable to get away quick enough A fifteen h the shadows and he was there

The supermarket was as quiet and desolate as everywhere else That pleased Cox He didn&039;t want to see anyone else, unless they could talk and control theic population and the way they gravitated towards him whenever they saw him He wished they&039;d just leave him alone Didn&039;t they know that he had proble to help him out? Just because he didn&039;t appear to be as sick as they obviously were, it didn&039;t mean he was there to run to the aid of every person who happened to see hi he could see that there were people swar around the front entrance and car park He decided to try and get in through the back The loading bay was a h the abandoned lorries, trolleys and carts at the back of the huge store and sloorked his way through the staff area, the bakery and into the main part of the shop Bloody hell, the place smelled awful The council health and safety department would have had a field day A week&039;s worth of rotting food and rotting flesh It was so strong that itout &039;Keep calm Ray,&039; he told himself, &039;this is the hardest part You can do this Get everything you need here and then you can shut yourself away for as long as it takes for this bloody mess to sort itself out&039;

Two bodies tripped and staggered towards hi footsteps

&039;Leave h for them to hear but not so loud that the rest of the dead shoppers would notice &039;I can&039;t help you There&039;s nothing I can do for any of you&039;

They kept co towards him

&039;Look,&039; he continued, &039;I&039; soon who&039;ll be able to help you, but it&039;s notfor you I&039; I&039;ve got problems too, you know&039;

The corpses continued undeterred The nearest of them was just a couple of meters away now and its relentless, slothful approach unnerved Cox He turned and tried tobut there were , he looked around and could suddenly see the the up the aisles Crawling over empty cardboard boxes and piles of spilt food He could seeto drag theh the supermarket&039;s open entrance doors In desperation and exacerbation he climbed up onto the lid of the nearest of a row of freezers full of decaying, defrosted food to both escape fro public

&039;Stop!&039; he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous building and attracting the attention of the few re bodies nearby who hadn&039;t yet noticed hi I can do for any of you Go away!&039;

In his frightened, confused and uided state Cox failed to appreciate the stupidity of his actions With renewed interest the corpses continued to advance towards hirab at him with cold, numb hands he scrambled back across the row of freezers One of the freezers - the third or fourth in the line - was open Cox didn&039;t notice until it was too late He struggled to keep his balance but was unable to stop hi down into it He sank deep into a e of soaked cardboard boxes and defrosted pizzas and lasagnes and he threw his arms out to steady hiht him face to face with the dead, eye level as left of the people of the borough The same people who used to use the tennis courts and football pitches that he had responsibility for The sas he used to sleep through Cox tried to scra and slipped deeper into the rabbed hold of the shoulders of the nearest cadaver and hauled hiht again he climbed out of the freezer and pushed the body away Cold, soaking wet and covered with foul-s crowd The dark mass of bodies turned and followed hih the loading bay