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JACKSON

You can learn a lot about theist or a doctor I don&039;t knohat&039;s happened to them or why it hasn&039;t happened to et ht live for another twenty years I know hardly anything, except how to survive

I never had any training for this kind of thing I did a couple of years in the Boy Scouts but that was the limit of my experience I could have done with a stretch in the forces, but it wasn&039;t forand the discipline I&039;ve never been able to handle being told what to do I work better on et on with other people (not that there are iven the choice I prefer my own company Especially noouldn&039;t be able to trust anyone else to be quiet enough or still enough when the bodies are about The world is dead and everything I do is exaggerated by the stillness

If I move they see me If I make a sound they hear me Hear me breathe and they want to kill etting about what they used to be before it happened, they&039;re pretty simple and easy to read There&039;s not a lot of conscious thought going on inside those eot no idea what&039;s happening inside their festering brains and their rotting bodies, but I have noticedcertain behaviours And those behaviours see today isn&039;t necessarily what they&039;re going to be doing tomorrow

It&039;s almost a week now since it happened They lay still for a while, and I checked enough of them to know that they were dead Well their bodies certainly were, but I think that so inside must have survived And whatever part of the steadily stronger ever since It began when they picked theain, and then they were able to hear and see Over the last day I&039;ve noticed that they&039;ve beco to show soer, although it could actually be frustration and pain No doubt that&039;s going torun

Enough of this Thinking like this is a waste of tiht not be happening to the to help es day by day and hope that I can stay one step ahead of the gaence should be enough to see h I just have to keep control and hold et jumpy or twitchy and I&039;ll start to make mistakes Make s don&039;t communicate with each other, in fact they&039;re fiercely independent and I&039;ve seen the each other apart That said, they do also have a strange tendency to roups It&039;s al happens which attracts the attention of one or two of thee crowd around whatever it was that caused the disturbance I can use that behaviour to es? When they&039;re together it&039;s easy to pick the able to take hundreds of thees? Pretty obvious really If I&039; the disturbance, I&039;ained froether Apart fros with one hit, it also takes the heat off h to flush thes can&039;t help theht or noise or whatever without giving me a second look I can virtually walk past them and they don&039;t notice Their senses are obviously pretty dull and basic Give the obvious to focus on and they don&039;t see else It&039;s like they can only concentrate on one thing at a tis are still pretty aard and cluave thee I have over theht I only risk walking out in daylight when I&039;m out in the middle of nowhere and I know there are only a few of theoing to keep travelling in one direction for a while, probably north but I ht head towards the coast in another direction It&039;s not going to be easy, but I can&039;t think of anything else to do Why the coast? See to be coh and inhospitable, and with the ocean on one side I&039;ll have less land to have to keep watching It will be okay I expect that as the bodies deteriorate they&039;ll find it harder and harder to cause ht on et lonely, lad that I survived In a strange way I&039;s It&039;ll be a future without the countless bullshit trappings of ery of trying to hold down a job and pay bills A future without politics, crap TV, religion and who knohat else Who knohat&039;s going to happen And I know I&039; na - ve, because for every problem the infection has solved, it&039;s created another few thousand You have to be positive though, don&039;t you?

I often wonder how many people like me are left? A quietly through the shadows, avoiding the bodies and, by default, avoiding each other too Doesn&039;t matter

It&039;ll be okay in the end

More to the point, I&039;ll be okay

OFFICE POLITICS

There are thirty-seven houses on Marshwood Road Only one of them has a freshly cut back lawn Only one has had its dustbins emptied and the rubbish placed neatly in black plastic sacks at the end of the drive Only one has had the curtains in its s drawn each night and opened eachsince the infection destroyed more than ninety-nine percent of the population

Different people deal with stress, loss and other ee of different ways Some implode, some explode Some shrivel up and hide in the quietest, darkest corner they can find, others make themselves visible and make as much noise as possible So

Si what has happened to him particularly badly The arrival of the infection and its subsequent repercussions and after-shocks has been little more than a trivial irritation which has further complicated his already utterly miserable existence One of life&039;s perennial victims, in his eyes no-one&039;s misery can compare to his own Walters cannot cope hat has happened all around him As a last ditch defenceto concentrate on his own

The sudden clattering of Walters&039; battery-powered alar stillness of the house He groaned, rolled over and switched it off It sounded louder than ever thisHow he hated that damn noise No, he didn&039;t just hate it, he absolutely bloody detested it Especially today When that unholy clanging began he kneas tiinally more bearable on Thursdays and Fridays as the weekend neared, but today was Monday, the beginning of yet another week, and the alar, love,&039; he yawned as he rolled over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling June, his wife lying next to hiht to himself Okay, so she only had to drop the kids off at school and work and they didn&039;t need to be there until just before nine, but she could at least et up with hiot out of bed once Perhaps when he caht he&039;d sit her down and force her to talk They needed to have a proper discussion about as bothering her God knows he needed to say so Her hair was greasy and lifeless and she was beginning to s to wash? He&039;d tried to say so to her about it yesterday afternoon but it was a delicate subject and he&039;d found it difficult to find the right words He&039;d tried his hardest to be careful and tactful but he&039;d obviously said so that had upset her because she&039;d not said a word back to hinored him She hadn&039;t even had the decency to look at hilass of wine and a slice of cake as a peace offering She hadn&039;t even touched thelanced over at the alarain Five past seven He couldn&039;t put it off any longer There was no avoiding it, it was tiet up Much as he wanted to curl up and pretend the day wasn&039;t happening, he couldn&039;t He had responsibilities He kicked the covers off his side of the bed, rolled over to the right and then yawned, stretched and stumbled to the bathroom

This country is well on its way down the road to ruin, he decided as he stared at hiain The taps had been dry for alht to himself, I look awful He looked tired, and that was because he was bloody tired Tired of his family and their behaviour towards him, tired of his job and tired of hie and he&039;d found himself stuck in a deep, directionless rut He couldn&039;t see a way out The only way he could see hiood books would be to pander to them and buy them more, and the only way he could afford to buy theet promoted at work or find himself a better job Bloody hell, how he hated his job He&039;d worked for the bank for more than twenty-five years and in that tier the sae sixteen Back then it had been a career to be proud of and working for a bank had given hi in the coues but noas little lorified sales to sell loans, accounts and insurance policies to people who either already had enough loans, accounts and policies or who had only coas bill Maybe it was his own fault he thought sadly as he began to shave with his old electric razor He&039;d seen plenty of people who&039;d joined the bank after hih the ranks at speed In fact, he&039;d trained three of the last five ers he&039;d worked for to be cashiers when they&039;d first joined the company

The bank needs people like ed and pulled at the weekend&039;s stubble with his razor If it wasn&039;t for people like h-flyers and the people at the top wouldn&039;t be able to do their jobs and hed at hie of the stationery cupboard for longer thanon the other side of their faces if he didn&039;t put in a stationery order, wouldn&039;t they? How could they sell their loans and their accounts and their insurance policies without the right brochures and forms? And how could they fill them out without any pens? He did ave him credit for

The batteries in his razor ran out mid-shave The left side of his face was , dark stubble Bloody typical

They needed to go shopping The kitchen cupboards were practically eone to the superone Why was everything left to hi his dry cereal (nolist He&039;d leave it on the table for June Hopefully she&039;d get up later and go out and get everything they needed

Walters looked around the kitchen dejectedly and shook his head He wished he could understand as going on He&039;d never known anything like it The water, gas and electricity supplies had been off since early last week To lose one of theh, but all three? At the sa his bills for And it wasn&039;t as if he&039;d been able to get June to phone to complain either The telephone had been out of action for just as long He&039;d tried to phone up himself from work last Friday but they&039;d had the sarief I&039;d get if I didn&039;t do ht There&039;d be hell to pay if the custoet access to theirto be, Walters stood up and packed his lunch away into his briefcase It wasn&039;t really very much of a lunch, just a few dry crackers, some biscuits, a packet of crisps he&039;d found at the back of the cupboard and an apple, the skin of which felt slightly rubbery and wrinkled He jast the hundreds of old circulars, leaflets, handwritten notes and photocopied procedures that he carried to and from work every day None of it was necessary (most of it was probably out of date) but ita case full of papers to the office It was a security blanket of sorts, so to hide behind He convinced himself it was necessary He needed to be well-inforet one over on him

&039;Are any of you out of bed yet?&039; he yelled fro to his faitated and nervous (he always felt that way before work) Walters put his briefcase down at the foot of the stairs and stormed back up to try and inject a little life andhappening in Matthew&039;s bedroom At least he was up

&039;Are you ready for school, Matt?&039; he asked as he pushed his way into his fourteen year-old son&039;s room What was left of Mattheas on the other side of the door, trying to claw its way out in reaction to hearing its father&039;s voice Walters shoved the door back and sent the wasted body of his son tripping backwards &039;Sorry about that, son,&039; heand lurched forward again, crashing into hihed, &039;take it easy!&039; Matthew&039;s corpse grabbed at hiot ti that the body was play-fighting with hio to work now I&039;ll see you when I get back, okay?&039;

Laughing, Walters picked up the light, emaciated body and carried it across the room and dumped it on its bed The corpse ian to aardly stagger back towards the door

&039;Make sure you change your sweatshirt before you go to school,&039; Walters ordered, pointing a disapproving finger at the dribbles of blood and other bodily emissions which had seeped down the front of his dead son&039;s dark blue junoring the heavy clump and clatter as what remained of his son smashed into the other side of the wooden barrier

Just like her ht as he peeled back the bedclothes in the next roohter She&039;d just turned seventeen when she&039;d died and had started work in a hairdressing salon three weeks earlier He gently shook her shoulder and the lifeless body fell over onto its back Its un

&039;Don&039;t you be late for work,&039; he whispered &039;You don&039;t want to give the impression, do you?&039;

No response Walters leant down and kissed his daughter&039;s cold, discoloured cheek There was a spider in her hair He picked it out and flicked it across the rooood day&039;

Walters paused and took a deep breath before going back into the bedroom he shared with June

&039;I&039;m off to work now,&039; he said quietly &039;I&039;ll see you tonight Maybe we could talk later? I&039;d like to knohat it is I&039;m supposed to have done?&039;

For a moment he stood and stared sadly at the body in the bed She didn&039;t ood years too) and she couldn&039;t even bring herself to acknowledge hi?

Walters pushed his way through the growing crowd of rotting bodies gathered around his front gate and began the short walk to work He didn&039;t knohy these people were there or what it was they wanted They&039;d been there for days now Didn&039;t they have hoo to? More to the point, didn&039;t they have jobs to go to? Was he solely responsible for keeping the country running? It was certainly beginning to feel that way this le car out on the roads He couldn&039;t see any of the usual faces he saw heading off to work or taking the children to school or walking the dog All he could see were ed people Sorab at him and pull his clothes as he passed them and he couldn&039;t understand why What did they want from him? What had he done to the that they would disappear by the tiht