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&039;They can&039;t get up here, can they?&039; Wilcox wondered timidly, concerned that he really was to bla new development He looked over towards Bushell for an answer Bushell shrugged his shoulders

&039;Don&039;t know Can&039;t see why not If enough of theuess is they&039;ll start cli eventually&039;

&039;But they won&039;t get up here, will they?&039;

Bushell shrugged his shoulders again

&039;This place has one ,&039; he explained, still staring deep into the vast crowd below them &039;There are a couple of fire escapes, but they&039;re blocked off as far as I know To be honest, I didn&039;t look into security too deeply when I got here There didn&039;t seem to be any need when the place still had a front door&039;

Wilcox glared at hi?&039;

&039;If there are enough of the, who knohat they&039;ll be able to do Give thee to get up here&039;

&039;Can we still get out of here if we need to?&039;

&039;Well, I think we can get back down no problehed, &039;but e do once we&039;re down there is anyone&039;s guess Thanks to you lot the building is surrounded I can&039;t see a way out&039; &039;Let&039;s all keep cals into perspective,&039; Proctor said quietly, doing his best to prevent panic fro to us are slih up here that they&039;ll probably disappear long before they even get close&039;

&039;You reckon?&039; Elizabeth snapped &039;There doesn&039;t see, does there? It looks like we&039;re the main attraction&039;

Bushell, Elizabeth, Wilcox and Proctor stood side by side at theand stared down The streets beloere filled with grey, staggering bodies and in the absence of any other distraction the whole da its way towards the hotel

There were already thousands of theerously close

DAY NINE

THE GARDEN SHED

Lester Prescott thrives on order and uniformity On many levels he has constantly proved hi He finds it difficult to connect with people eh he has tried, over the years he has proved hi and dull husband, a passion-free and uniinative lover and, perhaps worst of all, a disappointment both as a father and role model Lester has, however, excelled in other areas of his life His home is pristine and perfect and is situated in a relatively well-to-do residential area, he is well respected socially and is the most accurate and productive accountant ever to have been employed by the firm of Ashcroft, Jenkins and Harman Lester Prescott thinks in black and white Show a child a cardboard box and they&039;ll turn it into a spaceship, a plane, a car, a robot suit or whatever else their unrestricted iinations can create As far as Lester Prescott has always been concerned, however, a cardboard box is, was and only ever could be a cardboard box

Prescott and his long-suffering wife Janice have been married for twenty-seven years and two months For twenty-five of those years they&039;ve lived in the same semi-detached house a third of the way down Baker Road WestTwenty-three years ago next month their only child - Madeline - was born Maddy, as she&039;s known, left hohteen to study She loves her parents dearly but does her level best to only go back and see them when she absolutely has to She recently qualified as a nurse and noorks in a large hospital on the other side of town

Last TuesdayJanice, Maddy and more than six billion other people were killed by the most virulent virus ever to curse the face of the planet Much to his surprise, Lester Prescott survived

Day eight ends and day nine begins What will this day bring? This last week has been harder than I could ever have iined and I need to stop and take some time out now None of it ht to try and work it all out I sit here on the end of Maddy&039;s bed and look around her room It&039;s just as she left it when she went to university Mother and I didn&039;t see any point in changing it until she&039;d got herself married and settled down in her own home It&039;ll never happen now, of course I&039;ll never change this room now It&039;s a little oasis of norone coe of time hasn&039;t made any of this any easier to understand or deal with The chain of events which began last Tuesday are still as confusing, inexplicable and painful as they hen they first happened It started like just about every other Tuesday has started since I&039;ve worked for AJH I arrived at work at ten to eight, got ures Bill Ashcroft (one of the senior partners) was the first person it caught He was standing talking to his secretary Allison when it took hi everyone aroundfor et me I don&039;t knohy I escaped Before I knew it I was the only one left alive

I left the office as quickly as I could, stopping only to put away ain, pack my briefcase and fetch my newspaper and coat from the cloakroom I madeand painfully slow Outside it was as if someone had simply flicked a switch Everyone seemed to have died at almost exactly the same moment I saw hundreds of bodies down and cars crashed It seee and get back to the house

I had been thinking about Janice and Maddy constantly since leaving the office and I had hoped to return ho for me After all I seemed to have survived, so why shouldn&039;t she have too? Sadly it wasn&039;t to be I found her in the kitchen, lying on her back on the floor in an inch and a half of water The tap had been left running and the rooh I set to work sorting things out straight away I dried her off as best I could and then wrapped her in a blanket and covered her with black plastic refuse sacks which I taped up It wasn&039;t an easy or pleasant task but I nified at the ti in accordance with the instructions contained in the government information booklet we received last summer Janice used to mock me because, by nature, I am occasionally pedantic and perhaps a little obsessive She used to say that oodness I a system I&039;ve implemented in my study I was able to lay my hands on the booklet immediately and deal with ienically, just as the government had instructed

As I worked to move Janice&039;s body and clean up the mess in the kitchen I kept a constant eye out for Maddy I felt sure that she&039;d co and I wanted to make sure that Mother had been properly dealt with before she arrived Myh for one day, with each second that ticked by it looked increasingly likely that one too Eventually, at half-past one that afternoon, I could sit and wait no longer I set out to find her Once again ly difficult and slow I arrived at the hospital in an hour and tento my notes she should have been on duty but I couldn&039;t find her I had an awful tih the bodies for Maddy So many poor, innocent people had lost their lives so suddenly and inexplicably

When I couldn&039;t find her on any of the wards she covered I worked my way back from the hospital to the house she shared with her friends Jenny and Suzanne It was there that I found our little girl in her front garden, lying on her back in the long grass Bloody hell, she deserved nified end to such a short and beautiful life It broke ht her back home with me I dealt with her body in accordance with official instructions, just as I had Mother&039;s

It was inified to leave my family out on the patio as I had done They both deserved so ain that afternoon It said that the bodies of any fatalities should be buried away from the house Dejectedly I decided I would have to do just that I dragged thearden to the sarden shed and Maddy&039;s old swing We&039;d originally brought her that swing on her sixth birthday but Mother and I decided we&039;d keep it even after she&039;d grown out of it and stopped using it It was always there to re on it with her friends Even nohenever I look at it all I can see is young Maddy swinging on it in the surandchildren to use it one day

I unlocked the shed and went inside

The garden shed has always beena very practical and convenient storage space, it was also a quiet and comfortable little area where I could sit and work or read my paper or listen to sport on the radio Maddy and her mother liked their television and their soap operas but I couldn&039;t abide the constant noise and distraction Quite often - almost daily in the summer months, certainly most weekends - I would shut myself away in the shed and relax instronger

Before I picked up my tools I sat down on the deck chair in the corner of the shed and tried to take stock of all that had suddenly happened aroundthere it was hard to comprehend the enormity and finality of what had happened and I could hardly believe that hter&039;s lifeless bodies lay just inches away With tears in my eyes I looked around the little wooden hut and remembered all that I had lost The season was alarden tools had been cleaned and were ready to be put away On the opposite here I stored the sus that Maddy and her ers and deck chairs, garden games and the like In a small wooden box tucked away in one corner I found a collection of brightly coloured buckets and spades which I had again kept for those grandchildren ould now never arrive They reone where Maddy, Mother and I would spend endless days playing on the beach in the blistering sun All of that seemed hundreds of miles and thousands of years away now

With a heavy heart I stood up, picked uptool, and set to work I took a rough th and width of Maddy&039;s body (she was slightly taller and thicker set than her raves in the turf close together I carefully lifted the turf and then spent the next two hours digging Although we used to go to church most Sundays I wasn&039;t quite sure what I should say before I covered up their bodies It was difficult to think of the right words I loved them both very much but I&039;ve always found it hard to properly express , eled with, such words have never come naturally to me In any event I thanked God for their lives and asked that they would now find peace They were good people and I was confident they would I was far less sure about what the future had in store for me

I&039; sorry foranyone any favours if I&039;d just sat there and done nothing I spent a lot of ti to make sense of what had happened but I soon realised that it was i More to the point, I couldn&039;t find anyone or anything to help e as it seemed, the whole world seemed to suddenly have died The whole world, that was, except ain but it was of little help It kept talking about how the authorities would help and how I should sit and wait for further instructions from them I was ready to sit and wait, but I was pretty certain that no further instructions were ever going to co to verify the validity of my claim) I was the only man left alive

So what did I need to do in order to sit and wait? I had plenty of food at the house, but it was already clear that I&039;d need more With each hour that passed it see to take many weeks and ot sorted out at all I needed to be ready to fend fortime With that in mind I took the car round to the shops and started to collect supplies Food, cleaning , medicines even books, paper and pens I had already realised that it would be important to try and keep myself occupied both physically and mentally I had written myself a comprehensive list that ran to alet just about everything I needed and it took two trips in the car to get it all back hooods without paying, but I had nopayment and there was obviously no-one there to make payment to Instead I made a second list of what I&039;d taken and also the cost of each individual item When some seo back andI had been forced to take The proprietors of the shops involved, if they ever returned, would undoubtedly understand

The thirdas the first had been Just when I was beginning to get used toan to drag theain When I saw the first of them I hoped that was the end of it, that this was the first indication of an i return to normality It quickly became clear that was not the case The bodies that had moved were unresponsive and slow I stood out in the middle of the road in front of the house and stopped the body of Judith Springer froered past the end of the drive I had known Judith and her husband Roy for many years, but the cold, e was er It looked the sans of deterioration) but it failed to react as a nor wasn&039;t even breathing

I shut h to the back of the house What about Maddy and her ed also? I found myself faced with the bizarre and repulsive (but very real) possibility that the wife and daughter I had buried just two days earlier raves I arden and crouched down next to the two slightly raised hue as far as I could see I didn&039;t knohat to do for the best I lay there and put round and listened but I couldn&039;t hear anything and I couldn&039;t feel any movement I re again, some still lay where they had fallen I didn&039;t knohether Maddy and her mother remained motionless or whether I had buried theet out For a second I seriously conte their bodies, but ould that have achieved? If they were capable of , so what? What difference would it haveas I had always found her, was most certainly dead, despite the fact that she was suddenly and inexplicably ain I decided that it was kinder both to Maddy and her mother to leave thenity

I sat out in the garden shed again that afternoon and read a book and occasionally dozed lightly My sleep was punctuated with desperate dreahter and wife It was almost dark when I woke up properly and went back inside The low light increasedslept I tossed and turned all night in bed

As the situation outside continued to change I s to do to try and keep myself positive and motivated I had left the car parked on the drive and had stored the provisions I&039;d taken at the far end of the garage In fact I had collected such an impressive voluth of the cold, rectangular roo of the fourth day, when there was finally enough light to see clearly, I sat at my desk in the study and made a list of my daily dietary requirements I used reference books, our family medical dictionary and the encyclopaedia to calculate the minimum I would need to eat each day to survive I then spent the entire day in the garage, dividing the nus of food into equal-sized daily rations,sure there were sufficient levels of the necessary vitamins, proteins and whatever other chemicals I needed for each day I also allowed myself a daily luxury - a can of beer or a packet of sweets for example It quickly becaet quite everything I needed fro vitamin and mineral supple the day I also became very aware that none of the food I had was fresh Perhaps, I thought to etables if th of tietable plot, but perhaps I would need to expand the operation over the coe floor surrounded by packages of food I found the idea of having to fend for