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Lester had just started his final can of beer when it finally began For the briefest of ed to beco in particular and he&039;d alotten as about to happen The sudden sharp crack of splintering wood brought hirabbed the garden fork, holding it out in front of hiiven way at the other end of the garden, nearer to the house It was difficult to see uely aware of dark, sware door It was frighteningly indistinct and rando The fence - already weakened close to the house - now began to bow and buckle about halfway up the garden Lester watched as it dipped further and further down, finally dropping so low that he could see the heads and shoulders of the dark, relentlessly advancing bodies on the other side Their direction, although to a large degree random and uncoordinated, was obvious and inevitable

As the first few bodies began their stilted, aalk towards hiraves of his farily in his chest What would they do to him? Were they capable of an attack or would they just tra fearbut stare directly at the dark advancing shapes He wanted to stop them He didn&039;t care what they did to hiraves of his wife and daughter I ht not have been able to tell you how I felt about you when you were alive, he thought, picturing Maddy and Janice in his head, but I can show you now

As the closest bodies lifted their weak, earden fork He s it and sending it crashing to the ground He wrenched the fork back out and swung it around at other shadowy shapes, catching one of the it Fuelled by adrenaline and fear he attacked again, diving deeper into the crowd, desperate to defend his family&039;s honour The final section of fence that had reroan and an oed the but he didn&039;t have roo for hi at him tirelessly With tears of panic in his eyes he span around, terrified and disorientated Out of the corner of his eye he spied the dark silhouette of the garden shed and he ran towards it, pushing and kicking bodies out of the way He reached out for the door handle, knowing that the end of his life was close but too scared to let it happen He knew that he was doing nothing but prolonging the inevitable (perhaps only by a fewthe door open and crashed inside The door flapped shut in the wind behind hi theNow sobbing uncontrollably, Lester collapsed into his deckchair in the corner and waited

So arden shed, the coldest, weakest and ly strong and warht he looked around and remembered all that he was about to lose The tools hich he and Janice had lovingly tended their small plot of land The battered wooden tea-chest on which he used to leave his paper or his book and his drink when he dozed in the shed on long, relaxing Saturday afternoons The plastic table and chairs which had been dragged out onto the patio each year when they&039;d entertained faa with Janice and Maddy All about to be lost forever Most of it already gone Lester knew that not long reee itself between the flapping door and the door fraed itself into the shed, followed by an apparently endless queue of others Do I know you? Lester stared at the rotting shadohich lurched towards him Were you once a friend or someone I used to ith, he wondered? Have I passed you on the street or did I work on your accounts? The creature&039;s face, repellent in the cold nisable

Lester stood up to try and push the bodies away but their nuled to stop hi back further into the shed One of the bodies trying to get inside tripped and fell, pushing those in front of it forith surprising force and speed Like do hiainst the back wall of the shed unexpectedly, feeling a sudden stinging pain between his shoulders as the ten steel prongs of his garden rake punctured his skin It wasdiscomfort than pain as such Lester lifted his ar bodies which continued to advance, pushing hi the spikes deeper and deeper into his back

Warht to himself as blood from the puncture wounds seeped down his back The heat fro Unable to ave way underneath hi several bodies doith hied itself in the fall, and Lester was able somehow to roll over onto his back He closed his eyes and screwed up his face as an unknown nu in parallel with the bodies of Maddy and her arden shed for as long as he could keep his eyes open

ROBERT WOOLGRAVE

I&039; I&039;ve gone about it all the wrong way I thought I was so bloody clever to start with, thought I knehat I was doing I was too quick off the ht have fucked it all up for myself

Fuck the lot of them That was the attitude I took from the minute all of this started Didn&039;t see else I had to be selfish, didn&039;t I? If I&039;d have spent alldead on the ground then I iven up and laid doith the chance It&039;s pretty bloody obvious that it&039;s every man for himself no could it not be when I&039;reat thing If I&039; any different if I&039;d had the chance to do it again I did what pretty much everyone else would have done in the saotfor other survivors and trying to find help It was pretty bloody obvious pretty bloody quickly that I was the only one left I took one of the cars fro in different places and shouting out for a while I drove right into the middle of the pedestrian area and stopped the car in the shopping centre and yelled s out but no-one ca If I was going to find other people, that here they&039;d have been And even if they were hiding in other places, everywhere was so daine should have been enough to let anyone as still alive knohere I was It didn&039;t take long for me to come to the conclusion that, for some bloody ridiculous reason, there wasn&039;t anyone else When the bodies started to pick theh was enough I had to start thinking aboutI&039;d ever seen, that was, seeing the around Worse than watching the rest of the world dying around

I didn&039;t knohere to start I made the office my base It was a choice between my flat and the office and as the other flats were filled with corpses it was a pretty simple decision to s, then I collected as much food as I could carry in the back of the car I du to make the place a little safer and better protected I work at CarLand, which is a bloody stupid naest and busiest second-hand car lots in the country Now it&039;s nothingand bloody quiet car park

The office was built a couple of years back It&039;s a two-storey concrete and glass building right in the ood a place as any to hide because CarLand&039;s on a business park just off the motorway, it&039;s not actually in the city I spent so out all the desks and co to make myself comfortable And that here I made my first mistake It was too bloody easy to concentrate on co else I should have stopped to think

I took a van and fetched myself some stuff froot a bed and a mattress, a couple of easy chairs, a sofa and a table Nearly crippledthat bloody lot up the stairs Then I started to get greedy By the fourth day it was lookingto be onstretch so I made another trip out for food and drink and I stopped at the electrical superstore on the other side of the business park on the way back I took as s as I could find - CD players, portable DVD players, hand-held games consoles and the like - and as many packets of batteries as I could layto keepthe stuff There was nothing I could do, was there? It wasn&039;t my fault that the rest of the world had dropped dead around me

For a couple of days I was co a life of bloody luxury, I did Space, quiet, co to do except eat food, drink, listen to a fil e used to be I foundhardcore or extrewo so toheadphones I couldn&039;t stand not being able to hear as going on around ames, on the other hand, seemed to help I couldn&039;t concentrate on puzzles or adventures, but I got a bigger kick than ever out of action and fighting games They passed the time and it helped to be able to take out sos started to go wrong last Saturdayto have an effect on the bodies outside the office The bloody things wouldn&039;t leave me alone They hadn&039;t been interested in ed Christ, they only had to seetowards the building Bloody things They were slow et rid of them, but there seemed to be more and more of them The way theyIt didn&039;t matter what I did or didn&039;t do, once they knehere I was they&039;d just keep dragging theive up I had to do so the to make the office even more secure I went outside with ascars closer to the building I took my time and planned it properly I parked as ht around the outside walls of the building and then moved another layer up and parked them close to the first, and then another layer after that It took et the job done but it orth it The place is secure now I left et in and out if I have to and I also left a couple of cars ready just in case I have to get away quickly Bottoethappened when I wasthe cars on Monday that really bothered ressive with so things started getting aggressive with me first I couldn&039;t believe it - one of the fuckers just went forIf it had been any stronger then I ht have been in real trouble As it was I just threw it to the side and carried on When I was inside the cars they were less of a probleot a little nastier By the end of the day I had to get violent with them to keep them out of my way and I didn&039;t enjoy that at all It wasn&039;t my fault and I didn&039;t have any choice, but I had to do sos that I really wasn&039;t co athell, at one point I founda little kid around the head with a jack from the boot of one of the cars I had to do it I had no choice It was get theetto fight andthem out with the cars I feel bad about it now, but there was a part ofhell, by the end of the day I was chasing the fucking things round the car park, ploughing the them with style or at speed Crazy really It was only when I woke up the nextand sahat I&039;d done that I realised how stupid I&039;d been I s There was blood, guts and bits of bodies everywhere

I don&039;t feel so good today I&039;ht and there are hundreds of those bloody things outside again There&039;s no way they can get to ive up They just stand there, watching and waiting forto black out the s because I don&039;t want to see them and I don&039;t want the so to wonder whether they&039;re here for revenge Are they coet me because I wiped out so many of them? Am I a threat to them?

Christ I feel sick

Don&039;t knohether it&039;s so me feel like this I&039;ve lived on crap since this started - mostly chocolate, crisps, biscuits and other snacks - because that&039;s been the easiest kind of food to find I haven&039;t eaten bread or anything fresh for days My stoht just be nerves Jesus, I hope that&039;s all it is I stuck my head out of the door for a second this afternoon and all I could hear was the buzzing of thousands of fucking flies and I started thinking about theto be filling the air soon, if they&039;re not already there I&039;ve probably been breathing them in for days now For Christ&039;s sake, the whole of the fucking car lot is packed solid with hu to s so bad in here that it s to the point where I can&039;t stand it any longer I&039; and I can&039;t flush any of the toilets They&039;re all backed-up with shit and there&039;s nothing I can do about it I don&039;t have any water or bleach to clean them with I wish I&039;d been better prepared Wish I&039;d thoughtfood and water than fucking DVD players and games machines

It&039;s dark now There&039;s nothing to do but sit here and wait for htened I don&039;t want to listen to ames anymore I don&039;t want to be distracted I want to know everything that&039;s happening around me so that I&039;m ready for them, but at the same time I don&039;t want to look I don&039;t want to see them

I&039;m tired but I can&039;t sleep I slept for a little while this afternoon but it wasn&039;t enough I can&039;t even bring myself to shut uts would keep s still won&039;t leave They just stand there waiting for me They try to climb over the cars but they can&039;t do it They don&039;t have the coordination or the strength I don&039;t knohy they don&039;t just go They know I&039;m here, I&039;m sure of it, but I don&039;t knohat they want from me I don&039;t think they know

I&039;ll stay here for as long as I can but I&039;ll have to try and find some medicine and proper food soon

Maybe I&039;ll try and get away in theMaybe I&039;ll wait another couple of days

I&039;ve builtprison

KATE JAMES

They&039;ve been gone for days now I&039; it&039;s been I&039;ve lost all track of tis seee when Michael, Carl and Eone with theo with theht but when it caot the better of me When it came to the crunch I couldn&039;t move Like everyone else here I was too scared I was born in Northwich and I&039;ve lived here all ht as well finish it here Might as well stay here now and end s and places that I know and used to know and

Co like this

The rest of the people here are as frightened as I a off them You can almost taste the fear in the air No-one looks into anyone else&039;s face anyround Because if you start trying to co to end up talking about the mess we&039;re in When you do that you realise just how bad things are and you start thinking about how hopeless the situation really is You start to realise that this is never going to get any better, and that this is as good as it&039;s going to get Talk to other people and you start to re that you&039;ve lost

The building is deathly silent, and has been for days