was completely unrecognisable, just a mangled, burnt mass.
Some clothing still hung around the creature’s desperate frame, flapping in the breeze. Most of it, however, had either burned away or melted into the twisted, blackened flesh. But somehow it kept moving. Ignorant to the damage and deformation it had suffered and oblivious to any pain or shock it should have felt, the bloody thing just kept on moving. Its eyes were burned out empty sockets and it had no coordination but still it kept on dragging itself forward, clumsily crashing into walls, parked cars and other obstructions. It had been the smell more than anything that had tipped Jack over the edge. He’d caught a taste of the scent of scorched flesh on the breeze and had immediately dropped to his knees and emptied the contents of his stomach into the gutter.
Although he’d decided to turn back if nothing happened, an unpredictable combination of curiosity and morbid fascination coupled with the desperate desire to actually find someone else alive kept Jack moving towards the centre of town. The further he got from his home, the more confident he gradually became but, as he neared the main hub of the city, the full enormity of what had happened was made painfully apparent. The small and insignificant suburb where he had lived had been brutally scarred by what had happened but that had been nothing compared to the city centre. Here, where there were far more tightly packed shops, offices, factories and other buildings the death and destruction appeared immense and unending. Jack was overcome by the magnitude of it all. Nothing seemed to have been left untouched by the silent killer early on Tuesday morning.
Walking down one side of a wide dual carriageway, he finally plucked up enough courage to shout out.
‘Hello,’ he yelled, frightening himself with the volume of his own voice. ‘Hello, is there anybody there?’
Nothing. No surprise. He tried again.
‘Hello…’
He stopped shouting and listened as the echoes of his words reverberated around the desolate city street, bouncing off the walls of lifeless buildings. Now that he seemed to be its only occupant, the world suddenly seemed vast and empty. In the far distance he heard a lone dog bark and howl.
‘Hello…’ he shouted again.
Dejected, he wondered whether it was worth going on. He had left his home with some hope, albeit a minimal amount, but now that had evapourated away to nothing. But how could he possibly be the only one left, he asked himself? Out of millions -
possibly billions - of people affected, how could it be that he had survived when the rest of them had fallen and died? Did it have anything to do with where he’d been when it had happened? Did he just have a natural, inbuilt immunity? Was it because he worked nights? Was it something he’d eaten or not eaten?
Nothing seemed beyond the realms of possibility anymore.
More pathetic, staggering bodies were all that he could see.
Now that his initial fear and uncertainty at being out in the open had subsided, Jack was beginning to feel stronger and less threatened by those bodies which moved. He could see, hear, think and react. They, it seemed, could do nothing more than stumble about aimlessly.
He was getting closer and closer to the heart of the city with every step. Was it safe to go in there? Should he turn back now and head home? The main road gradually narrowed to a single lane in either direction and the sudden closeness of the buildings around him made him feel hemmed in and uneasy. He decided against shouting out again. There were even more bodies up ahead. He managed to walk past them with a new found nonchalance, even plucking up the courage to push one of them out of the way when it staggered randomly into his path.
Jack glanced over to his right where he saw one of the pathetic creatures sitting in the shadows of a shop doorway. He hadn’t seen any of the corpses sitting still before, they seemed to move about constantly. Perhaps this was one that had fallen and died in the doorway where it had remained until now. He stopped and walked a little closer. As he approached the body raised its head and looked up at him, lifting its hands to shield its eyes from the bright autumn sun which had appeared momentarily through an unexpected gap in the heavy cloud cover. The figure in the doorway - a young girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age dressed in a creased and crumpled school uniform - slowly stood up and began to walk towards him. It took the two desperate, frightened individuals a good thirty seconds to realise and fully accept the fact that they had both found another survivor. Moving slowly and with caution at first, the girl broke into a run for the last few meters before wrapping her arms around Jack and sinking to her knees. He crouched down and held her as tightly as he could, as if he’d known her for fifty years and not seen her for ten. He’d finally found someone else alive.
After a few long and emotional seconds of silence, Jack looked around anxiously before taking the girl’s hand in his and leading her towards the nearest building. It was a dental surgery.
A cold, dark and small private practice which smelt of dust and decay still tinged with a sterile, antiseptic edge. The two survivors sat down together in a musty waiting room on hard plastic seats, surrounded by three motionless corpses that had been waiting to be seen by the now dead dentist since early Tuesday morning. A nurse was slumped across a counter to their right. The presence of the bodies didn’t seem to matter. Being indoors helped Jack psychologically, regardless of how grim and desolate his new surroundings were.
At first neither survivor knew what to say to the other.
‘I’m Jack…’ he eventually stammered awkwardly.
‘I heard you shouting…’ she began to sob. She shook as she leant against him. The warmth of her body was welcome and reassuring. ‘I didn’t know where you were,’she continued. ‘I heard you but I couldn’t see you and…’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he whispered, stroking her hair and gently kissing the top of her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Have you seen anyone else?’ the girl asked.
‘No-one. What about you?’
She shook her head. Feeling fractionally better and more composed, she pushed herself away from Jack slightly and sat up in her seat. He watched as she wiped her face.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked softly.
‘Clare Smith,’ she mumbled.
‘And are you from round here, Clare?’
She shook her head again.
‘No, I live with my mum in Letchworth.’
‘So how did you end up in this part of town?’
‘I’d been stopping at my dad’s this weekend. We didn’t have any school on Monday so I stayed with him an extra day and…’
She stopped talking when the memory of her parents and the recollection of her sudden, unexplained loss came flooding back.
She started to cry silently. Jack watched helplessly as a relentless stream of tears ran down her pale cheeks.
‘Look,’ he soothed, trying to make it easier for her, ‘you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. If you want we could just……’
‘What happened?’ she asked suddenly, cutting across him and turning to look him square in the face for the first time. ‘What did this?’
Jack sighed, stood up and stepped over a corpse lying at his feet.
‘Don’t know,’ he replied, looking through a frosted-glass window into a small office area. ‘I was on my way home when it happened. I didn’t see anything until it was too late.
Clare leant forward in her seat and held her head in her hands.