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  Well now it had happened, and it was nothing like anyone had expected. The world had ended yesterday morning and now, sitting alone underground in the semi-darkness of the council bunker, Ray struggled to make sense of it all.

  Tuesday had begun normally enough. After taking a cup of tea up to Marcia in bed, he’d left home at the usual time and had driven across town to the council house. He’d driven down the ramp into the car park below the main building and it was there his nightmare had begun. He was reversing into his usual space when he glimpsed movement behind him in his wing mirror. Thomas Jones, one of the finance directors, had collapsed at the side of his car. Ray jumped out and ran around to help him, but Jones seemed to be suffocating, choking on something. Ray shouted for help but no one came. He wasn’t a designated first aider and he didn’t want to risk touching Jones in case the wily bugger sued, so he ran back up the ramp to the security guard’s hut, only to find another three people along the way who were all writhing in agony on the dirty concrete floor like the first man. Dan Potts, the security guard, was in a similar state also, thrashing around on the floor of his little square fibreglass cabin.

  Ray started to panic. Never mind how at least five people around him had been struck down by something he couldn’t see or hear, he was simply terrified he might be next. He continued out of the underground car park, running for cover, but when he reached the civic square, he stopped. His legs buckled with terror. It was happening everywhere. For as far as he could see in every direction, people were dropping to the ground, unable to breathe, grabbing and clawing desperately at their burning throats. He knew he should do something, and for a second he genuinely tried, loosening the collar of a particularly attractive woman’s blouse and trying to stop her arms and legs from thrashing, but when he realised he couldn’t help any of these people, the only option left was to help himself.

  Ray turned and ran back underground, moving faster than he had for years. Level G, Level 1A, past his car on Level 1B and then down to Level 2. And there it was, right at the far end of Level 2: a single, inconspicuous grey metal door – the entrance to the emergency bunker. He staggered towards it, his lungs about to burst but the fear that the invisible killer might be closing in on him keeping him moving. A woman lurched out of the shadows to his right and stumbled into his path, arms outstretched, desperate for help. Without thinking he grabbed her and dragged her along with him. He smashed into the bunker door, entered the access code on a hidden keypad with a shaking index finger, then yanked it open and disappeared inside with the woman. He turned back but paused before sealing the shelter. He couldn’t see anyone else. Where were the rest of the EPC? Were they already dead? He couldn’t risk waiting. He had to stay alive. Ray slammed the door shut.

  The woman was on the ground, convulsing. It was dark inside the bunker and the only illumination came from dusty yellow emergency lights hanging from the low ceiling. Ray crouched at her side and looked her up and down, not knowing how to help or even where to start. Before he could do anything her arms and legs went into a sudden flurry of quick spasms – some kind of seizure, he thought – then she stopped and lay ominously still. His eyes now becoming used to the low light, Ray took a torch from a rack on the wall above him and shined it into her face. Her wide, blue eyes stared desperately into space, but she didn’t react. She was dead. Her pale white skin, he noticed, was speckled with spots of crimson blood. Ray wept with fear as he wiped the blood away and shook her shoulder to try and get her to respond. He’d seen her around before. A nice looking girl, he had an idea she worked in Payroll, but he’d never spoken to her. The name on her ID card was Shelly Bright. Much as he’d genuinely tried to help her, Ray now wished she wasn’t there. He cursed himself for bringing her inside.

  #

  Adrenalin and fear kept Ray working uncharacteristically quickly for the next couple of hours. Like most council members he had a basic knowledge of the workings of the bunker and how the generator, lights and air conditioning and filtration systems were operated. Relatively fool-proof instructions had been provided and, to his immense relief, he was able to get the bunker fully operational in a fairly short period of time. It was a dark, depressing place which was stocked with basic supplies but nothing much of any substance. Originally designated as a regional command centre way back at the height of the Cold War, the equipment and stocks within the bunker had steadily dwindled over the last decade, and now just the basics remained. There was sufficient food and water to keep a small group alive for a couple of days, maybe as long as a week. Preoccupied as usual with thoughts of his own survival, Ray estimated that if he was careful, there would probably be enough to keep him going for the best part of a month. He didn’t want to think about what might happen after that.

  It was a short time later, once the initial shock of the morning’s terrifying events and his sudden confinement had begun to fade, that Ray truly began to appreciate the enormity of what had happened. Shelly Bright was dead and so, he assumed, was everyone else. Of course he had no way of knowing how widespread this attack or whatever it was had been, but the fact no one else had yet tried to gain access to the bunker almost certainly meant that vast numbers of people in the immediate area had died. But surely he couldn’t have been the only one who’d survived? In an unforgivably selfish moment he found himself hoping he was. Because, he realised ominously, if the other council members were dead, by default he would now be in charge of the borough of Taychester! He’d never wanted this level of responsibility. It wasn’t what he’d gone into politics for.

  He didn’t dare move. He couldn’t risk going back out there. Suddenly Duck and Cover seemed like sound advice. Ray sat alone in the cold, echoing emptiness of the bunker and waited.

  #

  He began to hate Shelly Bright’s body. The corpse frightened him. He didn’t want to look at it, but at the same time he was too scared to look away. What if she moved when he wasn’t looking? What if she wasn’t dead? He hated the pained expression on her face, her unblinking eyes searching for answers he couldn’t give. He’d once thought her attractive (Ray found any woman under the age of forty attractive) but her smooth skin and soft, delicate features had been hardened by the pain of her sudden demise. In the wavering dull yellow light underground the shadows seemed to shift and her expression seemed to continually change. He knew she hadn’t moved, but it looked like she was grinning at him now. A minute later she was sneering, then smiling, then snarling… Eventually, in a moment of uncharacteristic strength and conviction, he covered the corpse with a heavy grey fire blanket.

  The day dragged unbearably. Ray couldn’t switch off: his mind was filled with a thousand and one unanswerable questions and a similar number of nightmarish images, split second recollections of everything he’d seen aboveground. An inherently selfish man conditioned through years of regimented, nine-to-five working, it was only when it reached six o’clock in the evening – dinnertime – that he began to think more about his wife. Was Marcia safe? Would she be worried? Should he leave the bunker and go and find her? He already hated being underground but he knew he couldn’t do that. He’d had a lucky escape this morning. If he went outside now, he’d surely be exposing himself to whatever had killed everyone else. He had no choice now but to sit and wait.

  Never a man to follow procedures (usually because he didn’t understand them), it wasn’t until much later that Ray started to read the emergency planning guidelines which were stored in the command room. Following step-by-step instructions with the painful, awkward slowness of someone who had avoided as much contact with technology as possible over the last few years, he eventually got the radio working. He cursed the fact that he was so hopelessly inept. Forty-five minutes of fiddling and messing with the controls and all he could get was static punctuated by brief moments of silence. What he’d have given to hear another voice, someone out there who could reassure him he was going to be okay.

  #

  It felt like the morning would
never come. The lack of natural light was strangely disorientating but, having slept intermittently for a few hours, Ray got up just after five o’clock. He managed to pluck up enough courage to start properly investigating his surroundings. He’d already found the stores, the plant room (where the generators and air purification equipment machinery was housed) and the bathroom, but now he also discovered two musty smelling dormitories and a hopelessly inadequate kitchen. Perhaps it was the lack of any proper illumination which made things appear worse than they actually were, but the whole place seemed to have fallen into a state of terrible disrepair. He found himself cursing those people (himself included) who’d mocked the efforts of the EPC in those endless council meetings. If only he’d listened and been better prepared…

  It was only when he returned to the command room that he realised just how much the body on the ground was still playing on his mind. Even though it was covered up and was almost impossible to see clearly, he found it hard being in the same room as the corpse. What if he was stuck in there for several weeks or longer? Imagine the smell… He knew he had to do something about it. It took him an age to decide what to do, and another hour before he was actually ready to do it, but he eventually managed to shift Shelly Bright’s dead bulk into one of the dormitories. The corpse was stiff and awkward to move. Rigor mortis had frozen her arms and legs into position and Ray had to push, pull and shove in order to get her from where she’d died, around the corner, down the corridor and into one of the dorms. Panting, sweating profusely, and scared half to death, he slammed the door shut and sobbed his way back to the command room.

  If only there’d been a window in the main door or a camera so he could see what was happening outside. A paranoid part of him began to wonder whether the carnage he thought he’d witnessed aboveground was really as bad as he’d thought. It all seemed so bizarre – had it happened at all? Was this unbearable self-imposed incarceration truly necessary? Would he eventually emerge from the bunker to find everything back to? He’d be a laughing stock (again). If he stayed underground long enough, someone would probably have moved into his office and taken over his desk. And how would he explain the girl’s body…?

  The urge to open the door and take a look outside was almost impossible to resist. Just a quick look, he thought, just long enough to see what, if anything, was happening out there. Just long enough to see if there really were bodies lying around or if other people had survived.

  But he knew he couldn’t risk it.

  In frustration, Ray leant against the door and wept. He wept for the family and friends he was sure he’d lost. He wept for the easy, comfortable life which he was certain was gone forever. First and foremost, however, he wept for himself. His retirement from office had been on the horizon and an even easier and more comfortable future had been in the offing. Now, through no fault of his own, he found himself buried underground with only a corpse for company. Even worse than that, if and when he eventually emerged from the shelter, as potentially the last council member left alive his life would inevitably become harder and more complicated unless he found a way of resigning his position. Maybe he should have stayed out there and let it get him too…?

  Wait, what was that?

  He could feel cold air; a slight breeze on the back of his hand. It was little more than the faintest of draughts coming from the side of the door just below its hinges. Fear gripped him and he stumbled further back into the bunker. The bloody door was supposed to be airtight. If he could feel a draught then the seal had been broken, and if the draft was coming from outside then whatever it was that had caused all the death and destruction out there had probably already seeped into the bunker. He scrambled away from the door and hid like a frightened child on the other side of the command room, waiting for it to get him.

  More than an hour elapsed before Ray finally allowed himself to accept that he probably wasn’t going to die, not yet, anyway. The people outside had been struck down in seconds. He’d been out there with them when it happened, and since then he’d been breathing in the same air, albeit through a filter. The fact he might have some immunity to what had killed so many seemed more improbable than the arrival of the infection itself. Ray distracted himself by eating a little food (a powdered meal he made with cold water), then fell asleep clutching a picture of Marcia which he’d found tucked amongst the crumpled bank notes, credit card receipts and out of date business cards stuffed in the back of his wallet.

  #

  He could hear something. Ray had been dozing again, but a sudden and unexpected shuffling, bumping noise had disturbed him. Something falling off a shelf? A problem with the generator or the pumps circulating the air? There it was again… He jumped up, a cold, nervous sweat prickling his brow. In the deathly quiet of the bunker the direction of the noise was clear. It was coming from the dormitory where he’d left Shelly Bright’s corpse. But it couldn’t have been, could it? As much as he wanted to walk the other way and cover his ears and pretend nothing was happening, Ray forced himself to walk towards the room.

  Another crash. What the hell was going on in there? Was there another entrance to the bunker he wasn’t aware of? Ray cleared his throat. ‘Hello…’ he called meekly, too scared to raise his voice any louder. ‘Hello?’

  He lifted his hand to open the door, then stopped. Come on, he thought, this is bloody stupid. The main entrance to the bunker was sealed and there was only one way in or out of the dorm, so how could there be anything on the other side of the door? He decided it must have been rats or some other vermin which had somehow tunnelled their way in, although how they’d managed to do that when the place was supposedly enclosed within a thick concrete skin was anyone’s guess.

  Another noise.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Ray moaned pathetically. He was completely on his own, no one to hide behind now. He knew what he had to do.

  Holding his torch in his left hand (both as a source of light and a potential weapon), he opened the door. The dull yellow circle of light illuminated the back wall but little else. It must have just been—

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he yelled as Shelly Bright tripped across the room in front of him. ‘What the bloody hell…?’

  He shone the torch around until he found her again. There was no doubt it was her, but how could that be? She’d been dead since Tuesday morning, hadn’t she? Ray remained rooted to the spot with fear. After all he’d been through, this new discovery was too much to take. He stared at the body with a mix of bemusement and sheer terror and he only moved when the dead woman turned herself around and, quite by chance, began to walk towards him. He shoved her away. She fell back, then dragged herself back up and walked away, turning again when she hit the wall at the far end of the room with a heavy, uncoordinated thud.

  She was coming towards him again. Ray looked deep into her face. Her skin was unnaturally discoloured and her pupils dilated. Without waiting for her to get any closer, he slammed the door shut and held the handle tight. He felt the sudden collision as the corpse hit the back of the door, then listened carefully as she shuffled away again. He fetched a chair from the other dormitory and wedged it under the handle, preventing it from opening.

  Back in the command room, Ray paced up and down, trying to block out the sound of the clumsy cadaver clattering around. He purposefully stormed over to the sealed bunker entrance, fully intending to open it and leave, but then stopped. Although no longer airtight (he could still feel the draught from outside) he still couldn’t take that final step and go back out into the unknown. It might have been hellish underground, but for all he knew it might have been a thousand times worse out there. Sitting tight and doing nothing was, for the moment, the lesser of two evils. With the sounds of the body in the dormitory still ringing in his ears, Ray sank to the ground, covered his head with his hands and curled himself up into a ball.

  #

  It never stopped. The bloody thing never stopped. All day long the damn cadaver trapped in the other room barged around, sma
cking into the door, tripping over furniture, knocking things over… The noise, although not particularly loud, was enough to rattle Ray to the core. It was driving him mad. He had to get away from it.

  It was almost seven o’clock. He’d been down in the bunker for a day and a half and he wanted out. All day he’d been sitting there in the semi-darkness, trying to decide what he should do and reaching no conclusions. Did he risk going outside or stay down there and wait? The body would have to stop moving sooner or later, wouldn’t it? It couldn’t just keep going indefinitely. And how the bloody hell was it managing to move at all? Nothing made any sense anymore.

  Ray knew it was important to try and eat, but the limited food supplies he had tasted bloody awful. A lover of rich, fatty foods and sugary sweets, cakes and puddings, his stomach was growling angrily and he seriously wondered whether he’d be able to survive on the basic rations that had been stockpiled below ground. He was growing to detest every aspect of his grim surroundings: the stale, artificial smell of the air, the constant noise from the body in the dormitory, the lack of any decent lighting, the food… He crouched by the door in desperation, sniffing at the ‘fresh’ air which was seeping inside. What’s the point of sitting in here doing nothing, he thought? He wanted out. He wanted to go home and find his wife and find out what had happened to the rest of the world. He wanted to change his clothes and eat properly and be away from that damn creature next-door. So what was stopping him? Apart from the obvious, he realised the main reason he wanted to stay underground was particularly cowardly and selfish. He didn’t want the responsibility of having to do anything about the mess, and he definitely didn’t want to have to take charge of what was left of Taychester. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do it. But hang on a minute, why would he have to? Although in his early days at the council he’d had his fair share of appearances in the local papers, who would know who he was now and, more to the point, who would care? If he got into the car and drove away quick, no one would be any the wiser. He could get on with sorting out what was left of his own life and forget about everyone else. The longer he stayed in the bunker, the more getting out seemed like a good idea. Another muffled crash from the dead body was enough to sway him. His decision was made. Time to go. What’s left to lose, he thought, when it looks like I’ve already lost everything?