Autumn Read online

  Don’t log off. You okay?

  Okay. Scared

  Me too

  U know what happened?

  Don’t know. Everybody dead here

  Same here

  Except me

  And me

  Must have happened all over

  That’s what I figured. What we gonna do?

  Emily paused. Then she typed. The obvious answer was the only answer.

  Play

  And they did. For hours. Every game they both had that they could still get onto. Time difference be damned – they spent every minute they could online together, clinging onto each other, in touching distance yet still thousands of miles apart.

  Until this morning.

  This morning, just before eleven-thirty UK time, the kid in Texas disappeared. Emily cried – she actually cried – when she realised her buddy had gone. She had no way of finding out what had happened to him, but her mind went into overtime just the same. Had he been killed by a crowd of increasingly vicious corpses the size of the crowd of increasingly vicious corpses now gathered outside Nan’s house? Or was the kid okay and it was just the computers that had failed them? Had the servers gone down? Had the Internet given up and finally stopped working? Emily knew there’d been a chance that would happen eventually, but she’d hoped it would have lasted a while longer yet. Surely there would have been systems in place to keep everything up and running? She wished there was something she could do, but there wasn’t. She could get her computer to do plenty, but she didn’t know how it worked under the hood. She’d been proud to call herself a nerd, but there were painfully obvious limits to her geekiness.

  And now the power had died too. It was so bloody unfair.

  Emily’s computer was useless. Just a plastic and metal box now. Completely bloody lifeless. As lifeless as the several hundred corpses outside, scrabbling at the windows to get in. Her constant music had attracted them, that much was clear, but even though it had been silenced with the power, they weren’t going anywhere. They seemed to know she was here.

  But what hurt Emily most of all was the fact that if the kid in Texas did manage to get back online, she had no way of connecting with him. She had her phone, but it wasn’t the same. No signal. Battery half-dead. She didn’t have any means of calling or updating anyone, but she still clung onto the white glow of the phone screen regardless.

  She knew she should conserve the power, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She wanted to stay online, wanted to preserve her last connection with the digital world. She held onto the phone until the battery drained to nothing, playing crappy games, flicking through old photos, messages, emails… anything. And when the last dregs of power disappeared, Emily felt a gut-churning emptiness the likes of which she’d never known before. She knew she was finally, completely, hopelessly alone. All bridges to her virtual world now burned, no way of accessing anything, no more updates or notifications, her digital self now as good as dead. Nothing but reality left.

  She sat in Nan’s kitchen and sobbed, conscious that the noise she was making was having an ever-increasing effect on the ever-increasing hordes, but unable to stop. A little after midnight, the front door gave way under the pressure of the crowd, and the house quickly filled with cold flesh. Emily tried to get away and to fight but there were too many of them. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t escape.

  The dead smothered her, suffocated her, cut off all her options. But it didn’t matter anymore. She’d preferred her virtual reality to this. Not online, she thought, not worth living.

  DAY SEVEN

  AMY STEADMAN

  Part iv

  It is now several days since Amy Steadman’s corpse took its first unsteady steps. It is a week since infection.

  Her body continues to move at a lethargic pace, her mobility still limited. She has, however, been moving constantly and has now covered a considerable distance since leaving the crowd on the motorway. The dog trapped in the car – the cause of the disturbance which originally drew the large mass of cadavers to the scene – became quiet after several hours. Many of the dead, Amy’s corpse included, gradually drifted away. By pure chance Amy’s body continued to follow the route of the road forward. Although she has subsequently come across numerous blockages and occasional distractions, she has kept moving in the same general direction and has covered several miles.

  As time has progressed so she has continued to regain further control over her movements. She now walks with slightly more fluidity and speed although her muscles and nerves are continuing to decay. Her limbs – previously stiff, awkward and largely inflexible – are now able to bend and flex to an extent, although her overall range of motion is still severely limited. She can draw her hands into fists and can move her fingers independently. There has been a substantial increase in the number of voluntary head movements she makes, suggesting Amy is aware of the direction of sound.

  The long and wide motorway, straight for a considerable distance, slowly curved around to the right as it merged with another major road which skirted the centre of the city of Rowley. Amy’s body, however, did not change course. Instead, she continued to move in a relatively straight line, leaving the tarmac then tumbling down a grassy embankment. After managing to get up again, she crossed the width of a field, stumbled through an open gate, then found herself following a narrow gravel path which ran alongside an isolated bungalow. After walking the length of the gravel path, she reached another road. The steep banks on either side of the road have channelled Amy’s corpse and prevented her from going in any other direction but forward.

  The process of decay, combined with the physical toll of the distance travelled, has caused the condition of her body to deteriorate considerably. Amy’s skin is now extremely discoloured. The chemical reactions continuing to occur throughout her body have manifested themselves as numerous weeping sores and lesions. In the fall down the embankment, her corpse sustained a number of lacerations to the right hand and arm, her upper torso and also her face. Thick, congealed blood has slowly seeped, rather than poured, from these cuts. Her circulatory and respiratory systems are no longer operational; blood is no longer being pumped around her body.

  Amy’s self-awareness has increased. Although still at an extremely rudimentary level, she is now aware of her own general shape and size and compensates for her mass whilst moving. She can now use her hands (but not yet her fingers) to move obstructions with limited success. Her balance has also improved although she is still occasionally unsteady on her feet and has difficulty on uneven ground.

  A sudden heavy downpour of rain has drenched Amy’s body and she’s struggling to cope with the steep gradient of a road down a hillside. A canopy of trees hangs overhead which, coupled with the increased cloud cover, has substantially reduced the amount of available light. The loud, echoing sound of the rain hitting the leaves overhead is confusing Amy. She is surrounded by noise. She moves her head constantly, trying to identify the source of the directionless sound.

  Both of Amy’s feet are bare and the exposed flesh is wearing away. She leaves a bloody residue on the ground with virtually every footstep. Already there are insects feeding off her and the many other corpses scattered around the countryside. Amy’s body has just passed another corpse, this one trapped in the wreckage of a car. Over the course of the last seven days it has been ravaged by scavenging animals. The sheer amount of dead meat which is now available will inevitably prove an unexpected benefit to many millions of predators and parasites. It is likely that, over the coming months, the population of these creatures will increase massively. The lack of any form of pest control will further allow their numbers to multiply unchecked. It is still very early days, but it is already clear the removal of almost all of the human population is having an unprecedented effect on the ecosystem.

  A brief burst of sunlight bathes everything in unexpected brightness and warmth. Although unable to detect or understand the change in temperature, Amy noti
ces the increased light levels. Her eyesight is still poor – she sees shapes and detects movement but has so far been unable to make out any finer level of detail. Her ability to absorb and interpret what she sees is improving, but at the same time her physical condition continues to deteriorate. Her eyeballs and the associated nerves and muscles are rotting.

  Amy’s body has reached a junction where the road she has been following joins a more major route. Here a crowd of bodies has gathered around a young survivor. Caught out in the open looking for food, a ten year old girl has become lost and has found herself dangerously exposed. With nowhere else to hide, she has shut herself in a telephone box. She is on the ground with her back pressed up against the door to prevent it from opening. There are already seven bodies surrounding the girl with a further three approaching. Amy Steadman’s corpse is also close. Whilst the young survivor is aware that by keeping quiet she can evade detection by the corpses, she is trapped and is struggling to contain her emotions. She is sobbing uncontrollably, and the bodies on the other side of the glass are reacting to every sound. Although they don’t understand why, they are driven to try and get closer to her. One of them begins to bang on the glass. Others copy, and this new sound attracts the attention of even more of the dead.

  Amy’s corpse has now reached the telephone box. Although she doesn’t understand what she is doing, she has an instinctive, insatiable desire to reach the source of the noise at all costs. She grabs hold of the nearest corpse and attempts to take its place. Less decayed than some of the other cadavers, Amy viciously rips at them, pulling and pushing them out of the way. Their flesh is weak and is literally torn from the bone. Amy keeps moving until she is standing directly in front of the telephone box. She leans forward and presses her decaying face against the glass, staring down at the girl with dry, unblinking eyes.

  As long as the girl continues to move and make noise, the bodies remain.

  JACKSON

  You can learn a lot about them by watching. Sometimes it pays to be slow like them. Bide your time. Take it easy. Don’t panic and you should be okay.

  I’m not a biologist or a doctor. I don’t know what’s happened to them or why it hasn’t happened to me and to be honest, I don’t care. I don’t know if I’m immune or whether I’m just riding my luck and it’ll get me eventually. I might only have a day left, but I might last another twenty years. I know hardly anything about this strange new world, but I’m learning 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’s all. I could have done with a stretch in the forces, but it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t stand the shouting and the discipline. I’ve never been able to handle being told what to do. Unless I’m the one doing the ordering, then I work better on my own and I always have done. I used to get on with other people well enough but, given the choice, I prefer my own company every time. Especially now. I wouldn’t be able to trust anyone else to stay quiet or still enough when the bodies are about. The rest of the world is dead and everything I do is exaggerated by the stillness. I can’t take any risks.

  If I move they’ll see me. If I make a sound they’ll hear me. They have numbers on their side and I know that if I give them half a chance, they’ll kill me.

  So what have I learnt about them. They’re pretty simple creatures now, easy to read. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of conscious thought going on in their festering brains, but I have noticed them beginning to follow certain behaviours. And those behaviours are changing almost by the day.

  It’s a week now since it happened. I checked enough of them at the start to be sure they were dead, but something inside them has survived and it’s growing stronger. It began when they picked themselves up and started to move again, then they were able to hear and see. Over the last twenty-four hours I’ve seen them become even more animated. They’re beginning to show rudimentary emotions too: anger, although that could just be a physical manifestation of frustration, and either fear or pain, I can’t tell which.

  Enough of this. I’m wasting time. Daydreaming is dangerous. Hypothesizing pointlessly about what might or might not be happening won’t help. All I can do is respond to the changes day by day and try to stay one step ahead of the game. My comparative strength and my intelligence should see me through. I have to keep control and hold my nerve. Start to get jumpy or twitchy and I’ll make mistakes. Make mistakes and I’m dead. No second chances.

  These things don’t communicate with each other, but they’re developing a strange tendency to move together in large groups. It’s almost like they’re herding. Something happens to attract one or two of them, then more and more follow the first until there’s a huge crowd of the fuckers. I can use that behaviour to my advantage, but there are dangers too. The advantages? When they’re together it’s easy to pick them off in bulk. I haven’t yet, but I can imagine being able to take out hundreds of them at a time if I have to. And the dangers? If I’m the one causing the disturbance that’s attracting them, I’m fucked.

  Attacking a group of them can be unexpectedly useful. Starting fires also helps. A little heat and light is enough to draw them out from a wide surrounding area. The stupid things can’t help themselves, and they stumble towards the flames without giving me a second glance. I can walk right past them and they won’t notice if there’s something more interesting happening nearby. Their senses are dull and basic. Give them something obvious to focus on and they lose sight of everything else. I've been collecting fireworks. Feels strange to be rooting through toy shops now, wrong almost, but if I'm cornered all I have to do is set off a rocket and wait for them to react. I got the idea from a Romero movie, back when this kind of thing was just fiction.

  Darkness is my best friend.

  The creatures are still clumsy and slow. Take away their sight and the advantage I have over them is massively increased. That’s why I now travel almost exclusively after nightfall.

  So what’s the plan? You have to have a plan, don't you? I'm heading for the coast. I've a hell of a distance to cover still and it’s not going to be easy travelling on foot, but I can’t think of any other option. I tried using a car, but the noise caused more trouble than time saved, and if there's one thing I've got plenty of, it's time. And why the coast? Seems as good a place as any. Nowhere will be completely safe anymore. The coast strikes me as being rough and inhospitable, and with the ocean on one side I’ll have less land to have to watch. Maybe I'll find myself a lighthouse, somewhere strong and remote like that. Somewhere they can’t get to.

  I’ll be all right on my own. Maybe I’ll get lonely, maybe I won’t. Whatever happens, I’m just glad I survived. In a strange way I’m almost looking forward to whatever the future brings. The only thing that’s guaranteed is it’ll be free of the countless bullshit trappings of my previous daily life. A future without the drudgery of trying to hold down a job and pay bills. A future without politics, crap TV, religion and who knows what else. I know I sound naïve, because for every problem the infection has solved, it’s created hundreds more, but you have to be positive, don’t you?

  I often wonder how many people like me are left out here? Am I the only one, or are there hundreds of us creeping quietly through the shadows, avoiding the bodies and, by default, avoiding each other too.

  Doesn’t matter.

  Everything will be all right in the end.

  More to the point, I’ll be okay.

  OFFICE POLITICS

  It’s over a week since billions of people died. In that time, millions of them have risen up and are now walking the streets, their bodies rotting. Everything has changed. Almost nothing is as it was. Almost nothing.

  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, ready for collection. Only one has had its curtains drawn each night and opened again each morning sin
ce the infection killed more than ninety-nine per cent of the population.

  Different people deal with stress, loss and other emotional pressures in a wide range of ways. Some implode, some explode. Some shrivel up and hide in the quietest, darkest corner they can find, others make as much noise as possible. Some accept what was happened, others deny everything.

  Simon Walters is handling the end of the world particularly badly. The arrival of the infection and the subsequent after-shocks have felt like trivial irritations, further complicating his already over-complicated life. One of life’s perennial victims, in his eyes no one has problems big enough to match his. Simon has failed to cope with what has happened, and as a last ditch defence mechanism, he has shut out all other suffering to concentrate fully on his own.

  #

  The sudden clattering of the battery-powered alarm clock shattered the early morning quiet. Simon groaned, rolled over and switched it off. It sounded louder than ever this morning. How he hated that damn grinding, whining noise. No, he didn’t just hate it, he absolutely loathed it. Especially today. When that unholy clanging began he knew it was time to get up and start another bloody day. The noise was marginally more bearable on Thursdays and Fridays as the weekend neared, but today was Monday, the beginning of yet another week, and the noise was worse than ever.