Apologies: I missed my posting date yesterday. It’s the first time in well over a year I haven’t posted on a Monday. In case anyone was waiting with baited breath for the next part, apologies 🙂 In my defence, my son is five days old and I was lucky enough to be sneaking out to see Ani Difranco in London, but still, I feel lame. Sorry, folks, and here it is. 

Part One is here

David – Thursday: Plague Day

Soho was just the same as Trafalgar Square. Bodies littered the streets like leaves in autumn. But it was peaceful and the rumble of the soldier’s trucks was gone completely. In fact, he couldn’t hear anything. Was this his world? Had he returned to the place he’d spent the last eleven days? Maybe that was the truth of it. Perhaps all the time he spent wandering the empty streets, the corpses had been there, yet somehow hidden from view.

He walked into Soho square and found an empty patch of grass. He lay down, brushing away the remnants of the fog that still clung to the ground. It was strange how tenacious it was in some parts of the city but almost gone in others. Perhaps the wind moved through here and had already stolen it.

He lay back, settled his head onto the grass, and stared up at the sky. The blue looked wrong, like someone had painted it on there. The corners of the buildings that towered around the square crept into his vision and he grunted. He needed space.

He climbed to his feet, brushed imaginary dirt off his trousers and jogged out the square. He’d go to Regents Park. It wasn’t far and he could find somewhere to stare at the sky until his eyes watered.

He should be more worried about what was happening. He vaguely remembered the soldiers and the shooting, but his mind was doing an excellent job of blocking it out. If he tried hard enough, he could pretend the whole waking up and running and screaming thing was a dream. He could walk with his eyes turned up to the sky and ignore the bodies and it would be like home.

Soho fell away behind him as he jogged up Regent’s Street, across Oxford Street and past the BBC building. The park lay before him and he clapped his hands together as he ran through the tall black gates. It smelled better here, less rot and more trees. Maybe he’d see some squirrels.

There were bodies. However hard he tried, he couldn’t quite block them out. Runners in jogging pants, sweat still drying on their faces, lay spreadeagled as though they were trying to run despite their deaths. There were cyclists as well, tangled up in the wrecks of their bikes, the blood from scratches out of place amongst the peace of the park. The dogs were dead as well. Everything was dead.

David found an empty patch of green grass. He flung himself down and stared up at the sky. It wasn’t long before it blurred and ran with tears. He wasn’t sure whether it was the brightness or the truth that was doing its best to creep around his barriers and make itself known.

He stared and stared and tried his best to forget. He imagined when he turned his head he’d see the emptiness that had become his life. He screwed his eyes up and rolled onto his side then slowly opened them. Twenty feet away, a woman lay face down on the grass. She was dressed in jogging pants and a crop top and would have been pretty when she was alive.

Through the blades of grass that stood like fence posts before his face, he could see her eyes, peering out through half-open lids. They were red, devil-red, and surrounded by deep rings. She looked like she’d been on a bender and drunk herself to death. But her skin wasn’t flushed. It reminded him of the modelling clay Amber used, a sort of grey-putty that went crumbly if you left it out of the box.

Her skin was already crumbling. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. She was still there. He rolled onto his back and stared up. Tiny wisps of cloud, more optimism than any real threat of rain, scudded across the sky. Scudded was the wrong word. They crept and crawled at a snail’s pace.

He tried to make shapes in the clouds but they remained obstinately clouds and nothing more. He’d never been creative, not really. All the bullshit he wrote in the cards was recycled, ideas pinched from other cards, or famous people or random tweets. Nothing really his own. The clouds seemed to know this and mocked him, shifting slowly as if they were about to reveal the shapes that hid within them, before twisting again into nothing.

He closed his eyes and rolled onto his side. When he opened them, she was gone! Laughter rolled up his throat and he giggled, wrapping his hands around his sides. It had all been some horrible fever dream. It wasn’t surprising, living alone did funny things to you. He chuckled and rolled onto his back and the woman fell on top of him.

He screamed, spit catching on his lower lip and dripping down his chin. Her hands felt like ice when they grabbed his neck and twisted and pulled. She bared rotting yellow teeth and lunged. She was going to bite him. It didn’t matter, this was all part of his fever. She’d disappear any second. The smell of rot and mould hit him. She wasn’t about to disappear.

David thrashed around like he was being carted off to the gallows. Her hands lost purchase on his neck as her teeth scraped against his nose. It stung, just a little, before he got his knees between them and shoved her away. She fell beside him and he leapt to his feet. She was up almost as quick, hands outstretched like some movie zombie.

He blinked and the world came back into focus. He remembered the flower seller and the silence and then the blur came back. His mind, so sharp for a brief moment, felt once again like cotton wool. But he knew one important fact. This thing in front of him was a zombie. It was an actual living zombie. And this wasn’t a dream.

She grabbed his arm and he kicked her as hard as he could in the leg. The skin was hard but brittle and broke apart like egg shells. Beneath, the flesh was soft and he moaned as his foot sunk into it. The zombie hissed and swung at him. One clawed hand caught him across the side of the head and the force knocked him on his arse.

She took a step toward him and her leg buckled and spilled her to the grass beside him. Where she landed, her face was turned to his and they stared at one another for a moment. Was there something in those eyes, some semblance of humanity? There really wasn’t.

Her hand landed on his leg and he shook it off and staggered to his feet. He had time for a brief glance around the park. Others were getting to their feet. None had spotted him, not yet, but they would. He made for the nearest tree with low branches and ran.

The branches weren’t as low as he’d hoped and he spent a futile few seconds jumping up and down. Something growled and without looking back he set off again. He found a tree nearer the ground and threw himself up into the branches. David climbed as high as he dared and stopped, arms wrapped around the trunk like it was Steph.

The sudden picture of her in his mind almost made him fall off. He’d blocked her out sometime in the last week and even the image of her was ill-formed. He wrinkled his nose, trying to remember her smell, but nothing came to him. How could he forget her? Amber was still there, every detail of her, and he felt a longing he hadn’t experienced in years. The need to apologise burned suddenly and brought a lump to his throat.

He heard a growl and looked down. Anther zombie, this one a large man wearing a wife-beater t-shirt, prowled around the base of the tree. It paused. It was easier to think of it as an ‘it’. As soon as he started thinking of them as people he’d lose his mind completely. He giggled. What was left of it.

It wasn’t gone completely. He knew he still had something in there, because when the zombie pulled itself up onto the lowest branch, a streak of terror went through him that left him panting and sweating. He blinked, lights flashing before his eyes. His breathing sounded like a steam train and he stared at his hands, focusing on something while he tried to calm down. It wasn’t working.

A hand grabbed his leg and he kicked and kicked. The zombie balanced on a branch beneath him. And it was waiting. They were supposed to be stupid and thoughtless, incapable of something like climbing a tree. He’d watched Dawn of the Dead and though his memories were pretty slight, he knew they weren’t smart enough to do that.

This one was though. It would wait as long as—. It barked and leaped up, grabbing at his leg with both hands. He wasn’t ready and with the same lurching in his gut he got the time his car went into a slide on ice, he lost his grip on the trunk and fell.

Next Installment Thursday 25th September (honest)

Part One is Here

Krystal – Thursday: Plague Day

Nothing moved. The city was swimming in a dirty fog that covered every street and every body and made the tops of the crashed cars look like hundreds of tiny islands. The fog stretched from Shepherds Bush to Limehouse and got closer every second. And everywhere it went, those stupid enough to hang around dropped like drunks on a heavy night out.

Ed had stopped watching. He was sitting with some of the others in a circle, talking about stuff. She’d tuned in a moment ago and it sounded like they were talking about their lives. What made them happy, what they liked doing at the weekends, all the sorts of things people spoke about when the ship they were on started sinking.

Part of her longed to join in, but she thought sharing her best begging stories and ‘escaping being sexually harassed by overweight businessmen’ stories probably wasn’t the escapism they were looking for. So she stayed by the window and watched.

On a whim, she wandered across the tower and peered out the other side. The M25, the colossal circular motorway that surrounded London, was deadlocked, covered in stationary cars. The roads leading out of London were quiet, now, though they’d been heaving earlier. For everyone who’d died in the centre, many more had escaped.

They should escape. Why were they sitting up here, waiting to die? She knew the answer to that. They were scared. It wasn’t something she’d admitted to much before, despite the last three years of her life being pretty much one big scary movie. A dull one, but scary nonetheless. But she’d spent the last hour or so trying hard not to wet herself and the tops of her jeans were darkened from where she was wiping the sweat off her hands.

The fog was getting closer and maybe if they’d gone the moment it happened, they might have felt safe but now there was no chance. Why had they stayed? She’d seen this before. Some terrible disaster happened, the first thing was people panicking and running and screaming. But they’d all just watched, eyes wide and hands gripping the railing as half of London was killed by some mysterious attack. Would it come up here?

A man came from behind the counter and handed her a cup of tea, leaning against the railing and staring out. ‘Bad traffic, huh?’

‘Oh yeah, they’re gonna be pissed about that.’

He gave her a weak look and she thought for a moment he was going to cry.

‘Thanks for the tea?’

‘Hey, why not? Why are we still here?’

She laughed and blew on her tea. ‘Yeah, I was wondering that. My excuse is I don’t have a TV, so this is the first chance I’ve had to watch anything like this. What’s yours?’

‘I had tea to serve.’

‘Oh yeah, it’s all about the job. What do you really want to do?’

‘Live through this?’

Why had she asked him? What was she going to say if he asked her the same thing? At least he’d given her an out.

‘How about you?’

‘Yeah the same. You know, stay alive, get back to my cardboard box in one piece.’

‘What?’

‘Oh yeah, I’m homeless. This is the longest I’ve been in a building in, like, years.’

‘Good that’s terrible. Why?’

‘Why haven’t I been in any buildi—’

‘No, I mean, why are you homeless?’

She looked at him a little more closely. He was young. Not as young as her but not as old as she’d thought. Maybe eighteen. He looked really young, but the eighteen year olds she hung around with all looked forty so maybe he was older than he looked.

‘You really wanna know?’

He nodded earnestly and for a moment she felt sorry for him. He hadn’t seen anything of the real world. This place up here, far above it all was like a model for his life. What did he do? Student maybe? Learning shit that made no real difference to anyone. Had he ever even met a homeless person before?

But he had soft eyes and looked genuinely interested.

‘My dad started touching me. Nothing much at first, then he wanted to share baths and stuff and I was twelve and just had my first period and I knew it was creepy. So I told mum and she laughed at me and told me not to be ridiculous. Told her again and she got angry and sent me to my room. Told the school counsellor and somehow mum got blamed so I was living with dad. He left me alone for a bit, then started with it again so I ran away.’

His face changed. He had these smooth cheeks that were hollowed slightly and flushed with little red sunbursts beneath soft eyes that wanted to ignore what she was saying. He wanted to pretend it wasn’t true, only he couldn’t. So instead he stared at her like he could heal with just a look. Krystal kept herself from sneering and stared right back.

‘Why didn’t your mum believe you?’

‘She already knew. She just wasn’t willing to change her life. She thought dad was this golden person and even when she had the chance to shop him, she took the blame and went away. She’s just as messed up as he is. Was. I don’t know them anymore.’

The man nodded again and sipped his tea. His hand shook and she wondered if it was to do with what she’d said or the fact that far below them, the ponds that surrounded the building were filling slowly with fog. The circle was still going, filling the room with the soft murmurs of misplaced hope. She didn’t know why she was so sure it wouldn’t help.

 The idea of dying being not so bad if you were with someone, or believing in something made her want to vomit. Dying was dying, same as cold was cold and hungry was hungry. Who cared if you told other people about it before you went?

The guy with the tea stared down at the ground as the fog sent exploratory tendrils around the base of the building. She nudged him.

‘It won’t reach us up here, will it?’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t see why it should. Doesn’t seem to be coming up at all. I suppose there’s always the air con—’

His face went white. She’d always thought that was a bad description, like, no one’s face went white. But he looked like someone had shoved a vacuum cleaner somewhere and sucked the blood out of him. His tea hit the floor and he raced across the room.

The people in the circle barely noticed, so Krystal ran after him, dumping her own tea on a table. He rushed into the corridor and down to the lift where he hammered at the button, swearing under his breath.

‘Hey, hold on, what’s up?’

‘The air con, the bloody air con. It’ll circulate air all round the building. If the fog gets in down there, the air con’ll bring it up here.’

‘Oh.’ She realised just then she’d been somehow thinking they were safe. She’d imagined them sitting it out, far above the Earth and emerging unscathed into a new world, where things like homelessness didn’t matter any more. How the hell had she done that? She had though and now it was crumbling in her mind.

‘What do we do?’

‘Try and switch the air con off.’

‘Do you know how to do that?’

He shrugged and let out a breath as the lift arrived. As they descended he kept thumping his hand against the wall. ‘Why didn’t I think of it earlier, bloody sodding dammit.’

‘Well, you did have tea to serve.’

It brought him up short and he looked at her. He was on the verge of tears again, but at the earnest look on her face, he burst out laughing instead. It was an uncomfortable sound, like he was trying to convince himself something was funny, but it was better than the crying or the thumping.

The doors slid open and she followed him down the corridor. The place was deserted. Why had no one come up and got them? Maybe down here it was the more normal disaster scenario; everyone for themselves. He ran straight behind the reception desk and into the room beyond.

She glanced around before following, expecting someone to jump out and demand to know what she was doing. There was no one though. The glass doors at the front showed a scene like something from a Frank Herbert book. The fog was dense and carried tiny black particles, so it looked almost like smoke. And it was coming closer every second.

Swearing emerged from behind her and she ran into the room. The guy stood beside a huge grey box mounted on the wall. He had it open and within were hundreds of switches. There was a diagram on the back of the door but it made no sense to her and from the look on his face, none to him either.

They stood side by side staring at the switches.

‘You sure one of these is the air con?’

‘Pretty certain. Not completely, but pretty.’

‘Shall we just switch all of them then?’

He looked at her, eyebrows trying to escape into his hair. ‘This is the lights and all the power. No more tea.’

‘I can live without tea.’

She reached out, not giving him a chance to argue and flicked the bottom right switch. Nothing happened so she started on the rest. After a moment’s pause, he joined her, starting from the top. They had nearly met in the middle before the lights went out.

There were no windows in the room and it was utter darkness. Feeling really stupid, she asked, ‘you still there?’

‘Yeah. I can’t hear the air con any more.’

‘So we did it?’

‘I think so. We should go into the lobby, there’ll be some light there. Oh hey, I’m James.’

‘Krystal. Blame my parents.’

He chuckled and they started to cross the room. She put her hand out as her foot caught on something and it landed on his arm. She clutched it and he moved until their hands met. Without another word, they took baby steps across the room, accompanied by the thumps and thuds as they walked into desks or chairs or a hundred other things she’d paid no attention to on the way in.

She sniffed. There was the weirdest smell, like mold. She’d slept on enough cardboard boxes to recognise the scent of something rotting. It smelt damp as well, like her hair after a frost. James’s hand tightened in hers and she squeezed back. It got tighter still and cold and when she tried to pull free, he clung on, hand fixed in place.

Then she heard a thump and he fell and pulled her down with him.

Next Instalment Monday 22nd September

Part One is here

Alex – Thursday: 6 Days to Plague Day

Who was this guy? The world was shifting beneath his feet. It had shifted last week when he’d seen the future, but he’d explained that away as a hallucination, something he imagined to help him understand his need to have a child.

But that wasn’t so easy now. Not when the man who created the hallucination had, only a few hours ago, been pouring water over his face and burning him with cigarettes. He hadn’t imagined that. But who was he? There were no such things as ghosts and werewolves and vampires and demons and all the other stuff he’d enjoyed so much until he discovered science.

Science had changed so much in his life. It had given him direction and ambition. But the truth was no longer clear cut. He had to admit there were things beyond science, things he couldn’t explain, things no one could explain. And that made the hairs on his arms stand up and his mouth go dry. Because it meant he had to admit the man sitting across from him in the train seat wasn’t human.

‘Who are you?’

The man shifted his face from looking out the window and made eye contact. His eyes were weird, shifting and changing, just like his skin. Alex had barely looked at him when he’d sold him the flowers and only a little more in the horrendous future he’d taken him to. But it was obvious he was odd. How had he not noticed it before?

Why would he? Why would he have suspected a flower seller of being some strange being capable of torture and making him see the future?

‘My name is Luke.’

‘I mean, what are you?’ The words felt like dead weights dropping from his lips. How could he be asking someone that?

‘That’s a better question. I’m an angel.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Luke cracked a smile, the same one he’d had when he began torturing him. It was the sort of smile worn by people who know more than you and think they always will. Alex wasn’t convinced that in this case it wasn’t entirely justified.

‘There are plenty of other explanations of course. I’m a figment of your deranged mind. I’m a side product of that foul shit you cooked up and sold to the government. I’m you, your alter ego, making you take control of your life and right the things you’ve done wrong.’

Alex was already shaking his head. ‘You aren’t though. You aren’t any of those things.’ He paused, head still rocking from side to side. ‘If you’re an angel, how come you tortured me? Aren’t angels supposed to be loving, caring beings?’

‘Ahh, well, that’s an excellent question. I tortured you because I needed information. And because it was fun. As far as us being loving, caring beings, try a comparison. Your doctor. He or she has the job of keeping you well. Would you describe them as loving and caring? Do they give you a hug when you arrive at the surgery? How about the police. They care for your wellbeing and ensure you’re safe. How about them? Many hugs recently?’

‘That’s different, th—’

‘Why? Why should we be any different?’

‘You aren’t human.’

‘Exactly. So what possible reason could there be for us to act like we care about you?’

Alex opened his mouth and closed it again. His entire knowledge of the bible extended as far as knowing there were two testaments, possibly, and that it featured God and Moses and a bunch of other guys and not many women. What was there in there about angels? Without knowing, he couldn’t really argue either way.

‘So why are you doing this? Why are you trying to stop us getting poisoned if you don’t care?’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t care. Only that my caring isn’t the fluffy kind. It’s the practical kind, which is far more useful than the former.’

Alex leaned back in his seat, forehead creased. ‘You’re an angel.’

‘You catch on quick, most impressive.’

‘Angels aren’t real.’

‘Neither are zombies, but you know what, you’ve just made them a reality.’

Alex felt the blood drain from his face and gripped his trousers as his hands shook. ‘They aren’t zombies as such, not entirely. They merely operate through instinct using a simpler system, it’s not—’

‘Will they eat brains?’

Alex stared at his hands. ‘They’ll eat anything that will sustain them. Protein’s best, meat. Doesn’t matter if it’s raw or cooked. At a push, they’ll eat vegetables, but they’d have to eat a huge amount to stay alive.’

Luke burst out laughing, shaking his head. ‘You’ve created vegetarian zombies. Not just made a myth, but a genre-busting myth. Most impressive. Some of my old colleagues will be most jealous.’

‘They aren’t vegetarians, not by a long shot. But I haven’t created anything. I’ve made a weapon that will, conceivably, create them. But it’s safe, that’s why I gave it to them. They’ll make it safe.’

Luke stared at him, incredulous smile on his face. ‘You really believe the government can be trusted with anything? I’ve been a human for all of a week and I already know that. Admittedly, I’ve watched them dance from screw up to screw up for the last few millennia, but still…’

Alex got to his feet. ‘I need a pee, back in a moment.’

He set off down the carriage until he reached the tiny toilet and crammed himself into it. He sat on the closed seat, staring at the wall while his hands shook. Luke was right. He’d created something terrible and his self-control lasted all of a few days before he cashed in. He had to get away. He had to get Lisa and get out the country, as quick as possible.

They could run far enough to escape whatever came of the plague. They could go to some remote island surrounded by sea. Maybe in the pacific, Tonga or Fiji. But he had to get away from that crazy bastard first. He thought he was an angel. For a minute, Alex had believed it. Now though, he just thought the man was crazy.

He unlocked the door and peered out. Luke was just visible through the coats and elbows sticking out into the walkway. Alex crouched down and crept out of the toilet, heading the other way down the train. He reached the last carriage and squeezed himself into a corner seat. The next station was in the arse end of nowhere, but he could still get a cab or something from there.

His fingers drummed against his leg, eyes fixed on the door between the two carriages. He’d be wondering where he was by now. How long before he decided to search? The train announcer told him the next stop was approaching and he shifted side to side. He was in a group of four seats and the other two occupants were staring at him like he had two heads.

He opened the window and tried not to fidget. The train slowed and the station signs flashed past. He got up and headed for the door. Waiting in the space between the carriages, he heard something and turned. A voice, soft and calm, cut through the noise of the stopping train.

‘Tell me, Alex, what’s your greatest fear?’

The train rattled to a halt and he reached out to keep himself steady. A burst of pain shot up his wrist and he glanced down to see a stump where his hand should be. Blood dripped lazily from it, as though it had better things to do but couldn’t be bothered.

He screamed and grabbed at it with his other hand. Only that one was absent as well and his stumps banged together. The pain made every cigarette burn irrelevant and he dropped to his knees, vision closing in. He came to moments later to see eyes staring at him, an entire carriage-full of people watching this crazy man rolling on the floor.

His hands were whole and very much present. Luke came bustling up the carriage and helped him up. Alex was vaguely aware of Luke offering an apology to the others on the train.

‘I’m so sorry, change of medication. Don’t worry, he’s fine.’

He allowed Luke to steer him back to their seats and settle him down. His hands were still there and he poked and prodded at them, biting on a finger to make sure. What had happened? Luke’s voice drifted over the tiny table between them.

‘Tell me, Alex, what’s your greatest fear? The last five minutes would suggest you’re rather partial to your hands, but I question whether it isn’t the loss of the world you live in that doesn’t cause more hardship. The baby and now your unwillingness to believe in me. Don’t like change much, do you?’

Alex narrowed his eyes and said nothing. He rubbed his hands together and felt the grating pain of a few minutes ago. It had been real, as real as the airships of his future vision. ‘What are you?’

‘I’m your saviour.’ The grin was back. ‘Sounds good, doesn’t it?’

Next Installment Thursday 18th September

Part One is Here

Jackson – Thursday: Plague Day

Jackson strode out over the bridge. He made sure the trucks were long gone of course. There was no point in tempting fate. The silence was lessened here by the swell of the Thames beneath his feet.

His mind reeled, from questions about himself to questions about what was happening. But the one he kept coming back to was why he was alive and no one else was. Why had he been chosen? Was this some kind of punishment for all those years of treating God like dirt? Was it payback after the years of crime? It was no less than he deserved, but perhaps there was more here than this. Perhaps he was being given a chance. A second chance to do something real with his life. To make a change.

He stared down into the water and his fists clenched as he nodded. He would make a change. He already had. Whatever was happening in London, he had been kept alive to fix it, to make it better and he would. If it was the only thing he ever did. It would be the one thing he did that was good and pure and not motivated by the dark needs that he could still feel inside, trying to claw their way up.

The children were keeping them down. Stamping and kicking at them, screaming all the while.

He turned back and headed to what he was already referring to as ground zero. The police had been heading for the Houses of Parliament, so that’s where he’d start. He stomped hard, revelling in the thud of the pavement beneath his feet. Every step took him further from the countless hours spent in the park.

He realised that he had no idea how long he’d been there. He had no way of knowing how long the children had been climbing inside him and tearing him apart. Tears sprung up in his eyes and he stumbled to a halt and fell to his knees. He had deserved nothing less but still it hurt. His punishment had been brutal, beyond brutal. Had he really deserved all that?

He climbed to his feet and resumed his walking, bringing every step down with a thump. His knees began to hurt but he couldn’t stop himself. An image flashed before his eyes, of a child’s face beneath his boot as he brought it down. He shouted and swung his arms as if to bat the image away but it was stuck firm in his mind.

He growled and kept walking. This was a test. It was all a test. What was happening here was a test to see if he was worthy, if he should be allowed into heaven. Just like mam had said, he had to work at it. Every day he had to work at it and eventually he’d be let in. This just made it easier, because he knew what he had to work at.

The streets were covered in bodies. They were stiff and twisted into strange positions. If he blurred his eyes he could imagine he was looking at mannequins, molten in the sun. A fog lay over the ground, thick enough that some of the corpses were obscured from view. A weak wind tried and failed to move it and he felt like he was floating through the city.

Buildings sprung from the fog, untethered and ready to float away at any moment. He sniffed. Enough of the romantic bullshit. He had to keep his eye on the prize, whatever it was. He didn’t really know what it was. He couldn’t save these people, they were already dead.

He stopped, squinting through the afternoon sunshine. A hand thrust up through the fog, like a flag on a ship far out to sea. Against the dirty brown of the mist it stood out stark, white and stiff. The closer he got, the more convinced he became that it was just an unfortunate pose, that the owner was just as dead as the others.

His feet scraped on the concrete and he hesitated. Ten feet and then five. He was about to turn away when the hand slowly opened and closed, the fingers twitching. He swallowed and took a step backward and a hand closed around his ankle.

He tumbled onto his arse, swearing as he went down. He landed on something soft and jumped up quicker than he’d gone down. The hand scraped against him again and he looked down, but the fog hid everything. He lashed out and hit something. He lashed out again, shouting this time, but missed and nearly went arse over tit.

Jackson ran. He didn’t think about where he was going. His feet caught against bodies and he went over, tearing his trousers and the knees beneath them. His hands were bleeding as well by the time he reached the bridge, but he couldn’t stop. It was quieter here and the fog hadn’t settled. It was appearing in wisps before being dragged off by the wind and drifting down the river.

He arrived on an island. On both sides of the river the dirty fog lay thick and heavy. There were no bodies in his small space, nothing but him and the railings and the water far below. The buildings hovered, floating on a sea that shifted and spun. He could stay here. He could stay here and be safe. Nothing could get to him, not if he stayed alert and focused.

He put his back to the railing and waited. It didn’t take long.

The first thing he heard was the scraping, as though someone with a gammy leg was making their slow way across the bridge. When he spotted them, his teeth went straight through the lip he’d been worrying. He didn’t know whether it was the blood or just his scent, but as it trickled out his mouth and down his chin, the person he’d spotted – and he still used the word person then – jerked to a stop and stared at him.

He’d learn soon enough that the blood hadn’t helped. He’d learn all about the blood, but at that moment, all he knew were the eyes. They were dead, sunken and dry, yet still seemed to glare at him with a malevolence he’d have recognised had he been one of the children he’d taken in the last five years. The man’s hair was coming out, tufts and patches covering a blotchy scalp.

The person lurched back into motion. It didn’t move fast but it didn’t hesitate either and came with a purpose that suggested inexorability. As it reached the top of the bridge, he realised that it did indeed have a gammy leg. One foot was dragged along, twisted to one side. Jackson took a deep breath and then burst out coughing.

The thing smelled. There was rot, like meat left in the fridge too long and something else. A sort of wet mustiness like a wooden shed that’s got damp and started growing mould. It crept into his nostrils and throat and clogged him up and he furiously rubbed his nose in an attempt to dislodge it. It made no difference and he tried to take shallow breaths as it came nearer.

He’d say, when asked later, that at this point he weighed up the options. He thought about running and decided against it. But the truth was, his legs refused to move and it was all he could do not to fall to the floor and pray for something. The person didn’t stop. It raised its arms and that was the moment he was galvanised into action.

He shouted, barely recognising the high-pitched squeak that emerged, and grabbed the arms. They felt hot, not at all like the bodies he’d examined a few minutes earlier. And the moment he closed his hands around them, they jerked and yanked and almost pulled him off his feet. The creature was strong and unyielding and Jackson didn’t stop to think.

He pulled it toward him and past him and to the edge of the railing. Its chest struck the bar and a sound like wood striking metal echoed over the river. Then Jackson grabbed it by the legs and heaved. It went straight over the barrier and dropped like a stone in to the Thames.

It sunk in just the same way, but he kept watching, waiting for it to bob to the surface. It was the watching that nearly killed him. He smelled them first and spun around. Two of them stood no more than fifteen feet away and if he hadn’t been in full panic mode, he’d have said they were smiling.

He couldn’t throw them both over. He reached for the small of his back and pulled out his knife. It was a bowie knife, the kind he’d always wanted as a kid. With his first pay check from the Chinese men he’d gone and bought one and hadn’t left it at home since. Just thinking of the two men brought sweat to his brow, but he was glad for the knife.

The people came at him and his breathing sped up. They both stretched their hands out, like the old versions of Frankenstein and he hacked at them. The one to the right lost some fingers and he hacked a large chunk out of the other’s palm. Their blood was thin, like watered-down gravy with bits in and it went everywhere.

It struck his top and he jumped back, shrieking again. He half-expected it to start hissing and melting through the material, but it just clung there, carrying the same smell of mould. His attackers seemed oblivious to their new wounds, they just kept on coming. He gritted his teeth together and stepped forward.

With a shout he imagined was a battle cry, he buried the knife hilt deep in the one on the right’s eye. It made a squelching sound as it struck and he heaved. The other one grabbed his shoulder and he lashed out, fists swinging wildly. He caught it on the chin and it staggered back. He followed it with another blow to the face and it fell over.

He turned back to the one with the knife in its eye. It lay prone on the floor and the smell of rot grew suddenly stronger. His eyes widened as the skin began to slough away, layers of it crumbling to the floor. With nose wrinkled, he stepped closer and pulled his knife free. It was accompanied by another squelching sound that he did his best to ignore.

The second was getting up, no worse the wear for his punches and he readied the knife. He knew what he was fighting. He’d spent the last ten minutes pretending they were something else, or at least hoping they were, but his subconscious knew all too well. There were so many things wrong with it he wanted to scream. But at least he knew how to kill them.

The zombie came at him and he punched it in the face then jammed the knife into its ear. It went in easier than he expected and he lost his footing, falling over on top of the creature. As it struck the ground, the body beneath him gave way and his elbows sunk deep into its chest. The warmth of the lumpy blood soaked into his shirt and he groaned as bile filled the back of his throat.

He rolled off, flicking ineffectually at his shirt. He smelled of it and imagined he could taste the rot in his mouth. He yanked his shirt off, keeping it from touching his face. The body at his feet was going the same way as the first, skin rotting before his eyes. He pulled his knife clear of the mess and stood.

Jackson looked across the city. How many of them were there? Hundreds, thousands? More, so many more. But he was God’s soldier and he would fight them one by one. It was what he was supposed to do. He raised both hands above his head and roared and if it came out slightly squeaky, he didn’t care.

Next Installment Monday 15th September