‘What’s going on?’ Carl asked having finally dragged himself out of his seat and upstairs.
‘Bodies,’ Michael said quietly. ‘Hundreds of bodies.’
Carl crept forwards, dragging his tired feet on the ground, and looked out over the yard.
‘What do they want?’ he muttered under his breath.
‘Christ knows,’ Michael cursed.
The other man stared down at the heaving crowd with a morbid curiosity. Emma turned towards Michael and took hold of his arm.
‘They won’t get through, will they?’ she asked.
He felt that he should try and reassure her but he couldn’t lie.
‘Don’t know,’ he replied with a brutal honesty.
‘But they haven’t got any real strength, have they?’ she said, trying hard to convince herself that they were still safe in the house.
‘On their own they’re nothing,’ he muttered. ‘But there are hundreds of them here tonight. I’ve got no idea what they’re capable of in these kind of numbers.’
Emma visibly shuddered with fright. Her fright instantly became icy fear as the moon broke through a momentary gap in the heavy cloud layer and illuminated even more of the desperate figures staggering through the fields surrounding the farm and converging on the house.
‘Shit,’ snapped Michael anxiously.
‘What are we going to do?’ Emma asked. She looked down and watched as part of the crowd lining the stream-come-river surged forward. Several of the creatures, their footing already unsteady in the greasy mud, fell and were carried away by the foaming waters.
Michael looked up into the clouds and ran his fingers through his hair, trying desperately to clear his mind and shut out all distractions so that he could think straight. Then, without warning, he ran out of the bedroom and sprinted down the staircase and along the hallway to the back door. Taking a deep breath he unlocked the door and ran over to the shed which housed the generator. The conditions were atrocious and he was soaked through in seconds. Ignorant to the cold and the vicious, swirling wind, he flung open the wooden door and threw the switch which stopped the machine, suddenly silencing its constant thumping and plunging the farmhouse into complete darkness in one single movement.
Emma caught her breath at the moment the lights died. The darkness explained Michael’s sudden disappearance and she ran out to the landing to make sure that he had made it safely back inside. She was relieved when she heard the back door slam shut and lock.
‘You okay?’ she asked as he dragged himself breathlessly back up the stairs.
He nodded and cleared his throat.
‘I’m okay.’
The two survivors stood at the top of the stairs, holding each other tightly. Save for the muffled roar of the wind and rain outside the house was silent. The lack of any other sound was eerie and unnerving. Michael took old of Emma’s hand and led her back to the bedroom.
‘What the hell are we going to do?’ she whispered. She sat down on the edge of the bed as Michael looked out of the window.
‘Don’t know,’ he answered, instinctively and honestly. ‘We should wait and see if they disappear before we do anything. There’s no light or noise to attract them now. They should go.’
‘But what are we going to do?’ she asked again. ‘We can’t live without light. Christ, winter’s coming. We’ll need fire and light…’
Michael didn’t reply. Instead he simply stared down at the crowd of decomposing corpses. He watched the bodies in the distance, still dragging themselves towards the house, and prayed that they would become disinterested and turn away.
Emma was right. What quality of life would they have hiding in a dark house with no light, warmth or other comfort? But what was the alternative? On this cold and desolate night there didn’t seem to be any.
Rapidly becoming sick of it all, Michael turned away from the window, took Emma’s hand and led her out of the room. The temperature was low and to hold her close was comforting and reassuring.
Carl remained alone in the bedroom, leaning against the window, watching the milling crowds beyond the barricade with fear, unease and mounting hate. He hadn’t even noticed that the other two had left the room.
31
Emma finally managed to fall asleep a little after two o’clock the following morning but she was awake again by four.
Her bedroom was dull and cold. She woke up with a sudden start and sat bolt upright in bed. The air around her face was icy and her breath condensed in cool clouds around her mouth and nose.
Since arriving at the farm she and Michael had shared this room. There was nothing sinister or untoward about Michael’s presence there – he continued to sleep on the floor in the gap between the bed and the outside wall and he discreetly looked away or left the room whenever she dressed or undressed. Neither had ever spoken about their unusual sleeping arrangements. Both of them silently continued to welcome the warm comfort and security of having another living, breathing person close nearby.
This was the first morning that Michael hadn’t been there when she’d looked. He often rose first but, until this morning, she’d always been aware of him getting up and leaving the room.
She instinctively leant over to her right (as she often did first thing) and, finding it hard to focus her eyes in the early morning gloom, stretched out her arm, hoping that her outstretched fingers would reach the reassuring bulk of her sleeping friend. This morning, however, her tired eyes had not deceived her – where she had expected to find Michael she instead found only his crumpled sleeping bag. He had definitely been there when she’d gone to bed because she could clearly remember hearing him snuffling and snoring as he had drifted off to sleep beside her. She leant across a little further, picked up the empty sleeping bag and pulled it close to her face. It smelled of Michael, and it was still warm from the heat of his body.
No need to panic, she thought.
Had it been any later then she wouldn’t have been unduly worried, but it was only four o’clock. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to sleep. Maybe he’d just gone elsewhere because he’d been restless and he hadn’t wanted to wake her up.
Regardless of the reason, Emma got up and pulled on a nearby pair of jeans and a thick towelling dressing-gown which she had left draped over the back of a chair on the other side of the bed. She tiptoed across the dark bedroom with arms stretched out in front of her to give guidance and balance. The varnished floorboards were cold beneath her bare feet and she shivered as she reached out to open the door.
There was considerably more light on the landing. The thick curtains drawn across her bedroom window had blocked out almost all of the early morning light. She glanced up the short flight of stairs which led to Carl’s attic room and saw that his door was open. Unusual, she thought. With Carl becoming more of a recluse with each passing day, she had become used to not seeing or hearing him before midday. At the moment the last thing he seemed to want was any contact with Michael or herself, especially at this time of the morning.
She crept along the landing to the top of the staircase and peered down to the hallway.
‘Michael,’ she hissed. The deathly quiet of the building amplified her voice to an unexpectedly loud volume.
No response.
‘Michael,’ she called again, this time deliberately a little louder. ‘Michael, Carl…where are you?’
She waited for a moment and concentrated on the silence of the house around her, hoping that the ominous quiet would soon be shattered by a reply from one of her two companions. When no such reply came, she took a couple of cautious steps forward and called out again.
‘Michael,’ she called for the forth time, her voice now at full volume. ‘Christ, answer me, will you?’
Another step forward. She stopped again and waited and listened. She lifted her foot to take a further step but then, before she could put it down again, the oppressive quiet was shattered by a dull thump from outside. She froze, routed to the spot in fear. She had heard that sound last night.