Autumn Page 0,36

they instead did little more than smear the greasy mud right across his field of vision, reducing his already limited visibility further still.

'There,' he said, squinting into the distance and looking a little further down the track. 'There's a clearing up ahead. I'll try and turn round there.'

It wasn't so much a clearing, rather a length of track where there was no hedgerow on one side and where there had once been a gate into an adjacent field. Michael slowed the van down to almost a dead stop and put it into first gear.

'Wait!' Carl shouted. 'Down there!'

He pointed through a gap in the trees on the other side of the road. Michael again used the wipers to clear the windscreen.

'What?' he asked, a little calmer now that they had stopped.

'I can see it,' Emma said. 'There's a house.'

Michael's tired and wandering eyes finally settled on the isolated building. He turned and looked at both Carl and Emma.

'What do you think?' Carl asked.

Rather than bother to answer he instead slammed his foot down on the accelerator again and sent the van flying down the track. Like a runner suddenly in sight of the finishing line there was a new found energy and steely determination about his actions.

A staggering body appeared from the darkness of the trees at the side of the track (only the fifth they'd seen since leaving the cafe) and wandered into the path of the van. His reflexes slowed by fatigue, Michael yanked the steering wheel to the left and swerved around the miserable creature, scraping the van against the hedge on the other side. For a fraction of a second he watched in the rear view mirror. The corpse stumbled on across the track and through the undergrowth on the other side, completely oblivious to the van which had just thundered past, missing it by inches.

Michael forced the van over another slight rise. Once over the top the survivors had a clear view of the building in the near distance. The track which they were following led directly to the front door of the large house.

'Looks perfect,' Emma said softly.

The uneven road became less defined with each passing metre. It swooped down through a dense forest in a gentle arc and then crossed over a little humped-back stone bridge. The bridge itself spanned the width of a gentle stream which meandered down the hillside.

'It's a farm,' Carl mumbled with remarkable perceptiveness as they passed an abandoned tractor and plough.

'Can't see any animals though,' Emma muttered, thinking out loud.

Michael wound down the window and sniffed the cool air. She was right - he couldn't see or smell a single cow, pig, sheep, chicken, duck or horse.

'Must have been an arable farm,' he said as he stopped the van in the centre of a large gravel yard, right in front of the house. Without saying anything else he climbed out and stretched, glad to finally be out of the driving seat.

The apparent tranquility of their isolated location belied the turmoil and devastation that they had left behind them. The three survivors stood together in silence and took stock of their surroundings. They were standing in a farmyard, about twenty metres square, boxed in by the stream, the farm buildings and the forest and littered with rusting farm machinery and unused supplies. On the furthest side of the yard (opposite to where the track crossed the bridge) were two dilapidated wooden barns. The farmhouse itself was a large and traditional brick-built building with a sloping grey roof which was dotted with green and yellow lichen. From the front the house appeared to be roughly rectangular. Three stone steps led up to a wooden porch which was the only protruding feature. Tacked to the side of the building was an out-of-place looking concrete garage with a grey metal door. Twisting ivy covered between a half and a third of the front of the building and the unchecked leaves had begun to crawl from the house across the roof of the garage.

'This looks perfect,' Emma continued to enthuse. 'What do you two think?'

As he was standing closest to her she first looked towards Michael for a response. Not for the first time today he seemed to be miles away, wrapped up in his own private thoughts.

'What?' he mumbled, annoyed that he had been disturbed.

'I said it looks perfect,' she repeated. 'What do you think, Carl?'

'Not bad,' he said nonchalantly, leaning against the side of the van. He was deliberately