Autumn Page 0,62

themselves and I had been left alone in the kitchen to think and to plan.

By half-past two I had reached the stage where I knew exactly what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, but I wasn't sure what materials we had to use. Perhaps foolishly, I picked up the rusty rifle from where we'd left it lying on one of the kitchen units and went outside.

There were no bodies to be seen. The afternoon was dry and clear but cold. As summer had faded and died and autumn had arrived the temperature had dropped steadily. There was a light breeze rustling through the trees and bushes but otherwise the world was silent.

In the two large barns at the side of the yard I found some timber and a few fence posts. There was also some barbed wire. While I was there I looked at the barns themselves. They appeared strong but not indestructible. The wooden walls and the sheets of corrugated metal on the roof of each of the dull buildings also looked like they were going to be useful. On top of all of that I discovered numerous bits and pieces of farm equipment scattered around the place. I didn't know what half of it was for, but I knew that all of it could be used in someway to build a barrier between us and the rest of the diseased population.

I began to walk back towards the farmhouse feeling unusually calm and assured. The terror and stomach-wrenching fear of the morning had, for a time at least, subsided and been put to one side. The respite didn't last long. The light was beginning to fade and, as night rapidly approached, a single innocent and unexpected thought wormed its way into my tired brain and slowly and systematically destroyed the confidence and sense of purpose that I had spent the previous hours silently building up inside me.

I thought about a friend from work.

Just for a fraction of a second I pictured her face, and the memory of all that I had lost and left behind suddenly returned. With this torrent of unexpected memories came an equally unexpected torrent of pain and raw emotion.

For what felt like hours I sat alone on the steps outside the porch of the farmhouse and wept. I pictured the faces of my family and friends, of my colleagues from work, my customers, the people at the garage who had fixed my car a couple of weeks ago, the woman who'd sold me a paper on the morning it had all begun... as I saw each one of them the bitter realisation that they were gone forever felt like nails being driven into my flesh. And each dull pain was followed by a second hurt. While everyone I knew lay rotting in the streets - either lying motionless on the ground or dragging themselves around in endless agony - I had survived. Why me? Why should I have lived over all those others? I thought about my two brothers - Steven and Richard. I hadn't seen them for a couple of months. I hoped that they were like me and that they had survived. The thought of them being like those fucking monsters I'd seen this morning was too much to take...

But what could I do?

Why should I feel this way?

There was nothing I could have done to have changed any of it.

I picked myself up and went indoors. I was filled with a deep hurt that I knew would never completely disappear. But I owed it to myself to try and build something from what was left.

Chapter 27

The barrier around the house took the three survivors all of the following day to complete. They worked almost constantly - beginning just after the sun first rose and only stopping when the job was finally done. As the light had faded the work had become harder to concentrate on and finish. Carl, Michael and Emma had each individually struggled to keep focussed on the task at hand and to ignore the mounting fear that the approach of darkness brought. The fear of drawing attention to themselves was constant and relentless. Throughout the day the generator had remained switched off. As far as was possible they worked in the safety of a shroud of silence.

Despite his earlier apparent apathy, Carl worked as hard as the other two to complete the vital barrier. For