Autumn Page 0,70

chairs to the window and craned her neck to see outside.

'Anything there?' Michael asked, close behind her.

'Nothing,' she mumbled. She turned and headed out of the room towards the stairs. She stopped when she was halfway up and turned back to face Michael. 'Listen,' she whispered, lifting a single finger to her lips. 'There, can you hear it?'

He held his breath and listened carefully. For a few moments he couldn't hear anything other than the wind and rain and the constant rhythmic mechanical thumping of the generator. Then, just for a fraction of a second, he became aware of the new noise again. His ears seemed to lock onto the frequency of the sound and it somehow rose up and became distinct from the rest of the melee. As he concentrated the noise washed and faded and changed. In turn it was the sound of something being clattered against the wooden gate over the bridge, then another, less obvious noise, then more clattering and thumping. Without saying another word he ran towards Emma and pushed his way past her. She followed as he disappeared into their bedroom. By the time she entered the room he was already standing on the far side, looking out of the window in utter disbelief.

'Bloody hell,' he said as he stared down. 'Just look at this...'

With some trepidation Emma walked across the room and peered over his shoulder. Although it was pitch-black outside and the driving rain blurred her view through the glass, she could clearly see movement on the other side of the barrier. Running the entire length of the barricade were vast crowds of bodies. They had often seen one or two of them there before, but never this many. They had never seen them in such vast and unexpected numbers.

'There are hundreds of them,' Michael whispered, his voice hoarse with fear, 'fucking hundreds of them.'

'Why?' Emma asked.

'The generator,' he sighed. 'Even over the weather they must have heard the generator.'

'Christ.'

'And light,' he continued. 'We've had lights on tonight. They must have seen them. And there was the smoke from the fire...'

Emma shook her head and continued to stare down at the rotting crowd gathered round the house.

'But why so many?' she wondered.

'Think about it,' Michael replied. 'The world is dead. It's silent and at night it's dark. I suppose it just took one or two of them to see or hear us and that was enough. The first few moving towards the house would have attracted the next few and they would have attracted the next and so on and so on...'

As the two of them looked down at the hordes of corpses, one of the creatures standing on the stone bridge spanning the stream lifted its emaciated arms and began to shake and bang the wooden gate.

'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.