Autumn Page 0,8

the entire day curled up in the corner of her bed. She'd first heard the music shortly after ten o'clock but for a while had convinced herself that she was hearing things. It was only when she finally plucked up the courage to get out of bed and opened her bedroom window that it became clear that someone really was playing music. Desperate to see and to speak to someone else, she threw a few belongings into a rucksack and locked and left her home. She ran along the silent streets using the feeble illumination from a dying torch to guide her safely through the bloody mass of fallen bodies, terrified that the music might stop and leave her stranded before she could reach its source.

Thirty-five minutes later she arrived at the Community Hall.

Carl Henshawe was the twenty-fourth survivor to arrive.

Having left the bodies of his family behind, he had spent most of the day hiding in the back of a builder's van. After a few hours he had decided to try and find help. He'd driven the van around aimlessly until it had run out of fuel and spluttered and died. Rather than try and refuel the van he decided to simply take another vehicle. It was while he was changing cars that he heard the music.

Having quickly disposed of its dead driver, Carl arrived at the hall at day break in a luxury company car.

Michael Collins had just about given up. Too afraid to go back home or indeed to go anywhere that he recognised, he was sat in the freezing cold in the middle of a park. He had decided that it was easier to be alone and deny what had happened than face returning to familiar surroundings and risk seeing the bodies of people he'd known. He lay on his back on the wet grass and listened to the gentle babbling of a nearby brook. He was cold, wet, uncomfortable and terrified, but the noise of the running water disguised the deathly silence of the rest of the world and made it fractionally easier to forget for a while.

The wind blew across the field where he lay, rustling through the grass and bushes and causing the tops of trees to thrash about almost constantly. Soaked through and shivering, Michael eventually clambered to his feet and stretched. Without any real plan or direction, he slowly walked further away from the stream and towards the edge of the park. As the sound of running water faded into the distance, so the unexpected strains of the music from the car park drifted towards him. Marginally interested, but too cold, numb and afraid to really care, he began to follow the sound.

Michael was the final survivor to reach the hall.

Chapter 5

Michael Collins was the last to arrive at the hall but the first to get his head together. More than his head, perhaps, it was his stomach that forced him into action. Just before midday, after a long, slow and painful morning, he decided it was time to eat. In the main storeroom he found tables, chairs and a collection of camping equipment labelled up as belonging to the 4th Whitchurch Scout Group. In a large metal chest he found two gas burners and, next to the chest itself, four half-full gas bottles. In minutes he'd set the burners up on a table and was keeping himself busy by heating up a catering-size can of vegetable soup and a similar sized can of baked beans which he'd found. Obviously left over from camps held in the summer just gone, the food was an unexpected and welcome discovery. More than that, preparing the food was a distraction. Something to take his mind off what had happened outside the flimsy walls of the Whitchurch Community Hall.

The rest of the survivors sat in silence in the main hall. Some lay flat on the cold brown linoleum floor while others sat on chairs with their heads held in their hands. No-one spoke. Other than Michael no-one moved. No-one even dared to make eye contact with anyone else. Twenty-six people who may as well have been in twenty-six different rooms. Twenty-six people who couldn't believe what had happened to the world around them and who couldn't bear to think about what might happen next. In the last day each one of them had experienced more pain, confusion and loss than they would normally have expected to suffer in their entire lifetime. What made these