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asked Sunita. `Poor little bugger. Could only have been six or seven years old. One of the others spotted him running down the ring road. Said his mum had died and he'd come into town to try and find his dad. Wouldn't be told that he was probably dead too...' `How are we supposed to explain this to the children?' Sunita sighed. `If we can't make sense of what's happening, how are we supposed to make them understand?'

`Depends how old they are,' Croft said, lifting his head and looking up again. `Why?' `Because kids of a certain age will accept anything you tell them,' he explained. `I envy some of them. A two year old will grow up thinking this is how it's always been, won't they? Bloody hell, imagine how much easier the last few days would have been if you hadn't had to spend hours and hours trying to work everything out? If we'd had someone who could have told us what had happened and why, even if they weren't right, we could have just got on with sorting out the mess instead of trying to reason it out and explain it to ourselves.' `But those poor kids,' Yvonne continued. `Imagine losing your parents and being on your own like that.' `We've probably all lost our parents,' Sunita mumbled. `I know, but...

' Yvonne's words were interrupted by the noise of a body suddenly crashing into the glass double-doors directly in front of her. Nervously she stumbled back and tripped. Croft jumped to his feet and steadied her. Strangely curious he took a couple of slow, cautious steps closer to the corpse. Its gaunt face was pressed hard against the cold glass and it moved slowly along from left to right, leaving behind it a long smear of grease and a trail of bloody, germ-filled saliva. When it reached the end of the glass it clumsily turned around and began moving back in the opposite direction. `What the hell is going on here?' Croft asked under his breath. `What's the matter?' Sunita asked. She stared at the creature, her face screwed up with disgust. It didn't look any different to any of the thousands of other diseased bodies she'd seen. `I don't like this,' the doctor admitted.

He moved closer still and studied the figure's staccato movements. `This one isn't like the others.' `Why?' Sunita whispered. `Because it isn't going away.' `What?' `Look at it. By now it should have turned around and wandered off into the night again. It's staying here for a reason. It's almost as if it knows that we're in here.' `Like hell...' `Give me another explanation then? I tell you, this body is watching us.' As if to prove his point, he moved still closer towards the glass until his face was just inches away from that of the cadaver. He then moved across to his right and then, slowly and with painful lethargy, the body did the same. He moved back and, after a few seconds delay as it shuffled itself around, the corpse followed.

Yvonne was scared. She found it almost impossible to bring herself to look at the diseased shell which had, less than a week ago, been a perfectly fit and well human being. She had crept halfway up the staircase and was peering down through the railings like a frightened child. `So what does it mean?' she asked from a cautious distance. `One of two things,' Croft replied, not taking his eyes off the body. `Either this one has somehow been less affected than the others...' `Or?' Sunita pressed anxiously. `Or they're changing.'

Chapter Eight

Paul got up when the sun began to rise through the tenth floor windows of the office block. His movements weren't through choice, his temporary bed had proved less than comfortable and the pressure on his bladder had become too much to stand. Using a security pass which Donna had taken from a corpse earlier in the week, he dragged himself out onto the landing and climbed the single flight of stairs to the nearest toilet. Stumbling over an inert body in the halflight he crashed noisily through the door into the little room which was as cold, dark and unpleasant as he'd imagined it would be. Another body was slumped on the ground in one of the cubicles and a musty, stagnant smell hung heavily in the air. Still drugged with sleep and hurrying to get away from the bodies and back to