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Only Hodges was still watching for jumpers, sighting on the building opposite with one eye screwed into the telescope he had made from a napkin. They were forty-two floors up, a bunch of suits drinking champagne from whiskey tumblers, empty bottles scattered around their table.

Duncan was sweating. He was burning up but trying not to show it. He wanted to rip himself free of his pinstripe jacket but then everyone would see. They would know. He gulped some more champagne. It was barely chilled. Even their building, this seat of power and the uber-mojo, home to men who could quaff as the country failed, was not immune to the sweeping power outages.

Hodges slapped the table. ‘There goes another one!’

Most of the drinkers didn’t bother to look, the swan dive last moments of some poor wretch from fifty storeys high was old hat.

Hodges snorted with disgust. ‘It’s just not cricket, bloody Tinkerbell fairies, the lot of ‘em!’ He looked around the table of drinkers. ‘You really must hate your fellow man, choose that as a way to go. Someone’s got to clean up the mess after splashdown.’

There were some vague murmurs but most of the drinkers were too far gone to care. Weeks and weeks of this hell, of waking up day after day to a rising death count. No cure. No way to spot the infected. Duncan stifled another snort. Hodges with his paper telescope and his firm handshake and firmer belief that he could spot the infected.

It took an effort for Duncan to prise himself from his chair, and then to pick his way carefully through the detritus littering the floor of this once plush restaurant. Hodges was too busy with his telescope to notice him go.

Duncan began to run once he was out sight. He was burning up. The door to the toilets cracked hard against the tiles and rebounded painfully against his arm. He staggered to the sinks and splashed some cold water across his face. It barely registered. He stuffed one hand in the pocket of his suit jacket and squeezed the handful of marbles tightly between his fingers. For the first few days it had helped, the memory of childhood enough to keep the disease at bay. Now the wisp of autumn smoke on the breeze was a burning fire, and he could not stop himself from tearing off his suit jacket and trousers and then his shirt.

From the jacket of his suit he reverently took a small green cap and placed it atop his head. A tiny part of his brain was still calling to him - Duncan, your name is Duncan, you are forty-seven years old, you tend a rose garden at weekends and your wife is called Alice. The words faded into nothing as he gazed into the mirror and stared at this wonderful vision, this youngster dressed in a green jerkin and pale green tights, and perched atop his boyish curls his green cap with a scarlet feather.

Not just one of the lost boys, he was the leader of the Lost Boys, he was Peter Pan.

He felt the urge to fly.

Five months, three week and six days. That was how long it had been since John had spoken to another human being. He thought about maybe doing something to acknowledge the six month mark, but then decided that he simply wouldn’t be able to bear it. Instead he’d plant the roses for Molly, like he’d promised.

In the first few weeks after the last person had died John had gone to bits it was true. Well anyone would; the blood, the screaming, the futile pleading and the terrible sounds of loss and suffering. He had done his best, but, in the end, he couldn’t save any of them any more than the face masks and hand sanitiser could.

With shaking hands he’d mopped mouths clean of blood and, when the painkillers had run out, he had done what he could with a heavy pillow and a the press of a merciful palm.

In the end John realised that the silence was worse than the screaming.

It started with a cold. People might feel a little breathless, but nothing to worry about. They might think about visiting the GP when the nosebleeds started, but by then it was too late. Soon after came the fever and the shaking, the blood flecked vomit, the blindness, the fear. Then the inevitable. John had watched it all. He’d grown almost numb to it by the end

He’d had to clear the dead from the streets when the smell became unbearable. What had taken his neighbours, his family, even his Molly may have spared him, but the clusters of flies and the creeping rot of the corpses carried their own dangers and John wasn’t prepared to survive this long only to die from infection brought by putrefying waste.

And so he’d rolled up his sleeves and blanked out his mind and got on with it. When he was finished, Rose Garden Terrace was clear and he could almost pretend it was a quiet Sunday afternoon, like before. In a moment Mrs Harries would walk back from the shops with her arms full of shopping, or he’d smell Brian Pugh’s garden bonfire on the autumn breeze.

Now, the only sounds were the brushing of wind through John’s garden. The radio stations had stopped broadcasting weeks before. John missed the cricket. He missed the whirr of the morning milkfloat and the sound of the neighbours laughing through the wall. He missed Molly.

John stared out of his window into Molly’s garden, stroking Mojo’s furry ears. He had kept it neat for her, learned what to do from her books and magazines and he thought she would like that. Today he’d planted a rose bush in the rough patch of soil that covered the hole he’d buried her in.

So it was almost with a smile that John wiped away the thin trickle of blood that ran down over his lip from his left nostril.

(continued from last week)

Evelina picked the perfect time to sneeze. The zombie stopped hollering and the priest quieted his chanting. Evelina and I froze behind the tunnel wall. I heard the rustling of robes approaching and I turned to run back through the tunnel as fast as my scrawny legs would take me. A flashlight caught me mid-stride, Evelina already a step ahead of me. It was the priest.

“Stop, Children of Darkness! For you have seen nothing of the horrors of this world. Calmly follow me and you will not be harmed. Run, and you will suffer an unholy fate!”

Was this guy for real? Talk about a drama queen.

“Uh, why do you have a zombie in an underground tunnel?” I said, shielding my eyes from his holy light. Evelina stood by my side, tense. I knew what she was thinking. She could take him if needed. She was too quick, too athletic for him. And she was ready to pounce.

“That is not a zombie, child. That is a man born of sin uncontested. He is condemned.” The balding priest took a step closer.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure that’s a zombie, you hack.” Evelina’s voice carried throughout the tunnel with booming control. The priest hesitated and dropped the light just a touch.

Evelina lurched forward, smashing into the priest with a high knee to his chest, knocking him back into the room. The priest let out a strangled breath and fell flat onto his back. He lay gasping on the ground, the zombie only a few feet away, arms outstretched, mouth agape and glistening with blood.

Evelina was immediately on top of the priest, and then underneath him, her strong legs wrapped around his waist and her arms locked in a chock hold on his neck.

“You’re going to tell us what’s going on here or you’ll be that zombie’s next meal.” Evelina squeezed and the man’s face turned shades of red I haven’t seen except in my Aunt Becky’s rose garden. Evelina softened her grip on the man’s neck enough for the man to breath.

“We first...noticed...these demons...in the church. We’ve been...trying to exorcise them...for the past two weeks,” he choked out.

“Wait,” I said, keeping both eyes on the zombie. “You’ve known about these guys for two weeks and you’ve just been keeping them down here trying to exorcise their demons? Jesus, man, have you ever heard of a doctor? The CDC?”

“Answer her question or I’ll break your fucking neck. You scream, I’ll break your fucking neck.” Evelina’s biceps flexed. The girl was ready to kick some ass.

“That...is the doctor.” The priest pointed toward the zombie. “He was part of our congregation.” The creature groaned, a sad, old note escaping its mouth. I almost felt sorry for it. Almost.

Just then I caught a wisp of smoke coming from the side door, the scent of burning wood mingling with the decaying flesh of zombie.

“Where’s that smoke coming from?” I asked, covering my nose with my shirt. The priest’s eyes went wide. He struggled in Evelina’s grasp. She clamped down with her legs.

“You must let me go!” the priest shouted. “They’re coming!”

“Calm your mojo, clergyman, and let me think,” Evelina shouted at him, her grip firm.

And that’s when the howls began.