Autumn

gate on the bridge had been.
    ‘Why do they keep coming?’ she asked under her breath. ‘We came here because we thought there would be fewer of them, so why do they keep coming here?’ She knew that Michael couldn’t give her any definite answers to her questions, but she felt a need to ask anyway.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I still think it’s got to be the noise.’
    ‘But we’ve not been making any noise.’
    ‘We have compared to the rest of the world. Christ, how many times have we been through this? The whole planet is bloody silent. Every time one of us moves you must be able to hear it for miles around.’
    ‘So the sound of the car engines...’
    ‘Keeps attracting them. And even when the sound dies down, I think they’re staying close because they know we’re nearby.’
    ‘Do you really think so?’
    He nodded sadly.
    ‘It would explain why there are so many of them around here now, wouldn’t it?’
    ‘So if we stay indoors and keep quiet and out of sight for a while then they should...’
    He shook his head with a resigned sadness.
    ‘I don’t think that’s going to work anymore,’ he sighed.
    ‘Why not?’
    Rather than answer her, Michael instead just opened the bedroom window slightly. The sudden forcing noise as he pushed the sticking window open caused a ripple of excitement to quickly spread through the rotting crowd below.
    ‘Just listen to that,’ he whispered.
    Emma did as she was told, and was soon aware of a cold, alien sound coming from the diseased hordes below. The shuffling of weary, leaden feet, the occasional guttural groan, the sound of clumsy bodies tripping and falling - each individually insignificant noise combined to create a constant, chilling soundtrack.
    ‘It’s too late for us to just sit still and play dead now,’ Michael explained. ‘It’s got to the stage where they’re making enough noise by themselves to keep attracting more and more of them here. And with a crowd of this size, it doesn’t matter how quiet we are, the bastard things are going to keep coming regardless.’
    As realisation dawned, Emma stepped back from the window, sat down on a chair and rested her head in her hands.
    ‘So what do we do now?’ she asked anxiously.
    Michael didn’t answer.
    A heavy and ominous quiet descended on the room, disturbed only by the noise from outside and by Carl who groaned in pain.
    ‘How you doing?’ Michael asked, his voice still a hushed whisper.
    Carl didn’t respond. Emma stood up and leant over the injured man. She looked him up and down, thought for a second or two and then walked back over to Michael.
    ‘It’s difficult to say how he is,’ she sighed, whispering so that Carl couldn’t hear her. ‘He’s exhausted and he’s still in shock. He doesn’t look too badly injured physically, but he’s really suffering.’
    ‘Has he said anything to you?’
    ‘What about?’
    Michael closed the window and moved away from the glass.
    ‘About what he found in the city if he ever got there? And why he came back if he did?’
    She shook her head.
    ‘He hasn’t said anything. I think we should...’
    Michael wasn’t listening. He walked over to the side of the bed and knelt down next to Carl. Carl didn’t respond. He lay there motionless, staring up at the ceiling.
    ‘Mate,’ Michael began cautiously. ‘Carl, can you hear me?’
    He swallowed painfully and nodded.
    ‘You okay?’
    ‘No,’ he answered, his voice tired and little more than a whisper.
    Carl’s eyes flickered shut and then opened again. Without moving his head he looked over towards Michael, then back to Emma, and then back to Michael again.
    ‘Did you get to Northwich?’ Michael asked. ‘Did you get...’
    ‘I got there.’
    Michael glanced over at Emma.
    ‘So what happened? Why did you come back?’
    He looked up at the ceiling again, licked his dry lips and swallowed hard.
    ‘There was no-one there,’ he mumbled.
    ‘Where, at the community centre? Did you manage to get back to the community centre...’
    ‘They’ve gone. There was no-one there.’
    ‘So where did they go?’
    Carl slowly lifted himself up onto his elbows, paused for a second, took a deep breath and then swallowed again.
    ‘I don’t think they went anywhere. When I got there the door was open. Inside the place was full of bodies.’
    ‘What bodies? The ones from outside or...?’
    He shook his head.
    ‘Survivors. I don’t think they’d been dead that long.’
    ‘What