The Apocalypse Blog
by Melanie Edmonds

Sax woke up today, enough to speak and shout, but there was no sense in him. His eyes were open but he didn’t see us. He talked as if he was replying but not to any of us. Masterson says that it’s the fever and the dehydration, driving him into delirium.

I tried to be comforted by that. It helps to have an explanation, but there was something restrained in the doctor’s voice that made me press him.

It was good, surely, that he was conscious? Even if he wasn’t lucid? That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

He looked at me and made sure that we were alone. Then he said, “Not neccessarily.” He refused to say any more; he can’t be more specific, because he doesn’t know what this is yet. The symptoms don’t match anything he knows; it seems like influenza, but even that doesn’t fit.

Sax has a rash today that he didn’t have before, crawling up his arm and over his shoulder. Masterson is sure that it wasn’t there yesterday, or the day before. When I heard that, my stomach curled up into a small, hard rock and radianted cold into the rest of my innards.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he told me gravely.

Hope is exactly what we need right now.

The worse Sax gets, the tighter tempers pull around us. I know it’s because they’re upset, I know it’s because they’re worried and hurting, but that doesn’t make it easier. We are all raw nubs right now; I almost snapped at someone today. The only reason I didn’t was because it was Matt and he looked particularly strained. It’s not a look that suits him.

All I can hear is raised voices. Sally talking to Sax between his raving, trying to get him to lie still and take the food she’s pressing at his lips; he thrashes sometimes. The boys snapping at each other – for once, Masterson isn’t one of them. Alice snipping back whenever she’s spoken to, at the end of her resistance to the erosion of insults. Everyone is impatient and short-tempered, even the usually laid-back Ben.

Trying to keep the others occupied with jobs and activities isn’t working any more. Arguments erupt at the first obstacle and then the whole effort is in tatters. I don’t know what to do any more. They’re not children that I can send to sit in the corner.

To cap it all off, the roof appears to be leaking. There are melting lines down the back wall, wriggling downwards from a stained seam. The room was full of violent language when it was noticed – cursing and griping and do we have to shift now? Because Sax is very heavy to move. Alice, in particular, was freaking out, though she had the grace to try to do it quietly.

We couldn’t move just then – it was still raining outside – so we just shuffled towards the front of the building. A couple of the boys have gone to check out the leak to see what damage has been done, in case the ceiling is in danger of falling down entirely.

Sax is still talking, down to murmurs in the darkness now. I’d try to get the others to sing, but I think I’ve forgotten how.

Sometime during the night, Sax fell into a coma. His voice dimmed until he was moaning and wheezing, and then he was just wheezing. I don’t know if I was the only one listening to him, counting the time between his breaths, but the room felt like it was full of ears. When the air stuttered in his throat, I held my breath, willing him to keep going. Just one more breath, and another. Don’t stop.

I didn’t realise that I was crying until Ben rolled over and tried to comfort me. It felt good, burying myself against his chest and hiding from it all for a while. It was nice to have someone else’s arms around me and those meaningless words in my ear – it’ll be all right. Shhh.

It wasn’t until his chest quivered that I remembered something from a few days ago. He had been struggling to suppress coughs. I hadn’t thought much of it before then, I thought it had gone away, but of course, that’s how Sax’s sickness started. Since then, he has been clearing his throat a lot. I heard him do it again as I lay there against him, and this time I felt the spasm he was hiding. He had a cough, irritating and persistent.

I lifted my head to look him in the eye. It was just before dawn, I could barely see him at all, but it was light enough for our gazes to meet. That was enough. We both knew the truth. I felt like something had just fallen out from under me, something important, like a bridge or a floorboard or my own legs. And I started crying again, hopelessly trying to be quiet so that the others wouldn’t know.

When we got up this morning, no-one said anything about what they did or didn’t hear during the night. Then we realised that Alice was missing and all anyone would say was that they didn’t hear her go.

Thorpe is pleased and Dillon is devastated. The rest of us are relieved, even if we don’t know for sure that she brought this thing to us. She probably did. She might have killed us all. It makes sense, as much as I don’t want to admit it.

It doesn’t matter. The damage is done. It’s too late now for Sax, maybe for all of us. I don’t think he’s got long left.

Wherever she is now, Alice is probably a lot safer than she was here.

Sax slipped away sometime in the night. He didn’t get up and tiptoe out. He didn’t melt into the shadows when no-one was looking. He didn’t wake up. He was pale and breathing shallowly, and lying very still. By morning, he was grey and not moving at all.

We gathered silently around his couch, each one pulled over by the sight of someone else standing there. No-one said anything. No-one needed to. I wasn’t the only one with tears on my cheeks, though none of us broke the silence with sobs.

Masterson checked his pulse, just to be sure, just to make it official. He looked at us and shook his head.

After a few minutes, I realised that most of us were holding hands. I had Ben on one side and Matt on the other. It felt like those warm contacts were all that held me up. I nudged Matt and nodded at him to take the hand on the other side of him as well. Thorpe was surprised but Nugget already had hold of his other hand. Dillon took the hint and latched onto the little girl and Masterson. Sally completed the circle when she took Ben’s hand.

I don’t think any of us knew Sax very well, but he was still one of us. He was our rock – all of us leant on him at some point. He shared his music with us and helped us raise our voices together.

I remember when we found him in the city. I thought then that he was an old man, that he wasn’t likely to make it out of that nightmare alive. He turned out to be one of the strongest of us. Even when he was injured, he pressed on, unwilling to slow us down. We would have waited for him; we did, at times. I think he hated making us wait, but no-one ever complained about it.

He was a father-figure for Nugget. He looked after her, and I think she listened when he spoke only to her. She seems to understand that he’s gone, sniffing quietly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry before.

He had a bond with Sally as well. That time that he spent on the boat with her and Masterson changed something between them. They made peace with each other and the shadows of their pasts, and came out stronger for it. The loss of his daughter had crushed him, but he was brighter with Sally to care about. I can see her shoulders shaking from here.

We don’t know much about his family except that they were missing when we went looking for them. It nearly broke him – he loved them very much.

He gave us so many things. He taught me about electronics, enough to rewire engines if I need to (and I have needed to). He fixed a radio so that we could listen for signals, for signs of life. He gave me a way to keep this laptop alive, so that I could keep writing this blog. He gave us so many things that we will carry with us as we move forward.

Standing in a circle around him, there was only one thing that felt right to do. My throat was clogged; I had to clear it a couple of times before it would work. My voice was rough-edged and I had to start over after the first line, but the second time I kept going. Struggling up out of our gloom one by one, the others joined in. Even Nugget mouthed the words. Afterwards, there were hugs and tears as we finally let him go.

I hope you heard us, Sax. I hope we made you proud. We love you. We’ll miss you and your Amazing Grace.

• Theme song: Amazing Grace

After we had said goodbye to Sax and he had been covered with a blanket, we were at a loss for what to do next. I think we all felt like we should do something, but no-one was quite sure what.

“We can’t just leave him like that,” Matt said when we were starting to pack up again.

He had a point; it wasn’t right to just leave him there to rot. Something might eat him. The idea of letting the rain wash him out of the world made my skin crawl, and I wasn’t alone in my revulsion. Fire, perhaps? But it would take time to build a pyre big enough, and we would have to light it in the morning to be sure that the rain wouldn’t put it out before he was properly ashen. None of us wanted to risk setting fire to this whole block by lighting him where he lay.

“We shouldn’t waste a day on that,” was Thorpe’s contribution on the subject of the pyre. He wasn’t wrong.

We threw the matter back and forth a few times. Then Masterson distracted us by holding up a couple of slender bottles and suggesting we raise a glass in Sax’s honour. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Neat vodka is not nice. Cheap, lukewarm neat vodka is positively nasty. It scorched all the way down and made us grimace painfully. Still, that didn’t stop us. We each toasted him – everyone had something that they wanted to say. Of course, we took a shot for each toast; in retrospect, not the wisest move.

Ben: “For being a good friend, to all of us.”

Thorpe: “For always putting your shoulder in with the rest of us, even when you should have taken it easy.”

Matt: “For accepting me without question and helping me feel a part of the group.”

Me: “For helping us know how to say goodbye and reminding us how to sing.”

By the fourth glass, we were all wavering in that happy-fuzzy way (except the kids, who were on soda, much to Dillon’s disappointment). I snuck a little vodka into his next shot of cola, and he made a face when he swallowed it.

Dillon: “For never making me feel like a kid.”

Sally: “For forgiving me, and being there when I needed someone to talk to.”

Masterson: “For those of us left behind.”

Even Nugget gave one, the last of our group: an eloquent, “Sax.”

I don’t remember a lot after that. There was more drinking and we started telling stories. Little private things that none of the rest of us knew. The first time we saw Sax, the things he used to do, how we never heard him play his saxophone. I used to hear him play all the time, busking when the world was right, but then it all fell down and broke his instrument. It feels like a metaphor that I’m too hung over to grasp fully.

We were sluggish in getting up this morning, worn out and sickly in that post-alcohol way. I craved one of my dad’s disgusting fry-ups – eggs and bacon and mushrooms and– just thinking about it is making me hungry all over again. Cold beans in a can is not the best way to tackle a hangover. Okay, not feeling hungry any more.

One side-effect of the hangovers is that none of us want to move Sax’s body. Masterson shrugged and said that we should let nature take him, and for once there was no argument to his idea.

This whole episode has made me realise something. I’m an idiot and time is not our friend. It’s past midday already; we’re wasting dry daytime stumbling around as it is.

We’re almost ready to leave. I have to do this now, or it’ll be too late.

I have to tell them that I want us to go north. I want to find my dad.

The talk went better than I expected yesterday. There was the predictable confusion and questioning as the others tried to figure out what it all meant, in a practical sense.

We have the scooters now, I told them. We could be at my dad’s house in a few days, probably less. After that, we can turn around and head down to the Emergency Coordination Centre like we had planned. If there’s organisation there now, as we hope there is, it’ll still be there in a week’s time. It won’t take that long.

There was doubt on their faces, so I asked them to think about it and went to check on our rides. I wasn’t going to argue them into it. I want this to be their decision. Anyway, I’d just wind up getting upset and then my tongue would get away from me. I’ve cried so many times over the past few days and I don’t want another burning-eyed headache. I feel like my waterlogged skull is being slowly eroded by it all, and my emotional control is worn thin along with it.

Besides, they’re all adults. Even Dillon, for the purposes of this decision; I wanted to include him in it. Not just because he’s a good friend, but also because this means a few more days before we can find his parents again – guilt crawled around in my chest with cold feet when I looked at him.

He didn’t see it that way. He looked at the others and said ‘yes’ to my request, before I’d even walked away to let them discuss it. Bless his heart; I don’t deserve to have the support of a kid like that. I know it was selfish of me to ask this, but he doesn’t see it that way. He’s more grown up than most kids his age.

It didn’t take them long to come back with a decision. It makes a difference when it’s a matter of just days, not weeks like it used to be. Matt knows how close my dad and I are – I don’t want to say ‘were’ – and I think he spoke up for me.

North it is, they said. My heart was so much lighter after that; I bounced onto my scooter, and then off again so that I could hug Dillon. I even agreed to teach him how to drive in my happy distraction. Smart damn kid.

We were only on the road a short time before we realised that it was late and the clouds were gathering, snaggling up against each other in the kids and ready to tear themselves open above us. So we didn’t get very far. But we made it a short distance, we’re closer then we were.

I’m going home. I’m on my way, Dad. I’ll see you soon.

Progress is a wonderful thing. We made good time yesterday, much more than I thought we’d cover in just one day. I’m not used to going so fast – the past four months have tainted my perspective of the map, as if I can only look at it through the warp of a bowl’s curve.

The going is getting slower the more we go north – the closer we get to the epicentre of the blast, the more wreckage there is on the roads. It’s not dragging us down too much yet, though, not on these nippy little scooters.

We had to take a slight detour once, around a grafitti-tagged zone. We don’t know whose the tags are, and we haven’t heard any stories about the gangs in this area, but none of us are eager to take chances.

I even let Dillon drive the scooter this morning. He thought it was the best thing in the world, revving up the little engine and testing out the weaving ability of the machine. His grin was infectious when he got off, a little shaky with excitement, and he asked if he could drive it again later. We’ll take turrns, I told him.

Despite that, despite all of that, we reached the edge of my home suburb by the time the rain came. Today, we’ll get to my house.

When we were settling down last night, Sally drew me aside. She doesn’t often talk to me, one-on-one, and she was so nervous that I wondered if she was afraid of me. In hindsight, I think she was afraid of what she had to tell me.

She asked me first if Sax had told me anything about her. I said no – he hadn’t mentioned anything. I knew the two of them talked a lot since the time on the boat, and he was very fond of Sally. He never betrayed any confidences with me. I think that made it harder for her.

She looked at me, eyes bright at the mention of our dead friend, and took a deep breath. I started to get a little afraid of what she had to tell me.

“I’m pregnant.”

My response was a stare and an eloquent, “Oh.” Of all the things she might have said, I wasn’t expecting that one. Of course, I probably should have, considering the unsubtle activities that happen in the dark. Ben and I have been careful about protection, and I had assumed they were as well.

I glanced at Sally’s face and realised that she looked very young. Unsure of herself. I summoned up a smile and patted her arm. “Well, that’s great news.” It’s supposed to be good news, right? She looked at me like I was crazy and she’s not wrong; the notion of bringing a baby into this world is terrifying. “Does Masterson know?”

Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “I only told Sax.”

I felt like I was holding onto a can of worms with a loose lid. “Are you okay?”

She shrugged, her head drooping, and she didn’t reply. Matt was looking in our direction and I waved him off, moving to put an arm around her. She’s scared, of being pregnant, of what Masterson will say – and he’s a doctor, he’s going to notice soon – of what the rest of the group will do. We would never abandon her because of something like this; she needed to hear that, and I obliged. She tried not to cry and failed, and I stayed with her until she felt better.

“You have to tell the others,” I told her when she was calmer. “They deserve to know.”

“I will,” she replied. “But not yet.” She trembled at the idea.

I let it go. I hardly know what to think – a baby. I can’t think of a better symbol of hope for us, a sign that we’re going to survive all of this. I gave her a big hug before we rejoined the others, and by then I had got over my shock enough to look pleased for her. We’ll work it out, I told her.

Today I’m going home. Soon, we’ll have a new addition to our group. I feel like I could sprint all the way home, I’m so bouncy.

Dad wasn’t home when we got there. I knew it the moment we arrived.

I thought my heart was going to crawl out of my throat and flop around on the bricked driveway like a suicidal fish. It was too quiet and all I could hear was my own pulse, ratcheting up and up. Ben took my hand and pressed his lips together grimly. He knew exactly how I felt, and the worst of what I might find inside.

It looked like a fractured scene from a dream. The sort of dream when one minute I’m walking along the bank of the river in the middle of the festival, a step later I’m in my old classroom and all the doors are missing, and then I’m home, but it’s not quite like home should be. The choke and sprawl of the garden was missing; it was just bare earth and discoloured brick where the creepers used to cling. The house used to be melded into the earth, dwarfed by the rampant greenery that no-one had been able to tame since my mother died. Now, it stood starkly upright, its shoulders rounded as if in apology for its abruptness.

There was a squeak and I glanced over to see Matt checking the mailbox. He shrugged and closed it again, the hinge squeaking in protest; nothing for me today. The slice of normalcy jarred in a way that made me smile briefly.

My car wasn’t there – it’s probably still at the train station, waiting for the train that would never come. Dad’s car wasn’t there either and I tried not to read too much into that as I went up to the door. It was too quiet, though. I’m used to the powerless silence of the city now, but there’s an unmistakable hush that empty buildings have when no-one is breathing their air.

I still had my keys at the bottom of my bag, but I checked under the flowerpot by the door. There were no flowers on top any more, but there was a key underneath. It left an outline behind it on the ground when I picked it up. I knew then that he really wasn’t home – Dad only ever put that key there when he was going out. He forgot his keyring so often that he liked to know that he could always get in the house. I went inside anyway.

It looked different to the last time I saw it. The Christmas decorations were gone, the cards taken down. They had been stacked neatly on the kitchen counter, the string that had held them up wound in neat coils. He hadn’t known what to do with them. The tree was bare and losing its needles, but it was inside, leaning sadly in the corner of the laundry. He hadn’t wanted it to go out into the rain.

He had survived the initial blast, then, and the week until the rain started.

I realised then that the others were still waiting outside, so I turned to invite them in. Make yourselves at home, I told them. He’s not here. Then I forgot about them again and went to look around some more.

There were more clues. Small things, but it’s hard not to read meaning into them. Dad’s work boots were missing from their place by the door. His old, battered leather coat that looks like it had been through the wars, was also a. Some of the tools in the garage were just outlines on the walls by empty hooks. My old sports bag was gone from the hall cupboard. His drawers were messy and not quite closed, even though I had tidied them a couple of days before the bomb, as if someone had gone through them. The laundry hamper was overfull and spilling onto the floor.

Wherever he had gone, he had meant to go. Packed, even, and that’s not something he was ever any good at. Clothes always rebel against his attempts to fold them, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many tries it had taken him to get everything into that sports bag. He would have sworn under his breath and threatened to get the crowbar from the garage. The clothes wouldn’t have listened.

He had waited a while, though. He had waited for me to come home. I had taken too long after all, and nowhere in the house could I find a clue about where he might have gone.

I was sitting numbly on my bed when Matt came up to find me. He asked if I was all right and I just looked at him. Of course I wasn’t all right. I could be worse, but I wasn’t all right.

He sat down next to me and offered over a small wrapped box and an envelope. “We found these downstairs,” he told me. My name was scrawled across the envelope in Dad’s handwriting, his favourite ‘Faithy’.

I felt guilty then. He had left me these gifts but he never got mine; I had been on my way to get it when the world changed. I hadn’t even been able to leave him that much to hold onto. Did he think that I had forgotten? Or that I didn’t care enough to bother?

I opened his presents anyway. I had to know what he’d left for me. I started with the little box, struggling through the miles of tape and little bit of sparkly paper to get to a velvet lid. There was a bracelet inside the box, nothing fancy, just a pretty little chain that looked sturdy enough for even clumsy me not to break. The envelope held a snow-topped Christmas card with a booking slip inside. The slip was for a holiday in the islands, and he had scribbled a note in the card.

“If you don’t want to take anyone else, think you could spend a week with your old man?”

I remember him asking me about it, then. Silly little questions about where I might like to go for a holiday, what I’d want to do. I’d had no idea why. That was before Cody and I broke up. He must have meant it to be for the two of us, Cody and me, but he’d gone ahead and booked it even after we were over. He’d have taken me away to help me get over my cheating ex. It must have cost him a fortune.

That was when I finally broke. Sitting on my bed with my best friend fastening a bracelet around my wrist, looking at a card with a stupid, round robin on the front. I suddenly couldn’t breathe for the fist in my chest and then Matt was hugging me and stroking my hair back from my face, and telling me that it would be all right. I couldn’t speak.

At some point, Ben came up and switched places with Matt. I buried myself in the available arms and cried myself out, until I had a headache and was so drained I could barely move. They let me sleep until the rain woke me, hissing outside my window. It hasn’t stopped since, sputtering on and off all night and all day today. I can’t decide if it’s trying to emulate my tears or scour away the feelings that caused them. I don’t care; the rain doesn’t get what it wants.

I’m not crying because I’m sad; I’m crying because I’m loved. And I’m crying because I love back. I wouldn’t swap it for the world.

• Theme song: Don't Cry For Pain - Ana Johnsson

The rain let up sometime last night, and we left my house this morning to head south again. It was a strange goodbye, locking it up as if it mattered that thieves might get in.

I put the key back under the flowerpot, in case Dad returned one day and needed it. Then I stepped back and looked at the house. The image didn’t fit in my head properly.

I grew up in that house. I played with Matt in the back yard, fought with my sister and my mother in the kitchen, snuck out the back door when Dad wasn’t looking. I walked through the wake a week after Chastity died, dressed up in black. A few months later, I watched my mother drive away for the last time from the doorway, her car packed with her everything, heading for another city far from us. In my memories, my dad is as solid and constant as the house itself.

I didn’t take much from the house. I spent yesterday going through my stuff, trying to decide what mattered to me now. There are certificates from school and silly little outfits that I loved to go out in. Ridiculous shoes and complicated makeup I spent hours putting on. Old letters with girly secrets and post cards from places I’ll never go to. None of it means anything any more.

I laughed over some of the stuff I found, turning it over like an archaeologist wondering what on earth she had stumbled on. I remembered things I haven’t thought about in years – like when Chastity broke my bike and tried to hide it (I still have the fractured seat in the back of the wardrobe – I still don’t know how she did that), and the time I tried to sneak out of the house by climbing down the trellis only to discover that it wasn’t as strong as it looks. I told whoever was at hand about it – Ben or Matt or Dillon; even Sally came to sit with me for a while.

I cried a few times, partly because I knew that I won’t sit in that room again. I was picking up those pieces of my past, looking at them and then saying goodbye.

I took a few photos, mostly of Chastity and Dad. I went through my clothes and picked out pieces that were clean and sensible – I’ve lost so much weight that not much of it sits comfortably on me now. It’s as if I have slipped out of this life and can’t fit into it any more. I’m taking scraps and shards with me, but they barely feel like mine.

I tucked my favourite dress into the bottom of my pack, just in case I feel like wearing it one day, though I can’t imagine what that day would be like. This world is so far from skirts and makeup that it’s strange to think about wearing them again. I guess the dress means that I haven’t given up hope completely yet.

Now we’re on the move again, pointing towards the ECC, weaving through deserted streets like skittering puppies. The group have all been good to me, patient while I try to work out what the last couple of days mean.

I’m trying to see it as a good thing. I’m glad the house is still standing, waiting for us to wake up from this nightmare and come home. It doesn’t know that we’re not dreaming, as much as we might wish we were.

I didn’t find the answer I was looking for. I’m no closer to finding Dad than I was before we got here, but at least I know that he survived for a while. He waited until the cupboards were picked clean and then he went somewhere else. I don’t know if I’ll ever know where he went, but maybe someday I’ll find out. I still have hope, even if it’s thin at the moment, translucent at best. I look at Ben and know I was lucky, and I feel guilty for not feeling luckier.

A part of me wonders if he went to find me in the centre of the city that tried to fall on us. It’s the sort of thing he’d do. I hope not. I hope he stayed away from that particular branch of hell. I never want to go back there.

There’s an ache in my chest that won’t go away. It catches at me when I’m not paying attention, heavy and pressing, and it touches the corners of my eyes. I wonder if this is what Sax felt after he left his saxophone in his daughter’s empty home.

I left Dad a note before I left, pinned to the fridge with the violently-coloured magnets I made when I was seven. Just in case.

Dad,

It’s April and I finally made it home. Sorry I didn’t get here earlier.

I’m with a group called the Seekers. We’re heading south to the ECC. I don’t know if we’ll come back this way.

It’s your birthday next week. I hope you have a happy one, wherever you are. I’ll be thinking of you.

Love you. Miss you. Hope you’re all right.

Yours,

Faith

Things have been quiet for us lately. We haven’t seen many people – the occasional moving body has brushed our peripheral vision, but no-one has come close enough to help or hinder us.

I’ve been glad of it. I needed time to think, to try to deal with the house and what we didn’t find there. If I think about it too much, I get upset, and then I feel guilty. Ben found something so much worse. I can’t talk to him about it; my complaints just sound incredibly unfair and shrivel up in my mouth to leave an uncomfortable silence between us. As if things weren’t awkward enough.

Things have been weird between Ben and me since I found out about him being sick. He’s finding it harder to hide the coughs now, as they get steadily worse. He swallows cough medicine when he thinks no-one’s paying attention. I don’t know how to talk to him about it. He doesn’t seem to want to talk. I usually end up just hugging him, which is probably stupid, but if I’m likely to catch this thing from him, I already have. After all, we sleep together, trading more intimacies than just hugs.

I haven’t told anyone about Ben’s symptoms. I don’t know how well I would handle that conversation – it’s already hard enough not to dwell on the fact that he might be dying. A little every day, slipping closer and closer to that raving coma that took Sax from us. I can’t bear to think about losing anyone else right now.

The only person that I can talk to is Matt, though I haven’t told him about Ben’s condition either. There are so many other things jamming up my skull right now; I’m not short of things to say. It helps, spinning my thoughts around with him. He untangles me, and there’s no guilt the way there is with Ben.

I think the strangeness of my house hit him pretty hard too; he has a lot of memories there. Matt’s father never approved of his life choices: hairdressing isn’t what he wanted for his first and only son, and I think he heard enough about Matt’s other activities to be conservatively disgusted. Matt spent more time at my house than he did at home, and he left home as soon as he was old enough. He hasn’t looked back since. His father moved away a few years ago.

But he understands about my dad, how close I was to him. They got along pretty well, the two of them. “There’s never any pretending with him,” Matt used to say, and he was right. Dad had a way of accepting things without speaking, even if he didn’t like them, and then he would move on to something else. I could always tell when he didn’t approve of something but he would rarely actually have words with me about it. I could never tell if that was just the way he was, or if he knew that it made the guilt worse when I have the release of arguing with him.

I’ve been struggling not to be preoccupied with all of this. Memories and fears and what-ifs have been cluttering up my head. I haven’t been working through it as well as I would have liked, and I think the last few posts show that only too well. I’m trying harder now. My friends need me; the past will still be there when I have time to deal with it.

Ben’s sick and is trying to ignore it. Sally is pregnant and scared. Dillon is worried about me. Masterson is falling back into his habit of sniping and is currently nursing a split lip after saying one thing too many in Thorpe’s hearing. Thorpe is as stoic as ever, and completely unapologetic. Nugget is showing her disapproval of the violence by switching her allegiance to Sally. Jones is learning how to ride on the back of a scooter with much frowning of his ginger ears.

There’s not much I can do about the first two of those except be here and try to be a friend to them both. I’d like to knock Masterson and Thorpe’s heads together, like kids, but I’ll settle for trying to keep them apart instead. Nugget still requires an eye kept on her so that she doesn’t wander off with the cat – she has a habit of doing that just when we’re ready to set off. As if it wasn’t hard enough to mobilise eight people at the same time.

And then there’s–

There’s a noise outside that has the boys all up and alert. I’d better go see what’s going on.

I should know better than to mention how quiet it is – it just invites something to rise up and fill the gap. Last night, that’s exactly what happened.

I went to see what had the boys on their feet, over by the front window of the restaurant we had settled in. The rain had only just stopped; everything glistened darkly, and lights were dancing down the street. They were dancing in our direction, and the sound of feet slapping at the wet ground drifted to us.

The lights started wavering from one side of the road to the other accompanied by thumps on either side, like drunken pinballs. It took me a moment to realise that the people were trying to find a way inside the buildings.

I had time to say, “Guys, the door,” before they saw our light and beelined towards us at a flat-out sprint.

Thorpe and Matt were the quickest over to the door, while Ben and I scrabbled our weapons out. Sally had rabbit eyes, so I told her to watch the kids. I heard Dillon puffing up indignantly and when I turned he had his little knife ready. My stomach flopped over uncomfortably but, luckily, a request to protect the girls appeased him. Then the light-bearers were with us, banging on our door, shredded voices begging us to be let in.

Thorpe had to shout to be heard over their pleads while he put his whole body behind holding the door closed. Who were they and what the hell did they want?

“Help us, please!”

“They’re coming; they’re crazy!”

“They tore him to pieces. Oh god.”

“Jeez, don’t throw up now. We need to get inside!”

“Please, please.”

“Oh shit, I think I hear them.”

They talked all over each other and it was hard to tell how many voices were out there. I looked at my friends and we exchange glances but no answers. I sighed and nodded at Thorpe, and gestured to the others to be ready in case they were faking it. I couldn’t just leave them out there, but we weren’t letting them in without weapons at the ready. Sally had taken Nugget into the back room and Dillon was peeking around the doorframe. Masterson was the only one of us who looked excited and bright-eyed; I guess adrenaline is a good drug when it’s the highest one available.

Thorpe called for them to stop banging so he could open the door, and it went quiet for a heartbeat. The light-bearers all-but fell through the doorway in their haste, then caught themselves to stare at us with our clubs and blades. We demanded an explanation and they begged us to close the door. Close it and lock it and then barricade it with something heavy. We closed it and waited for them to start explaining.

There were four of them, three girls and a guy, breathless and huddling, each bearing a flashlight. They weren’t carrying anything else except clothing and spatters of still-wet blood. One of the girls was pale and shaking, and looked like she was about to pass out.

The steadiest and oldest-looking woman was the first to pull herself together enough to speak. “They – Jean and Scott – they’ve gone crazy. They attacked the rest of us.”

“Why?” Thorpe was unsympathetic.

“I don’t know! They were part of our group, our friends, and then they got sick.” She glanced at her companions, who looked scared and supportive as they nodded numbly. “They were so sick.”

I had to try not to look at my friends, not to think about Sax.

“We- we thought they had died. But they hadn’t. They got up and they grabbed Alex, and they just… shredded him. With their bare hands and, and their teeth. Like animals. Like they weren’t even in there any more.” Tears were starting to track down her cheeks as shock set in and it grew difficult for her to continue. “We couldn’t- there wasn’t anything we could do. So we ran, and I think they’re chasing us.”

“I heard them,” one of the other girls said.

“Please, you gotta believe us.”

All four of them were looking at us expectantly, waiting for our verdict. I took in the faces around me and then asked Ben and Thorpe to check outside. I pointed at a table and told our guests to sit down. They didn’t so much sit as collapse, still struggling too get their breath back, and there were tears all around. They were terrified of something, that much was clear enough.

Ben and Thorpe returned with shaking heads. Nothing out there. We put a couple of tables up against the door anyway, just in case.

Matt went to talk to the quartet while the rest of us tried to work out what we would do. We arranged to stay up in double watches, to keep an eye on our guests and to keep an ear out for this hungry, homicidal pair. It wasn’t going to be a comfortable night.

The first thumps came a few hours later, slapping messily against the front wall, loud in the sussurrus of sleeping. I think we all jerked awake at the first thud and were on our feet by the time the second one sounded.

Our guests panicked. Ben and I had to corral them against the back wall, telling them to stay out of the way. I didn’t like to have them there, but they were no use anywhere else. We found flashlights and Thorpe started shouting through the door at them. The only noise we got in return was a low groan, as if there was something hollow outside. Hollow and looking to fill the void.

A thud shuddered the glass of the main window and Dillon made a strange sound when he said my name. His flashlight beam had swept over to find what had hit the window and there was a face framed in it. Slack-lipped, pale and caked in dried blood, it was tipped up as if trying to catch a scent. Someone behind me screamed.

A hand with all of the fingernails torn off came down onto the pane again, leaving a sickly red smear. He didn’t seem to notice the light or try to look at us; his eyes were unfocussed as they roamed. He just lifted his hands ponderously and placed them against the glass, leaning in as if trying to push his way through.

I looked back just in time to see the last of the quartet stumbling out of the back door. They wouldn’t stop until they dropped, not with this at their backs.

They had the right idea. We weren’t eager for a fight and the sightless man with his broken fingers creeped us all out. I don’t remember which of us suggested getting out of there, but we all agreed quickly. We wheeled our scooters out the back door and down the street a little way before we dared to hop on and start the engines. The sun was coming up and we ran after our shadows as fast as those wheels would carry us.

Tonight, we’re avoiding talking about it. But we have to. I’m going to make the others do it now. We have to know what this means.

We have to know if Sax wasn’t really dead when we left him behind.