The Apocalypse Blog
by Melanie Edmonds

It’s white rabbits today. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but Dad used to say it on the first of the month. White rabbits, three times, for luck.

It’s autumn and the only way to tell is by the way the temperature drops at night. There aren’t any trees left to lose their leaves, or animals to grow thick coats, or birds to migrate; just the ever-sneaking chill. In the mornings, the warmth struggles sluggishly through the orange cloud cover, losing ground every day. Winter is going to be very cold, I think.

Last night, I made the others talk about Sax. It was hard – he’s still fresh for us, still missed. I didn’t know where to start, so I just blurted it bluntly: those strangers said the sickness changed their friends. They said they were wrong about death. Maybe we were, too.

The others exchanged glances that said I wasn’t alone in my fears. To my surprise, Dillon was the first to speak up. “But the doctor said he was dead.” He’s getting more confident with us.

All eyes turned to Masterson, who sighed. “He was. No pulse, not breathing… he’s dead.” His tone was matter-of-fact, just like a doctor who was used to seeing that kind of thing every day.

“Could there be a way for him to not be so dead? Some kind of deep coma or something?” I asked him. Mistakes had been made like that before, ending up in stories of people waking up in the morgue or, worse, their own coffin. Bells used to be installed in graves so that the occupant could ring it if a mistake like that had been made. Ring ring, dig me up, dig me up again. But that was centuries ago.

Masterson’s expression slid down into impatience; he didn’t like to be questioned like this. “I doubt it.”

“But it’s possible?” Ben asked, leaning forward.

“It’s not impossible. But it’s highly unlikely.”

“We should check,” I said.

Sally stayed quiet, her eyes overbright as she tried not to cry. The rest of us tried to find a reason not to go back to the cafe where we left our friend’s body. Thorpe grumbled about going so far out of our way and scowled when Masterson agreed with him. The question about whether we had enough fuel to get us there came up, but we’re not that far – a day’s travel at most, we figured. (As it happens, we had to stop to fix a flat tyre, so we were still a few blocks away when we had to stop tonight.)

Pale excuses about why we shouldn’t go circled us. It was Matt who finally silenced them by asking simply, “Don’t we owe it to Sax?”

No-one could argue with that, so it was agreed.

Settling down into our blankets, Ben was wound tighter than usual. I asked him what was wrong, then pressed him on it until he looked at me in the castoff glow of someone else’s flashlight.

“I don’t know if it would be better to find him dead or alive,” he said.

A knot formed just under my breastbone and I knew he was right. What are we supposed to hope for? Death, or a crazy, heedless killer? And not just for Sax – Ben’s cough was worse, escaping suppression now. The others were bound to notice soon.

It seemed to me that insanity, losing yourself, was more terrifying to contemplate than losing your life. From the look on his face, Ben agreed with me.

“We have to know,” I told him, but my voice had no strength in it.

I think that’s the closest to showing real fear I’ve ever seen Ben. There was nothing I could say to comfort him; we both know that assurances would be empty. I hate that. I can’t stand to be so helpless, to watch someone I care about hurting and be unable to take it away for him, not even a little bit of it. The worse this gets, the more I’m losing him – he withdraws to keep it to himself, and he’s getting sicker, and we both know the sickness is going to take him away.

So I kissed him; it was all I could think of to offer him. He said I shouldn’t, but I didn’t care about that and kissed him again. We can share that much, at least, and we did.

We were too late. Sax wasn’t at the cafe where we left him. All we found was an ominous lack of answers.

We arrived this morning and spent the day scouring the area. There was no sign of him, nothing at all.

The cafe was exactly as we left it, apart from the empty couch where he had spent his last hours with us. The blanket that we covered him with was crumpled on the floor. Even the impressions of him was gone from the couch’s cushions.

Most of us were relieved, but Ben was on edge all day, and so was I. We can’t know if Sax is dead or not, if he’s a mindless killer or gone forever. Perhaps another group came along and tossed him out into the rain. Or he got up and left under his own steam. None of us want to see him dead or stumbling around like the Scott we saw a couple of nights ago, but we have to know. We have to know the truth.

When the rain came, we settled down in the cafe, huddling in the space between the empty couch and the leaking roof. Everyone is unsettled and quieter than usual, as if afraid to disturb the memory of him that lingers here. I wish we had chosen another place to bed down tonight. I don’t think I’ll get any sleep, and not just because Ben is tighter than a freshly-stretched drum.

I don’t know what to do next. We don’t have the supplies to linger around here and keep looking, and we don’t know where to look even if we did. Ben’s cough is worse and I think his temperature is up; he won’t let me near him today, so I can’t check.

I’d better see if I can talk to him. Hopefully tomorrow will have more answers in it.

We didn’t expect to find our answer today.

After yesterday’s disappointment, we had all mentally moved on. We had given up on ever finding out what happened to our friend, and what the sickness might truly do to someone. We had tried and failed. We had other places to go, other things we should be chasing, so we packed up this morning to do that. We didn’t want to dwell on these unpleasant, unknowable maybes.

The truth wasn’t ready for us to give up on it. When we stopped looking, it came to find us.

Yesterday, we were ready for it. We were braced for it, prepared for impact, and wobbled a little when nothing came.

Today, we were looking the wrong way. When it hit us, we weren’t ready. Now, hours later, we’re still in shock.

I can’t talk about it now. The sound of typing is loud in the house we found to huddle in. The only sound is Sally trying not to cry. I don’t think anyone has said anything since we scrabbled onto the scooters and fled.

Sax is not as dead as when we left him. He’s not Sax any more, either.

I can’t do this now. I’ll explain tomorrow. Once I’ve stopped shaking.

Sax. Our friend, our father-figure. The man who taught us to sing and said prayers for us. He’s gone, and I don’t think we’ll ever get him back.

Yesterday, we packed up without any hope of seeing him again. We strapped our gear onto the scooters and wheeled them outside onto the orange space between the long morning shadows. It was Nugget who spotted him down the street; she stopped and stared, her eyes wide. It wasn’t until Jones hissed at him that the rest of us noticed.

He was moving towards us, slowly, dragging his feet, slump-shouldered and drooping. He came out of the sun, casting his shadow down the road at us. None of us moved, barely dared to breathe, as we watched him approach.

It didn’t look like him. If it wasn’t for that familiar checked shirt, I wouldn’t have believed it was really Sax. His dark skin was grey underneath, and it was flaking off him as if he had been scorched. He didn’t seem to have noticed. He stumbled and wavered, but he kept moving steadily towards us, his head lifting as if he was a dog scenting food.

He didn’t look at us – his eyes moved around but never seemed to fix or focus on anyone. A couple of us said his name, partly out of shock, partly hoping that he might hear us and stop, smile and say he was kidding. He didn’t hear us, he didn’t stop. His slack expression never faltered. He just kept coming, as determined as the tide clawing up the beach.

When he got close to us, he lifted his hands and reached for the first body he came to. That was when I noticed his hands – he had at least a couple of broken fingers, the skin torn and stained with dried blood, just like the man we saw at the window a couple of nights before. As if he has been tearing his way through the world one fingernail at a tme. Matt skittered out of reach, and so did Thorpe and Sally. Sax didn’t seem to mind, turning to go after whoever was closest to him.

None of us knew what to do. We moved out of reach and watched with terrible fascination as he simply turned and kept coming. Mine weren’t the only eyes blinking back tears. We called him by name, begged him to see us, begged him to let us know that he was still in there. He wasn’t; he was empty. Our friend was gone.

“Masterson, what’s wrong with him?” I asked.

He was staring along with the rest of us. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sax was homing in on Sally again and she pleaded with him. She didn’t move out of his way that time and his hands closed around her arms. She sobbed and struggled, and then screamed when he opened his mouth. His teeth were stained rusty with old blood and he let out a low moan. He leaned in and stretched his mouth open as if he wanted to take a bite out of her.

That was when the others moved in. They tried to pry his hands off her, but he gripped deeply enough to leave bruises. It took three of them to pull one hand free. Someone hit his other arm with a metal pipe and there was an awful crunch. He didn’t let go, though, and he almost tore Sally’s other arm off before they could get her out of his grasp. Once she was freed, there was a mad scrabble to let go of Sax without getting caught by him. Somewhere in the mess of it, he sank his teeth into Ben’s shoulder.

We skittered out of his way, and he was hit more than once to stop him from latching onto anyone else. He didn’t seem to notice. A cut was opened across the back of his hand but it barely bled. He didn’t even flinch; he just kept coming. He didn’t show pain, or anger, or frustration, or sorrow. He didn’t show anything at all, just kept reaching for us with a hungry, hollow moan and Ben’s blood trickling down his face.

Something broke. We shouted at him and each other. We grabbed our gear and the scooters, pulling ourselves on and starting them up. Thorpe grabbed Nugget and I pulled Ben onto the seat behind me. Dillon got to drive his own scooter for once. We tore out of there, hearts thumping in our throats, and we didn’t look back. We kept going until the cafe was blocks behind us and the sky was thickening with rain.

Holed up for the night, no-one wanted to talk about it. We patched each other up and huddled in the dark, trying not to think of our friend’s empty eyes and bloodied face.

We left him behind in our panic. I don’t know what else we could have done. Masterson doesn’t know what’s wrong with him or if he can be fixed. I feel bad for not sticking with him, but I never want to see him like that again. Just thinking about it makes me feel like I’m suffocating.

We couldn’t speak about it yesterday; none of us wanted to face it. Today, we haven’t moved on – there’s been too much arguing. Anger has crept in to cover our fear and is venting itself in any direction it can find. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen next. I’m afraid of what I might see next.

I don’t like to go to sleep on an argument. I’m not alone in that feeling, and that’s part of why we were up so late last night.

We tried to make sense of what we saw, but there was no reason or rhyme to it. Nothing logical we could unravel and learn from, except a few basic truths.

Being caught by someone like that is a bad idea. Sally’s arm muscles are all torn up under fingermark-bruises, and Ben’s shoulder has vicious teeth-marks in it. Sax was strong, far stronger than he should have been; it took three of the guys just to pry one hand off Sally, and most of us just to keep him from grabbing anyone else. Masterson said that it was probably due to the insensitivity; Sax didn’t seem to feel any pain, and the human body can do amazing things when it ignores all its own warnings. On the plus side, he didn’t move very fast, so it wasn’t difficult to stay out of reach once we figured out that it was the best thing to do.

We’ve been hearing stories about these mindless attackers for a few weeks now. Unstoppable, people said. They just kept coming, no matter what. They tore others apart with their bare hands, intolerably slowly. I can feel my stomach curling up and trying to hide at the thought.

No-one could answer the question of whether Sax was still in there or not. Masterson was more grim-faced than I’ve ever seen him; I don’t think he likes the conundrum. He said that it seemed like a drug fugue, but we all know there aren’t any drugs around here for that. He’s certain that Sax was dead when he announced it, and he doesn’t know if there’s any way to bring someone back from the state our friend was in.

Our ex-friend. Sax is dead. It’s too upsetting to think of it any other way.

It went quiet, and then Dillon piped up, darting glances between us as if hoping that someone would smile and tell him that it was all some elaborate joke he hadn’t understood. “So, Sax is really a zombie, then?”

I wasn’t the only one to stare at him, though most of the group avoided looking in his direction.

“Don’t be ridiculous; there’s no such thing,” Thorpe said.

“You sure?” Matt asked.

“The sky is orange and it rains acid every day,” I said. “Is anything ridiculous now?”

No-one was laughing. I wished someone would; I wanted Thorpe to be right. I wanted this to be something that we could breeze past and leave behind, one of those silly little thoughts that comes and goes because someone has seen too many movies. But it wasn’t like that.

There was no answer to my question and Dillon was looking around hopefully, because his hadn’t been answered either. I caught his eye and couldn’t glance away without saying something.

“I don’t think we should call them that.”

Zombies. There’s a twitch in the corner of my mouth whenever I hear that word, either in my head or on someone else’s tongue. I’m afraid that I’ll laugh at the worst moment when I hear the name. Because it is ridiculous. They’re a made-up thing from books and horror movies and our own nightmares. They don’t exist in the world.

“Someone must know more about them.” That was Ben, all taut jaw and a gaze that refused to rest on anyone.

There was only one person we knew who had seen them before. One person who had had her own group fall sick, die, and then be devoured. It turns my guts over to think that they might have devoured each other, friendly faces risen into something twisted. I don’t remember which of us said her name.

Alice.

The decision to try to find her formed quickly. We were all relieved to have a purpose, some way to chase this thing down and make a difference. The promise of answers, or at least confirmation of what we fear, is bright and reassuring. We’ll seek it out like magpies, and we’ll line our nests with it as if shiny means comfortable.

I don’t think we’re all looking forward to answers. Some of our number still blame her for bringing this to us. There’s revenge behind some of our hearts and I don’t know what to do about it.

A part of me hoped that we wouldn’t know where to look. But Dillon spoke up, the person that Alice was closest to, her friend from before and after all of this happened.

“She went to the mall,” he said. “She went to join the Rats.”

So that’s where we’re heading, heading backwards so we can move forwards. There’s going to be more blood before this is over, and more of the ‘z’ word, I know it.

The rain came early today and forced us inside, still about half a day from the mall. We found ourselves holed up in a tiny restaurant, a poky little place that was Greek once, made even pokier by the scooters and all our gear. 

A scuffle out back put us on the alert and a couple of us went to investigate, weapons at the ready. It was just a girl – she can’t have been more than sixteen, all boy’s clothes and scrawny limbs. I think she had a scar on the side of her head, but the rain had started by then and it was too dim to make it out.

We weren’t going to chase her out into the acid, so we wound up sitting down and talking. No-one wanted to talk about Sax or the things that are going on right now, so the conversation turned to other things. Older things. I hoped she might have news of something else, something more organised, some promise that there was hope.

She said her name was Paige, and this is what she told us:

Me and my mum and my older brother Nathan came from out west to visit my aunt over the holiday, up in Cairns.  My mum had this job in the bank that she had to be at, so we packed up the evening of the 23rd when she got home from work and flew out first thing on Christmas Eve.  My mum was going to stay for a few days, but me and my brother were going to spend our summer holidays up there, until school started again in January.  My mum was seeing this yobbo from the interior, you know the type, big guy who drives a ute and watches car races and drinks beer until he’s sick.  I didn’t like him much, but me and my brother liked the idea of Mum finding someone, and anyway, our aunt, she’s great, she does a lot of baking and knows bloody everything about nature and she’s the closest thing to a grandmum that Nath and I had.

So there we are on the tarmac getting ready to go.  There was this huge line of planes ahead of us.  I was so tired.  I’d been up all night from excitement about the trip, and the airport here was too noisy to sleep in, all the travellers and the screaming children and the holiday crowds.  I can’t sleep on a plane, and I wasn’t being very nice to Mum, and she leans forward, digs in her bag and pulls out a pressie for me and says, “Here, maybe this will put you in a better mood.”  She could have smacked me or something, but she didn’t, and I felt bad, like I didn’t deserve it, so I said, “Thanks, Mum,” and stuck it in the pocket of the seat in front of me.  I’m glad she did that.  I hope she knew that I felt bad.  I been carrying it with me.  I haven’t opened it yet, I think it’s a DVD or something, and I don’t think I’m going to.

Finally it was our turn.  We took off, the plane went up, and then everything went wrong all at once.  The sound… it was bloody horrific.  It caught us not even… [trails off and shakes her head] I don’t know how far off the ground, but the plane went over sideways and the noise from the engines was so loud.  You know how in all those TV shows they say whatever thing that happened, it happened in slow motion?  I never believed it, but it was really like that.  The sky was in one place and then it wasn’t, and then all the luggage fell out of the overhead bins when we hit the ground.  Next thing, Nath is shaking me awake and my head hurts so bad the first thing I do is throw up.  Half the plane is dead.  We were upside down and Nath unbuckled me and I fell on my head, and when I got upright again I could see Mum, still buckled in, her eyes open and her arms dangling over her head like she was just stretching.  She looked like a mannequin.

I don’t know what she died of.

The other passengers huddled in groups, some of them inside the plane, but most of them went back to the airport.  Nath and I didn’t want to leave Mum.  She was gone for sure, but leaving her there seemed like such an awful thing to do.  If it happened today I’d have buried her, but it was all so new — we were going on holiday, we were going to see Aunt Kate in Cairns, it was Christmas, it wasn’t a thing that could have happened.

After awhile we got hungry and thought to eat the airplane food, but it was a domestic flight, so mostly they had just biscuits and bags of pretzels.  After a couple days the dead started to smell and there was no more food, so we walked to the airport.  There was a load of people there and mostly they’d eaten everything already, so we had stuff like old bread and uncooked chips, whatever wasn’t touched.  Me and Nath were getting ready to leave when the rains came for the first time.  After it was done we pulled Mum out onto the runway and covered her with some of the clothes from her carry-on.  She wanted to be cremated when she died, and that was the best we could do.

Nath had this crazy idea that we could walk to Cairns, but I thought that eventually someone would come, maybe the army, and we had a big fight about what to do.  I told him that we’d probably get stuck out on the road and get dissolved, and by that time the rain had come often enough and all at the same time so he knew I was right.  What if we’d got caught out in the bush with nowhere to run to?  Seeing all those people screaming just at the touch of it?

So we wandered.  We picked rubbish out of bins for a little while and broke into houses.  Nath about got himself killed trying to go into a house in the suburb north of here where a fellow had a gun, one of those big long ones for hunting, but mostly people had left, and we went house to house in this one neighborhood eating baked beans and things out of cans, horrible things like spinach.  For a long time the only drinks we could find were cans of soft drink and beer and wine and things like that.  I never thought plain old water would be something I’d crave, but it was.  Canned meat, too.  Whenever we broke in somewhere, the first thing we’d go for was cans of tuna and Spam and sardines, bread that might not be moldy, things like that.  Lots of times there’d be stretches of houses where people had already been, but the beds were comfortable if there weren’t any dead people around.  Nath found a dog at one of them.  I don’t even want to say what happened to it, but we ran into a group of people and I guess they saw an opportunity.

Nath left about a month ago.  There was this other group, they were a bit to the west of here.  They called themselves the Pride, they had tags all over the place.  [looks up to see Faith’s reaction]  They wanted one thing from him, and another thing from me, and we had a big blow-up about it because he thought the best thing to do was stay with them, and I wanted to keep on wandering.  I guess Nath was upset over us not walking to Cairns, because the army hadn’t come, but I bet the whole bloody country is in bits and pieces over this.  The whole bloody world, even.  No one’s invaded that I can see, and no one’s come to rescue us.  We were on our own already, but Nath and I come to blows over this and he joins this group and tells me to just get lost already.  So I been walking around on my own.  It’s tough without him.  I mean, he didn’t protect me when he was supposed to so I guess I’m not any worse off if anyone comes by wanting something I don’t want to give, but he was my goddamn brother.  Mostly I been looking out for myself, you know?

[Guest Post by Julie]

We hit the road again this morning. Before we left, I asked Paige if she wanted to stay with us. We don’t know her, but she’s a young girl on her own; that wouldn’t have been safe in the time Before and it’s even more dangerous now. She would be safer with a group.

She refused. She believes that she can take care of herself. We’re not inclined or equipped to force her to come along, and I don’t think the others are eager to have a stranger join us right now, so I didn’t press her on it.

I also asked her if she had seen Alice, the girl with half a face. She said she might have seen someone like that a way west of where we were; that’s where the mall lies.

It wasn’t until after she had already given us directions that she asked why we were looking for the girl. Her mild curiosity was fobbed off with a shrug. We didn’t want to get into the truth, partly because we don’t know Paige and because none of us want to think about what happened with Sax. It’s going to be hard enough when we actually find Alice.

Paige slipped away while we were still packing up. I hope we see her again, or that she does all right, at least. I hate goodbyes. I hate not being able to believe that the poeple I can’t see right now are safe somewhere.

Our mad flight from the cafe and that awful ‘z’-word took us in completely the wrong direction. We had to pass back over our own footsteps to get to the mall, and that meant a big detour around the place we last saw our ex-friend. We don’t want to think about what we found there last time, and we certainly never want to see it again.

On the way down towards the mall, the frontrunners slowed their scooters. I made mine whine a little higher to catch up so I could see what had caught their attention. Ben gestured towards a couple of dark shopfronts we were passing: they were marked with fresh tags. The Pride. They have been extending their reach eastwards, and from the look of that paint, they’ve been doing it recently.

Our path turned us south to take us to the mall and we left the tags behind. The Pride don’t seem to have forayed into this area yet but none of us want to linger here in case they decide to start.

It was strange, arriving back at the mall and walking into its dim, quiet echo. Its heavy arms were familiar, as was the pelt of candles and ornaments that rained down at us. We retreated and shouted to the Rats until they stopped.

They weren’t pleased to see us. They hadn’t liked us being in their domain the first time and they were even less eager to entertain us again.

Thorpe looked ready to start banging heads together and Ben was carrying a stormcloud with him – they really weren’t helping things. I had to send them off to sort out somewhere for us to spend the night, and doing that much took me ten minutes of pleading, demanding, chivvying and being testy with them. I asked Dillon to explain the situation to the kids, though without saying anything about Sax or the sickness. No need to panic them; just ask about Alice.

They had become braver: they demanded a toll for coming into the mall. We gave them a couple of bottles of water.

When we asked about Alice, they said they’d have to check on whether she had come back or not. Which meant she was here but they didn’t want to tell us until they had talked to her. Dillon was going to argue with them, but I put a hand on his shoulder and told them that we’d look forward to hearing from them.

We haven’t seen them since. We retreated to a rundown store across the street from one of the mall’s entrances; the Rats didn’t want us staying in their home and we were happy to oblige. Now we’re settling down again and no-one is really talking. Ben won’t speak to me, caught up in his own fear and recriminations. He looks at me when I take his hand but glances away again quickly. I don’t know if I’m helping him or not.

Hopefully we’ll hear from the Rats tomorrow. And Alice.

We were woken this morning by a dull, repetitive thudding. Nugget pulled a blind aside and got us all up with a sharp, high-pitched scream. There were faces at the window, lining the front of the little store, vacant and slack-jawed.

Things happened very quickly, though I can’t say who did what. Nugget was pulled away from the window, the door was bolted, shelves were pushed up against the front wall, gear was scooped up and stuffed into packs, a scout was sent out the back to check for activity. I did a headcount twice; the second time was because I was sure I was missing someone. Then I realised that there really were only eight of us and my heart sank to rest on a sickened stomach.

The blinds had fallen back into place and it was difficult to see what was outside. I didn’t want to look at them, but I also wanted to know what was out there. How many, how bad it was. I wanted to hide, but I didn’t want to sit and wait for them to find me. The unknown fluttered around in my chest like a battered bird.

At one point, I realised that I was holding Dillon tightly against me, having pulled him out of the way of the bigger boys moving furniture. Arms wrapped around his shoulders, we stood staring at the frenetic action around us. I let him go with an apology and he gave me a strange look; I don’t know if the look was for hanging onto him so hard or for letting him go.

Then the lock on the door gave way and the panel scraped open an inch. The weight of a shelving unit stopped it opening any further, but the complaint of the metal grumbled through the little store. An arm wormed inside with blind determination and waved around, grasping. It was blackened and bloodied, and was missing a couple of fingers. I could see the broken ends of bones where the digits had been torn off and the smell was awful, rolling thickly through the gap in the door.

I would have vomited if I wasn’t so keyed up. None of us knew whether to fight or flee; our adrenaline was ready for either, teetering us on tiptoes.

Matt came in to tell us that the back way was clear, but there was no way to get the scooters out – there was a fence to climb. That gave us pause; we didn’t want to give up our best and only means of transport. We hesitated and I got the feeling that our hourglass was dribbling away sand we couldn’t afford. The shelving unit complained again, more strident this time.

“Well, they are hardly going to drive off with them,” Masterson pointed out drily.

He was right and that was enough to send us spilling out the back door, grappling our packs to us. We ran in that headlong way that is a shred of nerves away from a heedless stampede. We shouldered our gear as we went, fighting straps, and heaved each other over the back fence. Garbage cans clattered behind us, falling out from under our feet.

We ran a couple of blocks before we dared to stop, and then we were all about snatching in breaths and blinking the spots out of our eyes. Looking back, we couldn’t see anyone – or anything – following us. I wondered if they were still there, pressing at the door, ruining their limbs in their efforts to get inside the shop. The stillness was punctured by the sudden shatter of glass; they had figured out how to break the front window.

We looked at each other for direction, and I blinked first. The mall, I reminded them. Those kids might need our help, but it also might be more secure. As it turned out, malls have a hundred doors and wiindows, millions of ways to break in, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. No-one else had a better suggestion, so we agreed to circle around to the mall.

Jones had done his usual disappearing act and no-one noticed until much later. That poor cat is usually left to his own devices; I think only Nugget would noticed if he stopped finding us.

We moved as quickly and quietly as we could, down back alleys and empty streets, heading around to the mall entrance from the other direction. We had widened our route enough to completely avoid the road the attackers had been on. Attackers – I don’t know what to call them. I don’t like the ‘z’-word.

By the time we were sneaking over to the dull mall doors, they were gone. I glanced over to see the shop front in tatters, the glass in jagged shards, the blinds half-torn down, the door listing off its hinges, shelves leaning at improbable angles. Brown smears of old blood marked where they had climbed inside.

We didn’t stop; we just went inside. All thoughts of Alice were gone by then – we grabbed the Rats and demanded to know if they had secured the mall at all. Some, they said. Some.

Some was not enough.

We spent the rest of the day boarding up the place. Moving furniture, equipment, poles, beams – whatever we could get our hands on. The Rats tried to obstruct us, and I rounded on them to tear a strip off. Didn’t they know what was out there? There was an enemy they couldn’t scare away with raining ornaments, one that they couldn’t reason or bargain with. There was an enemy that would keep coming, that was stronger than them, that would tear them apart with bare hands given the chance. Now, did they want to help or get out of the way?

They got out of the way. After watching us for a while, they helped.

Now, the rain is falling and I am trying to believe that we are safe. I just wish I could convince my body to relax.

Last night was awful. Add it to the list of things I never want to do again.

We barricaded ourselves into a clothing store. It had been thoroughly gutted to block up the rear door and side window, so there was plenty of floor space to sleep on. I don’t think any of us did, though, not for long. Sleep was snatched in unwary breaths.

We took turns at keeping watch. What it meant was that we walked around the room one pair at a time, checking the doors and peering out the windows. Only Nugget wasn’t asked to do it, but she got up and trailed around after Thorpe when it was his turn anyway. I think she needed to feel like she was doing something just as much as the rest of us.

The day turned over into tomorrow during my watch shift. I had stopped by the window when I saw them and I was so shocked that I froze. The acid was still dribbling down the glass, a faint mist of steam hovering a few inches above the ground. It’s usually difficult to see anything outside at night – there are no stars, no streetlights, no moon to help us, just a black blanket ruffled by the meagre flickers of whatever light we can make. Perhaps it was the rain, carrying that faint glimmer over to the little store we had slept in the night before.

That’s where they were. Standing there, faces at the window, staring sightlessly out into the downpour. Lined up, perfectly still, waiting behind the broken shards of glass on the edge of the rainfall. The catch of my breath brought Ben over to me, followed by the others. We stood and stared through the gaps in the shelves and poles blocking up the window.

The shamblers didn’t look towards us. One lifted his head as if snagging a scent; his mouth opened but I couldn’t tell if he made a noise. I remembered that low, hollow moan of Sax’s, so divorced from his warm voice, and shuddered.

The rain fell between us, a thin veil of deadly liquid. We all hovered in our refuges: us in our barricaded shop and them just behind the teeth of the broken storefront. None of us moved while the downpour dribbled itself out and stopped.

When the rain stopped, the faint sheen of light faded with it. Dark wrapped us up as we fumbled for our flashlights; then thin beams of light cut the shop. A couple of us returned to the window and peeked the beams across the street, to check on the shamblers.

They were gone.

The shop window was empty, the gape of its broken mouth eyeless and deep. A piece of shattered blind waved back and forth, a last memory of its own demise.

Things turned frantic for a moment as we tried to see where they had gone, pressing ourselves against the window and peering up and down the street. Nothing – all was empty, all was quiet. It was like they had never been there.

Ben shushed us all and we fell silent to listen. I could hear us breathing and the faint shifts of the floorboards under our weight. That was all. No thumps, no moans, no distant shatter of glass. We waited, strung taut across the still air, but there was nothing. Minutes stretched out so long that I could feel the tick of the seconds falling past us.

There was a brief, hushed debate about whether we should go out to look for them. It got heated as paranoias fought – go out and find them, or wait here and hope for the best. It was a tough choice, and at the end I stepped in and said that we should try to get some rest and not fumble around in the dark. It wasn’t great – we weren’t going to sleep knowing that they were out there somewhere. But it was better than the arguing, and we’d probably only hurt ourselves trying to make our way around here in the dark.

We didn’t sleep again. We sat and we listened, and hoped that the sun would come up soon. We didn’t hear them, but I know I wasn’t the only one imagining them stumbling around in the mall, searching for us.

Today, we are checking the mall, all the places that we boarded up yesterday, to see if they did find their way in. I don’t know what I hope to find.

Yesterday, things got heated. I didn’t dare to post until now.

We spent the morning scouring the mall, checking all the exits and entrances. Wherever those shamblers went, they didn’t come into the mall. Not that we could tell, anyway.

The Rats came to harry us as we got into the northern end of the mall. It seems we had finally stumbled near to the parts that they call home. They’re getting braver and better armed; they were confident enough to try to scare us off. They weren’t to know that there are far scarier things than them around these days.

They came at us while most of the boys were in the back room of an electronics store, shouting and waving sticks and barbecue forks, and banging on pans. The sound was shocking in the quiet mall, enough to set my pulse racing even before I knew what was causing it.

Sally, Masterson and I spun to face them, weapons in hand; the Rats weren’t expecting that. But with the threat of the shamblers hanging low on our heads and shoulders, we weren’t going to be chased off by kids and noise. We backed up, shouting for them to stop, shouting… I don’t even know what we were saying. It all melded into one morass of words and warring intentions, each side trying to be louder, be heard. Then the boys came out from the room behind us, swelled our size until the kids looked up and stopped. They knew when they were outmatched.

Thorpe looked like he was going to cuff each and every one of them, and as he had his short metal pipe in hand, I thought it best to stop him before he got carried away. So I stepped forward and shouted at them instead, barely taking the time to catch my breath before I launched a tirade at them. Didn’t they know what was out there? Didn’t they know that we were making sure that this place was secure? Did they really think that we were here to steal from them, or attack them?

“No, but we know what you did to Alice.”

The words stopped me in my verbal tracks so abruptly that I forgot how to breathe for a moment. I stared at the kid and his thrust-out chin, and tried to work out what the hell he was talking about.

“We didn’t do anything to Alice.” Dillon stepped forward and I put a hand on his shoulder; he looked like he was ready to punch the kid in the face.

“You did, you got her sick,” the kid replied, unintimidated.

“We did nothing of the sort,” I said, before anyone else could wade in. I could feel the control between us slipping; it wouldn’t take much for someone to fall, and I didn’t want to know what that would mean. “The sickness is all over the place.”

“She brought it to us,” Thorpe put in before I could stop him. I shot him a look that I hoped would quiet him; the last thing we needed was a reason for them to argue with us.

“Alice is sick?” Dillon had shifted under my hand. I didn’t need to see his face to know that he looked stricken.

“We just want to see her,” I said before they could speak.

The Rats scowled at us, then withdrew a few steps so that they could exchange glances and hushed words. They finally came back to say that they would let one of us see her. We told them that that would never happen, and we came to an arrangement: most of my group would continue to check out the security of the mall to see if it had been breached, and three of us would go to see Alice. Dillon, because he’s her friend; Masterson, because he’s a doctor; and me, because someone has to get something useful out of the girl.

I wish that Dillon hadn’t come along with us. I didn’t want him to see what the Rats showed to us.

They took us to a small backroom in a clothing store, where beds had been made up between the racks and boxes of stock. Only one was occupied, the half-visible face pale and sweaty with fever. Alice looked like she had shrunk in the wash and still hadn’t dried despite being thoroughly wrung out. She blinked her good eye and hardly seemed to see us at all.

Masterson checked her over first, despite her protests. When he withdrew, Dillon said hello, said her name, and that was all he could manage. She looked at him and gave half a smile, and then he tore out of there. He couldn’t stay and watch his friend in such a state, knowing what had happened to Sax. Fearing it would happen to her.

I would have gone after him, but I couldn’t. Not until after I had spoken to her. I asked the doctor if it was safe to hold her hand and he shrugged, so I did it anyway. I do worse with Ben and he’s almost as sick as Alice now.

“Alice, your group – we have to know if they really died,” I told her.

She looked at me; she had been vague before, but the question had sharpened her attention. She knew what I was asking her about and the pain of it showed in every line of her. Her hand felt like thin, damp paper between mine.

“They did.” Her voice had been sandpapered and stapled to the back of her throat.

“And the attackers you saw – were they your friends?” She looked away from me; I had to press her. “Alice, we have to know. Sax, he–” I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t say what had happened to him. The thought of it made the words stick in my throat and prickle at my eyes like hot needles.

She shook her head and at first I thought she was giving her answer. Then I saw the tears in her eye and knew that she was refusing to answer the question. She was a girl who didn’t want to say ‘yes’, to acknowledge such an awful memory. As if admitting it made it real, made it impossible to hide from any more.

I was going to press her again – I wanted more, I wanted her to confirm the horror of it, for all of us, for Sax. But Masterson put his hand on my shoulder and told me to stop. Him, of all people. I think the shock of him stepping in for another person’s sake was what stopped me in the end.

I patted her hand and stood up. I apologised and told her that we weren’t angry with her. Then I painted on a smile and told her to get better soon. By the time I was out of the door, there were tears on my cheeks even before I asked Masterson to confirm what I already knew. She had the same sickness as Sax, the same creeping rash. He didn’t say how long she had.

It was on the way out that I caught sight of what was in the next store. Five or six beds – I didn’t stop to count – each of them with an occupant tossing back and forth, or lying very very still. I kept on moving until I made it back to my friends, where I could give my report and break poor Dillon’s heart again. There were arms to hold us there, comfort for us to lean on. And Ben with his irrepressible cough and the clammy heat on his skin.

He’s getting worse. I don’t know how long he can keep moving. I don’t know how long he’s got left. The worse he gets, the more he pushes me away, as if creating a festering bubble around himself will help.

There were no signs of the shamblers yesterday, and we took today to try to decide what to do next. We need to talk to the Rats, need to make them believe what’s coming. They need to know the danger they’re in, though I’m afraid of what it might make them do.

I wish I knew how to help them, and us.