The Apocalypse Blog
by Melanie Edmonds

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.

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.