The Final Winter

CHANCE OF SNOW

“I can’t believe this!” Richard turned away from the window and faced his family, each of them huddled beneath a blanket. “I know it’s winter, and everything, but this is Florida.”

Richard’s family, daughter and wife, said nothing. They knew better than to converse with him in the state he was in. He wasn’t angry at them, of course – wasn’t angry at anyone in fact – but he’d built the vacation home in Florida purely to get away from home during the winter months. He expected snow like this in England, but not here.

Richard looked back out of the window and stared out over the lake that edged his second home. The water was starting to freeze over and snow banks had built up around its edges. If there were any alligators currently in there then he held little hope for their survival.

Least I’m not them, thought Richard.

“Why don’t you come and sit down, honey,” said his wife. “I’m sure they’ll be a weather forecast soon. They’ll tell us what to expect.”

Richard huffed. “Well, they didn’t bloody-well tell us to expect this, did they? Would have stayed in England if I knew there was going to be all this snow.”

“Miriam said it’s the same back home,” his wife stated. “I called her this afternoon. They’re completely snowed in.”

“It’s like this everywhere,” Richard’s daughter chimed in. “They said on the Internet that every country in the world is covered in snow. There’s a group on Facebook that say it’s all down to aliens.”

“Don’t be so stupid, Charlotte.” Richard went and took a seat beside his wife and wrestled the television remote from her hands.”

“Don’t snatch,” she said meekly.

Richard ignored her and flicked through the TV stations. He hated American channels; they were filled with so much dross. How he longed to flip on BBC One and get some straight-forward news. Eventually he found a station that seemed to be discussing the weather and he settled on it, resting back into the sofa.”

“…temperatures expected to drop further in the coming hours and are likely to remain there,” the weather report informed. “Be sure to wrap up warm, Florida, and enjoy the snow while we have it. It’s once in a lifetime.”

“Enjoy the snow,” Richard grimaced. “Who comes to Florida to enjoy the snow? They certainly don’t spend half-a-million building a house here to enjoy the snow.”

Richard’s wife stood up from the sofa and headed off. “I’ll go make a pot of tea and turn the heating up. I wish you’d stop stressing. We’re still on holiday and together, aren’t we?”

Richard let out a sigh and rubbed at his cold forearms. He turned to Charlotte who was sat on the armchair beside the sofa. “Am I being a bit of an ogre?”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “Little bit. Just chill out, dad. You’re upsetting mom.”

She was right of course. Richard was not unaware of how tightly-wound he could be. That was why he’d built the holiday home sixty miles north of Miami. It was supposed to be their place to relax and spend some quality time together.

Good job you’re making of it!

Richard stood up from the sofa and made for the kitchen.

“Where are you going?” Charlotte asked him.

“To apologise to your mother.” He headed through a door that bordered the lounge and entered the family kitchen area. It was a large, modern room with a breakfast bar at its tiled centre. It was his wife’s favourite part of the house. Currently, she stood up against the oversized ceramic sink, filling up the kettle beneath one of the chrome taps. He went up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. She did not jump so she must have expected his arrival.

“You calmed down yet?”

Richard squeezed her shoulders gently and began rubbing. “When do I ever calm down? The best you can hope for is that I realise when I’m being insufferable.”

“And have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Realised that you’re being insufferable?”

Richard turned his wife around to face him and planted a soft kiss on her cheek. “Yes, I realise, sweetheart. I’m sorry, okay?”

She kissed him back. “You’re forgiven. Let’s just enjoy ourselves for the rest of the week. They’ll be plenty of sun next time, I’m sure.”

Richard nodded glumly. “Hope you’re right.”

His wife was about to reply to him, when Charlotte’s voice carried from the other room. “Hey, mom, dad, I think you better come look at this.”

Richard and his wife looked at each other and frowned. Together they exited the kitchen and walked back through to the carpeted lounge. Charlotte was stood up against the window where Richard had earlier been looking out at the lake.

“What is it?” Richard asked her.

Charlotte turned around and faced him. Her expression was mostly one of curiosity, but Richard could see a hint of anxiety there as well. “Come look.”

Richard walked up beside his daughter and leant forward to look through the double-glazed glass window. Outside was the same, semi-frozen lake that he’d already seen, snow pilling up all around it as fresh powder continued to fall. “Everything seems normal to me, sweetheart.”

Charlotte nudged him on the arm. “Look closer, at the far end of the lake.”

Richard focused his eyes further afield. If it were not for the outdoor lighting then he would have seen nothing at all, but thanks to the illuminating glare of the high-watt bulbs, Richard could see what his daughter was trying to point out to him. “Gators?”

“Yeah,” Charlotte replied. “What are they doing?”

Richard’s best guess was that they were migrating. They were common visitors to the lake and they always seemed happy to bask and feed in a group, so seeing them all bunch together now was not all that interesting. What was a little more unordinary, though, was the fact that they were currently fighting their way from the lake, pushing and burrowing through the snow banks that towered over them. “Looks like they’re leaving the lake,” Richard guessed. “I’m not surprised with the water as cold as it is.”

“But where would they go?” Charlotte asked. “Surely they wouldn’t be any better off in the snow?”

Richard shrugged. “I expect they’re just as confused as everyone else is in Florida right now.” His wife was nearby and he smiled at her so she knew there was nothing to worry about. “Go get that tea on, sweetheart. We can settle down and try to watch a film.”

His wife smiled back and quickly departed, leaving him alone with his daughter. Charlotte was still looking out of the window, enthralled with the alligator’s behaviour.

“There must be at least fifty of them out there, all in a group,” she said.

“Will you just get away from that window? I want to close the curtains and keep the heat in.”

Charlotte sighed and turned away from the window. Richard took her place and prepared to close the curtains. He took one last look outside at the departing alligators and let out a chuckle. It really was something to behold. He stretched out sideward and grasped the curtain and started sliding it across the window, but, before he got it all the way across, something made him stop.

“What the…?”

Charlotte came back over to the window and looked out through the small gap that still remained through the curtain. “What?”

Richard didn’t turn to face his daughter. His eyes were too transfixed on what he was seeing. “There’s someone out there in the snow.”

“You’re joking,” said Charlotte. “They must be mad. It’s freezing.

“Mad or not,” said Richard, “they’re there.”

Richard left the window and marched across the lounge towards the French doors at the rear of the house. They led out to a veranda which doubled as a smoking shelter for his wife’s habit. As soon as he pulled open one of the doors, the cold hit him like a punch in the face. His nose started burning almost immediately as the chill bit at his extremities.

He stepped out into the snow nevertheless, but wishing he was wearing something more substantial than trainers – snowfall was not something he’d packed for. The growing wind also made him wish hard for a winter coat.

“Who’s out here?” he shouted into the floodlit night. “This is private property. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

There was no answer and Richard took it as a threatening sign. He stepped cautiously as he approached the front of the house where he had seen the stranger. He couldn’t be sure, but it had looked to be a man; a tall one wrapped in a billowing coat – or maybe a cloak.

When Richard reached the side of the house that faced the lake, he was surprised to find the stranger was still standing there, quite assumedly. The man seemed to care little about his trespass.

“I said you need to leave,” he reiterated. “You’re worrying my family.”

“Their worry is well-founded,” came the stranger suddenly with a baritone voice.

Richard took a step towards the man. “Is that a threat?”

“A threat would imply uncertainty. There is none of that here.”

Richard examined the stranger with suspicion that was beginning to border on concern. The figure towered above the snow and was tall enough that Richard would not fancy his chances if the stranger attacked him. Unsettling too was the unusual cloak covering the man from head to feet – it was not something an ordinary person would wear in the 21^st Century.

“Look,” said Richard. “What do you want?”

The stranger seemed to move very slightly to face him as he replied. “I desire nothing. His will is my will and I do only as requested.”

Richard didn’t understand. He was cold and extremely confused. “Who is he? What are you talking about?”

“You ask of Him? You should know your Lord and revere him with the love and respect he demands. Perhaps if you had, your fate would be less perilous.”

Richard had had enough. He took the final few clumsy steps towards the stranger and pointed a finger right at his face. “You get out of here, right now. I love America, I really do, but you don’t half have some bloody nutcases here. Leave, or I will call the police.”

The figure let out a laugh that rattled Richard’s very bones. “You demand nothing of me, mortal. Your threats are puny. Your insolence, maddening.”

Richard was lost for words. This person was obviously a madman, just by the way he spoke, but so too was he huge and menacing. What the hell should I do? Richard decided that lowering his tone would be best. Steering away from any animosity seemed far safer than inciting any. “I’m sorry to offend you. Could you just tell me who you are, please?”

The stranger lowered his head as if to focus on Richard more clearly. The cowl was too tightly wrapped to give anything away about the man’s face; not even the eyes could be seen. To Richard’s surprise, the cloaked stranger raised both hands and began to pull away the hood. Slowly the cloth fell away to reveal a face of utter beauty and a head full of mahogany-streaked hair.

Richard took a breath and struggled to let it back out again. “Jesus!”

The beautiful man shook his head and seemed angry at the word. “You do not speak of The Son without reason. I am not Jesus.”

Richard was in awe. “Then who are you?”

The stranger’s face was without emotion as he answered. “I am Mika’eel. I am the first Harbinger of this world’s demise.”

“I-I’m sorry? Demise?”

Mika’eel nodded. “Your time of decadence has ceased. This world is to be no more.”

Richard shook his head. “Are you… are you a terrorist?”

The man showed no expression – in fact he seemed incapable – but he did shake his head. “I am no terrorist. I spread not terror, but extinction. I bring snow and ice to freeze further the cold hearts of man. It is an honour for you to meet me, an Angel of the highest order.”

Richard choked. “An Angel? Are you crazy?”

“Crazy is a state of mind beneath me – as are you, Richard Pointer.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I know all names, all fates, all journeys. Yours is a particularly interesting one. Your true mother abandoned you, but this you do not know. Yet that nagging feeling of rejection has spurred your every decision. You are a callous businessman, a competitive being, and a domineering husband. Your wife dreads you.”

Richard’s heart throbbed at the accusation, causing him actual pain. Perhaps the reason it hurt so much was because, deep down, he knew it was true. He was a control-freak and always had been. The fact that he allowed himself to control his lovely wife made him feel wretched.

“Do not fret, Richard Pointer. There are many men worse than you. Despite their dread, your family loves you. Go to them now. Comfort them as the end draws near. You have an opportunity that many will not. You know that the end is coming; you can say the things that need saying and die with an unburdened soul.”

Richard looked at the… Angel… and knew that it was all true. The world was truly ending and this being before him was its deliverer. Life was an inconsequential mess and it was now coming to an abrupt finish. Despite the fear that knowledge brought, Richard was indeed grateful for the gift of knowing. He would enjoy his final evening with his family; enjoy the final winter of man’s existence. Richard turned around and headed for the house, to be with his family and wait for the end of the world.

COLD SHOULDER

“Any more wine?” asked Amanda.

John turned to his wife and sighed. “Haven’t you had enough tonight?”

“Just go get another bottle and stop giving me grief. It’s not like I have work tomorrow. Maybe not all week if it keeps snowing like this – Whoop!”

John shook his head. He knew his wife was drunk because he was too. They’d polished off a bottle of red each and the heavy feeling it left him was dragging him towards sleep. Amanda was different though – she never quit while the night was still young. There was no point arguing with her, so John diligently went and got another bottle of Shiraz from the kitchen cabinet. There was another three bottles after this one and he worried. His wife would never drink them all – nowhere near in fact – but she may well keep going until she passed out.

Or turns nasty.

John re-entered the living room and unscrewed the bottle cap. He leant over Amanda’s glass and started pouring until the glass was almost full. He then topped up his own glass halfway.

“Sit down, honey. Never Mind The Buzzcocks is coming on. You like that.”

He did and was grateful that his wife was in an accommodating mood. He sat down beside her and put a hand on her lap. It was a struggle to focus on the television, however, because something was on his mind. “You think Jess is going to make it home from work okay?”

“Yeah,” slurred Amanda. “Why wouldn’t she?”

John shrugged. “The snow’s gotten pretty bad. Have you seen it recently?”

“Couple hours ago. Wasn’t that bad.”

“It is now. I’m starting to get a bit worried. You think I should try and walk down and meet her from the supermarket. Her shift finishes in ten minutes.”

Amanda turned the TV up slightly and frowned. “She’ll be fine. If you leave now you’d only end up missing her.”

John thought she was probably right. The weather was close to a full-blown blizzard now and it was difficult to see beyond a couple of feet. Unless he knew the exact path that his daughter took home, they would miss each other. He didn’t fancy going out in the cold pointlessly.

On the television, the programme began and John and his wife watched it. It was funny, but John couldn’t find it in him to laugh. The same wasn’t true of Amanda who was cackling at every joke, even if it was only mildly funny.

How the hell did we end up like this, he thought to himself secretly. Amanda hadn’t always been like this. The underlying edge of aggression she now possessed seemed to grow more volatile each year, and her drinking was becoming more commonplace. His own drinking had gotten much worse than it used to be too. After twenty years of marriage, an unspoken resentment had begun to take control of their relationship. John didn’t know how to stop it and was unsure if he even wanted to. It felt like something needed to change.

He wouldn’t change the past though. Most of those twenty married years had been joyous, moving down to contentedness in the latter half. And of course they had a beautiful daughter. Jess being born was the proudest moment of John’s life and he never stopped feeling that way about her. She was a strong girl with a character he admired. In fact she seemed to have many of her mother’s good points – he just hoped that she lacked some of the worst.

“You paying attention?” Amanda asked him, breaking him away from his thoughts.

He nodded to her. “Just tired. Think I might go to bed soon.”

Amanda huffed. “God, when did you become such a fuddy duddy? It’s not even ten yet.”

“I just can’t hold my wine like some people.”

Amanda scowled at him and leant away on the sofa. “What is that supposed to mean?”

John sighed and got up from the sofa. “Nothing. Nothing at all. You just do whatever you want, while I go to bed. Think that would suit both of us.”

“Would suit me better if your bed was somewhere else.”

Amanda often said nasty things when she was drunk, but that one was uncalled for. He turned around and faced her. “You keep saying things like that and you may just get your wish.”

Amanda stood up and came at him. “Don’t you threaten me.”

He took a step away from her. “You’re the one who bloody said it! Just sit back down. I’m not in the mood.”

He tried to walk away, but Amanda followed. “What’s your problem, John?”

He carried on walking. “What’s my problem? I’m fine. I just want to go to bed.”

“No,” said Amanda. “I want to know what your problem is.”

John hadn’t been aware that he had voiced a problem, but rationality was never a key component of one of Amanda’s arguments. He was starting to feel angry, but he had to keep a lid on it. The last thing the situation needed was two drunken people going at each other.

“Stop walking away,” Amanda shouted after him.

He did so, turning to look at her. He tried to stay calm. “Look, honey, I’m sorry if I upset you. I don’t want to fight. I’m just worried about Jess.”

Amanda huffed. “You needn’t be.”

Something about the way she had just said that raised the hackles on John’s neck. He felt a sudden stone of dread in his guts. “What do you mean by that?”

Amanda laughed and walked away. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“No,” said John, following back after her. “What are you talking about? Why would I not worry about my own goddamn daughter?”

Amanda spun around and looked at him with a hatred that John hadn’t realised she’d had for him. Their marriage really was over, he realised. The suffocating sadness that he felt was lessened slightly by the relief that also took root inside of him. He didn’t care about any of that right now though. He wanted to know what Amanda had meant. She told him.

“She’s not even your daughter,” she shouted at him. “She never has been. I was fucking one of the neighbours when we lived in Burnley.”

They’d lived in Burnley at the start of their marriage, almost twenty years ago and left five years later. Jess was seventeen. Amanda sat back down on the sofa and stared at the television as though she hadn’t said anything. John felt a loathing for his wife now that was almost boundless.

He stood in front of her, blocking the television. “Say that again, and if you’re lying…”

Amanda scowled upwards at him. “If I’m lying, what? What the fuck you going to do? Just get out of this house and don’t come back. Jess isn’t your daughter so you’ve got no reason to be here.”

Rage took a hold of John as if his entire body was merely a marionette on a flimsy set of strings. Without thinking about it, or even realising he was about to do it, John picked up the half-full bottle of red wine and walloped it over his wife’s head. Amanda fell back, stunned, blood already seeping from a crack on her forehead. The bottle had not broken, so John swung it again, hitting her in the temple. The shock left Amanda’s face and was replaced by a look of bewilderment. Still the bottle did not break. Infected with an unbridled rage, down to his very soul, John swung one last time with all his might. This time the bottle shattered, smashing off Amanda’s forehead with an almighty crack!

John had never seen a dead body before, but he knew he was looking at one right now. He was glad. Now his wife would not become the full-blown monster she was threatening to become. The decaying rot of her spirit had been halted by death and she would pass on with her memory intact. A tear escaped John’s eye as he realised he would get to remember his wife as the woman he had loved for so long.

John picked up the wine-soaked dead body from the sofa and started dragging it to the front door. The plan was to dump her somewhere, close by, on the estate. Later he’d call the police and claim she hadn’t come home. Until then, he would dump the body and return, sit back and wait for his daughter to get home. He looked forward to raising Jess alone.

WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER

The snow was really falling now. A nervous person might even say that the weather had become unnatural. With every minute that passed, the temperature dropped and water froze. The cold was enough to kill a man stone dead – but not the man that currently stood beneath a blinking streetlight on a desolate council estate.

Although, in all honesty, he wasn’t really a man.

Lucas looked up at the moon and saw that it was full. There was something happening tonight, that much was clear. He just hoped it wasn’t the thing he was starting to suspect. Four-thousand years of existence was a long time, but Lucas wasn’t ready for it to end yet.

I haven’t watched the latest series of Dexter, for one.

Lucas walked forward, feet resting on the surface of the snow as if he were weightless. He’d never visited this particular town, it was without any notable history, but there was a lot of supernatural energy suddenly leaked into the world and he had traced it to here. Now he just needed to find out the source.

It wasn’t long before he found it. Lucas stopped walking across the snow and turned around. Behind him was an old friend, from long long ago.

“Gabriel?” Lucas raised an eyebrow. “I take your being here to be a bad sign.”

The Angel Gabriel stepped forward to approach Lucas and shook his head. “On the contrary, Lucifer. I would say that my presence is an extremely good sign. It signals the end of the decadent cesspool of this humanity. The Lord’s patience has worn thin and He has sent forth his armies to-”

“Still towing the company line, huh?” Lucas interrupted without his Irish accent. It was unnecessary in the current company. “You don’t seriously buy into the whole apocalypse thingy-majig, do you?”

“It is His will.”

Lucas sighed. “So it’s really happening then? I’d worried as much.”

“The scales have tipped. A sinner was chosen and failed to redeem himself… and therefore his species.”

Lucas took another step towards Gabriel. It wasn’t confrontational – the war between Angels was a one-time event never to be repeated – he just wanted to read the other Angel’s expression. “I always hated that contingency – from the very day Michael dreamt it up. It’s perverse to pin the world’s hopes on a single individual. So who is it anyway?”

Gabriel took in a breath that he didn’t need. “The sinner? Harry Jobson.”

Lucas closed his eyes and summoned knowledge – one of the few talents he still retained from his days in Heaven. Harry Jobson was a good man turned bad by events beyond his control, not from any taint of his soul. “That’s not fair!” Lucas said, and was aware of how whiny he sounded, but carried on anyway. “If anything, the revenge he took on the man that killed his family only proves the capacity of love he had for them in the first place. If man wasn’t capable of great compassion and loyalty, then revenge would be of no interest to them. That’s how He made them, so why should they suffer?”

Gabriel was silent and for a moment and almost performed a gesture approaching a shrug. There was a sadness to the Angel that Lucas could sense; like fumes from a petrol can.

“You don’t agree with this either,” Lucas stated.

Gabriel shook his head futilely. “My opinion is of no consequence.”

“No being should accept slavery as a birth right, neither Angel nor Man. To be created is not an obligation to servitude. We have the right to our own opinions. You should have joined me long ago, brother.”

Gabriel swiped a hand through the air and fried the falling snowflakes that were unlucky enough to touch him. “Blasphemy! Your unrighteous war sought to enslave man. Now you speak to me of such things as free will?”

Lucas shrugged and resumed his Irish accent. He no longer felt like showing reverence of respect. He was more human than Angel. “Well, a fella can change his mind now, can’t he? In fact the almighty father changes his own every five minutes so it seems.”

“He is your father too and you will speak ill of him no more. The time for wrath has arrived and you are summoned to be its witness. Your hand in Armageddon is such that you deserve a front row seat.”

Lucas wasn’t about to accept any more of this pious nonsense. “Look, Gabriel. I know you spend your weekends at Vegas, counting cards and downing Amaretto cocktails like you’re trying to put out a fire in your belly, so why don’t you cut the bullshit and start speaking a wee bit of the truth. How can I stop this?”

Gabriel seemed to think for a moment before letting out a sigh that seemed to signal his walls coming down slightly. “Brother, you cannot. While my own fondness of humanity, and its vices, is something I admit too, I will not defy my Lord. Not all can have your strength of rebellion – and not all would even want it. It is done. A concordant has been met and at this very moment a plague of Angels descends to the Earth like you once did – thousands of falling stars ready for retribution. All life will be extinguished.”

Lucas couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It was this lack of rational compromise that turned him against Heaven in the first place. He didn’t miss it. “There are… loop holes?”

“Perhaps,” said Gabriel, already turning to walk away. “But can you remember them?”

Lucas shook his head. “I can’t, it was too long ago. Gabriel stop, I need answers.”

Gabriel turned back around. “I cannot remain here, Lucifer. I have… duties. If you need answers, perhaps you will find them in there.”

The Angel pointed and Lucas spun around. Behind him, on that hill, was a pub called The Trumpet. Lucas smiled to himself.

A drink sounds like a bloody good idea right about now.

NEWS AND WEATHER

“This is Jane Hamilton, signing off for Midlands-UK News.” Jane handed her microphone to a production assistant and let out a shiver. She was wearing a huge pink ski-jacket but the cold was still getting through. “Was that okay, Steve?”

Her cameraman, Steve, gave her a thumbs up. “Perfect. There might have been a slight issue with snow on the lens, but nothing we could do with things the way they are. “

“I know, it’s crazy, right?” Jane looked down from the motorway bridge and examined the tipped-over transit van. She had no idea what the contents were, spilled all over the snow, and each second only shrouded them further in layers of fine white powder. As a professional news reporter, Rule One was always to remain unaffected by the stories she was reporting, but this one gave her the willies. All of the meteorologists back at the studio were flummoxed by the recent weather – a few went so far as to say it was impossible. She took their expert opinions very seriously and had some serious anxiety about what the coming days would bring. People had already started dying and she couldn’t help but worry that the toll would continue to rise substantially.

“You okay, Jane?”

She let out a breath and watched it steam in front of her face. “Yeah, Steve. Thanks. I just don’t like this cold.”

“You want me to get one of the guys to fetch you a coffee from the van? There’s still a bit left in the Thermos.”

Jane cringed at the thought of the stale taste of lukewarm coffee from a flask. “No, thanks, that’s okay. I just want to get back to the studio. There’s going to be other things to report before the night is through, I can feel it.”

“You’re probably right,” agreed Steve. “We’ll get going in a few minutes. Mike and Tony are just trying to dig the van loose.”

Jane’s eyes widened. “What?”

Steve tutted. “Hard to believe, but in the short time you were reporting, the snow was heavy enough to cover the wheels.”

“Oh, hell!”

Steve waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it, Kitten. We’ll be gone in a jiffy.”

Jane narrowed her eyes. “I told you to stop calling me that. We’re not together anymore.”

“Pity,” said Steve. “You look hot in that ski-jacket.”

Jane laughed and decided to head for the van. The snow was beginning to melt through her boots and her thick socks were becoming soaked. It was hard to walk and, after only a few steps, her calves began to ache. She wanted nothing more than to wrap up warm at home with a DVD and her cat, Thompson, but she knew the night would be long. At times like this it was all hands on deck. The freak weather conditions would keep every news channel in the world busy until its cause was known.

“Hey, Mike, how’s it going?”

Mike was kneeling next to the van, mini-shovel in hand. “My hands are so numb you could put them on a pair of tits and I wouldn’t even know.”

“Charming,” said Jane, laughing. “I guess I should stay out of the van until you’re done. My weight would probably make it harder to get the van free?”

“Dunno,” said Mike, “but don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.”

“You’re a dear,” said Jane. She patted him on the head and stepped into the van via the side door, then slid it shut after her. The van was slightly warmer than outside, but was still uncomfortably chilly. A bank of blinking monitors lined one side and she sat on the stool in front of them. The monitor on the left showed the studio feed that was currently going out live to the nation. The monitor on the right showed the feed from Steve’s camera outside – the images were still streaming but were not being recorded. Back at the studio, one of her colleagues was interviewing an ecology expert. He was currently refuting claims that a damaged Ozone layer could be the cause of all the snow.

Something caught her attention on the other monitor. The camera mounted on a tripod outside had picked up the image of Tony, the other production assistant. He was currently taking a piss off the top of the bridge to the deserted road below.

“Nice,” Jane commented, shaking her head. Steve was in the picture too, speaking on his phone. He was probably checking in with the studio to confirm it was okay to come in. Beyond them both of the men, though, was something else: a dark shape in the background, partly out of focus and obscured by the snowfall.

What is that?

The shape seemed to be coming closer, heading towards Steve and Mike at the centre of the bridge. Jane leant closer to the screen to try and make out some further details. The dark shadow didn’t seem like another person. It was closer to a small vehicle than anything else – perhaps a motorcycle.

As Jane continued watching, the shadow continued getting closer. Inch by inch, the shape revealed itself. When it became clearer, Jane was even more confused.

“What the…?”

It appeared to be an animal of some kind; a huge dog maybe – but too big and too hairy. It was creeping up slowly behind Tony, who was still taking a leak.

Jesus, is that guy part-camel or what?

Jane kept waiting for Tony or Steve to notice the creature, but they did not. She tried urging them through the monitor to look around, but of course she knew it was hopeless – she wasn’t telepathic. Just when she was about to lean out of the van and shout for their attention, the creature made itself known to the two men outside.

The over-sized hound pounced at Tony from behind, crushing him up against the bridges railings. The monitor didn’t give out sound but Jane could hear his startled cries from inside the van anyway. The bloodcurdling screams that followed were unpleasant enough, but twinned with the disturbing images on the feed monitor they were horrifying. The beast outside had pinned Tony to the ground and was ripping and tearing at his back. The snow turned red all around.

Steve realised the situation and made a run for it, most likely heading for the van. He exited the view of the camera and Jane was left wondering how close by he was. A second later her stomach turned as she watched the hound-beast leaving the mutilated corpse of Tony behind to give chase to Steve.

Jane stared at the monitor and tried to control her breathing. Steve’s screams were coming closer and it wasn’t long before she heard Mike’s join them. Outside of the van the two men were being attacked by something she couldn’t describe – something unnatural.

Banging at the van door.

“Jane, let me in. Open the door.” It was Steve.

Jane stared at the door handle and found herself unable to move from her seat. Every part of her mind screamed at her to let Steve in, but every fibre of her nerve-endings refused to let her move. Steve continued to scream as ripping sounds began. Whatever was out there was ripping him to shreds. Mike was probably already dead, and here she was, hiding like a coward while it all happened only inches away from her.

I just report the news. I don’t take part in it.

Steve’s screams finally stopped and Jane sat in silence, listening only to the sounds of her own panting breath. She turned back around to face the monitors. The live feed from the studio had gone black, but the camera outside was still recording. On it she could see the snarling face of a jagged-toothed demon appear from off-camera. Then she saw its jaws gape wide and the video feed was no more.

Jane waited in terror for what seemed like an eternity, hoping against all hope that the beast would go away. But it didn’t.

The van began to rock as the creature attacked it, trying to get at the prize inside. Jane Hamilton cowered in the rear of the vehicle, knowing it was only a matter of minutes until she joined the recent death toll.

CLOUD COVER

Quinton Barstow was worried. Flying an airliner was nothing new to him; he was more nervous driving a car in actual fact. In a car you have to trust in the driving skills of other people, and trust that people are even paying attention, but in a plane it’s just you and the clouds; nothing to crash into and nothing that could go wrong in the engines – there were just far too many ground checks to miss anything. Piloting an airliner was an almost fully-automated and pretty plain sailing – or flying to be more accurate, and excuse the pun. Yet he was worried all the same.

All of the above only applied, however, when the aircraft’s electrical systems were responding correctly. This evening they were not, and Quinton could think of no reason why. Any errors with the plane’s on-board computers should have been rectified by a quick reset, but he had tried that several times now to no avail. He needed those systems to compensate for what his eyes could not see. The current weather was making his natural vision near-useless.

“I can’t believe they cleared us to fly in this,” said Quinton’s co-pilot, James.

“They didn’t see it coming,” replied Quinton. “The weather reports for the week ahead were mostly clear. All of this cloud cover doesn’t make any sense.”

“You think we should bring her down at the nearest airport?”

Quinton looked at his dials and meters. The spindles spun and flickered without any sense of reason. They were flying blind. “I’m beginning to think so.”

“Okay,” said James. “I’ll try and contact ground support at Paris. They should be able to receive us.”

Quinton nodded his agreement and continued to examine his controls. The autopilot navigation system was displaying random error codes in sequence, as if it could not decide what its problem was. The dials continued to spin and the altitude indicator seemed to think that the plane had banked to the left 90-degrees. In twenty years of flying, Quinton had not witnessed such a catastrophic failure of instrumentation.

“I can’t reach anyone,” said James without any sign of exaggeration.

Quinton looked at him. “What?”

James thumbed at buttons and switches on the console but gave up with concerned sigh. “I’m getting nothing but static.”

“That’s nonsense. De Gaulle is only thirty-miles away.

“They’re not responding. I’m not even sure they’re reading us.”

Quinton did not like this at all. “Okay, we’ll hold position in the area for thirty minutes. Keep trying to reach someone. Try Heathrow.”

James nodded uncertainly and went back to twisting dials and flicking switches. Quinton would have liked to have inputted some commands into the guidance system and gone and stretched his legs, but the way things were, meant that he had to remain at the plane’s manual controls. He steered in a steady curve, planning to circle until they spoke to someone on the ground.

As was natural to an airline pilot in the 21^st Century, Quinton began to worry about the bogeyman of all frequent flyers. He wondered whether his aircraft had been the target of terrorists. Had the on-board systems been tampered with in the effort to bring the plane down? Was this just step one of 9/11 part two?

No. Something told Quinton that his concerns were misplaced. For all the effort and planning it would take to disable a plane’s systems so entirely, it would be just as easy to plant a bomb on board or hijack the cockpit. Whatever was going on here had to be down to some other cause. Quinton couldn’t understand why, but he felt that it had something to do with the weather.

A knock at the cockpit’s door startled Quinton and he spun around on his cabin chair. After a hostess identified herself, he pressed the lock release and a red light above the door turned green. Samantha entered with a mug of coffee for both him and James. Coffee was as necessary to a pilot’s job as aircraft fuel and he couldn’t have welcomed anything more at that moment. He took one of the steaming mugs from the hostess and thanked her. She looked back at him with a scrunched up expression that he supposed meant she had an issue to raise with him.

“What is it?” he asked her.

She took in a breath as though she had many words to get out. “It’s really bizarre. I don’t even know how to explain it really. At first it was just one or two passengers but then more and more people started to complain, and now I think it’s everyone.”

“Spit it out,” Quinton told her.

“Okay, okay. Well, it would appear that anything electrical has gone a bit haywire. The passenger’s phones, ipads, mp3 players, et cetera have all gone a bit… funny.”

Quinton raised an eyebrow. “Funny?”

Samantha nodded. “All the displays have gone squiggly as if something is interfering with them.”

Quinton turned around and looked at his own malfunctioning gadgets. Something wasn’t adding up here, and anything unknown aboard a plane could be extremely dangerous. He leant forward and pressed the intercom button. The normal ding! sound did not occur. In fact nothing happened at all.

“Damn it! The intercom is down. Samantha could you inform the passengers to turn off all electrical devices. Tell them that… we’re passing through an electrical storm and leaving them on could permanently damage them. Also, please inform them that we will be performing an unscheduled landing due to adverse weather conditions.”

Samantha nodded, but didn’t seem comforted by his suggestions. Quinton couldn’t blame her, he wasn’t either. He turned to his co-pilot. “You got anything, James?”

James’ bleak expression told him the answer was no.

Quinton bit at his lip. There were no protocols for this. In the event of system failure, the plane needed to land, without question, but the danger of coming down unguided in the thick snow blizzard that hid beneath the cloud cover would be a near suicide-mission. The situation was dire, and as Captain it was his responsibility to decide what to do next.

“Okay, James, enough. We’re going to bring her down.”

The co-pilot’s eyes went wide. “We’re going to land blind?”

“What choice do we have? I would rather that then run the risk of falling out of the sky if the engines fail.”

James nodded. Quinton knew the other man thought he was right. It just didn’t make the decision any easier.

“Okay,” said James. “Reducing speed. Descending to 20,000 feet.”

Quinton prayed that the plane’s landing gear would deploy when approaching the runway. Being mechanical, he hoped they would. After all, the flaps and rudders were all responding.

Many tense minutes of ensuing silence were eventually broken when James spoke again. “Cruising at 20,000 feet. Runway is approximately twenty miles out.”

“Reduce altitude to 10,000 feet.”

James did as he was instructed and Quinton looked at his dials out of habit despite the fact they were currently useless. Once he reminded himself of this, he instead chose to look out of the cockpit’s wide, glass window. Now that the plane was descending, he could see the bulbous clouds below more clearly. They seemed unending, letting no light from below make it through. Which was why Quinton thought it inordinately strange when he saw several bright lights coming from above the plane.

He craned his neck to get a better viewing angle and saw that more than a dozen glowing spheres had appeared in the sky. They seemed to be falling, like meteorites, but Quinton knew that wasn’t what they were. He knew that, because they were falling too slowly, not free-plummeting the way a lump of space debris would.

“What the hell is that,” asked James, suddenly noticing.

Quinton stared out at the descending lights and wondered that himself. The way they moved was almost gentle, as if they had some great purpose that could not be rushed. It was then that a blinding light also filled the cabin.

The two pilots cried out and shielded their eyes, holding onto their chairs as they fought to stay seated. Mere seconds later, the light had gone again, and Quinton opened his eyes. The lights outside were still falling, but something inside the cabin had been altered. Something unexplainable.

Quinton looked down at his instruments with horror as he realised that they were no longer there. All that remained was a blackened husk of metal where dials and equipment used to be. The smell of ash lingered in the air, and Quinton felt dizzy as he realised something else.

His dizziness turned to panic.

The engines had stopped. They were going down.

Outside, the bright lights continued falling like stars, Angels from heaven. The plane fell faster.

WINTER BEFORE LAST

The drive had been a long one. Bristol was a long way from Stoke and the Boxing Day journey had been slow and cautious, the roads slippery with ice and slushed snow. Harry hated winter, hated the cold. In the summer, people came together – BBQs, festivals, zoos, and theme parks – but in the winter people stayed away from each other, wrapped up warm and ignored the outside world. Winter was the season of isolation and loneliness. Yet, out of all the dreary winters of Harry’s life, this one had been the best. Sure it was damp, icy, and grey; sure he had spent the last week with his wife’s condescending parents; and sure he was itching to get back to work, but this winter was great for one reason: Toby.

Of course he had spent several Christmases with his son already, but those had been interspersed with work and commitments. This year his furniture business was successful enough that he had been able to leave the running of it to his cousin and take a massive ten days off to spend with Toby and his wife, Julie. It had been total bliss to watch his son open his presents on Christmas morning, ripping open the packaging on his new bike and then moving on to the wrapped-up Nintendo DS beneath Julie’s parent’s tree. He’d never seen his son so happy, and he had never been so happy himself. What Julie had gone on to tell him that night had only made the day even more special.

He still couldn’t believe she was pregnant.

“You paying attention?” asked Julie, sitting on the passenger seat beside him.

Harry turned to her and smiled. “Yeah, sorry. I’m just so happy. Life is pretty good, huh?”

Julie smirked and shook her head at him. “I think you had a better Christmas than little man.”

Harry glanced back at his sleeping son on the back seat and agreed. In fact, he may have had a better Christmas than anyone.

“Anyway,” said Julie, “you should have come off at junction 16. You just missed it.”

Harry shook his head, annoyed with himself. “Bugger it. Okay, I’ll come off at the next one.”

Julie mumbled something under her breath and Harry just about heard her.

“Did you just call me a fish head?”

Julie shrugged. “Dunno what you’re talking about.”

Harry huffed. “Oh, really? Well it sounded like you called me a fish head.”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”

“Well, that’s rich, coming from a dog head.”

Julie hit Harry in the arm, causing him to swerve slightly. “Cheeky sod.”

“Whoa! Watch it, woman, you’ll have me in a ditch.”

Julie laughed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to endanger your perfect driving record.”

“Always pays to be safe. Baby on-board.”

Julie looked back at her son and smiled. She was so beautiful as a mother. There was something about her now, that Harry loved, which had not been there before Toby’s birth. It was something unexplainable to anyone without a child of their own.

Harry was just about to say, I love you, when something caught his attention from the corner of his eye. The sight was followed by a lot of chaotic noise.

“Shit!” Harry saw the vehicle on the opposite side of the motorway swerve. It careened across several lanes and came crashing up against the central reservation several yards ahead. His stomach fluttered and he thanked God for the near-escape, but then the speeding vehicle cartwheeled into the air, flipping the balustrade upon impact and hurtling, end over end, down the other side of the motorway; the lane that Harry was occupying. Harry would have liked more time to react, but before he even thought to swerve out of the vehicle’s path, his entire being seemed to shudder as his consciousness was battered from his body.

Harry opened his eyes and then closed them again. A light had burned his eyes and he had to flutter his eyelids until the dull aching went away. He found himself staring at a blank white ceiling with a small, tinted window looking out at star-filled sky. It was a vehicle; the back of a van perhaps. When a paramedic appeared in his field of view, Harry realised he was lay in the back of an ambulance.

The woman’s name badge read: Penelope. “Hey there,” she said. “Everything is okay. You’ve just been in an accident.”

Harry shot up on the stretcher. “My son… my wife?”

The paramedic tried to ease him back down but he resisted. “There are people trying to help them right now.”

“Help them? What do you mean?”

The woman looked him in the eye for a moment but could not hold the gaze. Something seemed to trouble her. Harry didn’t feel like getting information about his family second hand from someone else. He pushed the woman aside forcefully and stumbled off of the bed. His legs felt like jelly as he hit the tarmac outside the ambulance. His breathing was painful too, but none of that mattered. He needed to find his family.

There were flashing lights all around him and fluorescent white jackets flitting to and fro. The motorway had been closed off, probably by sideways police cars at the entrance to each junction. Harry staggered forward. There was a huge fire truck up ahead and it blocked his view any further down the road. People seemed to be congregating in that area and he headed towards them, as fast as his confused feet would take him.

“Excuse me, sir?” A police officer walked up to Harry with a palm raised. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Harry swiped at the hand in his face and snarled. “Where is my family?”

The officer stepped towards Harry, but backed off when he saw that there was no chance of his authority holding any weight. The man tried a different tact. “They’re being rescued now.”

“Rescued from what?”

The police officer sighed. “My name is Officer Tonks. Why don’t you come and sit down with me and we’ll have a chat about what is going on.”

Harry looked at the man and saw genuine compassion, but that didn’t change the fact that Harry didn’t want a conversation with anyone but his wife. He turned away from the officer and hurried towards the fire truck. The man did not give chase.

Once Harry reached the bright red vehicle, he saw the wreckage beyond. His brand new Mercedes was a ball of twisted steel and a mangled truck seemed to be entwined with it. Before he knew it, Harry was vomiting all over the floor. Maybe he had a concussion, but he was pretty sure it was purely because of what he was seeing.

Despite his injuries, Harry ran forward, dodging past anybody that tried to stand in his way. Over at the pile of compacted vehicles, two firemen worked at the steel with heavy cutters. When they saw Harry coming at them, wild-eyed, they stepped aside with concern.

It was then that Harry saw what was left of his family. He could make out Julie’s crushed face, squashed beneath the Mercedes window strut. One of her eyes seemed to bulge from her socket. Harry fell to his knees and tried to reach out to her, but he could not. As he tried to crawl his way into the car, he saw the mess that had been his son. Toby’s body no longer resembled human form. If it were not for bloody scraps of clothing and puckered flesh and protruding bones, Harry would not have even known it was his son.

Harry screamed out, loud enough to reach the moon. Someone pulled him back by the armpits and he kicked out and struggled. The person turned out to be Tonks and the officer was no longer willing to stand by. He controlled Harry’s body with a well-trained grasp of how joints and pressure points worked. Harry was forced by his twisted elbow to walk away from the scene.

“Why?” Harry cried out. “Why are they dead and not me. Why am I fine?”

“I’d say because you’re lucky,” said Tonks, “but I think you’d probably hit me. You were thrown free from the car upon impact. So was the driver of the other car. Your family… well they didn’t have the luck that you did. I’m sorry, Harry, I really am.”

Harry felt weak and struggled to keep his legs from folding like accordions. “How do you know my name?”

“Paramedics found your driver’s license in your wallet. Would you like me to contact anyone?”

Harry shook his head. “…No. I-I will do it later. I want to see my family. I want them out of there.”

Tonks nodded. “I know you do. They’re working on it. Let’s just get you to the hospital for now. There’s no way to deal with something as terrible as this, so don’t try.”

Any fight Harry might ever have possessed was gone from him now. He allowed the officer to take him by the arm towards the ambulance and he would also let them take him to the hospital too. There was no reason to resist now, no reason to fight… no reason to care. Harry’s life was without purpose and always would be from now on.

As he neared the ambulance, Harry noticed something up ahead. There were two other police officers standing with a weary-looking man. They were breathalysing him. Harry’s own breath caught in his chest and the only way he could let it out again was by talking. “Is that the other driver?”

Tonks seemed to stiffen then and started leading Harry at a slightly different angle, putting distance between them and the other officers. “Yes,” he said. “He says he doesn’t know what happened. He’ll be taken in for questioning once the paramedics clear him.”

“Why are they breathalysing him?”

“Standard procedure,” said Tonks without missing a beat.

Harry nodded and let the officer think he was satisfied with the answer. Really, he was taking one last, long look at the man that had just murdered his family, and committing his face to memory. Harry realised that, in actual fact, his life still did have a purpose: to take the life of the man that took his.

Enjoy what’s left of your life, whoever you are, thought Harry, because I promise that this will be your Final Winter.

THE PEELING OF SAMUEL LLOYD COLLINS

Thursday

My big toenail fell off today. That leaves three on my right foot and two on my left. It stung at first, but now my toe just feels… hot. I’m keeping the nail in an ashtray in the kitchen.

My name is Samuel Lloyd Collins and I suppose, in a way, this is my last will and testament, except I don’t have anybody to leave anything to, so I guess this is really just my last testament. Or maybe writing this is merely the closest thing I have to company.

I don’t have to be alone. I could go next door and take part in one of their endless political debates that echo through the walls and keep me awake at night. Sometimes I think about yelling at them to ‘keep it down’, but what would be the use? Politics are high on everybody’s agenda right now. One would expect them to be.

Everyone has their own theory on how ‘The Peeling’ started, but I personally think it was the Arabs. It’s always the Arabs, isn’t it? Saddam is dead and the Yanks finally got Osama. So what choice did they have left but to go for broke? Everyone assumed their master plan would culminate with a nuclear attack on a major city, but in many ways this virus is worse. We may have snuffed out the leaders, but their passion for killing, it seems, will never die. You cut the head off a chicken and it runs around like a maniac, spraying anyone nearby with blood. That’s what ‘The Peeling’ is: arterial chicken blood spraying us all with its infectious filth. I guess the Arabs won in the end…

I came down with the sickness on Tuesday. Two days ago. I’ve already lost a bit of hair and some skin off my testicles, and you already know about the toenails. Funnily enough, my fingernails are currently unaffected, probably the only reason I’m able to write this. I thought about typing this on the computer, but somehow it felt like a man’s final words should be in ink, don’t you think? Maybe when it comes right down to it, paper is more permanent than a collection of cheap circuits.

My future is laid out for me now. I’ll be dead within a week, give or take a day. The beauty of the Peeling is that it leaves no room for hypothesising. No room for hope. It kills every time, no exceptions. In a way that certainty has allowed me to come to terms and accept my fate. This time next week I will be a bubbling oil-slick of rancid, dissolving flesh. Somehow I’m fine with that.

But I need to know who is responsible for the pain I’m in. I already told you I think it’s the Arabs, but unless I know for sure… Well let’s just say that knowing for definite would bring a certain degree of closure to the situation. Of course, the honourable men and women of the Government’s various agencies are urgently investigating the origin of this disease and those responsible, but as each second passes, Great Britain withers and dies beneath its second great plague. I just hope to be alive when they determine the guilty party.

Already know it was the Arabs, just need to know for sure…

Friday

I woke up this morning stuck to my pillow. Not because I had been drooling in my sleep, but because the skin below my left eye had rotted and fused with the cotton. I had to rip the pillow away and half of my face with it. The resulting meld of infected flesh and sickly white cotton reminded me of a surrealist painting, beautiful in a way. Maybe I’ll have it framed before I die.

What an odd thing to muse upon! It would not surprise me if I have gone quite mad. I’m already starting to feel delightfully delirious (or maybe that’s just the throbbing and burning where my face used to be).

Such good bone structure I was blessed with, but did not know of, until I was today faced with it in the mirror. The bone of my cheek now shows right through, covered only by several, thin slivers of sinewy gristle. I look like the Phantom of the Opera (albeit a grizzlier version). I wonder what part of me will dissolve tomorrow. That’s the fun part of this sickness, I suppose, not knowing which chunk of skin will decompose next. It isn’t like typical flesh-eating diseases; they have a point of infection and usually spread systematically. But The Peeling strikes the body at random, necrotising a man’s feet before popping up a day later and doing the same to his ears. I’ve seen hundreds of case photographs and no two victims follow the same path of infection. The only non-variable: it’s always fatal. No one understands this disease at all…

…and no one can stop it.

I think it’s starting on my chest…

Saturday

I can see my ribs. Two of them, glistening at me like curved piano keys. It’s amusing, in some morbidly fascinating way, to see one’s inner workings. The pain is starting to subside, and thankfully only throbbed for a few hours in the morning, but the cloying odour inside the house is repugnant. Ideally, I would open the curtains and windows, but I don’t wish to be disturbed by the outside world. I would only become resentful of those who still have all of their skin. Besides, it was being around other people that infected me in the first place, sealing my fate, and I hate them for that! But retaining my humanity is all I have left to focus on for now and resentment will only make that task harder. I have decisions ahead of me that should not be made in temper…

I have been corresponding all day with a trusted associate that is supplying me with up-to-date information on the current pandemic, along with the progress of the on-going Government investigations into the crisis. So far it seems clear that this was a premeditated and focused attack on the western world. The Peeling has, so far, hit 90% of Europe and is seeping its way into the East. USA and South America are also stricken, worse than we are in fact, but it is unsurprising to me that, as yet, the Arab world is unaffected. I am eager to see just how far into the East the disease spreads before ceasing its journey of human pestilence. I’m guessing that it will be shortly after it runs out of Christian nations to infect.

Sunday

I lost a hand today. Thank God it was my left and that I can still continue writing this. I now have a withered stump that drips periodically with a viscous yellow discharge. It looks similar to the contents of a Cadbury Cream Egg but smells worse than anything I could ever hope to describe to you now. I suppose it’s the aroma of lingering death.

Next door are still at it. Talking incessantly at all hours. I need peace and quiet right now. Time to think. I already informed my colleagues that I would be working from home for the next week and am not to be disturbed under any circumstances. They were not happy, but I’m the Boss, so they’ll have to cope. They don’t know that I have the sickness, of course, probably too wrapped up in their own fear of it to even consider the possibility. People only worry about themselves nowadays.

My associate emailed today and told me that the infection was definitely engineered – Wow. What a revelation! – and that it was unleashed upon the world at strategic locations: Major cities, along coastal areas so that the disease would work inwards from all directions, eating around the edges of England as though it were a Jaffa Cake with a chewy orange centre…

God what I would do for a box of Jaffa Cakes right now! The stump of my wrist is itching just thinking about it. Perhaps it’s excitement?

Anyway, I have sent a reply email asking what is currently known about WHO engineered the disease. That is what I have to know.

Then maybe I can do something about it.

Monday

I have lost an eye today. It is indeed unfortunate, but in a way I am blessed to have persevered this long anyway. Many do not, and at least I have the other eye. My left one just dribbled out of its socket today like an under-boiled egg with its top sliced off: all foamy white and custardy-yellow. I almost laughed when I looked in the mirror. I look like a zombie-pirate.

At least it doesn’t hurt. Not physically.

I suspect I have little time left now and I am anxiously awaiting news from my associate. I can feel the illness seizing my internal organs in its corrosive grip and it’s only a matter of time before they start to decay completely. I have already taken to soiling myself involuntarily, so I assume that my intestines are already rotten. I would take a shower to get clean, but the pressure would only shred what remaining skin I have left. For now I will sit and wait for my associate to provide me the information I so desire…

Who is responsible? Who turned me, and most of the free world, into a quivering mass of mutilated flesh?

I wonder if there’s any Jaffa Cakes in the pantry.

Tuesday

It has now been one week since I first noticed the skin under my armpit was peeling away in pus-filled chunks. One week since I realised I was a dead man walking.

Dead man peeling! Ha!

But I am still alive, devoid of nearly all my skin, granted, but alive nonetheless. Moist splatters of pungent flesh litter my home now, whilst foul scabs fall from my body constantly. The only merciful thing about this disease is that I feel nothing.

Nothing except for the soft scraping of insanity inside my fleshless skull.

Wednesday

Today will be my last. I can feel it. My lower legs snapped today when I got out of bed, too rotten and malformed to bear what little weight my frail body has left. It is of no importance however, as I awakened to something wonderful: You have mail.

I am about to drag my withered limbs over to the computer right now, to see what my trusted associate has for me. I will record the email, and my response, for you right here, as I feel it will be important.