The Human Condition

AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION

DAVID MOODY

BEFORE JAKE HUMPHRIES

Eight months ago Jake Humphries and his family immigrated to Canada from the United Kingdom. A regional manager for a global finance house, Jake agreed to move his family overseas for a well paid two year posting. His wife Lucy and their two children settled quickly into their new surroundings. The people who found it hardest to adjust were those they left behind. Polly Humphries � Jake's well-meaning but highly strung and over-sensitive mother � still finds the distance between her and her son difficult to deal with. Mrs Humphries and her husband made their first visit to Canada several weeks ago. The trip did nothing to reassure the old lady. If anything it has made her more neurotic. Jake has grown to dread the weekly telephone calls from the UK. His mother usually phones on Saturdays. It is now the early hours of Tuesday morning.

`Jake? Jake, is that you?'

`Mum? Bloody hell, Mum, do you know what time it is?'

`Are you okay, son?'

`Apart from being tired because it's gone midnight and I'd only just managed to get to sleep I'm fine. We're all fine. Why shouldn't we be?'

`Haven't you heard?'

`Heard what? Christ, Mum, it's the middle of the bloody night. I haven't heard anything.'

`There's no need for the language, Jake, we were just worried about you, that's all.'

`Why?'

`Are you far from Vancouver ?'

`It's on the other side of the country. It's thousands of kilometres away, why?'

`Because something's happened there.'

`What do you mean? What's happened?'

`I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. Your dad and I saw it on the news and...'

`Look, Mum, I'm really tired. You're not making any sense at all...'

`I'm sorry, love. It's just that you're all so far away from us here and we worry about you.'

`I know, I know... Anyway, what time is it there?'

`Just after seven.'

`What are you doing up so early?'

`Your dad couldn't sleep. You know what he's like, once he's awake that's it. And once he's up and about I can't relax. He woke me up with his shuffling and his moaning so we both got up and came downstairs. We were watching the news and...'

`And what exactly is it that's supposed to have happened in Vancouver ?'

`They're not sure. No-one's saying very much. No-one seems to know very much yet.'

`So you've woken me up to tell me that no-one knows very much about what's happening in Vancouver ? Come on, Mum, I've got an important meeting first thing tomorrow and I can't afford to...'

`No. Listen, son, something's happened there but they don't...'

`Well give me a clue then. Has there been an accident or a bomb or...?'

`I don't know. I heard something about a bomb but they've stopped talking about that now.'

`So why have you phoned me in the middle of the night? This isn't little old England , Mum. This place is bloody huge. Just because something's happening in the same country doesn't mean it's going to affect...'

`I'm phoning you because they've lost contact with the city, and all the places surrounding it.'

`What? What do you mean, they've lost contact with it? Vancouver is a massive city for Christ's sake. There are thousands and thousands of people there. Millions. You can't lose contact with millions of people just like that...'

`I know...'

`You can't lose contact with a whole bloody city, Mum.'

`I know, but they have.'

`What channel are you watching? Are you sure it's genuine? Are you sure it's not just a film or one of those drama-documentaries about...'

`Jake, your father and I may be getting on but we're not stupid. I know what I'm watching. It's the news and it's real. We're sitting in front of the television right now. Your father's next to me. I'm only telling you what we've heard, and I'm only telling you because we're concerned about you, Lucy and the boys.'

`So tell me again exactly what it is they're saying.'

`Your dad says put your TV on, son. You're bound to have some news where you are. You're much closer than we are.'

`Okay, give me a second.'

`What can you see?'

`Hold on, that's strange.'

`What's strange?'

`Can't get a picture on some of the channels. Cable must be down. Sometimes this happens when...' `What about the radio? Try your computer. Try the Internet.'

`Hang on, here's something.'

`What are they saying?'

`Christ, it's just like you said, they've lost contact with the area around... Hold on, you said Vancouver, didn't you Mum?'

`Yes son, why?'

`Because the station I'm watching here is talking about Winnipeg. That's miles away. And Seattle, and Portland. They're talking about a massive part of the country. Bloody hell, what's going on here...?'

`Are they saying anything about what's happened, Jake? Do they know why...?'

`Christ, Mum, they've put a map up. It looks like it's spreading out from the west. It looks like...'

`Where are Lucy and the boys?'

`Lucy's here in bed with me, the boys are asleep...'

`You should lock your doors. Don't answer the door if anyone comes. Wait until we know what's...'

`What's the point of locking the door? Mum, this isn't anything to do with...'

`Jake...? Jake, are you still there? What's the matter, son?'

`Nothing. Thought I heard something, that's all.'

`What?'

`Thought I could hear...'

`Jake...? What's happening, son?'

`Sorry, Mum, I'm going to put the phone down. Look, I'll call you back as soon as I...'

`What's wrong?'

`Something's happening on the other side of the river. There's a fire. It looks like something's gone into the front of one of the buildings on the waterfront by the... Don't know what's going on. I can't see much from here... Hang on a second and I'll try and... Shit, that's all I need, the kids are awake now. Bloody hell. Lucy, could you go and...? Lucy...? Honey, what's wrong?'

`What's the matter, son?'

`Lucy? Don't struggle, honey, lie back and I'll get you a...'

`Jake? Jake... are you still there?'

Over five thousand miles away, Mrs Humphries listened helplessly to the muffled sounds of her son, her daughter-in-law and her two grandsons choking to death. Within hours both Mrs Humphries and her husband were dead too.

DAY ONE

AMY STEADMAN Part i

Amy Steadman is a twenty-four year old graduate who is the manager of the lingerie department in an exclusive women's fashion boutique located in a busy out-of-town shopping mall. She lives on her own in the town of Rowley in a small one bedroom flat above an antiques shop on a narrow road just off the main high street.

It's five-thirty in the morning. Amy's alarm has gone off, and she's just dragged herself out of bed.

This morning Amy has to make her quarterly sales presentation to the company's senior management team. She dreads these presentations. She doesn't have a problem with standing up and talking to these self-important, vacuous, grey-suited people, she just doesn't feel comfortable with the way they stare back at her. They are smarmy, lecherous old men and she can feel them undressing her with their eyes. She hates the way they don't listen to anything she says, instead they just watch her. She knows that they fantasise about her. She finds their unwanted interest and their cheap, double-entendre laden conversation offensive and unnecessary but she puts up with it. It's all part of the job.

In Amy's line of business appearance is absolutely everything. She walks the shop floor as a representative of the store and the numerous expensive labels it stocks. She knows that she must be perfectly coiffured and immaculately presented at all times. Customers directly associate her with the products she sells. The better she looks, she often thinks, the more chance she has of making a sale.

After a quick breakfast (she doesn't feel like eating much this morning) and a lukewarm shower (she needs to get a plumber in), Amy dries her hair and sits down in front of the mirror to apply her make-up. An exercise in precision application, the make-up is crucially important to her. Far more than just another part of her perfect appearance, it is a mask. She is painting on her work personality and her customer-facing smile. In fifteen minutes she creates a character far removed from the real Amy Steadman who sits in front of the television most nights, eating chocolate and relaxing in old jeans and baggy jumpers. More importantly, perhaps, the face becomes something she can hide behind. The senior managers who stare and leer at her see only the fixed smile, the white teeth and the flawless complexion. They are unaware of the disinterest and contempt she keeps hidden from them.

Less than an hour after getting out of bed, Amy is dressed, psyched-up and ready to go. She leaves her flat and crawls through the early morning traffic, arriving at work in just under fifty minutes.

It is almost eight o'clock, and the store is just opening its doors to the first customers of the day.

`These shoes are killing me,' Lorraine moans.

`Well what do you expect?' I sigh. Lorraine (who's had more nips, tucks, false tans and hairstyles than the rest of us put together) is a total slave to fashion. `Bloody hell, girl, those heels would be enough to cripple anyone. Christ, you're virtually walking on tiptoe!'

`You're all right, you've got the height you lucky cow,' she snaps back at me. `Short buggers like me need all the help we can get.' She stops talking and looks over my shoulder. `Oh, hang on, stand by your posts everyone, here we go again. Here comes the slime...'

I turn round and see that our overpaid guests from Head Office are beginning to arrive. My heart sinks.

`Morning, Mr Jackson,' I smile through gritted teeth as the area manager makes his entrance with his entourage. What a vile and odious little shit this man is.

`Morning, Andrea,' he grins, getting my name wrong as he does every month. `Looking more beautiful than ever!'

`And you seem to be more of a fucking creep than ever,' is what I want to say back to him but, of course, I don't. Instead I just smile politely, force out a little laugh and then relax when Maurice Green appears at my side to take Jackson through to the back offices.

`Excuse me, Miss,' a quiet little voice says from behind me. I turn round and look down and see an elderly man clutching a negligee, looking more than just a little bit uncomfortable. An odd choice of nightwear unless he's a transvestite or he's married to a gold-digger. I watched a programme on television a while back about women who marry decrepit and desperate men for their money. I can understand why they do it. Most of the men I've been involved with over the last couple of years haven't had any redeeming qualities other than the size of their wallets.

`What can I do for you, Sir?' I ask, looking around for Lorraine who's suddenly disappeared as she always manages to do when customers need serving. This isn't fair. I have to get to my meeting. I haven't got time to be dealing with customers today.

`I bought this for my wife's birthday last week and she doesn't like it,' he croaks. Judging by the age of the customer in front of me, if his wife isn't a gold-digger then she's most probably somewhere between sixty and eighty years old. Can't imagine I'll want to wear underwear like this at that age.

`I see,' I say, taking the negligee from him and holding it up. There isn't much of it. Definitely not to be worn in the winter. `Didn't she like it? Do you want a refund or...?'

He shakes his head.

`No. Actually I was wondering whether you had it in any other colours,' he says as his face turns lobster pink with embarrassment. He's taken me by surprise. `She doesn't like black,' he explains, `says she'd rather have red.'

I can't be late for the meeting so I'll have to hand the old gent over to a colleague. Typically there's no-one about. I'm about to lead him over to the customer services desk when I stop. Something's caught my eye over by the main doors. I can see Gary Bright, the area finance director. He's crouched down on all fours and he looks like he's choking or being sick. He's dropped his briefcase and it's open and there are confidential papers blowing all over the shop. I run over to try and help him. I call for Jenny Clarke who's the duty first aid officer. Christ, someone else is down now. A woman just to the left of me has collapsed against the customer service desk. Bloody hell, she looks like she's suffocating. Her face is red and her eyes are bulging. She's holding onto her neck and... Shit, Shirley Peters from sportswear is lying on the floor at the bottom of the escalator. She looks as if she's just...

Oh my God. What's that?

I can feel something at the back of my throat. It's like I've got something trapped. I keep trying to clear it but I can hardly swallow. Something's tickling and scratching the back and sides of my throat and I keep coughing to try and clear it away. I need to get some water. It's still there. It won't go. Stronger now. Christ, it feels like someone's got a hand round my neck. Need to get help. Jesus it hurts. It's stinging and burning. Bloody hell, I can't swallow. I can't breathe.

Slow down.

Oh God, I can taste blood in my mouth.

Don't panic. Slow down. Try and breathe. Try and...

Starved of oxygen, Amy fell back into a rail of expensive designer dresses, pulling half of the display down on top of her. She gagged and retched as blood seeped and dribbled down the inside of her inflamed throat. Unable to focus, she was momentarily aware of frantic, terrified movement all around her.

Quickly suffocating, she clawed at her neck and then began to thrash about as the remaining oxygen in her blood stream was rapidly used up. Already numb and unresponsive, she felt no pain when her flailing arms and legs smacked against the hard marble floor and the metal display units around her.

Her mouth and chin now covered with blood, she tried to stand but couldn't. The world became dark and the screams around her became muffled and then silent. The terrifying, claustrophobic panic which filled her mind disappeared.

Less than a minute after becoming infected, Amy Steadman was dead. JIM HARPER

Fucking hell, I'm in big trouble. I can't believe I've been so stupid. Christ, I'm never going to get out of this one.

There are mistakes and there are mistakes. There are small mistakes and minor indiscretions that you can brush under the carpet and there are fucking huge mistakes that you know are going to cost you big time and haunt you for the rest of your life. This is a fucking huge mistake. It was a moment of madness. It was a really bloody stupid thing to do.

I'm in a hotel room. It only took me a couple of seconds to get my bearings after I woke up. I'm here on a course from work. This is day two of five. The way things are going it could be my last day in the job. It's a quarter to eight and the first session of the morning starts in less than an hour. I've missed breakfast but that doesn't matter. I couldn't eat anything. I feel sick to my stomach. The problem is, this isn't my hotel room. My room is next door and I shouldn't be here.

I'm keeping as still as I can, lying on my side and looking out of a crack in the curtains at a dull and rainy morning outside. I'm trying to work my way back through the events of last night to try and remember everything that happened. We're here for the week � Monday morning through until lunchtime Friday. There are seventeen of us here from different outlets up and down the country. We had a formal meal last night to break the ice and to get to know everyone, then we moved into the bar. And that was where we stayed. I got talking to a couple of lads from up north, and then I ended up with two girls who work in my area. I'd met one of them before, but I didn't recognise her friend. Turns out she was Helen Hunter � the daughter of Bill Hunter, my area director and one of the hardest, most unforgiving and ruthless bastards you could ever have the misfortune to come across. My missus, Chloe, works in his office.

And here's where things begin to get really, really complicated and unpleasant. I haven't plucked up the courage to check yet, but I'm ninety-nine percent sure that this is Helen Hunter's bed. And I'm equally certain that Helen Hunter is in it with me. Whoever it is that's lying next to me, she's just wrapped her arm around me and now she's started kissing my neck.

Keep calm. Just try and keep calm and get things into perspective. Am I sure it's Helen? I'm having trouble remembering last night clearly. I remember sitting in the bar with the two girls, drinking heavily. I was starting to get to the stage where you really know you've had a few drinks and your body starts to try and tell you to stop. Sometimes the beer plays tricks on you � the alcohol sort of waits for a while and then creeps up and rushes you all of a sudden. I'd been fine all night but suddenly I could feel myself going and I knew I'd reached the point where having another drink would have been a mistake. I know I stopped in the bar for at least two more pints after that. One of the girls finally got up and went to bed and I remember being left there with the other. It was definitely Helen. The rest of our group were long gone and we were the only two left in the bar. We were having one of those conversations where you start discussing things you know you shouldn't be talking about. She started telling me about her relationships and then moved on to her sexual likes and dislikes (concentrating more on the likes). I started to get more and more uncomfortable and, at the same time, more and more excited. She was flirting with me (okay, I was flirting with her too) and I remember thinking that I was going to have to try and be a bit more distant in the morning because we have a whole week to get through together and I didn't want to give her the wrong impression. Problem was that by that time I'd already done more than enough.

I remember finishing our drinks and leaving the bar. We walked through the lobby together and went up to our rooms. We walked down the same corridor together and I started to get jumpy because I thought she was following me. I stopped outside my room and took out my key and she did the same with the room next door. She made some cheap comment about fate and coincidence and destiny or something and I just mumbled because my brain had long since stopped functioning properly. I remember thinking that I should just go into my room, shut the door and go to bed but I was having one of those moments where my body had decided that it was going to completely ignore whatever my brain tried to tell it to do.

Helen Hunt is a cheap (but good-looking) tart with a reputation for sleeping around and being a marriage-breaker. I was screaming silently at myself to turn and run but my nervous system seemed to have gone into meltdown, leaving my genitals in full control of the rest of my body. So instead of walking away from her I walked towards her. She wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered something filthy in my ear. I couldn't remember what it was she said, I just remembered smelling her perfume and the booze and feeling her breath tickling the side of my face. We started to kiss. One kiss, then another, then another and another until we were practically eating each other's faces. My hands started to wander. I grabbed her backside and pulled her closer. One thing quickly led to another and... and that's why I'm in trouble now.

It has to be said though, what I remember of last night was damn good. She lived up to her reputation. She was half-undressed by the time we'd made it onto the bed and I was completely undressed seconds later. The lights were full on and the curtains were open but neither of us cared. All I could think about was fucking her senseless. There was no hint of passion, just sheer lust and physical need. It felt like just minutes, but I remember looking at the clock on the bedside table at one o'clock, then two and then three. At some point one of us had turned the lights off and we'd finally fallen asleep.

Despite the fact that what I've done is wrong whichever way you look at it, it was bloody good. Just lying here thinking about what she did to me is making me feel horny again...

`We've got half an hour before the course starts,' a whispered voice says from behind me. She wraps her arms tight around me and starts to drag her nails across my chest. It hurts but Christ, it's really turning me on. I should try to be strong and say no but what's the point? The damage has already been done. There's nothing I can do. Might as well lie back and enjoy it...

She rolls me over and I find myself looking up into Helen Hunter's face. She looks fucking beautiful � an absolute gem. For a second it's easy to forget that I'm married and that the woman I'm in bed with is the precious daughter of my boss' boss. I can't think straight. All I can do is react that what she's doing to me. Now she's sliding down underneath the covers. She's biting my chest and licking me and she's not stopping there. She's going lower. I put my hands behind my head and lie back and get ready to take it.

Quarter past eight. It's over and all of the sudden excitement and lust has gone. Now all I feel is stupidity and regret. What have I done? Why have I done it again? Helen's grinning at me like an idiot but then, compared to me, she's got nothing to lose. Chances are I've already lost everything. How the hell am I going to be able to look Chloe in the face now? After the last time I promised her this would never happen again. I know I mean nothing to Helen and it's just been a bit of fun for her. I'm just another one of her victims, another conquest. She's renowned for it and I should have known better. She'll walk away from this without a bad word being said against her and I'll take all the flack. If Bill Hunter finds out then I've had it. I've probably just thrown away my marriage, my house and my career for one night of sex. What a fucking idiot.

Shit, what the hell do I do now? She's moved and I'm left lying on the bed on my own, looking up at the ceiling and trying to work out how I'm going to bluff my way out of this one. Easiest thing would be to grab my stuff from the room next door and do a runner but I know I can't do that. I just can't believe I've been so stupid again. This is definitely the worst yet. I've never done anything this bad before. Actually, the first night Chloe and I spent together was pretty similar in a lot of respects but this is different and this was a mistake. I'll talk to Helen now and tell her that it meant nothing.

She's in the shower. Despite the fact that we've just spent the night together and I've already explored every available inch of her naked body I now feel embarrassed because she's undressed. I don't want to look at her but I can't help myself and she knows it. She's flirting with me again. Bloody woman knows that I'm watching her and she's going to make me pay for it.

`Look,' I say, clearing my throat, `we need to talk.'

She doesn't answer at first. I don't know if she can hear me over the noise of the shower. I'll have to raise my voice although that's the last thing I want to do. Most of the course delegates' rooms are probably on this floor. I don't have any choice. This is a conversation that won't wait. I have to say my piece now.

`Listen, I'm going back to my room now. I had a great time last night but we shouldn't have done what we...'

She peers around the side of the shower curtain, making sure she shows just enough flesh to keep me interested and make me lose my train of thought.

`I'll see you later,' she smiles, `play your cards right and your whole week will be as good as last night.'

`I'm sorry,' I try to protest. `You're a really great girl, but I think we've made a mistake. I don't think we should see each other for the rest of the...'

She's shaking her head.

`Too late for that,' she grins. `You're going to learn more in this little room than you will on the course,' she promises. `I'm going to do things to you that are barely legal. You're mine for the rest of the...'

She stops talking. The expression on her face changes suddenly.

`What's the matter?' I ask, half-thinking that she's just winding me up.

`I...' she stammers, `I can't...'

She grabs hold of her neck with one hand and grips the shower curtain with the other to keep herself steady. She can't breathe. She's suffocating. She's trying to breathe in but she can't get any air. She's looking at me with wide, frightened eyes and I don't know what to do. I just stand there. I can't move. I want to help her but I don't know what to do.

Her legs buckle underneath her and she falls, pulling the shower curtain down with her. Her head hits the faucet with a soft thud that makes me feel sick. Now she's lying in the bath shaking and choking and there's blood pouring out of a gash on the side of her head and washing down the plughole, mixing with the foam and running water. I turn off the shower. Christ, there's blood everywhere. I need to get help.

I run to the bed to get my trousers. My legs are wet from the water that's splashed on me from the shower and I can't get them on. I stumble and trip around the room. I grab the phone and dial for reception to ask them to get an ambulance but there's no answer. No-one's picking up.

I'm standing in the bathroom door again now, half-dressed. Helen's not moving. I've got to do something but I can't bring myself to touch her. Christ, I think she's dead. What the fucking hell is happening here...?

Now I know that I must be a real spineless bastard. Poor girl's lying dead in front of me and for a split second I feel relieved. Now I might have a chance of salvaging my life from this mess. I can tell them that I was in the room next door and I heard her fall down so I came in to help and I found her like this...

Hold on, maybe that will only make things worse. My things are all over this room. Not just my clothes either, there will be hairs and fingerprints and God knows what else all over the bed and probably all over and inside her too. Fucking hell, what if they say I did it? What if they think I pushed her over in the shower to keep her quiet about what we'd done together?

Got to get out of here. Can't stay here any longer.

I grab my things off the bed and run to the door. I try and leave the room but then I see her body again and my conscience tries to make me stop and help her. But I'm too fucking scared. I open the door and go out into the corridor.

There's another body on the floor. Jesus Christ, it's a porter. I don't want to get any closer to him. I can see his face and it's all twisted and contorted with pain and there's blood on the carpet around his mouth.

There's another body further down, just outside one of the rooms. It's Steve Jenkins. I sat opposite him at dinner last night.

I can't handle this.

I let myself into my room and sit on the end of the bed.

I can't hear anyone.

I try the phone again but no-one answers.

I'm scared.

I'll wait here for a couple of minutes then I'll go and find help.

James Harper cowered in his hotel room for more than two hours before finally plucking up courage to go out and look for help. The smell of burning forced him into action. The hotel kitchens were on fire.

He searched the entire building but could find no-one else left alive. His colleagues, the course tutors, the guests and the entire staff of the hotel were dead.

SHERI NEWTON

Of all the shifts I have to work, this has to be the one I hate the most. I can handle starting early in the morning and working through the day, I don't mind starting in the afternoon and working through the evening, but this I can't stand � sat here from one in the morning until nine. It's not too bad at weekends because there's usually plenty going on, but on mid-week days like today the time drags. There's no comparison, this is definitely the worst shift, and today it's even worse than usual. There are usually always two of us in on lates but Stefan called in sick so I've been sat here on my own for seven and a half hours. This morning there's been nothing to do and hardly anything to see. Between two and three o'clock the pubs and clubs were clearing out so there was some activity on the streets for a while, but after that everything went quiet until around seven-thirty. That's when the daily crowds of commuters started to arrive and that was when I had to start paying attention to the screens again. This job is all backwards � I want to be busy at the start of my shift, not at the end of it when I'm too tired to concentrate. By seven-thirty my eyes are starting to go. Okay, so the work's not physically tiring, but sitting here in front of seventeen screens watching CCTV footage of a shopping centre, an office block and the surrounding streets is enough to put anyone to sleep. Still, as I have to keep reminding myself, it pays the bills. Just about. It's easy money really. I don't have to do anything much. Even if I see something suspicious all I have to do is call the police or centre security. They do all the dirty work. I just sit up here and watch them.

Like I said, at the weekend there's usually enough activity in town to keep me busy, but this has been by far the worst day of the worst shift. Very few people are out and about on Monday night and even fewer are still around in the early hours of Tuesday morning. I've seen absolutely nothing this morning. I watched a drunk get arrested by the police in the high street about two hours ago but since then nothing's happened. The only screen I've watched with any interest is the handheld TV that I brought in with me because I knew it was going to be like this.

It's just after eight now.

Here we go, first sign of trouble for the day.

The area the cameras cover includes all the public areas of the shopping centre, the access roads, the main entrances and the reception area in the office block. There's a driver making a delivery around the back of one of the electrical superstores. He's just fallen out of the cab of his truck, clumsy sod. Bloody hell, what's wrong with him? He must be drunk. Bloody idiot, he can't even get up. Christ, how can these people let themselves get in such a state and then get behind the wheel? Don't they have a conscience? I think they should be made to... Hold on, he's trying to pick himself up again. He's grabbing at his throat like he's choking on something. Damn, I can't see anyone else around down there to help. I've got a direct line to the loading bay. I'll try and get someone to go and see him... Come on, someone pick up. The line's ringing out but no-one's answering. I can't see whether this bloke's been attacked by someone else in the truck or whether he's ill or... Hang on. Wait a minute. There's someone else behind him in the shadows. Now they're coming out into the open. They must have heard him. Bloody hell, there's something wrong with them too. This person can hardly stand. He's grabbing at his throat as well.

Will someone please answer the bloody phone.

Shit, on screen seven one of the cleaners working outside the main department store has just collapsed. What the hell is going on here? The two screens I'm watching are showing feeds from cameras at opposite ends of the complex. I thought it might have been fumes or something else in the air doing this, but how could the same thing affect three people so far apart, at the same time?

Wait, there's more...

Camera twelve is fixed on the public walkway between the music store and the supermarket. Oh Jesus, what the hell is happening now? I think that's Jim Runton, the assistant manager of the supermarket. He's down on his hands and knees in the middle of the walkway. It looks like he's throwing up. It looks too dark to be vomit. Could that be blood?

No-one's answering this damn telephone. I'll have to try one of the emergency lines linked direct to the police.

There's Mark Prentiss the head of security now. He's running back towards the offices. He might know what's going on. Oh no. Christ, now he's slowing down. He's not going to make it back here. Bloody hell, his legs just went from under him. He's gone down like the others.

What the hell is causing this?

There's no answer on the emergency phone either. There should always be someone there to answer the emergency phone. Someone has to be there. I'll try and get one of the security team on their radio. One of them will answer me...

The truck driver around the back of the superstore isn't moving now. He's just lying there, face down on the tarmac at the side of his truck. It looks like he's dead but he can't be, can he? The other person near him isn't moving either.

Still no answer. I can't get any response.

The cleaner outside the department store has stopped moving too.

All I can hear is static on the radios.

Jim Runton's body has been spasming and shaking since I first saw him but now he's still as well. Mark Prentiss is flat on his back and he's not moving either. There's a pool of blood or vomit around his face.

I can move camera fifteen. That's the camera which covers the main entrance and the pedestrian approach. Using the controls I can turn it through almost a full circle. There should be crowds of people moving towards the mall from the station now. I'll try and get a better view and see if anything's happening outside... Jesus Christ, I can't believe what I'm seeing here. There are bodies all over the place. There are dead bodies all over the bloody place. The streets outside are covered with them. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. It's like they've all just fallen where they were standing...

I've got to get out of here.

Nothing's moving on any of the screens now.

Sheri Newton got up from her seat at the control desk and ran out into the small security office immediately behind the observation room where she'd spent the last eight hours. She found the lifeless body of Jason Reynolds (her colleague who had been due to take over from her in twenty-five minutes time) sprawled across the cold linoleum floor in front of her, his frozen face and wild, frightened eyes staring hopelessly past her and into space. Further down the corridor a dead security guard was slumped in a half-open doorway. She stepped over the body on the ground, tripping on an outstretched leg, and ran through the silent building until she was out on the street.

Overcome by the disorientating fear and shock of what she had seen and was continuing to see, Sheri fell back against the nearest wall and slid down to the ground. For more than an hour she remained there, fixed to the spot in terrified disbelief, as frozen and still as the countless corpses lying around her.

SONYA FARLEY

Her pregnant belly wedged tight behind the steering wheel of her car, Sonya Farley stared at the never-ending queue of traffic stretching out in front of her and yawned. This was the seventh time in nine weeks that she'd driven this nightmare journey for Christian. Generally she didn't mind � Chris worked hard and he was doing all he could to get everything ready for the arrival of their first child. It wasn't really his fault that he'd been needed in the firm's Scottish office while the papers and designs he'd been working on at home were needed in the central branch. He'd put hours and hours of effort, commitment and concentration into each design and she understood completely why he wasn't prepared to trust their delivery to some two-bit courier firm � after all, there were two vital contracts at stake here. But regardless of the reasons why and the logical explanations for her being stuck out on the road for hours on end, today those explanations offered little comfort. At this stage of their pregnancies, Sonya thought, all of her friends were at home with their feet up, resting and getting ready for what was about to happen. And where was she? Going nowhere fast in the middle lane of one of the busiest motorways in the country during the peak of the morning rush hour. And where did she want to be? Just about anywhere else.

Focus on tomorrow night, she told herself. Tomorrow night Chris would be coming home and they'd finally be able to spend some time together. It would probably be their last chance for a while. They'd planned to go out for a meal and to see a movie. The couple were well aware of the massive upheaval and change they were about to experience in their lives and they both fully realised the importance of making the most of the time they had left before the baby came. The last few weeks had been a struggle, but Sonya could see things getting easier for a time before the birth. A nice warm bath and an early night tonight, she thought, would be just what she needed to get herself ready for tomorrow. She'd missed Chris. She hated it when he wasn't there, especially now at this late stage of her pregnancy. She couldn't wait to see him again.

Something was happening up ahead.

Struggling to shuffle in her seat and move her cumbersome bulk while still keeping control of the car, Sonya peered into the near distance where she could see movement in sudden, unexpected directions. Her heart sank. That was all she needed. She was a couple of miles away from the nearest motorway exit. An accident now would most probably add hours to her journey. She'd been joking with Chris on the phone last night that if he kept making her do this drive she'd end up giving birth in the back of the car on the hard shoulder. The idea didn't seem so funny now...

Whatever it was that was happening, it was quickly getting worse. Sonya could see the sudden red flashes of the lights of countless hastily applied brakes, burning brightly through the grey gloom of the early morning. Even over the sound of her own car's engine and the radio station she was listening to she could hear strained mechanical whines and squeals as drivers struggled to control their cars. Almost immediately the screaming brakes were replaced with grinding thuds and heavy groans and thumps as vehicle after vehicle after vehicle slammed and crashed into the back of the one in front, literally hundreds of them quickly forming a vast tangled carpet of twisted, wrecked metal along the entire visible length of the motorway.

She had no time to react. It was getting closer now. There was no obvious way to avoid the carnage. Now it was starting to happen all around her.

Forced to slam on her own brakes as the vehicles immediately ahead of her lurched to a sickening halt, Sonya braced herself for impact. She didn't know what she was going to hit, what was going to hit her or even from which direction the first impact would come. All around her every vehicle seemed to be losing control. Just ahead, in the rapidly disappearing gap between the front of her car and the huge pile up which filled the road, cars, vans and lorries were swerving and crisscrossing the carriageway as if their drivers had just given up and stopped trying to steer them. The first collision she felt came from the right as a solid four-wheel drive vehicle smashed into the passenger door behind her, the force of the shunt sending her car spinning round through almost one hundred and eighty degrees so that she found herself facing away from her original direction of travel. Now head on to the rest of the traffic, Sonya's shock and surprise gave way to utter disbelief and abject fear.

An expensive executive's car was heading straight for her. For a few short seconds (which felt like painfully long minutes) Sonya watched the driver of the car thrashing about wildly. He was clawing at his neck with one hand, scratching and scraping at it desperately as he struggled unsuccessfully to hold onto the steering wheel with the other. His face was red and his eyes wide with pain. He was choking. Distracted as the car was rocked again by a collision from the left, she turned and looked out through her passenger window. A tanker had smashed into a van which had, in turn, smashed into her. The driver of the van had been hurled through his windscreen and now lay sprawled face down over the crumpled bonnet of his vehicle. His bloodied head slammed down onto the battered metal just a short distance from where she sat. She looked away in disgust and caught a glimpse of the tanker driver's face. The middle-aged man's face was pressed hard against the shattered glass of his side window, frozen in an expression of terrified agony. Dark red blood dribbled freely down his chin, contrasting starkly with the rest of his blanched white face. The executive's car ploughed into Sonya at speed, sending her flying back in her seat and then lurching forward awkwardly. Consumed by a sudden wave of nauseating pain as her distended belly and her baby were momentarily crushed again, she briefly lost consciousness.

In the few minutes that Sonya was unconscious the world around her changed almost beyond all recognition. She slowly woke and cautiously half-opened her eyes. Slumped heavily forward with her face pressed hard against the steering wheel she pushed herself upright, struggling for a moment with the weight of her unborn child. Her own safety was of no concern as, for a few seconds longer, she remained still and closed her eyes again, running her hands over her tender belly until she was sure she had felt the reassuring movements of the baby inside. Her split-second feelings of relief and elation were immediately forgotten when she lifted her head again and looked around.

Apart from the occasional hissing jet of steam rising up into the morning air and smoke and flame from numerous burning vehicles, the world was completely silent and still. Nothing moved. Where she had expected to hear voices and cries for help there was nothing.

Sonya instinctively tried to open the door to get out of her wrecked car. Another crashed car to her right, however, had wedged it shut and she was unable to force it open any more than just a couple of centimetres. The van which had collided with her on the other side prevented her from opening the passenger door. The sunroof seemed the only safe escape route. Suddenly freezing cold and shaking with shock and nervous fear she turned the key in the ignition far enough for her to be able to use the electrics of her disabled car. She lifted a trembling hand and operated the control which opened the sunroof. The sudden, jerking noise sounded disproportionately loud in the oppressively silent vacuum of the grey morning. The tinted window above her slid open before stopping with a heavy thud. Slowly lifting herself up onto her clumsy, unsteady feet she guided her head and shoulders out through the restrictive rectangular opening. She cautiously stood upright on her seat and waited for a moment and wriggled her toes, water retention having swollen her tired feet and ankles. She lifted her arms out of the car and then eased and squeezed her pregnant stomach through the rubber-lined gap. Her arms weak and heavy with nerves, she put the palms of her hands flat on the roof of the car and pushed herself up and out. A few seconds of grunting and straining and she had moved far enough to be able to sit on top of her wrecked vehicle. For a while she just sat there in stunned disbelief and surveyed the silent devastation around her. The carnage seemed endless and without any apparent reason.

The motorway around her was dead in both directions. Whatever had happened had worked its way back along the wide road towards the city. Sonya carefully shuffled around so that she was looking back towards the collection of tall, imposing buildings which she had driven through little more than three-quarters of an hour earlier. For as far as she could see both ahead and behind her the traffic on the motorway was motionless. She deliberately tried not to look too closely at any of the wrecked vehicles although it was hard not to stare. Their drivers were dead. Some remained sat in their seats, frozen and lifeless. Some were burning. Others appeared to have suffered a more violent and inexplicable fate. Many twisted and bloodied corpses lay on the ground in the random gaps between the wrecks of their cars, tankers, lorries, bikes and vans.

A cold autumnal wind gusted along the length of the road, buffeting Sonya and prompting her to move from her exposed position. Overcome by the sheer scale and speed of what had happened, and unable to think about anything but the safety of her unborn child, she carefully pulled her feet out of the car and lowered herself down the windscreen and onto its crumpled bonnet. Using the wrecks of other vehicles she made her way over to the hard shoulder. Once there � where the road was a little clearer � she began to walk back towards the city. Dark thoughts occupied her mind with every step. What had happened to Chris in all of this...?

The city, more than four miles away, was dying too. She could clearly see the destruction, even from a distance. Random explosions ripped through buildings and fire began to quickly spread and take hold. She could see smoke pouring into the early morning air in thick, steady palls, leaving a dirty grey shroud hanging above the devastation.

With her swollen feet already sore, and with the delivery of her baby ominously close, Sonya dragged herself back towards the city in search of someone � anyone � who could help her.

HARRY STAYT

Given the choice, if they didn't need to get up and go to work, school or whatever each day, many people (probably most) would prefer to spend their mornings in bed. Harry Stayt is not like most people. Harry is up, washed, dressed and ready to run by eight o'clock at the very latest, usually much earlier. Harry does not enjoy being cooped up inside. By trade he is an outbound activities instructor, qualified to teach (amongst other things) rock climbing, abseiling, caving, rafting, canoeing, kayaking, mountain biking and hill walking. The summer holiday season has just ended and he has no lessons booked for the best part of the next three weeks. For the first time since early summer he now has some time to himself. Harry being Harry, he intends to spend much of this time undertaking those activities he is usually paid to teach.

Harry loves to run. He rents a small cottage in a village which is nestled on the banks of a large, man-made lake. A single, continuous road of some eight miles in length encircles the eservoir. This is his regular running route.

Harry sat on the front step of the cottage and, as he tied his laces, he looked out over the stunning view which greeted him. There could be no better way to start each day, he decided. The world was silent save for bird song, the rippling of the water on the surface of the lake and the occasional distant rumble of farm machinery and traffic. And if this was favourite time of day, he thought, then early autumn was his favourite time of year; a brief, quiet interlude after the busy summer holidays and before the winter snow and ice brought skiers, snowboarders and others to this area of the country. This morning was picture perfect. The sky above him was a cool, clear, uninterrupted blue and the lush greenery surrounding the scene was slowly beginning to turn. The endless shades of green which had been present all summer had now begun to disappear and had been replaced by yellows, oranges and brittle browns. And the air... Christ, even the air tasted good this morning. Cool but not too cold, dry but not parched and with a very gentle breeze which blew at him from across the surface of the water.

Around Harry the population of the small village were beginning their morning rituals and daily routines. As he stood up and closed his front door he looked round at the few small houses and shops nearby and smiled inwardly. What was it about human nature that made people so desperate to trap themselves into strict routines like this? Couldn't they function without this structure? He'd moved as far away as he could from the city to escape from the relentless boredom and monotonous familiarity of the rat-race but even here, out in the middle of nowhere, there was still too much focus on structure and conformity. All around him the same people were doing the same things at the same time of day as they always did. Mrs Rogers was opening the village store as she did every morning, putting the same goods out on display in exactly the same place as always. Her husband was taking the daily delivery of bread, milk and papers. The small school gates were being opened and children were beginning to arrive. It was happening everywhere he looked. In some ways he was no better, he had to admit. He often ran the same route at the same time of day and he always performed a well-rehearsed stretching and loosening exercise routine before going out. Although he wanted to believe otherwise, maybe he was as regimented as the rest of them.

Harry checked the door was locked, checked that he had tied his spare key onto the string of his shorts, checked and started his stopwatch and then began to run. He moved slowly at first, knowing that the first few footsteps were crucial. He'd had more than his fair share of avoidable injuries over the last couple of years and he knew now that it suited his body to start slowly and gradually build up to something resembling a decent speed. In any event, this was a simple training run and he didn't intend overdoing it.

He jogged out through the village, acknowledging a couple of bemused folk as he passed them, ran across the dam and then began his usual clockwise circuit of the lake. He'd run this route many times before and had adapted it over time. He knew that it was more sensible to run clockwise because the majority of the children who attended the school lived on farms and in other villages to the east. The timing of his run today had been carefully considered so that he wouldn't reach the busiest stretch of road until the school traffic had been and gone. He expected the rest of the route to be quiet. Although very busy at the height of summer, with the ending of the holiday season the lake and the village had become noticeably quieter. Harry didn't expect to see more than a handful of people while he was out.

That was how he liked it.

Three miles in and the village had long been lost in the distance behind him. A heavy canopy of trees bowed over the road, giving Harry shade from the strangely cool but still brilliant and relentless sunlight. The cover muffled and changed the sounds around him, blocking out the very distant rumble of village noise and traffic, making every birdsong and animal noise seem random and directionless, and seeming to amplify the constant thud, thud, thud of his trainers pounding the ground. His breathing also seemed inordinately loud although he knew it didn't matter if it was because there was no-one else nearby to hear him.

The peace and tranquillity was disturbed momentarily. A car engine (which could have been ahead or behind him and anywhere between half a mile and a mile and a half away) was abruptly and unexpectedly silenced. Harry then thought he heard the crackle and spit of splitting wood. It could have been anything, he quickly decided, but it was probably nothing. One of the local farmers working their land on the steep banks of the lake perhaps? He ran on regardless.

The lake was roughly quadrilateral in shape. He had already run along its longest side and had just followed a sharp bend in the road round to the right. He was now running along the second side which was less than half as long as the first. The dense forest of trees to his left, the grey tarmac ahead and the glare of the sun bouncing off the water's calm surface to his right were all that he could see. His foot scuffed against something unexpectedly and he looked down at his trainers to mind his footing over a particularly uneven stretch of road. For some reason the ground here was covered with debris. Slowing down but not stopping, he tripped and kicked his way through the tangled branches of a sapling that had been felled, its narrow trunk having been snapped near to its base. Something � a car or truck perhaps � looked to have collided with the young tree. There were huge, arc-shaped scars in the mud just past the trunk. The vehicle, it appeared, had been knocked off course and had gone off the road close to where he was now running. The dirt, leaves and stones which had been disturbed by the collision had been dragged across the track in a rough curve which stretched ominously all the way across the tarmac. To Harry's right was a steep bank which dropped down towards the water. The tyre marks ended suddenly. He knew what had happened before he had even seen the car.

Slowing down to walking pace, he cautiously approached the edge of the bank and peered over. Some five meters or so ahead and below him, wedged tightly between two sturdy trees, was the wreck of a small red car. No doubt the car which had made the noise he'd heard minutes earlier, it had been forced over onto one side by a moss-covered tree stump and had come to rest ungraciously with two wheels up in the air, still spinning slowly but about to stop. Panting with the effort of his run but still in full control, Harry carefully clambered down the bank towards the car, knowing that he had to help. He hadn't seen anyone else in the last half hour and chances were it would probably be at least as long again before anyone else passed here. It was down to him alone to try and help whoever it was who had been trapped in the crash. As he made his rapid descent it occurred to him that there didn't seem to be any obvious reason why the accident had happened. No other vehicle seemed to have been involved. Perhaps it was mechanical failure, he decided, or maybe something had happened to the driver? Either way it didn't matter now.

The driver's door had been wedged shut by the awkward angle at which the car had suddenly come to rest. The windscreen was shattered (it had been pierced by a sharp, thick and low-growing branch) and he cautiously pushed the remaining glass out of the way and peered into the vehicle. He was then able to see the body of the driver, and it was immediately apparent that the injuries they had sustained had been fatal. The same branch which had smashed the window had impaled the stocky, grey-haired man through the left shoulder and his neck had been snapped, presumably by the force of the impact. Jolted out of his seat by the sudden and violent crash, the man's mouth had smashed against the steering wheel. Blood, bone and shattered teeth dribbled down the corpse's chin. The appalling injuries suffered by the driver were so obvious and extreme that for a few seconds Harry didn't notice there was a passenger in the car. A woman of similar age to the man next to her, it was instantly clear that she was dead too. Harry looked deep into her lifeless face. The second corpse didn't seem to have suffered any of the physical traumas that the first had, but it too had trickles of dark blood running from its mouth. Perhaps this lady's injuries were internal? His stomach was strong and, having obtained numerous first aid qualifications as part of his outdoor activities training, he instinctively leant across and checked for a pulse. Nothing. Although her skin was still warm to the touch, it was clear that it was already too late and there was nothing he could do for her. He stepped back and stared into the car again. In contrast to the driver, the reason for the woman's death was far from obvious. Whatever had happened to her, her face bore an inexplicable expression of absolute fear and gut-wrenching agony.

Harry's options were limited. Did he stop with the bodies and wait for another motorist to pass (which would likely be some time) or should he try and get back to the village as quickly as he could to alert the authorities? Although harder, the second option was clearly the most sensible. The poor buggers in he car were beyond help and there was nothing to be gained from stopping with them. Harry quickly scrambled back up to the road, brushed himself down and then began to run again, continuing with his clockwise circuit of the lake.

What started as a gentle training run had suddenly become a painful struggle. As well as having to contend with the shock of what he had just discovered, Harry also now needed to get his body moving again. He may only have stopped running for a couple of minutes, but that had been more than long enough for his muscles to begin to seize and tighten. He was just over halfway along his circuit so it made sense for him to continue on in the same direction. Perhaps he'd come across some of the school traffic that he'd originally hoped to avoid, heading back home after dropping off children.

Harry forced himself to try and maintain a steady pace. He was tired and he knew that he didn't have enough energy to run faster � with more than three miles left to cover he knew that if he tried he'd probably end up walking most of the way back. At the same time, however, the furious, adrenaline-fuelled chemical reactions racing through his body were intent on making him pick up his speed. All he could see were the bodies he'd just found and all he could hear was the thump, thump, thump of his feet hitting the ground and his heavy, rasping breathing which seemed to be becoming harder, deeper and more desperate with each passing metre.

Finally another sound disturbed the uncomfortable silence and distracted him. He could hear a plane in the distance. He rounded another gentle corner at the bottom of the lake and began to run the relatively straight two and a half mile stretch of road that would lead him back into the village. The relentless sunlight flickered through the trees, blinding him intermittently with its brilliance and causing him to involuntarily screw his eyes shut. The run was getting harder. He was suddenly beginning to feel cold and the ends of his fingers and toes had begun to tingle. Had the temperature dropped or was it shock? He'd run this route many times before and he knew he was more than capable of completing the distance, but now he was beginning to doubt himself. And all the time the plane's engines were getting louder.

At the side of the road a twisting mountain stream tumbled down the hillside, disappeared under the road and trickled into the lake. That was Harry's two mile mark. If he pushed hard he knew that he could be home in less than fifteen minutes now, but it would take just about every last scrap of energy he had to do it. His legs were hurting. Christ, that plane was getting low and close...

When the noise from the plane became deafening and was so loud that he could feel it through the ground beneath his feet like an earthquake, Harry stopped running again. This plane sounded different. Apart from the sheer volume of the noise it was making, this didn't sound like one of the military jets that often flew down the valley or even one of the smaller civilian aircraft that frequently passed over. The aircraft was moving in the same direction as he was, coming from behind him and flying along the length of the lake towards the village. He could see it above the trees now and it was flying lower than any plane he'd seen around here before. The slope of the bank down to the lake was relatively gentle here. Breathing heavily he jogged down to the water's edge to watch.

The plane passed alongside him. It could have been no more than fifty meters from the surface of the lake and it was falling rapidly. As Harry watched in stunned disbelief its nose and starboard wing dropped slightly. The inevitable seemed to take an eternity to happen. Its rapid descent continued until the tip of the wing eventually clipped the water and somersaulted the plane forwards, flipping it over and over in mid-air and breaking it into several huge pieces which landed in the lake with a series of massive splashes, sending vast plumes of water shooting high into the air.

Harry didn't connect the two crashes he'd seen until he found a third. He discovered Kenneth Brent, the local postman, dead in the middle of the road next to his motor-scooter. Letters were blowing casually across the silent scene like leaves on the breeze.

By the time he arrived back at the village � exhausted, bewildered and terrified � he knew that something of vast and disastrous proportions had happened.

By the time he arrived back at the village the wreck of the plane had disappeared beneath the surface of the lake, leaving the water appearing calm and deceptively normal. By the time he arrived back at the village everyone else was dead.

JACOB FLYNN Part i

Jacob Flynn is serving a prison sentence for manslaughter. Like pretty much every other inmate, he will protest his innocence relentlessly to anyone who will listen. The fact of the matter is, however, that Flynn caused the death of a seventy-three year old gentleman through reckless driving. He will tell you that the old man was at fault as much as he was. He will give you any number of entirely plausible reasons why he feels his case was handled badly, and why the judge had something against him, and why his solicitor let him down, and how if it hadn't have been for the fact that he'd caught his lying bitch of a girlfriend in bed with his best friend then he wouldn't have been driving at almost twice the legal speed limit down a narrow residential road at just after two-thirty on a quiet Thursday afternoon in late November last year.

Whatever Flynn might tell you, the fact remains that he lost control of his car around a tight bend, mounted the pavement and mowed down Mr Eddie McDermott as he walked back to his house after a lunchtime drink with friends. The fact remains that his driving was the sole cause of Mr McDermott's untimely death, and in the eyes of the law he is being punished accordingly.

Flynn shares his small, rectangular cell with two other men, Suli Salman (minor drug trafficking offences and assault) and Roger Bewsey (corporate fraud). According to his own mental records, he has now been locked up for five months, three weeks and a day. It is just after eight o'clock in the morning and he has been awake for three hours.

I hate this place more with every second I have to spend here. I don't know how the rest of them can handle it in here. I still don't know how I'm going to handle it. Every morning I wake up and wish that I hadn't got into the car that day. Every morning I wish that I'd never found Elaine with that bastard Peters or that I'd never met the bitch in the first place. We'd only been together for just over a year, and look at how much it's cost me. I'll spend more time in here alone than we ever spent together. I know there's no point thinking like this but I can't help it. The hours in here are long and slow and I don't have anything else to do.

It's the stench that gets to me first. Even before I've opened my eyes I can smell the soulless, disinfected emptiness of this fucking place. Then I hear it � the relentless clattering noise from the scum in the cells around me. No matter what time it is it's never quiet in here. There's no escape. It never bloody stops. I keep my eyes closed for as long as I can but eventually I have to sit up and look around this concrete and metal hell.

I shouldn't be here. Maybe if I'd driven a different way that day or if I hadn't gone round to see her then I wouldn't be here now. I'd be out there where I should be. Because of that fucking slag I've lost everything, and I bet she bloody loves it. She's out there with him, sleeping with him in the bed that I helped pay for, wearing the clothes and the jewellery and the perfume that I bought for her. Bitch.

Bewsey is snoring again. He amazes me. I don't know how he does it. There's a man you'd have put money on cracking up by now. He's in his late fifties, he's overweight, has a stammer, gets picked on constantly by the mentally-challenged thugs in here and, as far as I'm aware, had never been in any trouble before he got himself wrapped up in the mess that eventually wound him up in here. Salman, who sleeps in the bunk above mine, on the other hand, is a cocky little bastard. He's only in here for another couple of weeks. He's in and out of these places all the time, has been for years. He'll be back in for another stretch before Bewsey or I get out.

The mornings are hard here. Some days there's work to do, but most of the time there's nothing. Most days we spend virtually all of the time sitting in here, locked up. That's when it really gets to me. I've got nothing in common with the rest of the shite in here. I've got nothing in common with the other two except the fact that we share this cell. I don't have anything to talk to them about. I don't even like them. They both irritate the hell out of me. Most of the time I don't have anything to do here but sit and think. Sometimes I wake up and I can't imagine that I'll make it through till the end of the day. I feel like that now. Tonight seems an eternity away. Next week feels like it will never come. And I have years of this to get through...

Here we go, first fight of the day. I can hear trouble a few blocks down. Someone's screaming. Sounds like they're being strangled. This kind of thing used to shock me, even scare me, but you get used to it pretty quick. It's par for the course in this place. You can't go for anything longer than a couple of hours here without...

Jesus Christ! Bewsey just scared the hell out of me. I thought he was still asleep. Shit, he just sat bolt upright looking like he's just seen a ghost or had his parole turned down or something. Bloody hell, his face is ashen white. Something's not right with him.

`All right, Bewsey?' I ask.

Bewsey doesn't answer. He's just sitting there, looking at me with this dumb, puzzled expression on his face. Now he's starting to rub at the side of his neck, like he's strained it or something.

`You okay?' I ask him again. Being in this place has made me suspicious of everyone, no matter how harmless they might make themselves out to be. I don't trust him. I'm starting to think that he's either trying to trick me into getting closer or he's about to have a full blown panic attack. Either way I'm stopping over here on my bunk, right out of the way.

`I can't...' he starts to say as he rubs at the side of his neck again. He's looking into space but then his eyes dart up to look above me. Salman is trying to climb down from his bunk above mine. He's half-tripping, half-falling down. Now he's doubled-up with pain and he's coughing and wheezing like he can't catch his breath. He's dragged himself over to the sink. Christ, he's spitting up blood. What the hell is going on here? Now Bewsey's up on his feet and he's grabbing and scratching at his neck too.

`What is it?' I ask but he can't even hear me, never mind answer. He's not messing around. I can tell that this is for real. The cell is suddenly filled with their hoarse, grating coughing and rasping screams for help. The fact that it's happening to both of them is enough to make me... Wait, Bewsey can't breathe. Bloody hell, the poor bastard can't get any oxygen. He's up on his feet and he's trying to take in air but it looks like his throat is blocked. I have to do something. I push him back down onto the bed. He tries to get up again but then collapses back onto the mattress. His body starts to shake and he tries to move but all his strength has gone. I can hear Salman moaning and coughing behind me and I can hear similar noises coming from other cells around this one. I glance back over my shoulder just in time to see Salman fall to the ground and smack his head against the wall.

Bewsey is convulsing now and it's taking all my strength to keep him down on the bed. There's panic in his eyes. They're as wide as fucking saucers and they're staring straight at me like he thinks that whatever's happening to him is my fault. There's blood on his lips. Shit, there's a dribble of blood trickling down his cheek from the corner of his mouth. He's stopped shaking now. Bad sign. Fuck, he's grabbed hold of my arm and he's squeezing it so bloody hard I think he's going to break it. More blood now. Fucking hell. He arches his back and then crashes down onto the bed.

I just stand and look at him for a second before touching his neck and checking for a pulse.

He's dead. Jesus Christ, he's dead.

I stare at Bewsey's body for so long that I almost forget about Salman lying on the floor of the cell behind me. I turn around and I can tell by the way he's lying that he's dead too. Like Bewsey there's blood trickling from his mouth and there's more pouring out from a deep cut on his head.

And now I realise that I can't hear anyone else.

The whole bloody prison block has suddenly gone quiet. It's silent. I've never known it like this before. I'm scared. Jesus Christ I'm scared.

`Help!' I scream, pushing my face hard against the bars and trying to look down the corridor and across the landing. I can't see anyone. `There are men dead in here. Help! Please, someone, help!'

Shit, I'm crying like a bloody baby now. I don't know what to do. This cell is on the middle floor. I can see the bottom of the staircase which leads up to the top landing. I can see one of the officers sprawled over the last few steps. I don't know whether he fell or whether what killed Salman and Bewsey has got him too. Even from a distance though I can see that he's dead.

For almost half an hour Flynn stood in the corner of the cell in shock. He pushed himself hard against the wall, trying to get as far away as possible from the two bodies incarcerated there with him. It was a while before the initial panic began to subside and his brain was able to function with enough clarity to start trying to make sense of the situation. What had happened to the two men who shared this cell? Why had the rest of the prison also fallen silent? Why did he seem to be the only one left alive?

A few minutes later and Flynn's logical thinking helped him to arrive at the cruellest realisation of all. He dropped to the ground and began to sob uncontrollably. He was trapped. Much as he was used to being locked in this small, dark, depressing space for endless hours on end, he realised now that, for the first time, there really was no way out. There would be no exercise or work sessions today. There would be no meals, showers or classes or counselling sessions. If it was true and he really was the only one left here, then there was no-one left alive to let him out of his cell.

As the day wore on and no-one came and nothing more happened, Flynn painfully began to accept that, without warning or explanation, the term of his prison sentence had been dramatically extended to life. No parole, no early release, life. Paradoxically, he also knew that without food or water, this life sentence would ultimately be much shorter than the minimum length of time the law had originally decreed he serve.

All he could do was sit and wait.

BRIGID CULTHORPE

Brigid Culthorpe yawned, rubbed her eyes and squinted at the spraypaint-covered sign at the end of the street, hoping to make out the name of the road they had just turned into.

`It's like a bloody maze round here,' she grumbled to her partner, PC Marco Glover. `Don't know how you can tell one road from another.'

Glover grunted and nodded as he slowed the patrol car down and coaxed it gently over a speed bump.

`You get used to it,' he said. `Believe me, you'll spend plenty of time down here. It only took me a few weeks to get my bearings on this beat.'

`Get much trouble down here?'

`Virtually all the trouble we get starts down here,' the grey-haired policeman sighed wearily. `Every town has an estate like this. It's a dumping ground. It's where the scum and the unfortunate end up, and the scum don't think twice about praying on those folks who can't look after themselves. And even if the trouble doesn't start here, wherever it kicks off it's usually people from round here who start it.'

`Nice,' Culthorpe muttered as the car clattered over another bump.

`Not really,' Glover mumbled. `Right, here we go, Acacia Road . Sounds okay but...'

`...but it isn't,' Culthorpe interrupted, finishing her colleague's sentence for him. The car stopped. She climbed out and looked down the length of the desolate street. Ten or twenty years ago this might have been a decent area, she thought. Today, however, it was anything but decent. Unchecked weeds sprouted wildly between the cracks in the pavements where overgrown and unruly front lawns had spilled over the remains of collapsed walls and fences. The battered wrecks of old, half-stripped down cars sat useless outside equally dilapidated houses. Uncollected and overflowing black sacks of rubbish had been dumped in piles waiting for a council collection that would probably never come. Acacia Road was a grey, dead and depressing scene. Culthorpe's throat was dry. Not long out of training, an uneasy mixture of nerves, adrenaline and trepidation filled her stomach.

`Which number was it?' Glover asked as he walked around the back of the car to stand next to her.

`Forty-six,' she replied. `Come on then.'

The male officer began walking down the road. Culthorpe followed, checking the numbers on each one of the dark, shell-like buildings as she walked. They passed number four (which, as it was between numbers twenty-two and twenty-six, was most likely actually number twenty-four) and increased their speed. Thirty-eight, forty, forty-two, forty-four and then they were there. Number forty-six. The number had been daubed on the wall in off-white emulsion paint next to the boarded-up window in the front door. From the end of the path they could already hear the argument taking place inside. She noticed the remains of a large piece of furniture in the middle of the overgrown lawn. The front bedroom window had been smashed and a pair of thin, grey curtains blew out in the early morning breeze like a dirty flag. It didn't take a genius to work out what had happened.

`What gets me,' Glover moaned as he forced open the garden gate (the bottom hinge was broken and it scraped noisily along the ground) and began to walk up the path, `is the fact that these people are even awake at this time. You know, most of them are usually off their faces on booze or drugs and they don't open their eyes before mid-afternoon. Bloody hell, these people shouldn't even be awake yet, never mind having a domestic before eight o'clock in the bloody morning.'

`Probably still up from last night,' Culthorpe suggested.

`You're probably right,' Glover agreed. `Bloody dirty bastards. More bloody trouble than they're worth...'

Culthorpe smiled to herself. Glover was a far more experienced officer than she was, but even after just a couple of days working with him she had already learnt to read him like a book. As he got closer to an incident and became more nervous, she'd noticed, he started to swear. She, on the other hand, became more controlled and focussed as dangerous situations approached. It was the idea of conflict that she didn't like. Once she was actually there in the middle of the trouble doing something about it she could handle herself as well as the next man. In fact, she could usually handle herself better than the next man.

`What's this bastard's name again?' asked Glover, nodding towards the grim building they now stood outside.

`Shaun Jenkins,' Culthorpe replied. `The call came in from his partner, Faye Smith. Said he was threatening her and the kids.'

`And how many kids was it?'

`Three,' she replied as she reached up and banged on the door. `Open up please, Shaun. It's the police.'

No answer. Culthorpe hammered her fist on the door again. She could hear something happening inside. A child crying and then heavy, desperate footsteps trying to get to the door. A collision and a muffled scream. Jenkins, it seemed, was having a last ditch attempt to sort out the so called domestic problem � whatever it was � without police involvement.

Glover leant forward and thumped on the door.

`Open up,' he bellowed, `or I'll kick the door down.'

`Fuck off,' a hoarse, angry voice spat from just inside the building. Glover exchanged a momentary glance with Culthorpe before stepping back and kicking the lock. They could hear more struggling inside the house. Something slammed against the back of the door � Faye Smith, presumably � and it then opened inwards. Culthorpe barged her way in through the half-open door and lurched towards Jenkins who was grabbing at Smith, trying to drag her up onto her feet so that he could kick her back down again. In a single movement Culthorpe marched through the hallway, grabbed the junkie by the scruff of his scrawny neck and dragged him into the nearest room where she threw him onto a magazine, beer can and cigarette butt-covered sofa. A large, solid woman, she had a weight advantage over most people so this scarred and drug-addled excuse for a man didn't have a hope. Even if he'd been lucid enough to be able to react he still would have had no chance.

Culthorpe glanced back at Faye Smith who lay on the threadbare hall carpet in a sobbing heap.

`I'll look after this one,' she shouted to Glover. `You get her and the kids sorted out.'

Glover helped Smith to her feet. She wrestled herself from his grip and began to limp towards the room at the far end of the hallway. The policeman could just make out the shape of a child waiting anxiously in the shadows of the kitchen. He saw two more children � both boys, both half-dressed � standing at the top of the staircase, peering down through a gap in the banister.

`It's all right, lads,' he said, `your mum's okay. You stay up there and get yourselves dressed and we'll be up to see you in a couple of minutes.'

Glover glanced to his right and saw that Culthorpe was in complete control in the living room. He had to admit, she was turning out to be bloody good in situations like this. He was happy for her to take the lead, despite her relative inexperience. She stood tall over Jenkins. The wiry little man squirmed on the sofa.

`Do you want to tell me what's been going on here, Shaun,' she asked him, `or should I...?'

A sudden spit of hissing crackle and static from her radio interrupted her. Annoyed and distracted she grabbed at it, keeping one hand tight around Jenkins' neck. Through the white noise and interference she thought for a moment that she could hear something. Muffled, unnatural sounds. It sounded as if someone at the other end was being strangled or choked or...

A sudden movement from Jenkins immediately refocused the police officer.

`Look, Shaun,' she began, `we can do this here or we can...'

Jenkins' face began to change. His vacant, drugged-up expression disappeared and suddenly became more alert. Culthorpe tensed and reached for the baton on her belt, sensing that he was about to attack. The man tried to push himself up from the sofa but then stopped and fell back down. The expression on his face had again changed. His features began to twist and contort with sudden shock and pain.

`What's the matter?' Culthorpe asked, still cautious of the junkie. `What's wrong?'

Jenkins grabbed at his throat and she relaxed her grip. His breathing changed. His drug-fuelled panting became shallow, irregular and forced. She could hear him beginning to rasp and rattle. Was he for real? Christ, what should she do? She hadn't covered this in training. Did she risk trying to help him or should she call Glover and... and the colour in his face was beginning to drain. Bloody hell, there was no way he was faking this. Was it a seizure or a fit brought on by whatever he'd taken or was it something she'd done? Had she used too much force...? Jenkins' eyes, already wild and dilated, began to bulge as he fought for breath. He threw himself back in suffocating agony and began to desperately claw at his inflamed throat. `Glover!' Culthorpe shouted. `Glover, get yourself in here now!'

Culthorpe had to take a chance. She grabbed Jenkins' flailing legs and laid him out flat on the sofa. He arched his back in pain, his willowy frame beginning to shake and convulse furiously. Pressing down on his bare chest with one hand she tried to hold his thrashing head still with the other and clear his airway. Suddenly motionless for the briefest of moments, the odious addict then let out a tearing, agonising cough of pain and suffocation which splattered the police officer with blood and spittle. Shocked and repulsed she staggered back and wiped her face clean.

`Shit,' she cursed. `Glover, where are you?'

Still no response from her partner. Jenkins began to convulse again and she forced herself to move back closer towards him. It was her duty to try and save his life, much as she knew it wasn't worth saving. She crouched down next to him. By the time she'd decided what she needed to do he'd already lost consciousness. He wasn't moving.

`Glover!' she yelled again. Now that Jenkins was still she could hear more noises all over the dark, dank and squalid house. Her heart thumping in her chest, she stood up and walked cautiously towards the door. From the kitchen came a sudden crashing noise as plates, dishes and glasses fell to the ground and smashed. Culthorpe ran into the room and found Glover, Faye Smith and one of her three children sprawled motionless on the cold, sticky linoleum, surrounded by the remains of the food and crockery which had been knocked off a now upturned table. They were all dead. Smith, Glover and the child at her feet were dead, as was Jenkins when she returned to him. She ran upstairs. The two children up there were dead too. One was in the bathroom, the corpse wedged between the base of the sink and the toilet pan. She found his brother lying on the carpet next to his bed. Both of the children were white-faced but with crimson, almost black blood dribbling from their silent mouths.

With clumsy, nervous hands Culthorpe reached for her radio again and called for assistance. The familiar sound of hissing static cut through the silence, reassuring her momentarily.

She yelled desperately into the radio for help. No-one answered.

PETER GUEST

I keep going over the conversation in my head again and again and again, and every time I see Joe's face it hurts me more. I've been close before but I know I've really done it this time. I've made a huge mistake.

What happened at home this morning has been brewing for weeks, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. Sometimes I feel like I'm trapped and that I don't have any control. I'm trying to do my best for everyone but no-one can see it, and at the same time everyone blames me whenever anything goes wrong. I'm starting to think that whichever way I turn and whatever I do I'll end up pissing someone off and paying one hell of a price. I can't stop looking at the clock. It's almost eight. Jenny will have Joe ready for school now. He'll be in the playground with his friends before long and everything that happened last night and this morning will be forgotten until he gets home. He kept telling me it didn't matter but I could see that it did. He kept telling me it was all right and that there'd be another time but there's no escaping the fact that I've let my son down again. The trouble is, how can I justify sitting in a school hall watching my child's first class assembly when I should be at the office, closing a deal that's taken days and weeks of effort to bring to the table? I know that in financial terms there's no competition and the office has to take precedence, but I also know that on just about every other level I should be putting work at the very bottom of the pile. It's hard to do that. The pressure they're putting me under is immense. And worst of all, I have this gnawing, nagging emptiness in the pit of my stomach which is telling me this morning that I might have just paid a price that can't be measured in pounds and pence.

It wouldn't matter so much if this were the first time. It wouldn't even be that bad if it was only the second or third time either. Truth is because of work I seemed to have missed just about every notable landmark event in Joe's short life so far. I missed his first day at playgroup because of an off-site meeting and I missed his first morning at nursery because I was in Hong Kong on a business trip. I missed his first day at school. I missed his first nativity play and his first proper birthday party with his friends. And why did I miss all of those things? If I'm honest, I truly believed that I was doing it all for Jenny and Joe. I just want us to have a good standard of living and not to want for anything. If that means I have to work long hours and be dedicated to my job then so be it, that's what I'm prepared to do.

Jenny doesn't see things that way. She used to, but she doesn't anymore.

She really laid into me last night when I took the call and told her I was going to be at the office early. She started hurling all kinds of threats and accusations in my direction, telling me that we were getting close to the point where I was going to have to make a choice between my career and my family. She's said things like that before, but last night it felt different. I could tell that she meant every last word she said. I tried again to tell her that I was only doing it for her and Joe but she wasn't listening. She asked me if I could imagine a time when I didn't work for the company and I said that I could. It might still be a long way off, but I know the day will eventually come when I don't work for them any longer. Then she asked me if I could imagine being without her and Joe. I said that I couldn't and that I didn't even want to think about it. She said that was the choice I had to make. If they were more important to me than work, why did I keep choosing work over them?

Bloody hell, I know she's right and I know I should be stronger, but the company has got me by the balls.

Traffic's bad this morning. God, that'd be bloody ironic, wouldn't it, if the traffic makes me late for the meeting after all the grief I've had over this. I'm over halfway there now and it's been pretty much bumper to bumper since I left home. This isn't unusual. This is the main route into town and I know that a lot of commuters will be turning off and heading for the motorway soon, leaving the last mile or so to the office relatively clear.

Last major set of traffic lights coming up. I might be sitting here for the next ten minutes or so but, once I'm through, I should be at the office pretty quickly. I'll get this meeting done and I'll see if I can't get away a little earlier tonight. I'll find a way of making it up to Joe and Jen. If we get the deal closed this morning we all stand to get a decent payout next month. I'll take them out for dinner tonight and put it on the credit card. I'll take them for a pizza or a burger, Joe will love that. Maybe we could go to the cinema if he's not too tired after school. I can't keep him out too late. Perhaps I'll take them at the weekend. Maybe I'll just get them both something from town at lunchtime. But I don't want it to seem like I'm just trying to pay for...

Bloody hell, what was that? As I pulled away from the lights just then I'm sure I saw a car going out of control on its way down the bypass. There's no way I can turn back. There are plenty of other people about and there's probably nothing I could do anyway. The police watch all these roads on CCTV and they'll be on the scene before... Jesus Christ! I'm just heading down into the Heapford tunnel and I've seen another crash at the top of the slip road I've just pulled off. I went by so fast I didn't really see what happened. There was a blue-grey estate and it smacked into the back of another car. They both went spinning across the carriageway. Thank God I missed it. I hope everyone involved is all right and I don't want to sound completely uncaring, but I can't afford to be delayed today. A minute or so later and I would have been stuck in the tailback and chaos that rush-hour crashes always leave behind.

Down into the relative darkness of the tunnel. The light quickly fades and I listen to how the sounds change around me � the signal on the radio disappears and the noise of the city is muffled and snuffed out by the sounds of car engines echoing around the inside of the tunnel. The road ahead bends away to the left. I can see the bright red glow of brake lights up ahead. Drivers are always having to brake sharply at the end of this tunnel. They just don't anticipate the filter system. Everyone drives too fast down here and... and there are quite a few cars backed up now. Bloody hell, I hope it is just the filter and nothing more serious. I'm cutting it fine now. To be stuck this close to the office would be just unbelievable.

The noises around me are changing again. Now I can hear brakes and horns and engines roaring and other sounds. The radio is still quiet. It sounds like there's been another... Hang on, the traffic is stopping. There must have been another accident. Christ, three in one morning, and all in less than a mile. What are the chances of that...? Shit, what the hell is happening...? Jesus, this is a bloody pileup. It looks like a load of cars have smashed and been wedged together and... and I've got to stop before I hit them. I slam on my brakes but I'm going too fast to stop in time. The car behind me is doing the same, and the one to my right too. I'm going to hit something or something's going to hit me. I try to keep hold of the steering wheel and take my feet of the pedals so that I don't damage my legs and I'm just trying to...

Seven minutes later Peter Guest woke up. Dazed and disorientated, he gently pushed himself upright and gagged and coughed as warm, semi-coagulated blood trickled sickeningly into his open mouth and down the back of this throat from his broken nose. The fact that he might miss his vital meeting was the first irrational thought that crossed his concussed mind. He immediately struggled to unbuckle his seat belt and disentangle himself from the remains of the now deflated airbag which had prevented his face from smashing into the steering wheel with any more force. He had to get out of here and get to the office. He had to let them know what had happened. They'd understand if they knew he'd been in an accident.

Guest slowly and painfully attempted to focus on his dull surroundings. The end of the tunnel around the bend allowed a degree of grey morning light to trickle and seep across the scene a hundred meters or so ahead. Nearer to him the yellow-orange strip lights suspended along the arched ceiling of the tunnel provided a little more illumination. His car was wedged tight between the tunnel wall on his left and a crashed black taxi cab to his right. He tried to open his door but could move it no more than a couple of inches. Needing to get out of his car and out of the tunnel he lifted his aching body up out of his seat, clambered over the dashboard and scrambled through the shattered remains of his windscreen before rolling over onto his back on the car's crumpled bonnet. The effort required to move just that short distance was immense. He lay still for a moment or two longer (just enough time to let a sudden debilitating wave of nausea subside) and then stood upright on his car, leaning breathlessly against the grubby tunnel wall for support.

For as far as Guest could see both ahead and behind him the tunnel was filled with a huge mass of tangled, crashed traffic. Most vehicles seemed simply to have collided with those in front and around them and had come to a sudden, shunted stop whilst others had been forced up into the air by violent impacts. A few cars behind where Guest was standing a once pristine bright red, two-seater sports car lay on its roof, straddled widthways across the remains of two other vehicles.

Apart from him, nothing was moving.

Guest cautiously began to edge forwards. The road was obscured by wreckage and he had no option but to clamber over the mass of cars, trucks and vans if he wanted any chance of getting out of the tunnel. He had to do it. He was in pain. He needed daylight and fresh air. He needed help.

After dragging himself over the boot, the roof and then the bonnet of another car, Guest was faced with a short jump onto the boot of another. Pausing to compose himself and bracing himself for impact, he jumped onto the second vehicle and lost his footing, slipping down onto a small triangular patch of road that had somehow remained clear in the midst of the carnage. He fell clumsily against another car door. Inside the car the sudden lurching movement caused by Guest's impact made the body of a passenger slump over to one side, its head smashing against the window with a heavy, sickening thump. Christ, he hadn't thought about the other drivers. Struggling with his own disorientation, pain and confusion he had only been concerned with his own safety and well-being and with trying to get himself out of the tunnel as quickly as possible. Now that he stopped to think about the others, however, they were suddenly all that he could see. He scrambled through the devastation to get to the nearest body but it was no use, the poor bastard was already dead. As was the next one he found, and the next, and the next. He was the only one left alive.

Everywhere Guest looked he saw bodies. Vast, countless numbers of them. Bloodied, battered faces smashed against windows and limp, shattered bodies hanging awkwardly out of half-open doors. And the longer he stared into the shadows, the more he saw. In the low gloom he saw splintered, broken bones, dripping pools of crimson-black blood, torn skin, gouged eyes, twisted limbs and smashed faces. Suddenly finding enough terrified energy to be able to rise above his own pain, he began to run, jump and dive like an adrenaline-charged athlete until he had cleared the tunnel and was finally out in the open air again.

But the carnage and devastation had not been limited to the inside of the tunnel. All around him now it continued, unabated and unstoppable. Endless, inexplicable and seemingly without reason or direction.

Guest dragged himself along silent streets to the office where, sitting amongst the lifeless bodies of the colleagues and business associates with whom he should now have been meeting and negotiating, he sat and tried to make sense of the incomprehensible nightmare which had reduced his world to ruin.

It was almost two o'clock before I made it back home. The house was empty. I knew in my heart it would be.

I ran the half-mile or so between home and Joe's school. Once or twice I nearly stopped and turned back. By that time I'd already seen hundreds of bodies, possibly even thousands, but they were faceless and nameless. As I neared the school I began to see corpses that I recognised. I walked among the bodies of people I had known � Joe's teachers and the parents of his classmates, Jen's friends. I knew that somewhere in the school building I would find the bodies of my family.

Joe was in his classroom. I found him underneath his desk, curled up tightly in a ball. Jen was in the assembly hall, lying next to an upturned chair, half-covered by the body of another dead child's dead parent.

I carried them both to a little room and the three of us sat together for a while longer.

If I'd listened to Jen I would have been there when it happened. I might not have been able to do anything to help either of them, but if I had listened I would have been there. Because of me my wife and child died frightened and alone.

I don't know what to do now. I don't even know if there's any point trying to do anything.

I lost everything today.

JACKIE SOAMES

Jackie Soames opened one eye and then closed it again. It was late. She should have been up hours ago. George should have woken her up hours ago. Bloody man, sometimes he was absolutely useless. She didn't ask much of him but she relied on him to help. She ran the business and looked after the punters, he kept the home running and kept her happy. It was an unusual arrangement but it worked, and it had worked well for more than twenty years now.

Jackie opened one eye again.

It was quarter-to-eleven. Christ, how could she have slept in for so long? She should be opening the pub soon. She'd never missed opening time before � not even on the day her father had died - and she knew she'd take some stick from the regulars if she was late unlocking the doors today. She couldn't afford to waste time like this. In the pub trade you live and breathe the job. You're never off duty � there's always something to do and it all has to be done. She worked from the crack of dawn until the very end of each day (that was the curse and the joy of living with the job) and she couldn't believe that George had let her sleep in for so long. Where was he? She remembered him getting up when the alarm went off just after seven o'clock, but she couldn't remember him coming back after that. Strange, she thought, he usually brought her up a coffee before half-past eight and left it on the beside table for her. There was no cup there today...

Last night had been hard going. Monday nights were usually difficult. Jackie always had to do something special to try and get a decent sized crowd in on a Monday. She'd tried quiz nights and theme nights and cheap drinks promotions but the punters never seemed to want to know. Last night they'd had a band on, and a bloody awful band it had been too. Nice enough lads, but they were all noise and no talent. She'd come across plenty of similar acts trying to make a name for themselves over the years. `Give `em enough volume,' they seemed to think, `and the crowd won't know we can't play.'

They should have been here to pick up their stuff a couple of hours ago but she hadn't heard them. The bedroom was right over the bar. Anything happening down there would surely have woken her up. Christ, she must have been in a deep sleep. Maybe she was coming down with something? She couldn't afford to get ill. She couldn't risk leaving George in charge...

The music had not gone down well with the regulars at the Lion and Lamb last night. A good old traditional British spit and sawdust pub with good old traditional spit and sawdust locals, halfway through their act the noise from the less than impressed crowd of drinkers had threatened to drown out the music from the band. The drummer had given up straight away. The others lasted for another song and a half before admitting defeat and putting down their instruments. Trying to make the most of a disappointing situation, and trying to recoup the cost of the night without leaving the boys in the band out of pocket, Jackie had locked the doors after closing time and kept everyone drinking through the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Christ she was paying for it now.

Finally managing to prise open both eyes, she picked herself up out of bed, stumbled to the bathroom and threw up. That was better. Once the acidic taste and the vomit and booze-induced disorientation had passed she began to feel herself again. As a regular (daily) drinker of admirable capacity and many years standing, Jackie had become hardened to the effects of alcohol. It was a well rehearsed routine that she followed now. She got drunk, she fell asleep, she woke up, she threw up, she felt better. And the next night she did it again. It was all part of the job. The first cigarette of the day helped settle her stomach.

Where the hell was George?

`George?' she called out. `George, are you downstairs? Do you know what time it is?'

When he didn't respond she quickly got dressed (no-one ever saw her in her nightwear except her husband) and went out onto the landing. Nothing. She couldn't hear or see anything. Cursing her husband under her breath she stormed back to the bedroom. He must have gone out, she decided. That bloody man had gone out and left her fast asleep. And I bet those boys from last night haven't been able to get back in and get their stuff, she thought. With just over half an hour to go before opening time Jackie was close to losing her temper on a massive scale. Takings were down as it was. The last thing she needed was George making things worse for her by not pulling his weight. He was probably down the betting office, she grumbled to herself. That was where he seemed to spend most of his spare time. She earned the money and he flittered it away on horses and dogs. She'd have sacked him by now if she hadn't been married to him.

The bedroom was still dark and she kept it that way as she got herself ready. Regardless of what had happened to George, she still had a business to run. When it came to the crunch it was down to her and her alone to keep the pub running. It was her name on the licence, not George's. It was her name on the lease and on the contract with the brewery and the buck stopped with her. She wasn't complaining. That was how she liked it.

In the semi-darkness Jackie began to assemble her public image. No-one saw her without make-up but George. She was never seen in public looking anything less than perfect. Once dressed she sat in front of the mirror where she brushed her hair and painted on her smile. Copious squirts of her favourite fragrance to hide the smell of drink and cigarettes and she was ready to face the rest of the world. The landing was as dark as the bedroom. Beyond that the living room was as dark as the landing and the first floor function room was as dark as everywhere else. Jackie popped her head around each of the doors before going down. Strange, she thought, it was Tuesday. Paula Hipkiss hired the function room on Tuesday mornings to run her weekly keep-fit class. What had happened to them? There was no way she would have slept through that. If the thumping music hadn't woken her up, then the elephantine crashing of anything between ten and twenty-five sweaty, overweight, middle-aged housewives surely would have.

`George,' she yelled again, her smoker's voice hoarse and angry. She coughed as she stumbled down the stairs. Bloody hell, it was as dark down there as the rest of the building. The cleaners, aerobics instructors, crowds of chubby women, talentless musicians, her useless husband � someone should have been here to turn the lights on and get the place ready for the punters. And she was right, the band hadn't been able to get in to get their gear. She could see it piled up at the far end of the room.

`George!' she screamed at a volume that, had he heard her, he would never had dared ignore. `Where are you for Christ's sake?'

Jackie opened the curtains and stumbled around the bar. She found her husband of twenty-three years dead on the stairs which led down to the cellar. Poor bugger, he looked like he'd lost his footing and fallen headfirst down the steps, smashing his face into the concrete cellar floor. Shaking with sudden shock and emotion she slowly made her way down to him, one precarious step at a time, stepping over his sprawled out limbs. When she got to the bottom she sat down on the step next to him and began to cry.

Oh, George, Jackie thought, and there I was thinking you'd let me down. Sobbing, and filled with guilt, sorrow and a genuine deep, raw sadness, she tenderly stroked her husband's mop of white hair and gently shook his shoulder.

`Come on, love,' she whispered hopefully, `wake up.'

She knew it was too late. She knew that George was dead.

Several long, quiet, grief-filled minutes later Jackie managed to drag herself back up from the cellar. It was almost opening time now but that didn't seem to matter anymore. She poured herself a large gin, knocked it back, poured herself another and then picked up the phone to call for the doctor. The pub was still dark and empty and she looked around the shadow-filled room with sad, desperate eyes. Much as she was the brains of the operation and the one who made all the decisions, Jackie didn't know how she'd cope without George.

The telephone wasn't working.

She finished her drink, hung up and tried again. Same problem. Couldn't get a line.

Not the kind of people to waste their time with gadgets and fads, neither George nor Jackie had ever owned a mobile phone. Jackie decided to try and telephone from the bank next door. If the worst came to the worst, she thought, she'd walk up to the doctor's surgery. It was only a little way down the high street. She'd go out through the back door to avoid any of the regulars who might be waiting around the front to get in.

When Jackie stepped out into the cobbled courtyard behind the pub she immediately noticed how quiet it was outside. She buttoned up her coat, locked the door and then walked out through the gate, down the alleyway and onto the high street.

The devastation was incredible.

A bus was on its side just up the road. In the distance Westwood Garage was on fire. There were crashed cars all over the place and, for as far as she could see in every direction, hundreds of people lay dead on the cold ground around her.

This had happened hours ago.

What had caused it?

How had she slept through it and why hadn't it affected her?

Jackie went back into the Lion and Lamb and poured herself another gin.

GARY KEELE

`All right, Tuggie,' shouts Meade across the carpark. The sun's bright this morning. I have to cover my eyes with my hand so that I can see him.

`Morning, Keith,' I shout back. `Good day for it?'

He looks up and around.

`Just about perfect, I'd say,' he answers as he grabs his bag from the back of his car and starts walking towards the office.

He's right. It's a perfect day for flying. It's days like this that make me glad everything worked out the way it did between me and Sarah. If we were still together then I wouldn't be here now. I'd still be stuck living in our cramped terraced house in the middle of the city, spending long hours stuck in traffic and even longer hours stuck at the office. Most of the people I used to work with are probably still there, too scared to leave, stuck in a rut. And while they sit at their desks and follow orders, I'm out here in the fresh air, sitting on my backside and occasionally flying. I'm making it sound like I don't do anything around here. I do � I work damn hard when I have to � but I enjoy it. It doesn't feel like a job.

Shame we had to part on such bad terms though. I had a good few years with Sarah until we split up. Everything happened within the space of six months. She went off with a financial adviser (who advised her that he was worth a lot more than I was) and then, as I was just getting myself back on my feet, the bastards made me redundant. I had nothing to stay in the city for. We sold the house and I took my share and what was left of my redundancy payment and packed my bags and moved to the other side of the country. I learnt to fly a plane (it was something I'd always wanted to do) and then managed to get myself a job here at the Clifton Gliding Centre, towing gliders two thousand feet up into the air and then letting them go so that they can drift back down to the ground. Easy. I have a good life now. Simple, but good.

A line of three virtually identical (in all but colour) cars pull into the gravel carpark. The sound of their wheels crunching along the ground disturbs the quiet of the morning. This must be today's visitors arriving. There are supposed to be eight or nine of them I think, sales reps from a company in town. Noisy buggers. It's only just turned eight and all I can hear is them laughing and shouting. Why can't they talk quietly? It's probably just nerves. It's good sport watching blokes like this. They try and act all cool and relaxed on the ground, but I know they're nervous as hell. As soon as they're strapped into the gliders and they're ready to go up they change. All the bravado and macho bullshit disappears. When there's just the hull of a flimsy little plane and two thousand feet of air between their backsides and the ground they tend to shut up and drop the act. I hate these corporate team building activities. To think I used to have to do all this...

As the group disappears into the office to sign in and be briefed on the rules for the day I start getting the plane ready. I can still hear the voices of the seven men and two women as I walk over to the hanger. I climb into the plane, shut the cockpit and fire up the engine, drowning out their noise once and for all. I taxi out onto the airfield (which literally is a field here � no concrete runways for us) and move into position. Once we're ready I stop the engine, get out of the plane and walk over to where some of the other staff are standing in front of the hanger.

`Do me a favour,' I say to Willy who's one of the regular glider pilots.

`What's that?' he asks.

`Give them a fright, will you? Scare the shit out of these buggers!'

He smiles knowingly. He shares my dislike of overpaid businessmen.

`No problem,' he grins. `Anyway, Tuggie, five minutes of being dragged up behind you with your flying is enough to scare anyone! I'll be shitting myself, never mind them!'

`Cheeky sod!' I snap as Willy walks away, cackling to himself.

Willy and Jones (one of the ground staff) stand and wait for Ed (Willy's lad) who's towing the gliders out of the hanger and out onto the airfield. The tractor he's driving is a noisy bugger. It fills the air with chugging and clattering and with clouds of thick black fumes which it spits out of its exhaust. I head back to my caravan for a cup of coffee to wake me up properly before the flying starts.

We move quickly. It's not even nine o'clock and I've already towed three gliders up.

This really is a simple job. The glider's attached to the back of the plane by a cable. I take off and drag it up until we've reached around two thousand feet. The glider pilot releases the cable. They go up (for a while, if the conditions are right) and I go back down. They usually stay up for anything between twenty minutes and half an hour. The flights might last a little longer today. The clouds are good and the sun is bright. There should be plenty of thermals to keep them up in the air. Once I've lost them I can just coast back down to the landing strip.

We usually try to have four or five gliders up in the air at the same time. This morning the first three went up without any problems. Ed's just attaching number four to the back of the tug plane. I watch the lads getting the glider ready in my mirrors. Ellis (the pilot) nods to Jones who gives me a hand signal and I start to move slowly forward until the cable is taut. Another hand signal and I stop. Behind me two ground hands hold the wings of the glider, keeping it steady. A final signal from one of them tells me that they're ready to fly.

We're off again. The tug plane bumps along the uneven grass for a couple of hundred yards before I give it a little more gas, pull back the controls and start to climb. The rumbling beneath me is suddenly silenced as the wheels leave the ground. Now the glider's up too and we're on our way. I can see the faces of the two men in the plane behind me. Ellis is talking ten to the dozen but his passenger isn't listening. He's bloody terrified! I think he's got his eyes shut!

Christ, the sun's bright. There's no escaping it when you're up here. It's hot too. It's not like you can pull down a blind or open a window. You just have to put up with it to an extent. You know it's not going to last for that long. A few minutes flying and then... Shit, what was that? Turbulence? Not at this altitude. No, I didn't like that, something's not right. I'm looking at the controls in front of me, but there's nothing wrong with my plane. Everything looks normal. It must be the glider. Something's happening behind me. I can't see what they're doing... Oh, Christ. Jesus Christ, Ellis is losing control. We're not even a thousand feet up yet and he's lost it. I can't see what's happening and I don't know if he's...

Oh, God, the glider's rolling to the side. He has to release. If he doesn't he'll drag me back with him and... and I can't see Ellis. Bloody hell, I can see the passenger's face now. He looks like he's trying to get out. He's banging against the sides of the cockpit. Maybe he's had a panic attack or something. Damn, I can just about see Ellis now. He looks just as scared as the other man.

The glider's tipping again. We have to separate. I don't have any choice, I have to pull the emergency release. If I don't then they'll pull me down with them and we'll all... There, done it. Had to do it. I'm free again and I've got control back. I bank and climb and look down below me as the glider rolls and dips and begins to spin towards the ground.

I can't watch. I don't know what happened in there, but I know that the two men don't have long. It'll be over in a couple of seconds. I just hope Ellis can try and get control and level out before... I need to get back down there and get help. If I... Jesus Christ, what was that? What's happening now? Fucking hell, another glider has just dived right across the front of me. It could only have been a hundred yards ahead. Shit, another couple of seconds later and it would have hit me and I'd be heading down there with Ellis and... and what the hell is happening here?

The planes are dropping out of the sky all around me. The four gliders we put up this morning are all either down or on their way down. Keith Meade � a man who's been flying these things for more years than anyone else I know � has lost control of his glider too. The plane is spiralling down towards the hanger. I don't want to look but I can't help but stare as the flimsy aircraft smashes through the roof, its metal and fibreglass wings and body crumpling and being torn apart on impact.

My heart is thumping and sweat is pouring down my face. I can't think straight. God knows how I'm managing to keep flying. My legs are shaking with nerves and I can hardly keep the wings of the plane level. I've got to keep going. I'm approaching the airfield from the wrong direction but it doesn't matter. There's no-one else left up in the sky. I can't see anyone moving down there. Surely someone should have been out here to help by now?

I have to leave my landing a little longer than I'd like. What's left of Ellis' glider is strewn across the middle of the landing strip. There are pieces of plane and God knows what else scattered all over the place. I can't risk hitting any of the debris. I manage to put the plane down in half the distance I'd usually need. I kill the engine and sit and wait for the propeller to stop moving before I move. I don't want to go out there. I can't see anything or anyone moving. I can't sit here all day. I slowly climb out of the cockpit of the tug and just stand there for a moment, listening to the loudest, most overpowering and terrifying silence I've ever heard.

What the hell has happened here?

There are bodies at the side of the airfield. Without stopping to think about what I'm doing I find myself walking towards them. These aren't people who were flying. There are a couple of faces that I recognise � Meade's daughter is one of them. The rest, I think, are the remains of the men and women visitors who weren't flying. They're dead. They're all dead. As cold and lifeless as the rest of their colleagues who are scattered in pieces around here.

Inside the office I find Chantelle Prentiss, our Admin girl, dead at the front desk. The phone is off the hook next to her upturned hand. It looks like she was in the middle of a call when it (whatever it was) happened. I pick up the phone and lift it to my ear. Silence. I hang up and try to dial out but there's no answer on any number. After a while the phone stops working completely.

The world is dead.

I'm up in the plane again, flying round and trying to find someone else who's left alive. There's no-one.

The whole damn world is dead.

JULIET APPLEBY

`So what time will you be home tonight?' asked Mrs Appleby, staring with frustration at her daughter across the breakfast table. Sometimes trying to get information out of Juliet was like trying to get blood out of a stone.

`I don't know Mum...' she began to answer, in a quiet, mumbling voice that her mother had to strain to hear.

`Because you know how your dad gets if you're not back when he's expecting you,' Mrs Appleby interrupted.

`I know, but I can't help it if I have to stop back...'

`He has to have his meal before half-six otherwise it keeps him awake all night. And you know how he likes us all to eat together. It's an important part of family life.' `I know.'

`Dad just likes his routine, that's all. And he likes to know where you are. He likes to know that you're safe.'

`I know that too, Mum, but...'

`But what, love?'

`I'm thirty-nine for God's sake.'

Juliet Appleby closed the front door behind her and walked down the garden path to the car, pulling on her coat and brushing her long, wind-swept hair out of her eyes. She glanced back at the house before unlocking the car and getting in. There they were. She could see them both hiding behind the net curtains, pretending not to watch � Mum in front, trying not to be seen, and Dad standing just behind her. Hiding behind Mum, that was where he seemed to have spent most of his life, she thought. Inside the house he was king, and he let the two of them know that constantly and in no uncertain terms. Stick him outside and force him to face the rest of the world, however, and he couldn't cope. The accident twelve years ago (which was still a taboo subject that they weren't allowed to talk to him about) had destroyed his confidence and unbalanced his temperament. He didn't seem able to interact properly with anyone outside the small and tight circle of the immediate family. Outside Dad would always get aggressive or angry or confrontational with some poor unsuspecting person and it would inevitably be left to Mum or Juliet to smooth things over and sort things out.

Juliet sat down in the car and started the engine. Poor Mum, she thought. She'd dedicated her life to Dad. She'd put up with years of his moaning and his mood swings and his tempers. Sometimes, though, she was just as bad as he was. As Dad relied on Mum, so Mum seemed to rely on Juliet. And who was there for her? No-one. On the few occasions that she'd been brave enough to start talking about leaving home and setting up on her own it was usually Mum who played the sickness card and who came up with a list of reasons why she couldn't leave and why she had to stay and why they needed her around. She believed it. Each and every time she heard it she believed it. Why would they lie to her? Her friends at the nursery told her that she should just pack her bags and leave. But it was easy for them. She'd left it too late, and now she was trapped, spending her time being paid to look after other people's children when she should have been raising her own. Fat chance of that ever happening. She hadn't ever had a `proper' relationship. Men were either put off by the fact that she behaved like a timid old-maid trapped in a younger person's body, or Dad managed to put them off for her. She'd long since stopped dwelling on all that she had gone without physically, but she often thought about the cruel irony of her situation � there she was, a thirty-nine year old virgin, surrounded constantly by the fruits of other people's sexual encounters.

A quick wave to Mum and Dad (even though they thought she couldn't see them) and she was off. A ten minute drive into the centre of Rowley and she'd be there.

Juliet always seemed to be the first one to arrive at work. She was always there ages before anyone else. At the time she arrived at the nursery each morning there were usually only one or two other people around � usually just Jackson the caretaker and Ken Andrews, the deputy head of the infant school to which the nursery was attached.

`Morning, Joanne,' smiled Andrews, waving across the playground. Bloody man, she thought. In all the years she'd been working in and around the school he'd never got her name right. Occasionally she thought he did it on purpose to try and wind her up, other times she decided he was just plain ignorant. But the fact of the matter was he continually got her name wrong because he rarely had any reason to speak to her about anything of importance and also because she'd left it too long to correct him without there being more embarrassment on her part than his. To say that Juliet melted into the background was something of an understatement. Years of her overbearing parents had virtually destroyed her self-esteem. Juliet had reached the point where she preferred it if no-one noticed her.

As usual the caretaker had opened up the prefabricated hut they used for the nursery class. The classroom was always cold first thing in the morning, even in summer, and this September morning was no exception. Her breath condensed in billowing clouds around her mouth and nose and the low temperature made the tips of her fingers feel slightly numb. She glanced up at the clock on the wall. Half an hour until the children were due. Probably twenty-five minutes before any of the other classroom assistants and nursery teachers would grace her with their presence. As low, depressed and dejected as she could ever remember feeling, she began to prepare the room for the morning's activities.

What the hell was that? Juliet stopped what she was doing and looked up. Fifteen minutes now to the start of class and she'd just heard an almighty crashing noise just outside the door. It sounded like kids messing around on the concrete steps which led up to the classroom. It sounded like they'd thrown something against the door. Juliet didn't like confrontation. She kept her head down, hoping that whoever it was would go away as quickly as they'd arrived. Maybe they'd just miss-kicked a football or something...

Suddenly another sound, this one very different to the first. It sounded like someone coughing and choking, but it couldn't have been, could it? Juliet crept cautiously towards the window and looked outside. The playground was empty and still with the only movement coming from the birds flying between the roof of the school building and the rubbish bins and back again. She was about to turn round and go back to what she'd been doing when she noticed it. She had to stand on tip-toe and crane her neck to see properly, but she could definitely see a foot sticking out over the edge of the steps. So there were kids messing around after all, she thought. With her pulse racing (she didn't like it when she didn't know what was happening) she walked over to the classroom door and pressed her ear against it. She couldn't hear anything outside. Very slowly she pushed the door open. Lying on the steps in front of her was the dead body of Sam Peters, one of the boys who had been in the nursery class last year. Panicking, she immediately slammed the door shut again and leant against it. Not knowing what she was going to do, and overcome with sudden nervousness and disorientation, she slid down to the floor and held her head in her hands. There was no question that the boy was dead. She'd never seen a body before but she knew he was dead. His frozen face was all twisted and contorted with pain and there were dribbles of blood on the front of his yellow school sweatshirt.

No-one's coming. Christ, no-one's coming.

Twenty minutes later and still no-one else had arrived at the school. Juliet had been counting on someone else finding Sam's body on the steps. She'd planned to act dumb and pretend she hadn't known he was there.

Someone else should have been here by now. Where were the other children?

Marie and Dorian, two of the other nursery helpers (who travelled to work together), should have arrived at least five minutes ago. So where were they? Were they outside? Had they found the body and had she just not heard them? Unlikely. She crept towards the window and peered outside again. She could still see Sam's foot. He was still there.

As the minutes ticked by her conscience finally got the better of her fear. She had to do something. She couldn't just sit there knowing that the poor boy was out there on the steps.

The main school office was directly across the playground from the nursery hut. Juliet decided she'd have to make a run for it. She'd open the door, run down the steps and then find the headteacher or the deputy head and tell them what had happened, despite the fact that she didn't know what the hell was going on herself.

She had to do it now.

Juliet put on her coat and, taking a deep breath, opened the classroom door and burst out into the open. Forcing herself to look anywhere but down at the body on the steps she half-jumped, half-tripped over the boy's corpse, landing awkwardly, twisting her foot and almost falling over. Managing to keep her balance she ran across the playground with the sounds of her footsteps, her heavy, frightened breathing and the thumping of her heart ringing in her ears.

The headmaster of the school was dead. She found him in the corner of his office, buried under a pile of papers that he seemed to have knocked off his desk when he'd fallen to the ground. She found the school secretary dead in the short corridor which ran between the office and the staff room, and in the staff room she found three dead teachers.

In a vacant, disorientated daze Juliet roamed round the silent school and then the surrounding streets looking for someone to explain to her what had happened.