Part 1

The human population, Jake tells me, has dropped by about ninety percent. Meaning ninety percent of the world has died. I don’t know how he knows, of whether it’s just a guess, but I figure even his guesses are good. Everything else he does seems to be.

And even to my untrained eye, that sounds about right. The first day was just a complete annihilation. Death, destruction, and fire. Blood stained the streets everywhere, in every country. New York, London, Paris, Moscow, the lot.

I don’t know why I made it through and not other people. Half of those guys we lost here were far better fighters than me. Most were smarter. Most were more charismatic. I guess it’s just the luck of the draw.

But I better get on with it. This is a story I’ve got to tell, and so I better tell it. It’s been one sickening ride for me, a struggle to survive. To survive this new age of strife, pestilence and blood. And what caused such a horrific age?

The Sickness.

My name is Ollie.

Ollie Brooks. Pretty ordinary name, I guess. I didn’t mind it too much. I’m pretty ordinary at school. Good at maths, but never quite as good as those geeks up in the top class. I was in that awkward zone where you’re too smart for the middle class, but too dumb for the top class.

I was sixteen when this all blew over. I’m sort of average height for my age. I used to work out a bit, but I’d stopped recently. I don’t know why. I’ve got brown eyes; the girls say they’re lovely. Sorry, they said they were lovely. They don’t really say anything is lovely any more.

I’ve got black hair, and quite a bit of it. I used to straighten it down in what they’d call an ‘emo fringe’, but there wasn’t time for than no more. I used to do it every morning. Took me like, ten minutes, which’d make me late for school. I also have a heap of freckles, which I hate. They literally cover my cheekbones, making it look like I’ve got constant sunburn.

I used to wear decent clothes; tight black jeans and tops from brands like Jacks and Converse. It makes me sound kind of ridiculous now, looking back on it. I still wear similar sort of clothes, but the condition of the things are awful. I’ve only just noticed, you don’t think about that kind of thing these days.

I went to a school called St Simons. Compared to other schools it was damn good; my parents would pay a fortune on fees for me to go there. My parents. I’d come to terms with what had happened to them, but it was still a bad memory.

I’d had a job for about a year before it happened. I worked at a place called Farmer’s Heart. It was like a pet shop slash garden centre slash rural stockers, selling stuff from fish to plants to mulch to hay for horses. It paid very well compared to most other jobs people my age had, and it was alright once you settled down into it. Looking back, that was where I was when this kicked off.

Maybe I should jump to that now and stop talking about myself.

Just one more thing, guys. Enjoy life. You sure have to, ‘cause it’s short. I know it. Jake knows it. And the guys we’ve lost along the way know it better than everybody else.

“Oi, Ollie. Coming down to the servo for lunch?” asked Claus.

“Pretty sure,” I replied as I began to shift the next load of bags into the trolley. They were only two kilo bags, so I was just flinging them in. One of them split as it made contact with the bottom of the trolley, spilling seed all over the floor. Claus laughed and I swore back at him as I began to clean it up.

The two of us worked out in the back room behind the store. It wasn’t really taken care of, and there were now holes in the corrugated iron roof. The concrete floor had dents and flaws all over the place and to avoid things falling over, we mostly balanced them on plywood boards. The lighting had never really worked, so Claus and I had hooked up some dodgy fish tank lights. It worked, but the room was always a bit darker than it would have been otherwise.

We had a pretty simple job. Our task every Saturday, and any days me and Claus were free, was to get the big-ass twenty, thirty and forty kilo bags, tip them into our big green bucket, and shovel them into two and five kilo bags that could fit on the shelf. It was boring and mundane, and it could get downright messy bagging stuff that was all powdery and smelly, but it payed damn good.

Today was a Wednesday. It was exam time for all of us kids. The exams run for two weeks, and most of us have six exams. Claus went to a different school than me, but today we was both free of exams and decided to come down here and work.

It was turning out to be quite an odd day. Yesterday, there were reports of this mass sickness going around. It wasn’t deadly, apart from a few cases with old and really young people, but it seemed like everybody had it. Claus said his parents had it, my parents had it, and out in the store almost everybody was sick. They were calling it Mystery Flu, as nobody had found out how it was caused. I don’t know why the flu, though. It wasn’t contagious. It just seemed to be airborne. And the weirdest part of this whole thing was, almost no kids had it.

“What’s the time?” Claus asked.

This kid better get himself a watch sometime soon, he asks me this every damn day.

I looked at my Motorola. “Midday,” I answered. “Just past midday.”

Claus sighed. “Jesus, mate, I’m starving. Bret better come out to get us for lunch soon.”

Bret was our boss here. He was in his mid-forties, but he was a damn good boss. Every Saturday he’d but the whole staff lunch, he was flexible with hours and would even pay us for overtime as small as fifteen minutes. I’d never had a better boss.

Almost as if he was on cue, Bret walked around the corner and into the back room. He looked a mess; his skin tone was off, his bushy goatee covered in sweat. This sickness had really hit him hard.

“Alright guys, if you wanna go for lunch now,” Bret said, to Claus’s relief. “Be back soon though, we need you guys churning out back here.”

“Gotcha, Bret,” said Claus, and we both left the bagging room. We walked round the back of the store, as Bret didn’t like us walking through the store and just leaving for lunch. We headed through the parking lot, noticing that there was only about three or four cars. Usually at this time of the day, the car park was overflowing with cars.

Must be the sickness.

We headed down the road Farmer’s Heart was on and turned onto the main road, Winston Road. It ran in a gigantic loop around this area, which was totally dedicated to shops. The servo was on the corner of a small connecting road that joined the Winston Road area and the mall opposite; Jarrandup. Me and Claus went to the servo every lunch break we got, even Saturdays, when we got our lunch bought for us. Claus went to get his Starburst, and I went to get a can of Red Bull. It was cheap there, and the owner, Samid, was a great friend of ours by now. He was only a couple of years older than us, but he’d worked his way up from the counter to where he was now.

We got there to see yet another empty car park. Even the petrol booths were empty. We’d never seen that before. We got up to the doors and they opened with a ding! The small store was also empty. We looked to the counter, expecting to see Samid’s smiling face welcoming us, but instead we got the overweight counter girl Samid had hired ; Naleena. He had been forced to hire her through family connections, and from what we heard she had been nothing but trouble since.

We grabbed our stuff and headed to the counter.

“Where’s Samid,” asked Claus.

“Sick. Like everybody else,” answered Naleena. “I am in charge now.”

She grabbed our stuff and run it over the scanner.

“That is going to be twenty-two dollars and forty cents,” Naleena said, and held out a fat, pudgy hand. I worked it out in my head and gave her nine-fifty.

“You owe her twelve-ninety,” I said to Claus. He paid and we swiftly left. Neither of us really liked Naleena.

“I’m going to the Lair. I need to check out ammo prices.” said Claus. The Hunter’s Lair was the local gun shop. Claus had recently bought his own rifle, and wanted to check out prices. I was about to say yes, but the heavens opened upon us, drenching us in seconds.

“Maybe not, eh?” said Claus.

“Yeah,” I answered, and we headed back to Farmer’s Heart. Claus had pulled his jumper up, but I wasn’t bothered. I didn’t really mind the rain.

Claus got there quickly, and I arrived a while later. We walked round the back, sighing with relief when Bret wasn’t there. He would have gone crazy when he saw how wet we were. We heaved a bag onto the floor, and Claus took a seat on it. I grabbed the stool from over at our little desk and we both started eating in silence.

I’d eaten my pie a few minutes before Claus had even started. He insisted that pies tasted better after eating a whole packet of Starburst. It was all pretty good here, no noise, no Bret hassling us, and awesome food and drink. I knew we’d be back working in twenty-or-so minutes, but it was good while it lasted.

That’s when we heard the scream.

It echoed through the store and reached us with almost all its original intensity. It sounded like a young girl, from the pitch of it. This wasn’t unusual, most of the kids screamed when they saw Billy the goanna, our store mascot. But then the girl ran out.

She looked about six or seven, and she was dressed in a small pink and white striped dress. Her blonde hair was tied up in a pair of pigtails, the left of which was falling out slowly. She saw us and ran in. Claus got up to ask her what’s wrong, but she ran up and hugged him tight around the leg.

I laughed. “Looks like you got a fan, Claus.”

He mouthed at me to shut it, knelt down and asked the girl what was wrong. She looked up with a terrified expression and stammered a few times before managing to get it out.

“A man tried to eat me.”

I felt like laughing, but I didn’t because that would have made this little girl feel even worse.

“Take care of her, I’m gonna check outside,” I said, as I walked around the corner to the shock of my life.

Bret was standing there, but not like I’d ever seen him before. It looked like the sickness had finally taken hold at last, and the results were horrific. His skin was all purple and blotchy, and his face was swollen beyond belief. His ankle was twisted inwards, and was making a horrible cracking sound with every step he took on it. His arms were outstretched towards me, and I could see that the tip of one of his fingers had exploded, pus dripping down his hand and onto the floor.

“Bret, are you alright?” I asked, taking a step back. He didn’t reply, but just gave a low groan. I turned and walked back into the back room.

“Dude,” I said to Claus. “Bret’s outside, and he ain’t lookin’ so good.”

“Take over for me,” Claus said, and got up, but Bret had reached the corner and turned around towards the back room.

“JESUS CHRIST!” Claus exclaimed. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I think it’s the sickness. This must be its final stage.”

“So what do we do?”

“If I knew, Claus, I’d tell you.”

The little girl had started to cry again, with an intensity we didn’t know a person could reach. She was literally bawling with...something. Fear, anxiety, terror, I didn’t know. But it was horrible. Then, she ran.

Straight at Bret. No, straight to the side of Bret. She must have been trying to bet past him, but she didn’t get far before Bret grabbed her around the midriff and heaved her up. Then, we saw the most horrible thing either of us had ever seen in our life. Bret heaved the struggling girl up to eye level and then literally sank his teeth into the little girl’s shoulder!

The girl screamed, Claus yelled a swear word and I couldn’t manage anything. I just stared in horror.

He’s fucking eating the girl. Eating her!

Bret bit deeper and deeper until he’d torn a chunk of skin out of the little girl’s arm. He chomped up and down on the bit of skin as he dropped the girl. She had passed out now, probably because of the pain. It sure looked painful.

Then, Bret turned his eyes on us. His eyes had turned milky, but the veins had grown in intensity now, so they were still visible. Blood was dripping down his chin, slowly seeping through his goatee and then onto the plywood board.

I had no idea what to do, or what was going on in general. I was still dumbstruck with horror and incapable of making a decision. Luckily, Claus wasn’t.

He turned and sprinted to the back of the room, where the large metal gate was leading into the storage area and forklift garage. I thought he was running away, but he’d instead gone for the scraper.

We used the scraper to clean up seed spills we made throughout the day. It was four and a half foot long and painted in a dark blue. On one end was a small T-handle, and on the other was a foot long bladed edge; the scraping edge. He’d grabbed it by the T-handle and walked back over to me.

“Grab the scoop,” he said, and I reached over to grab the aluminium scoop by the handle. It was like a scaled up version of those scoops you found in pick ‘n’ mix bags in supermarkets, and fitted my hand well.

“Now what?” I asked him.

“Go for the head.” He answered, and before I could say anything he’d grabbed the scraper, swung it in a high arc above his head and brought the end of the scraping blade down on Bret’s head. It made a nasty squelching noise as it pierced the skull and entered the...I didn’t want to think about it.

I recoiled in shock at what Claus had just done, but I had to admit it stopped Bret, or whatever he was now. He stopped in his tracks, wavered a bit, then collapsed in a heap on the floor. Claus put his foot on his head and yanked the scraper out. The blade was now a deep magenta on the end.

Claus’s lungs must have been working like gallows, because he was breathing in and out like a dog on a hot day. Mine was bad, but not quite as bad as his was. Claus turned around, caught his breath and started to speak.

“We gotta bail, man. I don’t have a damn clue what’s gone on, but we gotta go. Grab something heavy and let’s go.”

He turned around to look outside and into the store as I began to look around for something. The scoop would be useless for sure, and I chucked it back into the bucket, making a slight rustle as it landed on top of a pile of sunflower seeds. I grabbed a few and shoved them in my mouth. They must have been my favourite food, and it would help to calm be down a bit. I looked for a bit and grabbed a small hatchet lying on one of the storage units. Then, just in case, I picked up a ball-pein hammer and shoved it through my belt. The large buckle dug into my skin a bit, and I realised how impractical it was going to be.

I walked out to Claus. He was alert, like one of those rabbits you see on National Geographic. His hand was gripping the scraper so hard his knuckles were turning white, and his head would twitch towards even the slightest noise.

He noticed me being there without looking around. Without losing his edge, he explained to me his plan.

“We’ve gotta get out, like I said before. I think we should head around the back and try to find somewhere we can hole up for a while. Also, I think we need some more people, so we should go to somewhere we know will contain a lot of kids. I’m thinking your school; it’s a lot closer than mine. Got it?”

“Yeah, I get it, but we aren’t gonna drive there, are we?”

“Nope, we’ll have to walk.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, I know. Now let’s go.”

We slowly set off, walking around the back and into the car park. I couldn’t see any of those things around in the local area, so we continued on. To get to my school, we’d have to head down the large road that was Jarrandup Drive, through the roundabout and up a large hill to the school, St. Simons. It was going to be a long walk, but the afternoon exam should have just started, so the people should still be there. It was Chemistry too, which means there will be a lot of people around.

We had Jarrandup Drive when we saw the first one. It was an older lady, about my mum’s age. She saw us and began to hobble towards us. Claus lifted his scraper into a more comfortable position, waited for the right time, and thrusted forward with the bladed edge. It struck her right in the forehead, and she went down without a sound. Claus jerked the blade out with a sharp tug and we continued.

We were about halfway down Jarrandup Drive when we saw the bikes. There were three of them, all guys’ bikes. I looked at Claus, and when he nodded, we grabbed one each and continued at a much faster pace. My bike was your average family bike, not too good but not too bad. Claus had gotten lucky and picked a fully kitted out racing bike, with disc brakes, gel suspension, the works. He was having an easier time than I was, and it looked like it was going to get worse as we crossed the roundabout and started to head up the hill.

There were a few more of them things around now. They were mostly behind us now, but there were a few in front, shambling along and moaning. In normal circumstances we would have had to fight them all, but now we could simply ride past them, leaving them in our trail. Every now and then Claus would stop and get one with the scraper that was too close for us to ride past.

I’d noticed that some of them were faster than others. It didn’t seem to correlate with age or fitness, in fact, the fastest one I’d seen so far had a similar physique to Naleena. It was odd, but about now, nothing seemed too odd to believe. I’d seen kind-hearted Bret eat a girl’s shoulder and talkative, social Claus smash his head in. It was surreal.

We’d soon reached the road that my school was on, imaginatively names St. Simon’s Loop. It ran in a wide rectangular circle, with the school on the bottom right point. It was a large school, with four main blocks, the primary block and the gymnasium. This last block was where the exam was at, and where we were headed.

“We’ve gotta go for the gym, that’s where we’ll all be,” I called over to Claus as quiet as possible. He nodded as an affirmative and we rounded the corner, bringing the building into sight. It was a recent construction, reaching up about thirty metres from the ground. It was painted with a beige coating, with the words “SPORTS EDUCATION CENTRE” written along the side in blue, the school’s main colour.

The school was surprisingly empty, human or otherwise.

Oh yeah, its staff retreat today. I guess some stay behind to look after the kids on exams.

As we turned onto the oval which spread out along the side of the gym, we got off the bikes and continued on foot. There could be God knows how many of those things hiding out in here and we really don’t want to be stuck on bikes if they come at us.

We would head into the gym area through the toilet block, which passed from the outside through to the main floor of the gym. I tentatively pushed the door open and the pair of us entered the pristine toilet block. We came into the shower area first, still no sign of anything. Then, we passed into the area where the row of cubicles were, and noticed that one of the doors was locked.

I pointed to it, and me and Claus headed over. We were just about to knock on the door when it swung back to reveal...

“Zack?”

“Ollie, what the hell are you doin’ here?”

Zack was my best mate at school. We’d known each other since we had started here, the both of us having known nobody. He was around my height and shape, but he kept himself way more active. His hair was spiky, like one of those anime characters. He wore glasses some of the time, but he didn’t really like them. His skin tone suggested Italian or Spanish, but in reality he was an English immigrant. He was a god at science, always tinkering with machines and stuff. His eyes were a deep green, and right now they showed one surprised expression.

“You don’t have an exam today, do you?” he said, still looking surprised. His expression grew from there on, however, as we explained the situation.

“Zack, we don’t have a damn clue what’s going on, but there’s bad stuff happening. My boss, Bret, went crazy, ate this little girl. It’s something to do with the sickness, I bet, but we’ve gotta get you the hell out of here, and as many other people as possible. This is Claus, by the way.” I concluded with a wave to Claus.

“Yeah, I met him at your party,” said Zack, and carried on quickly, “did I hear you right; he ate a girl?”

“Unfortunately, yeah, you did. Picked her up and ate her shoulder. You see why we’ve gotta get these people out?”

Zack nodded and opened his mouth to say something, but before he could a scream rang out through the hall.

That’s the second scream today I’ve heard, and it’s not getting easier to deal with.

Claus and I turned and ran towards the main hall as I shouted over to Zack, “Grab something!”

The hall was in pandemonium. It seemed like the examiners had just turned, and one of them had gotten hold of a girl in the front row. The other six examiners were shambling around the hall in pursuit of the fleeing kids, and there was no shortage of targets. I looked over to the far side of the hall. A boy called Mark, the only guy in my year who was in all of my classes, had tried to take the fight to them. He jumped onto his desk and launched himself at the closest examiner, a thirty-odd man. He gave it a nasty kick to the face, but the man grabbed hold of Mark’s leg and tore a chunk out of it. He stood for a while munching it, and then abruptly ran to chase another kid, leaving Mark writhing in pain.

“Claus, we’ve gotta help them out a bit here,” I said over the panic.

“So what are we waiting for?” he replied before heading to the nearest examiner, an ageing woman with a resemblance to a frog.

“Jesus, man, this is crazy.”

I looked to the side to see Zack returned from the toilets. My eyes strayed down to his left hand, and the weapon he’d chosen.

“Dude,” I said. “A locker door?”

Zack held it up and looked it over. “Should be strong enough,” he said, and we both charged in at an examiner, me holding my hatchet above my head and Zack gripping his ridiculous locker door with two hands out to the side. The closest examiner, our second-class chemistry teacher, noticed us and made towards us, but she didn’t even make the distance. With the adrenaline rushing through my veins, I had simply hurled the hatchet at her from where I stood. It hit her square in the forehead and stuck in, dropping her.

I yanked out my hammer as Zack shouted a compliment about my throw. The hammer was a heavy beast with a thick mahogany handle, and I felt it hit home as I smacked another examiner in the head. An ululating bang ran out through the hall as Zack had obviously found a tasty target to whack. It had put a huge dent in the door, but it had certainly done the trick. Zack braced the door against the floor and bent it back into shape with the heel of his foot before seeking out the next examiner, a group of people following him.

Soon, with Zack, Claus, me and a group of other people following Zack’s lead with the locker door, we had soon wiped out the remainder of the examiners. We stopped, all panting. I looked around to see about forty of us were left of the seventy or so that we started with. They’d done a hell of a lot of damage with seven of them. I noticed that Mark was still standing, his hand clamped tight over his knee, blood seeping through the gaps in his fingers.

Zack walked over and clapped me on the back.

“Thanks, man. We’d have been screwed without you.”

“No probs.”

We were all coming down from the massive adrenaline rush that bought on, but I knew we had to get out, fast. Zack, Claus and I walked over to the exit opposite us, and somehow everybody followed. The doors opened out onto the car park, but there was none of them there. Only three small hatchbacks and an SUV with the door open. I looked inside to see that somebody had broken apart the hotwiring wires. This car was going to be easy as to hotwire if we had to.

However, something was going on amongst the big group involving Mark and a kid called Jacob. Claus had gone over to listen in and came back with a bit of info on what was happening.

“That kid with the bite wants to go,” he said, “and the big guy, Jacob, is telling them it’d be a stupid idea. Bite Guy thinks it’d be safer going out to the country, but that Jacob kid thinks somewhere in Jarrandup would be better. I think Bite Guy is gonna leave anyway, but on that leg he won’t get far.”

Suddenly, a commotion started up in the group, and Mark could be seen storming off, hand still clasped over his knee. Tentatively, several other people followed until our group was reduced by at least five, if not ten. Everybody stood and watched as they climbed the hill, turned left and headed out of sight.

Some more talking happened and Jacob called to us, “We’re going to go back inside, you can come if you want,” before walking in with the rest of the group.

I looked at Claus, who shrugged, then to Zack. He didn’t look like he was going to say anything at all. I went to go inside, which seemed like the sensible option, but Zack pushed an arm across my chest.

“They’re coming,” he said. I didn’t bother to ask anything else or argue with him, I just got out my hammer. Zack was still in the exact same position, resting his weight on the locker door, but his eyes were darting around. I could hear it now, the slow tumble of footsteps, but I was unable to locate it. I didn’t have to.

A veritable army of them came rolling over the hill Mark and the others had just ascended and down towards us.

“Oh shit!” said Zack. “Go for the car!”

We saw his logic, and rushed for the SUV with the open door. I slid into the driver’s seat and Claus got into the passenger’s seat but was soon shoved over the back as Zack scrambled in. They hit just as Zack closed the door, tried to get in for a bit, and then saw a much juicier target: the slightly ajar door to the gym.

“Ollie, we gotta do something or they’ll get the guys inside,” said Claus urgently from over the back.

“I know,” I replied. “I’m gonna drive through them.”

Zack and Claus launched a series of protests, but I ignored them as I leant down and pressed the two wires together. The car’s engine started with a hum and I stuck the car in ‘drive’. Slowly, I spun around to face the door that they were all crowded around, and stuck it in ‘park’.

“Ready, guys?” I asked. Zack couldn’t manage an answer, but Claus gave a grunt I took to mean ‘yes’

“Let’s go.”

I shoved the lever into drive and slammed down on the accelerator as hard as I could. The SUV spun about for a bit but eventually got on track and barrelled towards the door. There was a corridor ahead of the door, so I knew we wouldn’t hit it. Even so, at the last moment I ducked behind the steering wheel to avoid falling glass.

We hit a fair few of them by the sound of it. They thudded onto the bonnet and up the windscreen and some rolled beneath the wheels. We hit the glass doors and they shattered with a deafening smash! We entered the corridor and ricocheted off the walls a few times before stopping.

I kicked up the sunroof and climbed out. The wheels had left a huge red trail behind them, but we hadn’t hit all of them. Even now a few were coming round the corner, two of them having suffered so much leg loss they were restricted to dragging themselves along by their arms.

“Get out guys, they’re on to us!” I yelled as I pulled myself up and over the front of the car. I saw Claus get out of the sunroof, but he didn’t have the scraper on him. I assumed that it was stuck somehow. Zack got out afterwards, his locker door somehow surviving without a scratch.

Claus had picked up three long pieces of glass from the floor and was aiming carefully at the closest one of them, the head of primary. He threw, and the glass piece soared straight past the man’s head, instead dropping the Year 8 Maths teacher.

Several of the group downstairs had heard us and came up to see what was happening. Jacob pushed his was through, a heavy cricket bat in his hand. He surveyed the situation and called out to the crowd behind him.

“Anybody with a weapon, come to the front. The rest of you go find one.”

He walked forward and just stood by us, waiting for them to come over. A couple of kids had followed Claus’s lead and grabbed a few shards of glass to throw. It looked like around twenty-five remained from the car crash, and they were slowly clambering over the car. The first one to make it over met the hard face of Zack’s locker door and crashed to the floor.

But more and more were making it over, and Zack alone couldn’t hold them off. Soon, me, Jacob and another kid called Fitz had come up and were battering away at the horde. It turned out that they were harder than a one hit kill, and on several occasions a single hit from even Jacob’s cricket bat wouldn’t be enough. The only thing that seemed to have enough force in it was that stupid locker door Zack had. The extra weight and range must have been what was doing the trick. Maybe it wasn’t so stupid after all.

Claus had found a piece of metal that must have sheared off the car door and was using that in a similar way to Zack’s attacks, swinging it in a wide overhead arc. This also seemed to be doing a lot of damage, so I tried it with my hammer. I swung it down aiming for the closest guy’s head, but instead it slipped out of my hands, span away at high speed and crashed into the opposite wall.

Before I knew it the guy was onto me, teeth gnashing at my face and body. I was panicking, but it gave me extra strength and I managed to keep its head away from mine long enough for Fitz to whack it one with his baseball bat. I got up but moved back to allow a bloke called Dave to move through with his locker door. I found a few more glass shards and began hurling them over the front line.

We were outnumbered five-to-one, but with such a small passageway they could only get about two or three guys through at a time. With the five guys up front working away at them we had soon gotten rid of them. Zack walked back and sat down with a sigh. His school shirt was covered with blood, and his locker door was dented and crumpled. Dave came back a minute later and gave me back my hammer, but before I could stick it back through my belt Zack had grabbed it and started to hammer his locker door back into shape. It was sure as hell an effective weapon, I had to admit.

Soon we were all grouped up in the main hall. Jacob had asked for suggestions about where to go, and they were now debating over three places. One, stay where we are. We know that there isn’t many left in this immediate area, and there’s food close by. Two, Jarrandup mall. There would be a constant supply of food, and chances are there’s going to be a lot of people there. Three, as put forward by Claus, the Hunter’s Lair. It was across the road from the mall, safe, secure, and there would be a hell of a lot of weapons.

Jacob liked the Lair plan, but the two other main contenders, Dave, who wanted to stay here, and a girl called Marie, who liked the mall idea, were putting forward a very good case. After a good ten minutes of argument, they reached a verdict. Fitz came over to let us know.

“We’re going to the Lair, boys. I just hope this kid’s plan is a decent one.”

We got up and checked over our weapons. My hammer was still in good condition, and I shoved it through my belt. I also grabbed a baseball bat and tested it for feel, but found it wasn’t to my taste, and stuck with my hammer. Nobody else had bothered to straighten up their locker door, leaving Zack the only one. Claus hadn’t got himself anything. I wondered if he already had something small, but it turned out he didn’t. I wasn’t going to say anything; he’d turned a bit weird since this had kicked off.

It wasn’t long until we set off. There was about twenty of us, and a large group attracted attention. We formed a box, with the best fighters around the edge, and the not so good ones in the middle. I walked with Zack and Claus at the rear of the box, and we constantly had to fight them off. Claus, it turned out, was now just using his fists and feet, pummelling them to death once they were on the ground. It seemed dangerous to me, but he was an odd kid now.

We reached the roundabout and had to launch a full scale battle with the things. There were about as many of them as there were of us, and we were fighting them off from all directions. Claus was moving through the crowd, stomping on ones that were grounded with the heels of his heavy construction boots. It was as good as having a brick attached to your shoes. We lost a guy, kid named Lars. He was the loner of the year, sitting in the library every lunch playing games. However, it still hit home. The kid was dead now, not an ounce of life left in him. It was scary, without doubt.

Another one bites the dust.

We set off up Jarrandup Drive again. The bike that we had left was no longer there. I hoped that somebody had used it to escape the plague. The road was scattered with people, but they could never muster up a proper attack, and it wasn’t long before we reached the back door of the Hunter’s Lair.