EXTRACT FOR
The Outbreak
(Ginny Watson)

Pedalling slowly David passed through the leafy suburbs, they had always been sleepy and quiet but the absolute lack of life was unnerving. Apocalypse! That is what had happened, but it had crept up on humanity, there hadn't been a bang and a flash and a spreading mushroom cloud that signalled a new dystopian world filled with crazy biker gangs and leather clad road warriors in muscle cars.

Far from being a wasteland, the world around David hadn't changed. It was exactly the same, except for the absence of people.

David slowed as he approached the wide tarmac drive that led up to his father's house, suddenly he was gripped with the urge to turn and flee. Don't be stupid he told himself as images of shuffling zombies filtered into his mind.

But what will I find in there?

It was a question he couldn't answer even though he had a shrewd idea. It had struck him as odd, but since the decimation had begun he had not seen a single body, not one corpse on the streets. Because it isn't sudden he had told himself, it was slow, the virus crept up on people and drove them to their beds, from there they would never arise again... which explains the roads not being littered with stiffs!

Stiffs. He shuddered as he nudged open the unlocked front door, what a terrible thing to think, inside would be his family, and what state would they be in?

"Dad?" he felt stupid calling out, but it also felt natural.

From the front door he crept forward and stepped into the kitchen. It was the heart of the house, how many times had he sat with his family around the solid dining table and shared a joke or a pot of tea, it was where everyone congregated. But he found the room deserted.

The living room next he told himself, the place where his father would snooze in front of the television on a Sunday afternoon as his step-mother kept herself amused with her knitting, the click of busy needles like a metronome.

Again, the room was empty.

They are upstairs he told himself as his mind shifted to more practical and gruesome matters, what was he going to do when he did find them.

In all honesty he'd decided that the rest of humanity could fend for itself but he couldn't leave his loved ones without making some small effort. I can dig graves in the back garden he decided, and when I do find them I can wrap them in sheets... and get them downstairs somehow. At least I can give them a decent burial.

At the top of the stairs he paused, to the left was his old room, the bedroom where he had grown up so many years before. To the right his step-sister Angie's bedroom, and directly ahead the room his step-mother and father had shared since the day they had married following the departure of his natural mother.

"Oh Angie, I'm sorry." he whispered as he decided to check his step-sister's room first before facing his decomposing father.

Trembling he turned the door handle and pushed the girlie pink door open slowly. "Angie?" he whispered as he took a tentative step inside. The curtains were still drawn and in the gloom he squinted to identify a darkened form lying on the bed. "I'm so sorry Angie." he sighed as sole survivor guilt finally entered his mind along with the question why? Why had he alone been spared?

I have to face this he told himself as he shuffled toward the curtains, what he was about to see would probably haunt him for the rest of his life but it had to be done if he wanted to live with his conscience in the lonely years ahead.

With his fingers gripping the heavy curtains David paused, something wasn't right, something was out of sync? But what?

No smell he suddenly realised, gross as it was he knew that after so long dead flesh would rot. He remembered the time some wild animal had crawled under the garden shed and died, and how awful the stench had been for weeks as the corpse slowly decomposed. But in Angie's room all he could smell was his own nervous sweat and the fear that suddenly surrounded him.

Do it he ordered silently, and closing his eyes and holding his breath he swept the curtains open allowing the midday sun to stream inside the room, and turning slowly he cautiously opened his eyes, then gasped.

Angie lay on her bed, naked. Her skin was bronzed, almost healthy looking. David had expected rot and decay but what he had discovered was a corpse that looked almost... alive.