Autumn: The City Read Free

Sobbing with fear, she turned and ran back her hiding place on the ninth floor, pausing only to glance out of the nearest window and look down onto the world below.
    The same bizarre and illogical thing was happening again and again down at street level. Most bodies remained motionless on the ground but many others were moving. Without reason, explanation or any real degree of control, cadavers which had lay motionless for almost two days were now beginning to move.
    Picking up her things, Donna made her way to the tenth floor (where she already knew there were no bodies) and locked herself in one of the building’s training rooms. There was no sign of the body of the secretary on the landing.

2
    Every door and window in the small end-terraced house was locked. Jack Baxter stood in silence in his bedroom and peered out from behind the curtain as another corpse tripped down the middle of the road and staggered away into the inky-black darkness of the night. It had disappeared from view in seconds. What the hell was going on?
    Coming home from a night shift early on Tuesday morning, he had been outside and unprotected when it had begun. Jack worked at a warehouse just outside the city centre. The bus route which he used to get home followed a loop past the warehouse, through the city centre, over to the other side of town and back again. The bulk of the passengers usually got off when they reached the main part of the city and, when it had happened on Tuesday morning, he had been one of only eight people left on board.
    The first sign that something was wrong had been an old man. Sitting two rows of seats in front of him he had started to cough and wheeze. His pain had increased dramatically in just a few seconds. Initially haunched forward, the pensioner had suddenly thrown himself back in his seat with violent force, terrified and fighting to breathe with his already inflamed throat burning with pain. Before Jack had fully appreciated the seriousness of his condition the pensioner had begun shaking and convulsing uncontrollably. He had been out of his seat and about to help when a twenty-five year old mother of three had yelled out in agony from the back of the bus. Her children had been screaming and crying too. Helpless, Jack had run towards them but had stopped and turned and moved back the other way when he realised that the driver of the bus was now also coughing and choking. He sprinted the length of the swaying, lurching vehicle and had reached the driver in time to see him retch and gag on the blood running freely down the inside of his throat. He collapsed over the wheel, losing control of the bus and sending it swinging out in a clumsy arc across the carriageway, smashing through traffic coming the other way and eventually ploughing into the front of a pub. Jack had been thrown to the ground, his head thumping against the metal base of one of the seats and knocking him out cold.
    He had no idea how long he had been unconscious for. When he finally came round his vision was blurred and he had struggled to regain his balance on unresponsive, unsteady feet. He had picked himself up and dragged himself towards the front of the battered bus. The driver was dead. The rest of the passengers were dead too. Using the emergency release he had managed to force open the door and had stumbled out onto the street. A sight of unparalleled and completely inexplicable carnage had greeted him. As the people on the bus had died so, it seemed, had everyone else for as far as he could see.
    Numb, Jack had stood motionless for a good few minutes, his body remaining frozen and still while his eyes darted around the macabre scene. He began to count the bodies - ten, twenty, thirty and then more and more… The destruction around him appeared to be endless. He had waited expectedly for the silence to be shattered by the wail of approaching police, fire and ambulance sirens but nothing had arrived. With each passing minute the ominous quiet