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  "So much for decommissioning," Pat said with a trace of humour in his voice.

  Karen smiled, nervously. She wasn't all that worldly wise, but she'd heard about all of that on the news. 'Decommissioning' referred to the recent move by various paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland to give up their arms. The suspicion was that the arms given over were not the entire stock, that some weapons and ammunition had been stashed 'just in case.' Pat's find, of course, confirmed this.

  "They look more plastic than I expected. Will they work against those things?" Karen asked, innocently.

  Pat lifted one of the rifles from the case, his eyes narrowing as he critiqued his find. He ran one hand across the barrel, doting on it as if it were a baby.

  "Let's find out," he said, with no trace of humour this time.

  Karen had never held a gun, never mind fired one. The same couldn't be said for Pat, though. This would have worried a girl like Karen in the old world, yet it strangely comforted her in the new world. She dwelled on that fact, on how things changed with perspective, as they took the long, gruelling stairwell from their top flat to the ground floor.

  It wasn't that Pat looked in any way intimidating. To Karen, he looked not unlike a few of the men folk who had gone to her church. Po-faced and sincere. Suited and booted in a kind of quaint and fashion-free way. Okay, maybe the men in her church carried a Bible in hand, instead of rifle, but she reckoned they and Pat would probably have shared the same narrow view of the world that, oddly, made men like that loyal and dependable. You knew what you were getting with those kinds of men. And that was a good thing to Karen. She wondered if Pat, himself, was a godly man. But they hadn't talked of God or religion. They had only talked of the dead.

  She could hear them, already. The recently quarantined, now joining the ranks of the moving, sniffling majority but unable to get out of their homes. It was unnerving to think that they would always be in there. Even when the block was secure and safe, the dead would remain amongst them. A constant taster of what was outside, like a free sample in one of those magazines you used to get.

  The noise from beyond the doors was building as they drew closer to the entrance. It seemed that the recent activity of Pat's car journey had attracted them to the apartment block. When they reached the bottom floor and the view afforded them by the thick glass in the heavy wooden doors, they could see a small crowd starting to congregate in the car park. Karen's heart was beating hard and heavy. These things terrified her.

  Pat took a moment to steady himself, clearly worn out by his second use of the stairs that day. Catching his breath, he checked his rifle.

  "Careful!" whispered Karen, shooting him a dirty look.

  "They can't hear you," Pat replied. "It's the flu, you see. It's blocked up all their sinuses. That's why they're always making that sound - trying to clear their throats. To be honest, I'm not sure if they can see you too well, either."

  "How do you know all of this?" Karen asked.

  "I don't know it," Pat replied, cocking the gun. "It's just a theory."

  "I still think we should be careful," Karen said, pouting. She hated being patronised.

  Pat seemed oblivious to her mood. Or perhaps he was purposefully being insensitive. Either way, he wasn't sporting any kind of bedside manner. She was nervous; she needed reassurance and comforting. He looked like a man who would grin and bear it, rather than let anything like nerves grind him down. Maybe that's why he had survived this whole thing for so long.

  "Okay," he said, finally ready. "On three, I want you to unlock the door, pull it open wide enough to let one of them in, then shut it really hard."

  "What if it comes for me?" Karen asked, a worried look spreading across her face.

  "It won't," Pat replied, still checking his gun. He really seemed to like the gun.

  "How do you know that?" she persisted. "Another one of your theories?"

  He didn't respond to the rise, of course. His type never did.

  "No," he said, simply. "Just trust me."

  "What if they all get in?"

  "They're far too slow and stupid. You'll be lucky to get one of them in."

  "Why can't you open the door?"

  "You know why," he said, patronisingly again. "I've got the gun, and I need to be able to use it quickly enough."

  "What if you shoot me?"

  "JUST-"

  She had riled him. She hadn't meant to - she was genuinely scared. But she had worn him down with her constant OCD questions. That had been enough to make even a man as consistently deadpan as Pat lose it.

  Karen must have looked startled because he immediately calmed down, even smiling a little to placate her. It wasn't the cuddly, fluffy grandfather-like 'there-there' she was looking for, but it was something. A gentle, paternal smile that she wished he would use more often. She needed more of those smiles in this world.

  "Okay " she said. "I'm going to do it "

  Pat nodded, readying the gun. His hands were steady, his movements controlled. He seemed rather pragmatic about the whole thing, as if he was about to hang a door rather than shoot up some monster.

  Karen reached to unlock the door. Unlike Pat, her hands were shaking. Her heart was beating like a kanga hammer. She struggled with the lock, constantly looking out the window to check the status of the dead. Sure enough, just as Pat suggested, they didn't seem drawn to the noise. Not one of them flinched, morosely staring in the same direction they had been staring at for god knows how long. She could hear one of them coughing. She watched him spit and puke a thick gob of blood from his mouth. Karen immediately felt sick.

  She stepped back from the door, placing a hand over her mouth.

  "Are you okay?" asked Pat, sighing, gun still at the ready.

  "Y-yeah " Karen replied, trying not to heave. "I'm okay, just give me a second then I'll open the door." She steadied herself, again, breathing in deeply, then out once more. She had to do this right - for herself, more than for him.

  She stepped forward and pulled open the door.

  For a man like Pat Flynn, putting a clean hole through a slow moving target with an AR 18 would prove easy.

  But this was not the kind of target he'd been used to shooting at through the years. No, his paramilitary 'career' involved more animated targets, regardless of how uncomfortable that had made him feel, at times. It was for this very reason that his current weapon of choice had been christened 'The Widowmaker'.

  He hadn't always questioned orders. But some people just looked less legitimate targets than others. The young men kissing their wives and babies before going off to do a day's work. The fact that their day's work involved an army camp was enough to place a red mark over their heads. The middle-aged men, retired from their careers of service, yet still considered open game. One walking his dog to the chip shop to pick up a pastie supper. Another cleaning his car on a bright summer's day. And then there were the old men, polishing their medals up for Remembrance Day, quietly proud of patriotic service in decades gone by. But their loyalty was to an enemy state, and that made them a legitimate target, also.

  Who was Pat to question orders? He hadn't been active in the early days, when the revolution had kicked off, but he did see what those British bastards had done to his friends and family when he was growing up. The 'legal' kidnapping and interrogation. The dawn raids on houses full of nothing but children and screaming mothers. Bloody Sunday, for God's sake! Surely the end justified the means? It was for the cause, they said. But, in the end, of course, he failed to see how any of it helped anyone but the politicians. The bloodshed on both sides of the divide. The killings by state and revolutionary alike. It didn't matter, in the long run. It definitely didn't matter now

  Except that it did matter. In a world full of death, overrun by death, it maybe even mattered more. Death begat death, and Pat was feeling even more tortured than before. He was far from a bad man. That's what

  Father Maguire had told him when he'd wandered into church, on
e night, from the cold, dark, rain-stained streets of West Belfast. This doesn't make you a bad man, the priest had said. But try telling that to the wives and children of those I've killed, Pat had said. The brothers and sisters. The mothers and fathers. Every last one of them bent over the graveside, choking back raw emotion and salty tears. And try telling it to the ghosts of all the animated targets from twenty-five years of active duty - because those were the conversations that kept a man like Pat Flynn awake at night.

  And as for those things outside, the poor bastards with bloody gore seeping from every gap in their skin, God knows what they felt anymore, if anything. Were they even human? They couldn't be - they were dead. He knew that much. Were they ghosts? What would Father Maguire call them? Of course, last time Pat had seen the good Father he. wasn't saying much about anything. In fact, he looked just like the others outside. But Pat couldn't do what he was planning on doing now to a man of the cloth. Good God, that would make his pitch in hell all the more permanent.

  He was going to shoot the next bastard that walked through the door, though. He was going to shoot it because he knew that if he didn't, there was a fair chance it would turn and do God-knows-what to the young girl standing opposite him. The young girl with her hands on the door handle, shaking. He was going to shoot it because he wanted to protect her, do something to make up for all the bad things he'd done (for the cause) over the years. The things that didn't seem to matter anymore on paper or in history but mattered a hell of a lot to those still living and breathing and coping with loss. Even if they were living through all of this.

  Pat may not have been a bad man, but he was a determined man. As the shambles of a walking corpse came through the door, blood and gore hanging off its Sunday best like wet confetti, Pat didn't hesitate. He took aim with the AR18, looking down its black, polished barrel and pressing his finger against the trigger. He blew a sizable hole through its chest - various organs and bone spreading across the nearby wall like a tantrum in an abattoir.

  The corpse was thrown back powerfully with the significant kick off the blast. It stopped at the very door it had wandered through, crumpling against the wood and glass like a broken bottle. It lay there like some 'down and out', almost looking confused, baffled by the shot. But it didn't stay down, and it didn't stay out.

  The girl was behind him now, having cowered in the corner like a frightened poodle after opening the door. She was behind him, tugging on his shirt sleeve and pointing at the dead corpse clambering back onto its feet. It seemed ridiculous to her and frightening, and she wanted him to stop it. So, he shot again, aiming for the chest a second time. The second shot completely shattered the damn thing's entire upper torso, leaving almost none of its ribcage left. Diseased lungs slapped against the wall like oily pancakes. There was very little holding the thing together, now, its arms hanging off its rickety shoulders like a broken puppet. Still, it didn't stay down, hauling its mess of a body back onto its feet for a third time.

  Pat was completely baffled. He looked to the girl who was staring back at him, both confused and terrified. He shot again. This time he aimed for the damn thing's head, a blotchy mess of dried blood and mucus that looked about as human as road kill. When Pat's bullet pierced it, almost at point blank range, the head all but exploded, a pink mist spraying across the doorway like strawberry milkshake. The corpse fell back against the door, down and out, again. But it wasn't for getting up, this time.

  Chapter Four

  Major Connor Jackson didn't take his eyes off the side window as the people carrier he was travelling in moved along the Ml motorway. They were en route to Portadown, a town some thirty miles south of Belfast. His driver was as monosyllabic as was to be expected, given the grim scenery. There wasn't much to coo at when driving along a post-apocalyptic motorway. A stalled vehicle here, a mini pile-up there. Foliage-clad fields with dead animals side by side with the living, the grazing. Wisely, the driver just stuck to what he did best, negotiating every obstacle before him with admirable calm and resolve.

  The red stripe of dawn that had stained the sky as Jackson's journey began now blossomed into a rose- blushed skyline. The sun was almost fully in view, and Jackson wondered if it was going to be another glorious day. Weather wise, that was. Because nothing else was going to be glorious about today. Or any other day, for that matter.

  Jackson wasn't normally a man given to maudlin thoughts. Not in recent years, anyway. Retiring early, he had spent much of his days fussing over his daughter's kids, playing the doting Grandpa. The only people who called him Major anymore had been the old boys down at the Legion, sharing little more than smutty jokes from their days in service. Until this all kicked off, Jackson had been pretty happy. Killing time (and wasps) at his Donegal summer retreat from March to September. Kicking back and watching old movies in his Derry city terrace during the Winter. A suitable pub was never too far away, whether Paddy's Bar in Glenties or the Legion in the Waterside. There was always a beer tap or bottle of whisky on hand to pass the odd evening, with good company to go with it. And that was fine by Jackson. All he needed was something to distract him, something to bury the bad times, the dark old days of the primitive North, where he had played a most gruesome role

  He had been standing in the back yard of his Derry terrace when the call came through on his cell. He had come back to pick his daughter and the kids up, hoping to take them to his Donegal retreat. He knew the call was from the military when he read 'number withheld' on the cell's incoming alert. And when the speaker at the other end of the line, a young man named Harris, had addressed him as 'Major Jackson', his fears were confirmed.

  They allowed him to return to Donegal on the premise that he called them when he got there. A secure number was provided, Jackson urged to call at a specific time to confirm his whereabouts. A helicopter would pick him up to take him to RAF Aldergrove. From there, they would travel across to London for a special briefing. Only, it didn't quite work out like that. With the flu hitting so furiously, and society quickly breaking down, Jackson found himself within a lock-down situation at Aldergrove. Weeks had passed without anyone telling him what was happening. Jackson watched as the television in his blacked-out quarters moved from constant news features on every channel to the po-faced debates, until eventually the Emergency Broadcast Channel was all that could be seen.

  When the virus finally reached them, people inside the compound falling ill, Jackson was neither surprised nor worried. In a way, he was glad something was happening. But where in the old films he enjoyed watching, it had been women and children first, the military had different ways. As a Major, he was siphoned off to a special restricted section of the compound. Along with other high-ranking officers, he wiled the hours away, playing chess and drinking shots of whisky. Food and drink (including copious amounts of booze) were provided, daily, by men in yellow suits. All they asked for in return was some guidance, some advice regarding strategy on how to deal with the crowds of sick people constantly baying for medicine outside the gates. But what could you do when there was no hope, when there was no medicine, and even your own yellow plastic suit and cumbersome supply of oxygen couldn't stop the virus from reaching you. As their own numbers depleted, all the yellow suits wanted was light hearted conversation and an occasional shoulder to wallow on. These were dark days, and old men, old war heroes (or whatever these young men thought Jackson and his drunken cronies were) became important just for having lived life, just for having survived days that seemed more tempestuous than hell itself.

  Eventually, against the advice of the other old officers, Jackson ventured topside to see what was going on. The base was in a mess, burnt up bodies of infected soldiers littering the ground like old, discarded bin bags. Most of the helicopters had been stolen, hijacked by deserters who bribed or threatened pilots to fly them to nowhere. Those still present and alive mostly wandered around in a drunken stupor. Fights broke out, unchecked, men pulling guns on each other over little more than lost games
of cards. Others struggled with religious icons, crosses and bibles, to make sense of the new, torn world.

  Few of the soldiers seemed to be acting reasonably anymore. The few that did, gathering around Jackson as if he were some sort of new Messiah, seemed clueless as to what to do. They told him what little they knew, how that burning the bodies of those who fell ill was the best way to ensure they didn't come back like the others. Jackson hadn't known what they meant until he took a look over the wall. Until he found dead people, instead of sick people, crowding the gates, walking and sniffing, spitting and scratching like prehistoric witches. He found himself suddenly thinking about his daughter and grandchildren, now that he knew the full scale of the situation. He wondered if they would be among the faces at the gate, or other gates like this. But the alcohol was doing its job well. His heart was tired, worn out, numb. No emotion could be rinsed from it.

  Jackson remembered watching them, for hours, from the sentry box. The men came and asked him what they should do, what his orders were, but he just shook his head. "Do whatever seems right," he said, quietly. And they did. They shot the dead, threw grenades at the dead, doused the dead with flames. But they always came back. Thicker each day, the more attention the soldiers drew to the base with their uncouth violence. The dead were insurmountable, unstoppable. It seemed useless to oppose them in any way.

  Some days later, two men wearing the yellow suits came to where the officers stayed, tired and sallow looking. They had removed their masks, no longer believing in the ability of such to protect them. They told the officers who had not ventured from their hiding place, most of them still cowering in the dark recesses of the base like the scared old men they were, that the majority of people were dead, that society as they knew it was gone. The provisions in the base were all but exhausted (including the whisky). Jackson nodded to confirm what they were saying - he'd seen it all with his own eyes. A choice was given to the officers, the more reasonable ones who hadn't regressed to drunken despair. Operations were still live at the Mahon Road Army Camp in Portadown. One man was needed to replace their previous officer, who had seemingly fallen ill with the virus and was currently under quarantine. There was enough fuel to get two men down there via car, a driver and one of the gathered officers. The others would be airlifted across to London, although no one seemed to know what was going on there. The pros and cons of both situations were laid out to the officers, but Jackson had been the only one to volunteer for the job in Portadown. London wasn't appealing to him anymore. God knew what it was like, over there. But he knew all too well what it was like at the Mahon Road. It was his old base, when he was active, and a part of him wondered what it looked like years later. The mission in Portadown suddenly reminded him of his daughter again, his grandchildren. It reminded him of the importance of family, and the love a man should have for his children