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yesterday? Or was he thinking about something else entirely? Whatever it was, it was clearly something which was weighing heavy on his mind. He scowled with concentration. His voice was abrupt and cold.
    ‘Is it me?’ she found herself wondering. ‘Have I upset you or have I done something that’s…?’
    He shook his head and then sighed and rubbed his tired eyes.
    ‘Why do you always assume it’s got anything to do with you?’ he asked. ‘What could you have done to upset me?
    When we’ve got all this shit happening around us, why should it be anything you’ve done that’s keeping me awake?’
    ‘I don’t know. Maybe if you’d talk to me and tell me what’s wrong I could help. I just want to…’
    Michael turned around to face Emma and reached out for her. She was shivering with cold. He gently pulled her across the front seats of the motorhome and held her close.
    ‘It’s nothing you’ve done,’ he whispered. ‘Believe me, you’re just about the only thing I’m not worrying about at the moment.’
    ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s just that when I woke up and found you weren’t there I started to think that… You know what it’s like, I couldn’t help thinking that…’
    ‘I know,’ he interrupted.
    Emma pushed her face closer towards Michael’s and curled up on his lap.
    ‘So what exactly were you thinking about?’ she asked.
    He nodded in the direction of the heavy entrance doors which separated the fortunate few inside the base from the immense and relentless gathering of rotting flesh outside.
    ‘The bodies,’ he answered quietly.
    ‘What about them?’
    He thought for a second.
    ‘You remember how many were outside when we first arrived here?’
    ‘Thousands,
    why?’
    ‘Jack said he thought there were just as many of them out there today, maybe even more.’
    ‘I know, I heard him. What’s your point?’
    ‘My point is that even though we’ve been buried down here for weeks, they’re still managing to find us out.’
    ‘We knew this was going to happen…’
    ‘I
    know.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So if they’ve been able to find us when we’ve been keeping quiet and out of sight, what the hell is going to happen now? What’s going to happen now that those bloody idiots have started going out there with their guns and their flame-throwers and God knows what else?’
    Emma squirmed uncomfortably as the implications of what he was saying became clear.
    ‘So what do you think’s going to happen?’ she asked.
    She already thought she knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it from Michael.
    ‘I think that every last corpse that’s anywhere near here is going to end up outside those doors, trying to get inside.
    And then more will come, then more. And more of them means that the military’s precious base is going to be put under increasing pressure to keep functioning. Sooner or later they’ll have to go above ground again and then, when they do, it’ll just make matters worse. Then even more of the fucking things will end up here.’
    ‘Do you think that’s really going to happen…?’ she started to say.
    ‘This is inevitable,’ Michael said quietly, his voice low and unemotional. ‘We’ve said it before, it might happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or the day after that. It might happen in the next hour or on the other hand it might not happen for weeks. The one thing I’m sure of is that it will happen eventually.’
    6
    ‘You on your own, Cooper?’
    Cooper shuffled closer to the intercom on the heavy door which separated the main decontamination chamber and the rest of the buried base from the hanger. Well away from most of the rest of the group of survivors, he had been sitting talking to Bernard Heath when they’d become aware of sounds of movement coming from inside the decontamination area. Through a six inch square observation panel he had recognised Jim Franks, just about the last of his ex-colleagues who still dared to risk speaking to