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towards the base must have chosen to try and get in here.’
    ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ Baxter baulked.
    ‘No,’ Cooper replied. ‘Their flesh and bone might be getting weaker, but we’ve suspected for weeks that they’re also getting smarter, haven’t we?’
    ‘You serious?’ said Croft.
    ‘Do you really think that’s what’s happening to them?’
    asked Donna.
    Cooper shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘Don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I’m just guessing here. It might have just been coincidence or a fluke that they found themselves close to the entrance. The bodies could have been heading towards the men out in the field and then been distracted by those that were left behind to protect the base.’
    ‘You’ve got a point though,’ Baxter agreed, now completely serious, ‘You would have expected all of them to head for the personnel carrier and the soldiers in the field. But how could those things be getting smarter when they’re rotting away?’
    Several members of the group of survivors instinctively looked towards Phil Croft for an answer to their obviously unanswerable question. The fact that everyone seemed to still assume that he knew more than they did because he was medically trained never ceased to infuriate and frustrate him.
    ‘How the hell am I supposed to know?’ he snapped.
    ‘Bloody hell, I’m getting sick of this. I keep telling you, I know as much as you do.’ Annoyed and tired, Croft swung himself around in his seat and pushed open the motorhome door with his feet. ‘Mind if I smoke?’ he asked.
    ‘Carry on,’ Michael said quietly.
    ‘How many you down to now, Phil?’ Baxter wondered.
    ‘One and a half boxes,’ he replied as he lit the remains of an already half-smoked cigarette and inhaled slowly. ‘I tell you, I’m going to go out of my bloody mind if I can’t get more cigarettes.’
    ‘How long do you reckon that lot will last you?’ asked Emma.
    ‘I’ve been limiting myself to smoking half of one each day, so I’ve probably got a couple of weeks left.’
    ‘What
    then?’
    ‘Not much choice really, is there?’ the doctor grumbled.
    ‘I can give up or I can go out and get some more!’
    ‘Where you going to go?’ laughed Baxter.
    ‘Not sure yet,’ Croft smirked. ‘Even if I could get out of here, I haven’t got a bloody clue where we are!’
    ‘You should try looking closer to home. Bet they’ve got fags and drink and everything in their stores here.’
    Cooper shook his head.
    ‘You’d be surprised, Jack. This whole operation was thrown together in minutes. They’ve got less kit and supplies stashed away than you’d think.’
    Across from Cooper Michael sat on the edge of the uncomfortable sofa which doubled up as the bed that he and Emma shared. Emma shuffled nearer to him. She was cold and wanted to be held. He wrapped his arms around her as she rested her weight against him. The other survivors looked away, each of them feeling suddenly awkward and almost embarrassed. Emma and Michael’s relative intimacy made them feel uncomfortable and unsure. Having each individually suffered so much pain and loss, the others found the idea of closeness and tenderness difficult and alien - an uneasy reminder of a world they had given up as gone forever. Having lost his long-term partner many months before the disaster, Baxter had long found dealing with this kind of emotion particularly hard.
    ‘I always wanted a van like this,’ he said suddenly, looking around and making a conscious effort to break the silence and start another conversation. ‘Me and Denise were planning on getting ourselves something like this when I retired. We were thinking about selling up and living on the road for a while.’
    ‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ Michael grinned, ‘it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. We were living on the road for a couple of weeks before we found this place, weren’t we, Em? Didn’t enjoy it!’
    Baxter
    smiled.
    ‘I’ve been thinking about