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extraction team, but right now I'd settle for a torch. If I had one I'd be able to read at night. I'd have to do it in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with the door closed, but I could manage that. I’m not going to risk Them noticing a light from my room, equally I don't want to go through another nine hours like last night.
    But I don't have a torch. I went back to my lists; the next thing I wrote down was hot water. A torch and hot water. The first may be downstairs, the second definitely is, or at least the fireplaces are.
    Going downstairs scares me. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m scared, and it's not some nameless fear of the unknown, it's a fear of slipping on the stairs and breaking my other leg. Of being woken in the middle of the night by the sound of the front door breaking. Of being trapped up here with the undead on the stairs outside, left with nothing but the choice between starvation and suicide.
     
    11:12, 14 th March.
    I didn’t check the front door. Or the back door for that matter. I think they're closed, but I can't be certain. There have been a few times when I got home at some ungodly hour to find the front door open. It sticks a bit and needs to be lifted closed. Clearly that was too much effort for my tenants, that's why I've got a sturdy lock on the door to my room. If they didn’t bother telling me they were leaving then what are the chances they shut the door when they left?
    So, do I go downstairs? I know I have to eventually, but if the door is unlocked and if one of the undead has got inside, then can I deal with it? If one has, then it clearly doesn't know I’m up here. I’m safe here. Safe until the car comes. Then what? There's at least twenty in the street now, how many people would Jen send? Last time she just sent the one guy, what if next time she only sends one? What if he waits in the street? I can't expect him to hold off twenty of Them, then climb up the stairs, carry me down and deal with a threat in the house as well.
    When the car comes I've got to be ready to meet it. I've got to be able to get at least as far as the front door. Of course, if it's locked I've got to be able to unlock it. Damn. I didn’t think of that. That settles it. I've got to make sure that the doors are closed. I'm going downstairs.
     
    15:30, 14 th March.
    I've never looted before. It's rather fun. I have returned with a net gain of a half kilo of sugar (thank you Jezzelle), a torch (thank you Tom) and another 10 zombie books. I've been more selective this time, picking the ones that look like they contain some vaguely useful survival techniques (one got four stars from Survivalist Quarterly. I wonder if that’s out of five or ten).
    First I went hunting for a weapon. I've not done that before either, I've never needed to. Never thought I'd ever have to either. The best thing I could find was the out-sized metal handled hammer I'd bought out of desperation when a I needed to put down a carpet to hide the disturbing stains a newly ex-tenant had left on the polished wooden floor. It was the only one in the only open hardware shop I could find and ended up leaving a series of dents, a quarter inch deep around each of the tacs. It's a far cry from the machete or shotgun that feature in all these books, but it was all I could find. Fortunately I didn’t have to use it.
     
    I couldn't bring much back upstairs but sadly that's not a problem because it looks like whatever my tenants thought would be useful they've taken with them.
    Tom and Jezzelle had the smaller two-room flats, each with a modest bedroom, a living room/kitchen dining area and separate bathroom. They're not huge rooms, but they were reasonably priced, at least for London, and far bigger than the space I lived in. The working fireplace wa s what clinched the deal in both cases. Tom's from Macau, on a two year post-grad archaeology placement at UCL. He seemed like a nice enough guy when I met him, not that I saw him that often,