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said.
    It's this waking nightmare we are in, where none of the old rules apply. I feel I can't be certain about anything, that I can no longer even trust the evidence of my own eyes. It's not paranoia. It's just part of this never ending cycle of horror for which there will never be any therapy, never any happy endings, nor any time when we will be able to look back on this and know that it is over. With those and a million other dispiriting thoughts running through my head I collapsed into a chair.
     
    I must have fallen asleep, because when I next opened my eyes dawn was just beginning to creep over the tree-line. It was the sound of the rifle being reloaded that had woken me. A few feet away, the gun propped up on the table by the window, patiently taking aim at the undead below, was Kim.
    “Morning,” I muttered, standing up. The duvet I'd thrown over her, that she in turn must have placed over me when she woke, fell off and onto the floor. I looked around. Sander's body was gone. She must have already moved it. So much for me waking up if the undead got into the house.
    Kim had found some new clothes, or, rather some old, not-recently worn ones. A set of hard-wearing gear, more suited to a rain drenched autumn than the start of a hot summer.
    I walked over to the window.
    “How's your wrist?” she asked.
    “What? Oh,” I flexed it. It was sore, but I really had had a lot worse. “Fine. Thanks,” I added, and feeling that was insufficient I went on. “How's... ah...” I stalled and decided to change tack “How many. Out there, I mean?”
    “About a hundred,” she said. “Give or take.” Then she pulled the trigger.
    “Are you familiar with guns?” I asked.
    “Not really,” she replied as she reloaded the gun with casual ease. I looked down at the grounds. I could only count about four dozen or so moving zombies.
    “I can only count...” I began.
    “The rest are around the side of the house,” she said.
    “By the window to the... your...” I stalled again, unsure how to finish the sentence.
    “About thirty. Another ten or fifteen stuck in the maze, a few others scattered around the back. I checked first thing.” She fired again. Now that I was looking in the right direction I saw her target collapse. Then I saw it try and move, its arms waving, its legs twitching.
    “Chest,” she said. “It's the suppressor, I think.” She reloaded, shifted her aim and fired again. The bullet entered the zombie's head as it was trying to stand. “Less accurate, but less noise. Noise is definitely more important.”
    “I've never fired a gun before,” I said, half to myself. “Well, I did fire a shotgun, once. At some clay pigeons. I fell over. The recoil.”
    “Right,” she said, and fired again. I looked over to the table next to the rifle. One box of ammunition was opened, and already half empty. On the floor other boxes were scattered about, all empty. Around her feet the carpet was littered with spent cartridges. Counting the shots fired at me yesterday, hundreds of rounds had been wasted on little more than target practice.
    “It would be better to conserve ammunition,” I suggested.
    “Sure. Better. But you just said you don't know how to shoot, and I’m out of practice.” She turned to look at me, and for the first time since we'd met, I saw her eyes properly. They were cold, hard, unforgiving, hidden beneath a haunted depth of recent experiences I can only hope I never understand. “And,” she went on, “can you think of a better time to practice than this?”
    Knowing that whatever she was doing, it wasn't target practice, I left her to it and went off to find some clean clothes for myself.
     
    The more I loot, the better I'm getting at reading the signs left by the previous inhabitants. Washing still in the machine or dirty crockery in the dishwasher is a sure fire indicator the occupants fled the night of the outbreak. A house that's immaculately tidy, with the beds made, the washing