The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [62]
She sat there for a while on her own, and the lighting slowly faded. Then the picture went blank, and didn't come on again. I supposed that was it for the TV, then.
I was a little surprised that the electricity was still on. The gas had gone off two days previously. Either they had some kind of automated system still powering the national grid or there were some very dedicated people working to keep the country energized. And just as I was thinking that, the lights went out. That buggered it for the microwave readymeals, I thought. Rat stew from now until the end.
In the middle of the night Mr Raines and his Civil Defence Group commandos "arrested" Roy the bachelor from the end house and strung him up from the lamp-post for the rape of the girl. Roy had always had the finger pointed at him whenever there was anything funny going on, and once the News of the World had published his name in a list of paedophiles and he had dog-muck pushed through his letterbox. They apologised and printed a retraction a couple of weeks later, saying it was another Roy in another town, but by then the damage was done.
I was a bit shocked at that but as Mr Raines said to me, desperate times require desperate measures.
I found a load of candles under the sink and dotted them around the sitting room. It was quite cosy. I finished the bottle of gin I'd pinched from Mrs Hughes' supply and picked up the phone. It was dead but I dialled Katy's number anyway, told the blank, empty air that I loved her, and cried myself to sleep on the sofa.
On the second day before the end, the hungry dead rose from the cold, damp earth. The popular assumption that they would be mindless, shuffling husks with a craze for human brains did, fortunately, prove to be unfounded. They were, however, largely very grumpy.
The first sign was in the small, dark time before dawn. No one was getting much sleep any more. In the quiet moments you could always hear the far-off sounds of violence. We had patrols in the street pretty much constantly, and there was always someone chasing rats or wailing. I'd done my bit and patrolled with my dad's gun for a couple of hours in the night, chasing off a couple of kids who were trying to sneak along the ginnel behind Mrs Reagan's house, so was trying to get a bit of kip. I'd just dropped off when there was a low rumble. I sat up in a blind panic, thinking that the asteroid must have hit Australia but the shaking wasn't in the ground, it was in my gut. It became a sustained, single note, rising in pitch. I assumed someone had got hold of a trombone or such-like. It lasted about fifteen minutes, and then stopped. There was a long silence. Even the sounds of gunfire faded for a moment.
Taking the opportunity to get my head down again, I was just drifting away when there was a hammering at the door. God, what now? I picked up the gun from the side of the bed and staggered downstairs.
"That's mine," said a voice as dry as autumn leaves. "Give it here."
"Dad?" I said.
It was indeed. And Mum as well. Looking ... well, looking exactly as they did the day they died. Dad was in his black suit, his fob watch tucked into the pocket of his waistcoat. Mum had that blue dress on that she had used to wear for dancing.
"I thought you were going to paint the window frames," said Mum.
I looked out of the door. There were more people in suits and dresses - and one or two in shapeless white gowns -staggering up the street, stopping at doors. At the houses they used to live at.
"That sound this morning