One

'All right. So from now on we only check things out if we all agree?'

'Yes.'

'And if we're starving?'

'Yes.'

'Every house, every place we see. There'll be people hiding out, maybe. Maybe not. We'll have to take chances eventually. Because I'm not thinking about just now. I'm thinking ahead. Three years. Five years. Ten. You think we can just waltz into the supermarkets every day and pick out a few cans for supper?'

Becky couldn't reply. He saw it in her face. The future opening up before her like a rotten gourd. Suddenly she seemed to understand the unhealable nature of things, the struggle ahead. He saw her realisation that she was a young woman who might die long before she became old.

She made to say something but nothing came. She walked away. Jane finished packing the rucksacks. Nobody complained about what he had decided to leave behind.

'Can I take these?' Aidan asked, holding up the toy cars.

'Of course you can,' Jane said, trying to swallow the bile, trying to cap a raging voice that wanted to ask if a couple of Matchbox toys meant more than an obliterated family lying under plastic in a room already sweating and stinking with decay.

He moved off at a smart pace, not waiting to see if the others were coming with him. They'd spent far too long at the farmhouse; it sickened him that they'd been preparing fancy food, filling their stomachs while bodies grew cold around them. He thought of all the meals he might eat in the future, however frugal, however pathetic or desperate. And he wondered about all the people who would watch him while they did it, with blank, unblinking eyes.

13. TRACHEOTOMY

Jane woke up reaching for someone who wasn't there. He could feel his slender shoulders beneath his fingers, the fabric of his favourite pyjamas. Words from books they loved to read together fragmented in his mind, falling away as though incapable of being remembered without the vital missing ingredient. Daddy Island. Frog Finds a Friend. Dad Mine. Titles Jane could hardly give voice to without the prickle of tears.

He sat up. His breath came in plumes. The climate was like that of a desert. Hot days. Frozen nights. Thin plaques of ice matted the canvas. He broke a piece off and sucked it. A taste of metal and chemicals. He spat. He wondered if dreams of Stanley had wakened him, or something else. The others were breathing steadily in the tent. He gripped the rifle stock loosely, glad of the weapon, but wary too, worried that it might inspire violence in others. He gazed out over the rooftops and countryside, the swollen, haphazard road. He had suggested finding a big house to stay in, or a hotel, but Aidan had begged them not to, preferring the tent.

'I don't want to see anybody,' he explained. 'I don't like how their faces look soft. Like they're asleep but they're not.'

It was too dark to see anything beyond the shapes of battered houses and factories, broken fingers of mills, the great shoulders of hills muscling up against the town. Again, he wasn't sure where they were. Somewhere between north and south, he told Aidan, and Aidan had been satisfied with that.

There was a distant thrum, a brief vibration. Jane thought he felt something in his feet, but couldn't be sure. The horizon they had left behind contained a burnt orange smear. His mouth went dry at the thought of some power station having finally reached tipping point and gone into meltdown. It was inevitable. Maybe life on Earth from now on would be dictated by whichever way the wind was blowing.

He moved away from the tents and leant back against the badly crumpled bonnet of a car. The engine block had rocketed into the driver's zone, lifting the top of the man and depositing him in the back seat. Oblivion. Out like a light.

The idea of death had caused Jane many moments of panic as a younger man. Newspaper articles about random attacks: samurai swords in London churches, knives on Manchester buses, guns in Liverpool nightclubs. People set on fire. People tortured and gut-shot. Left for dead. But death didn't go on. Your nerves were incinerated beyond use by fire; your lungs filled with water. The struggle to survive was out of your hands. You were insensate before the end. Death came and calmed you down. And it could only happen once. He was no longer scared of death. He didn't feel he had the right to be, not after what had happened to Stopper and the others. But he was scared for Stanley. He wanted to be able to assuage his son's fears, hold his hand, show him there was nothing to be frightened of beneath the bed or in the wardrobe. Because Dad was here and everything would be all right.

He thought he sensed movement a way back off the road. Shadows congealing, dispersing. But it could just be the colour of the night, writhing in his eyes.