One

He could convince himself that Stanley's pillow bore an impression of his head or that his smell lingered in the room. It was easy to convince yourself of anything if you needed it badly enough. He checked the note on the table. He couldn't distract himself by thinking that if Stanley were still around he'd probably not be able to read it, no matter that he was fifteen now. No schools. No teachers he knew of. Precious few children left to attend classes if there were.

Stanley. I come here every day. If you see this note, wait for me. I'll be with you very soon. I love you. Dad. x

Jane closed his eyes and felt nausea swelling. He staggered out to the hall and was as sick as he could be.

The rest of the flat displayed its unremarkable ghosts to him, as it had every day for the past ten years. There were some who were irked by his behaviour; others who envied his dedication and faith. He knew of people who had lost partners or children and who would not countenance thoughts that they were still alive. They were easily given up, the alternatives too horrifying to tolerate.

He sat by the window and looked out at the dead gardens behind the row of houses in the next street. The houses were losing their shape, brick and stone crumbling, steel rods in reinforced concrete becoming exposed. Edges were rounding everywhere. One day there would be no house to return to. A solid yellow puddle was a plastic football. The frames of cloches burned away covered patches of ground where rhubarb or strawberries might have grown. The flavour of cream itched at his memory, but he couldn't summon it. Nothing growing anywhere now. No dove to release; no green leaf to bring back.

A group had taken off, though, for the Continent shortly after he'd made contact with the capital's survivors, people who had already invented a name – The Shaded – for themselves. Jane remembered two of the expedition team: Hinchcliffe and Henderson, because they had the same names as his accountant and his secondary-school headmaster respectively. He couldn't remember anything of the other ten or twelve. They had set out for Dover, intending to steer a boat across the Channel to bring help back. They were like the Flat Earth Society, refusing to believe all evidence to the contrary, that this affliction had done for the entire planet. Wouldn't help have arrived already if it was the UK alone that was suffering? was a question they refused to consider. Nobody had seen any of them ever again.

Something snagged on Jane's vision, something that didn't move when he did. At first he thought it was a flaw in the glass, or a shadow falling, but when he angled his head he saw the tiny, greasy remains of fingerprints. He stared at the patterns in those pads, drawing closer until he could make out the whorls and curlicues, the signature of his boy, a hello from across the years.

16. SKINNERS

Dawn was always a hurdle. The break of filthy yellow light over the city, like a diseased yolk, heralded a reminder of what lay in wait for anybody who had lasted this long. We are but dust and a shadow, Jane remembered, and some of us aren't even that. London was shored up with bodies. They lay in drifts at the mouths of Tube stations and shop fronts. They foamed from the pits and ginnels of the cluttered interior, thickened the roads like browbeaten demonstrations. It was ceaseless, monotonous, Auschwitzian.

Jane gazed up at the bent and bowed and broken street lamps, the electrical wires, the dissolving architecture, and half expected to see vultures eyeing him, waiting for him to fall. But there weren't any vultures. Everything that had had a heartbeat was lost for ever. You could only goggle at bones, or try to remember. Hunger was causing people to forget. Jane often worried about that. The scrabble for food was erasing every other trait that made them human. How far into the future before it was all scrubbed clean and they were falling upon each other? It had already started, he was sure, among some of the other splinter groups that were dotted around the city. It was galling to think that you had to keep an eye on your neighbour as well as the Skinners.