Gabriel was halfway down the stairs, tangling a comb through his hair when Seamus returned. His eyes were distant, still half-asleep behind his glasses. It seemed there would never be enough time to rest, exhaustion was their third companion.

“I thought you might have gone.” he said, pausing on the steps.

“No.” answered Seamus tiredly. He arms ached something fierce. He dropped the bat to the floor. Gabriel watched it tumble, his gaze narrowed, suspicious. “Where would I even go?”

Gabriel went back to combing his hair as he descended the last of the steps. At the bottom, he paused, looked again at the bat, then at the jerrycans and the plastic tubing next to it. “You asked if you could trust me not to behave recklessly, and yet it seems to me that's a question I should be asking you. What did you do out there?”

“I bashed one of their skulls in.” said Seamus. His tone brokered no room for argument. The tiredness in his limbs was seeping into his patience, of which he'd always been in short supply. “It was hardly a threat out in the sunlight. They're weak and stupid when they're caught like that.”

“Weak?” repeated Gabriel. The smile on his face was thin-lipped, incredulous, and just a little bit condescending. “Are you really in such a rush to die, Seamus? They're never weak. You've always underestimated them.”

Seamus started to pick up their things. His palms were still hot and sweating, and now the back of his neck was beginning to cloy to his shirt collar. Heat nestled in the pit of his stomach, an angry, stabbing kind of heat that flared and riled at Gabriel's accusations and the truth in them. “Well,” he said snappishly, “I certainly didn't underestimate that one.”

Gabriel said no more, just rolled his eyes and pocketed his fine-toothed comb. He looked far too put together for a man that had been running for his life for the past year and a half. Seamus thought again about how out of place and time his companion was. He was more a ghost now than a man of flesh and bone.

For the second time that morning, Seamus ventured out into the street. Gabriel followed so closely behind that Seamus could feel his breath on the back of his neck, hot and shallow. He thought Gabriel might stop when he saw what little was left of Jermaine's body, but aside from a stuttered little wet gasp, he continued to follow without pause.

It took them the better part of the morning before they happened upon what they were searching for. Parked in the driveway of number fourteen, Alexander Street, the Ford KA looked like a bright red exclamation point, beckoning them over. Gabriel approached the vehicle eagerly, clearly of the mind that they'd finally come upon some much needed luck. Seamus was more hesitant. If the car remained in the drive, did that also mean that its owners remained in their home? During the initial days of the disaster, shelters and evacuation points had been erected all over the country, away from the towns and cities, away from the crowds such places brought. Why then had the occupants of number fourteen stayed behind?

“Are we doing this or not?” asked Gabriel from the drive. He was already fiddling with the fuel cap cover.

Seamus glanced behind him, into the dark windows of number fourteen. The curtains were drawn almost to a close, but he thought he spied movement, a flash of bone white, between the gap. It was dark enough inside for one of those creatures to grow strong and ravenous. He continued to search through the thin gap between each drawn curtain, his gaze roving over shapes that might have been furniture. Or something else entirely.

Gabriel huffed impatiently, his eyes rolling skyward. He fished one end of the plastic tubing into the unsealed tank, then he was crouching, his tall frame bent almost double, and put his lips to the other end of the tube. His cheeks became as hollow as a skeleton's as he sucked, the skin stretched taught and thin across his features. A light breeze would blow him away if he lost any more weight.

Through the windows, there came now a definite shift of movement. The thing appeared suddenly through the curtains, bloated and half-festered, it slammed its hands against the windows, leaving dirty stains in its wake. A second one joined it, this one pressing its face up against the glass, its eyes bulging from sunken sockets. Gabriel spluttered, hacking up a mouthful of petrol as he fell away from the vehicle in alarm.

Seamus steadied him by the shoulder before he could fall. The petrol continued to run the length of the cord, spilling about their feet now on the drive. Gabriel quickly secured the open end of the tube to the jerrycan, then turned to face number fourteen.

The creatures met their eyes. They beat against the glass mercilessly, blood oozing from old wounds and sores, smearing the glass like a child's finger painting. The woman's face had split, a bright red gash across her cheek where she continued to try to phase through the window. The hunger on their faces was violent.

“Do you think they can get out?” even as Gabriel asked, he was looking away from the window to the front door, which may or may not have been locked. Seamus might have replied, had he been given the chance, but the woman had tracked Gabriel's gaze, and as quickly as she had appeared, she was gone from the window. Seamus pulled Gabriel away from the drive, back towards the street. He came willingly, even as their best chance of survival lay only a quarter full next to the KA.

The door handle jerked. Seamus felt his heart leap into his throat. It jerked again, and then it started to swing wildly up and down. Gabriel staggered back in fright. “Christ,” he said, “it's going to take the bloody door right out of the frame!”

And it was true, Seamus could see the wood swelling and bloating, pushed out by a great force on the other side. The creature was grunting and shrieking now, its ravenous cries even louder than the heavy thud of its body crashing over and over into the door.

An answering cry came from somewhere behind, so loud that for a moment Seamus thought one had somehow managed to sneak up on them. But when he whirled around, he spotted it, a young thin thing behind the windows of number twenty-four, it was pressed up against the glass as desperately as the woman of fourteen had been, its hair coming off the top of its balding head like wisps of dirty straw. Two others were standing in the window of number twenty-six, the next house down, they weren't trying to phase through the glass, but they were watching, as keen and murderous as the others.

House by house, the whole of Alexander Street came to life. Or perhaps it was better to say that it awoke, much like the dead things when they'd first opened their eyes all those months ago. The calm quiet of the morning was broken, the storm clouds overhead grew darker, the sunlight blotted out entirely as though their cries were imbibed with an ancient power that might snuff out the sun for all time.

A trembling hand grabbed at his shirt sleeve, Gabriel's other hand was pointing, drawing Seamus back to the door of number fourteen. The frame was splintered, a crack right down the length of it almost an inch wide, wide enough that he could see one wild, bulging eyeball staring out at them.

It didn't matter then that the jerrycan was nowhere close to full, it didn't matter that they'd be in this same predicament again within the next few hours. Seamus grabbed for the jerrycan just as number fourteen's front door pulsed and creaked and gave another inch, then he grabbed for Gabriel. It was time to go.