Chapter 1: Waking Up to the End
The first thing he noticed was the silence. It wasn’t peaceful. It was a thick, heavy thing, pressed into his ears after a lifetime of hospital hum—the beep of monitors, the squeak of shoes, the low murmur of voices. Now, there was nothing. Just a high, thin ringing in his own head.
Jim opened his eyes. The ceiling tiles were stained with large, brownish blooms of damp. A single fluorescent tube flickered erratically, casting the room in a sickly, stuttering light. He tried to sit up. A dull, deep ache protested in every muscle, as if he’d been clenched into a fist for a month. Which, he supposed, he had.
He was in a hospital bed. The sheets were stiff and smelled of old sweat and something chemical. An IV needle was taped to the back of his hand, the tube leading to an empty bag hanging from a rusted pole. He peeled the tape back, wincing as the needle came free. A bead of dark blood welled up. He pressed his thumb against it.
Swallowing was agony. His throat was raw, desiccated. He saw a plastic jug of water on the wheeled table beside the bed. It was half-full, stale and lukewarm, but he drank it greedily, water slopping down his chin onto the thin hospital gown. The act of drinking focused him. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The linoleum was ice-cold under his bare feet.
The room was a disaster. The other bed was stripped, its mattress stained. Charts and papers were scattered across the floor. A wheelchair lay on its side by the door. And on the wall, just beside the sink, was a long, dark smear. It started at head-height and dragged down towards the floor.Jim stared at it. He knew that color. That texture. It was blood, long dried to a rust-black.
“Hello?” His voice was a cracked whisper, useless in the consuming quiet.
He stood, his legs trembling, and shuffled to the door. The corridor outside was a tunnel of deeper shadow, punctuated by the relentless, nervous blink of a red emergency exit sign. The ceiling lights were dead. The flickering light from his room spilled out just far enough to illuminate the overturned crash cart, its drawers spilled open, gauze and empty vials littering the floor like confetti. The smell here was worse—antiseptic failing to mask the sweet, coppery tang of decay and something else, something fecal.
He had to hold onto the wall. His body felt foreign, unreliable. He inched forward, his breath coming in short, sharp puffs that echoed too loudly.
“Is anyone there? Nurse?”
Another smear on the wall, this one with distinct fingerprints dragging through it. A child’s shoe. A forgotten drip-stand, its wheel stuck in a puddle of something sticky he didn’t want to identify.
He found the nurses’ station. It looked like it had been ransacked. Computers were smashed, phones ripped from their cords. File folders formed a snowy drift across the floor. He leaned against the high desk, his knees weak. A mug sat there, half-full of a mold so thick and furry it looked like a small, dead animal. Next to it, a newspaper.
The headline was in huge, block letters: PANIC AS “RAGE” VIRUS SPREADS. QUARANTINE INEFFECTIVE.
The date was twenty-eight days ago.
A cold, understanding seeped into his gut, colder than the floor. Twenty-eight days. He’d been asleep for twenty-eight days. He let the paper fall. It fluttered down, joining the chaos on the floor.
He needed clothes.Supplies. He stumbled into a treatment room. Cupboards hung open, empty. But in one, he found a set of blue scrubs, folded and untouched on a high shelf. He pulled off the gown and dressed, the cotton soft and comforting. In another drawer, a half-empty packet of glucose tablets. He shoved them into his pocket. A torch, dead. A lighter. He took it.
The silence was getting louder. It was in his teeth.
He needed to get out. The stairwell door groaned when he pushed it, the sound apocalyptic in the hush. The stairwell was pitch black. He flicked the lighter. The small flame revealed scrawled messages on the concrete wall. GONE TO MARGO’S.GOD HELP US. The flame trembled. He started down, his footsteps like gunshots.
Three floors down, the door to a ward was wedged open by a corpse.
Jim stopped, the lighter flame guttering. It was a man in a security guard’s uniform, bloated, face unrecognizable. The smell hit him in a wave, and he turned, gagging, acid burning his parched throat. He scrambled past, down the last flight, and shoved through the final door into the hospital’s main atrium.
Grey, rainy light flooded in from the towering windows, most of which were shattered. The grand space was a monument to ruin. Chairs were piled against the main doors like a barricade. Streaks of mud and blood crisscrossed the once-shiny floor. A reception desk was a fortification of files and upturned furniture. And everywhere, the litter of frantic departure—coats, bags, a single pram lying on its side.
This was not an evacuation. This was a rout.
Jim walked slowly across the vast space, his scrubs soaking up the drizzle blowing in through the broken panes. He reached the main doors. The barricade was heavy, but desperation lent him a strength he didn’t know he had. He pulled a chair away, then another, creating a gap just wide enough to squeeze through.He stepped outside.
The hospital steps led down to a wide road. It was utterly, profoundly still. No hum of engines, no distant sirens, no chatter of pedestrians. Just the soft, steady patter of rain on asphalt and the rustle of wind through litter.
Cars were abandoned at odd angles, some with their doors hanging open, one crashed into the front of a pharmacy. Buses sat empty in the middle of the road. Newspapers, bleached and pulpy by rain, plastered themselves to the wet ground like dead leaves. The buildings stood, grey and solid, but they were just shells now. Every window was dark.
He walked down the steps, the rain cooling his face. He turned in a slow circle. He was in the heart of London. He could see familiar landmarks. And it was empty.
A magpie landed on the roof of an abandoned taxi, cocking its head at him. It let out a harsh, chattering call.
The sound seemed to break a spell. A sob ripped its way out of Jim’s chest, raw and sudden. He covered his mouth with his hand, as if to push it back in. He was alone. Truly, completely alone in a corpse of a city.
Then, from far, far away, a new sound threaded through the silence.A scream. Not of fear, but of pure, unfiltered rage. It hung in the wet air for a moment, then cut off abruptly.
Jim’s head snapped towards the sound. His breath froze. He wasn’t alone after all.
He took a step back towards the hospital doors, then stopped. Going back into that tomb wasn't an option. He looked down at his hands, bare and already going numb with cold. He had the scrubs.The glucose tablets. The lighter.
He had to move. He had to find someone, anyone who wasn’t screaming. He had to find out what was left.
The scream echoed, bouncing off the faceless buildings before being swallowed by the rain. It didn’t sound human, not really. It was a raw, shredded thing, all fury and no fear. Jim’s muscles locked. Every instinct told him to run, but where? Back into the sterile tomb of the hospital? Out into the open grave of the city?He chose open. He stumbled down the rest of the steps, his bare feet slapping on the wet concrete. He moved without a plan, just away from the sound, ducking behind the skeleton of an overturned double-decker bus. He pressed his back against its cold, grimy side, heart hammering against his ribs. He tried to quiet his breathing, to listen.
Silence again.Just the rain.
Then, a new sound. Not a scream. A scrape. A soft, shuffling tread on grit and glass.
He peered around the bus’s rear wheel. A figure was moving down the center of the road, about fifty yards away. It walked with a limp, one arm hanging useless, head lolling. It wore the tattered remains of a suit. Even from this distance, Jim could see the dark, marbling stain that covered its chest and the side of its neck. The man’s face was pale, waxy. His mouth hung open.
Jim held his breath. The figure stopped. Its head lifted slowly, sniffing the air. It turned, not towards Jim, but in a slow, disjointed circle. Then it let out a low, wet groan and began shuffling in the other direction, disappearing into the misty drizzle between two buildings.
Jim slid down the side of the bus, sitting in a puddle he didn’t feel. He squeezed his eyes shut. This wasn’t just a collapse. This was something else. The newspaper headline burned behind his eyelids: RAGE.
He had nothing. No weapon.No shoes. The scrubs were already soaked through, plastered to his skin. The glucose tablets in his pocket were a dissolving, sticky mess. The lighter was useless. A profound, shivering helplessness began to rise in his throat. He was a child waking into a nightmare.
“Hey.”
The voice was a whisper, so close it made him jerk violently, his head cracking against the metal of the bus.
“Don’t make a sound. Just look at me. Slowly.”
He turned. A face was peering at him from a shattered service door in the building behind the bus.A woman. Her hair was a practical, messy brown knot. Her face was smudged with dirt, but her eyes were sharp, clear, and intensely focused on him. They flicked from his face, down to his hospital scrubs, to his bare, bleeding feet.
“You’re not one of them,” she stated, her voice low and raspy from disuse.
Jim could only shake his head.
“Where did you come from?”
He found his voice, a hoarse scrape.“The hospital. I just… woke up.”
Her eyes widened a fraction.A calculation happened behind them. She glanced furtively up and down the street, then back at him. The suspicion in her gaze was tempered by something else—a reluctant, pragmatic pity. “Christ. You’ve been in a coma.”
It wasn’t a question. He nodded again.
She bit her lip, wrestling with a decision. Another distant groan, this one from the direction the suited figure had gone, decided for her. “You can’t stay here. You’re like a neon sign. Come on. Now.”
She reached out a hand. Jim hesitated for only a second, then took it. Her grip was surprisingly strong. She pulled him quickly through the broken door into a dark, narrow service corridor. The smell of rot and damp concrete was overwhelming. She didn’t let go, pulling him along past overflowing industrial bins, through a door marked ‘STAFF ONLY’, and into the cavernous, pitch-black kitchen of what must have been a large restaurant.
She finally released him, turning to slide a heavy metal bolt across the door. They were in near-total darkness. Jim heard her fumbling, then the scratch and flare of a match. She lit a small candle stub stuck on a saucer. The tiny flame pushed the shadows back, revealing stainless steel counters, huge hanging pots, and a chaos of spilled cutlery and pots.
She turned to look at him properly in the candlelight. “I’m Milly.”
“Jim.”
“You’re lucky I was scavenging the chemist next door. Saw you from the window. Standing in the middle of the road like a lost puppy.” She shook her head, a grim half-smile on her face. “You’d have been dead in ten minutes.”
“What happened?” Jim asked, the question tumbling out. “The news said a virus…”
Milly’s face closed off.“Later. First, you’re a liability.No shoes. In that?” She gestured at his thin, soaked scrubs. “You’re shaking.”
He was. Now that he’d stopped moving, a deep, bone-aching cold was setting in. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving him hollow and weak.
Milly moved with a brisk efficiency. She went to a large canvas bag slumped against a giant mixer and started pulling things out. “Found these in a locker room. Tourist trap down the road. Probably some hike leader’s kit.” She tossed him a bundle.“Socks. Boots. Try them.”
The socks were thick wool. Jim sat on the filthy floor, his hands trembling as he pulled them on. The sensation of dry fabric was almost painfully luxurious. The hiking boots were a size too big, but he laced them tight. Next, she threw him a pair of heavy cargo pants and a dark green fleece. “Change. Don’t be shy.”
Jim turned his back, shucking off the wet scrubs. The clothes were stiff but clean. They smelled of detergent and storage. As he pulled the fleece over his head, the simple act of being dressed in real clothes, in shoes, made him feel marginally less like a victim.More like a person.
Milly was stuffing a few tins from a nearby cupboard into her bag. “You eat anything recently?”
“No.”
She tossed him a granola bar, its wrapper faded. “Eat.Slowly. Or you’ll puke.”
He obeyed, the sugary oats tasting like the best thing he’d ever eaten. The candlelight danced on the steel surfaces. The silence between them was different from the silence outside—it was shared, watchful.
“Thank you,” Jim said, his voice a little stronger.
Milly just nodded, her eyes on the bolted door. “Don’t thank me yet. You’re coming with me. It’s not safe to stay in one place long. My place is a few streets over. Fortified.” She looked him up and down, assessing him now as a potential asset rather than just a casualty. “You strong? Anything broken?”
“I’m weak. But I’m okay.”
“Good. We move fast. We stay quiet. You see anything moving that isn’t a bird or a rat, you tell me. You don’t run unless I run. You don’t fight unless I fight. Understood?”
“Understood.”
She blew out the candle, plunging them into a darkness so complete Jim felt his chest tighten. He heard her shoulder her bag, then her hand found his arm in the dark, her grip firm.
“Stay close,” she whispered, her voice barely a breath by his ear. “And welcome to the rest of your life.”
The darkness in the kitchen was absolute, a solid thing that pressed against Jim’s eyes. Milly’s hand on his arm was the only anchor. He heard the soft scrape of the metal bolt being drawn back, then a sliver of grey, rainy light cut into the blackness as she eased the door open a crack. She stood there, perfectly still, listening for a full minute. The only sound was the drip of water from a gutter.
“Clear,” she breathed, her voice barely audible. “Stay on my heels. We cross the street and go through the gap between the bookstore and the cafe. No talking. No running unless I do.”
She slipped out. Jim followed, the new boots clumsy on his still-weak ankles. The outside air was cold and carried a new smell beneath the rain—the faint, sweet stench of garbage left too long, and underneath it, a coppery note that made his stomach clench.
The street was a canyon of silence. Milly moved not like a person walking, but like a shadow separating from a wall. She stayed close to the building fronts, her eyes constantly scanning—the dark mouths of alleys, the hollow windows above, the shells of the cars. Jim mimicked her, his heart thudding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Every shifted piece of rubble sounded like a landslide to him.
They reached the opposite sidewalk. Milly paused beside a spilled newsstand, her hand coming up in a fist. Jim froze. A flutter of movement came from down the block. A fox, skinny and bold, trotted out from behind a van, a lump of unidentifiable grey meat in its jaws. It glanced at them with feral disinterest and vanished into a broken shop front.
Milly’s fist dropped. She pointed to a narrow passageway ahead, a service alley between two buildings.“There. Go.”
They ducked into the alley. It was choked with overflowing bins and sodden cardboard. The rain was lighter here, blocked by the close walls. Milly moved quickly, her confidence growing. Jim scrambled to keep up, his boots slipping on wet pizza leaflets and greasy puddles.
The alley opened onto a smaller residential street. Terraced houses with neat front gardens now looked like decaying teeth. One front door swung open and shut with a creak in the wind. In another, a television sat silent behind a grimy pane, a frozen news anchor’s face a pale smudge.
“My place is the one with the blue door,” Milly whispered, nodding two houses down. “Third floor flat. Windows are boarded.”
It looked as desolate as the others. But as they neared, Jim saw the differences. The ground-floor windows were indeed crisscrossed with fresh-looking planks. The blue paint was peeling, but the doorframe showed fresh scratch marks, as if something had tried and failed to get in.
Milly pulled a key from a chain around her neck and fitted it into the deadbolt. It clicked open with a sound that seemed deafening.
A guttural moan echoed from the far end of the street.
They both spun. A figure was emerging from a basement stairwell, its movements jerky and wrong. It was missing a shoe, and one foot slapped wetly on the wet pavement. Its head was tilted at a severe angle, but it had seen them. It let out another wet, hungry sound and began to shuffle forward with sudden purpose.
“Inside. Now,” Milly hissed, shoving the door open.
Jim stumbled into a dark, narrow hallway. Milly was right behind him, slamming the door and throwing three heavy bolts. The sound of the thing outside was muffled, but now they could hear a second voice joining it, then a third, drawn by the commotion.
“They’ll gather,” Milly said, her breath coming fast. She didn’t look scared, just fiercely annoyed. “We can’t stay. Damn it.” She looked at Jim, a new calculus in her eyes. “You cost me this place.”
“I’m sorry,” Jim said, the apology useless in the air between them.
“Sorry doesn’t matter. Upstairs. We grab the bags and we’re gone. Two minutes.”
She took the stairs two at a time. Jim followed, his legs burning. The flat was sparse, a fortress. The boarded windows let in only spears of grey light. A backpack and a duffel bag sat ready by the door. Milly tossed the duffel to Jim. “Carry that.” She swung the backpack onto her shoulders with practiced ease, then went to the kitchenette, sweeping tins and a bottle of water into a plastic bag.
From the street below, a thud hit the front door. Then another. A low chorus of moans filtered up.
“They’re here,” Jim said, his voice tight.
“Noise draws them. My fault for snapping the bolts like an idiot.” She strapped a knife in a sheath to her leg, threw a heavier jacket on over her own. “Back way. Fire escape out the bedroom window. It’s shaky but it’ll hold.”
The thudding on the door grew more insistent. A cracking sound. Milly pushed past him into the small bedroom. The window here was boarded too, but one plank was hinged, held with a simple latch. She unlocked it and kicked it open. Cold, damp air blasted in.
The rusted metal ladder of the fire escape groaned under her weight. “Come on!”
Jim climbed out after her, the duffel bag banging against the sill. The world opened up below him—a concrete courtyard filled with more bins, a high wall. The fire escape trembled violently. He looked down just as the first plank on the blue door below splintered inwards with a crash.
A hand, grey and bleeding, clawed through the gap.
Milly was already on the ground, looking up. “Jim, move!”
He descended, the metal shaking so badly he thought the entire structure would tear free from the wall. He jumped the last few feet, landing hard on the cracked concrete.
“The gate,” Milly said, already running across the courtyard to a heavy metal gate. It was chained shut. She cursed, pulling at it. The chain was thick, the lock new.
From above, a window shattered. A shape tumbled out onto the fire escape they’d just vacated. It was a man in a stained bathrobe. He saw them, snarled, and started clambering down with frightening, spider-like speed.
“Boost me,” Milly commanded, pointing to the top of the brick wall beside the gate. “Now!”
Jim linked his hands. She stepped into them, and he heaved with all his strength. She scrambled up, perched on top, and turned, lying flat to reach down for him. “Bag first!”
He threw the duffel up to her. She caught it, dropped it over the other side. The thing on the fire escape hit the bottom with a crunch of bone, stumbled, and righted itself. Its milky eyes fixed on Jim.
“Your hand!” Milly screamed.
Jim jumped, grabbing her outstretched wrists. His feet scrabbled against the brick. She grunted with the effort, pulling. He got an elbow up, then a knee, and rolled over the top, crashing down into a weed-choked alley on the other side. He landed on his back, the wind knocked out of him.
Milly dropped down beside him, not even looking. She was already on her feet, grabbing the duffel.“Up. They’ll find a way around. We have to keep moving.”
From the other side of the wall, they heard the gate rattling, the hungry sounds multiplying.
Jim got to his feet, pain flaring in his side. He looked at Milly, covered in grime and breathless, her eyes already scanning the new alley for the next route, the next threat. He looked at his own hands, raw and trembling. The hospital felt like a lifetime ago. The man in the coma was gone. Someone else was here now.
THEY TAKE OFF TOGETHER, slipping into the labyrinth of the dead city, two shadows against the ruin.