Looking for Shelter

It was slow; hesitant. We crept through the bushes, keeping low; watching and listening as we crept closer.

There was no movement. The house looked deserted, empty. Although, we had been fooled like that once before, back in the beginning. Nowadays, we were much more cautious. We had all watched Steve die and none of us wanted to see any of the rest of us die like that, or be the one to die… especially not like that.

We glanced at each other as we crept closer and I could see the memory of Steve and how he died, slow and screaming, in their eyes, and – I presumed – they could see the same fear in mine.

This time, though, we were armed. Although, I wasn’t sure Cathy knew as much as she claimed about shotguns, so I tried to keep my distance from her until she proved her competence… one way or another.

I’d had training though, and I knew the safe combination and where the Desk Sergeant kept the keys to the outer door at the station. So… after Steve, and after we’d buried him, and sobered up after drinking to forget the way he died, I’d gone back to the station. There, I'd picked up the guns and ammunition, stepping over the remains of the people I’d once regarded as colleagues, work-mates, on my way to what passed for the armoury in our small local village station.

Now, though, we needed food and shelter. This isolated farm looked as though it could answer our needs, one way or another, providing no other survivors had got here first.