In a way, it was those mist monsters that killed me, because we wouldn't have come across that caretaker's lodge if we hadn't been forced to make that detour. The outbuilding in the grounds of a large stately home with the undead traffic cop whom we'd somehow missed when we'd checked all around the building before trusting it to shelter us for the night. So there I was, dead, lying among the shrubs and flowers while my body continued to cool, wondering whether my soul would be lifted up to heaven at some point. I was worried about Angela and Julie, of course, but there was nothing I could do for them now. My body just lay there, ignoring my every command to move. At some point I assumed it would rise as a zombie. I only hoped George would know what to do when the time came. One bullet to the brain, that's all it would take. George would take care of them then. He was a good man. My wife and daughter would be safe with him.

I realised I could hear them, in the cabin. There was an argument going on. I could guess what it was about. Angela would be arguing that they had to go look for me, while George would be saying they had to wait until daylight. Keep them in there, I mentally begged him. Tie them up if that's what it takes. Do whatever it takes to keep them safe!

But then I heard the unmistakable sound of the door opening and closing and I quailed with fear. It was George! Angela must have persuaded him to look for me after all! She can be so persuasive when she wants to be! Most of the time she's happy to give in to whatever I want, but when she really wants something, really, really badly, she could convince anyone to do anything, and I had no doubt she'd put everything she had into persuading George! So George was coming, and it was dark and my body was hidden among the shrubs! But I hadn't risen yet! I didn't know how long it took for a zombie to rise. Maybe the others would be long gone before it happened! I'd never prayed before but I prayed then! Prayed that I would just continue to lie there while George searched around and either found me and put me down permanently or slept the rest of the night and took my family on their way in the morning.

But maybe God really was dead, maybe the Devil really was in charge now, because as his footsteps grew closer my body began to move. It began to sit up, slowly at first as if testing new muscles, easing a horrid new kind of life into the dead flesh, then faster as it grew in confidence. I tried to stop it. This is my body! I told myself. It obeys my commands! Not any longer, though, it seemed. My body climbed back to its feet, then walked towards the sound of George's approaching footsteps. It walked silently, I realised. Like a tracker hunting its prey. It's (My!) feet avoided sticks and gravel that would have crunched or snapped underfoot, almost as if there was some kind of new intelligence in charge, something cunning and resourceful but motivated only by hunger. The compelling, undeniable need to feed on the flesh of the living!

George never saw what killed him. In his last moments he would have known it was a zombie, of course, but I hoped he never knew that it had once been me. My body approached him from behind, cautiously, silently, one step at a time until it was close enough to pounce. Then it moved with appalling speed, leaping eight feet from a standing start onto his back. My teeth clamped down on the back of his neck and bit hard, crunching through muscle and bone, killing him instantly. I hoped his consciousness ended, or departed to an afterlife of some kind. I hoped he wasn't still trapped in there, like I was. A helpless observer, unable to control the actions of his body.

Feeding on him was awful! There was nothing I could do to stop myself as I rolled him onto his back, tore his clothes open to reveal his chest and stomach and then tore them open with my teeth. Zombies seemed to like the soft entrails, preferring them to hard muscle, sinews, tendons or even brains, which is what they're traditionally supposed to like. As my mouth started chewing guts and organs and swallowing them down I tried to shut it out of my consciousness. I tried to stop! I tried so hard, but my body ignored me and continued to feed. It was as if I was nothing more than a passenger in my own body, unable to do anything more than watch what it did.

I fed on him for over half an hour, during which I wondered what Angela and Julie would do now. They were on their own now, with no-one to look after them. If they were smart they would get back in the car and continue on to the community of survivors, if it really existed. Angela would know better than to go looking for me, she was the only one left to look after Julie. If anything happened to her Julie would be all alone, a fourteen year old girl alone in a world full of zombies and wild, lawless survivors who might see her as nothing more than a few minutes of pleasure. When I thought about what might happen to her I tried more desperately the ever before to take back control of my body! She needed me to protect her! She needed her father! It was no use. My body just continued to feed until George's body grew cold, as mine had, and then I just left it there while I wandered off among the bushes.

Just keep going, I willed myself. Walk away from the cabin! Something else might get my wife and daughter, but at least it wouldn't be me! It wouldn't be someone they loved and trusted, someone who would once have died to protect them. I remembered Julie's terror at being attacked by the zombie in the gas station. How much greater would the terror be if it was me who attacked her? Even if she fought me off and escaped, what permanent damage would have been done? She'll be fine, I tried to tell myself. This traitorous body is wandering off, soon it'll be too far away to be a danger to her...

There was a crash from inside the cabin, something falling over or falling down. I remembered a shelf mounted on the wall above the fireplace on which a number of small ornaments had been placed. I remember thinking, while looking around shortly after entering, that it didn't look secure, that it would only take someone bumping against it to bring the thing crashing down. I imagined Angela, or perhaps Julie, wandering around in frantic worry, not paying proper attention to where she was walking, jumping in startled fear as she bumped a shoulder against it and the screws were knocked out of the crumbly brickwork...

My body reacted instantly, turning and hurrying back to the cabin as whatever rudimentary intelligence it possessed processed the fact that there was someone alive in there. I almost wept in fear and frustration as I tried yet again to take back control. I might as well have been trying to turn back the tide! There was a window in the wall facing me. As I passed it I saw Angela through it, holding Julie in her arms as she tried to calm and reassure the terrified girl. By some stroke of Ill fortune she chose exactly that moment to turn her head and she saw me. The injuries inflicted by the traffic cop were mainly to my lower body, where my entrails were still dangling around my feet, but that was too low to be seen from the other side of the window. She might have seen the damage to my throat if she hadn't been so overjoyed and relieved by the sight of me.

"Stay here!" I heard her say to Julie, and then she ran to the door, threw it open and ran out into the night, all thought of zombies forgotten. It must be safe, she might have been thinking, if Sam's walking around so openly and unafraid. I wanted to scream, to warn her, but no sound came from my torn, ruined throat. My body just carried on walking towards its next meal, my beautiful, beloved wife!

The look of horror that appeared in her eyes when she saw me properly, when she saw my ruined, eviscerated body, will stay with me for however many eternities I'm doomed to spend wandering the earth trapped in this decaying flesh. She had time for one terrified yelp and then I was on her, my teeth reaching for her throat. She threw up her hands in an attempt to ward me off and my teeth closed on them instead. I bit down with all my strength, and a moment later fingers that had once caressed my face with gentle, tender love were slipping down my throat. "Sam!" she sobbed. "It's me Sam!" as if I wasn't already doing everything I could to stop myself! She backed away, tripped over something and I fell on top of her, ripping at her clothes.

What followed was an awful parody of our wedding night as I tore her dress and brassiere open, baring her breasts, but where she had been gasping with pleasure that time, this time she was screaming. It wasn't her breasts my body wanted, though, but her entrails, and my clawed hands continued to tear at her clothes until her flat, pale stomach was exposed. Her remaining hand had found a rock and she was beating me on the head with it, but her strength was pitifully inadequate to do me any real harm, or perhaps she just couldn't bear to hit her husband with any real strength. My body knew no restraint, though, and my clawed fingers tore through her perfect skin as if it were cotton fabric. Intestines burst out like a nest of earthworms, together with an eruption of blood. She continued to scream as I began to feed, and I was screaming too, inside. A scream that no-one except God was able to hear.

How I managed to retain my sanity as my body fed on my beloved wife I'll never know. Maybe I didn't. If I was mad now, maybe I wouldn't know it, and what difference would it have made anyway? I don't know when she died, but I hope it was quick. All I know is that, after a while, my body stopped feeding and stood again. I didn't want to look down, I didn't want to see what I'd done to her, but my body didn't care. My head just happened to look in that direction and I wasn't even able to close my eyes! I didn't even have that much control! I saw her. From the bottom of the ribcage upwards she might almost have been asleep. Her eyes were closed (Thank God for that! Such a small thing to be thankful for after all this horror, but I gave thanks nonetheless) and her breasts shone in the moonlight. Still perfect, untouched. Under the ribcage, though, was an empty red hole from which the half chewed ends of her entrails still hung.

Having seen her like that, once the sight was in my head with no way to get it out again, I wanted to keep looking at her, at her face, as if I could somehow apologise to her, beg her forgiveness by some impossible telepathy. My body just moved on, though. Dismissing her as though she were nothing more than a candy wrapper. It left it behind, walked away, forgot her while I grieved and mourned and cursed myself and the God that had allowed this to happen.

George had risen in the meantime. He was standing there, near the place where I'd killed him, staring around himself with blank, dead eyes. My body moved towards him and we stood together, wandering a few paces this way, then a few paces that way. Zombies seemed to like the company of other zombies, it seemed. They tended to keep together in a group, an instinctive behaviour rather than conscious planning, I think. I was certainly unaware of any conscious planning governing the behaviour of my own body.

I wondered whether his mind and consciousness was still in there, a helpless passenger in his body, just as I was in mine. Maybe I'm the only one, I tried to tell myself. Maybe I'm some kind of fluke, and George and Angela have gone to heaven together. Freed from this awful existence. There didn't seem to be any way to know. If George was still in there, there was no way he could communicate with me, or I with him, which may have been a blessing. It meant I could try to convince myself that it wasn't true, that he and my wife were now in paradise.

Even that small comfort was soon to be denied me, though, because a few minutes later Angela's body rose. She made no attempt to cover her breasts as she stood, her body was unconcerned with such human trivialities as modesty. She just stood there, her clothes hanging in tatters around her waist, and came over to join us, wandering back and forth in front of the cabin with us. We didn't look at each other, but then, just by chance, our heads turned to look towards each other and I saw her eyes. It would be incorrect to say that out eyes met, because we couldn't even move our eyes in their sockets, but my eyes saw hers and hers saw mine and what I saw there...

She was still in there, I saw! All her love, her compassion, everything that made her who she was! Somehow, the love we had for each other, our deep knowledge of each other, enabled me to see it in her, and perhaps allowed her to see it in me! I saw something else as well, her horror at what she had become, a torment that went beyond words, that went beyond sane comprehension! I wanted to cry out in outrage! She didn't deserve this! If anyone had earned paradise, it was her! And not just her! If it had happened to the two of us, then it must have happened to all the other zombies as well! All the teeming millions of them! Saints, sinners, former vagrants and former millionaires, they must all now be trapped in their decomposing bodies, doomed to wander the earth until their very bones fell apart, and maybe doomed to remain even then, trapped in the very soil into which they rotted. God would never allow this! I thought. Angela must have been right, God must be dead, and the Devil was in charge now! There was no other explanation for this!

I thought of Julie, all alone now in the lodge. Angela had closed the door after exiting, I saw as my body shuffled past, and zombies lacked the ability to turn doorknobs. She was safe so long as she stayed inside, which she would. She was a sensible girl, and she must know what had happened to the rest of us. She knew that I'd gone out alone and hadn't come back. She'd seen George, and then her mother, go out and not come back. She knew that zombies tended not to stay in the same area for long, unless they were trapped by a closing door or something. All she had to do was stay inside, stay quiet, and eventually the three of us would go wandering off and she'd be free to continue on alone to the community of survivors. They'd take her in, look after her. She'd be raised by strangers, but at least she'd be spared what had happened to the rest of us.

She'll have to walk there! I suddenly realised. She didn't know how to drive, and even if she did the car keys were in my pocket! Most of the food was in the car. She could break a window to get it, but there was a limit to how much she could carry. She would have to travel about a hundred miles on foot (if George was right about the community's location), stopping at shops and houses to forage for food, running the risk of disturbing a zombie every time. The gas station all over again, but this time with no-one to rescue her. What were her chances? Could she possibly make it?

She would make it! I told myself. Somehow, she would make it! I would never know for certain because we'd be long gone, but I would believe! I would have faith! No matter what horrors Angela and I had to endure in the years to come, we would find comfort in the belief that our daughter was safe, somewhere, somehow...

"Mummy?" I heard, her voice muffled through the closed door, and my soul froze in a new terror compared to which every previous terror was as nothing! "Mummy? Daddy?" No, I screamed inside my head. Keep quiet! Please, Sweetie, keep quiet!" My body responded to the sound of her voice, though, moving towards the door, Angela beside me, and I knew that my wife was feeling the same desperate anxiety I was, even though her ravaged and chewed body showed no outward sign. We reached the door together and began pushing, but the door was strong and remained closed.

There was a small glass window in the door, and I saw her pale, frightened face through it. "I know that's not you out there," I heard her say. "I know you're in heaven now. I want to be with you in heaven..."

No! Please, Sweetie, No! Don't do it! Please, God, please don't let her do it!

"I'm going to come out," said Julie. "I know what will happen, but it won't be long and then I'll be with you in heaven. I can't be all alone, I'm not strong enough! I need to be with you, wherever you are..."

I'll do anything! Anything! Please God! Or Satan, if you're in charge now! I'll do anything! I'll worship you if that's what you want! I'll do anything you want! Just don't let her do it! Please!

"I'm coming out now. I'm not scared. Whatever you do to me, I know it's not you. I'm coming, mummy! I'm coming!"

I could hear her crying! She was lying, she was scared! She was terrified, but she was going to do it anyway! The kind of courage that had to take... It meant that she was wrong about not being strong enough! She was easily strong enough to make it! If only I could speak, if only I could warn her! Please, God! Don't let her do it! I'll do anything! Anything!

There was a click as she turned the latch, and then Angela and I pushed the door open.