przed

Bodie zipped up his jacket and checked his supply of ammunition one more time.

He was more grateful than ever that he'd had the foresight to go back to his flat and grab his riding leathers when things had merely been serious and not fucking catastrophic. He was hoping they'd save his life now. They were flexible enough that he could move well in them, but tough enough to resist a bite from one of the infected.

"You trying out for the Hell's Angels, Bodie?" Jax asked.

"Fuck off," Bodie said, and moved a bit further away from the crush of agents in the room.

He didn't want to engage in the usual pre-op banter. Wasn't interested in the typical agent backchat. Because all that did was remind him of the man who was missing from his side. It reminded him Doyle was across the river in a fucking hospital bed and he couldn't do a thing about it

He saw Murphy glance his way, and then give Jax a concerned look, but that just made him angrier. He didn't want their concern, didn't want their pity. He just wanted this day over and done with. He wanted to be on a plane off this fucking island, hopefully at Doyle's side.

He pushed his way past Benny and burst from the locker room to emerge, staring and wild-eyed, needing to run even though there was nowhere to run to. Slumping against the wall, he stared at the ceiling and threw a prayer up to a god he didn't really believe was listening to keep Doyle safe.

That was where Betty found him.

"Bodie, there's a call for you on my line. It sounded urgent."

"I didn't think the phones were working," Bodie said as he pushed himself off the wall.

"Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't We can't depend on them, that's certain."

"Who is it?"

"She didn't say."

"She?" A wash of panic sloughed off the fog of exhaustion and self-pity Bodie had been existing in for nearly twenty-four hours. He was running down the hall before Betty could say another word.

At first he thought Betty had got it wrong, that it wasn't a call, just static on the line. "Hello?" he tried, not expecting anything. But a voice answered him. A panicked female voice that he immediately recognized.

"Bodie? Thank God I've got hold of you. You have to get here now."

"Lena? What's going on?"

"We're supposed to be evacuating, but the infected are massing and they think the barriers around the hospital are going to fall. We're not going to have nearly enough time to get all the patients out." Lena was talking so fast, all her sentences seemed to be merging together in one grand poly-syllabic word. "You have to get here now, Bodie."

"I can't, love." Bodie hated this, but he'd promised Cowley, had sworn to do his duty. He wouldn't back down on that.

"You have to." Those three words weren't delivered at the breakneck pace of her previous outburst, but very slowly indeed.

"Why?."

"They've triaged the patients. They're only evacuating those with the greatest chance of survival. The walking wounded. Those who'll require the least amount of care."

Lena paused, as if she was hoping Bodie would pick up on her meaning without her stating it directly. But Bodie wasn't feeling that charitable. He needed her to say the words.

"What do you mean?"

"Ray didn't make the list. He won't be evacuated. They were even going to, well, make sure he didn't suffer, but I wouldn't let them. I didn't let them, Bodie."

"Jesus," Bodie said softly. He could feel his breath coming in sharp gasps, could feel the blood pounding through his veins, could feel the panic he'd thought he was immune to overwhelming every nerve in his body.

"Did you hear me, Bodie? You have to get here. You have to get here now."

"I will, Lena."

"I've locked him in his room." She continued on as if she hadn't heard him, and given the turmoil he could hear over the line, she might not have. "I slid the key under the door. I didn't want the infected to get him."

"I'm coming, Lena," he shouted into the receiver, unconcerned now whether Cowley himself heard his declaration of treason.

"You have to come, Bodie." She broke off, and Bodie could hear someone else talking in the distance. "Oh God." There was another pause. "Come soon, Bodie. Come-", and the line went dead.

Bodie felt as if all the blood had been drained from his body. He nearly dropped to his knees in despair, but kept on his feet out of sheer bloody-mindedness. This wasn't going to happen. It wasn't fucking well going to happen. Doyle was not going to die at the hands of the infected. He just wasn't.

Bodie returned to the locker room, deliberately ignoring the stares of the other agents, slung his holster over one shoulder, picked up his shotgun, and left the room as quickly as he'd entered it.

He was hoping he'd make a clean getaway, but he heard footsteps behind him.

"Where are you going, Bodie?"

"It's none of your business, Murph." Bodie made his voice as cold as he could manage.

"I'm afraid it is." Murphy ran to catch him up and grabbed his arm to stop him. Bodie spun around, his back tense, ready to attack if necessary. "Cowley told me to keep an eye on you. Told me to stop you if you tried to leave."

"They've just about lost Guy's," Bodie said, not even trying to make a rational argument. "Lena just called, and the infected are nearly through the barricades. So they've made the decision that they're not evacuating everyone." He paused and looked Murphy directly in the eye. "They're not taking Doyle."

Murphy stared back at him for what must have been a minute. Bodie wondered what he was thinking. Whether he was wondering why Bodie should be allowed to save Doyle when he couldn't save his mother. Whether he was trying to decide if he had it in him to shoot a fellow agent.

"Let me go, Murph." He wasn't above begging. "Please."

Murphy swallowed, then let go of Bodie's arm.

"Go," he said. "Just get the fuck out of here."

Bodie didn't wait for him to change his mind. He strode down the corridor as quickly as he could manage without drawing attention to himself, and left Murphy standing there.

"Bodie," Murphy called behind him. "Find Lena, if you can. Save her too."

Bodie stopped for a moment, nodded, and then ran down the stairs, leaving CI5 behind him.

He grabbed a Capri from the motor pool when no one was looking, and got out of the cordon by talking shite to the sentries about Cowley wanting a final recce of the area surrounding the safe zone.

The drive from Whitehall to Guy's was better than it should have been. There were no infected about, no attacks to avoid. Nothing. It was as if the city had already been evacuated of everyone, healthy and infected.

When he drew closer to Guy's, he saw where all the infected had gone.

The barrier surrounding hospital was encircled by the infected, twenty deep. He could see where the barrier had been breached in several spots, but so far the Met blokes seemed to be keeping the infected in check.

Bodie knew he had to act fast. There was no time for subtlety, no time for a meticulous plan. It was brute force or nothing. Fortunately, he'd always had a talent for brute force.

He picked his route, picked his targets, then floored the Capri.

As he hit the outer edges of the infected, he could hear the bodies go down, could hear the crush of bones as he drove over them. He ignored the sounds, ignored their screams, their howls. He just drove until he hit the barrier. He grabbed his shotgun and was out of the Capri before he could consider how fucking insane he was. On the bonnet, up the fence, and over the top before one of those fucking bastards had even laid a finger on him.

Of course, he hadn't reckoned on how the Met would react. One of them nearly put a bullet in his head until they realized he wasn't infected. Even then, it took them a minute before they let him pass.

Getting inside the hospital was almost as difficult as getting past the barrier. There were buses, and patients, and more members of the Met, and a palpable sense of panic everywhere. Bodie tried not to think about how he was getting out of here, what with his vehicle now surrounded by the infected, and hundreds of others waiting to get on the pitifully few buses they seemed to have laid on.

He pushed his way past two patients--one holding tightly to the cane keeping him barely upright, the other trying to keep her IV line from getting tangled—and entered the hospital.

Inside the hospital, chaos truly reigned.

There were patients and nurses and doctors in a crush it was almost impossible to get through. No one seemed to be in charge, and everyone was terrified. The stink of their terror clung to them in a way Bodie hadn't sensed since Africa. Not since he'd seen a truck full of refugees caught between his troop and a group of rebel fighters. That had been nearly the last straw, the thing that had finally driven him out of Africa, and home.

Now home was significantly worse than that African road.

Bodie slung the shotgun on his back and pushed further into the crowd, further into the hospital. He kept reminding himself that each footstep took him closer to Doyle, but his progress was pitifully slow. The crush of people was overwhelming, and they were all moving out, pushing Bodie back in the direction he'd come from.

He increased his efforts, pushing harder, not caring who was in his way. He was beginning to move forward, to get closer to the stairwell that would take him to the trauma ward, to Doyle, when the mood of the crowd changed.

They stopped. Moving, talking, crying. Everything. It was as if everyone in the hospital was straining to hear the same faint sound.

Bodie felt a prickle down his back, a prickle he'd felt before, in the heat of the African sun, in the rain of Belfast, in the backstreets of London. It was a sensation that had saved his life more than once.

He was unslinging the shotgun from his back when the silence broke and the screaming started.

He could see a frenzied movement near the doors, people trying to run where there was no place for them to go. There was a churning of the crowd, like the churning of the ocean near a ship's prop. And then Bodie saw a spray of blood arc into the air.

That was when the screaming began in earnest, and Bodie saw the first of the infected inside the hospital.

"Fucking hell." He pushed forward harder, his movement hampered by the people trying to escape from the infected he was trying to reach. If he could get there fast enough, get there before too many of them had turned…

But he was already seeing signs of people turning. The thrashing movements, the inhuman sounds.

He aimed at one man with telltale bloodshot eyes, but a woman ran in front of him before he could pull the trigger. Then she was down, was turning. He pulled the goggles he usually used on his bike from his pocket and fitted them in place, slim protection against the blood of the infected, but protection all the same. Then he swung at the newly infected woman with the butt of his shotgun, ignoring the blood that sprayed up with each blow, and hoping none got in his mouth.

He worked through the crowd, bludgeoning the infected as he went, but there was always one more infected to kill. His arms were growing heavy from the effort, and his goggles were steaming up, making it hard to see.

He saw some members of the Met in riot gear enter, and hoped they'd be enough, that between them, they would get things under control. But then he was surrounded by a group of the infected, and he knew this was it, his last stand.

"This is for Ray, you bastards," he snarled as he struck one of the infected in the head. Then there was a blow, and pain, and he was falling into darkness, falling into the pit, and he knew there was no winning this time.

Doyle was forced to learn a whole new set of rules for survival.

"We travel by day, not night. The infected don't seem to like the daylight much."

"Why?"

"I don't know, do I, Doyle? I'm not a fucking scientist." Stuart was always short tempered. He never seemed thankful for the presence of another human being, seemed to view Doyle as just another weight to slow him down. Which Doyle might have resented more, except that he knew he wasn't at his best.

The one look he'd taken of himself in a mirror was enough to tell him that. The scar on his scalp was still prominent, and the shaved patch looked ridiculous. He'd found a set of barber's clippers the next day and had Stuart shave the rest of his hair down to match.

"Don't get bitten. Don't get infected blood in your eyes, or in your mouth."

"How much blood? How big a bite?"

"It doesn't take much, and it doesn't take long. Thirty seconds, and you're one of them."

"Christ."

He had to learn new habits, had to become even harder than he was. And he hadn't been soft to begin with.

"If I start to turn, you kill me immediately, Doyle. You don't fucking wait. I won't if you're bitten."

"Why don't you kill me now?" Doyle asked, overwhelmed by a bitter helplessness. "Save yourself the trouble later."

"Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind."

"Jesus, Stuart."

Their days were spent foraging and avoiding the infected. They visited every Tesco, every Sainsbury's, in walking distance, scavenging what they could find. Tinned beans, tinned, stews, tinned spaghetti hoops. If Doyle never saw a tin again in his life, he would be eternally thankful.

They cached their bounty of tins at different locations in the city.

"They might find us here," Stuart told him one night in their Westminster vault. "We might have to move."

They saw no one else who wasn't infected. Not one person who didn't have blood red eyes and an appetite for human flesh. Doyle killed his first infected the second day after he woke, a wild-eyed creature in the remnants of a business suit who attacked them in a Marks and Sparks food hall. There were more after that, but he tried not to think about them.

"There must be others," Doyle insisted one day as they loaded up bottles of Lucozade from a chemist's shop off Piccadilly. "Other people. Healthy people. We can't be the only ones left."

"I haven't seen anyone," Stuart said without looking at Doyle. "Not since Gregson. And no one but him for days before that." He tossed the last of the bottles into the shopping trolley they'd liberated for their supply raids. "Face it, Doyle. Everyone in London is either infected or dead. We're the last uninfected people in the city."

"God help us both," Doyle said, with not a trace of humour. Because if he had to be stuck in a deserted London with only one other person for company, Stuart was pretty fucking far down his list of preferred companions. Which only made him think more about the one person he'd rather be with.

Bodie.

Not that Stuart wanted to talk about Bodie, or anyone else in CI5.

"Why don't we leave? Get out of London? See if we can find the others?"

"There aren't any others, Doyle. They must all be dead."

"Not Bodie. Bodie can't be dead." Doyle knew he sounded delusional, but he wouldn't be convinced Bodie wasn't out there, somewhere, alive and healthy.

"I've already told you, before Heathrow was overrun, a few buses came through from Guy's. They'd seen the barricades fall at the hospital. They said no one could have survived."

"I survived."

"You were locked in your room. I don't see Bodie hiding in a locked room. Do you?"

"No," Doyle agreed reluctantly. "No, I don't." Bodie wouldn't hide. Wouldn't play it safe. Bodie would fight until the end, and would take as many of the bastards with him as he possibly could.

Stuart wanted to stay in London.

"There's plenty of food, plenty of places to hide. And the infected can't live forever. We're their food. If there's no one left to eat, they're going to start starving. Staying here is our best chance for survival."

"I don't want to survive. I want to live."

Every night, when he was on watch by himself, when Stuart had succumbed to the unquiet sleep that seemed the only sort of rest either of them could manage, Doyle would listen to the radio.

It was a short wave set Stuart had scavenged from CI5 headquarters. They'd found enough batteries in the camera stores on the Strand to keep it playing for months, if not years.

At first, Doyle only listened to the frequency that Cowley had given in his final briefing. He listened to static on that frequency for so long, he nearly went mad with it. He started hearing human voices in the inhuman buzz, started hearing it in his sleep.

So he started scanning the dial. The static was the same, but at least turning the dial gave him something to think about. Kept him from thinking he heard Bodie's voice in the static.

It was all more static, punctuated by the occasional faint voice in French, or German. Once he even heard something rather Scandinavian that he thought might be Norwegian. And then one night he heard someone speaking English.

He almost missed it, thought it was another of his audio hallucinations, but he went back just the same. Turned the dial, slowly and carefully, until the voice returned faintly. He couldn't tell if the speaker was a man or woman, couldn't make out more than the occasional word, so he brought his ear closer to the radio, and listened harder.

Then something changed—the earth's magnetic field, the subsidence of a solar flare, who knew—and the voice came in clearly. A male voice. With a distinctive Scottish brogue.

"There is a sanctuary from infection. We have secured Dumbarton Castle in Scotland. We can provide food and safety. If you are listening to this message, we can help."

The voice provided directions to the castle from all directions and then began to repeat.

Doyle nearly wept with relief. Cowley was alive. What's more, Cowley had created a stronghold against the infected. And if Cowley had survived, then maybe Bodie had too.

He listened to the message three more times before he could move, then shook Stuart awake.

"Cowley's done it," he told a still weary Stuart.

"Done what?"

"Listen." He shoved the radio at Stuart, and listened once again as Cowley declared the existence of a refuge, as he gave directions and offered dry encouragement. When they'd listened several more times, he snapped off the radio and put it down.

"We're going to Scotland," he told Stuart, and this time he knew he was going to accept no argument.

Bodie awoke to the sound of crying.

The sound was quiet and restrained, as if the person weeping was trying desperately not to be heard. It was the sound of furtive despair.

As more senses returned, Bodie could feel the hard floor beneath him, could smell blood and vomit, could hear the thrum of an engine.

He cracked one eye open, and found that he was on the floor of a bus. From where he lay, he could see the feet and legs of the passengers surrounding him, crowding him. Legs in surgical scrubs, bare legs exposed by hospital gowns. Black clad legs in police uniforms. His strength began to return, and he sat up, only to find the source of the crying. It was not a patient, nor a nurse, but a young police constable in riot gear, who clutched the seat in front of him and let the tears roll down his cheeks unimpeded, even as the other passengers looked away from him.

"You woke up," a gruff voice said. Bodie turned to see another policeman nearer his own age and with a look of bland curiosity. "We weren't sure you would."

"I have a hard head," Bodie said as he tried to sort out how he'd got here. "Bodie," he said, holding out his hand.

"Cameron," the policeman said, shaking the offered hand with a sure, callused grip.

Bodie nodded, then closed his eyes against the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him. Why was he here? He traced the path back. CI5. Lena's call. The infected. "Ray." He opened his eyes and tried to stand, just as the bus lurched around a corner, knocking him off his already unsteady feet. Cameron caught him with one arm and pulled him down on the seat beside him.

"We have to stop," he said. "I have to go back."

"For this Ray?"

Bodie nodded. "He's my mate. My best mate." And so much more he could not admit to in front of this gruff stranger and a bus full of traumatized civilians.

"Was he at Guy's?"

"In the trauma ward."

"Then he's dead."

The words were delivered coldly, without feeling. A part of his brain, the professional part, the part that could make jokes after witnessing cold-blooded murder, reckoned this man had seen so much death this day that the death of one more hardly mattered to him. But the rest of him had a sudden sympathy with the still weeping police constable.

"He can't be."

"The hospital fell," Cameron said clearly. "Only a few buses got out, and none with seriously ill patients. Your best mate is either dead or turned.

"No." Bodie knew it must be true. Doyle could not have survived if the infected had taken over Guy's. He must be dead. But he couldn't accept the truth without the impossible: a body to mourn and bury.

He recovered enough to look out the window, only to find a landscape he didn't recognize.

"Are we going to Heathrow?"

"Heathrow fell too. We're heading to Dover."

"Dover?"

"Some think the ferries might still be running." Cameron's tone of voice suggested he didn't share the belief, but had no other suggestions to offer.

"If Heathrow's gone, the ports won't be any better." Bodie put away his grief for the moment and tried to think like a soldier, like one of Cowley's best men. Cowley… "We need to make for Scotland."

"Scotland?" Cameron sounded completely incredulous. "That blow you took did more damage than I thought. There's nothing up in Scotland. Nothing but sheep and the infected."

"I'm CI5. We were in charge of Heathrow. If the airport fell, we were to rendezvous at Watford, then make our way to Scotland.

"Scotland's a worse choice than Dover. We're not going there."

"Then stop and let me out. I'll go myself."

Cameron shook his head. "I hauled you out of Guy's because you're a fighter. I need you fighting for us. Not up in Scotland where some sheep-shagging infected can turn you.

"Stop the bus."

"No."

Bodie took a deep breath, ignored the dizzying pain that was threatening to bring him to his knees, and acted.

He drew the pistol from his holster, knocked off the safety, hammered it back, and pressed it against Cameron's head. Shusai would have been proud of the fluidity and conviction of his action, if not necessarily of the action itself.

"Stop. The. Bus." He didn't shout; the weapon did his shouting for him.

"This lot could use your help."

"I take my orders from George Cowley," Bodie said, ignoring the fact he was only here now because he had ignored Cowley's orders. "Now are you going to stop the bus, or am I going to put a bullet in your head?"

"Mickey," Cameron yelled forward, without taking his eyes off Bodie. "Stop the bus, would you."

"You're joking," called back the unseen Mickey.

"No, I'm not. Stop the fucking bus."

Mickey put his foot on the brake and the bus came to a screeching halt. Bodie made his way to the front, ignoring the stares of its frightened passengers and Cameron's judging glare. He glanced outside, thankful that they'd stopped on the outskirts of some Kent market town, with no obvious signs of the infected. There was a pub car park across the road with the choice of a few cars to nick. Though he wondered if it counted as stealing if the owner was never coming back.

He gestured to the unlucky Mickey to open the door, and looked back once at Cameron.

"I'm sorry," he said, and then he was out of the bus and on the street.

Mickey barely waited till his feet hit the pavement before he had the bus on the go again, the lumbering thing roaring past Bodie, nearly running him over.

He stomped down on the feelings washing over and through him: the anguish of not saving Doyle; the grief at Doyle's death; the despair that anything he did would have no meaning. He would go on. Because he always had gone on, and because Doyle would expect him to, and Cowley, if he were still alive, needed him to. Continuing was the only meaning he had left in the world, and he would cling to it.

He did a quick check that there were no infected ready to attack, and took a deep breath.

"Right," he said to the sky, to the pavement, to no one at all. "Scotland."

Part Two: Arrival

Bodie stood at the castle's gate and checked his equipment. His handgun was loaded, he had extra shells for the shotgun in his pocket and his machete was within easy reach. His leathers were zipped up and whole, if you didn't count the tear in his left elbow that was a souvenir of his adventure at Guy's, and his protective goggles were hung around his neck.

"You ready to go?" Murphy asked.

Bodie nodded in response.

"Do you want me to come along?"

"No, Murph." He shook his head, just like he always did. "I'll be fine."

"Right, then," Murphy said, an unspoken awkwardness hanging in the air between them. "Be careful."

"I always am," Bodie said, though they both knew that was a lie.

Bodie was anything but careful. He took chances no one else would, ventured into nests of infected that even Cowley deemed it unwise to disturb. He had become, in his loss, an avenging angel, intent on destroying every infected human on England's shores. Intent on wiping out all of the creatures that had taken Ray from him.

It was that, embark on this quixotic crusade, or eat his own gun. Bodie had never been one for suicide. The act of a coward, he had always considered it, and he was no coward. Even if he did sometimes think it would be easier to simply lie down and die, to let oblivion take away the pain of his loss.

Instead, he turned his pain into rage, and used rage as his fuel on the patrols Cowley insisted upon every day.

They weren't supposed to do solo patrols, but these days no one wanted to pair up with Bodie. Not even Murphy, for all that he still offered. "A right nutter," he'd heard Jax call him when he hadn't known Bodie was on the other side of a storeroom door. The civilians in their castle stronghold were outright afraid of him. Bodie didn't care about any of them. He liked being out there alone, just him and the infected, his ferocity matched to theirs.

"Remember," Murphy was saying, "be back before sunset."

"Yes, mother."

"And you're meant to get supplies from the university and look for survivors, not just kill those fucking monsters."

"I will," Bodie said, another lie between them. He'd told so many lies in the last few weeks that they didn't cause him a single pang now.

"Off you go, then." Murphy gestured to the two lads controlling the castle gate. Bodie climbed into the Land Rover, revved it up, and sped off as soon as the gate was open enough to allow him. It was a cool summer day, with clouds scudding across the sky without threatening rain, much like the day he'd arrived at the Watford rendezvous, roaring up to the car park in a Vauxhall estate, not entirely sure if he'd find Cowley or hordes of the infected.

Murphy and Jax had been the first faces he saw that day, and he'd seen their relief and pleasure at his appearance. He could tell they were planning on taking the piss out of his choice of transport, the best of a bad lot he'd had to choose from when he'd been dumped out of that bus. He'd taken it all away from them—the relief, the pleasure, the good-natured ribbing—with his first words.

"Doyle's dead."

He'd seen the colour drain from Murphy's face, seen the light go out of Jax's eyes. And he'd taken a grim satisfaction that there were others who could share his grief at this one death, surrounded as they were by so many of the dead.

They brought him to Cowley, who mouthed platitudes about how Doyle had been a good man. He'd been in constant motion since that day. First, there was the journey to Dumbarton, and the task of cleansing the castle of all infected. Then there had been the long slow job of helping Cowley restore his beloved Britain.

If he wasn't scrounging the Glasgow universities and hospitals for supplies for the scientific boffins Cowley had managed to find, or on a patrol searching for survivors to rescue and infected to kill, he was taking watch on the ramparts or doing maintenance on the weapons they'd managed to find. Anything to keep himself busy, to keep from thinking about Ray, torn to pieces in that hospital bed, dying horribly and alone.

One assignment Bodie avoided, assiduously, was training the civilians they'd rescued. Cowley insisted everyone, young and old, male and female, learn how to fight. Everyone needed to be able to defend themselves and the castle. All existing members of CI5 had been drafted to the cause. Murphy taught shooting and sniping. Jax, one of the best with a handgun outside of Doyle, coached willing students to use pistols and revolvers. And Jack Craine taught hand-to-hand combat and the proper use of the flamethrowers Cowley had liberated from a military warehouse somewhere between London and Glasgow.

Bodie could see the sense in it, but he didn't have the patience to deal with some scared, green civilian who didn't know a revolver from a semi-automatic. And after the second time Bodie had made a grown man weep in fear and frustration, Cowley stopped insisting he teach a class.

Bodie squealed around a corner and onto the Glasgow Road, taking his usual route through Dumbarton into Glasgow, looking for signs of the infected and the healthy.

They'd had a few survivors find them in the days since Cowley had started his radio broadcast, his siren call to the healthy, but the numbers were depressingly few.

There always seemed to be infected in the area, though. Bodie wondered what he would do when he'd killed the last of the infected, when he no longer had a target for his rage and pain.

The houses started thinning out, and he shifted the Rover as high as it would go and floored it, revelling in the speed, trying not to think about how much he wished Ray was here beside him.

"Watch out, you maniac," Ray would say, his eyes sparkling with mischief in spite of his complaints.

"Go on. You love it," he'd say, knowing he and Ray were a matched set, both loving the speed and the adrenaline coursing through their veins. They'd laugh, and he'd find a safe place to pull over, and then they'd be kissing and fumbling with buttons and zippers.

A flicker of movement pulled him from his impossible daydream.

It had come from the hotel to his left, a lumbering mock Tudor monstrosity that must have done a good trade in weddings before the virus had hit. He turned into
the hotel car park, pulled in front of a Jag whose owner was no doubt long dead, and stopped the Rover. There was no movement now, but he could have sworn he'd seen someone, at the edge of the building. He confirmed the shotgun was loaded and left the safety of the car.

He'd found a nest of infected here already, three weeks ago. He'd killed them all and burned the bodies in the field behind the hotel. The pile of ash was probably still there, not that he was about to go looking for it.

He edged up to the hotel, then slowly made his way to the rear. Taking a deep breath and shaking his shoulders loose, he turned the final corner, and found himself in the rear car park, facing not a pack of the infected, but five black-clad men, aiming five handguns at his head.

"Who are you?" he barked out without dropping his own weapon, his shotgun aimed firmly into the middle of the group.

"Are you one of Cowley's men?" a voice asked from behind. He turned to see the one person on this fucking island he would have cheerfully seen stripped to the bone by the infected.

"Willis," he said through gritted teeth.

"Bodie, how nice to see you've survived," Willis said, while the expression in his eyes suggested he was as thrilled with Bodie's survival as Bodie was with his. "Now why don't you take us to see George?"

They were, at last, on the road.

Doyle hadn't thought it would take so long, but Stuart didn't seem to want to leave London. Even knowing Cowley was alive, that there was a sanctuary in Scotland, he didn't want to leave the hell he knew for an uncertainty. Doyle could sympathize, but he wasn't about to let Stuart keep him in the south. Not when Bodie might be alive in Scotland.

So Doyle bullied and pushed and cajoled, until, three days after they first heard Cowley's broadcast, Stuart agreed to leave for Scotland. A further two days of winnowing their supplies to the essentials, and picking the best vehicle for the trip—a brand new Range Rover from a dealership in Kensington—and they were on their way.

Much as Doyle wanted to do nothing more than blast up to Scotland as fast as they could, there was one place he wanted to go. He convinced Stuart to stay on the M1 past Rugby and head up to Derby. He had to check on his family, his mum, his sisters. Had to see if there were any of the Doyle clan left to save, even knowing how unlikely it was. Stuart didn't comment, just followed Doyle's directions. Doyle wondered what had happened to Stuart's family, his friends. Wondered if he'd already tried to find them.

He kept his question to himself, though. They both deserved some measure of privacy. It wasn't as if he were about to confess to Stuart exactly how deep his own feelings for Bodie ran, and exactly why he was willing to go to such lengths to find him.

They were driving through the suburb where Doyle had grown up, perhaps two streets from his mum's house. They'd already tried his sister Katie's house. It had been empty but undisturbed, as if Katie and her tribe had just stepped out to the shops. His little sister Mary's flat had been in worse shape, torn apart, with furniture and clothing thrown about, the fridge door open with decaying food inside. But there had been no body there either. Doyle was beginning to hope he'd find the whole family at his mum's, that they'd be waiting there for him, and they could all go up to Scotland together. A mad fantasy, but it was the only hope he had.

They turned a corner, when the quiet and stillness was broken by movement and shouting. Two creatures had broken from the side of one of the houses and were running towards the car, arms waving crazily.

"Christ," said Stuart as he sped up. "More fucking infected."

Doyle wasn't sure why, but he looked back as they raced away. There was something wrong with the two creatures' movements. They weren't as jerky as those of the other infected he'd seen. Their waving arms seemed less threatening, and more like they were trying to attract their attention.

"Fucking hell," Doyle said as the realization hit him. "They're not infected." He looked harder. "Turn back."

Even as he watched, there was movement behind the people, a woman and a girl. Four more figures, these clearly infected, emerged onto the street and began running after the woman and girl.

"Turn back, Stuart," Doyle yelled as Stuart kept going forward.

"I'm not risking my life for two people I don't even know."

Doyle didn't even have to think about his response. He grabbed the wheel and the handbrake and did a screaming turn worthy even of Bodie's mad driving. Stuart didn't say anything about his driving being hijacked, simply pulled out of the turn and sped up, his mouth flattened into a thin line.

They reached the woman and girl in seconds, with the infected rapidly catching up to them. Stuart pulled to a stop, and Doyle was out, hustling them into the back seat before jumping back into the passenger seat.

They got moving just as the first infected, a woman with long dark hair, blood red eyes, and a mouth that was like a gaping maw, reached them. Stuart floored the Rover and ran over the infected, which made the girl, already weeping, scream.

"Mum!" the girl managed to gasp out.

"Is your mum close by?" Doyle asked. "Can we go get her?"

"No," said the girl, shaking her head. "That thing-" She broke off and shuddered before continuing. "That thing you hit. That was my mum." At those words, she began to wail and buried her face in the woman's shoulder.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Stuart muttered as he accelerated down a high street. "You're in charge of them," he said, turning briefly to Doyle. "Do you understand? They're your responsibility."

Doyle ignored Stuart's outburst and concentrated on their passengers, clutching each other in the back seat.

The woman was probably in her thirties, though it was hard to tell under the tears and grime. The girl was perhaps ten or twelve, with the long-limbed awkwardness that showed puberty wasn't far off. Both shared the same dark hair and fine-boned faces that marked them clearly as family.

Before Doyle could say anything, the woman frowned.

"Doyle?" she said. "Ray Doyle?"

Doyle nearly laughed at the absurdity of it, saving someone from monsters straight out of a Hammer horror film, only to find she knew you.

"I'm sorry, I don't-"

"I'm Grace Edwards," she said. "I was friends with Katie."

"Grace?" Doyle had a memory of a group of his sister's friends laughing at him when his voice started breaking. Katie had been one of them, but always a little smarter, a little quieter than the rest. "But you went away. To medical school, wasn't it?"

"I ended up in biochemistry and immunology."

"I thought you were in London."

"I was. I was a researcher at UCL. I came up here when everything went wrong. I was hoping I could help Wendy get out. Or at least stay safe. Do you remember my sister, Wendy?"

Doyle nodded. "Is that Wendy's girl?" Doyle looked at the girl, still cowering in Grace's arms.

"Yeah." Grace hugged the girl tighter. "We're all that's left of the Edwards family now."

Doyle was sure he didn't want to hear the answer to his next question, but he had to ask it.

"Do you know anything about Katie, or my mum?"

"They're gone, Ray." Grace's tone was final, her expression even more bleak.

"Mary?"

"Gone."

"How?"

"They're just gone. Leave it at that, Ray. For all our sakes."

"Christ." Doyle turned back in his seat and stared unseeingly into distance, this news just one more disaster he didn't want to handle, but had to. After all this, Bodie had to be alive. He just had to.

"As touching as this reunion is," Stuart broke in, "I need your help, Doyle. You know this bloody town. How do I get back to the bloody motorway?"

Doyle broke free from the gloom that was closing in, introduced Grace to Stuart, and set about getting them back on the way to Scotland.

Bodie somehow held back from his impulse to pull the trigger and take out Willis and his men. He waited while they packed up their kit, then led them back to the castle in a small convoy, on the lookout for the infected the whole way. The infected didn't often come out during the day, but loud noises tended to attract them.

They made it back to Dumbarton and the castle without an attack, though Bodie still felt his skin crawling the whole way. He put it down to Willis' presence, rather than an imminent attack by the infected.

When Bodie brought Willis to the command centre in the castle's main building, Cowley looked no more pleased to see Willis than Bodie had felt.

"It's good to see you, Willis," Cowley said, though Bodie could tell it cost him.

"I sincerely doubt that, George," Willis said with a curl to his lip.

"Given the circumstances, I'm glad to see anyone alive." And that really did sound sincere. Bodie knew how hard Cowley had fought the past month. Fought to save England, fought to save her people. And now, when most thought everything had been lost, he was fighting to find a cure for this fucking virus that seemed to have taken away everything.

"Yes, well…" Willis trailed off, as if he couldn't find a single gracious thing to say in the circumstances.

"I assume you'll want to stay with us?"

"If you would be so kind." Willis looked unaccustomed to playing the role of supplicant. "My men have been on the run for too long."

"Where did you come from?"

"We were guarding the ferry docks at Plymouth. We managed to get a number of ships safely off, but there were thousands still waiting at the docks when the perimeter fell." He shook his head. "It was a bloodbath."

"I can imagine."

"You were at Heathrow?"

"We were."

"And was it bad?"

"A bloodbath," Cowley admitted, then shrugged. "I'll have Murphy get you and your men settled. We're a bit crowded, but there are a few quarters left to choose from."

"Thank you, George." Willis went to leave, then turned around. "I know we've had our differences, but I really am quite grateful. My men deserve better than I've been able to provide of late." He seemed so tired, so wrung out, all the artifice purged from his manner, that Bodie very nearly overcame his hatred and felt sorry for the man.

"I hope you would do the same, if our situations were reversed," Cowley said.

Willis only nodded, then left with Murphy.

"I'll be going, sir," Bodie said, then turned to leave himself.

"Stay for a minute, Bodie." Cowley sounded far too kind, which immediately put Bodie on his guard. Too many people had tried to be kind to him in the last few weeks. Since London, since Guy's, since Doyle's death. It put his teeth on edge.

"Sir." Bodie took refuge in the old military forms, snapping to attention, hoping Cowley would realize he didn't want and couldn't tolerate kindness just now.

"It's been over a month, since all this happened. Everyone is raw, everyone has lost friends and family. And I thought it might be a good idea to have a memorial service." Bodie's back was immediately up. A memorial service was the exact opposite of a good idea, as far as Bodie was concerned. "It will give everyone a way to remember the people they've lost. Give them a way to move on."

And there was the thing. Bodie didn't want to move on. Doyle had been all he'd had in life, friend, family, everything. He didn't want to relegate him to the status of fond memory. He wanted the idea of him alive and raw, even if it nearly fucking killed him every time he thought of Ray, every time he saw something he thought Ray would appreciate.

"I thought everyone could give a short speech about someone they've lost." Cowley was continuing. "I thought you might want to speak about Doyle."

Bodie clamped his jaw tightly shut and tried not to say what he wanted to: Are you fucking insane? Do you know what you're asking of me? Don't you know it will break me?

"Well," Cowley said finally, when the silence had stretched out between them for far too long. "What do you think?"

"I respectfully decline, sir." Only four words, but Bodie nearly couldn't spit them out.

Cowley stared at him for a few more moments, and Bodie felt as if he'd been examined more closely than he ever had in his life, as if Cowley had dissected him down to the cellular level. But then Cowley's shoulders fell and the steel left his expression.

"Ach, there's no getting you to do anything you don't want to. I imagine all your commanding officers have found that out."

"Yes, sir."

"Off with you." Cowley waved him out of the room, and Bodie didn't wait for the order to be repeated.

"Bodie?" Cowley said as he hit the threshold.

"Sir?"

"You'll let me know? If you change your mind?"

"Yes, sir," he said, though he was quite sure they both knew that wasn't ever going to happen.

They had stopped in a farmer's field outside of Stoke-on-Trent. They could have gone further, possibly all the way to Dumbarton, but none of them had had the heart to continue.

Lily had stopped crying, after a time, but had continued to shake with fear, her body pumping more adrenaline into her system than she could handle. Grace had wrapped her niece in a blanket Doyle had supplied and held her, comforting her as best she could, though Grace herself was clearly showing the strain of the horrors she'd been through. Stuart clenched the steering wheel and scowled. After his initial outburst, he'd kept his thoughts on Grace and Lily to himself, so Doyle wasn't sure if he was pissed off they'd saved them, pissed off Doyle had taken the wheel from him, or reliving visions of his own particular hell.

And Doyle…Doyle had sat in the passenger seat, his feet on the dashboard, and tried not to curl in on himself and scream in despair.

His mum was gone. Dead, one way or the other. And his sisters. And Katie's kids. Every single blood relation he had, wiped out at a stroke.

Now he sat in a farmer's field, a sleeping bag wrapped around his shoulders, huddled in front of the tiny fire that was all they dared risk. Light, Stuart told them, brought the infected. But light was exactly what they needed, whatever the danger it might bring.

Lily had fallen asleep an hour ago, exhaustion overcoming grief and anxiety. With a blanket pulled up to her nose, she looked more vulnerable than she had after her mother had gone under the wheels of their car.

Doyle stared at Grace and tried not to ask questions he didn't want answered: had his mum been killed by the infected, or had she become one of them? Was Katie dead, or was she wandering through her old neighbourhood, looking for prey? It would do him no good to know these things. Once he knew, he couldn't unknow. Ignorance might not be bliss, but it might actually be better than the truth, just this once.

"So you're a scientist." Stuart broke the silence.

"Yes," Grace answered tentatively. And well she might. It was the first time Stuart had opened his mouth since Derby.

"Biology?"

"Biochemistry," Grace corrected. "And immunology." Doyle saw her tense up, and even he could see where this was going.

"Looked at viruses, did you?"

"I mostly worked with bacteria. And I didn't have anything to do with the rage virus, if that's what you're getting at."

"Rage virus?" Doyle hadn't known the thing that had destroyed his world while he was sleeping had a name.

"That's what they called it, Doyle," Stuart said, the bitterness quite clearly audible in his voice. "The idiots who created the fucking thing."

"If they'd been idiots, it wouldn't have been so bad," Grace said. "But they were clever. They knew what they were doing. And they created something that's going to be bloody hard to kill."

"How would you know?" Doyle had a sudden twinge that here was something very important, something worth paying attention to.

"We were all looking at it, after the outbreak started. Every lab in the country. Everyone who had even a passing knowledge of viruses was trying to find a cure. Or a vaccine. Any way to eradicate the virus."

"And did you? Find a way to eradicate it?"

"Of course they didn't, Doyle." Stuart spit out the words with what could only have been utter contempt. "We wouldn't be sitting in the middle of a fucking field, cowering from fucking zombies if they had, would we?"

"Shut up, Stuart." Doyle kept his attention directed towards Grace. "Did you, Grace?"

"Well…" She trailed off and looked down at her hands twisting in her lap. "Our lab thought they might have found something. Not a cure, but a possible vaccine. But it was understandably hard to find anyone who wanted to volunteer to be a test subject. It was an immediate death sentence, if we were wrong."

"And…" Doyle prompted.

"And, nothing." Grace shrugged. "We hadn't decided how to test it. Things got worse. I got a panicked call from my sister and legged it up to Derby. And that's it."

"And we're back where we started," Stuart said with a bitter laugh. "Utterly fucked."

"I said, shut up, Stuart." Doyle resisted the urge to beat Stuart until his knuckles were bloody. "Could you reproduce what your lab was doing?"

"Maybe. Probably. But I'd need a proper lab. Equipment. Electricity. None of that's going spare at the moment, Ray."

"But if you had the equipment?"

"I could do it, yeah." Doyle could see Grace put down her grief and begin thinking. He could see the ideas flash through her eyes, see the calculations she was making.

"Fantastic, Doyle. She could do it if she had something that's impossible to get."

"Use your head, Stuart." Doyle was impatient. If he could see this, why couldn't Stuart? "Who is the one man on this island who seems to have set up a refuge from the infected?"

"Cowley, but-"

"And who," Doyle said, cutting off Stuart before he could voice any objections, "is the one man who would understand that looking for a cure would be the only way to save the country, and would be determined enough to set up a lab to do it?"

"Cowley," Stuart admitted reluctantly.

"Cowley," Doyle repeated. He turned back to Grace. "I think we might be going to the one place where you can do the most good."

Cowley would have a lab. Doyle was convinced of it. Just as he was convinced that Bodie must be with Cowley.

And Bodie was the only family he had left.

Bodie had tried. He really had.

He couldn't make himself set foot in the great hall for the memorial service, but he sat outside the door, listening as Cowley presided over a ritual that had been embraced by every other member of their makeshift community. He'd listened as Cowley read from the Bible, his brogue grown stronger now that he was on his native soil. He'd listened to Murphy's remembrances of his mother, presumed lost in Wimbledon, and to one of the scientists, a young man barely in his twenties, describing his girlfriend, a fellow researcher killed in that final mad scramble at Heathrow. He'd stuck it out for memories of wives and husbands, parents and children.

But then Jax had stood up and started to tell a story of a friend lost, and Bodie realized it was Doyle, and he couldn't get out of the building fast enough.

The impact of his grief had been physical. He'd nearly thrown up, as if his emotions were a poison he needed to purge. Nearly blind with panic, he rushed for the exit, not caring about the commotion he caused or who had craned their necks to view his exit. Not caring about anything until he was out in the cool evening air, a fresh breeze blowing off the river and into his face.

He paid no attention to the cooling tracks of wet down his face—he didn't cry, wouldn't cry—and made for the rampart, ignoring and ignored by the two B squad blokes who'd drawn the short straw and were on guard duty this night.

Don't be an idiot, he told himself. Doyle would laugh himself sick if he saw you.

He took in a great lungful of air, and tried to recall what Shusai had taught him about overcoming strong emotion, failing when he remembered that his sensei also must be dead.

Knowing he could not stay here, he stood straight and headed for the steep path behind the main building.

Most of the inhabitants of Dumbarton had rooms in the main building, the Governor's House. As more refugees arrived and more space was needed, some had taken over the old French prison on the other side of the crag the castle nestled against. Willis and his men had taken the rooms in the Guard House set over the steep path up the crag.

None of those places had appealed to Bodie. They were all crowded with the remnants of Britain's people that Cowley had gathered here. He wanted solitude, not company. And so he'd set up his kit in the Magazine, an isolated building on the top of Dumbarton Rock. It had been built in the 19th century to store gunpowder. Now it housed the castle's weapons, ammunition, and Bodie.

Bodie mounted the stairs that would take him through the Guard House and to the Magazine, but stopped when he reached the small brick structure, his senses telling him there was something off.

He drew the gun he always carried now, and listened.

At first there was nothing more than the blowing of the wind, the stray call of a bird settling for the night. But then, just as he began to believe he'd been imagining things, he heard a low whisper.

He drew closer to the Guard House, and the whispering resolved into scattered words, then whole sentences.

"Rob and Jamie, you secure the weapons. We don't want any trouble," said the soft male voice. Howard, Bodie realized. Willis' second-in-command. "The rest of us will wait until the service is over, and then we'll take over. Remember, it's the scientists we want. Take out any of those CI5 bastards who give you trouble, but don't touch the scientists. Or Cowley. Willis wants to deal with that old bastard personally."

Fucking hell, thought Bodie, even as he quickly ran through the possibilities. Go for help, and they might have time to secure the Magazine and its weapons. Yell for the blokes on guard duty, and it would be the same result. Stay and fight, and it would be at least six to one against. Bodie closed his eyes and tried to remember how many of Willis' men had been at the service. There had been a few. Enough to allay suspicion, anyway.

He could hear the sounds of armed men moving and knew he'd run out of time, out of options.

He moved quickly and pressed against the side of the Guard House, just beside the arch Howard and his men would have to pass through to get to the Governor's House. He made it just in time. The first of the four men came through mere seconds after he made it in position.

Bodie waited until they were all past, and then opened fire. There was no time for tactics, he just needed to put as many of these bastards down as he could, then get to the Magazine before the last two could barricade themselves in with the weapons.

The element of surprise worked in his favour. Two of the four went down without firing a shot. Howard and one other man lasted a few moments longer, but Bodie put them down as well. Two were dead, he noted automatically. The other two might survive. Maybe.

One of the B squad men, drawn by the gunfire, was running up the path towards him.

"It's Willis' men," he yelled down. "Go warn Cowley."

Burns stood there for a moment, frozen with indecision.

"Now!" Bodie screamed, and then headed up towards the Magazine without waiting to see if his orders had been followed. There was no time to lose.

The path to the Magazine was steep, but running up mountain paths was the sort of thing he'd been trained to do in the SAS. He gained steadily on Willis' men, but couldn’t quite catch them up. They were fifty yards from the Magazine when he took a risk. He stopped, dropped to one knee, aimed, and fired. The front man dropped. The second man halted and hesitated, clearly unsure what to do.

"Don't be a fool," Bodie yelled at him, his gun firmly trained on him. "Drop it."

The man waited the time it took for Bodie to draw one more deep breath of air, then tossed his gun to the side and put his hands up.

"Good lad," Bodie said.

The memorial service had spilled outside and degenerated into chaos by the time Bodie marched his prisoner down to the Governor's house. Willis' last four men were surrounded by CI5 agents, and Willis and Cowley were engaged in a shouting match at their centre.

They both turned to Bodie as he approached.

"That man is a menace," Willis yelled, his finger pointed firmly in Bodie's direction. "He always has been. He shot my men without provocation."

Bodie ignored Willis and his righteous indignation, and spoke directly to Cowley.

"They were launching a coup, sir. I heard them planning to capture the boffins. The four I shot were going to break in on the service." He pushed his prisoner at Willis. "This one and a friend were on their way to take over the weapons store when I stopped them."

"He's lying," Willis said, his expression heated.

"William Bodie is many things, but he is not a liar," Cowley said firmly to Willis. "I wish I could say the same of you."

"How dare you-"

"No." Cowley stopped Willis' tirade cold with a glare more ferocious than Bodie had ever seen. "How dare you? How dare you play power games when the survival of everyone in this castle, on this island, should be your primary concern?"

"Don't pretend you're above making a play for power, George. What is this place but your private fiefdom?"

"I'll not have this called a fiefdom. I'm a servant of the people here, nothing more."

"And what is this servant of the people going to do with us, George?"

"A bit better than you had planned for me and my men. Banishment."

Willis' men were silent and stone-faced, but Bodie thought one or two of them looked paler than they had.

"You can't…" Willis spluttered.

"I can, and I will. You obviously can't be trusted to act in the best interest of anyone but yourself. It's bad enough having the infected trying to kill us, but at least it's only instinct with them. I won't harbour those who'd do the same in the name of power."

"Banishment starting when?" Willis at least had the good sense not to argue his sentence.

"Tomorrow morning. You can bury your dead and patch up your wounded, and then I want you gone. You can take the vehicles and supplies you brought with you. We'll give you back your weapons once you're outside the walls. And if I see you within fifty miles of this place, I won't be nearly so merciful." Cowley turned to Murphy. "Search them, and then lock them up in the Guard House." Cowley watched as Murphy, Craine and a few other CI5 agents frisked Willis and his crew and hustled them back towards the Guard House, where the men Bodie had shot still lay, then looked at Bodie. Bodie wasn't sure how to read his expression. The fire that had driven him while he confronted Willis was banked, and Cowley looked more exhausted than anything. "Bodie," he said, his voice almost gentle. "A word."

Bodie followed Cowley to the edge of the ramparts, and the two of them stood there for several long minutes. Cowley stared intently at Bodie as the day's last light faded around them. Bodie just as intently ignored Cowley as he pretended to be interested in the way the last of the sun's rays glinted off the river before him.

"You never makes things easy, do you, lad?"

"Would you have preferred I'd waited until they'd shot you and taken over the castle?" Bodie could still feel the adrenaline humming through his veins. He was even less inclined than usual towards tact.

"No." Cowley sighed, then seemed to let the matter drop. "You weren't at the service."

"Good thing I wasn't, or I'd never have stopped Willis."

"You can't go on this way, Bodie. Doyle's dead."

"I know that, sir."

"You have to let him go, lad."

"Respectfully, sir, no I don't." Bodie didn't say anything else, because in the end it was none of Cowley's damned business if he let go of Doyle or not. And because he couldn't bear to have this conversation one more time, he turned and headed toward the Magazine.

"Bodie!" Cowley called after him. Bodie just shook his head and started running. He wished he could keep running, keeping going until he was away from Cowley and Murphy and Jax and all the well-meaning people who wanted to save him from his grief, to save him from himself.

He wanted to run until he was alone with himself, the sky, and his memories of Doyle, but he had to stop when he reached the stone wall that surrounded the castle and its grounds. The wall that protected them from the all the horrors of the world except the ones they'd brought with them.

He wanted to scream, to howl, to bring down the heavens with his cries, but he was too disciplined a soldier for that. Instead he gave the bloody wall a kick with a booted foot and then collapsed at its base, the stars the only witnesses to his frustration and pain.

Go to Part Three