AFTER (Book #3)

Prologue

Death grew closer by the hour, and after several days, he could feel its warm breath caressing the back of his neck, and its dark shadow enveloping his body. Except he knew that it wouldn't be that comforting, like sharing an embrace with an old friend, as it is for some. When death comes early and unexpected, it jolts and shakes your entire existence, like the sharpest of knives driving through your very soul, an infinite number of teeth grinding against every memory as it goes.   

He had always hoped that death would come to him with a warning, a gentle reminder when he was old and grey, a full life stretched out behind him. He had always imagined being tucked up in his own bed, surrounded by his own family and friends, smiles on their faces as death silently but knowingly led him across the divide.

He had been granted his warning, a long, drawn-out clicking time-bomb, counting down to his last breath, but there was nothing silent or gentle about it.

It had taken them a few hours to break into the building, he had locked and barricaded the doors as best he could in the time allowed, but he always knew that it was a temporary measure. Nothing much more than a hurdle for them to jump, or smash through, in order to reach them.

It had been three days or so since he had watched the last of them stream through what was left of the tattered front doors. He had peered down on them from the top floor, with a heavy lump in his throat as they scurried inside, like termites through wood.

Ever since then, he had been forced to listen hour after hour, to every crash, scratch and click, as they gradually scaled the office block. He felt like an escape artist with his head locked in a Perspex box, slowly filling up with water, except he knew that the trick could not be done. For three days he had lived in that exact heart-wrenching moment of realisation that there was no escape, and that he would be forced to live out his remaining precious seconds just watching the level rise.

On day one the noises were distant, unable to ignore completely, but distant, like the scratching of mice beneath the floorboards. By day two they had made it up a few floors higher, breaking down the barricades of desks, chairs and partitions that he had built at every doorway and staircase as he had made his own climb. The noises were louder by then, like a steady, dull thumping below their feet, accompanied by the droning chorus of clicks.

By day three, it was like they were in the room with him. If he shut his eyes, he would be sure that they were mere metres away, but for now, at least, they were still separated by walls and floors. The clicks were now like a swarm of locusts, and the scratching like a bug burrowing deep into his skull. By this point, he couldn't even be sure which of the noises were real, and which were just fabrications of his haunted mind.

In the past hour, the sounds of bodies thumping against metal were shortly followed by nails screeching against steel. It had taken him a few minutes to locate the source, as he stumbled past the elevator shaft in the centre of the room. Despite the unlikelihood of the clickers being able to scale the walls and wrench open the metal doors, the noise alone set his nerves racing.

In the last few minutes, he had accepted once and for all that the slim chance of rescue had been all but extinguished.

He had always hoped that death would come to him with a warning. Now his best chance for silent, painless end sat propped up against the wall by his side, the trigger glimmering like an exit sign. He wasn't sure whether he had the courage to take his own life, but what petrified him even more was the firm knowledge that he didn't have the courage to take another's.

A solitary tear ran down his cheek at this thought, as little George's face sobbed into his chest.