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People filled the street, blocking the road, and cutting off all hope of escape. They poured out of the houses and slipped out of the shadows, bodies pressed together, as they crowded closer and closer to surround the pod and bang on the glass panels. The pod was now five or six deep and the proximity net sensors automatically took the engine offline. Carson slammed his hands down on the steering wheel in desperation and frustration. He could feel a scream building inside him and knew if it broke loose it would never stop. He snatched up the key card from where it lay on the passenger seat and pressed the activation stud. Nothing. No response. The engine refused to engage. All he got for his trouble was the pod’s prox-net warning replayed to him. He threw aside the card and looked around for inspiration. The window on the passenger side began to give under the pounding hands: spider web cracks of silver shooting through the darkened glass. It would only be moments before the panelling collapsed and they were upon him. Frantic, he pulled his mobile from his jacket, but a quick glance told him it was useless. The signal net was down. There would be no summoning of the cavalry to save him, assuming there was even a cavalry left to call, as, for all Carson knew, he could be the last uninfected man on the planet. No, he thought. I refuse to give in. There are others. He dropped the mobile to the floor and flipped open the central storage compartment between the seats. Empty. “Shit.” He looked around again. There had to be something in here he could use. “Think,” he said. “For the love of Christ, thin —” Glass shattered and cut off his words, as hands thrust through the gap and clutched at him. The pod’s door hissed open and he was dragged from his seat. He fought, kicked and punched, but it was hopeless: he was outnumbered. His body slammed down onto the pavement and his arms and legs were pinned. A hypo was pressed to his neck. “No,” he gasped. It couldn’t end like this. There had to be another way: something beyond the choice Helena MacDonald offered. The scream inside gathered momentum: spiralling up from the depths; Carson felt it claw at his throat as he struggled and thrashed. “Please, don’t do this,” he said. “Please don’t —” A hand clamped across his mouth, silencing him. All around Carson, filling his field of vision, the infected stared down at him: each face impassive and indifferent. He was nothing to them. There was no humanity left behind their purpled eyes. They were nothing more than a manifestation of the single Machiavellian intelligence behind the infected: an intelligence whose only purpose was to ensure its survival. Carson felt the hypo-fluid enter his bloodstream and, as the hand was removed from his mouth, let out the scream that had been growing inside. It tore free from his throat and rent the night. It contained all his rage and despair and terror. It was the last, dying cry of a race now lost and without hope. It rang out into the dark and ushered in the end, an end, which Carson now knew, had been inevitable from the word go. Humanity had had its time. The future belonged to The New. *****THE
END*****
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