It had been a long journey, for the body if not the soul. The soul didn’t do a lot of moving these days. Since the end, it had rushed fairy quickly from panic and despair to a more wishy-washy resigned loneliness, tiredness and hunger, where it had plonked down its metaphorical buttocks and refused to budge another inch for at least a month now. It was probably best for William that it didn’t. The bottom of that street didn’t look very nice.

Not that the real streets did either. I mean, these were the streets of Middlesbrough, so they didn’t need a disaster to be menacing. For Middlesbrough, the world war was overkill.

He’d gone all the way to North Ormesby on this latest wild goose chase, on foot of course, because he didn’t dare risk the roar of a car over the dead silence of the town, and the buses were going for a truly unbeatable record of poor attendance now that all their drivers were lumps of rotten squishy stuff in the staff room.

He’d ran into little trouble, all things considered. Just a couple of crazy knife-waving alcoholics that had obviously been too far down in a ditch somewhere to see in Judgement Day when it came. Just the usual. Nothing to get worked up about. Yet. Grandad’s shotgun had been working surprisingly well on the remnants of human civilisation for something that had merely murdered a thousand pheasants in its previous career. It was just a shame that he was down to his last dozen shells, because shotgun shells weren’t the sort of thing for which he could just pop into the paper shop and buy in a little paper bag for ten pence a scoop. Actually, William thought to himself as he crept along the cold grey pavement with a wonderfully useful lamppost for cover, you never knew round here. If you could do that anywhere in the country it would be in Boro. He’d have to try out the shops if, no when, he got too desperate. Under the counters, of course; they still hadn’t got round to selling ammunition pick and mixes to school kids no matter what the national papers had thought about his home town. Southern prejudiced arseholes. The school kids typically only had shivs.

That was a moot point now, because there were no more school kids. Just the odd scrawny teenager, running round high on who knew what with bits of pipe looking for trouble, so more like the summer holidays, but in winter and with everyone else dead. William ducked low beneath a convenient trolley as one went lurching past right then. He eyed his sack of whatever-it-was dragging along the tarmac and wondered if he should just leap out and take it. After all, he’d won the post-apocalyptic jackpot by having a gun in a country (mostly) without guns. He didn’t even need to use one of his last shells. Just, you know... brandish it looking nasty or something. But he quickly dismissed the thought. He was only to defend himself, not prey on hapless survivors, no matter how dodgy they may seem. The atomisation of desperate starving souls was only to occur should they come within his comfort zone. William had principles.

And besides, he might have everything he needed to last another decade, and he was almost at the door. Time to find out. He tiptoed on down the street, with what was hopefully the key to survival folded neatly in one jacket pocket.

After two days of hogging and slogging, wrestling with lunatics, bubblegum eating, house-breaking, blasting through tripwires, blasting through locals, liberating photographs of old women out of their pewter frames... he had arrived.

William opened the front door, wiped his shoes on the mat, and shouted out across the dust-speckled parlour.

“Morning, Grandma.”

There was no reply. But what there was instead, the rich aroma of pork chops sizzling out from the kitchen, stopped him cold. There were several reasons for this, and the fact that Granny had been a vegan wasn’t particularly high on the list.

There was, for instance, the fact that Granny had passed on last month, bless her soul. Hopefully her soul was still intact to be blessed, because her bones had been dissolved in a cheery drizzle of alphaphuric acid, alongside a measly centimetre of aged flesh and a good couple of inches of bingo wing. It should be noted that this had also happened to roughly ninety-percent of the country’s population, but William was particularly annoyed about Granny. Who wouldn’t be?

Also, there was the fact that Granny had lived alone. William hadn’t ever been the best at Maths, but he was reasonably sure that a household of one minus one should equal none.

Also, just in case his state of semi-starvation had finally gotten the better of his nostrils, Granny had been all out of I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Pork-Chop.

Now he thought about it, as he slowly drifted towards the kitchen, he hadn’t had to unlock the door to his secret refuge. Looking back, he realised he’d been so concerned about ragamuffins outside that he’d mentally bypassed both the smashed latch and the entire possibility of internal ragamuffins as well.

He’d reached the door quite before he wanted to. He noted with grave concern that the damp patch in the ceiling caused by an acid shell plunging through the old council-house roof had spread. He’d have to get a man out.

But wait. He wouldn’t, because there was already a man out. He was turning from his smoking dinner on the hob and looking all startled and angry and now he was lunging for the new arrival with Granny’s best chopping knife (£20.99 from Lakeland) held out before him like a very pointy battering ram.

“Excuse me. Do I know you?” said William.

Then it was too late for chit-chat. The knife shot forward, and it was so close to his sagging sausageless flesh that it tore a button from his gaping shirt. The man’s eyes were full of panic and desperation as he ploughed forward. With a pained grunt he swung the knife again, from out wide, gouging a shower of plaster from the wall. William wasn’t ready. He was sure he wasn’t. But instinct is a strange animal. He had no memory of moving, but a second later he was behind the attacker, deeper in the kitchen by the oven. He’d ducked under the man’s arm, he realised with awe, judging from the alarming bald spot the weapon had shaved into his scalp. He’d rather hoped to hit forty before living with all that.

It wasn’t all amazing undiscovered superpowers for William, however, because the shotgun hadn’t followed his epic lead. Just like his tired soul, it had decided it had had enough of all this crap, and decided to remain by the door, clattering amid the uninvited guest’s feet as he steadied himself against the frame.

The man had whirled, gasping for breath, his chest heaving, grey hair straggling before his eyes. Those eyes were flickering everywhere, from William to parlour to shotgun, undecided, unsure. The knife was by his side in a death-grip, waiting to strike again.

But William wasn’t looking at that. Through his cold, adrenaline-shocked brain, a jumble of images superimposed themselves unhelpfully over the five paces between them. He’d called deep into his memory for aid, all those films and comics that he’d held so dear since he was but a toerag, adventures where heroes almost as unfit for war as himself had prevailed over whole battalions of Nazis or hundred-foot mega-monsters with just a few handy tools available around the home. In one way, he’d been preparing for this moment all his life, pestering his mum to release him from whatever dreadful family meal had been eating away what little time his mortal vessel had been gifted and spending that time in the dark embrace of the pictures down the road.

But sadly, Granny had had the indecency to tidy those precious tools away to other rooms, or so it seemed. He’d seen many a Saturday secret agent use a chair to shield themselves and remove eyes almost simultaneously, but he couldn’t really blame old Gran for that one. Who had a chair in the kitchen? That was all on the visitor. He should have had the decency to attack William in the dining room.

There were more knives, of course, but they were over in the drawers on the other side, and he’d have to turn his back to get to them. Also, there was a strong possibility that Granny’s monumental tupperware collection had overflowed into the cutlery, so if he just had a quick fumble, he’d be as likely to come up with a takeaway lid as a meat cleaver, and he hadn’t seen any secret agents use those. Grandad would’ve known what to do with such handy bits of tat. He’d had many more enjoyable years than William studiously ignoring his family in front of the wireless. If he’d been here, he’d have known how to wield a picnic set with deadly force.

No, he wouldn’t, actually. He’d have just blown off the intruder’s head with the bloody shotgun.

William’s attention had just leapt to the intriguing rubberised edge of the dustpan when the man that was five paces away cried out and suddenly become three paces away. The knife was up above his head, and also one of his front teeth was missing and why was William looking at that when there was a maniac coming at him with a knife. William had an annoying habit of focusing on the wrong things. He tried to remedy the fact by whirling round to grab the heavy iron frying pan from the oven top. The meat that had been charring there tumbled between the racking of the hob and William saw it wasn’t chops but sausages but no, sausages didn’t tend to have toenails and now he was gaping at the fried toes instead of rounding on the man to ward off the blow that was coming any moment now and -

But when he finally tore his eyes from what lay there cooling on the polished metal, the polished metal of his own dear Grandma’s kitchen, what had been cooked in his own dear Grandma’s pan, he saw that the man had backed off again, unsure, knife held point out towards him, wavering just in front of the old man’s panting chest. And that got him thinking again, in the lightning quick trapped rabbit hunted way of thinking, about how he always focused on the wrong things. Because if he was in his dear old Gran’s kitchen, with an old man come to dinner, then maybe, just maybe he should think about what she would do.

So William put the pan down, and turned for the dishcloth, and started mopping up the blood on the chopping board, and asked the man with the knife if he’d like a cup of tea.

“I’m sorry about the toes,” said Barry.

They stood side by side, at the top of the steps, looking down at the Belgian shelter. The Belgian shelter had been Granny’s name for it, because it was Belgian, and it was a shelter, and she couldn’t remember the string of sixteen letters that formed its official name. It was not because Granny had been developing dementia. It was because the name was gobbledegook.

“It’s okay,” said William, taking a steadying sip of his brew. It wasn’t, but it was the polite thing to say now that Barry had relinquished the knife.

“It’s just that I couldn’t stand any more of those things,” Barry insisted. The younger man knew exactly what he meant. Either other companies hadn’t seen the coming storm, or started manufacturing exclusively for executives and those all-important shareholders, or maybe they just didn’t have any more shits to give. Whatever the reason, Baz’s custard creams were the only plentiful thing left by the time the acid fell. Custard creams on the army pallets. Custard creams on the shelves. Custard creams on display in windows, in the fridges and freezers, piled on the pavement outside the cash and carry, exploding warehouses with their oppressive custardy creamy weight. William could only hope Granny had started stocking the shelter early. If he ever got in.

“I didn’t kill him,” said Barry, voice echoing in the rapidly emptying mug. “He was down a pothole on Costa Street. Got by the second attack, judging by the lack of maggots. He had steel-capped boots on. They were the only edible bit left.”

William turned from the mocking bulk of the vault door and reached out for the notebook on the coffee table by the basement steps. He started to ask Barry something, but paused rigid as some cackling gabbling half-crazed crackhead or possibly just the next-door neighbour went stumbling past down the street. When all was clear, he looked through his notes, adding what he could from his most recent expedition in neat tabulated block capitals. “Seeing as, you know, you broke in and tried to murder me with my own Gran’s best slicing knife whilst cooking some bloke on her hob, and all that, would you mind giving me a hand opening this thing up?”

Barry finished his drink and placed the cup carefully on a shelf behind a neat row of thimbles commemorating the lighthouses of western Scotland. He turned and ruffled his greying curls awkwardly. “Seems fair,” he decided.

“Right.” William rustled through his findings. The stench of human flesh still held thick in the air, despite his best efforts with a vanilla shoe spray he’d found under the sink. It might even be worse than those horrible kippers he’d had to have for breakfast every time he’d been forced to stay over as a kid. “Do you know anyone who went to St. Michael’s Primary School in 1988?”

“No,” said Barry.

“Anyone named Sue who sang at The Slag and Geezer on Tuesdays?”

“No,” said Barry.

William took out his most promising find from his jacket pocket, the piece of paper he had released from that awful pewter frame just moments before those lads with the dustbin lids and B&Q glue guns (battery operated) had finally caught up with him. He held it out, ink outwards to the old man, trying to keep the excited tremble from his fingers. “You know who this is? She lived on Deacon Street over in North Ormesby. Probably.”

“No,” said Barry. “But I did have a mate from somewhere up there, back in the day. Plumber. Bright blond hair. Phil Brown.”

With a start, William snatched back the photo and hurried across the room, where a prehistoric hulk of a PC with a CRT monitor whirred and wheezed to itself on a counter by a sewing machine. William slammed down the photo on the desk, hammered at the keyboard, and waited for a half-hour or so while the screen caught up. Then he hit enter, and waited.

An hour later, just as the computer sounded ready to shed its boosters and start up the warp drive, the little red letters flickered into life at the bottom of the screen. They didn’t say access granted.

“Shit,” William snapped. Then he got up out of the armchair and wandered over to the steps again, just in case it had decided to unlock the shelter anyway, out of sympathy.

“I mean,” Barry gurgled from somewhere within his third cup, “It wasn’t very likely old Phil was that tart your Gran used to play bingo with, was it?”

“You never know,” William muttered between gritted teeth. “I mean, he could have had a sex change or summat. Or just liked cardigans and wigs; I don’t judge.” He typed something else in. Another hour passed in awkward silence before the letters came up again. “Oh, come on,” William growled. “Doesn’t she look like a Violet?” He stomped off towards the living room. “And anyway, don’t you call her a tart. That’s Gran’s best friend you’re talking about.”

It was nice to have someone to whinge about again. Comforting. Barry really was a bellend, and not just because he was a cannibal. He used to put sliced banana on crumpets, before everything turned to shite.

“Where you going?” the bellend called after him.

“Off for more evidence.” He put on his best coat, the red one that would blend in with the blood, grabbed a pack of custard creams for the road from the stack by the window, then he marched off for the kitchen to collect the shotgun, where it had lain ever since his warm welcome when he’d got back this morning.

Twelve more shells. He might make it another round then.

“What sort of evidence?” Barry yapped as he appeared in the doorway like something a particularly hateful cat might drag in. “And why do you think it’s her anyway?”

William pumped the shotgun. Barry took a step back. “Are you blind, mate? Didn’t you see the fucking pencil in that photo?”

Barry blinked, eyes on the shotgun. “Yes?”

“Well that’s just it! Tart’s in the right place, right age, and she does writing. Writing! The only thing people round there would write is circles round bingo cards and spot the ball and stuff.”

Barry waited until the young man had swept past before daring to speak again. “You know, you might want to slow down this time. Go a bit more... thoroughly. Drawers and cabinets and whatnot. Bills. Birth certificates. Get some.... you know...” He looked up into the man’s eyes and the barrel of the gun and gulped. “Names and things.”

William raised the shotgun. Barry reversed a second step, hand on the oven. They were in the exact places they had met three long, dismal hours back, here in the dismal final breaths of a dying world with only each other and custard creams for company. “Fuck you,” William spat. His finger edged towards the trigger. Barry closed his eyes. But when he opened them again, William was by the front door, hand on the handle above the splintered latch. “You know what,” he called, “that’s actually a pretty good idea. Cheers, mate.”

“Welcome, mate,” Barry said.

William turned to go,then peered through the room, through the other door, into the sewing room where those steps to salvation and that stupid ignorant plastic piece of crap that controlled the half-foot of solid steel blocking his path awaited him, teased him, the gatekeeper bathing the fabrics in the glow of its welcome screen, asking him so innocently for the name of Granny’s childhood friend, the one she’d wittered on about all through the best bits of his films while the carrots writhed in a boiling pot for all eternity, the one she’d went to bingo with ever since, the one that lived in North Ormesby. One simple password. That’s all he needed.

Resolutely, he gripped the handle, counted down from five. Black and white soldiers rolled behind car doors in his mind’s eye.“What do you need to get into your mam’s?” he asked Barry when he got to two, not because he cared but because when he finally pressed down on that cold brass lever and stepped out into the murk of a dead dusk, all sorts of things might be waiting for him, and some might turn out to be even more unpleasant than the chap in the kitchen.

The old man scowled. Deep wrinkles around his jowls embraced the grime of a month’s toil without showers. “You’re lucky, mate, you know that? I’ve gotta get the name of ‘er first bloody hamster.”

William couldn’t help it; he puffed his cheeks and let out the low, slow whistle that signifies the very peak of compassion between two adult males. And before he could stop himself: “Tell yer what, bud; you just take a seat and have another cuppa and think about all the names you know for old biddies, and all the surnames just in case, and then when we get in I’ll give you summat, to tide you over, you know. A box of bourbons, a frozen sausage roll.” If he concentrated, he really could almost see someone sat in the armchair he waved at, and not some war hero for once; but the woman had no face.

For the first time, Barry’s haunted wrinkles raised into a smile. “Nice one. You’re a good egg, you know.” He raised his arms and spun a little to take in their drab, bric-a-brac festooned surroundings. “I didn’t know your Gran... but I can just tell she was a real nice lady, you know? She’d ‘ave been proud of you.”

A moment passed.

“Yeah,” said William, opening the door. “Whatever.” Somehow, he doubted it. The old man was prattling on again as William stepped out into the cold, watchful street, but William wasn’t listening.