She tries to bite, chewing at the cloth in her mouth to taste my flesh.

I hold there for a few minutes, feeling her skin against mine, feeling her cold breath.

With an exclamation of disappointment, I pull away again and collapse on the mattress next to her. I begin to weep.

"I'm a coward, Molly. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

I awake to the smell of food, an experience now so unfamiliar to me that it takes a few minutes to remember where I am.

I leap from the mattress.

Molly's wrists have two deep, open wounds across them, a sickening purple-red against the parchment grey of her skin. She's been trying to reach me all night.

I stare in horror.

This can't happen again. Seeing my own wife can't become an illicit love affair. These people are going to have to leave.

The key turns softly in the lock and I open the door a crack.

They're both downstairs. I can hear their intimate whisperings mixed among the clatter of plates and glasses, the slosh of juice and the sizzle of bacon in the pan.

Giving Molly one last look, I step out, shutting the door behind me, locking it and returning the key to my pocket.

My head throbs with last night's wine.

The couple downstairs have reminded me what life is and I want no part of it.

They say they're only staying another couple of days but that could become a week, a month, then it won't be an issue anymore, they'll just be staying.

The bottom stair creaks, making me flinch, and I step back a pace so it looks as though I've just emerged from my room.

Sally smiles up at me. "Good morning," she beams. "Would you like to come down for breakfast? Michael's just cooked us something."

"Sounds good," I grunt.

A smile of understanding crosses her face. "Come along, then," she says. "Too much wine last night?"

In the kitchen, the table is set for three.

Michael is serving the food. He's managed to find an apron from somewhere, one of those comical ones that make it look like he's wearing hardly anything at all, all hard abs and pecks.

"Good morning," he smiles.

I return the greeting, seating myself at the table.

The pair come over, Sally putting a steaming mug of tea down in front of me, while Michael sets down the plates piled with bacon.

It's now or never.

I manage to force the words out through my motionless jaw, bullying my tongue into complying. They come out as the merest of mumbles.

"You're welcome," Michael replies.

"No," the word comes out a little louder than I intend, making them both jump in their seats. "No, that's not what I said. I . . . " and again my nerve fails, the words standing idle in my mouth.

"Never mind." I give up and look back down at my plate.

"What is it, Toby?" asks Sally, looking a little concerned.

I mumble again.

"Excuse me?"

"You can't stay here."

The food freezes in their mouths. They look at each other.

"What?" Michael pales. "Why?"

My hands continue to twist in my lap, my shoulders cinch almost to my ears.

I don't know what to say. I hadn't thought this far ahead.

"Toby," says Michael, "you said we could stay."

"I know what I said. I just . . . I just want you out of here. I found this place. It's mine."

The cutlery wobbles in their hands, light shimmering off the fork prongs. Their faces have turned the colour of sour milk.

"I'm sorry but that's just the way it is."

Sally lets out a little worried mew of sound around the scrambled egg now lying forgotten in her mouth. She looks to her husband who's blinking back tears. The sudden change of mood has robbed him of words and all he's able to let out is a number of feeble croaks.

"That's just the way it is," I say again. I stand and push my plate away.

As soon as I'm out of sight, Sally lets out another whine of distress and Michael begins to whisper, his words like machine-gun fire.

I don't have long. I reach into my jumper and pull out the key, unlock the door and step inside.

No time for Molly, I pick up the bloody knife on the bedside table, cross the room, retrieve the hammer and out again, the door locked behind me, the key back in my pocket.

Straight into my own room, I place the knife under my pillow, the hammer in my back pocket.

The mist has barely begun to lift outside.

The soft hurried whispers below have grown in volume, the words are inaudible but their tones are harder, angrier.

I close the door to my room, expecting a knock at any moment. Counter-arguments are already whirling around my head. My throat has constricted in a half-gag of anxiety. Just let them leave, let them leave without a moment of fuss.

Michael's voice cuts clearly through the house, angry, abrupt and defiant.

Just make them go away.

Then comes the thud of footsteps up the stairs.

"Michael, no!"

I stare at the door, my hands feeling light and strengthless. The hammer hangs heavy in my pocket.

The door rattles with a demanding tattoo, making me jump.

I don't move, can barely breathe.

"Toby?"

I don't answer. I freeze, all extraneous movement rerouted to the increasing tempo in my chest.

"Toby, I know you're in there."

My tongue scrapes across my dried lips and I stare down at the pillow, seeing the knife in my mind's eye. It would scare them off.

Once I had locked them out, I would give them back their stuff.

Another knock. "Toby, please, let's talk about this. Please."

While he's speaking, I snatch the knife up again, tucking it into a loop in my belt. I throw on the dressing gown to conceal it.

"Toby, come on now," and the door flies open, Michael stumbles inside, had perhaps thought I'd barricaded myself in. I jump back towards the window, bring my hands up to my chest like a terrified child.

Recovering, Michael's eyes flit around the room before resting on me. "Toby, come on, just tell us what we've done wrong, we'll try and fix it. Whatever it is, we're sorry."

"It's nothing-"

"It must be something."

"It's nothing," I repeat. "You did nothing wrong. I just want you out. This is my hideaway. I made the barricades, I got the food-"

"We can help-"

"I don't care! I would rather, I would rather, you just left."

Michael's jabbering mouth grows still.

"We have nowhere else to go. If you send us out there we're going to die."

I stare down at his feet. "That's life. You seemed to be surviving before, you can do that again. You can keep the radio if you want. Find your way somewhere where people are broadcasting, maybe there are other ships picking people up."

"But there might not be. You could be just sending us out to die. You know that and yet you're still . . . Why? Why are you doing this? Surely you don't want to be alone for the rest of your life?"

It's in that moment of questioning silence that there comes a sound from Molly's room, something knocking against wood.

My head snaps up to see if Michael has heard it too. It's obvious that he has.

"What was that?"

He takes a step back into the hallway, cocking an ear and leaning towards my wife's door.

Another knock, making Michael jump back. He gives me a look and then approaches the door again.

"Sally?" He rattles the handle.

"Do you have the key to this?" he demands. "Are you keeping someone in here?"

I don't reply.

"Hello?" he calls through the wood. "Is anyone in there? Hello?"

I watch as Sally comes up the stairs. "What's going on?"

"Toby's keeping someone in here. Who is it? The family that lives here? Hello? If you have any way of letting us know you're alright . . . Who is it? Is this why you wanted us out?" He rattles the door again, leaning in this time, putting more weight on the frame.

"Get away from there," I say, too quietly for the couple to hear over their own noise.

"Sally, get the crowbar from my bag, we need to open this thing."

"I said, get away from there."

He does as I ask, takes another step down the corridor, putting himself between his wife and me.

"Who's in there?"

Sally backs away towards their room and disappears inside. There comes the sound of a frantic search.

"Look, I just want you to leave."

"Not until you explain what you're doing locking someone up in there."

"Look, it's-"

"Who's in there, Toby? Who's in there?"

"My wife, alright? My wife."

I watch Michael's face change from angry to confused to horrified and back full circle to angry again.

"You mean to say that all this time we've been sharing a house with one of those things?"

Sally returns, a crowbar and baseball bat in hand but she gives neither one to her husband.

"You don't call her that," I say. "She's not one of those things, she's my wife."

"She's not your wife anymore, Toby," says Sally. "Surely, you must see that. Your wife is dead."

"Of course she's dead! I know that! But she's still my wife!"

"We'll give her a proper burial," says Michael. "Look, the less of those things there are in the world the better."

"No." I take a step forward, closing the distance between myself and my wife's door, putting myself between them and her. "I won't let you do it. You are not just bashing my wife's head in. I just want you both to leave, leave me and my wife alone in peace."

I'm surprised at my own words. Where did this steel come from?

"We have to do it, Toby," says Sally. "We know it's terrible but that's just the way the world works now. We're sorry."

"No, it works however we decide. This is my house and I want you both to leave. Let me and my wife get on with things."

"Things?" says Michael. "What things?"

"Just . . . things. Look, I want you both to leave. Now."

Michael straightens. "That's not going to happen. I need to protect my wife. I'm not letting you throw us out because of this." He waves a hand at the door.

"The food won't last with three of us," but already my voice is beginning to sound thin.

"Toby, it won't last with just one of you either. What will you do then? Go into that town on your own? Carry another month's supply of food back with you? With those things snapping at your heels?" When he says 'those things' he indicates Molly's door again. "We'll have a better chance of surviving this if we stick together. We're staying here and that's all there is to it."

I don't know what to say, my mouth hangs open.

And then it closes again as I feel an icy calm descend.

"Fine."

That's all there is to it. It becomes the mantra that wordlessly fills the house for the rest of the day.

There isn't a single exchange between us except for fleeting, uneasy looks.

They say nothing as I take precisely a third of the food and store it in my wife's bedroom. Nor do they do anything other than bat an eyelid as I take over half of the magazines and newspapers and do the same with them.

I'm doing it, that's all there is to it.

That night, I lock the door behind me and leave the key in the lock.

The windows have been painted over and already a fire is crackling merrily in the grate. I've checked from outside, the windows are totally lightproof.

The flames make the shadows shiver across my wife's bed. It had been her efforts to get at me the previous night that had freed her arm this morning. The restraints had cut so deeply that the rope had no longer held her right arm securely. She had been knocking her hand against the wooden headboard, trying to get at the voices she could hear in the corridor. Her decaying flesh had given, not the hemp.

She lies so still now as to be truly dead. To the gag, I've also added a blindfold and filled her ears with cotton. Her arm has been retied. She has no idea I'm with her, except for when I rattle her mattress and she reanimates, shifting and grunting to find the source of the movement.

All too soon, the room has become unbearably hot. I never expected to make myself a prisoner, but I can't leave her alone, not with them outside.

I sit with my back against the wall opposite the fireplace, next to my stockpile of food and burnables, staring deep into the flames.

My heart skips a beat each time I hear them on the stairs or in the corridor. I notice the pause as they crest the staircase, hear them straining their ears to hear what's going on inside.

I'm not sure if I can risk sleeping and so I stare into the flames, and wait for the noise outside to stop.

And one night becomes two, becomes three.

The box of rat poison remains under the sink, the red-eyed rat blind in the dark, but the silver box tab is now in the bottom of the bin, along with a large measure of sugar from the pot by the kettle. Now all they have to do is make themselves a cup of tea.

They both take plenty of sugar.

In their small way, they've helped me. I'm ready now. I just need to sit here and wait.

I can't let Molly bite me while they're still here. Who'd protect her? Protect us?

In living they've forced me to confront life, but in dying they'll finally allow me to do the same.

All I have to do is wait.

And that requires no nerve at all.

I'm coming, Molly.

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