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The corpse is almost devoid of skin and pitted by burrowing insects. Noir steps back as his stomach heaves, nostrils filled with the smell of rotting meat. Without eyelids the milky blue eyes stare into the frozen sky while the lipless mouth hangs open. Under the wintry light of the abandoned side of the city the corpse is utterly still and more than slightly frozen. He's been dead for sometime but that didn't stop him from moving around and attacking everything that came close. Noir saw him lunge for a rat earlier this week. The rat squeaked away easily and ran back to its nest. Both creatures were surprised by how quickly their lunch had moved.

At first glance it's not clear what this man had died of the first time around but the bullet hole in the side of his temple confirms what took the zombie down at last. Purple and brown seepage dries onto his lifeless skin. There is fresh dirt under his nails; dark like peat or compost. There is dirt on the knees of his pale corduroy slacks too, but this is the pale sandy sort from the yard. If he had been wearing a jacket it was gone along with any other valuables and he's left with a ragged grey t shirt to cover his bones.

After all the losses there is little sentimentality left for the dead. It is easier not to think of them as people at all. The collective sense of humour across the city has become warped and darkly macabre. People laugh at their silly expressions and give them rude names. The soldiers make up lines for them to say as they toss them into the mass grave with the others. Burn them while some are still moving. People steal from them without guilt too. It turns his stomach more than the smell does.

They are not people any more. They are grey tinged regardless of race, blue lipped with blank stares. There is only so much horror you can take in and understand, after that your mind will snap. So people joke. Anyone who doesn't like it gets given the shovels and the rest of city walks away and closes their doors to the problem.

Cruel though it sounds, once the light winks out in their eyes they are another carcass to bury. The soul has moved on and the living are left with the task of burial and burning to prevent them from coming back and to put the returned down for good. Though with the massive numbers it is more like disposal. Their limbs, long passed the stage of rigor mortis, loll against one another in the pits. Their greyed flesh is often torn in the process of being moved and their eyes stare at a sky they'll never see.

Noir sighs. “I'm sorry, Frank. I guess you aren't one of the lucky ones.”

Did that mean he thought he was? Sure he wasn't turned into a zombie when he had died but he didn't know if this life was any better. Or if he should even call it a life. He doesn't breathe anymore and has no pulse. His skin is ashen and pulled tightly against his bones and muscles like every other corpse he's seen. But he's moving with intelligence and purpose unlike Frank and the gang and no one has mistaken him for a zombie just yet. It's only a matter of time though. He can feel the rot growing inside of him. He can smell it too. No matter how many times he tries to wash it away or bury it under cologne the fruity putrid scent lingers. Noir decides he's better off avoiding people for a while and takes a walk down the street away from Frank...

At first the streets are as dark and gloomy as they had always been and then it’s too bright and too loud. It’s as if God had adjusted the colours of the world in the night, like it was as easy as twisting one of those old plastic dials on a TV set. Everything is brighter than it should be; the trees are not just green but radiant virescent hues that burned themselves in Noir's sleepy eyes. The houses are lit up like Brighton Palace Pier as if they'd been repainted by moonlight and fireworks and now stand vibrant in the golden rays that fall unfettered through the clear sky. The road that should be grey is a sleek river of black with perfect paint lines and the street-lamps are blue. But they had never been blue, not ever. Everything is so right it is wrong - really wrong. And then it's darker than he's ever known it could be.

A flicker of the streetlamps above confirms he's not gone blind and as Noir looks up he sees they are back to yellow again. Still it doesn't feel right. There's a cold chill chasing down his spine. He spins to see if there's something there behind him and keeps walking. He's ignorant to the girl he's about to collide with because he's dazzled by lights and sounds and darkness. So he doesn't see the danger just behind him and even if he could he wouldn't be able to understand it. Not even in his nightmares did the shadows thicken and harden like black glass ready to strike him down. But it's like reality has become more monstrous than his own imagination.

The pain begins in his legs and his knees buckle. He yells in pain. Not like one of those guys in some Tarantino movie being tortured, but worse. It has a raw quality, the realness of a person consumed by a pain that knew no end or limit. This is a new low for being unable to die by being able to endure through his calves from being shredded. It's lucky he isn't able to see the way his skin is split and how the fatty tissues are parted around the muscles beneath. He's lucky he can't look down and see how his own blood is dark and kind of curdled just like Frank's is. He goes quiet, just lies there panting. Noir lies on the ground, his face closed in a grimace, his skin pale and clammy. His eyes close and he sucks himself into a deeper place to cope.

Noir can't help but compare the night with his own state of mind. Just like those clouds slowly eating up the inky sky, his insides are in a chaos. A mess. Something is hurting him. Something aches inside him beyond the pain in his legs. Something feels so wrong, so invalid but Noir can't tell what. He tries to pinpoint the cause for this unexplained pain but fails. He tries to find a reason for this unbearable burning but doesn't find any. Everything feels so confused, just like a jumbled set of a puzzle. He decides that this isn't a better life after all.

The pain commands his attention. It doesn’t sit quietly in the background like garish wallpaper, it cows his brain into meek submission demanding a solution that he can’t provide. Noir used to think that the intermittent pains he experienced throughout his life like the migraines and the twitching nerves were the worst because they were chaotic and random. Now there’s this constant unknown agony attacking his legs like giant splinters are stuck through his skin and muscles and it’s debilitating. Without a break in the pain, he can’t formulate a single thought. He’s trapped in it with eyes closed. He doesn’t think about getting up and running away to find some place to hide and recover. He lies there like a corpse, unbreathing, unmoving, but he’s feeling everything and then there’s a voice in his ears that’s not his and doesn’t belong to the pain either. He opens his eyes.

Beside him is a woman. Noir doesn’t understand what she’s doing there or what she wants. He doesn’t understand a thing she is saying to him either but her words sound like they could only be apologetic and frightened because of the taut tone of her voice, because the words sounded strangely melodic and sweet and sour at the same time. It’s like she’s talking under water for a moment and he stares at her frustratingly trying to figure out how her mouth was forming bubbles of sound instead of words he should recognise. Because he’s never lost his hearing before. He closes his eyes and remembers to breathe again and his face is drawn into a tight knot, expressing his silent anger and agony. He unconsciously mouths the words ‘I can’t hear you’ over and over but slowly. And after about the third time he’s said it silently, sound crackles through from his vocal chords.

“I can’t hear you...” he says.

He pauses.

The voice from his chapped lips is unexpected. It is low, with an agreeable trace of huskiness and with a hint of more power than his frail body suggests. Noir’s voice wasn’t an educated one, but one on which education had imposed a discipline which hadn't quite obliterated the provincial, Midlands Irish accent of his childhood. And when he realises he can hear himself, he looks her over and prompts her to respond with those doe-eyed look on his face.

“Wait…” He shifts and yelps a bit. “What happened?”