Old World (The Green and Pleasant Land) Read Online Free PDF

we could see told a grim tale. Burnt out buildings, burned out cars and bodies hanging from lamp posts. Some of them had signs wrapped around their necks but it was impossible from this distance to read them. We even saw the occasional cadaver roaming the streets, their bloodied eyes turned hungrily in our direction as we passed, but this A road was far enough south of the town that we did not need to worry unduly. We did find a couple of cadavers on the road here and there, but they did not last long against the thick bumper on the front of the land rover.
    After about half an hours driving from the Robinson house we came to a crossroads and a decision had to be made. If we continued south on this main road then we would have to drive through the outskirts of the town of Windermere. As settlements went it was not huge, and housed only about ten thousand people. But it didn't matter how strong the bumper on the front of the car was, if we got stuck in a herd of cadavers that might easily have gathered in a population of that size, then we would be finished.
    The other option was to go left, a thin winding road through some woodland which held its own perils, if they encountered any kind of obstacle on such a road then it would be a hard task to come back, we were also open to more hidden ambushes on a path, where cadavers might stumble from the undergrowth or fell men might lay in wait to take that which was ours and subject us to all manner of man made horrors.
    In the end we went left, with all four passengers on strict instructions to maintain a vigilant gaze against any foe that might come against us.
    Everything seemed to be going well. Until I beheld the grey horse, it had no rider, and it was death. I instinctively slammed on the breaks coming to a stop a few feet from the beast. Whatever fields and dunes it might have ran across with fleet footed abandon in life this was a creature of a very different makeup in death.
    Its eyes were white and bloody, the similarly pale froth which foamed around its sharpened teeth was flecked here and their with crimson. Its skin had fallen off in many places as the creature had decayed, here and there ribs could be seen, poking out of rotting flesh, a darker grey then that off its skin.
    Too late did I spy the fact that the dead horse had a rope around its neck which led off into the bushes. I yanked the gearstick back into reverse just as they struck. I heard one of the rear passenger windows break and saw hands reaching at Ellie. They weren't dead hands, they were dirty and filled with violent intent, but they were very much alive. We started to reverse just as one of the other windows went, this time on the front passenger seat. Sue screamed, Ellie screamed, I felt my heart start to race.
    I back up too far, we went up onto the verge and I cursed loudly as the rear wheels became lodged, jutting over a mound of rocks and roots. I glanced up to see our ambushers. They were all male, their eyes were almost as empty as those of the cadavers. Their clothes were shabby and all of them sported the same scraggly beards and unkempt hair that I did.
    Aside from the old man this was the first human contact we'd had in a year, the first interaction with someone outside the family since Greg, and it was evident that very little had changed. It was no surprised me that civilisation had fallen, my outlook had always contained an element of melancholic nihilism which I'd tried to shelter from my loved ones, no, what surprised me was the speed with which it had fallen and the finality with which the ties which used to bind us had been severed.
    They seemed to be all around us, though there were only half a dozen of them it felt like a swarm, they carried clubs and knives and it was obvious that this robbery would also involve five executions.
    The only advantage to us I could see was that these men were emaciated to a large degree, they had evidently not wintered on the veritable feasts which had