Free The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. by V. M. Zito Page B

right?’
    ‘I told you at the beginning, Doctor. I come to class prepared. And, as a matter of fact, I also brought somethingfor show and tell. Perhaps you’ll find this motivating.’ Osbourne pushed his chair back from the table, and another man’s arm reached into the frame. On the blue sleeve a patch was visible– DHS in stitched yellow letters.
    Marco heard four or five faint mouse clicks, and the window on his screen went black. A second later it lit up again. The view had entirely changed.
    What he saw now was grainy video of a prison cell block, black and white, silent, captured by a security camera from a mount on the top floor. To the right stretched a grated walkway along a row of darkened open cells, overlooking an identical balcony on the floor below and, underneath that, a long rectangular mezzanine. Hundreds of slow-moving prisoners in charcoal jumpsuits milled about in the open area, wandering in and out of doorways.
    ‘Sarsgard Medical Prison, twelfth of March 2014, eight days post-outbreak,’ Osbourne’s voice intoned over the video. ‘Footage retrieved from the central security system during the failed rescue attempt. I thought you might be interested in one of the highlights.’
    Marco concentrated on the prisoners. Corpses. Their faces were bleached, featureless at this distance, but Marco recognised the herky-jerky gait, the slight sideways loll of their heads.
    Exhaling, he took in the scene. Torn-open bodies of guards and convicts littered the floor, ripped livers and intestines flung about like trash. Trails of shining black liquid painted the floors. He could almost smell the piss, the shit, the stench of infection and rot. In corners around the mezzanine, the dead huddled like gangs, squatting, crawling over one another to pull meat from some carcass they’d dragged aside. Thank god for lack of audio, omitting the crunch of gnawed bones and the smacking of moist mouths spilled over with blood.Along one wall Marco saw a pair of uniformed legs–a guard, still alive under a pile of feeding corpses, fighting, kicking for his freedom–convulse and stiffen as a dark stain spread from his crotch.
    Marco shifted in his chair. He hadn’t seen a death like that in years. At least nowadays the corpses had run out of people to eat in the Evacuated States.
    Well, almost. They still have me.
    From the far end of the corridor, a commotion captured Marco’s attention. The door to a stairwell flung open, and out onto the balcony scrambled three men. Alive.
    ‘Three brave heroes,’ Osbourne said.
    The men rushed fifty yards forwards along the walkway, towards the camera. Two of the men were uniformed soldiers, their chests thick with bulletproof vests, faces hidden behind Plexiglas riot masks; they swung heavy-looking automatic rifles haphazardly as they ran. The third man looked different–spectacles, torn white shirt, light pants. Black-spotted bandaging swaddled his left arm. The men abruptly stopped just feet from the camera.
    The spectacled man’s mouth opened in horror.
    ‘Roger,’ Marco said. He wasn’t surprised. Of course he’d expected this–why else the video? Still, he couldn’t stop a sick weight from rolling over in his stomach.
    ‘Yes,’ Osbourne said simply.
    The three men reacted to something off camera, something ahead of them on the walk; they tripped backwards two or three steps then turned and bolted in the direction they’d come. But the stairwell door batted open before they could reach it, and corpses poured out. The dead jammed the walkway, clambering towards the men.
    Roger and the guards wheeled once more, knocking into one another, comedic and horrifying at the same time. Panicking. At the bottom of the video screen, an out-of-focusshadow moved into frame, approaching from underneath the camera.
    Heads. Shoulders.
    More corpses, cutting off the other end of the walkway.
    The men were boxed in.
    The first soldier faced the onslaught of dead prisoners from the