Do you know what is hard? Trying not to breathe when your heart is pounding in your chest, your eyes, your throat. It is like drowning on dry land.

Sometimes the apocalypse is ripping, shredding, stabbing, sucking, dripping, squelching and popping. Other times it is silence but for your breath, the mouse scratch of pen on paper and the sound of uncounted, decaying, shuffling pairs of feet carrying through the crisp night air.

There hasn’t been a herd in a long time. Dep says there were lots in the beginning. They are older and more decrepit but still dangerous in their sheer number, groaning, tripping, attracted by their own noise, growing and moving across the landscape, a consuming, blind beast.

If we can spot one far enough out, we can lead them away – hang wind chimes, bells and whatnot on trees, drawing them away from us. Dep’s favourite story was when he managed to slip a Walkman around the lead one’s neck. Dad scoffed, asking why he couldn’t at least scrounge up a Discman. I had no fricken’ idea what they were crapping on about.

There was no warning this time. I was asleep when we got the knock. It could have been 5 minutes ago, it could have been two hours. Either way, I really gotta pee. Once the knock happens, that’s it. No movement, no talking, no lights, absolute terror. I don’t know where the herd is coming from, where it is heading or how many. I didn’t hear dad come in tonight – he could be out there. I daren’t even whisper his name.

I prefer the visceral noise of fighting them, using the fear rather than suffocating with it. But there is a time to be a bad-ass and there is a time calm the hell down and hide.

So now I wait to live or die, writing by the light of the moon, hoping that everyone out there is safe.