'We'll sell up, buy a smallholding and take our chance,' she told him one evening.

'We don't have the money.' His resistance, his townie caution was only to be expected.

'We will have,' she smiled, 'when we sell this place. Residential houses fetch money and there's a property boom on at the moment. We'll get twenty grand for this house even if it is a semi. That kind of money will buy us a small spread up in those Shropshire hills where land and cottages are relatively cheap. We don't have a lot of mortgage left anyway and it'll be more of a swap . . . this house and your job for a smallholding, and after that it will be up to us.'

He'd been scared, scared so that he lay in bed each night telling himself what a bloody fool he was but he didn't care because this sort of artificial existence was no more than ticking the years off, waiting for retirement. And when you were retired all you had left was another period of waiting . . . waiting to die.

It had worked out. The house had been sold and they had found a seven-acre spread and a tumbledown cottage in the hills and had even had a thousand left over after the mortgage was cleared. But without Jackie he wouldn't have made it even then; she had her own ideas about farming, ideas which made them 'cranks' in the eyes of the sparse local community.

'Look at it this way,' she told him one night after he had spent the day propping up the sagging roof timbers in the old stone cottage. 'If we go in for conventional stock farming we'll be lucky to make a thousand a year with a few cattle and sheep, and that's providing we don't have any mishaps which we probably will have because we're only amateurs, after all.'

Jon closed his eyes, waited for it. But, after all, she had been right about digging up those lawns.

'We'll start up an organic farm,' she smiled. 'It'll be hard work but there's a genuine need for the produce. Carrots for cancer sufferers; under alternative treatment they have to drink three pints of organic carrot juice a day, plus goats' milk yoghurt, so we'll keep goats. And garlic, there's a big demand for garlic but most of it is imported. There's lots of other lines we can experiment with too. We won't make a fortune but we'll make a living and most important of all we'll have our freedom.'

As usual Jackie had been right. It had been hard work, very hard work, and still was but they had made it. Contrary to popular local expectations, they had succeeded in growing their crops on a windswept slope 1,000 feet above sea-ievel, they had built up their own goat herd and even had a billy for stud. They still had the old Citroen Dyane but had managed to buy a battered old canvas-topped Land Rover for farm work as well. That part of it had worked out, but somewhere along the way things had gone wrong for Jon and Jackie; they found themselves drifting apart. These last few days Jon had tried to put his finger on the cause but it had eluded him. In a way he felt guilty about having Sylvia in here with him, occupying Jackie's rightful place in a tiny haven of safety. It was as though he had traded his wife's life for that of his mistress. If Sylvia took it into her head to walk out of here and go on up there, get herself all burned up or whatever, then that was her lookout. No, it wasn't, he'd do his utmost to stop her because if she went then he would be left alone and he could not stand that.

'How much longer do we have to stay down here?' She broke the long silence, asked a question which he had been asking himself these last couple of days and had not had the courage to take responsibility for the answer.

'Another few days, I guess.' He stared down at the bare concrete floor and wished that he had saved that old piece of coconut matting out of the kitchen instead of burning it. Jackie's motto was that you never got rid of anything. 'That freak gale and rainstorm last night will have helped to disperse whatever was in the atmosphere.'

'God!' Sylvia covered her face with her hands and for a moment he thought that she was on the verge of hysteria. That's all I bloody need! But when she looked up again that expression of panic had passed. 'It is a nuclear attack.* She spoke calmly. 'It's got to be, hasn't it?'

'No.' He pursed his lips, shook his head slowly, a physics master aware that he was going to have difficulty getting a new theory over to an intelligent and questioning class. 'It's not a nuclear attack. That much was made plain in the early radio bulletins before they cut out/

Try the radio again.'

'I have. Nothing at all. Plus the fact the batteries are beginning to run low. I should've stocked some spares. Next time I will.' He laughed at his own joke, made it sound more unfunny than it was.

Then what do you think's happened, Jon?'

'It can only be one thing.' He watched her steadily, wondered if he should put it into words, decided that there really wasn't any point in keeping anything back. 'I reckon it can only be one thing. Germ warfare^

He saw her pale; it had to be a trick of the uncertain oil lighting because she had been deathly white for days.

'How do you know?' She asked the question because she felt she was expected to say something.

'I don't, I'm only guessing. The early reports hinted at a radioactive fall-out but they didn't know where it was coming from. There hadn't been any fireball, any direct attack, nothing picked up on the detection devices. All that was happening was that people were coming out in terrible skin rashes and their minds were going blank. It spread faster than the plague and I guess that when the newsmen caught it that was the end of all means of communication. We're OK because a shelter like this has a far better chance against micro-organisms than it does against radiation.'

'But how . . . how would an enemy attack us with these germs? Surely there would have been some kind of warning?'

'I guess it's the most deadly weapon of all, the one which we're most vulnerable to,' Jon Quinn went on. 'As you say, no bang, no warning. I suppose the enemy synchronise their agents to release the micro-organisms into the atmosphere, say at half a dozen strategic points in the western part of Britain so that the prevailing winds will spread the germs. You can't see 'em, hear 'em or smell 'em and they've got you before you realise it. It could be the same story in the States and in Western Europe. At the moment we've no means of finding out. But you can bet there's a few other survivors besides us, total annihilation would be an impossibility even for the most ruthless enemy. At the moment we've no idea what the effects of these diabolical bugs are. Early reports seem to suggest that they affect the skin and the brain but nobody seemed to be dying as a direct result of it! At least, not right away.'

'It's horrible.' Sylvia shuddered.

True, but think of the advantages from the enemy's point of view. Buildings are left intact and when it's ah over the enemy just arrives and takes over. They could have all the slave labour they need, thousands of zombies at their disposal. And the rest go to the gas chambers.'

'We'd be better off dead,' she groaned.

'Well we're alive and we've got to make the most of it,' he grinned, hoped that he sounded optimistic. 'As I said, that storm came from the west and with luck it will have cleared the micro-organisms. We've got all the food we need so we're lucky. Tomorrow I'm going to take a walk outside, see what's happened to the livestock.'

'I'll come with you,' she said, a sudden fear of being left alone; suppose something happened to Jon and he didn't come back.

'No,' he replied. 'If we both go then there's a double risk of contamination or whatever. I shan't go far, just a quick look around the holding. And if everything's OK then maybe we'll be able to make some plans to explore further afield.'