Angie turned in a slow circle. To the east and west the A2 stretched to the horizons, clogged with rusting vehicles. The north dropped down in a steep embankment, but it was the south that bothered her. Thick woods were beginning to encroach onto the road's shoulder.

"Do you remember films?" said Lisa.

"What?" Angie turned back to her companion. Lisa screwed up her face as she levered the tyre back onto the rim.

"You know. Movies."

"Of course."

"So in the movies, you just had to shoot a zombie in the head, right? Bang, and it was over. Why can't real life be like that?"

Angie turned back to the woods. Something rustled in the leaves. A bird?

"You ever had an intellectual conversation with one?"

"Ha! I guess not."

Angie shrugged. "No need for brains, then. No need for any central nervous system. All they need to do is breed, and no one ever needed brains for that." There was definitely something there in the long grass, by the hawthorn. "You done yet?"

"Nearly. Just need to pump it up and hope the patch holds." Lisa mounted the wheel onto her upended bike and gave it an experimental spin.

"Okay." Angie stepped over the central barrier and edged slowly towards the trees.

"What is it?" called Lisa. Angie ignored her. The hawthorn suddenly thrashed, causing her heart to jump into her throat.

"Angie? What is it?"

Angie stopped where the hard shoulder began and stared into the shadows. There was something there on the ground, something big. It jerked and she caught a glimpse of a limb. She turned and strode back to the bikes. Lisa stood there, pump in hand, searching her face.

"Zombie," confirmed Angie. She opened the lid of the bike trailer and rummaged through the containers of petrol they'd scavenged.

"It's not a dog, is it? I hate it when it's a dog. I had a dog, you know, Before." Before. It always had a capital, even in speech. No one needed to ask before what.

Angie pulled a gallon Jerry can from the trailer. "No, it's not a dog." She shook it. Half full. She replaced it and hauled out a full one. Lisa caught the significance and her hand flew to her mouth.

"Oh God, really? Out here? What were they doing?"

Angie shrugged. "Masks and gloves," she said, pulling on her own. She unscrewed the top of the pressure sprayer and carefully filled it with the precious fuel, then pumped the handle until the pressure was right.

Lisa was masked already when Angie hoisted herself into the straps. She hefted a pickaxe handle in her gloved hands.

"Ready?" she said.

Angie shook her head. "Never am, not for this. Let's get it over with. And I don't care if it is a dog, anything comes out of that wood you smash its head in, right?"

"Right."

"And if it's... if it's not a dog, you do the same."

Lisa nodded, her eyes above the mask wide.

They made their way over the central reservation and across the cracked tarmac to the shoulder. The verge beyond sloped up to the wood. Under the trees a wooden fence peeked out here and there from a mess of brambles and bindweed. Lisa stopped three feet shy of the body and stared. Angie stepped up beside her.

"You need to go further on," she said gently. "Between me and the woods. Lisa?"

"Yeah." Lisa tore her gaze away. "Yeah, right. Further on. You think there's more?"

"More like that? No. It's days old. If there are any, they'll not be in any state to bother us." It was easier, calling them 'it'. It was just meat, days old and rotting. It didn't have a name. It had never laughed or had friends or... Angie shook her head and forced herself to concentrate. It had been male, judging by the clothes, mature by its size, the flesh purple-black. It lay face down where it had fallen. Bite marks on its leg indicated scavenging.

"Eyes and ears, Lisa. Something's had a bite of it." She glanced up. Lisa stood between her and the woods, but she was looking back, staring at the corpse. "For Christ's sake, Lisa, get your head on. Eyes front. Cover me."

"Right." Lisa turned back to the wood, shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot.

Angie held up the long nozzle and pressed the trigger, watching the spray of fuel arc through the air and cover the body. Suddenly it convulsed, limbs flying. Its head twisted and she saw the nightmare of a face contort. Lisa swore.

"Can't we kill it first?" she asked.

"It's dead already. Look at it. It's been dead for days. Weeks, probably. You know how it works. The virus causes random electrical spasms. Movement attracts predators. That's all it is. It's the virus trying to reproduce." Angie gave a vicious kick at the leaf mould, sending a wave of leaf matter and dirt over its head, hiding the obscene mockery of a face. "And if you don't want to end up the same way, keep your bloody eyes on the wood. A fox or something has been at it."

She made sure Lisa was watching the woods before she resumed spraying the corpse.

"It's never going to end, is it?" said Lisa. Angie glanced up. At least Lisa was still facing the wood.

"Yeah, it will, eventually. Not tomorrow, and not completely, but it'll get better. We just got to keep fighting it. Eventually it'll burn itself out. It has to. It'll run out of hosts, reproduction will slow and we'll develop a resistance. In the end it'll be like the Black Death, consigned to remote pockets, and then eventually it'll be just history."

"Not in our lifetime."

The sprayer sputtered and spat the last of the petrol onto the body. Angie pulled out the matches.

"Maybe not, but that's not the point. We keep fighting it now, so it ends in somebody's lifetime."

She struck the match and started the fire.