Flesh and Blood by Jackie French Page A

touched the woman’s forehead. There was just a chance … but no, she was dead, the skin cold, the body stiff.
    ‘They haven’t been dead long,’ said Neil.
    ‘No. I wish …’ I didn’t finish. I had been going to say, if we had only arrived earlier we could have helped them. But how? Death, it seemed, had come swiftly, too fast even to need nursing.
    ‘Should we bury them?’
    For a moment I thought Neil was going to say, why bury two bodies when there will be thousands more? But he just said, ‘There’s probably a spade in the shed near the garden.’
    I followed him out into the light and fresh air. The bees were bright yellow, like the flowers. I wondered if they were Engineered too, super-productive hardy bees. Once again, I couldn’t be bothered to Link up the data.
    The shed held a spade and a hoe, and bags that bulged with what looked like dried corn cobs and spare blue beehives. I assumed the other shed held the honey harvest that would eventually be traded for Basics and floater repairs. They must have used the console in the floater when they needed to Link to the world, I thought vaguely, as they didn’t have power for one indoors.
    Neil seized the spade. ‘The vegetable garden would be the best place to dig,’ he said. ‘The soil will be softer there.’
    ‘But …’ I stopped. No, it wasn’t likely that anyone would be troubled by eating vegetables from a graveyard. This poor isolated utopia would probably never be lived in again.
    I leant against a tree trunk while Neil dug. I was grateful there was only one spade, so I couldn’t offer to help. I was an unskilled digger and the late afternoon sun was hot. I was glad of the shade. The bees’ hum grew to a roar above me.
    Had the bees seen it first? I don’t know. But all at once hands grabbed me from behind, bore me down onto thestony ground. Cold hands, strangely soft, that fumbled clumsily around my throat.
    ‘Nei …’ My cry was cut off by the cold soft hands. I shoved upwards with all my strength, but the being above me didn’t even flinch.
    I shoved again. This time I managed to dislodge the hands. The person stumbled back.
    It was the woman from indoors. She wore a faded unitunic. Her hair was long and blond. She blinked at me with cold dead eyes, then charged again.
    This time I was ready for her. I darted forward, my fingers aiming for the eyes. I gouged, as the hands tried to bear me down again. I felt the eye give, pop out cold and wet into my hand. But again she didn’t seem to feel the pain.
    Of course not, said a small voice in my mind. She was dead, dead, dead.
    My skin contracted with horror. I could feel the prickle as the hairs on my arms, my head, my legs stood up in protest. This was wrong, the dead don’t walk.
    I could smell her now. She smelt of death. But there was no breath. The dead don’t breathe either.
    Someone shouted behind me. The spade suddenly crashed against the dead woman’s head. It stopped her only for a second, then she came at me again.
    Another blow. This time across the eyes or the remaining eye. But no blood flowed. The eye was pulp now, surely there should be blood.
    But, I thought, the dead don’t bleed.
    I staggered back. The dead woman blundered sightless after me. She lurched and faltered, walked another three steps towards the shed, away from me. And then she fell.
    ‘Neil. Neil what …’ I couldn’t finish.
    Neil held me. His hands were dirty. Over his back I could see another body, the man this time, lying among the crushed stalks of corn. His body lay to one side, his head to the other. I glanced down. The spade was red with blood. No, not red. A dark, almost brown colour. After all, the dead’s blood is stale, not fresh and flowing red.
    I broke from Neil’s arms, and vomited next to the tree trunk. Then Neil’s arm was round my shoulders. We staggered back to the floater together.

chapter 32
    T he floater rose. Neither of us had programmed it, so it hovered above the