The Sleeping Dead by Richard Farren Barber

see their faces. He saw an elderly couple—the man in a gray overcoat had his hand gently pressed into his wife’s back.
    He saw parents with their children. He saw young couples and singletons, businessmen and women. He saw everyone who had been in the park at the moment when the horror had struck.
    “Let’s go.” He felt Susan’s hand on his arm, pulling him away from the stream. He snatched his arm free of her and whirled, filled in an instant with fury.
    “Don’t you see them?” he shouted at her. “Don’t you feel?”
    “You can’t help them. Not now.” Susan’s voice was soft, calm. Sad.
    The rage blew out as quickly as it had arisen, replaced with a hollow emptiness. The sense that nothing mattered anymore. Jackson turned his back on the dead bodies and trudged through the park.

 
     
     
    19
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    It was only five minutes. No longer. He’d made the journey with Donna hundreds of times. Five minutes from the house to the park. And yet on this occasion it felt like the distance had tripled. The quality of daylight fluctuated, the sun dimming and then growing brighter. At one point Jackson was sure he heard voices, but he looked across at Susan and she didn’t seem to notice, so he said nothing.
    He noticed the smoke before they left the park. It clung to the back of his throat so that he could also taste it. Thick, greasy smoke. As they neared the gates, he could see dark clouds rising up over the row of houses that backed onto the park. Whatever was burning was not far away.
    As he got closer to the gate, he realized the direction the fire was coming from and yet he still tried to tell himself it didn’t mean anything.
    He increased his pace. He stared at the park gates and, once he was through them, he picked another target to focus on. He had to get to the end of the street. He had to reach the post-box or the lamppost or the house with the black door. Small victories that stopped him thinking about the cloud of smoke that hung over all the streets around him.
    Even from a couple of streets away he could hear the crackling sound of the fire. And maybe he could feel the heat of the flames, although he thought it was probably his imagination. The smell was stronger now. His pace increased in direct response to the presence of the fire.
    By the time he reached his own road he knew he was not imagining the heat. It brushed against his cheeks.
    Most of the houses were already burning. Flames licked from the windows of the properties closest to him while those farther away, in the middle of the street, had soot-stained brickwork and black-eyed window frames. He wondered how long they had been burning and guessed that even when he was sitting in the offices of MedWay Associates his house had been aflame.
    Ash fell from the sky like dry rain. It coated the pavement and the parked cars. Jackson breathed it in. He walked along the center of the road and felt the intense heat emanating from the burning buildings. He could feel it drying up his eyes, evaporating the tears before they had a chance to form. The hairs on the back of his hands shrank into wired curls.
    He stopped outside number 79, although it was almost impossible to tell whether he was really looking at the right house. There was nothing left to distinguish the building from its neighbors. The paint had bubbled and peeled from the door. The plastic window frames had melted and dribbled down the brickwork. But he thought this was the right house.
    He wondered if this was where the fire had started. If not at number 79, then one of the houses close by. Donna was inside. He didn’t know how he knew this, but he was confident he was right. If he waited for the heat to die, he could go inside and find the charred remains of the woman he had loved.
    Jackson put his hands over his face to hide the image from his eyes, but there was no use because it was there, it would always be there; a memory stronger than the recollection of