He finished, smoothed the slight mounds over with the flat of the spade and stood back. It was almost dark now, the fog seeming to have melted with the coming of night. The sweat was chilling fast on his body, an icy shirt clinging damply to his flesh. It felt like there could be a frost tonight.

Jon Quinn retrieved his gun, headed back to the cottage. He kicked his boots off in the porch, went inside and locked the door behind him. Silence. No movement, no faint glow of a candle burning.

He grabbed a storm lantern, lit it and waited for the flame to settle. The wick needed renewing; he would see to it tomorrow. Always tomorrow but deep down you found yourself hoping that tomorrow never came.

Upstairs, almost afraid to go into the bedroom. Maybe Sylvia had gone, crept out whilst he was engrossed in his gruesome task, had just walked away into the fog and wouldn't be coming back. Or else she was dead. Last night might have proved too much for her; there was a bottle of aspirins by the bed.

Nausea compressed his stomach, tried to force him to vomit. Don't go in there, don't look. That way you won't ever know. If she's dead then you'll have to bury her too.

He kicked open the door, held the lamp at arm's length, the yellow circle of light quivering and casting weird shadows. The bed, a still form beneath the crumpled sheets. Alive or dead?

Then the bedclothes moved and Sylvia came into view, propped herself up on an elbow, blinked in the sudden wan light. He scarcely recognised her, she seemed to have aged a decade, her eyes black-ringed and sunken, deep contours etched into her skin. Sheer hopelessness, and something else—grief.

'Jon?'

'Are you OK?'

'Eric's dead, Jon.'

A jumble of replies crammed his confused brain. Don't be silly. How could you possibly know? He's OK, I'm certain of it. But they all sounded hollow so he said nothing, just stood there looking at her.

'He's dead,' she repeated.

Jon moved into the room, set the lantern down on the dresser. She moved again, sat up, and he saw that she was still fully dressed.

'I know he is.' She spoke flatly, not even a tremor in her voice. 'I wish I could have seen him one more time though. Just to say I'm sorry.'

He lowered himself down on to the edge of the bed, suddenly saw how she had changed during these last few hours, almost drew away in horror. The texture of her skin was different, blotched, coarser, her hair wiry, the soft silkiness gone out of it. The pertness of her features was gone too; lips thicker, nose less pointed. An unmistakable resemblance to those corpses which he had interred today!

'You're ill.' He had to say something, must not alarm her unduly. He hoped the revulsion, the shock, did not show in his expression. He tried to tell himself that it was a trick of the light, that if he went and fetched a torch and shone it on her she would be all right. In the end he accepted what he saw, let his brain go numb, didn't try to find reasons, or hope. Somehow Sylvia was undergoing the physical change which had thrown back the population of the rest of the world thousands of years. Mentally she seemed to have all her faculties. At the moment anyway.

'I know he's dead.' Her voice was a dull whisper now. 'I just know.'

Panic hit him as he sat there. Like the time Jackie (oh God, how 1 need her now!) had been suddenly ill in the middle of the night soon after they were married. It had turned out to be an allergy to a drug which the doctor had prescribed but he did not know that at the time, was certain she was having a heart attack. Wanting to rush downstairs and phone the doctor but he was afraid to leave her. Sure that she was going to die. If she did then he would kill himself because he couldn't bear to be without her. He couldn't bear being without Jackie now. But he hadn't killed himself because she had been al! right.

There was no doctor to phone, no help of any kind. Nothing. He just had to stay with Sylvia.

'I'll get you a drink.' His voice seemed far away, a faint echo coming from downstairs. He stood up and his legs felt weak. He swayed, had to hold on to the dresser.

He groped his way downstairs, found a torch; the battery was going and he didn't know whether there were any spares left but it would do for now. A glass, holding it under the tap, leaning on the sink.

Sylvia groped for the tumbler, slopped some of it down herself, drank the remainder in one gulp. She stared at him, did not seem to recognise him-, her eyes vacant.

He took the empty glass from her, backed towards the door. Til be back in a bit.' A mumbled excuse for leaving. You visited a senile patient in hospital, were grateful to take your leave, told them you'd see them again. You hoped you wouldn't but you did not want to be cruel.

Downstairs he would have thrown up had his stomach not been empty. He didn't want to eat; couldn't. His head was spinning, a wave of dizziness had him staggering towards the frayed sofa in the kitchen, flinging himself full-length on to it. Exhaustion was an illness, you had to sleep it off. A release valve to stop you from going mad; you reached a point where you didn't care any more. So you slept.

Morning; not early, comparatively late by the way the weak sunshine was patterning latticed diamonds on the wall. Much colder too. Jon Quinn shivered, lay there and let his recollections of the previous day come back in their own time. He listened, couldn't hear anything, didn't want to. He wished he could go back to sleep, divorce himself from reality. Hide.

In the end he swung his legs to the floor and made his way to the sink. A glass of water, not the same glass that Sylvia had used, he made sure of that. There was a sour taste in his mouth, the taste of damp earth. Grave soil?

He would have to go upstairs, it was his duty. Better now, get it over with; if he put it off any longer he wouldn't go. He would walk right out of that door and up the steep hillside opposite. I can't beat you so I've come to join you. Maybe the change will take me, too, and then I won't know any different.

He mounted the stairs a step at a time. In the cold light of morning there would be no shadows to hide the awful facial details. You're not Sylvia, you're something else.

Just like Jackie is.

He stood on the landing, almost turned back. How could it have happened? That storm months ago had cleared the atmosphere of any remaining micro-organisms, blown them on westwards. What damage was done was done, there wouldn't be any more. You were just left to live with what remained. In theory.

The mating, the rape . . . That was it, he was sure. Eric had passed the change on in his semen, given Sylvia new life in a different way. Oh Jesus God! A husband's revenge on his unfaithful wife and her lover!

No, I don't want to go near you, Sylvia. Thank God our relationship has been platonic these last few weeks. Or else . . .

He hit the bedroom at a rush otherwise he would never have gone through that door. Revulsion, curiosity. All right, let's get it over, let me look at you and . . .

The room was empty!

He stood there just inside the door, his brain trying to accept that there was no horror lying there on the bed, no disfiguration, no creature that might have been four thousand years old. Nothing but a pile of crumpled sheets and blankets, an empty bed in a room that stank of stale sweat and urine.

Instinctively, dazed, he checked the wardrobe, looked under the bed. Just to satisfy himself that she wasn't there. She wasn't, he didn't expect her to be.

She had gone because the call of the wild was too strong for her to resist; she had returned to her own kind.

It was some time later when Jon Quinn went outside. The sun had been obliterated by a bank of dark clouds and the temperature had dropped several degrees. He grimaced. Winter had replaced autumn overnight; those were snow clouds, maybe only a shower, a light ground covering but nevertheless snow.