He still remembered that on occasion, but it meant nothing to him now. The brief spark of memory hit him again as he wandered down onto the beach, the sky slowly beginning to darken as the sun began to disappear from the cloudless sky. Then the thought was gone, replaced only by the hunger and the churning of millions of voices. The voices drove him on, urged him, forced him to continue what the virus demanded. Somewhere along the way, he had lost one of his shoes, and he walked lopsided, the wet sand soaking through his sock. He barely registered the chill of the ground or of the air around him, his attention fixed on the distant horizon. The abrasions on his foot and the glass embedded in it were of no consequence to him. His arm no longer ached from the gunshot wound and broken arm, the virus having partially repaired the ripped muscle and shattered bone, knitting him back together over the days it had taken him to make the journey from London. He had been in the vanguard, spreading the contagion through the towns and cities that surrounded the nation’s capital.
