For a moment Luger is frozen, staring at me and Lola. The look on his face might be pity, but it quickly hardens into a cold mask.

"She's got the Red Death," he says.

I hug Lola against my chest, my throat too tight to speak.

"I'm sorry, but we have to deal with her," Luger says. His henchmen stride into the room. There's a moment before they reach us where I could try to fight them off, but I waste it trying to decide whether to grab the surviving bottle and attack them with it, or to scoop Lola into my arms and make a run for it. Luger's men grab my sister, ripping her from my arms like she weighs nothing at all.

"No," I scream.

I lunge after them, but the taller one turns and backhands me, sending me reeling against the wall. Pain screams across the side of my face, turning everything hazy. Many times since the Waves began, I've hoped to wake up and find that this has all been a dream, but I've never wished for it as badly as I do now. This has to be a dream. I've done everything I can to keep Lola safe from the Red Death. I've let sick people die by the roadside, walked past dying children without stopping to spare them a second thought, all to keep Lola safe. I've sacrificed pieces of my soul, and in the end it was for nothing.

"I'm sorry," Luger says again, before following his men out of the kitchen.

I try to chase him but my legs are rooted to the spot. I feel numb all over, like my body is no longer mine and I can't get it work. Then Lola's faint cry trails up to me and I explode to life, snatching up the wine bottle and running after them.

I don't care if Lola has the plague. No one is taking my sister away from me.

Luger and his men are already gone by the time I race outside, but they can't be too far ahead. My feet thud the paved ground, my heart slamming against my ribs. I tear through a flock of seagulls, and they rise into the air with a mad flutter of wings, leaving the ground pitted with droppings.

And suddenly I freeze, a horrible puzzle piece slotting into place. For weeks I've been wondering how the Red Death has managed to spread so far and so fast, sweeping across the world like a bloody lightning bolt. Now, looking around the quays, at the seagulls waddling across the raft of bodies that sways in the ocean, pecking happily away at the stacks of corpses lining the sides of the streets, it all makes sense.

This is how the Red Death is spread.

There are millions and millions of birds in the world - billions. If they carry the plague inside them, transferred by the diseased flesh they consume night and day, then each dropping becomes a plague-filled missile.

A scream builds in my chest. People are blaming lack of sanitation for the spread of the disease, and all this time it's been the fucking birds. The Others knew exactly how to wipe us out, and we never even saw it coming. I mean, who's afraid of a silly pigeon? I should have been because a silly pigeon is responsible for my sister's sickness. I think of the bird crap on her hands, the moment the Red Death must have entered her system, and my stomach heaves.

I want to scream at the people around me, warn them to stay away from the birds, but the scream dies in my throat as I spot Luger and his men. They're striding towards the bonfire, carrying Lola's small frame between them. She's too weak to even fight back.

The horror and fear freezing my limbs turns to fire, fury boiling in my veins. "Leave my sister alone," I roar, and charge at them.

Luger spins towards me, and I smash the bottle around the side of his head. He crumples to the ground. The neck of the wine bottle is still clutched in my hand, the end splintered to a circle of glass spikes. When Luger's henchmen hesitate, I drive the broken bottle into the nearest guy's shoulder. He screams and drops Lola.

The second man dodges out of my way. His friend curls into a ball, clutching his wounded shoulder and moaning. His blood drips from my broken bottle. The second man looks at his friend, then over at Luger, who's trying to find his feet. One hand is pressed against the side of his head, and his eyes are unfocused.

"Back off," I snarl.

This isn't about intimidating anyone anymore. I will kill these people, all of them, and anyone else that tries to get in my way. A group is gathering around us, people murmuring and pointing. I don't know if any of them are loyal to Luger, and I'm not waiting to find out. I can only hold my own against so many.

I crouch next to Lola. How I manage to hoist her onto my shoulder without dropping the bottle, I'll never know, but somehow I do it. Lola is a dead weight, her arms dangling down my back, and the strain of standing upright without dropping her makes my knees feel like they're going to pop. But my hand doesn't waver, still holding the broken bottle out in front of me.

Luger manages to climb to his feet. "She's got the plague, Maddy. She's going to die anyway," he gasps.

Maybe she is, but I'm not letting these bastards burn her alive. "That's my problem," I tell him.

I start to back away, throwing quick glances over my shoulder to make sure no one is sneaking up behind me.

"Maddy -" Luger starts.

I cut him off. "No. I'm leaving and taking my sister with me. Anyone tries to stop me, anyone tries to follow me, and I will kill them." For effect, I make a jabbing motion with the bottle.

Luger's hands fall to his sides, his face resigned. "She'll infect you too."

"That's my problem," I say again.

Luger shakes his head, but he doesn't come after me and no one else tries to stop me.

I carry Lola away from Central Square and that awful fire, and out of the quays themselves, heading for the train station. It's the only place I can think of to hide; I'm not strong enough to carry her through Vernon Gate and back the way we came.

The train station nestles next to a curve of harbour. The tide is in, and there are yet more bodies here, bobbing on the rippling surface of the water. A little further out to sea lies the splintered remains of HMS Warrior, historic battleship turned tourist attraction, now reduced to driftwood.

The station's four platforms are completely enclosed, and countless pigeons coo in the eaves around me. I hurry past them. Corpses lie here and there on the floor, decaying sacks of flesh that I have to carefully navigate. My legs are starting to buckle under Lola's weight, but I can't stop yet.

A train sits alongside the last platform, looking like a vast metal caterpillar. It must have been stationary when the 1st Wave hit, otherwise it would have gone off the rails. Its sliding doors are open and I make a beeline for them. There won't be any way of keeping Luger and his men out if they decide to come after me, but at least the padded seats are comfortable. I can't carry Lola further than this, so the least I can do is make sure she doesn't have to lie on a hard floor.

Only when we are finally inside the train do I let go of the broken bottle, placing it on the floor within easy reach. I lay Lola on the seats, picking strands of blood-caked hair off her face. The whites of her eyes are veined with red and when she blinks, red drops slide down her cheeks. She's crying tears of blood. She opens her mouth to speak, but all that comes up is something black and lumpy.

Seeing her like this is agony. There's nothing I can do to help her or to ease her suffering. I don't dare leave her alone again, not even to look for water. There's too much of a chance that Luger and his cronies are hanging around. And I have to understand that trying to cool her fever isn't going to make her better. This isn't a normal disease, but something that has been cooked up by our alien attackers with the sole intention of wiping us out. If breaking someone's fever could rid their body of the Red Death, then people worldwide would know it by now. But I've never seen anyone recover from this plague. I can't kid myself into thinking that Lola is going to either.

Lola blinks up at me, more bloody tears tracing red tracks down the sides of her face. "Am I dying?" she whispers, a tremor in her voice. Blood sputters on her lips.

"No," I lie, pulling my shirt over my head and using it to wipe the blood away. What am I supposed to do - tell her the truth? I can't do that. If the least I can do is pretend that she'll be okay and try and keep her fear at bay, then I'll do it.

And maybe I'm doing it for myself as well. If I can pretend that Lola isn't dying, I won't have to face that reality myself.

*

Lola's condition rapidly deteriorates over the next few hours. I stay with her the whole time, doing my best to care for her even when the Red Death claims her mind and she no longer knows who I am. The plague drives some people into a frenzy - I've seen infected attacking the people trying to help them, biting and clawing, everything that made them the person they once were washed away on a sea of blood and fever and pain. I'm lucky, I suppose. Even when the Red Death sweeps Lola's mind away, she doesn't attack me. She just lies on the train seats, grinning at me with bloody gums and bloody lips. Her teeth are red. More blood trickles from her nose and eyes, leaking out of her ears and soaking into her hair. Sometimes she jerks and twitches, and horrible wordless noises spill from her gore-clotted lips.

I don't leave her side for a second, talking to her, doing all I can to soothe her, fighting back my own tears as I watch my baby sister bleed to death from the inside out.

In the worst moments, I am struck with the mad notion that if I can peel away her skin, I can grab the disease underneath and rip it out of her fragile body. I think the black stuff she's hacking up is the lining of her stomach. She's disintegrating before my eyes, and nothing I can do will keep her together.

As the plague ravages her small body, I keep talking to her, telling her stories of when she was little. I tell her about the time she walked in on me watching a horror film with my then-boyfriend, and she was so scared that I had to bribe her with ice-cream so she wouldn't tell Mum why she was having nightmares. I tell her about the time her best friend got a puppy for her birthday and Lola was desperate for her own, but we couldn't get one because Mum was allergic. Lola cried for almost two days straight until we got her a rabbit to make up for the lack of puppy. Thumper was still alive when the Others came, so the poor thing was probably washed away with millions of people when the 2nd Wave hit. I don't know why, but thinking about Thumper brings fresh tears to my eyes. Lola loved that bit of fluff, but it slipped away from her. I love Lola, but she's slipping away from me.

The day is drawing to an end when my baby sister draws her last breath. I hoped she'd go quietly, but she thrashes and jerks, a wet jumble of sounds spilling out of her throat. Blood sprays from her mouth and forms a reddish mist on her face. And then it's all over and she lies still at last, her suffering over.

I thought I might feel relief that she's not in pain in more, but I just feel numb. I've been sitting with her for hours, but now it feels like I've only been here for minutes. Even though my legs are aching from crouching beside her as she slipped into the disease. Even though my throat and chest ache from the pressure of holding back my own screams.

I've lost her.

"I'm sorry," I whisper. I want to kiss her forehead, but I don't dare. If I haven't already caught the Red Death, that will certainly do it.

Unfolding my stiff legs, I climb to my feet. Pins and needles shoot up and down my legs, and I brace myself on the back of Lola's seat. She doesn't look peaceful in death. She looks like what she is, an innocent little girl who died horribly.

I can't leave her here. Even though she's gone, I can't bear the thought of anyone finding her and dragging her little body back to that bonfire. It's unlikely that anyone would - no one has removed the other bodies from the train station - but once the thought enters my head I can't shift it.

But it's not like I can bury her either. I can't dig a grave with my bare hands, even if there was somewhere to dig.

I gaze through the train's open doors to the windows that span the length of the opposite station wall. The sea glitters out there, sun-touched and wild. I nod to myself. That's where I'll take her.

Lola's body is shockingly light as I gather her into my arms. How had she felt so heavy when I brought her here? I carry her off the train and out of the station. The stink of rotting flesh and rancid smoke hits me like a slap as I step outside, and I wonder if I'll ever smell fresh air again.

"Goodbye, Lola," I whisper, hugging the small bundle of her body. I wish I could breathe in the smell of her one more time, but the rotten milk stench of the plague has overpowered everything else. She's not my Lola anymore. My Lola is gone and all that's left is this shell.

I move towards the harbour and tilt my head back as a breeze rushes in from the sea, pretending that I can still smell brine and wildness, instead of the ever-present funeral pyre. Then I gently slip Lola's body into the water, watching as she sinks, her face disappearing into the hungry blue-green water.

The tears don't come. I stand at the spot that marks Lola's grave and wait to cry, but it doesn't happen. For the first time I feel something - not hope, but the realisation that I will survive. Lola has left me, but I won't fall apart. I'll build a wall around my heart, keep a weapon in my hand, and just dare the world to come and get me.

Evening's drawing on and the sunset looks like blood, as if the sun itself has the Red Death and has spilled its guts across the horizon. The overturned Warrior falls to shadows, the splintered masts like bones sticking up from the water, tangled skeins of rigging drifting on the waves.

A flock of birds wheels and swoops in liquid formation over my head.

The Others aren't the only enemies now. They've turned even the birds against us. And the Waves haven't stopped, I'm sure of it. There may only be a few thousand humans left in the world, but that's a few thousand more than the Others want. A grim smile cuts across my face. I'm one person they won't break and they won't stamp out. They'll unleash something else to deal with those of us who survived the Red Death, and when they do I'll be ready for them.

I'll be waiting.