Excerpt: The Oathbreechers

The second thing he noticed after the snow was the silence. He sneezed at the cold, and the sound echoed on empty buildings and deserted streets. There was nothing. Nobody. The area had never been very busy (which was why Dr Cumming had chosen it to build his lab, from what Christopher had gathered), but even in the middle of winter there had always been people around, and the houses and buildings were warm and illuminated and living. This was different. This was a dead Oxford. The heavy mantle of snow sat undisturbed on the roofs and streets.

There was a strange sort of beauty to this landscape. He had never seen a city so calm. It looked as though it was in a heavy slumber, slowly breathing with the blow of the wind, wrapped in a thick, white blanket, waiting for spring and life to come back. But the silence was deafening. The lack of movement, the absence of colours, the dead windows everywhere, the houses devoid of heat...

"It's never going to wake up, is it?"