Aaron huddled down into the bunker he’d been calling home for the past 3 nights and shivered. The cold night air, damp with the mist that rolled in off the sea at this early hour had soaked through the scraps of rags from which he’d fashioned a makeshift blanket.

It had been 12 days since he’d last seen anyone – anyone human that is. The robot sentries kept their ever-vigilant watch over the landscape without fail, destroying with deadly accuracy anything that moved. Aaron’s leg hurt badly – the infection from the shrapnel wound was obviously spreading – but he wasn’t yet ready to amputate. Two more days, he reckoned, before death by cyborg laser or gangrene were the only options. It was growing increasingly unlikely that the system virus had worked anyway.

Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. Flinching, Aaron waited for the impending firefight such bravado should have attracted, but none came. So the virus had had some effect after all – even if only dogs were the lucky beneficiaries.