“Just go straight ahead,” I said distractedly scanning the silent streets thronged by the legions of the dead, all calmly tracking my progress.

“I’ll let you know when.”

The last leg of the journey to the hallowed ground of Greyfriars Cemetery was grim. As we drove up Lauriston Place, past the old Royal Infirmary and round into Forrest Road, the horror of one of the older parts of the city opened its arms and enfolded me like a long lost lover. A mass of shades, spirits and revenants shimmering like a heat haze at high noon thronged the streets. I could still make out the road through their insubstantial forms, but the view was distorted and warped; twisted out of true by presences that had no business here. Some of them manifested as pools of moving shadow, a darkness in perpetual motion flitting across the assembly of the dead like a disease liberated from an artificial confinement. A shiver ran down my spine as I realised now what I was looking at: the birth of a necropolis where the dead wandered at will, unfettered by the mostly unconscious restraints imposed by the living. They had always been around, but not with this overwhelming power and purpose.

Dawn of the Dead indeed. So what the hell was high-noon going to bring?