‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ Ralph stammered as Carl and Michael barged past him. ‘What the hell are you doing bringing that in here?’
Michael didn’t answer. He was too busy directing the others.
‘Group yourselves around her,’ he said authoritatively. ‘Try and cage her in.’
Obediently Kate and Emma drew closer, as did another two survivors whose names Michael did not know. Carl gently lowered the sick woman’s feet to the ground so that she was standing upright again and then took a couple of steps back so that he was level with the others. Once something resembling a circle had been formed and he was happy, Michael let go.
For a second the body did nothing. Then, without warning, it lurched towards Kate who screwed up her face in nervous trepidation and stretched her arms out in front of her to prevent the woman from getting too close. As soon as she made contact with Kate’s outstretched hands the woman turned and staggered away in the opposite direction towards another survivor. This continued every time the edge of the circle was reached.
As the woman stumbled towards Michael he allowed himself for the first time to look deep into her face. For a dangerous few seconds he found himself transfixed, looking at the pitiful creature in front of him and wondering how she might have looked just a week earlier. A few days ago he might have found her attractive but, today, her emotionless gaze and drawn, almost translucent skin immediately dissipated any beauty or serenity that her face had previously known. There was an unnatural sheen to her exposed flesh. Michael noticed that her skin had a grey, almost light green tone and a greasy shine and it was tightly stretched over the bones of her skull. What had at first glance appeared to be dark bags under her frozen eyes were, in fact, the prominent ridges of her eye sockets. Her mouth hung open – a huge, dark hole – and a thick string of gelatinous saliva trickled continually down the side of her chin. He pushed her away.
The woman turned and began to stagger towards Carl. Clearly unable to control or co-ordinate her own movements, she tripped over her own clumsy feet and half-fell, half-lurched towards him. He recoiled and pushed her down to the ground, feeling a cold sweat prickle his brow as the pathetic and diseased creature scrambled back up onto its feet.
‘Can she hear us?’ Kate wondered. She hadn’t really meant to ask the question, she’d just been thinking out loud.
‘Don’t know,’ Michael answered.
‘She probably can,’ Emma said.
‘Why do you say that?’
She shrugged her shoulders.
‘It’s something about the way she reacts.’
Ralph, who had until then been watching nervously from a corner of the room, found himself being drawn closer and closer to the circle of survivors.
‘But she doesn’t react,’ he stammered, his voice uncharacteristically light and shaky.
‘I know,’ Emma continued. ‘That’s what I mean. She’s walking and moving around, but I don’t think she knows why or how.’
‘It’s instinctive,’ Carl muttered.
‘That’s what I’m starting to think,’ Emma agreed. ‘She probably can hear us, but she doesn’t know what the noises we make mean anymore. I bet she’s still capable of speaking, she just can’t remember how to.’
‘But she reacts when you touch her,’ Paul Garner jabbered anxiously.
‘No she doesn’t. She doesn’t react at all. She turns away because she physically can’t keep moving in a certain direction. I bet she’d just keep walking in a straight line forever if there wasn’t anything in her way.’
‘Christ, look at her,’ Kate mumbled. ‘Just look at the poor cow. How many millions of people like this are wandering around out there?’
‘Did you check her pulse?’ Michael whispered to Emma who was standing next to him.
‘Sort of,’ she replied, her voice equally low.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he hissed, annoyed by her vagueness.
‘I couldn’t find one,’ she answered bluntly.
‘So what are you saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything.’
‘So what are you thinking?’
Emma glanced across at him and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Don’t know,’ she admitted.
‘Get it out of here,’ Garner hissed nervously from his vantage point in a doorway a safe distance away.
Michael looked around the circle and noticed that the others were suddenly either looking at the ground or looking at him. Sensing that it was up to him to make the next move he took a step forward and grabbed hold of the diseased woman’s arm. He pulled her gently out of the hall and back towards the door which he opened with his free hand. He pushed her out into the sunlight and watched as she staggered away from the building and back across the car park.
10
The isolation and desperation of the situation affected all of the survivors, some much more than others. Carl spent most of the afternoon trying (unsuccessfully) to catch up on missed sleep and (also unsuccessfully) to forget everything that was happening outside. Time was dragging at an unbearable and painfully slow rate. An hour now felt like five and five hours more like fifty. As the sun began to sink back below the horizon he clambered out of the community hall once more and stood alone on the small area of flat roof he’d discovered the previous evening.
For a moment the air was pure and refreshing and he swallowed several deep, calming breaths before the now familiar smells of death and of burning buildings quickly returned, blown towards him on a cool and gusting wind. There was a sudden unexpected noise behind him and he span around to see Michael struggling to climb through the tiny skylight.
‘Did I make you jump?’ he asked as he dragged himself out onto the roof. ‘Sorry, mate, I didn’t mean to. I was looking for you and I saw you disappear up here and…’
Carl shook his head and looked away, disappointed that his little sanctuary had been discovered. In the community centre private space was at a premium and they had all been limited to just a few square feet each. Almost every move that every person made indoors could be seen by everyone else. Carl hated it and he’d been looking forward to getting out onto the roof and spending some time alone. The small square roof had been the only place so far where he’d been able to stretch, scratch, stamp, scream, punch and cry without feeling that he had to hold back on how he truly felt because of the effect it might have on the others. Stupid that almost everyone else was dead and yet he still instinctively found himself considering what the few remaining people might think of him rather than just being honest and true to himself. The effects of years and years of conditioning by society were going to take more than a few days to fade away.
‘You’re okay,’ he sighed as the other man approached. ‘I just came out here to get away for a while.’
‘Do you want me to go back inside?’ Michael asked anxiously, sensing that he was in the way. ‘If you want me to go then I’ll…’
Carl slowly shook his head again.
‘No, it’s okay.’
Glad to hear that he wasn’t intruding (although not entirely convinced that he really was welcome) Michael walked across to stand next to Carl at the edge of the roof.
‘What the bloody hell is happening?’ he asked, his voice so low that Carl could hardly hear what he’d said.
‘Don’t know,’ he mumbled in reply, equally quietly.
‘Christ, it’s just the speed of it all,’ Michael mumbled. ‘A few days ago everything was normal, but now…’
‘I know,’ Carl sighed. ‘I know.’
The two men stood in silence for a while and surveyed the devastation around them. No matter how long and how hard either of them stared for, they still couldn’t accept the sight of countless bodies lying face down on the cold ground. Even more difficult to accept were those pitiful corpses that were now moving. How could any of this nightmare be happening?
‘Almost makes you envy them, doesn’t it?’ Carl muttered.
‘Who?’
‘The bodies still lying on the ground. The ones that haven’t moved. I can’t help thinking how much easier it would have been to be…’