That was all that Michael needed to hear. With that he strode up behind the woman, reached out and rested his hands on her shoulders. She stopped moving instantly.
Emma jogged the last few steps and moved round to stand in front of the body. She looked up into her glazed eyes and saw that they seemed unfocussed and vacant. Her skin was pale and taut, as if it had been stretched tight across her skull. Although she was sure that the body couldn’t see her (she didn’t even seem to know she was there) Emma respectfully tried to hide her mounting revulsion. There was a deep gash on the woman’s right temple. Dark blood had been flowing freely from the wound for some time and had drenched her once smart white blouse and grey business suit.
‘We want to help you,’ she said softly.
Still no reaction.
Michael gripped the woman’s shoulders a little tighter and shuffled closer.
‘Come on,’ he whispered, ‘let’s get you inside.’
Carl and Kate watched the others with a morbid fascination.
‘What the hell is happening?’ Kate asked, her voice gradually becoming noticeably weaker and more unsteady each time she spoke.
‘No idea,’ Carl admitted. ‘Bloody hell, I wish I knew.’
He surveyed the desperate scene around them. Not all of the bodies had moved. The majority still lay where they had fallen.
‘Carl,’ Michael shouted.
‘What?’ he mumbled nervously, turning back to face the others.
‘Give us a hand, mate. Could you get hold of her legs?’
Carl nodded and walked over towards Emma and Michael. He crouched down and grabbed the woman’s bony ankles, one in each hand, and, as Michael pulled back on her shoulders, he lifted her feet. She was surprisingly light. There was no weight to her at all and she didn’t react to being moved.
The two men scuttled back to the community hall, closely followed by Emma and Kate. As they approached the doorway the survivors (who had continued watching intently throughout) quickly realised what was happening. They scattered like a shoal of frightened fish that had just been invaded by the deadliest predator shark.
‘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…’