The night that they swarmed all over the building. Climbed up the outside of the sleek glass and steel tower. They could constrict their bodies, stretch them out, to get in through air vents that would have been impossible for a human.
And there they were now, crawling through the pipes above their heads, scratching and hissing from behind hollow walls. She could hear them and she knew they were there but she couldn’t move. She was paralysed. In the dark of the night she was the only one who knew what was coming and she was the only one who couldn’t move.
She tried to scream but nothing came out except a soundless gasp. It was like spiders crawling up her spine. If she couldn’t save herself then she wanted to warn her family but she couldn’t even do that. She was trapped, they were trapped, there was nothing she could do and they were all going to die.
It hadn’t happened like that.
No one had known they were coming but it hadn’t happened over night. It took weeks rather than days for it to become an epidemic. It was true that no one seemed to be able to stop them but it was also true that no one even seemed to try until it was too late.
She woke in a cold sweat to find sunlight streaming through the thin white curtains behind her. She was panting, out of breath. Hannah jumped up and ran out of the bedroom to find her children gone, their beds neatly made. She could hear them laughing and joking outside.
4
The river had flooded the Oracle shopping centre. It lapped against a deflated bouncy castle, the blue plastic had faded and turned yellow in places. Little waterfalls had formed running down the bricked hills. The McDonalds on one side was beneath a foot of water, on the other side the tables outside Starbucks had been turned over and lay half submerged.
Hannah steered the boat. Dennis jumped off holding a length of rope and looped it around the metal safety barrier that ran along the length of the the river. He pulled the boat towards him and then tied the rope. Ben threw another rope from the back and he tied that off as well.
She stopped the engine and the silence was like being punched in the stomach. The Oracle wasn’t as big as some shopping centres but it had always been noisy. The sound of a thousand people talking, laughing and joking, their only worry being whether the dress they liked would be available in their size. There had been music and the sound of children. Now there was nothing.
“All ashore that’s coming ashore,” said Dennis.
She turned and saw him helping the children down. They soaked their shoes and trousers in a foot of water that had once been dry land. She wondered if it was safe for them to be doing this, whether it made more sense for her and the kids to stay on the boat while Dennis went looking for weapons. She didn’t much like the idea of Ben and Cora handling guns but what other choice did they have? They needed more than just guns if they were going to keep going.
Dennis helped her down and she winced as the cold water climbed up her trousers. The children were already standing at the top in front of another coffee shop. She let Dennis take her hand and lead her up the wet steps.
The automatic doors were stuck on open. The floor was slippery with about an inch of water running down into House of Frasier and to the escalators. Which weren’t working. Hannah reached for Cora’s hand — she knew that Ben wouldn’t let her take his — as they passed the cash machines which might as well have been spitting out fifties for all the good they could do them now.
At the top of the stairs they passed Thornton’s which was one of the few shops to have its shutters pulled down. She would have liked to take some chocolate with them but supposed it was all beginning to rot now.
The floor was dry at the top and their shoes squeaked as they walked. The lights were off but there was a dirty glass ceiling that let in enough light for them to see by. They walked slowly around the corner and then out the other side, across the bridge and up to John Lewis.
She and Dennis had been discussing the plan for the last three days. She knew exactly what they were there to do. But she hadn’t accounted for an increasing desire to look around the shops she used to buy clothes from and maybe pick herself up a nice outfit. She thought it would make her feel better. She kept quiet and followed Dennis through the narrow passageway and onto the high street.
This was where the damage had been done. The air still smelled faintly of smoke. The brick ground was carpeted in glass from the windows that had been broken, overturned army vehicles lay in ruin. An old book shop must have been hit with a bomb or something, the buildings on either side of it leaned towards each other like drunks at a party. Hannah hadn’t realised how much she would have liked to take away a few books but all that was left were charred pages and empty covers laying in the rubble.
They found what they wanted laying in the middle of the street, casually discarded like coffee cups. Dennis walked towards a gun, some sort of pistol and looked around. She stood a little way back with Cora and Ben, whose arm she had grabbed to hold him in place.
Dennis looked around but she could tell they were alone there. Then cautiously he bent down and touched the pistol briefly, as if he was afraid it would burn him. When nothing happened he picked it up.
“It’s heavy,” he said. He didn’t speak loudly but, with no other sounds around, she could easily hear him.
He put the gun in his bag without checking to see if it was loaded. As far as she knew he didn’t even know how. She just hoped that if the time ever came they would be able to work out how to fire the thing. He picked up more guns, gaining confidence each time he dropped one in the bag, making a loud clack. After just a few minutes he had a bag full of handguns, machine guns and rifles. It was not yet mid-day.
“We should get back to the boat,” she said when he walked back to them.
“Don’t you want to do some shopping?” he said.
Her heart lifted but she pushed it back down. That wasn’t what they were here for and they couldn’t afford to waste time. They needed to get back on the river and to as wide a stretch as possible. “We don’t have time.”
“Come on,” he said, already walking. “It’s on the way back and we need stuff for the kitchen. The kids need clothes as well.”
She followed him. Ben tried to walk ahead to be with his father, no doubt drawn by the exotic treasure he had in his bag, but she kept a tight hold on his arm.
“Don’t you want anything?”
She did want things. She wanted a nice dress and some pretty shoes. But that wasn’t the world they lived in anymore. “Maybe some more boots,” she said. “And some trousers.”
They walked back along the narrow alleyway which still smelled faintly of piss. They walked past the entrance to John Lewis and back across the bridge to the Oracle. She thought he was going to suggest they split up. She wouldn’t have let it happen but the fact that he didn’t even suggest it worried her. Did he think there was something in the shopping centre that could get them?
He dropped the heavy bag of guns on the floor at the bottom of the escalator. “Where first?” he said.
It would have been easy to imagine they were back in the old world. A Saturday morning spent walking around the shops followed by lunch in a nice pub and then the drive home. But she wouldn’t let herself be drawn into that fantasy. This was a dangerous world. She couldn’t afford to relax.
They walked up the escalator to the top floor of the Oracle. A 1950s style diner was empty but still smelled of hamburgers. A cart selling cheap mobile phone accessories had been pushed out of its usual spot into the middle of the floor.
“I didn’t realise they’d closed The Gap,” she said. The space stood empty, even the fixtures and fittings had been removed. It was a meaningless comment to make.