'Tens of thousands.'
'Smacker says there's whole areas where they haven't cleared them — Erdington, Bearwood… They're just lying in the streets, what's left of 'em now, in their homes… He said there's like, plagues of rats and clouds of flies as big as your fist, and the stink-'
'All right, I don't need you to paint me a picture. Let's just get out of here.'
They made their way through the door and into the back of the building where there were even more bodies. A section had been set aside where corpses could be prepared for disposal, but neither Thackeray nor Harvey paid any attention to it.
They eventually made their way out through a window on to a flat roof and then a fire escape. The roar of the bikes had now moved down towards Digbeth. They moved through the still city, the smell of corruption never far from their noses. Occasionally they'd glimpse frightened people scavenging amongst the cavernous buildings, masked with scarves or hooded to keep the stink out or in a feeble attempt to stop the spread of infection. A medieval air now lay across a city that had been thriving and modern only months earlier. Thackeray and Harvey had their base in the Mailbox, a once-upmarket shopping mall now reduced by looters to a maze of empty rooms. They lived in the barricaded back offices of a former shoe shop, with dwindling supplies stolen from a supermarket lorry in the early days of the Fall. Their food cache had once been secured in an entire shop — bottled water, trays of cans, sacks of pasta and rice — safe behind a steel security gate that could only be opened by a key Thackeray had taken from a security guard killed in the first rash of riots. Now it filled barely a tenth of that space. They still didn't know what they were going to do when it was all gone.
Once safe inside they relaxed. They had a couple of armchairs, sleeping bags under rickety tents of designer sheets to make it more homely, the food for the day in one corner, a?1500 Arabian rug on the floor, scatter cushions all around and a poster of FHMs cover girls on the wall.
'It might look like a seedy smackhead's squat, but we like to call it home,' Thackeray said, sitting Caitlin down on one of the cushions.
'So what's the deal with the bow and arrows?' Harvey said, nodding towards the weapon that was still strapped across her back.
'I don't know. Maybe she uses it to hunt animals. Nothing like a bit of roast squirrel.' He went to remove the bow, but Caitlin's hand went up unconsciously to block him. 'OK. She wants to keep it on. Might be uncomfortable sleeping in it, but that's her call.'
Harvey threw Thackeray a can of sardines and opened one himself, eating with his fingers. Thackeray took out one sardine steak dripping with thick tomato sauce and offered it to Caitlin. She looked straight past it, past him, so he put it to her mouth, rubbing it gently back and forth on her lower lip. Eventually her tongue flicked out to taste it, then she took a bite, and then took the whole piece into her mouth hungrily. 'I don't know where you came from,' Thackeray said softly, 'but you can't have been walking round this city long in this state.' He fed her another piece of sardine. 'And it looks like it's been a while since you ate. So how did you get here? Couldn't have wandered in from the outside. Getting past all the checkpoints… it was bad enough before the plague. Muzzy in the west isn't letting anybody pass through his turf. Siegler in the east has bolted everything down — and those bastards down south, you wouldn't be in this good a condition if you'd passed through there.' A look of distaste crossed his face.
'You don't really reckon she can hear you?' Harvey peered into Caitlin's blank eyes, then shook his head and returned to his can of sardines.
'It's trauma — hardly surprising in this place. She's probably locked up deep inside, understanding everything I'm saying. A fugue state…'
'You've had too much of a bloody education, you have.' Harvey finished his can and tossed it into a shiny dustbin in the corner. 'I have to ask you, mate — isn't it going to hamper us a bit carting a zombie-bird around? We've had enough close calls as it is.'
'We couldn't just leave her out there, Harvey, for all those other bastards to pick off. How humane would that be?'
'You just fancy her.'
Thackeray didn't answer. Thackeray and Harvey cared for Caitlin for the next week. After the first day she was able to feed herself, silently, laboriously, and she was capable of coping with her other bodily functions once they showed her the toilet. When her period started on the third day, Harvey went out and located a large cardboard box of sanitary towels from the storeroom of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
Thackeray slept on the cushions while Caitlin had his sleeping bag, and during the day they gave her plenty of exercise walking around the roof of the Mailbox. Though she didn't realise it, from that vantage point the true state of the city could be seen.
Parts of Balsall Heath were burning and a thick cloud of smoke hovered over the area. There were gaps in the urban sprawl in other areas where similar conflagrations had been allowed to run their course. Abandoned cars and buses were everywhere. Some roofs had caved in due to more localised fires or disrepair, and there were few windows that hadn't been smashed. Barricades had been set up in many streets while bonfires blazed all over the place, pockets of hellish reds and oranges in the grim spread of browns and greys. Few people were visible on the roads, but occasionally white faces briefly passed gaping windows.
Yet there were flocks of birds all over, starlings swooping with evil eye and sharp beak, crows roosting on the rooftops of offices or nesting in the dark, empty interiors of broken-windowed tower blocks. There was greenery in unusual places, self-set elders in guttering, weeds on rooftops, out-of-control ivy swarming over entire terraces. Nature was reclaiming its own.
'It's a real mess, isn't it?' Thackeray said. He took Caitlin's hand when she ventured too close to the edge. 'I used to love this city. They'd turned it round from that horrible industrial past… lots of culture sprouting all over the place, galleries, clubs, restaurants, places you actually fancied going out to for a drink. I went to university here, decided to make it my home.' He laughed bitterly. 'Good choice.'
Harvey came up behind them. 'Don't get too close to the edge. We don't want Buckland's goons knowing we're hiding out here.'
'Ah, yeah, good old Buckland. The King of Central Birmingham,' Thackeray said sarcastically to Caitlin. 'He came up fast after the Fall, some local crook with plenty of thugs on tap to enforce his ways. There was too much chaos to get any opposition going, and once he was established, that was it.'
'That's not just it,' Harvey interjected. 'It's the thing he picked up at the Fall… the devil…'
'Superstition,' Thackeray sneered. 'You'd believe any old bollocks, you would. That's the kind of stupid stuff they put out to keep people like you in line.'
'It's true! Smacker saw it.'
'He did, did he?'
'Well, not exactly
'Buckland's just a hard man who'll go that extra mile to stay in power. And none of us are inhumane enough to match him. So we just hide out, and live a life in the shadows.' His voice was filled with self-loathing, but he turned to Caitlin and forced a smile. 'You know what they say, you're either part of the cure or you're part of the disease. So that's us done for.'
'I wish we could get out of here,' Harvey said wistfully. 'Maybe go down to Worcester. I had some good times there, in the Lamb and Flag. They're mellow down there.'
'Forget it. We're never getting out,' Thackeray said. 'Look at it — they've got it bolted down tight with their little principalities and banana republics, living off the leftovers of society and doing over everyone else who comes into view.' He scanned the skyline thoughtfully, then added sourly, 'This city is a metaphor. Everybody has their own Birmingham — it's a state of mind. You never get away from it.'