Autumn: The City (17 page)

Up high on the opposite side of the room he could see cardboard boxes. Most of the racking was loaded up with basic office supplies and stationery, but from where he stood he couldn’t see what these boxes might contain. A mixture of inquisitiveness and sheer boredom and frustration drove him to climb up and check the boxes out. Disappointingly they held nothing more than printer cartridges and supplies.

Cooper lowered his foot to step down but lost his balance as the racking (which was not attached to the wall as he’d presumed) tipped forward slightly. He dropped down heavily and landed awkwardly on his back on top of a photocopier with a crash which, in the silence of the night, sounded disproportionately loud. Wincing with pain and surprise he then rolled off the top of the machine and tumbled onto the floor in an uncoordinated heap, smashing his head against more racking on the way down. Numb with surprise and breathing heavily, he lay where he had fallen for a moment and listened to other sounds which had suddenly begun to echo around the building, the clattering and crashing noises he’d made having disturbed the office’s other occupants. With considerable effort he slowly dragged himself back onto his feet and brushed himself down.

He could feel air on his face.

Thrown into a desperate panic, Cooper scrambled around in the darkness for his torch. Switching it on, he shone it across the room and, in the light it gave off, saw that the visor of his face-mask was damaged. With his heart pounding in his chest his eyes followed the route of a snaking crack across the visor from bottom-left to top-right where he saw that the protective glass, perspex or whatever it was that the mask was made of had chipped.

An immediate, suffocating nausea washed over the soldier as he realised the implications of what had happened. His suit had been compromised. He had seen what the disease had done to Thompson earlier and he knew full well how quickly and violently his colleague had been infected and had died. After a split-second pause as the cold reality of his situation sunk in, he panicked. He covered the chip in the visor with his hand, hoping to prevent the disease from getting inside. With each second that passed so his fear increased. He struggled to find some tape with which he could repair the damage, knowing full well that, in all probability, his lungs had already been filled with the deadly germs. All that he could do now was wait for the inevitable to happen.

Cooper screwed his eyes shut and waited.

He held his breath for as long as he could, hoping to prolong his life by a few precious seconds and knowing that the next time he breathed in might be the last.

A few seconds longer still and he ripped off the face-mask. He was already contaminated - he decided he might as well breathe his final breath freely and not through the sterilising filters in the breathing apparatus.

He leant against the window, breathing in the cold autumn air, and waited.

After five minutes had passed he began to wonder why he wasn’t dead. Or was he? Was this how the people who were still able to move had been affected? He didn’t feel any different. It didn’t hurt. He wasn’t suffocating or choking as he’d seen Thompson suffering earlier.

It was several hours later when Cooper finally allowed himself to accept the fact that he so far seemed to have been left untouched by whatever it was that had ripped apart the rest of the world.

‘They’ve got to be somewhere down that track,’
Michael whispered, knocking back the last dregs of a mug of lukewarm black coffee. ‘Whether they’re a mile away or ten miles away, they’re going to be down there somewhere.’

‘So what do we do?’ Emma asked, leaning across the melamine covered table and watching the shadows dance across his face in the dull light of a flickering gas lamp. She was tired. It felt like they’d been talking about this for hours.

‘Find them,’ he said simply.

‘But is that wise?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If this really is the army or airforce or whatever, do we really want to get involved with them?’

‘Do we have a choice? Whoever they are, they’re obviously well organised. You never know, they might have an antidote or something. There could be bloody hundreds of them holded-up somewhere.’

‘But we don’t need an antidote.’

‘I know that,’ he snapped. ‘All I’m trying to say is that this whole thing might not be as hopeless as we’ve been thinking…’

‘And anyway,’ she continued unabated, ignoring everything he’d said, ‘everybody’s already dead. It’d need to be a bloody good antidote to help those poor bastards out there.’

‘Okay,’ Michael sighed, annoyed by her flippancy and her reluctance to try and find some good in the day’s events, ‘you’ve made your point.’

A brief moment of silence followed. Emma looked around the cramped motorhome where she’d spent virtually every minute of the last few days. She hoped with all her heart that Michael’s optimism was justified. After the relentless grief, despair and fear which had burdened them both constantly since the nightmare had begun, the possibility that some semblance of normality might somehow be about to return to their lives was welcome and unexpected. But it was so unexpected that she wouldn’t allow herself to believe it was true until the fragments of possibility and hope had been evidenced and cemented into reality.

‘You okay?’ Michael asked, concerned by how quiet and reflective she had suddenly become.

‘I’m all right,’ she answered sadly.

‘Sure?’

She shook her head and looked down at the table.

‘No,’ she mumbled.

Suddenly uneasy and self-conscious, Michael shuffled awkwardly in his seat. He’d spent weeks with Emma now but there was still an occasional distance between them. He grew more and more relaxed and assured in her company each day, but moments like this felt uncomfortable. Truth was he didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t know how to make her pain go away.

‘What’s wrong?’

She wiped her eyes and looked up at him.

‘Sorry,’ she sobbed, ‘I can’t help it. Most of the time I’m okay, but then sometimes I…’

‘What?’

Emma looked around the caravan, searching for the words to express how she felt.

‘I just want this to stop,’ she explained. ‘I want to go to sleep tonight and wake up in the morning and find everything back as it used to be. And if that’s not going to happen, I want to wake up and find the bodies gone and the uncertainty gone and the fear gone and…’

‘Shh…’ he whispered, worried that her voice was becoming loud enough to be heard from outside. ‘Listen, you know as well as I do that the only certainty round here is that things are never going to get back to normal, don’t you?’

She nodded.

‘Yes, but…’

‘If this is all we’ve got left then we’ve got to make the most of it. We’ll get used to living like this and…’

‘But this isn’t living,’ she protested tearfully. ‘How can you call this living? This is barely existing for Christ’s sake. Look at us, Mike. Look at what’s happening to us. We smell. We’re dirty. We haven’t washed properly for weeks. Our clothes are filthy. We both need to cut our hair and you need to shave. We’re not eating properly or exercising or…’

‘We’re making do,’ he interrupted. ‘And when we can we’ll find somewhere to live where we can wash and relax and grow our own food. We’ll get new clothes and we’ll build ourselves a bloody palace somewhere, okay?’

She sniffed back more tears.

‘Okay,’ she replied.

Michael stared into her tear-streaked face. She was right, but what could they do? As far as he could see there was no immediate way out of the situation they found themselves in. They had to remain mobile and go without some base necessities in order to survive. He truly believed that things would change eventually, they had to. The bodies would decay away to nothing in time.

‘Hungry?’ he asked, looking for a way to distract Emma from her dark and difficult thoughts. She nodded and sank back into her seat.

‘A little.’

‘I’ll get you something.’

She watched him as he stood up and walked the short length of the motorhome to the cramped kitchen area. Their vehicle shelter was safe but stifling. She might have been able to cope with the confined space had she been able to venture outside occasionally. As it was she was trapped, and she was finding the motorhome increasingly claustrophobic. Even though they had intentionally driven out into the middle of nowhere, for safety’s sake they had draped thick blankets over every window and door to prevent any light from seeping out into the darkness and giving away their presence.

Almost three weeks had passed since the day the disease had struck but Emma still couldn’t adjust to the way she was having to live. She’d known from the start that she’d probably never fully come to terms with the devastation and loss she’d experienced, but there were other much more subtle ways in which she was struggling. Having to remain deathly silent was harder than she would ever have imagined. She was growing tired of having to think about everything in terms of how much noise she was going to make.

Michael came back to the table and sat down. He carried with him more coffee and two pots of dehydrated snack food. Steam snaked up into the air from the top of each pot.

‘Beef and tomato or sweet and sour?’ he asked.

They had found a job-lot of these snacks in the storeroom of a small corner shop they’d looted earlier in the week. The food tasted awful but it was hot, easy to prepare and relatively nutritious.

‘Can’t stand sweet and sour,’ she answered, ‘but I prefer it to beef and tomato.’

He passed her the sweet and sour flavoured food and a fork. Still sniffing back tears she began to eat hungrily and without further complaint.

‘I think they’ll be back,’ Michael said between mouthfuls of tasteless food.

‘Who will?’ asked Emma.

He looked at her in disbelief. How could she have forgotten already?

‘Whoever it was I saw today,’ he sighed. ‘Remember? Bloody hell, Emma, anyone would think you didn’t mind living in a shit-hole like this eating plastic food out of a plastic pot!’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m tired. Look, I know how important this is to you…’

‘Do you?’ Michael snapped.

‘Yes,’ she insisted, ‘of course I do.’

‘Have you stopped to think where these people might be from? This might not be as widespread as we’d thought. Maybe it’s only this country that’s been affected……’

He stopped talking, aware that Emma had put down her fork and that she was staring at him.

‘Don’t do this,’ she said softly, reaching her hand out across the table and gently squeezing his. ‘Please don’t let your imagination run away with you. Until we know more let’s just keep our feet on the ground and take every day as it comes. I don’t want to start thinking things are going to change only to find that we’re back in the same damn mess again and nothing’s happened. Do you know what I’m trying to say?’

‘No, not really.’

She sighed and squeezed his hand again.

‘As far as I’m concerned you’re all I’ve got left. You’re the only thing left that I can count on. My family and friends are gone. I don’t have a home any longer and I don’t own anything other than what’s in this van. The only thing I seem to be able to hold onto is you, and I’m not about to let you go.’

‘You don’t have to. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not suggesting that we do anything that’s going to…’

‘I don’t want to take any chances, Mike. You know how much I hate all of this, but if this is as good as it’s going to get then it’s going to have to do. Let’s just keep our heads, take our time and not take any chances, okay?’

He looked across the table and into her eyes and nodded. Much as he wanted to follow the track and try and find the other survivors he knew that she was right. He felt strangely guilty for a moment. Did he give their relationship and need for each other the same importance that Emma appeared to? For a split second he tried to imagine being without her. He couldn’t. She was all he had too.

Cooper woke up.

He couldn’t remember falling asleep. He remembered sitting by the window last night, staring out into the darkness and listening to the rain but, other than that, nothing. He noticed the discarded face-mask on the floor and recollections of what had happened to him came flooding back. He felt okay. He was still breathing and he still had a pulse. As far as he could tell he was still fit and healthy and alive. Surely the disease would have affected him by now if it was going to affect him at all?

The morning outside was dry and, despite the sky being dull and overcast, relatively bright. The heavy smell of death and decay hung over the city like a dense cloud of polluting fog, tainting everything with its abhorrent scent. Now that he had discarded his breathing apparatus the stench was inescapable. Regardless, Cooper quickly decided that it was just about preferable to the processed and recycled air that he’d been forced to breathe for most of the last two and a half weeks. He reminded himself that he was in the middle of a large city and that the air would surely be cleaner and more palatable elsewhere. There would undoubtedly be better places than this.

For a short time he allowed his mind to wander. Instinctively he thought about making the return trip to the base. He’d already made basic mental plans and preparations before the realisation dawned on him that he didn’t actually have to go back there if he didn’t want to. It was only the sense of duty and misguided loyalty instilled through years of military service that had made him think that he should return. No doubt the other soldiers who had left the base with him yesterday would have given him up for dead by now - the officers would be more surprised if he did find his way back there now than if he remained missing in action. He suddenly found himself in a relatively fortunate position. He was free from the restrictions of military life and the confines of the bunker and, it seemed, immune from the germ that had destroyed pretty much everything else. What remained of the rest of the world was potentially his for the taking.