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‘Yeah, he was on fire. Wanted someone to help.’ The Ape reduces everything to the bluntest logic.

I look at Billie. ‘You understand, don’t you?’

She nods, but then adds, ‘Not really.’

‘He came from somewhere,’ I say.

‘So? What does that matter?’ Billie asks.

‘So,’ I tell her, my voice as calm as I can manage, ‘somewhere is
somewhere.
Right?’

‘I s’pose,’ she says, straightening and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘But I’m thinking . . . I’m thinking that . . .’ She trails off.

‘What?’ I ask her.

‘The light. It was the light.’

The Ape looks totally lost. ‘What light?’

‘Have you actually got a memory?’ I snap at him.

‘You’re the ones who didn’t remember my name,’ he snaps back.

‘There was a light when the classroom door got opened. Bright and blinding,’ Billie continues, ignoring our bickering. ‘Ever since then we’ve not seen another
person.’

The Ape gets an idea and incredibly enough looks excited by it. ‘Maybe the light fried everyone!’

Billie shudders. ‘Don’t, please.’

‘Something fried that guy.’

‘I’m going to follow the man’s trail,’ I say suddenly.

‘Seriously?’ Billie looks worried.

‘He came from somewhere. He may have been left behind or he may have got out from wherever everyone else is.’

‘I don’t want you to go anywhere, Rev,’ she says to me.

‘I have to. We need to do something,’ I tell her.

‘If he came from somewhere that burned him that badly then that’s not a place anyone should go,’ she replies.

‘I need a beer.’ The Ape is already bored by the discussion.

‘That light,’ I persist. ‘It might’ve fried everyone, like the Ape said.’

‘You just call me an ape?’

‘Everyone does,’ I say, impatiently. Is he so dense that he’s not heard people call him that at school?

‘I’m Dazza.’

‘No, you’re not. OK? You’re the Ape.’

The Ape almost looks hurt and walks off, muttering something about getting crisps too. For a split second I almost feel sorry for him, but I’ve got bigger things to worry about than his
feelings.

‘If everyone got burned, where’s their ashes, Rev? Or their squelchy, burned bodies?’ Billie asks. She’s looking directly at me and I know she’s doing her level
best to keep a grip on reality. ‘That can’t be what happened, it just can’t.’

‘That’s why I need to go and find out. Because despite what that man was going through, he was trying to tell us something, I’m sure of it.’

The Ape returns with a six-pack of Buds and a family-size bag of crisps. ‘We could live for years in here,’ he says with a big grin on his face.

‘Keep Billie safe,’ I tell him.

‘Me?’

‘You’re the best we’ve got right now,’ I say, realising with a sinking feeling that sadly that’s true.

The Ape looks proud. ‘Yep, that’s me.’

‘Cod four,’ I say to him.

He salutes me and I haven’t the heart to tell him I’m only saying that because I’m scared I won’t come back and that someone will need to look after Billie.

After unpacking and laying a large cotton tablecloth over the burned man, I pick up his trail and follow it all the way to the back of the supermarket.

A body doesn’t just burn, it sort of melts too. At least that’s what I learn, because the dead man’s dark gooey trail isn’t hard to pick up. I follow it
down the soaking wet aisles, through to a storeroom and on through two wide-open delivery doors, then on towards a massive articulated lorry. The trail stops at the open door of the lorry. I take a
guess that whatever burned the man, burned him in the driver’s cabin and he tried to escape before the flames engulfed him completely.

I head towards the door of the cabin with the feeling that whatever I do in the next ten seconds I really shouldn’t climb up into the cabin. The one thing anyone in my position should
not
do is that. But I also have this other feeling that unless I do the one thing I’m not supposed to, I won’t find out what has happened. And I need to know. Me, Billie and
the Ape need to know.

I reach up and pull myself onto the steps leading up to the driver’s cabin.

‘Hello?’ I call out.

I climb a step higher.

‘Anyone?’

I take another step and the higher I climb, the warmer it seems to get. My head draws level with the inside of the cabin and I can see signs of the fire that must have engulfed the burned man.
The melted seats and steering wheel are pretty damning proof of that. God alone knows how hot it must’ve been in there. That poor man, I think.

I’m not sure what I hope to find and the cabin is in such a state that I don’t think anything is going to help me discover what actually happened. But I’m here now so I climb
further in and as I do I spot pieces of the burned man’s skin stuck to the interior. The air starts to get hotter around me and at first I like the heat, it’s like a hot bath that I
want to sink into. But it keeps getting hotter and the heat is doing something to me, making me dizzy and lose focus. My clothes that had been soaking wet from the sprinklers in the shop are now
dry as a bone and I realise that their dampness must have shielded me from the onslaught of heat.

I look at my arm and there are already blisters forming and my fingers are starting to clench up, not because I want them to, but of their own accord. I try to get out of the cabin, but I
can’t seem to move. The heat won’t let me. I can’t find any air that isn’t going to burn the hell out of my throat and I don’t have any strength in my overheated
limbs. I’m willing myself to move but my brain is cloudy and can’t send the right signals. My limbs continue to curl involuntarily from the heat, and it’s like I’m curling
up to die.
Why the hell did I come up here
, I think.

From nowhere someone grabs my ankles and yanks them hard and I crash down onto the tarmac. I land so awkwardly that for a second I think I’ve broken my spine.

‘You’re on fire,’ a voice says, as I’m dragged away from the boiling lorry. I’m actually smouldering. I can see steam coming off me as I’m shoved through the
delivery doors at the rear of the supermarket. I get a glimpse of wild dark locks as my rescuer grabs a shopping trolley, dumps me into it and wheels me back into the supermarket aisle at a
thousand miles an hour till we hit the freezer section where we skid to a halt. Bags of ice are torn open and suddenly ice cubes are raining down on me, hundreds of them, pouring down onto my
superheated body.

‘You alone?’ a voice asks.

‘No . . .’ I whisper hoarsely. ‘Billie’s around somewhere.’

‘Wait there.’

The rescuer takes off, calling at the top of his voice. ‘Hey! Billie! Hey!’

I listen as Billie comes running.

‘Johnson??’ She sounds shocked.

Did she say Johnson?

‘Quick.’

They hurry towards me and I do everything I can to not black out from the searing pain.

‘Rev, can you hear me?’

I look up and see Johnson looking down at me.

‘Told you not to get burned.’

Most supermarkets have a chemist’s section and Johnson proves to be a doctor in the making when he breaks open packs of bandages and ointments and gives me painkillers
washed down with a bottle of mineral water he’s grabbed from the shelves. I’m screaming inside with agony, but he hands Billie the ointments and bandages and then reads out the
instructions so that she knows what to do.

‘What the hell happened?’ she asks.

‘I found her halfway inside a lorry,’ Johnson offers.

‘It’s where the man came from,’ I whisper, my throat red raw from the heat.

‘Why did you go in if it was on fire? Was it on fire?’

‘No. I mean yes. I don’t really know . . .’

Billie keeps gently applying ointment onto my burns, and whatever Johnson found it is working miracles.

Johnson sticks a thermometer into my mouth and takes a reading. I don’t really know what he thinks he is going to do with the information but he seems to think it’s important.

‘Did you see anyone out there?’ Billie asks Johnson.

‘You’re the first people I’ve seen since I left school.’

‘Didn’t see anyone at all?’ I ask him.

He gives a rueful smile and I notice he has deep dimples that make him look like he is smiling twice. ‘No. Sorry.’

Johnson gets side-tracked by the Ape coming down the aisle with a homemade weapon. It’s a broom with carving knives taped to the end of it. Nice.

‘I did a sweep out back. There’s no one there,’ he says.

Billie leans towards me and takes a second reading from the thermometer.

‘It’s coming down.’

Johnson turns to the Ape and Billie. ‘I thought I was the only one left.’

‘Yeah, it’s getting a bit crowded now,’ says the Ape and from the smell on his breath I can tell he’s downed another beer and eaten a packet of cheese and onion
crisps.

Johnson looks back at me. ‘The painkillers kicking in yet?’

‘Must be. I feel a bit light-headed.’

‘Light-headed is good.’

‘It is?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ he smiles. ‘Though I can break open the pharmacy and get the real stuff if you need it – there’s got to be some kind of morphine in there.’

‘What’s that?’ asks the Ape.

‘A drug.’

‘Break it open, Jonno. Let’s par-tay.’

We ignore him.

‘I owe you,’ I tell Johnson.

‘Was nothing. Just happened to be there.’

But it was much more than that, I want to tell him. He prob ably saved my life.

‘What d’you think’s happened?’ interrupts Billie.

‘Until I met you three I didn’t have a clue. But now I’m starting to wonder.’

‘How d’you mean?’ I ask him.

‘Well. The last people I saw are also the first people I saw, if you get my drift. So maybe we’ve been singled out, or we’re linked in some way.’

‘But singled out by who?’ asks Billie.

No one even attempts to answer that.

The smell coming from the burned man has made Johnson think that we should either move him or move out. He tells the Ape and Billie to gather blankets, clothes and food and
drink. He also doesn’t think the Ape should drink any more alcohol.

‘You’ll end up stabbing yourself with that broom,’ he tells him.

Billie laughs at this but the Ape scowls. ‘You’ll be glad of this when they come.’

‘When who come?’ I say.

‘Whatever’s out there.’

‘I don’t think there’s anyone out there. Isn’t that the point?’

‘There’s always someone out there,’ he says. ‘Always.’

It doesn’t take long for Billie and the Ape to fill a trolley with food and drink from the shelves.

I watch Johnson head for the cigarette kiosk. He finds the brand he wants, slides a packet out of the shelf, opens it and then slips a fresh cigarette into the corner of his mouth. He strikes a
match that seemingly appears like magic in his hand and takes a long slow draw. He holds the smoke in his mouth then blows a smoke circle. For some reason, I’m guessing all the painkillers
making me light-headed, I can’t stop gazing at him. It’s not that I haven’t noticed him before, of course I have, but there was never a reason for our paths to cross. His world
doesn’t touch mine, like I’d ever be cool enough anyway, and yet suddenly here we both are. He senses me staring at him and when he turns I blush and look away.