Autumn: The City (7 page)

‘So the damn thing’s watching me!’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

He began to walk towards her, stopping short when he saw the corpse. Completely silent and otherwise unnervingly still, the only visible movement came from its misted eyes which moved from side to side, looking from Donna to Paul and back again. It hadn’t been there when he’d returned from the toilet minutes earlier. Could it have followed him?

‘Why doesn’t it go?’ Donna asked. ‘It should just wander away like the rest of them. Why’s it staying here?’

Paul crept forward slightly to get a better view of the cadaver on the landing.

‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled, ‘maybe it’s…’ He stopped speaking immediately when the creature outside slowly lifted up a single diseased hand and smashed it down against the door. As the two survivors stood and watched in terrified disbelief, it thumped the door again. And again. And again. And again. And then with both hands, raining down a sudden torrent of weak, comparatively clumsy and completely unexpected blows on the door.

‘I’m going to let it in,’ whispered Donna, her mouth dry and her pulse racing.

‘What?’ screamed Paul, unable to believe what he was hearing. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? You don’t know what that thing will do if you let it in here…’

‘You don’t know what it’s going to do either,’ she snapped back. ‘For God’s sake, this thing is trying to get to us. It wants help, it must do. This one’s different to all the others I’ve seen…’

‘But you can’t just assume that…

Paul’s words were wasted. Donna wasn’t listening and, besides, she’d already made her decision. The body in front of her looked pathetic and emaciated. Its movements were slow and laboured. But more to the point, it appeared to have some level of control, and that separated it from the hundreds of other corpses she’d seen. The creature continued to thump against the door. Donna flicked her pass at the sensor to her right and pulled the door open. The body dropped its arms and, for a second, stood still again.

‘See,’ she said, relieved. ‘I told you it…’

The creature lunged towards her, knocking her off balance and sending her thudding into the wall. With sudden energy - uncoordinated but unmistakably savage in intent - the remains of a rotting fifty-two year old man threw itself at Donna, its weak limbs flailing in the air around her face. Instinctively she lifted her hands to protect herself. Paul ran towards the obnoxious cadaver and grabbed it from behind, wincing in disgust as he tightened his grip and felt cold, hard, leathery flesh give way under the increasing pressure of his grip. With surprisingly little effort he yanked the body away and threw it down to the ground. Regardless of its unexpected speed and intent, it was still little more than a diseased and wasted shell.

‘Bloody thing,’ Donna spat. She pushed Paul to one side and stood over the corpse which was already struggling to pick itself up again. It leant over to one side and with claw-like, almost skeletal hands, made another lunge towards her.

‘We’ve got to kill it,’ Paul wailed.

‘How do we do that?’ Donna yelled. ‘Fucking thing’s been dead since Tuesday.’ It was only after she’d spoken that she realised how ridiculous her words sounded.

‘I don’t know!’ he screamed back at her. He looked around. Mounted on the wall just to the side of the entrance door was a fire extinguisher. He picked it up and raised it above his head. Donna, shaking with fear but fully aware of what Paul was doing, put one of her feet down hard on the creature’s bony chest. Half of her body weight was more than enough to keep it pinned down. It didn’t have the strength to reply.

‘Do it,’ she urged frantically. ‘For God’s sake, do it!’

Paul held the extinguisher high above the corpse. He watched its head thrashing helplessly from side to side with terrified fascination. Ashen, almost translucent skin was drawn tight across the emotionless face and its black, gaping mouth opened and closed continually without making a sound.

‘Do it!’ Donna screamed again.

He couldn’t move. Frozen. Terrified. Again the body tried to lunge and the sudden movement forced him into action. With his eyes screwed tightly shut Paul slammed the base of the metal cylinder down onto the head of the corpse on the ground. It hit the side of the face with a dull thud and a faint cracking sound as the cheekbone fractured. Slightly more confident in what he was doing, but with the sickening taste of bile rising in his throat, he lifted the fire extinguisher once again and hammered it down, this time smashing in the back of the skull. Finally the body lay still.

‘Let’s get it out of here,’ he said as he dropped the extinguisher. Donna held the door open as he dragged the creature out by its feet, leaving behind it a thick trail of dark, almost black blood on the pale purple carpet. Driven by a nauseous combination of shock, fear and adrenaline, he dragged it out through the landing door and left it on the staircase. There were more bodies on the stairs. Jesus Christ, he could see another three of the damn things - one tripping down towards him from the floor above, two more dragging themselves up painfully slowly from the floor below. Filled with panic and cold fear he turned and sprinted back to the office.

For more than an hour they were too afraid to move or even to make a sound. Hiding behind desks in the training room, Donna and Paul sat close together. Occasionally one of them would pluck up the courage to peer out into the main office again. They could just about see onto the landing through the precious doors which separated them from the rest of the world. Although indistinct and unclear, they could see movement outside.

Donna sat upright and looked up and out of the window at the grey sky, trying to make some sense of what was happening. Paul lay on the carpet next to her, curled up in a ball.

‘Why did it attack you?’ he mumbled, finally able to bring himself to speak about what he’d seen.

‘Don’t know for sure if it did.’

‘What do you mean? Of course it attacked you!’

‘Are you really sure? How do you know it wasn’t trying to get us to help? How do you know…’

‘I don’t know,’ he whined, covering his head with his hands. ‘All I do know is that you should never have opened the bloody door in the first place.’

There was a sudden crash outside. It sounded like something falling down the stairs - the cleaner’s bucket Paul had kicked earlier perhaps? He decided that one of the bodies must have tripped over it.

‘It’s like they’re coming back to life,’ Donna mumbled.

‘What?’

‘They died last Tuesday. I know that’s true because I watched it happen and I checked enough of my friends to know that they were all dead. And then they started to move. It’s like they’re beginning to function again. They walked on Thursday, now……’

‘Now what?’

‘How did they know we were here?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘I think you disturbed them when you went to the toilet.’

‘But we’ve both been off the floor before now, haven’t we? How come they didn’t react to us then? I walked past a hundred of those damn things outside on the streets and not one of them reacted…’

‘I know,’ she interrupted, growing increasingly annoyed by his mounting hysteria. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. They couldn’t move, now they can walk. At first they had very little control and coordination, now that seems to have improved. They couldn’t hear us and I don’t know if they could see us before, but now it seems that they can.’

‘But why did it attack you?’ he asked again, repeating his earlier question.

‘Did it attack me? If their control is limited, what else could it have done? It couldn’t ask for help, could it? Christ, Paul, look what’s happening to them. They’re full of disease. Their bodies are beginning to rot and decay. Imagine the pain they must be feeling.’

‘But can they feel it?’

‘I don’t know. If they can move, my guess is that they must be able to feel something.’

Paul sat up and drew his knees up tight to his chest.

‘So what’s going to happen next?’

Donna shrugged her shoulders. Her head was spinning. She didn’t want to think about it until she had to.

‘Don’t know,’ she muttered.

‘So what do we do?’

‘For now we keep our heads down and we keep out of sight. Don’t let them know we’re in here.’

Music woke Jack from his light sleep. He thought he was imagining it at first but no, there it was again. Faint and tinny, for the first time in almost a week he could definitely hear music. Once he was fully awake it took him a couple of seconds to get his bearings. He looked around and let his eyes slowly become accustomed to the low morning light. The department store looked very different in daylight - completely different in fact to how he’d pictured it last night when it had been filled with nothing but shadows and darkness. He then remembered that he hadn’t been alone last night and he sat up quickly and looked around for Clare.

‘Over here,’ she shouted from the other side of the store. She’d been watching him stirring for the last couple of minutes but hadn’t wanted to wake him. Stiff, aching and tired, Jack swung his legs out over the side of the bed, got up and then slowly shuffled over to the dining room furniture display where she was sitting. He sat down opposite her at a large mahogany table. In the middle of the table was a small stereo unit. Clare was playing a CD. He didn’t recognise the music. Although he didn’t say anything to her he wished she’d turn it down. It wasn’t particularly loud, he decided it just seemed that way because everything else was so deathly silent.

‘How are you this morning?’ he asked.

She nodded and smiled sadly.

‘I’m okay,’ she replied. ‘Look, I didn’t mean to wake you up. I hope you don’t mind the noise. I couldn’t stand the quiet any longer. I found the stereo in the electrical department just past the beds.’

Jack looked back over his shoulder and noticed a huge bank of dead television screens a short distance behind the row of beds where they’d just spent the night. Still drugged by sleep he stood up again and walked back to where he’d left their belongings last night. After searching through his rucksack he found a little of the food which he’d brought with him. He took it back to Clare and sat down again.

‘Hungry?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Not really.’

‘You should try and eat something. We both should.’

He opened up a plastic lunch box and took out some chocolate and fruit which he laid out on the table between them. Clare took a chocolate bar and unwrapped it. It was surprisingly good. The rich taste and smell of the food was reassuringly familiar and strangely comforting. She’d hardly eaten since Tuesday. After days of feeling nothing much more than sickening hurt and constant disorientation, the food provided a welcome distraction. For a moment it seemed that although they appeared to have lost everything, there was a slight chance that it might be possible for them to rediscover something resembling normality amongst the rubble of what remained of the lives they used to lead.

‘I love this song,’ Clare said as the next track on the CD began. She chewed thoughtfully on her chocolate and turned up the volume. She closed her eyes and for a precious few seconds tried to imagine she was somewhere else.

To Jack the music sounded no different and no less processed and manufactured than the last bland track he’d heard. He remembered the days when music was played by real musicians and when talent mattered more than appearance and… and he could hear something else. He slammed his fist down on top of the stereo and stopped it playing.

‘Hey…’ Clare protested.

‘Shh…’ he hissed.

He pushed his chair back and walked towards the escalators which snaked up through the centre of the department store. He could hear movement on the first floor below. Cautiously he peered over the top of the staircase and saw that a crowd of bodies had appeared. Unlike the clumsy bodies he’d seen earlier, these seemed to have a modicum of control. The light was poor but he could see, incredibly, that two or three of them had begun trying to climb up the motionless escalator towards him. They tripped over shop displays and random fallen corpses as they tried awkwardly to move forward. Clare suddenly appeared at his side, startling him.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Look,’ he answered, nodding down in the direction of the figures beneath them. He concentrated his attention on the diseased body which had made most progress towards the second floor. It was now almost halfway up the escalator but had been forced to stop, its way ahead blocked by an upturned baby’s pushchair. Although it had been considerably darker last night it had been fairly easy for Jack and Clare to negotiate their way around such obstacles. The stilted movements of the desperate creatures below were nowhere near as controlled and precise as those of the survivors. As they crouched in silence in the shadows and watched, the crowd below them began to dissipate. Those bodies on the outside of the gathering were beginning to trip and stumble away.

‘Was it the music?’ Clare wondered. The corpses on the escalator seemed to be losing interest now. They were staggering back down to the first floor again.

‘Must have been.’

‘But why?’

‘What d’you mean?’