Autumn a-1 Read online

  Michael sensed that he was being watched. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that a girl sitting nearby was staring at him. She was rocking on a blue plastic chair and watching him intently. It made him feel uncomfortable. Much as he wanted someone to break the silence and talk to him, deep down he didn’t really want to say anything. He had a million questions to ask, but he didn’t know where to start and it seemed that the most sensible option was to stay silent.

  The girl got up out of her chair and tentatively walked towards him. She stood there for a moment, about a metre and a half away, before taking a final step closer and clearing her throat.

  ‘I’m Emma,’ she said quietly, ‘Emma Mitchell.’

  He looked up, managed half a smile, and then looked down again.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ she asked. ‘Do you want any help?’

  Michael shook his head and stared into the soup he was stirring. He watched the chunks of vegetable spinning around and wished that she’d go away. He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to start a conversation because a conversation would inevitably lead to talking about what had happened to the rest of the world outside and at that moment in time that was the last thing he wanted to think about. Problem was, it was all that he could think about.

  ‘Shall I try and find some mugs?’ Emma mumbled. She was damn sure that he was going to talk. He was the only person in the room who had done anything all morning and her logic and reason dictated that he was the person it would be most worth starting a conversation with. Emma found the silence and the lack of communication stifling, so much so that a short while ago she’d almost got up and left the hall.

  Sensing that she wasn’t going to go away, Michael looked up again.

  ‘I found some mugs in the stores,’ he muttered. ‘Thanks anyway.’

  ‘No problem,’ she replied.

  After another few seconds of silence, Michael spoke again.

  ‘I’m Michael,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry but…’

  He stopped speaking because he didn’t really know what it was he trying to say. Emma understood, nodded dejectedly and was about to turn and walk away. The thought of the stunted conversation ending before it had really started was enough to force Michael to make an effort. He began trying to think of things to say that would keep her at the table with him. It was involuntary at first, but within seconds he’d realised that he really didn’t want her to go.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘It’s just with everything that’s… I mean I don’t know why I…’

  ‘I hate soup,’ Emma grunted, deliberately interrupting and steering the conversation into safer, neutral waters. ‘Especially vegetable. Christ, I can’t stand bloody vegetable soup.’

  ‘Nor me,’ Michael admitted. ‘Hope someone likes it though. There’s four tins of it in there.’

  As quickly as it had began the brief dialogue ended. There just wasn’t anything to say. Small talk seemed unnecessary and inappropriate. Neither of them wanted to talk about what had happened but both knew that they couldn’t avoid it. Emma took a deep breath and tried again.

  ‘Were you far from here when it…’

  Michael shook his head.

  ‘A couple of miles. I spent most of yesterday wandering around. I’ve been all over town but my house is only twenty minutes walk away.’ He stirred the soup again and then felt obliged to ask her the same question back.

  ‘My place is just the other side of the park.’ She replied. ‘I spent yesterday in bed.’

  ‘In bed?’

  She nodded and leant against the nearest wall.

  ‘Didn’t seem to be much else to do. I just put my head under the covers and pretended that nothing had happened. Until I heard the music, that was.’

  ‘Bloody masterstroke playing that music.’

  Michael ladled a generous serving of beans into a dish and handed it to Emma. She picked up a plastic spoon from the table and poked at the hot food for a couple of seconds before tentatively tasting a mouthful. She didn’t want to eat but she was starving. She hadn’t even thought about food since her aborted shopping trip yesterday morning.

  A couple of the other survivors were looking their way. Michael didn’t know whether it was the food that was attracting their attention or the fact that he and Emma were talking. Before she’d come across he’d said less than twenty words all morning. It seemed that the two of them communicating had acted like a release valve of sorts. As he watched more and more of the shell-like survivors began to show signs of life.

  Half an hour later and the food had been eaten. There were now two or three conversations taking place around the hall. Small groups of survivors huddled together while others remained alone. Some people talked (and the relief on their faces was obvious) while others cried. The sound of sobbing could clearly be heard over the muted discussions.

  Emma and Michael had stayed together. They had talked sporadically and had learnt a little about each other. Michael had learnt that Emma was a medical student and Emma learnt that Michael worked with computers. Michael, she discovered, lived alone. His parents had recently moved to Edinburgh with his two younger brothers. She had told him that she’d chosen to study in Northwich and that her family lived in a small village on the east coast. Neither of them could bring themselves to talk much about their families in any detail as neither knew if the people they loved were still alive.

  ‘What did this?’ Michael asked. He’d tried to ask the question a couple of times before but hadn’t quite managed to force the words out. He knew that Emma couldn’t answer, but it helped just to have asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Don't know, some kind of virus perhaps?’

  ‘But how could it have killed so many people? And so quickly?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ she said again.

  ‘Christ, I watched thirty kids die in just a couple of minutes, how on earth could anything…’

  She was staring at him. He stopped talking.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she sighed.

  Another awkward, pregnant pause followed.

  ‘You warm enough?’ Michael eventually asked.

  Emma nodded.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘I’m freezing. I tell you there are holes in the walls of this place. I stood in one corner this morning and I could push the bloody walls apart! It wouldn’t take much to bring this place down.’

  ‘That’s reassuring, thanks.’

  Michael shut up quickly, regretting his clumsy words. The last thing anyone wanted to hear was how vulnerable they were in the hall. Shabby, ramshackle and draughty it might be, but today it was all they had. There were countless stronger and safer buildings outside, but no-one wanted to take a single step outside the front door for fear of what they might find there.

  Michael watched as Stuart Jeffries and another man (whose name he thought was Carl) sat in deep conversation in the far corner of the room with a third figure who was hidden from view by Jeffries’ back. Jeffries had been the first one to arrive at the hall, and he’d made a point of telling everyone who’d arrived subsequently that he’d been the one who had found their shelter as if they should be grateful. In a world where position and stature now counted for nothing, he seemed to be clinging on desperately to his self-perceived ‘status’. Perhaps it made him feel important. Perhaps it made him feel like he had a reason to survive.

  The conversation in the corner continued and Michael began to watch intently. He could sense that frustrations were beginning to boil to the surface by the increasing volume of the voices. Less than five minutes earlier they had been mumbling quietly and privately. Now every survivor could hear every word of what was being said.

  ‘No way, I’m not going outside,’ Jeffries snapped, his voice strained and tired. ‘What’s the point? What’s outside?’

  The man hidden in the shadows replied.

  ‘So what else should we do the
n? How long can we stay here? It’s cold and uncomfortable in here. We’ve got no food and no supplies and we’ve got to go out if we’re going to survive. Besides, we need to know what’s happening out there. For all we know we could be shut away in here with help just around the corner…’

  ‘We’re not going to get any help,’ Jeffries argued.

  ‘How do you know?’ Carl asked. His voice was calm but there was obvious irritation and frustration in his tone. ‘How the hell do you know there’s no-one to help us? We won’t know until we get out there.’

  ‘I’m not going out.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve already established that,’ the hidden man sighed. ‘You’re going to stay in here until you fucking starve to death…’

  ‘Don’t get smart,’ Jeffries spat. ‘Don’t get fucking smart with me.’

  Michael sensed that the friction in the corner might be about to turn into violence. He didn’t know whether to get involved or just stay out of the way.

  ‘I know what you’re saying, Stuart,’ Carl said cautiously, ‘but we need to do something. We can’t just sit here and wait indefinitely.’

  Jeffries looked as if he was trying desperately to think of something to say. Maybe he was having trouble trying to reason the argument. How could you apply any logic and order to such a bleak and inexplicable situation? Unable to find the words to express how he was feeling he began to cry, and the fact that he was unable to contain his emotions seemed to make him even angrier. He wiped away his tears with the back of his hand, hoping that the others hadn’t noticed, but knowing full well that everyone had.

  ‘I just don’t want to go out there,’ he cried, finally being honest and forcing his words out between gasps and sobs. ‘I just don’t want to see it all again. I want to stay here.’

  With that he got up and left the room, shoving his chair back across the floor. It clattered against the radiator and the sudden noise caused everyone to look up. Seconds later the ominous silence was shattered again as the toilet door slammed shut. Carl looked at the man in the corner for a second before shrugging his shoulders and getting up and walking away in the opposite direction.

  ‘The whole bloody world is falling apart,’ Michael said under his breath as he watched.

  ‘What do you mean falling apart?’ Emma asked quietly. ‘It’s already happened, mate. There’s nothing left. This is it.’

  He looked up and around at his cold grey surroundings and glanced at each one of the empty shells of people scattered about the place. She was right. She was painfully right.

  6

  Dead inside.

  Henshawe sat alone in a dark corner of a storeroom with his head in his hands, weeping for the wife and daughter he’d lost.

  Where was the sense in going on? Why bother? Those two had been the very reason he existed. He’d gone to work to earn money to keep them and provide for them. He’d come home every night to be with them. He’d been devoted to them in a way he thought he’d never be with anyone before he and Sarah had got together. And now, without any reason, warning or explanation, they were gone. Taken from him in the blinking of an eye. And he hadn’t even been able to help them or hold them. He hadn’t been there when they’d died. When they’d needed him most he had been miles away.

  Outside in the main hall he could hear the moans and cries of other people who had lost everything. He could smell and taste the anger, frustration and complete bewilderment of the other survivors which hung like the stench of rotting flesh in the cold, grey air. He could hear fighting, arguing and screaming. He could hear raw pain tearing each one of the twenty or so disparate, desperate people apart.

  When the noise became too much to bear he dragged himself up onto his feet with the intention of leaving. He was about to get up and walk and leave the hall and the rest of the survivors behind when his mind was quickly filled with images of millions of lifeless bodies lying in the streets around him and he knew that he couldn’t go. The light outside was beginning to fade. The day was almost over. The thought of being out in the open was horrific enough, but to be out there in the dark – lost, alone and wandering aimlessly – was too much to even consider.

  He leant against the storeroom door and peered into the main hall. The brilliant orange sunlight of dusk poured into the building from above his head, illuminating everything with vibrant, almost fluorescent colour. Curious as to the source of the light, he took a few steps out of the room and turned back around. In the sloping ceiling just above the door was a narrow skylight. The storeroom he had hidden in had been added as an extension to the original building and when he had arrived he had noticed that it had a flat roof. Sensing that his escape was at hand, Henshawe climbed onto a wooden table, stretched up and forced the skylight open. He dragged himself through and scrambled out onto the asphalt roof.

  The coldest wind he had ever felt buffeted and blew him as he stood exposed on the ten foot square area of roof. From the furthest edge he could see out over the main road into Northwich and into the dead city beyond. By moving only his eyes he followed the route of the road as it splintered away to the left and headed off in the general direction of Hadley, the small suburb where he had lived. The small suburb where the bodies of his partner and child lay together in bed. In his mind he could still picture them both, frozen still and lifeless, their perfect bodies stained with dark, drying blood, and suddenly the icy wind seemed to blow even colder. For a while he considered driving back to them. The very least they deserved was a proper burial and some dignity. The pain he felt inside was unbearable and he dropped to his knees and held his head in his hands.

  From his vantage point he could see countless bodies, and it struck him as strange and unnerving to think that he was already used to seeing the corpses. Before all this had happened he’d only ever seen one dead body, and at that time it had seemed an unusual and alien thing. He had been at his mother’s side when she’d died. As the life had drained away from her he had watched her change. He’d seen the colour blanch from her face and her expression freeze and had watched the last breath of air be exhaled from her fading body. He’d seen her old and frail frame become heavy and useless. She’d had little strength towards the end, but even then it had taken just a single nurse to help her get around. When she died it took two male porters to lift her from her bed and take her away.

  Parts of the city in the distance were burning. Huge thick palls of dirty black smoke stretched up into the orange evening sky from unchecked fires. As he watched the smoke climb relentlessly his wandering mind came up with countless explanations as to how the fires could have started – a fractured gas main perhaps? Or a crashed petrol tanker? A body lying too close to a gas fire? He knew that it was pointless even trying to think about reasons why, but he had nothing else to do. And at least thinking like that helped him to forget about Gemma and Sarah for a while.

  He was about to go back inside when one of the bodies in the road caught his eye. He didn’t know why, because the body was unremarkable in the midst of the confusion and carnage. The corpse was that of a teenage boy who had fallen and smashed his head against a kerb stone. His neck was twisted awkwardly so that whilst he was lying on his side, his glazed eyes were looking up into the sky. It was as if he was searching for explanations. Carl felt almost as if he was looking to him to tell him what had happened and why it had happened to him. The poor kid looked so frightened and alone. Carl couldn’t stand to look into his pained face for more than a couple of seconds.

  He went back inside, and the cold and uncomfortable community hall suddenly seemed the safest and warmest place in the world.

  7

  Carl eventually returned to the other survivors and found them sitting in a rough circular group in one corner of the dark main hall. Some sat on chairs and benches whilst others were crouched down on the hard linoleum floor. The group was gathered around a single dull gas lamp and a quick count of the heads he could see revealed that he seemed to be the only absentee. A few of the poo
r bewildered souls glanced up at him as he approached.

  Feeling suddenly self-conscious (but knowing that he had no reason to care) he sat down at the nearest edge of the group. He sat down between two women. He’d been trapped in the same building as them for the best part of a day and yet he didn’t even know their names. He knew very little about anyone and they knew very little about him. As much as he needed their closeness and contact, he found the distance between the individual survivors still strangely welcome.

  A man called Ralph was trying to address the group. From his manner and the precise, thoughtful way that he spoke Carl assumed he’d been a barrister or, at the very least, a solicitor until the world had been turned upside down yesterday morning.

  ‘What we must do,’ Ralph said, clearly, carefully and slowly and with almost ponderous consideration, ‘is get ourselves into some sort of order here before we even think about exploring outside.’

  ‘Why?’ someone asked from the other side of the group. ‘What do we need to get in order?’

  ‘We need to know who and what we’ve got here. We need food and water, we need bedding and clothes and we should be able to find most of that in here. We also need to know what we haven’t got and we should start thinking about where to get it.’

  ‘Why?’ the voice interrupted again. ‘We know we’ll find everything we need outside. We shouldn’t waste our time in here, we should just get out and get on with it.’

  Ralph’s confidence was clearly a professional facade and, at the first sign of any resistance, he squirmed. He pushed his heavy-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of his nose with the tip of his finger and took a deep breath.

  ‘That’s not a good idea. Look, I think we’ve got to make our personal safety and security our prime concern and then…’