Autumn: The Human Condition (17 page)

The civic square in front of the council house was a grim sight. The sun was just disappearing below the horizon, drenching the scene in warm orange light and casting long, dragging shadows. It had recently been raining and the sunlight made the wet ground glisten and shine. Cox counted sixteen bodies traipsing across the block-paving in various random directions. One of the stupid things nearby lost its footing and tumbled down a short stone staircase just to his right. Its clumsy, barely coordinated movements made him chuckle nervously to himself. His laughter, although quiet, sounded disproportionately loud and made him feel uncomfortable and exposed. Now that the silence had been broken, however, he finally felt brave enough to call out.

`Hello,' he said, his wavering voice at little more than normal speaking volume.

Nothing.

`Hello, can anyone hear me?'

Nothing.

`Hello.'

Nothing.

Cox took a few more hesitant steps forward (avoiding the crumpled remains of a foul-smelling, rain-soaked corpse) and then turned back on himself to look across the landscape of Taychester. He'd lived there all his life but had never seen it like this. Tonight it was an alien and cold place. It was so dark. Not a single pinprick of electric light interrupted the steadily increasing darkness. No street lights. No light coming from inside any of the hundreds of buildings he could see. Suddenly feeling cold, alone and afraid the counsellor turned and walked back down to where he'd left his car on Tuesday morning.

He paused for a moment longer before setting off. Perhaps he should go back into the chambers and up to his office and see if there was anyone else around. Had any of his colleagues survived? He couldn't risk it. He couldn't afford to get wrapped up in any council business when he had so many issues and uncertainties in his own life to sort out. That was his excuse and he was sticking to it. He climbed into his car, keen to get away quickly.

The sound of the engine was uncomfortably loud but Cox felt protected and safe behind the wheel. He pulled out of the car park and began to drive home. He clipped the hip of a random body which lurched into his path from out of nowhere as he turned left onto the main expressway. He slammed on his brakes and reversed back to help the bedraggled figure. He watched in petrified disbelief as the corpse silently picked itself up off the ground and limped away.

Used to only having to think about himself and Marcia, Cox drove home quickly, forcing himself to block out and ignore the hundreds of bodies, the countless wrecks of crashed cars and the unprecedented destruction and devastation which lined his entire route home. The house was just as he'd left it first thing on Tuesday.

Cox stopped the car on the drive and walked towards the front door. He paused before going inside. He needed to compose himself before he faced whatever he might find in there. Turning around he stared at the quiet cul-de-sac where he and Marcia had lived for almost ten years. It looked pretty much the same as it always had done, and yet everything felt uncomfortably different. This Wednesday evening had the still and silent air of an early Sunday morning. No-one was about. Nothing moved. Nothing, that was, apart from the remains of Malcolm Worsley (who had lived opposite). Worsley's corpse was trapped in its front garden, hemmed in by the ornate shrubs and privet hedges he'd so lovingly tended for years.

Cox turned back to face the front door and put his key in the lock. He stopped and took a deep, calming breath before opening the door and going in. Inside the house was as quiet as everywhere else.

`Marcia,' he called hopefully, `Marcia, are you here?'

She should have been there. She hadn't said that she'd planned going out anywhere on Tuesday morning. He walked further down the hall. He instinctively started to take off his coat but then stopped and quickly pulled it back on. It was almost as cold inside the house as it was out on the street.

`Marcia?' he called again.

He peered through the doors into the living room, dining room and kitchen. All empty. They all looked just the same as he'd left them. He then began to climb the stairs, knowing that his wife would most probably still have been in bed when it had happened. Christ, he hoped she was all right. But she would have answered him when he'd called, wouldn't she? Cox prepared himself for the worst as he neared the landing. Through the gaps between the wooden banister posts he could see into their bedroom. Their duvet lay in a heap on the carpet at the side of the bed. He climbed the last few steps two at a time and burst breathlessly into the room but she wasn't there. The bed was empty.

The carpet on the landing was wet. Water had seeped out from under the bathroom door and had spread along virtually the entire length of the landing. It was obvious now where Marcia was. Cox walked up to the bathroom, his feet squelching beneath him, and knocked on the door.

`Marcia? Marcia, it's me, love. I'm home...'

He tried the handle. It was locked. He pushed and shoved at the door to little effect before taking five or six splashing, sliding steps back down the landing and then running back and trying to shoulder-charge his way into the bathroom. The lock was weak and gave way almost instantly with Cox's considerable weight pushing against it. Marcia had been moaning at him for months to get someone in to change it. He pushed the door fully open (sending a low wave of water rippling back across the bathroom floor) and there, in front of him, stood what remained of his wife. Completely naked and completely oblivious to its surroundings it walked blindly towards the dumbstruck Cox and collided with him. He grabbed hold of his dead wife's arms and held her tightly. Her eyes were dark and vacant and she felt cold to the touch. He pulled her close to him but then pushed her away again. He pressed himself back against the wall and watched in heartbroken silence as she lurched past, staggered the length of the landing and then crashed into the door of the spare bedroom.

Cox shut Marcia in the living room and then went around the house and locked and bolted every ground floor door and window. Wednesday night turned into Thursday morning as he busied himself around his home. The flood in the bathroom (Marcia had been running a bath when it happened) had caused massive damage both upstairs and down in the kitchen below. The cold water made the house smell of must and decay, or perhaps that was just the smell of his wife? Cox wasn't sure. At least she'd left him with a bath full of water. That might prove to be useful.

Very occasionally, and only for the briefest of moments each time, Cox allowed himself to think about what had happened. What could have caused the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands of people and why had some of them dragged themselves back up onto their dead feet again? Why hadn't it happened to him? Why had he been spared and why were there no other survivors? Why hadn't anyone come to help yet? Surely this couldn't have happened everywhere, could it?

Despite his vocation, thinking about other people was most definitely not something that came naturally to Cox. Soon enough, he had come to the conclusion that the most sensible course of action for him to take would be to just continue to concentrate on his own safety and wellbeing and sit tight and wait. Despite the fact that the gas, electricity and water supplies were all off, his house was still relatively comfortable and, as far as he could be sure, safe. There was a shop round the corner from where he could get food and drink supplies. It made sense to stay at home. What use would he be to anyone else, anyway? One man to help hundreds, possibly even thousands? It would be far more sensible for him to concentrate on looking after himself. That was, after all, what he was best at.

A strange sense of normality gradually overcame Cox. Apart from making one hurried trip to the shop around the corner to fetch food early on Friday morning he remained locked in his home from daylight until dusk. He checked on Marcia a couple of times but there had been no obvious change in her condition. He dressed her and moved her to the garage to limit the damage that her endless and pointless staggering around was causing in the living room. He didn't get annoyed. She couldn't help it. Somehow the noise and inconvenience his wife's corpse caused was more bearable than the constant banging and clattering of the body he'd left behind in the bunker.

With little else to do to occupy his time Cox tried to make good the water damage to his home. It was difficult to do much without any power but he was glad the electricity supply was off. It was safer that way. The light fitting in the kitchen was full of water which had dripped through the ceiling from the overflowing bath. He'd drained as much of it off as he could. By the time the water supply came back on, he decided, it would probably have dried out. He'd have to get someone to come out and look at the damage later. No doubt they'd charge him a fortune...

On Friday evening Cox sat at his desk in an alcove at the side of the dining room towards the front of the house. He read books by candlelight until his eyes began to droop and close. It was good to be occupied and distracted. It was a relief to have something positive to think about and do for a while. He was finding it increasingly difficult to deal with the relentless silence of the dead world around him. After a good hour of searching he found a battery powered cassette player upstairs and used it to play a tape of loud classical music to drown out the quiet.

At a quarter to two on Saturday morning, Malcolm Worsley's corpse (his dead neighbour from over the road) escaped from its garden, staggered over to Cox's house and slammed against the window next to where he was sitting reading. Startled, he leapt back, his pulse suddenly racing. He quickly began to regain his composure when he realised it was only one of the dumb bodies from outside and nothing more sinister. He nodded in recognition when he realised it was what was left of Malcolm and watched as the corpse on the other side of the glass pressed its lifeless face against the window, leaving behind a greasy, bloody smear. As he watched, it lifted a single, rotting hand into the air and slapped it down on the glass. Strange, thought Cox as he watched the wizened, decaying shell of his friend hitting the glass again and again. It didn't bother him unduly. In fact he felt quite sorry for it. The windows were double-glazed and that muffled each bang to little more than a dull thud. Tired, Cox turned up the volume on his cassette player and carried it upstairs with him to bed.

Saturday morning. Day five.

Cox slept well. It would have been wrong to say that he was happy with his situation but, all things considered, it could have been much, much worse. He'd begun to accept what had happened and was determined to make the most of it. Regardless of what had happened to everyone else, he remained relatively safe, warm and well protected. For a while he lay there and didn't move, staring up at the ceiling and thinking about how everything had changed.

What was he going to do today? He really needed to start thinking about getting more supplies in. He'd noticed earlier in the week that workmen had been at one of the houses down the road when all this had started last Tuesday morning and their van was still parked outside the house. Perhaps he should borrow it and drive it round to the local supermarket? If he spent a little time today filling the van with absolutely everything he'd need, it would save him having to go out again for maybe as long as a couple of weeks. By then he was sure that the situation outside would have improved. It couldn't get any worse, could it? In a couple of weeks time, he decided, the other people who had survived like him would start to coordinate themselves and get things organised.

Cox forced himself to get up. He swung his legs out of bed and winced at the sudden drop in temperature � without the central heating working the house was icy cold. He tiptoed across the landing to the toilet (stepping gingerly over the still damp carpet) and relieved himself in the plastic bucket he'd been having to use since the toilet cistern had dried up. Once a day he carried it down to the bottom of the garden and emptied the contents over his roses. That felt better, he thought as he shook himself dry and walked back to the bedroom to get dressed.

He was half-dressed and halfway down the stairs when he noticed that something had changed. It was a subtle, far from obvious change and he struggled for a moment to put his finger on exactly what it was that was different. It was dark. That was it, the ground floor of the house was unusually dark this morning. Feeling slightly uneasy, but not overly concerned, he continued down the staircase.

He saw them at the front door first. Visible only as shifting shapes through the frosted glass, he could see the heads and shoulders of at least three or four corpses, maybe more. Unusual, he thought as he continued down, zipping up his trousers and tightening his belt as he walked. As it was every morning, his next port of call was the kitchen at the back of the house. Still half asleep he walked barefoot across the cold, tiled floor to fetch himself some breakfast cereal from the cupboard next to the sink. The cupboard door slammed shut (the hinges were loose and needed tightening) and the sound echoed through the empty house like a gunshot. Cox cringed and then frowned. He could suddenly hear Marcia moving around in the garage. Was it just coincidence, or had what remained of his wife just reacted to noise for the first time since she'd died? He was about to go and see her when he caught sight of something in the dining room. Like the rest of the ground floor of the house this morning, that room also seemed darker than usual, and Cox was sure he could see some movement. He put his head around the door and then quickly drew it back again. Bodies. Hundreds of the bloody things, or that was how it seemed. Fighting to keep himself calm, he peered through the narrow gap between the open door and the door frame and saw that the entire width of the wide bay window at the front of the house was packed tight with dead flesh. He could see countless ghastly, cold faces pressed up against the glass, scouring the room with their dry, clouded eyes. Why were they here? What did they want? Cox leant his head against the wall and tried to understand what was happening. None of the creatures had shown the slightest interest in him before, so why now? Were these somehow different to all the other bodies he'd so far seen? His mind wandered back to what had happened just before he'd gone to bed. Malcolm Worsley. That was it, that bastard Worsley had brought them here. He must have tipped them off that he was from the council. Did they think he'd be able to do something for them? Before he'd died Worsley had asked Cox to do favours for him on more than one occasion � everything from rushing through planning permission for an extension to his house to trying to get a parking fine overturned. Cox had no reason to think he would have changed his ways now just because he'd died. He peered through the gap again. There he was, the sly bugger, his dead face pressed hard against the window, letting everyone know where Cox was, wrongly assuming that he was the man who could (and would) help them.