Autumn: The Human Condition (31 page)

Now Doreen he couldn't stand. No ifs, buts or maybes, he simply couldn't abide her. He hated her grating voice and her witch's cackle of a laugh. He hated her smell and the cloud of cigarette smoke which followed her around the room. He hated her wizened, wrinkled skin and her yellow teeth. Most of all he hated the fact that she moaned constantly about everything, anything and everyone. She had more aches, pains and problems each day than the rest of them put together. No matter how low or desperate someone may have been feeling, Doreen had it worse. It had reached the stage where Proctor now tried to avoid all contact with her, which wasn't easy when they were trapped together in such a confined space.

It was interesting just how little the rest of them had to do with Paul Jones. Wilcox in particular hardly ever spoke to him. Perhaps there was an element of competition there? Perhaps they both considered themselves to be the all-important alpha male of the group? Whatever the reason they kept their distance from each other, although in all fairness Paul Jones tended to stay apart from everyone else. He both infuriated and fascinated Proctor. Such an isolated and solitary person who, when he could be persuaded, added so much to the group. He was obviously intelligent, perhaps too bright for his own good? His distance from the others came across as an unpleasant arrogance and superiority. Perhaps he just wasn't very good at relating to other people? On the other hand perhaps he really did consider himself to be better than the rest? Funny, Proctor thought, that these six people should find so many faults with each other. There they were, all living under the same cloud of uncertainty and fear, and yet they couldn't work together. He was as bad as the rest of them and he'd freely admit it. Shame though, that in the face of such uncertainty, they still preferred to splinter and fragment because of trivial differences rather than trying to work together for the common good.

Doreen and Wilcox were sat at the dining table playing cards, their faces long and emotionless. Close by Elizabeth dozed on a sofa. Like Bushell, Paul Jones also had a small area of turf which he'd marked out as his own. His usual position was sitting on a chair looking out of the wide floor-to-ceiling window which overlooked the front of the hotel. From there he could just about see the rear-end of the bus sticking out of the gaping hole in the wall where the building's main entrance had once been. Although much fewer in number, even now more bodies were still stumbling through the rubble to get into the building. Ten days on and the volume of dead flesh which had forced itself into the building was continuing to increase.

An uncomfortably familiar mixture of boredom and curiosity forced Proctor to get up from where he sat and wander over to Jones. Jones noticed him but didn't react, hoping that if he didn't acknowledge the other man he'd go away again. He didn't.

`Any change?' Proctor pointlessly asked.

Why the hell did you ask that question, Jones wondered? Was he really that desperate to start a conversation, or was he just too stupid to look out of the window for himself? In response Jones grunted and shrugged his shoulders.

`Still more of them coming?'

Jones grunted again.

`You'd think they'd have given up by now, wouldn't you?'

`Suppose,' Jones mumbled. Finally, a response! `Fuck all else to distract them round here though, isn't there?'

Now it was Proctor's turn to grunt an unintelligible answer. Talking to Jones made him feel uncomfortable. He never knew what to say for the best. He could never gauge the level of the conversation and Jones always seemed to gain the upper hand, leaving him looking and feeling stupid. He turned around and was about to walk away when he stopped himself. Looking round the vast but strangely empty suite there didn't seem to be any point going anywhere else. Nothing was happening. Might as well stay here and look out of the window.

Proctor knew that it annoyed the other man, but he couldn't help himself incessantly asking unnecessary questions.

`Think they'll ever stop?'

`What, stop moving or stop trying to get in here?'

`Both.'

`Yes.'

`Yes what?' `Both. Yes they'll eventually stop moving and yes, they'll eventually stop trying to get in here.'

`When?'

`Quarter past six tomorrow night. How the fuck should I know?'

`Sorry.'

`They'll stop moving when they've rotted down so much that they just can't do it anymore and they'll stop trying to get in here when there's so fucking many of them crammed into this fucking building that there's no more room for them. And please don't ask me which is going to happen first because I haven't got a fucking clue.'

Proctor took that as his cue to move. A sudden tirade like that from Jones meant that he'd had enough of speaking to you and it was time to disappear before he told you to go. Dejected, Proctor turned and ambled slowly back towards the middle of the huge penthouse apartment. It had been an impressive sight when they'd first arrived there. Now the Presidential Suite looked as ragged and rundown as the rest of the decomposing world. Tired, bored and uneasy, he walked towards the kitchen to look for scraps of food. He knew there wouldn't be much there. They were rapidly running out of supplies. Maybe he'd find something in the rubbish that one of the others had missed...

Proctor waded through the discarded boxes, bags, wrappers and other litter that covered the floor of the suite's small kitchen and thought about Jones' words. He was right, the bodies would keep trying to force their way into the building until there was no more space. That was a terrifying thought, and one which had generated a lot of animated discussion but very little action over the last ten days. If things kept progressing as they had been � and there was no reason to suggest that they wouldn't � then a time would inevitably come very soon when the building in which they now sheltered would be filled to capacity with dead flesh, leaving the group stranded without supplies in their once-luxurious top-floor airlock. But what could they do about it? They'd talked and argued about the problem on and off without reaching any conclusion or workable solution. There had so far been enough food in the kitchen and enough space between the living and the dead for the survivors to enable discussions to be put off until tomorrow, and then the day after that, and the day after that. On the whole the group seemed content not to do anything until they absolutely had to. Proctor sensed that soon, one way or another, they would have no choice but to take action.

Proctor had, for his part, tried to do something constructive. Granted it wasn't much, but (as he frequently reminded them), it was more than the rest of them had done. A once keen photographer, five days ago he'd found a digital camera and batteries lying around the Presidential Suite. Bushell had brought them back with him from an early trip into town but had never used them. In a moment of unexpected initiative he'd crept out onto the landing, attached the camera to the end of a fire-hose, and lowered it down the middle of the staircase. Through trial and error he'd managed to work out what length of hose was necessary to lower the camera to the floor below, then the floor after that and the floor after that. At the same time he set the camera's timer and flash to take a single picture once the required level had been reached. With surprising accuracy he had soon developed a means to take photographs of the main staircase at each level (albeit only as far down as the hose would stretch) and, therefore, he'd found a way of measuring the speed and progress of the dead when they finally appeared. Their incalculably vast numbers meant that the bodies at the front of the crowd were continually being pushed and shoved forwards and up the stairs. With corpses continuing to pour through the bus-shaped hole in the hotel wall, once the ground floor reception had been completely filled with flesh there was nowhere else for them to go but up. The enormous crowd was slowly channelling and funnelling itself further up the stairs and deeper into the hotel. Each time Proctor hauled the camera back up to the top floor the group crowded around the little screen on the back of its casing to monitor the progress of the slowly climbing cadavers. There had been no sign of them initially, but Proctor had continued to take his photographs every morning regardless. And then, yesterday morning, the furthest advanced of them had been photographed on the twenty-second floor. It was a simple enough calculation to make � the dead had covered twenty-two floors in about nine days. They were climbing at the rate of just over two floors a day. The second simple calculation the group made was altogether more disturbing. It was Thursday today. If their rate of climb continued at the same speed (and there was no immediate reason why it should change) the bodies would reach the twenty-eighth floor sometime on Saturday or by Sunday at the very latest.

Proctor found a strange sense of enjoyment in his role of chief cameraman and body-watcher. It made him feel useful. It made him feel indispensable and gave him a purpose. Perhaps even more importantly, it gave him a role which he could hide behind and use as an excuse for not doing anything else. He saw the camera as a potential way out of some of the pretty bloody unpleasant and downright dangerous jobs which would inevitably come their way over the course of the next few days.

Three forty-five. The afternoon sun had begun another rapid descent towards the horizon, filling the Presidential Suite with harsh orange light and long, dragging shadows. Rather than spreading themselves around the edges of the apartment, on this rare occasion the six survivors were sat together around the dining table. There was no meal to be eaten or food to be shared this afternoon. The reason for sitting together was to finally talk about the issues they'd avoided talking about for the last ten days. The agenda for their discussions was dishearteningly short and simple. Firstly, they had hardly any food supplies left. Secondly, according to the photograph Proctor had taken earlier, the bodies were now close to reaching floor twenty-four.

`So exactly how much food have we got?' Doreen asked.

`A days worth,' Bushell replied, `maybe two at the very most. After that there's nothing.'

`We must have something...?'

`No,' he said again, shaking his head, `we won't have anything.'

`But...?'

`But what?' snapped Wilcox. Christ, how did they get through to this bloody woman? `Listen, we've got nothing, okay? We're down to our last few meals. We haven't got an extra little stash of food tucked away for emergencies. After this we'll have absolutely nothing. Fuck all. Zip.'

Doreen slumped back in her seat and stared into space.

`So what are we going to do?' she eventually asked. More sighs from around the table.

`That's what we're trying to decide, you stupid cow!' Wilcox groaned. `Bloody hell, are you on the same planet as the rest of us?'

`Wish I wasn't,' she grunted.

`So we've got two problems,' Proctor summarised, trying his best to control the direction of the conversation. `We need to try and get out and get supplies but...'

`But this building is full of bodies,' continued Bushell, `thanks to the hole you lot made in the front door.' He glanced across at Wilcox as he spoke. Uncomfortable, Wilcox looked down and did his best to avoid eye contact with anyone.

`So what do we do?' Doreen asked again.

`Is there any way of getting out of here and back up again?' Elizabeth wondered.

`Not that I know of,' Bushell answered quickly. `Getting down's no problem, we can use the fire escape.' He nodded towards an inconspicuous looking door in the far corner of the room. `The problem is what to do once you're down there,' he continued. `Open the fire escape door on the ground floor and you'll probably find yourself face to face with a few thousand bodies. And if you manage to get outside, Christ knows how you're going to get back in again afterwards. It'd be impossible if you were carrying supplies...'

`There must be a way?'

`Get a sheet, hold it like a parachute, climb up to the roof and jump off,' Wilcox suggested to Doreen, less than seriously.

`Do you think that will work?' she asked, her response meeting with groans of disbelief from several of the others.

`Only if you try it, Doreen,' he smirked.

`How would I get up again?'

Wilcox didn't bother to answer.

`We should go down there,' he instead suggested. `We should go down there and torch the place on our way out. Set light to the building and watch the whole fucking place go up in flames.'

`What good's that going to do?' wondered Bushell.

`It would distract them. Christ, the heat and light this place burning would generate would be more than enough of a distraction for us to be able to get away. They're not going to be interested in a handful of people sneaking out the back door if that's going on, are they?'

Wilcox's plan was met with a muted silence from the others. They each thought long and hard about it, but none of them were sure. It wasn't the wanton destruction that put them off, rather it was the thought of running again...

`What about the cradle?' Proctor said suddenly. `We've talked about it before, haven't we? Barry said there's a window-cleaner's cradle half way up the side of the building. We could use that to get us down, couldn't we? We could use it to get back up as well...'

`What about power,' Jones grunted from the end of the table. The others turned to face him. `How do you think you winch it up and down? Think the window-cleaners used to pull themselves up thirty floors by hand? No power, no cradle.'