Demise of the Living (12 page)

“
Have you got any
headphones?” he asked.

“No,” Mo replied. “I don’t own
a MP3 player; not the sort of thing I use.”

Colin looked at the two
women. They looked back at him blankly, their blue smocks casting a
cold hue over their already pale skin, making them look gaunt and
slightly sinister.

Colin broke eye contact with
them.

“I’ll go upstairs and see if
anyone has a pair I can borrow,” he said quickly.

Mo nodded. “I’ll let you
through the doors.”

“The doors?” Colin asked.

Mo waved his security pass at
him.

***

Colin jogged up the stairs,
leaving Mo to return to the canteen. The stairwell was colder than
the rest of the building and the hard concrete and glass
construction made his harsh echoing footsteps drown out the light
hiss from the radio.

He got to the office floor and
looked through the narrow window.

John was still standing
at the window, but now he had a can of some diet drink in his
chubby hand.

Colin rapped his knuckles on
the glass. John continued slurping at his drink and staring out the
window.

Colin knocked again, a little
harder. A face snapped into view and Colin jolted back. The door
clicked open and Sharon smiled.

“You don’t have a pass, do
you?”she said.

Colin shook his head.

“I suppose, given the
circumstances, it makes sense to give you one. Come over to my
desk.”

Colin trailed her over to
her desk. As she walked he cast his eyes up to her waist. Her
yellow blouse was thin and he could clearly see the back of her bra
through the material. He found himself admiring her fit and
obviously toned body.

“Here we are,” Sharon said,
opening a desk drawer.

She turned round and smiled
while passing Colin a blank swipe pass.

Although her body was well
formed, her face was far from attractive. She had a slightly hooked
nose and a weak chin, but the most unattractive feature was the
glossy orange sheen of fake tan.

“
Thanks,” Colin
said.

Sharon held the badge a little
longer than Colin was comfortable with.

“
I was going to try and
get a signal on this,” he said, breaking the awkward moment. “Are
there any headphones I could borrow?”

“
Bound to be,” Sharon
said. “There’s a call monitoring suite in that room down there.
There’s bound to be a set of headphones to spare.”

“Thanks,” Colin said again and
quickly peeled off.

It didn’t take long to
find a pair of cheap plastic headphones and he slipped out of the
office, purposefully avoiding eye contact with John and Sharon, and
trotted up the stairs. He held out the phone like it was some kind
of sensor, waving it in the air as he ascended higher. He hoped
that the higher up the building he went, the better a signal he
would pick up, but so far that wasn’t the case.

He arrived at the top
landing. Ahead of him was a door with ‘Roof Access’ engraved in a
small white tag. Looking around, he couldn’t see one of those
ubiquitous grey swipe boxes all the offices had. This door had an
old-fashioned lock. He turned the handle, but the door didn’t
budge.

Colin turned to his
right, to the entrance to the fourth floor office. He peered
through the arrow slit window in the door that led into the office
space on this floor.

The room was populated by rows
of blonde wood desks, but nothing more. He ran his pass over the
swipe box and the door lock gave a clunk.

He pushed the doors open
and stepped inside. Unlike the first floor there were no computers
on the desks and the chairs were neatly stacked in one corner of
the room. As he prowled round the vacant office trying to get the
best signal strength, the only sounds were his footfalls on the
carpet and the hiss of the radio. If the lack of people in the
office below was surreal, this was eerie.

Delicately, he nudged the
frequency button, pushing the radio’s receiving range a fraction
higher. He paused for a moment, trying to listen through the
static. He wandered a few feet to the right and held the phone up
just above eye level. Every time he moved, the static changed
subtly and he would freeze, trying to hear through the noise for
the human voice underneath. When he was sure there was nothing
there, he tapped the button again and repeated his protocol.

It wasn’t long before a voice
started wafting in through the interference. He found himself
wandering closer to the window, catching snatches of a man’s voice.
Unable to make anything out, he pushed the frequency up. The voice
became slightly more distinct. Odd snatches of sentences escaped
the fizzing sea of interference.

Colin found himself at
the south-facing window looking out across the city. The lay of the
land casually sloped as it made its way to the ocean only a few
miles from here. On a clear day he had no doubt he could see all
the way to the coast, but looking out of the window now, there was
light smog. The summer’s clear blue skies had tendrils of smoke
snaking their way up from the hundreds of sporadic fires the chaos
had spawned.

Colin pushed the frequency
higher, still trying to hear past the electronic smog, and there it
was. The hiss melted away to reveal an audible voice.

***

“Listen, that’s all I can do
for you,” Stephen said coldly.

“
My son needs help. You
can’t just turn us out,” Liz pleaded.

“I need to get back home. I
can’t drive around the city all day,” Stephen said, looking at Liz
via the rear view mirror.

“You can’t just abandon us or
your colleague,” Liz said franticly.

“Gary’s just a security guard.
I don’t owe you or him anything,” Stephen said, the anger rising in
his voice.

Gary gave a light moan and his
head rolled as if he were trying to muster the energy to join in
the argument. Over the hours of driving around, he and Grant had
become steadily worse. Now they were both uncommunicative,
sweating, and ashen-faced.

“We’re not leaving until you
take us to a hospital,” Liz said firmly.

Stephen turned around in
his seat. “There
are
no hospitals, Liz. You saw what they did—they
bombed it. What am I supposed to do, conjure one up?!”

“
We need to get to a
doctor. They need medical attention.”

“I can’t help you. Get out,”
Stephen demanded.

“You have to help us,” Liz
cried.

Melissa sobbed, “Ma, I’m
scared.”

“
It’s okay,honey. Just be
quiet for now.” Liz turned back to Stephen. “Please, you have
to.”

Stephen shouted, “I don’t
have to do anything! Now get the fuck out of my car!”

“
Please
,” Liz begged.

Stephen seemed to calm
down. He rubbed a hand over his tired face and then looked back at
Liz. In a measured voice, he said, “It’s the easy way or the hard
way. You choose.”

“Are you threatening me?” Liz
asked.

Stephen didn’t hesitate to
answer, “Yes.”

He pulled the keys from the
ignition and stepped out.

The alleyway felt narrower than
usual. There were a number of industrial-sized bins sitting ready
for refuse collection.

He walked over to the
chain gate of the office parking lot and unlocked it. He pushed the
gate half open and stepped back to the car.

“
Get out,” he said,
staring Liz in the eyes.

The young girl Liz held
appeared terrified, and the boy looked like he was in a trance. In
the front seat, Gary was swaying gently, delirious with
fever.

“Get out!” Stephen shouted, the
anger flushing his face red.

He pulled open the front
passenger door and manhandled Gary out of his seat. The security
guard was drenched in sweat and far heavier than Stephen
anticipated.

He stumbled backwards,
hauling at the docile man. Getting his feet out of the car, he
dragged Gary inside the gate and lay him down on the asphalt. As he
straightened up he heard the car door slam shut.

Liz had stretched over and
pulled the door closed. As Stephen ran up to the car she slapped
down the door locks.

“Daft bitch,” Stephen
growled.

He pulled his keys out of his
pocket and dangled them in front of the window.

He hit the central locking
button on the car key and the door locks sprung open.

Liz lunged out and
managed to lock the rear passenger door again before Stephen could
yank the door open.

Thwarted, Stephen grabbed the
handle for the front passenger door and beat Liz to the goal.

He leaned inside the car. Liz
was still half out of her seat, frozen in her failed attempt to
secure the door.

Stephen pulled his fist
back.

He grumbled, “You
annoying cow,” as he punched her in the face.

Liz fell back into her seat,
Melissa’s screaming and a swarm of buzzing in her ears. She screwed
up her eyes against the bright light and realized she was being
dragged from the car.

The ground was hard and
unyielding as she felt herself being dumped down. Dazed and in
pain, by the time she had managed to sit up, the car was gone, the
sound of its engine quickly obscured by the crying and plaintive
sobs from her daughter.

An alarm sounded,
high-pitched and angry.

Liz turned round to see a fire
exit wide open.

“Liz?” Colin panted.

With Melissa’s help, Liz got to
her feet..

Colin called above the racket,
“What happened?”

Liz ran her hand under her
nose. It was tender and throbbing, but there was no blood on her
fingers.

“
Stephen
,” Liz slurred. She looked
back down the alleyway in the direction he had sped off. “He hit
me.”

“
Are you okay?” Colin
asked, getting closer. He looked down at the delirious Gary. “Is he
okay? Did you not get to a hospital?”

Liz shook her head and started
to cry.

Colin looked around,
unsure what to do. The little girl Melissa had buried her head in
her mother’s abdomen. She had started crying, too. The young boy
was lying on the ground, still holding his injured hand, looking
very sickly, and Gary was mumbling incoherently.

As Colin was trying to
determine what he should do, a rasping moan rose above the sound of
the fire exit alarm. From across the deserted car park he could see
a limping figure making its way towards them along the chain link
fence. He stepped up to Liz's side and put his hands on her
shoulders.

“Let’s get you inside,” Colin
said, gently guiding her towards the office block.

With his eyes on the figure
ambling towards them, Colin jogged across the parking lotto the
gate.

The flimsy metal gate squeaked
slightly as he pushed it back into place. As the two halves of the
gate met, the chain mesh jangled, but didn’t line up.

Colin looked more closely at
the lock. It was a simple slide-over bolt, but the problem was the
bolt was all the way across, stopping the gates from sitting flush.
The bolt was being held in the locked position by the padlock that
normally kept the gate secure, a padlock that had been snapped
shut.

“Oh, Christ,” Colin cursed.

He looked around for some
way of barring the gate. As he did he caught sight of the advancing
figure again. Now that he was closer, Colin could see he wore an
unzipped grey jacket that was missing a sleeve from the shoulder
down. His dark jeans were muddy and ripped through at the knees.
The cartoon figures on the front of his T-shirt were obscured by
the trail of rich red blood that until recently had flowed from the
gash in the man’s throat. With his stiff limbs he was fighting to
move each and every step forward. He swung his legs out as if he
were trying to free his feet from wet cement. The force of the
motion would throw him off balance slightly and he would totter for
a moment before throwing his trailing leg forward. Arduous though
the movement was, he persevered.

Colin broke his gaze with
the man and resumed his visual search for something that would bar
the gate. He saw Liz walking wobbly toward the doorway, her
daughter helping her, but the boy and Gary were lying on the
asphalt.

There were a couple of cars in
the car park, but without the keys to start them, there would be no
way to manoeuvre them in front of the gate.

Colin looked down at his
slip-on shoes and khaki shorts.

No
shoelaces. Not even a belt. Even a
tie would do the trick
, he
reasoned.

“Hell with it.”

Colin grabbed the bottom of his
t-shirt and started pulling it up and off his torso.

The fence rattled close
by and the moaning grew louder. By the time Colin had fumbled his
way out of the t-shirt the creature was at the gate. The air smelt
of iron from the fresh blood that gently oozed from its neck
wound.

Colin stuffed his t-shirt
halfway into the space between links.

He curled the fingers of his
left hand through the chain links and held the gate shut. He
slipped the finger and thumb of his right hand through the void in
the chain on the other gate and started plucking at the cloth of
his t-shirt. He couldn’t get enough of his fingers through the hole
to get a good grip of the material. Every time he tugged, the cloth
slipped a little and gave way.