Demise of the Living (15 page)

“Grant?” Liz said, kneeling
down next to the boy.

Grant made no
acknowledgment of his mother’s voice. He just continued to fight,
trying to break free and attack her.

She stretched her hand out to
cradle his cheek, but as her hand drew close he snapped round to
bite it. The muscles around his lips strained as he tried to rip
free off the duct tape over his mouth.

She brought both hands up and
cradled his juddering head between them.

“
Still now. Calm down,”
she said softly.

The skin on Grant’s face was
cold and stodgy to the touch. She slipped her right hand down to
his neck and grasped it in a stranglehold.

“What are you doing?!” Mo
exclaimed.

”I’m checking for a pulse,” Liz
said.

“
Do you believe what
Colin said? That they’re dead?” Mo asked.

Liz didn’t reply. She sat
quietly for a few seconds, holding the boy by the throat.

Eventually she stood up and
walked past Mo.

Puzzled, Mo turned to follow
and was about to chase after her when John came onto the floor.

“Liz,” Mo said.

She didn’t acknowledge him.

“Liz?” Mo said more softly.

She turned round, her head
slightly bowed. She slowly shook her head, then turned and walked
past John.

“Colin asked me to give you a
break,” John said.

“Thanks,” Mo replied.

He took a last look back at the
writhing child and left the floor.

“Liz,” Mo called.

He could hear crying coming
from the toilet across the landing. He walked up to the door with
the ladies pictogram, and rapped on it.

“Liz, are you okay?” Mo
asked.

As soon as he’d said it he knew
it was a stupid question. This morning she had seen her husband
killed and this afternoon witnessed her son turn into a
monster.

“Liz, I’d like to help.”

“Go away,” Liz sobbed.

“If that’s what you want.”

The sobbing stopped and he
heard the sound of footsteps approaching. The door swung open
violently.

Liz stood before him. She was
roughly the same height as Mo, but the anger held her rigid and Mo
felt small and intimidated by her.

“My son is in that room in some
horrific limbo state. My husband is dead in the street and I have a
little girl downstairs no doubt just as terrified by all this as I
am. But I don’t have the luxury of breaking down in tears because
my daughter needs her mother to be strong. Can you not leave me
alone for five minutes to do some grieving on my own?”

“I’m sorry,” Mo said, feeling
belittled.

He backed up from the entrance
to the woman’s toilets.

“If I can do anything to help,
anything at all, just let me know.”

Liz’s angry glare did not
soften.

Mo turned and headed back down
the stairs.

***

Sharon was gazing out of
the window onto the street as if she was watching TV in a showroom,
trying to choose which one to buy.

“You okay?” Colin asked.

“Considering, yes I’m fine,”
Sharon replied.

“I should have gone with
Stephen when I had the chance,” Colin said.

“Why?” Sharon asked, still
looking out onto the street.

“I should have tried to get to
the school just in case any of the kids had turned up.”

“Oh,” Sharon said
absentmindedly.

“I know they would have been
dropped off by their parents—at least I hope they would’ve. I mean,
I hate to think of some poor kid stranded during all this.” Colin
continued, “Have you got children?”

“What?” Sharon snapped out of
her trance. “No.”

“
Me neither,” Colin said.
“Would like to someday.”

He looked out the window.
The sun was getting low in the sky and it wouldn’t be long before
night fell. In the street below there were innumerable figures
wandering randomly to and fro,so many it was becoming difficult to
spot the tarmac at their feet.

“Yeah, I’d like to be a dad
some day when all this is done with,” Colin said.

“What makes you think all this
will be over?” Sharon asked.

“Well, it stands to reason,
doesn’t it?”

Sharon shook her head. “Look at
it out there. There are hundreds—if not thousands—of those maniacs
in the street. There are fires all over the city and have you seen
any signs that it’s going to end soon?”

Colin was silent for a
moment.

“
The government will
swing into action. It just takes time for them to get organised,
that’s all,” he said finally.

“
This is happening
everywhere
, Colin. You saw the news when it was still
broadcasting.”

“You really think it’s that
serious?”

Sharon turned to look at
the deserted office. She said, “Of course it’s that serious. I have
a staff of almost three hundred. Take a look around. Do you see any
of them?”

The empty office spoke for
itself.

“One percent of my staff turned
up for work today and that includes me,” Sharon said. “And I know
we’re just a poxy little office doing a meaningless job in the
grand scheme of things, but if this is typical of what’s going on
elsewhere I don’t see how things can get back to normal, at least
not quickly.”

“So we’re in this for the long
haul,” Colin said.

“We need to start making plans,
because I very much doubt we’ll wake up tomorrow morning to find
street cleaners outside mopping up the mess.”

There was a clunk and the
lights went out.

“What’s happened to the power?”
Colin asked, looking up at the ceiling. “I thought we were running
off the generator?”

“I asked Thomas to switch it
off for the night,” Sharon replied. “I think you were right. I
think we need to conserve what power we have and try not to
advertise our presence here.Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to
check my laptop’s switched off. No point wasting the battery life
if I’m not using it.”

***

Colin jerked awake from a sleep
he would have sworn he’d never had. The woman’s coat he’d found on
a hanger in a cupboard wasn’t long enough to cover all of him. He
had scrunched himself into a ball, but as soon as he relaxed or
turned he would expose a bare leg or arm to the cold air, and every
time he moved he got a fresh whiff of the woman’s fragrance that
lingered on the fabric.

This was not the only
barrier to sleep. The manmade fibres of the floor tiles were
rasping and bristly. The other occupants coughed or snored or
whimpered in the dark. And the unfamiliarity with the building
meant that any unidentified sound piqued his fear that one of those
things outside had broken in or that the boy upstairs had broken
loose. But despite this, exhaustion snatched at him and forced him
to doze even if it was for only a few minutes.

He turned over and
rearranged the coat trying to cover his legs up.

He breathed in and caught a
mote of smoke over the perfume.

Nervously, Colin sat up and
sniffed the air. There was a warm orange glow coming in through the
windows, but it wasn’t the fires outside he could smell. He stood
up as quietly as he could. He looked around, but there wasn’t
enough ambient light to reveal the interior of the office. He
cautiously made his way over to the window, feeling for tables or
chairs that might impede his path. Before it went dark the
maintenance guy had found three torches and placed them all end-up
in a row on the windowsill; that way if someone needed to go to the
toilet in the middle of the night there wouldn’t be any
accidents.

Colin made it over to the
window without any collisions and noticed one of the torches was
missing. He picked up the second and switched it on. An oval of
light fell across the floor. Using the faintly illuminated exit
sign above the door and the sickly yellow of the torch, he
successfully navigated his way out of the office.

With the power off, the
security doors had defaulted to open and he walked on through
without having to use his visitor’s pass. The door creaked
ferociously, like a tree about to be felled by a storm. There were
a couple of coughs from behind him and the fresh rustling of
clothing, but no one got up.

On the other side of the
door, Colin held the handle and let the door slip back into its
frame as quietly as he could.

He took a sniff of air
through his nostrils. There was a definite smell of tobacco
lingering in the stairwell. He walked over to the handrail and
looked down into the darkness. There was nothing. He looked up and
saw a faint light at the top of the stairs.

He decided to
investigate.

As he climbed he began to hear
voices. Reaching the fourth floor, he saw the roof access door that
had been locked shut earlier was now open. He entered and climbed
up a smaller stairwell to emerge on the roof of the building.

The wind was gently
blowing and the smell of burning assaulted his nostrils,
overwhelming all trace of tobacco he’d followed from
downstairs.

He took a few steps past the
entrance and saw Thomas and one of the cleaners sitting on the edge
of the building.

Colin walked over.

“Hi,” he said to announce his
arrival.

“
Hey there,” Thomas
said.

“
Hello,” the Polish woman
replied.

In the light he couldn’t tell
which one she was, Magda or Alex; he hadn’t gotten to know them
well enough yet to tell them apart.

The cleaner offered over her
lit cigarette.

”Oh, no thanks. I don’t smoke,”
Colin said.

The woman seemed to understand
and she drew the cigarette back to her lips.

“It’s the end of the fucking
world out there,” Thomas said.

Colin looked out over the city.
Much of it was ablaze. The clouds of smog that hung overhead
reflected back the soft orange taint of the fires below.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
Colin said.

“
What radio saying?” the
cleaner asked in clipped English.

“Is that safe?” Colin asked,
pointing at the woman’s legs dangling over the side of the
building.

The woman bent forward to look
down at the ground from between her feet.

“Whoa, don’t do that,” Colin
said, feeling queasy.

“
You worry too much,” she
said, still looking down at the darkness below.

“What else did the radio say?”
Thomas asked, taking a draw of his cigarette.

“I didn’t catch much; just that
it’s a contagion spread by bites and that people should stay in
their homes and...” Colin hesitated.

“And what?” Thomas asked.

Colin uneasily shuffled his
feet on the gravel.

“I know it’s hard to digest,
but the radio said they were dead. It said this disease or
infection was bringing them back to life. They attack other people,
biting and scratching at them, I guess as a way to spread the
infection.”

His audience was silent,
smoking their cigarettes.

“
It said the only way to
stop them was to decapitate them.” Colin saw the cleaner’s blank
expression. “To chop off their heads.”

“Strzyga,” the Polish woman
said, cigarette in mouth.

“Stiz…what?” Colin asked.

“
Strzyga. The dead who
rise from grave. Fairy story. Those whose souls don’t leave the
body rise after death. Feast on human flesh,” she said. “Only way
to stop them is…” She drew a finger across her neck and made a
burbling hiss as she did so.

“
Charming culture you
have there, Alex,” Thomas said. He turned to Colin. “What else did
the radio say?”

“Don’t know. I fell on it and
it broke,” Colin said with a shrug.

“So what do we do?” Thomas
asked.

“
Don’t know,” Colin
admitted. “I guess sit tight for a bit.”

“
How long do we stay
here?” the woman asked.

“The radio didn’t say anything
to give me an idea. It must be pretty major. I guess we wait as
long as we can, play things by ear.”

“
What is this with your
ear?” she asked.

“
Um, it’s an expression.
Means we’ll just have to wait and see what happens,” Colin
explained.

The woman took a long draw from
her cigarette and inhaled deeply. She held the smoke a lot longer
than Colin thought possible before blowing it out in a steady
stream.

“
Best get some sleep.”
She flicked the spent stub off into the void.

Colin watched as the tumbling
ember plunged into the darkness and disappeared.

Alex swung her legs back
over onto the roof and stood up. “Be ready to meet things by ear,
no?”

Tuesday

Chapter
8

The sun was up, Karen
guessed, but the thick haze of smoke blotted its arrival in the
sky. The headlight from the bike was still visible on the
ash-coated road, but not as strong now. She wanted to check her
phone to find out what time it was, but she knew she couldn’t stop.
She could feel Shan’s arms wrapped around her waist, not as tightly
as they had been at first, and her chest rising and stuttering as
she sobbed.

Something warm trickled its way
down the back of Karen’s neck. She didn’t know if it was blood or
tears.

“We’ll be there soon,” Karen
assured her friend.

“It hurts so fucking much,”
Shan growled.

Karen turned the handlebars of
the bike to avoid a zombie and the pain in her shoulder flared.