Demise of the Living (29 page)

“
We’re only three short,”
Sharon argued. “Those cleaner girls are never around to help out; I
mean, where are they now? And it’ll be more hassle than it’s worth
trying to explain things to them. If something did happen and they
had a gun, it would take too long to explain what it is you want
done. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Still leaves one gun short,”
Colin said.

“Maybe someone won’t want one
on principle or something,” Sharon said off-the-cuff.

“I’d want one of those
automatics.” Billy said.

“
Don’t be greedy. You’ve
already got a gun,” John said.

“I’ve only got two cartridges
left for it.”

Thomas turned to the ageing
biker. “Two cartridges?”

“
Yep. Two
cartridges.”

“We went out there among those
things and you only had two shots?”

“Yep,” Billy replied.

“
You only had
two shots
?!”

“
Worked out fine,” Billy
said. “We came back with both of them.”

“Look, would you two children
stop bickering?” Sharon interjected.

Both Billy and Thomas cast
looks at each other, but kept silent.

“Why are we doing all this?”
John asked.

“Doing what?” Sharon asked.

“All this cataloguing. What
about just driving out of here?”

“I don’t think that would be a
good idea,” Colin said.

“Why not?” John said in a
challenging tone.

Billy scowled and shook
his head. “For starters, we’d have a hard time getting out of the
alleyway. Thomas and I blocked the entrances north and south. We’d
have to haul the refuse bins out of the way before we could get out
and they’re pressed up tight as it is. No way you’d get them open
without losing a man, and even then you wouldn’t get enough of a
run up to smash through them.” He battered his fist into his open
palm for emphasis.

“
And whose fault is
that?” John accused.

“
We
had
to block it,”
Billy explained. “Otherwise they’d have followed us down that
alleyway and be pressed up against the fences right
now.”

“
Yeah, and again: whose
fault is it that there’s a million of those dead fucks outside?”
John spat.

“We had to go get food,” Colin
said.

“Where would we go?” Liz asked
from her spot on the floor.

Everyone looked over to her,
surprised by her sudden entry into the conversation.

“
Where is there?” Liz
asked. “Where is there more secure than here?”

“
Good point, Liz,” Sharon
said. “We’d be launching ourselves into the unknown. Besides, I
thought we covered all this yesterday. There’s no point going over
dead ground.”

“So we’re in agreement,” Colin
said. “We should look at setting up barricades.”

“I think we should get this lot
up to the first floor and make camp there, as it were,” Sharon
suggested.

“There are camp beds and
sleeping bags—even tents if you want to set them up for a bit of
privacy,” Colin proposed. “We can live quite comfortably up there
with a bit of organisation.”

“Okay, it’s settled,” Sharon
said. “Thomas, would you put the power back on so we can use the
elevator?”

“We’ve used up a lot of fuel
keeping it running yesterday. I’d guess we only have maybe twenty,
twenty-two hours of power left.”

“We don’t know when that glass
will break. I think it’s prudent to get this stuff upstairs. Get it
secured and quickly,” Sharon replied.

***

Karen stood up to shake off the
numbness in her legs.

“You okay?” Liz asked.

“Yeah, just need a stretch,”
Karen said.

The last of the supplies had
been brought up to the first floor office. Liz, Melissa, and Karen
had spent the best part of two hours sorting through their bounty.
The food they had first segregated into type. Bags of flour, pasta,
canned meat, canned vegetables, canned fruit and so on were put
into piles or stacks together. Once that had been done, they had
started on the camping equipment. Here Liz had split up the
supplies into eleven piles, each with an identical inventory.

“
You both look like you
could do with a break,” Liz said, looking at the two girls. Melissa
was about three years younger than Karen, but the two girls were an
age apart in maturity. “Why don’t you take the dog up on the roof
for a bit of exercise?”

“Sure,” Karen said.

“
Yes, please,” Melissa
said. She stood and called, “Blow!”

The squat little dog bounded to
her feet from where she had been dozing.

“Come on, girl,” Melissa
encouraged.

The dog trotted along beside
her as she opened the door to the stairwell.

“You girls be careful up
there,” Liz said. “I don’t want you going too near the edge.”

“Coming through!” Billy called
out as the two girls entered the hallway.

Mo and Billy were carrying a
cupboard down the stairs; Billy, the taller of the two men, in the
lead, and Mo at the back.

At the top of the first floor
landing there was now a selection of office furniture. A
photocopier, some filing cabinets, cupboards, and a selection of
desks.

Billy was sweating rivers and
looking red-cheeked as he shuffled past.

“
Okay, down,” he
instructed and they set the latest addition to their defences on
its end.

A voice called out from the
ground floor, echoing up the stairwell.

“Billy, you up there?” Sharon
asked.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Have you seen the girls?”

“Yeah, they’re right here.”

Sharon trotted up to the
landing halfway between the floors.

“
No, the Polish girls,
Magda and Alex,” she said, looking at Karen and Melissa.

“
All right, you can
squeeze by now,” Billy said to the two girls. He turned to Sharon
and shook his head. “Nah, haven’t seen them.” He looked round at
Mo, but Mo just shook his head, too.

“I’ve not seen them all
morning,” Sharon said.

“Have you tried the plant room
where Thomas hides?” Billy asked.

“Yes, I’ve just been there. I
was going to try the roof. I know they’ve been going up there to
smoke.”

“
We’re just going up
there. We could look for them,” Melissa offered.

“Would you? The toilet is
almost out of paper, but the dispenser thing needs a key to open
it. Can you ask one of them to come down and refill it?”

“Okay,” Melissa agreed.

The two girls took off bounding
up the stairs. Sensing a change in pace, the dog bolted up the
steps.

“Blow!” Melissa shouted, but
the dog didn’t look back.

Her stubby legs were slightly
too short to take two stairs at once. Instead she pelted up in a
half-skipping gait, taking two stairs, then one, then two stairs,
then one as she went.

Melissa and Karen giggled and
gave chase.

When they reached the top, the
dog was already at the short parapet around the roof’s edge. Her
front paws on the lip, she barked at the hazy sky.

“
Blow, come back from
there,” Melissa scolded. She stepped up behind the dog and pulled
her back down. She pointed off at a metal Christmas tree-like array
of antennas. “Now go do your business.”

Karen spotted something
by the edge. She walked over and picked up the bottle of champagne.
She held it up to the light and swirled it from the neck.
Disappointingly, it was empty. She let it slip from her hand and
fall to the gravel. It hit the roof with a crunch, but didn't
break. Just behind where it laid, Karen spotted a bashed packet of
cigarettes. She picked it up and gave it a shake. Something rattled
inside. Flipping the lid open, she saw a lighter and half a dozen
cigarettes.

“Nice,” she said.

“What you got there?” Melissa
asked.

Karen slipped a cigarette
between her lips and lit it. She took a long, satisfying draw.

“You’re not allowed to,”
Melissa protested.

Karen blew out a lungful of
smoke.

“I’m telling,” Melissa
said.

“
Who you going to tell?”
Karen said, sitting down on the edge of the roof. “Your
mother?
My
mother?”

Melissa looked deflated.
“You’re not supposed to smoke. It’s bad for you.”

“
Lots of things are bad
for you. Don’t suppose it matters much now, though,” Karen said.
She picked up the champagne bottle by the neck. She pointed out a
shambling woman on the street below. “Bet I can hit that one down
there with the red jacket.”

“Don’t,” Melissa said.

Karen leaned back,
holding the bottle like a stick grenade.

“
Don’t. It’s not nice,”
Melissa said.

“Oh, come on,” Karen
cajoled.

Melissa turned her back, not
willing to watch.

Karen ignored her. She whipped
her arm round and tossed the bottle off the side of the
building.

The throw was nowhere near
powerful enough. The bottle sailed through the air a moment before
arcing down to fall short of its target.

Melissa heard the glass
shatter and turned round to see where it had landed. She leaned on
the low wall around the roof and peered over. The bottle had found
a clear patch of road and exploded on impact. A clutch of zombies
heard the noise and were now converging on the spot, searching for
the cause of the sound.

“Meant to miss,” Karen
lied.

“What are they doing?” Melissa
asked, watching the throng below.

Karen sat down on the parapet,
one leg on the roof, the other dangling over the edge. She said,
“Don’t know. Looking for someone to eat, I guess.”

“Don’t do that,” Melissa
chastised.

“
Do what?” Karen asked.
She exhaled, blowing smoke in Melissa’s direction, but the wind
whipped it away before it got near her.

“
Sit on the edge like
that. It’s dangerous.”

“Pussy,” Karen said, puffing at
the cigarette.

“Do you think they’re hungry?”
Melissa asked.

“Don’t know. Maybe they’re
just, like, pissed off and wanting to start something.”

“Are they really dead?”

“
How should I know?”
Karen replied. “I’m not a scientist or a doctor. I flunked
biology.”

“
If they
are
dead,
why are they still walking around? I saw my grandmother in the
coffin when she was dead. She didn’t look like…” Melissa paused for
a few seconds. Then she said flatly, “My brother’s one of
them.”

Karen sucked in another lungful
of smoke.

“Do you think they could cure
it?” Melissa asked.

Karen shook her head.
“How the fuck would I know?”

Melissa stared over the
edge to the throng below. “No one’s talking about it. They’re just
ignoring it. He might be an annoying brat, but I don’t want my
brother to be like that.”

Karen grabbed Melissa by the
shoulder and shook her.

Melissa screamed.

“Don’t fall over!” Karen
laughed.

“That wasn’t funny!” Melissa
cried, stepping back from the edge.

Karen shrugged it off. “I was
just messing with you.”

“I’m telling on you!” Melissa
said as she stormed off.

“Aw, don’t do that, Melissa. I
was just kidding about.”

Melissa didn’t change her
stride. She marched over the crunching stones to the access
door.

Karen’s heart sank. “I’m sorry,
Melissa. Please. I won’t do it again.”

She knew she’d upset the girl
and she just hadn’t thought about how she would react.

She turned round and looked
over the edge to where the bottle had smashed.

“
Melissa!” she
shouted.

“I’m not talking to you!”
Melissa barked back.

“No, Melissa,” Karen said, her
voice trembling. “You have to see this!”

Chapter
15

“You’re sure you’ve looked
everywhere?” Sharon asked.

“
The whole building and
the cars in the parking lot,” Mo said. “They’re nowhere to be
found.”

“Could they be hiding?” Colin
asked.

“Why would they be hiding?”
John said.

“It was her,” Karen said
softly.

“
I don’t know, but it’s a
big building,” Colin said. “I’m sure someone who knew the place
could avoid being found. I mean, they could hide in the air ducts
or something.”

“
That’s plain ignorant,”
Thomas said. “Ducts aren’t like in the movies, all well-lit and
easy to crawl through. You’d cut yourself up on rivets and rough
seams. The ducts in this place would maybe fit a little girl like
her.” He pointed at Melissa. “Two grown women? No way.”

“It was her down there,” Karen
said.

“You can’t be sure of that; you
hardly even met her,” Sharon said. “Who was the last to see
them?”

“Remember, we saw Magda and
Alex leave with Thomas with that stolen bottle of champagne,” John
said.

“Stolen? We took a bottle
between the three of us. I think that was fair shares,” Thomas
said.

“You were the last one to see
them, Thomas. Did they say anything to you?” Liz asked.

“Um, no, but you know what they
were like. They hardly spoke a word of English just jabbering
between themselves.”

“
There! Look!” Karen
said, pointing at the crowd of zombies below.

“I don’t see anything,” Billy
said.

Colin shifted uneasily.“ This
morning I looked out of the window before I came down for
breakfast. There was a bunch of them with darker faces, like dried
blood. Now that I think of it, I think I saw one with some of
Magda’s shirt in its mouth.”