Demise of the Living (33 page)

“I suppose,” Colin agreed.

“
Bombing the hospital
didn’t work. What makes you think they fared any better elsewhere?”
Thomas asked.

“Maybe it did work. Maybe
things would be a lot worse now if they hadn’t,” Billy
commented.

“We can’t think like that,”
Sharon said. “We have to stay focused and positive or we’ll never
get through this.”

“Ha! With busy work like your
flip chart there?” Thomas mocked.

Sharon straightened up
and shook her head. “No, with planning and positive action. What’s
the alternative? Sitting around and waiting to die?”

The office doors opened and
Melissa walked in, dog in arms.

“Where have you been?” Liz
demanded.

“On the roof walking Blow,”
Melissa lied.

“Okay,” Liz acknowledged.

“Well, let’s leave all this
until morning,” Sharon said.

“It’s getting dark and right
now we should be thinking about bed,” Liz said, looking over at her
daughter.

“Aw, Ma, why do I have to?”
Melissa protested.

“
Your mother’s right,”
Sharon said. “It’s been a long day and we all have the comfort of
the camp beds and sleeping bags now, so we can get a good night’s
sleep.”

“It is getting late and we’ve
all had a busy day. Now go and brush your teeth,” Liz ordered.

Melissa whined, “Ma!”

“You need to keep your teeth
clean and your gums healthy,” Liz said.

Melissa stuck a frown on her
face.

“Don’t get stroppy with me. You
have to brush your teeth, madam,” Liz said more sternly.

“I haven’t had to do it since
we got here,” Melissa complained.

“We didn’t have toothpaste and
brushes before now, so get to it.”

Colin rustled among his
possessions. “I think your mother is right. My breath is getting a
bit stinky too.” He pulled out his own toothbrush, still in its
cellophane and card wrapper. He stood up. “Come on, we’ll both go
together. You bring the toothpaste, I’ll bring my
teeth.”

Reluctantly, Melissa put
the dog down and was about to follow Colin when there came a
commotion from one of the tents. There was some rustling and
thumping.

The flap flew open and John
tumbled out.

“Out the way!” John
gurgled.

The obese man stumbled in the
dim light, falling forward, carried by his own weight.

Colin held an arm out and held
Melissa back.

John rushed past, his cheeks
swelling.

As he entered the stairwell he
collapsed to his knees and a rush of vomit spewed from his
mouth.

Melissa screamed.

John sat hunched over,
continuing to vomit, the splashing noise echoing round the
stairwell.

“Go back to your mother.
Melissa; there’s a good girl,” Colin urged.

Colin stood with his hands on
his knees, bent over slightly, the acrid smell of bile clutching at
the back of his throat.

“You all right, John?” he
asked.

John retched again, letting a
string of saliva stretch from his gaping mouth down to the
floor.

“You want a towel or a drink of
water?” Colin asked.

John nodded his head as he
gasped to catch his breath back.

“What’s happening?” Sharon
called from the campsite.

“John’s been sick,” Colin
called back.

“Anything we can do?”

Blow trotted up to the pool of
sick and started lapping at it.

“Clean-up in aisle six!” Thomas
joked.

“Oh God, that’s disgusting,
Thomas,” Sharon said.

“Melissa, would you take Blow
back into the office and keep her away from this?” Billy called
through the open office doors.

“Isn’t someone going to get him
a towel or something?” Liz asked.

“
Uh… oh, yeah,” Colin
responded. He scampered off to the toilets.

“Are you okay, John?” Sharon
asked.

“
I don’t feel too good,”
he moaned.

“It’s no wonder, considering
the amount of leftovers you scoffed,” Thomas said.

“Fuck off!” John cursed.

“Bet you’re glad you skipped
the Cajun wrap now,” Billy said, nudging Thomas.

John rolled over into a
sitting position with his back against the wall. His crumpled
sweat-stained shirt now sported a cascading damp patch of vomit
from his chest to his bulging gut.

“You don’t look so good?”
Sharon said, looking at his pale, waxen face.

He burped and the smell of
vomit wafted into the air.

“I feel sick too, Ma,” Melissa
said, holding the small dog back.

“
It’s the smell, honey.
It makes you feel sick,” Liz said.

She put an arm around her
daughter and led her back to the camp.

Colin returned with an armful
of paper towels.

“You’d better get cleaned up,
John,” Sharon advised.

John nodded slowly while
wiping the puke from his chin.

“Would one of you boys go help
him?” Sharon asked.

“Why? It’s his own fault for
being such a greedy pig,” Thomas said.

“Um, yeah, sure,” Colin
replied.

Colin lent in to give John some
support, then seeing the wet vomit glistening on his shirt, thought
better of it.

Painfully, John hauled himself
to his feet. Colin opened the door to the gents’ toilet and ushered
him inside.

John walked slowly with
faltering steps. He waddled, shifting his body weight left and then
right, breathing heavily, his chest heaving.

“
Looks like one of
them
,”
Thomas whispered.

“Thomas!” Sharon chastised and
turned to go back into the office.

“Who’s going to clean that up?”
Thomas demanded, pointing at the puddle of sick on the floor.

“
You’re the janitor,”
Sharon answered without looking back. “You clean it up.”

“Whoa—no fucking way!”

When Sharon didn’t respond, he
went marching into the office after her.

“For one, I’m not a janitor.
I’m a maintenance engineer and for two, you’re not the boss of me.
That’s woman's work,” Thomas spat.

Sharon froze in her tracks and
whipped round.

She snapped, “I am your boss
and I am not prepared to put up with your sexist attitude.”

“
I don’t see me getting
paid overtime for this shit, so no; no, you’re not my boss—you’re
just a stuck-up bitch who does fuck-all but strut around drawing
charts and giving everybody orders.
You
clean it up.
You
do
some work for a change.”

“Do not take that tone with
me,” Sharon warned.

“You don’t know when to shut
the fuck up, do you?” Thomas replied.

“Let’s all just calm down,” Liz
implored.

“
None of you seem to have
realized what’s changed here,” Thomas said, addressing the whole
room. “It’s no longer about who’s got the connections, who’s got
the right education at the right schools, who plays squash with the
managing director—it’s about who has the nuts to get stuff done and
half of you lot have done fuck-all to help. So no, I will not be
treated like a skivvy.
You
go clean it up.”

Sharon stood
impassive,
her arms folded across her
chest.

“Get on with it!” Thomas
shouted, frustrated at being ignored.

Sharon shook her head. “I
don’t think you—”

Thomas grabbed Sharon by the
hair at the side of her head and pulled her back out towards the
stairwell.

The room erupted into a
cacophony of screams and shouts.

There was a scuffle, hands
grabbing and pulling.

Colin came back into the office
to see Thomas being firmly held by Billy, and Liz comforting
Sharon.

“
You had enough?” Billy
asked loudly. He had his lips mere millimetres from Thomas’ ear. He
asked again, louder, “I said,
have you had enough
?!”

“Fuck you,” Thomas said,
rolling his shoulders trying to prise Billy off.

“What happened?” Colin asked,
stunned by the turn of events since he’d been in the toilet.

“Thomas here got a little rough
with a lady,” Billy explained.

Colin looked over at Sharon.
Her hair was tussled and there were tears streaming down her
face.

“Have you calmed down, Thomas?”
Billy asked.

Thomas snorted and nodded his
head.

“I’m going to let you go now,
but don’t you think of trying any nonsense.”

Thomas shook off the arms
holding him back. He stretched himself up to his full height,
turned, and stormed off out of the office.

“Are you okay, Sharon?” Liz
asked.

Sharon ran her fingers through
her hair and felt a damp welt near her temple. Thomas had succeeded
in wrenching a tuft of hair from her head.

“I'm fine,” Sharon said,
composing herself. “We’ll need to keep a close eye on Thomas from
now on.”

“He tried to touch me,” a voice
said from the back of the room.

The group turned round to see
Karen sitting by her tent.

“What?” Sharon asked.

“
Last night, when
everyone had a drink,” Karen said.

“Where? What happened?” Colin
asked, stepping forward.

“On the landing on the fourth.
He pushed me against the wall and groped me.” Karen folded her
hands over her chest.

Liz let out a little gasp and
looked at her own daughter.

“I tried to fight him off, but
he didn’t stop until I scratched his face,” Karen explained.

“That’s where he got the mark
from,” Colin surmised.

“
That sick shit,” Billy
cursed, whipping round. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”

Liz shouted, “Wait!”

Billy stopped.

Liz went on, “I know he’s a
problem. Christ, what if it had been Melissa he attacked? I don’t
know if she’d have the strength or clarity of mind like Karen to
fight him off. But we have to think this through. What happens when
you get him, Billy? Do you actually kill him?”

“I’m going to beat the crap out
of him at the very least,” Billy said.

“
Then what?” Liz
asked
.
“He won’t take a beating and just forget about it. He’ll want to
get his own back. And on who? Just you, Billy? Or Karen or me or
all of us?"

“What are you saying?” Colin
asked.

“I don’t know what I’m saying.
I don't know what we should do. I just know we need to stop for a
moment and think about it." Liz said.

“The guns,” Sharon said.

Colin shrugged. “What about
the... Oh, shit.”

He whipped round and dashed
into the stairwell.

Propped up against the
barricade were the two rifles. With the clatter of metal on metal,
Colin picked them up and returned to the office.

“
He didn’t take one,”
Colin said, relieved.

“What about the two at the
other stairwell?” Liz asked.

“
I’ll get them,” Billy
volunteered, hurrying off.

“We can’t let Thomas get his
hands on a weapon,” Sharon said.

“I agree,” Liz replied.

“
I think we should keep
them together in here,” Colin suggested. “That way they’re close at
hand and we can all keep an eye on them.”

“Christ knows what he might do
if he kicked off with a gun in his hand,” Sharon observed. “That’s
the last thing we need.”

The doors swung open and
everyone turned round expectantly.

Mo was standing there holding a
flashlight with a look of confusion on his face.

“What’s going on? Who’s been
sick?” he asked, looking back at the crowd.

“Long story.” Colin said.
“Thomas attacked Sharon and he tried to touch up Karen last
night.”

“Where the hell have you been,
anyway?” Sharon demanded.

“My rounds,” Mo answered.

“
Useless security guard
you turned out to be,” Sharon said. “You’re never around when we
need you.”

“
Eh? What about the
sick?” Mo asked.

“John. He’s in the toilet being
sick,” Colin explained.

“He’s got food poisoning from
eating all of the leftovers,” Liz elaborated.

“Food poisoning doesn’t start
so quickly,” Mo said.

Billy came back into the office
carrying the two rifles.

“So what is it?” Colin asked,
walking over to meet Billy.

“What is what?” Billy asked,
placing the guns down on a crate.

“John being sick. Is it food
poisoning?”

“I don’t know what’s causing
him to be sick, but I'm worried,” Mo interjected. “What if it’s
something we can all catch? What if it’s something serious?”

The room was silent other than
the constant moaning coming from outside.

“What if he’s got their
infection?” Mo said, looking towards the window.

“One thing at a time,” Colin
said. “What about Thomas?”

“He tried to rape a little
girl,” Billy said.

“I’m not a little girl,” Karen
protested.

“
That’s
hardly
the
point now, is it?” Billy chastised.

“
What can we do about
that, reasonably?” Colin asked. “Do we put him on trial? If we find
him guilty, what then? Imprison him? Castrate him?”

“What?!” Sharon gasped,
appalled.

“
Too right,” Billy said.
“I’d cut his nuts off for him.”

“We could banish him,” Liz
said.

“
How?” Colin asked. “Open
the front door and say,
off
you go, hope you don’t mind pushing your way past those two
thousand cannibals
?!”

“We’ll lock him up,” Liz
suggested.