ceiling, skewering him and lifting him off his feet. And there he remained, dangling in mid air, a huge sharpened girder sticking out of his back, blood everywhere.
Dammit, I liked him.
I staggered back with an involuntary scream and the next thing I knew someone slammed into my back, shoving me hard up against the store window, pushing my right arm up behind my back, and grazing my stitched cheek on a streak of hard, dried shit.
'You fucking do, cunt?' yelled a squaddie in my ear.
It would have been impossible to reply with my face pressed against the glass, so I didn't even try to respond.
'Easy, Col,' said one of his mates. 'It's a booby trap.'
Col wasn't inclined to let me go, though, and he kept me pinned there for another few seconds, pressed up against me. He let me go by pushing himself away from me with his groin, so I could feel his erection, snorting his disgust as he did so.
The wise thing to do would have been to let it go. But I turned like a flash and slapped him as hard as I could.
He snarled and raised his hand to hit me, but his mate intervened, grabbing his wrist and staring him down.
'Fuck's sake, Col, get a grip,' he said. My assailant gave a sick laugh, pulled his arm free and walked away backwards, giving me the evil eye.
'Thanks,' I said as I spat on my sleeve and wiped the shit and blood off my face.
'Shut the fuck up,' replied my rescuer, 'and get back in the fucking truck before I shoot you myself. And don't even think of doing a runner.'
Leaving the squaddies to their grim task I stepped away and walked back to the trucks. Before stepping out into the road I instinctively looked left and right for oncoming traffic, then paused, realised what I'd done, and laughed at my own stupidity. Then something registered, and I looked right again.
At the far end of the street stood a figure. I think it was a man but it was hard to be sure because they were dressed in a bright yellow hazmat suit, their glass visor glinting in the sun, hiding their face. The figure just stood there looking at us, seemingly content just to watch.
I looked back at the soldiers. Two of them had taken up positions in cover and were scanning the opposite buildings. I was pleased to notice that Col had chosen the bush to hide behind, which meant he was kneeling in my piss. Ha. The other three were inside the shop attempting to pull Barker down. None of them had seen our visitor. I looked back and now there were two of them, both in the bright yellow suits. And I could see that they both carried shotguns.
'Um, guys,' I said quietly, but they didn't hear me. Snatches of their conversation floated across to where I stood.
'No, not that arm, dipshit…'
'Jesus, now I'm covered in guts…'
'Oi, careful I just washed this bloody uniform…'
I spoke more clearly. 'Guys, we have company.'
The nearest man on watch heard me and called the others. They dropped what they were doing and I heard Barker hit the floor with a thud. Weapons raised, they scattered to positions of cover and vantage, all the while keeping their eyes on our two -no, three now – visitors.
I turned to see where the soldiers were taking up positions, about to move myself, and over their shoulders I saw four more of the yellow-clad figures standing motionless outside a ruined hardware store at the other end of the road. Before I could shout a warning, one of them raised a megaphone to his visor and a tinny voice echoed up the wrecked street.
'You shall be cleansed,' he said flatly, his voice altered by a distorter that made him sound like a Dalek. 'All shall be cleansed.'
'Ah shit, cleaners,' yelled the squaddie nearest to me. 'Masks!'
'They're in the bloody trucks,' yelled someone else.
Then there was a dull pop, I heard something metal hit the tarmac, and then a soft hiss.
There was a second's silence before I heard Col shout 'gas!' and then I ran like hell for the truck where Rowles and Caroline were hiding. A cloud of thick yellow smoke billowed out from the area where the soldiers had taken up positions. I heard screams and then indiscriminate gunfire. A burst of rounds whipped past my head, punching holes in the nearest truck's canvas covering.
The hazmat guys just remained where they were.
Staying just ahead of the drifting cloud, I reached the truck and looked inside. Empty. They must have slipped away. No time to look any closer, the thick yellow cloud was nearly at me. I ran for the opposite side of the road and straight through the shattered doors of a branch of Lloyd's Bank. I was so panicked that it was only once I was inside that it occurred to me to look for tripwires. And there one was, about a centimetre from my right toe. Unfortunately I was still moving and my left foot was just about to hit the thin metal strip. I dived forward, clipping the wire as I did so. I hit the damp, mouldy carpet hard and heard the clang of something big and metal above my head. I rolled on to my back and saw enormous metal jaws, cut from what looked like car bonnets. It was a sort of huge, upside down mantrap and it would have taken my head clean off.
'They really don't like giving overdrafts,' said a boy's voice to my right.
'You armed?' I asked.
'Natch,' said a girl's voice to my left.
'Spare?'
'Catch.'
I caught the browning semi-automatic handgun, chambered a round and sprang to my feet.
'There a back way out of here?'
'Nope,' replied Rowles. 'Already checked. How d'you know we were in here?'
'I didn't.'
'Cool, woman's intuition,' said Caroline.
'Yeah, right,' Rowles laughed.
'Enough,' I snapped. 'Quiet.'
We listened but could hear no noise at all from the street outside. The shooting was over. Through the door I could see the cloud of gas had nearly dispersed and was being blown towards the other side of the road. As the mist cleared a figure emerged. It was Col, with his hands over his face, staggering like a blind man. He walked into a car and his hands came away from his face. taking most of the flesh with them. His cheekbones shone white in the sunlight as he slumped forward across the car and lay still.
'I think I'm gonna puke,' said Caroline.
'Are they all dead?' asked Rowles.
'Looks like it,' I replied. 'But Sanders and another one, Patel, they're off doing a recce. They should have heard the gunfire. They'll be back any minute.'
'And do they have gasmasks?' asked Caroline. ''Cause if not…'
'Sanders is SAS. He'll sort it. We just have to sit tight and wait for…'
A yellow suited figure stepped into the doorway holding a gas grenade in his left hand.
'You shall be cleansed,' he said.
And he pulled the pin.
Chapter Eleven
The men in yellow suits had come to the school during The Culling Year, a month after we closed the gates and instituted quarantine.
They pulled up to the gate in their trucks and got out, sealed inside their protective shells, eyes hidden in shadow beneath Perspex visors, mouths covered by bulbous gas masks. There were four of them, and two had
