Remains of the Dead

heave her off, but in his struggle he stepped back and missed his footing on the stair. He fell backwards, tumbling the whole way, the zombie biting and scratching as he fell.

With a heavy thump Cahz hit the ground.

“Fuck!” he bellowed, snapped out of his slumber.

He sprang to his feet and anxiously looked round.

“Easy, tiger,” Ryan said calmingly as he popped another cranberry into his mouth. “Bad dream?” The cellophane rustled as he grasped with one hand at the dried fruit while cradling the baby in the other.

“You okay, boss?” came a more concerned voice.

“Sure, Cannon,” Cahz said, standing dazed in the converted office.

He looked around to see things exactly as he’d left them: the crates, the camp bed, and Elspeth still in her glass cage.

“Just a bad dream…” Cahz stopped dead.

He rushed over to the window and looked out at the street below. There were still thousands of zombies besieging the building. He turned and ran to the other side of the room and did the same. The back of the office block looked down at a relatively quiet employee car park, but behind the wire fencing, packed in the alleyway, was a thick mob of zombies.

“The roof!” Cahz barked as he ran for the stairwell.

“Boss, you’ve got me spooked. What’s going on?” Cannon asked as he pounded up the stairs after Cahz.

“Smoke. There was smoke in my dream,” Cahz said, worry in his voice.

“So you had a bad dream. Ain’t no other kind nowadays,” Cannon replied, jumping two steps at a time to keep pace.

“Met a special forces guy in the field once.” Cahz didn’t look back as he vaulted up the stairs. “He told me about a course on intuition his unit were sent on.”

“Don’t get you, boss,” Cannon said flatly.

“They pulled a whole unit out to go on a course run by a civvie psychologist. The crux of it is they were taught if you get the feeling something’s wrong then something is wrong.” Cahz thundered up to the roof access door and flung it open. “And I’ve got that feeling.”

Cannon barrelled up behind Cahz onto the sunlit roof. As he took in his first breath of the outside air, he could taste it.

Cahz walked calmly to look over the building’s edge.

“Shit,” he said. “Just what we freakin’ need.”

Cannon drew level with him.

Down below, the adjacent office block was on fire. The flames were unimpressive, their orange glow tempered by the bright sunlight and only visible on the ground floor, but a lick of smoke was twisting its way up.

“Maybe it’ll burn itself out,” Cannon said hopefully.

Cahz said, “Even if it doesn’t spread, do you think you can land a chopper at night with smoke all around? Idris won’t even know we’re here. We set off a flare and he’s never going to spot it.”

He pointed to the narrow alleyway between the buildings. Other than the throng of zombies there were a number of skips.

“See there,” Cahz asked, pointing.

“Yup,” Cannon confirmed.

“Full of trash that was never collected. It’ll catch. And that’s a gap for the flames to bridge and get to us. Hell, those W.D.s down there will dry out with the heat and combust. One of them could burst into a flaming torch and the fire could spread that way.”

“We’re fucked then,” Cannon said softly.

“We’re not fucked,” Cahz said confidently. “There’s plan B.”

“What’s plan B?”

“Don’t know yet,” Cahz said. “But we’d better come up with one.”

Chapter Twelve

Fishing

With his aching leg resting up on a stool, Ali reclined in an easy chair and took a swig of black coffee. He’d learnt to enjoy black coffee back in the warehouse. Some of the others had become accustomed to the powdered whitener but he’d never made the adjustment.

The strong smell of his drink mixed with the smoke from the small fire he’d set on the cooker to boil the water. He could have made the campfire anywhere in the apartment, but an atavistic bent instinctively called him to the cooker. In all the destruction, the rubble and collapse, Ali still clung to an ingrained sense of cleanliness.

He took a deep inhale and savoured the wafting odours from the mug. It was a good smell, a comforting smell.

The jar he had found in Frank Topalow’s kitchen was almost empty, which no doubt was why it had survived the winter salvaging. Ali wasn’t sure if the coffee was any good or not; it was certainly on a par with the past-its- sell-by-date stuff he’d been used to. It had been a long time since he’d tasted fresh milk or anything other than freeze dried coffee. In fact, it had been so long since he’d had a good coffee it was no longer possible for him to retrieve the memory. But the drink was a calming influence, an island of normality, a source of fortitude.

Ali smiled as he recalled his dad always took his coffee black. Sitting here, the smell of black coffee transported him to childhood memories.

It reminds me of the old country, Ali recalled his father saying once. At the time he thought it odd. Ali didn’t remember anything of the “old country”. All Ali could recall was a hazy memory of a fraught plane flight. He was bored and his parents snapped at him for “misbehaving”. Ali couldn’t remember his misdemeanour, but he could still see his father’s eyes burning with anger as he snatched his arm and dragged him to his seat. His father wasn’t a violent man and the shock of such force had stunned Ali into silence. Looking back it was obvious why his mother and father had been so distraught. But to the five year old boy it had been unfathomable.

He took a bite from the granola bar washed it down with a swig of his drink and focused on the now. The meandering scrawl on the wall looked like a convoluted family tree with branches and sub-branches frantically splitting off and multiplying. Over the previous hour Ali had listed all his options and resources, all the pros and cons, everything he felt he should take into account before making a decision. He’d watched Ray do this numerous times back at the warehouse. Ray loved to use charts and diagrams to demonstrate his point or to support his decisions. Ray had had some kind of middle management job for a corporation before all this. Many of his fellow survivors had sneered at Ray’s pseudo-intellectual approach, but Ali had found it helpful. Today he was glad he’d taken the time to ask Ray about his techniques.

One branch in particular was ringed numerous times where Ali had come to his conclusion. WAIT FOR CHOPPER. Splitting off from that heading was IS IT SAFE? and FOR HOW LONG?

Ali had no way of knowing if it was safe. All he could say was he was safe for now. The how long would depend on what supplies he could find.

“Find vantage point to wait for chopper,” Ali read off the actions points he’d written for himself.

The bedroom in this flat had a wide enough view that he could see most of the plaza, but this was far from ideal. Although he would be able to see a helicopter land, he’d have no way of signalling it from here. And what if it didn’t land? What if it just circled overhead looking for survivors?

Ali looked around at the flat. It was comfortable and pleasant. It was an inviting thought just to stay here for a few days, but Ali knew that he couldn’t. He knew he would have to find a rooftop vantage point from where to keep look out and where he could signal.

“Supplies,” Ali said out loud. “I need supplies. I need food and warm clothing and something to signal the helicopter with.”

He put the coffee cup down and took the last bite from the bar.