Remains of the Dead

teeth.

“There’s music playing,” Elspeth helpfully added.

Ali was taken aback. “A helicopter?”

He cocked his head slightly and listened. He took a few paces further onto the roof and stopped by the water butts. His long black beard bobbed in the gusts of wind. With his thick hands he stroked the hair tame. As he stood there holding the point of his beard he picked up the music drifting on the wind.

The army of corpses below also heard it. From their besieging positions around the warehouse, some of the undead had started wandering towards the noise.

Nathan stood slightly hunched against the cold. He asked, “So what do we do? Light a signal fire or something?”

“They might think it was just an accidental fire,” Ryan pointed out.

Nathan turned round, running his gaze over the rest of the roof. “Maybe we could use the solar panels like signal mirrors?”

“They’re not looking for us-they’re not looking for anyone,” Sarah said, her voice carrying a note of dismay. “They’re not expecting anyone left alive.”

“So what are they here for?” Ray asked, speaking up for the first time.

Ray was a logical man. Happier working out problems on paper than engaging in the practicalities. Ali remembered when they’d first arrived here Ray had spent the best part of a week cataloguing the pallets of supplies within.

With his index finger Ray shoved his glasses further up his nose, as much a habit as a necessity. “If they’re scavengers they’re shit out of luck,” he said. “There’s nothing left. We’ve picked this place clean.”

“Wasn’t much to pick,” Nathan complained.

Ryan shrugged his heavyset shoulders. “So how do we signal them?”

Sarah was stolid. “We don’t. We go to them.”

“Go to them, girl?” George’s overly loud interjection startled Ali. The power behind that old voice was stronger than Ali had heard in some time. George shook his head, nodding in the direction of the music. “We don’t even know who they are.”

“He’s got a point,” Ryan agreed. “They could be worse than those things.”

“They might shoot us as soon as help us,” Elspeth added.

Sarah turned her attention away from the ruined city to look at her comrades. “It’s been years since we’ve seen any marauders and none of them were in helicopters. Anyway, they’re advertising their presence with the music. It’s like they want to cause a commotion to shake the place up.” Sarah paused and pressed her tongue to her bottom lip in contemplation. Finally she said, “No. This has been our only chance of escape in years and it may be our last.”

“Sarah, think about it,” George said, taking a half step forward, “We’re safe in here.” With an arm carpeted in grey hair he gestured back at the warehouse door. “The moment we open the shutters there’ll be no turning back. They’ll be in here and there won’t be no way of stoppin’ ‘em.”

Sarah shook her head slightly. “How much longer will we be safe in here?”

No one answered. No one wanted to confront the truth.

Ali wasn’t the smartest of men but he’d picked up on whispered conversations over the past couple of months. He’d watched as the gaunt bespectacled man had scurried around the warehouse with his clipboard in hand.

“Tell them straight, Ray,” Sarah demanded, breaking the silence.

Ray muttered into his chest like a chastised school boy, “I don’t know.”

“Ray!” Sarah barked.

“Maybe four or five weeks worth of food,” Ray admitted, “and that’s rationing out even thinner than now.”

Elspeth’s face dropped, shocked by the revelation.

The predicament wasn’t a shock to Ali. Like most of the survivors he had been complicit in his ignorance, preferring to ignore the inevitable for as long as possible. Ali had pushed aside the thoughts of how perilous their existence was. He knew the food would run out but he knew there was nothing they could do about it. Each winter he had foraged among the decaying buildings trying to find supplies of food. As the years dragged on they had to forage further afield. The incident with the cod liver oil capsules had brought things into sharp focus. Knowing their plight last winter he’d gone out further than ever before. He and the younger ones had fashioned a sledge and set up a series of waypoints. It was the longest any of them had spent away from the warehouse since they’d arrived. Day after day they picked through the frozen dead and frost shattered rubble in a vain attempt to bolster their dwindling supplies. But the town had already been gutted.

When the first thaws of spring released the dead from their icy prisons it was time to retreat. And as the snow of winter had melted away, a steady trickle of undead had found them, like migrating birds finding the same nesting site year after year. In previous years even the most concerted winter cull had proven futile. Come spring the undead would return. Slowly at first, a handful at a time, but before long there were thousands crushed up against the fences. Summer was still at least a month away but already the warehouse was swamped.

Ali tuned back in to the conversation to hear Nathan complain, “Ryan’s guzzled the last of the Jack.”

“Nathan!” Elspeth chided from next to him.

Ryan faced the group from the lip of the roof and asked, “What do we do?”

He stood there, his skin numbed from the cold, casting his gaze across everyone. Ryan was hoping that someone could come up with a better plan, but as he looked at his emaciated friends no one did.

“Fuck it,” Nathan said, breaking the awkwardness. “Sarah’s right. We have to go to them.”

Ali stroked his rowdy beard flat and took a deep swallow to lubricate his voice and said against the wind, “Hold on.”

It seemed that even the baby in Elspeth’s arms went quiet as everyone turned to look at him.

“You’re seriously suggesting we go out there?” Ali looked over the heads of his audience into the distance where the chopper had been spotted.

Sarah’s voice was acidic, “What else would you suggest?”

Sarah had been quite cold towards him in the early days. Ali was used to it; he’d always been an outsider and maybe that suited him. Now looking out at the people he’d been thrown in with-incarcerated with-people he would never have chosen to be with, he realised these were the closest friends he’d ever had. Always quiet, always reserved, Ali had kept himself to himself but in the close confinement of their sanctuary the time had worn down many barriers. After those first fearful months they’d started to grow together. Week on week, month on month, year on year the barriers had melted away. Every one of these people were his friends and Ali knew they would all die if they didn’t make the right decision.

He asked the crowd, “You’re thinking things are so bad that it justifies going out there?”

Sarah caught Ray’s eye before speaking. “They will be in a month.”

Ali could see what Sarah was trying to do. She was trying to force the group to the same conclusion she had. But he knew that the older people, George and Elspeth, wouldn’t budge if they felt pressured.

“There are thousands of those pus bags between here and there. One bite, one scratch and that’s all it takes to turn you.” Looking around, Ali checked that the gravity of what he had just said had sunk in. He continued highlighting the unknowns to his companions. “You plan on dodging those things long enough to get to a helicopter full of people who are mystery to you?”

Ray shuffled nervously but other than that the group was silent.

“As Elspeth said, they may not be friendly, they may want to shoot us, they may refuse to take us. What then?” Ali paused for a response.

“We don’t have time to argue this,” Ryan said. “Who knows how long they’ll be there.”

“Is it truly worth the risk?” Ali asked. “Do you want to wait here and starve to death or take the chance?”

The congregation on the rooftop started looking at each other. Ali could see people were starting to seriously weigh up the two options, the slow death through starvation or the risk of trying to get help.

“I only say that because everyone has to be sure what choice there is.”

Ali leant back against a water tank and waited for the group to decide. He already knew the only option. Starving to death would drive everyone mad. They’d end up fighting each other for crumbs. He remembered his grandmother telling him of a famine when she was a girl. He remembered her arthritis gnarled fingers jabbing out at him as she told of how she’d eaten the rats that were gnawing on her brother’s corpse. Ali never knew how true her