‘What we must do,’ Ralph said, clearly, carefully and slowly and with almost ponderous consideration, ‘is get ourselves into some sort of order here before we even think about exploring outside.’
‘Why?’ someone asked from the other side of the group. ‘What do we need to get in order?’
‘We need to know who and what we’ve got here. We need food and water, we need bedding and clothes and we should be able to find most of that in here. We also need to know what we haven’t got and we should start thinking about where to get it.’
‘Why?’ the voice interrupted again. ‘We know we’ll find everything we need outside. We shouldn’t waste our time in here, we should just get out and get on with it.’
Ralph’s confidence was clearly a professional facade and, at the first sign of any resistance, he squirmed. He pushed his heavy-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of his nose with the tip of his finger and took a deep breath.
‘That’s not a good idea. Look, I think we’ve got to make our personal safety and security our prime concern and then…’
‘I agree,’ the voice interrupted again. ‘But why stop here? There are a thousand and one better places to go, why stay here? What makes you any safer here than if you were lying on the dotted white line in the middle of the Stanhope Road?’
Carl shuffled around so that he could see through the mass of heads and bodies and identify the speaker. It was Michael, the bloke who had cooked the soup earlier.
‘We don’t know what’s outside…’ Ralph began.
‘But we’ve got to go out there eventually, you accept that?’
He stammered and fiddled with his glasses again.
‘Yes, but…’
‘Look, Ralph, I’m not trying to make this any more difficult than it already is. We’ve got to leave here to get the supplies we need. All I’m saying is why bother delaying it and why bother coming back? Why not go somewhere else?’
Ralph couldn’t answer. It was obvious to Carl and, probably, to pretty much everyone else, that the reason Ralph didn’t want to go outside was the same reason Stuart Jeffries had admitted to wanting to stay trapped in the hall earlier. They were both scared.
‘We could try and find somewhere else,’ he began, hesitantly, ‘but we’ve got a shelter here which is secure and…’
‘And cold and dirty and uncomfortable,’ Carl said quickly.
‘Okay, it’s not ideal but…’
‘But what?’ pressed Michael. ‘It seems to me that we can pretty much have our pick of everywhere and everything at the moment.’
The room fell silent for a few seconds. Ralph suddenly sat up straight and pushed his glasses back up his nose again. He seemed to have found a reason to justify staying put.
‘But what about the music and the fire?’ he said, much more animated. ‘Stuart and Jack managed to bring us all here by lighting the fire and playing music. If we did it again we might find more survivors. There might already be people on their way to us.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Michael. ‘No-one’s arrived here since me. If anyone else had heard the music they’d have been here by now. I agree with what you’re saying, but again, why here? Why not find somewhere better to stop, get ourselves organised there and light a bloody big bonfire right in the middle of the road outside?’
Carl agreed.
‘He’s right. We should get a beacon or something sorted, but let’s get ourselves safe and secure first.’
‘A new beacon somewhere else is going to be seen by more people, isn’t it?’ asked Sandra Goodwin, a fifty year-old housewife. ‘And isn’t that what we want?’
‘Bottom line here,’ Michael said, changing his tone and raising his voice slightly so that everyone suddenly turned and gave him their full attention, ‘is that we’ve got to look after ourselves first of all and then start to think about anyone else who might possibly still be alive.’
‘But shouldn’t we start looking for other survivors now?’ someone else asked.
‘I don't think we should,’ he replied, ‘I agree that we should get a beacon or something going, but there’s no point in wasting time actively looking for other people yet. If there are others then they’ll have more chance of finding us than we’ll have finding them.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Sandra asked.
‘Stands to reason,’ he grunted. ‘Does anyone know how many people used to live in this city?’
A couple of seconds silence followed before someone answered.
‘About a quarter of a million people. Two hundred thousand or something like that.’
‘And there are twenty-six of us in here.’
‘So?’ pressed an uncomfortable looking Ralph, trying desperately to find a way back into the conversation.
‘So what does that say to you?’
Ralph shrugged his shoulders.
‘It says to me,’ Michael continued, ‘that looking for anyone else would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
