run towards the building ahead. She collided with body after body after body with each impact sending the weak figures tumbling to the ground and causing more and more of them to react. Already numerous clumsy and diseased hands were trying to grab hold of Paul. He wrestled them away and followed after Donna in her wake.
The sheer volume of bodies crammed around the front of the building made the main entrance appear impassable even from a distance. Already gasping for breath, Donna looked around anxiously for an alternative route. She was surrounded on all sides by the noxious corpses, every last one of which now seemed to turn and lurch awkwardly towards her. There wasn’t time to make decisions. She just kept moving, hoping that her comparative strength would be enough to see her through. She sensed that Paul was close behind but didn’t bother to check. He would have to look after himself. Stupid fucking idiot.
She was on the ring road itself now. She tripped down the high kerb and began to run across the wide stretch of tarmac, managing to somehow continue to push the bodies away and also to avoid the wreckage of cars and rotting corpses strewn across her path. The crowd surged after her relentlessly, moving together slowly but ominously like some unstoppable thick and viscous liquid. Up and over the low central reservation barrier and she knew she was almost there. She could hear her foolish companion getting closer behind her now grunting and groaning with effort as he forced his way forward through the seemingly endless tide of the dead.
‘Go right!’ she heard him shout and she immediately changed direction. The building in front of them was long and narrow but they were considerably closer to the right side than the left. It seemed logical to try and get around the back, but who was to say that there wasn’t a crowd twice as big behind the building?
The alternatives were bleak. She kept moving.
The bodies were tightly packed against the front entrance.
Donna rounded the corner and saw, to her relief, that there were considerably fewer of them to the side of the building, no doubt, she decided, because virtually all of the corpses would have approached from the direction of the city centre. Slipping around the side of a red and white striped entry barrier she took a deep breath, pushed another two corpses out of the way and continued to move forward.
‘Climb up!’ she heard Paul yell from behind. ‘Get off the ground.’
Donna looked around helplessly, not sure what he was expecting her to do. He answered her questions as he suddenly appeared next to her and pushed his way through the hordes towards a large delivery truck that was parked alongside the building. Grabbing hold of the passenger side wing mirror he hauled himself up and away from the grabbing hands below. He lay flat across the roof of the truck and reached back down for Donna.
‘Come on,’ he hissed.
Exhausted, she pushed her way through to the lorry and clambered up. By the time she had reached the top of the truck Paul was already making his way along the length of the vehicle towards the rear end. Donna followed before stopping and falling to her knees once she was safe.
‘Help!’ she yelled desperately, praying that someone inside the building would hear her.
The back end of the truck where Paul was standing was less than three feet away from the outside wall of the building. Just above his head and to his right slightly was a small balcony.
Without stopping to consider the risks he leapt up and grabbed at the metalwork surrounding the balcony area. In a flurry of movement he reached out and wrapped his arm around one of the metal railings. He grimaced with pain as the sudden weight of his body threatened to wrench his shoulder from its joint.
Slowly, and with much effort, he managed to pull himself up.
Donna watched from the roof of the truck as he hauled himself up onto the narrow landing and began to smash his fists furiously against a double-glazed window.
Donna lay down and rolled over onto her back and looked up into the grey morning sky above her. The noise that Paul was making quickly faded into silence as she relaxed, as did the constant shuffling of the relentless crowd of bodies swarming around the front of the building and around the truck. She stared into the clouds moving over her head and watched as they blew across from left to right. If I look up and I keep looking up, she thought, then everything seems normal. If I don’t look down then I can pretend that none of this is happening. Just for a few seconds I can pretend it’s not happening.
After locating the window where Paul was standing the survivors forced it open and quickly pulled him inside. Using a ladder to bridge the gap between the building and the top of the truck, two men ventured out into the cold and inhospitable morning and brought Donna into the shelter.
18
Midday.
Donna had managed to sleep for a few hours. It was the first time in a week she’d had a proper bed and even though it was in a cold and unfamiliar place, it still felt reassuringly comfortable and safe. A man she hadn’t seen before walked past the door to the room she’d been sleeping in and, seeing that she was awake, stopped to talk to her.
‘How you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Crap,’ she replied with brutal honesty.
‘I’m Bernard Heath,’ he said, taking a couple of steps into the room.
‘Donna.’
He nodded and, feeling suddenly awkward and not knowing what to say, looked around the room rather than stare at her lying on the bed.
‘Look,’ he said after a few long seconds had passed, ‘would you like to come downstairs with me? I can get you some food or something to drink or…’
Donna was up and on her feet before he’d finished his question. She was starving. Heath led her along the corridor and down the stairs.
‘Bloody hell,’ she muttered under her breath as she walked into the assembly hall. She began to cry. She couldn’t help herself. She’d given up hope of ever seeing so many people together again. She counted between ten and twenty of them. In one corner a handful of subdued children played quietly.
Elsewhere people sat around the edges of the room, generally keeping themselves to themselves. Heath fetched her some food from an adjourning kitchen.
Standing in the middle of the hall with a tray in her hands, Donna suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable. She looked around for somewhere to sit and caught sight of Paul Castle sitting next to another man. Despite the fact that she still wanted to punch him in the face for the stupid stunt he’d pulled this morning, he was the only other person that she knew. Wearily she dragged herself across the room and sat down next to him.
‘You okay?’ he asked.
She nodded and grunted but didn’t properly answer. She began to eat the crackers and cheese spread that she’d been given. Her hands shook as she tried to spread with a plastic knife. It was bitterly cold inside the building.
‘This is Steve,’ Paul continued, introducing the man sitting next to him. ‘Steve, this is Donna.’
‘Hi, Donna,’ Steve said wearily, managing half a smile.
Donna managed another grunt.
‘Steve says there’s almost fifty people here you know,’ Paul whispered. ‘Thank God we found this place. He says that most of them don’t……
‘Finding it wasn’t difficult,’ Donna said, swallowing a mouthful of food and finally finding enough energy and interest to bring herself to speak, ‘it was getting here that was the hard part. It wouldn’t have been so much of a problem if it hadn’t been for you, you stupid bloody idiot!’
Paul looked down at his feet and turned back to face Steve.
‘So what’s the plan?’ he asked, trying desperately to ignore Donna’s anger. ‘What’s going to happen next? Are we staying here or…?’
‘As far as I can tell there is no plan, mate,’ Steve replied.
‘And if there was you’d only go and screw it up,’ Donna snapped.
Paul
ignored
her.
‘Don’t think anyone knows what to do next,’ Steve continued. ‘Seems like it’s going to be as bad wherever you go so you might as well stay put. A couple of us have got a few ideas brewing though, haven’t we,
