often that…
‘What do you think, Jack?’ he heard Phil Croft ask. At the mention of his name he looked up.
‘What?’ he mumbled.
‘You’re not with us, are you?’ smiled Donna.
‘Nothing against any of you,’ he smiled, looking deeper into the darkness and trying to focus on the others, ‘but I wish I was anywhere but here.’
Cooper kept the conversation on track.
‘We were talking about getting out of here,’ he began.
‘What, still?’ he moaned. ‘Christ, haven’t you got anything better to talk about?’
‘No,’ Donna replied abruptly. ‘Bloody hell, what else is there to talk about?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘Decided where we’re going yet then?’
Silence. It was one thing talking about what they should do, but when it came to actually making decisions it was difficult to get any of the survivors to speak out with any conviction.
‘We’re not completely sure whether……’ muttered Croft before Cooper interrupted.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he sighed.
‘There’s only one place we can go, isn’t there?’ Donna added.
‘Your base?’ ventured Baxter.
‘Much as I don’t like the thought of going back there, we don’t seem to have much choice at the moment.’
‘So will your people let us inside?’ he asked.
‘They might. I don’t know.’
‘I don’t think they will.’
Everyone looked at Jack.
‘Why not?’ Donna asked.
‘I know we seem to be immune to whatever’s done all this,’
he explained, his voice tired and low, ‘but I bet we’re still carrying it. If it’s a disease then we’re going to be full of it, aren’t we? It’ll be in our lungs and in our blood. There’s no way they’re going to let us inside if we’re going to bring it in with us.’
‘We’ve just got to hope the decontamination process is good enough to clean us up properly then, haven’t we?’Cooper said.
‘Do you think it will be?’
‘Don’t know,’ he admitted after a moment of careful consideration.
‘There’s another problem of course,’ yawned Croft. The doctor was incredibly tired but he knew it wasn’t worth trying to sleep.
‘What’s that?’ Cooper asked.
‘How the hell are we going to get there?’
‘How many people are here?’
‘Between forty and fifty,’ he replied.
‘And how many will leave with us?’
‘No idea. Probably not that many. Say half.’
‘Theoretically we can take our pick of just about anything we can find in the city,’ said Donna.
‘If we can get to it,’ interrupted Baxter.
‘So what do you suggest?’ Cooper asked. ‘We need to be sensible about this. We’re not going to be able to just drive out of here in a convoy of cars, are we?’
‘What did you arrive in? We heard it but we didn’t see it.’
‘Armoured patrol carrier. I could probably drive one of those if we had one, but I don’t expect we’ll find anything like that round here…’
Baxter managed half a smile.
‘You might be surprised,’ Donna said quietly. The other faces turned to look at her.
‘What have you got in mind?’
‘There’s a courthouse near here,’ she replied.
‘And?’
‘And round the back there’s a loading bay.’
‘A loading bay?’ Croft mumbled. He wasn’t at all sure where her logic was leading.
‘We could see it from the office where I worked. We used to watch them unloading when there was a big trial on,’ she explained. ‘The prison vans used to pull up around the back and reverse inside to deliver and collect the prisoners.’
‘So?’
‘Think about it. Prison vans are designed to carry people.
More than that, they’re strong and they’re safe. They’re as close to a bloody armoured patrol carrier as we’re going to get.’
‘Are there any vans there now?’
‘How am I supposed to know? There’s a good chance there will be though. Just about every morning you’d see at least one of them pulling up. Logic says that if the courts were going to be in session when all of this started, there would have been prisoners there.’
‘I know the court,’ Baxter whispered secretively. ‘But how are we supposed to get there? It’s halfway across town.’
‘Don’t know,’ Donna admitted.
‘I can’t see how we’re going to get past the crowds out there.
And even if we do manage to get through, how are we supposed to get back here again? Christ, imagine what the noise of a load of prison vans will do to them?’
Cooper took a swig from a cup of cold black coffee that he’d made almost an hour earlier. He winced at its bitter aftertaste.
‘Seems to me that whatever we do is going to drive them crazy,’ he said, ‘but there isn’t any alternative. We’ve already decided that we’re going to have to go out at some point.’
‘Any suggestions?’ asked Donna expectantly.
‘I came up through a subway.’
‘That’s going to help us get out there,’ she sighed. ‘Getting back without them seeing or hearing us is going to be impossible if we manage to get our hands on some kind of transport.’
‘We could go out at night,’ Croft offered.
‘Not a good idea,’ Cooper responded. ‘I know what you’re saying, but you’ve got to add up the risks and balance them all out, haven’t you? Whatever we do we’re bound to attract attention to ourselves because of the noise we make if nothing else. If we go out in the dark then we’re just going to make it harder for ourselves. They’ll still react to us so we might as well go out in the daylight and give ourselves the best possible chance.’
‘If we’re really going to do this,’ Donna continued, ‘then we need to think very carefully before we put a single foot outside.
From what I’ve seen of those things out there they seem to be getting more and more aggressive each day. We have to get everything we need in one trip.’
‘We can do it,’ Cooper insisted. ‘A few of us need to get out there, get what we need and get back. Once the excitement’s died down again we can get everyone who wants to leave together and we can move.’
Jack Baxter lay down on the cold, hard floor next to Clare and listened as the conversation continued. He agreed with everything that was being suggested, but the fact that it was right didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Within the walls of the university it had to an extent become possible to isolate themselves from events outside. The sudden realisation that they were about to leave the safety of the building and head back out into the unknown was terrifying. Unavoidable, necessary and terrifying.
35
‘What you doing out here?’
