largest of the few rooms that the survivors were permitted access to.
‘Morning, Bernard,’ Emma replied. ‘Bloody cold, isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t it always?’ he sighed. ‘Get yourselves something to eat, the soldiers left us quite a lot last night.’
Holding onto Michael’s hand, Emma followed him as he weaved through the crowded room. About six metres square, it was used by the group of survivors as a dormitory, a meeting place, a kitchen and a mess hall. In fact it was used for just about everything. As bleak, grim and imposing as its grey and featureless walls were, the fact that the room was always filled with people made it just about the best place for any of them to spend their time. In spite of the uncertainty and unease which still surrounded everything, the heat and noise made by the group of frightened and frustrated people made this room a more inviting place than anywhere else. At least here they weren’t always looking over their shoulders. At least here they could, for the time being at least, begin to try and relax, recuperate and heal.
A basic shift pattern had been drawn up shortly after they had first arrived at the bunker. Although there had been the expected few missed shifts, most people seemed prepared to pull their weight and contribute by cooking or cleaning or doing whatever other menial tasks needed to be done. Rather than evade work as some of them might have done before the disaster, just about all of the survivors now willingly did as much as they could. How much of this work was done to help the others was questionable. Most simply craved the responsibility because it helped reduce the monotony and boredom of every long, dark day. As each of them had already found to their cost on many, many occasions, sitting and staring at the walls of the bunker with nothing to do invariably resulted in them thinking constantly about all that they had lost.
Emma and Michael collected their food from Sheri Newton (a quiet and diminutive middle-aged woman who seemed to always be serving food) and sat down to eat. The faces of the people sitting around them were reassuringly familiar. Donna Yorke was at a table nearby talking to Clare Smith, Jack Baxter and Phil Croft. As the couple began to eat Croft looked up and around and nodded at Michael.
‘Morning,’ Michael said as he chewed on his first mouthful of dry and tasteless rationed food. ‘How you doing today, Phil?’
‘Good,’ Croft replied, wheezing. He took a long drag on a cigarette and coughed.
‘You should think about giving those things up,’
Michael muttered sarcastically, ‘won’t do your health any good. They’ll be the death of you!’
Croft grimaced as he coughed and then managed a fleeting smile. It was a sign of the grim hopelessness of their situation that death was just about the only thing they could find to laugh about. The group’s only doctor, he had sustained serious injuries in a violent crash when they had first approached the military bunker. The dark, dank conditions underground were not ideal and did nothing to aid his recovery. The only visible signs of his injuries which remained now were a scar across his chest and a severe limp and, as far as the rest of the group were concerned, he appeared to be getting stronger and fitter with each day. A trained and experienced medical professional, however, Croft knew that his body had sustained a huge amount of damage and that he would never be fully fit again. With his discomfort and pain seeming to increase day on day, and with the military on one side and a crowd of thousands of decomposing corpses on the other, the potentially harmful effects of smoking cigarettes was the very least of his worries.
Cooper marched angrily into the room, his sudden, stormy appearance instantly silencing every conversation and causing everyone to look round. He fetched himself a drink, yanked a chair from under the table and sat down next to Jack Baxter.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ Baxter asked.
‘This place is full of fucking idiots,’ the ex-soldier snapped. Since returning to the base he had steadily distanced himself from his military colleagues to the point where he now had very little to do with them. Perhaps symbolically, he now only wore the lower half of his uniform, and he only kept the boots and trousers on because they were the most practical clothes he possessed.
In fact, they were just about the only clothes he had.
‘Now who’s he talking about?’ Croft interrupted. ‘Who you on about now, Cooper?’
Cooper took a swig of coffee.
‘Bloody jokers in charge of this place,’ he answered.
‘What have they done?’
‘Nothing, and that’s the fucking problem.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Donna, concerned. She knew Cooper well enough to know that there had to be a reason behind his sudden ranting. He was usually much calmer and more controlled than this.
‘The troops won’t tell me a thing anymore,’ he explained. ‘My guess is they’ve been ordered not to. I just can’t understand their logic. What do they think they’re going to gain from keeping us in the dark? We’ve seen more of what’s happened out there than they have. You’d think they’d want to try and keep us on side, wouldn’t you?’
‘Sounds typical of what I’ve seen of the military so far,’
Baxter said quietly. ‘So is that all that’s bothering you?’
Cooper shook his head.
‘No,’ he sighed, ‘it’s more than that. I’ve just been talking to an old mate of mine, Jim Franks. Jim and I go back a long way and I know I can trust him. Anyway, he’s been telling me that they think they’re going to start hitting real problems soon.’
‘Supplies?’ Baxter wondered.
‘No.’
‘What kind of problems then?’ asked Emma, immediately worried.
‘Big fucking problems,’ Cooper continued. ‘Nothing they weren’t expecting, but big fucking problems nonetheless.’
‘Such as…?’
‘You’ve got to remember that I was talking to Jim through the intercom on the front of the decontamination chamber and he was trying to keep his voice down in case anyone caught him speaking to me so I didn’t get a lot of detail. It’s the bodies. They’ve been taking readings around the base and the damn things still keep coming. Jim told me that the air filtration system’s still working but it’s really starting to struggle and the problems we’ve heard about with ventilation have really started to take hold. Seems that more than half the exhaust vents are blocked or almost blocked, just like we said they would be.’
‘So what are they going to do about it?’ Croft mumbled, asking the question that everyone was thinking.
‘There’s no way of clearing the vents from down here,’
he explained, ‘so they’re going to have to go above ground eventually.’
‘But what good’s that going to do?’ Emma protested, immediately terrified at the prospect of the bunker doors being opened again. ‘Do they think they can just clear the bodies away? As soon as they move any of them hundreds more will take their place.’
‘I know that and you know that,’ Cooper sighed dejectedly, ‘but they don’t. This is why I can’t understand them not talking to us. The reality is that the people making the decisions down here don’t have a fucking clue how bad things are on the surface. Until you’ve seen it for yourself and you’ve been out there in the middle of it, you just can’t imagine the scale of what’s happened outside, can you?’
‘So how are they planning to keep the vents clear?’ asked Donna. ‘Like Emma says, as soon as they’ve cleared them more bodies will be lining up to block them again.’
‘I don’t know. My guess is they’ll try and cover them or build something over the top. You’ve got to remember that this place was built not to be noticed. You’d have to look hard just to find the bloody vents ‘cause they’re not obvious. I think they’re planning to fight their way through to them and then just do whatever they need to do to block them off. They’ll try and cover the top of them or leave people out there to guard them. A trench or a wall might be enough…’
‘Pity the poor bastards who get sent out there to build bloody walls,’ Baxter mumbled. ‘Christ, it’s hard enough just being up there, never mind having to build a bloody wall. I tell you, you wouldn’t get me outside for anything.’
‘You reckon? Keep things in perspective, Jack,’ Cooper said, looking directly at the other man, ‘we’ve got a massive advantage over this lot at the moment because we can survive out in the open. So who says they’re not going to try and use us to do whatever it is that they’re planning on doing? Argue all you like, but if you’ve got a gun
