early trip into town but had never used them. In a moment of unexpected initiative he'd crept out onto the landing, attached the camera to the end of a fire-hose, and lowered it down the middle of the staircase. Through trial and error he'd managed to work out what length of hose was necessary to lower the camera to the floor below, then the floor after that and the floor after that. At the same time he set the camera's timer and flash to take a single picture once the required level had been reached. With surprising accuracy he had soon developed a means to take photographs of the main staircase at each level (albeit only as far down as the hose would stretch) and, therefore, he'd found a way of measuring the speed and progress of the dead when they finally appeared. Their incalculably vast numbers meant that the bodies at the front of the crowd were continually being pushed and shoved forwards and up the stairs. With corpses continuing to pour through the bus-shaped hole in the hotel wall, once the ground floor reception had been completely filled with flesh there was nowhere else for them to go but up. The enormous crowd was slowly channelling and funnelling itself further up the stairs and deeper into the hotel. Each time Proctor hauled the camera back up to the top floor the group crowded around the little screen on the back of its casing to monitor the progress of the slowly climbing cadavers. There had been no sign of them initially, but Proctor had continued to take his photographs every morning regardless. And then, yesterday morning, the furthest advanced of them had been photographed on the twenty-second floor. It was a simple enough calculation to make ? the dead had covered twenty-two floors in about nine days. They were climbing at the rate of just over two floors a day. The second simple calculation the group made was altogether more disturbing. It was Thursday today. If their rate of climb continued at the same speed (and there was no immediate reason why it should change) the bodies would reach the twenty-eighth floor sometime on Saturday or by Sunday at the very latest.
Proctor found a strange sense of enjoyment in his role of chief cameraman and body-watcher. It made him feel useful. It made him feel indispensable and gave him a purpose. Perhaps even more importantly, it gave him a role which he could hide behind and use as an excuse for not doing anything else. He saw the camera as a potential way out of some of the pretty bloody unpleasant and downright dangerous jobs which would inevitably come their way over the course of the next few days.
Three forty-five. The afternoon sun had begun another rapid descent towards the horizon, filling the Presidential Suite with harsh orange light and long, dragging shadows. Rather than spreading themselves around the edges of the apartment, on this rare occasion the six survivors were sat together around the dining table. There was no meal to be eaten or food to be shared this afternoon. The reason for sitting together was to finally talk about the issues they'd avoided talking about for the last ten days. The agenda for their discussions was dishearteningly short and simple. Firstly, they had hardly any food supplies left. Secondly, according to the photograph Proctor had taken earlier, the bodies were now close to reaching floor twenty-four.
`So exactly how much food have we got?' Doreen asked.
`A days worth,' Bushell replied, `maybe two at the very most. After that there's nothing.'
`We must have something...?'
`No,' he said again, shaking his head, `we won't have anything.'
`But...?'
`But what?' snapped Wilcox. Christ, how did they get through to this bloody woman? `Listen, we've got nothing, okay? We're down to our last few meals. We haven't got an extra little stash of food tucked away for emergencies. After this we'll have absolutely nothing. Fuck all. Zip.'
Doreen slumped back in her seat and stared into space.
`So what are we going to do?' she eventually asked. More sighs from around the table.
`That's what we're trying to decide, you stupid cow!' Wilcox groaned. `Bloody hell, are you on the same planet as the rest of us?'
`Wish I wasn't,' she grunted.
`So we've got two problems,' Proctor summarised, trying his best to control the direction of the conversation. `We need to try and get out and get supplies but...'
`But this building is full of bodies,' continued Bushell, `thanks to the hole you lot made in the front door.' He glanced across at Wilcox as he spoke. Uncomfortable, Wilcox looked down and did his best to avoid eye contact with anyone.
`So what do we do?' Doreen asked again.
`Is there any way of getting out of here and back up again?' Elizabeth wondered.
`Not that I know of,' Bushell answered quickly. `Getting down's no problem, we can use the fire escape.' He nodded towards an inconspicuous looking door in the far corner of the room. `The problem is what to do once you're down there,' he continued. `Open the fire escape door on the ground floor and you'll probably find yourself face to face with a few thousand bodies. And if you manage to get outside, Christ knows how you're going to get back in again afterwards. It'd be impossible if you were carrying supplies...'
`There must be a way?'
`Get a sheet, hold it like a parachute, climb up to the roof and jump off,' Wilcox suggested to Doreen, less than seriously.
`Do you think that will work?' she asked, her response meeting with groans of disbelief from several of the others.
`Only if you try it, Doreen,' he smirked.
`How would I get up again?'
Wilcox didn't bother to answer.
`We should go down there,' he instead suggested. `We should go down there and torch the place on our way out. Set light to the building and watch the whole fucking place go up in flames.'
`What good's that going to do?' wondered Bushell.
`It would distract them. Christ, the heat and light this place burning would generate would be more than enough of a distraction for us to be able to get away. They're not going to be interested in a handful of people sneaking out the back door if that's going on, are they?'
Wilcox's plan was met with a muted silence from the others. They each thought long and hard about it, but none of them were sure. It wasn't the wanton destruction that put them off, rather it was the thought of running again...
`What about the cradle?' Proctor said suddenly. `We've talked about it before, haven't we? Barry said there's a window-cleaner's cradle half way up the side of the building. We could use that to get us down, couldn't we? We could use it to get back up as well...'
`What about power,' Jones grunted from the end of the table. The others turned to face him. `How do you think you winch it up and down? Think the window-cleaners used to pull themselves up thirty floors by hand? No power, no cradle.'
Another idea quashed.
`Seems to me that if we can get out of here in one piece then maybe that's what we should be looking to try and do. Maybe we're going to have to find ourselves somewhere else to hide,' Elizabeth said dejectedly. Bushell shook his head.
`I don't want to leave here,' he sighed, his voice soft and tired. `I can't see any point in running.'
`Of course there's a point,' sneered Doreen.
`Is there?'
`Yes...' she stammered, sounding far from certain, `of course there's a point...'
Bushell shrugged his shoulders.
`I'm not so sure there is.'
`So what are you saying?' snapped Wilcox. `Do we just sit here and starve? Fucking good plan, well done!'
`What are you running for?'
`Because I don't want to die,' Wilcox answered quickly.
`Good answer. Why don't you want to die?'
He struggled to answer. It was a simple enough question, or maybe it was a trick...
`No-one wants to die, do they?' he said quietly.
`But is it the end of your life you're worried about, or is it death itself that scares you?'
`What?'
`Are you worried that you're not going to achieve everything you've always wanted to achieve, or is it the
