That she knew he wasn’t over her yet.
He could have pretended that the reason he’d come back to Colchester to look for her was that he still thought of her as a friend, and he had been worried about her, knowing she lived alone. But he doubted anyone would have believed it.
Kingsley and Emma both knew there was no chance of them ever getting back together. They just weren’t compatible. Yet here he was, sleeping under the same roof as her. Even though the pain of their breakup had dissipated and they had put their differences aside and recognised that they were both now just survivors in a messed up world, he couldn’t help feeling like an intruder sometimes. Especially when he was surrounded by Emma’s sister and her extended family. A family he was no longer a part of.
After a pause of awkward staring, Emma just smiled, looked at the ground and shook her head. Then she limped back to the house with Archie padding behind her.
*
After five days, Eric didn’t seem to be getting any better. He was bedridden, sleeping through most of the day, only waking long enough to eat, drink and use the toilet. He was slow, untalkative and weak, constantly tossing and turning in bed, plagued by fever dreams. The wound on his belly hadn’t improved either.
If the co-amoxiclav was working, surely there would be some visible improvement to Eric’s condition by now? Or would there be?
Kingsley had considered going on Brian’s computer and searching for the answer on Google.
The national grids power supply to the area had faltered the day after their arrival at the house, plunging Colchester into darkness, but Brian had solar panels generating conservative amounts of electricity for him. And knowing it could help Eric, he would be okay with Kingsley using the computer.
However, Dave put the idea to rest when he told him that he’d already tried loading up Google a few days ago and had been met with an error page; he explained that this was because every web page on the internet was made up of information stored on a physical server, and as no workers were maintaining those servers anymore they were shutting down.
This hadn’t come as a surprise to Dave who had been a web developer before the apocalypse and knew his shit when it came to anything IT-related.
So instead Kingsley found himself browsing the selection of non-fiction titles on the bookshelves in Brian’s study, looking for medical textbooks or anything that might have information in it that could help.
Meanwhile, Dave was fiddling with an old radio on the desk.
Not having noticed it there before, Kingsley asked, “Where’d you get that?”
“Oh, it’s my dad’s old shortwave receiver.” Dave perked up at the question, and Kingsley wondered whether he would regret asking; the man could go on and on about the most mundane things without realising he was boring you. When he got onto a subject that interested him, there seemed to be no end to the information he had stored in his brain about said subject. And it was hard to get him to stop talking when Leena wasn’t there to bluntly let him know that no one wanted to hear it.
“It can pick up signals across continents,” Dave went on, the speakers fizzling with static as he twisted a knob. “When I was a boy, dad used to love listening to broadcasts from different countries, even ones in languages he couldn’t understand. I think it was his way of escaping, closing his eyes and pretending he was somewhere else, far away across the ocean, just tuning in to the radio.
“Mum left it in my possession after he died, in a box along with a few other items of his which I grabbed before we left our home. It holds a lot of sentimental value to me. But I also thought it might be useful at some point to have a radio receiver. If, say, the military was to set up a safe zone or an extraction point for survivors and broadcast the location over the radio. Something like that. I only remembered I’d brought the thing with me when I was telling you about the web servers earlier.”
“Is that what you’re doing with it?” Kingsley said. “Listening for the military?”
“Not just the military. I’m listening for anything. There could be survivors anywhere in the world with important information about the virus. There might even be a place the virus hasn’t reached where we could go.” Dave shrugged.
He was silent as he turned a dial to adjust the frequency and listened for something breaking the static. That was another thing that could get him to shut up – giving him something else to concentrate on.
There was nothing useful on the bookshelves. It was full of all the philosophy textbooks that Brian used in his lectures at the university where he taught. So Kingsley started to walk out of the study.
But a sudden barrage of noise from the radio speakers stopped him in his tracks.
A voice. Speaking in a foreign language. He couldn’t even tell what language it was because of how hysterical the person speaking sounded. Maybe French, he thought, and it was definitely a female voice. She was almost babbling, and she kept repeating herself. Though he didn’t understand the words, Kingsley guessed it was a cry for help. Beneath that was the sound of something pounding fitfully against a wall or a door.
The two men shared a disturbed look. There was nothing they could do for the poor woman, whatever it was they could hear happening.
Dave turned the dial and the woman’s voice faded.
“What on earth was that?” Leena poked her head into the study, having heard the radio from out in the hallway.
Dave shrugged. “A transmission from abroad, by the sound of it. I don’t know what was happening on the other end but it didn’t sound good.”
“Tell me about it.”
He continued to twist the dial in small fractions. “I’m going
