Demise of the Living (20 page)

“We need to go out and get
food,” Thomas said sternly.

“
It’s too dangerous,”
Sharon said. “Besides, this whole thing could blow over in a couple
of days.”

“
This isn’t some passing
rain storm
,”
Thomas said. “We can’t just duck under cover for a few minutes and
carry on. This is the fucking apocalypse.”

“I think you’re exaggerating a
bit there,” John said.

“Take a look outside and tell
me you see rainbows and sunshine.”

“Look, I agree with you both,”
Colin said, cutting in over John’s forthcoming rebuttal.“We need
food and it’s a mess outside. This thing is obviously wide-scale,
but it doesn’t mean we won’t have the police or the army strolling
down that road at any moment. This is big.It’s bound to take the
government time to organise. I think we look to being rescued, but
we prepare for being on our own.”

“Sense at last,” Thomas
said.

“Well, what would you propose?”
Sharon asked Colin.

“We’ve got food for today and
tomorrow. If the situation’s the same outside tomorrow, I say we go
looking for supplies.”

“Is that okay with everybody?”
Sharon asked.

There was a round of nods.

“
Okay, when we meet back
here at nine a.m. tomorrow, I want you all to have thought about
the best way to go about this. We’ll spend Wednesday planning and
organizing, and if there’s no change to our situation, then my
suggestion is to put our plans in action first thing Thursday
morning. Now, is there any other business?”

“
Cigarettes,” Magda said
in a crisp voice.

“I’m sorry?” Sharon said, not
sure what was meant by the statement.

“Were cigarettes found?” Magda
asked.

“I… I don’t know. Maybe John or
Thomas can shed some light on that?”

“
Yes,” John said
emphatically. He turned over a few sheets in his
notepad.

Thomas slouched back, somewhat
deflated by the prospect that he would have to share. He felt the
bulge of the packet in his pocket and was grateful he’d managed to
at least pilfer those.

“
Here we go,” John said.
“Do you want the totals by type or desk?”

“How many cigarettes?” Alex
asked bluntly.

“
Um...” John scanned his
notes. “Two full packs, which is forty cigarettes, and a further
thirty-four loose. That’s seventy-four in total.”

The two Polish cleaners started
muttering to each other incomprehensibly. After a moment Magda
spoke.

“
Is twenty-four each
between three of us, is it not?” she said, casting an eye over Alex
and Thomas.

Alex turned to Billy.

“
Do you smoke?” she asked
in her heavily-accented English.

Billy nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I
do.”

Thomas opened his mouth to
protest, but then thought better of it.

“Okay,” Sharon agreed.

“
Between
five
,” Liz suddenly
interjected.

Everyone at the table turned
their heads to gawk at Liz.

“But you don't smoke,” Melissa
said firmly.

Liz nodded, but didn’t
make eye contact with her daughter. “I used to before you were
born. I feel like restarting.”

“
Now’s not the time to
start smoking again,” Thomas said. “Besides, you’d only get a few
days’ supply. It hardly seems worth it."

“Yeah, it’s a bad habit to
restart,” Colin added.

“I want a smoke,” Liz said.

Thomas shrugged. “Come
now—”

“Give me a fucking cigarette!”
Liz shouted, slamming her fists on the table.

Melissa jolted back, shocked by
her mother’s behaviour.

“This isn’t worth an argument,”
Sharon said diplomatically. “I don’t see any reason why Liz
shouldn’t get a cut of the found cigarettes.”

“So that works out at fourteen
each,” John said. “Well, fourteen each and four left over. I don’t
know how you want to work that one out.”

Sharon stood up. Liz was still
fuming and her daughter looked ready to burst into tears.

“I think we can call this
meeting adjourned. John will take care of the cigarette situation
and we’ll meet back here tomorrow morning at nine am with
contingency plans in case we don’t get rescued.”

Without waiting for the room to
acknowledge her, Sharon turned and left.

***

“There’s someone else here,”
Karen said, putting the plates down.

Entering into the first
aid room she had almost convinced herself that Shan left the
footprints, maybe having decided to take a stroll while Karen made
something to eat. That hope had vanished as she entered the room
and saw Shan fast asleep on the medical bed.

“There’s someone else in the
school,” Karen repeated.

Shan pushed back the
rough blanket like a child in a tantrum and tried to focus on what
her friend was saying. She started to yawn, but winced when the
pain snapped at her cheek.

“Someone else—who?” Shan
asked.

“I don’t know who,” Karen
whispered harshly.

“Is it like the Janny, or one
of the teachers, or some random?”

“I don't know. All I saw were
their footprints.”

“Maybe they were made weeks ago
and you just didn’t notice them,” Shan reasoned.

Karen shook her head
vigorously. “No, it was the water. The footprints were from the
water—they would have dried out.”

“Let’s look,” Shan said,
swinging her legs off the bed.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“It could be anyone or even one
of those things,” Karen said.

Shan picked up the lump of
concrete in one hand.

“
Then we’ll take care of
them like we did at the farm,” she said.

“No, Shan, we shouldn’t have
done that,” Karen said.

“He fucking asked for it. Now
shut up and show me where those footprints are,” Shan demanded.

She grabbed hold of the
door handle and threw the door open. She stepped in to the
corridor.

“
Which way?” she asked
flatly.

Karen pointed and followed
after her. Eventually the pair reached the junction in the
corridor.

“
Up that way,” Karen
said. “The tracks went up that way.”

“I don’t see any,” Shan said,
sticking out her bottom lip.

“There were wet. They must have
dried up.”

“You don’t say,” Shan snorted
dismissively.

Karen walked down the hallway
back in the direction of the kitchen. There she reacquired the
trail.

“Over here,” Karen said.

Shan sauntered over, bereft of
her friend’s sense of urgency.

“Yeah?” Shan asked.

She played with the lump of
concrete, spinning it around in her hand and testing its weight by
bouncing it in her palm.

“Down there you can see my
prints and the second person’s side-by-side,” Karen pointed
out.

Shan bent down to examine the
marks.

The water was indeed
drying out and the footprints had started to evaporate and
contract.

“I don’t see it,” Shan admitted
after studying the tracks.

“They’ve dried out a bit, but
those ones are far bigger than mine.”

“
Or the smaller ones are
you first time round and they’ve dried up, making the other look
bigger.” Shan stood up, satisfied with her answer. “I’m hungry.
Let’s eat.”

She turned back to the sick
bay.

Karen stood in the
hallway for a moment, inspecting the marks on the floor.

“I didn’t just imagine those,”
she said to herself.

She looked back up at Shan.

“I didn’t imagine it!” Karen
shouted.

Shan turned round. “Come
on, supper’s getting cold.”

She turned but her path was
blocked. Standing in front of her was a tall pale woman.

Shan raised her arm up and
brought the concrete hammer down as hard as she could.

The woman started to say, “What
are you two—”

Shan’s blow struck the woman
directly on the temple. There was a dull crack that sounded like a
fresh twig snapping and the woman stopped talking.

She remained standing for
an instant, then keeled over sideways. She toppled into the wall,
her head snapping backwards as she crashed to the floor.

Karen screamed.

Shan stood there holding the
makeshift weapon, frozen in astonishment.

The woman lay on the
floor, her head cocked at a peculiar angle, her legs crumpled
underneath her.

Karen gulped in a couple of
sharp breaths and then continued screaming.

“Shut up!” Shan shouted
hysterically.

Ignoring her, Karen kept on
screaming.

Shan walked up to her friend
and slapped her across the face.

“Shut up!”

“That was Miss Alvarez!” Karen
said, staring at the body.

“She was one of those mental
people,” Shan said.

“She spoke—she was normal,”
Karen replied.

“She was one of those fucked
fuckers, Karen,” Shan said more forcefully.

A pool of blood was oozing out
of the dead teacher’s auburn hair and onto the floor with
surprising rapidity.

Karen stepped back,
shaking her head. She stuttered, “No… no, she...”

Shan dropped the weapon and
grabbed Karen by the shoulders.

“
She was one of them and
she attacked us,” she said menacingly. “You got that?”

Karen shook her head
slightly.

“You got that?” Shan asked
again.

Karen could sense the
anger in Shan bubbling up just like it did yesterday.

“If anyone asks when this is
all over, she was one of them,” Shan said.

Karen looked her in the eyes
and saw the animal ferocity barely being kept in check.“

”Okay,” Karen said softly, too
terrified to say anything else.

“Good. Now dinner’s getting
cold. We can deal with this mess later.”

Shan casually stepped over the
body and walked back to the first aid room.

Karen gazed down at the
dead teacher and the oozing blood, her appetite completely
lost.

***

“
Okay, what have we got?”
John asked, looking at the food.

There was a pitiful selection
of sandwiches spread out on one of the desks.

“Just a minute,” Sharon
said.

She picked up the first
sandwich and placed it running straight to the table edge. Then she
picked up the next one and laid it down alongside with an inch of
clearance. One by one she did this until all five of the
traditional sandwiches were in a neat row. Then she lay down the
tortilla wrap and the two long French-style baguettes at the
end.

“Ten of us and eight
sandwiches,” Sharon announced as if no one else could count.

“There’s a couple of baguettes
there,” Colin noted. “We could cut them in half. They’re a bit
bigger than the rest.”

“Well I’ve got my eye on the
Cajun chicken wrap,” John said.

“What if I want that one?”
Thomas said.

“Jeez—we’re not going to start
that bullshit are we?” Colin huffed.

“Look, there’s plenty to choose
from,” Sharon said.

“I don’t mind which one I get,”
Liz said, trying to be conciliatory.

Mo bobbed in and took a look at
the assembled sandwiches.

“I don’t mind as long as it
doesn’t have pork or prawns,” he said.

“I don’t like prawns neither,”
Thomas said.

“
This is going to descend
into chaos if we don’t come up with a pragmatic method,” Sharon
said.

“
Okay, so what do we do?”
Colin asked. “Draw lots to decide who picks first and second and so
on?”

“I have a better idea,” Sharon
said.

She sat down at her desk and
pulled out a notepad and pen. On the blank page she wrote out her
name three times, turned the page over and then wrote out Colin
three times.

“What you doing?” Billy
asked.

“
It’s simple,” Sharon
said, still writing names in the notebook. “We bid for the sandwich
we most want.”

She tugged the pages from the
notebook and handed out the sheets.

She instructed, “Tear
these into three strips each with your name on it. You now have
three bids. If there’s a sandwich you really want, you put all
three of your chits on it. If you’re not too bothered, but have a
preference, you can spread your bids around.”

“What if we all put three on
the Cajun wrap?” Colin asked.

“Then it won’t work,” Sharon
said. “But if, say, I put three on the Cajun wrap and you only put
two then I get the wrap and you get your second choice.”

“Yeah, if no one else has put
three on Colin’s next favourite,” Thomas said.

“And what if me and you both
put ours on the Cajun wrap?” Billy asked. “What then?”

“Then we toss for it and
whoever loses has to eat the sandwich no one wanted,” Sharon
said.

Colin shook his head. “It
sounds overly complicated.”

“It’s market forces at work,”
Sharon said confidently. “It will work, trust me.”

“Might as well give it a try,”
Billy said.

“What we do?” Magda asked,
puzzled by the whole situation.

“Write down on your slips of
paper which sandwich you like. Remember you can spend all your
chits on just one or spread them around.”

Sharon stepped over to
the confused cleaners and ran through the concept again, trying to
dismantle the language barrier.

“Cajun Wrap’s getting a lot of
attention. I’d avoid that one,” Billy said jokingly.