He leant against the storeroom door and peered into the main hall. The brilliant orange sunlight of dusk poured into the building from above his head, illuminating everything with vibrant, almost fluorescent colour. Curious as to the source of the light, he took a few steps out of the room and turned back around. In the sloping ceiling just above the door was a narrow skylight. The storeroom he had hidden in had been added as an extension to the original building and when he had arrived he had noticed that it had a flat roof. Sensing that his escape was at hand, Henshawe climbed onto a wooden table, stretched up and forced the skylight open. He dragged himself through and scrambled out onto the asphalt roof.
The coldest wind he had ever felt buffeted and blew him as he stood exposed on the ten foot square area of roof. From the furthest edge he could see out over the main road into Northwich and into the dead city beyond. By moving only his eyes he followed the route of the road as it splintered away to the left and headed off in the general direction of Hadley, the small suburb where he had lived. The small suburb where the bodies of his partner and child lay together in bed. In his mind he could still picture them both, frozen still and lifeless, their perfect bodies stained with dark, drying blood, and suddenly the icy wind seemed to blow even colder. For a while he considered driving back to them. The very least they deserved was a proper burial and some dignity. The pain he felt inside was unbearable and he dropped to his knees and held his head in his hands.
From his vantage point he could see countless bodies, and it struck him as strange and unnerving to think that he was already used to seeing the corpses. Before all this had happened he’d only ever seen one dead body, and at that time it had seemed an unusual and alien thing. He had been at his mother’s side when she’d died. As the life had drained away from her he had watched her change. He’d seen the colour blanch from her face and her expression freeze and had watched the last breath of air be exhaled from her fading body. He’d seen her old and frail frame become heavy and useless. She’d had little strength towards the end, but even then it had taken just a single nurse to help her get around. When she died it took two male porters to lift her from her bed and take her away.
Parts of the city in the distance were burning. Huge thick palls of dirty black smoke stretched up into the orange evening sky from unchecked fires. As he watched the smoke climb relentlessly his wandering mind came up with countless explanations as to how the fires could have started – a fractured gas main perhaps? Or a crashed petrol tanker? A body lying too close to a gas fire? He knew that it was pointless even trying to think about reasons why, but he had nothing else to do. And at least thinking like that helped him to forget about Gemma and Sarah for a while.
He was about to go back inside when one of the bodies in the road caught his eye. He didn’t know why, because the body was unremarkable in the midst of the confusion and carnage. The corpse was that of a teenage boy who had fallen and smashed his head against a kerb stone. His neck was twisted awkwardly so that whilst he was lying on his side, his glazed eyes were looking up into the sky. It was as if he was searching for explanations. Carl felt almost as if he was looking to him to tell him what had happened and why it had happened to him. The poor kid looked so frightened and alone. Carl couldn’t stand to look into his pained face for more than a couple of seconds.
He went back inside, and the cold and uncomfortable community hall suddenly seemed the safest and warmest place in the world.
7
Carl eventually returned to the other survivors and found them sitting in a rough circular group in one corner of the dark main hall. Some sat on chairs and benches whilst others were crouched down on the hard linoleum floor. The group was gathered around a single dull gas lamp and a quick count of the heads he could see revealed that he seemed to be the only absentee. A few of the poor bewildered souls glanced up at him as he approached.
Feeling suddenly self-conscious (but knowing that he had no reason to care) he sat down at the nearest edge of the group. He sat down between two women. He’d been trapped in the same building as them for the best part of a day and yet he didn’t even know their names. He knew very little about anyone and they knew very little about him. As much as he needed their closeness and contact, he found the distance between the individual survivors still strangely welcome.
A man called Ralph was trying to address the group. From his manner and the precise, thoughtful way that he spoke Carl assumed he’d been a barrister or, at the very least, a solicitor until the world had been turned upside down yesterday morning.
‘What we must do,’ Ralph said, clearly, carefully and slowly and with almost ponderous consideration, ‘is get ourselves into some sort of order here before we even think about exploring outside.’
‘Why?’ someone asked from the other side of the group. ‘What do we need to get in order?’
‘We need to know who and what we’ve got here. We need food and water, we need bedding and clothes and we should be able to find most of that in here. We also need to know what we haven’t got and we should start thinking about where to get it.’
‘Why?’ the voice interrupted again. ‘We know we’ll find everything we need outside. We shouldn’t waste our time in here, we should just get out and get on with it.’
Ralph’s confidence was clearly a professional facade and, at the first sign of any resistance, he squirmed. He pushed his heavy-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of his nose with the tip of his finger and took a deep breath.
‘That’s not a good idea. Look, I think we’ve got to make our personal safety and security our prime concern and then…’
‘I agree,’ the voice interrupted again. ‘But why stop here? There are a thousand and one better places to go, why stay here? What makes you any safer here than if you were lying on the dotted white line in the middle of the Stanhope Road?’
Carl shuffled around so that he could see through the mass of heads and bodies and identify the speaker. It was Michael, the bloke who had cooked the soup earlier.
‘We don’t know what’s outside…’ Ralph began.
‘But we’ve got to go out there eventually, you accept that?’
He stammered and fiddled with his glasses again.
‘Yes, but…’
‘Look, Ralph, I’m not trying to make this any more difficult than it already is. We’ve got to leave here to get the supplies we need. All I’m saying is why bother delaying it and why bother coming back? Why not go somewhere else?’
Ralph couldn’t answer. It was obvious to Carl and, probably, to pretty much everyone else, that the reason Ralph didn’t want to go outside was the same reason Stuart Jeffries had admitted to wanting to stay trapped in the hall earlier. They were both scared.
‘We could try and find somewhere else,’ he began, hesitantly, ‘but we’ve got a shelter here which is secure and…’
‘And cold and dirty and uncomfortable,’ Carl said quickly.
‘Okay, it’s not ideal but…’
‘But what?’ pressed Michael. ‘It seems to me that we can pretty much have our pick of everywhere and everything at the moment.’
The room fell silent for a few seconds. Ralph suddenly sat up straight and pushed his glasses back up his nose again. He seemed to have found a reason to justify staying put.
‘But what about the music and the fire?’ he said, much more animated. ‘Stuart and Jack managed to bring us all here by lighting the fire and playing music. If we did it again we might find more survivors. There might already be people on their way to us.’