Autumn: The Human Condition (16 page)

Never a man to follow procedures (often because he didn't understand them), it wasn't until almost nine o'clock that Cox started to read through the emergency planning guidelines and manuals that lay around the dark and cluttered command room. Following step-by-step instructions with the painful, awkward slowness of someone who had avoided as much contact with technology as possible over the last few years, he eventually managed to get the radio working. He cursed the fact that he was so hopelessly inept. Forty-five minutes of fiddling and messing with the controls and all he could get was static punctuated by brief moments of silence. What he'd have given to hear another voice.

It felt like the morning would never come. The lack of natural light was strangely disorientating but, having slept intermittently for the last few hours, just after five o'clock Cox finally plucked up enough courage to get up from his seat and properly investigate his surroundings. He'd so far spent almost all of his time in the main command room but had also briefly visited the stores, the plant room (where the generators and air purification and conditioning equipment machinery was housed) and the bathroom. Moving slowly, and using the torch and dull emergency lighting to find his way around, he peered into two cramped and musty smelling dormitories and a hopelessly inadequate kitchen before returning to the heart of the bunker. Perhaps it was the lack of any proper lighting making things seem worse than they actually were, but the whole place seemed to have fallen into a state of terrible disrepair. He found himself cursing those (himself included) who had mocked the efforts of the EPC in those long and tedious council meetings. If only they'd been better prepared...

It was only when he returned to the command room that he realised just how much the body on the ground was still playing on his mind. Even though it was covered up and was almost impossible to see clearly, he found it difficult to be in the same room as the corpse. What if he was stuck in there for weeks or a month? Imagine the smell and the decay and... and he knew he had to do something about it. It took him over an hour to finally decide what to do, and a further forty-five minutes before he was ready to actually do it. He then shifted the dead bulk into one of the dark dormitories. Shelly Bright's body was stiff, awkward and cumbersome. Its arms and legs were frozen by rigor mortis and Cox had to push, pull and shove it in order to get the corpse from where she'd died, round the corner, down the corridor and into the dorm. Terrified, shaking uncontrollably, panting and sweating profusely he slammed the door shut and sobbed his way back to the command room.

If only there was a window in the main door or some other way that he could see what was happening outside. A part of him began to wonder whether the carnage he thought he'd seen above ground was really as bad as he'd thought. It all seemed so bizarre � had it really happened at all? Was this unbearable self-imposed incarceration necessary? Would he eventually emerge from the bunker to find everything back to normal above ground? He'd be a laughing stock (again). If he stayed down there long enough, someone would probably have moved into his office and taken over his desk...

The urge to open the door and take a look outside was almost impossible to resist. Just a quick look, he thought, just long enough to see what, if anything, was happening out there. Just long enough to see if there really were still bodies lying around and whether there were other people like him who had remained apparently untouched by what had happened. He knew that he couldn't risk it. In frustration he leant against the door and wept. Cox wept for the family and friends that he was sure he'd lost. He wept for the easy, comfortable life which he was certain was gone forever. First and foremost, however, he wept for himself. His retirement from office had been looming on the horizon and an even easier and more comfortable future was in the offing. Now, through no fault of his own, he found himself buried underground with only a corpse for company. Even worse than that, if and when he eventually emerged from the shelter, as potentially the last surviving council member his life would inevitably become harder and more complicated unless he found a way of resigning his position. Maybe he should have stayed outside and let it get him too...

Wait. What was that? He could feel cold air. A very slight breeze on the back of his hand. It was little more than the faintest of draughts coming from the side of the door just below its hinges. In sudden fear he stumbled and tripped further back into the bunker. The bloody door was supposed to be airtight. If he could feel a draught then the seal had been broken, and if the draft was coming from outside then whatever it was that had caused all the death and destruction out there had probably already seeped into the bunker. He scrambled away from the door and hid like a frightened child on the other side of the command room and waited for it to get him.

More than an hour had passed before Cox finally allowed himself to accept that he probably wasn't going to die, not yet, anyway. The people outside had been struck down in seconds. He'd been out there with them when it started and he'd been breathing in the same air (albeit in a filtered form) for more than a day. The fact that he might have some immunity to what had killed so many seemed even more improbable than the arrival of the infection itself. He didn't like to think about it. Cox distracted himself by eating a little food (a powdered meal which he made with cold water) and then fell asleep clutching a picture of Marcia which he'd found tucked amongst the crumpled bank notes, credit card receipts and out of date business cards he'd found stuffed in the back of his wallet.

He could hear something. Cox had been sleeping lightly again but a sudden and unexpected shuffling, bumping noise had disturbed his slumber. Something falling off a shelf? A problem with the generator or the pumps that were filtering and circulating the air? There it was again. He jumped up from his seat, a cold, nervous sweat immediately prickling his brow. In the deathly quiet of the bunker the direction of the noise was clear. It was coming from the dormitory where he'd left Shelly Bright's corpse. But it couldn't have been, could it? As much as he wanted to walk the other way, Cox forced himself to walk towards the room.

Another crash. The sound of someone tripping and falling? What the hell was going on in there? Was there another entrance to the bunker that he wasn't aware of?

Cox wiped the sweat from his forehead and cleared his throat.

`Hello...' he whispered meekly, too scared to raise his voice any louder. `Hello...?'

He lifted his hand to open the door and then stopped. Come on, he thought, this is bloody stupid. The main entrance to the bunker was sealed and he was sure there was only one way in or out of the dorm so how could there be anything on the other side of the door? He decided that it must have been rats or some other vermin that had somehow managed to tunnel their way in, although how they'd managed to do that when the place was supposed to be airtight was anyone's guess.

Another crash.

`Oh, Christ,' Cox moaned pathetically to himself. He was completely on his own. He didn't have anyone to hide behind now. He knew what he had to do.

Holding a torch in his left hand (both as a source of light and as a potential weapon), Counsellor Cox timidly shoved the door open and shone it into the room. The dull yellow circle illuminated the back wall opposite the door but nothing else. It must have just been...

`Bloody hell,' he cursed loudly as Shelly Bright tripped across the room in front of him. `What the bloody hell...?' He desperately shone the torch around until he found her again. There was no doubt that it was Bright, but how could it have been? She'd been dead since Tuesday morning, hadn't she? Cox stood rooted to the spot with confusion and fear. After all that he had been through over the last day or so, this new discovery was too much to take. He stared at the body with an uncomfortable mixture of bemusement and sheer terror and he only moved when the creature awkwardly turned itself around and, quite by chance, began to shuffle towards him. He held out his hand and shoved it away. It fell back and then dragged itself back up and walked away, stopping and turning again when it hit the wall at the far end of the room with a heavy, uncoordinated thud. Unable to go any further the cadaver slowly began to walk back towards him. Cox looked deep into its face. Its skin was unnaturally discoloured and its pupils dilated and unfocussed. Without waiting for it to get any closer the terrified counsellor slammed the door shut and gripped the handle tightly. He felt the sudden collision as the corpse hit the back of the door and then listened carefully as it turned and shuffled away again. He dragged a chair out of the other dormitory and wedged it under the handle, preventing it from being opened again.

Back in the command room Cox paced up and down with his hands over his ears, trying to block out the sound of the clumsy body clattering around. The sealed entrance to the bunker now looked more inviting than ever. He purposefully stormed over to the door, fully intending to open it, but then stopped. Although the bunker was obviously no longer airtight (he could still feel the cool draught from outside) he couldn't bring himself to take that final step and push his way back out into the unknown. It might have been hellish underground, but for all he knew it could have been a thousand times worse outside. Sitting tight and doing nothing was, for the moment, the lesser of two evils. With the sounds of the body still crashing around in the background Cox sank to the ground, covered his head with his hands and curled himself up into a ball. It never stopped. The bloody thing never stopped. All day the damn cadaver trapped in the other room moved constantly, smacking into the door, tripping over furniture, knocking things over � the noise, although not particularly loud, was enough to rattle Cox to the core. It was driving him insane. He had to get away from it.

It was almost seven o'clock. He'd been down in the bunker for a day and a half and he wanted out. All day he'd been sitting there in the semi-darkness, trying to decide what he should do. Did he go outside or stay down there and wait? The body would have to stop moving sooner or later, wouldn't it? It couldn't just keep going indefinitely. And how the bloody hell was it managing to move at all? Nothing made any sense.

Cox knew it was important to try and eat but the limited food supplies he had tasted bloody awful. A lover of rich, fatty foods and sugary sweets, cakes and puddings, his stomach was growling angrily and he seriously wondered whether he'd be able to survive on the meagre rations that had been stockpiled below ground. He was growing to detest every aspect of his grim and gloomy surroundings � the stale and musty, artificial smell, the noise of the body, the lack of any decent light. For a while he actually found himself crouching by the door in desperation, sniffing at the `fresh' air which was somehow managing to seep inside.

What's the point of sitting in here doing nothing, he dejectedly thought to himself? He wanted out. He wanted to go home and find his wife and find out what had happened to the rest of the world. He wanted to change his clothes and eat properly and be away from the damn body which was still moving around incessantly. So what was stopping him? Apart from the obvious fear and uncertainty and the fact that he still thought going outside might kill him, he realised that the main reason he wanted to stay underground was particularly cowardly and selfish. He silently admitted to himself that he didn't want to go up there because he didn't want the responsibility of having to do anything about the mess, and he definitely didn't want to have to take charge of what was left of Taychester. He couldn't do it. He knew he wouldn't be able to do it. But hang on a minute, why should he have to? Although in his early days at the council he'd had his fair share of appearances in the local papers, who would know who he was now and, more to the point, who would care? If he got into the car and drove away quickly, no-one would be any the wiser. He could get on with sorting out what was left of his own life and he could forget about everyone else. In the intense, claustrophobic darkness of the bunker, getting out gradually began to seem more and more like a good idea. Another crash from the dead body in the dormitory convinced him that the time was right to try and make his move. And anyway, he thought, what was there to lose when, in all probability, it looked like he'd already lost everything?

Cox grabbed his jacket and the torch and, after overcoming a final moment of uncertainty and self-doubt, strained to re-open the heavy bunker door. He groaned with effort. It wouldn't open and, for just a second, he panicked as he realised that he might never get out. Another hefty shove and it began to move. He cautiously stepped outside.

It was quiet. And cold. And dark.

Slowly, step by nervous step, Cox moved away from the bunker entrance and began the long climb back up the twisting concrete ramp which led back through the underground car park to the surface. Suddenly there was movement ahead which made him stop dead in his tracks � a single dark figure tripping across the width of the car park. He tried to call out but the silence which shrouded the scene was intense and he couldn't bring himself to make any noise. It didn't matter anyway. The person up ahead was in the same condition as the body he'd left down in the shelter, it was obvious even from a distance. The shadowy figure moved in the same awkward, listless and directionless way as Shelly Bright's remains had done and it failed to respond when he got closer to it, even when he crossed its path and was directly in its line of vision.

As Cox neared the surface the number of bodies around him increased. There were numerous corpses still lying where they'd fallen on the cold concrete and many more dragging themselves silently through the semi-darkness of early evening. In the strangest way he was slightly relieved � everything he'd thought he'd seen on Tuesday morning had actually happened. He hadn't imagined it. He walked past the security guard's hut and peered in through the window to see what remained of Potts scrambling around on the floor pathetically, trying desperately to stand but unable to pull itself up with useless, heavy arms.