Autumn: The Human Condition (25 page)

`You reckon?' Elizabeth snapped. `There doesn't seem to be much else happening in town this morning, does there? It looks like we're the main attraction.'

Bushell, Elizabeth, Wilcox and Proctor stood side by side at the window and stared down. The streets below were filled with grey, staggering bodies and in the absence of any other distraction the whole damn rotting mass seemed to be making its way towards the hotel.

There were already thousands of them down there, and thousands more were dangerously close.

DAY NINE

THE GARDEN SHED

Lester Prescott thrives on order and uniformity. On many levels he has constantly proved himself to be an inept and dysfunctional human being. He finds it difficult to connect with people emotionally. Although he has tried, over the years he has proved himself to be a boring and dull husband, a passion-free and unimaginative lover and, perhaps worst of all, a disappointment both as a father and role model. Lester has, however, excelled in other areas of his life. His home is pristine and perfect and is situated in a relatively well-to-do residential area, he is well respected socially and is the most accurate and productive accountant ever to have been employed by the firm of Ashcroft, Jenkins and Harman. Lester Prescott thinks in black and white. Show a child a cardboard box and they'll turn it into a spaceship, a plane, a car, a robot suit or whatever else their unrestricted imaginations can create. As far as Lester Prescott has always been concerned, however, a cardboard box is, was and only ever could be a cardboard box.

Prescott and his long-suffering wife Janice have been married for twenty-seven years and two months. For twenty-five of those years they've lived in the same semi-detached house a third of the way down Baker Road West . Twenty-three years ago next month their only child � Madeline � was born. Maddy, as she's known, left home at the age of eighteen to study. She loves her parents dearly but does her level best to only go back and see them when she absolutely has to. She recently qualified as a nurse and now works in a large hospital on the other side of town.

Last Tuesday morning Janice, Maddy and more than six billion other people were killed by the most virulent virus ever to curse the face of the planet. Much to his surprise, Lester Prescott survived.

Day eight ends and day nine begins. What will this day bring? This last week has been harder than I could ever have imagined and I need to stop and take some time out now. None of it makes any sense. I sometimes come here at night to try and work it all out. I sit here on the end of Maddy's bed and look around her room. It's just as she left it when she went to university. Mother and I didn't see any point in changing it until she'd got herself married and settled down in her own home. It'll never happen now, of course. I'll never change this room now. It's a little oasis of normality in a world that's gone completely mad.

The passage of time hasn't made any of this any easier to understand or deal with. The chain of events which began last Tuesday are still as confusing, inexplicable and painful as they were when they first happened. It started like just about every other Tuesday has started since I've worked for AJH. I arrived at work at ten to eight, got my desk ready and then started on my figures. Bill Ashcroft (one of the senior partners) was the first person it caught. He was standing talking to his secretary Allison when it took him. I then watched it work its way around the office, killing everyone around me, and I just sat there, too afraid to move, waiting for my turn. I still don't understand why it didn't get me. I don't know why I escaped. Before I knew it I was the only one left alive.

I left the office as quickly as I could, stopping only to put away my papers again, pack my briefcase and fetch my newspaper and coat from the cloakroom. I made my way home as fast as I could but the journey was harrowing and painfully slow. Outside it was as if someone had simply flicked a switch. Everyone seemed to have died at almost exactly the same moment. I saw hundreds of bodies down and cars crashed. It seemed to take me forever to work my way through the wreckage and get back to the house.

I had been thinking about Janice and Maddy constantly since leaving the office and I had hoped to return home to find Janice sitting there waiting for me. After all I seemed to have survived, so why shouldn't she have too? Sadly it wasn't to be. I found her in the kitchen, lying on her back on the floor in an inch and a half of water. The tap had been left running and the room was awash. My dear Janice was soaked through. I set to work sorting things out straight away. I dried her off as best I could and then wrapped her in a blanket and covered her with black plastic refuse sacks which I taped up. It wasn't an easy or pleasant task but I managed to get it done. It seemed a little undignified at the time, but I was acting in accordance with the instructions contained in the government information booklet we received last summer. Janice used to mock me because, by nature, I am occasionally pedantic and perhaps a little obsessive. She used to say that my attention to detail was infuriating. Thank goodness I am that way is all that I can say. As a result of the filing system I've implemented in my study I was able to lay my hands on the booklet immediately and deal with my wife's body quickly, humanely and hygienically, just as the government had instructed.

As I worked to move Janice's body and clean up the mess in the kitchen I kept a constant eye out for Maddy. I felt sure that she'd come home before long and I wanted to make sure that Mother had been properly dealt with before she arrived. My mood darkened with every minute that passed. As if losing my closest companion hadn't been enough for one day, with each second that ticked by it looked increasingly likely that my only child was gone too. Eventually, at half-past one that afternoon, I could sit and wait no longer. I set out to find her. Once again my progress outside was frustratingly difficult and slow. I arrived at the hospital in an hour and ten minutes and immediately started to look for her. According to my notes she should have been on duty but I couldn't find her. I had an awful time searching through the bodies for Maddy. So many poor, innocent people had lost their lives so suddenly and inexplicably...

When I couldn't find her on any of the wards she covered I worked my way back from the hospital to the house she shared with her friends Jenny and Suzanne. It was there that I found our little girl in her front garden, lying on her back in the long grass. Bloody hell, she deserved much more than that. Such a cruel, sudden and undignified end to such a short and beautiful life. It broke my heart to see her like that. I put her in the car and brought her back home with me. I dealt with her body in accordance with official instructions, just as I had Mother's.

It was impossible and undignified to leave my family out on the patio as I had done. They both deserved so much more than that. I read through the government booklet again that afternoon. It said that the bodies of any fatalities should be buried away from the house. Dejectedly I decided I would have to do just that. I dragged them both the length of the garden to the small area of lawn between the garden shed and Maddy's old swing. We'd originally brought her that swing on her sixth birthday but Mother and I decided we'd keep it even after she'd grown out of it and stopped using it. It was always there to remind us of her. She used to have so much fun playing on it with her friends. Even now whenever I look at it all I can see is young Maddy swinging on it in the summer sunshine. We had hoped that we'd have grandchildren to use it one day.

I unlocked the shed and went inside.

The garden shed has always been my escape. As well as being a very practical and convenient storage space, it was also a quiet and comfortable little area where I could sit and work or read my paper or listen to sport on the radio. Maddy and her mother liked their television and their soap operas but I couldn't abide the constant noise and distraction. Quite often � almost daily in the summer months, certainly most weekends � I would shut myself away in the shed and relax in my own company with a cup of tea or a glass of something stronger.

Before I picked up my tools I sat down on the deck chair in the corner of the shed and tried to take stock of all that had suddenly happened around me. Sitting there it was hard to comprehend the enormity and finality of what had happened and I could hardly believe that my wife and daughter's lifeless bodies lay just inches away. With tears in my eyes I looked around the little wooden hut and remembered all that I had lost. The season was almost over and the mower and some of the garden tools had been cleaned and were ready to be put away. On the opposite wall was where I stored the summer things that Maddy and her mother used to use; plastic patio furniture, sun-loungers and deck chairs, garden games and the like. In a small wooden box tucked away in one corner I found a collection of brightly coloured buckets and spades which I had again kept for those grandchildren who would now never arrive. They reminded me of many summer holidays now long gone where Maddy, Mother and I would spend endless days playing on the beach in the blistering sun. All of that seemed hundreds of miles and thousands of years away now.

With a heavy heart I stood up, picked up my spade and the garden edging tool, and set to work. I took a rough measurement of the length and width of Maddy's body (she was slightly taller and thicker set than her mother) and marked out the shape of the two graves in the turf close together. I carefully lifted the turf and then spent the next two hours digging. Although we used to go to church most Sundays I wasn't quite sure what I should say before I covered up their bodies. It was difficult to think of the right words. I loved them both very much but I've always found it hard to properly express my feelings. Being gushing, emotional and romantic was something I've always struggled with, such words have never come naturally to me. In any event I thanked God for their lives and asked that they would now find peace. They were good people and I was confident they would. I was far less sure about what the future had in store for me.

I'm not the kind of man who sits around feeling sorry for myself. I wouldn't have been doing anyone any favours if I'd just sat there and done nothing. I spent a lot of time over the first two days of the crisis trying to make sense of what had happened but I soon realised that it was impossible. No answers were forthcoming. More to the point, I couldn't find anyone or anything to help me find those answers. Strange as it seemed, the whole world seemed to suddenly have died. The whole world, that was, except me. I read through the government booklet again and again but it was of little help. It kept talking about how the authorities would help and how I should sit and wait for further instructions from them. I was ready to sit and wait, but I was pretty certain that no further instructions were ever going to come. As far as I could tell (and I didn't do anything to verify the validity of my claim) I was the only man left alive.

So what did I need to do in order to sit and wait? I had plenty of food at the house, but it was already clear that I'd need more. With each hour that passed it seemed more and more likely that what had happened was going to take many weeks and months, possibly even years to sort out � if it ever got sorted out at all. I needed to be ready to fend for myself for a long, long time. With that in mind I took the car round to the shops and started to collect supplies. Food, cleaning materials, clothing, medicines... even books, paper and pens. I had already realised that it would be important to try and keep myself occupied both physically and mentally. I had written myself a comprehensive list that ran to almost two full sheets of paper. I managed to get just about everything I needed and it took two trips in the car to get it all back home. It didn't feel right taking such a large amount of goods without paying, but I had no means of making payment and there was obviously no-one there to make payment to. Instead I made a second list of what I'd taken and also the cost of each individual item. When some semblance of normality finally returned, I decided, I would go back and make a payment for everything I had been forced to take. The proprietors of the shops involved, if they ever returned, would undoubtedly understand.

The third morning was as frightening and disorientating as the first had been. Just when I was beginning to get used to my situation it changed again. On the third morning many of the bodies that had fallen and died suddenly began to drag themselves back up onto their feet again. When I saw the first of them I hoped that was the end of it, that this was the first indication of an impending return to normality. It quickly became clear that was not the case. The bodies that had moved were unresponsive and slow. I stood out in the middle of the road in front of the house and stopped the body of Judith Springer from number 19 as it staggered past the end of the drive. I had known Judith and her husband Roy for many years, but the cold, empty creature which stood in front of me that morning was most certainly not Mrs Springer. It looked the same (save for a few unpleasant signs of deterioration) but it failed to react as a normal human being should. For goodness sake, the bloody thing wasn't even breathing.

I shut my door on the rest of the world again and went through to the back of the house. What about Maddy and her mother? Had their condition changed also? I found myself faced with the bizarre and repulsive (but very real) possibility that the wife and daughter I had buried just two days earlier might now be trying to escape from their hastily dug graves. I made my way through to the back garden and crouched down next to the two slightly raised humps in the turf. There had been no change as far as I could see. I didn't know what to do for the best. I lay there and put my ear to the ground and listened but I couldn't hear anything and I couldn't feel any movement. I reminded myself that not all of the bodies outside were moving again, some still lay where they had fallen. I didn't know whether Maddy and her mother remained motionless or whether I had buried them too deep for them to be able to get out. For a second I seriously contemplated digging them up and exhuming their bodies, but what would that have achieved? If they were capable of moving, so what? What difference would it have made? Judith Springer, as vacuous and uninteresting as I had always found her, was most certainly dead, despite the fact that she was suddenly and inexplicably mobile again. I decided that it was kinder both to Maddy and her mother to leave them where they were and preserve what remained of their dignity.