Конрад Уильямс - One

‘We ought to leave,’ Jane said. ‘Is there another way out of the hospital?’

Becky led them back through the corridors. Jane heard something slam behind them. A crash. A cheer.

Chris said, ‘Survivors,’ but made no other attempt to get them to return. They were something other than survivors. They were drunk on that survival, or cursed by it. They had things on their mind other than finding family, or swapping tales of how they had dodged the breath of the devil. Survivors didn’t knock about city streets clutching weapons, insanity flooding out of their wide-open mouths.

They were trying not to run, trying not to admit the panic in their legs, but they weren’t far off it. Angela’s breathing was shallow, irregular, edged with pain and fright. Brendan ushered her into a wheelchair and Jane didn’t know what was worse, the protest of her lungs or the squeal of a loose castor.

‘Did they see us?’ Jane asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Nance said.

‘Maybe they’re coming here to stock up on pills,’ Becky said. ‘Maybe I ought to stick with you after all.’

The noise of pursuit carried on after the point where they would have reached the pharmacy.

‘I get a feeling they saw us,’ Chris said, risking the ire of his girlfriend for contradicting her.

Now they were running. Becky led them to a reception area on the east side of the hospital. A café was filled with patients and visitors obese with death. A security guard’s hand was splayed on a visitors’ book, his ravaged eyes downcast, tongue protruding as if in revulsion over his swollen, polished fingers. His skin was like paper, the heat had driven out the moisture from his bones. He was little more than a pillar of salt in a uniform.

They filed out, heads snapping this way and that as they searched for a path to safety, or somewhere to hide.

‘Keep moving. Let’s try to stay close and change direction as often as we can.’

They made their way through houses and shops, café kitchens into back alleys, hotel lobbies – Nance was eager to hide out in the rooms, but Jane’s flesh tightened whenever they went indoors.

Eventually, with Angela close to tears and Brendan in need of oxygen himself after pushing his wife for so long, Becky asked if they might be safe now.

Jane stood still, looking back the way they had come. He waited a long time. Something in him, some diver’s sensitivity to pressure change, suggested they were being followed.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I think we can rest for a while. But not too long, yes?’

‘Well, that’ll be for us to decide,’ Chris said. Jane noticed the change in him, how he became cockier, more aggressive, when the number of companions increased.

‘Of course,’ Jane said. ‘But if you’re coming with me, I want to crack on.’

‘We haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet,’ Chris said.

Jane snorted. ‘I’m sorry. I’m finding it hard to care. But in ten minutes, I’ll be leaving. Anyone who wants to come along is welcome. Whatever you do, seriously, good luck.’

Chris wouldn’t be mollified. Nance was egging him on with her eyes, with her body language. Jane gave him every opportunity, backing off, turning away, but Chris was at the point where any kind of retreat would be seen as cowardice. Nance would gut him for it later.

‘Every step of the way you’ve been laying down the law,’ Chris said. ‘I’m not used to being ordered around.’

Jane couldn’t suppress his laughter.

He felt Chris’s hands on him, a push, a provocation. He felt fingers tighten on his jacket, turning him around.

‘Maybe things can change a little bit,’ Chris said, his fury spitting between clenched teeth, empurpling his face.

‘You can be in charge all you like, Chris,’ Jane said. ‘Look around you. The world is all yours. Build an army. Go on a rampage. Conquer your enemies. Shout at their dead faces. Call them names—’

Chris hit him. The sound of the punch was flat and pathetic in this dead space. Jane felt a brief flare of pain in the lower left side of his jaw and thought he heard a distant scream, like those that had haunted them on their last few nights in the countryside.

Angela and Brendan turned away. Becky and Aidan watched with open mouths. Nance seemed excited, turned on almost, but confused too; perhaps she had been expecting a fight. Jane’s pacific reaction was not in her copy of the script.

Jane readjusted his goggles, removed the air filter from his mouth and spat. Clean. ‘What are you thinking, Chris?’ Becky asked. ‘We survived this terrible thing. There are hundreds of thousands, probably more like millions of people dead, and you’re giving someone a slap because they said something you didn’t like? Jesus.’

‘Jesus,’ Aidan said.

Jane kept his mouth shut. He stared at Chris, seeing the fight crumble out of him. Chris held up a finger; his hand was shaking violently: all that adrenaline crammed into his muscles and nowhere to go.

‘A warning,’ Chris said, but his voice could not invest in the weight of what he was trying to say.

They weren’t safe.

As soon as they moved on they heard whooping noises again. Sounds of joy taken by some as yet unknown quantity into the realms of nightmare. These were violence sounds, death sounds. They carried on the wind currents like vengeful ghosts. Angela pushed herself up from the wheelchair and cried out: ‘Leave us alone!’

Jane put a hand on her shoulder but it was too late. The whooping had stopped. Now they could hear determined footsteps slapping towards them.

‘Keep your heads down,’ Jane said. ‘Don’t make eye contact. Give them what they want. Don’t give them an excuse to hurt us.’

There were six of them – five men and a girl, all of indeterminate age – and they came sprinting out of Castles Farm Road. They did not look good. Their heads had either been shaved to the quick or burned back almost to bone. They looked like something peeled and bruised and sore: too pink, purple and moist. Their blasted faces carried eyes that were overly bright, too intense. Jane wondered if they could focus properly; it was clear they had taken drugs of some sort. And then he saw the melted eyelids, the skin hanging off them like strips of torn material, and he understood why. They were not going to live for long.

‘You!’ one of them screamed, and they all swerved towards Jane, like starlings at dusk.

Jane again cursed their lack of a weapon, especially when he saw the ice axes hanging from their belts. He hoped that a lack of obvious threat might work in their favour; Angela and Aidan too. The gang didn’t stop moving, even when they were within metres of their quarry. They prowled and twitched and spat and perspired. Nobody said anything until Angela again rose.

‘Sit yourself back down!’ the girl screamed. Metal studs poked out of her shoulders. Her shaven head was pockmarked with razor scars and slashes; it was difficult to guess if any were deliberate.

The girl wore a T-shirt bearing the legend I LOVE GIRLS THAT LOVE GIRLS . Some of the men wore knuckledusters. The pain they felt was there in their eyes; you could see it beyond the gauze of narcotics, you could hear it in every laboured inhalation.

‘We have painkillers,’ Jane said.

One of the men, a tall bull-shouldered figure with lips so dry they had blackened, laughed and unclipped one of the ice axes. He buried it to the hilt in his own thigh. They knew they were going to die.

‘We have water too,’ Jane said. They were clearly dehydrated. They were high on whatever they had injected or swallowed, but also on the natural chemicals with which their failing bodies had flooded their bloodstreams.

‘Fuck your water!’ The girl again, stabbing her head into his airspace like a weapon. ‘ What are you doing here? This is our sweetshop. You been stealing sweets? ’