Conrad Williams - One

Brendan and Angela were in the same position in which they'd left them, holding on to each other as if afraid that one of them might defy gravity. They regarded Becky and Aidan with a naked pleading.

'We found some portable oxygen canisters,' Jane told them. 'And enough Ventolin to clear out Kong's chest.'

Brendan asked Becky: 'Are you a doctor?'

Aidan said, 'Am I looks like a doctor?'

They were readying to leave, Jane making his final appeals to Becky who was shaking her head, backing away, feeling for the entrance to the hospital behind her. A klaxon went off, dopplering through the blistered, blustery sky like the appetite cry of some fantastic beast. Jane swivelled on the step. He could see nothing beyond the thick ranks of cemetery cars. Dust had turned them all the same colour. It was piled thickly on the windscreens, obliterating any views within.

The klaxon came again, closer. Was this the sound they had heard in the nights on their approach to the city? Jane doubted it; that had been more organic – this was compressed, synthetic, impersonal. It had the air of code about it; he imagined a gathering of weaponised shadows closing in around them. Spies on rooftops coordinating an attack.

'I don't like this,' he said.

'What?' Chris said. 'Survivors? Like us? Are you worried your trip down to London is going to be delayed even more?' 'It doesn't feel right,' Jane said.

'That's because nothing is right any more,' Nance said. Chris curled an arm around her, trying to disguise his surprise at her support.

Jane's eyes were fast on a road filled with shadow, fifty yards or so away, opposite the car-park entrance. Something had moved within it, he was certain. Now he saw it again. A figure peeled itself away from the shelter of an overturned ice-cream van. A white scarf clung to the lower half of its face. Jane squinted, confused. It looked like a child, no older than nine or ten. There was something wrong with it. Its pallor was waxen, unnatural. He might have guessed this was some kind of sculpture, a fashion dummy escaped from the shop window, had it not been for the movements it made.

The klaxon made itself known again through the treacly air. The child's head snapped to the left; Jane followed her lead, again distracted by the apparent failure of her physicality. Was she sick? Was she disabled in some way? She raised her hand and he frowned and felt a tip of the tongue moment, a thing observed and then forgotten at the moment he noticed it. But all this was dismissed from his thoughts when he saw a half-dozen heads bobbing past the procession of naked trees at the far end of the car park. Steel flashed.

'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!'