“Um, yeah,” Colin said. He hesitated before adding, “I really should have tried to get to the school. There might be kids waiting there.”
“You’re kidding, right?” John said. “What parent would take their precious darlings to the school with that going on outside?”
“You don’t know the kids we were supposed to be taking,” Colin said. “Anyway, I guess you’re right. The headmaster was calling the parents to tell them the trip was cancelled. I was just going as a precaution.”
“I used to work with this guy once. Nice enough, but you knew something wasn’t quite right,” John said, giving no indication he was talking to Colin. “He was part of some Christian group. Said the world was going to end. The nutter went and sold everything he had—house, car, all his possessions, quit his job, the whole lot.” He shook his head. “Don’t know what he and his wife were doing at the turn of the millennium, but I doubt they had as much as the rest of us.”
“Before my time,” Colin said.
John snorted, “Forgot how young you are.” He pushed himself up onto his tiptoes for a second like he was stretching his calves out. He went on, “I bumped into him on the street a few weeks later. I didn’t say anything outright; I just asked how it was going. He didn’t mention anything about the fact we were all still here. Turns out his ministry was sending him and his wife to Russia to spread the ‘Good Word’. Guess they were too embarrassed to stay. But you’ve got to wonder if he saw all this coming or if he was just as boned as the rest of us.” John took a bite from his sandwich. A sprinkling of crumbs cascaded from his mouth as he talked. “I guess if God wasn’t talking to him in two thousand, why would he start now right?”
Colin looked across at the sandwich held between podgy fingers and watched it being quickly devoured by those slobbering lips.
“Hey, I’m getting kind of famished. Is there somewhere I can get something to eat?” he asked. He was genuinely starting to feel hungry, but there was something repugnant about John that impelled Colin to leave his company.
“Well, I guess the deli down the street is out of the question, but there is a vending machine in the canteen downstairs, behind the reception desk where you came in,” John said without taking his eyes off the carnage outside.
“Where the TV is?” Colin asked.
“Oh yeah, I forget you’ve been down already. Yeah, down there,” John said, stuffing another mouthful in.
Colin bobbed his head a little to acknowledge John’s answer and then made his way to the door.
He walked past rows of empty desks. There must be space for a hundred staff in this office, but only a handful of them made it in this morning and one of them had left already.
He got to the door and pulled the handle, but the door didn’t budge. He pulled again, wondering if he’d done something wrong, but still it stuck fast.
“Hey, John,” Colin shouted down the office. “Is there a knack to this?”
John started to say something, but his mouth was too full. Instead he waved and started over. He was still chewing when he reached Colin.
“How do—” Colin began, but stopped speaking when John raised a finger in the air to silence him.
John made an overly pronounced swallow and smacked his lips. He said,
“It’s a swipe thingy.” He held out his ID badge on its lanyard.
He pressed it up against a small grey box at the side of the door and there was an audible clunk. He pushed the door open.
“There you go,” John said.
“Thanks.”
Colin stepped through.
It was only after the door closed behind him that he began to consider just how would he get back in. He thought of rapping on the thick windowpane to get John’s attention again and ask him what he should do, but he decided not to worry about that just yet. Instead he skipped down the stairs to the ground floor and the staff canteen.
When he got there he had a shock. There were three people sitting at a table watching the satellite feed. They all turned to look at him as he entered.
Colin recognized Mo the security guard, but there were two women sitting with him, smoking and drinking coffee. They both looked gaunt and pale, not unlike the insane people outside. Each wore a blue apron and one had a matching blue bandana that kept her hair out of the way. The younger of the two wore a distinctive red and yellow shirt under her dull tabard.
“Um, I came to see if there was anything to eat?” Colin said, transfixed by the two newcomers.
Mo stood up and gave Colin a nod before he walked to the back of the room. Instinctively, Colin followed.
“Vending machine is here,” Mo said, pressing a button.
There was the whir of a motor and the carousel slowly turned. The machine had a number of compartments stacked five high. The motor clunked to a stop as the next compartment drew level with a sliding perspex door.
“Not much of a choice,” Mo conceded. “It hasn’t been restocked after the weekend yet.”
“Thanks,” Colin said.
“No problem.” Mo started to walk back to his seat.
Colin stuttered, “Um…?”
Mo stopped. “Yes?”
Colin nodded over at the two women. “Who are they?”
“Oh, that’s Magda and Alex, the cleaners,” Mo said. “They decided to wait it out here awhile before going home.”
“Oh, okay,” Colin said.
He turned his attention to the vending machine. The selection was indeed poor. After a half a dozen turns of the carousel, each time hoping something tasty would miraculously appear, Colin gave up and settled for the cheese baguette. He poured the change from his wallet into the coin slot until the machine beeped at its fill.
Colin unwrapped his meal and stood behind the three at the table, transfixed on the screen.
“Anything new?” he asked before taking his first bite.
The bread was stale and had a rubbery texture that reminded Colin more of jerky than bread. The cheese on top was dried out and flaky, but beneath that crust it had retained a modicum of freshness.
“No, nothing new,” Mo answered. “It’s still saying to stay in your homes. No real information.”
“What about the other channels?” Colin asked.
Mo picked up the remote control and started flicking through the stations.
“A lot of them are off the air,” Mo said while clicking the remote. “Some are just showing pre-recorded programs.”
He put the remote down within easy reach of the two women and patted it in a subconscious invite for them to change the channel to something of their choosing.
“What about the news channels?” Colin asked.
Mo picked up the remote control and gave a nod to the two women. They nodded back and with their approval. Mo switched to a news channel.
An unfamiliar newscaster sat square in frame and there was a ticker of information scrolling along the bottom of the screen.
“She new?” Colin asked.
None of the three replied.
“…unrest throughout the country,” the newscaster was saying. She pressed a finger to her ear. “I’m just being told we can go live to our outside broadcast unit.”
The screen flickered to a test signal, then back to the studio before finally bringing up the image of a reporter. The camera angles was slightly Dutch, set off true.
“Are we on?” the reporter asked someone off-camera.
“Where are they?” Colin asked, trying to make out a landmark behind the reporter.
There was a crowd of jostling people behind the reporter and it didn’t take long to realize the people in the background were policemen in riot gear.
“I’m told we’re live on-air, but I can’t hear you back in the studio. The police here have been reiterating the government advice to stay off the streets. Stay in a secure location. All morning the police here have been effectively operating snatch squads, but we have just been overwhelmed. They started the day making arre
sts and subduing those people refusing to disperse, handcuffing them with plastic restraints and then tying them down inside police vehicles. This tactic doesn’t seem to have lessened the mobs of angry rioters and all during the morning their numbers have increased.”
“Move! Move! Move over!”
The reporter was knocked out of the way and two policemen manhandled a restrained maniac past the camera. The prisoner snarled wildly and thrashed against his restraints.
“Breach!” someone cried off-camera.
The picture bobbed and shuddered as the obviously inexperienced operator tried to find the shot.
“They’re in!” someone else shouted.
The camera spun round just in time to see a blood-drenched civilian throw himself at the reporter. Sprays of crimson fluid jetted skyward and the reporter’s screams filled the air.
An unknown voice came across the broadcast: “Cut away! Cut away, studio one!”
The camera didn’t cut away. The reporter slapped out, the microphone still in hand. Loud crunches and pops could be heard as it was used to bat away the attacker. The cameraman stood transfixed by the fight, too unwilling or too uncaring to intervene.
“Cut to studio!” the disembodied voice shouted.
Over the reporter’s screams there was a crisp sound like fresh salad being crunched and blood started spurting into the air.
“For Christ’s sake, cut it! Cut It!”
The screen went blank, but the audio continued, all the more visceral without the picture, the sounds of screaming and wet gnawing up close.
A test card flickered onscreen and the sound cut out. It hung there for a few seconds before the view switched back to the studio and a visibly shaken announcer.
She sat silently, her mouth wide open aghast at what she had just witnessed.
There were off-camera sounds, voices filled with panic and chaos.
Suddenly a channel identification burst onto the screen. A pre-recorded voice boomed, “All the news from across the globe, brought to you twenty-four seven.”
Colin whispered, “Fuck.”
He looked over at the others. Mo had a hand in front of his mouth like he was trying to hold in sick. The two cleaners sat unfazed, still smoking their cigarettes.
“Anything more?” Colin asked. “I mean, is there an explanation as to why this is happening?”
Mo toggled the remote control and started surfing through the channels for another live feed.
Colin pulled his phone out and looked at the signal bars. There was still a no service line through the icon.
He slipped the phone back into his pocket. Then it struck him. He pulled the phone back out and opened up the operating system. He clicked through a couple of icons and found what he was looking for.
“Turn the volume down on that a minute, would you?” he asked.
Mo obliged. hitting the mute button on the remote.
With the TV turned down, a light hissing could be heard in the room. Colin sat down opposite Mo and the two cleaners.
“What you got?” Mo asked.
“I forgot there’s an FM radio on my phone,” Colin said, playing with the settings. “I’ve never used it before, but there might be a radio station.”
He quickly worked out how to use the scan function and started trawling through the frequencies. Occasionally the hiss of static was broken by a high-pitched whine or the unintelligible bleeps of machine code.
“There's nothing there,” Mo said.
“You might be right. I don’t even know if it works,” Colin replied. “It’s picking up some weird Morse code or something, though.”
“Interference from something electrical nearby?”
“Maybe...Wait!” Colin thumbed the volume control up. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” Mo asked.
Colin cycled back down the channels.
“There!” He held the phone up to the side of Mo’s face.
“Ahh, I hear something,” Mo said hesitantly. “It could be a voice.”
Colin pulled the phone back to his ear and strained to listen.
“Have you got any headphones?” he asked.
“No,” Mo replied. “I don’t own a MP3 player; not the sort of thing I use.”
Colin looked at the two women. They looked back at him blankly, their blue smocks casting a cold hue over their already pale skin, making them look gaunt and slightly sinister.
Colin broke eye contact with them.
“I’ll go upstairs and see if anyone has a pair I can borrow,” he said quickly.
Mo nodded. “I’ll let you through the doors.”
“The doors?” Colin asked.
Mo waved his security pass at him.
***
Colin jogged up the stairs, leaving Mo to return to the canteen. The stairwell was colder than the rest of the building and the hard concrete and glass construction made his harsh echoing footsteps drown out the light hiss from the radio.
He got to the office floor and looked through the narrow window.
John was still standing at the window, but now he had a can of some diet drink in his chubby hand.
Colin rapped his knuckles on the glass. John continued slurping at his drink and staring out the window.
Colin knocked again, a little harder. A face snapped into view and Colin jolted back. The door clicked open and Sharon smiled.
“You don’t have a pass, do you?”she said.
Colin shook his head.
“I suppose, given the circumstances, it makes sense to give you one. Come over to my desk.”
Colin trailed her over to her desk. As she walked he cast his eyes up to her waist. Her yellow blouse was thin and he could clearly see the back of her bra through the material. He found himself admiring her fit and obviously toned body.
“Here we are,” Sharon said, opening a desk drawer.
She turned round and smiled while passing Colin a blank swipe pass.
Although her body was well formed, her face was far from attractive. She had a slightly hooked nose and a weak chin, but the most unattractive feature was the glossy orange sheen of fake tan.
“Thanks,” Colin said.
Sharon held the badge a little longer than Colin was comfortable with.
“I was going to try and get a signal on this,” he said, breaking the awkward moment. “Are there any headphones I could borrow?”
“Bound to be,” Sharon said. “There’s a call monitoring suite in that room down there. There’s bound to be a set of headphones to spare.”
“Thanks,” Colin said again and quickly peeled off.
It didn’t take long to find a pair of cheap plastic headphones and he slipped out of the office, purposefully avoiding eye contact with John and Sharon, and trotted up the stairs. He held out the phone like it was some kind of sensor, waving it in the air as he ascended higher. He hoped that the higher up the building he went, the better a signal he would pick up, but so far that wasn’t the case.
He arrived at the top landing. Ahead of him was a door with ‘Roof Access’ engraved in a small white tag. Looking around, he couldn’t see one of those ubiquitous grey swipe boxes all the offices had. This door had an old-fashioned lock. He turned the handle, but the door didn’t budge.
Colin turned to his right, to the entrance to the fourth floor office. He peered through the arrow slit window in the door that led into the office space on this floor.
The room was populated by rows of blonde wood desks, but nothing more. He ran his pass over the swipe box and the door lock gave a clunk.
He pushed the doors open and stepped inside. Unlike the first floor there were no computers on the desks and the chairs were neatly stacked in one corner of the room. As he prowled round the vacant office trying to get the best signal strength, the only sounds were his footfalls on the carpet and the hiss of the radio. If the lack of people in the office below was surreal, this was eerie.
Delicately, he nudged the frequency button, pus
hing the radio’s receiving range a fraction higher. He paused for a moment, trying to listen through the static. He wandered a few feet to the right and held the phone up just above eye level. Every time he moved, the static changed subtly and he would freeze, trying to hear through the noise for the human voice underneath. When he was sure there was nothing there, he tapped the button again and repeated his protocol.
It wasn’t long before a voice started wafting in through the interference. He found himself wandering closer to the window, catching snatches of a man’s voice. Unable to make anything out, he pushed the frequency up. The voice became slightly more distinct. Odd snatches of sentences escaped the fizzing sea of interference.
Colin found himself at the south-facing window looking out across the city. The lay of the land casually sloped as it made its way to the ocean only a few miles from here. On a clear day he had no doubt he could see all the way to the coast, but looking out of the window now, there was light smog. The summer’s clear blue skies had tendrils of smoke snaking their way up from the hundreds of sporadic fires the chaos had spawned.
Colin pushed the frequency higher, still trying to hear past the electronic smog, and there it was. The hiss melted away to reveal an audible voice.
***
“Listen, that’s all I can do for you,” Stephen said coldly.
“My son needs help. You can’t just turn us out,” Liz pleaded.
“I need to get back home. I can’t drive around the city all day,” Stephen said, looking at Liz via the rear view mirror.
“You can’t just abandon us or your colleague,” Liz said franticly.
“Gary’s just a security guard. I don’t owe you or him anything,” Stephen said, the anger rising in his voice.
Gary gave a light moan and his head rolled as if he were trying to muster the energy to join in the argument. Over the hours of driving around, he and Grant had become steadily worse. Now they were both uncommunicative, sweating, and ashen-faced.
“We’re not leaving until you take us to a hospital,” Liz said firmly.
Demise of the Living Page 8
