“I agree with Colin. There’s safety in numbers,” Mo said.
“Don’t talk soft,” Thomas huffed. “Half you lot would be a liability in a crisis. And anyway, I don’t want to spend another night listening to John’s grunting and farting.”
“John’s snoring is nowhere near as disturbing as the moaning coming from outside,” Liz said.
“Could we move up to the top floor?” Mo asked. “It might be a bit quieter higher up.”
“I don’t think that would be prudent,” Billy said. “If there’s a fire, at least we can dreep down to the car park.”
“Dreep?” Sharon asked.
“You know… when you hold on to the top of a wall to lower yourself down so you don’t have as far to fall,” Billy explained.
Colin said, “Getting back on track, Billy has a point. We limit our ability to escape in an emergency if we move further up the building.”
“I think that sounds logical,” Mo agreed.
“Don’t we get a vote on it?” Thomas asked. “I mean, when did you get appointed queen of the living?”
“”No need for that, Thomas,” John protested.
“No, he has a point,” Sharon said. “I’m not the queen of the living, as you put it. Shall we take a vote?”
There was a murmur of agreement from around the table.
Sharon said, “All those in favour of moving to the top floor…?”
“Whoa,” Thomas interjected. “I never said I’d move to the top floor. I want to stay in the plant room.”
“We can’t all fit in there,” John said.
“That’s the fucking point, you idiot.”
“Okay, okay,” Sharon cut in. “All those in favour of the status quo...?”
“What’s a status quo?” Karen asked.
“Everyone who wants to keep things the way they are, raise your hand,” Sharon said discordantly.
Mo, Billy, and Colin raised their hands.
“All right, those against—whether that be moving to the top floor or splitting up…?”
Thomas, John, and Karen put their hands in the air.
Sharon looked over at Liz and Melissa. She said, “Those abstaining…?”
Liz half-heartedly raised a hand.
“So it’s tied on three apiece,” Thomas said.
“Not quite,” Sharon said. “As Chairperson, I have yet to cast my vote and I say we stay where we are.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Thomas protested. “What’s it to you if I go sleep in the plant room?”
“You’re the one who wanted to vote on it, Thomas,” Billy said.
“We stay together; it’s the safest thing to do,” Sharon said. “We can lock the doors to the ground floor as a precaution, so if that glass panel does give, we won’t be overrun.”
“You won’t be overrun—you’ve got those barricades right on the landings,” Thomas protested.
“Just listen to yourself,” Billy said. “A lot of good that’s going to do you if you’re down in the plant room, eh?”
“I don’t see you giving a fuck if I do get trapped down there,” Thomas muttered.
“Do you want me to lock the doors?” Mo asked.
“Yes, please, Mo,” Sharon said.
“I’ve only got the one key for them and we still need in and out of the plant room for the power,” Mo pointed out.
“So we’ll need to find you each time we want to switch the power on and off?” Sharon asked.
“Nobody uses the north stairwells. Why don’t I lock the north doors and leave the key in the south one?”
“That seems like a reasonable plan,” Sharon said, casting her gaze around the room and checking the level of agreement. She looked down at her notes. “Now, the next item on the agenda is toilet provision.” She didn’t really have to remind herself of what was next, but it meant that she could break eye contact with anyone still dissenting over the sleeping arrangements. “The chemical toilet that was with the camping equipment is now set up in the disabled toilets by virtue of space. I’ve never used one. Is there anything special you need to do?”
“No, it’s just like a normal toilet,” Colin answered. “You sit down and do your business. If it’s a bit whiffy, you pour a glug of the blue stuff down. Did you find the toilet fluid?”
“Two litre tub with a diamond logo on it?” Liz replied.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Just pour a little of that in if you need it. There’s a trap door thing at the front. Pull that out first’ makes it easier to clean and keeps the smell in a bit.”
“Those things need emptied and with nine of us, I’m guessing that will be once a day, at least,” Billy said.
“We’ll need to draw up a rota,” Sharon added.
“Can I suggest that the men still use the urinals?” Colin said. “It will reduce the need to empty out the port-a-potty. If it starts to stink the place up, it will only take a capful of the blue to sort it out.”
“Good. It will also reduce the wait in the morning,” Sharon said. “Colin, would you draw up a rota and show everyone how to empty it?”
“Yeah, I’ll take the first turn and show you all tomorrow morning.”
“It’s what passes for entertainment these days, folks,” Billy chirped.
“We move on to food,” Sharon said. “We’ve all been snacking on the leftovers from last night’s cook-off. Thank you for that, Liz. But we’re going to have to start opening cans and feeding ourselves and there are a number of issues surrounding that.”
“Well, the food’s not going to last forever,” Billy commented. “We need to think about how we’re going to ration it and what we do just before it runs out.”
“So that’s a simple equation, isn't it?” Colin said. “Calories needed times mouths to feed.”
“Three thousand calories per day, times nine,” Thomas added.
“Times ten,” Billy corrected.
“You telling me Alex didn’t jump off the roof last night?” Thomas asked.
“No, you’re forgetting about Blow,” Billy said.
“Your dog?! We’re not missing out on meals to feed your mutt!”
“So what do you propose to do?”
“That’s your problem.” Thomas sat back and folded his arms.
“I don’t think the dog will be an issue,” Sharon said to Thomas to placate him. “It can eat the scraps we leave behind.”
“There’s not going to be any scraps,” Thomas said.
“A dog that size won’t eat much,” Colin noted.
“You’d be surprised. And anyway, it’s not going to be chowing down on the pineapple rings is it? It’s going to want to be fed meat,” Thomas pointed out.
“I’ll feed it from my ration, all right?” Billy volunteered. “I could stand to lose a few pounds, at any rate.” He smiled and gently slapped his stomach.
John threw his hand up to his face and gave a loud, gaseous burp.
He said apologetically, “Excuse me. I think I’ve got a bit of an upset stomach after those leftovers.”
“That’s ‘cause you ate so fucking much of it,” Thomas snipped.
“It was going to go to waste,” Billy interjected. “You had your fill; what the hell do you care, anyway?”
“Gentlemen,” Sharon said, her voice clipped. “Okay, so tomorrow we need to take stock of what we have, what we can make from it, and just how many days’ worth of food there is.”
“There was a week’s worth of camping meals in the trailer for twenty of us,” Colin said. “Just to get ourselves organized faster, can I suggest we dish out some of those for tomorrow while we get the menu and rotas drawn up?”
“Make sure whoever’s on latrines isn't cooking my supper that day,” Thomas joked.
“John, you have the inventory of the food supplies,” Sharon said. “Can you work out the calorific total we have from our stocks and then calculate how long that will last us?”
“That’s a hell of a lot of work,” John complained. The
re were beads of sweat forming on his waxy forehead. He wiped his brow and swallowed hard. “I’ll need to go over every item again, note down its details, and them multiply it up. And then there’s the fact that we’re not going to eat through things at an even rate. If we open a tin of tomatoes, we’ll need to eat it before it goes off.”
“I’m sure you’ll do your best,” Sharon said.
“That’s going to take all day,” John complained.
Thomas jibed, “Not like you’ve got anywhere to go.”
“I appreciate it’s a lot of work. Maybe the girls could help you,” Sharon said, glancing over at Karen and Melissa.
“So what do we do with the expiration date?” Billy asked.
“I’m sure if the foods past its sell-by date, it will still be edible. It just might not taste as nice.” Liz replied.
“I didn’t mean that. I meant once John’s worked out the totals and come up with a date when the food runs out, what then? Do we just sit here and starve to death?”
“Well, of course not,” Sharon answered, a little too quickly.
“What then?” Billy asked.
“Do we start eating each other like those things outside?” Thomas added.
“We’ll need to work out a plan, of course,” Sharon said.
Colin cleared his throat and leaned in. He said, “Look, I’m not a good judge of these things. I don’t know if the food will last two months or two years, but if we work out an expiration date—as Billy put it—we’ve got a finite amount of time to come up with a plan. But we’re in no rush to do anything just yet.”
“So we just sit on our butts?” Thomas asked.
“For now.” Colin shrugged. “Things could change.”
“Like what?” Liz asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, those things outside… they might wander off or freeze come winter.”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Thomas said. “Besides, winter’s a long way away. I don’t fancy being cooped up in here until then.”
Colin’s cheeks flushed. He gritted, “Well, I don’t know. Something, all right?! There’s no point worrying about it until John gets back to us with the expiration date.”
“It’s okay, Colin,” Sharon said in a soothing voice. “We don’t have to plan for that eventuality just yet. I think that’s a subject for another meeting.”
Colin nodded and sat back, a little less angry.
“Now we have the issue of the guns,” Sharon said, reading from her list. She raised her gaze from the paper and smiled at Liz. “First of all, I’d like to thank Liz for this afternoon’s—”
“I want a gun,” Thomas said.
Sharon scowled at the abrasive interruption.
“There aren’t enough to go round, Thomas. We’ve covered this,” Billy said.
“Billy has suggested we keep two loaded guns at each of the stairwells and one in the camp,” Sharon said.
“Yeah, Billy would say that. He’s got the shotgun,” Thomas complained.
“With two shots,” Billy reminded him.
“Is it safe leaving the guns lying around?” Liz asked.
“In what way?” Sharon replied.
“Well, there are two little girls around.”
Melissa exclaimed, “Ma!”
“I’m not a little girl!” Karen said over Melissa’s protest.
“Under normal circumstances I would agree with you, Liz,” Sharon said. “But these aren’t normal circumstances, are they?”
Liz dipped her head, giving tacit agreement.
“And what if they did break in? You’d want your li—” Sharon stopped herself and smiled at Melissa. “You’d want your daughter to be able to defend herself, now wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose,” Liz said sheepishly.
“Are we all in favour of Billy’s idea?” Sharon asked.
“No,” Thomas said loudly.
“I think we all know your opinion, Thomas,” Sharon said, cutting him off. “What about everyone else?”
There was a wave of nods around the table.
“Carried then,” Sharon said like a judge, tapping her pen against the table.
She studied the faces in the meeting room. Everyone else looked contented and relaxed. Other than Thomas.
It was a good place to end the meeting.
Sharon smiled. “If there isn’t any other business, we’ll meet back here tomorrow at nine a.m.”
Chapter 17
Unwelcome Guest
Melissa sat a few feet away from her brother. The dog had refused to come into the room with her, so she left it outside to root around the empty office space. She kept the meeting room door open and could hear Blow scurrying around, entertaining herself with some imaginary chase.
Grant snarled at her from behind the duct tape gag. He didn’t look much like Grant any longer. Although his appearance had degenerated in the last few days, it wasn’t the matted hair or the blotchy pale skin or even the ghostly white eyes that struck Melissa the most. It was the way he moved. Constantly fighting against his bindings more animalistic than human. This creature before her was a long way from the brother who annoyed her with his every action.
She had tried talking to him, watching to see if there was any spark of recognition in his blank eyes, but finally she gave up and just sat watching.
It was growing dark outside. Soon the light would go altogether and it frightened her to think of being with him in the dark.
Melissa stood up.
“Bye Grant,” she forced herself to say.
She exited the meeting room and closed the door. She could still hear Grant inside struggling to break loose, and she wondered how he felt being left alone in the dark.
“Blow!” Melissa called.
There was the patter of paws on the carpet and the little dog came bounding to heel.
The stairwell was gloomy with the encroaching night. The noise of a door closing from somewhere lower down echoed off the forlorn walls. Melissa placed a hand on the cold metal rail and cautiously made her way down through the gathering murk.
As she reached the third floor she could see a light darting around the abandoned office. She pushed the door open and walked in, curious as to who was there.
Blow sped past her.
“Blow, come back!” Melissa half-whispered.
The dog ignored her.
She walked into the darkening office space to hear a door slam shut.
“Blow?” she asked cautiously.
“Can you take your dog out of here, please?” she heard a voice say.
Melissa looked round to see Mo standing with his back to the closed door of a meeting room, a torch in hand.
Blow was turning circles by his feet.
“I’ve just washed and I don’t want to get dirty again,” Mo said.
“Blow. Here, girl,” Melissa called and made a chirping sound with her lips.
The dog, sensing it would get no attention from Mo, ran back to Melissa.
“Thank you,” Mo said. “Now it’s getting dark. I think you should head back down to the camp.”
“Okay,” Melissa agreed.
She scooped up the dog and left.
***
“Avant garde piece of artwork you’ve done there, Sharon,” Liz commented.
Sharon had taken a large sheet of flip-chart paper and drawn a grid across it. The grid had numbers and luminous multi-coloured boxes in columns stretching from one end of the paper to the other.
“I give up,” Thomas said, arms folded like an art critic. “What is it?”
Sharon stood back to give the viewers a better look at her creation.
“It’s a death clock,” she said.
“A what?” Liz asked.
The jovial atmosphere evaporated
“Well, more of a death calendar,” Sharon corrected herself. “The expiration date Billy was talking about.”
“And what’s it do?” Colin asked.
“I took the information John had
from the stock take. Worked out the calories per day and the amount we have stockpiled,” Sharon explained, pleased with her work.
“I thought that was on your agenda for tomorrow,” Thomas said sarcastically.
“It was, but there’s precious little to do to pass the time. It was just a matter of crunching John’s stock take through the laptop.”
Liz pointed to a red blocked-out square on the chart. “I can’t make that out in this light; is this when we’ll die then?”
“No,” Sharon said. “This is when we run out of food. This point here, about three weeks later, is when we’ll die of starvation. That’s if we have water.” She flipped the chart over to reveal a second, very similar but less expansive chart. She pointed out a red block of colour on the new chart. “If we can’t replenish our water, this is when we’ll die of thirst.”
“Cheery,” Billy said, joining the conversation.
“I can’t say we can put a positive spin on this, but we need to plan,” Sharon said. She tapped a thick black felt-tip pen on both charts, drawing attention to the green squares. “This is the point of action.”
“Point of action?” Liz said.
“Yes. This is the time where we still have some supplies, be it water or food, and we are still in a position to do something. When we reach this point we need to take action or we will die.”
“Again: cheery,” Billy commented.
“No, it’s a good piece of work, Sharon,” Colin said, “Now we have a date to work to. Now we know when we need to have plan B ready for.”
“We can start plotting out contingency plans tomorrow,” Sharon said.
“Isn’t that a little premature?” Liz asked. “I mean, it looks like we have plenty of time just now.”
“True, but we need something to work to. If we just sit about all day we’ll lose momentum,” Sharon explained.
“Like doing your homework when you get it handed to you rather than the night before,” Colin said.
“You could put it like that,” Sharon agreed.
“So is this it?” Liz asked. She was staring out of the window at the apartment block opposite them.
Sharon followed her empty gaze, but saw nothing that would attract her attention.
Demise of the Living Page 23
