Autumn Page 0,14

that we should get a beacon or something going, but there's no point in wasting time actively looking for other people yet. If there are others then they'll have more chance of finding us than we'll have finding them.'

'Why do you say that?' Sandra asked.

'Stands to reason,' he grunted. 'Does anyone know how many people used to live in this city?'

A couple of seconds silence followed before someone answered.

'About a quarter of a million people. Two hundred thousand or something like that.'

'And there are twenty-six of us in here.'

'So?' pressed an uncomfortable looking Ralph, trying desperately to find a way back into the conversation.

'So what does that say to you?'

Ralph shrugged his shoulders.

'It says to me,' Michael continued, 'that looking for anyone else would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.'

Carl nodded in agreement and picked up where Michael had left off.

'What's outside?' he asked quietly.

No response.

He looked from left to right at the faces gathered around him. He glanced across the room and made eye contact with Michael.

'I'll tell you,' he said quietly, 'there's nothing. The only people I've seen moving since all of this began are sitting in this hall. But we don't know if it's over. We don't know if we're going to wake up tomorrow. We don't know if what happened to the rest of them will happen to us.'

Ralph interrupted.

'Come on,' he protested, 'stop talking like that. You're not doing anyone any good talking like that...'

'I'm trying to make a point...'

Michael spoke again.

'Since this all started have any of you heard a plane or helicopter pass overhead?'

Again, no response.

'The airport's five miles south of here, if there were any planes flying we'd have heard them. There's a train station that links the city to the airport and the track runs along the other side of the Stanhope Road. Anyone heard a train?'

Silence.

'So how many people do you think this has affected?' Carl asked cautiously.

'If this was the only region affected,' Michael answered, 'logic says that help would have arrived by now.'

'What are you saying?' a man called Tim asked quietly.

Michael shrugged his shoulders.

'I guess I'm saying that this is a national disaster at the very least. The lack of air traffic makes me think that it could be worse than that.'

An awkward murmur of stark realisation rippled across the group.

'Michael's right,' Emma said. 'This thing spread so quickly that there's no way of knowing what kind of area's been affected. It was so fast that I doubt whether anything could have been done to prevent it spreading before it was too late.'

'But this area might be too infected to travel to,' Tim said, his voice strained and frightened. 'They might have sealed Northwich off.'

'They might have,' Michael agreed. 'But I don't think that's very likely, do you?'

Tim said nothing.

'So what do we do?' an unsure female voice asked from the middle of the group.

'I think we should get away from here,' Michael said. 'Look, if I'm completely honest I'm just thinking about myself here and the rest of you should make your own minds up. It's just that I'm not prepared to sit here and wait for help when I'm pretty sure that it's never going to arrive. I don't want to sit trapped in here surrounded by thousands of bloody bodies. I want out of the city. I want to get away from here, find somewhere safe, make myself comfortable and then just sit and wait and see what happens next.'

Chapter 8

Michael spent the first five and a half hours of the following morning trying to find somewhere comfortable to sleep. When he finally managed to lose consciousness he only slept for forty-five minutes before waking up feeling worse than ever. He'd been lying on the cold hard floor and every bone in his tired body ached. He wished he hadn't bothered.

The main hall was freezing cold. He was fully clothed and had a thick winter jacket wrapped around him but it was still bitter. He hated everything at the moment, but he quickly decided that he hated this time of day most of all. It was dark and in the early morning shadows he thought he could see a thousand shuffling shapes where there were none. Much as he tried he couldn't think about anything other than what had happened to the world outside because absolutely everything had been affected. He couldn't bear to think about his family because he didn't know if they were still alive. He couldn't think