Autumn Page 0,21

he thought? Why shouldn't he be? His life had been turned upside down and inside out and he'd lost everything. Not just his possessions and his property, he'd lost absolutely everything. And when he thought about poor Sarah and Gemma, lying there together in their bed at home, the pain he felt became immeasurably worse. But were they still there? Had they been affected by this new change? The thought of his beautiful little girl walking aimlessly through the dark streets alone was too much to bear. He tried unsuccessfully to hide the tears which streamed freely down his tired face.

'Come on,' Michael whispered, attempting to reassure him (although he already knew that there was no way he could).

'I'm okay,' Carl sniffed. It was patently obvious that he was not.

'Sure?' the other man pressed.

Carl looked into his face and forced himself to smile for a fraction of a second. He was about to reply with the standard 'yes, I'm all right,' when he stopped. There was no point in hiding the truth anymore.

'No,' he admitted. 'No, mate, I'm not all right...'

Suddenly unable to say another word, he found himself sobbing helplessly.

'Me neither,' Michael admitted, wiping tears of desperation and pain from his own eyes.

The two men sat down on the edge of the roof, their feet dangling freely over the side of the building. Michael stretched, yawned, and then ran his fingers through his matted hair. He felt dirty. He'd have paid any price to have been able to relax in a hot bath or shower and follow it up with a night spent in a comfortable bed. Or even an uncomfortable bed. Just something better than a hard wooden bench in a cold wooden building.

'You know what we need?' he asked.

'I can think of about a million things that I need,' Carl answered.

'Forget about all the practical stuff for a minute, and all the things that we should have like warmth, safety, security, answers to a million questions and the like, do you know what I need more than anything?'

Carl shrugged his shoulders.

'No, what?'

Michael paused, lay back on the asphalt and put his hands behind his head.

'I need to get absolutely fucking plastered. I need to drink so much fucking beer that I can't remember my own name, never mind anything else.'

'There's an off-licence over there,' Carl said, half-smiling and pointing across the main road. 'Fancy a walk?'

He glanced down at Michael who was shaking his head furiously.

'No,' he replied abruptly.

Another long silence followed.

'Christ, look at him would you,' Carl said, minutes later. Michael sat up.

'Who?' he asked.

'That one over there,' he said, nodding at a solitary figure in the distance which tripped and stumbled along the edge of the main road. The shadowy shell had once been a man, perhaps six foot tall and probably aged between twenty-five and thirty. It was walking awkwardly with one foot on the kerb and the other dragging behind in the gutter.

'What about him?'

Carl shrugged his shoulders.

'Don't know,' he sighed. 'Just look at the state of him. That could be you or me, that could.'

'Yes but it isn't,' Michael yawned, about to lie back down again.

'And there's another. See that one in the newsagents?'

Michael squinted into the distance.

'Where?'

'The newsagents with the red sign. Between the pub and the garage...'

'Oh yeah, I can see it.'

The two men stared at the body in the building. It was trapped in the entrance to the shop. A display rack had fallen behind it, blocking any movement backwards, and a crashed car prevented the door from opening outwards. The body moved incessantly, edging forward and then stumbling back, edging forward and then back.

'It just hasn't got a clue what's happening, has it?' Carl muttered. 'You'd think it would give up, wouldn't you?'

'It's just moving for the sake of it. It doesn't know how or why or what to do. It just needs to move.'

'And how long will they keep moving? Bloody hell, when will they stop?'

'They won't. There isn't any reason to stop is there? Nothing registers with them anymore. Look, watch this.'

Michael stood up and looked around. He walked over to where the slanted roof of the main part of the building met the flat roof they were standing on and pulled away a single slate. Carl watched bemused as he walked back to the edge of the roof.

'What the bloody hell are you doing?' he smirked.

'Watch,' Michael said quietly.

He waited for a few seconds until one of the wandering bodies came into range. Then, after