Autumn The City Page 0,42
through the seemingly endless tide of the dead. 'Go right!' she heard him shout and she immediately changed direction. The building in front of them was long and narrow but they were considerably closer to the right side than the left. It seemed logical to try and get around the back, but who was to say that there wasn't a crowd twice as big behind the building? The alternatives were bleak. She kept moving. The bodies were tightly packed against the front entrance. Donna rounded the corner and saw, to her relief, that there were considerably fewer of them to the side of the building, no doubt, she decided, because virtually all of the corpses would have approached from the direction of the city centre. Slipping around the side of a red and white striped entry barrier she took a deep breath, pushed another two corpses out of the way and continued to move forward. 'Climb up!' she heard Paul yell from behind. 'Get off the ground.' Donna looked around helplessly, not sure what he was expecting her to do. He answered her questions as he suddenly appeared next to her and pushed his way through the hordes towards a large delivery truck that was parked alongside the building.
Grabbing hold of the passenger side wing mirror he hauled himself up and away from the grabbing hands below. He lay flat across the roof of the truck and reached back down for Donna. 'Come on,' he hissed. Exhausted, she pushed her way through to the lorry and clambered up. By the time she had reached the top of the truck Paul was already making his way along the length of the vehicle towards the rear end. Donna followed before stopping and falling to her knees once she was safe. 'Help!' she yelled desperately, praying that someone inside the building would hear her. The back end of the truck where Paul was standing was less than three feet away from the outside wall of the building. Just above his head and to his right slightly was a small balcony. Without stopping to consider the risks he leapt up and grabbed at the metalwork surrounding the balcony area. In a flurry of movement he reached out and wrapped his arm around one of the metal railings. He grimaced with pain as the sudden weight of his body threatened to wrench his shoulder from its joint.
Slowly, and with much effort, he managed to pull himself up. Donna watched from the roof of the truck as he hauled himself up onto the narrow landing and began to smash his fists furiously against a double-glazed window. Donna lay down and rolled over onto her back and looked up into the grey morning sky above her. The noise that Paul was making quickly faded into silence as she relaxed, as did the constant shuffling of the relentless crowd of bodies swarming around the front of the building and around the truck. She stared into the clouds moving over her head and watched as they blew across from left to right. If I look up and I keep looking up, she thought, then everything seems normal. If I don't look down then I can pretend that none of this is happening. Just for a few seconds I can pretend it's not happening.
After locating the window where Paul was standing the survivors forced it open and quickly pulled him inside. Using a ladder to bridge the gap between the building and the top of the truck, two men ventured out into the cold and inhospitable morning and brought Donna into the shelter.
Chapter Eighteen
Midday. Donna had managed to sleep for a few hours. It was the first time in a week she'd had a proper bed and even though it was in a cold and unfamiliar place, it still felt reassuringly comfortable and safe. A man she hadn't seen before walked past the door to the room she'd been sleeping in and, seeing that she was awake, stopped to talk to her. 'How you feeling?' he asked. 'Crap,' she replied with brutal honesty. 'I'm Bernard Heath,' he said, taking a couple of steps into the room. 'Donna.' He nodded and, feeling suddenly awkward and not knowing what to say, looked around the room rather than stare at her lying on the bed. 'Look,' he said after a few long seconds had passed, 'would you like to come downstairs with me? I can get you some food or something