Autumn The City Page 0,8

him feel hemmed in and uneasy. He decided against shouting out again. There were even more bodies up ahead. He managed to walk past them with a new found nonchalance, even plucking up the courage to push one of them out of the way when it staggered randomly into his path. Jack glanced over to his right where he saw one of the pathetic creatures sitting in the shadows of a shop doorway.

He hadn't seen any of the corpses sitting still before, they seemed to move about constantly. Perhaps this was one that had fallen and died in the doorway where it had remained until now. He stopped and walked a little closer. As he approached the body raised its head and looked up at him, lifting its hands to shield its eyes from the bright autumn sun which had appeared momentarily through an unexpected gap in the heavy cloud cover. The figure in the doorway - a young girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age dressed in a creased and crumpled school uniform - slowly stood up and began to walk towards him. It took the two desperate, frightened individuals a good thirty seconds to realise and fully accept the fact that they had both found another survivor.

Moving slowly and with caution at first, the girl broke into a run for the last few meters before wrapping her arms around Jack and sinking to her knees. He crouched down and held her as tightly as he could, as if he'd known her for fifty years and not seen her for ten. He'd finally found someone else alive. After a few long and emotional seconds of silence, Jack looked around anxiously before taking the girl's hand in his and leading her towards the nearest building. It was a dental surgery. A cold, dark and small private practice which smelt of dust and decay still tinged with a sterile, antiseptic edge. The two survivors sat down together in a musty waiting room on hard plastic seats, surrounded by three motionless corpses that had been waiting to be seen by the now dead dentist since early Tuesday morning. A nurse was slumped across a counter to their right. The presence of the bodies didn't seem to matter.

Being indoors helped Jack psychologically, regardless of how grim and desolate his new surroundings were. At first neither survivor knew what to say to the other. `I'm Jack...' he eventually stammered awkwardly. `I heard you shouting...' she began to sob. She shook as she leant against him. The warmth of her body was welcome and reassuring. `I didn't know where you were,' she continued. `I heard you but I couldn't see you and...' `Doesn't matter,' he whispered, stroking her hair and gently kissing the top of her head. `It doesn't matter.' `Have you seen anyone else?' the girl asked. `No-one. What about you?' She shook her head. Feeling fractionally better and more composed, she pushed herself away from Jack slightly and sat up in her seat. He watched as she wiped her face. `What's your name?' he asked softly. `Clare Smith,' she mumbled. `And are you from round here, Clare?' She shook her head again.

No, I live with my mum in Letchworth.' `So how did you end up in this part of town?' `I'd been stopping at my dad's this weekend. We didn't have any school on Monday so I stayed with him an extra day and...' She stopped talking when the memory of her parents and the recollection of her sudden, unexplained loss came flooding back. She started to cry silently. Jack watched helplessly as a relentless stream of tears ran down her pale cheeks. `Look,' he soothed, trying to make it easier for her, `you don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to. If you want we could just...'

`What happened?' she asked suddenly, cutting across him and turning to look him square in the face for the first time. `What did this?' Jack sighed, stood up and stepped over a corpse lying at his feet. `Don't know,' he replied, looking through a frosted-glass window into a small office area. `I was on my way home when it happened. I didn't see anything until it was too late. Clare leant forward in her seat and held her head in her hands. `Dad was driving me to school,' she said quietly as she stared down at the floor between her feet. `He lives right on the other