Autumn The City Page 0,84

than the dead.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

It was time. Six volunteer survivors stood outside at the back of the accommodation block in a small, sheltered alcove where several tall, overflowing and foul-smelling waste bins were stored. There were no bodies around that they could see. Various building extensions, walls, fences and other obstructions seemed to have prevented the creatures from stumbling round to the area. 'Ready?' Phil Croft asked. The others looked far from sure. The doctor did up the zip on the fleece he was wearing. It was a cold afternoon. Although fairly bright, there was a threat of rain in the air and ominously heavy clouds were approaching from the east. 'Suppose so,' Paul Castle mumbled. 'Never going to be a good time for this though, is there?' 'If you can't handle it why don't you just go back inside?' Jack Baxter snapped nervously. 'Quit fucking moaning.' 'Give it a break you old...' Castle began. 'Okay,' Cooper said, cutting across the increasingly nervous conversation and having to raise his voice to make himself heard over the gusting wind, 'this is where we shut up.

Anyone speaks and draws attention to us once we're out there and we're history. I tell you, those bodies aren't quick or strong enough on their own, but if you do something stupid and end up with a hundred of them coming at you, you're going to have real problems.' Baxter thrust his cold hands into his jacket pockets and leant back against the red-brick wall behind him. He was terrified. Perhaps that was why he'd reacted so angrily to Castle's nervous complaint seconds earlier. He'd been close to throwing up before they'd left the safety of the building. He didn't tell the others, of course. They'd all been so sure of their plans when they'd spoken this morning and last night.

Doing this had seemed such a good idea before they'd actually stepped out into the open and stood there unprotected. A single body tripped across a footpath a short distance ahead of them. The six survivors stared in silence and watched anxiously as it moved awkwardly away. Steve Armitage (a long-distance lorry driver who had hardly spoken until today but who had volunteered to do this because he could drive a truck and because he could no longer stand being trapped indoors) licked his dry lips and nervously lit a cigarette. 'Put that bloody thing out,' Croft hissed quietly. 'You fucking idiot! We're trying to blend in here. How many of those damn things have you seen smoking?' Armitage dropped the cigarette down onto the ground and stubbed it out with his foot.

'Sorry,' he whispered apologetically. 'Not thinking. Bit nervous.' Cooper's military training was beginning to show. Although he may well have been as scared and apprehensive as the other five men, it was not at all noticeable. He remained calm and collected, as if this was something he did every day. 'Don't worry, Steve,' he said softly, doing his best to reassure the struggling lorry driver. 'We can do this, you know. We just have to keep our nerve and stick together. Take your time, don't do anything stupid and we'll be okay.' Bernard Heath was, surprisingly, the sixth survivor who had ventured out into the open.

Although it had seemed that his cowardice and nerves had been steadily increasing during the days and weeks of their confinement, he remained a sensible and rational man at heart. He had gradually come to accept that his earlier protestations and demands that they should stay inside were driven more by fear than any rational thought processes. Much as he still preferred the idea of staying locked away in the accommodation block, he understood that was no longer an option. Perhaps trying to make amends for the conflict and arguments he had helped prolong recently, he had volunteered to be one of the first to leave the protection of the building. Cooper glanced round at the faces of the others before nodding his head in the general direction of the city centre and starting to walk. Weighed down heavily with their individual nerves and trepidation, the six men began to move towards the dead heart of the town in slow, shuffling single file. The door from which they had emerged from their shelter had been hidden around the back of the building.

As the majority of bodies had reached the university from the direction of the town, the survivors came across relatively few of them at first.

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