The City

the light alone was more than enough reason for him to keep trying to force his 29
    way inside. Not making any progress he took a couple of steps back and then shoulder-charged the door. It rattled and shook in its frame but still it didn’t open.
    None of the bodies she’d come across possessed anywhere near enough strength to make that kind of noise, Donna thought.
    She wanted to believe that there was another survivor on the other side of the door but in her heart she didn’t really think that would be the case. She hadn’t seen or heard anyone else. She knew that she had no option but to leave the relative safety of the training room and go and have a look.
    The landing was about twenty feet long and five feet wide.
    Double doors at either end gave access to the open office space.
    Paul had turned left at the top of the stairs but the training room where Donna had been sheltering was to the right. Cautiously she picked up a torch and tiptoed to the door nearest to her. She shone the light through the small window and peered into the darkness, sure that she could see some movement at the far end of the landing. Suddenly aware of the light shining at him, Paul stopped what he was doing and slowly turned around. Donna instinctively pointed her torch down to the ground, frightened that she had been seen. Paul ran the length of the landing.
    ‘Let me in,’ he yelled, banging his fists against the door furiously. ‘For Christ’s sake, let me inside…’
    He leant against the door and pressed his face against the glass, frustrated, frightened and breathing heavily. For a few moments Donna did nothing. Then, slowly, the reality of the situation dawned on her. The bodies that moved couldn’t speak.
    They couldn’t make decisions or move with any amount of control. The person on the other side of the door had to be a survivor. She flicked her pass at the sensor on the wall at the door unlocked and opened inwards. Paul fell into the office and collapsed in front of her.
    ‘Are you…?’ she started to say.
    He looked up at her, tears rolling down his face, and then picked himself up and reached out for her. Locked together in an awkward, uncomfortable but ultimately welcome embrace, the two survivors stood in silence, both revelling in the sudden closeness of another living human being.

5
    By the time Clare and Jack reached what had been the main shopping area of the city it was almost completely dark. Neither of them wanted to be outside at night. The world had been turned on its head and ripped apart in the last week and nothing could be taken for granted. In daylight it was difficult enough to try and keep track of what was happening around them. In darkness it would be virtually impossible.
    Jack gently pushed Clare towards Bartrams department store.
    A huge and imposing building at the best of times, it had long been a focal point for city shoppers. Now, drenched in crimson-black gloom and crisscrossed by angular shadows cast by the moon above, its tall, grey walls and many small, square windows made it appear unnervingly prison-like.
    ‘We can stop here tonight,’ Jack whispered. ‘There’ll be food and stuff inside. We’ll be okay here.’
    Clare didn’t reply. Exhausted and dejected, it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. She hadn’t said very much since they’d been together.
    A few tearful sentences when they’d first met and a few grunted words since then had been all. Jack didn’t push her to make conversation. He felt and understood her pain. He was hurting too, of course, but he’d suffered loss like this before. Clare, he assumed, hadn’t. He tried to help her but his well-meaning words appeared to have very little positive effect.
    ‘I know it’s hard,’ he’d said a while back as they’d followed the main road into the remains of the high street. ‘My missus died last year. I know what you feel like. You think you’re hurting so much that you’ll never get over it but you will.
    Believe me, it will get easier.’
    ‘How can it get better?’ she’d cried. ‘How can it get better when I’ve lost everything?’
    Other than that Clare hadn’t responded. Even Jack didn’t know if he really believed what he was saying. At least he’d had a reason and an explanation for the loss he’d suffered when his wife passed away, even if it had been impossible for him to accept why Denise had died. Clare’s loss had been completely