The City

the woman was resting.
    She was very attractive - tall, well-toned, strong and nine months pregnant with her first child. Croft was strangely drawn to Sonya Farley. His girlfriend - Natasha Rogers, a nurse in one of the burns units - was dead. In those painful first few minutes on Tuesday morning he had run from his building across to Tash’s unit and had found her cold and lifeless on the ground with the rest of them, dead like everyone else. She had been eight weeks pregnant. They hadn’t had chance to tell anyone about the baby, not even their parents. They’d only just got over the shock of the unexpected pregnancy themselves. Now Croft found that focussing his efforts and attention on Sonya helped his constant, gnawing pain to ease slightly. It somehow made it easier for him to cope with his loss, knowing that he would still be able to help Sonya to bring her baby into what remained of the battered world. And Christ alone knew that Sonya deserved help. When the disease had struck she’d been sitting in the middle of an eight mile traffic jam on the main motorway leading into town. She’d walked through more than four miles of unremitting horror and devastation to reach the hospital.
    Satisfied that she was well and leaving her sleeping soundly, Croft made his way downstairs. He entered a large rectangular assembly hall where a few survivors had gathered together. He found the lack of any noise or conversation more difficult to  handle than the solitude and he kept moving, crossing the room diagonally and leaving by another exit. The fact that everyone had become so painfully withdrawn somehow made the situation harder for him to deal with but, then again, what was there to talk about? Did any of the survivors have anything in common?
    Even if they did, chances were that whatever interests they may have once shared were gone now. What was the point of talking to anyone else about your taste in food, clothes, film, music, books or anything anymore? And as every survivor who did speak quickly found to their cost, it didn’t matter who you tried to talk to or what you talked about, every single conversation inevitably began and ended with pointless conjecture about what had happened to the rest of the dead world.
    Croft needed nicotine. He walked the length of another corridor then turned right and sat on a step halfway down a short staircase which led to a glass-fronted entrance door. This small, secluded area had become something of a smoker’s corner and two other survivors - Sunita, a student who lived in the building they were sheltering in and Yvonne, a legal secretary from a firm of solicitors on the other side of the ring road - were already stood there, smoking their cigarettes and staring out into the darkness. Croft had successfully kicked the habit five months ago but had started again yesterday. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. He lit his cigarette and acknowledged the two women who turned around to see who it was who had joined them.
    ‘You all right Dr Croft?’ Yvonne asked.
    He nodded and blew a cloud of smoke out into the still air just in front of his face.
    ‘I’m okay,’ he replied, his voice quiet and tired. ‘You two?’
    Sunita nodded instinctively but otherwise didn’t reply.
    ‘My Jim,’ Yvonne said softly, ‘he used to love the dark.
    Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d get up and go and sit in the bay window at the back of the house and watch the sun come up. He used to love it when the birds started singing. If he was feeling romantic he’d wake me up and take me downstairs with him. Didn’t happen often, mind.’
    Yvonne smiled momentarily and then looked down at the ground as the sound of bird song in her memory was swallowed  up and overtaken by the all consuming silence again, leaving her feeling empty, vulnerable and lost. She wiped a tear from her eye. She was in her early fifties but the strain of the last few days had left her looking much older. Her usually impeccable hairstyle was frayed and untidy, her once smart business suit now crumpled and unkempt. Sunita sensed her grief and put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close. She knew that Yvonne’s husband had worked in an office across town and that, on the first morning, she’d gone there and found him dead at his desk, face down in a pile of papers.
    ‘I can handle the dark as long as I’m not on my own,’ Sunita said. ‘When I’m on my own my mind starts to play tricks. I start