The City

of cause and  effect were sparse, but it was already clear that no-one could have been trained to deal with anything like this.
    It was uncomfortably hot in the protective suit. Cooper knew that his life depended on the protection, of course, but the oppressive atmosphere beneath the layers of treated material and rubber did nothing to calm his nerves. The initial burst of adrenaline he had felt on leaving the bunker had died down now that they had been away from their protective prison for some time. He now felt claustrophobic and wanted to return to the base. His mouth was dry and he needed to drink but he was afraid to risk compromising his suit. Eating, drinking, going to the toilet and many other simple and ordinary tasks would be difficult and risky until they were back. To remove any part of the suit for even a few seconds might be enough to let in the vicious virus that, if the information his officers had was correct, could quickly end his life. Judging by the number of bodies scattered on the ground around them as the drove through the suburbs and into the city, this was a disease that had killed many, many thousands more than it had spared.
    Heavy rain clattered down constantly on the metal roof above the soldier’s heads, echoing around the transport. There was next to no conversation. Other than the rain and the sound of the machine’s groaning engine there was an oppressive and all-consuming silence which was only disturbed by sudden brief explosions of static conversation from the radio and equally brief and factual reports to the officers back at the base.
    The soldiers were sat in two rows along either side of the transport, facing into the middle. Thompson suddenly got up out of his seat and leant across the inside of the machine to look out of a small square window between the heads of the two troops sitting directly opposite.
    ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, loud enough for the others to hear.
    There was sudden movement throughout the vehicle as rest of the soldiers immediately turned to see what it was that their colleague had spotted deep in the murky-greyness of the late September afternoon. All around them they could see movement.
    Slow and laboured but still very definite movement.
    They had reached what Cooper called the ‘inner-suburbs’ of the city - a ring of small shopping areas and high streets which had once been villages in their own right but which had since been swallowed up and consumed by the ever-expanding city centre. These areas were the first real pockets of civilisation that the soldiers had driven through since leaving the base. There were many more bodies on the ground here, and there were many more figures moving nearby too.
    ‘Why ain’t they moved any of the bodies yet?’asked one of the soldiers, thinking out loud, his voice muffled by his facemask.
    ‘And what the hell are those others doing outside? said another, watching through a back window as a quickly growing crowd of moving figures dragged themselves pointlessly along the road after the transport. ‘If these people are sick then what the hell are they doing out here in the open? It’s pissing down for Christ’s sake.’
    ‘Who says they’re sick,’ asked Thompson. ‘These are supposed to be the survivors, aren’t they?’
    ‘Have you seen them?’ the other soldier replied nervously, his mouth suddenly dry. ‘Jesus, look at the state of them.
    They’ve got fucking scraps of clothes on and they don’t look like they’ve eaten for weeks. Bloody hell, this lot look as bad as the dead ones on the ground.’
    Cooper shuffled around to look out of the window nearest to him. The temperature outside was low and the thick glass was smeared with condensation. He wiped it clear with the back of one gloved hand and peered out into the afternoon gloom.
    ‘Christ…’ he muttered under his breath.
    The world outside the window looked as if it had been totally drained of all colour. Perhaps naively he had expected to find a disorganised and unkempt but otherwise relatively normal city scene - after all, he thought, there hadn’t been any fighting on the streets, had there? This didn’t sound like it had been a war or battle which would cause damage to buildings and property.
    Where he had expected to see a thousand familiar colours, however, he instead saw little more than a thousand different dull shades of grey and black. And the same was true of the  people he could see too. Devoid of all energy, they