The City

to go out for supplies again soon,’
    said Croft. ‘And as time goes on we’ll need to go further and  further afield to get those supplies. We’re going to be spending longer out in the open.’
    ‘We need to start getting ourselves organised,’ Donna continued. ‘Get some kind of routine and order to what we’re doing. We need to find a way of letting those other survivors know we’re here without…’
    Sat in the corner of the room, Nathan Holmes got up and walked towards the nearest exit.
    ‘You’re a bunch of fucking idiots,’ he spat. The rest of the people in the hall turned and stared at him. ‘Look at you. What are you trying to do here? Think you’re going to build some brave new fucking world out of…
    ‘We’re not trying to do anything except………’ Donna began before Holmes interrupted.
    ‘What you’re trying to do is pointless. It’s all pointless. You shouldn’t even be wasting your time talking about it. As soon as I can I’m getting out of here and I’m going to…’
    ‘We all know exactly what you’re going to do,’Donna sighed.
    ‘You’re going to drink yourself stupid so that you can forget everything. We’ve heard you say it a thousand times. You don’t give a damn about anyone but yourself.’
    ‘Too right I don’t,’ he replied, ‘why should I?’
    ‘Can’t you see how our chances will improve if we work together?’ Croft asked.
    Holmes looked up to the ceiling in despair.
    ‘But that’s my point, what chance have we got? Everybody in this damn building has lost absolutely everything. Getting out of here and trying to forget everything is the best option for anyone who’s got any degree of sense left…’
    ‘You’re confusing sense and selfishness,’ Donna mumbled under her breath.
    ‘Look,’ Croft said, the patience in his voice wearing thin, ‘all we’re talking about doing here is setting up some kind of beacon so that if and when those others come back they’ll know where we are and they’ll come to us. We’re not trying to make great plans for the future because we don’t know if any of us have got a fucking future!’
    ‘But your beacon will attract the bodies,’ protested Heath.
    ‘For Christ’s sake, man,’ Croft seethed. ‘Can’t you see that’s a risk we’re going to have to take?’
    Jack Baxter had been watching the increasingly tense conversation develop.
    ‘What if we put a beacon on the roof?’ he asked.
    ‘What’s that going to achieve?’ Heath wondered.
    ‘Think about it, if we put some kind of beacon up on high then it’s not going to be immediately obvious to the bodies but a survivor…’
    ‘…a survivor would know that anything up on the roof would probably have been put there intentionally,’ added Donna, completing his sentence for him. ‘If we’re talking about lighting a fire, then a survivor would know that any blaze would most probably start somewhere inside the building and work its way up, it wouldn’t start on top, would it?’
    ‘I understand that,’ moaned Heath, sitting down on an uncomfortable plastic chair, ‘but if and when those other people get here, they’re going to bring the bodies with them, aren’t they? It’s not going to matter how careful you are with your bloody beacon, is it?’
    Donna looked at the frightened lecturer for a few long seconds before turning her back on him in frustration. She understood what he was saying, she just couldn’t understand why it was such a issue for him. To her the solution to their problem and the potential side-effects were obvious and unavoidable. Increasing the number of bodies outside the building seemed to be a small price to pay if it meant they could make contact with other survivors - people with transport and weapons who, it seemed, were surviving out in the open.
    Just over thirty miles from the city, and two and a half miles away from the concealed entrance to the underground bunker, two survivors sat together in nervous silence. Hiding in a relatively well-appointed motorhome they had taken from outside another dead town just three days ago, the couple had driven out to the most exposed and isolated area of land they had been able to find.
    Since being forced to leave the farmhouse where they had previously sheltered, Michael Collins and Emma Mitchell had lived from hand to mouth like scavenging animals. Five days ago the building where they had hidden in relatively safety for the best part of two weeks had been