The City

are going to change no matter what we do. The bodies will change for a start.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘They’re decomposing, aren’t they? No matter how determined or persistent those bloody things are, there’s going to come a time when they physically won’t be able to do what they’re doing any longer.’
    ‘And how long’s that going to be?’ Donna pressed. ‘How long do you think it will take them to rot completely?’
    He shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘Six months,’ he suggested although he was far from certain.
    ‘Six months!’ Heath protested.
    Croft shrugged again.
    ‘Could be. Might be longer. Might happen in half the time.
    There are a lot of unknown factors we’re dealing with here.’
    ‘Such
    as?’
    ‘The disease for a start, we don’t know what effect it might have on the speed of decomposition. And then there’s the fact that they’re above ground. I guess they’d rot quicker if they were buried, but it might be that exposure to the elements and the physical effort of moving around wears the bodies down at a faster rate. I don’t know for sure.’
    Donna suddenly stood up. The other survivors watched her.
    ‘This is bloody brilliant,’ she said with genuine excitement in her voice for the first time in weeks. ‘Do you hear what you’re saying?’ She looked around at the blank faces staring back at her. ‘Six months and we could be over the worst of this. Six bloody months and we might well be able to do whatever we damn well like again!’
    ‘So we just need to find somewhere safe to hide out until then,’ said Baxter.
    ‘Stay here,’ Heath immediately suggested. ‘We can stay here until it’s safe to move.’
    ‘You haven’t been listening, have you?’
    ‘We need somewhere better than this, somewhere stronger and more isolated,’ Donna announced.
    ‘You need the base,’ decided Cooper, his voice filled with resignation.

32
    He didn’t know how he had let it happen. In just a few minutes he had experienced a full range of emotions – from glorious realisation, joy and fulfillment through to shame, utter despair and regret. All of the confused and pent up feelings which Michael had forced himself to hold onto and suppress for weeks had now, in a moment of rash madness, been allowed to bubble to the surface and show themselves. The situation he now found himself in was painfully awkward and unexpected. He felt frustrated and embarrassed, exposed and naked.
    It was early morning. Michael didn’t wear a watch anymore but he knew by the low level of light beginning to trickle in through the skylight that it was about five or six o’clock, maybe a little later. He’d managed to sleep for a while but, ultimately, the night had been as long and interrupted as most other nights in the motorhome had so far been. But the last few hours had been subtly different. Lying next to Emma (who, in comparison, had slept relatively soundly) he had spent much of the hours just gone watching her. She had rolled over to face away from him in the darkness. Instinctively he had snuggled down behind her and put his arm around her body. His hand had brushed her breast.
    Both survivors were fully clothed, but just the sensation and the slightest touch of her warm, soft bosom had been unexpectedly exciting and had reminded him in an instant of feelings of desire and lust which had been forgotten for what felt like forever. He had pushed himself closer to her in the darkness, pressing himself against her, praying that she wouldn’t wake up but, at the same time, wishing that she would respond. He had wished that she’d turn around and hold him and kiss him and stroke him and caress him and tell him that everything was going to be all right.
    For a long time Michael had wrestled with his conscious.
    How could he allow himself to think about love and sex when the world outside was dead? What kind of a human being was he to even consider his own lust and sexual desires ahead of the devastation that had taken place beyond the fragile walls of the motorhome? But regardless of how his brain and his conscious screamed at him and demanded that he should behave, his heart and other more basic, carnal instincts drove him to act differently.
    In the semi-darkness he reached down under the bedding and unzipped his trousers. Troubled and nervous at first, he began to touch himself in a way that had been forgotten since the nightmare had begun. Initially uncertain, with each passing second his quiet