The City

unloading when there was a big trial on,’ she explained. ‘The prison vans used to pull up around the back and reverse inside to deliver and collect the prisoners.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘Think about it. Prison vans are designed to carry people.
    More than that, they’re strong and they’re safe. They’re as close to a bloody armoured patrol carrier as we’re going to get.’
    ‘Are there any vans there now?’
    ‘How am I supposed to know? There’s a good chance there will be though. Just about every morning you’d see at least one of them pulling up. Logic says that if the courts were going to be in session when all of this started, there would have been prisoners there.’
    ‘I know the court,’ Baxter whispered secretively. ‘But how are we supposed to get there? It’s halfway across town.’
    ‘Don’t know,’ Donna admitted.
    ‘I can’t see how we’re going to get past the crowds out there.
    And even if we do manage to get through, how are we supposed  to get back here again? Christ, imagine what the noise of a load of prison vans will do to them?’
    Cooper took a swig from a cup of cold black coffee that he’d made almost an hour earlier. He winced at its bitter aftertaste.
    ‘Seems to me that whatever we do is going to drive them crazy,’ he said, ‘but there isn’t any alternative. We’ve already decided that we’re going to have to go out at some point.’
    ‘Any suggestions?’ asked Donna expectantly.
    ‘I came up through a subway.’
    ‘That’s going to help us get out there,’ she sighed. ‘Getting back without them seeing or hearing us is going to be impossible if we manage to get our hands on some kind of transport.’
    ‘We could go out at night,’ Croft offered.
    ‘Not a good idea,’ Cooper responded. ‘I know what you’re saying, but you’ve got to add up the risks and balance them all out, haven’t you? Whatever we do we’re bound to attract attention to ourselves because of the noise we make if nothing else. If we go out in the dark then we’re just going to make it harder for ourselves. They’ll still react to us so we might as well go out in the daylight and give ourselves the best possible chance.’
    ‘If we’re really going to do this,’ Donna continued, ‘then we need to think very carefully before we put a single foot outside.
    From what I’ve seen of those things out there they seem to be getting more and more aggressive each day. We have to get everything we need in one trip.’
    ‘We can do it,’ Cooper insisted. ‘A few of us need to get out there, get what we need and get back. Once the excitement’s died down again we can get everyone who wants to leave together and we can move.’
    Jack Baxter lay down on the cold, hard floor next to Clare and listened as the conversation continued. He agreed with everything that was being suggested, but the fact that it was right didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Within the walls of the university it had to an extent become possible to isolate themselves from events outside. The sudden realisation that they were about to leave the safety of the building and head back out into the unknown was terrifying. Unavoidable, necessary and  terrifying.

35
    ‘What you doing out here?’
    Donna turned round and saw that Nathan Holmes was standing behind her. She was sitting on a wooden bench in a small enclosed courtyard just to the side of the assembly hall.
    She often sat there to think and be alone, and after the long conversations of the last few hours she craved a change of surroundings. The three meter square area of concrete buried between university buildings was as close as she could safely get to being outside.
    She didn’t want anyone’s company, least of all Holmes. She turned her back on him. Unperturbed, he sat down next to her.
    ‘What do you want?’ she sighed.
    ‘Nothing,’ he answered. ‘Just thought I’d come and talk to you, that’s all.’
    ‘Why would you want to do that? It’s three o’clock in the morning for Christs’ sake.’
    He shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette.
    ‘Don’t know,’ he replied, leaning back and looking up at a patch of dark and cloudy sky between the tall buildings which stretched up around them.
    ‘I haven’t got anything to say to you anyway,’she mumbled.
    ‘You had plenty to say earlier.’
    ‘You asked for it. You’re a fucking arsehole.’
    Holmes shook his head in mock disapproval.
    ‘Don’t know why you’ve got it in