The Human Condition

bloody road,' Wilcox cursed anxiously through gritted teeth, `never mind follow it.' Even with his headlights on full-beam he could see very little. The streets were teeming with movement as the dead continually staggered into the path of the huge, bulky vehicle. His vision already severely limited, he was forced to frequently flick on his wipers to clear blood, gore and other splattered remains from the wide windscreen in front of him.

    `Does anyone know where we are?' Elizabeth asked hopefully. `Anyone been here before?'

    Her question was met with silence from the others. `We could just stop,' Ted Hamilton suggested, his mouth still full of food. `We've done it before, haven't we? Sit still and shut up and they'll leave us alone after a while.'

    `Come on, Ted,' Elizabeth sighed, `there's got to be a better way. They'll take hours to go, you know that as well as I do, and there are hundreds of them around here. I don't want to spend another night lying on the floor.'

    `I'm not sleeping on the floor again,' Doreen immediately protested in her grating, high-pitched voice. `It's bad for my back. When we did...'

    `Doreen,' Hamilton interrupted, `with all due respect, love, would you please shut your fucking mouth. You couldn't keep quiet if you tried.'

    Wilcox managed half a smile as he steered the bus around a sharp bend in the road and powered into another group of shuffling corpses. He knew as well as the rest of them that several hours of absolute stillness and silence would be necessary if they wanted to try and fool the bodies into leaving them alone. With Doreen on board it was impossible to have even five minutes of silence, never mind anything longer.

    `Bloody hell,' Hamilton said suddenly, swallowing his last mouthful of food and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. `Look at that.'

    `Look at what?' Paul Jones asked, quickly moving forward along the length of the bus towards the others and surprising them with his sudden involvement. Hamilton pressed his face up against the window and pointed up.

    `There,' he mumbled.

    `What is it?' demanded Elizabeth anxiously. Apart from Wilcox (who was craning his neck to see what was going on from behind the wheel) the rest of the survivors stared out into the unending darkness on the left hand side of the bus, not knowing what they were looking for but desperate to see whatever it was that Hamilton thought he'd seen.

    `A light,' he said quietly, not quite believing himself, `up there.'

    Visible fleetingly between the tall, dark buildings which lined the streets along which they drove, the light � although relatively dull � appeared to burn brightly through the otherwise total blackness.

    `Head towards it,' Doreen demanded.

    `Where is it?' Wilcox yelled.

    `Over to the left,' Proctor replied. `You watch the road and we'll keep an eye on the light.'

    High above the disease-ridden streets Bushell's quiet and solitary life seemed now to be filled with a series of infuriating contradictions. He wanted to be surrounded by light, but the brightness made him feel vulnerable and exposed. Likewise darkness made him feel safe but it was also unsettling and cold and he was scared of the shadows that filled the hotel at night. He wanted to hear some noise to end the eerie silence but, at the same time, he wanted the quiet to remain so that he could hear everything that was happening in the dead world around him. He wanted to sit out of sight in the relative comfort of his suite but he also felt compelled to check each window and stare outside almost constantly. He knew that he was alone in the building and that it was secure (he'd checked every one of the rooms and had kicked out every moving body himself over the last week) but an uneasy combination of nerves and paranoia convinced him almost constantly that there were bodies on the staircases and walking the halls. He felt sure that rotting hands would reach out of the shadows for him whenever he opened a door. Whatever he was doing he felt uncomfortable and unsafe. It was far easier to handle the situation in daylight. Each night he found the darkness harder to cope with, and that led to the cruellest paradox of all. Bushell's fear would keep him awake through almost the entire night. Only when the morning (and the light) came was he finally able to relax enough to sleep. Invariably he would drift and doze through the morning and early afternoon and miss almost all of the precious daylight.

    He wandered listlessly