The Human Condition

cameras at opposite ends of the complex. I thought it might have been fumes or something else in the air doing this, but how could the same thing affect three people so far apart, at the same time?

    Wait, there's more...

    Camera twelve is fixed on the public walkway between the music store and the supermarket. Oh Jesus, what the hell is happening now? I think that's Jim Runton, the assistant manager of the supermarket. He's down on his hands and knees in the middle of the walkway. It looks like he's throwing up. It looks too dark to be vomit. Could that be blood?

    No-one's answering this damn telephone. I'll have to try one of the emergency lines linked direct to the police.

    There's Mark Prentiss the head of security now. He's running back towards the offices. He might know what's going on. Oh no. Christ, now he's slowing down. He's not going to make it back here. Bloody hell, his legs just went from under him. He's gone down like the others.

    What the hell is causing this?

    There's no answer on the emergency phone either. There should always be someone there to answer the emergency phone. Someone has to be there. I'll try and get one of the security team on their radio. One of them will answer me...

    The truck driver around the back of the superstore isn't moving now. He's just lying there, face down on the tarmac at the side of his truck. It looks like he's dead but he can't be, can he? The other person near him isn't moving either.

    Still no answer. I can't get any response.

    The cleaner outside the department store has stopped moving too.

    All I can hear is static on the radios.

    Jim Runton's body has been spasming and shaking since I first saw him but now he's still as well. Mark Prentiss is flat on his back and he's not moving either. There's a pool of blood or vomit around his face.

    I can move camera fifteen. That's the camera which covers the main entrance and the pedestrian approach. Using the controls I can turn it through almost a full circle. There should be crowds of people moving towards the mall from the station now. I'll try and get a better view and see if anything's happening outside... Jesus Christ, I can't believe what I'm seeing here. There are bodies all over the place. There are dead bodies all over the bloody place. The streets outside are covered with them. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. It's like they've all just fallen where they were standing...

    I've got to get out of here.

    Nothing's moving on any of the screens now.

    Sheri Newton got up from her seat at the control desk and ran out into the small security office immediately behind the observation room where she'd spent the last eight hours. She found the lifeless body of Jason Reynolds (her colleague who had been due to take over from her in twenty-five minutes time) sprawled across the cold linoleum floor in front of her, his frozen face and wild, frightened eyes staring hopelessly past her and into space. Further down the corridor a dead security guard was slumped in a half-open doorway. She stepped over the body on the ground, tripping on an outstretched leg, and ran through the silent building until she was out on the street.

    Overcome by the disorientating fear and shock of what she had seen and was continuing to see, Sheri fell back against the nearest wall and slid down to the ground. For more than an hour she remained there, fixed to the spot in terrified disbelief, as frozen and still as the countless corpses lying around her.

SONYA FARLEY

    Her pregnant belly wedged tight behind the steering wheel of her car, Sonya Farley stared at the never-ending queue of traffic stretching out in front of her and yawned. This was the seventh time in nine weeks that she'd driven this nightmare journey for Christian. Generally she didn't mind � Chris worked hard and he was doing all he could to get everything ready for the arrival of their first child. It wasn't really his fault that he'd been needed in the firm's Scottish office while the papers and designs he'd been working on at home were needed in the central branch. He'd put hours and hours of effort, commitment and concentration into each design and she understood completely why he wasn't prepared to trust their delivery to some two-bit courier firm � after all, there were two vital contracts at stake here. But regardless of the reasons why and the logical explanations for her being stuck out on the road for hours on end, today those explanations offered little