Eleven

Next morning we set off walking again. In the watery pink dawn sunlight the scattered bodies stink worse than ever. We don’t talk much. We’re hungry and tired and refugees, and we save our breath for walking, or for keeping watch for Creatures.

Once or twice we see a flying Creature far in the distance, swooping over the ruins. Whenever this happens we freeze and hide as well as we can, and they don’t appear to notice us. As well as this, there are a number of nests. At least, that’s what I think they are. They are the same kind of papery cocoons that insects weave, only huge. They spill from the doorways of some of the still standing buildings. They are draped like white, inflated tents from bits of wreckage, or from bent electrical pylons.

After a few hours we find a car. It is a silver jeep, run up at a crazy angle on a pile of steel bins. The keys are still dangling from the ignition, but the cab is thankfully empty of bodies.

“Careful,” says Lisa.

“I will be.”

“The noise will draw them here.”

I give her the gun while I climb up into the cab. “If we stay on foot they’ll get us sooner or later. We’ll be safer this way.” She stands back as I start the car. It works, the noise horrendously loud. I put it into reverse and back it off the pile of bins with a crunching and slamming that shatters the stillness of the day. Lisa climbs in and I pull away, steering around spilt islands of detritus. The cab shakes its way over odd bricks, bits of wood, toppled bollards.

I’m surprised I remember anything as mundane as how to drive, but it comes easily enough. Some streets are blocked, and there is rubble all over the road. There are bodies in the road. It feels terrible, every time we lump our way over one, but there’s nothing I can do. It doesn’t matter, but it does.

Lisa cranes round to look behind us, or scan side streets. Once or twice she gasps, grabs my arm and points, but by the time I look we’re already gone. For the rest of the day we whine through the empty streets of an injured London, out onto the motorway. Here I pick up speed and leave behind the smoke and the ash and the desolation.

All of a sudden I feel like I can breathe for the first time in weeks.