All Roads End Here

by David Moody

  “Right now I’m struggling to see a way out. From what I’ve seen, the military or the CDF or whatever they’re calling themselves has splintered, and it’s every one of these camps for itself.”

  “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though, is it?” Jason says. “You said before, it’s just a question of staying put until the Haters outside the camp have been killed or starved or whatever.”

  “Yeah, but how long do you think that’s going to take? Weeks? Months? Years? Because that’s the variable in the equation that none of us can work out. How are we going to survive for any length of time when there’s no space here and no food? No clean water, no sanitation … and the longer we wait, the worse it’ll get.”

  “So can we leave?” Mrs. Walker asks.

  “And go where?”

  “I don’t know … there must be somewhere?”

  “There isn’t. However bad it is in here, it’s a hundred times worse on the other side of the city wall. Trust me, I know.”

  “But you can get food,” Jen says.

  “Not anymore. As of today my source has dried up.”

  “Where were you getting it from?” Mrs. Walker asks. “Come on, you’ve been quick enough to criticize everyone else for being dishonest. Exactly how have you been keeping us fed?”

  How much does he tell them? How much would they believe? Is there any point sharing any of what’s happened to him recently? Right now he doesn’t think he has anything left to lose. “I was helping a CDF faction.”

  “Helping them do what?”

  “Track down Haters hiding in No Man’s Land.”

  Jen’s appalled. “Jesus, Matt. You’ve been outside the camp again?”

  “I did it for us,” he tells her, “but I’m done. What they’re doing is futile and misguided and it’s dangerous as hell. I’m getting out while the going’s reasonably good.”

  “But why take such a risk in the first place?”

  “Knowledge is power. Have you heard that old cliché before? I figured we might have half a chance if I got involved with the people who were supposedly in charge and tried to work out what they’re planning.”

  “I can’t believe you risked going back out there,” she says. “Promise me you won’t do anything like that again.”

  “I told you, I’m finished. I’m not going back.”

  An ominous silence descends on the kitchen. For a while the only noises come from other places: the kids bickering in the room next door, voices outside on the packed street, air traffic, distant fighting beyond the border. Jason takes a deep breath and asks the question everyone’s thinking. “So what do we do? Sounds like we’re in a lose-lose situation here.”

  There’s an equally long wait before Matt replies. He’s still looking down, and when he finally looks up he sees it’s all eyes on him. “What? Are you expecting some great speech?” he says, sounding as empty as he feels. “I’m sorry. I’ve got nothing.”

  Jen gets up and storms across the room. “So that’s it, is it? You go through all that shit to get back here, and now you’re just giving up?”

  “If anyone else has any ideas, I’m all ears.”

  “Please, Matthew,” says Mrs. Walker.

  Jen crouches down next to him and takes his hands in hers. “This isn’t like you, love.”

  He looks into her face and feels the weight of the combined expectations of everyone in the house. He knows he can’t just roll over, because that’s no longer in his nature. “Fuck it, you might be right. Things look shitty, but being here’s better than when I got back from that island.”

  “So how did you get through that?” Mrs. Walker asks.

  “The golden rule that kept me alive out there was to look at what everyone else was doing, then do the opposite. Maybe we just need to do the same?” He’s thinking on his feet now. “If we’re going to stand any chance at all then we need to be one step ahead, but at the same time make it look like we’re ten steps behind.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Jason says.

  “We act dumb. Right now we really only need two things, and that’s a decent supply of food and to be invisible. We need to hunker down.”

  “Where?” Jen asks.

  “Here, I guess. It’s as good a place as any. It’s the only place, if I’m honest. Did you never watch a zombie movie and think to yourself, why don’t you idiots just lock the bloody doors and wait for everyone else to get themselves killed? The more desperate the rest of the people in the city get, the more they should gravitate toward the same places. The gates, the old food distribution points, the places where they can still get water … This is a nothing house on a nothing street full of nothing people. No one will come looking around here.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Mrs. Walker asks.

  “As I can be.”

  “But what about supplies?” Jason asks. “You said your source has dried up, and you know as well as I do there’s nothing left out there.”

  Matt’s mind is suddenly racing. “I think you’d be surprised. We just need to apply the same logic and look where no one else is looking.”

  25

  First light.

  It’s been pouring down with rain for hours, clattering against the windows, and this sudden, monsoon-like downpour shows little sign of abating anytime soon. The sky overhead is a turgid mess of rolling yellow-gray clouds which look too heavy to stay up there, like they’re going to drop and smother everything at any moment. Regardless of the conditions, Matt’s outside. He knows he could probably still get food from people at the convent, but at what cost? The ever-increasing risks make the gains barely worthwhile. Instead, this morning he’s giving Jason a master class in going against the flow.

  What’s left of this city never slows and never speeds up. It’s a constant collective insomnia, an endless malaise. With no structure, routine, or purpose to their lives now, the masses simply exist. And without the regimentation and familiarity of the lives which they’ve been torn away from, they’re lost. No internet, no TV, no movies, no magazines, no jobs, no schools, no homes, no point.

  “Don’t look,” Matt tells him, conscious that Jason’s staring at a simmering altercation on a street corner.

  “What?”

  “Don’t make eye contact. Seriously. The more people you make any kind of connection with out here, the more they’ll be watching you. You should know that by now.”

  Jason tries to do as he’s told, but it’s hard. “I do, but it feels different now. There are so many people out here … It’s impossible.”

  “No it isn’t, you just need to focus. Don’t look at them, look through them.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “I never said it was. You start staring someone out now and all they’ll be thinking is what do they want from me? Or what can I get from them? Don’t engage. Don’t trust anyone.”

  Jason’s distracted again, this time by the gangs of children he sees scavenging in the foothills of a refuse slag heap. They’re all ages, picking through the waste for food like the kids from war- strewn Third World countries he used to see on TV.

  Neither of the men has spent much time in this part of the camp before today, not since the city was cordoned off from the rest of the world. They’ve reached the fire-damaged Royal Midlands Hospital. What’s left of it, anyway.

  Over the weeks a makeshift field hospital has sprung up in the Royal Midlands’ shadow and has grown like a weed, wrapping its tendrils around the main building while also spreading farther and farther out into the camp. No doubt its numbers became massively swollen by a sudden influx of the injured and displaced after the fire. It’s easy to get distracted imagining the panic which must have gripped patients and staff alike as flames tore through parts of the monolithic building. Matt tries to put it from his mind as he leads Jason through a mazelike mass of rain-soaked canvas.

  Of all the sights they’ve so far seen in this increasingly godforsaken place, the field hospital is by far the w
orst. The heavy rain this morning is compounding the grimness, leaving the narrow gaps between shelters and stationary vehicles churned up and muddy like something from the First World War. In a wall-less shelter—little more than a grubby fabric roof supported by poles in each corner and a sagging crossbeam—a number of patients sit together in a miserable huddle, bandaged-up but otherwise forgotten. The look in their eyes is haunting. They say so much without saying anything at all.

  “What the fuck are we doing here?” Jason whispers with more than a hint of nerves in his voice. “Seriously, man, this is a bad idea. We could catch all kinds of shit here.”

  “Have you not been listening to anything I told you? We have to go where nobody else goes.”

  “Yeah, but there are thousands of people here. What makes you think we’re going to find anything they’ve missed?” Now that they’re deep in the midst of this improvised medical facility, it seems to go on forever. Nothing but sickness on all sides. Jason imagines the people here fighting over single crumbs of food. Every face he sees is hollow-looking. Starved.

  “Not here,” Matt says. “There.” He points up at the main hospital building, which looms large over everything.

  “Are you fucking kidding? It’ll be a thousand times worse in there.”

  “You’re right. Nobody in their right mind is going to go looking for food in that place.”

  “Nobody but you.”

  “Nobody but us.”

  * * *

  From a distance the three sections of the hospital building appear separate and distinct. Close-up, though, and it’s clear that this is a single building which separates into towers at a much higher level. The place stinks of death. Christ alone knows how many people must have been killed when fire ravaged the building. The area around the burned tower is markedly quieter than everywhere else. Is it reverence or fear which keeps the masses away? Matt has no time for either.

  He points at the part of the hospital which is most badly damaged. The building’s once-white skin is almost exclusively black higher up save for a small patch which has been spared near the roof. “Look,” he says to Jason, “that part was cut off by the fire. It’ll be practically untouched inside.”

  Jason follows Matt down to the main hospital entrance. Like everywhere else, it’s rammed with people. They could be patients, refugees, or staff, it’s impossible to tell. Matt thinks they’re just here because there’s nowhere else, that as grim and uninviting as this building is, it’s (just about) better than nothing. In places they’re so densely packed that the crowd appears like a single writhing mass; arms and legs and heads everywhere, like some grotesque conjoined creature carpeting the ground.

  On Matt’s advice they’re both carrying rucksacks filled with junk to give the impression they’re looking for a place to stay, not looting. Jason appreciates his foresight now, because everyone here has something they’re desperately clinging on to. A bag, a box, a suitcase, a crate … frantically grabbed remnants of their old existences packed up in haste as they ran for their lives. It makes him and Matt look unremarkable.

  Every inch of floor space is occupied. The light inside the building is low and it takes a long time to negotiate between and around the refugees. As soon as Matt sees a staircase and an opportunity to get up off ground level, he takes it.

  It’s easy to be sure they’re heading toward the fire-ravaged area, because the number of people reduces as the severity of the damage to the building around them increases. It’s testament to the designers of this massive structure that the fire was relatively contained. Matt checks each level as they climb. The last three floors have been progressively more damaged to the point where the level they’ve now reached is nothing but black. “It’s only when you’re away from them that you realize how loud the crowds are,” Matt says, and he’s right. Other than their labored breathing and heavy footsteps, the only noise comes from the wind whistling in through broken windows.

  “You’re sure this is going to be worth it?” Jason whispers, because he clearly isn’t. The staircase itself is blackened and charred now and the light has reduced to virtually nothing, all windows covered over with soot. Matt feels his way a few steps higher and realizes the way through is blocked by fallen debris.

  “I’m sure,” he says. “No one’s been here since it happened. You can feel it.”

  Jason doesn’t doubt he’s right. “There’s good reason for that.”

  “And that gives us an ever better reason for pressing on. Can’t go this way, though. The fire burned itself out before it reached the top levels. The undamaged section is right above us, assuming we can get to it. We’ll find another way up. There must have been more than one way.”

  Matt leads Jason along a ruined corridor which stretches out into the darkness. There’s a glimmer of light at either end, but the illumination barely reaches the middle. That’s for the best, he thinks. There are blackened bones covering the floor. It’s impossible to tell where the people end and the building begins. Matt edges along the dirty walls, feeling his way and dragging his feet when the amount of detritus is too uneven to risk taking proper steps. Jason literally hangs on his coattails, following the noise he makes as much as anything.

  A lift shaft. One sliding door is wedged open but there’s no lift visible. There’s enough metalwork on the walls of the shaft to hold on to and Matt nonchalantly slips into the small rectangular space and begins to climb. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Jason says under his breath. His whispered words are amplified by the shape of the apparently bottomless chute.

  “No joke, just move.”

  A short climb—it might just be one level, it might be several—and Matt’s able to rest his feet on a narrow ledge while he forces another door open. He expects to find more fire damage, but doesn’t. It’s weird, surreal almost. They’re above the devastation now, and up here it’s like nothing ever happened. This part of the hospital feels trapped in the prewar. Pickled in aspic.

  Unlike the patients.

  There must have been scores of them left up here, unable to escape. The bodies are piled up against doors they’ve tried to get through, corpses wearing patient’s gowns lying alongside those in hospital scrubs. No one got out of here alive.

  Jason drags himself out of the lift shaft on his hands and knees, then vomits when he sees (and smells) a mound of decaying flesh dead ahead. Matt keeps going. He’s seen worse. “This is nothing compared to the shit outside the city, believe me.”

  “We should go back,” Jason shouts to him across the echoing, sarcophagus-like space. “There’s no point. If there was anything worth taking here, this lot would have already had it.”

  But Matt’s not listening. He’s still heading up.

  * * *

  There are scraps of food on every level, pretty much on every ward and side room. Enough, with the medicines they also collect from cupboards they smash open, to fill both of their rucksacks. It’s grim work picking through the remains, emotionally and physically grueling, but they have to do it. Near the top of the hospital building, where they find labs and offices and other empty spaces, Jason suggests this would be a good place for them to sit out the rest of the apocalypse.

  “Bad idea,” Matt tells him. “We’d never get the others up here.”

  “Yeah, but it would be worth the effort. Once we’re here—”

  “Once we’re here we’d be stuck for the duration. A hiding place without a decent escape route is a tomb.”

  “I just thought—”

  “No, Jason, you didn’t. You just reacted and said the first thing that came into your head. There’s a difference, and that’s the difference you have to be aware of if you want to get through this. You might be right, we might be safe up here from the people down there, but this place would leave us prone. There’d be no quick way out if things go shit-shaped, and they usually do in my experience.”

  “You’ll disappear up your own ass one day.”

  “Mock
me all you like, I know what I’m talking about. Why do you think there are so many dead bodies up here? They couldn’t get down. We wouldn’t get down, not at any speed, anyway.”

  Enough talking. Matt’s still climbing, this time heading up a precarious-looking maintenance staircase and out onto the roof. The rain’s still driving down and the wind is fearsome. Head down, hanging on to whatever he can find for support, he walks toward the edge of the building and surveys the camp below. In spite of the low cloud, the view from up here is astonishing.

  “What do you see?” he asks Jason.

  “Same old, same old. Too many people, not enough space.”

  “Look closer.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t just accept what you see, start trying to read it. See down there?” He points to an area closer to the center of the camp, away from the hospital grounds. “I reckon that’s a likely flashpoint, a bottleneck. It’s an intersection. If anything happened around there you’d likely have people converging from all different directions. And over there…”

  “Where?”

  Now Matt’s pointing in the opposite direction, closer to home. “Right over there. Nearer to our place.”

  “What, that empty space?”

  “Yes, the space. Why’s it there? It wasn’t there last week, I don’t think. Has it just been cleared? Is it too dangerous to be around there? Has it been sealed off because the Haters have attacked the border again? You see what I’m getting at? Don’t just look at what’s happening now, try and work out what’s already gone and what might come next.”

  “What’s that place?” Jason asks. Now he’s the one doing the pointing, but Matt knows immediately what it is he’s spotted. The high-walled military compound from which he first ventured out into the wilderness with Franklin and the others is surprisingly conspicuous from up high. The crowds are dense around its clearly defined perimeter.

  “That place,” he warns him, “is bad news. We stay away from there at all costs.”

  “Why? That where the CDF lot you got mixed up with are from?”