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Dead inside
Henshawe sat alone in a dark corner of a storeroohter he&039;d lost
Where was the sense in going on? Why bother? Those two had been the very reason he existed He&039;d gone to work to earn money to keep theht to be with theht he&039;d never be with anyone before he and Sarah had got together And noithout any reason, warning or explanation, they were gone Taken fro of an eye And he hadn&039;t even been able to help them or hold them He hadn&039;t been there when they&039;d died When they&039;d needed him most he had been miles away
Outside in the main hall he could hear theHe could ser, frustration and co like the stench of rotting flesh in the cold, grey air He could hear fighting, arguing and screa each one of the twenty or so disparate, desperate people apart
When the noise becaed hi He was about to get up and walk and leave the hall and the rest of the survivors behind when his es ofin the streets around hiht outside was beginning to fade The day was al out in the open was horrific enough, but to be out there in the dark - lost, alone and wandering aimlessly - was too ainst the storerooe sunlight of dusk poured into the building fro with vibrant, alht, he took a few steps out of the roo just above the door was a narrow skylight The storerooinal building and when he had arrived he had noticed that it had a flat roof Sensing that his escape was at hand, Henshawe cliht open He dragged hih and scrambled out onto the asphalt roof
The coldest wind he had ever felt buffeted and blew him as he stood exposed on the ten foot square area of roof Froe he could see out over the main road into Northwich and into the dead city beyond Byonly his eyes he followed the route of the road as it splintered away to the left and headed off in the general direction of Hadley, the small suburb where he had lived The sether in bed In his mind he could still picture them both, frozen still and lifeless, their perfect bodies stained with dark, drying blood, and suddenly the icy wind see back to them The very least they deserved was a proper burial and sonity The pain he felt inside was unbearable and he dropped to his knees and held his head in his hands
Froe point he could see countless bodies, and it struck hi to think that he was already used to seeing the corpses Before all this had happened he&039;d only ever seen one dead body, and at that ti He had been at his mother&039;s side when she&039;d died As the life had drained away froe He&039;d seen the colour blanch from her face and her expression freeze and had watched the last breath of air be exhaled fro body He&039;d seen her old and frail frath towards the end, but even then it had taken just a single nurse to help her get around When she died it took two male porters to lift her from her bed and take her away
Parts of the city in the distance were burning Huge thick palls of dirty black s sky from unchecked fires As he watched the s mind came up with countless explanations as to how the fires could have started - a fractured gastoo close to a gas fire? He knew that it was pointless even trying to think about reasons why, but he had nothing else to do And at least thinking like that helped hiet about Geo back inside when one of the bodies in the road caught his eye He didn&039;t knohy, because the body was unree The corpse was that of a teenage boy who had fallen and sainst a kerb stone His neck isted aardly so that whilst he was lying on his side, his glazed eyes were looking up into the sky It was as if he was searching for explanations Carl felt al to him to tell him what had happened and why it had happened to hihtened and alone Carl couldn&039;t stand to look into his pained face for more than a couple of seconds
He went back inside, and the cold and uncomfortable community hall suddenly seemed the safest and warmest place in the world