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Cooper was becoly claustrophobic in his protective suit Made from a nu any conta fro he was dripping with sweat He decided he would make a ather his thoughts and prepare himself for the journey back to the base He didn&039;t relish the thought of having to fight his way back out of the city And what if he couldn&039;t get access to the base when he finally made it back there? What if they wouldn&039;t let him inside because the decontamination process had already started for the others?

What if they hadn&039;t evento wait outside on his own for days - unable to eat or drink or even to breathe freely Christ, what exactly had happened to the world? He had been understandably preoccupied with the situation that he suddenly found himself in, so much so that the fate of the rest of the world seemed to have somehow temporarily passed hi beyond compare, that much was clear, but what had the deadly disease actually done? Why had some people survived when others had died, and had those people actually survived at all? Their skin bore the sans of decoround and they were unnaturally lethargic and slow He stopped and checked hi here? Cooper shook his head and laughed and leant back against the nearest wall Did he really think that those people he&039;d come across in the city were dead? Maybe the air had been filled not with disease but with so that had so that he thought he&039;d seen had actually happened? That was a inally more plausible explanation of the bizarre events of the day so far The world outside was relentlessly dark He wondered whether he would be better ht? Perhaps he would be safer under the cover of darkness? Whatever the people he&039;d come across were - contaminated survivors, reanier and quicker than they were He also had the advantage of having been trained to survive in the most extreme conditions

He was confident - or at least as confident as he could be in the circuet out of the city His stoer He&039;d done his best to ignore theworse The gentle ruut and, to add to the discomfort, his bladder was full to capacity despite the fact that his throat was unco the store room he couldn&039;t immediately think of one In a desperate attean to look around thewhich surrounded him Even a pen and paper would be sufficient - he could write his will or scribble pictures or do anything to distract hiht from a small but powerful torch he&039;d carried strapped to his belt he peered dejectedly into the glooh on the opposite side of the room he could see cardboard boxes

Most of the racking was loaded up with basic office supplies and stationery, but froht contain A mixture of inquisitiveness and sheer boredom and frustration drove hily they held nothing es and supplies Cooper lowered his foot to step down but lost his balance as the racking (which was not attached to the wall as he&039;d presuhtly

He dropped down heavily and landed aardly on his back on top of a photocopier with a crash which, in the silence of the night, sounded disproportionately loud Wincing with pain and surprise he then rolled off the top of the machine and tu his head againstheavily, he lay where he had fallen for a un to echo around the building, the clattering and crashing noises he&039;ddisturbed the office&039;s other occupants With considerable effort he slowly dragged himself back onto his feet and brushed himself down

He could feel air on his face Thrown into a desperate panic, Cooper scra it on, he shone it across the rooave off, saw that the visor of his face- in his chest his eyes followed the route of a snaking crack across the visor frolass, perspex or whatever it was that thenausea washed over the soldier as he realised the implications of what had happened His suit had been compromised He had seen what the disease had done to Thompson earlier and he knew full well how quickly and violently his colleague had been infected and had died

After a split-second pause as the cold reality of his situation sunk in, he panicked He covered the chip in the visor with his hand, hoping to prevent the disease fro inside With each second that passed so his fear increased He struggled to find so full well that, in all probability, his lungs had already been filled with the deadly germs All that he could do noait for the inevitable to happen Cooper screwed his eyes shut and waited He held his breath for as long as he could, hoping to prolong his life by a few precious seconds and knowing that the next tier still and he ripped off the face-ht as well breathe his final breath freely and not through the sterilising filters in the breathing apparatus

He leant against the , breathing in the cold autuan to wonder why he wasn&039;t dead Or was he? Was this how the people ere still able to move had been affected? He didn&039;t feel any different It didn&039;t hurt He wasn&039;t suffocating or choking as he&039;d seen Tho earlier It was several hours later when Cooper finally allowed himself to accept the fact that he so far seemed to have been left untouched by whatever it was that had ripped apart the rest of the world