Domain of the Dead Read Free

to the group as much as to her. “The moment we open the shutters there’ll be no turning back. They’ll be in here and there won’t be no way of stoppin’ ‘em,”
    “How much longer will we be safe in here?” Sarah asked.
    No one replied.
    She looked at their default quartermaster. “Tell them straight, Ray.”
    Ray looked nervously around and shrugged apologetically. “I don’t know.”
    “Ray!” Sarah barked.
    “Maybe four or five weeks worth of food and that’s rationing out even thinner than now.”
    No one was surprised at Ray’s statement. They had begun rationing out their food months before. It wouldn’t be long before it was exhausted.
    “And Ryan’s guzzled the last of the Jack,” Nathan grumbled.
    “Nathan,” Elspeth rebuked.
    “What do we do?” It was a rhetorical question Ryan posed. He looked around the group, half hoping to see the spark of an idea in anyone’s eyes.
    The thin cloth of Nathan’s shirt rippled in the cold wind. Goose pimples stood out on his thin arms. “Fuck it. Sarah’s right. We have to go to them.”
    “Hold on.”
    Everyone turned round to see Ali standing by the water tank. He wasn’t one for conversation and the very fact he had spoken without being spoken to demanded everyone’s attention.
    “You’re seriously suggesting we go out there?” Ali nodded in the direction of the sound, his long black beard bobbing with the wind.
    “What else would you suggest?” Sarah asked.
    Even though Ali had lost a lot of weight from their enforced confinement, he still made for an imposing figure. He’d always looked dangerous, not tough, more strange. He fitted the archetype in Sarah’s mind of the creepy unwashed guy behind the till in a sleazy porn shop—not that Sarah had actually been in a sleazy porn shop, but she had been instantly wary of him when they’d met. Ali wasn’t pretty to look at. His large nose was lumpy and pointed off at a crooked angle, a sure sign of a violent life, in Sarah’s opinion. His complexion was pockmarked and there were patches of paler skin all over his face and neck. His hair, what was left of it, was suspiciously black for someone his age. His mouth would gape open as he watched you and his dark brown eyes looked black under his bushy eyebrows.
    As the months had passed, though, Sarah had got to know him in increments. The hair colour was natural, along with the male pattern balding inherited from both his father’s and mother’s sides of the family. The pockmarks were the result of acne as a teenager, his broken nose the result of a car crash before the days of airbags, and the smattering of light skin was the result of scarring from the broken windshield. The gawping mouth was an indirect result of the accident. His broken nose never healed properly, leaving him unable to breathe through it. The more Sarah had got to know him the less intimidated she felt. The final nail in the coffin for her prejudice had been when she found out he worked for an animal rescue centre.
    “You’re thinking things are so bad that it justifies going out there?” Ali’s eyebrows dipped so low it was impossible to see his eyes.
    Sarah looked at Ray. “They will be in a month.”
    “There are thousands of those pus bags between here and there. One bite, one scratch and that’s all it takes to turn you.” Ali looked round at the rest of the group’s expressions. “You plan on dodging those things long enough to get to a helicopter full of people who are mystery to you?”
    Everyone was silent.
    Ali continued, “As Elspeth said, they may not be friendly, they may want to shoot us, they may refuse to take us. What then?”
    “We don’t have time to argue this,” Ryan said restlessly. “Who knows how long they’ll be there.”
    “Is it truly worth the risk?” Ali asked. “Do you want to wait here and starve to death or take the chance?”
    The congregation on the rooftop started looking at each other.
    “I only say that because