32 Days Later

It had started with bird flu.

That, David thought as he crossed the deserted Stamford Street, was a pretty bad lie, if not stupid. People just didn’t drop like flies with bird flu. But that was what the government – who were all dead now, by the way – had said it was, in the beginning.
But no other country in Europe had had any major problems with bird flu during the past decade, and it had never even been reported in Britain before.

During the last days before he was left alone, there was a scientist on TV saying that the virus had initially been an attempt to create new life forms that would be able to discover tumours just by entering the bloodstream. But the new organisms, developed from an already existing virus, had turned on the body it was supposed to help, creating a disease with a death-rate of 100%.

Of course, that didn’t matter now. Stamford Street was deserted, as was every other street David had walked the past month. The phone lines were dead and so were the radio and the Internet.

For all he knew, he could be the last one alive. In London, or in England, or in the whole world.

At first, he had tried to keep as close to the house as possible, but the memories had become too much to bear. The trampoline in the garden only reminded him of the many afternoons Sally had spent jumping up and down on it, the pieces of Lego strewn across the living room floor were all John’s, and he had taken to sleep on the couch since he didn’t want to go near the bedroom that still smelled of Abby’s perfume. At last, during his third week completely on his own, he had packed a bag and left the house. He didn’t intend on coming back.

But he tried not to think about the house, or any other reminder of his family, as he turned onto yet another empty street that was littered with paper, junk and the occasional abandoned car. In the first days, he had thought about taking his own car and drive around, but in the end he had decided on walking. Walking felt better. What good would a car do when he had no goal?

An evacuation bus with an infected driver had overturned on Waterloo Bridge, but there hadn’t been anyone there to take care of the wounded or clear the road from dead bodies and vehicle wrecks. He hadn’t walked here before, but didn’t want to turn around to find another bridge across the Thames. As he passed the accident site with some difficulty, trying not to look at the mouldering bodies scattered across the road and inside the bus wreckage, the crows seemed to look at him almost accusingly. He didn’t blame them – he wondered why he was still alive himself.

A flight of the ominous black birds lifted into the afternoon September sky as he passed. He stopped to take a look at the city in front of him. A dead, silent city.
An old newspaper lay on the pavement, the ink somewhat smeared by rain that had now dried up – the headline read, in bold, black letters: 150,000. Reported deaths in the first week, and then it had hit London. The morgues had been flooded since the hospitals hadn’t been able to offer any help.

He curled up with his sleeping bag a few hours later, in the corner of a high fashion clothes shop where the doors hadn’t been locked. Abby used to go shopping in here, much to David’s dismay as it was pretty expensive.
But he had always loved what she was wearing.

-

It was getting dark by the time Ivy finally got around to try and find something to eat. Not that she had had other things to do, other than walking around, reading, and trying to come up with names for the unaffected squirrels in Hyde Park (and attempting to tell them apart, a pastime she was getting rather good at). Her lack of food intake was merely a result of nonexistent enthusiasm. Thoughts of food were nowadays usually interrupted by thoughts like “what’s the point anyway?” and thus, she rarely ate. Almost constant hunger was her own punishment for still being alive.

There was a slight chill in the air as she walked down the pavement on Hammersmith Road with a bag of chips in one hand and a tube of Oreos in the other, and the backpack slung over her left shoulder. It was Friday, after all, and she had a few cans of Coke back at the bed shop where she slept. Party time.

It was quite a bit to walk to her “home”, though, and it would probably be completely dark by the time she got there. And even if she hadn’t seen another human being in the last 32 days, walking through a dark London with only the occasional street lamp to light up her path was not a very pleasant experience. Sleeping somewhere else tonight was not a very appealing prospect either, but she had a torch with her and an extra sweater.

Ivy had always had been afraid of the dark, but she was learning to cope. Darkness was a part of her life now whether she liked it or not.
Darkness and silence.