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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.

7

    Carl eventually returned to the other survivors and found them sitting in a rough circular group in one corner of the dark main hall. Some sat on chairs and benches whilst others were crouched down on the hard linoleum floor. The group was gathered around a single dull gas lamp and a quick count of the heads he could see revealed that he seemed to be the only absentee. A few of the poor bewildered souls glanced up at him as he approached.
    Feeling suddenly self-conscious (but knowing that he had no reason to care) he sat down at the nearest edge of the group. He sat down between two women. He’d been trapped in the same building as them for the best part of a day and yet he didn’t even know their names. He knew very little about anyone and they knew very little about him. As much as he needed their closeness and contact, he found the distance between the individual survivors still strangely welcome.
    A man called Ralph was trying to address the group. From his manner and the precise, thoughtful way that he spoke Carl assumed he’d been a barrister or, at the very least, a solicitor until the world had been turned upside down yesterday morning.
    ‘What we must do,’ Ralph said, clearly, carefully and slowly and with almost ponderous consideration, ‘is get ourselves into some sort of order here before we even think about exploring outside.’
    ‘Why?’ someone asked from the other side of the group. ‘What do we need to get in order?’
    ‘We need to know who and what we’ve got here. We need food and water, we need bedding and clothes and we should be able to find most of that in here. We also need to know what we haven’t got and we should start thinking about where to get it.’
    ‘Why?’ the voice interrupted again. ‘We know we’ll find everything we need outside. We shouldn’t waste our time in here, we should just get out and get on with it.’
    Ralph’s confidence was clearly a professional facade and, at the first sign of any resistance, he squirmed. He pushed his heavy-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of his nose with the tip of his finger and took a deep breath.
    ‘That’s not a good idea. Look, I think we’ve got to make our personal safety and security our prime concern and then...’
    ‘I agree,’ the voice interrupted again. ‘But why stop here? There are a thousand and one better places to go, why stay here? What makes you any safer here than if you were lying on the dotted white line in the middle of the
    Stanhope Road
    ?’
    Carl shuffled around so that he could see through the mass of heads and bodies and identify the speaker. It was Michael, the bloke who had cooked the soup earlier.
    ‘We don’t know what’s outside...’ Ralph began.
    ‘But we’ve got to go out there eventually, you accept that?’
    He stammered and fiddled with his glasses again.
    ‘Yes, but...’
    ‘Look, Ralph, I’m not trying to make this any more difficult than it already is. We’ve got to leave here to get the supplies we need. All I’m saying is why bother delaying it and why bother coming back? Why not go somewhere else?’
    Ralph couldn’t answer. It was obvious to Carl and, probably, to pretty much everyone else, that the reason Ralph didn’t want to go outside was the same reason Stuart Jeffries had admitted to wanting to stay trapped in the hall earlier. They were both scared.
    ‘We could try and find somewhere else,’ he began, hesitantly, ‘but we’ve got a shelter here which is secure and...’
    ‘And cold and dirty and uncomfortable,’ Carl said quickly.
    ‘Okay, it’s not ideal but...’
    ‘But what?’ pressed Michael. ‘It seems to me that we can pretty much have our pick of everywhere and everything at the moment.’
    The room fell silent for a few seconds. Ralph suddenly sat up straight and pushed his