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glasses back up his nose again. He seemed to have found a reason to justify staying put.
    ‘But what about the music and the fire?’ he said, much more animated. ‘Stuart and Jack managed to bring us all here by lighting the fire and playing music. If we did it again we might find more survivors. There might already be people on their way to us.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ said Michael. ‘No-one’s arrived here since me. If anyone else had heard the music they’d have been here by now. I agree with what you’re saying, but again, why here? Why not find somewhere better to stop, get ourselves organised there and light a bloody big bonfire right in the middle of the road outside?’
    Carl agreed.
    ‘He’s right. We should get a beacon or something sorted, but let’s get ourselves safe and secure first.’
    ‘A new beacon somewhere else is going to be seen by more people, isn’t it?’ asked Sandra Goodwin, a fifty year-old housewife. ‘And isn’t that what we want?’
    ‘Bottom line here,’ Michael said, changing his tone and raising his voice slightly so that everyone suddenly turned and gave him their full attention, ‘is that we’ve got to look after ourselves first of all and then start to think about anyone else who might possibly still be alive.’
    ‘But shouldn’t we start looking for other survivors now?’ someone else asked.
    ‘I don't think we should,’ he replied, ‘I agree that we should get a beacon or something going, but there’s no point in wasting time actively looking for other people yet. If there are others then they’ll have more chance of finding us than we’ll have finding them.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’ Sandra asked.
    ‘Stands to reason,’ he grunted. ‘Does anyone know how many people used to live in this city?’
    A couple of seconds silence followed before someone answered.
    ‘About a quarter of a million people. Two hundred thousand or something like that.’
    ‘And there are twenty-six of us in here.’
    ‘So?’ pressed an uncomfortable looking Ralph, trying desperately to find a way back into the conversation.
    ‘So what does that say to you?’
    Ralph shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘It says to me,’ Michael continued, ‘that looking for anyone else would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
    Carl nodded in agreement and picked up where Michael had left off.
    ‘What’s outside?’ he asked quietly.
    No response.
    He looked from left to right at the faces gathered around him. He glanced across the room and made eye contact with Michael.
    ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said quietly, ‘there’s nothing. The only people I’ve seen moving since all of this began are sitting in this hall. But we don’t know if it’s over. We don’t know if we’re going to wake up tomorrow. We don’t know if what happened to the rest of them will happen to us.’
    Ralph interrupted.
    ‘Come on,’ he protested, ‘stop talking like that. You’re not doing anyone any good talking like that...’
    ‘I’m trying to make a point...’
    Michael spoke again.
    ‘Since this all started have any of you heard a plane or helicopter pass overhead?’
    Again, no response.
    ‘The airport’s five miles south of here, if there were any planes flying we’d have heard them. There’s a train station that links the city to the airport and the track runs along the other side of the
    Stanhope Road
    . Anyone heard a train?’
    Silence.
    ‘So how many people do you think this has affected?’ Carl asked cautiously.
    ‘If this was the only region affected,’ Michael answered, ‘logic says that help would have arrived by now.’
    ‘What are you saying?’ a man called Tim asked quietly.
    Michael shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘I guess I’m saying that this is a national disaster at the very least. The lack of air traffic makes me think that it could be worse than that.’
    An awkward murmur of stark realisation rippled across the group.
    ‘Michael’s right,’ Emma said. ‘This