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brought Jack a welcome distraction from his increasingly dark, morbid and hopeless thoughts.
    The large store had just opened for business when the disease or virus or whatever it was had struck on Tuesday. A row of large glass doors along the front of the building were open and it seemed, fortunately, that the vast majority of those dead  shoppers who had risen up again inside the shop had managed to stumble back out onto the street.
    Tired and emotionally drained, Jack and Clare wearily worked their way up through the store floor by floor. From the ground floor they collected scraps of food and extra clothing. On the first floor there was a small hardware department from where they took torches and lights. Using the now stationary escalators running up through the centre of the building as a staircase, they then climbed up to a second floor furniture department. It seemed that the higher they went, the fewer bodies they came across. The clumsy figures couldn’t easily cope with climbing up stairs but they were, of course, prone to tripping and falling down. Jack and Clare felt safer the higher they managed to get above ground level. The solitary moving body that they did find on the second floor (trapped between a chest-of-drawers and a fallen wardrobe in a bedroom furniture display) offered no resistance as Jack reluctantly bundled it into a nearby toilet and blocked its way out with a set of bunk beds.
    They spent a long hour together sitting on an expensive leather sofa, picking at the food they’d collected and sharing a few moments of fragmented conversation. Although it was relatively early (around half-past eight) the darkness, silence and strain of the day combined to make it feel much later. They were both exhausted. In what remained of their world everything seemed to take a hundred times more effort to do than it had done before. And added to that, nothing could be done which didn’t remind them both of all they once had but which now they had suddenly lost. By torchlight Jack flicked through a TV
    listings magazine he’d found in a dead shopper’s bag. Most probably all of the celebrities pictured in the glossy pages were now dead. In any event none of it really mattered. What good were actors, presenters and celebrities now?
    ‘We’ll have more luck tomorrow, I’m sure of it,’ Jack whispered hopefully (although not entirely convincingly).
    ‘What do you mean?’ Clare mumbled.
    ‘We’ll find someone else.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘I don’t know. Look, this is a huge city. There must be more people left alive somewhere. You and I can’t be the only ones left, can we?’
    She shrugged her shoulders.
    ‘Well we haven’t seen anyone else, have we?’
    ‘They must be sheltering. I stayed at home for a while before I went out, I bet there are hundreds of people sitting in their houses waiting for something to happen. They’ll have to come out sooner or later to get food and drink and…’
    Clare wasn’t listening. She was crying again. Although he knew that he couldn’t do anything to relieve her pain and fear, and even though he knew he wasn’t the cause of her suffering, as the only adult around Jack couldn’t help but feel responsible and protective towards her. Cautiously he rested a gentle hand on her shoulder, and then reached across and pulled her closer. Half-expecting her to recoil and pull away, he was surprised when she did the opposite and leant her weight against him fully.
    ‘When is this going to stop?’ she sobbed, drawing her knees up and making herself as small as possible.
    ‘Don’t know,’ he grunted honestly.
    ‘But what caused it all?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said again.
    ‘Will it happen to us? Is it just taking longer for us to……?’
    ‘I don’t know, Clare,’ he sighed with a hint of resigned frustration clear in his tired voice. ‘I don’t know anything and I can’t give you any answers. I know as much as you do.’
    ‘But I don’t know anything,’