Chapter 5

I couldn't squeeze into this small space any tighter. I put my hand over my mouth and tried to control my breathing but I knew it was too loud. I could hear my heart beating and I was sure I could be seen from the grass, but it was too late. Moving now would mean certain death. At least here, I may have a chance. I poked my head out to have a look and that was when he saw me. Now, I was going to die.

As I walked through the deserted playgrounds of my old primary school, I remembered every game of cops and robbers, manhunt, block, scramble, fumble, kiss chase, tag, stuck in the mud, lob, British bulldog, hide and seek... In this particular game of cops and robbers, I'd managed to give the cops the slip and was hiding, with the loot, between a big yellow bin and a wall. Marcus, my partner in crime, had been captured and obviously, was now a cop. I knew he'd seen me, he knew he'd seen me, yet he just winked at me and continued "searching". I shot and killed all of the cops with my rocket launcher, including Marcus, and the robbers had won again. I smiled.

I was at the school for two reasons. One, I was looking for bottled water and thought this may be a good place to look. That is unless I was right about the shooters map, in which case it would be full of corpses and free of anything useful. This was the second reason I was here. To see if I was right about the shooter and the three refugee centres.

The school was eerily silent. The only noise came from a shed door, occasionally blowing open and closed. It was day time, probably about midday, but if felt a lot later because of the lack of light. It had rained for three days straight and the clouds hadn't broken once during that time. The wind was cold and sliced through me with every new gust and I knew it would rain again soon. I had to find a place to sleep comfortably. The car was beginning to feel cramped after the first night and the noise of the rain hitting the roof was keeping me awake. The fact I could see out the windows didn't help either. Every movement I saw in the corner of my eye returned me instantly to a state of alertness from which it would take me half an hour to shake off, only for it to happen once again a few minutes later.

The door wasn't locked and so I instantly expected the worst. No one would leave a swinging door open, even the infected could open these. I walked into the main building and headed for the hall. Children's drawings and various other arty projects decorated the corridors leading up to the main entrance of the hall. I got to the door and noticed pieces of paper had been put on the glass, to stop anyone from seeing inside. I slowly pushed the door, it was open. I braced myself, for I was sure what was on the other side. A mass of bodies, all shot and no supplies. I swung the door open and allowed my eyes to dart across the room. Wall to wall, corner to corner. There were tables, chairs and beds but no people. No bodies, no blood, no infected but more importantly, there were no supplies either.

Confused, I took a seat on one of the makeshift beds. I noticed that there was a battery powered radio on the floor. I picked it up and switched it on. Nothing. A battery was missing. I dropped to the floor and looked under the bed. My eyes widened. I'd found the battery, yes, but I'd also found something much more interesting. The metal shone in the sunlight that sneaked into the room. It was a pistol. A revolver to be exact. Suddenly, images of me cruising around in my car, dropping the infected at the pull of a trigger began to flood my thoughts but, just as suddenly as they had begun, they'd stopped. This gun only had one bullet.

I searched every square inch of the room, but there were no more bullets. Guns were never a common sight in England. Even when the dead returned and began eating the living, England remained practically firearm free. Only farmers owned guns and these could only be limited capacity shotguns and rifles. No one could own a handgun or an assault weapon, even with a firearms license, which weren't exactly easy to obtain. Unlike our cousins across the Atlantic who could quite easily walk into a supermarket and buy a fully automatic assault rifle, three hand grenades and a hundred pounds of plastic explosives with their week's food shopping. I'm exaggerating, of course, but I couldn't help but think the American's would be better equipped to deal with this. For all I knew, they may well have been experiencing this as well. I didn't dwell on it. Instead, I thought of a practical use for my new toy, other than the obvious option, that is.

It was raining again. I couldn't think of a use for the gun, other than painting something with my own brain matter, that is. But that didn't interest me, I was too much of a coward to do anything like that and what was the point, anyway? It would be a waste of a perfectly good bullet.

I was doing my best Dirty Harry impression, looking out the window, when I saw it. I was sure of it. It was flying low. It was a helicopter. A police one, if I wasn't mistaken. I burst through the doors and into the courtyard, following the helicopter. I ran round the corner and onto the playing field. It was gone. But now I knew why there weren't any bodies in the school. They were on the playing field, behind the building. In rows, they were decomposing badly, likely because of the recent damp weather. There were at least a hundred people on the field. Soaked through and dripping wet, all I could do was look at them and wonder why anyone would have done this and who?