The Apocalypse Blog
by Melanie Edmonds

After Alice told me her story, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Should I tell the group, or keep it to myself? Was it important enough to repeat what was told to me in the quiet dark, in unspoken confidence?

I spent yesterday mulling it over, trying to work out what might be best. The images that she had painted in my head kept poking at me – bloodsmeared faces and hooked fingers tearing at a person’s flesh. No wonder she had nightmares about it.

Finally, I told her that I had to tell the others what she had related to me. She wasn’t happy with that, but I told her that I wouldn’t make her tell it again. I could save her that much, at least.

I waited until everyone was done eating and the youngsters had settled down for the night, leaving just the adults awake with Alice sitting sullenly at my elbow. They were all quiet while I told them the story, their expressions shifting as the details sank in. I caught sight of Sally slipping her hands around Masterson’s arm to hold onto him; of all of us, she looked the most nakedly frightened by all of this. He shot her a frown, but he didn’t protest her clinging to him. It’s possible that he’s getting fond of her.

When I was done, we had to talk about what comes next. Carlos’s trio had come from a different direction to the one we were heading in, so we didn’t think we were heading towards this maddened gang. Thorpe asked if it was the same gang that attacked both groups – Alice’s and Carlos’s. No-one could say for sure, though she said that they sounded the same. They would have had to move very fast to get that far ahead of us, though, and it was only possible if they had cut right through the middle of the Pride’s territory. Both of those factors made it unlikely; Carlos had said that part of what had freaked his group out the first time they encountered the gang was how unhurried and inevitable they moved, and we’ve heard how dangerous the Pride are.

It was Masterson who piped up and asked if this wasn’t just hysteria. Frightened people who can’t handle the awful things that have happened, making up unlikely stories to cover up what really happened. Or perhaps it was guilt speaking. He was looking directly at Alice when he said that, and we all knew that he was asking if she had killed her group, either by staying away too long or not bringing what they needed to survive.

I was furious. I would have shouted at him, but Alice erupted next to me and I had to grab onto her to stop her launching herself, either at him or away from all of us. She was yelling at him about how horrible he is and that she didn’t lie about this, not this time.

Matt said what I was too busy to: “What’s wrong with you?” I suspect I would have sworn at him, though.

I managed to calm Alice down enough to stop her shouting at him. I was holding onto her arm and could feel her shaking; from the tension in her jaw, I could tell she was barely holding back tears. Everyone was angry, but from the lack of abuse heading in the doctor’s direction, I knew that they all thought he had a point. Now, hours after the event, I can see that he wasn’t entirely out of line, but at the time I couldn’t. I just knew that I believed her. Like Carlos, I believed that she believed it. Our discussion was descending into disgruntled murmurs and doubt; I could see the purpose and usefulness of it slipping away.

“I don’t think she’s lying,” I said, trying to get their attention again. “But I also don’t think it matters. The question is whether we dare take the chance that it’s not true.” I looked at Thorpe and Ben. “It’s like someone shouting ‘fire’. You have to assume that it might be true, for everyone’s safety. At least until you’re sure.”

“You’re not suggesting that we go and check it out, are you?” Masterson’s tone was derisive and I could feel my hackles instinctively rising against it. “That’s ridiculous. And suicide.”

“Of course she’s not.” To my surprise, it was Sax who spoke up for me first. His low voice was a smoothing undercurrent to the hot tempers in the group. “She didn’t suggest that we run in and ask the Pride if they were as bad as we had heard, did she?”

“She’s right; we can’t just ignore it,” Ben put in, another calm voice in the melee. He had a possessive hand on my knee, which I didn’t mind in the least.

The conversation shifted towards what we could do with this information, and what we should do. We had already doubled our nightly watches but we had relaxed during the day; we had to be more vigilant. No-one should be allowed to go off on their own, and we had to find some way of warning each other if trouble arose. We all had to promise to look out for each other; the group was our best protection. We were already armed, so we didn’t need to worry about finding weapons, though we should keep an eye out for better ones (I know some of the men would like to get their hands on guns, but we haven’t found any yet).

No-one suggested armour. I wonder if that will be the next thing, as we find more ways to harden ourselves against this world.

Today, I saw something that I haven’t latched my eyes onto in a long time. It took me a moment to realise what I was seeing, and why it was unusual.

It was Nugget who spotted them first, drawing our attention by stopping and staring at them. When asked what was wrong, she just pointed at the blur in the sky. Black bodies, living bodies, flapping and fluttering as they circled high above. There was nothing ‘wrong’ about them at all – it was a small flock of crows, spiralling around something some distance away. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

It has been a long time since we saw any birds – I haven’t seen any since the rain started. There has been no birdsong in the air, no wings swooping around, not even any birdshit marring buildings or statues, roadways or car windscreens. I thought that the rain must have taken them all, scoured the sky clean of their invasions. I’ve missed their presence, missed the motion above my head, hopping around in trees, on gutters and TV aerials. I’ve missed them calling to one another, screeching at the neighbour’s cat, even the mind-numbingly repetitive cooing of the pigeons.

We all broke into chatter as we walked on, wondering how they’ve survived this long. They’re scavengers, so they must be pillaging the dead that hasn’t been rubbed away by the rain. They must have found an indoor place to roost during the wet hours.

If crows can do that, then so can other creatures. We’ve seen so few animals since the bomb went off – a few cats (other than Jones), a snarl or two of dogs, and the unseen skitter of rats or mice, but that’s it. No butterflies, hardly any insects at all – the cockroaches that suicided in the rain were the only notable appearances made by our many-legged friends. There have been spiders, but they tend to keep to themselves. No horses or cows out in the fields, though we’ve passed few of those in our travels.

But the birds – they’re the most obvious wildlife that impinged on our lives in the time Before (before the bomb, that is). I hadn’t realised just how much I missed their presence until I saw those crows, stamped in indelible black against the strange orange sky. Even their raucous cries were welcome to my ears as we drifted nearer to them; it’s just so good to hear something alive here in this world that’s suffocating under a dead silence.

I am so glad that we are not the only creatures that have survived. After watching the cockroaches die, I had wondered if anything else could live in this After world. I know that we are a part of a huge cycle, a chain of life in which giants stand on the shoulders of ants, and I thought it was all broken. The damage that was done had seemed too great, irreparable, something we would never recover from. Nothing can grow in this soil that the rain falls on, there are no plants left to feed on, and nothing but ourselves to use for meat.

The supplies we pillage are finite – we all know this and plunge on towards the time when there’s nothing left to find any more. Once they’re gone, what will we do? I had thought there was no way to make more.

Now I know better. Now I know that there is a thin, fragile thread of life that exists beyond the grubby, selfish human gangs that have formed, hungry for survival. Now I know that we can hunt if we need to, that there’s more food in the world than is contained in cans and boxes and sealed plastic containers.

We chose not to see what the crows were circling around; it was most likely some dead thing and it was off our chosen course. We left them to their feeding with lighter steps, throwing ideas about what it means back and forth. I haven’t seen the group so bouyant in a while.

A flock of crows is called a ‘murder’, and today that is more ill-fitting than ever. This murder proves that life exists. It proves that hope is not dead. May there be many more such murders in this world.

We had a choice to make today, standing on the cusp of ruined suburbia and what lay beyond it. We hadn’t realised that we had drifted so far west; our detour around the Pride’s territory had pushed us further out of our way than we had planned.

On the map, the area we came to is a little green splodge. In reality, it’s an expanse of bare, scorched earth, stretching under the orange sky with unwise exposure. I think there used to be fields here, a small farm nestled up against the city’s outer districts. Now there’s nothing fertile or growing about it; the rain has seen to that.

There’s no cover within sight, nothing we might be able to rely on, and we reached that edge just after lunchtime. With only a few hours until the rain came, it wasn’t a risk we were eager to take. So we had a choice: cross the ex-fields and chance the exposure; or follow the suburban edge around it and risk cutting back towards the threat of the Pride. Even if we waited until tomorrow to head out across the open land, there was still the danger of being caught out.

I hadn’t realised how dependent we had become on these buildings that hunch up around us. They had seeped into my psyche until the thought of being without them made my heart beat uncomfortably fast. I have grown used to their shadows resting on my shoulders, these shells of homes and pillaged businesses. I have grown used to the security of kicked in doors and empty windowframes.

In the end, we decided that the threat of the Pride was not worth chancing. But instead of walking out bare-headed under that sky and its murderous weeping, we opted to make ourselves a third option: driving. It took us a while to find a couple of suitably big and tough vehicles, and for once I found myself glad of the housewife habit of buying 4x4s. The roads are fairly clear out here, but it is still useful to be able to climb a car around obstacles as well.

We’re still making our way across the open space, making good time because there isn’t a lot on this particular stretch of road. The boys aren’t rushing, because the last thing we need right now is a burst tyre or an accident. We’re looking for somewhere to hole up, but the farm buildings we passed earlier didn’t look good. The barn’s roof was ruined and the farmhouse itself didn’t look that much better, with the kind of ramshackle propping that suggests it was like that even in the time Before.

The clouds are gathering up overhead. I hope we find some shelter soon.

I do not like driving through the rain. I never really did – it tends to make people drive like idiots. Now, our drivers are very careful but the rain itself more than makes up for that.

We didn’t find shelter before it came yesterday, before the clouds thickened and darkened the whole world. Headlights made the fall before us sparkle in sickly colours and windscreen wipers struggled to keep up with the deluge. With no streetlights any more, it was just us and our little patch of headlights, pushing through like a blind man feeling his way. We kept moving because the hope of shelter was better than sitting in the cars all night.

We were all glad to see the walls rearing up out of the wet darkness in front of us. But then they just kept on going – long and high and faceless. The map was in the other car – I had to use the radio to talk to them. Sax still has the radio he took out of the boat and, as luck would have it, we had accidentally been organised enough to have a radio in each vehicle. I know I didn’t think about it when we were piling in, but I will from now on.

We had found the gates, painted slick and dark by the rain, when the reply came through. It’s the prison, Sax reported. That’s what was on the other side of the fields. I don’t think I even looked that far when we were discussing which way to go.

I think the worst part was that one of the gates was listing open, waggling faintly in the wind that was skirling up the droplets of acid-laced water. This was a secure facility housing our worst and most ruthless characters, and the door is open.

We should keep going, we decided. But then the other car radioed back to say that the engine had stalled out. We couldn’t get out to restart it, so our minds were made up for us. We weren’t going anywhere else; that was where we were spending the night. Settle down and make sure we keep watch, we all agreed. It wasn’t easy when we were sitting there, facing the prison’s open door, wondering what lay within and what might have been let out.

It’s hard to know whether I hope the prisoners survived or not. The idea of them being locked inside their cages while the world fell down, of starving to death or rioting against the bars until they were all dead – that notion makes me shiver. It’s not an end I would wish on anyone. I’d like to think that I don’t wish anyone dead.

But at the same time, there are enough ruthless, violent people who have let go of morals and law out in the world. Those who were like that even when things were whole and working might be free, and that scares me. It’s possible that I’ve met some already. But what if we haven’t met the worst?

Are they behind Carlos’s story, and Alice’s? Are they why the Pride are so frightening?

There was another voice in my head that demanded attention. It was the same one that made me hide the labels when I took things from stores. It was reminding me that in the time Before, I might had ended up in here for all that I’ve done. We were sitting in a stolen car in front of the prison gates and the irony of that didn’t escape me.

Sitting in front of those open gates, wondering where the criminals had escaped to, it’s a wonder I slept at all. Today, I just want to get the hell away from here.

I don’t think any of us got a lot of sleep that night in front of the prison gates. In the morning, we were all eager to get the cars started again, though that was easier said than done. The one that had stalled didn’t want to come back to life and I ended up under the bonnet trying to figure out what was wrong with it. With hardly any tools, it was a challenge. Dillon watched me fiddling and Ben lent a hand. Sax was nearby to offer suggestions, though he agreed that he was not much use with mechanics; he’s better with electronics. The rest of the group was keeping an eye on the prison through the open gates.

The place is no more appealing in daylight. The walls are a flat, uncompromising grey even in the strange orange-tinted daylight, featureless except for the curl of barbed wire snaggling along the top and the gate we were stranded in front of. The rain has stained the signs, dribbling words together until we can barely make them out. The gates are high, metal bars that were once painted an inoffensive tan and are now faded to a sickly vomit-colour, matching the glimpses of doors and mesh and gates further inside.

The weirdest thing about it is the silence, the stillness that lives inside the crouched building. I’m not the only one that imagines eyes in the barred windows, or that feels that held breath ready to sneak down the back of my neck. The whole place has a presence, one that watches us, one that waits for us.

It didn’t have to wait long.

I had just found what I thought was the problem with the engine – the fuel line had worked itself loose – when there was a cry behind me. I turned just in time to see Nugget disappear through the gates in hot pursuit of a certain small furry creature. In true horror movie style, he had decided to go visit the prison, and because Nugget had to follow, so did the rest of us, despite our desires to the contrary. We might leave the cat to his fate inside a place like that, but a child and one of our own number is different. Conditions compelled us, and so we answered it.

The others were all following Nugget, trying to call her back without shouting; they didn’t want to make too much noise in case there was someone alive in the building. I finished up what I was doing – we might need to make a swift exit, so I wanted to know that both cars would work – before I went with them.

I finally dropped the bonnet closed and ran through the gates, only to slow to a walk as I looked for the group. Once off the access road, it was a maze of gates and mesh walls that stretched high over my head. The only reason I knew where to go was that the path only led in one direction, for all it flipped back and forth and wound around corners. I don’t know how many security points I passed; I wasn’t paying attention. I did notice that some of the gates were bent out of shape, warped by someone’s – or something’s – determination. They would never close properly again.

I found the others in a central courtyard. There was equipment lying around – weights, gym machines, that kind of thing – with padding and seats all eaten away by the rain. The prison walls rose up around us, holding a small square of orange sky between their thick grey arms. Bars prickled over the windows and, between them, the glass glared down at us.

The others were quiet and I almost asked why they were standing there like that, huddled up in a group in the centre of the courtyard. Nugget wasn’t there; they hadn’t caught up with her yet. Then I followed their gazes upwards, beyond the accusing windows to the roofline above. There were bumps in it, uneven and familiar.

I heard a skitter and nearly jumped out of my skin – in the silence, the sound bounced off every wall and came right at us. Claws scraped quite distinctly against the gutter and I recognised the way one of the black shapes up there moved. We had found the crows’ home. The murder’s home. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a good thing any more.

Even more unsettling was the fact that each of the walls that hemmed us in bore an open door. They might let the birds in, but I was more worried about what they might have let out.

Something’s happening, gotta go.

It was nothing dire. Dillon had snapped and was shouting at Masterson. I’m not sure what happened, but it had something to do with Alice – probably one too many crack about the one-eyed girl. The two boys have been separated and Masterson has been told to keep his tongue to himself before he gets it smacked down his throat. Then it was time to move on for the day.

Anyway. Where was I? Oh, the courtyard.

I crept over to join the others, and Ben took my hand and held onto it tightly. I didn’t dare to say anything. I think we were all wondering why the crows were just sitting there, why they weren’t cawing. They all seemed to be looking down at us, watching the tiny people move around on the ground. Maybe they were wondering if one of us would die and provide them with a meal.

They didn’t wait long. Without warning, they all erupted into the sky, prompted by some signal none of us saw. It was deafening – the courtyard amplified the sound of wings and crow voices, and all of us covered our ears. They circled once and then dived into the courtyard like it was a great funnel, swirling around and around until they peeled off and dived through one of the open doors. The prison’s dark belly ate them up.

It was over in seconds. They didn’t touch a single one of us, but we were all crouching by the time they were gone, hearts hammering like a big dwarf with a tiny chisel. There was wariness in the way we stood up again, testing our true heights as if it might prompt something else to fly at us. In the crows’ absence, silence swallowed us again, as if they had sucked all the sound along with their wake.

“Fuck this.” Masterson was the first one to speak, jolting us all out of our stunned expressions. “You guys can find the stupid kid. I’m gonna wait in the car.”

He wasn’t wrong. Callous, as always, but not wrong. I wanted to say something to stop him, but I couldn’t figure out what.

Matt didn’t have that problem. “On your own?” He wasn’t confrontational about it, just asked the question evenly.

Masterson was already several steps across the courtyard, heading for the exit, when he turned to scowl back at us. He set a pointed look on Sally; she shifted uncomfortably because her feet hadn’t moved to follow him.

“I wanna stay with the group,” she told him, in that voice that hopes he won’t mind, really, because she doesn’t want to cause trouble. To her credit, she didn’t bow to his disapproval or displeasure. She’s learning to stand up to him.

The doctor thought about it for a moment, and then huffed and came back to us. He wasn’t willing to risk being caught alone in this place and I don’t blame him for that. I had hold of Ben’s hand again and wasn’t planning to let it go anytime soon.

Nugget had to be somewhere inside, so we had to decide how we were going to search for her. We retreated to a doorway to talk, so that we weren’t standing right there out in the open any more.

We didn’t want to split up because we were safer in numbers. But in one group, it would take hours to search the whole place. We didn’t dare call out to Nugget in case there were other people here, and she wouldn’t call back anyway, so we would have to search the prison room by room. At least the number of places we had to search would be cut down by how much she could get into; it was bound to be locked up inside.

No-one said anything about the potential of prisoners loose in there; we were all thinking it. Even guards weren’t a comforting thought; we’ve seen plenty of good people turned to violence and self-interest, and heard stories about prison guards being just as bad as the prisoners, only with keys and weapons. No, if there were people here, they were unlikely to be friendly or disinterested. They were likely to be armed and ready for us.

We decided to split into two groups. Me, Ben, Dillon and Alice in one; Thorpe, Matt, Sax, Sally and Masterson in the other. We were to meet back in the courtyard in an hour. Then we turned to opposite sides of the courtyard, straightened our shoulders, and went in.

It wasn’t until we were split up and inside that I realised none of us had a working watch. It wasn’t the best start.

Time to go. I’ll finish this when I can!

Inside the prison was worse than being outside. The walls closed around us, gulped us down and let light in through its teeth. Our footsteps echoed as if they might wake up this great beast of a building, shivering its quiet corridors back to life.

I’ve been in many ruined and empty buildings. Shops, houses, apartments, even an office or two. I don’t like them. I don’t like how they seem to be waiting for their rightful occupants to return: the open mail lying on the counter; the wares halfway through having their sale stickers applied; the stacks of papers in line for attention; the abandoned laundry begging for a wash. We use them because we must.

This place is different. This place has a taste of an aftermath about it; something happened here, closer and more personal than the bomb that exploded over the city, miles and months away. The signs were small at first, until there were so many that the wrongness was big enough to choke us.

There was paper all over the floor, tissues and toiletpaper mostly, torn into shreds as if an angry and insatiable puppy tore through here. We saw pieces of furniture, but not a single item whole. There were shards of broken pottery – I’m not sure what they used to be, but I suspect at least one was a sink. Someone had to have ripped it off the wall and brought it into the corridor to smash it. Against what? I didn’t want to know the answer to that.

The worst of it was the marks on the walls. Scars and scratches, and smears and spatters turned rusty and faded. No-one felt the need to comment on it, and what was there to say anyway? Something awful happened here, something violent and roiling, tearing up the corridors and smashing anything in its path.

It was distracting, the debris and the marks of what happened here. It wasn’t until we reached the centre of the block that I realised something else about this place, something we had all been walking past without comment.

All of the doors were open. An innocuous thing in any other building, but this wasn’t just any building. This was a place supposed to keep people locked in place. But each and every door stood ajar, or aside, or broken off and left leaning against a wall. Even – and especially – the cell doors were open. Whatever they had held back has long since stepped out and moved on.

I must have muttered something about it, because all of a sudden the others with me were staring at the cells around us. We were all thinking the same thing – how many had got out, how many had survived, and where were they now? Most importantly, where were they now?

My stomach was crawling uncomfortably around in my abdomen. We looked at each other and decided to hurry this search along. We started to jog, but our footsteps were so loud, reflected back at us as if to show us how foolish it was. We didn’t dare make so much noise, so we dropped to a quieter pace, all-but creeping along. We had to check every room, every cell, whispering for Nugget and Jones and hoping that they were all we would find.

It was Alice who found the first body. It was barely more than bones; I began to wonder how long it took a body to decompose until I realised that that wasn’t what had happened here. The crows – either they had eaten it or another creature had. Ben identified the body as a guard by the belt that lay in the mess of parts; I took his word for it, not inclined to look that closely.

We didn’t linger there, moving on quickly. The next corpse was a prisoner, from the jumpsuit shredded over the bones, as equally devoured as the first. Just look for Nugget, I told them. We can’t help these people now; let’s just find our missing one and get out of here.

All through the time we walked those corridors, I felt a prickling between my shoulderblades. More than once, I looked over my shoulder to see if we were being followed, but there was never anything there. I don’t know if there ever was.

We found the crows completely by accident. We had entered the building in a different section to the one they had dived into, but clearly it’s all connected on the inside. It’s all open, wide enough for the murder to flow through it unimpeded. I can’t find that a comforting thought.

We heard the cawing first, and the scrabble of their clawed feet. Then the clacking and harried flutter as they vied for space and access. We had found the dining room and they were feasting on another body. The flesh didn’t look like it was a good colour, but they didn’t seem to care; black forms fought for space on the dead thing so that they could tear it apart with their beaks.

We had no wish to disturb them, so we backed up through the doors. A couple of them screamed and hopped towards us across the tables, but they didn’t come after us when we moved on. We closed the doors behind us in the hope that it would stop them following us.

I wish I hadn’t looked back at the body slumped over the table. I wish the crows hadn’t shifted and shown me the caved-in skull. I wish I hadn’t seen that.

We took much longer than an hour. Without a working watch, it was hard to know exactly how long we had been – whatever timepieces weren’t ruined by the bomb (which was very few) had long since been bashed, broken or lost. The clock on the laptop still works, of course, but I can’t exactly carry that around.

The other half of our group were waiting for us when we got back to the courtyard. They had had the same problem, so they didn’t complain, though Masterson looked like he wanted to. From the sideways look he gave Thorpe, something had been said there. I’m glad of that.

There was still no sign of Nugget. The morning was growing old and people were getting hungry. It was then that we realised that we had left all of our gear in the cars. I felt a spurt of fear as we all turned to hurry out of the courtyard and through the twist of lanes to the front gate. What if it was all gone? What if the cars were gone too, and we were truly stranded here? I had the laptop with me – I don’t let that out of my sight – but I can’t post if I’ve starved to death. Or worse. I don’t want to think about the possibilities that flooded through my head as we ran outside again, of the caved-in skull and the feasting crows.

The cars were still there when we piled out of the gates. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw them gleaming in the orange light, slowing to a walk. Thank goodness; at least they were still there.

There was something not quite right, though; something off about the scene before us. It took me a moment to realise what it was, and my brain has just clicked onto it when Matt stopped and said, “Who left the doors open?”

No-one answered. We looked at each other and some offered shrugs. They turned to me because I was the last one to leave the vehicles, and I told them I hadn’t opened the doors; I had closed the bonnet and come after them. I don’t remember the doors being open when I left.

Not all of them were open – just three in total, across both cars. But it’s not a trivial thing. Our gear was inside the cars, including all of our food and water. If it had rained before we got back, we might have lost it. It was a careless, dangerous thing to do. We had been distracted by Nugget’s departure and the chase to catch her, but had we been that distracted? I had run right past one of those open doors – surely I would have seen it?

But if it wasn’t one of us, then who was it? That was, by far, the more disturbing thought. There was a fearful little snake curling up in my stomach.

“Let’s just make sure everything’s there,” I said when it was clear no-one was going to own up to the crime of leaving the doors open. Better to focus on what we had left.

No-one discovered something missing. I thought the car’s innards looked disturbed, but that might just have been paranoia sneaking ideas into my head. Or maybe just the wind. There are plenty of things it could have been other than a person we haven’t seen or heard or smelt.

As we were sorting out the packs, we talked about how much ground we had covered; it looked like we had done maybe half of the building, between all of us.

We were just shouldering our burdens when we heard Jones mewing in protest. We turned around to see Nugget walking calmly out of the gates, hugging the stupid creature to her chest with a determined set to her jaw.

All hell broke loose then. Packs hit the ground with a mixture of relief and frustration. Nugget looked puzzled and then upset when Thorpe shouted at her. He yanked the cat out of her arms and tossed him in the car, slamming the door to keep him inside. Sax drew her away and gave her some stern words of his own. By then she was trying hard not to cry, and losing.

She pulled herself free of Sax’s hold and was going to run back into the prison in her upset. Luckily, I was between her and the gates, and managed to snag her before she could slip by. She writhed and moaned in protest – the most noise I’ve ever heard her make – but I wasn’t about to let her repeat this morning’s nightmare.

I took her off to the side and held her until she settled down, trying to sush her, trying to soothe her. She didn’t really start to calm down until Sally came quietly over and started to talk to the girl. She smoothed Nugget’s snarly hair back and wiped her cheeks. She told the kid that we were angry because we were worried about her and she wasn’t to run off like that; we had spent the whole morning looking for her because she means that much to us. We were hardly looking for the cat.

To my surprise, Nugget listened. She didn’t say anything – she still doesn’t speak any more than the rare word – but she seemed to hear what Sally said. Finally, she nodded.

With the drama contained, we were all only too happy to turn our attention to the cars and work on getting the hell out of there. We pushed them both off the prison’s driveway and up the road, giving ourselves space to get them going. The first one was fine, but the second, the one that had stalled out, that one wasn’t so great. It struggled to catch and start, and a few seconds later there was smoke piling out from under the bonnet.

There was panic then as everyone hurried away from the burning car. I shouted for the firemen to please do something before we lost the whole thing, and we managed to pop the bonnet open to see the fiery engine. A little fire extinguisher was pulled out from somewhere and the flames were put out with hissing and great gouts of smoke and steam.

Afterwards, we all stood there looking at it. It seemed like something didn’t want us to leave; it brought us here in the darkness and made us stay, and now it was preventing us from going. As I pointed out to the others, I couldn’t look at the engine to figure out what was wrong with it until it had cooled down. Then Sax drew our attention to the sky, to the thickening of the clouds, and we had a decision to make. None of us wanted to spend another night in the cars, but the indoor option wasn’t exactly appealling either.

In the end, we decided it was probably safer being inside than outside. All we had to do was find somewhere we could lock ourselves into for the night. That shouldn’t be too hard in a prison, right?

I can’t believe it’s taking me so long to get all of this down! It certainly made an impression, this prison we found, stuck out in the middle of barren fields, a grey lump in the scorched earth. But I’m almost at the end! Not much longer until we’re free of it.

It took us a while to find somewhere to hole up in. They had been quite thorough in cracking this egg open; of the doors still on their hinges, many didn’t close and only some of those that did were able to be locked again.

We didn’t split up this time around. All ten of us clomped along, with the weight of the place making us try to move quietly. I felt big and heavy and obvious in this place of empty spaces. There was that crawl between my shoulderblades again, snicking up to the back of my neck, but there was never anything behind us when I looked. It felt like we were travelling in our own bubble of air, pushing it around these unwilling corridors and intruding on resting rooms.

There weren’t many rooms big enough to hold us all. I thought of the dining area, but I knew none of us would want to go back there. The place we wound up in was the laundry with its ranks of dead machines and cloth strewn everywhere. It was dusty but clean in there, and both sets of doors closed. We couldn’t lock one of them, so the boys dragged one of the washers in front of it instead.

It’s possible we were a little paranoid; it’s been a couple of days since that night, so I can say that now. At the time, blocking the door like that made us all breathe a little easier. And later on, we wished that we could have barricaded it more solidly.

We made ourselves as comfortable as we could, turning the laundry into makeshift beds and nests. It was musty but at least not soiled.

Ben had stuck close to me all day and when it was all done and we were settling down to sit, he pulled me into his side tightly. I think he needed the contact as much as I was taking comfort from it, and I was happy to share. I looked at Matt and Thorpe and wished I could do the same for them, but I only have one pair of arms. Dillon was talking quietly with the big fireman, and Nugget was still shunning Sax because he shouted at her; she nestled down next to Sally. Masterson said something to the girl that I couldn’t hear and Nugget responded by sticking her tongue out at him, safe on the other side of Sally. Poor Sally looked awkward in the middle and didn’t look at either of them.

The noises didn’t start until the rain brought a veil of darkness with it. At first it was just the sound of the water falling, smashing itself against the prison walls in a vain attempt to get in. The windows here were intact (as were the bars across them), so we felt secure in that regard. I noticed that Alice had esconced herself in a corner, pressed up against the wall, and she looked tense as that sound washed over us. I glanced up at Ben, wondering if he was thinking about his burns, too.

Then other movement started to creep towards us. The skitterings of many little claws across the hard floors, and a determined scraping that sounded like an unusually-sized rodent was gnawing a hole in the wall. Someone said that it was probably just mice, but those teeth sounded like they were at least a foot long.

Then the murder came. The flapping sounded like distant thunder, like an internal storm front that was sweeping closer and closer to break over us. Funnelled through the prison’s corridors, the crows were seeking a safe roost. One of them cawed just outside the doors and we all jumped – it was a raucous, threatening noise, and it seemed loud enough to cut the door down on its own. Then all we could hear was wings beating at the air, filling up the space around the room and sliced up by corvid screams.

None of us moved. The doors were still closed and someone had put our lamp out, and we stayed perfectly still. We stared at those thin wooden panels and barely dared to breathe in case they noticed us here and tried to get in.

Then it went quiet. All at once, as if a tap had been shut off, the flapping stopped. There was a moment of silence, and then the scrape of heavier claws. A rustle and the clack of a beak. They hadn’t gone past; they had decided to land nearby. It sounded like they had taken up position right outside the door, but there was nothing out there for them to perch on; it must have been a trick of the acoustics.

There were less of the smaller sounds now as the rodents wisely stayed out of the way of the carnivores. We chanced a tiny light to chase away the utter blackness that had fallen on us so that we could see to eat. The birds didn’t seem to notice it. Before we shifted to distribute the food, I caught sight of Thorpe with his hand on Dillon’s shoulder, offering some reassurance. We were all taking what courage we could get.

We didn’t say much as we ate, and I don’t think any of us managed to put more than a few mouthfuls away before we’d had enough. Too many of us were thinking of the other hungry creatures in the building to bear being one of them. We didn’t dare to sing or even talk loudly in case we drew attention to ourselves.

We agreed to sleep in shifts, with three always awake to keep watch. Even so, it was a wakeful night – I snatched only moments of sleep before a tiny scrape from three rooms away woke me up. I don’t think those on watch ever took their eyes off the doors, waiting for that moment when the panels would move, when the handle would turn slowly, creeping around to betray us.

At one point, I could have sworn I heard footsteps. Very soft, almost shuffling, but rhythmic in that walking way. I had been dozing and came awake sharply. I tried not to move in case I lost the sound in my own rustling; I held perfectly still, taut and listening. Then there was a plop and a flutter of feathers, and the grumbling of the nearby birds drowned it out. By the time they had quietened again, the footsteps were gone. I don’t know where they went to.

We were all relieved when reddened orange light snuck through the windows and fell on us. Everyone was up quickly, mostly because we hadn’t been that asleep, and we skipped breakfast in favour of getting back to the cars and the hell out of there.

But we hesitated when it came to opening the doors. The washer was moved out of the way and then we looked at each other; no-one had heard the birds leave. Then Thorpe leaned over and thumped on the door, loudly. It was just like being out in the courtyard again, all thrashing wings and cawing voices whirling around us, and we all covered our ears and found ourselves crouching reflexively. The crows were on the other side of the doors, but it was so loud.

Again, it was over very quickly. Ben peeked outside while the rest of us made sure we had collected everything, and then we made all speed out of the building. There was that sneaking fear as we half-jogged towards the gates, the one that said the cars wouldn’t be there, but they were, complete with Jones complaining about being shut in one of them all night, alone.

Nugget climbed in to fuss over him while I did the same to the burned engine. It didn’t look good and it smelt worse, but it seemed salvagable. The best I can figure, some petrol had leaked onto the engine when the hose had come loose and ignited when we started it up. I cleaned off as much of it as I could and I taped the hose securely in place, and we all crossed our fingers when we tried to get it going again. By some miracle, the damn thing choked to life and didn’t set itself on fire. We gave it ten minutes to warm up before we dared to let anyone climb in, though, and the packs were all piled up in the other car. Just in case.

When we were ready to go, I turned to look at the prison. Its grey walls reared up over us, trying to snag us into its shadow. It was plain and faceless and empty, and still set my nerves crawling. The crows were circling high overhead, calling out warning and directions. Perhaps they were for our benefit.

I’ve never been so glad to turn my back on a place and know that it was growing smaller with every calming heartbeat. Of all the places we’ve been, that’s the one I never want to go back to. I still feel lucky that we came out of it all right, as if we had sidestepped the swing of a great pendulum. Sometimes, I still feel its breath on the back of my neck.

So many posts have been about the prison – it seems like I’ve spent more time writing about it than we actually spent there. Things have been far less eventful since those grey walls disappeared from our rearview mirrors.

We drove with more haste than was probably wise until we reached another suburb; it wasn’t long before more welcoming walls rose up around us. As soon as we found something big enough, we switched out the dodgy car for one we hoped would be more reliable and less flammable.

Then we moved on again, pushing forward until the sky grew dark with acid and we had to seek shelter. It seems to be doing that earlier in the afternoon these days; I think the pattern might be shifting. It’s strange how regular it has been, falling at roughly the same time every afternoon until the last couple of weeks. I don’t think we’ve ever had as much rain here before as we have in the past three months, but it always seems to have dried up and faded away again by morning. Which I’m grateful for; these are not puddles that we can just go jumping in.

The day after we escaped from the prison – Wednesday – we went to start the cars as usual, but stopped after we had pushed the first one into life. Matt was waving at Ben to cut the engine with an urgent look in his eye, and when it fell quiet, we heard what had prompted him. There were voices, close by, calling to one another about the sound of a car, and whistles for attention.

It was enough to get our gear out of the cars and off the road. We hunkered down in a nearby house and waited, and it wasn’t long before they came, sniffing out the sound they knew they’d heard. The group was made up of patchwork creatures – it seemed like a motif for them, rather than some kind of coordinating accident. I was thinking that we should just go out there and shoo them away – there were only a handful of them – when the rest turned up. A dozen, a score… I lost count. I was glad we had decided to hide after all.

They looked over the cars in the street and soon figured out which ones were likely to have been used lately. I looked at the others and they looked at me, and then we headed for the house’s back door. We had to climb over a couple of fences to get to the next street, and then we settled into a walk once more. Vehicles might be the quickest and easiest way to get around, but they attract attention and that’s not safe. So it’s back to heavy feet and packs, long days and roads.

Since then, we’ve covered quite a bit of ground. We’re surrounded by apartment buildings again, from the rundown to the kind that was looked after in the time Before. We should reach Ben’s sister’s building tomorrow; she’s on the outskirts of this area. There’s a mall nearby, too, and we’re going to call by there to see if there’s anything of use left.

Sax is developing a cough – I heard it rattling last night. He’s trying to suppress it, but it still catches him off-guard sometimes. I hope there’s a chemist around here so we can get him some medicine for it.

I should go and sit with Ben. He won’t say or show it, but he’s scared about tomorrow. I would feel the same if it was my turn. I hate that all I can do is hold him tight and offer physical comfort; there just aren’t any words that mean anything at a time like this.