Plagued (20 page)

Mark’s facial expression told her that he heard it
too.  

“What is that?” she asked him.

Mark ignored her and turned to face the crowd.
“Shut up for a second!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

A few of them stopped and turned around curiously,
when they heard the crackling too, they hushed the ones around them.

“Where is it coming from?” Jamie asked, frowning.

Sarah listened to the sound again and ran to the
door. “The bathroom.”

“Sarah, that’s where—” Mark didn’t have time to
finish his sentence before she left the room. He followed her.

Sarah ran into the men’s bathroom, just outside
the main door and saw a body covered in a blue blanket. She stopped in her
tracks, feeling nauseous. The crackling came again.

Mark stood in the doorway, followed by Jamie and
Annie, who were all watching curiously.

“It’s coming from
him
,” Sarah said and ran
to his body. She pulled the sheet off him from the bottom upwards, so she
didn’t have to look at his face.  His leather jacket was matted with blood.
Bile rose in Sarah’s throat and she spat it onto the ground, heaving.

“Sarah,” Mark said, looking disgusted.

She ignored him and peeled the sheet up to his
throat. A muffled voice came from his chest, startling her. She reached into
his leather coat without thinking and searched for a pocket. His body was stone
cold. She felt around the right side of his chest and her hand hit something
hard—there was something square and hard underneath the soft material of the
jacket’s inner lining. She found a large pocket and shoved her hand in,
grasping the rough plastic object and pulling it from his pocket. She stared at
it and smiled.

“A CB radio,” Mark laughed, shaking his head, “how
long was he carrying that around?”

“Bastard,” Sarah said, as the small screen lit up
blue and the room filled with crackling.

A voice bellowed from the machine. “This is
Officer Alex Craig. My men and I are searching for survivors in the area. We
have supplies and weapons. If you can hear this and you need our assistance,
please respond.” The voice went quieter, as if turning away from the radio.
“There’s no one out there, sir. We’ve been doing this for hours now. No one is
listening.”

“Oh my God,” Sarah said, looking at the radio with
disbelief.

“Give it here!” Mark said, and Sarah shoved it
into his hands. He pressed a button on the side and pulled the radio to his
mouth. “Wait! This is Mark England, we’re in Winding and we’re trapped inside
the sports hall. We are in desperate need of food and water. Please respond!”
He lifted his finger from the switch and the sound of crackling returned.

Seconds went by with nothing but silence and the
doorway was now filled with hopeful survivors, watching and listening with
their hands to their mouths.

“Come on, you bastard,” Mark muttered at the white
noise.

“They’ve gone,” someone said in the background.

The radio burst into life again, this time with a
different voice. “How do you use this?” A croaky voice said very quietly in the
radio. “Just speak? Okay. Bloody contraption.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mark said, as the
voice mumbled on.

“If you can hear me, son, I’m okay. I’m alive and
we’re coming to get you. Now how do you turn this thing off?” The voice in the
radio said before being disconnected.

“Who was that?” Jamie asked, as Sarah and Mark
stared at each other with tear-filled eyes.

“That was my father,” Mark said, and laughed in
disbelief.

The End