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  "Oh, them?" Geri laughed, genuinely having forgotten all about her two ex-captors. "They were here before me. They tried to lock me in there, thinking I had the virus, but I managed to get the better of them."

  "I'll bet you did," replied Young Cop, almost flirtatiously.

  Geri smiled, slightly embarrassed. She didn't know why she was getting on like this, like a starry-eyed little girl. She supposed it was the uniform. It didn't just offer comfort and security to her. It was more than that. Like many women she'd known, Geri had always been a sucker for a man in uniform. That and the sudden lack of anything even smelling like talent in this new fucked- up world she found herself to be in.

  "So, what's the plan?" Geri asked, looking to both men in turn.

  The two men shared a glance that unnerved Geri slightly. Smiling, the younger one reached his hand forward to help her up from the sofa.

  "The plan is as follows," he said, placing his other hand on his partner's shoulder, "we'll let the big man, here, keep watch, while you give me a guided tour of the house. Preferably," he said, "with a cup of tea in my hand."

  Geri smiled, accepting his hand to pull her up from the sofa.

  "Do you take sugar?" she asked.

  "Always," he said, smiling.

  Lark stood up, nervously. He walked to one end of the room and then back. He repeated this action several times over, pacing like a caged animal.

  He thought back to when things were a lot simpler and less fucking hazardous to his health. Back when he had worked the desk at Belfast's infamous Gen X tattoo shop, suffering little more than stoned sixteen year olds with false ID and a grumpy bitch of a boss. Of course, he'd often moaned about life then, too. That was his nature - glass half-empty and all of that shit. But he'd had it pretty good, considering, and a large part of him was starting to realise that.

  He picked up a pan from the floor, aimlessly, then threw it back down, as if piping hot, realising it was the one that Geri had pissed in for three days.

  "Fuck this shit!" he spat, kicking the cupboards under the sink just a little too hard and hurting his DM-clad foot. He really had thought he was doing the right thing by quarantining Geri. That's what they had said to do in the news, right? Quarantine your family, they said. Quarantine your neighbours, yourself, even. If symptoms such as sneezing or coughing or prickly throats develop, they said, you need to QUARANTINE.

  Of course, towards the end, they sent the fucking pigs around, wrapped in yellow plastic and breathing like fucking Darth Vader, to do all the quarantining themselves. And that's what worried him about the two newcomers, because Lark had been witness to a couple of incidents where the 'quarantine' had been replaced by 'extermination'.

  He'd been staying with a couple of mates. They'd been kicking back, drinking a lot of beer and smoking a lot of gear while the whole world went to shit. It seemed to be the best way of dealing with it, the only way of dealing with it.

  Until one of them got sick, that was.

  They never found out who it was who called the police, although Lark reckoned it was one of the bitches who were hanging around - no one seemed to know them too well. Either way, the cops came calling all too soon. A few of them kicked up a fuss. Anarchist types, in the street-understanding of the word, not too shy of fucking shit up when something needed sorting. They weren't too keen on the cops taking their friend away, so they put up a fight, some silly cunt deciding to pull the oxygen tank from one of the cops' back. It was maybe meant as a joke, when Lark thought back on it. Or a joke with a jag, at the very most. Just some pisshead mucking around, acting the big man in front of his mates. They were all pretty mangled by that stage, and probably not capable of very much in the way of a reasonable struggle. But the cops took it very seriously. Seriously enough to blow a hole right through the poor bastard's head with a Glock 17.

  Lark had gone on the run after that, scared out of his wits. Life on the streets had been pretty bad, too. But he managed to keep one step ahead of both The State and The Dead, the numbers of the former dwindling as the latter grew. Of course, it felt like they had caught up to him, now. And he was really starting to get fucking scared about what might happen.

  "If they're really pigs, I think it's time you took off that stupid fucking ski mask," he said to McFall.

  "No way!" McFall countered, placing one hand on the mask as if defending his right to wear it. "It stops the infection!"

  "It doesn't stop the -" Lark started before giving up and sighing. Another thought ran through his mind suddenly. "Look," he said, "we could be in real trouble here. What if they find the gear?"

  "What gear?!" McFall asked, bewildered.

  "The fucking -" Lark looked through the glass patio door, noticing Geri and the younger cop chatting and making tea in the kitchen. He continued, with a whisper, "The coke, you idiot. And I'm not talking cola, here."

  "We have coke?" McFall said, excitedly.

  Lark couldn't be sure if McFall was more excited by the hard drug or soft drink, but he wasn't for discussing it further. He watched as Geri and the cop (were they flirting?) finished in the kitchen, moving back towards the hallway. Neither of them looked in the direction of the patio.

  "Where are they going?" whispered McFall, still resting a hand defensively on his balaclava.

  "Don't know. Back into the hallway, it seems."

  "What'll we do?"

  "I guess there's nothing we can do," Lark said, dejectedly. "Just got to sit tight and see what happens.

  They headed up the narrow staircase, laughing awkwardly at how tight a fit it was for a man in almost full riot gear.

  "I should really just take this stuff off," the cop said.

  "Kinda suits you," Geri said, facetiously, patting his padded back.

  "Why thank you," he replied, turning to mock-bow and almost banging his head off the dangling light bulb in the process.

  Geri smirked. He was being indulgently silly, now, and he knew it.

  His little performance was either an attempt to make her feel more comfortable or an attempt to bed her. She didn't care, either way. Fact of the matter was, she hadn't had any positive male attention (being locked in the patio really didn't count) in quite some time, so she was keen to make up for lost time.

  They made their way through to the largest bedroom, both immediately seeming embarrassed to have automatically found this room, in particular. The room's decoration suggested older and more conservative inhabitants than its current motley mix of Geri, Lark and McFall. To Geri, it smelled immediately like someone else's house. Floral wallpaper, poorly lined, covered the walls. A dressing table and drawers combo stood, sensibly, against one wall, the bed being perched against another. A generously sized window, clothed by thick, velvet curtains, looked out onto the main street. China dolls and other small trinkets and ornaments were dotted around the room, more dusty now than they had ever been allowed to be in the past.

  The cop looked around, lifting random things up and setting them down again, whistling. He was probably feeling uncomfortable on his own with her, without his buddy to bounce one-liners off. Not that his buddy seemed the one-liner type. But men and boys were stupid that way. Geri would always have found the blokes she went out with to be one type, whenever they were with her, and another type when out with their mates. It kind of disappointed Geri, made her reluctant to trust a guy if she saw him being a dick with his mates. Especially if it was at her expense.

  "Nice view," the cop said, eventually turning his attention to the window.

  "Sure, if you like dead people," Geri replied, venturing a look out the first floor window, down onto the street.

  A few of the dead were shuffling around aimlessly below. They were circling a nearby abandoned car, as if expecting someone to get out of it. She counted them, only noticing four where there had previously been six around the house. Several more were interested in the Land Rover, but less than before. What the older cop had been saying was obviously right, then. They did get bor
ed and wander off. One of them looked way too young to be dead, maybe still a teenager. She knew it would sound stupid to say something like that, but to Geri, it seemed less fair for a younger person, or a child, to end up like one of those things. Older people were one thing, she reckoned, but a teenager or a child

  The dead seemed to be gradually forgetting about the Land Rover, paying it the same attention as they paid the house and just about everything else, including each other. Many of them were just simply standing there. Lethargic. Dreamy, even. Like willow trees in summer.

  "What do you think happened?" the cop asked her, still staring out the window.

  Geri was suddenly gobsmacked. She turned, sharply, to look at him. This one comment ruined everything for her.

  "What, you mean you guys don't know what happened?!" she said, indignantly.

  The cop seemed shocked by the question.

  "Of course not," he said, defensively. "How would we?"

  Geri laughed, sarcastically. She really couldn't believe she bought into their whole 'we're in control' performance.

  "Because you're the fucking government!" she said, almost aggressively, "It's your job to know this kind of stuff "

  "We're not the government," he said, "We're just a couple of cops. We don't know anything more than you do "

  Geri stared at him, disbelief hanging from her face like a dead man's noose.

  "Listen, I'm sorry!" he protested, hands outstretched, "Would you rather I lie to you?"

  Geri thought about it for a second. She realised that a very large part of her may just very well prefer him to lie to her. To tell her things like (adopting a deep-sounding, 'official' voice), 'We've got everything under control,' or, 'We'll just phone through your whereabouts to rescue central,' or whatever. But she had to accept the reality that these were just another two guys who had stayed alive, for whatever reason. No more knowledgeable, it seemed, than the two buffoons in the patio. Regardless of whether they were cops or fucking robbers.

  Sighing, Geri leaned her head against her hands, resting on the window sill.

  "Where does this leave us now?" she asked him.

  The young cop removed his helmet, running a hand through his dark hair. He moved away from the window, sitting himself down on the bed.

  "It leaves us here, right now," he said, without a trace of irony in his voice. "We make the best of what we've got, and we try to survive."

  "For what?" Geri snapped, "What's the point in it all?"

  "What was ever the point in it all?" he countered, sharply. His pallor changed all of a sudden, all of the likeable goofiness from before gone. In the poor light of the bedroom, Geri could see shadows under his eyes. The faint hint of stubble suggested a day without shaving. He suddenly offered his smile, again, almost as an afterthought. It didn't seem that reassuring anymore.

  "I'm sick of just making do," she said, tears glistening in the corners of her eyes, "Fucking sick of it. And I really thought when you guys when the police came it would change everything."

  The young cop stood up again, moving to comfort her. She accepted his embrace, willingly, offloading the emerging tears onto his bulky, padded shoulder.

  "I don't even know your name," she laughed, wiping her eyes with a free hand.

  "George," she heard him say. "My name is George."

  Lark poked McFall in the ribs, waking him from his slumber.

  "What? Where are they?" he muttered nervously as he woke.

  "Shhh " Lark said, one finger over his pierced lips, "They're coming."

  Both men sat upright on the plastic patio chairs as the formidable shape of the larger of the two cops came to the sliding glass doors. He fumbled in the keyhole, opening the door and quietly moving inside. He stood in front of the two survivors, riot gear still hanging off his familiar PSNI uniform. A bag was slung across his shoulder. He held his rifle in his left hand, which surprised Lark, who found himself wondering whether a rifle had to be made specially to accommodate left- handed users, the way guitars were.

  For a moment, the man said nothing, simply staring at the two men sat before him. Then, with one fluid movement, he slung the shoulder bag onto the ground before bending, slowly, to unzip it.

  Lark felt a cold sweat tickling his spine. He went over various scenarios in his head, all of them ending with him getting gunned down, or at best pulverised, as he attempted to overpower the huge man in front of him. He looked to McFall, the white of his friend's eyes popping out from under the ski mask like headlights on a dark road.

  Suddenly, the cop produced a smaller, blue plastic bag and sat it down on the patio table. Pulling up a third chair, he removed his helmet and laid his rifle across the ground beside him.

  "I don't know about you lads, but I'm parched," he said, smiling and producing three tins of beer.

  McFall laughed nervously. It was an embarrassing laugh. High pitched and way too girly for a man to be proud of. The kind of laugh you would get a kicking for at school.

  Lark said nothing. He simply accepted the beer, cracking it open, quietly. There was something very familiar about this guy. Something tangible, as opposed to him just looking like any other cop - scary, creepy or a bit unhinged. Lark searched his narcotic-stained brain for any recollection of this particular smart-arse cunt, handing out the beer as if he were some fucking student.

  "I'm Norman, by the way."

  The name didn't ring a bell. Not even with the face to go with it. His voice did, though. He couldn't quite place the 'whens' and the 'wheres' of it all, but he did recognise it. Mind you, it had that familiar 'cop' twang to it. Affected, but not affected enough to take away every trace of shit-kicking country-boy. And shit- kicking country boy was exactly what this guy was. He even looked like one.

  "What's the matter?" the cop asked Lark. "Cat got your tongue?"

  Lark had never really got sayings like that. Nonsensical phrases of days gone by that only your granny would look right saying.

  "No," Lark replied, calmly, "I guess I'm just a little more careful, these days, with the people I talk to."

  The cop thought on that, for a while, nodding as if in agreement.

  "Not a bad way to be," he said, cracking his own beer open. "Careful, that is."

  The comment was loaded, but Lark decided not to rise to the bait.

  "Lark" he said, offering the cop his hand. "My name, that is."

  "Lark?" said Norman, accepting the handshake. "That's a weird one."

  "It's not my real name," Lark said by way of explanation, still keen to offer no more than was necessary.

  "Fair enough," shrugged Norman.

  He seemed well used to playing these types of games. The 'sizing up' game. The verbal pacing, as if they were two prize fighters in a cage.

  The cop turned to look at McFall, yet still addressing Lark.

  "So who's your mate in the terrorist mask?" he said, sniffing.

  McFall seemed nervous. He smelt nervous, too. A warm waft of sweat passed by Lark, the ski-masked man clearly feeling the glare of the old blue spotlight.

  He looked to Lark and then back at the cop.

  "I'm not a terrorist," he said, completely deadpan, as if to a teacher at school.

  Norman stared back at him for a second, blankly. He looked like he was going to bellow at him, release some cop tirade of menace, then cuff McFall right there and then. Instead, he erupted into laughter. It was very different to McFall's laughter. This was a belly laugh, the kind of laugh that only big men seemed able to produce. A laugh that needed a bit of welly behind it.

  McFall looked bemused, looking again at Lark and shrugging.

  The cop finally stopped, wiping his eyes as he calmed himself. "I'm sure you're not, mate," he said, "but it wouldn't matter a damn if you were, let's face it."

  Lark didn't believe that for a second. If you looked the part, you were the part. That's the way cops worked. That's why people like him always got so much shit from them.

  But another part of hi
m took what the cop was saying and considered it for a moment, pretending it came from someone else. It was a solid point. Belfast had been chasing its tail for almost half a century, its people drowning in a quagmire of bullshit politics and religious foreplay. The bombs, the bullets, the masks. None of it mattered a damn anymore. God or Mother Mary or Mother Fucking Nature had called time on proceedings, and it no longer mattered what the hell you believed or who you believed it with.

  Terrorism was irrelevant. Ireland was finally united.

  United in disease.

  United in death.

  United in fear.

  Chapter Nine

  Karen sat down on the sofa of the flat that was beginning to feel to her like a prison. She sighed, pointedly. She looked over to where Pat was, quietly reading a book at the table and sipping on his tea. He hadn't noticed her sigh. She sighed again, this time louder.

  Pat looked up from his antiquated reading glasses, still holding his book.

  "You okay?" he asked, lifting the cup of tea to his lips and lightly slurping it down (that was really starting to grate on Karen).

  "I'm bored," she replied, pouting. "This place is too small for a young -"Pat held her gaze, cup of tea still at his lips. "Oh, I didn't mean that in the way -"

  "It's okay," Pat interrupted, setting his cup down on one of the coasters Karen had laid out on the table. "I know it's a lot easier for an old fogey like me to deal with not being able to get out than a young slip like yourself."

  "No, it's not like that at all," Karen protested.

  Pat simply smiled, looking back at his book. Why the hell it was so interesting, Karen didn't know. She squinted to read the title. It seemed to be some crime novel of some sort. Of no interest, whatsoever, to a girl like her.

  In days gone by, Karen's main literary diet had consisted of a couple of magazines that she picked up at her local Christian bookshop or church, as well as the various trashy magazines that the newsagent stocked. She couldn't remember the last book she'd actually read. She remembered studying a few novels and poetry books in school, but she had never actually read for pleasure. Her friend had once lent her some 'chick lit' book - something about a young marketing executive in Dublin, or something. She had managed to get through about eight chapters or so of it, before deciding it was a little bit too steamy for a girl like her and politely returning it.