The Rabid Hour

Part 36

We were lead into the building and I realised it was the police station. I had come here once to try and report my dad but he had followed me. I never made the report. There was a set of doors straight ahead of us next to the registration desk and we were pushed through. I'd hoped we weren't going to be put in a cell but the men lead us further until we reached a corridor of grey doors with small windows at about head height. Jess was lead further than me and I reached for her as she past. Our hands grazed and my heart pounded. When was I next going to see her? Was I even going to be able to? Were there other people in here? I was pushed violently against the grey door closest to the exit as someone unlocked it. They tripped me as I went in and landed with a thud on my knees on the concrete floor. I shuffled back to let the door close without hitting me.

"Wait!" I cried not too desperately. There was a crack in the plastic on my side of the window and I slid my fingers in and pulled. The black plastic snapped and I used the broken piece to slide open the window from the other side. No one had noticed. From here I could see one of the double doors we had come through. There was a guard standing near there but he seemed out of it. Putting the piece of plastic in the pocket of my trousers I turned and skulked to the back of the room. Before I got far I was startled.

Sitting on the plain bed I thought was empty was a thin, sunken-eyed man around 30 with a thick woolly jumper on.

"Er... hey," I said, embarrassed.

"You'll never see her again, you know?" he said ominously. His head was lowered so it looked like he would be looking at me from the top of glasses.

"Molly?" I asked, testing the new name in my mouth.

"You should know."

"How long have you been in here?"

Instead of answering me he stood up and moved the thin pillow he was sitting on. Underneath that he lifted the blue sheet to reveal a messy hole in the mattress. From there he lifted a folded piece of yellowing paper and began to unravel it. He laid it out and I saw the whole thing was almost covered completely in little black lines. It reminded me of something from Doctor Who or an old prison spy movie where the prisoner would scratch the wall for every day he was in here.

I didn't know what to say so I took the paper and scrutinised it. I couldn't be bothered to count how many lines there were but each line was about half a centimetre long and each tally of 5 came to about a centimetre. On an A4 sheet of paper that was a lot of days.

"Were you here before the outbreak?"

"Outbreak?" the man asked studiously.

"You know, when this whole thing started." I was starting to get a little nervous as I wondered how I was going to explain it to him.

"Was there an alien invasion?" he asked, either amused or not believing me at all.

"No..." I sat down. "Well-" I started, but before I could get any further he laughed maniacally, throwing back his head and holding his stomach like I had just told the funniest joke in England. "What?" I demanded.

"I know, jeez, I know," he said between breaths. "About the zombies, and the death and the-" he switched to a dramatic voice, "-end of the world!"

My face must have reflected the anger I felt on the inside because he stopped laughing short after that and packed away the paper and sheet and pillow.

"That's not funny," I said harshly, sitting back on the only bed there was and realising with horror that I'd have to share this bed with that scrawny psychopath. Without a jacket I felt the ripping cold penetrating every open crevice I had. My hands were too numb to move and in this room my breath came out in clouds. I ignored Skeletor and leant my head back on the hard wall and thought about Jess. Her beautiful green eyes, the way her smile lit up her whole face. Her ponytail, swinging back and forth and the jumper she wrapped herself in like a cocoon. Her chapped lips that were so soft when I kissed them and the curve of her neck, her arched back and her beautiful legs. Them nights we spent talking to each other in the hospital and the joy I felt when I realised she was still alive. I realised in that moment, sitting in a cold prison room with a cliché nutcase, that I couldn't live without her. Even being a few feet away from her I felt like my body was decaying, my mind shutting down. She was my reason to keep living and I wasn't going to let her down. I was going to find a way out of here, find our friends and get to London.