The Divine Infection

Chapter Seventeen: Set Fire to the Rain

"Well, this seems like a mighty lovely place, right?" Alaya murmurs, looking around us as we all shuffle into a small tenement flat that seems barely big enough to house 10 people.

"Yeah. After all that's happening here, this flat is just the icing on the cake..." Jim snorts. Separating into little groups to check out the small flat, Barrone and I stick as a pair, entering a small room furnished with a ragged sofa, bean bag, and small radio on a grimy coffee table. The walls are plain white, the floor covered with a sandy-coloured threadbare carpet, the windows to the left of the door covered by blackout blinds that obscure our view of the "outside" world.

"Some place, huh." Barrone frowns. "If I'd known it was going to be like this, I'd have stayed in the van." Out of nowhere, a lopsided grin makes its way onto his face, and I smile back up at him, before stepping further into the room. It's so...so plain. Like no one ever lived here before we arrived.

"Four bedrooms." I hear Crilly call down the hallway. I feel a hand slap down on my shoulder and jump, before looking over my shoulder and realising that it's just the grinning black-haired goth trying to scare me. "So, I'm thinking, Alaya and Leigh can sleep in a room out of the way of us lot, and-"

"I want to stay with Leigh." Barrone says, at the same time as I speak.

"I want to stay with Barrone."

"Oh..." Crilly smirks, crossing the room and dropping onto the bean bag in the corner, crossing his arms behind his head and stretching out. "So, is there some explaining you two should be getting on with, then?"

"No!" Barrone and I gape.

"Then why do you both want to share a room, dare I ask?" Alex grins. He and Jake drop onto the ragged sofa, sprawling out, and Jim scoops up the radio from the table, migrating to the side of the sofa to sit.

"I..." My cheeks flush slightly red. "I feel safer around him, okay?"

"Aw!" Crilly coos. Barrone and I scowl at him. "I mean, uh...oh. Okay."

"I want to go wandering." Pip says curiously as he, Tom and Frenchy enter the room. Peeking under the blinds, the long-ginger-haired man comes to one conclusion: "well, the view is shit."

"Wow. That's all you've learned from today's wander. You scholar, Ginger." Frenchy laughs. Then, after stretching, "where can we get some food around here? I'm bloody starving."

"The cupboards are all empty, and there's no food in the kitchen." Jim frowns. "And we don't have any money. I don't know how you get food 'round here."

"Maybe Alaya'll know?" I suggest. "Ala- Oh, come on!" Staring down the hallway, I see that the front door is wide open. "Who left the door open?"

"I closed it after we came in." Tom muses. "Is she gone?"

"Who, Alaya? I guess so. Alaya?!" I call out, but she doesn't answer. "Alaya? Al- Yeah, she's gone."

"Should we go look for her?" Jake asks.

"I don't see why not." Barrone shrugs. "Everyone up for a walk?"

So, not five minutes later, we're all outside, have agreed to split up, and are now in our own little groups again: Tom, Pip and Frenchy; Crilly and Jim; Alex and Jake; Barrone and I. Walking off to the left of the flats, the pair of us are silent, at least until the others are out of sight.

"Everyone's gone." I mutter.

"Yeah. It's deserted." Barrone agrees. Once again, everything falls silent again. I study my surroundings to take my mind off the silence; I came to Dundee once with Caleb, when I was a kid, and we went to a comic convention here. It wasn't anywhere near as run down as it is now. It's scary to think how much this outbreak has changed things.