Paradigm (9781909490406) by Ceri A. Lowe Page A

stepped over the glass, which crinkled underneath her feet.
    It smelled even worse than the bed she had landed on when she had first arrived on the eighth floor. The walls were papered with cream-and-white roses, faded yellow with decades of smoke damage and wear. On the floor, in front of the electric fire, was a pile of half-burned books, charred around the edges and damp. The front door had been barricaded with a sturdy wooden table and a large bookcase. A chill ran through Alice’s bones.
    Someone had to still be in the house.
    â€˜Hello,’ she called, but there was no answer. In the kitchen, the cupboards were not over-healthy but there were some cartons of cereal, biscuits and chocolate. Alice filled the basket and then opened one of the small bars of chocolate and inhaled the sweet, deep smell of cocoa. It melted in a delicious frenzy in her mouth and she savoured every piece. She chewed it, sucked it and swallowed, the sugar tingling through her fingers to the roots of her hair. For a moment she was delirious—until she remembered the barricade at the front door.
    The stairs were as old as those in number 59, but creaked twice as noisily. Each step let out a distressed moan as she pushed her foot downwards, as lightly as she could without hurting herself or creating too much noise. Balancing her weight on the balustrade, she picked her way gently upstairs. The smell of decay was overpowering. It was a sweet, ugly smell more potent even than the rubbish chute at the end of her balcony. Pulling her T-shirt over her face, she picked onwards, the smell hugging her brain and her lungs. It was only when she shoved open the bedroom door that the horror hit her.
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    T he couple in the bed were embracing; skinny brown arms the colour of creamed coffee poking up above the covers. An empty bottle of pills stood on the cabinet next to them, and one of them, a man she presumed, was still clasping a bottle of spirits, one arm over the bedspread, the other around the person next to him. There was the whistle of the wind and the call of a bird somewhere in the distance. Standing as far back as she could, Alice pulled on the bottle, wrenching it out of the withered hand. As she turned to leave the room, she hobbled back to the bed and carefully pulled the duvet over the couple.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she whispered, eyes filling with tears. Alice swallowed deeply and ran without stopping to look in the other bedroom. She didn’t stop moving until she was back in the first flat with the jagged window.
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    P utting what she had found in the basket, Alice watched out of the window as Hutchinson pulled it up carefully, steadying it against the raw breeze that brought with it the overwhelming stench of a city in decay. While he unpacked the basket she thought, for a moment, that he wasn’t going to send it back down for her and that she was going to have to stay there on level eight with the couple in one flat and the dog in the other. For the briefest of moments, in the quiet of the afternoon, Alice was terrified of being alone.
    â€˜Major Hutchinson,’ she shouted. ‘Sir, where are you?’ But there was no answer and the only sound was a cold wind whipping around the tower. When the basket returned, relief overwhelmed her and she anchored it with one hand, climbing in with the other, levering her legs with the sway of the wind.
    â€˜Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘Thank you.’
    â€˜Well done, private,’ said Hutchinson as he hauled her through the window. ‘Mission one complete. But this lot won’t last us long. Tomorrow, we’ll go down to level seven.’
    Their tea was a relative banquet—tinned peaches and peas with a small glug of canned cream.
    â€˜Fit for a king,’ said Hutchinson, eyeing the bottle of rum she’d stolen from the bony fingers of a dead man. ‘Fit for a king.’
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    L ess than an hour later , the rain turned to hail.