The Sleeping Dead by Richard Farren Barber Page B

gazing back down at the old man.
    His eyes were open, staring directly in front of him. He held a crucifix between his hands. It was easier to believe he was simply sitting there, praying. But Jackson had been fooled by the earlier sleeping dead and each time he had reached down to check for a pulse, he had felt cold skin beneath his fingertips.
    Jackson stopped, his feet anchored to the pavement. “I can’t do it.”
    “What?” Susan asked. For a moment she carried on walking, drifting away from him, and then she too stopped and looked back at him. “What can’t you do?”
    The image bloomed fully formed in his mind. Donna sitting in Café Reynauld with her eyes open, staring into nothing. It wasn’t true, he understood that, it couldn’t be true, and yet there was an honesty to the vision that he couldn’t deny.
    “I can’t abandon Donna.”
    He didn’t look at Susan as he spoke. He didn’t want to see what she thought of him. Instead he stared into the open, sightless eyes of the dead man and he battled against the voices that were starting to whisper inside him: This was Donna. This was Donna because he had not been with her when the tsunami had struck and washed everyone away. Maybe if he had been beside her instead of stuck in a room on the eighth floor of a tower block, he would have been able to protect her.
    Susan had not spoken. Jackson stared at the dead man, and wondered what Susan was thinking, why she was silent. At times she didn’t speak with passion but with a dreadful need, as if she was frightened of discovering that there was really nothing carrying her forward.
    “What do you want to do?”
    Just for a moment Jackson was sure it was the dead man who spoke; his soft voice almost a whisper.
    “I need to find her.” He realized he was replying to the dead man.
    Jackson took out his mobile phone to try Donna’s number again. He weighed the handset in his palm. The last few times he had tried, he had got a signal—no more messages that the network was busy—but although the phone rang at the other end, there was no answer from Donna. Calling the emergency services had resulted in a similar response.
    He sent a text, because the idea of imagining Donna lying somewhere with her mobile buzzing beside her cooling corpse was too difficult to bear. The image churned his stomach and dragged a fever-sweat across his brow.
    The message was simple: C ALL ME . In this new world there was no need for further explanation. If Donna was still able to receive the message, she would understand.
    “Do you want to go back to the café?”
    “She’s not there,” Jackson snapped. “Why would I want to do that?”
    The dead man stared impassively into the distance and let the anger slip over him. Nothing mattered anymore. That was the truth about death—once you found it, nothing else mattered.
    He felt Susan’s warm hand on his arm. “What do you want to do?”
    “I want to go home.” His voice broke on the last word. He knew he sounded like a small child.
    “Are you sure?”
    He nodded, and raised a hand to wipe his eyes clear, rubbing his knuckles deep into his sockets. If Donna is alive, that’s where she’ll be.

 
     
     
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    Along the footpath there was a line of people sitting on the pavement. The sleeping dead. Hundreds of them. As if they had come out from the surrounding shops and houses to sit down on the ground. An honor guard of the dead.
    “I can’t do it,” Susan said.
    He heard the tremble in her voice. She was close to breaking. He looked at the line of dead bodies and understood completely. Walking past each one took a terrible toll upon his soul. To walk past them all … Jackson glared at them, as if they were responsible for this, as if all of this was their fault.
    “Please don’t make me do it,” Susan whimpered. “Please. I don’t think…”
    Jackson looked along the line of bodies. He thought about walking out into the middle of the