Blogs of the Dead pt 2

“..It’s like everyone’s dead, it’s so quiet, I’m afraid” Sophie pressed the send button on her phone she looked around her at the many bodies all over the wide boulevard that was La Rambla. Overhead the sun shone in the clear sky and there was a distinct smell in the air. She’d been walking for a few hours now from her holiday apartment near to the Universidad and had only caught a couple of glimpses of a few other people. They quickly ran away, scared it seemed of any human contact. Here in Barcelona’s heart it seemed that everyone had come out to see the meteor shower and for some reason everyone was dead.

Sophie had come down with food poisoning a few days previously and so had missed out when her boyfriend and their friends had gone down to La Rambla and the harbour to watch the show. She’d been searching for them amongst the thousands of bodies but so far had had no luck. Fortunately it seemed that there was still power being generated and the phone systems seemed to be working still. She’d sent a number of sms’ but no–one had replied but twitter seemed to be still up and some people were posting.

Clare her real life friend in Sacramento had just posted “the freeways are choked, crashes everywhere. I walked home. Very scared”

Nat, a blogger in Australia had posted “This is FKN bad, lots of car crashes, power fluctuating, lots of dead’

The sound of seagulls squabbling caught Sophie’s attention they were fighting over a piece of chicken, what was interesting that there were a lot of birds around and none were going for the human corpses. Looking around again taking in the many bodies which now to be honest had congealed in her mind as basically a carpet of death with no individual features. Across the boulevard she could see Café de l’Opera and decided she needed some water and to get out of the sun.

The front of the building looked as lovely as every with the soft lights in the cast iron chandeliers reminding her of better times. There were only a few corpses and many of the smartly dressed waiters seemed to be just in front of the café. Stepping inde she could smell burning and the steam spout on the main coffee machine was billowing out clouds of steam. Self-consciously Sophie walked around the bar and grabbing a couple of towels managed to turn of the now very hot control lever.

Looking around in the fridges she found some bottled water and took a couple of bottles. The first she drank straight down, the second she placed in her bag. Still feeling weak from her bout of food poisoning but not being able to face any food ,she went to the orange juicer with it’s cage of oranges and after a couple of minutes of working out how to operate the machine produced a glass of fresh OJ, a quick trip to the ice machine and she had a refreshing beverage. Moving to one of the seats by the door way she sat down.

The scene was very bizarre, it seemed that lots of guests had left their possessions at their tables and had gone outside leaving them behind. Handbags, mobile phones a couple of laptops it was a muggers paradise.

Except even the muggers were dead.

And that was when the dam burst within her. All the fear, frustration and loneliness came forth in a wave of sobbing and a bad case of the shakes which last it seemed almost forever. What brought her back from the edge was almost banal. From the corner of her eye she saw a small mouse slowly make its way into the café. It’s nose twitching and head moving from side to side every alert. Moving carefully it scurried past the near hysterical young woman and started feasting on a piece of bread that was on the floor. By the time Sophie had almost regained her composure it had also grabbed a couple of grapes and was walking back outside it’s cheeks bulging under the weight of the fruit.

As it passed Sophie the small rodent stopped and seemed to regard her and then went outside. To Sophie it looked like it was shaking it’s head. That made her laugh although the cleaner emotion still had a brittle edge to it. After blowing her nose on the table cloth *very ladylike* she thought, Sophie slowly drained the glass of OJ placing the empty glass on the table with an affirmative clack. She was about to check her phone again when she heard outside a faint call

“Hola? Hola?”