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Ape is already bored by the discussion.
    ‘That light,’ I persist. ‘It might’ve fried everyone, like the Ape said.’
    ‘You just call me an ape?’
    ‘Everyone does,’ I say, impatiently. Is he so dense that he’s not heard people call him that at school?
    ‘I’m Dazza.’
    ‘No, you’re not. OK? You’re the Ape.’
    The Ape almost looks hurt and walks off, muttering something about getting crisps too. For a split second I almost feel sorry for him, but I’ve got bigger things to worry about than his
feelings.
    ‘If everyone got burned, where’s their ashes, Rev? Or their squelchy, burned bodies?’ Billie asks. She’s looking directly at me and I know she’s doing her level
best to keep a grip on reality. ‘That can’t be what happened, it just can’t.’
    ‘That’s why I need to go and find out. Because despite what that man was going through, he was trying to tell us something, I’m sure of it.’
    The Ape returns with a six-pack of Buds and a family-size bag of crisps. ‘We could live for years in here,’ he says with a big grin on his face.
    ‘Keep Billie safe,’ I tell him.
    ‘Me?’
    ‘You’re the best we’ve got right now,’ I say, realising with a sinking feeling that sadly that’s true.
    The Ape looks proud. ‘Yep, that’s me.’
    ‘Cod four,’ I say to him.
    He salutes me and I haven’t the heart to tell him I’m only saying that because I’m scared I won’t come back and that someone will need to look after Billie.
    After unpacking and laying a large cotton tablecloth over the burned man, I pick up his trail and follow it all the way to the back of the supermarket.

A body doesn’t just burn, it sort of melts too. At least that’s what I learn, because the dead man’s dark gooey trail isn’t hard to pick up. I follow it
down the soaking wet aisles, through to a storeroom and on through two wide-open delivery doors, then on towards a massive articulated lorry. The trail stops at the open door of the lorry. I take a
guess that whatever burned the man, burned him in the driver’s cabin and he tried to escape before the flames engulfed him completely.
    I head towards the door of the cabin with the feeling that whatever I do in the next ten seconds I really shouldn’t climb up into the cabin. The one thing anyone in my position should
not
do is that. But I also have this other feeling that unless I do the one thing I’m not supposed to, I won’t find out what has happened. And I need to know. Me, Billie and
the Ape need to know.
    I reach up and pull myself onto the steps leading up to the driver’s cabin.
    ‘Hello?’ I call out.
    I climb a step higher.
    ‘Anyone?’
    I take another step and the higher I climb, the warmer it seems to get. My head draws level with the inside of the cabin and I can see signs of the fire that must have engulfed the burned man.
The melted seats and steering wheel are pretty damning proof of that. God alone knows how hot it must’ve been in there. That poor man, I think.
    I’m not sure what I hope to find and the cabin is in such a state that I don’t think anything is going to help me discover what actually happened. But I’m here now so I climb
further in and as I do I spot pieces of the burned man’s skin stuck to the interior. The air starts to get hotter around me and at first I like the heat, it’s like a hot bath that I
want to sink into. But it keeps getting hotter and the heat is doing something to me, making me dizzy and lose focus. My clothes that had been soaking wet from the sprinklers in the shop are now
dry as a bone and I realise that their dampness must have shielded me from the onslaught of heat.
    I look at my arm and there are already blisters forming and my fingers are starting to clench up, not because I want them to, but of their own accord. I try to get out of the cabin, but I
can’t seem to move. The heat won’t let me. I can’t find any air that isn’t going to burn the hell out of my throat