by David Moody
‘Come on,’ Cooper insisted, although he already suspected that it was pointless. Armitage’s face was grey and ashen.
He shook his head again.
‘Can’t.’
Frustrated, for a second Cooper contemplated jumping down and trying to manhandle the other survivor up onto the roof of the truck. He knew that it would be impossible and pointless. He’d have to climb down to do it and even if he managed to shift Armitage’s considerable weight, the hundreds of bodies still baying for his blood would prevent him, if not both of them, from getting back up to the helicopter.
‘Go,’ Armitage gasped, trying to lift his head again. The light from the helicopter suddenly shifted slightly, illuminating the inside of the cab and allowing Cooper to clearly see the pain in Armitage’s face. His lips were tinged with blue and it was obvious that he was beyond help.
‘Okay, mate,’ he said, reaching in through the window and resting his arm on the other man’s shoulder.
Reluctantly Cooper then stood up and ran the length of the roof to get to the helicopter. Strangely relieved, Armitage closed his eyes again and tried to breathe through the increasing pain until it finally stopped.
‘What about Steve?’ Emma shouted as Cooper scrambled into the helicopter and pulled the door shut behind him. He shook his head and looked down and watched the roof of the truck becoming smaller and smaller as the aircraft quickly climbed away.
Below them the airfield was a solid mass of crazed, decaying bodies.
46
Almost exactly fifty-nine days since the germ had destroyed almost all of the population of the planet, the final survivors arrived in the air over the island of Cormansey.
Michael had been waiting in the small cottage by the airstrip. Donna and Jack Baxter kept him company although no-one had spoken for what felt like hours.
Finally the oppressive silence was broken by the constant dull thud of the approaching helicopter. The distant sound increased Michael’s uncertainty and nervousness to an almost unbearable level. Almost too afraid to look he went outside and scanned the skies until he finally spotted the aircraft approaching. He watched every last metre of its painfully long descent to the ground and then sprinted the length of the island’s short runway.
Cooper was the first to get out, then Juliet.
Then he saw her.
Michael ran over to Emma and held her. Ignorant to everything else that was suddenly happening around them -
the frenzied and excited activity, the tears for missing friends, the cars which approached from various directions, the cheers and cries of relief and sadness - he buried her face in his chest and held her tightly.
‘Didn’t think you were going to make it over here,’ he whispered.
‘Neither did I,’ she admitted quietly. ‘You found us somewhere decent to live yet?’ she asked, looking up into his tired and haggard-looking face and smiling through her tears.
‘Not yet,’ he answered honestly, ‘but I’m working on it.
I’ll show you a few places later. You can choose where we go.’
In a moment of silence Michael stood next to Emma and watched as she looked around her, trying to take in what she could see of the island. He watched her as she tasted the air and listened to the sounds around her and soaked up the atmosphere. He watched her as she relaxed and he held her as she wept with relief.
Cormansey was a bleak, cold and often unforgiving place, but both of them knew it was as good as it was going to get.
Epilogue
Michael Collins
2nd June
I saw Jack Baxter this morning for the first time in almost two weeks. He came by the house earlier. Told me he’d been out walking. I often see him in the distance, marching on his own across the horizon. He told me he walks circuits of the island to keep himself occupied.
Very few people visit us here. There aren’t many houses more isolated than ours. That was a deliberate move. We both want to stay close to the others, but at the same time we want lives of our own too. Most people have chosen to live in or around Danvers Lye. There are some people here who want to build a close community and who want to live, sleep and eat in each other’s pockets. There are some here who couldn’t survive on their own and who need the closeness of others. We don’t want that. We don’t need that. We’ve tried it already. We’ve lived like that for long enough. That kind of life seems pointless now.
Christ, we could do with having Phil Croft here now.
We’ve struggled since Emma fell pregnant. Other people have tried to support her and help her, but it’s been difficult and we miss his guidance, company and expertise. It was hard in the winter when she first caught, and it will be hard in the autumn when the baby’s born. At least I’ll be able to help more then. At the moment I feel useless. The others have been understanding. They told us about the baby that was born when they were back in the city and what happened to it. We know that the same thing could happen to our child. Our medical facilities here are virtually nonexistent and we didn’t have any option but to go through with the pregnancy, not that either of us would have chosen to do anything else. I pray that our baby will be all right. I talked to Donna about its chances. She said that although the mother of the baby in the city had survived, it was likely that its father had been killed by the germ. She said that maybe the fact that both Emma and I survived will make a difference. I hope that whatever it is that’s kept us both alive had been passed down and will protect our child too.
Jack and I had a long conversation about the future today. I’ve agreed to go back to the mainland with Cooper and some of the others in a few days time. It’ll only be the third time we’ve been back. Providing the weather stays good the plan is for Lawrence to fly us over to the nearest port. We’ll salvage whatever supplies we can and then find a boat of some description and sail back again. There’s hardly any fuel left in the helicopter now. We could try to find more, but we need to look for another way of getting to and from the mainland. We’re going to have to keep going back there. We’ll always need medicines and food and clothing. No doubt we’ll become more self-sufficient as time goes by, but at the moment it makes sense to keep scavenging for what we need.
If I’m honest we’re struggling here, and I can’t see that things are ever going to get any easier. Some people are working on trying to get gas and electricity supplied to the village. They might manage it, but at what cost? It’s going to take an enormous amount of effort for questionable gain.
How will they maintain the supplies? Who will keep them working? It’s all going to take time, but that’s the one thing we seem to have in abundance. Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking that all of the fighting and the struggling and everything we’ve been through somehow feels pointless now…
The last time we went back to the mainland (a few months ago now) the bodies were almost all gone. I doubt we’ll see any of them moving when we go there this time.
They should have rotted away to nothing by now. The last one I saw was slumped at the side of the road just outside a shop we’d been clearing out. Its body was massively decayed and it just lay there and watched me. It tried to move but it couldn’t. It managed to lift its head slightly.
The remains of its cold, black eyes followed me as I moved between the shop and the helicopter.
For some reason I think about that body a lot. I guess it haunts me. I find myself thinking about what happened to turn it from being a normal, healthy person into that cold, useless mound of decay. I wonder sometimes how aware the bodies were of what was happening to them? They couldn’t react, but did they feel anything? I wonder whether their brains were more active and alive than we’d originally thought, and whether it was only the deterioration of their flesh and bone that caused them to react and behave the way they did? Did my friends and family suffer? Did they wander around like that, trying desperately to find comfort or familiarity and a release from their pain? I often wonder whether that last body had
been looking at me and remembering what it had once been.
It’s getting late. Emma is asleep and has been all afternoon. No doubt she’ll wake up soon and then keep me awake all night talking. She still doesn’t like to be on her own at night. No-one does.
I’m standing in front of the house looking out over the ocean. It’s a bright, warm and sunny day and the water in the distance looks deceptively calm and inviting.
Everything is quiet and if I just stand here and listen to the silence then I can almost believe that nothing ever happened. But there’s no escaping the fact that our lives have been changed forever and no matter how safe or comfortable we try and make this place, the rest of our days are going to be constantly difficult and hard. We will have to fight for everything we need and if our children survive then they’ll spend their lives fighting too.
In getting here we managed to win a small victory, but it was a hollow one. I now know that our achievements are unimportant and insignificant in the overall scheme of things. There might be other people like us. There might be people elsewhere who have been more successful and who are more organised and protected than us. Whoever’s left alive and however many of us there are, I think our days are numbered. We are remnants of the past. I sometimes feel like an intruder now, like I shouldn’t be here. Baxter says that whatever the reason or cause, what happened to the world was supposed to happen. I agree with him. We’ve been brushed aside. I can’t help thinking that everything we’re doing is going to come to nothing. We’re just kidding ourselves if we believe any different. The balance of our world has been changed forever. Mankind is being cleansed from the face of the planet. Purification has begun.
All that Emma and I can do is make the most of the time we have left.
That’s all that any of us can do.
FOLLOW THE COMPLETE AUTUMN
STORY IN THE BEST-SELLING NOVELS
AUTUMN
AUTUMN: THE CITY
AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM
DAVID MOODY
STRAIGHT TO YOU
and
TRUST
All books available in paperback and a wide range of ebook formats from Infected Books For more information visit:
www.djmoody.co.uk
www.theinfected.co.uk
www.infectedbooks.co.uk
Table of Contents
DAVID MOODY
Prologue
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Epilogue
