by David Moody
A thoughtful few moments of silence followed as the two survivors each considered the soldier’s plan. It seemed to make sense and they had to admit she had a point - the risks they were facing were great whichever direction they chose to travel in. So if they were resigned to taking risks anyway, surely it would be more sensible to leave the school and move forwards rather than backwards?
‘I’m still not sure,’ Baxter said quietly. ‘I understand what you’re saying but I don’t…’
‘You lot better make a decision quickly,’ Clare said from near the window.
‘Why?’ Donna snapped.
‘Helicopter,’ she said, pointing up into the sky at the flashing lights on the tail of the aircraft high above them.
For a second no-one moved.
‘Come on,’ Harcourt shouted, forcing the rest of the small group into action. With sudden, nervous energy Baxter did up the zip on the front of his jacket and began to collect up the maps and shove them back into his rucksack, all the time keeping one eye on the helicopter circling over the city. He picked up the pack and swung it round onto his shoulders.
‘How will they know we’re here?’ Clare asked.
‘They won’t,’ Donna answered as she grabbed her things and ran over to the classroom door. ‘We’ll need to get back to the van and get moving. We’ll have more of a chance if they see us in the van.’
‘Think so?’ asked Baxter.
She shrugged her shoulders and glanced around the room at the others.
‘Hope so.’
She led the way out of the room and back down the stairs. Weaving through the darkness at speed she pushed open the front door of the school and ran over to the van.
The two soldiers, Baxter and Clare followed close behind.
Pausing momentarily to look for the helicopter as she opened the van, Donna immediately became aware of a huge swathe of movement all around them. From the shadows in, it seemed, every direction, bodies had turned and were now moving quickly towards them, lurching at them desperately with an ominous speed and purpose. The evening gloom was disorientating and the low light made the perception of distance surprisingly difficult. One of the nearest cadavers reached out for Kilgore and caught hold of him before he even knew it was there.
‘Get it off me!’ he screamed. ‘Get this fucking thing off me!’
The body had grabbed him from behind. He span around, trying desperately to dislodge the emaciated creature or to grab hold of it and drag it round in front of him. The corpse’s slimy, rotting skin and constant, writhing movements made it difficult for him to get a grip.
‘I’ve got it,’ Harcourt said calmly as she yanked the desperate figure away from him in a single violent movement. She wrapped her hand around its scrawny neck and threw it angrily to the ground. There were many more around them now. Kilgore, shocked by the sudden attack and not thinking clearly, immediately began to check his suit for damage as the others bundled themselves into the van. Harcourt shoved him forward and he scrambled inside, leaving her to stamp angrily on the body at her feet with her heavy standard issue boots. Flesh, muscle and shattered bones were crunched into the ground. Donna started the engine and the sudden noise prompted Harcourt to dive into the back of the van and slam the door shut behind her.
With its engine straining and wheels skidding across the ground, the van roared out of the car park, thudding into body after body as it powered towards the road.
‘There!’ Clare shouted as Donna threw the van around the second sharp turn. She pointed up at the helicopter which was moving quickly through the sky ahead of them.
‘There it is!’
The survivors had only been on the move for a matter of minutes when Lawrence spotted them. The pilot had completed his first circuit of the city centre and was trying to find an excuse for giving up for the night when he caught sight of a momentary flash of light below. The only illumination in the whole of the dead city, the van was easy to pick out and follow.
‘Left here,’ Harcourt shouted from the back of the van, keen to make sure that Donna followed the route she’d shown them in the classroom and didn’t screw up again.
‘Keep going the way we planned.’
Donna did as instructed, yanking the steering wheel over and guiding the van between the parallel wrecks of a car and a burned out milk float. The van’s headlights lit up constant movement ahead of them as bodies emerged from the darkness and stumbled towards the sudden light and noise.
‘He’ll never see us,’ Kilgore moaned from the back.
‘Of course he will,’ Baxter snapped, sick of the soldier’s defeatist attitude, ‘there’s nothing else to see out here, is there?’
Donna struggled to keep concentrating on the cluttered road ahead of her and resisted the overwhelming temptation to watch the helicopter. It seemed to be flying away from them but she couldn’t be completely sure. She just had to keep the van moving and keep hoping that Lawrence would spot them and… the van clipped the kerb, causing its passengers to be jolted and shaken in their seats momentarily. The sudden and unexpected movement forced Donna to return her full attention to navigating along the debris-littered carriageway.
Struggling to follow the van, Lawrence took the helicopter down as low as he dared. This was, perhaps, the hardest and most dangerous part of flying at night above the dead land. Everything was black, featureless and virtually indistinguishable. He had to keep low enough to try and keep track of the vehicle below, but also stay at a sufficient height to avoid any tall buildings, electricity pylons or similar. Fly too low and he knew he probably wouldn’t see such obstacles until it was too late.
On the ground below the van had come across an obstruction blocking the road. Nothing too serious, but the tangled wreckage of a three car crash had covered enough of the carriageway to force Donna to slow down to little more than a fraction of her preferred speed. Lawrence, noticing their difficulties, seized on the opportunity to try and make contact. He switched on the helicopter’s powerful searchlight and managed to move the concentrated beam of light around enough to gain a general appreciation of the immediate vicinity through which the van was moving. To their right were buildings. On the other side of the road, however, perhaps another half mile further ahead, he could see an expanse of open land - a park or playing fields perhaps? Lawrence eased the helicopter forward to hover above the grassland and saw that directly beneath him were football posts. An important find - he immediately knew that there should be sufficient clear space for him to set down between the two goals. A football pitch would give him more than enough room to land. He moved the searchlight to point down at the pitch in a rudimentary attempt to signal his intent to the survivors on the ground.
‘What’s he doing now?’ Donna asked, keeping her attention fixed on the road ahead and relying on the others to tell her what was happening above them.
‘He’s moved over to our left,’ Baxter replied. ‘Now he’s hovering.’
‘What’s he want us to do?’
‘How the hell am I supposed to know? I’m not a bloody psychic.’
Baxter stared up at the helicopter hopefully. Having cleared the remains of the car crash, the van sped up again and slammed into a random body, its sudden and brutal disintegration leaving a bloody smear of grease and gore across the area of windscreen through which he was looking. The unexpected noise and movement startled him for a moment. Donna flicked on the wipers.
‘He’s definitely stopped moving now,’ he continued, struggling to see clearly through the smeared glass. ‘Try and get closer.’
‘I can only follow the bloody road,’ Donna snapped.
‘What do you want me to do? I can’t even see what there is for us to…’
‘He’s coming down,’ Baxter interrupted. His view of the helicopter was clearer now.
‘What?’
‘He’s landing.’
Donna allowed herself to look up from the road for an instant. He was right, the helicopter was desce
nding, but she couldn’t see what it was descending towards.
‘Stop the van,’ Harcourt shouted from the back. ‘Stop the van and we’ll find him on foot.’
‘Are you bloody stupid?’ Kilgore protested.
‘It’s a park,’ Baxter said as they passed a momentary gap in the tree-lined fence which ran along the left hand side of the road. ‘She’s right, Donna, stop the van and let’s make a run for it.’
Donna didn’t argue. She was cold and tired and frightened and she wanted this wild and pointless chase through nowhere to be over. She forced the van up onto the pavement and climbed out. A body threw itself at her, almost knocking her to the ground. She quickly regained her balance and pushed the rancid cadaver to one side before following Baxter, Clare and the two soldiers who were already sprinting along the fence, looking for a way into the park.
Now that they were out of the van the sound of the helicopter was suddenly deafening. With his lungs already burning and feeling like they were going to explode with fiery effort, Baxter forced himself to keep moving forward, trying to keep up with the others who were all younger and in far better physical condition than he was. He was being left behind. Being at the back of the pack terrified him but he couldn’t move any faster. He allowed himself a momentary glance over his shoulder and saw bodies shuffling after them. The light was poor but there seemed to be hundreds of them dragging themselves out of the shadows from every direction. He looked forward again and concentrated on following Donna who was just ahead.
He didn’t dare look back a second time, but he felt sure that the bodies would be gaining on him. Christ, they were probably catching up. One might even be about to grab hold of him…
Harcourt had also noticed the bodies around them. The disturbance caused by the van had been enough to drive the corpses into a frenzy. Unsurprisingly the helicopter was having even more of an effect. She took comfort in the fact that the aircraft was so loud and its searchlight so bright that in comparison the five of them frantically running along the pavement would hopefully go unnoticed by the dead masses shuffling ever closer.
‘Through here,’ shouted Clare as she reached an open wrought iron gate. She banked left and ran into the park and was immediately able to see the helicopter in all its magnificent glory. It hovered imperiously some ten feet above the ground.
‘Has he seen us?’ Donna asked as she tripped through overlong grass which had been left to grow wild for weeks.
Conditioned by circumstance to keep quiet and not shout, she began to wave her arms furiously, hoping that the pilot would see her and respond. At first nothing happened. The brilliant white searchlight lit up almost all of the park and illuminated crowds of shuffling cadavers swarming towards the helicopter from the darkness in every direction. The speed of the survivors made them easy for Lawrence to see.
He couldn’t risk setting down until they were almost directly underneath him. At the last possible moment he dropped the final few feet down to the ground.
‘One in the front with me and the rest of you in the back,’ Lawrence yelled over the deafening engine and rotor blade roar as Harcourt yanked the helicopter door open.
‘Strap yourselves in if you can, just hold on if you can’t.’
The pilot’s voice was barely audible over the noise.
Clare and the two soldiers clambered in, followed almost thirty seconds later by Baxter. Donna waited for him at the side of the helicopter and virtually had to push him up into his seat. Dizzy with exhaustion, he slumped back and sucked in long, cool mouthfuls of damp evening air as she slammed the door shut in his face.
‘Come on,’ Lawrence hissed under his breath. The bodies were damn close now. He could see the decayed faces of the nearest dead staring back at him.
Donna scrambled into the front and pulled the door closed behind her. By the time her belt was buckled and she looked up they were airborne again. On the ground where they had just been the bodies converged and reached up pointlessly towards the rapidly disappearing machine.
22
The return flight to the airfield took less than fifteen minutes to complete. The silence and stillness when they touched down was overwhelming and filled the five new arrivals with cool relief. Oblivious to the thousands upon thousands of cold, dead eyes which stared at them from beyond the other side of the fence in the near distance, Baxter, Clare, Donna, Harcourt and Kilgore stumbled wearily out of the helicopter and followed Lawrence across the tarmac. In tired silence he led them towards a collection of dark buildings - a large, half empty and skeletal hangar, an observation tower and several smaller buildings which had once been used as offices, waiting rooms and public lounges. Baxter was impressed. The place looked better equipped and more substantial than he’d ever dared imagine it might be. It seemed to have been an unusual cross between a small airport and a flying club and he guessed that it had probably been used for private planes, chartered flights and pilot training. He noticed the prison van and personnel carrier parked a short distance away. The presence of the other vehicles came as an enormous relief.
The rest of the group had also made it safely to the airfield.
A dull light was shining out from the top of the observation tower. The survivors followed Lawrence into the building, across a short open area and up two flights of steep, echoing stairs. The events of the last few hours had been physically and mentally exhausting and Baxter in particular struggled to keep moving forward. After what felt like miles of walking and an endless climb they reached the top floor of the building and entered a large room through a pair of heavy double doors. Inside the room was light and warm and was buzzing with noise and conversation, a stark contrast to the cold and enforced silence of the world outside the building. The sight of familiar faces dotted around filled the three weary survivors and two soldiers with a sudden surge of energy again.
‘You finally made it then,’ Cooper laughed from across the room. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Piss off!’ replied Baxter, managing a tired grin. ‘We took a couple of wrong turns, that was all!’
‘Just a couple? Bloody hell, we’d almost given up on you. We’ve been here for hours!’
Donna stood in the doorway and soaked up the atmosphere. The mass of people around her - both those she knew and the twenty or so faces she didn’t recognise - seemed relaxed and at ease. She too felt suddenly calmer as if the countless stresses and problems that continually plagued her had begun to be stripped away. Was it because she’d finally reached the airfield that she felt that way, or was she just relieved that Cooper and the others were safe?
Whatever the reason, she hadn’t been in such a comfortable and welcoming environment for a long, long time. In fact, now that she stopped to think about it, she hadn’t felt free like this since the days before the disaster. For a few precious moments the overwhelming relief was such that she couldn’t move. The nightmare outside suddenly seemed a thousand miles away. She stood there, overcome and rooted to the spot, feeling full of positive but undeniably painful emotion.
‘You okay?’ a voice asked from beside her. It was Emma.
‘I’m fine,’ she answered quickly, suddenly self-conscious. ‘I’m sorry, I was just…’
Although Donna had stopped mid-sentence, Emma already understood what she was trying to say. She too had experienced the same bewildering range of emotions when she’d first arrived at the airfield.
‘This is really good,’ Emma continued. ‘These people have really got themselves sorted out here.’
‘Looks that way…’
‘You won’t believe some of the things they’ve been telling us. You know, when we first saw the helicopter this morning I knew it was going to be important, but I didn’t realise just how important. None of us had time to stop and think about it, did we? Christ, these people have been up and down the whole bloody country. They’ve seen other bases like the one Cooper came from and…’
‘I know, I heard Lawrence talking earlie
r. So how come there’s so few of them then?’ Donna wondered, sitting down next to Emma.
‘Suppose they’ve just been taking the same approach to all this as we have,’ Emma answered, thinking on her feet.
‘Mike and I decided right from the start that we couldn’t afford to spend all our time looking round for other survivors. We knew we had to forget about everyone else and concentrate on getting through this ourselves. Looks like these people have spent their time doing that too.’
‘So how many of them are there?’
‘Not sure exactly. I think there are about twenty or so of them here, with another six on Cormansey.’
‘Cormansey?’
‘The island, remember?’
Donna nodded. She was tired and her brain wasn’t functioning properly. Tonight she looked drained and weak, a shadow of her normal self. Emma noticed and passed her a drink. It was a small bottle of lemonade. The sweet liquid was warm and gassy but very welcome.
‘Much happened since you’ve been here?’ Donna asked, wiping her mouth dry on the back of her sleeve.
‘Not really,’ Emma answered, ‘we’ve just been sat here waiting for you lot to turn up. What happened? Did you run into trouble?’
‘Stupid cock up,’ she admitted, shrugging her shoulders.
‘We took the wrong exit on the roundabout where that bloody memorial came down, and then made more mistakes trying to get back on track and catch up with you.’
A sudden peel of loud laughter came from the far side of the room. It was an unexpected and strangely startling noise. Donna looked up and saw that Michael, Cooper and several others were talking to a handful of people she didn’t recognise. At first she didn’t question who these people might be, or what they might have found amusing. Instead her mind was preoccupied with the fact that she’d just heard laughter. For the first time in many weeks she could hear people freely expressing positive emotions that had previously been suppressed. Whatever the reason for their jollity, it touched an uncomfortable nerve. Normally strong and determined to the point of seeming cold and uncaring, Donna now felt ready to burst into tears. She dismissed her feelings as being just a passing moment of weakness, probably brought on by her tiredness and exhaustion. She turned and looked out of a window behind her before Emma could see the raw emotion in her eyes.
