by David Moody
Outside the window the airfield was dark and, although she knew that there were thousands of bodies just out of view, the ground around the observation tower was clear.
And the building itself was strong and isolated. She couldn’t imagine any of the cadavers she’d seen having the strength, intelligence or coordination to reach the tower, never mind make it up the stairs. Being this high up in the air felt infinitely safer than being buried underground where she’d spent most of the last fortnight.
‘See that woman sitting next to Mike?’ Emma asked, causing Donna to turn back around, wipe her eyes and look across the room again. Sat between Michael and Phil Croft, the woman Emma referred to was rotund, red-faced and very loud. Donna wondered how the hell she’d managed to survive for so long in a world where silence often seemed to be the strongest form of defence and self-preservation.
‘The big lady?’ she replied, choosing her words carefully.
‘That’s right.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Her name’s Jackie Soames.’
‘Is she in charge?’
‘I don’t think anyone’s in charge really, but she seems to get involved with most of the decisions round here.’
‘She doesn’t look…’ Donna began.
‘She doesn’t look like the kind of person who’d be sat giving out advice in a place like this,’ Emma interrupted, successfully anticipating what Donna had been about to try and say. ‘She’s got a lot of respect here, though. I’ve spoken to a few people who’ve only got good things to say about her. Apparently she used to run a pub. Story is she slept through everything that happened on the first day.
Went to bed with a hangover then woke up at midday and found her husband dead behind the bar.’
‘Nice. Who else is there?’
‘See the young lad on his own with his back to us?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s Martin Smith. He’s the one who…’
‘Supposedly found out how all this happened?’ Donna said quietly, sounding less than convinced.
‘That’s him. And the bloke standing looking out of the window over there,’ she continued, nodding across to the diagonally opposite corner of the square room.
‘The one with the jacket and the hair?’
‘That’s the one,’ she replied, ‘I think his name’s Keele.
He calls himself Tuggie.’
Donna looked at the man and felt a strange combination of surprise and disappointment and a certain amount of immediate distrust. Whilst just about every other survivor she’d seen wore whatever clothes they’d been able to salvage, this man’s appearance seemed to suggest that, for some inexplicable reason, he still considered it important to be well-dressed and presentable. His hair - in contrast to just about everyone else - was surprisingly well-groomed.
He looked conspicuously out of place and out on a limb, somehow distant and separate from the others. But was it because he’d chosen not to mix with them, or did the rest of the group not want to associate with him? Whatever the reason, in a room full of people he was very much alone.
‘So what does he do round here?’ she asked, guessing that the man must have had some relevance to the group for Emma to have pointed him out.
‘Did you see the plane in the hangar?’
Donna shook her head.
‘No, but I knew they had one.’
‘Apparently he’s the one who’s going to fly it.’
‘Why do you say it like that? What do you mean, apparently?’
‘Girl over there called Jo told me that he used to fly little tug planes at a gliding club…’
‘Hence the nickname…’
‘That’s right. Anyway, she says he’s not flown anything as big as the plane they’ve got here yet.’
‘Does he need to? They’ve got the helicopter, haven’t they?’
‘The plan is to keep sending people over to the island in threes and fours to make it safe. When it’s all clear they’ll load up the plane and take everyone and everything else over.’
Donna nodded and finished her drink.
‘Come to think of it, I didn’t notice any planes out on the runway when we got here,’ she said, stifling a yawn.
‘So how did this Tuggie get here? Is his plane in the hangar too?’
‘Now that’s the part of the story I don’t think he wants anyone to know about,’ Emma explained. ‘Richard Lawrence says that he found him hiding under a table in an office at another airfield when he stopped to refuel the helicopter. He’s a bloody nervous wreck. I’m not convinced he’s going to be able to fly anywhere.’
‘Great,’ Donna mumbled.
Jack Baxter crossed her line of vision and began to walk towards her. The tension and fear so evident in his face earlier had now disappeared and had been replaced with a relaxed, almost disbelieving grin.
‘You two all right?’ he asked. Donna nodded.
‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘What about you?’
‘Bloody fantastic!’
‘That good, eh?’ she mumbled, unable to match his enthusiasm.
‘That good.’
‘So what are you so happy about?’
Baxter shrugged his shoulders.
‘Can’t you feel it?’
‘Feel what? We’ve only been here a few minutes, Jack.
You can’t have had chance to feel anything yet.’
He ignored her flippancy.
‘This is going to work out,’ he grinned. ‘I tell you, it won’t be long now before we’re out of this mess.’
23
The observation tower was the focal point of the airfield and its growing community. The strongest and safest part of the complex by a long margin, it was where people ate, talked, slept, planned, cried, argued and did pretty much everything else together. Not really a tower as such, it was simply the tallest and safest building around and the first survivors to arrive there had naturally gravitated towards it.
Its relative height and its distance from the perimeter fence and the dead hordes beyond provided them with a little welcome security. With the arrival of Cooper, Donna, Michael and more than thirty others, however, space was suddenly at a premium. At two-thirty in the morning Michael and Emma found themselves sitting together in a small, dark room off the main entrance corridor at the foot of the stairs. The temperature was icy cold. The couple held each other tightly and covered themselves with blankets and coats to keep warm. Conversation was sporadic.
Michael had something on his mind. He’d wanted to talk to Emma about it for a couple of hours since an earlier discussion he’d had with Cooper and Jackie Soames, but for the first time in weeks she seemed relaxed and almost happy and he found it difficult to bring himself to speak knowing that what he wanted to say would inevitably upset her.
After skirting round the subject for what felt like the hundredth time, Michael decided to take a deep breath and tell her.
‘Em,’ he began slowly, choosing his words with care, ‘I was talking to Cooper earlier…’
‘I know,’ she replied, ‘I saw you. The pair of you were as thick as thieves.’
‘Remember the conversation we had on the way over here?’ he continued, ignoring her.
‘Which one?’
‘When we talked about the island? I said I wanted to try and get over there pretty quickly so we could make sure we get everything we needed.’
‘I remember,’ Emma mumbled, already beginning to anticipate what he was about to say next.
‘Well…’ he began before pausing momentarily, ‘I’m going to go over on the next flight.’ Michael forced his uncomfortable words out as quickly as he could. Once they were spoken he felt sudden relief at having finally come clean and told her. Emma nodded but didn’t say anything.
In the darkness it was difficult for him to see her face and gauge her reaction. The silence was awkward and Michael soon felt pressured into explaining further. ‘There are a couple of damn good reasons why I shou
ld go,’ he continued. ‘Most important is that I really do want to get over there to try and make sure that this island is everything we need it to be. Second…’
‘What happens if it’s not?’ Emma interrupted. ‘What are you going to do? Ask them to bring you back so you can start looking for somewhere else?’
He ignored her again.
‘Second,’ he continued, ‘have you looked at the people left around here, Em?’
‘What about them?’
‘Just go back upstairs and have a look around. Most of the people here are empty. There’s more life in half the bodies outside than in some of them up there. It’s not their fault, they just can’t handle what’s happened and…’
‘What point are you trying to make?’
‘Jackie Soames says they’ve already sent some of their strongest people over there but they need more. They’re planning to try and clear out the village in the next couple of days and they’re going to need as much manpower as they can get.’
‘So why do you have to go? Why not send Cooper or some of the others?’
‘Cooper’s a hard bastard - he’ll be more use here keeping this lot moving in the right direction. And if I’m honest, I want to do this. I want to go.’
Emma stopped to think.
‘So when are you leaving?’ she asked quietly, not really wanting to hear his answer. Her mouth was dry with sudden nervous emotion. Michael shrugged his shoulders.
‘They’re planning the next flight for sometime tomorrow. It will probably be early afternoon.’
She nodded but didn’t say anything. Once again Michael found himself feeling pressured by her ominous lack of words. He desperately wanted to know what she was thinking and feeling. He’d known all along that she was never going to have been happy with the idea, but he didn’t know what else he could do. Cooper had implied that he owed it to the rest of the group to go and Michael couldn’t help but reluctantly agree. Since arriving at the military base it had been him, Cooper, Donna and a just handful of others who had kept the group together and functioning.
The same level of control needed to be applied on the island. They needed representation over there quickly.
Keen to keep the conversation with Emma flowing he spoke again.
‘It’ll be okay,’ he began to say, his voice soft and quiet.
‘This place seems fairly safe…’
‘You say that every time we find somewhere new to shelter and within days we’re on the run again,’ she snapped.
‘This place seems fairly safe,’ he repeated, ‘but you know as well as I do that it’s probably not going to last.
Places like this don’t stay safe indefinitely. We attract the bodies, and until we manage to find ourselves somewhere that they can’t get to this will just keep happening.’
‘So you’re going to leave now before it happens again?’
Stung, Michael looked at Emma and pushed his body away from hers slightly.
‘Come on, that’s not fair,’ he protested. ‘I want to go over to the island to make sure things are moving, that’s all.
The place could be cleared of bodies in a couple of days and we could all be over there. By this time next week we could be standing out in the open without a hundred thousand bloody corpses watching our every move.’
Emma regretted her comment. He was right, it had been unfair and unnecessary.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled apologetically.
‘It’s okay.’
‘It’s just that I don’t want…’ she began to say before stopping.
‘Don’t want what?’ he pressed gently.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ she answered. ‘I don’t want to be here on my own.’
‘But you’re not going to be on your own, are you? There are more people here now than we’ve been with since this all started.’
‘No,’ she sighed, shaking her head sadly, ‘that’s not what I mean. You and I have been together since the first few days and I don’t want that to change. I’ve been okay as long as I’ve been with you. We’ve had some pretty bloody awful times, but we’ve got by. I guess I’m just frightened that you’ll leave here and something will happen to you or you won’t come back or…’
‘Shh…’ he soothed, sensing her mounting emotion.
‘Come on, now you’re just being stupid.’
‘Am I?'
‘Yes. Look, this is nothing. I’ll go over there in the helicopter tomorrow and the job’ll be done before you know it.’
‘You make it sound easy.’
‘It is easy.’
‘Is it? Is it really? Wake up, Mike. In case you hadn’t noticed, nothing’s easy anymore. Finding the next meal isn’t easy. Keeping warm and dry and out of sight isn’t easy. Keeping quiet isn’t easy. Driving round the country running from place to place isn’t easy so please don’t patronise me by telling me that getting in a frigging helicopter and flying God knows how many miles to wipe out this island’s already dead population is going to be easy either.’
‘Look,’ Michael snapped, beginning to become irritated by her negativity and defeatist comments, ‘I’m not prepared to sit here and wait for something to happen when I can go and do something about it right now. I’ve got a chance tomorrow to do something that might guarantee a future for both of us. And if I’m honest, I think I have to do it because I don’t trust any of those other fuckers upstairs to do it properly. We can’t afford to take any chances with this.’
‘I know all that,’ Emma replied, her voice equally full of anger and frustration. ‘I know why you’re going and I know why you have to do it, but none of that makes it any easier to deal with. I just don’t want you to go, that’s all.
You’re all I’ve got left.’
24
‘You okay?’ Jack Baxter asked. Kelly Harcourt was slumped in a seat in the shadows of the furthest, quietest corner of the room at the top of the observation tower.
Kilgore was asleep, curled up in a ball on the ground at her feet like a faithful dog. Harcourt couldn’t switch off. She couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes, never mind sleep.
Her head was spinning with dark, painful thoughts. The hard and bloody fight outside the bunker and the subsequent journey which had brought them to this place had proved to be a long and difficult distraction which had stopped her thinking about the hopelessness of her position.
Now, in the silence and calm, there was nothing to stop her thinking constantly about the grim inevitability of her immediate future.
‘What?’ she mumbled, realising that he had spoken to her.
‘I asked if you were okay?’
‘No, I’m fucking not,’ she grunted with brutal honesty.
‘You?’
‘I’m all right,’ he replied, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to her. He glanced across at the soldier who continued to stare impassively ahead and out of the window and into the darkness. For the first time since leaving the base Baxter thought she looked odd and out of place in her heavy protective suit. In the chaos of the last day and a half he had become used to seeing soldiers, guns and helicopters. Now that things seemed calmer and more organised and controlled, Harcourt and Kilgore suddenly didn’t seem to fit in with their surroundings. He didn’t know why, perhaps it was because he finally seemed to be starting to feel a little more normal and human again? The soldiers reminded him of the confusion and hopeless battles they had left behind. Baxter could see Harcourt’s dark, melancholy eyes behind her facemask. The poor kid could only have been in her early twenties. He felt desperately sorry for her but he began to regret sitting down next to her.
He’d instinctively wanted to talk to her to see how she was feeling and make sure she was all right, but he already knew that she never could be. There was absolutely nothing that he or anyone else could do to help her or to soften the blow of what was almost certainly going to happen to her.
He’d originally sat down with the intention of trying to start a conv
ersation but now he didn’t know what to say. The soldier picked up on his sudden shuffling awkwardness but did nothing to help. He was the least of her concerns.
Baxter was about to get up and walk away again when she spoke. She didn’t want to be alone.
‘My dad,’ she said, her voice flat and empty, ‘he would have liked it here. He loved planes. He was turning into a proper old-fashioned grandad. He used to take my sister’s boys to the airport and they’d spend the whole day watching the planes taking off and landing.’
‘Never appealed to me,’ Baxter quietly replied.
‘Me neither. Dad loved it though. Should have seen him at my passing out parade. Mum told me she had to keep reminding him to watch me. Spent the whole time looking round the base and staring at the kit instead of looking at me.’
The conversation faltered. Feeling slightly more comfortable Baxter spoke again.
‘So tell me, how did you end up in uniform?’
‘I had two older brothers in the forces. Like I said, Dad was always interested in the military so I guess I just grew up surrounded by it. Didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school and I just sort of stumbled into it. I figured what was good enough for my brothers was good enough for me too.’
‘Glad you did it?’
‘I had some good times. I knew some good people.’
‘You talk about it as if it’s over.’
For the first time since he’d sat down Harcourt turned to face Baxter.
‘Come on, Jack,’ she sighed, ‘you know as well as I do that I haven’t got long left.’
‘But doesn’t this feel like it did every time you went out to fight? What I mean is,’ he began to stammer clumsily,
‘you knew that you were putting your life on the line every time you picked up your weapon, didn’t you?’
She shook her head sadly.
‘This is different,’ she explained. ‘At least on the battlefield you had a chance. Here I’m just sitting and waiting for it to happen, and that’s what makes it so bloody hard to deal with. There’s nothing I can do about it.’
