by David Moody
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…’
‘Forget it, it doesn’t matter.’
Baxter regretted his ill-considered and pointless questions. He wondered whether it would be better for both of them if he just got up and walked away now. Or perhaps he owed it to her to stay and try to talk some more and repair some of the damage he was sure he was doing? The pity he suddenly felt for this young girl was overpowering and humbling. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how she must have been feeling. He’d been surrounded by people who were suffering for weeks now, but never anything like this…
‘If I could have my time again,’ she said quietly, ‘then I never would have signed up.’ Her voice, although muffled by her breathing apparatus, suddenly sounded tearful and full of emotion. ‘I probably would have left school and got myself a normal job like all my friends did.’
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked instinctively.
‘Because,’ she answered, ‘if I hadn’t signed up then I wouldn’t be sitting here now waiting to die. If I hadn’t signed up then I’d probably have died on the first day like I should have done. I’d have died next to my mum or my dad or my boyfriend, not on my own out here.’
‘You’re not on your own…’
‘I don’t know anyone, other than this idiot,’ she sighed, gently nudging the soldier on the ground with her foot.
‘Honestly, Jack, it would have been so much easier. I really don’t want it to end like this. I’d rather have just gone with the rest of them and not known anything about it…’
‘Who’s talking about dying?’
‘How can it not end that way for me? Please don’t waste your time trying to make me feel better with bullshit because there’s no point…’
‘You’re assuming you’re not immune. You might be able to breathe. There are almost fifty of us here who can…’
‘And there are millions of dead people out there who can’t,’ she interrupted. ‘I think it’s a pretty safe bet that I’m not immune, don’t you?’
‘But you’ve come this far, why stop and give up now?’
‘Because now that I have stopped I can see that there’s no point carrying on. I’m just prolonging the inevitable. It’s going to happen sooner or later.’
‘So why not later?’
She shook her head again.
‘No, there’s nothing to hang on for. You’ll all be gone soon anyway.’
‘Come with us.’
‘Why? It might as well end here as anywhere. If you’ve got any sense then you won’t bother taking me and Kilgore over to your island. We’d be taking up precious cargo space. Might as well use it to take something that’s going to be useful to you.’
‘There might be somewhere on the island that we can adapt so that…’
‘Shut up, Jack, it’s not working. What are you going to do? There’s only one village on the island for Christ’s sake.
I don’t even know if there’s a hospital. There won’t be anywhere for me. Are you planning to wrap a plastic bubble round a house so that we can live in a fucking oxygen tent? Thanks for your concern, but it’s not going to happen.’
Baxter finally realised that it really was time to stop talking. He meant well but she was right, he wasn’t helping. He just seemed to be making things worse for Harcourt and digging a deeper hole for himself.
‘So what are you going to do?’
Silence.
‘Nothing,’ she eventually replied. ‘I’ll just sit here in this bloody suit until I can’t take it anymore. Then I’ll end it.’
25
Michael woke up in agony just before seven o’clock the following morning. He and Emma had spent the night sleeping on the floor in the little room where they’d sat together and talked through the early hours. He’d been lying on the hard concrete and Emma had been lying on him. Every bone in his body ached. He slowly opened his eyes and looked around. Seeing their dark surroundings reminded him what had happened and what was already planned for later. Their long and difficult conversation echoed around his head. His heart sank when he remembered that he would be leaving her today.
Emma was still sleeping soundly. Michael carefully eased himself out from underneath her and made sure that she was comfortable and warm before quietly going out of the room and following the corridor down to the building’s main entrance. He pushed the door open and stepped out into a bright and cold morning. The sky was clear and blue and the sun strong. A powerful, gusting wind blew across the airfield, waking him fully. A short distance away was the helicopter, the sun glinting on its curved surfaces and reflecting back at him. Remembering what he’d come outside for he found a less-exposed corner of the building, leant against the wall and began to empty his bladder.
‘Morning, Mike,’ a voice suddenly said from out of nowhere. He looked round and saw that it was Donna. She was sitting on a chair at the edge of the runway, staring out across the airfield. A couple of months ago he would have been mortified at being caught urinating in such a public place. Today he didn’t care.
‘Morning,’ he said nonchalantly as he shook himself dry and did up his fly. ‘You all right?’
‘Fine,’ she replied, shielding her eyes from the sun as he walked towards her.
‘What you doing out here?’
‘Originally the same as you,’ she answered factually.
‘Other than that, nothing much. I just wanted to get some air, that’s all. Still can’t get used to being able to be outside.’
Michael nodded and shoved his hands into his pockets.
‘Bloody cold though, isn’t it?’
Donna looked up into his face. He was staring into the distance and it was obvious that he had things on his mind.
‘You okay?’
He crouched down next to her but didn’t immediately answer. From where they sat the bodies on the other side of the fence seemed miles away. From such a distance he couldn’t make out individual figures - just a constant, shifting mass of grey-green decay. Phil Croft had mentioned that he thought the corpses might not be able to see the survivors for much longer because of the steady deterioration of their faces and eyes. Their limited eyesight may have reduced, but the fact they remained on the other side of the fence in such vast numbers seemed to be proving the doctor’s theory wrong.
‘Cooper tells me you’re leaving us.’
‘You make it sound like I’m disappearing for good,’
Michael grumbled in reply. ‘I think we’re planning to leave later today. All depends on us being able to fly in this wind I suppose.’
‘How’s Emma feel about it?’
‘She’s ecstatic,’ he answered sarcastically. ‘She’s really pleased.’
‘I bet.’
‘She understands.’
‘What happens on Cormansey is important.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you realise how important?’
‘I think so.’
‘This could make the difference, Mike. This is the best chance we’ve had. This is the best chance we’re going to have.’
‘I know,’ he said again.
Michael stood up, brushed himself down and walked out onto the runway in front of him. He thought about what Donna had just said, and he found the sudden gravity and importance of the day strangely humbling. Until now he hadn’t stopped to think about what he was going to do in any great detail. Sure, he’d considered the practicalities of getting over to the island and he’d paid lip service to starting to build a future for the group. Outside and unprotected, however, with the cold wind biting into his face, he began to fully appreciate the enormity of the task ahead.
Michael was ready to face the bodies again.
After weeks of inaction he was ready to work hard and fight to clear the island of death and decay. He was ready to start planning and working and building and grafting to try and make something positive out of the skeletal remains of the past.
Behind him Richard Lawrence emerged fro
m the door at the base of the observation tower and walked over to where Donna was sitting.
‘You all right?’ he asked.
‘Just taking in the air,’ she replied, giving him the same answer she’d given Michael minutes earlier. ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do this.’
Michael turned around when he heard the conversation.
He slowly walked back towards the others.
‘We’ll be looking to leave around midday, okay?’ said Lawrence.
‘Will we be all right with this wind?’
The pilot laughed.
‘This is nothing,’ he answered. ‘I’ve been up in far worse than this recently. Trust me, this is a good day for flying. A little breezy, but nothing I can’t handle.’
His apparent confidence did nothing to inspire Michael.
Much as he genuinely did still want to make the trip over to the island, he’d been quietly hoping for a delay. Although he understood why, things suddenly seemed to be happening at an uncomfortably quickening speed. He wanted to spend some time with Emma before they were separated. They’d spent just about every minute of the last eight weeks together. Now that they were going to be apart, however, every last second suddenly felt more precious.
Without saying anything else Michael turned and jogged back to the observation tower to find her.
26
The morning seemed to be over in minutes. For the first time in recent memory Michael prayed that time would slow down. Take-off was delayed by an hour but that wasn’t enough. He’d wanted longer.
The helicopter’s powerful rotor blades sliced through the air above their heads as Lawrence flew Michael, Peter Guest and another man called Danny Talbot across the dead land. The spare seat between Michael and Guest was loaded up with their belongings and supplies. What was quickly becoming a regular, almost run-of-the-mill journey for Lawrence was far more of an unsettling experience for his passengers. As well as being used to flying, the pilot had also grown accustomed to the view of the scarred and overgrown landscape from the air. For Michael, Guest and Talbot the turbulent journey was an uncomfortable education - a painful reminder of the incomprehensible scale of the tragedy which had destroyed the world around them.
For the first half of the journey Michael had been preoccupied with thoughts of Emma. He hadn’t been able to get her tearful face out of his mind for even a second. As the morning at the airfield had disappeared he’d gradually become more and more uncomfortable with the idea of leaving her behind. Now that it had finally happened and he’d left he felt hollow, empty and alone. He’d looked down from the air and had watched her until the distance between them had become too great and she’d disappeared from view. He tried to comfort himself with the thought that if everything went according to plan they could be back together in less than a week. But there was a lot of work to do before then, and these days things rarely seemed to go according to plan. Michael was already bitterly regretting not being at the airfield to look after her, even though he knew she didn’t need him there. It was like she’d said in the early hours of the morning just passed, so far they’d struggled through almost every second of the nightmare together. Being away from her now just didn’t feel right.
Forcing himself to try and clear his mind and to focus on what was ahead, not what was (temporarily) behind him, he looked across the helicopter at Peter Guest. Guest was sitting with his head resting against the window and he was staring down. Transfixed, almost unblinking, he watched the ground rush by beneath them at a furious speed.
Interested, Michael turned back and looked out of his side.
The bright sun of early morning had long gone, leaving the late-autumn sky dull, grey and filled with rain. He peered down and watched as they flew over a small town. Out of view again in seconds, the buildings which made up the town seemed unusually blurred and ill-defined. Everything seemed to be overgrown and covered in a fine layer of green. It was almost as if the buildings and roads were being swallowed up and were melting back into the land.
Below the helicopter the world seemed almost completely still. Danny Talbot - a short and acne-ridden teenager who had arrived at the airfield in the back of the prison truck - found himself instinctively looking out for survivors amongst the ruination. If I was out there on my own, he thought, when I heard the helicopter I’d go outside and I’d made damn sure they saw me. So why couldn’t he see anyone down there now? Why could he only see rotting bodies shuffling painfully across the cluttered landscape?
Was it because any survivors who heard the helicopter were too scared, too slow or too vulnerable to react? Or was it just because there were no more survivors? On this cold and uncertain day that seemed to be the most probable explanation.
‘Cormansey,’ Richard Lawrence announced just over twenty minutes later when he spotted the dark shape of the island on the misty horizon. The mainland was behind them now, and the helicopter raced out over the ocean. Michael had somehow managed to close his eyes and had been on the brink of falling asleep when the pilot’s words had made him quickly sit up again. His heart began to thump in his chest as he stared out of the window. The longer the journey had taken, the more he had become used to the isolation and protection of the helicopter. The thought that they would soon be back down at ground level in the midst of the mayhem was disconcerting. He couldn’t see much through the front of the helicopter from where he was sitting. He peered out over Lawrence’s shoulder and was just about able to make out the point in the distance where the dull greens and browns met the grey water as the island emerged from the sea.
Sitting next to Michael, Peter Guest suddenly seemed equally unsure.
‘Where is it?’ he asked, struggling to see anything through the rain-streaked window. Lawrence couldn’t hear him.
‘Not sure,’ replied Michael, still staring at the horizon. ‘I can’t see much.’
Lawrence soared over the ocean which appeared deceptively smooth and steady. With a little more confidence and freedom he took the helicopter lower and flew closer to the waves. The frothing surf was now just a few feet below them and, for the first time, the passengers were able to fully appreciate the speed at which they were travelling. The dull, dark blur on the horizon quickly grew in size and definition and in minutes they were over the island.
‘This is it then,’ mumbled Guest as he peered down at the rough landscape of Cormansey beneath them. It looked just as Michael had expected it to - cold and bleak, with grey rock alternating with lush green grassland and the occasional patches of russet-red and orange-brown vegetation. The sea seemed to be battering the island’s coastline relentlessly. Tall waves crashed down on the rocks sending huge plumes of surf and froth smashing up into the air. Below them now was the village, little more than two short roads lined with shops and houses, as yet untouched by those survivors who now inhabited this small pocket of land. Bodies lay motionless in the middle of the street where they had fallen months earlier. Although they were only over the tomb-like place for a matter of seconds, it was time enough for them to see corpses shuffling ominously through the shadows. Strange, Michael thought, that they still seemed to gravitate there.
Lawrence flew straight over the village and continued out further along the length of the island. Michael continued to stare at the land they passed over, the rich colours contrasting vividly with the dark grey-black of the late afternoon sky and the dirty blue-green ocean which surrounded it. The weather had been steadily worsening all day and a storm now looked likely. Down on the ground he could see narrow roads and gravel tracks leading to the doors of isolated small cottages and houses. Virtually every home on the island, although often in view of one or two other buildings, stood a distance apart from even its nearest neighbours. Some were so remote and exposed that they appeared to offer a degree of isolation that even Penn Farm would not have been able to provide.
‘Almost there,’ the pilot shouted to his passengers as the helicopter climbed again, rising
quickly to clear a sudden elevation in the level of the otherwise fairly flat landscape.
They passed over a rocky scar which ran across almost the entire width of Cormansey from east to west. Once over the rocks the helicopter and its passengers had a clear view of the rest of the island. In the distance just ahead of them Michael could make out a short landing strip cut into a large area of relatively flat grassland. A little further ahead still and he could see more buildings. From behind a small whitewashed cottage a plume of dirty smoke rose up and climbed into the squally air.
Unperturbed by the swirling winds, Lawrence skilfully touched the helicopter down in the middle of the runway.
Neither Michael, Guest or Talbot moved at first other than to unbuckle their safety belts. The pilot, perhaps sensing their understandable unease and uncertainty, turned round to face them.
‘They’ll be here in a couple of minutes,’ he said, lowering the volume of his voice as the powerful engine slowed and died.
‘Who will?’ asked Guest.
‘The others,’ he explained. ‘Brigid, Harry and the rest of them.’
Michael leant against the cold and rapidly misting window to his right, wiping a section of it clear so that he could still see outside. Now that the helicopter was silent and stationary they could hear and feel the full strength of the fierce wind. It whistled through the rotor blades. They could feel the helicopter being buffeted and battered, feeling as if it was almost being shunted back along the runway. Michael had felt safer up in the air.
‘So where are these people coming from?’ Guest asked.
‘Not that it really matters I suppose. Can’t take long to get from one place to the other here.’
‘Takes fifteen minutes to drive from one end of the island to the other I think,’ Lawrence said. ‘We drove a quick circuit when we first got here to try and get the lay of the land. We stopped down at this end because of the airstrip and the hill. Figured the bodies would struggle to get over the hill so they’d mostly stay around the village at the other end…’ He stopped speaking momentarily. ‘Hang on, here they are.’
