by David Moody
I can’t do this anymore. I’ve been sitting here for almost a day now and I know that I can’t take anymore.
I’ve listened to everything the others have said and I’ve tried to understand and see their way of thinking but I can’t.
My perspective is different to theirs. My priorities are different to theirs. They keep trying to persuade me to stay strong and go with them but I know that there’s no point.
Doesn’t matter what they think they might be able to do for me and Kilgore, it’s never going to happen. They’re going to have enough trouble trying to look after themselves from here on in. When it comes to the crunch they’re not going to put themselves at risk for us and I don’t blame them. It would be stupid. It would be pointless. What’s going to happen to Kilgore and me is inevitable.
It’s the waiting that’s hurting me most.
I’ve had my share of hard times before now. I cried my way through the first half of basic training like a bloody baby. I’ve been stuck out on the battlefield looking down the barrel of the enemy’s gun. I could handle all of that.
Hard as it was at the time, I managed it and I got through.
When each one of those things happened, no matter how bad it got, I dealt with it.
The difference today is that everything’s out of my control. I can’t think or fight or negotiate my way out of this one. The end is a foregone conclusion and I’ve just been putting it off sitting here and waiting. I can’t close my eyes anymore without seeing everything that’s happened and remembering everything that I’ve lost. I haven’t slept properly for days because my head’s been filled with constant nightmares and dark thoughts, even before we came above ground. And it all seems to have come full circle now we’re sitting here at the airfield. I look at the people around me and I can see that their faces are full of more hope than ever. They can finally see a way out. The things that are stopping them from moving on now are obvious and clear, and by leaving this place they’ll be leaving those problems behind. But it doesn’t matter where I go. Location won’t change anything. It’s not the bodies that will kill me, it’s what’s in the air. It’s going to be the same whatever I do or wherever I go.
Things have changed since we got here. Arriving here felt like reaching the end of the road. I watched the helicopter leave this afternoon and that made me realise that things are moving on without me now and that I should finish this today.
I’m an outsider. Neither living or dead. I can’t continue to exist like this.
I’m standing a little way short of the perimeter fence now. The bodies are watching me but they’re not reacting as much as I’d expected them to. God, everything sounds and feels different out here. I’ve spent the last two months either hidden underground or travelling. Now I can hear my footsteps as I walk through the long, wet grass. I can hear birds again and I can see them shooting quickly across the sky. I can see the wind ripping through the tops of trees and I can feel it blowing against my suit.
It’s spitting with rain now. Little drops of water are splashing against my visor. If I don’t look at the bodies then everything seems green and fresh and clear and all I want to do is breathe the air again. Since we came above ground and left the base I haven’t been able to touch my own skin. I want to scratch my arms and bite my nails and rub my eyes and run my fingers through my hair. I want to feel the wind and the rain on my skin one last time.
Kelly Harcourt stood at the edge of the airfield.
Oblivious to the bodies standing just metres away from her, and equally ignorant to the watching eyes of the survivors in the observation tower behind, she ripped off her facemask.
And for a moment the sweet relief was overpowering.
Cool, fresh-tasting air flooded her lungs, making her feel stronger and more human than she had felt in weeks.
She could smell the grass and the decay and it tasted a thousand times better than she remembered. The seconds ticked by, and it seemed that the impossible had happened.
Was she immune? By some incredible chance, did she share the same physical traits which had allowed the people in the building behind her to survive? She didn’t dare believe it at first. What were the odds against her managing to survive like this? In a delirious instant her mind was filled with visions of finally making it to the island and actually having some kind of existence where before she’d only been able to think about…
It started.
It was happening.
She knew this was it.
From out of nowhere the pain gripped hold of her like a hand wrapped tight around her neck.
The inside of Kelly’s throat began to swell and then split and bleed. With her eyes bulging with pain and suffocation she fell back onto the grass and stared deep into the heavy grey sky overhead, seeing nothing.
Thirty seconds later it was over.
28
The fact that he found himself lying on a relatively warm and comfortable bed for the first time in weeks wasn’t helping Michael to sleep. Danny Talbot, in comparison, was snoring from the comfort of his narrow bunk on the other side of the small, square cottage bedroom. It was almost midnight. Michael’s head was pounding and he wished that he could find a way to switch off and disconnect for a while. It was impossible. If he wasn’t being distracted by the noise coming from the other survivors downstairs then he was thinking about the island and how he had finally managed to get there. When he stopped thinking about the island he found himself thinking about the changing behaviour of the bodies, and when he stopped thinking about that he started to think about Emma.
Once he’d started he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Funny how distance alters perspective, he thought.
Having spent virtually all his time with Emma over the last two months, he’d grown used to having her around and it felt strange, almost wrong, now that they were apart. He’d always had her there to talk to or to shout at or cry with until now. Whereas they had previously spent most of their time in the same building or the same vehicle together, now it could be argued that they weren’t even in the same country. The distance between them seemed immense, almost immeasurable. The sudden physical gulf made him feel strangely guilty and made him question whether leaving the mainland had been the right move. He should never have left her. He knew that she was more than capable of looking after herself (Christ, she’d looked after him enough recently) but that didn’t make it any easier. In many ways he felt responsible for her. More than that, he liked being with her and he was missing having her around.
He hadn’t yet dared say as much to her, but he knew that he loved her and he was reasonably confident that she loved him, as much as anyone could love anyone else in their cold and emotionally-starved world. His sudden solitude this evening (which he still felt despite the fact that he was surrounded by other people) had made him painfully aware of the depth and strength of the feelings he had for Emma but which, because of circumstance, he’d kept hidden and subdued. The constant pressure and danger on the mainland had made it impossible for either of them to fully appreciate how they really felt.
Lying on the bed in the dark was pointless. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep. Already fully dressed, he got up and crept back down the narrow staircase to where Brigid, Guest, Harper and Gayle Spencer were sitting in the kitchen.
‘You all right?’ Brigid asked as he entered the room. His shuffling footsteps on the floorboards above had alerted them to the fact that he was up and awake.
‘I’m okay,’ he answered quietly.
‘Coffee?’
He nodded. The kettle was boiling on a portable gas stove, filling the room with steam and heat.
‘Where are the others?’ he asked, looking around and trying not to yawn.
‘Danny, Tony and Richard are upstairs, Harry and Bruce are outside.’
‘Outside? What the hell are they doing out there?’
‘Keeping watch,’ Gail answered.
‘Why? Has somethin
g happened?’
She shook her head.
‘No, we’re not planning on taking any chances, that’s all.’
‘Bloody hell, just being outside would have meant taking a chance where I’ve just come from.’
‘We know. It’s different here, you’ll get used to it.’
Michael took a few steps closer to the window and looked out into the darkness. He could just about make out movement a few metres ahead. It was too quick and purposeful to have been a body. It had to have been either Stayt or Fry.
‘Here you go,’ Brigid said, handing him a mug of coffee.
‘Thank you.’
He could see one of the men outside more clearly now.
Whoever it was they were walking back towards the cottage. Seconds later the door to Michael’s right creaked open and Harry Stayt stepped inside.
‘Okay, Harry?’ Gayle asked. Stayt nodded.
‘Bloody cold out there tonight,’ he complained.
‘What you come back in for? Anything happening out there?’
‘Saw a couple of bodies about half an hour ago, that’s all.’
‘Give you any trouble?’ Michael wondered. ‘I mean, did they go for you or were they like the others earlier?’
‘They went for us.’
‘I don’t understand. Why do some of them still react like that when others don’t?’ asked Harper. A young man, tonight he looked tired and drawn beyond his years.
Michael shrugged his shoulders.
‘Who knows,’ he replied. ‘My guess is that it all depends on what condition their brains and bodies are in.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Some of them are more decayed than others. You’d expect their brains to be decaying at the same rate as the rest of their bodies, so it stands to reason that some will be in a worse mental state than others.’
‘Bloody hell, they’re all in a bad mental state, aren’t they?’ Stayt grinned. ‘Look, sorry to change the subject, but I saw the windows steaming up and guessed you’d put the kettle on. Any chance of a drink?’
Deep in thought, Brigid stood up and spooned coffee into two more mugs. She poured on boiling water, stirred the drinks and then pushed them over towards Stayt who picked them up with one hand. Michael noticed that he was carrying a blade of some description in the other hand.
From where he was standing he couldn’t see whether it was a sword, a machete or just a long-bladed knife. Stayt noticed that he was looking at it.
‘Bloody useful, this is,’ he explained as he lifted the blade up into the dull light. It was a long and ornately decorated sword. The other survivors watched him raise it with cautious eyes. ‘Nicked it from a museum a few weeks back. I tell you, it’s the best thing I’ve found for getting rid of bodies.’
‘Put that damn thing down, will you?’ Brigid sighed.
‘You’re like a bloody kid with a new toy. I used to spend half my time locking up idiots who carried things like that.’
Michael looked puzzled. Stayt explained.
‘Ex-Copper,’ he grinned. He did as he was asked and then turned round to leave the cottage again.
‘Mind if I come out with you?’ Michael wondered. His question seemed to surprise the others, Stayt included.
‘You can if you want to,’ he answered, grinning again.
‘If you’d rather spend your first night here out in the dark with Fry and me instead of here in the warm then be my guest!’
‘Can’t sleep anyway,’ Michael grumbled as he zipped up his jacket and followed Stayt out into the darkness. The two men walked away from the cottage together.
‘Don’t know why they get so wound up about this sword,’ Stayt said quietly once he was sure they were out of earshot. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’d rather carry a weapon like this than a gun.’
‘I’ve never got on with guns,’ Michael agreed. ‘They’re no use anymore. They’re too bloody noisy and you have to be a damn good shot to take the bodies out. Miss the head and they’ll just keep coming at you.’
‘Damn right, and by the time you’ve got rid of one of them there’ll be another couple of hundred following close behind trying to see what all the noise was about.’
‘Stick to your sword,’ Michael grunted.
‘Fry,’ Stayt shouted into the darkness. ‘Oi, Fry, where are you?’
‘Over here,’ a disembodied voice replied from the direction of the small hill which overlooked the pyre Michael had seen earlier. The remains of the fire were still smouldering. He could see the faintest of orange glows in the darkness.
‘Two of us coming over,’ he shouted back. He lowered his voice again to talk to Michael. ‘Didn’t want him thinking you were one of them and trying to take you out!’
Michael managed half a smile.
‘Thanks.’
They found Fry crouched over the embers of the fire, warming his hands. Earlier in the evening they’d fuelled the flames with wood and other general rubbish but the remains of the fire’s original fuel could still clearly be seen.
Michael found it a little unnerving to see so many charred bones. The fact that they were in a natural hollow in the ground gave the area the feeling of being a grotesque mass grave.
‘How you doing, Mike?’ Fry asked cheerfully as they neared.
‘I’m good,’ he answered, ‘just got sick of sitting in there and staring at the walls.’
‘I know what you mean,’ the other man said. ‘Guess we’ve all done enough of that recently to last a lifetime.’
‘That’s why we keep volunteering to come out here,’
Stayt added. ‘I don’t know about you, but I can’t stop and relax until I know that we’ve got rid of all the bodies here and the rest of our people are on their way over from the mainland. I just want to get it done now.’
‘How were they all doing when you saw them?’ Fry asked. ‘Jackie still trying to keep them in line?’
‘Seemed to be.’
‘Give them a week or so and I reckon they’ll all be over here,’ Stayt yawned.
‘Why should it take that long?’
He shrugged his shoulders and yawned again.
‘That’s the timescale we’ve been trying to work towards.’
‘So what’s stopping us from moving things on more quickly?’
Stayt and Fry both became quiet.
‘Apart from getting the village cleared,’ Fry eventually admitted, ‘nothing really.’
‘So we should do it tomorrow, shouldn’t we? What reason have we got for delaying it? I feel the same as you two, I don’t want to be sitting here talking about what we’re going to do when we could be doing it.’
‘I’m not sure. I think we should…’
‘Be honest, Bruce,’ Michael interrupted, ‘everyone instinctively makes excuses and tries to put things off because they’re scared. I understand because I’m the same, but the sooner we do this and get it done, the sooner we can try and get on with our lives.’
‘We know that, but clearing the village is going to be a big job and there’s a lot riding on it. We need to make sure we get it right first time.’
‘There you go again, more excuses. We don’t really have to get it all done on day one, we just have to make sure that things don’t go too wrong. Does that make sense?’
The blank expressions on the faces of the two men seemed to indicate that Michael had confused them both. ‘We just have to make sure we don’t take any unnecessary risks,’ he explained. ‘We should get in there quick, strike, and then get out again. Regroup and then go back and do the same again. Then we do it again and again until the job’s finished.’
‘Probably won’t take that long,’ Fry admitted.
‘So why are you so keen?’ Stayt asked.
‘Partly because I just want it over with, partly because of experience,’ Michael replied.
‘Experience of what?’
‘The bodies.’
‘But we’ve all got that. Why shoul
d you think any differently to the rest of us?’
Michael shrugged his shoulders and kicked at the ashes on the ground next to his feet, sending a shower of sparks up into the air.
‘I don’t know about you two,’ he answered, ‘but I’ve watched those things change steadily, almost from day to day. I know there’s going to come a time when they’ve rotted down to nothing and they don’t get in our way, but what I’ve seen over the last couple of days has made me think things might get more difficult before they get any easier. Look at what’s happened so far - in just a few weeks they’ve gone from just staggering around to being aggressive and violent and having some control. And now it seems they’re starting to watch us and think about what we’re doing.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘I think that if we don’t make a move now, then it’ll be the bodies hunting us out, not the other way round.’
29
The dull morning light crept slowly and silently across the airfield. From the top of the observation tower Clare stood and watched as the darkness gradually disappeared. It looked blustery and cold outside but the building protected and isolated her from the brunt of the harsh, almost wintry conditions. From where she was standing she could see right across to the fence and the hordes of constantly moving corpses beyond. As the light improved she could make out the body of Kelly Harcourt lying on its back in the overgrown grass, just metres away from the shuffling feet of the dead.
‘You can understand why she did it, can’t you?’ Emma asked, standing just behind her.
‘Such a shame though,’ Clare answered quietly, her voice disconsolate and low. ‘I liked her. She was nice, much nicer than Kilgore.’
‘You can’t even begin to imagine what the poor girl was going through,’ Emma sighed sadly. ‘You just don’t know how you’d react if you were in that position, do you?’
‘Makes you realise how lucky you are, doesn’t it?’
‘Suppose so.’
‘We are lucky, aren’t we?’
Emma shrugged her shoulders. It was a strange question that Clare had asked. On the face of it they had survived where millions had fallen and that had to make them lucky, didn’t it? But every day life seemed to be getting harder, and she couldn’t help thinking that in many ways it would have been easier just to have fallen and died on the first morning. Feeling suddenly guilty for allowing herself to think so negatively, she forced herself to respond positively to Clare.
