When There's No More Room in Hell 3

by Luke Duffy

  WHEN THERE’S NO MORE ROOM IN HELL:

  PART III

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  Copyright©2013 Luke Duffy

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  1

  The city was dead.

  It had been devoid of human life for twelve years. Its buildings slowly decayed and crumbled as the streets below were gradually reclaimed by Mother Nature. She stole back more and more each year and slowly but surely, the landscape began to transform.

  Steve took another cigarette from the pack and lit it. He inhaled deeply and let the wisps of curling smoke drift up into the air. He checked his watch, and then looked out across the landscape to check on the position of the sun. It was still mid-afternoon; plenty of time yet.

  Apart from the twitter of the birds in the trees and the occasional mournful wail lingering in the distance, the air was silent. The wind was down to nothing more than a gentle breeze that was barely enough to make the long grass sway.

  Imagining that things had once been different to how they were now was hard. In the old days, the stillness and quiet that covered the land had once been completely alien to him. Even during the night, the streets and roads would have been lit with lights that came on automatically at pre-programmed times. Houses and places of work would have glowed with illumination from within.

  Even the silence would not have been complete. There would have always been the steady drone of distant traffic. The hum of factories and power stations, as they continued to work throughout the night, would have added to the ambient light and noise of the dark hours.

  As he looked out at the slowly crumbling metropolis, he sighed and raised the cigarette to his lips for another drag.

  The city loomed on the skyline in the low sunlight, like the black silhouette of an old graveyard. Its dull buildings, towers, churches and monuments stood in solemn silence like monoliths. They clung on stubbornly, as testament to the old world and the once prosperous human civilisation that had built them, as though waiting for the return of the architects and engineers to repair and restore them to their former glory.

  Most of the large panes of glass in the tall buildings were cracked or smashed as the elements had taken their toll on the manmade structures. The wind and rain poured into the office blocks and apartment buildings, laying waste to the interiors and creating high-rise eco systems that lived and thrived in the places where humanity had once dwelled.

  Weeds and plants flourished, using every crevice and crack to take root and make a life in a place where they would have once been ripped up or poisoned the moment they began to grow. Creeping vines and ivy slowly scaled the buildings, climbing higher each year, and one day, they would cover the concrete and brick surfaces like a death shroud on the dominance of man.

  The city was not completely dead. Birds and insects continually flocked and swarmed in the air, high above the buildings, looking like black, swirling clouds from a distance, as they fed on the remains of the lifeless world below and dominated the skies above. Their populations had exploded since the rising of the dead. With no one to control their growth and treat them as pests, they had multiplied at an expeditious rate.

  No one collected the waste and rubbish that was left behind or carried out maintenance and cleaning of the city anymore. Stored and discarded food, animal carcasses and the dead bodies of the human populace provided meals for the smaller creatures that were stealthy enough to pick from them. The supermarkets, restaurants, and even the fridges and freezers in the homes had become easy pickings and great sustenance for the lesser inhabitants of the urban areas. Their numbers had soon increased and rose sharply as the once dominant species of the planet succumbed and began to fade into obscurity.

  At ground level, the rats and other small vermin had the run of the city. They scurried through the gutters and sewers, through the empty buildings and between the cars, scavenging and feeding on whatever they could. Like the birds and insects, initially, the rodent population had expanded quickly with the abundance of food. However, after many years of prosperity, their numbers settled and the colonies shrank to a more sustainable number.

  The abandoned cars, many parked neatly at the roadside, as though waiting on their owners to come and retrieve them, slowly rusted away. Their paintwork flaked and their tyres had become flat, leaving them as static, immovable homes to the plants and creatures that took up residence in them.

  Shops, homes and businesses sat quietly, their dark doorways and windows gazing out onto the desolate streets like traumatised eyes that had witnessed such unimaginable terror. They looked on in silence, unwilling to speak of their horrors, staring out onto the roads and pavements that were scattered with the debris of civilisation.

  Personal and beloved belongings of the thousands of people that had tried to flee now lay discarded and left to decay along with the rest of the city.

  Bones, bleached white by the sun, lay unburied and unceremoniously strewn along the pavements and roads. The skulls and ribcages of men, women and children sat as if witnesses to the panic that had swept over the world in the beginning as old newspapers drifted and fluttered by them through the streets on the wind. Their headlines, 'The Dead Walk', speaking ominously of what was to come.

  'Twelve years…,' Steve thought to himself, as he remained sitting on the grassy hillside overlooking the city. 'Jesus, it seems like so much longer. I can't even remember the old world.'

  The figure, struggling to negotiate the slippery hill below him, continued to fall and tumble back down the slope. It never gave up. Steve wondered to himself how many more times the thing could fall down the wet grass before its limbs were smashed to the point where it could no longer stand.

  He looked back up and closed his eyes for a moment, trying hard to picture what the city was like in the old days. The roads would have been clogged with revving engines and tooting horns. People would have scurried along the streets as they went about their daily business. It would have been a hive of activity.

  He opened his eyes again and looked down at the decaying buildings and silent cluttered roads. If he had not known better, he would have found it hard to believe that the world was once very different. It all seemed so long ago.

  He glanced down at the rifle in his lap, then down at the walking corpse that stubbornly attempted to climb the hill below. He thought about all the people that he had known before and after the dead began to walk and wondered what had become of the ones he had lost touch with when the old world died.

  His brother, Marcus, and the remains of his team had made it home after many months of struggle and fighting in Baghdad. They had slogged and battled their way across the Middle East and Europe, then finally, to the Safari Park where Steve and the other survivors waited.

  However, that was not the end of their ordeal.

  2

  The machine seemed cumbersome and fought against her as she struggled to control it and keep them stable. The steady thump of the engine was muffled in her ears by the headset that she wore, but she could still hear and feel that something was wrong.

  The cockpit shuddered and the seat beneath her vibrated as the machine buffeted and rattled around her, while the sound of her own heavy breathing and pounding heartbeat in her ears was enough to drown out the noise of the motors. She felt a stream of sweat begin to pour from beneath her helmet and down her forehead as she strained and battled to keep control. She blinked hard, attempting to clear her vision from the moisture that had begun to accumulate
beneath her visor. Clenching her teeth, she growled under her breath, willing the machine to comply with her commands.

  The anti-torque pedals pushed back against her feet and she had to tense the muscles in her thighs as she pressed down, controlling the angle of the rear rotor to stop them from going into a spin. The cyclic stick and collective trembled in her hands, as though fighting to break free of her influence.

  She looked down at the panel in front of her. No warning lights flashed and no alarms sounded. The gauges and readouts all seemed to be in order. There was no sign of any pressure loss from oil or hydraulics and the fuel levels were still within the green. Their altitude was exactly where she wanted it to be; sitting level with the horizon and the cockpit gyroscope, while the readout indicated a forward ground speed of forty miles per hour. She glanced to her right and out of the window, looking down at the rooftops, roads and sprawling fields as they passed over them, confirming their speed and altitude with her own eyes and sense of judgement.

  The cockpit instruments seemed to be correct.

  'Ancient bag of bolts,' she thought to herself. 'This thing belongs in a museum. Please don’t fail me now, old girl.'

  The engine sputtered and they began to oscillate; the horizon swinging before her like a pendulum as the machine lurched violently from side to side, threatening to turn them upside down, resulting in an inevitable crash.

  Her stomach knotted and she tensed every muscle in her body as she wrestled with the pedals and levers. Dread was creeping in fast and a film of sweat began to coat her skin. Her ears subconsciously registered the whining sound of the struggling engines as they rose and fell in pitch. She automatically adjusted the pressure on the anti-torque pedals and the lift on the cyclic and collective to compensate.

  In her left hand, she twisted the throttle attached to the head of the collective lever, hoping that an increase in revolutions to the engine would help to settle the old helicopter in its flight. She eased back slightly on the cyclic stick with her right hand, changing the down angle on the main rotor to prevent their speed from increasing due to the sudden rise in engine power output.

  Lone dark figures, shambling through the fields and staggering along the roads below, stopped and looked up as the swerving and swaying aircraft passed over them. They remained motionless, watching the curious flying machine. Their longing moans were drowned out by the sounds of the engine and thumping rotors.

  The helicopter began to stabilise.

  She looked across to her left and blew out a sigh of relief at her co-pilot. He looked back at her, a grin spreading the entire width of his face.

  "Fuck me, you're good, Kelly," he stated through the intercom.

  Kelly shook her head. She had been a pilot for ten years and there was very little that she did not know about when it came to flying a rotary wing aircraft. Nevertheless, it did not stop her from experiencing the gut-twisting fear in her stomach during situations when she thought they were about to drop out of the sky.

  "Tell me that on the day I end up crashing this thing into a mountainside, or have to touch down in the middle of a swarm of those infected down there, Joey."

  "Nah, you're far too nice to do that to us," Joey replied.

  She nodded and smiled, but she was under no illusion of what could happen should she lose control of the aircraft. At best, she would crash land and they would manage to climb from the wreckage unhurt, but then they would be exposed and vulnerable to the hordes of walking dead that roamed the land.

  Since the collapse of civilisation, the logistics of the armed forces had also drastically declined. The helicopter was old and parts were hard to come by. Maintenance was performed to the best standard that the mechanics could manage with the tools and equipment that were available, but it was never at one hundred percent serviceability. It was only a matter of time before the machine would fail to start, or drop out of the air. Kelly just hoped it would not be the latter.

  "Zero, this is hotel three zero, over." Kelly paused and waited for a reply from their base. "Zero, hotel three zero, over," she repeated.

  A voice suddenly crackled in her ear. "Zero, send, over."

  "That’s our sweep complete. No survivors seen; looks like another dead city, over."

  "Roger that, three zero, move to your next safe haven and shut down. Remain on alternate means until phase-two is complete."

  "Will do, but be aware, we're experiencing some mechanical difficulties, possibly from the rear rotor, causing stability problems," Kelly replied.

  "Roger, three zero, go static at the RV and assess. Report on your condition in your evening sit-rep."

  The succinct and detached tone of the radio operator made her feel as though they were alone and insignificant. At times, whilst flying missions over a dead and perilous wasteland, she just wished that she could get a warmer, more human conversation with base. At least then, she would feel that there was a real person aware of their position and situation and not just some robot.

  Kelly nodded to herself. She did not like the prospect of being stranded with a broken down helicopter, but she also remembered what happened to the last pilot who returned to base with mechanical problems without specific orders to do so. He had been court-martialled and found guilty of negligence, dereliction of duty, and failing to follow orders in a time of war. General Gibson had ordered him to be hanged as an example.

  Kelly, shaking the memory from her mind, decided that she would rather take her chances with a downed helicopter and the swarms of infected, than face the gallows.

  "Roughly fifty kilometres, on this bearing," Joey informed her.

  He had a set of charts and surveys in his hand, and he studied the lay of the ground around them, relaying it to what he saw on the map, confirming their exact position.

  "We should be pretty secure up there."

  "You think so?" she replied.

  Joey looked up, glanced out the window towards the city, and then back at Kelly.

  "Well, yeah. Safer than being here when phase-two happens, anyway. Besides, there's a team of SAS guys, dug in up there. They’ve been on the ground since this whole thing began. We'll be safe enough, I think."

  Kelly shook her head. "I still can't believe they're really going to do this. They’ve lost their minds."

  Joey nodded, but said nothing. He did not want to get into a conversation about the rights and wrongs of the decisions of their commanders. Over the months, he had learned that it was better to play the grey man and keep his thoughts and views to himself.

  "Well, anyway, we have two days to ourselves before phase-two goes ahead. I'm looking forward to a well earned rest," he said, changing the subject.

  Kelly smiled. She knew him well and was aware of his discomfort when it came to conversations on political matters. Not that he was a coward, but because he chose self-preservation over upsetting a status-quo that he could do nothing about. Things were different now, and free speech and stating your opinion was something that could get you in serious trouble.

  She pushed down slightly on the cyclic and twisted the throttle, increasing the revolutions. The thump of the rotors increased in frequency and the screech of the engine grew. The nose of the helicopter dipped and the aircraft picked up speed. They flew low over the city one final time as they headed to their next position.

  The grey buildings and dark streets drifted by silently beneath them as the aircraft passed over, just above the highest rooftops. The chaos of the last days of civilisation was evident on the ground below them; collapsed barricades, overturned and burnt out vehicles littered the narrow streets. Charred and crumbling buildings stood testament to the anarchy.

  Kelly and Joey could also see the dead below. In some streets, they were scattered, looking like small black insects slowly making their way through a model city. In other places, seething dark masses, packed in tightly to one another, filled the roads between the buildings as they swarmed together.

  "Why do so many of them stay
in the towns and cities?" Joey asked rhetorically.

  Kelly felt the need to theorise.

  "Maybe, it's instinct? Cities were once important places to us and those things just feel the need to be there."

  Thousands of gaunt faces and dead eyes were turned upwards towards them, staring into the sky as the helicopter passed overhead. They swarmed out the doors and broken windows of office blocks and shops, spilling into the streets and adding to the seething mass. Kelly could see ripples, like waves, passing through the crowds as they heard the helicopter above and worked themselves into a state of frenzy, reaching and clawing at the air above them in a desperate attempt to bring down the flying machine and reach the living flesh inside.

  Kelly shuddered and looked away, focusing her eyes on the horizon in front of them.

  "Completely dead," she stated.

  Joey nodded in agreement, unable to tear his eyes away from the spectacle below.

  The helicopter picked up more speed and headed away from the city.

  3

  Stan sat hunched with his shoulders riding high, as though he was trying to force them into his ears. He clutched the hot steaming mug in both hands and watched the wisps of steam drifting up into the cold air as the liquid slowly cooled. He gingerly sipped at the coffee, pulling a face as the hot fluid assaulted his cold lips and struck his teeth.

  "Jesus, it's cold this morning."

  Kieran was pacing, stomping his feet in an effort to keep warm. The blanket draped over his shoulders added to his large bulky appearance. He clapped his gloved hands together, the noise muffled by the padding as he attempted to increase his circulation and warm his numb fingers.

  They had drawn the short straw and had been on watch the whole night. Now, as the sky above them slowly changed from a deep purple to a myriad of pink, orange and dark blue, they eagerly awaited the sun to cast its warming rays over the distant horizon.

  "Aye," Kieran replied, "winter is going to be a bitch this year."