by Luke Duffy
“I’m sorry, Emily, but he’s gone,” he shouted into her face, struggling to be heard over the noise of battle and the unearthly shrieks from outside.
“No,” she cried, “we can’t leave him. We have to go back.”
Bobby took hold of her by the collar and began to drag her along, following after the others as they headed for the main building. All the while, she fought against him, kicking, screaming, and trying to pull away from him.
“He’s gone, Emily. He’s dead.”
Inside the terminal, they were greeted by thousands of eyes staring back at them. Everywhere they looked, people sat or stood in clusters, holding on to one another with what remained of their belongings stuffed into the bags at their feet. Some were crying and others talked, but most, just sat in terrified silence, staring back at the newcomers who had just arrived.
Bobby dragged Emily in through the doors. She was becoming more and more incoherent with each step from the shock and grief of losing her husband and daughter within the space of twenty-four hours.
She sobbed and cried and Bobby knew that if he let go of her, she would fall to the ground and would not get back up.
Danny was holding William by the hand, speaking words of encouragement to him and doing his best to stop him from realising that his father had not arrived with the rest of them. The traumatised boy looked about him with bulging eyes, watching the crowds of shell-shocked refugees.
Staying close together as a group, they began to push their way through the throng of people and deeper into the terminal. There was no security or smiling airline attendants anymore, ready to help and facilitate the commuters. Now, it was just a free-for-all, with soldiers, police and civilians, cramming themselves into whatever space they could find, waiting patiently for their turn to be flown out.
“Fuck me,” Bull huffed, “it’s like the retreat from Stalingrad in here.”
Outside, the guns continued, but the sound was no longer so harsh on their ears. They seemed to be coming from far away, from somewhere else, the thick panes of glass that spanned the length of the front of the terminal, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, buffeting the endless crack of the exploding rounds.
All around them, Stan noticed the people were paying very little attention to the battle that raged beyond the huge glass walls. Their eyes stared blankly, as though having seen enough horror to last a thousand lifetimes, becoming numbed to the sound of gunfire and the moans of the infected.
The group gathered at the foot of a stalled escalator, wondering where to go next. There did not seem to be anyone taking command of the airport and no matter where they turned, they were met with indifference from the soldiers, slumped with exhaustion, trying to gain some rest before their turn on the barricades came around again.
“What do…” Brian’s question was cut short.
The thick glass stretching along the length of the terminal building’s entrance burst inwards, exploding into a million pieces and sending shards of razor sharp shrapnel flying in all directions as a ball of fire and debris from outside blasted its way into the building.
In the instant before he was hurled into the air, Stan watched in slow motion as Brian’s head was torn open, a large chunk of glass slicing its way through his scalp and severing the upper part of his skull. His blood and brains were spattered in all directions, striking Stan in the face as the shockwave lifted him from his feet and threw him several metres across the terminal. He landed amongst a tangle of bodies and limbs from other survivors who had been caught in the explosion.
The concussion of the detonation knocked the wind from his body and sent his senses spiralling into a black abyss, but the shocked expression on Brian’s face at the moment of his grisly death, stayed imprinted at the forefront of his mind.
The building was roaring with the frightened screams of the wounded and fleeing refugees. The rumble of the explosion was still echoing through the terminal as the smoke and dust began to pour in through the gaping holes in the windows.
Stan, unable to stand, began to crawl towards the body of his friend, slithering through the blood and entrails that coated the floor beneath him. His head buzzed and his ears rang, but he could clearly see Brian’s lifeless corpse, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling high above them.
“Brian,” Stan heard someone shouting through the chaos.
The voice sounded distant, as though it was travelling from miles away.
“Brian…”
As the voice continued to cry out, he realised that the words were coming from his own mouth while he dragged himself forward, reaching out towards his old friend and calling for him to get up.
A pair of hands suddenly yanked him from the floor and hurled him to his feet. His legs were weak and his body struggled to remain upright. He looked back down at Brian’s mutilated body and made to reach out for him.
He stumbled, barely catching his balance and felt a wetness seeping through his own clothing, running down along his spine. His head swam and as his vision turned red with the blood pouring from the wound in his head. He began to sway.
Stan collapsed into darkness, vaguely aware of someone lifting him off his feet and charging through the echoing screams.
The sounds of voices brought him to.
He could hear and feel movement all around him and as his eyes slowly opened, his head threatened to burst from the pain. His face was still covered with blood and his sight was tinged with crimson.
“Stan,” a voice hovering over him gasped with relief, “Stan, can you hear me?”
He let out a groan, incapable of forming any words.
“Get some water, quick,” the voice ordered urgently.
Moments later, he felt the cold splash against his lips and feeling it revitalise him slightly, reached up with his remaining good hand, grabbed the bottle and began to drink greedily.
“Easy, Stan,” the voice coaxed, “take it easy, mate.”
Blinking heavily as the cool liquid cascaded over his face, washing some of the blood from his eyes, he looked up and saw Danny leaning over him, cradling his head in his arms as he held the bottle to his lips.
“Where,” his throat hurt as he attempted to speak, “where are we? What happened?”
“They got in,” Danny replied, updating his team commander on the events that had occurred after the gates had been blown wide open.
“Fuck knows what happened, but they got in. It was pandemonium down there, Stan.”
“The others, what about the others?”
“We’re here, Stan,” Taff said reassuringly from his side then turned to look at Danny.
With a nod of approval from the others, Taff continued.
“Brian’s dead, Stan. He was killed in the blast.”
The face of Brian loomed at him from deep within his mind. At first, it was one of him smiling, from days gone by, but then, it quickly changed to the mangled face of his friend, his brains pouring from the opening in his skull and his lifeless eyes staring back at him.
Stan screwed his eyes shut.
“Where are we?”
“In the control-tower,” Bull’s straining voice informed him from the other side of the room where he was busy piling anything he could get his hands on up against the doors.
“There’s a fucking million of them out there.”
Stan was badly hurt, but he was determined not to allow his wounds to incapacitate him. He had a large gash across his scalp and a wound in his neck that Bobby had managed to stop from bleeding. His arm, lacerated with deep cuts that reached to the bone, severing muscles and tendons, was virtually useless, and the slither of steel that had sliced through his back, had been just millimetres away from severing his spinal column.
He tried to sit up, but Danny pushed him back.
“Easy, Stan. Take it easy.”
“You fucking take it easy,” he grunted back, swiping Danny’s hands away and hauling himself upwards.
Wincing with pa
in and feeling the fresh blood clots around his wounds open up again he looked about the room, making his own appreciation of their situation.
There were a number of faces that he did not recognise staring back at him with horror filled eyes. Some were in military uniform and others were clearly civilian.
William sat huddled with his mother beneath one of the desks built into the wall of the circular room.
On the far side, was the entrance and to the left, was a steel ladder leading up through a hatch in the ceiling.
From beyond the doors, the pounding continued as Bull and Marty attempted to fortify their position. By now, they had ripped out most of the fittings, furniture and computers, adding them to the ever increasing pile in an effort to stop the infected from breaking in.
Stan, even in his weakened and wounded state, could see that the barricade would not hold for long. Already, the doors were shuddering beneath the onslaught, threatening to burst out from their frames and collapse into the main room of the control tower.
“The ladder,” Stan groaned, climbing to his feet and using his rifle as a crutch to help him up.
“Get up onto the roof.”
After a brief argument between Stan and Taff, the commander finally relented and allowed himself to be hoisted up onto the top of the control tower by Bull and Marty as they hung down through the trap door.
One by one, the survivors, fifteen of them in total, climbed the ladder and pull themselves through the hatch and onto the roof.
Outside, planes were frantically pulling away from their ramps and heading for the runway. Jet engines roared all around as the pilots pushed their machines to the limit in order to escape the doomed airport.
Some aircraft had been slow to react, and from their vantage point above the control tower, the survivors watched as hundreds of infected smashed their way in and tore through the trapped passengers.
After a few minutes, Bobby and Taff were the only remaining people inside the control room. The door was beginning to give way and they turned to see the first of the infected faces pushing itself through the small gap.
They paused, looking at the ladder and quickly realised that it was fixed in place with a number of bolts in the floor and ceiling. They did not need to say anything. They knew that they would have to destroy the fixtures before they could think about saving themselves.
Bobby looked at Taff and shrugged, resigning himself to the task.
“Cunts,” Taff roared.
He turned and ran towards the door. Reaching across the barricade, he raised his M4 and smashed the butt against the face of the snarling man. The bone of the skull cracked and imploded, and the dead face slid down through the gap and crashed into the floor with a wet smack.
Together, Taff and Bobby began to hammer at the bolts, shouting with frustration as they saw their efforts yield no results. Above them, the others continued to shout down into the control room, demanding that they begin to climb.
The doors began to splinter and the barricade shifted.
Bobby stepped back and fired off a whole magazine into the floor around the bolts, ripping up tufts of the carpeting and splinters of the hard concrete as ricochets whizzed and zipped in all directions.
“For fuck sake,” Bobby roared, “come on, you bastard.”
The pair of them kicked and kicked at the frame, throwing all their weight into the assault until slowly, it began to move. Sensing victory, they barged their bodies against it and forced the ladder back against its fittings in the ceiling. With a loud creaking noise, it buckled against the brackets, dislodging it and rendering it impossible to be climbed.
Taff turned and fired into the first of the bodies that had squeezed their way through the gap and began scrambling over the barricade. He watched them crumple with multiple hits as his rifle shook in his hands and switched his aim to the heads of the next.
To his left, he sensed Bobby’s frenzied movements and turned to see him unravelling a hosepipe from a red container on the wall. Without any explanation, Bobby raised his rifle and fired into the windows that overlooked the runway. They splintered and shattered, bursting out into the open air and without waiting for the glass to cease falling, Bobby charged forward, gripping the fire hose tightly in his hands.
“Follow me, Taff,” he yelled over his shoulder as he disappeared through the opening in the tower window.
Taff hesitated, glued to the spot.
He looked on in shock, his mouth agape, unsure whether he had really seen what his eyes relayed to him. He had just witnessed his friend hurl himself through a window with nothing but a hosepipe to stall his decent and shouting words encouragement for him to do the same as he dropped from sight.
Beside him, the hose rolled out rapidly and came to an abrupt halt as it reached the limit of its length and snapped taut. A loud grinding noise rose up from behind and Taff turned just in time to sidestep the steel bracket that the fire hose had been wrapped around. Torn from its mounting on the wall, it shot out through the window in Bobby’s wake.
Even over the sound of bodies crashing against the door behind him, Taff was sure that he heard a wet splat and heavy thud from outside on the runway.
He looked up and saw the stunned expression on Bull’s face staring back down at him through the hatch. Neither of them said anything but a loud crunch forced Taff from his daze. He turned and saw the doors being forced open, away from their frame and a tide of mottled flesh begin to flood into the tower.
Bull was too high for him to reach and faced with the choice of being devoured by the snapping jaws of the infected, or following Bobby to a quick death, he chose the latter.
As the first of the grasping hands reached to within just centimetres from his back, Taff rocketed himself forward towards the gaping hole in the window frame. Bellowing at the top of his lungs as he launched himself upwards, his momentum carrying him forwards towards his target, he sailed through the air and out to join Bobby.
He became weightless.
He could feel his innards become displaced within his body as he hurtled towards the hard tarmac of the runway beneath the tower. He fell, seemingly for hours, through the still air, hearing nothing but the sound of his own heartbeat and the voices of his memories as they flooded into his mind from all throughout his life.
His body twisted, his arms flailed, and finally, he spun upright, his feet plummeting towards the ground.
Shit, oh shit, he heard his own mind screaming out, over and over.
In the final moments, he saw the vibrant green of the grass verge around the control tower, racing up to meet him.
Fuck, this is going to hurt.
26
Bobby was dragging him, shouting at him to move under his own steam, but the pain in his legs prevented him from little more than a hobble. After landing, Taff had crumpled into a heap, feeling his ankles and knees buckle beneath the impact. He was certain that, at the very least, his right ankle was broken and his left knee had popped out of position. His hips and back also screamed at him, sending convulsions of agony through his entire body, making him suspect he had slipped a disc and fractured his pelvis.
Bobby continued to force him to move.
Bobby too was hurt. He had felt his back crack during his fall and was sure that it was broken along with a number of his ribs. However, his fear of becoming a feast for the infected compelled him to keep going.
Limping across the runway, with the tower receding into the distance behind them, they headed for the nearest of the small private hangers, far to the south of the terminal. Out to their right, a number of aircraft, military and commercial planes, were hurriedly making their way into position to begin take-off and make their escape. There was no way that the two wounded men could catch them now, and even if they did, it was unlikely that the pilots would stop to pick them up. The airport had fallen and to wait any longer, left them at risk of never being able to take off again as the infected were already pouring onto the runways and rac
ing towards the taxying planes.
“Where are we going, Bobby?” Taff wheezed as his body threatened to give up on him.
“Just keep going,” Bobby grunted, still holding onto his friends harness, pulling and dragging him along.
In danger of their injuries engulfing them and leaving them incapable of continuing, they reached the first of the hangers.
Inside, they found nothing but emptiness, forcing them to persist with their search. Far behind them, they could hear the terminal as it fell into chaos. The agonizing moans of the infected drifted out onto the airfield, carried along on the cool air, and the shattering screams of living people, being eaten alive, rasped at their ears.
In the hangers that they passed, they watched for signs of movement, both of them fully aware that if they were attacked, there was very little that either of them could do in their present condition. They limped along, gritting their teeth and swallowing down their pain as their speed was reduced to little more than a shuffle.
They were forced to search further and further along the airfield, all the while, their bodies threatening to succumb to their injuries. Taff could feel his ankle swelling against the interior of his boot and already, his knee was stretching the material of his trousers as it became bloated to twice its normal size. Each step sent an excruciating pain through his nervous system, wracking his body and blurring his vision, making his head spin and his mind tumble.
Reaching the final hanger, Taff collapsed against the door, unable to walk any further on his crippled limbs.
“I’m done. I’m fucked,” he groaned, sinking to the floor as Bobby continued on into the shadowy building.
A moment later, he reappeared, smiling broadly at him and began helping him up again, pulling him by the arm.
“We’re in luck,” he panted.
Taff stared back at him.
Bobby’s pain contorted face looked as exhausted as Taff felt and he wondered how the man was still going after all they had been through. With great difficulty, he climbed to his feet and conceded that he would allow his aching body to be dragged just a little further.
