by Stevens, GJ
“We should go soon. Keep heading north. Take a minute if you need,” I said, not turning from the view.
“I’m ready.”
When I turned around, Shadow jumped from the bed and stared at me as if he had something to tell.
Cassie walked by my side down the corridor, bearing no sign that yesterday she’d had to be carried and I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face when all she’d needed had been rest. They had cured her.
Alex opened her door as we arrived at her room. “Are you ready?” she said, as if she’d been waiting to hear our steps. She looked to Cassie as I nodded, still beaming. “Did you see Jess?” she added, turning to me.
I paused for a moment, thinking back to the woman in red, but shook my head.
At Mandy’s door, Alex gave a gentle knock. Knocking harder a second time.
As Alex stopped, I was about to lean into the door to listen when it opened to Mandy standing on the other side, pushing her long hair from her face.
“Be ready in five minutes, please,” Alex said, and we left down the corridor.
I hadn’t expected Jess to greet us in the reception downstairs. Dressed in a black jacket, white blouse and black skirt, I double-took to make sure it was her; she looked as if she’d been at a spa retreat; refreshed and rested. But how could that be?
Turning to the revolving doors, I stared at the chairs neatly stacked on the other side of the glass; the chairs I’d used last night to jam them closed. I remembered checking I couldn’t make the doors move, no matter how hard I pushed.
I turned to Alex, but she didn’t seem phased; instead she wore a grin and looked to the two bulky black cases at Jess’s feet.
Jess stared at Cassie with her eyes pinched and Cassie looked back at her with almost the same expression. Jess was the first to turn away, glancing to Alex before peering to the cases.
“I got batteries. There should be enough,” she said, and Alex nodded as if continuing a conversation involving no one else.
“The roof?” Alex asked, and Jess replied the same, grabbing the handle of a case in each of their hands. “Are you coming?” she said, turning to me.
I paused for a moment, but Alex didn’t wait for my response before following Jess to the staircase.
The winter’s chill hung in the air and the sting of acrid smoke gusted across us as we walked to the edge of the roof.
I turned to check for Shadow and found him waiting at the head of the stairs as they rose through the roof in the middle of the building. He wasn’t moving from that spot until we headed back down.
Standing by Cassie, I tried not to stare as I hoped for her to talk and tell me how she felt. Instead, to her silence, I watched as Alex opened the cases, pulling out the camera equipment and what appeared to be an upturned umbrella from the second case as Jess pointed to the buttons at its base.
I watched with fascination as Jess switched to the professional we all knew from the TV; staring down the lens of the camera with her posture perfect and the microphone in hand as she described our journey with such eloquence.
The bombing of the hospital. The helicopters. The creatures we’d run from but that were no longer around. As she continued to speak, Alex panned the camera on its tripod to take in the destruction across the horizon.
I watched as the camera’s red-light darkened and Jess’s shoulders relaxed. Sharing a nod and a smile, they turned down to the satellite transmitter and Alex began pressing buttons at Jess’s instructions.
Shadow’s bark echoed across the city and as I turned from the stairwell, I stared at Cassie standing at the edge of the roof. She’d climbed up the three bricks forming the lip of the roof and stared out in the direction where the camera pointed, her expression blank.
About to call her name in a soft voice, hoping not to startle her, she turned around and jumped down from the wall; her look not connecting with mine as if I wasn’t there. She headed to the stairwell, apparently overtaken by a sudden need.
I followed, rushing behind her, leaving Jess and Alex to their growing frustration at the equipment.
I couldn’t catch up with her on the stairs. Only as she reached the glass doors of the reception did she stop, but rather than speaking, she looked out of the windows.
“Cassie,” I said, coming to her side, following her gaze into the distance. “Did you see something?” All I could see was the chaos and distraction of the view, the gaps between the buildings, and those that seemed so badly damaged they would soon follow their neighbours to the ground.
I turned, and she shook her head. Instead, she leant forward to open the single glass door.
“We should wait for the others,” I added, and she let go of the handle. Her singular response.
Mandy arrived down the steps just as Jess and Alex did, both carrying the heavy black cases.
“They can’t fail to believe you now,” I said as I nodded to the camera equipment.
Their sunken expressions and furrowed brows didn’t follow the joy they should have held.
“What’s wrong?”
Jess shook her head as she rested the case at her feet.
“It wouldn’t go through. I think the satellite is refusing to lock. I don’t know how these things work, but whenever that kind of thing happens, I just speak with the tech at the station and within minutes it’s back up and running again.”
“Do they know it’s your transmission?” I asked, looking between them.
Jess nodded. “It’s my credentials.”
“Could they have locked you out?”
Jess turned to Alex with a frown. “Remember what the conspiracy nut told us,” Alex said.
We each nodded.
“Stan’s in custody,” Jess replied, and I spoke again.
“Do you know anyone else in the newsroom, or wherever you need to get the footage to?”
I watched as she squinted with the thought.
“Sure, but I can’t exactly just make a call.”
“Do they have satellite phones next door?” Alex said, looking toward the BBC building.
Jess’s eyebrows flashed high, and she turned as if able to see through the walls. “I’ll go look.”
We took it in turns through the revolving door back out to the icy air, but on the other side, Jess didn’t wait, veering off to the building as we followed, stopping only as she paused at the door.
“You wait here,” she said. “I know where to look.”
I glanced at Cassie, but she hadn’t come to the building; instead, she stayed outside the hotel doors and stared in the direction she’d been watching all this time.
“I’ll come with you,” I said.
“Me, too,” added Mandy, as she looked across the horizon wide-eyed.
Jess held her ground, looking at Alex before turning back and heading through the door.
“Cassie,” I called softly, but she didn’t turn and I followed them into the building.
Jess strode off across the wide foyer, not flinching as Mandy gasped.
I bumped into her back when she stopped dead in my path, Alex knocking into me.
I stepped to the side, following Mandy’s wide gaze to a headless man, naked from the waist up in the centre of the foyer.
45
The contents of my stomach rose as I stared at a skull so white and clean as though left out in the sun to bleach for years, or painstakingly licked clean.
Not able to linger on the smooth, stripped-bare bone of an arm detached from the body, I moved my focus to a haphazard string of intestines leading out from the chest ripped wide open. My thoughts turned to how this person had lost their life, but by the lack of odour, the remains had no chance to decay.
I guided Mandy around to face the door, not able to turn my gaze until a sudden fear rose that Cassie had left. Leading Mandy by her shaking form back into the frigid air, I breathed a sigh of relief to see Cassie standing where I’d left her in the same place, with Shadow still by her side.
Alex followed, but only
a slight furrow to her brow gave any sign of what we’d just witnessed and what it could mean.
Watching Mandy walk toward Cassie with her mouth hanging open and her hands at her face, I thought about grabbing Cassie by the shoulders and running off into the distance for fear that Jess had cleaned those bones of their flesh and harvested the organs.
Something held me back. Something stopped the fear from multiplying. Could it have been because she’d shown no sign of this instinct to us? Or could it be that I’d already realised what she might be capable of? She’d said herself, the creatures were each different; some more human than others.
Alex stood by my side. When I turned from the ground she was already staring back, her brow raised and eyes wide as if to reassure my unvoiced questions.
We both knew how the body had got there, but before I could speak to voice my lingering fear, Jess strode through the door with a rucksack weighing down her shoulder and in her hand she held to her ear what looked to be a large mobile phone but with a thick antenna the size of my index finger.
Turning to Alex, she let the phone down, looking thoughtful and wearing a grave expression as she moved her way.
“You spoke to someone?” Alex said, the words doing nothing to temper Jess’s expression.
“Stan. He’s out of custody but it’s worse than we thought,” she said, but without explaining she pulled the rucksack from her back and handed it over to Alex. “We’ll need this. It’s a smaller camera.”
Without looking to the cases still resting where she’d left them at the front door of the hotel, Alex pulled on the rucksack whilst Jess peered over my shoulder, raising her brow.
“Where are they going?” Mandy asked.
Looking over my shoulder, my questions disappeared when I saw Cassie and Shadow striding off down the road with more energy than I’d seen even before she’d been bitten.
“We’re heading north,” I said. “It seems as good a route as any. We’ll follow the motorway and hope we can find the front line or whatever’s there.”
“What about the doctors and the children?” Alex said, looking to Jess and back to me again.
“Do you know where they are? I don’t. North is our best chance.” I looked around to Cassie, already with a long head start and when neither Jess or Alex gave an answer, I jogged to catch up.
“She’s feeling better then,” Alex said, arriving at my side with an eyebrow raised and head tilted.
“What is it?” I asked, but Alex just shook her head, looking to Jess coming alongside with Mandy shuffling a few paces behind.
Walking in the middle of the road, now clear of debris, the two lanes of the one-way street joined up with another double lane heading the opposite direction. With no cars in the way or parked along the side, to our right were half-height metal railings and to our left were small shops, still with their tall windows intact.
About to ask Alex once more, I looked up as she peered to the sky, listening with a rising dread to the faint buffeting we’d last heard just before arriving in the city.
“Cassie,” I called ahead in a stage whisper, despite knowing the helicopter crew wouldn’t be able to hear my call even if they hovered directly above us.
Cassie turned, her expression pinched and I raised my palm. She paused, then gave a shallow nod, cocking her head when she caught the sound of the helicopters.
“Perhaps they’d take you to her,” Mandy said.
I turned around, glaring her way. “Or they could shoot us where we stand,” I said as I turned back to look along the road.
We had no way of telling where the noise came from and so quickened our pace in our original direction.
To our left, a grassy bank rose from the road to a cluster of three-storey flats.
“This way,” Cassie said, changing course and climbing. Without complaint, we followed up the bank and down the other side as I scoured the sky between gaps in the buildings for the source of the rising bass.
In amongst the small development of flats, the monotonous thump of the rotors echoed, flashing across the brick in a disorienting amphitheatre of sound.
Cassie rushed to the wide front door of the first flat, but it didn’t give as she pushed. Alex jogged past her, trying the next, but found the same.
By now no one could deny the helicopters were close, so near I thought I could feel their downdraft.
Not diverting to try any door handles, I led the way out of the cul-de-sac, through the car park whilst sticking close to the buildings and twisting to peer to any hiding place, searching for what could leap out.
With the others following, I ran through a street lined with shops and run-down retail units either side, but when none of the doors gave way to our attempts, I continued rushing along the road empty of cars parked to the curb.
The pounding in the air remained ever present, but still searching high above the buildings, all I could make out were the rising columns of smoke everywhere I looked. As the road divided, I lurched down a side street, with Cassie and the others catching up before stopping and staring at the looming shape of an Apache gunship flashing across the air space ahead.
Out of view no sooner than it appeared, we could only hope those on board hadn’t seen us as they glanced between the buildings.
Picking up the pace when the sky became clear, we dived left to a narrow road between two tall concrete buildings. Relieved as everyone followed, I beckoned them further between the high concrete either side as I leaned to a handleless steel door whilst looking to where the space opened out and the sun shone on a private space empty of cars.
Dismissing the option of somehow getting through the bulky fire exit and into the building, I listened to the receding sound of the rotors, trying to decide if they were turning around.
“Is it coming back?” I said, staring wide at Cassie who wouldn’t turn my way. She’d already recovered from the rush and instead of replying, she edged out from the safety of the building’s shadow to look to the sky with the dog panting at her side.
Alex doubled over to catch her breath and Mandy looked at me red faced and with her hand to her chest. Jess appeared as if she’d just stepped from a cab.
Cassie walked past, looking to the air in the direction we’d arrived and when I thought she’d stepped too far from the cover, I rested my hand on her shoulder and went to draw her in, but she shrugged my hand away as if my touch was acid. Without catching my eye, she moved back to the opposite opening.
A cloud of guilt came over me as I reminded myself she’d almost died and was separated from her only living relative who she’d just found out wasn’t as safe as she’d thought. Maybe that was it; maybe she regretted letting me decide. Perhaps she thought she was in no fit state to have agreed with my decision and she blamed me for all that could happen to her sister now.
The pound of the rotors were back as if amplified and I had no choice but to accept they were looking for us. Perhaps Jess’s failed transmission had singled us out without getting the story to the masses. By their expressions glaring in my direction, it seemed as if Jess and Alex agreed with me.
Still listening to the rise and fall of the beating blades in the air, Jess and Alex came over. Cassie stayed staring out to the car park with Shadow by her side. Mandy sat on the cold tarmac with her hands over her ears, leaning against the concrete wall.
As Jess stepped close, my first thought was to step back, but I somehow rallied against my instinct and held my ground.
“We should leave,” she said, and looking to Alex I knew she was right, but before we could take the first move, I turned to footsteps and Cassie, with Shadow, running from under the cover in the direction opposite to where we’d entered.
What else could we do but follow?
We were out into the car park with the sound of the helicopters seemingly further away, or perhaps it was the echo caused by the concrete walls which had made them seem closer. Taking a tentative look up to the sky, I followed Cassie’s lead aga
in.
As I ran, my gaze turned to a dot in the sky. It could have been a helicopter, but the sound of another, higher pitched this time, rose to obscure each of my senses. I froze to the spot as the others kept up their pace, rushing past.
Relieved with the helicopter disappearing from view, I sprinted, catching up to Alex dragging Mandy as Cassie jumped, side by side with Shadow, over a low metal fence at the end of the car park.
Taking Mandy’s arm, Alex guided her over and I took the other hand, ignoring her complaint, pulling her toward the others already back at the main road. I expected at any moment the helicopters would appear to strafe us with its guns and end the cat and mouse. And our misery, perhaps.
Seeing a short path to the right, I called out, pointing the way with my free hand.
“This way.”
Jess and Cassie turned in unison, their late decision allowing us to catch up as they doubled back. Together, now with me in the lead, we ran between tall blocks of flats as I looked to the doors, running on when none were open.
An old Victorian-looking building, a Salvation Army hall, looked so inviting with its thick walls and solid front door, but as I bounded up, using all my weight and turning the handle, the door held firm.
I carried on past as each of us slowed, looking left and right to the locked-up buildings. Panic rose until I caught a stench mixing with the drone of the helicopters and I forced down any thoughts of giving up.
Still running, I turned away from the noise, heading past a sign pointing out a dead end. It was then I saw what I’d sought; a door wide open at the base of another set of tall flats and I changed direction towards it.
“No,” came a call, and another unfamiliar voice added to the volume.
“This way,” Alex said, but I carried on, ignoring the disgusting but familiar smell. I was more interested in getting away from the guns I expected to spray bullets in our direction.
Running, my gaze held firm to the horizon and across the river, watching black ropes dangling below the body of the Chinook hovering in the air with soldier after soldier rappelling to the ground as if they had no grip.