by Luke Duffy
“Is there anything worth salvaging?” one of the mechanics whispered to Charlie as they waited for the cordon to get into place.
Charlie looked back at him and smiled. The man looked as though he was coiled too tightly and a sudden noise would cause him to jump out of his boots. The question was just his way of occupying his own mind, trying to be proactive and preventing himself from thinking too much about their precarious situation and where they were.
“Don’t ask me, mate. I just work here. If we knew the answer to that then we wouldn’t need you two with us, would we?”
When Bryn returned and gave the thumbs up and confirmed that the protection force was in place, Nobby got to work. He moved towards the main entrance while retrieving the bolt cutters from his pack. There was a much smaller door to the left of the garage entrance, but it was closed and sealed from the inside, with no handle or lock visible on the outside. Regardless, they would eventually need to open the bay doors if they found what they needed. There they paused and listened with their ears pressed against the icy metal of the huge corroded shutters.
“Anything?” Al asked as he watched Tommy and Nobby, their faces contorting as they listened for any noise coming from within.
Tommy shook his head and took a step back. Nobby concurred a moment later and raised the cutters, placing the blades over the thick chains and the rusted padlock that were holding the doors shut. He pressed the long handles together, forcing all of his strength and weight into the cutters as they bit into the lock. With a clunk, the u-shaped bar of the padlock was split in two.
“Just a touch,” Charlie whispered and nodded towards the seal of the door. “Big enough to climb through.”
After years of them being closed he knew that the hinges and rollers will have become heavily corroded, and opening them would make a lot of noise. He wanted to leave the ‘noisy’ phase of the operation until the very last minute, once they had vehicles ready and were about to turn their engines over for the first time. That is when things would need to move fast. The doors would have to be forced open as quickly as possible with the militia simultaneously collapsing inwards from around the perimeter and mounting the buses before the infected were able to swamp the area.
Gritting his teeth and cringing at the impending noise that they were about to make, Nobby dug his heels in against the ground, and pulled the handle. Al, Tommy, and Charlie stood watching the seal and ready to fire at anything that came rushing out towards them.
“Easy now,” Charlie whispered. “Easy.”
The bay doors slid across their tracks much easier than he had expected with only a slight whine as the wheels ran along the ungreased rails. Once the gap was a metre wide they met resistance, and the door refused to move any further without being forced. Charlie held out his hand and signalled for Nobby to stop. They would use more men and more strength later when they needed the bay fully opened. Until then the gap was sufficiently large enough for them to squeeze through. He eyed the black chasm that presented itself before them. He could not see anything that was beyond the threshold, but a strong and familiar smell of old oil and mildew drifted out towards them. There was no scent of the dead; their reek completely absent from the air. It was a good sign, and each of them instantly began to feel more confident about their task.
Nobby stepped through, quickly pushing to the right and dropping into a crouch as Charlie entered behind him. They waited for a while, allowing their eyes to adjust to the change in light. Above them and around the circumference of the building where the walls met the ceiling were narrow rectangular windows that allowed very little light to pass through due to the grime that covered the glass. The roof of the building was made from corrugated sheet metal, interspersed with sections of opaque glass or heavy duty plastic, acting as sky lights. Again, they too were caked in layers of accumulated dirt and allowed very little of the fading daylight into the building.
The two men refrained from turning on their lights, preferring to smell and listen, trusting their senses before relying upon false illumination to show them the way. The place was as still and silent as a tomb, and after a few minutes they felt confident that there was no threat and called in the others.
Al switched on his light and scanned the area around him. They were standing in the centre of the huge garage with rows of dust covered buses on either side of them that were still sitting in their bays and slowly eroding. He instantly saw that the ones closest to the entrance were beyond salvageable. He was no mechanic, but he could see that they were in a state that was not much better than the vehicles outside, falling apart in the parking lot. His heart began to sink at the sight of them as they advanced along the centre of the garage. More beaten and corrupted hulks appeared from the gloom as they moved further in, but one thing that he noticed was that each appeared less decrepit than the one sitting in the bay beside it.
Charlie stopped when he judged that they were more or less standing in the centre of the building. The others closed in around him.
“We’ll stay with the mechanics while they carry out their inspections,” he informed them and indicated himself and Nobby before pointing to Al. “You two push further in, and make sure there’s no surprises waiting for us back there.”
Towards the rear of the building were the offices and staff areas for the bus company employees. Al and Tommy pushed towards them, passing through the workshop where the depot’s mechanics had once stored their tools and spare parts. The room was spacious and mostly empty with only a few bulky containers and racks of shelving fitted to the far wall. Beyond that they entered into a narrow corridor that was flanked by dark, sinister doorways. The lights attached to their rifles pierced the blackness of the offices as they crept by, the dust that had been drifting around in the air for years twinkling in their beams. The atmosphere suddenly felt closer and colder compared to the wide and open expanse of the main garage, as though they had just entered into another world that was in the depths of a deep freeze.
Al shivered, his feet treading lightly over the grimy floors and scuffing against the occasional clump of plaster that had fallen from the walls. Nothing seemed out of place. The desks lay empty with their chairs neatly tucked away. The computers and monitors sat silent and coated with dust while the printed paperwork beside them and pinned to the noticeboards had become faded and yellow over time. Just as the depot had appeared from the outside, its interior confirmed to him that the place had merely been sealed shut and abandoned during the early days of the outbreak.
They reached the end of the hallway and passed through a set of doors leading into what was clearly the cafeteria. The tables and chairs remained, along with the serving counters and the piles of discoloured and broken cups, plates, and cutlery. The only thing that gave any indication that the outbreak had given the depot even the lightest of touches were the broken and misshapen vending machines in the far corner of the dining hall. Someone had smashed them open, looting what was inside.
As they patrolled deeper and into the offices they began to see signs that someone may have actually been there at some point in time. There were empty food cans and wrappers, along with mouldy cardboard boxes that had been piled into a corner, their labels faded and unreadable. Someone had gone to the effort of ensuring that the litter was confined to one space, packing it all into the boxes, and preventing it from becoming scattered throughout the building. To the right of the garbage was another office. The plaque on the door indicated that it had once belonged to the station manager. While Tommy moved off to clear the adjacent rooms, Al pushed inside.
The desk was positioned so that it faced the door and occupied a large area in the centre of the tiny room. It seemed far too big for the small office and much too ornate. Beneath the dust, the deep gleam of the mahogany finish could be distinguished. The curving and intricately carved legs were thick and solid looking, appearing more like something expected to be found inside the private study of an aristocrat rather than a bus company
branch manager. It was clearly a pretentious status symbol for someone who had once been in charge of the depot and held delusions of grandeur for their rightful place amongst the social elite. Obviously not content with the usual style of company issued flat-pack furniture that the rest of the managerial staff contented themselves with, this person had sought out an antique and hefted it into their office.
Al raised his light and leaped back as he saw the withered corpse that was seated behind the desk, almost fossilised into the chair. It was clearly dead and no threat to him, but that did not help with his self-aimed anger. It had taken him far too long to notice the body, and he was astounded and somewhat embarrassed that he had not seen it immediately. He took a step closer, feeling curious as to why someone would be sitting there in the first place, as though it had been work as usual for them. The man’s head was thrust back against the headrest of his seat, his jaw hanging open in a silent, perpetual scream. The station manager’s uniform continued to cling to his bones as his body decomposed beneath, identifying him as the very same pretentious person who clearly loved his desk, right up until the very end.
“Tommy, come over here. I’ve found something,” Al whispered loudly into the corridor. “Take a look at this fucker.”
Tommy arrived and stepped in through the door. He turned his body in a circle, shining his light over the walls around them and into the corners before giving his attention to the morbid, but strangely curious figure that Al had discovered.
“All clear out there,” he reported.
“Bit weird, don’t you think?” Al said, gesturing towards the corpse in the chair.
“Weird?” Tommy replied, screwing up his face. “How do you mean? It’s not the first stiff that we’ve come across.”
“Yeah, but this guy is still in his uniform and sitting at his desk. Why would anyone stay here, all dressed up with nowhere to go? How did he die? Why didn’t he come back like all the others?”
Tommy suddenly realised what Al was getting at. He nodded, agreeing that it certainly was a little out of the ordinary. It was unclear how long he had been there, but judging by the pile of rubbish outside of his office, he had survived in there for at least a few months after the depot was emptied and closed up. He stepped forward and around towards the right of the desk, checking the area directly behind the corpse.
“That’s why he hasn’t come back,” Tommy grunted, shining his light over the back of the office chair.
Al stepped around and saw that a long, slender metal rod had been placed so that one end was wedged against the corner of the room and positioned so that it was incapable of slipping, while the other end disappeared into the back of the chair in line with the dead man’s head. Al looked at Tommy, his forehead wrinkling in a frown as his light travelled from one end of the rod to the other.
“What the fuck?”
“That’s dedication for you. To do that to himself must’ve took some real balls. He must’ve really loved this place,” Tommy shrugged.
Al picked up a book that was sitting on the desk in front of the body and wiped the dust away from the cover. It was a diary and long since out of date. Al flicked through and saw that the man’s name was emblazoned in large, thick letters across the first page.
“Nevil Cumberland,” Al read aloud. “The first entry looks as though it was written about the same time it all went to shit.”
Tommy leaned over and took a look at the diary as Al leafed through, sliding the pages across and noting that the entries appeared to be getting more jumbled and ranting as the days increased. It appeared that the man had kept a day by day journal of what was happening and how he was feeling.
“Poor bastard,” he sighed and then turned to look at the body. “His whole world came crashing down around him. This place was probably his entire life.”
“Aye, and it looks like he finally gave up about a year after it all started,” Al replied, reaching the last page containing Nevil’s scribblings. “Says here that he’s had enough, and there’s no hope left.”
“Hope of what? Someone coming to catch a bus?” Tommy sniggered. “Come on, let’s finish up and get back to the others.”
Al tucked the diary into his jacket with the intention of reading through it at a later date out of morbid curiosity. It was hard for him to imagine someone shutting themselves away from the world and other survivors, choosing to live alone and remain in the place that was most familiar to them. There was nowhere on the planet that held such strong sentimental value for Al. Even the base that had been his home for the last twelve years held no power over him. They had fled from the fortress, and he would never look back with even the remotest sense of longing for the place.
Possibly the only location in the world that could give him even the slightest sense of nostalgia was probably Aldershot, a garrison town in the south of England where he had been based for a large portion of his army career. He did not love the place, but he had many fond memories of the town and the time he had spent there. However, his emotional link with Aldershot was nowhere near strong enough to make him to want to die there.
He followed after Tommy and headed back towards the main garage. They found Charlie kneeling beside one of the long buses and shining his light into the engine compartment while the mechanic rummaged around, huffing and grunting as he carried out his checks.
“How’s it looking?” Al asked.
Charlie turned to him and shook his head.
“Not all that good to be honest. We’ve found one that they think just might work, but it’ll take some time before we’ll know for sure. It needs the tyres changing as well as the battery, bearings, filters, oil, brakes, fuel…the bloody lot. Even then, it still might not start.”
“Just one? But there’s two hundred of us.”
“Looks like it might be a little more cramped than we would prefer then,” Charlie smiled back at him. “Hey mate, I’ll be happy with anything as long as it rolls. We’ll tie people to the roof if we have to.”
A few minutes later, and Nobby confirmed that the other mechanic could not find another vehicle that he considered salvageable, but he had identified a number of buses that had parts that could be stripped and used.
“I’d better get out there and see if I can make comms with Stan. I hope he’s made it through,” Charlie said gravely. He then turned to Al and smiled. “Not to worry, big fellow. We’ll make it work, somehow.”
20
Stan was out in front, leading the survivors up the hill and towards the prominent observatory building that they had nominated as the location for the rendezvous with the advance group. It was getting colder by the second, and as they reached the high-ground the wind-chill increased, biting its way through their clothing. Above them the sky was now completely dark and devoid of any clouds. The stars were out in force, twinkling brightly against the impenetrable blackness of the vast galaxy that blanketed the heavens. In another time and place Stan would have been tempted to stop and admire the sight, but right now he needed to get his group into the relative safety of the rendezvous.
They had made it through the sewers without any major problems. The veteran’s gun group had led the way, blasting any straggling infected that crossed their path while Stan and Tina drove the others forward, refusing them any opportunity to rest. With the amount of injured that they were carrying they did not have the luxury of stealth, and the journey inevitably became a noisy affair. They thrust their way through the tunnels, screaming at the bark of the machineguns and the roar of the men and women who were relentless in their determination to keep the group moving.
It soon became a brutal affair. People were kicked, punched, and dragged as they collapsed with exhaustion and refused to move any further. On one occasion, Stan was ready to shoot a man through the head when he fell and was unable to continue. Paul saved him, seeing that the threat was not an idle one. After the incident, the civilians realised that the man leading them was as cold and ruthless as the dead themsel
ves. However, their fear of Stan kept them mobile and forcing themselves forward through the darkness, terrified that they would become the victims of Stan’s lust for blood should they fall behind.
He reached the top of the hill and looked back. The men and women behind him were suffering from exhaustion, shock, and now the cold. They silently hobbled along in his wake, struggling to keep their legs moving as their bodies wanted nothing more than to collapse from beneath them. They groaned and whimpered with pain, nursing wounds that they had sustained during the journey but were unable to treat due to the rapid pace of the retreat. Now they were almost there, the hill sapping the last remnants of their energy as they struggled on after the monster who was leading them.
Taff was already there with his group and waiting for them. He began to move forward when he saw Stan reach the clearing from the track that was surrounded by woods.
“We’ve been trying to reach you on the radio,” he reported.
“We haven’t got one anymore,” Stan replied. “That Ron guy didn’t make it.”
Taff nodded and watched as Stan’s group continued to drag themselves up the hill. After only a few minutes, most of them were out of the woods and headed across to where Bull and the others waited. There were still a few stragglers climbing the slope, but Taff could see that the majority of the people from Stan’s group were now in the rendezvous. He looked at Stan quizzically and then back at the survivors, forming a rough estimate of their numbers in his mind.
“Where’s the rest?”
“That’s all of them,” Stan shrugged. “The bastards broke through the gates, and at least half of the folk were cut off from the tunnel.”
“How many?”
“Not done a full head count yet, but I’d guess we managed to save about sixty or seventy of them. We lost some in the tunnel when we blew it, too.”