by David Moody
‘Hear what?’ Michael demanded, becoming increasingly uneasy.
‘Shh…’ he answered. ‘Just listen.’
Michael did as Cooper said, and what the other man had implied gradually became clear. There had been a change to the sounds of battle drifting into the bunker from outside.
Where before there had just been the constant pounding of gunfire and other explosions, now he could hear screams and shouts over the relentless clatter of fighting. Everything suddenly sounded desperately frantic and uncoordinated.
The order and control previously demonstrated by the soldiers now seemed to be disappearing. As he watched he saw that some of the troops who had been left behind to guard the entrance to the base were edging forward, moving closer to the fight. Others were beginning to shuffle back.
‘Why…?’ Heath mumbled. ‘What’s happened…?’
‘Shit, they’ve got no idea how many bodies there could be out there, have they?’ Michael said anxiously. ‘You tried to tell them, didn’t you? Christ, there must be thousands of corpses for every soldier.’
‘Yes, but they’ve got guns and machines and… It’ll be all right, won’t it, Cooper?’ The uncertainty in Heath’s voice was obvious and clear. He already knew the answer to his question.
Cooper ran the length of the hanger and up the entrance ramp until he was almost level with the guards. He peered out into the darkness. The still frequent flashes of brilliant light and flame and random explosions provided more than enough illumination to allow him to see what was happening outside. An experienced soldier, he’d seen enough ground battles to know when an army’s tactics were working and when they were not. He could see at least two areas ahead of him where the bodies were now moving between the military and the base. The creatures had somehow managed to work their way through the lines of troops. Ignorant to the restrictions of fear, pain or just about any other emotion felt by the living, the dead hordes continued to surge forward past pockets of desperate and isolated men and women who were swallowed up by the decaying masses. It was an awful, nightmarish scene which held Cooper rooted to the spot with abject fear until he was distracted by the headlamps of the personnel carrier in the near distance as it turned and began to power back towards the bunker. The headlamps jerked up and down as the driver forced the powerful vehicle over the uneven ground at speed. Bodies occasionally crisscrossed in its path and were obliterated as it raced back to safety.
The corpses were close.
‘What can you see?’ Michael shouted to Cooper from the bottom of the ramp.
Cooper didn’t answer at first, continuing instead to scan the mayhem he could see outside. There seemed to be a never-ending sea of movement ahead of him. The countless bodies which had been burned and destroyed by the last military excursion seemed to have gone - trampled underfoot by yet more corpses. He turned and ran back into the base.
‘Get the engines running,’ he eventually replied in a loud but calm and authoritative voice which masked the anxious, creeping terror he felt inside.
Back out in the field a combination of friendly misfires and the random movements of the bodies had now exploited four breaks in the soldier’s defensive line.
Already at an unexpected advantage because of the dire conditions and their incalculable numbers, the cadavers continued moving forward incessantly towards the light in the distance coming from inside the bunker. En masse they surged through the gaps in the ranks almost unopposed.
Pockets of troops struggled to dispose both of the bodies they faced head-on and those moving through the undefended areas between them and their base. In less than fifteen minutes the balance of power on the battlefield had suddenly and unexpectedly shifted. With the coordination and order they had previously commanded now gone, the soldier’s instinctive reactions and their individual selfish desire for self-preservation caused still more gaps in their defences to appear. Now there were shadowy shapes on all sides. The troops continued to fight and to shoot and to burn and destroy as many corpses as was physically possible until a single flare was launched into the sky near to where Cowell, the officer’s aide, had been standing.
The flare was the signal to retreat.
‘They’re coming back,’ Cooper yelled to the others as he sprinted towards them. He had spotted the incandescent flare hanging in the squally air and had immediately understood its meaning. Before he’d finished speaking the personnel carrier crashed back into the base, careering out of the darkness and skidding out of control. Michael and Heath dived in opposite directions as the heavy machine ploughed along the length of the hanger and then collided with the front of the survivor’s police van, sending it spinning round and shunting it against the wall. Michael instinctively ran to help the survivors who had been waiting inside the vehicle and who had been unprepared for the sudden violent impact. He could hear them screaming and shouting as he yanked at the doors. One of them - an elderly man who’s name he couldn’t remember - was dead, his bloody face having been smashed against one of the windows.
‘What the hell do we do now?’ he yelled to Cooper as he pulled the remaining survivors back out into the light.
Cooper had already yanked the door at the back of the personnel carrier open.
‘Get them in here,’ he screamed.
Michael ushered the terrified survivors towards the military vehicle. As they quickly covered the short distance between the van and the personnel carrier the first foot soldiers returned to the base. They stumbled down the ramp, still firing indiscriminately into the darkness behind them. Seconds later the first bodies appeared. A sudden noise and a flash of movement distracted the survivors.
Cooper looked up and saw that one of the jeeps had crashed into the side of the entrance door. The soldier who’d been behind the wheel was now limping into the base, struggling to keep moving forward whilst the nearest bodies reached out and began to pull him back.
‘We’ve got to get out of here now,’ Cooper decided. ‘If they can’t get that door closed then in a couple of minutes this place will be full of those fucking things.’
‘Go!’ Michael screamed at the drivers of the survivor’s other two vehicles. The noise in the cavernous room was deafening and intense and at first neither Donna or Steve Armitage reacted. Michael gestured frantically and angrily towards the bunker doors until Armitage acknowledged him and began to pull forward, steering the clumsy prison truck around stockpiles of military equipment. Donna, who had never driven the motorhome before, did the same.
As the two vehicles moved towards the entrance many more soldiers and bodies swarmed into the base. Like small and insignificant ants against the vast and bland concrete backdrop, individually the corpses were slow and largely uncoordinated but their collective movement down the steep entrance ramp gave the ominous impression of speed and control. Gunfire continued to ring out and echo constantly. As more soldiers forced their way back inside, so the base became filled with more deadly gunfire and, occasionally, barely controlled flame.
From her position at the front of the motorhome Emma searched desperately through the confusion outside, hoping to catch sight of Michael. Next to her Donna tried to keep calm as she struggled to drive the heavy and unresponsive vehicle. She followed Armitage ahead of her in the truck, concentrating on staying close to his taillights. For a second she allowed herself to look up and into her door mirror.
Back deeper in the base she could she frantic movement around the back of the personnel carrier. In the midst of the bloody confusion she could see Bernard Heath struggling to climb inside. She watched in helpless disbelief as he was brought down by gunfire, a stray round almost cutting him in half. A torrent of bullets thudded into his right leg, his crotch, his abdomen and his shoulder. By the time he hit the ground he was dead.
‘Fucking hell,’ she wailed with tears in her eyes.
‘Bernard’s gone down.’
‘What?’ Emma mumbled, spinning around desperately and trying to get a clear view thr
ough the back of the motorhome. She stared for a second at Heath’s crumpled body on the ground before looking for Michael again.
Where the hell was he? What had happened to him…?
Out of sight of Emma, Michael pulled the door at the back of the personnel carrier shut.
‘Get moving!’ he yelled as he stared out through a small, square window at the remains of his fallen friend. He lurched forward and then fell back into a seat as the soldier driving the transport slowly turned it around and pulled away.
‘Put your fucking foot down,’ Cooper hissed in his ear.
The driver did as he was ordered, quickly overtaking the motorhome and the prison truck and powering towards the ramp. Countless staggering shapes - both living and dead - were smashed to the side.
‘Which way?’ the nervous trooper stammered through his cumbersome facemask as they neared the doors. Bright electric light was replaced by sudden blackness as they drove out into the open. Intense battles still seemed to be raging on all sides, providing some illumination but not enough to allow Cooper to make sense of everything that was happening around them. Knowing that the main track away from the bunker was blocked by the truck the survivors had crashed when they’d first arrived there weeks earlier, he needed to find another route away. The vehicle he was travelling in would be able to cope with any terrain, no matter how rough or uneven. The prison truck and motorhome following behind, however, would undoubtedly struggle to deal with uneven ground or anything more than the gentlest of gradients. Resigned to the fact that conditions would probably be as bad whichever direction they went in, he made a snap decision.
‘Follow the line of the valley,’ he ordered, gesturing left and choosing what he thought would be the most level route. He struggled to make himself heard over the engine, the rain and the relentless thud, thud, thud of the constant stream of bodies which launched themselves pointlessly at the metal sides of the personnel carrier. ‘Just keep going straight,’ he continued. ‘We’re bound to pick up a road or a track at some point.’
Driving through the bloody mayhem and devastation which continued to unfold all around them, the three vehicles disappeared into the darkness.
The hanger was filled with bodies. Individual soldiers still managed to offer a degree of resistance but their ammunition and their will to fight was almost completely gone. Terrified and exhausted, several disorientated troops had ripped off their cumbersome facemasks in desperation and were quickly infected and killed. Others were brought down by crossfire. Many more were ripped apart by vast, surging crowds of crazed bodies.
The senior officer left below ground ordered the decontamination chambers to be locked and sealed.
One hundred and seventeen troops remained buried underground.
Almost double that number were trapped on the surface, some still fighting, the majority dead or dying.
8
Being constantly thrown from side to side, Michael had to crawl the length of the personnel carrier to get to Cooper.
‘So what the hell do we do now?’ he demanded, knowing full well that his question was a pointless one.
Cooper had already dragged himself into the front of the vehicle and was now sitting alongside two suited soldiers.
There were a further two troopers sitting in the back with Michael and three other survivors. Obviously soldiers who had been out fighting on the battlefield for some time, the survivors gave them as wide a berth as was possible in the close confines of the military vehicle. Their cumbersome protective suits were covered with a layer of mud, blood and dripping gore which had been picked up during the relentless fighting outside.
Cooper didn’t even bother trying to reply to Michael’s question.
‘Do we just keep going all fucking night?’ Michael cursed, holding on to the back of Cooper’s seat as the armoured vehicle lurched down a sudden incline. He looked out through the blood-splattered glass in front of the driver. The view was frighteningly limited. ‘The motorhome’s got less than half a tank of fuel left,’ he continued, ‘we can’t keep going indefinitely.’
When his comments were again met with silence from Cooper he slumped back angrily in the nearest seat and turned round to look out of the back of the vehicle. Behind them the pointless and costly battle continued to rage with frequent explosions and brilliant flashes of light illuminating the dead world for a fraction of a second at a time. The personnel carrier dipped awkwardly to one side as the ground over which they were driving became increasingly rough and uneven. Following close behind was the prison truck and, further back still, Michael was able to see the lights of the motorhome as it struggled to keep up.
For a second he contemplated trying to stop the convoy so that he could try and get out and get to Emma and the others. But there were still too many bodies around to risk it. Far too many bodies.
Michael held his head in his hands and screwed his eyes shut. He tried to clear from his head some of the nightmarish images he had witnessed in the last hour but it was impossible. Everything had happened so fast. How had it all gone so very wrong so quickly? A couple of hours ago the bunker door had still been sealed and they’d been relatively safe and protected. Now they were exposed and vulnerable again, running once more without direction or defence. He thought about the people he’d seen killed -
several soldiers, Bernard Heath and at least one other survivor. It had all been so pointless. He couldn’t stop thinking about Bernard. He pictured him lying dead on the hanger floor, surrounded by scores of bodies and soldiers still trying to fight. Christ, he hoped he’d died quickly. He hoped he wasn’t suffering. Imagine lying helplessly in the middle of that nightmare, unable to move and slowly bleeding to death, just waiting for it all to be over…
‘We have to hit a road at some point,’ Cooper finally said, snatching Michael back from his dark, depressing thoughts again and bringing him crashing back to reality.
‘Then we’ll stop and try and work out where we are.’
‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ the other man snapped, ‘how can we stop? If we stop then we’re going to…’
‘If we’re sensible we can afford to stop for a little while,’ Cooper interrupted, his voice slightly louder - just enough to silence Michael’s emotional outburst. ‘We’ll stop and regroup and decide what to do next. If we’re quick enough there won’t be time for any more than just a few bodies to find us.’
Michael nodded and grunted to show understanding but he wasn’t really listening. He was trying to keep himself calm and under control. Again he found himself looking out of the window at the motorhome struggling to move across the rough terrain. He was thinking about Emma and what he would do if anything happened to her. At the same time he watched the constant, dark movement all around them as bodies turned and traipsed through the night after the uncoordinated convoy. He was trying to get used to the bitterly painful fact that they were exposed and on the run again.
In the prison truck Steve Armitage skilfully steered along the wide furrowed tracks that the military vehicle in front of him had left behind. At his side was Phil Croft, watching the scene like a hawk, terrified and shaking with nerves but still alert. In the back of the truck more survivors sat huddled in the darkness, not knowing where they were now or where they were going, each one of them wracked with an uncomfortably familiar sense of disorientation and hopeless fear.
Several metres behind the truck Donna groaned with effort as she struggled to keep control of the motorhome. It was an old, overused and unresponsive vehicle which gave a rough ride on level road at the best of times, never mind in these treacherous conditions. Inside the vehicle was deathly silent. A far more ordinary machine than the other two vehicles in front, its wide windows afforded those survivors crammed in the back a clear view of the dead world around them. It was a view which many of them would have preferred not to have seen. Now more than a mile from the military bunker, there were still vast crowds of bodies swarming across the land. Donna forced herse
lf to keep looking forward and to concentrate on driving. She did the best she could but the motorhome was not built to move through thick, churned mud and over sudden, uneven dips and climbs. The steering was slow and heavy and the vehicle’s rear end constantly threatened to slip and slide out of control. In the back no-one dared speak for fear of distracting their nervous driver.
Emma glanced up and noticed the dark silhouette of a house nestled amongst the trees on the brow of a low hill.
At first she was reminded of Penn Farm and in her frightened state she didn’t stop to think that where there was a building, there would almost certainly be a road, track or some other means of access. It was only when Donna slammed the brakes on that realisation dawned.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, immediately concerned that they had stopped. Donna nodded her head in the direction of the two vehicles ahead. Emma peered into the darkness and saw that Cooper had climbed out of the personnel carrier. He was untying the frayed rope that was keeping a wide metal gate closed and in place. The headlamps of the three vehicles illuminated a steady stream of unsteady bodies which crisscrossed the scene randomly and began to collide with the transports. They watched as Cooper swung the gate open, kicked away the nearest corpse, and then ran back to his vehicle.
‘Should be easier from here,’ Donna said quietly, tired resignation very evident in her voice. ‘I don’t think we’ll…’
Her words were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a withered cadaver which stumbled haphazardly out of the darkness towards them and slammed into the front of the motorhome. She jumped back with surprise and then leant forward and peered down at the pathetic shell which was pointlessly battering the front of the vehicle with clumsy, barely-coordinated hands. It was an appalling sight. In the time that the survivors had been underground the condition of the bodies had continued to deteriorate. This creature, judging by the length of its lank, shoulder-length hair and the remains of its ragged clothes, had once been female.