by David Moody
‘We can still get out,’ he said quietly.
‘How?’ she asked. ‘How are we going to get past that lot?’
Emma pointed out of the window and down at the ground, her tone and body language seeming to demand an answer. Cooper took a few steps further forward and peered down. From their high vantage point the apparent hopelessness of the situation was painfully clear. They could see across the wide expanse of the airfield. In the distance bodies continued to stumble and trip through the now sizeable gap in the fence, their huge numbers showing no signs of reducing. As individual corpses entered the field, many more followed from either side of where entrance had been forced. Following each other like a plague of rats, the entire crowd was slowly being channelled through the gap. In the clear but rapidly darkening sky above them the lights of the helicopter and plane could still be seen disappearing into the night.
‘Lawrence will be back,’ he said, turning away from the window and massaging his temples. His head was aching.
He couldn’t think straight.
‘And what’s going to happen then?’ Armitage demanded. ‘Do you think those fucking things are going to stand to one side so that he can land and pick us up? For fuck’s sake, just admit it, we’ve had it.’
For the first time Cooper wondered whether he might be right. The ever increasing crowd of bodies spilled across the land below them like ink steadily seeping across blotting paper. They were congregating around the observation tower and the collection of nearby buildings.
He moved round so that he had a better view of the small office block where the others were. By his calculations there were between ten and fifteen survivors trapped there.
Jesus, they were surrounded too.
‘How are we going to get them out of there?’ Emma asked, peering over his shoulder.
‘No idea,’ he grunted.
‘We have to get them out,’ she continued. ‘We can’t just leave them there, can we? We have to…’
‘Come on, Emma,’ Cooper sighed. ‘We’re as trapped as they are. There’s nothing we can do.’
‘What do they want?’ Juliet Appleby asked. She had gradually moved away from the window and was now standing in the middle of the room.
‘Haven’t you ever seen them like this before?’
‘No,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘I’ve been here for weeks. I’ve seen the crowds, but never anything like this.
I’ve never been this close to so many of them. I don’t know what…’
‘Chances are you’re going to get a lot closer to them yet,’ Emma interrupted. ‘And in answer to your question, I don’t know what they want and neither do they. The bloody things don’t know anything. They don’t know who they were or what they are now. They don’t know who or what we are or what they want from us. They don’t know a fucking thing and all that I know is they’ve probably just taken away our last chance of ever getting away from here.’
‘No they haven’t,’ Cooper snapped. ‘We can still get out.’
‘You keep saying that,’ she yelled, sobbing again, ‘but I can’t see how it’s going to happen.’
Dejected and demoralised she sat down heavily and put her head in her hands. Cooper continued to stare out of the window for a moment longer before turning away and looking round the room.
‘They’re crowding around us because we’re a distraction,’ he said quietly, ‘and we’re the only distraction come to that. They go for us because we’re different. And I don’t know if they do it because they want help from us or because they’re scared of us or because they want to rip us to fucking pieces or…’
‘It doesn’t matter why they do it,’ Armitage hissed, his voice strained and hoarse. ‘You’re right though, the only thing left for them to do is to try and get to us. They won’t stop until we’re gone.’
‘I think,’ Cooper continued, ‘that all we can do for now is keep out of sight and not make a bloody sound. If they don’t know we’re up here then we should be okay for a while. We’ll wait for Lawrence to come back.’
‘Come on,’ Emma protested, ‘they already know we’re up here. Even if just one of them knows and tries to get inside then hundreds more will copy it and will try and do the same.’
‘I know.’
‘So what if Lawrence does bring the helicopter back?’
Armitage asked.
‘When he brings the helicopter back,’ Cooper corrected him, ‘then we’ll have to move, won’t we? Until then all we can do is shut up, sit tight and wait.’
40
‘Just get down, shut your fucking mouth and keep out of sight,’ Phil Croft hissed at Jacob Flynn. Croft was crouching behind a desk. Flynn was standing in the middle of the room, in full view of every window. He was a volatile and selfish man who’d generally kept himself to himself for as long as he’d been at the airfield. He was different now, desperate and frightened. He’d been this way since the plane had left and they’d been forced back into the office. He’d somehow allowed himself to be left behind and it angered him. As far as he was concerned it was every man, woman and child for themselves now, and he was damn sure that he wasn’t going to end his time trapped in this fucking building with these stupid, frightened fucking people.
‘What good is keeping out of sight, you frigging idiot?’
Flynn yelled. ‘They already know we’re in here for God’s sake. The only chance we’ve got is to open the fucking door and fight our way out.’
‘Fight your way out to where?’ Croft asked. ‘There’s nowhere left to go.’
One of the survivors cowering in the darkness behind Croft let out a sudden, painful wail of fear. The doctor turned around but he couldn’t see them. From his position low on the ground, however, he could see into several of the nearby office rooms. Thick, angry crowds of rotting bodies stood pressed against every window, trying to push and force their way inside. Even if Flynn was right and they tried to make a run for it, he thought, the sheer weight and number of cadavers outside would stop them. Sensing that his time was running out, he dragged himself back onto his feet and walked over to the man still standing in the middle of the room.
‘Open any of the doors,’ he said quietly, his face just inches from Flynn’s so that no-one else could hear, ‘and this place will be full of them in seconds. You won’t survive and I won’t survive. Open the door and we’re all dead.’
Flynn seethed with anger and stared back into the doctor’s eyes. A good six inches taller than Croft, his presence was imposing and threatening. He grabbed hold of the other man by the scruff of the neck and pulled him closer.
‘I want to get out of here,’ he hissed. ‘You’ve got to help me get out of here.’
‘You can’t,’ Croft replied, struggling to keep his balance. ‘The only chance we’ve got is to sit tight and wait.’
‘Wait for what?’
He couldn’t answer. Flynn let him go and he fell back onto a nearby chair, the sudden movement causing searing pain to run the length of his injured leg from ankle to hip.
‘We should all get into one room,’ he said, his heart racing, trying to keep calm. ‘Let’s get everyone together and out of the way. That’ll limit what they can see of us.’
Flynn grunted agreement and looked around the dark building. He pushed open a door to his right.
‘In there,’ he said, gesturing into a small bathroom which contained a single cubicle and a basin. More importantly, the only window in the room was a narrow strip which was above head height. Although out of sight, the shadows and movement of the bodies outside could still occasionally be seen through the frosted glass.
A further nine survivors were cowering in the office building. Slowly and cautiously they emerged from their frantically chosen hiding places, crept towards the bathroom and slipped inside. Flynn stood at the back and shuffled further into the corner as more people joined him.
The space was desperately limited. Apart from the toilet in the cubicle there wasn’t
room for any of them to sit or lie down. Phil Croft, the eleventh and final survivor, pushed his way inside and pulled the door shut behind him.
Someone was crying. He couldn’t see who it was. It might even have been more than one person. The bodies outside were reacting to the sounds of movement made by the survivors and the volume of their moans and cries threatened to attract even more of them.
‘Whoever that is, you’ve got to be quiet,’ he whispered.
He winced in pain and leant back against the door behind him. His leg was hurting again. He didn’t know how long he’d be able to stay standing like this. ‘Please just be quiet,’
he pleaded.
He could still hear muffled crying and sniffing. Whoever it was had tried to stifle their emotions but with only limited success. Other than their cries the room had become frighteningly quiet with no-one daring to speak.
Wedged tightly up against each other and hardly able to move, the eleven desperate people stood and waited.
41
An hour and twenty minutes later the helicopter arrived over Cormansey.
‘What the bloody hell’s he doing back here?’ Donna asked. She’d been walking down the road which ran through the middle of Danvers Lye with Michael and Karen Chase, trying to get used to her sudden freedom and enjoying the unexpected change of pace of life on the island.
‘No idea,’ Michael answered, immediately feeling nervous and uncertain. He stood still and watched the helicopter for a moment, its dark shape silhouetted against the evening sky.
‘Well, either he didn’t make it back to the airfield or they’ve started to bring the rest of them over here early,’
Chase suggested.
‘But why would they do that?’ Donna mumbled to herself, trying to make sense of the situation. Realisation dawned. ‘Christ, something’s happened, hasn’t it?
Something’s gone wrong.’
‘Come on,’ Michael said quickly, turning and running back to the jeep.
‘They might have just decided to make a move tonight rather than wait for morning,’ Chase continued optimistically as she ran after him and climbed into the back seat. She sensed Michael’s unease and shared it wholeheartedly. ‘Let’s face it,’ she muttered, ‘if you were Keele or Lawrence and you had the energy then you’d probably want to try and get the job over and done with too.’
‘So where’s Keele then?’ Michael asked as he started the engine and turned the vehicle round to drive towards the airstrip.
‘There,’ Donna replied, pointing up and to her left. She could see the lights on the plane’s wings and tail flashing intermittently in the darkening sky. Michael slammed his foot down.
‘Take it easy, will you?’ Chase complained from the back seat as the car lurched forward. Michael didn’t react.
Between them they would probably have been able to come up with twenty or thirty plausible reasons why the plane and helicopter had returned to the island so soon. Until he heard otherwise from one of the pilots or their passengers, however, Michael was going to presume the worst.
Driving at speed, the jeep arrived at the airstrip before the plane. The helicopter was just touching down as Michael pulled on the brakes.
‘What’s happened?’ he demanded as the survivors began to jump down from the back of the helicopter. He didn’t recognise the first woman who emerged. She looked around the airstrip, shell-shocked, disorientated and frightened. The noise of the engine and rotor blades made it difficult for her to hear what was happening. She knew that someone was shouting at her, but she couldn’t see who and she couldn’t see where they were. ‘What’s happened?’
Michael yelled again, grabbing hold of the woman’s shoulders and turning her round so that she faced him. He stared desperately into her pale and bewildered face.
‘Fence came down,’ she gasped. Her breathing was wheezy and asthmatic. Michael relaxed his grip, realising that he was frightening her. ‘Fence came down and they got in,’ she repeated. ‘Hundreds of them.’
Michael turned and looked at Donna who was standing directly behind him.
‘Fucking hell,’ she cursed.
‘I think it was the noise we made when we landed back there,’ Richard Lawrence explained. ‘I’m sure it was. The bloody things went wild and managed to pull down part of the fence. It’s been brewing for weeks. All our bloody noise today must have pushed them over the edge.’
‘Did you manage to get everyone away?’ Donna asked.
Michael closed his eyes and dropped his head, almost too afraid to listen to the pilot’s answer. He knew that there wouldn’t have been room in the plane for everyone.
‘We had to leave some people behind,’ he admitted quietly. ‘There just wasn’t enough room. We’d never have been able to get off the ground if we’d brought any more over with us.’
‘We’d always said we’d need another flight over after this one,’ Jackie Soames said, walking around the helicopter to stand with the others.
‘I’ll try and get back there tomorrow,’ Lawrence continued. ‘Christ knows how I’m going to land with thousands of those damn things swarming all over the place though…’
The pilot’s voice was drowned out by the deafening noise from the plane as it swooped down behind him. His already fragile nerves shattered by the events of the last couple of hours, Keele was struggling to keep control. His descent was too steep and too fast. The plane hit the ground and bounced back up off the runway before crashing down again, finally stopping at an awkward angle in the grass almost twenty metres over the end of the tarmac strip. After a brief pause the door opened. Keele half-jumped, half-fell down and then stumbled away as his passengers poured out after him.
‘It was a fucking nightmare back there,’ Jack Baxter shouted over the whipping wind as he tripped along the runway towards Michael and the others. ‘Christ, we didn’t have a fucking chance. The bloody things were all over us before we knew what had happened…’
Michael wasn’t listening. He pushed past Baxter to get closer to the plane, having to fight his way through the stream of frightened people coming the other way. More were still climbing out onto the runway - Jean Taylor, Stephen Carter, several others - but there was no sign of Emma. He stood less than a metre from the door and watched and waited. Still more people - Sheri Newton, Jo Francis - and then the flow of survivors stopped. He moved further forward and leant inside, desperate to see her. She had to be there, didn’t she? The plane was empty. Now beginning to panic he turned around again and began to run back towards the area where the frightened survivors had grouped further down the runway. Maybe he’d missed her.
He must have done. She must have walked straight past him.
Donna noticed Michael approaching and tugged Richard Lawrence’s arm to attract his attention.
‘Where the hell is she?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Emma?’
Lawrence swallowed hard.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he began, ‘she’s back at the airfield. We couldn’t get everyone over here without…’
‘You’re going back, aren’t you?’
‘The plane can’t, there’s no way we can land it there now…’
‘But you’re going back, aren’t you?’ he asked again.
‘I will go back, but I don’t know what I’ll be able to do.
I’m sorry, Mike. You don’t know what it was like back there. Once they’d got past the fence there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t…’
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, his voice suddenly sounding disturbingly flat and unemotional. ‘We’ll go now.’
‘No, Michael,’ Donna sighed. ‘You can’t, there’s no point. We need you here to…’
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said again, ignoring her.
Lawrence shook his head and looked away. Michael fixed him with a desperate, unblinking stare.
‘Listen, mate, she’s right. There isn’t room. There’s more than ten people left back there. If I manage to get back to them then I�
�m going to need all the space I can get to bring as many of them back here as I can, that’s if I can get anywhere near them…’
‘When are you going?’
Lawrence sighed and looked up into the sky.
‘Look, I need some time, okay? Before I do anything we need to stop and think about how I’m going to…’
‘Go back now.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not? What’s stopping you?’
‘About fifty thousand dead bodies.’
‘You have to go back. You can’t leave them there.’
‘I don’t know what else I can do. It’s going to take three or four trips minimum.’
‘So you make three or four trips.’
‘Come on, Mike,’ Donna said softly, taking hold of his arm and trying to lead him away from the exhausted pilot.
‘It’s not his fault…’
He shook himself free of her and stood his ground.
‘Michael,’ Lawrence sighed, ‘I’m not going anywhere until morning, if I go back at all. There’s no point taking more of a risk than I have to by flying back at night. Just stop for a minute and think about…’
Michael wasn’t listening. He stared at the pilot for a few seconds longer before simply turning away and walking into the darkness, his head filled with dark and desperate thoughts and images of Emma. Donna watched him disappear into the night, knowing that there was nothing she could do to help.
In his heart he knew that Lawrence was right. There was no way he could go back to the mainland tonight.
How could it be, he wondered as the cold wind bit into his face, that just about everyone else could be here when the one person he cared about above all others had been left behind? How could they have done that to her? How could he have allowed it to happen? He cursed himself for ever having left her and the pain he felt increased immeasurably when he pictured her back at the airfield, surrounded by bodies, hundreds of miles away from anyone who could help. The hurt increased still further when he started to consider the limited likely outcomes for Emma and the others. They might remain barricaded away and slowly starve. The bodies might get to them and… and that was a thought too dark to even consider.