by Haywood, RR
That’s all we could do. We fended off and we staggered, and we fell. We went down and we picked each other up while Frank worked our rear and Jess ran around us while the Saxon did what it could.
The next bit is a blur. I saw a building ahead. Concrete and white. We aimed for it, but I didn’t know why. All I know is we went around the corner to the other side and I stumbled again and went down hard, and when I tried to rise I saw Howie running in behind me carrying Danny over his shoulder while shouting now, Dave into his radio.
Then the world went white.
Reginald
It was like a flash at first. A single solitary flash that made me look to the northern edge of the airfield to a place known as the fuel farm. Where five large silos fed the fuel trucks, pipes, tanks that all supplied the commercial aircraft with highly combustible aviation fuel.
That’s where the first flash came from. Followed a whole series of flashes as the C4 detonated almost faster than the eye could see, which were all placed to transfer energy, heat and fire into the pressurised fuel storage system.
All of which then went bang.
I saw it first on the drone as the fireball went up and the noise rolled out. Then a fraction of a second later I heard it with my own ears as the ground started to shake and tremble. Rocking the van on the chassis as the pressure wave blew the hangars and warehouses apart and smashed every single plate glass window in the airfield, and not just there because I could hear glass smashing and structures breaking apart in the buildings around me with debris and bricks slamming into the van. Cracking the windscreen and denting the panels. The broken sliding door flew back from the pressure wave and through the open side I saw the fireball going up over Gatwick. Hundreds of metres high and wide enough to scorch the aircraft sat on the tarmac still waiting for passengers a month after the pandemic. With each one exploding as more fireballs rolled up into the air, and each one of those explosions sent countless shards of metal and flaming material out across the airfield in all directions.
I looked back to the monitor and fought to control the drone as it spun crazily from the blast, and when I got it back on line I saw the boarding gates on the piers attached to the north terminal were buckled and coming away and tearing chunks out of the piers, leaving gaping holes and entry points. One of the piers crumpled and broke while other parts melted and every window in the north terminal blew out as most of the roof structures of the closest buildings were ripped off.
It made the sky go dark. It turned day into night and cast a shadow over the land.
It made me feel small and puny. It made the whole battle feel small and puny, and something Howie said came to my mind, that all we ever needed to win was Dave.
For all of my genius. For all of Howie’s bravery. For all of Henry’s training and experience.
All we ever needed was Dave.
I lowered the view on the drone while in my heart I knew we’d won. We had to have won. But I couldn’t see the ground. I couldn’t see anything through the smoke and heat hazes. Chunks of debris on fire here and there. Whole parts of aircraft now scattered across the airfield. Vehicles blown apart.
I looked harder and cried out when through the gaps and rolling clouds I saw the bodies littered across the grounds. Bodies that were sitting up. Bodies that were getting up.
Bodies that were still charging.
Carmen
The ground was heaving so much it took most of us off our feet, and the noise was like something from another world. Impossibly loud and deep and going on forever.
But that was just the initial bang, and the pressure wave hit us a split-second later as the air roared past. Super-charged and super-hot. I saw bodies flying by on fire as though they were twigs. Chunks of buildings and vehicles went overhead. A huge section of a boarding gate. The wing of a jet aircraft. All of it on fire and pouring with smoke. An aircraft tow truck went past with the tyres on fire, cutting through swathes of infected in the way.
A set of motorised stairs on its side spinning around and around as it gouged across the tarmac onto the runway.
Something hit our building on the other side and sent a chunk of bricks flying out that rained down on us. Hitting Clarence on the head. Striking down into Henry and Frank. Then I heard a scream and saw Bash dropping to the ground with his legs on fire as Tappy jumped on him to smother the flames with her own body.
‘RIGHT SIDE!’ Dave then shouted. I don’t know where he came from, but only that he was there without a mark on him. His eyes seemed so alive and his whole face was bathed in the light of the fires he’d made. He was still up and still firing, and I realised that even in the midst of that hell, they were still trying to get at us. I went for my rifle and got rounds in. Frank did the same. Then Bash was up and firing on one knee with his clothes still smouldering.
‘LEFT SIDE!’ Clarence shouted as I turned to see him resting the barrel of the gimpy over his ruined right arm while firing it with his left. But they were still coming. Some of them on fire. Running while engulfed in flames and leaping into our midst.
‘NO!’ Howie yelled as he grabbed the dog to stop her trying to attack a body on fire. I spun around and fired into the head.
Then, the fire and smoke started spreading out into the sky, and it got dark quick, with bits of flaming debris raining down all over the place. Chunks of aircraft were landing on the runway killing scores more infected. Walls and buildings. Bricks. Windows. Wheels.
I felt a stinging pain to my arm and looked down to see a chunk of glass sticking out. I yanked it free with a spurt of blood coming out as Danny dropped at my side with an infected going for him while he was trying to club it in the head. I jumped in and rolled it off before drawing my pistol to get a round in the head. Then I was up and pulling Danny to his feet and pushing my knife into his good right hand. Two fingers gone from his left.
Mo’s neck was covered in blood from his ear ripped off. Cookey had an eye taken and a chunk of flesh bitten out of his arm. Nick’s face was ripped open. Charlie was cut deep. Tappy’s nose was broken. Bashir had glass shards poking out of his neck and cheeks.
We were broken and ruined. We were bleeding and dying, and that heat. I cannot begin to describe it. It was just heat.
Pure unforgiving heat.
I couldn’t swallow. My mouth was bone dry. My throat the same. We were breathing fumes and that fireball was stretching up into the sky, dwarfing our plight with smoke overhead, blotting the light out.
And still they came.
They came running and howling and screeching through the smoke. Wild and pumped with rage and hunger.
‘Behind you, Carmen!’ I heard someone shout and turned to get the last few rounds of my mag into a female. Body shots on the move. Centre of mass but it took her off her feet then Jess stamped down and finished her off as I looked up to see the drone in amongst us with Reginald giving what aid he could.
Reginald
It was a relentless onslaught with no respite, and even with the airfield engulfed in smoke with the top quarter on fire it made no difference and I cursed at the sight of the infected running through the smoke and fires. Trampling over corpses and tripping over the debris. And that debris still came down as more fuel tanks went up, and more infected were killed. Dozens at a time. But it wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t anywhere near enough.
Then, through the smoke and haze, I caught sight of a horde not running towards Howie. They were running south towards me.
Charlotte
We couldn’t move or run. There was nowhere to go, and it was too chaotic and too fast.
Even the Saxon couldn’t be used because the smoke was so thick Tappy wouldn’t be able to see. Plus the whole airfield was littered with chunks of aircraft on fire. Whole wheels and wings and nose cones. Sets of seats smouldering and adding fumes to the already choking air.
For a few minutes we poured what rounds we had left into them until one by one we ran out of rounds.
&n
bsp; ‘I’m out,’ Cookey shouted as he cast his rifle aside.
‘Same,’ Nick said as the same words rolled around from one to the next.
‘Handweapons!’ Dave then shouted.
‘Got any spares?’ Frank asked as Dave jumped into the Saxon and started passing out machetes and axes while Clarence dragged the thick chain with his left hand. His face a mask of pure rage and filth, and gore and pouring with blood. The same for all of us, and all around the infected poured in while we compressed.
I mounted Jess, but my hand was broken. I couldn’t hold the reins, so I wrapped them over my wrist and gripped my axe in my good hand as Jess turned a circle while snorting and flicking her head up.
Reginald
I looked at the horde coming south. There weren’t that many of them. Forty to fifty perhaps. And I could only assume that the CP controlling them had intelligence enough to work out that someone must be flying the drone. And the only viable place to be flying the drone from was my location.
Whatever the reasons, they were coming for me, but I could not, and I would not leave my post. Howie was in it to the end. And that meant I was too. I wasn’t a brave man. Not by any degree, but that pledge meant something. We were brothers in arms. We were a unit. We were a pack. Such things once made me cringe and reposit with witty or cutting cynicism, but I understood what they meant by then.
I was just sad we’d failed.
We’d won many battles, but sadly, the war was not ours to win, because they had nothing left to give, and the horde were still going for them.
Then, a gust of a breeze cleared some of the smoke, and I felt my heart quicken, and I looked back to see Paula grabbing at Howie. She gripped his hand in hers and held it aloft, and for a moment, he seemed confused until he realised what she was doing, and together they waved the invisible magic fuckstick.
Then, a split second later, the horde in Gatwick erupted, and the air filled with a thunderous roar of howls as they commenced their charge.
It was the final stand. The last few seconds of life. The last defiant act of a species that refused to surrender. We’d won every battle and we’d given back against an enemy so much bigger than us, but the war was not ours, and that horde poured into the team as they cried out and brandished their weapons, and outside I heard the sound of feet drumming towards the van. I heard the growls and the screeches as they got my in their sights, and in those last few seconds of life I thought to hell with it because this was the game and this was the hunt, and we were all in it.
Carmen
We were fucked. Exhausted. Drained. Hurt and surrounded by thousands of infected that wouldn’t stop until we were all dead, and they charged towards us on all sides at the same time.
And in those last few seconds of life I looked over to Paula holding Howie’s hand in hers and waving it in the air like they were conducting an invisible orchestra. I had no idea what it was or what they were doing but they stopped and stared up with the strangest expressions I have ever seen on either of them.
Which is when I heard the sound of something different in the air. Something growing closer with a noise we all knew so well, and as the infected charged we all snapped our heads up to the sky to see the smoke swirling and parting.
Jess reared as Charlie let rip with a battle cry and as one we gave voice to scream and cheer at the sound of the Rolls Royce Merlin engines coming in fast as the Spitfire roared into view with those beautiful wings creating twirls within the smoke.
Then we saw the Hurricane right behind it and we threw our arms into the air as the infected charged at us and the two fighters lowered to start a shallow dive, sailing over our heads a split second before their wing mounted machine guns opened up to strafe the infected.
Reginald
I was on my feet once again slamming my battle swatter into my desk at the sight of the Spitfire and the Hurricane. I knew what it meant. I knew what she’d done. I knew why she’d gone out to get some air.
And Marcy didn’t just come back on her own.
She bought an army with her.
Carmen
It was on.
Holy fuck it was on.
‘INTO THEM!’ came the order, but it wasn’t from Howie. That one came from Henry. I kid you not. Henry led the charge next to Howie with the two of them going at the infected with Dave and Frank striding in after them. Both of them with blades slicing throats while the rest of us charged our lines and hacked and bludgeoned and killed whatever was in front of us.
‘GO ON, JESS!’ Charlie screamed as she went in with Jess battering the infected down.
Seeing the Spitfire and the Hurricane galvanised us. It gave us the energy we needed to hold on and fight and as we slammed into the lines. And those two fighters completed their turns and came back in low and fast, and the air filled with the sound of their machine guns strafing the dense crowds once again and I snapped my head over to see a one-hundred-year-old man at the controls. Worn and weathered. Lined and wrinkled, but upright and more alive than he had been for decades.
They scored kills and made gaps and I fought on with Bash at my side swinging out with an axe. Taking heads off. Taking limbs off.
Howie was in deep, and that hive mind happened again. I felt it and knew I had to be part of whatever Howie was. That meant I was infected too. It raised instant questions, but right then was not the time.
I could feel the others though, and I could feel Henry. It wasn’t like I could see their thoughts or anything that powerful. Just the essence of them. Their energy, I guess. And as I opened my mind up to it, so it became more fluid and organic, and I started to sense urges and notions.
Pack fight together. Stronger together. As one.
It was incredible to experience what the infected had. That the very thing driving them to kill us was being used in a mutated version by Howie to will us on. I could feel his energy pouring into us, and I could sense Meredith’s instincts driving us to accept the energy and be as one with the pack.
The next thing I was within that flow, and I knew without looking where the others were and the whole of us sped up and flowed around each other, and in the backdrop the fighters flew overhead strafing the crowd with live ammunition intended to be used to make a movie.
Reginald
My word what a sight it was. To see two such aircraft flying low through the smoke was stirring and it gave them all a boost of hope.
I willed them on and felt that crushing heat bearing down under that sky made dark from the smoke, until I realised it wasn’t just smoke filling the sky. It was clouds too. Low dense clouds full of anger and rage were rolling in as the heat seemed to drive up and peak.
And outside I heard the screeches as the infected charged at my van and at the last second. I gripped my door and held it closed with all of my might as they impacted on the front and quickly clambered over the roof.
I had no escape. There was no way out. And all I could was hold on while watching the monitor as the first drops of rain fell from the sky.
Carmen
The thunder rumbled overhead as we held onto that surge of energy, and the flames were still burning from Dave’s explosions. Jesus. It was incredible, and that heat got worse until I thought I would pass out. I could hardly move. The hive mind was wearing off as I guessed Howie and the others were feeling the same.
We kept going, but what choice did we have? It was either that or die.
Then the fighters went overhead again and put more rounds into the crowd. Scoring kills and making gaps, but they were filled instantly.
‘Marcy! Get them firing into fuel trucks and planes!’ Howie shouted into the radio as the two fighters cut off firing and instantly flared up to fly high and loop over before diving in fast. Both of them opening up with fresh bursts at something near the south terminal, and a second later the fireball went up from a fuel truck igniting.
It was a good idea, and no doubt it got more kills, but it was just too little too late and that hope
we all felt started to fade once more.
Reginald
Good lord I was in a right pickle with infected hammering at the van and I knew it was only a matter of time before one of them saw the door was broken and threw themselves against it.
I couldn’t very well keep holding it, but then the second I released it the buggers would be inside.
Or perhaps it would take longer than a second. Perhaps I could grab the controller and get myself locked in the cabin before they got through the door.
Mind you, it wasn’t like I had any other options, and so I looked back to my desk and worked out what I needed to do.
Grab the controller.
Turn and run through the hatch.
Seal the hatch.
That was it. I could do it. I had to be brave and take decisive action.
I was ready.
Maddox
We were getting beaten back. There was nothing we could do. I was shoulder to shoulder with Books and trust me, that guy can fight. He’s savage and fast, but against that many? We didn’t stand a chance. It was over.
We were done.
Charlotte
I thought when the planes went overhead that we could hold on. I assumed help was coming. But we just couldn’t sustain the punishment.
We had nothing left to give. I wanted to tell Jess to get away, but I knew she wouldn’t leave me. I felt angry again and a rush of rage that I’d read it so wrong with Cookey. Why didn’t he want me? What was wrong with me? It’s absurd but that’s what was in my mind. But a battle does that to you. It strips away all the fake emotions and leaves the raw truth exposed in your mind.