by Luke Duffy
"Yeah, well, I'd just like to know if it is going to be able to shoot at us, bender."
Jake was about to retort but Marcus cut them off. "You two, shut up. Lee has a point. You never know in this day and age, and people may not be as friendly as we would like."
He turned to the others and handed the binoculars to Steve.
"It's okay though, it isn't a gun-ship. It's a Puma. French built and used by the British army. Time to get their attention, I think."
He moved away from the others and held up the mini-flare. He released the spring and, with a pop, a glowing red light shot up into the air. Immediately, he began to reload and sent another three lights into the sky in quick succession.
The helicopter seemed to slow down then, banked to its left, headed straight for the house.
"Clear the roof, go," Marcus ordered.
Gary began to usher everyone from the rooftop. Rounding up the children was the hardest part but a few stern words, barked at them from their parents, made them fall into line and comply.
"Gary," Marcus shouted to him as the older man attempted to dislodge Liam from his firm hold on one of the water pipes.
"You, Carl, Sophie and Lisa, get whatever you can use as a weapon and stay in the foyer."
"Will do," Gary nodded in return as he finally pulled the protesting Liam loose, dragging him into the doorway.
Marcus turned and quickly checked on the progress of the helicopter.
"Lee and Jake, you stay on the roof and cover us."
He passed his rifle across to Jake and pulled out his pistol. He pulled the top slide back slightly, checking that there was a round in the chamber, and then turned to his brother, Steve.
"You're with me, bro. Helen, you too, if you don’t mind. Let's go welcome our new guests."
They both drew their pistols and followed him into the stairway.
11
Kelly and Joey were on their way to carry out visual confirmation of the effects of the bomb that was dropped on the city of Stoke-on-Trent. They did not expect to find much, except for a wasteland of destroyed buildings and rubble, and the scattered and twisted remains of the hundreds of thousands of walking dead that infested the city. Still, orders were orders and they were expected to follow them to the letter. Kelly was not prepared to question or disregard anything that came from the top.
They spent two days sitting on the cold and empty moors, waiting for phase-two. They expected to be able to rest and catch up on some sleep with hot meals to help them to recharge, but things did not turn out as they hoped.
After arriving at the rendezvous, where they were to lay up for a couple of days before phase-two began and the bomb was dropped, they soon discovered that the SAS team they were supposed to meet were nowhere to be found. There was no evidence of a fight or the position being overrun; they just vanished without any word or trace.
To be safe, Kelly decided that they should push further north, opting to touch down and rest on the secluded and windswept moorlands where they were unlikely to encounter many of the dead.
Joey was less than pleased. Exposed to the freezing rain and howling winds, they sat and waited it out, eating cold rations and taking turns to stand watch until it was time to move again.
Kelly endured forty-eight hours of Joey's endless grumblings.
"This is bollocks, Kelly," he shouted from outside the cockpit as he stood his shift on guard duty. "I'm fucking freezing."
She rolled her eyes and smiled at him through the windshield, rubbing her hands together and waving.
"Fuck off, Kelly," he snapped, "I mean, where were the SAS blokes? We could've been sat with them, eating hot food and…"
Kelly had heard enough. She opened the window and leaned out. The force of the wind, swept her hair in all directions, leaving it looking like a lion's mane as it framed her face.
"What would you like, Joey? The Hilton hotel?" She had to scream to be heard over the slashing rain and gale force wind. "There's one in Manchester, just ten minutes flying time from here. We could go there if you like?"
"Shit and fall in it," he retorted, raising his middle finger and slamming it against the windshield of the cockpit.
Two days up on the bleak moors seemed like two weeks. Neither of them was rested, but they could not wait to be moving again. When the order came that phase-two had begun, they gladly started up the engines and wasted no time in getting airborne.
Flying over a large town on a bearing that would lead them directly to Stoke, they saw an exodus of the dead, headed away from the built up area. Thousands of corpses roamed the streets below them, all headed towards the suburbs and beyond. Kelly was used to seeing the reanimated bodies headed towards the cities and towns, not away from them.
They followed the trail of shambling cadavers for a number of miles and reached a junction where they all seemed to congregate, clambering against a high wall that ran parallel with the roads leading off from the crossroads, towards the west and north.
Their numbers swelled until the crowds were so dense, it was virtually impossible to distinguish individuals. From a higher altitude, the multitude of blackened and swollen corpses made the ground look like it was covered with a seething and bubbling oil slick. On closer inspection, the sea of blacks and greys was revealed as the twisted and grotesque bodies of once living people.
"Jesus, there's so many of them," Kelly gasped as she looked down from the cockpit.
She eased back on the cyclic stick, slowing their forward movement, and adjusted the collective and throttle to settle the helicopter into a hover, positioned over the road junction below them.
"They must be in the hundreds of thousands, Kelly," Joey noted. "What do you think is attracting them?"
Kelly shook her head, unable to tear her eyes away from the scene below. "I don't know, but there must be something around here that is grabbing their attention."
Just fifty feet below the aircraft, a sea of rotting, maggot infested bodies stood staring up at them. The downwash from the rotor blades blew their matted hair from their features, exposing the thousands of skeletal rotting faces and dead eyes that were locked on the helicopter. They reached out into the air, grasping futilely and jostling one another for pole position directly below the hovering aircraft.
They pushed and pulled at the other bodies around them, snapping their jaws aggressively, like hungry predators around a fresh kill. Arms were ripped from their torsos and some of the bodies were even decapitated as the swarm grew with excitement, grabbing and clawing at one another.
Even over the loud thump of the blades and the screech of the engine, Kelly and Joey could clearly hear their wails. It was a constant barrage of monotone moans; all mixed together and creating a ceaseless hum that seemed to penetrate the souls of the living. It was enough to send cold shivers running the length of Kelly's spine.
She pushed down on the pedals beneath her feet, slowly turning the helicopter in a three hundred and sixty degree arc. Everywhere they looked, a mass of walking corpses covered every patch of road. They staggered, hobbled, swayed and crawled from all directions, bumping into each other and trampling on the fallen.
Despite the downwash of the whirling helicopter blades, the stench of thousands of rotting bodies managed to make its way into the cockpit of the aircraft. Joey gagged and looked across at Kelly pleadingly, grimacing and wafting his hand in front of his face.
"Come on, Kel, it's nothing we haven't seen before. Take us up to where the air is fresh and clean," he grinned.
Kelly nodded and obliged. She increased the throttle and pulled back on the collective. The machine gained altitude and again, when they were roughly fifty metres from the ground, she settled into a hover. From that height, they were able to see the extent of the crowd more clearly.
They were everywhere. Along the entire length of the wall, from the junction and into the far distance in both directions, a swarm of dead pressed themselves against the tall stone barricade.
&n
bsp; Lofty fir trees grew on the opposite side of the wall, their branches overhanging the brick structure. Beyond them, sprawling fields and woods, devoid of any sign of the dead, stretched for as far as the eye could see towards the north and west.
"What do you think of that?" Kelly asked, nodding to an area on the western part of the main junction. "Looks like a link road running towards the west and someone's…"
Before she could finish, Joey butted in. "Set up a barricade to block it off…"
"Exactly," she replied.
Her voice betrayed a hint of enthusiasm, excitement at the prospect of finding other survivors. It had been a long time since they last came across people that had managed to stay alive on the mainland.
She did not doubt for a minute that there were probably thousands, hiding and living through the dead plague. However, given the extent of ground to cover and the fact that they were ordered not to waste fuel looking for survivors, they were unlikely to cross paths with any.
Kelly steered the helicopter over towards the junction, settling above it while they studied the barricade. A number of large trees had been felled. They spanned the entire width of the carriageway, blocking the link road beyond from view.
"Looks like someone did a little lumberjack work," Kelly remarked. "Look over there." She pointed to an area on the northern side of the road.
Between the mass of bodies she was able to make out a number of tree stumps, their pulp still much brighter in colour than the rest of their bark.
"Must've been a risky job to come out here and go to work with an axe."
"Not a bad job, though," Joey added. "They’ve pretty much cut off access to the road in this area."
"A lot of good it's done them."
Beyond the barricade and along the whole stretch of link road, a dense horde of ghouls was packed shoulder to shoulder, covering the entire road like a carpet of putrid flesh and bone.
Kelly pushed down on the cyclic and sent the aircraft moving forward. They followed the road down for another three hundred metres and came to rest, lingering over a turn off in the road that led up to a large iron gate, built into the high wall.
"There must be people in there," Joey stated, more to himself than trying to inform his pilot of the obvious.
Kelly nodded as she eyed the thick iron railings and the large fuel tanker that was parked on the opposite side, flush with the wall and entrance to stop the gate from collapsing under the weight of the horde pressing against it.
She kept the helicopter hovering for a few moments longer, studying the area beyond the truck. It was hard to make anything out. A road led away from the entrance and disappeared into a thick tangle of trees, cast in shadow and giving no inclination of what lay beyond.
"Why don’t we just fly in there, Kelly?"
Kelly bit her lip. She considered the possibility of going straight in and having a look around for herself from within the safety of the cockpit, but she hesitated. If there were people beyond the wall, Kelly and Joey knew nothing about them. They could be well armed and very protective over their sanctuary, especially against a helicopter. The last thing she wanted was to be shot down or killed by a mob of fiercely territorial survivors.
"Let's have a look to the north," she said finally, and turned the aircraft back towards the junction.
At the crossroads, she pushed down on the anti-torque pedals and, with a gentle push on the cyclic stick, they swung around to the left, headed north along the outer perimeter of the wall and soaring over the thousands of staggering creatures below. It was the same story as the road and wall that led westwards, beyond the barrier of fallen trees. An ever-swelling river of rotting bodies flooded the ground below, coursing along the road like a repulsive alternative illustration of bubbling water rapids.
"Yup," Joey nodded to himself, "there's definitely someone in there, Kel."
A flash from the left caught his attention. In his peripheral vision, he saw something red in the sky. He studied the area while Kelly concentrated on watching the ground below.
Another red light, glowing brightly and soaring into the sky, erupted to the west from deep within the grounds beyond the wall.
Joey's eyes lit up but he struggled to find his voice. Instead, he opted to wave his hands around in front of the cockpit instruments, trying desperately to attract the attention of his pilot.
Finally, he was able to form one word.
"Flare," he squealed.
12
"How do we get out of this shit-trap, then?" Jim groaned.
Hussein and Stu looked at one another. Neither of them had any real solution to their immediate problem. They had been trapped in the loft of the public house for over two days, and they still had no idea of how to make their breakout.
Stu, Jim, Hussein and Kieran were tired and hungry but most importantly, thirsty. Sleep was a welcome distraction, but it never lasted long enough. A noise below, as one of the shambling corpses clumsily bumped about or tripped, would wake them with a start, or the thirst that they all suffered from would drag them from their slumber, tearing at their throats and their desiccated mouths.
Stu wondered how long they would need to be there for before someone began drinking their own urine. The thought of it did not particularly bother him, but he would have insisted that he drink only his own and no one else's.
Jim came up with the innovative idea of removing the bullet head from four rounds, one for each of them, and sucking on them to help encourage saliva to build up in the mouth.
"Like they did in the desert during the Second World War," he reminded them.
It seemed to work initially, but soon their whole body and not just their parched lips and throats screamed out for fluid to replenish them.
It was no use; their body was becoming more dehydrated by the minute. The headaches had already begun, along with moments of blurry vision and dizzy spells. Gradually, their bodies would begin to shut down on them. As every drop of moisture was slowly used up from within their organs, muscle, and skin tissue, they would eventually lose control of their limbs, ability to think clearly, speech, and finally slip into unconsciousness and die.
Stu detested the idea of dying from dehydration, especially when there were much greater dangers to fear. He especially loathed the idea of dying from thirst while he was in the United Kingdom.
'One of the wettest countries on the planet, and here I am, about to die from lack of water. The fucking irony of it,' he thought to himself.
"I'm not sure we should be in a hurry to leave just yet," Stu pointed out in reply to Jim's question.
"Why's that, Stu?" Jim huffed in an aggressive and questioning tone.
He was growing impatient. The four men had been trapped in the relatively small and cramped space in the roof of the building for what seemed like a lifetime, and his temper was beginning to flare.
"Well," Stu began in a tone that was just as hostile, "in case you’ve forgot, and as much as I would like to get away from this stinking, shit infested tomb." He nodded in the direction of the far corner, the area they were using as a toilet.
"A big nuclear bomb went off and I'm not sure if it will be safe to leave yet. Do you understand what I mean, or should I draw you a fucking picture?"
"Fuck you," Jim snapped, sitting up and thrusting out his chest towards Stu. "Don’t patronise me, you Limey motherfucker."
Stu felt the hairs on his neck stand on end; his jaw clenched and his fingers rolled themselves inwards to form a fist.
"Who you calling a 'Limey' you, hillbilly inbred twat?" Stu launched himself towards his friend, roaring with rage and grasping Jim by the straps of his assault vest.
Jim was caught off balance and with the weight and momentum of Stu's body, they both crumpled into a heap, pulling and pushing at one another as they rolled across the floorboards. Jim managed to thrust his hand under Stu's chin and forced his head backwards, while Stu folded his fingers around the American's neck. Both men snarled and grunted a
s they struggled, each trying to gain a better position to land a blow to the head and face of the other.
Stu let out a howl as Jim forced his knee up in to his groin, but the impact failed to dislodge Stu's clutching hands from around his throat.
The scuffle went on…
Kieran, sitting by the trapdoor that led down in to the main bedroom of the pub, stared at the grotesque scene below.
After Stan was pulled down and set upon by the mass of hungry ghouls, Jim, Stu, and Hussein managed to restrain Kieran from launching himself through the hatch to try to help his friend. They slammed the door shut and sat in silence, listening to the noises of the feeding frenzy below as the dead gorged themselves on Stan's flesh.
A day later, with complete silence from underneath them, the four survivors risked opening the hatch and peering into the room below. Bright morning light poured into the room through the windows, revealing an almost empty space, with none of the festering creatures in sight.
The room was not completely empty though. There were still a number of motionless bodies, sprawled across the floor, buzzing with flies as what remained of their brains seeped from their broken skulls, but the dead that were still mobile had left, leaving their fallen comrades behind.
They could still be heard throughout the building as they crashed and bumped about from room to room, rummaging through drawers, and turning over furniture, always searching for living flesh. The four surviving men chose not to risk leaving the sanctuary that was built in to the roof of the pub.
Kieran sat watching, unable to take his eyes from the squirming, limbless torso of the body in the corner. It was devoid of all of its flesh. Its arms and legs were torn from their sockets and carted away to be devoured. The stomach was ripped open and the contents dragged from the body and scattered in a wide area over the floor of the spacious room.
Blood spatters streaked the walls and below the body, a dark red patch seeped into the carpet, spreading out like a silent, creeping menace. Bloodied hand and footprints covered every surface of the room, standing testament to the horrific feast that had taken place the day before.