‘Last one,’ Cooper yelled from on top of the truck. Moments later the final survivor appeared and climbed down into the van.
Cooper was close behind. ‘Pull forward and close the doors,’he ordered.
‘Pull forward,’ Baxter repeated. The woman in the front of the van pushed down on the accelerator and eased the van slowly forward, pushing steadily into the rotting crowd which surrounded them. As soon as they were far enough from the remains of the truck to be able to close the doors, Baxter looked up at Cooper.
‘Close the fucking doors,’ the soldier said again. Helped by another survivor Baxter pulled the doors shut. The van rocked momentarily as the soldier jumped onto the roof from the cab of the truck. Losing his footing, Cooper threw himself flat and edged towards the front of the vehicle. He smashed his fist onto the windscreen and gestured forward. ‘Move!’ he ordered. ‘Just fucking move!’
The van lurched forward again. Cooper pressed his face down against the cold metal and held on for all he was worth.
Back in the middle of the field Michael sat nervously behind the wheel of the motorhome waiting for the van to reappear.
‘This isn’t good,’ he muttered. ‘I think we should go and…’
He stopped talking when the van powered over the ridge and began a fast and uncoordinated descent back into the field, obliterating countless bedraggled bodies. Cooper clung onto the top of the van, his feet and one hand wrapped around the roof bars. With his one free hand he gestured towards Michael for him to drive around a small mound in the centre of the field.
Michael immediately did as instructed, as did Steve Armitage following close behind. The remaining prison truck belched clouds of noxious exhaust fumes into the morning air already polluted by the rancid stench of death and decay.
Around the back of the mound, completely hidden from view from all other approaches, was a huge grey door, partially sunken into the ground. Bodies swarmed around the three vehicles with frantic energy and bile.
‘Hit the horn!’ Donna screamed as soon as she saw the door.
‘Let them know we’re here.’
Michael slammed his fist down on the horn. Seconds later Armitage did the same. The woman driving the van did the same as it trundled round the corner. The air was filled with noise, and the noise drove what remained of the massive crowd wild.
The motorhome stopped just meters away from the huge concealed entrance.
‘What now?’ Michael demanded. ‘For Christ’s sake, what are we supposed to do now?’
‘Just keep sounding the horn,’ Donna sighed. ‘They’ll hear us eventually.’
‘And so will every corpse in the fucking country,’ he hissed under his breath.
Without warning the doors began to slide open. Painfully slowly, the heavy barriers began to part. As soon as a wide enough gap had appeared a stream of soldiers in protective clothing emerged, every inch of their bodies hidden. They aimed their weapons into the crowds and began to fire indiscriminately.
Bodies began falling to the ground. The space left by each fallen corpse was immediately filled by several more.
Without waiting for instruction, as soon as the gap in the doors was wide enough Michael accelerated and drove into the base. It was immense. He had never seen anything like it. The prison truck forced its way inside, followed close behind by the police van. Cooper climbed down from the roof and looked around. His exhaustion, nerves and fear were immediately replaced by a claustrophobic and cold familiarity.
The sound of gunshots continued to fill the air as the soldiers closed the doors and picked off the last few bodies, throwing their remains back out into the open before the doors slammed shut.
Michael, Emma, Donna, Baxter, Cooper, Heath and the rest of the survivors gathered in the centre of a cavernous and well-lit hanger packed with a vast array of military hardware. The soldiers surrounded the exhausted group. The guns that had moments earlier been pointed at the bodies outside were now pointed at them.
51
Safe.
Oblivious to the danger of the weapons pointed at them, the survivors stood close together and waited for instructions. One of the soldiers stepped forward. Cooper took a similar step forward to meet him.
‘Sir!’ he snapped instinctively, saluting and standing to attention. He couldn’t see who was behind the soldier’s protective facemask.
‘Cooper?’ the faceless officer said with surprise clearly evident in his voice, despite it being muffled and distorted by the heavy breathing apparatus. ‘Where the hell have you been, soldier? We thought you were long gone. Welcome back.’
The weapons were lowered.
No more words.
Under continuous guard the survivors were crammed into a decontamination chamber. Those troops who had ventured out into the open with them laughed and joked in a similar chamber adjacent to the first. The initial relief and euphoria felt by the people from outside quickly disappeared. Exhausted and empty they sat and stared into space or slept or cried as their bodies were cleaned and every last trace of the disease was removed from them.
Emma lay on a hard wooden bench, her head resting on Michael’s lap. She looked up into his tired face and wondered what would happen next. Would the questions they’d both been asking since the first morning of the nightmare finally be answered by someone in this cavernous base? Would someone be able to explain what had happened to their world?
From the little that Cooper had been able to tell them, the decontamination process would last for more than a day. As the hours crept slowly by she drifted in and out of consciousness.
Although still restless and uneasy in these new and alien surroundings, for the first time she was able to move and speak freely without fear of being hunted out and attacked by vicious bodies. No matter how highly trained they were, the soldiers with their guns and masks seemed to be nowhere near as much a threat as what remained of the rest of the population outside.
These people, she hoped, were rational and controlled. The millions of decaying bodies on the surface were not.
In order to conserve power the electric light in the decontamination chamber was switched off. Emma curled up with Michael and waited silently for the next day to arrive.
Although she wasn’t completely sure, she thought it would be Friday. Almost four weeks since it had begun. Almost two weeks since they’d lost the farmhouse.
Maybe tomorrow would be the day when everything would begin to make sense again.
In the arms of the man who had come to mean everything to her, and surrounded by more survivors than she’d ever thought she’d see again, Emma relaxed and slept and began to feel human again.
Safe.
FOLLOW THE COMPLETE AUTUMN
STORY IN THE BEST-SELLING NOVELS
AUTUMN
AUTUMN: PURIFICATION
AUTUMN: THE HUMAN CONDITION
