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.
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 through 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.
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.
