of bodies nearby. Cooper nodded and stood to one side to allow the new arrivals to walk past him and follow Michael into the dark building.
By the time they reached the main area where the survivors had grouped themselves just about everyone was up and awake and aware of what had happened. Nervous and subdued conversations were quickly silenced as the unfamiliar figures entered the warehouse. The centre of attention, Lawrence and Chase found themselves standing in the middle of the group feeling awkward and exposed, nodding acknowledgments to the few faces they were able to make out in the half light. Chase tugged Lawrence’s arm and pulled him over to the edge of the impromptu gathering. They found themselves somewhere to sit and looked round into the many faces staring back at them.
‘This is Richard Lawrence and Karen Chase,’ Cooper announced as he arrived back in the room. ‘They’ve come from Bigginford, so Christ knows how they’ve ended up here.’
‘That’s bloody miles away,’ Jack Baxter muttered under his breath.
‘They’ve got a bloody helicopter,’ Phil Croft sighed, frustrated by the other man’s stupid comment.
The air was suddenly filled with hushed expectation.
There seemed to be so many questions to ask that no-one knew where to start. Donna cleared her throat and took up the mantle.
‘So do you spend all your time flying around in the middle of the night looking for survivors?’ she asked, the tone of her voice strangely abrasive and clearly lacking in trust.
‘Not usually,’ Chase responded, equally abrasively.
‘How did you know where to find us then?’
‘We’ve known for some time that there were probably people around here…’
‘So why didn’t you let us know you were about?’ Baxter interrupted.
‘Because we couldn’t see you,’ Lawrence answered, playing with his short greying ginger beard as he spoke.
‘All we could see were a few thousand bodies. We knew something had to be attracting them, but we didn’t know what.’
‘So where were you?’ Chase asked.
‘Underground,’ Baxter replied.
She nodded.
‘I flew over this area a couple of days ago and it was pretty bloody obvious that something had happened. There was a hell of a lot of smoke around but I couldn’t see what was going on. We came back again just now and saw the fighting. We thought that some of you might have got away so we spent the last couple of hours flying around trying to find you.’
The group fell silent as they each considered the explanation they’d just heard. It sounded feasible. They didn’t have any reason not to believe what they’d been told.
‘Tell us about the helicopter,’ Emma asked. ‘How have you ended up with a helicopter?’
‘I’ve been flying for years,’ Lawrence answered. ‘It was my job. I used to fly people over towns for those “eye in the sky” traffic broadcasts on local radio. I was up there when this all kicked off…’
‘So what happened?’
‘We were in the middle of a broadcast and it got the reporter,’ he replied. The pilot’s face suddenly looked tired.
The effort involved in talking about what had happened was considerable. ‘Beautiful girl, she was,’ he continued.
‘She was dead in seconds. Then I looked down and I could see the world falling apart beneath me and I never wanted to land. By the time I finally touched down everyone was dead.’
The group’s questions, although random and perhaps individually insignificant and unimportant, all needed to be asked. And the sudden speed of the unexpected arrival and the lack of time they’d had to think about what was happening meant that the questions were asked as and when they came to mind.
‘So are there many of you?’ Michael asked.
‘Not as many as you by the look of things,’ Lawrence replied. ‘There are just over twenty of us, but we’re split at the moment.’
‘Split?’
He nodded.
‘We’ve been based at Monkton airfield since all this started,’ he explained, ‘but we’re getting ready to move on.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘You probably know what it’s like from your own experiences, you make a damn sound out in the open these days and you find yourselves surrounded by those bloody things out there before you know what’s happening. What with the helicopter and the plane…’
‘You’ve got a plane too?’ Baxter interrupted, amazed.
‘Only a small one. Anyway, with the noise we make we’ve been surrounded by thousands of them since we first got to the airfield.’
‘So where are you planning to go?’ Michael asked.
‘Surely it’s going to be just as bad wherever you end up?’
‘We’ve been all over the bloody place,’ Baxter added,
‘and we’ve not been able to find anywhere safe enough yet.’
‘We spend our time running from crisis to crisis,’ Emma sighed. ‘Never seem to get anywhere worth…’
‘We’ve found an island,’ Chase said, cutting across her.
‘An island?’ she gasped, her mind immediately filling with images of sun-drenched beaches and golden sands.
‘It’s just off the northeast coast,’ she continued to explain. ‘It’s cold, grey and miserable and there’s not much there but it’s a hell of a lot safer than anywhere on the mainland.’
‘How big is it?’ Michael asked quickly, his head beginning to spin with sudden questions. ‘What kind of facilities have you got there? Are there many buildings or do you…?’
‘It’s early days yet,’ Chase answered. ‘We spent a lot of time looking for the right location and we finally think we’ve found it. It’s a little place called Cormansey. It’s about a mile and a half long and a mile wide. We think there were originally about five hundred people living there. There’s one small village where most of them lived, but there are houses and cottages dotted all around the place. There’s an airstrip on the far side of the island and…’
‘What about bodies?’ Michael wondered, desperately trying to contain his mounting interest and to keep his sudden excitement under control. Lawrence explained.
‘We’re planning on getting rid of what’s left of the local population. We’re hoping to fly a few people over each day,’ he said, his voice suddenly a little more tired and slow again. ‘We’ve only been there for a couple of days.
There are six of us there now, I flew three over yesterday morning. That’s how I came to be flying over here.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘We’ve sent some of our strongest people over there to start clearing the land. They’re going to work their way down the length of the island, getting rid of all the bodies they come across. Like Karen says, we think there were only about five hundred people there originally and from what we’ve seen it looks like more than half of them are still lying face down on the ground. As far as we can tell there aren’t any indigenous survivors so that just leaves us with a couple of hundred corpses to get rid of.’
‘Bloody hell,’ mused Baxter in awe. Like everyone else around him he was slowly beginning to come to terms with the implications of what he was hearing. Imagine being somewhere where they were free to move and where there were no bodies. Imagine being somewhere where they could make as much noise as they damn well pleased without fear of the repercussions. It sounded too good to be true. Perhaps it was.
‘Once we think we’ve got enough people over there we’ll start moving into the village,’ Lawrence continued.
