frantic speed at which the van was travelling. With bodies constantly marauding nearby they had no option but to keep moving quickly. It had only taken a couple of wrong turns to confuse and completely disorientate the survivors.
‘Haven’t we been down here before?’ Clare mumbled.
‘How could we have been here before?’ Donna demanded angrily. ‘For God’s sake, we’ve been driving straight for the last ten minutes. We haven’t turned round.
How the hell could we have been here before?’
‘Sorry, I just thought…’
‘We took two left turns and one right, remember? Since then I haven’t done anything except drive straight. Now shut up and let me concentrate.’
‘Take it easy on her,’ Baxter whined, ‘she’s only trying to help.’
‘If it wasn’t for you and your bloody directions we wouldn’t need help.’
‘Come on, let’s not go there again. We both screwed up.
I got it wrong and you got it wrong and now we’re…’
‘Now we’re in a real bloody mess because…’
‘I still say we should try and find somewhere to stop for a minute or two to try and work out where we’ve gone wrong,’ Kelly Harcourt suggested, doing her best to end the pointless arguments. ‘All we need to do is…’
‘We can’t stop,’ Donna explained, cutting across her.
‘For Christ’s sake, don’t you understand anything yet? This place is crawling with bodies. We can’t risk not moving.’
‘But why not?’ the soldier pressed, her voice calm and level in comparison to the others. ‘Seems to me we can either stop now and take a chance or just keep driving round in circles all bloody night until we run out of fuel and end up stopping anyway.’
Donna didn’t respond.
‘Maybe she’s right,’ Baxter said after a few long seconds had passed. ‘We should find somewhere to park the van until we’re sure of where we’re going again. We don’t have to get out or anything. Even if a hundred bodies manage to find us, if we keep quiet then they’ll disappear off before long.’
‘Bloody hell, Jack,’ Donna sighed as she steered round the rubble and other scattered remains of a shop, the front of which had been decimated by an out of control ambulance. ‘How naive are you? All it takes is for a couple of those things to start banging and hammering on the van and we’ll have bloody hundreds of them around us in no time. They don’t just lose interest and turn round and disappear anymore, remember?’
Baxter didn’t answer. He just sat in his seat and looked out into the darkness around them feeling frightened, frustrated and slightly humiliated. He returned his attention to the map in front of him and tried again to work out where they were. He hated travelling. He began to think he’d even be prepared to take his chances on foot with the remains of the decaying population outside just to be able to escape from the volatile confines of this damn van.
‘Find a landmark,’ Harcourt suggested.
‘What?’ Clare mumbled.
‘I said we should find a landmark,’ she repeated, clinging onto the side of the van as Donna swerved and weaved down another cluttered road. ‘We need to try and find something recognisable so that we can orientate ourselves to the map.’
‘It’s pitch black,’ Donna snapped. ‘How the hell are we supposed to find a fucking landmark when we can’t see anything?’
Hoping for inspiration, she turned left and drove down another narrow street. More residential in appearance than most that they had so far driven along, here more cars seemed to be parked than had crashed, perhaps indicating that it had not been a particularly busy throughway. On either side of the road were houses; very dark, ordinary and unremarkable Victorian terraced houses. The relative normality of the scene managed to silence the raised voices and bring a temporary respite to the relentless arguments. It had been a long time since any of the survivors or soldiers had found themselves anywhere so inoffensive, unobtrusive and reassuringly familiar. For a few seconds Baxter’s fear and nervousness gave way to a stinging, stabbing pain and a desperate sadness as the ordinary sights which suddenly surrounded them forced him to again remember all that he had lost.
‘What about a church?’ suggested Harcourt, pointing out the silhouette of a large and imposing building nestled behind the row of houses to their right.
Resigned to the fact that they were going to have to take a chance and stop, Donna drove quickly towards the church. Two right turns in quick succession and they were there. She steered the van down a narrow service road which bent round to the left before opening out into a small rectangular car park. In front of them, and slightly to the left, was the church, on the other side a school.
‘We going to stop out here or take a chance inside?’
Harcourt asked from the back. She turned and peered out through the rear window. A single body was tripping awkwardly down the service road after them. Contrary to what Donna thought, the soldier was quickly beginning to understand that although insignificant on its own, the body would inevitably bring more of the damn things to the scene in no time.
‘Inside,’ Baxter suggested, leaning forward and looking directly at Donna for a reaction. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound. Come on, this place looks pretty quiet and you’ve been sat behind the wheel for hours.’
‘Everywhere’s quiet, you idiot,’ she moaned. ‘Doesn’t mean it’s safe though, does it? We’re putting our necks on the line here for no reason…’
Donna didn’t want to move, but she didn’t want to sit outside, exposed and vulnerable, either. Her resistance was instinctive. As she stared up at the front of the church she thought long and hard. She had to admit that it did make sense to try and make the most of this unexpected break in the journey.
‘To hell with it,’ Baxter whispered, ‘our necks are on the line whatever we do. Let’s do it.’
‘Okay,’ she sighed reluctantly as she watched the solitary body approaching the van. Exhausted, she pushed herself out of her seat and clambered out. The three survivors and two soldiers sprinted over to the dark school building and quickly disappeared inside, leaving the body to crash clumsily into the side of the van and then turn and stumble after them.
The airfield was close. Cooper knew that they were near, not just because Guest had been talking constantly and with renewed nervousness for the last ten minutes, but also because there were suddenly many more bodies around than there had been previously. The city was behind them and the road they now followed ran between wide, open fields. All around he could see dark, stumbling figures.
Some were distracted briefly by the noise made by the trucks carrying the remaining survivors, but most continued to shuffle steadily forward in the same general direction as the two vehicle convoy was moving. With a lack of any other obvious distractions nearby it was logical to assume that the living and the dead were all heading towards the same destination.
‘How far?’ Michael asked from the back of the personnel carrier.
‘Just a couple of miles now I think,’ Guest replied.
‘How do we get in when we get there?’
Michael’s question was sensible but no-one answered.
Guest and Cooper exchanged momentary glances before returning their attention to the maps and the road respectively. Michael slumped back in his seat next to Emma. He hadn’t really expected any response. As foolish as it might now have seemed, getting access to the airfield hadn’t been something that had been discussed at any great length with Lawrence and Chase. The two airborne survivors had been noncommittal and vague about this end of the journey, telling the others that they would know when they arrived and that they’d make sure they had a clear passage to safety. From the distance and relative comfort of the warehouse hours earlier it had seemed reasonable to believe them. Now, however, as they rapidly approached their final destination and the crowds of cadavers which would inevitably be waiting there, nerves and doubt were beginning to take hold.
‘So how are we going to get inside?’ Emma whispered, taking care not to talk too loudly.
‘No idea,’ he grunted in reply.
Michael’s concern increased tenfold as they followed a bend round in the road and, for the first time, were able to see the airfield in the distance. Located in the middle of a wide plain which the road they followed now
