‘He’s landing.’
Donna allowed herself to look up from the road for an instant. He was right, the helicopter was descending, but she couldn’t see what it was descending towards.
‘Stop the van,’ Harcourt shouted from the back. ‘Stop the van and we’ll find him on foot.’
‘Are you bloody stupid?’ Kilgore protested.
‘It’s a park,’ Baxter said as they passed a momentary gap in the tree-lined fence which ran along the left hand side of the road. ‘She’s right, Donna, stop the van and let’s make a run for it.’
Donna didn’t argue. She was cold and tired and frightened and she wanted this wild and pointless chase through nowhere to be over. She forced the van up onto the pavement and climbed out. A body threw itself at her, almost knocking her to the ground. She quickly regained her balance and pushed the rancid cadaver to one side before following Baxter, Clare and the two soldiers who were already sprinting along the fence, looking for a way into the park.
Now that they were out of the van the sound of the helicopter was suddenly deafening. With his lungs already burning and feeling like they were going to explode with fiery effort, Baxter forced himself to keep moving forward, trying to keep up with the others who were all younger and in far better physical condition than he was. He was being left behind. Being at the back of the pack terrified him but he couldn’t move any faster. He allowed himself a momentary glance over his shoulder and saw bodies shuffling after them. The light was poor but there seemed to be hundreds of them dragging themselves out of the shadows from every direction. He looked forward again and concentrated on following Donna who was just ahead.
He didn’t dare look back a second time, but he felt sure that the bodies would be gaining on him. Christ, they were probably catching up. One might even be about to grab hold of him…
Harcourt had also noticed the bodies around them. The disturbance caused by the van had been enough to drive the corpses into a frenzy. Unsurprisingly the helicopter was having even more of an effect. She took comfort in the fact that the aircraft was so loud and its searchlight so bright that in comparison the five of them frantically running along the pavement would hopefully go unnoticed by the dead masses shuffling ever closer.
‘Through here,’ shouted Clare as she reached an open wrought iron gate. She banked left and ran into the park and was immediately able to see the helicopter in all its magnificent glory. It hovered imperiously some ten feet above the ground.
‘Has he seen us?’ Donna asked as she tripped through overlong grass which had been left to grow wild for weeks.
Conditioned by circumstance to keep quiet and not shout, she began to wave her arms furiously, hoping that the pilot would see her and respond. At first nothing happened. The brilliant white searchlight lit up almost all of the park and illuminated crowds of shuffling cadavers swarming towards the helicopter from the darkness in every direction. The speed of the survivors made them easy for Lawrence to see.
He couldn’t risk setting down until they were almost directly underneath him. At the last possible moment he dropped the final few feet down to the ground.
‘One in the front with me and the rest of you in the back,’ Lawrence yelled over the deafening engine and rotor blade roar as Harcourt yanked the helicopter door open.
‘Strap yourselves in if you can, just hold on if you can’t.’
The pilot’s voice was barely audible over the noise.
Clare and the two soldiers clambered in, followed almost thirty seconds later by Baxter. Donna waited for him at the side of the helicopter and virtually had to push him up into his seat. Dizzy with exhaustion, he slumped back and sucked in long, cool mouthfuls of damp evening air as she slammed the door shut in his face.
‘Come on,’ Lawrence hissed under his breath. The bodies were damn close now. He could see the decayed faces of the nearest dead staring back at him.
Donna scrambled into the front and pulled the door closed behind her. By the time her belt was buckled and she looked up they were airborne again. On the ground where they had just been the bodies converged and reached up pointlessly towards the rapidly disappearing machine.
The return flight to the airfield took less than fifteen minutes to complete. The silence and stillness when they touched down was overwhelming and filled the five new arrivals with cool relief. Oblivious to the thousands upon thousands of cold, dead eyes which stared at them from beyond the other side of the fence in the near distance, Baxter, Clare, Donna, Harcourt and Kilgore stumbled wearily out of the helicopter and followed Lawrence across the tarmac. In tired silence he led them towards a collection of dark buildings - a large, half empty and skeletal hangar, an observation tower and several smaller buildings which had once been used as offices, waiting rooms and public lounges. Baxter was impressed. The place looked better equipped and more substantial than he’d ever dared imagine it might be. It seemed to have been an unusual cross between a small airport and a flying club and he guessed that it had probably been used for private planes, chartered flights and pilot training. He noticed the prison van and personnel carrier parked a short distance away. The presence of the other vehicles came as an enormous relief.
The rest of the group had also made it safely to the airfield.
A dull light was shining out from the top of the observation tower. The survivors followed Lawrence into the building, across a short open area and up two flights of steep, echoing stairs. The events of the last few hours had been physically and mentally exhausting and Baxter in particular struggled to keep moving forward. After what felt like miles of walking and an endless climb they reached the top floor of the building and entered a large room through a pair of heavy double doors. Inside the room was light and warm and was buzzing with noise and conversation, a stark contrast to the cold and enforced silence of the world outside the building. The sight of familiar faces dotted around filled the three weary survivors and two soldiers with a sudden surge of energy again.
‘You finally made it then,’ Cooper laughed from across the room. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Piss off!’ replied Baxter, managing a tired grin. ‘We took a couple of wrong turns, that was all!’
‘Just a couple? Bloody hell, we’d almost given up on you. We’ve been here for hours!’
Donna stood in the doorway and soaked up the atmosphere. The mass of people around her - both those she knew and the twenty or so faces she didn’t recognise - seemed relaxed and at ease. She too felt suddenly calmer as if the countless stresses and problems that continually plagued her had begun to be stripped away. Was it because she’d finally reached the airfield that she felt that way, or was she just relieved that Cooper and the others were safe?
Whatever the reason, she hadn’t been in such a comfortable and welcoming environment for a long, long time. In fact, now that she stopped to think about it, she hadn’t felt free like this since the days before the disaster. For a few precious moments the overwhelming relief was such that she couldn’t move. The nightmare outside suddenly seemed a thousand miles away. She stood there, overcome and rooted to the spot, feeling full of positive but undeniably painful emotion.
‘You okay?’ a voice asked from beside her. It was Emma.
‘I’m fine,’ she answered quickly, suddenly self-conscious. ‘I’m sorry, I was just…’
Although Donna had stopped mid-sentence, Emma already understood what she was trying to say. She too had experienced the same bewildering range of emotions when she’d first arrived at the airfield.
‘This is really good,’ Emma continued. ‘These people have really got themselves sorted out here.’
‘Looks that way…’
‘You won’t believe some of the things they’ve been telling us. You know, when we first saw the helicopter this morning I knew it was going to be important, but I didn’t realise just how important. None of us had time to stop and think about it, did we? Christ, these people have been up and down the whole bloody country. They’ve seen other bases like the one Cooper came from and…’
‘I know, I heard Lawrence talking earlier. So how come there’s so few of them then?’ Donna wondered, sitting down next to Emma.
‘Suppose they’ve just been taking the same approach to all this as we have,’ Emma answered, thinking on her feet.
‘Mike and I decided right from the start that we couldn’t afford to spend all our time looking round for other survivors. We knew we had to forget about everyone else and concentrate on getting through this ourselves. Looks like these people have spent their time doing that too.’
