The group nodded and mumbled tired and subdued acknowledgments as they struggled to stand their ground against the wind.
‘New faces?’
‘This lot joined us yesterday,’ he explained. ‘Remember I told you about the journey we did over here a couple of days back when we saw that crowd of bodies? That was these guys. They’d been holed-up for a while in some military base or other. Had some trouble and ended up having to make a break for it…’
‘You can say that again,’ Guest interrupted.
‘…Karen and I managed to track them down.’
Michael stood next to the helicopter with his arms folded across his chest, looking around anxiously and only half-listening to the conversation. He felt uneasy. It wasn’t just the grim conditions and unfamiliar surroundings that concerned him, he felt on edge because of the fact that they were standing out in the open, exposed and defenceless.
Were there really so few bodies around here that it didn’t matter? And what had the woman meant when she’d said they’d been quieter than expected?
‘Come on,’ shouted Brigid, ‘let’s get inside.’
The survivors began to unload their bags and supplies from the back of the helicopter and threw them into the jeep as Lawrence secured the aircraft. Disorientated and slow to react, the three new arrivals squeezed uncomfortably into the back of the vehicle. Their senses suddenly overloaded with questions, emotions, random thoughts and sheer mental exhaustion, they sat in collective silence as Brigid started the jeep, turned it around and drove back down the runway.
‘Been keeping yourself busy, Brig?’ Lawrence asked.
‘I always do,’ she replied. ‘Anyway, what about you?
Everything all right back on the mainland?’
‘Okay,’ he answered, ‘pretty much the same as when you left really. There are a few more of us now, that’s all.’
‘You going to be able to get Keele to fly that plane over here soon?’
‘I bloody well hope so. I’m sick of doing all the donkey work. Christ, the number of times I’ve flown backwards and forwards between the airfield and this bloody island…’
‘Don’t make it sound like such an ordeal,’ she laughed, leaning forward and wiping condensation from the windscreen with the back of her hand. ‘You love it when you’re here.’
‘I do,’ he agreed. ‘It’s going back to that dead place that I can’t handle.’
A narrow dirt track curved away from the end of the airstrip and disappeared between two low, dune-like hills.
Brigid drove onto the rough track and followed it round to the right. Sandwiched uncomfortably between Guest and Talbot, Michael looked out through the windscreen and could see that they were getting closer to the billowing cloud of smoke he’d seen from the other end of the runway.
He was about to ask where they were going when they rounded another corner and pulled up behind the whitewashed cottage which had been visible from the air when they’d come in to land. A short, athletic-looking man was stood outside, pumping up the tyres of another car. He stopped what he was doing and looked up as the jeep approached.
‘Home,’ Brigid said as she turned off the engine. ‘What you doing, Richard? Coming in or going straight back?’
‘I’m knackered. I’ve told the others I’m stopping here tonight,’ he answered. ‘There’s not a lot of point trying to get back today. I’ll wait until morning. I’d rather stay here anyway.’
Once Guest had moved Michael was able to clamber out of the jeep. He stretched his legs. Although short and over quickly, the journey had been cramped and uncomfortable.
The man who had been working on the other car walked over to him and held out his hand. Michael shook it.
‘Harry Stayt,’ the man said brightly. ‘How you doing?’
‘Good,’ he replied, still a little subdued. ‘I’m Michael.
This looks like quite a place you’ve found here. I didn’t think that I’d get to see anywhere like this again…’
To his embarrassment Michael found that talking coherently had suddenly become ridiculously difficult. This was such a quiet, ordinary and unremarkable place and yet he was struggling to take everything in. It wasn’t the location that had affected him and it wasn’t the physical appearance of the island (which was very different to the decayed land he’d left behind). It was the atmosphere and the attitude of the people he’d so far met that had taken him by surprise. They seemed to be amazingly relaxed and at ease. They were outside, talking freely, unconcerned by the level of their voices and not looking constantly over their shoulders.
‘I tell you,’ Stayt said, ‘this place is the business. As soon as we got here I knew it. Once we get it cleared up and get everyone else out here we’ll be set up for life.’
Michael didn’t answer. Instead he just stood still and listened and breathed in the air. Apart from the occasional waft of smoke from the fire nearby everything smelled relatively pure and fresh. The sickly stench of death and decay so prevalent across the rest of the world had much less of an impact here. It was still there, but it was weaker and more diffuse than he was used to. In comparison to the heavy, suffocating, disease-ridden air he had become used to breathing, the air on the island was the purest he could ever remember tasting.
‘Is there much left to do?’ he asked, finally responding to Stayt’s earlier comment.
‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘All that’s left now is the big one.’
‘The big one?’
‘Danvers Lye.’
‘What the hell’s that?’
‘The village. They have told you, haven’t they? We’re going to clear the village.’
‘They told us about it. When?’
‘Next couple of days probably. We might even try and make a start tomorrow now there’s a few more of us here.’
Michael became aware of the sound of another engine approaching. He took a few steps to his right to look around the side of the cottage and saw that a road stretched out away from the front of the building. A pickup truck was moving quickly towards them. The truck drove past the cottage and carried on towards the source of the smoke a short distance away.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
‘Bruce Fry and Jim Harper,’ Stayt answered. ‘They’ve been cleaning up.’
‘Cleaning up?’
Stayt nodded his head in the direction in which the truck had been travelling. Michael followed him as he walked towards another low hill. He heard the sound of the engine stop as they climbed up to the top of the gentle rise. Below them was a natural hollow, the base of which had been filled with a smouldering bonfire. The truck had stopped on the other side of the dip.
‘It’s the only sensible way of doing this really,’ Stayt explained as they watched the two men climb out of the truck.
‘Doing what?’
Fry and Harper, dressed in protective boiler suits, got out of the truck and walked round to the back, acknowledging Stayt and Michael when they noticed them watching. With rough, gloved hands they began to drag bodies from a pile on the back of the vehicle and then threw them unceremoniously onto the flames.
‘These are mostly the ones we’ve found lying around.
We’ve got rid of about thirty of them so far,’ Stayt explained as he turned round and began to walk back towards the cottage, ‘only another few hundred to go.
Actually, they burn pretty well.’
‘What?’
‘Easier to chop up than firewood too,’ he laughed as he walked away. ‘I can see us sitting in front of the fire in winter with a basket of arms and legs to burn instead of logs!’
‘Sick bastard,’ Michael muttered. He wasn’t relaxed enough yet to appreciate Stayt’s humour. He stood and
