‘Still don’t know how we’re supposed to get to it,’ snapped Armitage.
‘Better find a way quickly,’ Emma yelled suddenly with a new found urgency in her voice.
‘Why?’ demanded Armitage, worried by her sudden change in tone.
‘Because the helicopter’s back.’
Once he was over the airfield Lawrence allowed the helicopter to drift lower, switching on the searchlight and managing to clumsily guide it around the scene. For a while all he could see were the seething bodies and it took him some time to orientate himself and properly identify the dark shapes and outlines of the observation tower and other buildings through the smoke. Conscious that the noise, light and disturbance that he had inevitably caused was again whipping the rancid crowd below into a bloody frenzy, he moved lower still, stopping only when he was level with the top of the observation tower.
He could see survivors. The nearby office building had been destroyed, but he could definitely see other people at the top of the observation tower. He had to look twice to be sure. Could it have been bodies? Had they found a way inside? From his high position there were no signs obvious of any entrance to the building having been compromised.
If the dead had forced their way in he would have expected hundreds of them to have pointlessly crammed themselves inside by now. There didn’t seem to be many people there, and those that he could see were moving with direction and control. It had to be survivors. But how could he hope to reach them?
Cooper’s face appeared at the window, confirming beyond doubt to Lawrence that his return to the mainland had been worthwhile.
‘We have to go outside,’ Emma shouted, suddenly having to raise her voice to make herself heard over the welcome noise of the helicopter. ‘We have to get out of here.’
‘But there is no way out,’ Armitage yelled. ‘We’ve just been through this. We’re surrounded. They’re out the front and they’re round the back and…’
‘Emma’s right,’ Cooper interrupted. ‘We have to find a way out of here and we have to do it now.’
‘Go for the trucks,’ Juliet suggested.
‘I agree,’ Emma said quickly, ‘it’s the best option.
Lawrence will see us moving. If we can get to one of the trucks we can drive through the bodies until we reach somewhere where there are fewer of them. Then he can land and pick us up.’
‘Do we just make a run for it?’
‘It’s not going to be easy,’ Emma replied, looking down at the ground immediately around the base of the building.
‘I think we should try and distract them and get them away from whichever door or window we decide to use to get out. Then maybe just one of us could try to get across and bring the truck back over here.’
Cooper stood behind Emma, thinking carefully. He glanced up and looked outside and across at Lawrence. The helicopter was hovering so close that, despite the drifting smoke, the pilot’s face could clearly be seen. The distance was irrelevant. Cooper thought he might as well have been a hundred miles away for all the good it was doing them.
Lawrence looked understandably agitated. Cooper knew he wouldn’t wait indefinitely for them to make their move.
‘Good God,’ mumbled Juliet. ‘Just look at that.’
She pointed out of the window down at an area of ground which was almost directly beneath the helicopter.
‘What the hell are they doing?’ Armitage asked, crowding forward to try and get a better view.
The four survivors peered down. Lawrence had angled the searchlight below the helicopter and slightly to one side. Whilst many bodies continued to react as the survivors had expected them to, others now were beginning to behave differently. A large number of them ripped and tore at those corpses closest to them, but many others did not. Instead those bodies appeared to be visibly agitated and riled by the noise, light and wind coming from the helicopter hovering a short distance above their decaying heads. Many of them seemed almost to be cowering. It was hard to believe, but some of the bodies were trying to move away from the disturbance.
‘Fucking hell,’ mumbled Cooper.
‘This is it,’ Emma whispered secretively, ‘this is our chance. It’s like you said earlier, they’re changing. They’re finally beginning to wake up, aren’t they? Bloody hell, those things down there are starting to get worried.’
‘Worried?’ Armitage snapped nervously. ‘What the hell are you talking about, worried?’
‘They’re becoming aware of their own limitations,’ she explained. ‘Some of them are starting to realise that we’re capable of causing them a lot more damage than they can do to us. I’m sure that’s why some of them fight. They’re trying to protect themselves.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Might be,’ she said quickly. ‘Whatever the reason, the point is that this might give us more of a chance of getting past them than we thought we had.’
‘How?’ asked Juliet.
‘Use the helicopter as cover. Make as much of a disturbance as we can and try and get Lawrence’s help.
Chances are some of them will disappear and keep out of our way.’
‘Some of them?’
‘The rest will probably still go for us, same as they always do.’
A moment of quiet contemplation followed, disturbed only by the continual noise coming from the helicopter outside. Much as he hated to admit it, Armitage knew that Emma was right. Better to go out there and face five hundred of those bloody things, he thought, than a thousand.
‘We should do it,’ Juliet Appleby announced timidly.
‘Do what exactly?’ Armitage instinctively asked.
‘Shake them up then go out there and kick their bloody backsides,’ Emma answered.
‘Because if we don’t,’ Cooper reminded them, ‘then we won’t be getting into that helicopter and we’ll be stuck here. If we don’t go outside and face them now, then we’ll be facing them when they finally get in here, that’s if we haven’t burned to death already. Not much of a choice, is it?’
Dividing his concentration between piloting the helicopter, watching the survivors and watching the bodies below, Lawrence noticed that Cooper and the others had shifted their attention from looking at him to watching what was happening on the ground. He peered down through small observation panels by his feet and watched as the bodies reacted to his presence. He shifted the helicopter slightly and saw that as the disc of light coming from the searchlight moved, so more shadowy shapes stumbled out of the way as if they expected it to burn or maim them.
Having seen the behaviour of the creatures on the island change similarly, the actions of the diseased corpses surprised him less than they surprised the others trapped at the top of the observation tower. Perhaps if he dropped lower, he thought, then more bodies would move and he might be able to land and pick up the survivors. He tried briefly, but the number of corpses which stood their ground and still reacted violently was more than enough to convince him that course of action was out of the question.
But the presence of the helicopter and the fear (that seemed to be the right word to use) that it seemed to generate amongst the dead was unquestionably important. It would help. It might give the people on the ground a chance, albeit a slight one. Lawrence remembered that the bodies he’d seen acting this way on the island, although quieter and more hesitant than most, had still attacked the survivors eventually when they’d been threatened. The bodies were trying to survive and their most basic instincts drove them to fight when no alternative course of action remained.
From his position above the airfield Lawrence felt uncomfortable and helpless. He had no way of warning the others or telling them what he knew.
Several minutes of frightened inaction passed.
Having stood still and watched and waited for too long, too frightened and unsure to make her move, Emma finally decided that she had to take action. No-one else seemed ready to do it. All the talking in the world wasn’t going to get them away from the airfield and, as Cooper had already pointed out, they had nothing to lose and everything to gain from trying to get away. If they did nothing then their last chance would have gone. The prospect
