of a relatively safe and secure future with Michael was too great a prize to risk throwing away. She had to do something.
‘Where you going?’ Cooper shouted as she turned and pushed through the doors and began to clatter down the staircase.
‘To Cormansey,’ she shouted back. ‘What about you?’
Suddenly feeling forced into action, Juliet, Armitage and Cooper followed close behind. For all her sudden movement and intent, it was clear that Emma didn’t have a plan. They found her at the bottom of the staircase, looking around hopefully for inspiration.
‘What now?’ Juliet asked.
Through the bitter-tasting, wispy smoke which had seeped inside, Armitage noticed the light leaking in from under the front entrance to the building. A mixture of the natural first light of day and the harsh artificial illumination coming from the helicopter, he cautiously moved towards it. Clambering carefully over the tables and chairs which he and Cooper had earlier used to block the entrance, he peered out through a narrow crack between the double doors. There were still an uncomfortably large number of bodies milling around out there, but their numbers in the light from the helicopter were considerably more diffuse now. He looked up at the aircraft hanging in the air above them. Lawrence seemed to have worked out what was happening. Armitage couldn’t be completely sure, but the pilot seemed to be deliberately aiming his light towards the door.
‘I reckon we should make a run for it,’ he suggested, his sudden positive attitude meeting with surprise from the others. ‘We should do it now.’
‘We can’t risk just throwing the doors open and going out there,’ Emma protested. ‘What if we get split up? What happens when we get over to the truck? Do we just stand there and wait for you to open it up?’
‘Worse than that,’ Juliet added, ‘if we open the doors and we all go out there, then that leaves this place wide open. We’ll have no way back if anything goes wrong.’
‘We need to get the truck over here,’ Cooper said. ‘One of us needs to get over to it then get it back here to pick the rest of us up.’
The sound of the helicopter was deafening and seemed to be amplified at the bottom of the staircase by the long, thin shape of the building itself. Above the mechanical noise the occasional sound of bodies slamming against the walls, doors and windows could be heard. The longer the survivors remained silent, the louder the sound outside seemed to become. Although the helicopter seemed to be keeping some of the creatures at bay, its position next to the observation tower was also drawing more of them closer.
Armitage couldn’t stand it any longer. He was generally a quiet man who was content to sit and wait and watch rather than act, but, occasionally, the pressure of a situation proved too much and forced him to take action. It had happened before back in the city when he’d left the safety of the university complex to help collect transport for the group. It was happening again now.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said suddenly.
‘What?’ asked Cooper, surprised.
‘I said I’ll do it,’ the burley man repeated before he had chance to talk himself out of volunteering. ‘Might as well.’
‘You sure?’
‘No.’
Cooper moved forward and looked through the narrow gap in the doors that Armitage had been looking through just a few seconds earlier. His view was limited, but he could clearly see the prison truck on the other side of the runway where it had been left. It wasn’t going to be easy to reach.
‘It’s got to be a couple of hundred metres away,’ he whispered, still looking out through the gap, ‘and there are a couple of hundred bodies in your way. Think you can make it?’
‘I can do it,’ Armitage answered. ‘Listen, with enough of those things snapping at my heels, I could run a bloody marathon!’
Cooper nodded and then started moving the tables and chairs which were blocking the doors.
‘When you get out there,’ he said as he worked, looking back over his shoulder at the other man, ‘you just put your head down and run, understand? Keep moving until you reach the truck. Don’t stop for anything.’
‘I’m not going to.’
Armitage nervously turned round to look at Emma and Juliet as Cooper continued to clear the door. Both women tried to think of something to say but, overcome with nerves and emotion, neither of them were able to speak.
‘Ready?’ Cooper asked as he dragged the last table away. Armitage turned back towards the door.
‘Ready,’ he answered.
Cooper nodded. He took a deep, nervous breath.
‘Go for it.’
Armitage pushed the doors open and burst out into the cold morning. The light which poured down from the helicopter and saturated the immediate vicinity was momentarily blinding and the unexpected force of the wind bearing down from the aircraft threatened to knock him off his feet. The suffocating smell of burning flesh filled his lungs. For a single disorientated second he stood still and stared at the truck on the other side of the runway. His view was relatively clear and, for an instant, the distance he had to cover seemed reassuringly short. But then he glanced to his left and then to his right and saw that there were bodies all around him. Some remained cowering in the shadows, others began to quickly converge on him from all directions. The sound of the door being pulled shut behind him - barely audible over the constant noise from the helicopter above - prompted him to move.
‘Shit,’ he cursed as the nearest body reached out for him. It’s hands were bony and hard with much of the putrefied flesh having long since been worn and rotted away. Jogging slowly away from the observation tower, and trying desperately to pick up some much needed speed, Armitage grabbed the skeletal figure by the neck and swung it around, sending it flying into a group of four more ragged cadavers and knocking them down like skittles.
He looked ahead again and tried to regain his focus on the truck. Where before he’d seemed to have a clear passage, now a myriad of shuffling figures crisscrossed ahead of him. More vicious hands lashed out, one catching his cheek and tearing three long cuts from just under his left eye and down to his chin. Suddenly pumped full of adrenaline, fear and stinging pain, Armitage again forced himself to ignore the bodies all around him and keep moving forward. His mouth was dry and his heart was thumping like it was about to explode but he knew that he had to keep moving. He lowered his shoulder as two more corpses crossed his path. Charging through the pair of them he smashed one away in either direction.
Almost halfway there.
A heavy and unfit man, Armitage’s right knee was hurting badly as a result of the sudden stress he was putting his body under. He knew that he had no option but to keep running through the pain, but every time his foot hit the ground a piercing, shooting pain ran along the length of his leg from his knee to his backside. The pathways and grass under his feet had now given way to the harder tarmac surface of the runway and he knew that he had almost reached the truck. The ground was littered with the random remains of corpses which had been burnt or brought down and torn apart by others and he trod heavily on one which had fallen onto its back. His boot smashed through the rib cage and sent the rotten remains of internal organs flying in every direction. As he frantically tried to pull his foot clear he tripped and fell and in seconds bodies had swarmed all over him.
‘Fucking hell,’ Cooper yelled from the observation tower as he watched through the crack in the door. More and more bodies piled on top of the helpless truck driver, quickly burying him under a mound of constantly moving, decaying flesh.
‘Jesus,’ Emma wailed, looking out through a small window nearby and taking care not to be seen from outside.
Cooper moved to open the door.
‘Cooper, don’t…’ Juliet screamed instinctively.
‘I can’t just leave him out there…’
‘Wait,’ Emma snapped. She pushed her face against the window. She could see movement from the bottom of the pile of bodies. Armitage was still fighting. High above him Lawrence had moved the helicopter round so that the searchlight was bearing down on him directly. The sudden illumination caused many of the bodies still lurching towards the disturbance to turn and trip away in other directions.
