reappeared over the edge.
‘Okay?’ Cooper asked.
‘Okay,’ Juliet replied, forcing herself to look anywhere but down into the mass of rotting faces which stared back at her.
Emma was next. With the nearest bodies just inches away from grabbing hold of him, Cooper supported her relatively slight weight until Juliet had caught hold of her hands from above and had pulled her up onto the roof.
Cooper then turned and scrambled up himself, using the door at the back of the truck to push himself up.
Breathlessly the three survivors stood together on top of the truck. Emma looked down at the relentless crowd of decayed creatures below her. Their anger and ferocity seemed to increase as Lawrence lowered the helicopter down.
‘Get in,’ Cooper shouted, having to yell to make himself heard over the deafening noise. Instinctively crouching down and moving on all fours because of the rotor blades which now seemed perilously close and the wind which threatened to blow them off the roof of the truck, Emma and Juliet crawled towards the aircraft. Lawrence now hovered just inches away, although the distance between the roof of the truck and the helicopter’s nearest landing strut seemed immense. Taking a deep breath Emma stepped across the gap and pulled herself into the back of the aircraft.
Cooper ran down to the front end of the truck and lay down across the width of the cab. He dragged himself further forward and leant down and banged on the half-open window next to Armitage. He could see the back of his head. The exhausted driver was lying across the steering wheel with his face turned away from Cooper.
‘Come on, Steve,’ Cooper pleaded. ‘We’ve done it.
Let’s get you up here.’
Armitage slowly lifted his head, turned to look at Cooper, and then dropped back down again. He closed his eyes.
‘Can’t,’ he gasped, his voice hollow and hoarse and his breathing shallow and intermittent. ‘Can’t do it.’
‘Come on,’ Cooper insisted, although he already suspected that it was pointless. Armitage’s face was grey and ashen.
He shook his head again.
‘Can’t.’
Frustrated, for a second Cooper contemplated jumping down and trying to manhandle the other survivor up onto the roof of the truck. He knew that it would be impossible and pointless. He’d have to climb down to do it and even if he managed to shift Armitage’s considerable weight, the hundreds of bodies still baying for his blood would prevent him, if not both of them, from getting back up to the helicopter.
‘Go,’ Armitage gasped, trying to lift his head again. The light from the helicopter suddenly shifted slightly, illuminating the inside of the cab and allowing Cooper to clearly see the pain in Armitage’s face. His lips were tinged with blue and it was obvious that he was beyond help.
‘Okay, mate,’ he said, reaching in through the window and resting his arm on the other man’s shoulder.
Reluctantly Cooper then stood up and ran the length of the roof to get to the helicopter. Strangely relieved, Armitage closed his eyes again and tried to breathe through the increasing pain until it finally stopped.
‘What about Steve?’ Emma shouted as Cooper scrambled into the helicopter and pulled the door shut behind him. He shook his head and looked down and watched the roof of the truck becoming smaller and smaller as the aircraft quickly climbed away.
Below them the airfield was a solid mass of crazed, decaying bodies.
Almost exactly fifty-nine days since the germ had destroyed almost all of the population of the planet, the final survivors arrived in the air over the island of Cormansey.
Michael had been waiting in the small cottage by the airstrip. Donna and Jack Baxter kept him company although no-one had spoken for what felt like hours.
Finally the oppressive silence was broken by the constant dull thud of the approaching helicopter. The distant sound increased Michael’s uncertainty and nervousness to an almost unbearable level. Almost too afraid to look he went outside and scanned the skies until he finally spotted the aircraft approaching. He watched every last metre of its painfully long descent to the ground and then sprinted the length of the island’s short runway.
Cooper was the first to get out, then Juliet.
Then he saw her.
Michael ran over to Emma and held her. Ignorant to everything else that was suddenly happening around them -
the frenzied and excited activity, the tears for missing friends, the cars which approached from various directions, the cheers and cries of relief and sadness - he buried her face in his chest and held her tightly.
‘Didn’t think you were going to make it over here,’ he whispered.
‘Neither did I,’ she admitted quietly. ‘You found us somewhere decent to live yet?’ she asked, looking up into his tired and haggard-looking face and smiling through her tears.
‘Not yet,’ he answered honestly, ‘but I’m working on it.
I’ll show you a few places later. You can choose where we go.’
In a moment of silence Michael stood next to Emma and watched as she looked around her, trying to take in what she could see of the island. He watched her as she tasted the air and listened to the sounds around her and soaked up the atmosphere. He watched her as she relaxed and he held her as she wept with relief.
Cormansey was a bleak, cold and often unforgiving place, but both of them knew it was as good as it was going to get.
I saw Jack Baxter this morning for the first time in almost two weeks. He came by the house earlier. Told me he’d been out walking. I often see him in the distance, marching on his own across the horizon. He told me he walks circuits of the island to keep himself occupied.
Very few people visit us here. There aren’t many houses more isolated than ours. That was a deliberate move. We both want to stay close to the others, but at the same time we want lives of our own too. Most people have chosen to live in or around Danvers Lye. There are some people here who want to build a close community and who want to live, sleep and eat in each other’s pockets. There are some here who couldn’t survive on their own and who need the closeness of others. We don’t want that. We don’t need that. We’ve tried it already. We’ve lived like that for long enough. That kind of life seems pointless now.
Christ, we could do with having Phil Croft here now.
We’ve struggled since Emma fell pregnant. Other people have tried to support her and help her, but it’s been difficult and we miss his guidance, company and expertise. It was hard in the winter when she first caught, and it will be hard in the autumn when the baby’s born. At least I’ll be able to help more then. At the moment I feel useless. The others have been understanding. They told us about the baby that was born when they were back in the city and what happened to it. We know that the same thing could happen to our child. Our medical facilities here are virtually nonexistent and we didn’t have any option but to go through with the pregnancy, not that either of us would have chosen to do anything else. I pray that our baby will be all right. I talked to Donna about its chances. She said that although the mother of the baby in the city had survived, it was likely that its father had been killed by the germ. She said that maybe the fact that both Emma and I survived will make a difference. I hope that whatever it is that’s kept us both alive had been passed down and will protect our child too.
Jack and I had a long conversation about the future today. I’ve agreed to go back to the mainland with Cooper and some of the others in a few days time. It’ll only be the third time we’ve been back. Providing the weather stays good the plan is for Lawrence to fly us over to the nearest port. We’ll salvage whatever supplies we can and then find a boat of some description and sail back again. There’s hardly any fuel left in the helicopter now. We could try to find more, but we need to look for another way of getting to and from the mainland. We’re going to
