‘I don’t know. Maybe if you’d talk to me and tell me what’s wrong I could help. I just want to…’
Michael turned around to face Emma and reached out for her. She was shivering with cold. He gently pulled her across the front seats of the motorhome and held her close.
‘It’s nothing you’ve done,’ he whispered. ‘Believe me, you’re just about the only thing I’m not worrying about at the moment.’
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s just that when I woke up and found you weren’t there I started to think that… You know what it’s like, I couldn’t help thinking that…’
‘I know,’ he interrupted.
Emma pushed her face closer towards Michael’s and curled up on his lap.
‘So what exactly were you thinking about?’ she asked.
He nodded in the direction of the heavy entrance doors which separated the fortunate few inside the base from the immense and relentless gathering of rotting flesh outside.
‘The bodies,’ he answered quietly.
‘What about them?’
He thought for a second.
‘You remember how many were outside when we first arrived here?’
‘Thousands, why?’
‘Jack said he thought there were just as many of them out there today, maybe even more.’
‘I know, I heard him. What’s your point?’
‘My point is that even though we’ve been buried down here for weeks, they’re still managing to find us out.’
‘We knew this was going to happen…’
‘I know.’
‘So?’
‘So if they’ve been able to find us when we’ve been keeping quiet and out of sight, what the hell is going to happen now? What’s going to happen now that those bloody idiots have started going out there with their guns and their flame-throwers and God knows what else?’
Emma squirmed uncomfortably as the implications of what he was saying became clear.
‘So what do you think’s going to happen?’ she asked.
She already thought she knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it from Michael.
‘I think that every last corpse that’s anywhere near here is going to end up outside those doors, trying to get inside.
And then more will come, then more. And more of them means that the military’s precious base is going to be put under increasing pressure to keep functioning. Sooner or later they’ll have to go above ground again and then, when they do, it’ll just make matters worse. Then even more of the fucking things will end up here.’
‘Do you think that’s really going to happen…?’ she started to say.
‘This is inevitable,’ Michael said quietly, his voice low and unemotional. ‘We’ve said it before, it might happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or the day after that. It might happen in the next hour or on the other hand it might not happen for weeks. The one thing I’m sure of is that it will happen eventually.’
‘You on your own, Cooper?’
Cooper shuffled closer to the intercom on the heavy door which separated the main decontamination chamber and the rest of the buried base from the hanger. Well away from most of the rest of the group of survivors, he had been sitting talking to Bernard Heath when they’d become aware of sounds of movement coming from inside the decontamination area. Through a six inch square observation panel he had recognised Jim Franks, just about the last of his ex-colleagues who still dared to risk speaking to him.
‘No, I’ve got Bernard Heath with me,’ Cooper replied, his voice deliberately low. ‘It’s okay. Bernard’s all right.’
A pause.
‘Okay, mate,’ the subdued and disembodied voice said.
Franks and Cooper had known each other for several years and held each other in mutual respect. The rest of Cooper’s former colleagues had, for a number of reasons, either been ordered or had chosen to no longer communicate with him.
Many now felt uneasy around him and distrusted him because he was “out there with them” instead of being “in here with us.” Others thought that being a bona-fide “survivor” somehow made him a different person to the Cooper they had known and served alongside previously.
Those troops who still remained committed and loyal to the military simply feared incurring the wrath of their superiors if they dared speak to him. Others had become completely isolated and withdrawn and just didn’t speak to anyone any longer.
‘How you lot doing in there?’ Cooper asked, huddling closer to the intercom.
‘Not good,’ Franks replied.
‘What’s happening?’
Another brief silence.
‘The men are scared ‘cause no-one knows what’s happening or why it’s happening. And we know we’re on our own here now, so the jokers who are running this place are starting to think they’re in charge of what’s left of the fucking country and they can do what they please. We’re all pretty shook up after what happened outside and it’s getting pretty fucking intense down here.’
‘Did you go outside?’
‘Not this time,’ Franks replied, ‘but it’ll be my turn sooner or later. You boys know better than I do what we’re facing here…’
‘It’s not good,’ whispered Heath.
‘Seems to me it’s fucking awful, never mind “not good”,’ Franks hissed. ‘Jesus Christ, we’ve got people walking round down here talking about fields full of bodies and…’
Cooper interrupted, keen to get an answer to his original question.
‘So what’s happening?’
‘Christ, Cooper, you know what it’s like when you’re getting ready for a fight. You’ve got some blokes who can’t wait for it all to kick off so they can get going, then you’ve got others who spend most of their time crying into their pillows like fucking babies. All that most of us want to do is just get out of this hole, but we keep being told that what’s out there is worse than what’s down here and… and I don’t know what the hell’s going to happen but something’s going to give sooner or later.’
Cooper was worried that Franks had mentioned a fight.
As far as he was concerned a fight in their present position would inevitably mean risking absolutely everything for absolutely nothing.
‘I wish I could give you some good news,’ Cooper sighed, ‘but I’d be lying to you because there’s been no good news since this whole bloody thing started. Believe me though, mate, you’re in the best place you could be.
Make sure you stay down there as long as you can. I’ve told you before, every move you make up here brings hundreds of bodies swarming round you like flies. You might be stuck down there, but at least you’re alive and you’re not having to watch every step that you take. And if you do end up out here, you’ll be trapped in your suit until you get back underground because one breath of outside air and chances are you’ll have fucking had it. My advice is to keep your head down and get through this as best you can because…’
‘You’ve got no fucking idea,’ Franks snapped, raising his voice to a dangerously high level. ‘For Christ’s sake, Cooper, don’t be so fucking naive. You know the kind of people that are down here. There’s only so much of this they’re going to take. There’s only so much I’m going to take…’
‘You don’t have a choice. Go above ground again and…’
‘Try telling that to this lot.’
‘I know how it seems, but you’ve got to…’
‘Remember Carlson?’ Franks’ desperate voice asked.
‘Keith Carlson?’ Cooper answered.
