Purification

Prologue

Bodies.

Thousands upon thousands of cold, rancid, decaying bodies once spread across almost the entire length and width of the dead land but now crammed into the space of just a few square miles. Relentless, vicious and unstoppable shells. Creatures without direction. Creatures without purpose. Savage, instinct-driven, insect-ridden carcasses.

Empty, rotting, skeletal husks which had once each had individual identities and lives and reasons to exist but which were now nothing more than emotionless collections of tattered rag, grey-green greasy flesh, withered muscle and brittle bone.

In little more than a few seconds the lives of each one of these pitiful, tortured things had been ended. Forty-seven days ago, without warning or explanation, the disease had struck and killed billions. The most brutal and unforgiving infection ever to have cursed the face of the planet tore through the defenceless population with unstoppable speed and ferocity, leaving only an unfortunate few unaffected.

Now, more than a month and a half later, the full effects of the deadly germ were still making themselves known.

At the furthest edge of a cold, wet and generally featureless field, the dishevelled carcass of what had once been an affluent fifty-three year old investment banker lifted its dark, clouded eyes. Surrounded on all sides by hundreds of similarly bedraggled and featureless cadavers, the remains of the once powerful, wealthy and well-respected man shuffled awkwardly forward, slipping and sliding through churned mud, and lifted its tired arms and grabbed clumsily at those bodies which stood in its way.

The body didn’t know what drew it to the field, it didn’t know why it was there, it didn’t know what it wanted, it just knew that it had to be there. Survivors. Although it didn’t know what they were, it could hear them and feel them. They were different. Buried underground deep beneath the creature’s feet they hid in fear and attempted to salvage some kind of life for themselves in the unnatural semi-darkness of their subterranean base. But it was impossible for them to exist without giving their location away. The world had become a lifeless, empty place, and the sounds made by the people underground echoed relentlessly through the fragile silence. The heat they produced burned like a fire. In the cold, vacuous and featureless land they attracted the corpses to them like moths round an incandescent flame.

The disease - if that really was what had caused all of this to happen - had dealt around a third of its victims a blow of unimaginable cruelty. All of those affected had been killed within seconds of infection. Most corpses - the fortunate majority - remained motionless and inert and simply rotted away where they had fallen. The remainder, however, had been sentenced to an unnaturally prolonged existence of relentless suffering. The germ had spared a key area of these creatures’ brains. Somehow unaffected, a spark of primordial instinct had survived the disease, leaving the bodies physically dead but still compelled to move; lifeless but incessantly animated. And as the flesh which covered these lurching, stumbling creatures had rotted and decayed, so the unaffected region of the brain had grown in strength and had continued to drive them forward. As the brain slowly recovered basic senses had gradually returned, then a degree of control. Finally something which resembled base emotion gripped the cadavers and forced the desperate figures to keep moving.

They didn’t know what they were or where they were.

They didn’t know why they existed and they didn’t know what they wanted. They had no need to eat or drink or rest or sleep or respire. Sentenced to spend every minute of every day shuffling pointlessly across the empty landscape, even the slightest sound or movement was enough to attract their limited but deadly attention.

As the days had passed since their initial infection, so the behaviour of the bodies had continued to slowly change. Apathy and emptiness began to be replaced.

Restricted by their steadily worsening physical condition, the hordes of the dead became violent and increasingly aggressive. They did not have decision making capabilities, only the desire to try and silence their individual pain and protect themselves. In the empty, featureless vacuum above ground they gathered en masse around every disturbance or distraction, no matter how slight or insignificant, hoping to find release. Only time and decay would end the torment, but the bodies had no way of knowing whether such release would ever come.

What had begun as a few random corpses stumbling upon the underground military base by chance had now grown to be a massive crowd of vast, almost incalculable proportions. The appearance and movement of the creatures inevitably attracted more and more of them from the surrounding area. Now, several days since any of the soldiers had been above ground, almost one hundred thousand bodies fought to get nearer and nearer to the impassable bunker entrance.

The dead investment banker’s way forward was blocked by more bodies. It lifted its emaciated arms again and then, with unexpected force, lashed out at the figure immediately in front. Soft, putrefying flesh was ripped from bone as the decaying office-worker tore the unprotected body in front of it apart. The sudden violence rapidly spread to the nearest cadavers on all sides and then rippled out further into the enormous crowd before petering out again as quickly as it had begun. All across this massive, decomposing gathering in random, isolated pockets the same thing was happening, triggered by each body’s instinctive need to ensure its self-preservation.

Apart from the continual shuffling and fighting of the bodies and the wind blowing through the swaying branches of nearby trees, the world around the buried base appeared motionless and frozen. Even birds had learnt not to fly too close to the creatures because of the reaction their darting movements and fleeting appearances invariably caused. In spite of the fact that the dead were individually weak and clumsy, what remained of the rest of the world instinctively feared them and despised them.

Deep underground in the military base, almost three hundred survivors cowered helplessly and waited for something - anything - to happen. Despite being physically stronger than the dead, and even though they had control, intelligence and power on their side, they were afraid to move. It was obvious to all of the lost and terrified souls trapped in the concrete maze below the fields and hills that the sheer number of bodies on the surface would soon be too much for them. Their options were desperately limited.

They could sit and wait, but no-one knew what they’d be waiting for. They could go above ground and fight, but what would that achieve? What use was open space and fresh air to the military? The disease still hung heavy in the contaminated air. Each one of the soldiers and their officers knew that a single breath would, in all probability, be enough to kill them. And the survivors immune to the disease who also sheltered there knew that they would fare no better from such a confrontation either. Any attempt to clear the bodies from above the base might help in the short term, but the noise and movement such an act would inevitably cause would doubtless result in thousands upon thousands more cadavers being drawn nearer to the shelter.

Below the surface the survivors and the military were forced to remain apart. The base was reasonably well-equipped and technologically advanced. Designed to cope with the expected after-effects of chemical, nuclear or biological attack, the air pumped through the underground levels was pure and free from infection. The survivors, however, were not. Decontamination had been half-heartedly attempted, but the woefully ill-prepared military commanders, scientists and advisers who controlled the base had known from the start that it had been a futile exercise. The germ could be washed away from equipment and from the soldier’s protective suits, but the survivors were riddled with infection. They had been breathing the contaminated air constantly for more than a month and a half. Virtually every cell in their bodies must surely have carried the deadly contagion and, whilst it had no effect on them, even the slightest exposure might be sufficient to start the deadly chain reaction which would inevitably lay waste to the soldiers and contaminate the base.

Despite their sizeable arsenal of weapons and the huge psychological and intellectual advantage which they had over the dead, the soldiers and survivors alike knew that they were trapped. The men, women and children sheltering underground lived with a constant sense of uncomfortable claustrophobia and despair. The military occupied almost all of the complex (everything beyond the entrance to the decontamination chambers) with the thirty-seven survivors having to exist in the main hanger and a few adjacent storage, utility and maintenance rooms. Space, light, heat and comfort was severely limited. After fighting through the hell above ground, however, the limitations of the military facility were readily accepted and hugely appreciated. The alternatives which awaited them on the surface were unthinkable.

1

Emma Mitchell

It’s almost two o’clock.

I think it’s two o’clock in the morning, but I’m not completely sure. There’s no way of telling whether it’s day or night down here and, if I’m honest, it doesn’t matter.

Whatever time of day or night it is, it’s always dark. There are always some people sleeping and there are always other people awake. There are always people gathered in groups and huddles talking in secret whispers about nothing. There are always people crying, moaning, fighting and arguing.

There are always soldiers moving through the decontamination chambers or coming into the hanger to check, double-check and triple-check their stockpiled equipment and machinery.

I can’t sleep.

I’ve been lying here with Michael for the best part of two hours now. I always seem to feel guilty when we’ve been together like this and I can’t clear my head enough to switch off and sleep like he can. I wish I could. We haven’t done anything wrong. We’ve made love together four times in the three weeks since we’ve been down here and each time he’s slept for hours afterwards. When I ask him why he tells me that when we’ve been together like this he feels more human and complete than he does the rest of the time.

He tells me that what we do makes him feel the way he used to feel before all of this happened.

Sex is different now. In many ways it’s sad and it reminds me of everything I’ve lost. In other ways it helps me to realise what I’ve still got. I still get scared when I think about how easy it would be to lose Michael and how lucky I am that we managed to find each other and stay together. Sometimes I’m not sure if I sleep with him because I love him, or whether it’s because we just happen to be there for each other. There’s no room for romance and other long forgotten feelings anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever have another orgasm. I can’t imagine being relaxed or aroused enough to feel those kind of emotions again. When we’re together there’s no seduction or foreplay. All I want is to feel Michael inside me. I need the intimacy. He is the only positive part of my world. Everything is cold except his touch.

When we were above ground I hated this motorhome. I was trapped in here and it was all we had. Now it’s all I want. It’s where I spend most of my time. This is our little private space where we can shut ourselves away from the rest of the people we’re trapped down here with. We’re lucky to have this privacy and I appreciate it. The rest of them have no choice but to spend all day, every day with each other. I wonder whether they resent us? Even though I know they’re probably not interested, sometimes I think that they do. I’ve seen the way they look at us when we’re together.

I’m cold. I don’t know what the temperature’s like deeper underground on the other side of the decontamination chambers, but out here in the hanger it’s always freezing. You can usually see your breath in front of your face. The air is motionless and still although sometimes you can smell the decay and disease outside.

You’d think we’d be used to the smell of death by now, but none of us are. Yesterday I overheard a couple of soldiers talking about the air on the lower levels of the bunker. They said it’s getting thinner. They said there are so many bodies above ground now that the vents and exhaust shafts around the base are gradually becoming blocked by the sheer weight of corpses crammed around them. Cooper told me he expected that to happen sooner or later. He said that most of the vents are scattered over a couple of square miles. It scares me to think just how many bodies there must be above us now for them to be having such an effect.

Christ, there must be hundreds of thousands of those damn things up there.

Supplies are coming in.

Two suited soldiers have just emerged from the decontamination chambers to deliver our rations. The military don’t give us much, just enough to survive. I guess they’ve only got so much for themselves and I’m surprised we get anything. There’s going to come a point when the provisions they’ve hoarded in their storerooms run out.

Maybe it won’t matter by then. Donna Yorke keeps talking about how it’s going to be different in a few months time.

She says that by then the bodies will have rotted away to almost nothing and we’ll be able to live on the surface again because they’ll no longer be a threat to us. I hope she’s right. I believe her. I’ve no reason not to. We can’t stay down here forever.

Whatever happens to us the future is far less certain for the soldiers. Every time I see any of them I can’t help thinking about what’s going to happen to them. The air might still be filled with infection six years from now, never mind in six months. And how will they know if it ever becomes clear again? Are any of them going to be brave or stupid enough to take off their suits, put their heads above ground and risk breathing in? You can’t see much behind their protective masks but every so often you catch a flash of stifled emotion in their eyes. They’re as scared as we are. They don’t trust us. Sometimes I think they hate and despise us almost as much as they do the bodies. Maybe they’re keeping us here because they want to use us? Perhaps they’re planning on forcing us to scour the surface to stock up their stores and provide them with food and water?

I put on Michael’s thick winter coat and walk over to the nearest window to get a better view of what’s happening outside. The window is covered in condensation. I wipe it away but it’s still difficult to see what’s going on. The lights in the hanger are almost always turned down to their lowest setting. I guess they do it to conserve power. It only gets any brighter when the soldiers are about to go outside and that hasn’t happened for well over a week now. The doors have only been opened once since we’ve been down here. Two days after we arrived outside they tried to go out to clear the mess we’d made getting in. They started to open the doors but there were too many bodies. They burned the first few hundred of them with flame-throwers but there were thousands more behind.

I can see Cooper checking over the vehicles that he and the other people from the city arrived here in. You can tell just by watching him that he used to be a soldier. Even though he has nothing to do with the rest of the military now he’s still regimented and he has a level of control and confidence that none of the others possess. I often see him exercising and sometimes, when the army are out of sight, he gets small groups of people together and tries to show them how to use the military equipment left lying around here. Most of the time no-one’s interested. Cooper checks the battered police van and prison truck at least once every day to make sure they’re still in working order. What does he think’s going to happen to them? They’re not being used and apart from him no-one else has been anywhere near them in days. I asked him about it yesterday. He told me that we can’t afford to take any chances. He told me that we have be ready to get out of here quickly if we need to.

Much as I think Cooper is overdoing it, I keep asking Michael to make sure our vehicle will be ready when the time to leave finally arrives. And none of us are under any illusions here, we all know that the time to leave is going to come eventually. It might be today, it might be tomorrow or it might not be for six months. The only certainty we have is that we can’t stay down here indefinitely.

Michael is stirring in bed.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asks, waking up and noticing that I’m not there next to him. His eyes are dark, tired and confused as he looks around for me.

‘Nothing’s the matter,’ I answer. ‘Couldn’t sleep, that’s all.’

He sits up and yawns and beckons me over. I’m still cold. I get back into bed and lie down and he grabs hold of me tightly like we’ve been apart for years.

‘How you doing?’ he asks quietly, his face close to mine.

‘I’m okay,’ I answer.

‘Anything happening?’

‘Not really, just a delivery of supplies, that’s all. Does anything ever happen around here?’

Still holding me tightly he kisses the side of my face.

‘Give it time,’ he mumbles sadly. ‘Give it time.’

2

‘Morning, you two,’ Bernard Heath said in his loud, educated voice as Michael and Emma walked into the largest of the few rooms that the survivors were permitted access to.

‘Morning, Bernard,’ Emma replied. ‘Bloody cold, isn’t it?’

‘Isn’t it always?’ he sighed. ‘Get yourselves something to eat, the soldiers left us quite a lot last night.’

Holding onto Michael’s hand, Emma followed him as he weaved through the crowded room. About six metres square, it was used by the group of survivors as a dormitory, a meeting place, a kitchen and a mess hall. In fact it was used for just about everything. As bleak, grim and imposing as its grey and featureless walls were, the fact that the room was always filled with people made it just about the best place for any of them to spend their time. In spite of the uncertainty and unease which still surrounded everything, the heat and noise made by the group of frightened and frustrated people made this room a more inviting place than anywhere else. At least here they weren’t always looking over their shoulders. At least here they could, for the time being at least, begin to try and relax, recuperate and heal.

A basic shift pattern had been drawn up shortly after they had first arrived at the bunker. Although there had been the expected few missed shifts, most people seemed prepared to pull their weight and contribute by cooking or cleaning or doing whatever other menial tasks needed to be done. Rather than evade work as some of them might have done before the disaster, just about all of the survivors now willingly did as much as they could. How much of this work was done to help the others was questionable. Most simply craved the responsibility because it helped reduce the monotony and boredom of every long, dark day. As each of them had already found to their cost on many, many occasions, sitting and staring at the walls of the bunker with nothing to do invariably resulted in them thinking constantly about all that they had lost.

Emma and Michael collected their food from Sheri Newton (a quiet and diminutive middle-aged woman who seemed to always be serving food) and sat down to eat. The faces of the people sitting around them were reassuringly familiar. Donna Yorke was at a table nearby talking to Clare Smith, Jack Baxter and Phil Croft. As the couple began to eat Croft looked up and around and nodded at Michael.

‘Morning,’ Michael said as he chewed on his first mouthful of dry and tasteless rationed food. ‘How you doing today, Phil?’

‘Good,’ Croft replied, wheezing. He took a long drag on a cigarette and coughed.

‘You should think about giving those things up,’

Michael muttered sarcastically, ‘won’t do your health any good. They’ll be the death of you!’

Croft grimaced as he coughed and then managed a fleeting smile. It was a sign of the grim hopelessness of their situation that death was just about the only thing they could find to laugh about. The group’s only doctor, he had sustained serious injuries in a violent crash when they had first approached the military bunker. The dark, dank conditions underground were not ideal and did nothing to aid his recovery. The only visible signs of his injuries which remained now were a scar across his chest and a severe limp and, as far as the rest of the group were concerned, he appeared to be getting stronger and fitter with each day. A trained and experienced medical professional, however, Croft knew that his body had sustained a huge amount of damage and that he would never be fully fit again. With his discomfort and pain seeming to increase day on day, and with the military on one side and a crowd of thousands of decomposing corpses on the other, the potentially harmful effects of smoking cigarettes was the very least of his worries.

Cooper marched angrily into the room, his sudden, stormy appearance instantly silencing every conversation and causing everyone to look round. He fetched himself a drink, yanked a chair from under the table and sat down next to Jack Baxter.

‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ Baxter asked.

‘This place is full of fucking idiots,’ the ex-soldier snapped. Since returning to the base he had steadily distanced himself from his military colleagues to the point where he now had very little to do with them. Perhaps symbolically, he now only wore the lower half of his uniform, and he only kept the boots and trousers on because they were the most practical clothes he possessed.

In fact, they were just about the only clothes he had.

‘Now who’s he talking about?’ Croft interrupted. ‘Who you on about now, Cooper?’

Cooper took a swig of coffee.

‘Bloody jokers in charge of this place,’ he answered.

‘What have they done?’

‘Nothing, and that’s the fucking problem.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Donna, concerned. She knew Cooper well enough to know that there had to be a reason behind his sudden ranting. He was usually much calmer and more controlled than this.

‘The troops won’t tell me a thing anymore,’ he explained. ‘My guess is they’ve been ordered not to. I just can’t understand their logic. What do they think they’re going to gain from keeping us in the dark? We’ve seen more of what’s happened out there than they have. You’d think they’d want to try and keep us on side, wouldn’t you?’

‘Sounds typical of what I’ve seen of the military so far,’

Baxter said quietly. ‘So is that all that’s bothering you?’

Cooper shook his head.

‘No,’ he sighed, ‘it’s more than that. I’ve just been talking to an old mate of mine, Jim Franks. Jim and I go back a long way and I know I can trust him. Anyway, he’s been telling me that they think they’re going to start hitting real problems soon.’

‘Supplies?’ Baxter wondered.

‘No.’

‘What kind of problems then?’ asked Emma, immediately worried.

‘Big fucking problems,’ Cooper continued. ‘Nothing they weren’t expecting, but big fucking problems nonetheless.’

‘Such as…?’

‘You’ve got to remember that I was talking to Jim through the intercom on the front of the decontamination chamber and he was trying to keep his voice down in case anyone caught him speaking to me so I didn’t get a lot of detail. It’s the bodies. They’ve been taking readings around the base and the damn things still keep coming. Jim told me that the air filtration system’s still working but it’s really starting to struggle and the problems we’ve heard about with ventilation have really started to take hold. Seems that more than half the exhaust vents are blocked or almost blocked, just like we said they would be.’

‘So what are they going to do about it?’ Croft mumbled, asking the question that everyone was thinking.

‘There’s no way of clearing the vents from down here,’

he explained, ‘so they’re going to have to go above ground eventually.’

‘But what good’s that going to do?’ Emma protested, immediately terrified at the prospect of the bunker doors being opened again. ‘Do they think they can just clear the bodies away? As soon as they move any of them hundreds more will take their place.’

‘I know that and you know that,’ Cooper sighed dejectedly, ‘but they don’t. This is why I can’t understand them not talking to us. The reality is that the people making the decisions down here don’t have a fucking clue how bad things are on the surface. Until you’ve seen it for yourself and you’ve been out there in the middle of it, you just can’t imagine the scale of what’s happened outside, can you?’

‘So how are they planning to keep the vents clear?’ asked Donna. ‘Like Emma says, as soon as they’ve cleared them more bodies will be lining up to block them again.’

‘I don’t know. My guess is they’ll try and cover them or build something over the top. You’ve got to remember that this place was built not to be noticed. You’d have to look hard just to find the bloody vents ‘cause they’re not obvious. I think they’re planning to fight their way through to them and then just do whatever they need to do to block them off. They’ll try and cover the top of them or leave people out there to guard them. A trench or a wall might be enough…’

‘Pity the poor bastards who get sent out there to build bloody walls,’ Baxter mumbled. ‘Christ, it’s hard enough just being up there, never mind having to build a bloody wall. I tell you, you wouldn’t get me outside for anything.’

‘You reckon? Keep things in perspective, Jack,’ Cooper said, looking directly at the other man, ‘we’ve got a massive advantage over this lot at the moment because we can survive out in the open. So who says they’re not going to try and use us to do whatever it is that they’re planning on doing? Argue all you like, but if you’ve got a gun held at the back of your head, you’ll do whatever they bloody well want you to do.’

‘You really think it’s going to come to that? You think they’ll try and get us to go up there?’

‘Perhaps not yet, but…’

‘But what?’

‘But they might do eventually. Put yourself in their shoes. You’d probably try and do the same.’

The conversation stalled as each of the survivors stopped to take stock of Cooper’s words. He knew how the military minds worked better than any of them. Each of them knew that he was being frank and honest with them because there was no point trying to soften the blow.

Cooper was never anything other than straight and direct.

He had nothing to gain from scare-mongering or frightening the others.

‘How long?’ Donna asked.

‘How long until what?’ Cooper replied, assuming that the question had been directed towards him.

‘How long before they have to open the doors and go above ground?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Don’t know. I don’t expect they know either. We’ll just have to sit and wait.’

‘For what?’

‘For their air to start running out,’ Emma interrupted quickly.

Another break in the exchange. More silent contemplation.

‘It has to happen, doesn’t it?’ Michael said with a tone of honest resignation and acceptance in his voice.

‘What?’ mumbled Croft, only half-listening.

‘I said it has to happen,’ he repeated. ‘It’s inevitable.

They call it Chaos Theory, don’t they? If something can go wrong, then eventually it will go wrong.’

‘Keep looking on the bright side, eh?’ grinned Baxter.

‘He’s right,’ Cooper agreed.

‘We’ve all seen it happen,’ Michael continued. ‘We started off in a village hall. There was about twenty of us to start with and we thought we’d be okay but we had to get away. Three of us found ourselves a house in the middle of the bloody countryside miles away from anywhere, but that wasn’t safe enough either. Built a bloody fence around it but it didn’t last.’

‘Same with us and the university,’ Donna said, leaning closer to the others. ‘Looked ideal when we first got there but the safety didn’t last. Things change and we can’t afford to just sit still and wait and hope and…’

‘And you’re right, the same thing’s bound to happen here eventually,’ Cooper interrupted. ‘Something’s got to give - more vents will get blocked, supplies will run out, the disease will manage to get in or something else will happen. It’ll take luck more than anything else to keep us safe down here.’

‘So what do we do about it?’

‘There’s not a lot we can do,’ he answered. ‘We just need to be ready for it when it happens, and be prepared to get out of here fast if anything goes wrong.’

3

Three days was all it took. It was mid-morning.

Michael was standing in front of the motorhome talking to Cooper about the sorry state of his battered vehicle.

Although it had been cleaned and overhauled to the best of their abilities with their limited resources, the machine still looked desperately dilapidated and tired. The two men’s conversation was abruptly interrupted when the hanger lights were suddenly switched on, filling the cavernous space with unexpectedly bright illumination. Having been forced to live in almost complete darkness for weeks the survivors covered their eyes and, for a fraction of a second, found themselves thinking more about the brightness and discomfort than the possible reasons why the lights had been turned on.

Michael was the first to react.

‘Shit,’ he cursed as he squinted and looked around, shielding his eyes, ‘here they come. This must be it.’

Cooper looked up and saw that the doors to the main decontamination chamber were opening. From deep inside the base a steady stream of dark, suited figures were beginning to emerge. Close on a hundred troops filed out into the hanger. They marched quickly and quietly.

Although their formation and manner lacked something of the discipline and precision Cooper had come to expect from his former colleagues, they were still clearly well organised and ready to fight.

‘Christ, they mean business,’ he mumbled.

‘What do we do?’

‘Get everyone ready to get out of here.’

The two men sprinted across the huge room, cutting through the soldier’s ragged formation. The sudden light and noise had already alerted the other survivors. Anxious faces appeared in numerous doorways before Michael and Cooper were even halfway across the hanger.

‘What’s happening?’ Steve Armitage asked.

‘What’s it look like?’ Cooper replied. ‘They’re about to open the fucking doors!’

‘Shit,’ was all that Armitage could say. Before he could react a further crowd of panicking survivors pushed passed him and spilled out into the hanger.

‘Get ready to leave,’ Cooper shouted. He hoped they weren’t going anywhere, but he felt duty bound to prepare the group for the worst possible scenario. ‘Get everyone into the vehicles.’

Without question or delay the frightened crowd began to hurriedly make its way across the cavernous chamber towards the police van, prison truck and motorhome.

Bernard Heath looked around for Phil Croft. He grabbed the unsteady medic’s arm and pulled him along. Whilst he could walk, his injuries still prevented him from getting anywhere with any real speed.

‘Get the kids,’ Michael yelled to Donna across the small, square room where the youngest members of the group tended to gather. She did as he said, ushering the few children towards the door. Emma, frightened and moving against the flow of the others, grabbed hold of his arm.

‘What’s going on?’ she began to ask. ‘What are they doing…?’

‘Get into the motorhome,’ he snapped anxiously. ‘I’ll be over there in a couple of minutes.’

‘But…’ she protested. Michael pushed her away, desperate to get her to safety quickly.

‘Don’t ask questions,’ he shouted after her, ‘just get yourself over there.’

‘Is that everyone?’ Cooper asked breathlessly as he returned to the hanger after checking the largest room was clear.

‘Think so,’ said Jack Baxter as he looked back across the immense cavern. He watched nervously as the rest of the survivors attempted to cram themselves into the back of the group’s three vehicles.

‘You two get yourselves over there and try and get that lot sorted out,’ Cooper ordered. Although he had never been formally recognised by the group as their leader, the authority and command in his voice was unquestionable.

Michael and Baxter turned and ran towards the others.

Cooper stood his ground and anxiously watched the soldiers. The roar of engines suddenly filled the base and an armoured personnel carrier took up position at the foot of the ramp which led up to the main entrance doors. Two smaller jeeps were driven out of the shadows and parked behind the first vehicle. He cautiously moved forward, his military mind keen to try and work out the tactics and intentions of what was about to happen.

‘Cooper,’ shouted Michael as the final few survivors jostled for space in the group’s battered transports, ‘come on!’

Cooper ignored him and instead moved closer still to the troops. He estimated there were somewhere between eighty and a hundred soldiers in the hanger and there was no doubt that this was a major operation. He knew that the officers (who, as far as he could tell, were still buried safely within the deeper confines of the base) would never risk sending such a large number of troops above ground unless they had absolutely no option but to do so.

He took a chance. He had nothing to lose.

‘Hey,’ he said, standing in shadow and reaching out and grabbing the arm of the nearest suited figure. The soldier nervously span around to face him. The protective mask and breathing apparatus partially obscured the trooper’s face allowing Cooper to see only his eyes. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Vents are blocked,’ he answered in a muffled but clearly young and anxious voice.

‘So what’s the plan?’

The soldier looked from side to side, not sure whether or not he should even be speaking to Cooper. He figured that the preparation of the troops and equipment closer to the front of the hanger was a sufficient distraction for him to risk saying a few more words.

‘They reckon we can get by for now with at least two of the vents clear, so we’re going out there to sort ‘em and to make sure they stay working.’

‘Are you staying out there?’ Cooper whispered. The soldier shook his head.

‘You’ve got to be fucking joking,’ he replied quickly.

‘No, that’s what the jeeps are for. The vents are low on the ground. Plan is to leave a jeep straddling each vent to block them off and stop those bloody things out there from clogging them up again.’

The soldiers began to move forward. The trooper next to Cooper pulled himself free from the survivor’s grip and moved up to retake his position in formation next to his colleagues. Still curious, Cooper jogged across the width of the hanger towards the others. Instead of getting into one of the vehicles with them, however, he instead clambered up onto the front of another huge military transport to try and get a better view of what was about to happen. Out of breath and red faced, Baxter appeared at his side.

‘What’s happening now?’ he asked, panting with effort and nerves as he pulled himself up level with the other man.

‘They’re going to try and clear a couple of vents,’

Cooper replied. ‘They’re planning to leave those jeeps parked on top of them to try and keep the bodies away.’

‘Got to get to the bloody vents first,’ Baxter mumbled.

‘Do they realise what it’s like out there?’

‘They will in a few minutes. Anyway, they don’t have any choice if they want to keep breathing. If there was another way I’m sure they’d have tried it by now. No matter what we think of them, they’re not stupid…’

The conversation ended quickly as the doors began to open. At first nothing seemed to happen. But then, slowly and steadily, a dull scraping noise became audible over the rumbling sound of the military machines which stood poised to drive out into the open. A few seconds later and the first chink of light appeared. A slender shaft of harsh grey-white brightness appeared between the two gradually separating halves of the door. As Cooper and Baxter watched the width of the band of light increased as the entrance was opened further.

‘Christ,’ muttered Baxter under his breath. Rooted to the spot with fear he desperately tried to contain his rapidly mounting panic. ‘Jesus Christ.’

As soon as the gap was wide enough bodies began to spill into the hanger. Forced forward like a thick and viscous liquid by the sheer weight of rotting flesh pushing hard against them from behind, the first corpses stumbled and lurched down the ramp towards the soldiers with surprising speed, many tripping and falling at their booted feet. The soldiers responded instinctively, pushing the bodies back and firing at them until they had managed to temporarily stem the flow of dead meat. From somewhere deep within the ranks a muffled order was given and a row of four soldiers armed with flame-throwers stepped out of the darkness. They pushed their way closer to the diseased crowd and unleashed their devastating weapons on the nearest creatures, sending controlled arcs of dripping, incandescent flame shooting out of the bunker door and up into the cold morning air. Tinder dry, the bodies caught by the fire were almost immediately incinerated.

Another order was given and the personnel carrier began to creep slowly forward, climbing steadily towards daylight and then emerging out into the open, pushing and probing deeper into the burning crowd and grinding charred flesh and bone into the ground beneath its heavy and powerful wheels. To the front and on either side the flame-thrower carrying soldiers took up protective positions and advanced cautiously, matching the massive vehicle’s laborious pace and continuing to destroy as many corpses as their flames would reach. Beyond the mass of burning bodies countless more continually pushed themselves closer and closer to the disturbance, ignorant to the danger and devastation and attracted by the noise, fire, smoke and sudden movements.

At the bunker entrance the two jeeps finally emerged into the mayhem, each one of them surrounded by more soldiers carrying flame-throwers and other, more conventional and clearly less effective weapons.

As the military convoy eased itself away from the front of the base uncomfortably slowly, the remaining troops formed a heavy protective line of defence across the open entrance. The cool air was filled with billowing clouds of thick, black smoke and the choking, suffocating smell of burnt meat. Suddenly unable to see what was happening from where he was watching, Cooper jumped down from his high viewpoint and moved closer to the troops.

‘Cooper,’ hissed Baxter, ‘what the hell are you doing you bloody idiot?’

Cooper ignored him and continued to edge further forward. Now standing just short of the heavily armed soldiers he could see that the personnel carrier and its entourage had managed to carve a deep, curved groove through the centre of the immense crowd of corpses. The vehicles moved painfully slowly through the bloody mayhem, still surrounded by a circle of troops who aimed their weapons into the rotting masses which writhed and squirmed and surged all around them. Hundreds were obliterated by flame and gunfire. Undeterred, more bodies continued to stagger across the mass of burning remains.

Some three hundred metres away from the entrance to the base, the driver of the personnel carrier turned to the officer next to him.

‘Where’s the vent?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s the fucking vent?’

Perhaps naively the troops had not stopped to consider the disorientating visual effect of so many bodies being packed tightly together on the ground. Shaking with nerves and fired up with adrenaline, the officer traced the path they had already taken on a map. He glanced up briefly to check his bearings but could see little through the front of the vehicle. Frantic, uncoordinated movements, jumping flame and dense clouds of heavy, noxious smoke were all that he could see.

‘Should be over there,’ he yelled, pointing over to his right as he continued to try and find a more accurate visual reference. The driver steered the carrier as directed, shielding his eyes from a blast of sudden brightness as more bodies were drenched with fire and destroyed. He watched in petrified disbelief as the creatures burned and yet continued to move. Inexplicably ignorant to the flames which quickly consumed them, the rotting cadavers staggered relentlessly forward until their last decaying muscles, nerves and sinews had been burnt away to nothing.

‘Got it,’ the driver gasped as he caught sight of the exhaust vent amongst the seething sea of figures. Standing just a few inches above the ground and surrounded by mud, moss and weeds, the location of the vent was made suddenly obvious by the movement of the bodies nearby and also by the mass of once-human remains which had accumulated around it. Drawn there by the comparative warmth coming up through the vent from the depths of the base, many bodies had become entangled with the low metal structure and had been trapped and wedged in place by the weight of countless more figures pressing forward against them. Clumsy, barely coordinated feet and legs had been twisted and had buckled under the combined weight of the huge crowd, leaving the metal vent partially obscured under mounds of cold grey flesh.

‘Drive straight over the top of it,’ ordered the officer.

The driver did as instructed, turning the heavy vehicle towards the vent and accelerating through the bodies. The soldier moving in front of the carrier continued to soak the apparently endless crowd with fire, burning away the nearest of the hordes of lumbering cadavers which scrambled towards the convoy.

Apart from the vent this area of the field was otherwise relatively flat and featureless. The driver of the personnel carrier powered over the top of the metal covering, smashing more burning bodies away to the side and scraping away a thick layer of once-human remains. Seeing that the way was now slightly clearer, the driver of the first jeep following behind gestured for the driver of the second to leave his vehicle straddling the vent as arranged. The second driver pulled forward and stopped when the metal opening was directly under the centre of the jeep’s mud and blood-splattered chassis. Leaning precariously over the side of his vehicle he saw that there was just a couple of inches clearance between the top of the vent and the bottom of the jeep. Perfect.

The other two vehicles had continued to move forwards, changing course and heading towards the next nearest vent to repeat the manoeuvre. The second driver, now suddenly vulnerable without the protection of his jeep, sprinted after the others.

From behind the row of soldiers standing in the entrance to the bunker Cooper still struggled to see what was happening. The clouds of repulsive, stagnant-smelling smoke which the gusting wind blew back inside the base stung his eyes and filled his nose and throat with a charred, nauseating taste.

‘What’s happening now?’ Baxter asked. As the length of time the soldiers had spent outside had increased, so the older man had slowly gained in confidence. He had now crept forward to stand just behind the shoulder of his colleague.

‘Looks like they’ve managed to get one vent cleared,’

Cooper answered. ‘Can’t see what they’re doing now though. I’ve lost sight of them.’

‘Do you think they’re going to be able to do this…?’

Baxter asked before being silenced by a sudden huge flash of flame. One of the nearest soldiers had fired a flame-thrower and had destroyed a small pocket of bodies which had somehow broken through the rest of the burning masses and which were moving dangerously close to the base.

‘I don’t know what to think anymore,’ Cooper mumbled, struggling to keep the smoke out of his eyes and still continue to look outside. ‘This is just bloody relentless, isn’t it?’

‘What is?’

The heat from another arc of flame sent the two men scuttling further back into the base.

‘The effort,’ he continued, wiping sweat and ash from his face. ‘For bloody hell’s sake, look at the effort that this lot are having to put in. Look at the risks they’re having to take. Christ, there are about a hundred men and women out there risking their lives, and it’s for the simplest of reasons.’

‘What do you mean?’ Baxter was confused. Cooper sensed that he was struggling to make himself understood.

‘What I mean,’ he said, his voice tired and flat, ‘is that this is what they now have to do just so they can breathe!

To keep breathing, for Christ’s sake! Never mind anything else, these people have to put their lives on the line just so they can continue to breathe. It’s a pretty desperate state of affairs, isn’t it?’

Baxter didn’t have chance to answer. The soldiers protecting the entrance suddenly lowered their weapons and dropped back. For a second the two survivors feared the arrival of an unstoppable deluge of bodies but it didn’t happen. Instead the personnel carrier, followed by the five minute long return of a full complement of tired, shell-shocked and battle-dirtied troops, burst back into the bunker.

The doors began to close.

Baxter stared out into the distance for as long as he was able. The return of the powerful personnel carrier and troops had disturbed the air and, momentarily, had caused much of the dirty smoke to be dispersed. For a few seconds the survivor’s view was clear and uninterrupted. He could clearly see the charred and mangled remains of hundreds of bodies lying twisted and blackened on the muddy ground.

Beyond them he could see thousands more cadavers approaching the base. Like a dense, grey fog those bodies which had so far escaped destruction scrambled over the remains of those which had been obliterated, desperately trying to reach the soldiers and survivors.

The entrance was sealed. Baxter and the others relaxed.

They had been ready to move if they’d had to but, for a while longer, they were safe.

4

‘And that’s all they’re going to tell you?’ Croft asked.

Cooper shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.

‘That’s about it,’ he replied. ‘To be fair I don’t think there’s much more to tell. They’ve cleared two of the vents and cremated a ton of corpses. Suppose that was all they wanted to do.’

‘But will they need to clear more vents? Are they going to have to go out there again?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘So how long do they think those vents are going to stay clear? How long’s it going to be before they’re clogged up with bodies again?’

‘Don’t know,’ Cooper sighed, clearly irritated by the doctor’s relentless and pointless questioning. ‘Look, Phil, it doesn’t matter how many times you ask me, or how many different ways you ask, I don’t know anything more than what I’ve already told you, okay? The blokes I know have been told not to talk to me anymore.’

Several hours had passed since the soldiers had returned from outside and the doors to the base had been closed. A handful of survivors now sat in the relative comfort of the motorhome with Michael and Emma. Croft, Cooper, Baxter and Donna had needed to escape from the bunker’s prison-like grey walls for a while. Although blurred and obscured by condensation, those same walls could still be seen through the windows of the motorhome. Regardless, the extra layer of separation allowed the survivors to convince themselves for a while that they were, somehow, a little further detached from their nightmarish reality than usual.

‘What bothers me,’ Jack Baxter said quietly, cradling a beaker of water in his hands as if it was finest malt whiskey, ‘is that they’re still coming. After all this time it doesn’t look like anything’s changed out there. I looked out there today and I could see as many bodies as I saw on the day we first arrived here, probably even more. It’s been three weeks now for God’s sake. Why don’t they just piss off and find somewhere else to hang around?’

‘Because there isn’t anywhere else,’ Donna reminded him. ‘You know this, Jack. Even if there are hundreds more survivors scattered round the country, they’ll all have probably hidden themselves away like us by now. They might not be underground, but they’ll be out of sight, and they’ll all have bloody huge crowds hanging round them like we have.’

‘Won’t make any difference whether they’re underground or up a bloody mountain,’ Michael added.

‘Doesn’t matter how quiet or careful we are, they’ll eventually find us and anyone else like us.’

‘I know,’ Baxter mumbled dejectedly.

‘Did you see what kind of condition they were in today, Jack?’ Donna asked. He looked up and shook his head.

‘Didn’t get much chance, sorry,’ he grunted sarcastically. ‘I would have tried to get closer but the soldiers and the flame-throwers and the thousands of burning bodies kind of put me off. Next time I’ll try and…’

‘What I mean,’ Donna snapped, irritated by his flippancy and completely ignoring his pathetic attempt at humour, ‘is were they still as mobile as they were before?

When we came down here they were starting to get really aggressive and unpredictable. I just wondered if you noticed whether they’d changed or got any worse or whether their bodies have decayed enough now to stop them from…’

‘I couldn’t tell,’ Baxter started to, his voice suddenly humourless again. ‘I couldn’t really see anything much from where I was standing, and I wasn’t about to try and get any closer to the…’

‘It’s difficult to say what kind of condition they’re in,’

Cooper said, cutting across the other man before he’d finished his sentence. ‘You have to understand that we couldn’t see much more than just fire and smoke out there.

What really concerns me though, is the fact that the guys who were left posted at the entrance were kept busy pretty much all the time that the doors were open.’

‘What’s your point?’ wondered Michael.

‘My point is that even though there was a bloody huge engine driving through the middle of them, some of them were still trying to get inside here. We’ve been saying all along that these things just react to distractions. Well that might still be true, but to my mind a personnel carrier surrounded by blokes with flame-throwers should be a damn sight more distracting than a line of soldiers standing in an open door. The bodies that came towards the base must have chosen to try and get in here.’

‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ Baxter baulked.

‘No,’ Cooper replied. ‘Their flesh and bone might be getting weaker, but we’ve suspected for weeks that they’re also getting smarter, haven’t we?’

‘You serious?’ said Croft.

‘Do you really think that’s what’s happening to them?’ asked Donna.

Cooper shrugged his shoulders.

‘Don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I’m just guessing here. It might have just been coincidence or a fluke that they found themselves close to the entrance. The bodies could have been heading towards the men out in the field and then been distracted by those that were left behind to protect the base.’

‘You’ve got a point though,’ Baxter agreed, now completely serious, ‘You would have expected all of them to head for the personnel carrier and the soldiers in the field. But how could those things be getting smarter when they’re rotting away?’

Several members of the group of survivors instinctively looked towards Phil Croft for an answer to their obviously unanswerable question. The fact that everyone seemed to still assume that he knew more than they did because he was medically trained never ceased to infuriate and frustrate him.

‘How the hell am I supposed to know?’ he snapped.

‘Bloody hell, I’m getting sick of this. I keep telling you, I know as much as you do.’ Annoyed and tired, Croft swung himself around in his seat and pushed open the motorhome door with his feet. ‘Mind if I smoke?’ he asked.

‘Carry on,’ Michael said quietly.

‘How many you down to now, Phil?’ Baxter wondered.

‘One and a half boxes,’ he replied as he lit the remains of an already half-smoked cigarette and inhaled slowly. ‘I tell you, I’m going to go out of my bloody mind if I can’t get more cigarettes.’

‘How long do you reckon that lot will last you?’ asked Emma.

‘I’ve been limiting myself to smoking half of one each day, so I’ve probably got a couple of weeks left.’

‘What then?’

‘Not much choice really, is there?’ the doctor grumbled.

‘I can give up or I can go out and get some more!’

‘Where you going to go?’ laughed Baxter.

‘Not sure yet,’ Croft smirked. ‘Even if I could get out of here, I haven’t got a bloody clue where we are!’

‘You should try looking closer to home. Bet they’ve got fags and drink and everything in their stores here.’

Cooper shook his head.

‘You’d be surprised, Jack. This whole operation was thrown together in minutes. They’ve got less kit and supplies stashed away than you’d think.’

Across from Cooper Michael sat on the edge of the uncomfortable sofa which doubled up as the bed that he and Emma shared. Emma shuffled nearer to him. She was cold and wanted to be held. He wrapped his arms around her as she rested her weight against him. The other survivors looked away, each of them feeling suddenly awkward and almost embarrassed. Emma and Michael’s relative intimacy made them feel uncomfortable and unsure. Having each individually suffered so much pain and loss, the others found the idea of closeness and tenderness difficult and alien - an uneasy reminder of a world they had given up as gone forever. Having lost his long-term partner many months before the disaster, Baxter had long found dealing with this kind of emotion particularly hard.

‘I always wanted a van like this,’ he said suddenly, looking around and making a conscious effort to break the silence and start another conversation. ‘Me and Denise were planning on getting ourselves something like this when I retired. We were thinking about selling up and living on the road for a while.’

‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ Michael grinned, ‘it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. We were living on the road for a couple of weeks before we found this place, weren’t we, Em? Didn’t enjoy it!’

Baxter smiled.

‘I’ve been thinking about it though,’ he rambled, looking out through the motorhome window and imagining he could see something other than grey concrete walls, ‘just think what it’ll be like when the bodies have gone. Just picture it, we’ll have the whole bloody country to ourselves. We’ll be able to go where we like, when we like.’

‘So where would you go?’ Croft asked him.

‘I think,’ he began, stretching in his seat and staring up thoughtfully at the low metal ceiling above his head, ‘I’ll try and travel right round the coast. I’m going to wait until summer, then I’ll start on the south coast and work my way west. I won’t plan a route, I’ll just keep going and one day I’ll end up back where I started.’

‘But you could have your pick of the biggest houses or whatever you wanted,’ Emma said. ‘You could sit on your backside and relax. You’d still want to travel and live rough?’

‘I’m getting used to living rough now,’ he smiled, ‘it’d be strange to be comfortable again. I like the idea of moving from town to town or village to village, taking whatever I need from wherever I can find it.’

‘Think you’ll ever do it?’ Donna asked.

Baxter looked deep down into his beaker of water and thought for a moment.

‘Don’t know. I hope so.’

‘Think it’s going to be as easy as you imagine?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘I never said it would be easy. Anyway, there’s no way of knowing, is there?’

‘I can’t start dreaming like you can, Jack,’ Donna admitted, ‘not yet, anyway. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I think about the future, I still automatically try and picture things like they used to be before this happened, just empty of people and quiet. But it’s not going to be like that, is it?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I can’t be anything but realistic. I know we can get by for a while, but I’m anticipating every day from now on being a struggle. The more time passes since everything was normal, the less there’s going to be for us to take out there. The last bits of food will rot. Buildings will start to crumble. Everything we used to know will gradually disappear.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Baxter groaned sarcastically, ‘here’s looking on the bright side, eh?’

‘Like I said, I’m just being realistic, that’s all,’ Donna mumbled, her voice tired and resigned.

‘Anyway,’ Croft interjected, ‘we’ve got to get out of here before you can start sightseeing, Jack.’

‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘Frustrating, isn’t it. We’re the one’s who can survive out there, and it’s the bloody army who’ll decide whether we can go outside or not.’

‘Think they’ll try and keep us down here, Cooper?’

Croft asked.

‘We need to stay here for a while,’ Emma said.

‘Unless us being here puts them at risk, I don’t think they’ll be in a hurry to get rid of us,’ Cooper answered.

‘Why?’

‘I still think we might be useful to them. I’m starting to think they might have plans.’

5

‘What’s the matter?’

Emma had woken up alone in bed. After a moment’s panic she had found Michael at the other end of the motorhome, sitting in the driver’s seat behind the wheel and staring out through the windscreen into the grey, shadowy gloom of the vast hanger. The clock on the dashboard said it was almost four in the morning.

When he heard her he looked up momentarily and then looked down again.

‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he replied. ‘I was just thinking, that’s all.’

‘What about?’

‘You know, the usual.’

‘What’s the usual?’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘What do you think?’

Emma sat down on the edge of the passenger seat next to him, still unsure as to what he was alluding to. A series of thoughts flashed through her mind. Was he thinking about the other survivors and the conversation they’d had earlier? Was he thinking about the soldiers or what had happened when they’d ventured outside yesterday? Or was he thinking about something else entirely? Whatever it was, it was clearly something which was weighing heavy on his mind. He scowled with concentration. His voice was abrupt and cold.

‘Is it me?’ she found herself wondering. ‘Have I upset you or have I done something that’s…?’

He shook his head and then sighed and rubbed his tired eyes.

‘Why do you always assume it’s got anything to do with you?’ he asked. ‘What could you have done to upset me?

When we’ve got all this shit happening around us, why should it be anything you’ve done that’s keeping me awake?’

‘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.’

6

‘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.

‘Kevin,’ Franks corrected. ‘Remember him?’

‘The chef, right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘What about him?’

‘They found him a couple of hours ago in his bunk.

Stupid bloody idiot had slit his wrists.’

‘Christ,’ Bernard Heath sighed under his breath.

‘He’s not the first and he won’t be the last,’ Cooper answered quickly with a cold matter-of-factness.

‘I know that,’ Franks continued, ‘the problem isn’t what he’s done, it’s how to get rid of him. They can’t decide what to do with the body. People are so fucking paranoid down here that they’re talking about trying to burn it or cut it up into little fucking pieces for God’s sake. I’ve just seen blokes fighting over the corpse.’

‘Fighting, why?’ Cooper asked.

‘Because they want to make sure it’s dead,’ he replied.

‘Jeavons and Coleman are standing over the fucking body watching it, ready to hack it to pieces if it starts to move.’

‘It’s not going to move,’ Heath interrupted, his voice unintentionally condescending. ‘That would probably only going to happen if the body had been exposed to the outside air before he killed himself. I don’t think…’

‘I know that and you know that,’ Franks snapped angrily, ‘but you try convincing a couple of hundred soldiers who are scared out of their fucking minds and who feel like they’ve been backed into a corner. These people are trained to fight, not to do nothing. They’re talking about dumping the body outside when we go above ground again.’

‘Makes sense,’ Cooper said, ‘but that could be weeks.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Something planned?’

‘It’s starting to look that way.’

‘What?’

‘Not sure, no-one’s saying much. There are a few rumours doing the rounds, that’s all.’

‘Such as…?’

The conversation faltered momentarily. Through the observation panel Cooper watched as Franks looked over his shoulder and checked he was safe to continue talking.

‘I started to hear a few rumblings yesterday, and I’ve heard more today from people that I trust so it looks like there’s some truth in what they’re saying. Main problem is that we still can’t get enough air down here and it’s probably going to get worse. They cleared a couple of exhaust vents last time but they need to do more. There’s no way of unblocking them from this side ‘cause they’ll risk infecting the whole fucking base, so at best it looks like we’ll be coming up again soon to go out and get a few more of them cleared.’

‘If that’s at best,’ Heath asked quietly, his voice filled with uncertainty, ‘then what’s your worst case scenario?’

Cooper glanced across at the other man, sharing his concern.

Another pause and then Franks spoke again.

‘Some of the boys who went out last time,’ he explained, ‘told the bosses that they managed to get rid of hundreds of those things up there.’

‘They did,’ agreed Cooper. ‘Problem is there’s thousands more of them left.’

‘Rumour has it,’ Franks continued, ‘that they’re looking at trying to organise one massive push. Rumour has it we’re all going above ground to torch the whole fucking lot of them.’

7

The lights came on.

Donna jumped up from her seat as the doors of the decontamination chambers began to open.

‘Oh, Christ,’ she mumbled anxiously, glancing across at Emma, Clare and Heath who were stood nearby and who were also staring at the slowly opening door.

Alerted by the sudden brightness in the hanger, most of the other survivors had already begun a furious and uncoordinated scramble across the vast cavern and over to their vehicles. As the first heavily-suited soldiers began to emerge from their sealed shelter the frightened crowd of men, women and children once again sprinted towards the police van, prison truck and motorhome.

A steady stream of troops again took up position on the ramp just short of the entrance doors. Standing to the side of the main column of soldiers, an officer furiously marshalled proceedings. Just as they had done the time before a number of engines were started and another armoured personnel carrier was driven out of the shadows.

This time the powerful vehicle was accompanied by four jeeps and was surrounded by a phalanx of eight, flame-thrower carrying men. The men moved quickly towards the front of the short convoy, ready to escort the vehicles out into the open and burn a path for them through the crowds.

It was Saturday afternoon, three o’clock.

‘What do you reckon?’ Donna asked Heath. The two of them had stopped halfway across the hanger and were watching the troops intently. ‘Think they’re just going to try and do the same as they did before?’

‘Looks that way,’ he replied, his voice quiet and trembling slightly. ‘I just want them to get it over with. If they’re really going to do this, I just want them to do it now and stop all this stupid and pointless…’

His words were abruptly cut short as the ominous and unerringly familiar mechanical rumbling began which signalled the opening of the main doors. He nervously swallowed and licked his dry lips, unable to look away from the entrance to the bunker, too scared to keep watching but even more afraid not to. The outside world slowly began to appear. Because of the slope of the entrance ramp he became aware of the sky first - a dirty, grey-black, heavy and rain-filled sky that hung over the desolate scene and which made the day seem almost as dull and dark as night. And then it began. An unexpected split-second of silence and calm was quickly ended by a sudden torrent of bodies which began to pour into the base before being pushed back and obliterated by the soldiers with flame-throwers. From a distance Heath couldn’t make out the shapes, details and actions of individual corpses - just a constantly writhing and lurching, featureless mass of movement which spilled forward before being destroyed by the flames. For a gut-wrenching and seemingly endless moment the sheer weight of advancing bodies appeared to threaten to put the front row of soldiers on the back foot, almost forcing them to move further back into the base again before they were able to dig in and push forward.

Their vastly superior power and strength soon allowed them to eat into the crowd with relative ease. Brutal and one-sided, as the first battles quickly unfolded the familiar smell of burnt flesh began to fill the cavernous hanger, carried along by clouds of dirty, suffocating smoke.

‘We should get ready to move,’ Michael urged anxiously as he jogged across the width of the hanger.

Donna reacted instantly but Heath failed to respond, transfixed by the hell he could now see outside. The personnel carrier began to drive forward, followed by the jeeps and by other heavily armoured vehicles and surrounded by a ring of troops who launched carefully controlled jets of flame into the crowd. As the troops began to move away from the base Michael ran to stand next to the other man and then took a few steps further forward.

‘Cooper reckons they’re really going to go for it this time,’ Jack Baxter said, suddenly appearing behind the two men. ‘Says they might even be trying to get rid of the whole lot of them.’

‘He’s right,’ Heath mumbled, his voice barely audible.

‘But what’s the point?’ Michael wondered. ‘For God’s sake, what good do they think it’s going to do them? Get rid of them all and more and more will come. Whatever happens out there they’re either going to end up back down here in this bunker or stuck outside in their suits. One way or another they’ll be trapped. They might as well just cut their losses and…’

‘And you can’t reason with them,’ Cooper said, joining the others and overhearing their conversation. He watched as the soldiers marched outside and thought for half a second about how he should have been among them. ‘Try and put yourselves in their shoes,’ he continued, ‘we don’t know much about what’s happened, but we know a hell of a lot more than they do. We might not have the hardware they’ve got, but we’re far better placed to deal with all of this than they are. All they know is they can’t breathe the air outside because it will probably kill them, and that those bloody things out there are preventing them from getting the clean air they need. You can understand why they’re seeing the bodies as the enemy. The only option they think they’ve got left now is to blow the fucking things to kingdom come and be rid of them.’

‘But don’t they understand…?’ Baxter began pointlessly before Cooper interrupted.

‘No they don’t, not fully. They haven’t seen half of what we’ve seen.’

‘But the bodies won’t stop, will they? They’ll keep coming until there’s nothing left of them.’

Outside the first troops had made steady progress. The area immediately surrounding the base - which already resembled a churned and bloody first world war battlefield

- was swarming with movement. The bodies approached from all angles and were beaten and battered into the ground by adrenaline-fuelled soldiers who had been kept waiting underground too long. Every last man and woman laid into the approaching cadavers with anger and force, driven on by fear and pent-up frustration and emotion.

Those who had not been above ground before, although shocked and disgusted by the bizarre and relentless battle unfolding around them, were surprised by the relative ease with which the corpses could be destroyed. Having been outside for only a few minutes, however, to many of the troops the vast numbers of the dead and their unstoppable nature had yet to become apparent.

Heavy artillery was quickly deployed with mortars and shells being fired into the endless crowd beyond the perimeter of the base. In the near distance constant explosions shook the ground and tore the bodies apart.

Closer to the entrance the personnel carrier had almost reached another exhaust shaft. Walking alongside one of the vents, and shielded from the battle by the protective ring of fire which surrounded the convoy, the senior officer on the field, Jennens, watched events unfolding around him with a degree of cautious satisfaction. His men and women were already doing well, despite appalling conditions. The gloom of the afternoon’s rapidly fading light was worsened by hissing rain that poured down on the scene relentlessly, drenching everything. The ferocious heat of the flame-throwers turned the grimy pools of water which had puddled in the churned, furrowed land into steam.

Underneath his boots Jennens crunched charred and cindered flesh and bone into the mud.

The vent was secure. Jennens peered into the gloom beyond the scattered remains of the hundreds of bodies which had already been destroyed. He’d seen some appalling sights in his time, but never anything like this.

The size and ferocity of the apparently endless crowd was remarkable and terrifying. He watched with disgust and a morbid fascination as still more of the dark, skeletal creatures scrambled, tripped and crawled through the mayhem towards his soldiers and towards certain destruction. In the midst of the confusion Cowell, one of his most trusted men, appeared at his side.

‘We can do this,’ he said, shouting to make himself heard through his facemask and over the wind and rain and sounds of constant battle. The muddied ground shook momentarily as a small mortar landed short of its target and exploded nearby, sending a gruesome shower of random body parts shooting into the squally air. ‘If we’re going to do this at all, then we should do it now.’

Jennens thought for a moment. Cowell was right. The opposition, although huge in numbers, was weak and offered no tangible resistance. Although wiping them out would not allow the soldiers any more freedom, this was unquestionably a perfect opportunity to take back some of what they’d lost. The defensive position they’d intended to take had already become offensive and attacking. If they could destroy enough bodies and beat the remainder back to a far enough distance and keep them there, they would be able to fortify the entrance to the bunker and properly clear and secure the exhaust vents. Although there was still no way the military personnel could yet survive outside the base, the officer immediately recognised the psychological importance of ridding themselves of the tens of thousands of cadavers which plagued and complicated their already miserable existence.

‘Shall I give the order?’ Cowell asked. Jennens looked around the battlefield again. In the short time he’d been stood there his troops had made even more progress through the diseased crowds. The enemy (if they could really be called that) were defenceless against the comparative might of the military. All the dead had were numbers. Jennens knew they had nothing to lose.

‘Do it,’ he commanded.

‘Can’t see,’ complained Baxter, edging closer to the soldiers charged with protecting the hanger entrance. ‘Can’t see a bloody thing.’

‘Stay back, Jack,’ Michael warned.

A sudden familiar noise from behind the small group of survivors startled them momentarily. Cooper span around to see that the decontamination chamber doors were opening again.

‘Shit,’ he cursed as a second ragged column of nervous soldiers appeared from the depths of the base. There seemed to be almost twice as many of them this time.

‘What’s all this about?’ asked Heath anxiously.

‘My guess,’ Cooper answered as he watched more than a hundred troops file past, ‘is that they’ve decided to try and clear them away. This is the showdown we’ve been promised.’

As they emerged from the shadows into the light of the hanger the soldiers increased their speed, breaking into a gentle jog for a few paces before accelerating and sprinting out into the semi-darkness with weapons held high, ready for battle. The light outside was deteriorating rapidly. The survivors stared anxiously into the gloom as the guards at the front entrance parted to allow the re-enforcements through.

‘This isn’t good,’ Baxter whined, feeling his stomach churn and twist with nerves. ‘This is not at all good.’

As the fighting outside increased in ferocity and volume, the small group of survivors again herded towards their transports. Michael climbed into the motorhome and found it already crowded with frightened people, each of them clutching the few personal belongings they’d managed to grab hold of in the sudden confusion. In the front seats Donna had taken his usual position behind the wheel.

Emma was sitting next to her.

‘You two okay?’ he asked, leaning into the front cabin.

‘Just great,’ Donna answered through teeth clenched together with nervous anticipation. She gripped the steering wheel tightly in readiness should they suddenly need to move. Emma looked up and flashed him a momentary smile.

‘We’re okay,’ she said quietly. ‘Are you going to…?’

‘I’m going back to the others,’ he said quickly. ‘There are enough people in here already. Listen, Donna, if anything happens you just put your foot down on the fucking accelerator and get out of here.’

‘Be careful,’ Emma pleaded. ‘Look, why can’t you stay…?’ she began to say but he had already gone.

There was clearly no more room in the motorhome -

because of its more comfortable and open design many of the survivors had gravitated towards it rather than shutting themselves away in the insides of the more secure but claustrophobic prison truck. Michael found, however, that the prison truck (with Steve Armitage ready as ever behind the wheel) was also virtually full. Cooper called him over to the police van.

‘There are only a couple in the back here,’ he said, gesturing over his shoulder towards the back of the van.

‘Just make sure that either you or I get behind the wheel if we need to make a move, okay?’

‘Okay.’

Breathless and red faced, Bernard Heath appeared from around the back of the van.

‘I’ve done a quick count of heads,’ he wheezed. ‘I think everyone’s accounted for.’

Cooper nodded and then stood and watched and waited.

Outside the base a wide swathe of land had been cleared.

The majority of the soldiers and machines had now been formed into long attacking lines, ready to sweep out across the land from the bunker entrance and destroy more of the bodies. Now that the jeeps had been positioned over all but one of the vents, the main objective of the excursion had been achieved. What was happening now was largely unplanned but still relatively well coordinated. From positions just behind the advancing troops heavy artillery fired over their heads and out into the distance, relentlessly pounding the land and cutting deep into the shadowy crowds, destroying countless scores of bodies. All around momentary bursts of brilliant yellow, orange and white light pierced the monochrome gloom and, like camera flashes, illuminated the grotesque hordes for a fraction of a second at a time. Deafening explosions shook the ground and rumbled through the early evening air. The troops moved steadily forward away from the entrance to the base.

Progress continued to be relatively quick and largely unimpeded.

The attacking line of ground troops fanned out as they moved away from the bunker, pushing the crowds back.

There remained a bloody and relatively constant gulf of several metres between the advancing soldiers and the dead. Ignorant to the danger that they faced, those creatures which had so far escaped the wrath of the military continued to move ever closer, dragging themselves over the putrefying remains of the thousands of corpses that had been destroyed before them.

‘Aim for their heads,’ a sergeant yelled as his troops unleashed another furious volley of bullets and flame into the seething mass of cadavers. Undeterred, the bodies continued to shuffle and trip forwards.

A short distance further down the military line, a soldier named Ellis stood up to his ankles in blood and rancid flesh and picked out individual corpses from the crowd up ahead.

With the skill and concentration of a highly trained marksman he managed to shut off from the mayhem and confusion all around him and aimed at each body in turn, shooting them in the head and obliterating what remained of their brains. They dropped twitching to the ground and were immediately trampled by more dark figures advancing from behind. Conditions were becoming steadily worse with smoke, flame and rain all making it impossible to see clearly through the fading light of a dull and stormy dusk.

To Ellis’ left and to his right his colleagues continued to fight alongside him, each of them destroying as many bodies as they could. But still the crazed creatures continued to advance. For every one that Ellis destroyed, ten more seemed to take its place. And beyond there remained thousands more. Out of view still more and more and more of them crawled through the darkness.

‘Fucking hell,’ the soldier to the immediate right of Ellis cursed. ‘I can’t keep up with this. Christ, how many of these fucking things are there?’

They continued to shoot and the bodies continued to advance, spilling ever forward like some dark, thick liquid.

Ellis didn’t have time to think or speak, instead he concentrated on letting bullet after bullet fly into the rotting crowd. An unexpected arc of flame burnt through the air just ahead of him, illuminating the full horror of the scene for a few heart-stopping seconds. The twisted, grotesque faces of hundreds of corpses were suddenly exposed and Ellis found himself staring at them in disgust and revulsion, praying for the light to fade and the dark to return. The nearest corpses were less than ten metres ahead.

The ragged line of soldiers, still advancing steadily, reached a slight ditch where a meandering stream had once run diagonally across the battlefield but which had, over the course of the last few weeks, become clogged and filled with a compacted layer of rotting human remains. The trooper on Ellis’ right, fighting to keep concentrating and not lose control of his frayed nerves, stumbled and slipped on the uneven ground, ending up on his hands and knees in the middle of the stagnant trench. A powerful wave of gut-wrenching nausea swept over him as he looked down into a mire of the mashed and mangled remains of decayed faces, limbs and other body parts, all instantly recognisable as such. As he pushed himself back up and tripped and stumbled further towards the approaching bodies, bile began to rise in his throat and he started to salivate. He knew that he was going to vomit, but he also knew that he had to stop himself from doing so at all costs - he couldn’t take off his facemask. He turned back to face his advancing colleagues and another searing jet of fire lit up the stormy sky above him. Less than a second later a shell dropped short of its intended target and landed just metres away, exploding instantly and showering the troops with mud, shrapnel and putrefied flesh. Knocked to the ground again, the trooper panicked and scrambled back away from the front line. He was aware of a sudden stabbing, burning pain in his back, but his sickening fear and disorientation kept him moving. Once up on his feet again he reached over his shoulder and rubbed at the part of his neck and right shoulder which hurt the most. He could feel a small, jagged shard of metal which had ripped through his suit and pierced his skin. When he brought his hand back around he saw that it was covered in blood, and it was the sight of the blood on his glove which terrified him more than anything else. His suit had been compromised. Panicking, he lifted his weapon and turned back around. At first the adrenaline numbed the pain and kept him fighting.

Aware of a gap in the attacking line to his side, Ellis turned around. The wounded soldier next to him continued to fire into the swarming bodies until the infection caught him. As he emptied another round into the crowd the inside of his throat began to swell. In seconds the swellings blocked his windpipe and then began to split and bleed.

Knowing he was dying, but not sure how or why, the soldier slowly turned on the spot, as if silently looking around for help or explanations. Frozen in position by a spontaneous nervous reaction, his finger remained on the trigger of his rifle, sending a seemingly endless torrent of bullets flying through the air. Ellis was the first to fall to the ground, shot through the neck. Another six men and women immediately around him were felled in seconds.

Ellis saw one of them drop just metres from him.

The sounds of battle were muffled and silenced down on the ground. Weighed down by his breathing apparatus and other equipment, Ellis managed to roll over onto his back in the mud. He looked up into the cloudy sky above his head and waited. The heavy rain clattered down on his facemask, drowning out all other noise. He was aware of sudden, frantic movement and then utter darkness.

The last thing Ellis remembered was feeling the crowd of emaciated bodies smothering him as they crawled over him and marched on towards the base.

‘Listen,’ Cooper said as he stood by the transports next to Michael and Heath.

‘What?’ Heath stammered nervously.

‘Something’s happening.’

The men stood in silence and listened to the sounds which echoed around them.

‘What?’ Heath asked again.

‘Can’t you hear it?’ Cooper whispered.

‘Hear what?’ Michael demanded, becoming increasingly uneasy.

‘Shh…’ he answered. ‘Just listen.’

Michael did as Cooper said, and what the other man had implied gradually became clear. There had been a change to the sounds of battle drifting into the bunker from outside.

Where before there had just been the constant pounding of gunfire and other explosions, now he could hear screams and shouts over the relentless clatter of fighting. Everything suddenly sounded desperately frantic and uncoordinated.

The order and control previously demonstrated by the soldiers now seemed to be disappearing. As he watched he saw that some of the troops who had been left behind to guard the entrance to the base were edging forward, moving closer to the fight. Others were beginning to shuffle back.

‘Why…?’ Heath mumbled. ‘What’s happened…?’

‘Shit, they’ve got no idea how many bodies there could be out there, have they?’ Michael said anxiously. ‘You tried to tell them, didn’t you? Christ, there must be thousands of corpses for every soldier.’

‘Yes, but they’ve got guns and machines and… It’ll be all right, won’t it, Cooper?’ The uncertainty in Heath’s voice was obvious and clear. He already knew the answer to his question.

Cooper ran the length of the hanger and up the entrance ramp until he was almost level with the guards. He peered out into the darkness. The still frequent flashes of brilliant light and flame and random explosions provided more than enough illumination to allow him to see what was happening outside. An experienced soldier, he’d seen enough ground battles to know when an army’s tactics were working and when they were not. He could see at least two areas ahead of him where the bodies were now moving between the military and the base. The creatures had somehow managed to work their way through the lines of troops. Ignorant to the restrictions of fear, pain or just about any other emotion felt by the living, the dead hordes continued to surge forward past pockets of desperate and isolated men and women who were swallowed up by the decaying masses. It was an awful, nightmarish scene which held Cooper rooted to the spot with abject fear until he was distracted by the headlamps of the personnel carrier in the near distance as it turned and began to power back towards the bunker. The headlamps jerked up and down as the driver forced the powerful vehicle over the uneven ground at speed. Bodies occasionally crisscrossed in its path and were obliterated as it raced back to safety.

The corpses were close.

‘What can you see?’ Michael shouted to Cooper from the bottom of the ramp.

Cooper didn’t answer at first, continuing instead to scan the mayhem he could see outside. There seemed to be a never-ending sea of movement ahead of him. The countless bodies which had been burned and destroyed by the last military excursion seemed to have gone - trampled underfoot by yet more corpses. He turned and ran back into the base.

‘Get the engines running,’ he eventually replied in a loud but calm and authoritative voice which masked the anxious, creeping terror he felt inside.

Back out in the field a combination of friendly misfires and the random movements of the bodies had now exploited four breaks in the soldier’s defensive line.

Already at an unexpected advantage because of the dire conditions and their incalculable numbers, the cadavers continued moving forward incessantly towards the light in the distance coming from inside the bunker. En masse they surged through the gaps in the ranks almost unopposed.

Pockets of troops struggled to dispose both of the bodies they faced head-on and those moving through the undefended areas between them and their base. In less than fifteen minutes the balance of power on the battlefield had suddenly and unexpectedly shifted. With the coordination and order they had previously commanded now gone, the soldier’s instinctive reactions and their individual selfish desire for self-preservation caused still more gaps in their defences to appear. Now there were shadowy shapes on all sides. The troops continued to fight and to shoot and to burn and destroy as many corpses as was physically possible until a single flare was launched into the sky near to where Cowell, the officer’s aide, had been standing.

The flare was the signal to retreat.

‘They’re coming back,’ Cooper yelled to the others as he sprinted towards them. He had spotted the incandescent flare hanging in the squally air and had immediately understood its meaning. Before he’d finished speaking the personnel carrier crashed back into the base, careering out of the darkness and skidding out of control. Michael and Heath dived in opposite directions as the heavy machine ploughed along the length of the hanger and then collided with the front of the survivor’s police van, sending it spinning round and shunting it against the wall. Michael instinctively ran to help the survivors who had been waiting inside the vehicle and who had been unprepared for the sudden violent impact. He could hear them screaming and shouting as he yanked at the doors. One of them - an elderly man who’s name he couldn’t remember - was dead, his bloody face having been smashed against one of the windows.

‘What the hell do we do now?’ he yelled to Cooper as he pulled the remaining survivors back out into the light.

Cooper had already yanked the door at the back of the personnel carrier open.

‘Get them in here,’ he screamed.

Michael ushered the terrified survivors towards the military vehicle. As they quickly covered the short distance between the van and the personnel carrier the first foot soldiers returned to the base. They stumbled down the ramp, still firing indiscriminately into the darkness behind them. Seconds later the first bodies appeared. A sudden noise and a flash of movement distracted the survivors.

Cooper looked up and saw that one of the jeeps had crashed into the side of the entrance door. The soldier who’d been behind the wheel was now limping into the base, struggling to keep moving forward whilst the nearest bodies reached out and began to pull him back.

‘We’ve got to get out of here now,’ Cooper decided. ‘If they can’t get that door closed then in a couple of minutes this place will be full of those fucking things.’

‘Go!’ Michael screamed at the drivers of the survivor’s other two vehicles. The noise in the cavernous room was deafening and intense and at first neither Donna or Steve Armitage reacted. Michael gestured frantically and angrily towards the bunker doors until Armitage acknowledged him and began to pull forward, steering the clumsy prison truck around stockpiles of military equipment. Donna, who had never driven the motorhome before, did the same.

As the two vehicles moved towards the entrance many more soldiers and bodies swarmed into the base. Like small and insignificant ants against the vast and bland concrete backdrop, individually the corpses were slow and largely uncoordinated but their collective movement down the steep entrance ramp gave the ominous impression of speed and control. Gunfire continued to ring out and echo constantly. As more soldiers forced their way back inside, so the base became filled with more deadly gunfire and, occasionally, barely controlled flame.

From her position at the front of the motorhome Emma searched desperately through the confusion outside, hoping to catch sight of Michael. Next to her Donna tried to keep calm as she struggled to drive the heavy and unresponsive vehicle. She followed Armitage ahead of her in the truck, concentrating on staying close to his taillights. For a second she allowed herself to look up and into her door mirror.

Back deeper in the base she could she frantic movement around the back of the personnel carrier. In the midst of the bloody confusion she could see Bernard Heath struggling to climb inside. She watched in helpless disbelief as he was brought down by gunfire, a stray round almost cutting him in half. A torrent of bullets thudded into his right leg, his crotch, his abdomen and his shoulder. By the time he hit the ground he was dead.

‘Fucking hell,’ she wailed with tears in her eyes.

‘Bernard’s gone down.’

‘What?’ Emma mumbled, spinning around desperately and trying to get a clear view through the back of the motorhome. She stared for a second at Heath’s crumpled body on the ground before looking for Michael again.

Where the hell was he? What had happened to him…?

Out of sight of Emma, Michael pulled the door at the back of the personnel carrier shut.

‘Get moving!’ he yelled as he stared out through a small, square window at the remains of his fallen friend. He lurched forward and then fell back into a seat as the soldier driving the transport slowly turned it around and pulled away.

‘Put your fucking foot down,’ Cooper hissed in his ear.

The driver did as he was ordered, quickly overtaking the motorhome and the prison truck and powering towards the ramp. Countless staggering shapes - both living and dead - were smashed to the side.

‘Which way?’ the nervous trooper stammered through his cumbersome facemask as they neared the doors. Bright electric light was replaced by sudden blackness as they drove out into the open. Intense battles still seemed to be raging on all sides, providing some illumination but not enough to allow Cooper to make sense of everything that was happening around them. Knowing that the main track away from the bunker was blocked by the truck the survivors had crashed when they’d first arrived there weeks earlier, he needed to find another route away. The vehicle he was travelling in would be able to cope with any terrain, no matter how rough or uneven. The prison truck and motorhome following behind, however, would undoubtedly struggle to deal with uneven ground or anything more than the gentlest of gradients. Resigned to the fact that conditions would probably be as bad whichever direction they went in, he made a snap decision.

‘Follow the line of the valley,’ he ordered, gesturing left and choosing what he thought would be the most level route. He struggled to make himself heard over the engine, the rain and the relentless thud, thud, thud of the constant stream of bodies which launched themselves pointlessly at the metal sides of the personnel carrier. ‘Just keep going straight,’ he continued. ‘We’re bound to pick up a road or a track at some point.’

Driving through the bloody mayhem and devastation which continued to unfold all around them, the three vehicles disappeared into the darkness.

The hanger was filled with bodies. Individual soldiers still managed to offer a degree of resistance but their ammunition and their will to fight was almost completely gone. Terrified and exhausted, several disorientated troops had ripped off their cumbersome facemasks in desperation and were quickly infected and killed. Others were brought down by crossfire. Many more were ripped apart by vast, surging crowds of crazed bodies.

The senior officer left below ground ordered the decontamination chambers to be locked and sealed.

One hundred and seventeen troops remained buried underground.

Almost double that number were trapped on the surface, some still fighting, the majority dead or dying.

8

Being constantly thrown from side to side, Michael had to crawl the length of the personnel carrier to get to Cooper.

‘So what the hell do we do now?’ he demanded, knowing full well that his question was a pointless one.

Cooper had already dragged himself into the front of the vehicle and was now sitting alongside two suited soldiers.

There were a further two troopers sitting in the back with Michael and three other survivors. Obviously soldiers who had been out fighting on the battlefield for some time, the survivors gave them as wide a berth as was possible in the close confines of the military vehicle. Their cumbersome protective suits were covered with a layer of mud, blood and dripping gore which had been picked up during the relentless fighting outside.

Cooper didn’t even bother trying to reply to Michael’s question.

‘Do we just keep going all fucking night?’ Michael cursed, holding on to the back of Cooper’s seat as the armoured vehicle lurched down a sudden incline. He looked out through the blood-splattered glass in front of the driver. The view was frighteningly limited. ‘The motorhome’s got less than half a tank of fuel left,’ he continued, ‘we can’t keep going indefinitely.’

When his comments were again met with silence from Cooper he slumped back angrily in the nearest seat and turned round to look out of the back of the vehicle. Behind them the pointless and costly battle continued to rage with frequent explosions and brilliant flashes of light illuminating the dead world for a fraction of a second at a time. The personnel carrier dipped awkwardly to one side as the ground over which they were driving became increasingly rough and uneven. Following close behind was the prison truck and, further back still, Michael was able to see the lights of the motorhome as it struggled to keep up.

For a second he contemplated trying to stop the convoy so that he could try and get out and get to Emma and the others. But there were still too many bodies around to risk it. Far too many bodies.

Michael held his head in his hands and screwed his eyes shut. He tried to clear from his head some of the nightmarish images he had witnessed in the last hour but it was impossible. Everything had happened so fast. How had it all gone so very wrong so quickly? A couple of hours ago the bunker door had still been sealed and they’d been relatively safe and protected. Now they were exposed and vulnerable again, running once more without direction or defence. He thought about the people he’d seen killed -

several soldiers, Bernard Heath and at least one other survivor. It had all been so pointless. He couldn’t stop thinking about Bernard. He pictured him lying dead on the hanger floor, surrounded by scores of bodies and soldiers still trying to fight. Christ, he hoped he’d died quickly. He hoped he wasn’t suffering. Imagine lying helplessly in the middle of that nightmare, unable to move and slowly bleeding to death, just waiting for it all to be over…

‘We have to hit a road at some point,’ Cooper finally said, snatching Michael back from his dark, depressing thoughts again and bringing him crashing back to reality.

‘Then we’ll stop and try and work out where we are.’

‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ the other man snapped, ‘how can we stop? If we stop then we’re going to…’

‘If we’re sensible we can afford to stop for a little while,’ Cooper interrupted, his voice slightly louder - just enough to silence Michael’s emotional outburst. ‘We’ll stop and regroup and decide what to do next. If we’re quick enough there won’t be time for any more than just a few bodies to find us.’

Michael nodded and grunted to show understanding but he wasn’t really listening. He was trying to keep himself calm and under control. Again he found himself looking out of the window at the motorhome struggling to move across the rough terrain. He was thinking about Emma and what he would do if anything happened to her. At the same time he watched the constant, dark movement all around them as bodies turned and traipsed through the night after the uncoordinated convoy. He was trying to get used to the bitterly painful fact that they were exposed and on the run again.

In the prison truck Steve Armitage skilfully steered along the wide furrowed tracks that the military vehicle in front of him had left behind. At his side was Phil Croft, watching the scene like a hawk, terrified and shaking with nerves but still alert. In the back of the truck more survivors sat huddled in the darkness, not knowing where they were now or where they were going, each one of them wracked with an uncomfortably familiar sense of disorientation and hopeless fear.

Several metres behind the truck Donna groaned with effort as she struggled to keep control of the motorhome. It was an old, overused and unresponsive vehicle which gave a rough ride on level road at the best of times, never mind in these treacherous conditions. Inside the vehicle was deathly silent. A far more ordinary machine than the other two vehicles in front, its wide windows afforded those survivors crammed in the back a clear view of the dead world around them. It was a view which many of them would have preferred not to have seen. Now more than a mile from the military bunker, there were still vast crowds of bodies swarming across the land. Donna forced herself to keep looking forward and to concentrate on driving. She did the best she could but the motorhome was not built to move through thick, churned mud and over sudden, uneven dips and climbs. The steering was slow and heavy and the vehicle’s rear end constantly threatened to slip and slide out of control. In the back no-one dared speak for fear of distracting their nervous driver.

Emma glanced up and noticed the dark silhouette of a house nestled amongst the trees on the brow of a low hill.

At first she was reminded of Penn Farm and in her frightened state she didn’t stop to think that where there was a building, there would almost certainly be a road, track or some other means of access. It was only when Donna slammed the brakes on that realisation dawned.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, immediately concerned that they had stopped. Donna nodded her head in the direction of the two vehicles ahead. Emma peered into the darkness and saw that Cooper had climbed out of the personnel carrier. He was untying the frayed rope that was keeping a wide metal gate closed and in place. The headlamps of the three vehicles illuminated a steady stream of unsteady bodies which crisscrossed the scene randomly and began to collide with the transports. They watched as Cooper swung the gate open, kicked away the nearest corpse, and then ran back to his vehicle.

‘Should be easier from here,’ Donna said quietly, tired resignation very evident in her voice. ‘I don’t think we’ll…’

Her words were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a withered cadaver which stumbled haphazardly out of the darkness towards them and slammed into the front of the motorhome. She jumped back with surprise and then leant forward and peered down at the pathetic shell which was pointlessly battering the front of the vehicle with clumsy, barely-coordinated hands. It was an appalling sight. In the time that the survivors had been underground the condition of the bodies had continued to deteriorate. This creature, judging by the length of its lank, shoulder-length hair and the remains of its ragged clothes, had once been female.

The features of the lower part of its face were virtually indistinguishable. The hole where its mouth should have been was double normal size. Its jawbone hung down, looking as if it had been ripped away from one side of its head. The corpse’s dark, empty eyes stared unblinking into the headlights of the motorhome.

‘They’re moving,’ whispered Emma, forcing herself to look anywhere but directly at the body in front of them.

Donna looked up and then gently accelerated, hoping that the movement of the motorhome might be enough to dislodge the body and push it to one side. When after a couple of seconds it hadn’t moved, she simply pressed her foot down hard and crushed the obnoxious, disease-ridden thing beneath the wheels of her vehicle.

Following the prison truck and the personnel carrier, Donna carefully steered the motorhome through the gate and turned right onto a narrow tarmac track.

9

The convoy pushed on through the early evening and into the night, following the twisting road through the endless darkness, not knowing where it would eventually take them.

The nervous silence in the personnel carrier was uncomfortable and oppressive and yet was expected and understood. Its nine passengers were all struggling and suffering for a number of reasons. Each person was individually as anxious and uncertain as the next. Cooper kept his mind occupied by watching the road ahead constantly, scanning from side to side for bodies and hoping to find somewhere where they could stop for a while and catch their breath. They had nothing with them -

no food, water, weapons or anything - and it was obvious that getting hold of some supplies whilst keeping safe had to be their first priority. He had known it was going to be like this if they’d needed to leave the base at speed. He’d intended stockpiling supplies in readiness for such an eventuality. The fact that the military had provided them with meagre rations and had maintained strict control over their equipment had made it impossible for him to build up any reserves. They’d hardly had enough to live on, never mind any to save.

In the back of the vehicle Michael stared at one of the soldiers leaning against the door. The soldier was sobbing.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked. The suited figure turned its head and looked at him.

‘Kelly Harcourt,’ she replied. Michael was surprised although he knew he shouldn’t have been. Under all the battlefield dirt and the heavy protective suit he’d assumed that the trooper was male. Although it was dark and most of her face was hidden by her cumbersome breathing apparatus, he could still see her eyes, her nose and the top part of her mouth. She looked too young to be in uniform.

‘And is this the first time you’d been above ground?’

She nodded.

‘They told us what we were going to see,’ she said quietly, ‘but I never expected it to be like this. I didn’t think that…’

He shook his head.

‘Believe me,’ he sighed, ‘whatever they told you, it’s worse. You haven’t seen anything yet.’

As quickly as it had begun the exchange ended. Michael regretted sounding so negative, but how else could he be?

His awkward attempt to make conversation with the soldier had been instinctive and natural, but when he couldn’t think of anything more positive to say he instead chose to say nothing. What could he possibly tell her that would make any difference to the hopelessness of her position? He couldn’t help her or reassure her or comfort her. He couldn’t make any promises about her safety or her health or security. He couldn’t really tell her anything and that, he decided, was the hardest and most frustrating part of all.

Now that they were outside and unprotected again, he truly understood just how important the military base could (and should) have been. He thought about the different places where he’d spent any length of time over the last six weeks

- the community centre back in Northwich, Penn Farm and now the base - none of them had been able to provide the shelter and protection he’d craved and expected. Nowhere had been strong enough. Filled with a sudden gut-wrenching emptiness, Michael realised that in spite of his seemingly constant efforts, he had achieved nothing since the nightmare had begun. Okay, so he was still alive and in relatively good physical condition, but he was as vulnerable, cold, anxious, tired, disorientated, unnerved and helpless now as he’d been on the very first day.

Was this how it was always going to be?

Progress along debris-strewn roads was slow. The landscape through which they cautiously moved was relentlessly dark and bleak with just about the only movement coming from those random bodies quick enough to react to the noise and light produced by the three vehicle convoy. Almost an hour and a half after their unplanned and uncoordinated journey had begun, the survivors skirted round the furthest edge of relatively small town and then came upon a collection of large, nondescript buildings sited just off the main road. The soldier driving the personnel carrier slowed down. Some kind of industrial estate, when they looked deeper into the shadows they were able to make out a cinema, a restaurant, a call centre, office blocks and various dilapidated factories and several other shells of buildings in various stages of construction or demolition. It appeared that the area had been in the middle of a huge regeneration project when the project managers, the architects, the backers, the bankers, the construction workers and everyone else involved in the place had died.

Michael looked around hopefully. There didn’t seem to be too many bodies around, perhaps because of the relatively close proximity of the underground base. Thousands of corpses had been drawn to the bunker over several weeks.

Because so many of them had ended up around the base, it stood to reason that the dead population of the surrounding areas might well have been substantially reduced. Although they may return in time, for the moment Michael guessed that they were still being drawn towards the mayhem at the base that the survivors had just left behind.

‘Let’s try here,’ he suggested, leaning towards Cooper and the driver at the front of the vehicle.

The driver cautiously led the convoy deeper into the estate, following a winding road which connected a number of car parks the size of football pitches, largely empty save for the odd abandoned (and numerous crashed) vehicles.

He was about to pull up alongside a dark and apparently lifeless restaurant when Cooper made a suggestion.

‘Head for the cinema,’ he said quietly. ‘Everything happened early in the day. No-one would have been there when it started.’

His reasoning was sound. Most people seemed to have been killed sometime between eight and nine o’clock in the morning - long before the cinema would have been open for business. If there were any bodies inside, he thought, then at most there should only have been a few staff or cleaners.

‘Go round the back,’ Michael said, ‘just keep going for a minute.’ He followed the logic of Cooper’s train of thought but he wasn’t entirely convinced. The cinema may well have been quiet, but it was also designed to be dark and enclosed and the entrances and exits within each individual theatre would be limited. He was apprehensive. He didn’t want to make the wrong decision and find himself trapped in such a confined and restrictive environment. ‘Hold on,’ he said, looking up and over to his left, ‘what about that place?’

Michael gestured beyond the cinema towards a warehouse-sized shop. The driver kept moving forward, swerving instinctively but unnecessarily around three clumsy, lurching bodies which tripped out of the shadows.

The warehouse was in the furthest corner of the estate and was bordered on its left side and along the back by a high chain-link fence. Beyond the fence were trees. As they approached Cooper noticed a cordoned-off loading bay nestled against the side of the building.

‘Over there,’ he said. ‘Go through the gate.’

The driver did as instructed, carefully guiding the personnel carrier into the enclosed area. Still close behind, the prison truck and the motorhome both followed. The personnel carrier came to a sudden, jerking stop and, feeling sick through a combination of nerves and the long, rough journey, Michael clambered out quickly and jogged across the loading area. Seconds later Cooper was with him and, between them, they pulled shut a heavy gate and secured it, cutting them off from the rest of the estate. A lone body had managed to get through. Cooper grabbed its neck and smashed its head repeatedly against the back of the nearby prison truck until it fell twitching to the ground.

‘Let’s get everyone inside,’ Michael suggested. ‘If we get under cover quickly enough then we might not attract very many of them. We might even be able to spend the night here if we can…’

A sudden flurry of movement to his right distracted him.

Instantly ready to batter and beat away another abhorrent body, he stopped when he saw that it was Emma. She threw herself at him and wrapped her arms around him, knocking him off-balance.

‘Couldn’t see you back there,’ she whispered. ‘I looked but I couldn’t see you. I didn’t know if you were here or whether you’d…’

‘We haven’t got time for this,’ Donna hissed disapprovingly. ‘Get out of sight for Christ’s sake.’

The survivors and soldiers nervously emptied out of their respective vehicles and bustled into the dark building.

Stonehouse, the highest ranking of the four soldiers who had travelled with them, led the way in through a side entrance which had been propped open for the last seven and a half weeks by the atrophied right leg of a dead member of staff. He held his rifle out in front of him, ready to fire but not sure what good it would do if he did. The group followed behind in a close but uncoordinated bunch and were almost completely silent until Jack Baxter spoke.

‘We should make a bit of noise,’ he whispered, ‘just in case there’s any of them in here. We should try and get them to come out of the shadows.’

‘It’s all bloody shadows in here, Jack,’ Michael mumbled, looking around and trying to make sense of their dark and dismal surroundings. They seemed to be in a household store of sorts and they were presently standing in the middle of the electrical department. To their right was a wall of depressingly dark and dead television screens, to their left a similarly dead and powerless display of stereo equipment.

The soldier leading the group stopped moving.

‘So what do we do now?’ he asked.

‘Get some bloody light in here for a start,’ a voice from the darkness replied. Michael recognised it as belonging to Peter Guest, a quiet whisper of a man who generally kept himself to himself and to whom he had only spoken a handful of times.

‘There’s bound to be something in here we can use,’

Donna said hopefully as she looked round through the gloom. She could hear movement nearby and, although she was almost completely certain that it was another one of her group she could hear, she wasn’t totally sure.

Standing just to the side of Stonehouse, Phil Croft raised his cigarette lighter to his face, the dancing orange flame burning a bright hole in the darkness. Scrambling through the shop debris towards the light with suddenly increased speed, a body lurched at Stonehouse, knocking him off-balance and pushing him back into the huddled group of survivors. Instinctively the soldier picked himself back up, shoved the corpse back on its already unsteady feet, and then lifted his rifle and shot the pitiful creature through the head. It dropped heavily to the ground at his feet, its face a bloody mass of putrefied flesh and splintered bone.

‘You bloody idiot,’ Donna hissed. ‘Christ, make some more noise why don’t you? We’d better get some damn light sorted out now because every dead body in this fucking place will be on its way over to us.’

‘Have you stopped to wonder why none of us bother carrying guns?’ Baxter spat. ‘A single shot might take one of them out, but there are thousands of the bloody things, and the noise you make getting rid of one will bring a hundred of them sniffing round you.’

Knowing that their words had just caused panic within the group of anxious survivors, Donna began to search the nearby shelves for something to illuminate the dark building. Others followed her lead. Kelly Harcourt, the soldier Michael had spoken to earlier, disappeared back outside and then returned with a handful of torches from the personnel carrier.

‘Why the hell didn’t you bring them in with you in the first place?’ Donna snapped, snatching one of the torches from her.

‘Give her a break,’ Baxter sighed as he peered nervously into the darkness.

The torches were handed round and several circles of bright light were shone around the vast shop floor. They heard the clattering of a display unit being knocked over as at least one more clumsy body became aware of their presence and began to stumble over towards them.

‘Let’s stay here,’ whispered Michael. ‘It’ll be easier if we stay in one place and wait for them to come to us.’

‘How long do we wait?’ a voice from behind him asked.

‘As long as we have to,’ he answered back. ‘Why? You got anything better to do?’

The first body lumbered into view. Moving with surprising speed and dragging one useless foot behind, the creature was illuminated by the light from Donna’s torch.

Its face (as much of its face that remained intact) was blue-grey and waxy in appearance with dried, parchment-like skin clinging to its skull, making it appear hollow and frail.

It wore the ragged remnants of a store attendant’s uniform - a blue shirt (with a collar that now appeared several sizes too big because of the body’s emaciation) and a red tie.

Donna found the fact that the body was still wearing a tie bizarre. It even had a name badge pinned to its shirt pocket.

The name had been obscured by mould and dribbles of blood and other bodily discharges which had dripped down from its decaying face over time. Cooper disposed of the body by swinging a fire extinguisher through the air and virtually knocking its listless head from its shoulders. It collapsed to the ground as three more bodies lumbered awkwardly into view.

Half an hour was sufficient time to enable the survivors to rid themselves of the last bodies and dispose of them in a heap outdoors. Pleased to finally be occupied for a while, many of the survivors then busied themselves around the building, collecting anything they thought might prove useful. The bodies outside had yet to materialise in the vast numbers the group had come to expect. When the hordes of corpses had failed to appear a handful of people had ventured out into the open for a few risk-filled minutes and gathered all the edible food and drink they could find from the kitchen of the restaurant next door and the concessions stand in the foyer of the cinema opposite. Mostly sweets, chocolate and tinned goods, it was better than nothing. By the time the men and women who had gone outside were safely back in the warehouse there were around twenty bodies gathered around the front of the building and half as many again clattering against the fence surrounding the loading bay, nothing like the massive numbers they were used to.

‘They’re not a problem when there’s only a few of them,’ Cooper explained, trying to educate Stonehouse.

‘Problem is that one of them will inevitably attract another and so on and so on until you’ve got hundreds to deal with.

And there are thousands upon thousands of the fuckers out there.’

Stonehouse sat opposite Cooper, slumped dejectedly in a chair in the area of the store where customers would previously have sat with staff and applied for credit. Baxter sat alongside them. Donna, Emma and Michael were also nearby, as were several other survivors. A short distance away the three other soldiers sat in silence on a pile of large cushions and garishly coloured beanbags which looked like they had originally been designed for use in children’s bedrooms.

‘So what happens next?’ Stonehouse asked. Baxter looked at him with sadness and pity, trying to imagine how the soldier must have been feeling, trapped in his uncomfortable protective suit, knowing that to take it off would almost certainly result in a quick, painful and instant death. He imagined that he himself might have been able to handle it for a few hours, maybe even a couple of days, but the four soldiers now travelling with them would have to exist like this indefinitely. He didn’t know how they’d be able to eat, drink or do anything else. Surely it would only be a matter of time before they had no option but to take off their suits. It was inevitable. Christ, whether they realised it or not (and he was pretty sure they did), they were just waiting to die.

‘I don’t know,’ Cooper replied, answering the soldier’s question. ‘We need to stop here for as long as it’s safe. We need to know exactly who and what we’ve got here. There are a lot of people here who need to…’

‘Then what?’ the soldier pressed, interrupting. He wasn’t interested in hearing about the state of mind of any of the survivors. Cooper shrugged his shoulders.

‘We move on I suppose.’

‘Where to?’

‘How the hell am I supposed to know?’ he sighed.

‘Bloody hell, I don’t know.’

‘Problem is,’ Baxter said quietly, ‘nowhere’s safe anymore. Christ, you lot with your bloody guns and your tanks and everything else couldn’t look after yourselves, could you? What hope do you think we’ve got?’

Cooper looked up at him and slowly shook his head.

‘Come on, we’ve talked about this a hundred bloody times already, Jack,’ he said before turning back to face the soldier again. ‘The bodies are rotting. Although they’re more controlled than they were before, the fact is they’re still decaying.’ He turned to face Stonehouse again. ‘We reckon it’s not going to be too long before they reach the point when they’re not able to function.’

‘And how long do you think that’s going to be?’

‘Just a few more months now.’

‘A few more months? Fucking hell, are we supposed to sit here like this for a few months?’

‘You might have to. Could you last that long?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

The soldier thought for a moment.

‘Doesn’t look like we’ve got any option but to try and get back to the base,’ he replied, his voice tired and slow.

‘Whatever happens we’re dead if we stop out here. Might as well try and get back inside if we can.’

‘You’ve got nothing to lose,’ Baxter said.

‘Seems to me we’ve lost everything already,’ the soldier snapped.

10

By Clare’s watch it was a quarter to three.

The warehouse was silent and cold. She lay restless on the floor on a thin mattress next to Donna. Together they’d dragged it over from the furniture department hours earlier.

Despite being physically exhausted she couldn’t relax enough to be able to sleep. Looking around in the low light it was obvious that she wasn’t the only one struggling to get any rest. Perhaps as many as half of the others were awake too. Clare needed to get some sleep but she couldn’t.

She felt increasingly anxious and uncomfortable. Her guts were twisting with pain. Maybe it was just nerves? Perhaps it was the overdose of sugar she’d taken when she’d eaten earlier. Whatever the reason, the very thought of food now made her want to vomit. She’d had diarrhoea an hour or so ago. Christ it had been humiliating. She’d sat on a dried-out toilet pain in the furthest corner of the building and had cried with the discomfort and degradation of the experience. She was sure that everyone had been able to hear her. Even now after living rough for almost six weeks and going without even the most basic of human necessities, sometimes it was still too much for her. She was a teenage girl and, despite what had happened to the rest of the world, her body had continued to develop as it would normally have been expected to. She’d started her first period a week and a half ago. Donna had helped her and had reassured her as much as she could but it hadn’t been easy - it was obvious that she was struggling too.

Everyone was struggling.

Clare lay on her back and looked up at the ceiling, studying the many metal girders which supported the roof and wishing that the huge lights hanging high above her would work. She’d be prepared to risk attracting the attention of the bodies outside if she could just turn on the lights and see clearly for a while. She wanted a little light and certainty. The darkness and shadow unnerved her. She hated it even when she was in relatively familiar surroundings, but this place was cold and unknown. She hated the darkness more than ever tonight.

Her eyes were becoming heavy but still she couldn’t sleep. Clare desperately needed to relax and start building up her energy reserves. She knew that as soon as day broke they’d most probably be up and out again and she didn’t know when they’d next be able to stop. She didn’t know if she’d have enough strength to be able to make it through tomorrow. She found it incredibly difficult to keep going when they didn’t know where or what they were going to.

She just hoped that tomorrow would be relatively easy and painless and…

She could hear something.

She lifted herself up onto her elbows and listened intently. There it was in the distance - a faint, mechanical sound. The world was so still that the unexpected noise seemed directionless and vague and she wondered at first whether she was just imagining it. Was it just a cruel trick her tired mind was playing on itself? The sound became fractionally louder, and she made the logical assumption that it must have been more soldiers from the base. Perhaps a few more of them had managed to get to their vehicles and get away from the bunker. Maybe they were looking for the survivors? Maybe they’d just come this way by chance? Whatever the source of the noise, it was still faint and it seemed for a while to wash in and out of range. It could have been a mile away or ten. Clare had no way of knowing where it was coming from and she was too afraid to risk getting up and going to the window and looking for it. She didn’t want to be seen by any of the things outside.

It was getting louder.

She wasn’t the only one who had heard it. She noticed that another couple of people (she couldn’t see who) were now sitting up and listening. She leant across and shook Donna’s shoulder.

‘What?’ Donna grumbled lethargically before suddenly remembering where she was and jumping up, worried that something was wrong or that something had happened.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Listen,’ Clare whispered.

The noise was definitely moving closer now. It sounded like an engine of sorts, but not the engine of a car, truck or lorry. It continued to steadily increase in volume and, as it got louder, it began to change and to gradually become clear. A relentless mechanical chop, chop, chop could now be heard above the general din. Those survivors who were awake knew what it was they could hear, but they refused to believe it. Louder and louder now until the building felt like it was beginning to shake and the air was filled with the deafening sound. Michael got up and ran to the front of the warehouse, desperate to see what was making the noise and also concerned that it would attract many more unwanted bodies to the scene. All of his worries were forgotten instantly when, from out of nowhere, a brilliant shaft of bright white light suddenly swooped along the length of the industrial estate and then stopped. It took a few seconds for the reality of the situation to sink in. The reality was that there was a helicopter hovering over the warehouse, lighting up the place with a powerful searchlight.

‘Is this one of yours?’ Baxter asked Stonehouse as they both stood up. Behind them Cooper grabbed the nearest soldier’s weapon and pushed his way over to the door through which they’d originally entered the building.

‘Nothing to do with us,’ the equally bemused Stonehouse replied as he and Baxter both followed Cooper out into the loading bay. They shielded their eyes from the burning light and whipping wind and ran for cover behind the prison truck as the pilot of the helicopter skilfully and carefully lowered the machine and set it down in the space between the soldier’s and survivor’s three vehicles. Cooper watched every metre of its rapid descent.

The very moment the helicopter was down the pilot cut its engine and extinguished all lights. The swirling rotor blades began to slow and the ground-shaking mechanical noise began to fade, leaving the all too familiar sound of bodies clattering against the wire mesh fence to become clear again. Baxter stood up to move but Cooper grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back down.

‘Wait,’ he hissed, ‘take it easy. We don’t know who the hell this is.’

The doors on either side of the helicopter opened.

Cooper watched with caution and a degree of unquestionable excitement as two people jumped down onto the tarmac. It was difficult to clearly see what was happening in the gloom of early morning. What appeared to be a well-built man and a smaller, more rotund woman stood together in front of the aircraft and scoured the scene for signs of life.

‘Hello,’ the man called out. ‘Anyone there?’

His calls provoked a sudden and intense reaction from the crowd of corpses on the other side of the fence but nothing else. After a few seconds spent silently weighing up the options, Cooper slowly stood up and stepped out of the shadows. He held the soldier’s rifle tightly in his hands, making sure it was visible, but kept the barrel very obviously pointed down towards the ground.

‘Over here,’ he answered. The two figures turned and, after a moment’s hesitation, began to walk towards him.

‘Where the bloody hell did you come from?’ he demanded, relieved that these people looked relatively normal.

‘Just outside Bigginford,’ the man replied factually. ‘I’m Richard Lawrence. This is Karen Chase.’

‘Everything all right, Cooper?’ Michael asked, suddenly appearing at his side, flanked by another two survivors and a soldier. A further crowd of people were stood in the doorway, watching intently.

‘Think so,’ Cooper mumbled in reply. He moved a little closer to Lawrence and Chase. ‘How did you find us?

We’ve only been here for a few hours.’

‘Pretty easy in that thing,’ Lawrence answered, nodding back towards the helicopter. He brushed his long and windswept grey hair out of his face so that he could clearly see Cooper. ‘We saw the crowds a few miles back and we knew that something was happening round here,’ he continued, referring to the battle at the bunker, ‘so we’ve been on the lookout for anyone trying to get away. And you lot stick out like a sore thumb.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve been flying helicopters for years now,’ he explained, ‘and it gets easy to spot things that are out of the ordinary, even today when pretty much everything’s screwed up. You don’t often get vehicles like the ones you’ve got parked around the back of places like this.’

He had a point, Cooper silently admitted to himself. The prison truck, motorhome and military vehicle did look conspicuously out of place tucked away in the shadows of the warehouse.

‘How many people you got here?’ Chase asked.

‘Don’t know exactly,’ Cooper replied. ‘Between thirty and forty I think…’

‘Look, can we finish this inside?’ Michael interrupted.

He was, as always, acutely aware of the effect their prolonged appearance outside was having on the mass of bodies nearby. Cooper nodded and stood to one side to allow the new arrivals to walk past him and follow Michael into the dark building.

By the time they reached the main area where the survivors had grouped themselves just about everyone was up and awake and aware of what had happened. Nervous and subdued conversations were quickly silenced as the unfamiliar figures entered the warehouse. The centre of attention, Lawrence and Chase found themselves standing in the middle of the group feeling awkward and exposed, nodding acknowledgments to the few faces they were able to make out in the half light. Chase tugged Lawrence’s arm and pulled him over to the edge of the impromptu gathering. They found themselves somewhere to sit and looked round into the many faces staring back at them.

‘This is Richard Lawrence and Karen Chase,’ Cooper announced as he arrived back in the room. ‘They’ve come from Bigginford, so Christ knows how they’ve ended up here.’

‘That’s bloody miles away,’ Jack Baxter muttered under his breath.

‘They’ve got a bloody helicopter,’ Phil Croft sighed, frustrated by the other man’s stupid comment.

The air was suddenly filled with hushed expectation.

There seemed to be so many questions to ask that no-one knew where to start. Donna cleared her throat and took up the mantle.

‘So do you spend all your time flying around in the middle of the night looking for survivors?’ she asked, the tone of her voice strangely abrasive and clearly lacking in trust.

‘Not usually,’ Chase responded, equally abrasively.

‘How did you know where to find us then?’

‘We’ve known for some time that there were probably people around here…’

‘So why didn’t you let us know you were about?’ Baxter interrupted.

‘Because we couldn’t see you,’ Lawrence answered, playing with his short greying ginger beard as he spoke.

‘All we could see were a few thousand bodies. We knew something had to be attracting them, but we didn’t know what.’

‘So where were you?’ Chase asked.

‘Underground,’ Baxter replied.

She nodded.

‘I flew over this area a couple of days ago and it was pretty bloody obvious that something had happened. There was a hell of a lot of smoke around but I couldn’t see what was going on. We came back again just now and saw the fighting. We thought that some of you might have got away so we spent the last couple of hours flying around trying to find you.’

The group fell silent as they each considered the explanation they’d just heard. It sounded feasible. They didn’t have any reason not to believe what they’d been told.

‘Tell us about the helicopter,’ Emma asked. ‘How have you ended up with a helicopter?’

‘I’ve been flying for years,’ Lawrence answered. ‘It was my job. I used to fly people over towns for those “eye in the sky” traffic broadcasts on local radio. I was up there when this all kicked off…’

‘So what happened?’

‘We were in the middle of a broadcast and it got the reporter,’ he replied. The pilot’s face suddenly looked tired.

The effort involved in talking about what had happened was considerable. ‘Beautiful girl, she was,’ he continued.

‘She was dead in seconds. Then I looked down and I could see the world falling apart beneath me and I never wanted to land. By the time I finally touched down everyone was dead.’

The group’s questions, although random and perhaps individually insignificant and unimportant, all needed to be asked. And the sudden speed of the unexpected arrival and the lack of time they’d had to think about what was happening meant that the questions were asked as and when they came to mind.

‘So are there many of you?’ Michael asked.

‘Not as many as you by the look of things,’ Lawrence replied. ‘There are just over twenty of us, but we’re split at the moment.’

‘Split?’

He nodded.