Sensing that to prolong the conversation any longer would be pointless, Michael turned and walked back to the house.
By six o’clock Carl was ready to leave. His bike, loaded up with his bags, stood next to the gate. Dressed in the leathers and boots taken from corpse in Pennmyre earlier in the day, and carrying the freshly disinfected crash helmet in his hand, he stood at the front door of the farmhouse with Emma and Michael. This was it. He knew that there was no turning back, and no point in delaying the inevitable.
He glanced at the other two.
‘Ready?’ Emma asked.
He nodded and swallowed. His mouth was dry.
It was a cold night with a relentless, biting wind. Emma zipped up her fleecy jacket and thrust her hands deep into her pockets.
‘Last time I ask,’ Michael said, fighting to make himself heard over the wind, ‘are you sure about this?’
Carl nodded again.
‘Better get on with it,’ he said and with that he pulled on his crash helmet. The helmet helped to make him feel further detached from the other two, and that sudden perception of distance made it easier to take the first step and leave.
The three survivors walked together towards the bike.
‘I’ll open the gate,’ Michael said. ‘You wheel the bike through and start it. Once I hear the engine and see you move, I’m locking up. Okay?’
Carl raised a leather clad hand and lifted his thumb to show that he understood. He took one last look over his shoulder at the farmhouse he was leaving and climbed onto the bike. He flicked up the kick-stand with his foot and rolled forward a couple of tentative meters.
‘Wait by the house,’ Michael said, gesturing for Emma to get back and out of the way. They had no idea what would be waiting for them on the other side of the gate on the bridge. Keen to put maximum distance between her and the rest of the world beyond the barricade, Emma slowly walked backwards towards the house. She watched intently as Michael carefully unlocked each of the eight padlocks and lifted the wooden bar which secured the gate.
‘Ready?’ he asked.
Carl stood astride the bike, his hands tightly gripping the handlebars. He nodded.
Slowly and cautiously, Michael pushed open one side of the gate. Carl rolled the bike forward again until he sat on the other side of the bridge. Again he glanced over his shoulder and saw that the other man had also taken a few steps forward. He kept hold of the edge of the gate in his hand, ready to slam it shut as soon as Carl had gone. They had only been out there for a few seconds but already Michael could see movement in the bushes.
A few seconds later and it was done. Carl lifted his foot and slammed it down on the pedal, starting the bike. The mighty engine spluttered and roared into life sending a cloud of fumes and heat billowing towards Michael. As the first few inquisitive corpses emerged from the shadows of the forest Carl accelerated away. As he pulled the gate closed Michael saw the bike swerve as Carl avoided the first body to have staggered into his path. With shaking hands he lowered the wooden bar back into place and snap-locked each of the heavy padlocks.
Emma was standing just a few feet behind Michael. He turned around and her sudden unexpected appearance startled him. He caught his breath and then, instinctively, reached out and held her tight. The warmth of her body was reassuring. He rested his head on her shoulder and cried silent tears for the man who had just left Penn Farm. Michael put his tears down to the wind but he knew in his heart that there was more to them. He found himself suddenly wracked with guilt at having let the other survivor leave.
Such was the silence of the evening that almost ten minutes had passed before the sound of Carl’s engine had finally faded away into the night. Emma shivered as she imagined the effect that the noise would have on the lamentable remains of the population of the shattered world through which Carl was now travelling. The roar of the engine and the light from the headlamp would attract the attention of hundreds, probably thousands of bodies, every last one of which would stagger after Carl until he was out of view or earshot. But he would have to stop the bike eventually. What would happen then? It didn’t bear thinking about.
It was a bitterly cold night.
Once they were completely sure that they could no longer hear the distant sound of the motorbike, Emma and Michael went inside and locked the door of the farmhouse behind them.
35
Carl raced along countless twisting, turning narrow roads, hoping and praying that he was still travelling in the right direction, hoping and praying that he would soon see a road sign or some other signal to confirm that he was heading the right way. He needed to find the motorway which would take him south-east, almost directly into the heart of Northwich. It was bitterly ironic that he now found himself desperate to return to the city which he, Emma and Michael had earlier been so keen to escape from.
Driving at speed in the dark was harder and required more concentration than he had expected. He found it difficult to get used to the motorbike – it had been some ten years since he’d ridden one regularly and, even then, the bikes he had been used to were nowhere near as powerful as this one. The state of the roads made the journey even more hazardous. Although devoid of any other moving traffic, they were littered with haphazard piles of rubbish, twisted, rusting vehicle wreckage and rotting human remains. As well as the countless motionless obstructions, Carl was constantly aware of shadowy bodies all around him. Although they could do nothing to harm him while he travelled at speed, their ominous presence alone was enough to distract and unnerve him. He knew that one slip was all that it would take. One lapse of concentration and he could lose control of the bike. If that happened he knew that he would have just seconds to get himself back in command of the powerful machine before the bodies arrived.
The motorcycle’s bright headlamp was powerful enough to illuminate a sizeable area of the devastated world through which he travelled. In spite of all that he had seen over the last few hours, days and weeks, some of the sights he witnessed through the inky blackness chilled him to the bone. As he drove towards a car facing towards him, the dead driver lifted its rapidly decomposing head and stared at him. In the fraction of a second he saw it, he knew that the body had not looked past him, it had looked directly at him. In those lifeless, dull eyes he saw both a complete lack of emotion and, at the same time, a paradoxical savage intent which chilled him to the bone. Such abhorrent visions, and the fact that he knew he was utterly alone for the first time since his nightmare had begun, made the cold, dark night seem colder and darker still.
Thousands upon thousands of pathetic, straggling bodies turned and stumbled towards the source of the sound that shattered the otherwise all-consuming silence. Most of the time they were too slow and, when they finally arrived at where the bike had just been, Carl was long gone. Occasionally, however, fate and circumstance contrived to allow some of the bodies to get dangerously close to him. He quickly learnt that the best way to deal with them was simply to plough straight through them with relentless ferocity. The empty corpses offered no resistance. The shadowy silhouette of a dead young woman stumbled out into the middle of the road and began to walk towards the rapidly approaching bike. Rather than waste time and effort by swerving to avoid her, Carl instead forced the bike to move faster and faster. He collided with the body full-on. It was rotten and decayed and completely disintegrated on impact.
Other than the light from the bike the world was swathed with a virtually impenetrable darkness. The only other light came from the full moon which occasionally dared to peer out from behind a cover of thick, swirling cloud. The sharp light which then spilled down on the world was cold and cruel. The shadows it cast made the grotesque sights which surrounded Carl seem even more unbearable.