‘Get back to the car!’ Michael yelled as he struggled to hold the other man down. ‘Get the fucking engine started!’
Despite having the speed and intentions of a man possessed, Philip was weak and slight of stature and it didn’t take much effort on Michael’s part to overpower him. He wrenched him around and grasped his scrawny neck in a dangerously tight headlock. He dragged Philip towards the front door of the cottage, ignoring his pitiful, wheezing cries.
There were three bodies in the road between the car and the van. Emma ran past them and climbed into the car and started the engine. The corpses – joined by more from the shadows nearby – began to crowd around her. She struggled to see between them and waited anxiously for Michael to appear.
More bodies were reacting to the sounds of the struggle inside the building and were heading towards the cottage. Emma accelerated, hoping that the sound of the car’s engine would distract them and give Michael and Philip a chance to get out. A couple of stumbling figures turned around awkwardly and staggered towards the car. An equal number continued to move closer to the house.
Michael looked up and saw that there were corpses in the doorway. Philip, sensing that he had been distracted momentarily, managed to squirm free. He took a few steps away from Michael and wiped tears from his eyes, oblivious to the danger of the approaching cadavers.
‘Why can’t I bring her with me?’ he pleaded, still refusing to accept the bitter truth.
Michael grabbed hold of his arm to pull him out of the house but he recoiled and managed to twist himself free again. A body reached out and grabbed hold of Philip’s shoulders. Another caught hold of one of his legs. Terrified, he began to kick and scream.
‘Get them off me!’ he yelled. ‘Please, get them off!’
Michael tore the creatures away from him and pushed them back out into the street. He looked up and saw that there were about twenty figures around Emma’s car and he could see her panicked face staring back at him through the glass. He knew that he had to make a choice and he had to make it immediately. Keep trying to persuade Philip to leave without his mother or just leave without either of them. He glanced back at the pathetic shell of a man who stood in the middle of his living room, whimpering and snivelling.
The decision was made.
Michael ran out through the doorway, pushing bodies to the side, and pausing only to pull the door shut behind him hoping to give Philip something of a chance. He fought his way through the ragged crowd and climbed into the Landrover and started the engine. From where he sat all that he could see was a mass of grotesque, decaying faces staring back at him. He gave a couple of short blasts on the horn and, when Emma did the same in reply, he pushed down on the accelerator and moved away. The decomposing bodies offered hardly any resistance.
He watched in the mirror until he was sure that Emma was following and then put his foot down.
42
Seven miles to Penn Farm.
The maze of twisting country lanes which surrounded the farm and connected it to the numerous villages and small towns nearby was confusing and disorientating. Michael found it hard to keep concentrating because he was preoccupied with other thoughts. Had he done the right thing in leaving Philip behind or should he have made more of an effort to drag him away from his home? He knew that the poor confused soul wouldn’t have abandoned his dead mother without a lot more persuasion, and he also knew that they hadn’t had the luxury of having time to argue. When it came to it the decision had been a pretty clear cut choice between Emma and Philip. He couldn’t stand the thought of risking Emma’s safety for even a second, but at the same time he felt wracked with guilt when he remembered the pathetic, frightened little man he’d left quivering alone in the stagnant surroundings of his dead mother’s house.
A short while earlier in the car park, in those few precious seconds when he had stood out in the open next to Emma, he had allowed himself to feel a faint flicker of optimism. Momentarily they seemed to have been miles away from the close confines of the farmhouse and the wandering bodies. He had felt strong and safe as he had breathed in deep gulps of cold, sea air. But reality had returned with a vengeance. Now an all too common feeling of claustrophobic despair had returned.
A T-junction in the road appeared. It looked familiar and Michael sensed that they were finally heading in the right direction. Then a signpost he had seen before, soon followed by the rusting wreck of a blue estate car which he remembered having seen crashed into the base of an old oak tree. Without a doubt they were at last on the road that would lead them back to the farmhouse.
Driving back along the same road towards the farm but approaching it from the opposite direction was Carl. Feeling numb and weak with nerves and with every muscle in his body aching with heavy tiredness and a deadly fatigue, he glanced down at the motorbike’s controls. He was still travelling at a reckless speed, but he didn’t dare slow down as the needle on the fuel gauge had dropped to the lowest possible level. He hadn’t planned on making two long trips on the same tank of petrol. Now little more than fumes remained in the tank.
Forcing himself to keep going, he swerved around another one of the wandering bodies and increased his speed still further. The body span around and grabbed at the carbon monoxide-filled air where the bike had just been.
With less than three miles to go Michael’s nervousness increased. He felt a constant and very real fear in the back of his mind whenever they were away that something might have happened to the farmhouse. If the gate or any other part of the barrier had collapsed then their home could well be surrounded by scores of relentless, decomposing corpses. Although there was still a way to go, he began instinctively to search for the turning which led to the track running from the road to the house. It was on their left somewhere, but he knew it would be difficult to see from the angle they would be approaching at.
They rushed past the trees, bushes and buildings lining the sides of the roads at a dangerous speed but neither Michael or Emma cared. Both were individually content to risk a degree of safety to get back home in the shortest possible time.
Carl was almost there.
Just a couple of hundred yards remained between him and the turning onto the track to the farm. He too searched constantly for the elusive junction. There were bodies all around him, stumbling onto the road in whichever direction he looked. Yet again the silence of the rest of the world seemed to have amplified out of all proportion every sound the motorbike made. Like a perverse Pied Piper a growing crowd of restless corpses followed him, attracted by the throaty roar of the powerful engine.
Carl’s heart sank as that same roar suddenly spluttered and died.
He was out of fuel. Damn close to the farmhouse, but not close enough.
As the bike freewheeled to a standstill he frantically tried to decide what to do. He quickly took off his helmet and threw it at the closest few bodies before dumping the bike and beginning to run. Exhausted, hot and tired he sprinted down the road and towards the track with what seemed like hundreds of corpses in close (but slow) pursuit and with more swarming around him from the trees and shadows surrounding. He was faintly aware of a low mechanical sound in the distance but he was too scared to stop. He had to keep moving. He reached the turning onto the track and began to sprint up the hill in the direction of the farmhouse.
At that moment the Landrover and car appeared, both still in close convoy and both out of sight of Carl. Disorientated and surprised by the unexpected appearance of so many bodies, Michael missed the turning. The sound of their vehicles had attracted plenty of cadavers along the way, but why were so many of them here now? Had their collective interest been aroused by the noise from the Landrover when they’d first left Penn Farm earlier that morning?