The map they were studying was of too large a scale to be of any real use in helping them plot a route from their present location back to the road which would take them to the airfield. Baxter took a second book, this one of major town centre street maps, from the rucksack he’d been carrying with him. He flicked through its pages until he found a map of the centre of Rowley and its surrounding districts.
‘Where are we now?’ he asked. ‘What’s the name of this place?’ His questions were initially met with silence.
‘Don’t know,’ Donna eventually answered. ‘I don’t remember seeing any place names when we came in. We might have to go out and look for…’
‘This is Bleakdale,’ Kilgore said.
‘How do you know that?’ Donna wondered.
‘Educated guess,’ the soldier replied sarcastically, holding up a child’s exercise book which had the words
‘Bleakdale Church School’ printed across the front cover.
‘Bleakdale… got it,’ Baxter mumbled. He began to run the torch over the page again as he looked for a school and church in close proximity to each other.
‘There,’ Donna said, peering over his shoulder. She pointed at the map. ‘There’s the school and there’s the service road leading up to it. That’s the turning we took to get in here.’
‘That’s it. So if we work our way back…’ his words trailed away as he concentrated on working out the way back to the traffic island where they had made their original mistake.
‘We’re going to need to get a move on,’ Harcourt warned. She was stood next to the window with Clare, looking down into the car park. Although slow, a constant trickle of bodies were still dragging themselves towards the school building. Many of them seemed to be coming from around the corner, near to the classroom where Baxter had first unwittingly attracted their attention. It was almost as if they had given up looking for the survivors there, and they had now moved on. Now some of them had grouped and had become a small but violent crowd around the front of the van.
‘What’s happening out there?’ Donna asked, turning and whispering over her shoulder.
‘More bodies.’
From their first floor viewpoint Harcourt was able to see along several of the surrounding streets of the suburb of Bleakdale. The longer she stood still and stared into the night, the more scrambling, stumbling creatures she was able to see. In the deep-blue darkness of evening the dark figures seemed to move like insects scuttling across the landscape. Staggering along streets and alleyways and crashing clumsily through debris and rubble, all dragging themselves towards the source of the sound that had echoed through the air just minutes earlier. She could now see for herself the full effect that others had previously explained to her. The first figures had originally been drawn towards the school by the noise. Now those few bodies were themselves causing a disturbance which brought more and more of them to the scene. Some stood still with their arms hanging heavily at their sides. Others relentlessly and pointlessly hammered on the sides of the van and on the windows downstairs. The few in the car park didn’t bother her unduly. What concerned Harcourt more were the mounting numbers of them she could now see crawling through the shadows of the nearby streets.
Forcing himself to ignore the deteriorating situation outside, Baxter continued to stare at the maps.
‘I reckon we should just turn round and go back the way we came, sticking to the main roads,’ he suggested. ‘We turn left out of the car park and keep following the road round until we reach this roundabout here. Straight across and after a mile or so it looks like it loops back round onto the first road we got onto by mistake. Follow that back and…’
‘…and we should be on track again,’ Donna said, anticipating his words and speaking for him.
‘Why do we have to go backwards?’ Harcourt asked, moving away from the window and walking across the room to look at the maps with the others. ‘Why not just keep going forward?’
‘We could,’ Baxter replied with reticence in his voice,
‘but that’s going to mean going deeper into the city.’
‘So? Do you really think that matters now?’ she grunted as she studied the maps through her cumbersome facemask.
‘According to this we’re pretty close to the city centre anyway. I don’t think another couple of miles is going to make too much difference, do you?’
Neither Donna or Baxter answered. Both had naturally assumed that the most sensible option available to them would be to turn round and try to get back onto the route they had originally intended to follow. Now that they stopped and thought about it though, the soldier had a point.
‘I don’t know…’ Baxter instinctively mumbled.
‘Look,’ Harcourt explained, annoyed by their indecision.
She leant across the desk and grabbed hold of Donna’s torch so that she could show the others what she was thinking. ‘We could go left as you suggested, Jack, but then turn left at the next roundabout instead of going straight over. By the time that gets us onto the right road we should only be a few miles short of the airfield.’
A thoughtful few moments of silence followed as the two survivors each considered the soldier’s plan. It seemed to make sense and they had to admit she had a point - the risks they were facing were great whichever direction they chose to travel in. So if they were resigned to taking risks anyway, surely it would be more sensible to leave the school and move forwards rather than backwards?
‘I’m still not sure,’ Baxter said quietly. ‘I understand what you’re saying but I don’t…’
‘You lot better make a decision quickly,’ Clare said from near the window.
‘Why?’ Donna snapped.
‘Helicopter,’ she said, pointing up into the sky at the flashing lights on the tail of the aircraft high above them.
For a second no-one moved.
‘Come on,’ Harcourt shouted, forcing the rest of the small group into action. With sudden, nervous energy Baxter did up the zip on the front of his jacket and began to collect up the maps and shove them back into his rucksack, all the time keeping one eye on the helicopter circling over the city. He picked up the pack and swung it round onto his shoulders.
‘How will they know we’re here?’ Clare asked.
‘They won’t,’ Donna answered as she grabbed her things and ran over to the classroom door. ‘We’ll need to get back to the van and get moving. We’ll have more of a chance if they see us in the van.’
‘Think so?’ asked Baxter.
She shrugged her shoulders and glanced around the room at the others.
‘Hope so.’
She led the way out of the room and back down the stairs. Weaving through the darkness at speed she pushed open the front door of the school and ran over to the van.
The two soldiers, Baxter and Clare followed close behind.
Pausing momentarily to look for the helicopter as she opened the van, Donna immediately became aware of a huge swathe of movement all around them. From the shadows in, it seemed, every direction, bodies had turned and were now moving quickly towards them, lurching at them desperately with an ominous speed and purpose. The evening gloom was disorientating and the low light made the perception of distance surprisingly difficult. One of the nearest cadavers reached out for Kilgore and caught hold of him before he even knew it was there.
‘Get it off me!’ he screamed. ‘Get this fucking thing off me!’
The body had grabbed him from behind. He span around, trying desperately to dislodge the emaciated creature or to grab hold of it and drag it round in front of him. The corpse’s slimy, rotting skin and constant, writhing movements made it difficult for him to get a grip.