‘Has he seen us?’ Donna asked as she tripped through overlong grass which had been left to grow wild for weeks.
Conditioned by circumstance to keep quiet and not shout, she began to wave her arms furiously, hoping that the pilot would see her and respond. At first nothing happened. The brilliant white searchlight lit up almost all of the park and illuminated crowds of shuffling cadavers swarming towards the helicopter from the darkness in every direction. The speed of the survivors made them easy for Lawrence to see.
He couldn’t risk setting down until they were almost directly underneath him. At the last possible moment he dropped the final few feet down to the ground.
‘One in the front with me and the rest of you in the back,’ Lawrence yelled over the deafening engine and rotor blade roar as Harcourt yanked the helicopter door open.
‘Strap yourselves in if you can, just hold on if you can’t.’
The pilot’s voice was barely audible over the noise.
Clare and the two soldiers clambered in, followed almost thirty seconds later by Baxter. Donna waited for him at the side of the helicopter and virtually had to push him up into his seat. Dizzy with exhaustion, he slumped back and sucked in long, cool mouthfuls of damp evening air as she slammed the door shut in his face.
‘Come on,’ Lawrence hissed under his breath. The bodies were damn close now. He could see the decayed faces of the nearest dead staring back at him.
Donna scrambled into the front and pulled the door closed behind her. By the time her belt was buckled and she looked up they were airborne again. On the ground where they had just been the bodies converged and reached up pointlessly towards the rapidly disappearing machine.
22
The return flight to the airfield took less than fifteen minutes to complete. The silence and stillness when they touched down was overwhelming and filled the five new arrivals with cool relief. Oblivious to the thousands upon thousands of cold, dead eyes which stared at them from beyond the other side of the fence in the near distance, Baxter, Clare, Donna, Harcourt and Kilgore stumbled wearily out of the helicopter and followed Lawrence across the tarmac. In tired silence he led them towards a collection of dark buildings - a large, half empty and skeletal hangar, an observation tower and several smaller buildings which had once been used as offices, waiting rooms and public lounges. Baxter was impressed. The place looked better equipped and more substantial than he’d ever dared imagine it might be. It seemed to have been an unusual cross between a small airport and a flying club and he guessed that it had probably been used for private planes, chartered flights and pilot training. He noticed the prison van and personnel carrier parked a short distance away. The presence of the other vehicles came as an enormous relief.
The rest of the group had also made it safely to the airfield.
A dull light was shining out from the top of the observation tower. The survivors followed Lawrence into the building, across a short open area and up two flights of steep, echoing stairs. The events of the last few hours had been physically and mentally exhausting and Baxter in particular struggled to keep moving forward. After what felt like miles of walking and an endless climb they reached the top floor of the building and entered a large room through a pair of heavy double doors. Inside the room was light and warm and was buzzing with noise and conversation, a stark contrast to the cold and enforced silence of the world outside the building. The sight of familiar faces dotted around filled the three weary survivors and two soldiers with a sudden surge of energy again.
‘You finally made it then,’ Cooper laughed from across the room. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Piss off!’ replied Baxter, managing a tired grin. ‘We took a couple of wrong turns, that was all!’
‘Just a couple? Bloody hell, we’d almost given up on you. We’ve been here for hours!’
Donna stood in the doorway and soaked up the atmosphere. The mass of people around her - both those she knew and the twenty or so faces she didn’t recognise - seemed relaxed and at ease. She too felt suddenly calmer as if the countless stresses and problems that continually plagued her had begun to be stripped away. Was it because she’d finally reached the airfield that she felt that way, or was she just relieved that Cooper and the others were safe?
Whatever the reason, she hadn’t been in such a comfortable and welcoming environment for a long, long time. In fact, now that she stopped to think about it, she hadn’t felt free like this since the days before the disaster. For a few precious moments the overwhelming relief was such that she couldn’t move. The nightmare outside suddenly seemed a thousand miles away. She stood there, overcome and rooted to the spot, feeling full of positive but undeniably painful emotion.
‘You okay?’ a voice asked from beside her. It was Emma.
‘I’m fine,’ she answered quickly, suddenly self-conscious. ‘I’m sorry, I was just…’
Although Donna had stopped mid-sentence, Emma already understood what she was trying to say. She too had experienced the same bewildering range of emotions when she’d first arrived at the airfield.
‘This is really good,’ Emma continued. ‘These people have really got themselves sorted out here.’
‘Looks that way…’
‘You won’t believe some of the things they’ve been telling us. You know, when we first saw the helicopter this morning I knew it was going to be important, but I didn’t realise just how important. None of us had time to stop and think about it, did we? Christ, these people have been up and down the whole bloody country. They’ve seen other bases like the one Cooper came from and…’
‘I know, I heard Lawrence talking earlier. So how come there’s so few of them then?’ Donna wondered, sitting down next to Emma.
‘Suppose they’ve just been taking the same approach to all this as we have,’ Emma answered, thinking on her feet.
‘Mike and I decided right from the start that we couldn’t afford to spend all our time looking round for other survivors. We knew we had to forget about everyone else and concentrate on getting through this ourselves. Looks like these people have spent their time doing that too.’
‘So how many of them are there?’
‘Not sure exactly. I think there are about twenty or so of them here, with another six on Cormansey.’
‘Cormansey?’
‘The island, remember?’
Donna nodded. She was tired and her brain wasn’t functioning properly. Tonight she looked drained and weak, a shadow of her normal self. Emma noticed and passed her a drink. It was a small bottle of lemonade. The sweet liquid was warm and gassy but very welcome.
‘Much happened since you’ve been here?’ Donna asked, wiping her mouth dry on the back of her sleeve.
‘Not really,’ Emma answered, ‘we’ve just been sat here waiting for you lot to turn up. What happened? Did you run into trouble?’
‘Stupid cock up,’ she admitted, shrugging her shoulders.
‘We took the wrong exit on the roundabout where that bloody memorial came down, and then made more mistakes trying to get back on track and catch up with you.’
A sudden peel of loud laughter came from the far side of the room. It was an unexpected and strangely startling noise. Donna looked up and saw that Michael, Cooper and several others were talking to a handful of people she didn’t recognise. At first she didn’t question who these people might be, or what they might have found amusing. Instead her mind was preoccupied with the fact that she’d just heard laughter. For the first time in many weeks she could hear people freely expressing positive emotions that had previously been suppressed. Whatever the reason for their jollity, it touched an uncomfortable nerve. Normally strong and determined to the point of seeming cold and uncaring, Donna now felt ready to burst into tears. She dismissed her feelings as being just a passing moment of weakness, probably brought on by her tiredness and exhaustion. She turned and looked out of a window behind her before Emma could see the raw emotion in her eyes.