Outside the window the airfield was dark and, although she knew that there were thousands of bodies just out of view, the ground around the observation tower was clear.
And the building itself was strong and isolated. She couldn’t imagine any of the cadavers she’d seen having the strength, intelligence or coordination to reach the tower, never mind make it up the stairs. Being this high up in the air felt infinitely safer than being buried underground where she’d spent most of the last fortnight.
‘See that woman sitting next to Mike?’ Emma asked, causing Donna to turn back around, wipe her eyes and look across the room again. Sat between Michael and Phil Croft, the woman Emma referred to was rotund, red-faced and very loud. Donna wondered how the hell she’d managed to survive for so long in a world where silence often seemed to be the strongest form of defence and self-preservation.
‘The big lady?’ she replied, choosing her words carefully.
‘That’s right.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Her name’s Jackie Soames.’
‘Is she in charge?’
‘I don’t think anyone’s in charge really, but she seems to get involved with most of the decisions round here.’
‘She doesn’t look…’ Donna began.
‘She doesn’t look like the kind of person who’d be sat giving out advice in a place like this,’ Emma interrupted, successfully anticipating what Donna had been about to try and say. ‘She’s got a lot of respect here, though. I’ve spoken to a few people who’ve only got good things to say about her. Apparently she used to run a pub. Story is she slept through everything that happened on the first day.
Went to bed with a hangover then woke up at midday and found her husband dead behind the bar.’
‘Nice. Who else is there?’
‘See the young lad on his own with his back to us?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s Martin Smith. He’s the one who…’
‘Supposedly found out how all this happened?’ Donna said quietly, sounding less than convinced.
‘That’s him. And the bloke standing looking out of the window over there,’ she continued, nodding across to the diagonally opposite corner of the square room.
‘The one with the jacket and the hair?’
‘That’s the one,’ she replied, ‘I think his name’s Keele.
He calls himself Tuggie.’
Donna looked at the man and felt a strange combination of surprise and disappointment and a certain amount of immediate distrust. Whilst just about every other survivor she’d seen wore whatever clothes they’d been able to salvage, this man’s appearance seemed to suggest that, for some inexplicable reason, he still considered it important to be well-dressed and presentable. His hair - in contrast to just about everyone else - was surprisingly well-groomed.
He looked conspicuously out of place and out on a limb, somehow distant and separate from the others. But was it because he’d chosen not to mix with them, or did the rest of the group not want to associate with him? Whatever the reason, in a room full of people he was very much alone.
‘So what does he do round here?’ she asked, guessing that the man must have had some relevance to the group for Emma to have pointed him out.
‘Did you see the plane in the hangar?’
Donna shook her head.
‘No, but I knew they had one.’
‘Apparently he’s the one who’s going to fly it.’
‘Why do you say it like that? What do you mean, apparently?’
‘Girl over there called Jo told me that he used to fly little tug planes at a gliding club…’
‘Hence the nickname…’
‘That’s right. Anyway, she says he’s not flown anything as big as the plane they’ve got here yet.’
‘Does he need to? They’ve got the helicopter, haven’t they?’
‘The plan is to keep sending people over to the island in threes and fours to make it safe. When it’s all clear they’ll load up the plane and take everyone and everything else over.’
Donna nodded and finished her drink.
‘Come to think of it, I didn’t notice any planes out on the runway when we got here,’ she said, stifling a yawn.
‘So how did this Tuggie get here? Is his plane in the hangar too?’
‘Now that’s the part of the story I don’t think he wants anyone to know about,’ Emma explained. ‘Richard Lawrence says that he found him hiding under a table in an office at another airfield when he stopped to refuel the helicopter. He’s a bloody nervous wreck. I’m not convinced he’s going to be able to fly anywhere.’
‘Great,’ Donna mumbled.
Jack Baxter crossed her line of vision and began to walk towards her. The tension and fear so evident in his face earlier had now disappeared and had been replaced with a relaxed, almost disbelieving grin.
‘You two all right?’ he asked. Donna nodded.
‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘What about you?’
‘Bloody fantastic!’
‘That good, eh?’ she mumbled, unable to match his enthusiasm.
‘That good.’
‘So what are you so happy about?’
Baxter shrugged his shoulders.
‘Can’t you feel it?’
‘Feel what? We’ve only been here a few minutes, Jack.
You can’t have had chance to feel anything yet.’
He ignored her flippancy.
‘This is going to work out,’ he grinned. ‘I tell you, it won’t be long now before we’re out of this mess.’
23
The observation tower was the focal point of the airfield and its growing community. The strongest and safest part of the complex by a long margin, it was where people ate, talked, slept, planned, cried, argued and did pretty much everything else together. Not really a tower as such, it was simply the tallest and safest building around and the first survivors to arrive there had naturally gravitated towards it.
Its relative height and its distance from the perimeter fence and the dead hordes beyond provided them with a little welcome security. With the arrival of Cooper, Donna, Michael and more than thirty others, however, space was suddenly at a premium. At two-thirty in the morning Michael and Emma found themselves sitting together in a small, dark room off the main entrance corridor at the foot of the stairs. The temperature was icy cold. The couple held each other tightly and covered themselves with blankets and coats to keep warm. Conversation was sporadic.
Michael had something on his mind. He’d wanted to talk to Emma about it for a couple of hours since an earlier discussion he’d had with Cooper and Jackie Soames, but for the first time in weeks she seemed relaxed and almost happy and he found it difficult to bring himself to speak knowing that what he wanted to say would inevitably upset her.
After skirting round the subject for what felt like the hundredth time, Michael decided to take a deep breath and tell her.
‘Em,’ he began slowly, choosing his words with care, ‘I was talking to Cooper earlier…’
‘I know,’ she replied, ‘I saw you. The pair of you were as thick as thieves.’
‘Remember the conversation we had on the way over here?’ he continued, ignoring her.
‘Which one?’
‘When we talked about the island? I said I wanted to try and get over there pretty quickly so we could make sure we get everything we needed.’
‘I remember,’ Emma mumbled, already beginning to anticipate what he was about to say next.