Down below more survivors forced their way out of the besieged building and were swallowed up by the putrefying hordes. Stunned by the speed of events and their absolute, inexorable helplessness, the people in the observation room above could do nothing more than stand and watch.
‘So will they come for us next?’ Juliet asked, her voice wavering with emotion.
‘They probably don’t know we’re up here yet,’ Cooper answered. ‘But they will.’
‘Give them time,’ Armitage muttered.
‘You’re right,’ Emma agreed, wiping tears of fear and frustration from her eyes. ‘They’ll realise we’re up here at some point and then…’
‘Then what?’ Juliet nervously pressed.
‘Their physical condition is deteriorating. I don’t think they can communicate or reason. So whatever their motives are I think they’ll still only be able to react in one way.’
‘How?’ the now trembling woman asked, her voice a quiet and nervous whisper.
‘I think they’ll try and tear us to fucking pieces,’ she answered in a voice drained of emotion. Her blunt, monotone delivery belied the mounting terror she felt inside.
In the bathroom of the office block, Phil Croft sat on the floor with his back against the door, determined to keep the fucking things which now filled the building away from him at all costs. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew it was inevitable. He knew it was only a matter of time.
Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out his last remaining box of cigarettes and opened it up. One and a half smokes left. He lit the first and took a long, beautiful and relaxing drag on it, filling his lungs with nicotine, tar and smoke. He lit the second, and shoved the glowing stub into a wedge of paper towels which immediately began to smoulder and burn. On the other side of the door he could hear thumps, groans and screams. On the other side of the door he could hear the other ten people he’d been trapped with being torn and ripped apart. He tried to fill his head with random, pointless thoughts to distract him from the sounds outside but it was impossible. He’d always been able to block out the horror before, but not tonight. Tonight the terror and hopeless fear was all that was left.
So this is how it ends, he thought sadly as he watched the flames begin to take hold of the paper towels and then begin to scorch and burn the building’s wooden wall. He pushed back against the door again (which was now being pushed and shoved from the other side by cadavers) and wedged his feet against the door of the cubicle opposite.
He sat and smoked his last cigarette and waited, wondering whether it would be the flames or the bodies that would get to him first.
From the top of the observation tower high above the ground, Cooper watched the building below him burn.
Eleven good people lost. How long before either the fire or the dead got to him and the others? He slumped to the ground and held his head in his hands. He didn’t want to look outside any longer.
43
Almost first light.
Exhausted and beaten, Lawrence had delayed his flight for as long as possible, balancing his own physical tiredness with the need to get back quickly to those people they’d been forced to leave behind. Now, seven hours after he’d left them, he flew the helicopter back over the dead land. Beneath him there now seemed to be more movement than ever. Where previously there had only been stillness and an uneasy calm, now the entire dark landscape appeared to be crawling with activity. He could see bodies moving freely across the land, moving pointlessly and constantly from place to place. He wondered whether he was imagining things, whether his nervous mind was exaggerating what he could actually see below him and making it appear worse than it actually was. When he was a child he had shared a bedroom with his younger brother.
He remembered how his brother’s face had often seemed to twist and contort in the darkness when their bedroom light had been turned off and when shadows and shards of light from the street lamps outside had seeped in and appeared to distort his features. Maybe that was what was happening this morning. The sky was clear and the sun would soon be ready to rise and burn away the darkness. Perhaps it was the dull grey light which made the situation on the ground appear far worse than it actually was.
This was a dangerous and pointless flight. When Lawrence had left the airfield earlier he had felt beaten and disconsolate. What possible hope could the fifteen or so people left there have against the thousands upon thousands of unstoppable bodies he had last seen heading towards the collection of exposed and defenceless buildings. Several times during the journey he had considered turning the helicopter around and heading back, wondering whether there was anything to be gained from even trying. What good would it do? What would he achieve? The base was overrun - if there were any survivors left there, how was he supposed to pick them up? Would his return do anything more than taunt those left behind and prolong their agony?
Would he spend his time flying around the complex, watching the others waiting to die?
As bleak and inevitable as the conclusion of his flight appeared to be, Lawrence knew that he didn’t have any choice. He had to try.
The slowly lifting darkness of the early morning camouflaged the airfield. In his mind Lawrence still pictured the place as he’d left it hours earlier - a small collection of buildings surrounded by empty space and encircled by the fence and the many thousands of bodies beyond. He knew it would look different now, but it was hard to imagine the extent to which the dark scene would have changed.
Fear, nerves and fatigue had confused Lawrence and made him lose his bearings and pass the airfield. In the uninterrupted gloom everything looked the same and it had not been until he was almost over the centre of the town of Rowley that he realised his mistake. He turned round in a wide, graceful arc and flew back on himself, eventually spotting the airfield (and the fire and smoke to the side of the observation tower) just a mile or so ahead. Like a dark, black scab on the relentlessly bleak and monochrome landscape, as he approached it the airfield already looked overrun and lost. Once again he considered turning tail and heading back to Cormansey. There were hundreds of thousands of bodies swarming constantly around the place.
Even if Cooper, Croft and the others were still there and were still alive, what the hell could he do to help them now? How could he hope to reach them?
44
‘What are they doing now?’ Armitage asked. Too afraid to look himself, the burley truck driver leant against the back wall, as far away as he could get from the window without leaving the room. Cooper and Emma remained close to the glass, watching the bodies shuffling below them with mounting unease.
The rear of the nearby office building had been burning for hours now and more than half of the building had been completely consumed by flame. The fire had attracted the attention of many of the bodies, but many more continued to drag themselves around the rest of the airfield and the other buildings. The physical weight of their immense numbers helped them to randomly gain access to the hangar, waiting room and other places through windows and doors which had been left unlocked and open. Those which strayed too close to the burning building had themselves become engulfed by flames, their remains of their tinder-dry clothing and emaciated flesh quickly igniting. The appearance and movement of the burning bodies was bizarre, unsettling and surreal. Ignorant to the heat and flame which quickly consumed and destroyed them, the corpses continued to stagger around relentlessly, colliding with other random figures and setting them alight too. The fire, although mostly confined to the other side of the remains of the office building, was growing quickly and was eating away at the rest of the structure. Any change in wind direction, thought Cooper, and they might have no choice but to get out of the observation tower and take their chances with the baying masses outside.