Baxter smiled.
‘I’ve been thinking about it though,’ he rambled, looking out through the motorhome window and imagining he could see something other than grey concrete walls, ‘just think what it’ll be like when the bodies have gone. Just picture it, we’ll have the whole bloody country to ourselves. We’ll be able to go where we like, when we like.’
‘So where would you go?’ Croft asked him.
‘I think,’ he began, stretching in his seat and staring up thoughtfully at the low metal ceiling above his head, ‘I’ll try and travel right round the coast. I’m going to wait until summer, then I’ll start on the south coast and work my way west. I won’t plan a route, I’ll just keep going and one day I’ll end up back where I started.’
‘But you could have your pick of the biggest houses or whatever you wanted,’ Emma said. ‘You could sit on your backside and relax. You’d still want to travel and live rough?’
‘I’m getting used to living rough now,’ he smiled, ‘it’d be strange to be comfortable again. I like the idea of moving from town to town or village to village, taking whatever I need from wherever I can find it.’
‘Think you’ll ever do it?’ Donna asked.
Baxter looked deep down into his beaker of water and thought for a moment.
‘Don’t know. I hope so.’
‘Think it’s going to be as easy as you imagine?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘I never said it would be easy. Anyway, there’s no way of knowing, is there?’
‘I can’t start dreaming like you can, Jack,’ Donna admitted, ‘not yet, anyway. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I think about the future, I still automatically try and picture things like they used to be before this happened, just empty of people and quiet. But it’s not going to be like that, is it?’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I can’t be anything but realistic. I know we can get by for a while, but I’m anticipating every day from now on being a struggle. The more time passes since everything was normal, the less there’s going to be for us to take out there. The last bits of food will rot. Buildings will start to crumble. Everything we used to know will gradually disappear.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Baxter groaned sarcastically, ‘here’s looking on the bright side, eh?’
‘Like I said, I’m just being realistic, that’s all,’ Donna mumbled, her voice tired and resigned.
‘Anyway,’ Croft interjected, ‘we’ve got to get out of here before you can start sightseeing, Jack.’
‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘Frustrating, isn’t it. We’re the one’s who can survive out there, and it’s the bloody army who’ll decide whether we can go outside or not.’
‘Think they’ll try and keep us down here, Cooper?’
Croft asked.
‘We need to stay here for a while,’ Emma said.
‘Unless us being here puts them at risk, I don’t think they’ll be in a hurry to get rid of us,’ Cooper answered.
‘Why?’
‘I still think we might be useful to them. I’m starting to think they might have plans.’
5
‘What’s the matter?’
Emma had woken up alone in bed. After a moment’s panic she had found Michael at the other end of the motorhome, sitting in the driver’s seat behind the wheel and staring out through the windscreen into the grey, shadowy gloom of the vast hanger. The clock on the dashboard said it was almost four in the morning.
When he heard her he looked up momentarily and then looked down again.
‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he replied. ‘I was just thinking, that’s all.’
‘What about?’
‘You know, the usual.’
‘What’s the usual?’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘What do you think?’
Emma sat down on the edge of the passenger seat next to him, still unsure as to what he was alluding to. A series of thoughts flashed through her mind. Was he thinking about the other survivors and the conversation they’d had earlier? Was he thinking about the soldiers or what had happened when they’d ventured outside yesterday? Or was he thinking about something else entirely? Whatever it was, it was clearly something which was weighing heavy on his mind. He scowled with concentration. His voice was abrupt and cold.
‘Is it me?’ she found herself wondering. ‘Have I upset you or have I done something that’s…?’
He shook his head and then sighed and rubbed his tired eyes.
‘Why do you always assume it’s got anything to do with you?’ he asked. ‘What could you have done to upset me?
When we’ve got all this shit happening around us, why should it be anything you’ve done that’s keeping me awake?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe if you’d talk to me and tell me what’s wrong I could help. I just want to…’
Michael turned around to face Emma and reached out for her. She was shivering with cold. He gently pulled her across the front seats of the motorhome and held her close.
‘It’s nothing you’ve done,’ he whispered. ‘Believe me, you’re just about the only thing I’m not worrying about at the moment.’
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s just that when I woke up and found you weren’t there I started to think that… You know what it’s like, I couldn’t help thinking that…’
‘I know,’ he interrupted.
Emma pushed her face closer towards Michael’s and curled up on his lap.
‘So what exactly were you thinking about?’ she asked.
He nodded in the direction of the heavy entrance doors which separated the fortunate few inside the base from the immense and relentless gathering of rotting flesh outside.
‘The bodies,’ he answered quietly.
‘What about them?’
He thought for a second.
‘You remember how many were outside when we first arrived here?’
‘Thousands, why?’
‘Jack said he thought there were just as many of them out there today, maybe even more.’
‘I know, I heard him. What’s your point?’
‘My point is that even though we’ve been buried down here for weeks, they’re still managing to find us out.’
‘We knew this was going to happen…’
‘I know.’
‘So?’
‘So if they’ve been able to find us when we’ve been keeping quiet and out of sight, what the hell is going to happen now? What’s going to happen now that those bloody idiots have started going out there with their guns and their flame-throwers and God knows what else?’
Emma squirmed uncomfortably as the implications of what he was saying became clear.
‘So what do you think’s going to happen?’ she asked.
She already thought she knew the answer, but she wanted to hear it from Michael.
‘I think that every last corpse that’s anywhere near here is going to end up outside those doors, trying to get inside.
And then more will come, then more. And more of them means that the military’s precious base is going to be put under increasing pressure to keep functioning. Sooner or later they’ll have to go above ground again and then, when they do, it’ll just make matters worse. Then even more of the fucking things will end up here.’
‘Do you think that’s really going to happen…?’ she started to say.
‘This is inevitable,’ Michael said quietly, his voice low and unemotional. ‘We’ve said it before, it might happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or the day after that. It might happen in the next hour or on the other hand it might not happen for weeks. The one thing I’m sure of is that it will happen eventually.’
6
‘You on your own, Cooper?’
Cooper shuffled closer to the intercom on the heavy door which separated the main decontamination chamber and the rest of the buried base from the hanger. Well away from most of the rest of the group of survivors, he had been sitting talking to Bernard Heath when they’d become aware of sounds of movement coming from inside the decontamination area. Through a six inch square observation panel he had recognised Jim Franks, just about the last of his ex-colleagues who still dared to risk speaking to him.