‘Yeah, and it wasn’t alone…’
Hamilton pushed past Wilder and struck another creature square in the face with the butt of his rifle. And another. Wilder was alongside him now, and they saw that more of the monsters were swarming through the trees, all moving in this direction.
‘Where the hell are they coming from so suddenly?’ Wilder asked, confused and concerned.
Hamilton didn’t answer. He called for assistance and was relieved when he heard other members of the battalion moving towards them. He stared into the blood-soaked face of the next corpse he dispatched. Female? Although his view was limited in the low light, he realised the woman lying at his feet was dressed in the uniform of a prisoner. Had she come from Polonezköy? ‘Wait,’ he started to say, ‘are these . . .?’
One of the vile creatures hurled itself at him at speed. He instinctively caught the cadaver and was about to smack the damn thing in its hideous face when it spoke.
‘Wait, don’t. It’s me, Lance Corporal Barton. Get me to Captain Hunter. Urgently!’
The accent gave the man away. It was one of the Brits. Hamilton obliged, virtually dragging the British soldier back to the airfield, then pushing him up the makeshift runway.
It took a couple of minutes to reach the captain. Barton could barely breathe, let alone speak. By the time they got to him, though, the captain was already well aware there was a problem. A vast swarm of the dead was beginning to emerge from the tree-line, rapidly encroaching on the airfield. Their shadowy shapes were everywhere. Hunter could see his men trying to keep them at bay; to a man they were doing everything they could, beating the hell out of everything that moved, but numbers meant they were already being forced to retreat.
‘Where’s Lieutenant Wilkins and the doctor?’ Hunter demanded, no time for pleasantries.
Barton shook his head and sucked in oxygen. ‘Not yet… Message from the lieutenant… He says to wait… almost done…’
‘We can’t afford to wait, goddammit. And where the hell did all these spooks appear from?’
‘The camp… the walls have been breached… Hundreds of them coming this way…’
‘Does Wilkins have the doctor?’
‘Not sure.’
‘And I’m supposed to risk the lives of my remaining men on your uncertainty?’
‘Lieutenant Wilkins won’t let us down, sir.’
‘Yeah, well it ain’t just us who’s in trouble, is it?’
Captain Hunter stormed away, barking orders at his men, moving them down from the top end of the airfield towards the trees to stem the ever-growing advance of the dead.
Someone asked an obvious question, and Hunter gave them an equally obvious reply, bellowing at the top of his voice. ‘Do whatever you have to. Shoot the shit out of those bastards, just keep them off this damn runway. I want that Douglas to get a clear approach and to be able to get away again. I do not intend on being stranded in the middle of this shit-storm. Do I make myself clear?’
His troops’ reply went unheard amongst the cacophony of gunfire which suddenly filled the air.
29
The dead seemed to come at Wilkins and Steele like a tsunami of rotting flesh. ‘No need for quiet anymore, eh Lieutenant?’ Steele said, and he ran headlong into the crowd, firing shot after shot at the foul cadavers. It was impossible to spot the little girl in the madness out here, and equally impossible to stop and search for her.
‘Split and find her,’ Wilkins ordered, shouting after him. ‘Holler when you have her. Remember the whole world depends on us.’
He too ran into the chaos, doing everything he could to ignore the searing pain in his left shoulder and still hold onto his pistol with his good right hand. He chose each shot with as much care as he could, knowing that once this round was spent, he wouldn’t have time to reload.
Steele headed for the area where he thought he’d last seen the girl. There was just a forest of sickly cadavers here now, balancing on spindly legs, all of them pivoting awkwardly when they heard him, starting to move in his direction. He dove through them, battering some away with his rifle and shooting others, feeling like he was about to drown in this rotting tide.
And then he thought he saw her.
Nothing, just more bodies. Had he been mistaken?
He shot a foetid Nazi between the eyes, and when the hideous creature dropped, he saw clear space behind.
There she was!
He could see her intermittently between the ghouls which still surged towards him. They were coming at him with ever increasing speed and ferocity, not giving up and not letting him pass. One caught his jacket, another the strap of his rifle, a third clung onto his leg… but Steele kept moving because he could definitely see her now, almost touch her…
One last push…
He broke through and grabbed the girl’s hand, and as soon as he had hold of her it was as if he had become invisible to the diseased masses. They turned away and he moved among them without fear. Impervious. And as for the girl beside him – she was the strangest creature. Pallid skin, ice-cold to the touch… anyone would think she was dead. It occurred to him that she most likely was, and it took all the inner strength he could muster not to let go of her tiny hand.
‘I’ve got her, Lieutenant,’ he shouted, but his voice was drowned out by the engines of the Douglas aircraft which swept down low over the camp on its way to the airfield.
Less than ten minutes remaining.
Captain Woody Rickman couldn’t believe the chaos on the ground below him. ‘You seeing this, Garfunkle?’
‘Yeah, I see it,’ his co-pilot replied.
From the air, Polonezköy looked like it was imploding. Palls of dirty grey smoke rose up from several unchecked fires. The guards had clearly lost control, because the prisoners were unrestrained. They were fighting with each other to get out through an ugly breach in the outer fence. And there were bodies everywhere; the grubby grey courtyard was awash with blood.
Rickman guided the Douglas out towards the airfield. On the ground below he could see a constant stream of prisoners making their way in the same direction they were heading. ‘Jeez, they’d better have that landing strip clear, otherwise we ain’t putting down.’
‘It’ll be clear. Captain Hunter’s a good man. He’ll have the job done.’
Rickman pointed down. ‘It’s not him I’m worried about, it’s them. Even if we get down, chances are we’re going to struggle to get back up again. What’s the betting all those people are going to want a ride out of this place.’
‘Well we ain’t taking none of them,’ Garfunkle said, indignant. ‘Wasn’t our brief.’
‘I know that and you know that, Garfunkle, but try telling them.’
30
Steele looked for Wilkins, and Wilkins looked for the girl. She had to be here somewhere, Wilkins thought, but he kept glancing over at the hole in the border fence, wondering if she’d managed to escape. His energy was flagging, and his feelings of abject loss and desolation were increasing by the second. In some ways it would have been easier to have missed by a mile. To have come so close to success yet to have still failed was tantamount to cruelty.
Did he run now and try to get away, or did he keep looking until the last possible second? Was there any point in running and heading home empty-handed? Would there even be a home left to run back to?