It was nothing to do with him wanting to witness her flying skills, although he did his best to disguise it as such. He was just terrified of touching down and becoming vulnerable to attack. She shook her head, refusing to be drawn in by his fear fuelled challenge. For years she had flown much larger and heavier aircraft, and she still did not completely trust her reactions and instincts in the Gazelle.
“It’ll be fine, Mike,” she said reassuringly and nodding towards the waving man with the desperate expression etched into his face. “We’ll pick that poor bastard up and be in the air again before we know it.”
Mike looked at her and could instinctively sense that there was a ‘but’ coming. He checked the control panel in front of him, and without Melanie needing to say anything, he knew what the potential risk was.
“The wind will be behind us,” he said with an air of regret and acceptance.
Melanie nodded.
The ideal landing position was facing into the wind, but with the position of the communications mast, power lines, and fire escape, she had no choice but to approach with the wind blowing them forward from the tail rotor. With such a light aircraft and such little room for manoeuvre, it would be difficult to maintain a stationary position as the helicopter decreased power for landing, and any sudden gusts could cause them serious difficulties. With little else in the way of choice, they had no other option but to take the risk.
“We’ll be okay, Mike. Just keep an eye on the ground, and watch for any drift.”
They carried out a final sweep along perimeter of the building, staring down at the infested streets below them. The masses of bodies paused in their assault against the walls and doors as the aircraft passed over them, staring up with their gaunt ashen faces and dead eyes. A ripple of energy seemed to flow through the crowds, making them sway like the long stalks of a wheat field in a sudden breeze. The corpses thrashed and clawed at one another, howling up at the helicopter as it drifted by over their heads.
“Jesus,” Mike whispered.
A few moments later, and the helicopter was once again positioned above the lone survivor. As Melanie controlled the aircraft, Mike guided her down.
“Nine feet, eight feet…” Mike relayed to Mel as he looked down on to the roof. “The left is good and you have six feet clearance on the right.”
The man below stepped back, keeping the landing site clear but remaining close enough to reach the Gazelle in just a couple of bounds once it was in position. He continued to alternate his attention between the aircraft and the fire door behind him. His eyes darted nervously and his body language betrayed his high level of anxiety. As the helicopter began to lower towards the roof’s surface, he turned and stared at the dark doorway of the fire escape, as though expecting someone or something to come up from inside the building and drag him away when he was just moments from rescue.
Melanie stole a glance to her right and watched as the edge of the helicopter’s rotor disc swept around above them, just two metres away from the communications tower and the steel cables that could snag their blades and send them crashing to the ground.
“Five feet, four, three feet…”
The skids touched down lightly against the gravel of the building’s rooftop, and the cockpit rocked as the aircraft settled. Melanie maintained as much power as possible in order to prevent the roof having to support the whole weight of the Gazelle. Like controlling the clutch of a car with a manual gearbox, keeping the helicopter’s power at the point of bite would also allow them a rapid take-off if the situation suddenly changed.
“Okay, Mike, get him in here.”
Mike was just as eager as the bedraggled soldier to get into the air and away from the roof. He turned to the survivor to wave him forward from his position just a few metres away but saw that the man was already moving.
As the helicopter made contact with the building’s roof, the man instantly sprang forward. Ducking slightly to ensure that he remained beneath the spinning disc, he reached for the rear door with shaking hands and expressions of panic and relief fighting for dominance over his grime covered face.
Melanie looked over her shoulder as the door was pulled open and the screech of the engine filled the interior of the cockpit. She was trying to make eye contact with the survivor, hoping to reassure him that he was now safe, and that they would take him home. He looked starved and dehydrated, with festering sores visible on the filth encrusted skin of his neck and face. She sympathised with him, but more than anything, she wanted a moment of eye contact that would allow her a glimpse into his state of mind. After being trapped in the dead city for so long and all his friends dying around him, she could not be sure of his sanity. He could have spiralled into madness for all she knew. The fingers of her right hand folded around the grip of the pistol that was fastened to her hip as she waited for him to look back up at her. It would not be the first time that a soldier had been driven to absolute madness as a result of the horrors they had seen.
A sudden jolt snapped her attention back to the front as the cockpit took on a downward angle, and they were jostled in their seats. The rotor tilted forward abruptly and Melanie instinctively increased the throttle and raised the collective while pulling back on the cyclic to prevent the disc from slamming into the roof’s surface. The fuselage had somehow dropped and they were now much closer to the roof than they had intended to be. The ground in front of the Gazelle suddenly disappeared from beneath the skids in a cloud of dust, sending the aircraft tumbling forward into a black crevasse as a number of loud crunches and groans filled the cockpit, sending an icy terror rushing through the veins of Melanie and Mike.
“Shit,” Mike hollered as he pushed himself back into his seat, staring into the darkness that appeared in front of the windshield.
“The roof’s collapsing,” Melanie cried.
In the split seconds that passed, Mike fought hard against his instincts to grab hold of the cyclic stick in front of him. Melanie had control and he suddenly pulling at the yoke would worsen the situation. Instead, he clung to whatever he could, gritting his teeth and screaming above the straining engines as he braced himself, placing his faith in Melanie to recover the aircraft before it was too late.
“Get us up,” he yelled in panic. “Get us fucking up, Mel.”
The helicopter did not seem to be responding to Melanie’s commands. With the instant adjustments she had made they should have been lifted back into the air and away from the crumbling surface. However, they were still facing down into the hole that was rapidly growing beneath them, and the blades were moving dangerously close to the rooftop.
“It’s not responding,” Melanie screamed with a grimace as she increased the power. The interior flashed and whirred with the sound of alarms as the control panel lit up in front of her. “We must be stuck on something. The bitch won’t lift.”
Mike glanced back over his shoulder as the helicopter jolted forward again. The survivor was still standing beside the aircraft. He was staring down at the hole that was quickly appearing beneath them as the roof disintegrated under the weight of the helicopter. He glanced back up at Mike, his face filled with shock and despair as he quickly realised that his rescue had come to an end before it had even began. For an instant, Mike felt pity begin to bubble up inside him for the unfortunate man, but the feeling was quickly replaced with stunned terror as the Gazelle slipped again, and the rotor blades sliced through the man’s head, spraying blood, bone, and brains over a wide area around the aircraft. The window beside Mike’s head was instantly spattered with gore, as was the rear seating area. The headless body dropped to the ground and tumbled into the hole as more cracks appeared in the asphalt.
“Shit,” Mike cried out. “We lost him. He’s gone, Mel.”
Melanie was not listening. She was desperately trying to prevent the aircraft from plummeting down into the depths of the building. The machine rattled and groaned beneath her as she tried to work the cockpit free from whatever had snagged it. She could see the blur of the rotor disc in front of her, just centimetres away from slamming into the rooftop. Again, she increased the power, knowing full well that if they were to suddenly come free, the aircraft would be flung backwards in an uncontrolled ascent. The muscles in her jaw flexed as she gritted her teeth and screamed at the rattling and shaking machine to obey her, but the nose of the Gazelle continued to dip as the turbine howled at full power.
Then, the tail dropped sharply, and for a moment the cockpit rose up from the chasm. However, Melanie was unable to control the power, and the fenestron of the rear rotor was slammed hard into the surface of the rooftop, splitting the outer casing. With a loud, high-pitched crack, the rear rotor was smashed to pieces, sending shards of the steel blades whizzing through the air in all directions. Instantly, the aircraft began to twist, having lost torque control. Melanie felt the change in the behaviour of the helicopter and immediately realised what had happened.
Another alarm began to shriek at them from the control panel.
“We’ve lost the tail,” she screamed out as the cockpit rotated to the right. “We’ve lost the tail rotor, Mike. We’re going down.”
“Grab onto something,” Mike cried back at her.
“Zero, this is Hotel-Two,” Melanie calmly called into the radio as the cockpit groaned and squealed around her. “We’re going down. I say again, we’re going down. We’ve lost power at search-grid four-two…”
She was unable to finish her message and relay the rest of their coordinates to the operations room. The door beside her suddenly dented inwards as the cockpit was slammed into the edge of the gaping hole and Melanie was thrown to her left as the Gazelle began to burrow itself into the asphalt. She knew now that they could not save the aircraft. Without the tail, they had no hope of flying. All control was lost. She watched as the main rotor once again dipped and chopped its way through the air, inching closer and closer to the roof’s surface. Melanie screwed her eyes tight. She knew that there was nothing she could do to stop it and released her grip on the cyclic and collective, bracing herself for impact. She raised her hands towards her face and bowed forward. Mike did the same beside her, knowing that they were about to lose the main rotor in the most violent way possible.
With a loud crunch, the blades crashed into the asphalt, hacking their way through until hitting the point of extreme resistance. At that moment, something needed to give. The cockpit jerked and spun to the right with the sudden torque, and then the rotor blades exploded, shattering into hundreds of pieces that shot out at high speeds in all directions. Shrapnel ripped through the helicopter, tearing at the aluminium framework and punching through the windows.
The aircraft dropped. There was nothing to stop it from falling now that they had lost the rotor disc. As the engine continued to howl, the fuselage plummeted into the darkness, its body groaning and shrieking in protest as it crashed through the upper floors of the building.
Melanie was flung forward as the nose slammed into and through a partitioning wall. She crashed into the control panel in front of her and felt a sharp pain shoot through her body, emanating from the right side of her ribcage. The Gazelle hit another hard structure, and again she was hurled around in her seat as Mike howled with pain and fear beside her. Her flight helmet thumped heavily against the frame of her door, sending bolts of lightning shooting across her vision and her head spiralling into an abyss. She lost consciousness, but the helicopter continued to fall.
2
Tina awoke with a start. Her brow glistened with sweat, and the sheets beneath her were damp to the touch. Her breathing came in short gasps, and her heart pounded against her ribcage as the horrific visions remained stubbornly imprinted upon her thoughts. She anxiously looked around her, suspiciously eyeing the corners of the room and double checking that the door remained closed and secure. Her mind was shrouded in fog, and she was struggling to distinguish between reality and what she had seen in her dreams. She squinted against the bright sunlight that was filtering in through the blinds of the small window and turned away, blinking the white spots from her vision. She could not be sure of the exact time, but judging by the position of the sun, she guessed that it was somewhere around midday. She had slept through the whole morning.
“Shit,” she hissed with annoyance.
She wiped her face with the palm of her hand and let out a long sigh. The dreams were becoming more lucid with each day that passed. They were never completely accurate to the memories of the events that she had experienced, but the faces she saw were the same friends she had witnessed being torn to pieces as their riot lines collapsed into disarray. She could vividly see the agony and fear in the eyes of her fellow soldiers and hear the stomach-churning screams of the dying and the lustful howls of the dead. She wondered when, or if, they would ever stop haunting her sleep. Like so many other survivors, she was plagued with guilt and a feeling of helplessness. The dreams were her punishment, sent to torture her for having survived when so many others had not. At times, she felt that she deserved to suffer the reliving of the events, but then again, there was nothing she could have done to prevent the annihilation of her unit. In the end, everyone was running. It just so happens that she was one of the lucky few to escape.
At the beginning of the crisis, when the virus had spread across into Europe and very few people understood what was actually happening, she had been based in the garrison town of Colchester in the south-east of England. At first, like so many other people in the army, she had believed that they were dealing with civil unrest, and the reports of the illness creeping up from Africa were never connected to the crowds of ‘violent lunatics’ running through the streets and attacking everyone they came into contact with. At the time, Tina had no idea of the approaching doom that was clawing its way across the country, and neither did anyone else around her. It was only when the Prime Minister appeared on live television during an emergency news report, explaining the situation and announcing the effects of the virus to a stunned public that Tina and the other soldiers, shaking their heads in complete disbelief, realised that the violence sweeping the globe was a direct effect of the mysterious illness. Still, even after having been fully informed of what was happening, it was hard to accept that the dead were returning to life and killing the living.
Like so many others in the same situation, her first thoughts were for her family and friends outside of the army. She felt an overwhelming need to return home and protect her loved ones, but at that point in time, the powers that be had other plans for her.
The men and women of her unit were given very little time to digest and contemplate the information that they had received. Within minutes of the Prime Minister’s announcement and the subsequent scientific explanations, Tina’s battalion was sent out to help form a defensive line to the north-west of Colchester. They were hastily issued with riot guns and two metre tall Perspex riot shields, along with just a few loaded magazines for their 5.56mm SA-80 rifles. They were far from prepared for what lay ahead, but nevertheless, their commanders sent them forward into the lines.
Their orders were to secure the main roads leading into the town and prevent the infection from spreading to the general population within their AOR, area of responsibility. A ring of soldiers from various units was thrown up around the urban districts while behind the lines, small teams of scientists, specially equipped troops, and armed police attempted to check the virus that was already taking hold within the garrison’s population. As Tina and the other soldiers prepared to hold the infected at bay, collection and extermination teams swept through the streets, destroying the already infected and reanimated, and centralising anyone suspected of carrying the virus into specially cordoned off areas of the town centre.
It was there on the front line that the true horror of the situation had been realised by Tina and her comrades. As the days passed, the infected converged upon Colchester from the outlying districts and rural areas. Their numbers increased by the hour as they swarmed towards the barricades. Their bloated and lumbering bodies seemed to be drawn to the urban areas by an unknown force or instinct. They dragged themselves from the suburbs and surrounding towns and villages, charging the lines and smashing their festering carcasses against the shield walls, gnashing their teeth and tearing at the defenders. Their poignant wails and moans drowned out the horrified gasps and cries of the living that stood and stared in terror at the tide of death headed towards them.
Some of the soldiers broke early, dropping their shields and fleeing from the riot line, but the majority stood fast, realising how desperate the situation was and the consequences that would befall the city and its inhabitants if their shield walls were overwhelmed.
More of the reanimated arrived from all directions, and it was not long before a breach began to form in the hastily erected defences. The dead poured through, dragging the traumatised soldiers to the ground, clawing and biting at them. The streets echoed with the crackle of gunfire, but very soon the small amount of ammunition that had been issued to the men and women who were charged with holding back the infected had been expended. More of the dead burst through into the rear areas, trapping the units in a ring of horror that tightened with each passing minute.
The soldiers panicked and ran, trampling the fallen and adding to the confusion as the turmoil spread to neighbouring units. Gunfire blasted from all quarters while screams of pain and fear rang out through the streets. Eventually, despite the efforts of the commanders, it became impossible to shore up the front, and a total collapse began as more troops retreated in terror. The reanimated corpses crashed through like a rogue wave.
Tina had witnessed the carnage first hand. She had seen many of her friends brought down by the ravenous ghouls and watched as their flesh was ripped from their bones. She could still hear their screams. They rang out inside her mind like the bells of a cathedral, over and over. Their cries for help and howls of pain rasped at her nerves while their pleading, terror filled eyes burned deep into her soul. She felt guilty and ashamed because she had been unable to save them. She could clearly see their faces and still smell the blood that gushed from their wounds, even now while she was awake.
“Hold the line,”
was the order that continued to echo through her mind.
She had bolted, like so many others had done. Only a handful of her unit had managed to escape from the rout, and everyone she had served with was now dead. She soon found herself alone and unarmed, running for her life.
Snorting back the emotions that threatened to overcome her, she sat with her head in her hands for a few minutes, fighting back the tears. The faces of her friends continued to linger before her, eventually becoming replaced by the grotesque and twisted features of her mother. Tina had arrived home to find her lying in her bed and snarling back at her, having died from the flu a number of days earlier, while her brother, Christopher, sat outside the bedroom door whimpering and unable to gather the courage needed to end his mother’s torment. The deed was left for Tina to carry out. It had been hard for her to deal with her mother in the way she had done, but she knew that there was no one else willing to do it, and she could not have left her suffering in that way.
Christopher,
she thought.
The bastard.
He had shot her but failed to complete the job. As the crowds of corpses closed in around her on the car park of the industrial estate, she had unwittingly stumbled upon an avenue of escape. Dragging her tormented body away from the approaching infected, desperately trying to gain some distance from them and the precious extra moments of life it would allow her, Tina hauled herself towards the nearest of the warehouses. The door at her back, she soon realised, had been secured with a cheap quality padlock, fastened through a flimsy looking steel hook. After a number of heavy swings from her hatchet while struggling to remain upright, she was able to drag herself through into the dark building and secure the door again from the inside. She was alone and hurt, but her desire for revenge upon the man who had done this to her was stronger than any other emotion and cancelled out all the pain she was suffering.
Fuck you, Chris.
Shaking her head, Tina reached across to the bedside cabinet and scooped up the three bottles containing an assortment of pills that the doctors had given her. They were a mixture of painkillers, antibiotics, and mild sedatives. When she had arrived at the base she was exhausted, hurt, and suffering from a fever that threatened to boil her from the inside out. The medical staff had held very little in the way of hope for her recovery. The wound in her leg had become infected, and septicaemia was ravaging its way through her bloodstream. The surgeon removed the bullet and cut away as much of the infection as he could, but he was sceptical about her chances of pulling through.
Now, more than four weeks later, her strength of character and physical resilience were fighting their way to the surface for all to see. She had beaten the odds laid down against her, and already people were seeing something different in the young survivor from the outside.
She stared at the small bottles in her hand and absentmindedly read the labels. She grunted and shrugged her shoulders and then slung the painkillers and sedatives across the room. They smashed against the wall, scattering red and white capsules over the floor. She would take no more of them. She could withstand the pain, and she was determined not to become reliant upon a cocktail of drugs in order for her to sleep and function properly. She would see out the course of antibiotics and then be done with any reliance upon pills.
She climbed out from her bed and silently delighted in the feel of the cold linoleum floor against the soles of her feet. She rubbed at the unsightly scar on her calf where the bullet from her brother’s gun had punched through. The muscle had been torn, but the doctors at the base had done a good job of sewing it all back together. The wound was healing well, but the fresh tissue around the hole irritated her. It itched constantly, and she needed to fight the urge not to dig her nails into it.
It was time for her to begin her daily routine of testing her capabilities. For the previous two weeks she had secretly been carrying out her own recovery and rehabilitation programme. Each day when there was no one to see, she went for walks through the corridors of the base. She would run and jump, and twist and turn while snarling at her leg to heal faster and threatening to have it amputated if it failed to do so.
She placed her weight down on to her good leg and slowly allowed the damaged limb to settle. It was getting stronger by the day, and she smiled with satisfaction, knowing that her brother had failed completely in his attempts to kill her. She jumped up and down and then broke into an on the spot sprint, pumping her legs high to waist level and savouring the aching throb she felt in her calf.
Pain is merely weakness leaving the body
, she reminded herself.
Satisfied that the wound had become nothing more than a discomfort, she slipped into her clothes and tied up her boots. Next, she grabbed her belt with the pistol that the soldiers at the base had given her. She fastened it around her waist, drew the weapon from its holster, and checked the chamber before sliding in a loaded magazine.
Before leaving the room, she paused and looked at her reflection in the mirror above the small sink in the corner. She looked tired and worn, and a multitude of grey was beginning to fight its way out from beneath her thick dark locks. However, in spite of her appearance, she felt much stronger than she had done when Tommy and Al had found her and saved her from her dead pursuers. She owed those two men a lot. They could have left her there or even mistook her as one of the infected, but they took her with them, carrying her to safety and helping to nurse her back to health. In the weeks that followed her rescue, both Al and Tommy had visited her regularly while she recovered. A friendship had begun to form between them. They were extremely rough around the edges, and their mouths tended to be in gear long before their brains were, but despite their uncouth ways, they were the backbone of the base. She had known many of their sort during her career, and in her experience, they always proved themselves to be the better soldiers and human beings.
Tommy and Al had showed her more care and humanity than most people would have done in the new world order, and she wanted to be a part of their group and earn her place amongst the survivors. She was ready and determined to play her part alongside the other soldiers of the Forward Operating Base.
Tina smiled as she turned towards the door. She was feeling good. She had lived through everything that had been hurled at her.
Outside, she moved through the corridors of the complex, passing other people and smiling politely as she made her way towards the doors at the far end. She concentrated on her gait, determined not to allow the habit of a limp to set in. Despite the discomfort, she showed no outward visible sign of ever having sustained an injury to either leg.