She could not detect any movement within the room but until she had physically checked, she could not be sure. Reluctantly and carefully, she inched her way through the darkness, her light dancing from one shadowy recess to the next as she nervously made her way towards the far side of the food preparation area. There she found a heavy fire door that she presumed led out into an alleyway at the rear of the restaurant. She leaned in close and pressed her ear to the hard cold surface. At first she could detect no sound, but after a few seconds, she began to hear the faint noises of something moving around on the other side. It sounded like scraping footsteps, occasionally joined with the clunk and thud of something heavy colliding with a solid object.
Melanie stepped back and studied the door for a moment. There were no windows, so there was no way of knowing exactly what was on the other side. However, she had heard enough and decided that the fire escape would remain shut. Considering it as a way of escape was out of the question. She could see that it was secure and undamaged, and she wasted no time in making her retreat back into the main room of the restaurant and onto familiar ground, closing the kitchen door behind her.
More rooms were cleared and secured. As she left the manager’s office and headed back towards the crumpled helicopter, she began to feel safer in her surroundings. There was one more door that needed to be checked. Beyond it, she presumed to be the restaurant’s main entrance.
“We need to find a way up to the roof, Mike,” she whispered loudly. “I’m moving to the front. Watch my back, will you?”
“You got it,” Mike replied out of the gloom with assuredness.
She walked to the front of the helicopter and headed towards the large heavy wooden barrier that was decorated with ornate golden artwork, depicting oriental flowers and fire breathing dragons that intricately intertwined with one another and gave no indication of where one began and the other ended.
She came to a sudden stop as something to her right caught her eye, illuminated by the light for just a fraction of a second. She took a step closer and then realised what the red pulpy mass was. She recognised the boots first and then the scraps of a torn and blood soaked army uniform amongst the piles of rubble and contorted steel framework. It was the remains of the soldier they had tried to rescue. The unfortunate man had been decapitated by the rotor, his body being beaten and crushed while the helicopter and tons of masonry fell down upon him as they all tumbled through the collapsing building. She looked away and shuddered before continuing forward.
At the door, she paused and looked back at the room around her, sweeping her light from side to side and letting it linger for a moment on the remains of the helicopter. She could not see him, but she was sure that Mike was staring back at her, holding his pistol at the ready in his weak and shaking hands.
Pressing her ear to the door, she listened for a few moments. Muffled thuds, sounding distant, could be heard from beyond the thick wooden barrier. Holding her breath, Melanie tried hard to distinguish whether or not the noises were coming from the next room or if they were from beyond the outer walls. With her head still throbbing and her mind continuing its slow spin from the crash, it was impossible for her to tell. She was caught in a dilemma. She could choose to leave the door sealed and retreat to the main room, praying for a rescue that may never come or she could risk moving into the reception area in the hope of finding a set of stairs that would enable them to reach the roof and signal any aircraft that were searching for them. She knew that staying hidden beneath the collapsed roof was not an option. Any helicopter circling overhead could easily miss the building and the wreckage of the Gazelle that was nestled within its dark chasm. She
had
to go through into the next room.
She switched off her light and raised the pistol so that the barrel was just millimetres from the seal of the door. She swallowed hard and then pushed down on the handle, wincing with anticipation of the inevitable click as the locking mechanism came free from its housing. The handle creaked loudly in the silence as the door came free. She pulled gently and felt a gust of stale air blow through the tiny crack between the door and its frame, lightly brushing against her exposed skin. Goose bumps sprang up on her forearms, and her heart began to race. Again, she paused and listened.
The thuds had become louder now and were accompanied by the snarls and moans of the dead as they hammered away at the outer doors. The room of the reception area was in complete darkness, and through the narrow gap between the door and the frame, it was impossible for Melanie to tell if there were any of the infected inside. She bit down on her lip and tried to blot out the haunting wails of the dead in the streets outside. She squinted into the gloom and concentrated all her senses but it was no use, she would need to step through the doorway and possibly use her light. The thought of giving away her presence terrified her, but she could not risk groping around in the darkness and making noise as she stumbled over objects, or worse, collided with any infected that may be lurking within the shadows.
She pulled the door open further, enough to squeeze her body through. Once across the threshold, she instinctively stepped to the left, pushing her back up against the doorframe and crouching down into a squatting position with her pistol held close to her chest and the barrel pointed outwards. There she remained for a while, staring at the wall of blackness that surrounded her, listening, feeling, and tasting the atmosphere. After a few minutes, her eyes began to identify shapes within the room. She could see the delicate contrast between the dark floor and the lighter coloured walls.
Bulky objects that she presumed were couches and coffee tables became visible against the murky backdrop. Then there was the main door. Its frosted glass panels glowed in comparison to the rest of its solid dark frame as the moon continued to barely penetrate the cloud filled sky above. Faint shapes could be seen moving on the opposite side of the reinforced glass as the door continued to rattle and grown from the mass of bodies pushing against it. For now, the sturdy barrier refused to allow them entry.
“Shit,” Melanie whispered with resignation as she reached for her torch. Her hands were shaking, and a wave of nausea surged up from the pit of her stomach.
She placed her fingers over the lens and switched it on, allowing only the tiniest shard of light to pass from between her glowing fingertips. She hoped that it was small enough to remain unnoticed by the prying dead eyes beyond the opaque glass of the door. She took in a deep breath and began to move through the room, remaining in a crouched position and carefully placing each step as she shone the thin beam over the furniture and the walls. Silently, she prayed that there would be a door containing a set of stairs leading up towards the roof. She had seen no sign of a staircase in any of the other rooms within the restaurant, leading her to believe that they
must
be somewhere near the front of the building, adjacent to the reception area.
On the left was a desk where the maître d would have been stationed, welcoming guests and providing them with drinks and menus as they waited to be seated. Behind the reception desk was a small cloakroom, and on the opposite side was the seating area. Again, the walls were adorned with an abundance of oriental décor, but there was no sign of a door or a stairwell. She suddenly felt deflated as she realised that getting back to the roof was not going to be easy. She wondered to herself if she could have missed the stairs, but she was sure that she had not. Either the building had no internal staircase, which was highly unlikely, or they had been destroyed when the helicopter had crashed through the roof.
There was a sudden thump to her left, and the main entrance juddered violently as a blurred face pressed itself against the glass. Hands appeared and began to pound away at the panes, joined by the cries of the infected that became louder and more ferocious as they battered away at the window and heavy steel frame. Somehow, they knew she was there. They had seen her light or sensed her moving around. However they had detected her, it did not matter. They now knew that a living person was in the building, and that was enough for Melanie to want to retreat back towards the wreckage of the helicopter.
“We’re up shit creek, Mike,” she whispered fearfully as she pushed her head and shoulders back in through the door of the rear compartment. “They know we’re here, and I don’t think there’s any stairs.”
“What do you mean, there’s no stairs?” He gasped, his voice filled with doubt. “What kind of building has no stairs?”
“I think we landed on them when we crashed,” she replied, shining the light up at the hole in the ceiling.
She looked down at the floor around her and saw golden coloured framework and what she believed to be the remains of bannisters and rails.
“Yep, I think we destroyed the stairs when we came through the roof.”
They both looked at one another for a moment. They knew that it would be virtually impossible for them both to climb up through the destroyed floors. With his broken leg, Mike knew that he had no hope of making it to the roof. Their only option was for Melanie to try for it alone and leave him in the crashed helicopter. Their radio was out of action, and their only hope of attracting attention was by using the flares that they had in their escape gear.
“I’m cold, Mel,” Mike said weakly.
“Me too,” she replied, feeling a shiver run the length of her spine. In the light of her torch, she could see her breath misting as she exhaled.
“What are we going to do?”
Melanie shook her head and looked around at the smashed cockpit. She had attempted to send their coordinates before the crash, but she had not completed the message and she doubted that the command centre were able to make much sense of the information she had managed to relay before they lost communications. She reached under the seat beneath Mike and pulled out a small canvas holdall. Inside were a number of flares, a first aid kit, enough food and water to last a day or two, and a blanket.
“Not exactly Bear Grills style survival gear, is it?” Mike remarked with disappointment as he looked down in to the bag that Melanie was busy rummaging through. “You looking for anything in particular?”
“An emergency beacon,” she replied impatiently.
Eventually, she slammed the bag down on to the floor and let out a frustrated snort. At that moment, she wanted to scream and burst into tears, but she needed to keep control of her composure. Allowing herself to fall to pieces now would do neither of them any good.
“Bad news, then?” Mike quipped.
Melanie nodded, her shoulders slumping as she felt that the odds were being deliberately stacked against them.
“They know we’re here, Mike,” she whispered, still staring down into the dark opening of the canvas bag.
“I know,” Mike replied sadly. “And I know you’re not talking about HQ.”
She sniffed back the tears that threatened to blur her vision and took a deep breath in an attempt to control her fear and feelings of helplessness. Mike watched her, sympathising with her and feeling the same sense of vulnerability and hopelessness, but he was determined not to allow it to beat them.
“We should try to get some sleep,” he suggested, not knowing what else to suggest. “We’ll wait till morning and then, hopefully, have a better idea of how things are.”
She nodded and picked up the blanket from the bag. Climbing the rest of the way into the fuselage, she was careful not to trample on Mike’s leg. He let out a grunt of gratitude as she sat herself down on the seat beside him, pushing her body close to his and covering them both with the blanket as she rested her head upon his shoulder.
“What is this building, anyway?” Mike asked with curiosity.
“A Cantonese restaurant.”
“Damn. I could really go for a Chinese, right now,” he replied with a faint smile as he remembered the old days and the things they used to take for granted.
“I don’t think Mr. Chan would be too impressed with what we did to his restaurant.”
“What do we do now then?” Mike asked, feeling her warm body close to his and savouring the scent of her hair as it brushed against his cheek.
“Indian?” she joked.
Mike sniggered.
“Good one. But you know what I mean.”
“Sit tight, I guess,” Melanie replied, staring at the damaged flight controls in front of her. “They won’t risk losing another aircraft by searching for us in the dark. At first light, I’ll see if I can find a way up to the roof. I’m sure they’ll find us tomorrow.”
“Fingers crossed,” Mike replied distantly and with a clear note of pessimism. “Do you think the doors will hold?”
Melanie did not answer immediately. Her thoughts were on the main door and the piles of corpses pressing against it from the outside. There was no barricade, and the door was held shut by basic locking mechanisms. She had moved some heavy objects up against the double doors leading from the foyer into the main room of the restaurant, but their defences were far from impenetrable.
“I hope so,” she said, finally.
5
Every action they made was slow and deliberate. Even something as simple as reaching up to scratch the tip of their nose had become a painfully slow and lengthy process. They were too close to potentially prying eyes to risk any sudden movement. Their bodies appeared frozen, set fast into the ground with only their eyes moving as they watched the block of flats and scanned the desolate land around them. The three of them had been in position for a number of hours, sheltering in the shadow of a partially destroyed building. They continued to obstinately endure the cold that seemed to be growing more intense by the minute, slowly creeping up from the ground and travelling along their legs, causing their bodies to shiver as their limbs steadily grew numb.
The clouds had disappeared from the sky, allowing the temperature to drop, and exposing a blanket of blackness that was coated with twinkling stars. Without the false light from the houses and street lamps creating glare and spoiling the view, the night sky had become an awe inspiring sight. Even the faint, cloudy smear of the Milky Way had become easily distinguishable above the crumbling relics of civilisation.
The street to their front was scattered with the rusting carcasses of stalled cars and clumps of debris that had been thrown out in a wide arc during the explosions that had rocked the town in the early days of the outbreak. Weeds were quickly taking root, spreading out over the tarmac, and smothering the buildings and vehicles that lay silently awaiting the passage of time. The bodies of the dead, the lucky ones who had not been able to reanimate, lay amongst the wreckage, their bones slowly becoming a part of the landscape, and eventually, crumbling to dust like the rest of humanity and its creations.
Al hunched his shoulders and huddled down, lifting his arm close to his face and checking his watch. Raising his head again, he looked towards the eastern horizon. The sky there was still as black as coal, and it would remain that way for at least another three and a half hours before dawn began to make its presence known. He glanced across at the dark shapes of Tommy and Tina just a few metres away to his right. He could see their breath misting in front of their faces and their eyes sparkling in the starlight. Both of them had their attention fixed upon the flats, watching for any sign of movement.
Off to the right, along the street and barely visible, a number of shadows moved. They were hard to distinguish, but there was no question that they were the wandering bodies of the dead. They lumbered around through the darkened avenues, scraping their feet, and from time to time singing their woeful lament.
To the left, just four metres away, a single corpse sauntered by. It moved sluggishly, barely lifting its feet as its gaunt face, obscured by a mass of lank dark hair, stared down at the ground beneath its feet. It was oblivious to anything around it as it made its way along the path. The three of them watched as it passed, their beating hearts pumping their rich, flowing blood through their veins just below the surface of their warm flesh. The creature had no inclination that the living were so close, observing it as it mindlessly shuffled by. It headed away and was soon swallowed up by the gloomy night.
They had gathered all the information that they could, which was actually very little in the way of enemy strength, capabilities, weaponry, and intentions. Most of the information that they had gleamed, they already knew. After reaching their objective, Tommy had wanted to conduct a three-hundred and sixty degree sweep of the target but Al had rejected the suggestion. They had no idea if there were any other units in the area, and he did not like the thought of them stumbling upon a rear protection group on the blind side of the building. They would be too far from their nearest support, cut off and unable to make a retreat. The patrol could very easily have found themselves caught in a devastating crossfire if they wandered into another position and made contact.
“Ready to move in ten minutes,” Al whispered, finally having had enough and surmising that they were unlikely to see anything more.
Tina and Tommy did not move but began to mentally prepare themselves. They kept their attention focussed on the area to their front, eyeing the top of the building and listening into the darkness. Earlier, they had been able to see the soldiers through their night sights and heard their muffled conversations, interrupted by the static hiss of their radio as they relayed information back to their commanders.
Al had pushed forward, closing to a distance of just twenty metres from the entrance to the building while Tina and Tommy remained static, ready to give him covering fire if he was compromised. There, he had seen another two strangers sitting in the dark. They were positioned close to the main doors, providing protection while the troops on the roof continued to observe. Al crept forward, slowly slithering his way across the ground, hiding amongst the small bushes and gutters as he moved himself into a position where he could hear their hushed conversations.
In the silence of the night, small snippets of information had been harvested from what Al could hear. The soldiers had estimated the numbers of the people in the FOB quite accurately, and they even knew that the civilians had received a degree of training and now occupied the walls along with trained snipers and machine gunners manning the towers. They seemed to know a lot about their numbers and weaponry but they - Al and his reconnaissance patrol - knew virtually nothing about the people they spied upon. It was clear to him that the soldiers had either been watching them for quite some time, or they had been given the information from someone who had first-hand knowledge of the base, its setup, and its occupants.
Then, a few hours later, it had all stopped. No more movement could be seen from the building, and the whispered chatter ceased as though a switch had been flicked, and the soldiers and their activities had been shut down. The two men at the entrance to the building had simply vanished into the darkness right before Al’s eyes, as though they had sunk into the earth.
Al
Al
had returned two hours later, having gained no further information while he skulked in the shadows, close to the main doors and directly below the soldiers stationed on the rooftop. The observation post had become deathly silent. He wondered if they had all fallen asleep or even left the area. Or maybe the soldiers had gone into hard routine, keeping their noise and light discipline to a minimum. They had shown no such tactical considerations during the day time when they had moved into position, so he concluded that they would conduct themselves in the same manner during the night. Now, it was as though the soldiers had disappeared from right in front of them.
“I don’t get it,” Al mumbled as he checked his watch again. He raised himself up into a squat, resting his rifle across his knees as he studied their target.
“What?” Tommy asked, eager to begin their patrol back to the base and into safety. “You don’t get what?”
“Any of it. I don’t get any of it, Tommy. They turn up, moving like a bunch of recruits but clearly knowing how to set up an OP. Then they start watching us and reporting back to someone through their radio which must be pretty hi-tech with frequency scramblers or data burst transmitters, because Ronnie couldn’t pick anything up. Then they go all tactical on us? I don’t get it, mate.”
“They could be asleep,” Tommy suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve caught blokes getting their heads down on stag.”
Al nodded, keeping his eyes firmly locked on the target and studying the lay of the land. None of it seemed to make much sense to him. He doubted Tommy’s simple theory of the soldiers sleeping while on duty. There seemed to be a definite plan, but no matter how hard he tried, Al was unable to work it out.
“Yeah, but something tells me they’re not sleeping, Tommy.”
He was tempted to break radio silence and ask Harry stationed upon the wall whether he was able to see anything, but if anyone else was listening in their position could be compromised. No, he decided to avoid the temptation and call an end to the patrol. It was time for them to move back and accumulate whatever intelligence they had gathered, adding it to what Phil had been able to see from his over-watch position close to the FRV. They hoped that the soldiers back at the base listening in on the radios and watching from the towers had also managed to gain some information during their absence.
Tina had a feeling in her gut. She felt vulnerable and open to attack. It seemed almost as if they had been lured out from their base and into the open, attracted to that position by the blatant activities of the soldiers. Now, as the men they had been watching had faded into the shadows, she became nervous. She imagined scores of eyes watching her from their vantage points and waiting for the opportunity to spring their trap. A cold hand ran its icy fingers along the length of her backbone.
“I don’t like this,” she whispered.
“Me neither,” Al replied flatly as he looked out to their left and right, studying the lay of the ground. “It feels like a ‘come-on’ to me.”
He considered moving back, deeper into the built-up area, but that would mean travelling along an unproven route. They had no real idea of what lay to their rear and amongst the buildings on the outskirts of the town.
“This whole thing is beginning to feel like we’ve been stitched up. Like they wanted us to see them,” he grunted to the others as he thought more about how keenly they had set out on their patrol into an area where they were vulnerable and exposed. “Come on; let’s get going before all this turns into a gang-fuck.”
Al slowly raised himself to his feet and stepped out onto the narrow path that ran around the edge of the building they had been using for cover. They remained tucked away in the gloom and obscured by a row of leafless bushes that paralleled the road in front of them and kept them out of sight from the block of flats. Al turned and headed back towards Phil and the rendezvous point. Tina moved out, closely followed by Tommy, their weapons held at the ready and their eyes nervously scanning their surroundings.
Phil was still in position three-hundred metres further along the road and nestled amongst the trashed bedroom furniture of the house he had identified as a good over-watch position. He had a clear line of sight to the target from his vantage point, set back from the window and lurking in the shadows. He, too, had observed the soldiers on the roof for a number of hours, but as with Al and the others, they had abruptly vanished from his sights. Now, he sat watching the rest of his patrol from behind his rifle as they made their way towards him for the rendezvous. He watched their flanks for the infected, his finger gently touching the trigger, ready to fire in a spilt second should he identify a threat headed towards the others. He breathed slow and shallow, keeping the barrel of his sniper rifle perfectly still as he scanned the street.
They were now just one-hundred metres from the Final Rendezvous. Al was up in front, carefully patrolling forward and creeping between the dark recesses, using the shadowy outcrops of walls, doors, and mangled vehicles as cover. He was methodical in his movements and each step was placed with extreme caution, ensuring that he did not trip or create any noise, potentially alerting the thousands of wandering dead eyes that filled the streets around them.
He stopped and moved into a crouch, raising his rifle and pointing the barrel directly ahead of him. Tina and Tommy also halted and slowly lowered themselves into cover. Just a few metres away, a ghostly shape trundled through the rubble, tripping over debris and barely managing to remain upright as it crashed from one object to the next. Each sound that it made seemed to shatter the silence all around them. Its footsteps were heavy, and its snorting grunts rattled loudly in its throat. It soon became obvious to Al that the creature could not see where it was going. The dead, although always clumsy with their footing, were still capable of negotiating uneven ground. This one, however, was undoubtedly blind.
Al watched it as it limped and staggered across his path, oblivious to his close proximity. Then, he saw the other. Walking right beside it, on the opposite side from where Al was crouched, was a second figure. It was much smaller than the first and barely noticeable in the darkness. It stayed close to the larger body, as though it was using it for protection, or Al wondered, companionship. The thought seemed ludicrous to him, but as he continued to watch them, it began to seem distinctly possible. One thing that Al was sure of was that they were definitely travelling together for reasons that he could not understand.
They were now barely beyond an arm’s reach away, and as well as being able to smell them, he could make out some of the larger corpse’s features. In addition to being blind, it did not appear to have much left of its lower face. Its swollen, black tongue drooped out of the dark chasm where its mouth had once been and swayed with each step like the bloated tentacle of some creature from outer space. One of its arms was completely missing, and the other had been severed at the elbow. Without meaning to dwell upon the two figures in front of him, Al surmised that the two had more than likely known each other when they were alive, possibly parent and child, and they had remained together in death.
He squinted and saw something that made his stomach begin to knot and a silent gasp rise and become lodged in his throat. At first, he refused to believe what he was seeing, but the more he watched, the more his brain acknowledged what his eyes relayed. The smaller figure was unmistakably guiding the larger, holding onto its tattered jacket, and helping it to navigate through the hazardous wasteland.