Coldbrook (Hammer)(107)

Olivia nodded, her eyes still wide.

Gary flew them in at about five hundred feet, curving across the southern part of the airport and keeping away from the blazing terminal buildings. Small explosions were erupting in there all the time, terrible flowers of flame and smoke, and the eastern concourse was also ablaze. Several large airliners burned fiercely in islands of fire and wrecked fuselages. Vic hoped they had been empty when they’d exploded but realised that it probably didn’t matter.

‘If they were trapped in a plane they might have left by now,’ Vic said. ‘Who’d want to stay here?’

‘Someone who had to,’ Lucy said. ‘Gary, swing around again, take a wider sweep further from the fires.’

Vic raised his eyebrows at Lucy, surprised at her sudden involvement. She offered him a nervous smile, resting a protective hand on Olivia’s leg.

‘Further from fire sounds good to me.’ The helicopter banked and curved around to the south.

‘What did you see?’ Vic asked. But Lucy was frowning, shaking her head.

‘Something that didn’t register,’ she said. ‘But it’s bugging me.’

The stench of smoke already filled the cabin. Olivia coughed. She seemed more scared than before, and Vic guessed it was to do with the sudden flurry of activity. Until now the little girl had been sitting with her parents on a long helicopter ride, and maybe it had even been exciting for her. Now there was smoke and fire, and a burning airport.

‘It’s okay,’ Vic said, pressing his mouth to her ear.

‘There,’ Lucy said. ‘That plane down there, close to the grass verge. Furthest one. See it? Do you see?’

‘I see it,’ Marc said. ‘But what am I looking at’

‘Not the plane,’ Vic said, understanding at once. ‘Gary, take us lower.’

‘Oh, shit,’ the pilot whispered. He had seen it as well.

They hovered two hundred feet away, maybe a hundred feet off the ground, and countless eyes turned their way.

‘Must be a thousand of them down there,’ Vic said.

They surrounded the aircraft, most of them motionless, a few sitting or lying down because of the damage done to their bodies. They all turned their heads to watch the helicopter, and some were now walking their way, a few of them running.

Though they were well off the ground Gary took them a little higher.

Vic saw a couple of battered police vehicles and noticed that one of those running at them was a big man wearing a torn uniform. His face had gone, replaced with a dark mask of dried blood.

Olivia had pressed her face against Vic’s side and he held one hand to the side of her head, just in case she peeked. He wished someone would screen his eyes from the view as well.

‘They’re just waiting there,’ Lucy said.

‘Maybe they’ve got nowhere else to go,’ Gary suggested.

‘Or maybe they know that someone’s alive in there,’ Marc said. ‘Look!’ He pointed, and Vic saw the faint flicker of a weak light being turned on and off inside the plane. ‘Gary, any way we can signal them?’ Marc asked, and Gary swung the helicopter left and right three times.

‘Okay,’ Lucy said. ‘So.’

Many of the shapes were below them now, looking but not reaching up, aware in some animal way that they could not touch the helicopter yet knowing that there were people inside. Vic could see their faces, devoid of emotion. He could see the dried blood. They were dead but walking, and they wanted to bite his family.

‘Fuck them,’ Vic said, his voice shaking. ‘Fuck them all. We put down and shoot them, and then get to the plane and—’

‘How many bullets do you think we have?’ Marc asked him, a note of sarcasm in his voice.

Gary lifted them a little higher and swung in a circle around the besieged jet. The zombies watched.

‘What if we land a few hundred feet away?’ Vic said. ‘Sit there, wait for them to come at us. Then take off and land back here.’

‘No,’ Marc said. ‘We can’t assume that whoever’s inside will know what we’re doing. We don’t know if they’re hurt. And if it is the girl we’re after and she has been bitten . . .’

‘Are we just going to let her on board?’ Lucy asked. ‘Without checking?’

‘No,’ Vic said. ‘No way.’ He stared at Marc when the tall man looked back. He squeezed Olivia tighter.