Aftermath

this?” Richard said as he ran through his preflight checks and started the powerful machine. “Hell of a risk, this.”
    “I don’t see we have much choice,” Michael said as the noise and vibration increased. “We have to try.”
    “Fair enough.”
    Richard pulled back on the controls and took off. The helicopter rapidly climbed up into the night.
    *   *   *
     
    The helicopter was over the castle in no time at all. Richard banked around and peered down into the courtyard. He could already see people down there, looking up, following the aircraft as it circled. He switched on his searchlight, both to help him and make it more difficult for those on the ground to track his movements. There weren’t as many people out in the open as he’d expected to see. Where were the rest of them? They’d already ruled out trying to touch down within the castle wall, but that was academic now because much of the courtyard below was filled with rubbish and clutter. The bus occupied the area where he’d set down previously. He couldn’t land there even if he wanted to.
    He completed another circuit, a little lower this time, sweeping around the castle and trying to distract and confuse the people down below. He could see figures up on the top of the gatehouse. When he saw one of them lift a rifle then fire it, he knew it was time to leave. He broke off from his flight path and flew back toward Chadwick, climbing rapidly, not about to risk being hit.
    *   *   *
     
    In an overgrown field a mile and a half farther north, Michael, Harte, and Harry stood and watched the lights of the helicopter disappear. Between them they carried a mass of mountaineering equipment which had been looted from Chadwick in the hours prior to them setting out again. Harry already had much of it prepared. While most people who had survived had cast off virtually all remnants of the lives they used to lead, others had found new outlets for the skills they’d previously employed. As an outdoor activities instructor, many of the things Harry had spent his time teaching to school kids and corporate employees on team building weekends were still proving useful. Sailing for one. Mountain craft and rock climbing another.
    They clambered over a low dry-stone wall which ran around the perimeter of the field where Richard had set them down before flying over the castle. The moon highlighted everything with its ice-white light, but Michael wished it would disappear as they approached the outermost edge of part of the vast crowd of bodies which had encircled the castle. Although the immediate threat the dead once posed had now been substantially reduced, and the plummeting temperature had restricted them further tonight, crossing this immense sea of decay was still a daunting prospect. The three men stood together on the last patch of clear grass they could find, each of them looking for reasons to delay the next step forward.
    Harry hoisted a long coil of heavy climbing rope up onto his shoulder and looked toward the castle up ahead.
    “There’s nothing much in the way of cover out here,” he said, “but I don’t think anyone’s going to be expecting us to walk through this lot.”
    “I don’t think they’re expecting anything,” Michael said, sounding more confident than he felt. “I think they’ll have fallen for Richard’s little bluff. They’ll think we’re all still in the helicopter.”
    “Is this going to work?” Harte mumbled, far less confident than the others. Everything had made sense back at the port, but the nearer they’d got to the castle, the more uncertain he’d begun to feel.
    “If we’re careful it should,” Michael replied. “Like I said, Jas won’t be expecting this. And if you’re right and more of them want to leave than want to stay, then he’s going to be well outnumbered too.”
    “Suppose,” he said, still not convinced.
    “Come on, ladies,” Harry said, tired of dawdling, “let’s just get this done, shall we? Opposite end to the gatehouse, you reckon?”
    “That’s our best bet,” Harte replied. “No caravans or anything else around there as far as I can remember. There’s the cesspit, but that’s all. The bloody stink from that keeps most folk away.”
    “That’ll do, then.”
    Harry took his hesitant first step into the remains of the dead. His boot cracked a thin sheen of ice, then sank into a layer of mud and decay that was several inches thick. The ground—what he could