The City

shapes and sizes. He grabbed everything which looked as though it might belong to a car, truck or van and ran back to the loading bay.
    Having dragged the body away from the van Croft turned his attention to trying to get the engine started. Fortunately he had found the keys he needed on the ground in the footwell between the body’s feet. He sat in the driver’s seat and fumbled with the ignition. After a month of inactivity he didn’t hold out much hope of them getting any of the vehicles going.
    ‘Can you hear them?’ Castle asked as he watched Croft work.
    Croft glanced up and looked through the windscreen towards the loading bay doors. It sounded as if they were being battered by a continual stream of bodies outside. He looked down towards the 218
    bottom of the steel shutters. He could see the metal rattling and shaking in its frame.
    ‘Of course I can bloody well hear them,’ he grunted as he returned his concentration to getting the van moving. ‘More to the point, they can hear us.’
    He turned the key in the ignition. The engine began to turn over but then died pathetically. His last words rang round his head as he tried the key again. The noise they were going to make getting these vehicles back to the university would be deafening. The grim reality of the situation was quickly dawning on him. It was clear that even without the engines the noise they had already made had been enough to attract many bodies to the other side of the loading bay doors, and he knew that those bodies would, in turn, draw more and more to the scene. They were quickly being surrounded. The options left now seemed simple and bleak. Get out in the van and the lorries or don’t get out at all.
    Heath had more success with the smaller truck. Having managed to find the right key from the collection Cooper had brought back with him from the office, he tried the engine a couple of times before, on the third attempt, it dramatically spluttered and burst into life, filling the loading bay with rough, mechanical noise and belching out dirty grey floor-hugging clouds of fumes. Never before had the taste of carbon monoxide and lead been so welcome, the university lecturer thought to himself as he accelerated the engine. Momentarily elated the other men quickly realised that now that one vehicle had started, it would most probably be possible to get the others started too.
    Heath watched cautiously as the needle on the fuel gauge slowly climbed across the dial, finally stopping just short of the three-quarters full mark. Even over the throaty road of the engine they could clearly hear more and more of the bodies thudding against the door outside.
    ‘Bernard,’ Armitage yelled, ‘pull up in front of me and we’ll get this one started.’
    The lorry driver had also managed to locate the keys to his vehicle from the pile Cooper had found. He watched from his cab as Heath slowly pulled forward in the smaller truck and  swung round in front of the larger vehicle. Armitage climbed down and ran over to an area in the far right corner of the loading bay which seemed to have been used as a makeshift garage and repair shop of sorts. Managing to locate a set of heavy duty jump leads he quickly moved back to the trucks, opened the bonnets and started work.
    Paul Castle nudged Croft who was still trying unsuccessfully to get the van’s engine to fire.
    ‘Join the queue,’ he said. ‘Wait till they’ve got the other truck going and then get them to do the same with the van.’
    Croft nodded. He gestured for Castle to move to the side and then released the handbrake, allowing the van to slowly roll a few feet forward. He turned the steering wheel and guided the vehicle closer to the trucks.
    Ten minutes later and all three vehicles were started and were running. The six men stood together in the middle of the loading bay and hurriedly arranged their exit plans. Much as the university had seemed the most cold, uncomfortable and impersonal of prisons recently, every one of the men desperately wanted to be back there now.
    ‘Do we wait?’ Heath asked. ‘Should we shut the engines off and hope some of the bodies disappear?’
    ‘No point,’ Croft answered. ‘We might as well just go for it.
    The amount of bloody noise we’ve made will have brought hundreds of them here. It’ll take days for them to disappear.’
    ‘He’s right,’ Cooper agreed. ‘We’re not going to gain anything from putting this off.’
    ‘Are we going to fit