The City

means impassable.
    It would never had needed to be impenetrable - there had been enough security both outside and around the courthouse to prevent or deter escape. He guessed that had a prisoner tried to get away like this they would have been surrounded and captured long before they’d got this far. He thought for a fraction of a 222
    second about the level of noise they were making and the distance the sound would have travelled. Bodies for miles around would by now be staggering relentlessly towards the courthouse.
    He felt almost as if they were ringing a bizarre church bell, calling a decaying flock to worship.
    The door began to move. Cooper had forced the bottom latch open.
    With the first restraint now released he moved out of the way and looked up at Heath who continued to hammer relentlessly on the metal. Sweat poured from his brow and his right arm was tired and heavy, exhausted by the effort of pounding against the door with the hammer.
    ‘Almost there?’ Cooper asked.
    ‘Almost there,’ he panted in reply.
    The soldier readied himself to open the door. By default Phil Croft would be the first driver to leave the building and he tried to visualise his route back to the university. He never used to drive through town. It had always been so busy that public transport had been by far the quickest and easiest way to get to and from work.
    ‘Got it,’ Heath finally yelled. Relieved, he threw the hammer to one side and clambered down from the top of the van, gasping for breath. He dragged himself towards the larger of the two prison trucks and climbed into the passenger’s seat next to Armitage.
    Cooper beckoned for Castle and Armitage to move their vehicles as close to the back of the police van as possible. Space in the garage was limited. The two drivers pointed the front of their trucks towards the exit and readied themselves to move.
    ‘Okay?’ Cooper asked Croft. The doctor nodded and leant across the van to open the other door ready for Cooper.
    The soldier opened the loading bay.
    Hundreds of bodies began to pour into the building, pushing themselves away from the dense crowds behind them and grabbing at the stagnant air ahead. They flooded around the vehicles. Cooper sprinted the short distance to the van and threw himself in through the open door. Sitting up he kicked and 223
    punched at the numerous corpses that reached out after him before slamming the door shut.
    ‘Move!’
    he
    screamed.
    Croft jammed his foot down onto the accelerator and sent the van flying forward, tearing through the rotting masses and obliterating those creatures unfortunate enough to get in the way.
    Behind them the two trucks began to move, slower than the van but with even more strength and devastating force. The second and third vehicles followed in the bloody wake of the first.
    ‘Can’t see a frigging thing,’ snapped Croft as body after body smashed into the windscreen.
    ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Cooper replied as he shuffled into his seat.
    ‘Just keep moving. Just get away from here.’
    The crowd was huge and, it seemed, apparently endless.
    Their relatively low driving position made it impossible for Cooper and Croft to fully appreciate the appalling sight which could be seen by the other four men from their higher vantage points in the cabs of the trucks. A never-ending sea of decaying bodies, all dragging themselves senselessly towards the court and after the vehicles driving hurriedly away. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of emotionless, empty shells lurching helplessly towards the source of the sound and movement that had suddenly filled their otherwise empty world.
    ‘Which way?’ Croft asked, shouting to make himself heard over the sound of cold metal hitting decaying flesh.
    ‘I thought you said you knew this place,’ Cooper replied, annoyed.
    ‘I did,’ the doctor snapped back. ‘Problem is I knew it before all of this happened. I knew it before there were a million fucking corpses rotting in the streets.’
    Angry and frightened, Croft turned right along a wide road which he knew would take them deeper into the city centre.
    ‘Where you going?’ Cooper demanded, struggling to see through the bodies which surrounded them.
    The doctor shrugged his shoulders and grabbed hold of the steering wheel again as it was wrenched from his hands momentarily as he clipped the kerb. Despite having been away from the court for almost a minute now they seemed to be no  closer to reaching the