Autumn The City Page 0,87
left and the court's at the top of the main shopping street. A few hundred yards probably.' 'What's it look like?' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Big building, bronzed glass in the windows, steps up to the front door.' 'Who else knows what it looks like?' The other men, who had now grouped around Castle and the soldier, nodded. Baxter wasn't sure. 'Is it by...' he began. 'Follow the rest of us,' Cooper snapped.
'Wait here for a second. I'll go and see what's around.' Silently creeping further down the service road, he stopped when he reached the point where it merged with the main road. Cautiously he stuck his head around the corner and looked up and down the once busy street. There were plenty of bodies around, but considerably fewer than they had seen before they'd taken shelter in the bookshop. He guessed that the disturbance they'd caused back at the university would have resulted in many of the corpses gravitating around that area. He made his way back to the others. 'There are a fair few of them about,' he said quietly. 'The only way to get through them is to ignore them. Try and forget they're there. Run through them. They can't match speed and the power we've got.' 'A few thousand of the bastards could...' Armitage moaned.
'There aren't a few thousand out there,' Cooper replied, 'but there will be if you panic so shut up, take a deep fucking breath and follow me.' Without waiting for a response he headed back towards the main road. The rest of the survivors followed behind, their nervousness increasing with every step. Bernard Heath took deep breaths of stagnant air in an attempt to fill his lungs with oxygen before they started running again. Cooper paused and turned back to make sure they were together. 'Ready?' he asked. No response. He turned and ran. Instinctively the others followed at a frantic pace. Immediately those straggling bodies left in the street turned and moved towards the sudden disturbance.
Cooper led the way, pushing corpses away to the side as he forced his way forward. Castle was close behind. A myriad of unexpected emotions ran through his mind as he moved. As the inhabitants of the city had rotted and decayed, so the city itself also appeared to have deteriorated. The once familiar sights of streets that he'd walked along hundreds of time seemed to have changed almost beyond recognition. Unchecked moss and weeds grew between the cracks in the pavements and climbed the walls of cold and silent buildings. Motionless, skeletal corpses lay in the gutter being steadily devoured by the passage of time and by the numerous rodents and insects which fed off their disintegrating flesh. A random body lashed out and caught him off-guard.
He grabbed it by the neck and threw it into a crowd of three more advancing cadavers. 'Left!' he shouted at the soldier who, in his haste and desire to keep moving, had just passed the turning. Castle changed direction, followed closely by the rest of the men who were all somehow managing to keep a comparable pace. Bernard Heath and Steve Armitage in particular were moving with unexpected velocity and newfound determination. Pure adrenaline and fear was driving them to run like men half their ages. Disorientated by its overgrown appearance and the sudden effort of the sprint through the streets, it took Phil Croft a while to recognise the court building.
As he swerved to avoid another lurching body his eyes locked onto the steep steps which led up from ground level to the court's imposing bronzetinted glass entrance doors. Cooper, Castle and Heath were already there. They held the doors open for the others and then slammed them shut and barred them once they were all inside. Half of the men dropped to their knees and struggled to catch their breath. The remaining three realised immediately that there were suddenly movements in the shadows all around them. Within thirty seconds some fifteen ragged figures had appeared in the building's vast reception area. Countless more slammed into the door and began to try and beat their way inside. 'Get rid of them,' Cooper ordered. 'Go for the head and try and take them out. We'll get this area cleared and then we can slow it down a gear.' Looking round for inspiration he picked up a nearby metal tube (which had previously held up a sign instructing visitors to the court to