Free Devouring The Dead (Book 1) by Russ Watts

tomorrow. She wandered aimlessly through her office looking for a distraction. She eventually found herself back in the boardroom. The storm was dying down and her eyes ached. She rubbed her puffy, red eyes, and looked east. Through two skyscrapers opposite, a small gap gave her a glimpse of the airport. Occasionally, she would take a break in here on her own, and watch the planes taking off and landing. She didn’t like to visit the kitchen often. Invariably, the staff would leave as soon as she came in and eventually she stopped bothering. Today was so quiet though, she felt like she needed to see those planes, to know there was still life out there somewhere.
    The clouds obscured any clear sight of the airport but she noticed it was unusually quiet. There were no planes in the sky and no movement on the ground. Even the runways were quiet and dull . The usual twinkling landing lights were all off. She had never seen it so empty before.
    Christin a wondered if perhaps the situation was more serious than she had given credence to before. From the boardroom, she dialled security, but there was no answer again. She went to the lifts but there was no response. She hit the call button repeatedly but it brought nothing up to rescue her. She went back to the boardroom and sat casually on the table, its smooth mahogany finish cool against her legs.
    “I’m not walking down twenty five sodding flights of stairs,” she said aloud. In this room , she was used to an answer when she spoke: mostly yes’s, rarely a no. Now her voice was unaccompanied by anything but the sound of her own beating heart. Well, that’s something, she thought.
    Her stomach grumbled. The evening was drawing in and she began to wonder if she was going to have to stay the night. It was that or walk down to the ground and see what was happening. Maybe Edward and the others would be down there waiting for her, ready to have a good laugh.
    “Suppose I’d better go,” she said to herself. Sitting there quietly, procrastinating as the weak rain pitter-pattered against the window, she began to hear another noise: a beating, thumping sound, at first faint, but increasing in volume by the second.
    Christina slid off the table and stood by the full length windows looking out over the grey world. It didn’t occur to her to look down. She had trained herself over the years not to do that anymore: the height was disconcerting. If she had looked down though, she would’ve seen the city as it had become in the last twelve hours: the dead, the fires, the burning trucks and the shambling corpses. She would’ve grasped the severity of her situation at last.
    Suddenly , the noise increased sharply and an army helicopter appeared, its rotor blades spinning rapidly. Unknown to her, it was the same one that had ferried Doctor Garner away earlier in the day. It had gone back to St Thomas hospital at his bequest, before he died, to retrieve some key information: a body. He had described it and the soldiers had managed to find it where he said it would be. They were transporting it now back to a secret location.
    The khaki green helicopter was huge. She had never seen one so close before and it was now only about fifty feet away. It was headed in the direction of the airport when, without warning, it veered off to the left. Christin a watched as the overhead blades came within inches of striking the tower opposite her. She looked on as the helicopter momentarily hovered, righting itself, before lurching again to one side. It was caught in a spin and the metal beast came straight toward her. Christina screamed and froze.
    It stopped just in time, inches away from crashing straight through the boardroom windows making mincemeat out of her. She clearly saw the pilot who was struggling with the controls. Two men appeared to be fighting, knocking and pushing him, when suddenly they were upon him. The pilot’s mouth shouted unheard obscenities and then the helicopter swung round