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was stunned by what she saw. For five hundred metres to the east, the runway jutted out into the water. A hundred metres to the west, the site widened and spread, with windowed warehouse-like buildings ringing the landing strip in a U-shape of unequal height and depth. Going by the position of the train station on the maps she’d poured over back at the fortress, the passenger side of the airport was in the southeastern corner. On every available patch of tarmac between her and those buildings were planes. They were a mix of single engine, twin props, and jets, and all were parked wingtip to window. She recognised a few of the paint schemes as those of commercial carriers, a few more as being obviously privately owned, but most were burned and broken beyond recognition.
    There was a narrow path down the centre of the runway. At first, Nilda thought that it had been deliberately left clear, but as she took another step forward, she realised that it was the result of the 747’s failed landing. Though there was still enough clearance for one of the small-winged planes to set down, the runway was so littered with charred debris that any attempt would end in a crash.
    Her foot kicked against something. It skidded across the tarmac with a jangling tinkle of metal. Looking down, she saw a twisted seat buckle still attached to a few inches of singed belt. The sound brought her back to where, and when, she was. She looked and listened, but there was no sign of the undead, nor could she hear their ominous shuffling wheeze.
    “Stay safe,” she said, turning to Jay. “And stay close to the boat.” She nodded to Chester, and the two of them set off at a jog towards the terminal.
     
    Rafts
    “Which plane should we start with?” Jay asked.
    Tuck looked around, taking in the wreckage. “Not all planes had rafts,” she signed.
    “Okay,” Jay said. “So, which ones did?”
    Tuck shrugged and pointed at a twin-engine jet with a set of steps pushed up to the open door. “That one. The stairs will save us the climb.” Their presence also meant that the passengers had exited the aircraft. Tuck didn’t want to enter one of those planes and find it full of the dead, or worse, the undead. Not now, not today. She was tired, and in a way she hadn’t felt in months, not since she and Jay had first arrived at Kirkman House. Then it had been the shock of finding a group of survivors and discovering that civilisation had been reduced to a handful of people using ramshackle rooftop walkways to scavenge from the remains of a dead city. There had been a euphoric moment when they were rescued from the British Museum, compounded by seeing it was Nilda who had rescued them. That had turned to near ecstatic joy with the discovery that there were ten thousand people alive and thriving around a nuclear power plant in Wales. That had been the high point from which she’d come crashing down when she’d realised that the fifty of them in the Tower of London were probably the second largest community left on the planet. Anglesey and London, the last bastions of humanity, and each week their numbers shrank, the struggle for survival grew harder, and the only end to it that she could see was death.
    She glanced at Jay, forced a smile, and planted a weary foot on the plane’s steps. She froze. Something was wrong. Slowly, she turned around. It wasn’t just exhaustion, not this time. She’d had this feeling before, though in a very different city, facing a very different threat. It was the sense that despite everything appearing deserted, they were surrounded.
    Again she looked at Jay. He saw her expression and knew without being told that danger was close. He twisted his head left and right, listening, then tilted it to one side, squinting in a way that reminded her of a cat looking at a mouse that wouldn’t run away.
    “Not zombies,” he signed.
    She was about to berate him for being imprecise when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a