For nearly two hours Marcus had pressed his journey south; he had no inkling of exactly where he was going but only that while he was up here he was safe, nothing could get to him.  He had spend a fraught few days on the ground after he had been forced to ditch the Channel nine news helicopter; it wasn’t an experience he was readily willing to repeat.<br/><br/>Marcus had panicked on that day; there was no other word for it.  He had been resting against the bird waiting to fly the live news team back to the center, when they made news themselves; it was the onset of Z-day; not that they realised it then. They had been dispatched to report on a spate of violent incidents that seemed to breaking out everywhere.  With the cameras still rolling during a live emergency report they had broken from the cover …they had moved quickly and with unwavering intent as they  ripped through them.  He had reacted in an instant and desperate to save himself he took to the air; leaving the screaming bloodied face of the female reporter burned into his mind as she screamed for his help… Marcus shook the memory from the forefront of his thoughts.<br/><br/>He pointed the nose of the chopper south and held that line, his plan was to get as far as he could and hope to stumble on some sanctuary or means of refuelling.  It wasn’t a great plan, not by any stretch; but it was all he had.  Once or twice his head nodded forward with fatigue and the path of the helicopter bucked a little as he jolted back to full wakefulness.  On the seat next to him sat a silver hip flask; he reached for it and flipped open the lid.  Bringing it to his lips he felt the warming rush of neat whisky; an all to familiar friend on this trip though it was doing little blur the memories.  As he moved the flask from his lips he caught sight of a warning light blinking on the console.<br/><br/>“Shit.“ it was the fuel warning light, he leant forward and tapped it; hoping that he could convince it that the tanks were full.  It was a stratagem that didn’t seem fruitful.  Then something caught his attention, a little way ahead rose a thick column of black acrid smoke, it seemed to mark the centre point of a highway intersection; and he strained to see its cause, but it was difficult to make out any details through the mangled wreckage, that seemed both made of metal and flesh.  Marcus shuddered inwardly.  He had just flown past the column of smoke and was continuing southwards when in the next instant his whole cocooned world changed around him;<br/><br/>The engine screamed and from somewhere deep within came a grinding that was audible even with his headset on.  The twisting metallic sound abruptly terminated with a shearing crunch as the helicopter lurched to the right; in an instant the engine failed and he fought with the collective, pushing down on the right pedal; instantly reducing the thrust from the tail rotor.  With the engine now floundering, any and all anti torque provided by the tail would send it spinning.  He pressed the collective a shade to the right; bringing it back to a neutral position and then lowered it as far as he dared to; taking the pitch off the blades, the helicopter began to descend rapidly, the air from below maintaining the rotors revolutions as the machine began to fall from the sky.<br/><br/>Desperately he looked around for somewhere he could put down; his forehead glistening with sweat as his eyes flashed left and right.  He had just passed what looked like a hospital and it would have been ideal as there seemed to be a perfect place to land on the roof; but with his rate of descent, he had lost the altitude that he would need in order to set down on the roof without clipping the lip of the building.  The damn thing had started to drift to the right and he fought to hold a slight left cyclic input to maintain his position as he dropped from the sky.  Marcus watched the needles spin, but he managed to maintain control over his descent; feeling the collective shudder and shake the collective within his grasp.  His teeth gritted and his body tensed against the natural pull of the blades above his head.<br/><br/>His luck held though; as just past the hospital south of the intersection, there was a car park.  There was no time to hesitate and he had little option but to set the ‘bird’ down there.  Marcus began a gentle flare and started to arrest his descent; levelling the ‘copter as it fell the last few feet and bringing the collective back to cushion the landing as best as he could.  The helicopter came to a solid landing and cut the remaining power to the controls before rocking back in the pilots seat; his eyes closed and exhaled deeply; his nerves were already shot to pieces and damn near ending up like the mangled wreckage of smoking metal he had just flown over did nothing to calm them.  He sat there with his eyes closed tightly for a few moments; before it suddenly dawned on him that being so exposed and inattentive was not conducive to his natural instincts to survive.  As if he awoke from some disturbing dream; he bolted forward and from the relative safety of the cockpit he looked around his<br/><br/>It seemed quiet enough …at least at the moment, but he knew it wouldn’t be wise to hang around in one place for any length of time; he had seen what had happened to those who had tried to hole up somewhere they thought safe …the results were rarely pretty.  He swung into action and took hold of a backpack that lay on one of the backseats and then turned his attention to the strongbox beneath the seats.  From within he pulled out a S&W 4506 and a Glock with a couple of boxes of bullets and shells which he shoved into his pack; then from its anchor on the back wall he took down the Remington 11-18 shotgun.  There had been definite advantages to procuring a police helicopter<br/><br/>Finally he reached to the back of the strong box and pulled out a near empty bottle of whisky, he swirled the last dregs of this around the bottom of the bottle.  The sight of this more than anything right now filled him with a sense of dread.  He filled his hip flask to the brim and chose to drain the last of the dregs from the bottle before he threw it across the car park, where it exploded into a shower of fragmented glass.  It was only then that he thought that might not have been the smartest move to have made.<br/><br/>Marcus stood close to the downed helicopter trying to ascertain the next best course of action, the leisurely spin of the rotors winding down above his head as the momentum leached from them.  Marcus had no clue what to do; he was caught in the middle of this town, with his only hope of getting out now sat impotently in the middle of a car park.  Perhaps he could find spares enough to repair whatever damage had been done to the engine …from there, perhaps he could find enough fuel to make it worth while undertaking in the first place.  His fingers wrapped around his hip flask and he took a draft from it …then; as he lowered it he looked at the flask somewhat mournfully …perhaps there was a liquor store nearby.<br/><br/>With the shotgun resting over his shoulder he looked around for any signs of movement, he was concerned that the noise of the helicopters descent might have attracted some unwanted attention so thought it best to make a move.  He turned and watched the column of thick smoke rise from the intersection which lay behind the hospital from his vantage point and started to head towards it, unsure of what he would find there.<br/>