Purification a-3 Page 13

  ‘They’ll find us,’ Cooper said abruptly, hoping to silence Guest who was already wittering and babbling about the whereabouts of the missing van.

  ‘But they could be anywhere…’ he began to protest.

  ‘Listen,’ Cooper interrupted, his voice clearly tired but still level, calm and full of authority, ‘they’ve taken a wrong turn, that’s all. They’ve got maps. They’re not stupid. They’ll find us.’

  ‘But what if…?’

  ‘They’ll find us,’ he said again. ‘And if they don’t then they’ll just make their way to the airfield like we agreed.

  They’re going to expect us to keep following the route we’ve planned. Stopping and turning around or leaving this road now will make things harder for everyone.’

  18

  In the post van the situation was deteriorating rapidly.

  Nervous recriminations and arguments had begun. More bad decisions had been made.

  ‘You told me to go right,’ Donna yelled.

  ‘I said left!’ Baxter snapped back. ‘Tell her, Clare, I said left, didn’t I?’

  ‘I’m not getting involved,’ Clare said nervously from her seat which was literally in the middle of the argument.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter who said what, just get us out of here, will you?’

  Whatever the instruction had or hadn’t been from Baxter, the fact remained that they were now lost. In the fading light each dull and shadowy street looked virtually the same as the next and as the last. Street names and other signs were overgrown and covered with moss and weeds, making them almost impossible to read at the frantic speed at which the van was travelling. With bodies constantly marauding nearby they had no option but to keep moving quickly. It had only taken a couple of wrong turns to confuse and completely disorientate the survivors.

  ‘Haven’t we been down here before?’ Clare mumbled.

  ‘How could we have been here before?’ Donna demanded angrily. ‘For God’s sake, we’ve been driving straight for the last ten minutes. We haven’t turned round.

  How the hell could we have been here before?’

  ‘Sorry, I just thought…’

  ‘We took two left turns and one right, remember? Since then I haven’t done anything except drive straight. Now shut up and let me concentrate.’

  ‘Take it easy on her,’ Baxter whined, ‘she’s only trying to help.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for you and your bloody directions we wouldn’t need help.’

  ‘Come on, let’s not go there again. We both screwed up.

  I got it wrong and you got it wrong and now we’re…’

  ‘Now we’re in a real bloody mess because…’

  ‘I still say we should try and find somewhere to stop for a minute or two to try and work out where we’ve gone wrong,’ Kelly Harcourt suggested, doing her best to end the pointless arguments. ‘All we need to do is…’

  ‘We can’t stop,’ Donna explained, cutting across her.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t you understand anything yet? This place is crawling with bodies. We can’t risk not moving.’

  ‘But why not?’ the soldier pressed, her voice calm and level in comparison to the others. ‘Seems to me we can either stop now and take a chance or just keep driving round in circles all bloody night until we run out of fuel and end up stopping anyway.’

  Donna didn’t respond.

  ‘Maybe she’s right,’ Baxter said after a few long seconds had passed. ‘We should find somewhere to park the van until we’re sure of where we’re going again. We don’t have to get out or anything. Even if a hundred bodies manage to find us, if we keep quiet then they’ll disappear off before long.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Jack,’ Donna sighed as she steered round the rubble and other scattered remains of a shop, the front of which had been decimated by an out of control ambulance. ‘How naive are you? All it takes is for a couple of those things to start banging and hammering on the van and we’ll have bloody hundreds of them around us in no time. They don’t just lose interest and turn round and disappear anymore, remember?’

  Baxter didn’t answer. He just sat in his seat and looked out into the darkness around them feeling frightened, frustrated and slightly humiliated. He returned his attention to the map in front of him and tried again to work out where they were. He hated travelling. He began to think he’d even be prepared to take his chances on foot with the remains of the decaying population outside just to be able to escape from the volatile confines of this damn van.

  ‘Find a landmark,’ Harcourt suggested.

  ‘What?’ Clare mumbled.

  ‘I said we should find a landmark,’ she repeated, clinging onto the side of the van as Donna swerved and weaved down another cluttered road. ‘We need to try and find something recognisable so that we can orientate ourselves to the map.’

  ‘It’s pitch black,’ Donna snapped. ‘How the hell are we supposed to find a fucking landmark when we can’t see anything?’

  Hoping for inspiration, she turned left and drove down another narrow street. More residential in appearance than most that they had so far driven along, here more cars seemed to be parked than had crashed, perhaps indicating that it had not been a particularly busy throughway. On either side of the road were houses; very dark, ordinary and unremarkable Victorian terraced houses. The relative normality of the scene managed to silence the raised voices and bring a temporary respite to the relentless arguments. It had been a long time since any of the survivors or soldiers had found themselves anywhere so inoffensive, unobtrusive and reassuringly familiar. For a few seconds Baxter’s fear and nervousness gave way to a stinging, stabbing pain and a desperate sadness as the ordinary sights which suddenly surrounded them forced him to again remember all that he had lost.

  ‘What about a church?’ suggested Harcourt, pointing out the silhouette of a large and imposing building nestled behind the row of houses to their right.

  Resigned to the fact that they were going to have to take a chance and stop, Donna drove quickly towards the church. Two right turns in quick succession and they were there. She steered the van down a narrow service road which bent round to the left before opening out into a small rectangular car park. In front of them, and slightly to the left, was the church, on the other side a school.

  ‘We going to stop out here or take a chance inside?’

  Harcourt asked from the back. She turned and peered out through the rear window. A single body was tripping awkwardly down the service road after them. Contrary to what Donna thought, the soldier was quickly beginning to understand that although insignificant on its own, the body would inevitably bring more of the damn things to the scene in no time.

  ‘Inside,’ Baxter suggested, leaning forward and looking directly at Donna for a reaction. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound. Come on, this place looks pretty quiet and you’ve been sat behind the wheel for hours.’

  ‘Everywhere’s quiet, you idiot,’ she moaned. ‘Doesn’t mean it’s safe though, does it? We’re putting our necks on the line here for no reason…’

  Donna didn’t want to move, but she didn’t want to sit outside, exposed and vulnerable, either. Her resistance was instinctive. As she stared up at the front of the church she thought long and hard. She had to admit that it did make sense to try and make the most of this unexpected break in the journey.

  ‘To hell with it,’ Baxter whispered, ‘our necks are on the line whatever we do. Let’s do it.’

  ‘Okay,’ she sighed reluctantly as she watched the solitary body approaching the van. Exhausted, she pushed herself out of her seat and clambered out. The three survivors and two soldiers sprinted over to the dark school building and quickly disappeared inside, leaving the body to crash clumsily into the side of the van and then turn and stumble after them.

  19

  The airfield was close. Cooper knew that they were near, not just because Guest had been talking constantly and with renewed nervousness for the last ten minutes, but
also because there were suddenly many more bodies around than there had been previously. The city was behind them and the road they now followed ran between wide, open fields. All around he could see dark, stumbling figures.

  Some were distracted briefly by the noise made by the trucks carrying the remaining survivors, but most continued to shuffle steadily forward in the same general direction as the two vehicle convoy was moving. With a lack of any other obvious distractions nearby it was logical to assume that the living and the dead were all heading towards the same destination.

  ‘How far?’ Michael asked from the back of the personnel carrier.

  ‘Just a couple of miles now I think,’ Guest replied.

  ‘How do we get in when we get there?’

  Michael’s question was sensible but no-one answered.

  Guest and Cooper exchanged momentary glances before returning their attention to the maps and the road respectively. Michael slumped back in his seat next to Emma. He hadn’t really expected any response. As foolish as it might now have seemed, getting access to the airfield hadn’t been something that had been discussed at any great length with Lawrence and Chase. The two airborne survivors had been noncommittal and vague about this end of the journey, telling the others that they would know when they arrived and that they’d make sure they had a clear passage to safety. From the distance and relative comfort of the warehouse hours earlier it had seemed reasonable to believe them. Now, however, as they rapidly approached their final destination and the crowds of cadavers which would inevitably be waiting there, nerves and doubt were beginning to take hold.

  ‘So how are we going to get inside?’ Emma whispered, taking care not to talk too loudly.

  ‘No idea,’ he grunted in reply.

  Michael’s concern increased tenfold as they followed a bend round in the road and, for the first time, were able to see the airfield in the distance. Located in the middle of a wide plain which the road they followed now gently descended towards, it was instantly recognisable for a number of reasons. Firstly, and most obviously in the gloom of early evening, because of the light which shone out from what he presumed was an operations room or observation tower of sorts. The only artificial light the survivors had seen since leaving the warehouse earlier in the day, it burned brightly in the night like a beacon. The light initially drew Michael’s eyes away from the rest of the scene. Gradually, however, he began to look around a little further. He saw that the building with the light stood just off-centre in the middle of a vast fenced enclosure, alongside a single dark concrete strip. The land around the building was clear for several hundred metres in all directions, and the entire estate was ringed by a tall fence.

  On the other side of the fence was the second more obvious and far more ominous indication that the survivors were close. Around all of the perimeter of the site for as far as they could see from the road, a dense, heaving crowd of bodies had gathered. Thousands upon thousands of them swarming like dark, shadowy vermin against the inky-blue backdrop of the night. From where he was sitting it was difficult to estimate with any accuracy, but it seemed to Michael that in most places the crowd ahead of them was at least a hundred bodies deep.

  Toying with the idea of stopping short of the base and trying somehow to attract the other survivors from a distance, Cooper cautiously slowed the personnel carrier down.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Guest asked anxiously. Cooper shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he replied quickly, his voice quiet as he peered into the distance, looking hopefully for some movement on the airfield.

  ‘Are they really going to see us? Do you really think they’re going to…?’

  Tired of Guest’s relentless noise, the ex-soldier looked across at him, silencing his increasingly irritating babbling with a single glance. Although conditioned by years in the forces and too professional to let his feelings show readily, Cooper was also beginning to feel a little unsettled and the other man’s nerves didn’t help. He reassured himself by trying to put himself in the position of the people at the airfield. From where he was he had a clear and uninterrupted view of them so they, no doubt, should have the same of him. As bright and distinct as the light from their observation tower was so, surely, would the light from their vehicles be also. He was sure they would soon see them approaching. As their distance from the airfield steadily reduced, however, his doubts returned and he nervously prayed for something to happen. He couldn’t risk going much further forward without a sign that they had been seen. Driving too close to such an enormous crowd without an escape route would be tantamount to suicide.

  ‘There,’ one of the survivors shouted from close behind him. ‘Look!’

  Michael sat up and leant forward to try and get a better view of what was happening. It was difficult to make out detail from a distance, but their slightly elevated position on the approach road allowed him to see definite movement on the airfield. Several small lights - torches and lamps perhaps - were moving away from the observation tower towards a dark shape at one end of the equally dark runway. Was that the helicopter they had seen earlier? As he watched it became clear that it was. After a delay of a few seconds the powerful machine climbed into the sky and then hovered some thirty or forty feet above the ground.

  Even from a distance and over the engine of the personnel carrier they could hear its rotor blades slicing through the cold night air.

  ‘This is it,’ said Cooper as he began to increase his speed again. The road continued its gentle descent towards the airfield. As they approached the helicopter began to gracefully move out to meet the survivors, switching on its bright searchlight as it hovered over the road, illuminating the route they needed to follow. The brilliant burning light also illuminated a sizeable section of the seething, violent crowd of decomposing bodies which surrounded the airfield, the sudden incandescence causing them to react with increased and relentless ferocity.

  ‘How are we supposed to get through that lot?’ Guest sensibly asked.

  ‘Just drive straight through them, I suppose,’ Cooper answered, ‘same as we always do.’

  ‘But there are hundreds of them.’

  ‘There are always hundreds of them,’ he sighed as he struggled to look ahead and follow the line of the dark road.

  ‘And who’s getting out to close the gate or block up the hole in the fence afterwards?’ Emma asked, equally sensibly.

  As they neared the airfield it became apparent that the helicopter was beginning to lower. When a gap of no more than ten feet remained between its landing skids and the heads of the corpses, it stopped moving. Hundreds of gnarled, withered and desperately grabbing hands reached up pointlessly towards the powerful machine. Weak, slight and ragged, the bodies were being thrown about and buffeted by the violent, swirling wind created by the helicopter’s blades.

  ‘What the hell are they doing now?’ Michael asked, craning his neck to get a clear view. He watched in confusion as the survivors in the back of the helicopter allowed themselves to hang out over the sides of the aircraft. Anchored in position and held tightly by rudimentary safety harnesses, two figures emptied large cans of liquid over the crowd directly below. As they worked the pilot (Lawrence, presumably) gently moved the helicopter from side to side, ensuring that as many bodies as possible were drenched with the substance. When the canisters were empty they were dropped into the enraged mass of shadowy shapes below, smashing several of them into the ground and knocking many more aside. The speed of the operation suddenly began to increase as the helicopter quickly lifted higher.

  ‘Slow down again, Cooper,’ Guest suggested. For once Cooper listened to him. He cautiously reduced their speed.

  One of the figures in the back of the helicopter lit something - a torch or flare or a bottle of something flammable, it was difficult to tell from such a distance - and casually let it drop into the crowd below. The bright flame seemed to be falling forever, spinning over and over until it reached the cadavers below. In an instant the substa
nce which had soaked many of them combusted, exploding and burning through the night air and destroying scores of rotten bodies.

  ‘Here we go,’ Cooper muttered under his breath before slamming his foot back down and sending the vehicle careering at speed towards the airfield. The bodies which had been destroyed left a relatively clear area at the point where the road entered the enclosure. As the personnel carrier and the prison truck hurtled towards the fence more survivors emerged from the observation tower and sprinted towards the perimeter. A group of six men and women pulled open a solid-looking gate that had previously been hidden by the mass of corpses swarming nearby.

  More bodies were approaching, stumbling over the charred remains of those that had already fallen. The helicopter swooped and dived through the air above them, distracting them and keeping them away from the two vehicles which were quickly disappearing into the compound.

  The gate was closed.

  20

  ‘I don’t know,’ Baxter sighed, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t see why we can’t just wait here for a few hours longer and then try and get to the airfield. What difference is a couple of hours going to make for God’s sake?’

  Donna was already beginning to regret this unscheduled delay in their journey to the airfield. She should have gone with her instincts. She wished now that they’d taken their chances and just kept driving until they’d managed to get themselves back on course. It was clear that the others didn’t share her views. Clare, Baxter and the two soldiers were content to sit and wait for a while and then make their move. She listened to the opinions of her fellow survivors and respected them. She didn’t care what the soldiers thought.

  ‘Let’s forget it until morning,’ Clare suggested. ‘We might as well. We’re pretty safe here, aren’t we? It’s almost dark know.’