Purification Read online

  ‘What’s happening now?’ he asked, panting with effort and nerves as he pulled himself up level with the other man.

  ‘They’re going to try and clear a couple of vents,’

  Cooper replied. ‘They’re planning to leave those jeeps parked on top of them to try and keep the bodies away.’

  ‘Got to get to the bloody vents first,’ Baxter mumbled.

  ‘Do they realise what it’s like out there?’

  ‘They will in a few minutes. Anyway, they don’t have any choice if they want to keep breathing. If there was another way I’m sure they’d have tried it by now. No matter what we think of them, they’re not stupid…’

  The conversation ended quickly as the doors began to open. At first nothing seemed to happen. But then, slowly and steadily, a dull scraping noise became audible over the rumbling sound of the military machines which stood poised to drive out into the open. A few seconds later and the first chink of light appeared. A slender shaft of harsh grey-white brightness appeared between the two gradually separating halves of the door. As Cooper and Baxter watched the width of the band of light increased as the entrance was opened further.

  ‘Christ,’ muttered Baxter under his breath. Rooted to the spot with fear he desperately tried to contain his rapidly mounting panic. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  As soon as the gap was wide enough bodies began to spill into the hanger. Forced forward like a thick and viscous liquid by the sheer weight of rotting flesh pushing hard against them from behind, the first corpses stumbled and lurched down the ramp towards the soldiers with surprising speed, many tripping and falling at their booted feet. The soldiers responded instinctively, pushing the bodies back and firing at them until they had managed to temporarily stem the flow of dead meat. From somewhere deep within the ranks a muffled order was given and a row of four soldiers armed with flame-throwers stepped out of the darkness. They pushed their way closer to the diseased crowd and unleashed their devastating weapons on the nearest creatures, sending controlled arcs of dripping, incandescent flame shooting out of the bunker door and up into the cold morning air. Tinder dry, the bodies caught by the fire were almost immediately incinerated.

  Another order was given and the personnel carrier began to creep slowly forward, climbing steadily towards daylight and then emerging out into the open, pushing and probing deeper into the burning crowd and grinding charred flesh and bone into the ground beneath its heavy and powerful wheels. To the front and on either side the flame-thrower carrying soldiers took up protective positions and advanced cautiously, matching the massive vehicle’s laborious pace and continuing to destroy as many corpses as their flames would reach. Beyond the mass of burning bodies countless more continually pushed themselves closer and closer to the disturbance, ignorant to the danger and devastation and attracted by the noise, fire, smoke and sudden movements.

  At the bunker entrance the two jeeps finally emerged into the mayhem, each one of them surrounded by more soldiers carrying flame-throwers and other, more conventional and clearly less effective weapons.

  As the military convoy eased itself away from the front of the base uncomfortably slowly, the remaining troops formed a heavy protective line of defence across the open entrance. The cool air was filled with billowing clouds of thick, black smoke and the choking, suffocating smell of burnt meat. Suddenly unable to see what was happening from where he was watching, Cooper jumped down from his high viewpoint and moved closer to the troops.

  ‘Cooper,’ hissed Baxter, ‘what the hell are you doing you bloody idiot?’

  Cooper ignored him and continued to edge further forward. Now standing just short of the heavily armed soldiers he could see that the personnel carrier and its entourage had managed to carve a deep, curved groove through the centre of the immense crowd of corpses. The vehicles moved painfully slowly through the bloody mayhem, still surrounded by a circle of troops who aimed their weapons into the rotting masses which writhed and squirmed and surged all around them. Hundreds were obliterated by flame and gunfire. Undeterred, more bodies continued to stagger across the mass of burning remains.

  Some three hundred metres away from the entrance to the base, the driver of the personnel carrier turned to the officer next to him.

  ‘Where’s the vent?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s the fucking vent?’

  Perhaps naively the troops had not stopped to consider the disorientating visual effect of so many bodies being packed tightly together on the ground. Shaking with nerves and fired up with adrenaline, the officer traced the path they had already taken on a map. He glanced up briefly to check his bearings but could see little through the front of the vehicle. Frantic, uncoordinated movements, jumping flame and dense clouds of heavy, noxious smoke were all that he could see.

  ‘Should be over there,’ he yelled, pointing over to his right as he continued to try and find a more accurate visual reference. The driver steered the carrier as directed, shielding his eyes from a blast of sudden brightness as more bodies were drenched with fire and destroyed. He watched in petrified disbelief as the creatures burned and yet continued to move. Inexplicably ignorant to the flames which quickly consumed them, the rotting cadavers staggered relentlessly forward until their last decaying muscles, nerves and sinews had been burnt away to nothing.

  ‘Got it,’ the driver gasped as he caught sight of the exhaust vent amongst the seething sea of figures. Standing just a few inches above the ground and surrounded by mud, moss and weeds, the location of the vent was made suddenly obvious by the movement of the bodies nearby and also by the mass of once-human remains which had accumulated around it. Drawn there by the comparative warmth coming up through the vent from the depths of the base, many bodies had become entangled with the low metal structure and had been trapped and wedged in place by the weight of countless more figures pressing forward against them. Clumsy, barely coordinated feet and legs had been twisted and had buckled under the combined weight of the huge crowd, leaving the metal vent partially obscured under mounds of cold grey flesh.

  ‘Drive straight over the top of it,’ ordered the officer.

  The driver did as instructed, turning the heavy vehicle towards the vent and accelerating through the bodies. The soldier moving in front of the carrier continued to soak the apparently endless crowd with fire, burning away the nearest of the hordes of lumbering cadavers which scrambled towards the convoy.

  Apart from the vent this area of the field was otherwise relatively flat and featureless. The driver of the personnel carrier powered over the top of the metal covering, smashing more burning bodies away to the side and scraping away a thick layer of once-human remains. Seeing that the way was now slightly clearer, the driver of the first jeep following behind gestured for the driver of the second to leave his vehicle straddling the vent as arranged. The second driver pulled forward and stopped when the metal opening was directly under the centre of the jeep’s mud and blood-splattered chassis. Leaning precariously over the side of his vehicle he saw that there was just a couple of inches clearance between the top of the vent and the bottom of the jeep. Perfect.

  The other two vehicles had continued to move forwards, changing course and heading towards the next nearest vent to repeat the manoeuvre. The second driver, now suddenly vulnerable without the protection of his jeep, sprinted after the others.

  From behind the row of soldiers standing in the entrance to the bunker Cooper still struggled to see what was happening. The clouds of repulsive, stagnant-smelling smoke which the gusting wind blew back inside the base stung his eyes and filled his nose and throat with a charred, nauseating taste.

  ‘What’s happening now?’ Baxter asked. As the length of time the soldiers had spent outside had increased, so the older man had slowly gained in confidence. He had now crept forward to stand just behind the shoulder of his colleague.

  ‘Looks like they’ve managed to get one vent cleared,’

  Cooper answered. ‘Can’t see what they’re doing now though. I’ve
lost sight of them.’

  ‘Do you think they’re going to be able to do this…?’

  Baxter asked before being silenced by a sudden huge flash of flame. One of the nearest soldiers had fired a flame-thrower and had destroyed a small pocket of bodies which had somehow broken through the rest of the burning masses and which were moving dangerously close to the base.

  ‘I don’t know what to think anymore,’ Cooper mumbled, struggling to keep the smoke out of his eyes and still continue to look outside. ‘This is just bloody relentless, isn’t it?’

  ‘What

  is?’

  The heat from another arc of flame sent the two men scuttling further back into the base.

  ‘The effort,’ he continued, wiping sweat and ash from his face. ‘For bloody hell’s sake, look at the effort that this lot are having to put in. Look at the risks they’re having to take. Christ, there are about a hundred men and women out there risking their lives, and it’s for the simplest of reasons.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Baxter was confused. Cooper sensed that he was struggling to make himself understood.

  ‘What I mean,’ he said, his voice tired and flat, ‘is that this is what they now have to do just so they can breathe!

  To keep breathing, for Christ’s sake! Never mind anything else, these people have to put their lives on the line just so they can continue to breathe. It’s a pretty desperate state of affairs, isn’t it?’

  Baxter didn’t have chance to answer. The soldiers protecting the entrance suddenly lowered their weapons and dropped back. For a second the two survivors feared the arrival of an unstoppable deluge of bodies but it didn’t happen. Instead the personnel carrier, followed by the five minute long return of a full complement of tired, shell-shocked and battle-dirtied troops, burst back into the bunker.

  The doors began to close.

  Baxter stared out into the distance for as long as he was able. The return of the powerful personnel carrier and troops had disturbed the air and, momentarily, had caused much of the dirty smoke to be dispersed. For a few seconds the survivor’s view was clear and uninterrupted. He could clearly see the charred and mangled remains of hundreds of bodies lying twisted and blackened on the muddy ground.

  Beyond them he could see thousands more cadavers approaching the base. Like a dense, grey fog those bodies which had so far escaped destruction scrambled over the remains of those which had been obliterated, desperately trying to reach the soldiers and survivors.

  The entrance was sealed. Baxter and the others relaxed.

  They had been ready to move if they’d had to but, for a while longer, they were safe.

  4

  ‘And that’s all they’re going to tell you?’ Croft asked.

  Cooper shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.

  ‘That’s about it,’ he replied. ‘To be fair I don’t think there’s much more to tell. They’ve cleared two of the vents and cremated a ton of corpses. Suppose that was all they wanted to do.’

  ‘But will they need to clear more vents? Are they going to have to go out there again?’

  ‘Don’t

  know.’

  ‘So how long do they think those vents are going to stay clear? How long’s it going to be before they’re clogged up with bodies again?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Cooper sighed, clearly irritated by the doctor’s relentless and pointless questioning. ‘Look, Phil, it doesn’t matter how many times you ask me, or how many different ways you ask, I don’t know anything more than what I’ve already told you, okay? The blokes I know have been told not to talk to me anymore.’

  Several hours had passed since the soldiers had returned from outside and the doors to the base had been closed. A handful of survivors now sat in the relative comfort of the motorhome with Michael and Emma. Croft, Cooper, Baxter and Donna had needed to escape from the bunker’s prison-like grey walls for a while. Although blurred and obscured by condensation, those same walls could still be seen through the windows of the motorhome. Regardless, the extra layer of separation allowed the survivors to convince themselves for a while that they were, somehow, a little further detached from their nightmarish reality than usual.

  ‘What bothers me,’ Jack Baxter said quietly, cradling a beaker of water in his hands as if it was finest malt whiskey, ‘is that they’re still coming. After all this time it doesn’t look like anything’s changed out there. I looked out there today and I could see as many bodies as I saw on the day we first arrived here, probably even more. It’s been three weeks now for God’s sake. Why don’t they just piss off and find somewhere else to hang around?’

  ‘Because there isn’t anywhere else,’ Donna reminded him. ‘You know this, Jack. Even if there are hundreds more survivors scattered round the country, they’ll all have probably hidden themselves away like us by now. They might not be underground, but they’ll be out of sight, and they’ll all have bloody huge crowds hanging round them like we have.’

  ‘Won’t make any difference whether they’re underground or up a bloody mountain,’ Michael added.

  ‘Doesn’t matter how quiet or careful we are, they’ll eventually find us and anyone else like us.’

  ‘I know,’ Baxter mumbled dejectedly.

  ‘Did you see what kind of condition they were in today, Jack?’ Donna asked. He looked up and shook his head.

  ‘Didn’t get much chance, sorry,’ he grunted sarcastically. ‘I would have tried to get closer but the soldiers and the flame-throwers and the thousands of burning bodies kind of put me off. Next time I’ll try and…’

  ‘What I mean,’ Donna snapped, irritated by his flippancy and completely ignoring his pathetic attempt at humour, ‘is were they still as mobile as they were before?

  When we came down here they were starting to get really aggressive and unpredictable. I just wondered if you noticed whether they’d changed or got any worse or whether their bodies have decayed enough now to stop them from…’

  ‘I couldn’t tell,’ Baxter started to, his voice suddenly humourless again. ‘I couldn’t really see anything much from where I was standing, and I wasn’t about to try and get any closer to the…’

  ‘It’s difficult to say what kind of condition they’re in,’

  Cooper said, cutting across the other man before he’d finished his sentence. ‘You have to understand that we couldn’t see much more than just fire and smoke out there.

  What really concerns me though, is the fact that the guys who were left posted at the entrance were kept busy pretty much all the time that the doors were open.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ wondered Michael.

  ‘My point is that even though there was a bloody huge engine driving through the middle of them, some of them were still trying to get inside here. We’ve been saying all along that these things just react to distractions. Well that might still be true, but to my mind a personnel carrier surrounded by blokes with flame-throwers should be a damn sight more distracting than a line of soldiers standing in an open door. The bodies that came towards the base must have chosen to try and get in here.’

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ Baxter baulked.

  ‘No,’ Cooper replied. ‘Their flesh and bone might be getting weaker, but we’ve suspected for weeks that they’re also getting smarter, haven’t we?’

  ‘You serious?’ said Croft.

  ‘Do you really think that’s what’s happening to them?’

  asked Donna.

  Cooper shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I’m just guessing here. It might have just been coincidence or a fluke that they found themselves close to the entrance. The bodies could have been heading towards the men out in the field and then been distracted by those that were left behind to protect the base.’

  ‘You’ve got a point though,’ Baxter agreed, now completely serious, ‘You would have expected all of them to head for the personnel carrier and the soldiers in the field. But how could those thing
s be getting smarter when they’re rotting away?’

  Several members of the group of survivors instinctively looked towards Phil Croft for an answer to their obviously unanswerable question. The fact that everyone seemed to still assume that he knew more than they did because he was medically trained never ceased to infuriate and frustrate him.

  ‘How the hell am I supposed to know?’ he snapped.

  ‘Bloody hell, I’m getting sick of this. I keep telling you, I know as much as you do.’ Annoyed and tired, Croft swung himself around in his seat and pushed open the motorhome door with his feet. ‘Mind if I smoke?’ he asked.

  ‘Carry on,’ Michael said quietly.

  ‘How many you down to now, Phil?’ Baxter wondered.

  ‘One and a half boxes,’ he replied as he lit the remains of an already half-smoked cigarette and inhaled slowly. ‘I tell you, I’m going to go out of my bloody mind if I can’t get more cigarettes.’

  ‘How long do you reckon that lot will last you?’ asked Emma.

  ‘I’ve been limiting myself to smoking half of one each day, so I’ve probably got a couple of weeks left.’

  ‘What

  then?’

  ‘Not much choice really, is there?’ the doctor grumbled.

  ‘I can give up or I can go out and get some more!’

  ‘Where you going to go?’ laughed Baxter.

  ‘Not sure yet,’ Croft smirked. ‘Even if I could get out of here, I haven’t got a bloody clue where we are!’

  ‘You should try looking closer to home. Bet they’ve got fags and drink and everything in their stores here.’

  Cooper shook his head.

  ‘You’d be surprised, Jack. This whole operation was thrown together in minutes. They’ve got less kit and supplies stashed away than you’d think.’

  Across from Cooper Michael sat on the edge of the uncomfortable sofa which doubled up as the bed that he and Emma shared. Emma shuffled nearer to him. She was cold and wanted to be held. He wrapped his arms around her as she rested her weight against him. The other survivors looked away, each of them feeling suddenly awkward and almost embarrassed. Emma and Michael’s relative intimacy made them feel uncomfortable and unsure. Having each individually suffered so much pain and loss, the others found the idea of closeness and tenderness difficult and alien - an uneasy reminder of a world they had given up as gone forever. Having lost his long-term partner many months before the disaster, Baxter had long found dealing with this kind of emotion particularly hard.