Purification Read online

  ‘A few more months? Fucking hell, are we supposed to sit here like this for a few months?’

  ‘You might have to. Could you last that long?’

  ‘I

  doubt

  it.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  The soldier thought for a moment.

  ‘Doesn’t look like we’ve got any option but to try and get back to the base,’ he replied, his voice tired and slow.

  ‘Whatever happens we’re dead if we stop out here. Might as well try and get back inside if we can.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to lose,’ Baxter said.

  ‘Seems to me we’ve lost everything already,’ the soldier snapped.

  10

  By Clare’s watch it was a quarter to three.

  The warehouse was silent and cold. She lay restless on the floor on a thin mattress next to Donna. Together they’d dragged it over from the furniture department hours earlier.

  Despite being physically exhausted she couldn’t relax enough to be able to sleep. Looking around in the low light it was obvious that she wasn’t the only one struggling to get any rest. Perhaps as many as half of the others were awake too. Clare needed to get some sleep but she couldn’t.

  She felt increasingly anxious and uncomfortable. Her guts were twisting with pain. Maybe it was just nerves? Perhaps it was the overdose of sugar she’d taken when she’d eaten earlier. Whatever the reason, the very thought of food now made her want to vomit. She’d had diarrhoea an hour or so ago. Christ it had been humiliating. She’d sat on a dried-out toilet pain in the furthest corner of the building and had cried with the discomfort and degradation of the experience. She was sure that everyone had been able to hear her. Even now after living rough for almost six weeks and going without even the most basic of human necessities, sometimes it was still too much for her. She was a teenage girl and, despite what had happened to the rest of the world, her body had continued to develop as it would normally have been expected to. She’d started her first period a week and a half ago. Donna had helped her and had reassured her as much as she could but it hadn’t been easy - it was obvious that she was struggling too.

  Everyone was struggling.

  Clare lay on her back and looked up at the ceiling, studying the many metal girders which supported the roof and wishing that the huge lights hanging high above her would work. She’d be prepared to risk attracting the attention of the bodies outside if she could just turn on the lights and see clearly for a while. She wanted a little light and certainty. The darkness and shadow unnerved her. She hated it even when she was in relatively familiar surroundings, but this place was cold and unknown. She hated the darkness more than ever tonight.

  Her eyes were becoming heavy but still she couldn’t sleep. Clare desperately needed to relax and start building up her energy reserves. She knew that as soon as day broke they’d most probably be up and out again and she didn’t know when they’d next be able to stop. She didn’t know if she’d have enough strength to be able to make it through tomorrow. She found it incredibly difficult to keep going when they didn’t know where or what they were going to.

  She just hoped that tomorrow would be relatively easy and painless and…

  She could hear something.

  She lifted herself up onto her elbows and listened intently. There it was in the distance - a faint, mechanical sound. The world was so still that the unexpected noise seemed directionless and vague and she wondered at first whether she was just imagining it. Was it just a cruel trick her tired mind was playing on itself? The sound became fractionally louder, and she made the logical assumption that it must have been more soldiers from the base. Perhaps a few more of them had managed to get to their vehicles and get away from the bunker. Maybe they were looking for the survivors? Maybe they’d just come this way by chance? Whatever the source of the noise, it was still faint and it seemed for a while to wash in and out of range. It could have been a mile away or ten. Clare had no way of knowing where it was coming from and she was too afraid to risk getting up and going to the window and looking for it. She didn’t want to be seen by any of the things outside.

  It was getting louder.

  She wasn’t the only one who had heard it. She noticed that another couple of people (she couldn’t see who) were now sitting up and listening. She leant across and shook Donna’s shoulder.

  ‘What?’ Donna grumbled lethargically before suddenly remembering where she was and jumping up, worried that something was wrong or that something had happened.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Listen,’ Clare whispered.

  The noise was definitely moving closer now. It sounded like an engine of sorts, but not the engine of a car, truck or lorry. It continued to steadily increase in volume and, as it got louder, it began to change and to gradually become clear. A relentless mechanical chop, chop, chop could now be heard above the general din. Those survivors who were awake knew what it was they could hear, but they refused to believe it. Louder and louder now until the building felt like it was beginning to shake and the air was filled with the deafening sound. Michael got up and ran to the front of the warehouse, desperate to see what was making the noise and also concerned that it would attract many more unwanted bodies to the scene. All of his worries were forgotten instantly when, from out of nowhere, a brilliant shaft of bright white light suddenly swooped along the length of the industrial estate and then stopped. It took a few seconds for the reality of the situation to sink in. The reality was that there was a helicopter hovering over the warehouse, lighting up the place with a powerful searchlight.

  ‘Is this one of yours?’ Baxter asked Stonehouse as they both stood up. Behind them Cooper grabbed the nearest soldier’s weapon and pushed his way over to the door through which they’d originally entered the building.

  ‘Nothing to do with us,’ the equally bemused Stonehouse replied as he and Baxter both followed Cooper out into the loading bay. They shielded their eyes from the burning light and whipping wind and ran for cover behind the prison truck as the pilot of the helicopter skilfully and carefully lowered the machine and set it down in the space between the soldier’s and survivor’s three vehicles. Cooper watched every metre of its rapid descent.

  The very moment the helicopter was down the pilot cut its engine and extinguished all lights. The swirling rotor blades began to slow and the ground-shaking mechanical noise began to fade, leaving the all too familiar sound of bodies clattering against the wire mesh fence to become clear again. Baxter stood up to move but Cooper grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back down.

  ‘Wait,’ he hissed, ‘take it easy. We don’t know who the hell this is.’

  The doors on either side of the helicopter opened.

  Cooper watched with caution and a degree of unquestionable excitement as two people jumped down onto the tarmac. It was difficult to clearly see what was happening in the gloom of early morning. What appeared to be a well-built man and a smaller, more rotund woman stood together in front of the aircraft and scoured the scene for signs of life.

  ‘Hello,’ the man called out. ‘Anyone there?’

  His calls provoked a sudden and intense reaction from the crowd of corpses on the other side of the fence but nothing else. After a few seconds spent silently weighing up the options, Cooper slowly stood up and stepped out of the shadows. He held the soldier’s rifle tightly in his hands, making sure it was visible, but kept the barrel very obviously pointed down towards the ground.

  ‘Over here,’ he answered. The two figures turned and, after a moment’s hesitation, began to walk towards him.

  ‘Where the bloody hell did you come from?’ he demanded, relieved that these people looked relatively normal.

  ‘Just outside Bigginford,’ the man replied factually. ‘I’m Richard Lawrence. This is Karen Chase.’

  ‘Everything all right, Cooper?’ Michael asked, suddenly appearing at his side, flanked by another two surviv
ors and a soldier. A further crowd of people were stood in the doorway, watching intently.

  ‘Think so,’ Cooper mumbled in reply. He moved a little closer to Lawrence and Chase. ‘How did you find us?

  We’ve only been here for a few hours.’

  ‘Pretty easy in that thing,’ Lawrence answered, nodding back towards the helicopter. He brushed his long and windswept grey hair out of his face so that he could clearly see Cooper. ‘We saw the crowds a few miles back and we knew that something was happening round here,’ he continued, referring to the battle at the bunker, ‘so we’ve been on the lookout for anyone trying to get away. And you lot stick out like a sore thumb.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve been flying helicopters for years now,’ he explained, ‘and it gets easy to spot things that are out of the ordinary, even today when pretty much everything’s screwed up. You don’t often get vehicles like the ones you’ve got parked around the back of places like this.’

  He had a point, Cooper silently admitted to himself. The prison truck, motorhome and military vehicle did look conspicuously out of place tucked away in the shadows of the warehouse.

  ‘How many people you got here?’ Chase asked.

  ‘Don’t know exactly,’ Cooper replied. ‘Between thirty and forty I think…’

  ‘Look, can we finish this inside?’ Michael interrupted.

  He was, as always, acutely aware of the effect their prolonged appearance outside was having on the mass of bodies nearby. Cooper nodded and stood to one side to allow the new arrivals to walk past him and follow Michael into the dark building.

  By the time they reached the main area where the survivors had grouped themselves just about everyone was up and awake and aware of what had happened. Nervous and subdued conversations were quickly silenced as the unfamiliar figures entered the warehouse. The centre of attention, Lawrence and Chase found themselves standing in the middle of the group feeling awkward and exposed, nodding acknowledgments to the few faces they were able to make out in the half light. Chase tugged Lawrence’s arm and pulled him over to the edge of the impromptu gathering. They found themselves somewhere to sit and looked round into the many faces staring back at them.

  ‘This is Richard Lawrence and Karen Chase,’ Cooper announced as he arrived back in the room. ‘They’ve come from Bigginford, so Christ knows how they’ve ended up here.’

  ‘That’s bloody miles away,’ Jack Baxter muttered under his breath.

  ‘They’ve got a bloody helicopter,’ Phil Croft sighed, frustrated by the other man’s stupid comment.

  The air was suddenly filled with hushed expectation.

  There seemed to be so many questions to ask that no-one knew where to start. Donna cleared her throat and took up the mantle.

  ‘So do you spend all your time flying around in the middle of the night looking for survivors?’ she asked, the tone of her voice strangely abrasive and clearly lacking in trust.

  ‘Not usually,’ Chase responded, equally abrasively.

  ‘How did you know where to find us then?’

  ‘We’ve known for some time that there were probably people around here…’

  ‘So why didn’t you let us know you were about?’ Baxter interrupted.

  ‘Because we couldn’t see you,’ Lawrence answered, playing with his short greying ginger beard as he spoke.

  ‘All we could see were a few thousand bodies. We knew something had to be attracting them, but we didn’t know what.’

  ‘So where were you?’ Chase asked.

  ‘Underground,’

  Baxter

  replied.

  She

  nodded.

  ‘I flew over this area a couple of days ago and it was pretty bloody obvious that something had happened. There was a hell of a lot of smoke around but I couldn’t see what was going on. We came back again just now and saw the fighting. We thought that some of you might have got away so we spent the last couple of hours flying around trying to find you.’

  The group fell silent as they each considered the explanation they’d just heard. It sounded feasible. They didn’t have any reason not to believe what they’d been told.

  ‘Tell us about the helicopter,’ Emma asked. ‘How have you ended up with a helicopter?’

  ‘I’ve been flying for years,’ Lawrence answered. ‘It was my job. I used to fly people over towns for those “eye in the sky” traffic broadcasts on local radio. I was up there when this all kicked off…’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘We were in the middle of a broadcast and it got the reporter,’ he replied. The pilot’s face suddenly looked tired.

  The effort involved in talking about what had happened was considerable. ‘Beautiful girl, she was,’ he continued.

  ‘She was dead in seconds. Then I looked down and I could see the world falling apart beneath me and I never wanted to land. By the time I finally touched down everyone was dead.’

  The group’s questions, although random and perhaps individually insignificant and unimportant, all needed to be asked. And the sudden speed of the unexpected arrival and the lack of time they’d had to think about what was happening meant that the questions were asked as and when they came to mind.

  ‘So are there many of you?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Not as many as you by the look of things,’ Lawrence replied. ‘There are just over twenty of us, but we’re split at the moment.’

  ‘Split?’

  He

  nodded.

  ‘We’ve been based at Monkton airfield since all this started,’ he explained, ‘but we’re getting ready to move on.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘You probably know what it’s like from your own experiences, you make a damn sound out in the open these days and you find yourselves surrounded by those bloody things out there before you know what’s happening. What with the helicopter and the plane…’

  ‘You’ve got a plane too?’ Baxter interrupted, amazed.

  ‘Only a small one. Anyway, with the noise we make we’ve been surrounded by thousands of them since we first got to the airfield.’

  ‘So where are you planning to go?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Surely it’s going to be just as bad wherever you end up?’

  ‘We’ve been all over the bloody place,’ Baxter added,

  ‘and we’ve not been able to find anywhere safe enough yet.’

  ‘We spend our time running from crisis to crisis,’ Emma sighed. ‘Never seem to get anywhere worth…’

  ‘We’ve found an island,’ Chase said, cutting across her.

  ‘An island?’ she gasped, her mind immediately filling with images of sun-drenched beaches and golden sands.

  ‘It’s just off the northeast coast,’ she continued to explain. ‘It’s cold, grey and miserable and there’s not much there but it’s a hell of a lot safer than anywhere on the mainland.’

  ‘How big is it?’ Michael asked quickly, his head beginning to spin with sudden questions. ‘What kind of facilities have you got there? Are there many buildings or do you…?’

  ‘It’s early days yet,’ Chase answered. ‘We spent a lot of time looking for the right location and we finally think we’ve found it. It’s a little place called Cormansey. It’s about a mile and a half long and a mile wide. We think there were originally about five hundred people living there. There’s one small village where most of them lived, but there are houses and cottages dotted all around the place. There’s an airstrip on the far side of the island and…’

  ‘What about bodies?’ Michael wondered, desperately trying to contain his mounting interest and to keep his sudden excitement under control. Lawrence explained.

  ‘We’re planning on getting rid of what’s left of the local population. We’re hoping to fly a few people over each day,’ he said, his voice suddenly a little more tired and slow again. ‘We’ve only been there for a couple of days.

  There are six of us there now, I flew three o
ver yesterday morning. That’s how I came to be flying over here.’

  ‘So what’s the plan?’

  ‘We’ve sent some of our strongest people over there to start clearing the land. They’re going to work their way down the length of the island, getting rid of all the bodies they come across. Like Karen says, we think there were only about five hundred people there originally and from what we’ve seen it looks like more than half of them are still lying face down on the ground. As far as we can tell there aren’t any indigenous survivors so that just leaves us with a couple of hundred corpses to get rid of.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ mused Baxter in awe. Like everyone else around him he was slowly beginning to come to terms with the implications of what he was hearing. Imagine being somewhere where they were free to move and where there were no bodies. Imagine being somewhere where they could make as much noise as they damn well pleased without fear of the repercussions. It sounded too good to be true. Perhaps it was.

  ‘Once we think we’ve got enough people over there we’ll start moving into the village,’ Lawrence continued.

  ‘We’re planning to clear it building by building until we’ve got rid of every last trace of them.’

  ‘What about power and water?’ the ever practical Croft asked, his mind racing. Lawrence shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Come on,’ Donna sighed, as pessimistic as ever, ‘how do we know whether any of this is true? And even if it is, how do you know if this island of yours is going to be safe?’

  ‘They turned up here in a bloody helicopter, Donna,’

  Cooper said quietly, disproving of her attitude. ‘My guess is they’re telling the truth. Why should they lie? It might not all be as easy as they’re making it sound though…’

  ‘It’s still early days and we’ve got a lot to do,’ Lawrence said, ‘but there’s no reason why we can’t make this work.

  And who knows, in the future we may well be able to get fuel and power supplies working again.’

  The future, Michael thought to himself. Bloody hell, these two survivors who had suddenly appeared from out of nowhere were in a strong enough position that they could actually allow themselves the luxury of stopping to think about the future. Okay, so they clearly still had a lot of work ahead of them and the danger they faced was far from over, but at least they could sense an end to it. They could see the direction that the rest of their lives might possibly take. He, in comparison, didn’t know which way he was going to run or what he was going to have to face in the morning.