Purification (17 page)

‘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 substance 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.’

‘She’s got a point,’ Kelly Harcourt agreed. ‘It makes sense to wait until it’s light before we move. It’ll be easier to see where we’re going in the light.’

‘I don’t want to wait,’ Donna argued. ‘We’re vulnerable if we stay out here. I think we should go now.’

‘Seems to me we’re vulnerable everywhere,’ the female soldier said dejectedly from behind her facemask. Whilst the three survivors stood and shivered in the cold, she and Kilgore had been sweating under heavy layers of protective clothing. What she’d have given to feel the cold wind and rain on her face again…

‘We’ve been here for over an hour now,’ Baxter continued, ‘and there still aren’t that many bodies around out there, look.’

He gestured for Donna and the others to look through the window which he was standing next to. The group had hidden themselves away in a first floor classroom in the small school which lay nestled in the shadows of the imposing church they’d originally planned to shelter in.

Donna peered down into the carpark below and saw that he was right. There were very few bodies nearby, and most of them seemed to be wandering around as aimlessly as ever, seemingly oblivious to the presence of the survivors in the school. A handful of them had crowded around the van and were pressing their diseased faces against the windscreen.

She could see other dark figures around the edges of the carpark. Strange how they seemed to almost be keeping their distance.

‘As long as we keep quiet and out of sight we should be okay, right?’ mumbled Harcourt.

‘It doesn’t matter when we get to the airfield, as long as we get there,’ Baxter continued, trying to convince himself as much as anyone else. ‘They’re not going to be in a position to pack up and leave tomorrow, are they?

Lawrence said they’ve only just started flying people out.

It’s not like we’ll get there and they’ll all have gone already, is it?’

Clare sat on a low desk a short distance away and listened to the end of the conversation with disinterest. She leant down and picked up a book from where it had fallen on the wood-tiled floor. The name on the front of the book was Abigail Peters who, she worked out from the school year she was in, had been nine or ten when she’d died.

Baxter stopped talking. He looked across at her sadly and watched her flicking through the pages of the book. Poor kid, he thought, as much as what had happened had been hard for any of them to comprehend and try and deal with, in many ways it must have been infinitely more difficult for her.

Baxter found their surroundings unnerving and sad.

Everywhere he looked he could see evidence of young lives ended without justification or reason. It was hard seeing the innocence of childhood shattered so brutally as it had been by everything that had happened. Fortunately the school day seemed not to have started when it had begun. They had entered the building through the main reception area and, apart from the body of a teacher they’d noticed stumbling between upturned chairs in an assembly hall, the building looked to have been virtually deserted. On the way up to their relatively secluded classroom hideout (it was one of only two rooms not on the ground floor) they had been able to see the playground at the front of the school.