Purification (20 page)

‘You finally made it then,’ Cooper laughed from across the room. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Piss off!’ replied Baxter, managing a tired grin. ‘We took a couple of wrong turns, that was all!’

‘Just a couple? Bloody hell, we’d almost given up on you. We’ve been here for hours!’

Donna stood in the doorway and soaked up the atmosphere. The mass of people around her - both those she knew and the twenty or so faces she didn’t recognise -

seemed relaxed and at ease. She too felt suddenly calmer as if the countless stresses and problems that continually plagued her had begun to be stripped away. Was it because she’d finally reached the airfield that she felt that way, or was she just relieved that Cooper and the others were safe?

Whatever the reason, she hadn’t been in such a comfortable and welcoming environment for a long, long time. In fact, now that she stopped to think about it, she hadn’t felt free like this since the days before the disaster. For a few precious moments the overwhelming relief was such that she couldn’t move. The nightmare outside suddenly seemed a thousand miles away. She stood there, overcome and rooted to the spot, feeling full of positive but undeniably painful emotion.

‘You okay?’ a voice asked from beside her. It was Emma.

‘I’m fine,’ she answered quickly, suddenly self-conscious. ‘I’m sorry, I was just…’

Although Donna had stopped mid-sentence, Emma already understood what she was trying to say. She too had experienced the same bewildering range of emotions when she’d first arrived at the airfield.

‘This is really good,’ Emma continued. ‘These people have really got themselves sorted out here.’

‘Looks

that

way…’

‘You won’t believe some of the things they’ve been telling us. You know, when we first saw the helicopter this morning I knew it was going to be important, but I didn’t realise just how important. None of us had time to stop and think about it, did we? Christ, these people have been up and down the whole bloody country. They’ve seen other bases like the one Cooper came from and…’

‘I know, I heard Lawrence talking earlier. So how come there’s so few of them then?’ Donna wondered, sitting down next to Emma.

‘Suppose they’ve just been taking the same approach to all this as we have,’ Emma answered, thinking on her feet.

‘Mike and I decided right from the start that we couldn’t afford to spend all our time looking round for other survivors. We knew we had to forget about everyone else and concentrate on getting through this ourselves. Looks like these people have spent their time doing that too.’

‘So how many of them are there?’

‘Not sure exactly. I think there are about twenty or so of them here, with another six on Cormansey.’

‘Cormansey?’

‘The

island,

remember?’

Donna nodded. She was tired and her brain wasn’t functioning properly. Tonight she looked drained and weak, a shadow of her normal self. Emma noticed and passed her a drink. It was a small bottle of lemonade. The sweet liquid was warm and gassy but very welcome.

‘Much happened since you’ve been here?’ Donna asked, wiping her mouth dry on the back of her sleeve.

‘Not really,’ Emma answered, ‘we’ve just been sat here waiting for you lot to turn up. What happened? Did you run into trouble?’

‘Stupid cock up,’ she admitted, shrugging her shoulders.

‘We took the wrong exit on the roundabout where that bloody memorial came down, and then made more mistakes trying to get back on track and catch up with you.’

A sudden peel of loud laughter came from the far side of the room. It was an unexpected and strangely startling noise. Donna looked up and saw that Michael, Cooper and several others were talking to a handful of people she didn’t recognise. At first she didn’t question who these people might be, or what they might have found amusing. Instead her mind was preoccupied with the fact that she’d just heard laughter. For the first time in many weeks she could hear people freely expressing positive emotions that had previously been suppressed. Whatever the reason for their jollity, it touched an uncomfortable nerve. Normally strong and determined to the point of seeming cold and uncaring, Donna now felt ready to burst into tears. She dismissed her feelings as being just a passing moment of weakness, probably brought on by her tiredness and exhaustion. She turned and looked out of a window behind her before Emma could see the raw emotion in her eyes.

Outside the window the airfield was dark and, although she knew that there were thousands of bodies just out of view, the ground around the observation tower was clear.

And the building itself was strong and isolated. She couldn’t imagine any of the cadavers she’d seen having the strength, intelligence or coordination to reach the tower, never mind make it up the stairs. Being this high up in the air felt infinitely safer than being buried underground where she’d spent most of the last fortnight.

‘See that woman sitting next to Mike?’ Emma asked, causing Donna to turn back around, wipe her eyes and look across the room again. Sat between Michael and Phil Croft, the woman Emma referred to was rotund, red-faced and very loud. Donna wondered how the hell she’d managed to survive for so long in a world where silence often seemed to be the strongest form of defence and self-preservation.

‘The big lady?’ she replied, choosing her words carefully.

‘That’s

right.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Her name’s Jackie Soames.’

‘Is she in charge?’

‘I don’t think anyone’s in charge really, but she seems to get involved with most of the decisions round here.’

‘She doesn’t look…’ Donna began.

‘She doesn’t look like the kind of person who’d be sat giving out advice in a place like this,’ Emma interrupted, successfully anticipating what Donna had been about to try and say. ‘She’s got a lot of respect here, though. I’ve spoken to a few people who’ve only got good things to say about her. Apparently she used to run a pub. Story is she slept through everything that happened on the first day.

Went to bed with a hangover then woke up at midday and found her husband dead behind the bar.’

‘Nice. Who else is there?’

‘See the young lad on his own with his back to us?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s Martin Smith. He’s the one who…’

‘Supposedly found out how all this happened?’ Donna said quietly, sounding less than convinced.

‘That’s him. And the bloke standing looking out of the window over there,’ she continued, nodding across to the diagonally opposite corner of the square room.

‘The one with the jacket and the hair?’

‘That’s the one,’ she replied, ‘I think his name’s Keele.

He calls himself Tuggie.’

Donna looked at the man and felt a strange combination of surprise and disappointment and a certain amount of immediate distrust. Whilst just about every other survivor she’d seen wore whatever clothes they’d been able to salvage, this man’s appearance seemed to suggest that, for some inexplicable reason, he still considered it important to be well-dressed and presentable. His hair - in contrast to just about everyone else - was surprisingly well-groomed.

He looked conspicuously out of place and out on a limb, somehow distant and separate from the others. But was it because he’d chosen not to mix with them, or did the rest of the group not want to associate with him? Whatever the reason, in a room full of people he was very much alone.

‘So what does he do round here?’ she asked, guessing that the man must have had some relevance to the group for Emma to have pointed him out.

‘Did you see the plane in the hangar?’

Donna shook her head.

‘No, but I knew they had one.’

‘Apparently he’s the one who’s going to fly it.’

‘Why do you say it like that? What do you mean, apparently?’

‘Girl over there called Jo told me that he used to fly little tug planes at a gliding club…’

‘Hence the nickname…’

‘That’s right. Anyway, she says he’s not flown anything as big as the plane they’ve got here yet.’

‘Does he need to? They’ve got the helicopter, haven’t they?’

‘The plan is to keep sending people over to the island in threes and fours to make it safe. When it’s all clear they’ll load up the plane and take everyone and everything else over.’

Donna nodded and finished her drink.

‘Come to think of it, I didn’t notice any planes out on the runway when we got here,’ she said, stifling a yawn.

‘So how did this Tuggie get here? Is his plane in the hangar too?’

‘Now that’s the part of the story I don’t think he wants anyone to know about,’ Emma explained. ‘Richard Lawrence says that he found him hiding under a table in an office at another airfield when he stopped to refuel the helicopter. He’s a bloody nervous wreck. I’m not convinced he’s going to be able to fly anywhere.’

‘Great,’ Donna mumbled.

Jack Baxter crossed her line of vision and began to walk towards her. The tension and fear so evident in his face earlier had now disappeared and had been replaced with a relaxed, almost disbelieving grin.

‘You two all right?’ he asked. Donna nodded.

‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘What about you?’

‘Bloody

fantastic!’

‘That good, eh?’ she mumbled, unable to match his enthusiasm.

‘That

good.’

‘So what are you so happy about?’

Baxter shrugged his shoulders.

‘Can’t you feel it?’

‘Feel what? We’ve only been here a few minutes, Jack.

You can’t have had chance to feel anything yet.’

He ignored her flippancy.

‘This is going to work out,’ he grinned. ‘I tell you, it won’t be long now before we’re out of this mess.’

23

The observation tower was the focal point of the airfield and its growing community. The strongest and safest part of the complex by a long margin, it was where people ate, talked, slept, planned, cried, argued and did pretty much everything else together. Not really a tower as such, it was simply the tallest and safest building around and the first survivors to arrive there had naturally gravitated towards it.

Its relative height and its distance from the perimeter fence and the dead hordes beyond provided them with a little welcome security. With the arrival of Cooper, Donna, Michael and more than thirty others, however, space was suddenly at a premium. At two-thirty in the morning Michael and Emma found themselves sitting together in a small, dark room off the main entrance corridor at the foot of the stairs. The temperature was icy cold. The couple held each other tightly and covered themselves with blankets and coats to keep warm. Conversation was sporadic.

Michael had something on his mind. He’d wanted to talk to Emma about it for a couple of hours since an earlier discussion he’d had with Cooper and Jackie Soames, but for the first time in weeks she seemed relaxed and almost happy and he found it difficult to bring himself to speak knowing that what he wanted to say would inevitably upset her.

After skirting round the subject for what felt like the hundredth time, Michael decided to take a deep breath and tell her.

‘Em,’ he began slowly, choosing his words with care, ‘I was talking to Cooper earlier…’

‘I know,’ she replied, ‘I saw you. The pair of you were as thick as thieves.’

‘Remember the conversation we had on the way over here?’ he continued, ignoring her.

‘Which

one?’

‘When we talked about the island? I said I wanted to try and get over there pretty quickly so we could make sure we get everything we needed.’

‘I remember,’ Emma mumbled, already beginning to anticipate what he was about to say next.

‘Well…’ he began before pausing momentarily, ‘I’m going to go over on the next flight.’ Michael forced his uncomfortable words out as quickly as he could. Once they were spoken he felt sudden relief at having finally come clean and told her. Emma nodded but didn’t say anything.

In the darkness it was difficult for him to see her face and gauge her reaction. The silence was awkward and Michael soon felt pressured into explaining further. ‘There are a couple of damn good reasons why I should go,’ he continued. ‘Most important is that I really do want to get over there to try and make sure that this island is everything we need it to be. Second…’

‘What happens if it’s not?’ Emma interrupted. ‘What are you going to do? Ask them to bring you back so you can start looking for somewhere else?’

He ignored her again.

‘Second,’ he continued, ‘have you looked at the people left around here, Em?’

‘What about them?’

‘Just go back upstairs and have a look around. Most of the people here are empty. There’s more life in half the bodies outside than in some of them up there. It’s not their fault, they just can’t handle what’s happened and…’

‘What point are you trying to make?’

‘Jackie Soames says they’ve already sent some of their strongest people over there but they need more. They’re planning to try and clear out the village in the next couple of days and they’re going to need as much manpower as they can get.’

‘So why do you have to go? Why not send Cooper or some of the others?’

‘Cooper’s a hard bastard - he’ll be more use here keeping this lot moving in the right direction. And if I’m honest, I want to do this. I want to go.’

Emma stopped to think.

‘So when are you leaving?’ she asked quietly, not really wanting to hear his answer. Her mouth was dry with sudden nervous emotion. Michael shrugged his shoulders.

‘They’re planning the next flight for sometime tomorrow. It will probably be early afternoon.’

She nodded but didn’t say anything. Once again Michael found himself feeling pressured by her ominous lack of words. He desperately wanted to know what she was thinking and feeling. He’d known all along that she was never going to have been happy with the idea, but he didn’t know what else he could do. Cooper had implied that he owed it to the rest of the group to go and Michael couldn’t help but reluctantly agree. Since arriving at the military base it had been him, Cooper, Donna and a just handful of others who had kept the group together and functioning.