Purification (16 page)

He looked around the personnel carrier at the other people travelling with them. It was disheartening that even now after having spent so much time together, the group remained fragmented and disparate. The survivors generally seemed to fall into either one of two very distinct categories - those who talked about the future and those who wouldn’t. Interesting, Michael thought, that he could name all those who had at least tried to look forward and make something of the little they had left. The others -

those who sat still and silent and wallowed in self-pity and despair - remained comparatively nameless, faceless and characterless.

Michael still clung onto the slim hope that they could carve themselves something of a future from the remnants of the past. But the chances and opportunities presented to them seemed increasingly slender and difficult to spot and take. He knew he had to make the most of every chance which came his way, no matter how small, and he wasn’t about to entrust what was left of his uncertain future to someone he didn’t know anything about or who didn’t know anything about him. He had to admit that as positive as he genuinely did feel, the prospect of meeting this new group of survivors made him feel slightly uneasy.

‘All I’m saying,’ he said to Emma, keen to labour his point, ‘is that we need to make sure we stay in control here.

This little bit of control is all we’ve got left.’

Two vehicles behind, tempers were beginning to fray.

‘Will you two just shut up and stop your fucking moaning,’ Donna sighed, glancing over her shoulder at the two soldiers slumped in the back of the van. ‘All you’ve done for the last hour is complain. If you haven’t got anything positive to say, don’t say anything at all.’

‘I’ve got plenty to say,’ Kilgore snapped back. ‘Problem is you won’t listen.’

‘You might as well take your bloody mask off and give us all a break,’ she hissed.

‘Come on, Donna, that’s a bit harsh isn’t it?’ Baxter whispered across the front of the van, his voice quiet enough not to be heard from the back. ‘Just let it go, he’s not worth it. He’s just a bloody idiot who’s scared to death.

They both are, you can see it in their faces.’

Donna watched in the mirror as Kilgore angrily sat back in his seat like a chastised child, crossed his arms and turned and stared out of the window. It wasn’t worth fighting back. He’d been arguing with Donna for several miles about something pointless (he couldn’t even remember what had started it now). He really didn’t like her. She was blunt and opinionated. She had a big mouth, a bad attitude and such an air of superiority at times that he wanted to hit her. Fucking woman, he thought, thinks she’s better than Harcourt and me because she can breathe the air without a bloody suit. Bitch.

‘We should kick them both out now,’ Donna said out of the corner of her mouth. ‘I don’t know why we’re even bothering to bring them with us. We should do what Cooper did to the other two and…’

‘Come on,’ he sighed, ‘you know as well as I do why Cooper did what he did. This is different. At the end of the day they’re just people like you and me. They might even be able to breathe if they could take a chance and…’

‘I’ll slit their fucking suits and we’ll see how they get on,’ she muttered angrily to herself.

Baxter shook his head sadly. He knew - he hoped - that she didn’t mean what she was saying. Maybe it was just the tension and uncertainty of the long day getting to her like it was getting to him? Not wanting to prolong the conversation he returned his attention to his maps again.

The convoy rapidly approached the third of the five roundabouts they expected to come across in relatively quick succession along the road to the airfield. Tired, Donna sat up in her seat and dropped the van back a little way to allow her to get a better view of the road ahead. In the centre of the island in the middle of the carriageway was a large stone war memorial which she could see outlined against the darkening sky. At its base it had been hit by a juggernaut that had obviously lost control when its driver had died. The huge lorry was twisted round awkwardly with its cab leaning over to one side and half its wheel-base lifted off the ground.

‘Take it easy round here,’ Baxter warned as the two vehicles ahead of them slowed down to navigate their way through and around the crash scene.

A body hurled itself out of the darkness and into the way of the personnel carrier, distracting Cooper momentarily. In the brief and sudden confusion he over-steered and clipped the back of the crashed juggernaut, bringing it thumping back down onto all of its wheels again. Armitage, following too close behind, then collided with the military vehicle in front, shunting it forward and, at the same time, also causing the juggernaut to be shoved fractionally further forward into the base of the memorial too. Cooper glanced up and, seeing that the tall stone monument had been disturbed, increased his speed and drove quickly towards the exit that Peter Guest was furiously pointing to.

Armitage followed.

‘Shit,’ Donna yelled as she watched the truck and personnel carrier disentangle themselves and move on.

From a little way back she could see that the monument, already unsteady, had been seriously weakened by the impact and subsequent vibrations. As the prison truck powered away, the pointed top of the memorial began to sway and tilt. Its collapse appeared inevitable. Rather than take any unnecessary risks, Donna stopped the van and they watched from a distance as it fell, the tall stone needle crashing heavily to the ground and splitting into three huge pieces as it smashed into the tarmac. Even before the dust had settled it was obvious that the road they needed to take was blocked.

‘Bloody brilliant,’ Donna said dejectedly, shaking her head and rubbing her tired eyes.

‘Doesn’t matter, just go round the roundabout the other way,’ Baxter suggested anxiously. ‘Do anything, just keep moving.’

Donna pulled forward and began to steer anti-clockwise around the island, doing her best to concentrate on following the road and ignoring the numerous swarming bodies which had been attracted by the arrival of the vehicles and the sudden crash and confusion they had caused.

‘Which exit?’ she demanded.

They were now travelling around the roundabout in the opposite direction to that which they had originally intended.

‘Third,’ Baxter shouted. ‘No, fourth.’

His nervous indecision, coupled with the intense pressure, the random movement of corpses all around her and the various obstructions which littered the road, caused Donna to choose the wrong exit. It was a split second decision and she made the wrong choice. They had expected to continue along the wide main road they’d already been following for miles. The narrowness and unexpected direction of the road they were now on made her mistake immediately obvious.

‘Damn,’ she cursed, slamming on the brake and stopping. She looked back in her mirror and saw that the road behind was rapidly filling with bodies. Two crashed cars made it difficult to reverse back easily. Up ahead she could see the taillights of the personnel carrier and prison truck rapidly moving away from them along the right route.

‘I can’t turn round here,’ she said, looking around desperately for a way out.

‘Keep going forward!’ Baxter shouted as bodies began to slam against the sides of the van. ‘Just keep moving. I know where we are on the map. I’ll get us back on track in a few minutes.’

Frustrated, unnerved and angry with herself and with Baxter for making the mistake, Donna drove further down the road as quickly as she dared, dividing her attention between concentrating on the road and trying to keep staring into the darkness in the general direction in which the other two vehicles had disappeared.

‘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.