Purification (35 page)

He sat and smoked his last cigarette and waited, wondering whether it would be the flames or the bodies that would get to him first.

From the top of the observation tower high above the ground, Cooper watched the building below him burn.

Eleven good people lost. How long before either the fire or the dead got to him and the others? He slumped to the ground and held his head in his hands. He didn’t want to look outside any longer.

43

Almost first light.

Exhausted and beaten, Lawrence had delayed his flight for as long as possible, balancing his own physical tiredness with the need to get back quickly to those people they’d been forced to leave behind. Now, seven hours after he’d left them, he flew the helicopter back over the dead land. Beneath him there now seemed to be more movement than ever. Where previously there had only been stillness and an uneasy calm, now the entire dark landscape appeared to be crawling with activity. He could see bodies moving freely across the land, moving pointlessly and constantly from place to place. He wondered whether he was imagining things, whether his nervous mind was exaggerating what he could actually see below him and making it appear worse than it actually was. When he was a child he had shared a bedroom with his younger brother.

He remembered how his brother’s face had often seemed to twist and contort in the darkness when their bedroom light had been turned off and when shadows and shards of light from the street lamps outside had seeped in and appeared to distort his features. Maybe that was what was happening this morning. The sky was clear and the sun would soon be ready to rise and burn away the darkness. Perhaps it was the dull grey light which made the situation on the ground appear far worse than it actually was.

This was a dangerous and pointless flight. When Lawrence had left the airfield earlier he had felt beaten and disconsolate. What possible hope could the fifteen or so people left there have against the thousands upon thousands of unstoppable bodies he had last seen heading towards the collection of exposed and defenceless buildings. Several times during the journey he had considered turning the helicopter around and heading back, wondering whether there was anything to be gained from even trying. What good would it do? What would he achieve? The base was overrun - if there were any survivors left there, how was he supposed to pick them up? Would his return do anything more than taunt those left behind and prolong their agony?

Would he spend his time flying around the complex, watching the others waiting to die?

As bleak and inevitable as the conclusion of his flight appeared to be, Lawrence knew that he didn’t have any choice. He had to try.

The slowly lifting darkness of the early morning camouflaged the airfield. In his mind Lawrence still pictured the place as he’d left it hours earlier - a small collection of buildings surrounded by empty space and encircled by the fence and the many thousands of bodies beyond. He knew it would look different now, but it was hard to imagine the extent to which the dark scene would have changed.

Fear, nerves and fatigue had confused Lawrence and made him lose his bearings and pass the airfield. In the uninterrupted gloom everything looked the same and it had not been until he was almost over the centre of the town of Rowley that he realised his mistake. He turned round in a wide, graceful arc and flew back on himself, eventually spotting the airfield (and the fire and smoke to the side of the observation tower) just a mile or so ahead. Like a dark, black scab on the relentlessly bleak and monochrome landscape, as he approached it the airfield already looked overrun and lost. Once again he considered turning tail and heading back to Cormansey. There were hundreds of thousands of bodies swarming constantly around the place.

Even if Cooper, Croft and the others were still there and were still alive, what the hell could he do to help them now? How could he hope to reach them?

44

‘What are they doing now?’ Armitage asked. Too afraid to look himself, the burley truck driver leant against the back wall, as far away as he could get from the window without leaving the room. Cooper and Emma remained close to the glass, watching the bodies shuffling below them with mounting unease.

The rear of the nearby office building had been burning for hours now and more than half of the building had been completely consumed by flame. The fire had attracted the attention of many of the bodies, but many more continued to drag themselves around the rest of the airfield and the other buildings. The physical weight of their immense numbers helped them to randomly gain access to the hangar, waiting room and other places through windows and doors which had been left unlocked and open. Those which strayed too close to the burning building had themselves become engulfed by flames, their remains of their tinder-dry clothing and emaciated flesh quickly igniting. The appearance and movement of the burning bodies was bizarre, unsettling and surreal. Ignorant to the heat and flame which quickly consumed and destroyed them, the corpses continued to stagger around relentlessly, colliding with other random figures and setting them alight too. The fire, although mostly confined to the other side of the remains of the office building, was growing quickly and was eating away at the rest of the structure. Any change in wind direction, thought Cooper, and they might have no choice but to get out of the observation tower and take their chances with the baying masses outside.

‘I can see them in at least three buildings now,’ Emma said, her voice a barely audible whisper.

‘Still reckon we’ll be safe here?’ Armitage snapped, looking directly at Cooper for an answer.

‘I never said we’d be safe,’ he replied, ‘I just said they don’t know we’re here yet. They’re going to keep sniffing round the buildings because there’s nothing else here, is there? Hopefully the fire will keep them occupied and distracted for a while.’

‘You think so?’ Armitage challenged.

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘It

might.’

‘Assuming it doesn’t, how long before they manage to get inside?’

‘I don’t know if they will. We blocked the door downstairs. They probably haven’t got the strength to get past it.’

‘We didn’t think they’d have the strength to pull the bloody fence down but they managed that, didn’t they?’

Cooper didn’t answer, knowing that Armitage was right and sensing that the conversation was becoming increasingly pointless and predictable.

‘Did you block all the doors and windows downstairs?’

Juliet Appleby asked from across the room. She had her face pressed against another smaller window and was trying to look straight down the side of the building.

Cooper shook his head.

‘Just the main entrance, why?’

‘Because whether they’re going to manage it or not, it looks like they’re trying to get inside.’

‘What’s happening?’ Emma asked anxiously as she ran over to stand next to Juliet.

‘I can see a couple of groups of them.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘Nothing much, just pressing up against the door I think.

It’s difficult to see much from up here.’

Emma sighed and held her head in her hands.

‘They’re going to get in, aren’t they?’ she whispered.

‘Probably,’

Cooper

admitted.

‘But you just said…’ Armitage protested.

‘I said I’d blocked the door and it wasn’t going to be easy for them, but there are thousands of those damn things out there, and a thousand bodies pushing against pretty much any door will open it, won’t it?’

‘Yes,

but…’

‘I’m not saying they’ll manage it today or tomorrow,’ he continued, ‘but they’re likely to get inside eventually.’

Cooper’s use of the word ‘tomorrow’ made Emma’s heart sink. It brought home to her the reality of their situation, and that reality was that they all had very little chance of seeing many more tomorrows, if any. As far as she could see there was no way out of this place.

‘Christ, this is fucking stupid,’ snapped Armitage, becoming increasingly nervous and angry. ‘We can’t just sit here and wait for it to happen, can we?’

‘That’s just about all we can do, isn’t it?’ sighed Juliet.

‘We could make a run for it?’ he suggested. ‘Fight our way over to one of the trucks and try and get away?’

‘Where would we go?’ asked Cooper. Armitage couldn’t answer. The thought of another directionless drive through the decaying countryside was just marginally more appealing than sitting still and doing nothing. It was a last resort, but they all knew it may well turn out to be their only option.

Emma had made her way back over to the largest window and was now trying to keep hidden in the shadows whilst watching everything that was happening outside.

The ground was now completely carpeted in a constantly shifting layer of dead flesh - she couldn’t see any grass, pavement or runway. The office building was almost completely ablaze and she knew that there was now no-one left alive inside. Elsewhere the bodies were tightly packed around the other buildings and seemed to be pushing ever closer. Burning bodies still dragged themselves around hopelessly and a thick, smog-like layer of smoke had settled across the scene. The wind was light and directionless and the smoke showed no sign of dispersing.

‘What’s the roof of this building like?’ she asked suddenly.

‘What?’ Cooper grunted.

‘The roof of this building,’ she repeated, ‘is it flat?’

‘Not sure. You can’t really tell from the ground. Why, what are you thinking?’

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘I’m thinking that if we are going to get out of here, then we need to do a couple of things. First, we need to be somewhere obvious so that Lawrence can see us when he comes back…’

‘If he comes back,’ Armitage mumbled.

‘When he comes back,’ Cooper corrected him. ‘Whether he can do anything for us or not, I’m sure he’ll be back.’

‘Whatever.’

‘I’m sure he’ll be back because any one of us would do the same if we were in his shoes, wouldn’t we? You couldn’t just sit there on the island knowing that there still might be people left alive and trapped over here, could you?’

No

answer.

‘Anyway,’ Emma continued, ‘as well as being visible, we need to make sure that we end up somewhere the bodies definitely can’t get to.’

‘Like?’

‘Like a flat roof,’ she replied.

‘I think the roof here is sloped,’ Juliet said, still standing at the window but now looking up instead of down.

Cooper shuffled round so that he had a better view of the rest of the airfield and, more importantly, the few remaining buildings nearby.

‘Not sure about this one, but that one over there’s a possibility,’ he said quietly, nodding in the general direction of small utility building nestled in the shadows of the hangar where the plane had previously been housed.

‘Just a couple of problems as far as I can see,’ Armitage grumbled from close behind. ‘Getting to it and getting on top of it. Any bright ideas?’

‘How desperate are you feeling?’ Cooper asked.

‘Fucking desperate,’ Armitage replied.

‘Me too, so we’ll just have to find a way of getting up there, won’t we? I don’t see that we’ve got any choice.’

‘How

then?’

‘Try the usual tricks,’ he answered, ‘because they’ve worked so far. We’ll distract the bodies and make a run for it.’

‘Shouldn’t the fire be distracting them already?’ Emma suggested. She was right. Many bodies were continuing to crowd around the base of the observation tower and were ignoring the slowly spreading heat and light of the flames.

‘She’s right. And anyway, that building is at least twenty feet high,’ Armitage sighed. ‘What are we going to do?

Jump up for Christ’s sake? Stand on each other’s shoulders?’

‘We’ll find a way up.’

‘Forget about the buildings,’ Emma suggested, her mind suddenly racing. ‘Using the trucks was a better idea. We could do that, couldn’t we? Once they see us on top of one of the buildings we’ll have the whole bloody lot of them snapping at our feet. At least with the trucks we’ll be able to keep moving…’

‘But the trucks are even further away,’ whimpered Juliet.

‘The prison truck’s only on the other side of the runway,’ Cooper said. ‘Can’t see the personnel carrier from here.’

‘Still don’t know how we’re supposed to get to it,’

snapped Armitage.

‘Better find a way quickly,’ Emma yelled suddenly with a new found urgency in her voice.

‘Why?’ demanded Armitage, worried by her sudden change in tone.

‘Because the helicopter’s back.’

45

Once he was over the airfield Lawrence allowed the helicopter to drift lower, switching on the searchlight and managing to clumsily guide it around the scene. For a while all he could see were the seething bodies and it took him some time to orientate himself and properly identify the dark shapes and outlines of the observation tower and other buildings through the smoke. Conscious that the noise, light and disturbance that he had inevitably caused was again whipping the rancid crowd below into a bloody frenzy, he moved lower still, stopping only when he was level with the top of the observation tower.

He could see survivors. The nearby office building had been destroyed, but he could definitely see other people at the top of the observation tower. He had to look twice to be sure. Could it have been bodies? Had they found a way inside? From his high position there were no signs obvious of any entrance to the building having been compromised.

If the dead had forced their way in he would have expected hundreds of them to have pointlessly crammed themselves inside by now. There didn’t seem to be many people there, and those that he could see were moving with direction and control. It had to be survivors. But how could he hope to reach them?

Cooper’s face appeared at the window, confirming beyond doubt to Lawrence that his return to the mainland had been worthwhile.

‘We have to go outside,’ Emma shouted, suddenly having to raise her voice to make herself heard over the welcome noise of the helicopter. ‘We have to get out of here.’