Purification a-3

by David Moody

  ‘Okay?’ asked Fry.

  Michael nodded. Holding his breath and trying hard to ignore the suffocating smell of the insect-infested body, he picked it up in gloved hands and carried it gently out of the garden and over to the roadside. He placed it down on the grass verge as they’d agreed with the others. Their job today was purely to concentrate on emptying the properties.

  Others would drive around the island again later, pick up all the bodies in the truck and transport them to a single disposal point. That was all this poor child had left now, he thought sadly as he stared into what was left of its face. No school. No adolescence. No first kiss. No leaving home. No getting a job. No successes. No failures. Nothing.

  By the time Michael had stood up again and turned round Fry and Talbot had already disappeared inside. He followed them indoors.

  ‘Anything else in here?’ he asked. The smell in the house was typically obnoxious and overpowering.

  ‘Just this one, I think,’ answered Fry. He was pointing into the living room at the body on the carpet that he’d seen from outside. Talbot could be heard upstairs checking out the bedrooms. A few seconds later and he came crashing back down, his face flushed red with the sudden effort.

  ‘Clear,’ he gasped.

  Fry grabbed hold of the bony wrists of the corpse in the living room and dragged it out into the hall. Presumably the mother of the dead child, it had been comparatively well preserved having been maintained in a dry and relatively constant environment. It left behind a dark and sticky stain of decomposition on the dust-covered carpet.

  The cold, echoing house was modest and traditional and in many ways it reminded Michael of Penn Farm. The way Fry was disposing of the cadaver was also reminiscent of the way that he and Carl Henshawe had removed the remains of the farmer Arthur Jones from the farmhouse living room several weeks earlier. The musty smell and lack of fresh air gave the building an antique, museum-like atmosphere.

  ‘You sure you’re okay?’ Fry mumbled as he came back indoors after dumping the body on the grass verge by the road. ‘You seem miles away this morning.’

  Michael was still standing in the hallway, looking around at the interior of the house.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he replied quickly. Fry had picked up on the fact that Michael seemed distant and preoccupied but, until that moment when it had been pointed out to him, he’d been oblivious to it himself. He did feel different today though, there was no denying it. As well as continuing to worry constantly about Emma and the other survivors back on the mainland, he was also having to contend with a bewildering combination of a number of other unexpected emotions. He felt a strange and unpleasant sense of anti-climax - almost disappointment - and he couldn’t initially understand why. He wondered whether it was because he was gradually becoming aware of the limitations of the island. As safe and protected a place as it would no doubt eventually prove to be, he could also see it becoming a restricted and stifling environment. Their isolation and remote location would inevitably make it difficult for them to grow and expand their small community easily. It was already obvious that Cormansey was not going to be the haven that he and the others had naively dreamed it would be. Nothing was going to be easy here, that much was for sure. Michael wondered whether it was what had happened yesterday that was making today so difficult? Was it because he’d suddenly had to face up to aspects of the life he’d lost that was now causing him to feel so much confusion and doubt?

  Their brief this morning had been simply to clear the bodies from the homes they visited. Looking around this particular small and unimposing property, however, it was obvious that there was going to be much more work to do to make each building inhabitable again. In the kitchen Michael found that the fridge and cupboards were filled with rotten food. Dust, mould and decay was everywhere.

  Nothing was salvageable. There were numerous traces of insect and rodent infestations. Some of the taps and the pipe work running through the house were exhibiting signs of severe corrosion. An open window in one of the bedrooms, as well as letting in a supply of relatively fresh air, had also allowed several nesting birds and two month’s worth of rainwater into the room. Damp was spreading across the bedroom walls.

  The implications of what he saw around him, although he chose not to share them with the others, were immense and humbling in their scale. What he saw today was a world slowly being reclaimed. No doubt the arrival of the survivors on Cormansey would prolong the life and usefulness of this building and others on the island but elsewhere, back on the mainland, the process of decay and deterioration would continue unchecked. The disappearance of man from the face of the planet was inevitably going to cause a massive change and imbalance to the ecosystem. Crops would no longer be grown or harvested. Vermin would be allowed to breed and consume.

  The decay of millions of bodies would inevitably result in a huge increase in the numbers of insects, germs and disease.

  The ramifications were endless.

  When he’d arrived on the island he’d felt strong, determined and full of hope. Today, however, those feelings had started to fade. In comparison to the almost unimaginable scale of the changes the infection had bought to the entire planet, the minor achievements of this small group of survivors meant nothing.

  Unquestionably disheartened, Michael dragged himself back out to the jeep with the other two men.

  ‘Where to next?’ he asked.

  ‘Road splits in a while,’ Fry replied. ‘We’ll keep going west. Harper said he was sticking to the east side.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Michael sat back in the driver’s seat and readied himself for the next building. He stared into the wing mirror and watched the bodies of the child and its mother for a couple of long, thoughtful seconds before turning the key in the ignition and starting the engine. He accelerated away quickly.

  ‘Did that kid bother you?’ Talbot asked from the back seat. The way he had asked his question illustrated the level of his comparative immaturity. Nevertheless Michael was surprised that he had even noticed the change in his mood.

  ‘Everything’s bothering me today,’ he grunted, abruptly and honestly.

  ‘Decent weather,’ Fry said cheerfully, doing his best to lighten the increasingly dark and sombre mood. ‘Just imagine what this place is going to be like in the summer.

  Plenty of coastline, good fishing waters…’

  ‘Got to get through the winter first,’ Talbot reminded him.

  ‘I know, but that doesn’t…’

  ‘What’s that?’ Michael interrupted. He leant forward and peered up into the sky.

  ‘What?’ asked Fry.

  ‘Up there. Look, Lawrence is back.’

  He slowed the jeep and pointed up into the clear sky.

  The helicopter could clearly be seen now, scurrying across the deep blue like a small black spider.

  ‘Bloody brilliant,’ Fry sighed with relief. ‘Some help at last. Wonder who he’s brought with him? Hope it’s someone who’s going to pull their weight. The last thing we need here is…’

  ‘The plane,’ Talbot announced.

  All eyes switched from staring at the helicopter to scouring the sky, looking for the plane. Fry spotted it first and pointed it out to Michael. It seemed to be following the exact same course the helicopter had taken. Suddenly feeling more alive and invigorated than he had done at any part of the day so far, he put his foot down and accelerated again.

  ‘Where you going?’ Fry asked as they sped past the front of the next house and carried on down the narrow road.

  ‘Just want to see who’s here,’ Michael muttered, his pulse racing with sudden nervousness and anticipation.

  By the time the jeep had reached the airstrip both the plane and the helicopter had already landed. The passengers were quickly being unloaded from the back of the plane. They staggered onto the tarmac strip and wandered towards Brigid and Spencer who approached on foot from the far end of the runway. The new arrivals looked around in a
we at their surroundings like tourists arriving at some long awaited and much anticipated holiday destination. Gary Keele ran in the opposite direction and stopped when he reached a patch of long grass. He bent over double, put his hands on his knees and threw up into the clump of weeds at his feet. Landing the plane had proved to be even more nerve-wracking than taking-off.

  Michael stopped the jeep, jumped out and started to look around hopefully. He could see several faces that he recognised immediately. He could see Donna, Clare and Karen Chase amongst others.

  There was no sign of Emma.

  37

  With the first sizable tranche of people now having left, the observation tower had suddenly become something of a hollow and empty place. It wasn’t that anyone in particular had gone, Emma thought, it was just that where she had become used to always seeing people, she could now only see empty spaces. Several of those who had now left had done little more than sit in the same spot and wait since they’d first arrived at the airfield. It annoyed her that some of those who had done nothing to help the group had been among the first to get away. The whole day had felt disconcerting and strangely disorientating and her feelings were compounded by the fact that she didn’t know if the flight had made it to the island safely. For an hour or two after they’d left she’d half-expected to look up and see Keele bringing the plane limping home, still full of survivors. She didn’t have much faith in him, either as a pilot or a human being. But, come to that, she didn’t have much faith in anything anymore. If she was perfectly honest with herself, the truth of the matter was that she wanted the plane back so that she could leave. She wanted to get away from this place, and she wanted to get away now, not tomorrow. Whatever had happened they would know if the pilots had been successful in a few hours time.

  Keele and Lawrence’s plan had been to drop off their passengers and get back to the airfield as quickly as they could. They’d planned to travel there and back within the day and had been hoping to return to the mainland by three o’clock. It was already half-past one.

  Emma had earlier counted just over thirty people left at the airfield. That included herself and also Kilgore, who had disappeared several hours ago and who she had last seen heading towards one of the outbuildings close to the observation tower. Exhausted, dehydrated and starving, he knew that his time was up but he didn’t have the strength or the courage to be able to do what Kelly Harcourt had done.

  Instead he stayed where he was and festered and waited.

  The rest of the survivors kept their distance from him.

  Their most recent approaches had been met with either anger and hostility or with equally unpalatable outpourings of self-pity and grief from the weak little man. With enough confusion, disorientation and doubt of their own to contend with, the survivors did their best to forget about him. Most of them could now be found in the office building, waiting impatiently for the helicopter and plane to return.

  Finding it impossible to relax and to stop thinking about Michael and the others, Emma tripped lethargically down the observation tower staircase and stepped out into the cold but bright afternoon. She found Cooper standing outside, scanning the skies and occasionally the perimeter fence with a pair of binoculars.

  ‘See anything yet?’ she asked hopefully, startling him momentarily.

  ‘Nothing,’ he mumbled. Emma watched him as he shifted his attention from the sky to closer to the ground.

  ‘What you looking for?’ she wondered.

  ‘Nothing really,’ he replied. ‘Just keeping an eye on them.’

  Emma shielded her eyes from the sun and looked out towards the fence herself. Without the benefit of the binoculars she could see little more than a constantly shifting and apparently unending mass of cold, dead flesh.

  The immense crowd didn’t look any different today to how it had appeared yesterday or the day before. She soon found herself watching Cooper more than the bodies. His guard was by no means down, but his manner and his whole demeanour seemed to have undergone a subtle change since the first planeload of survivors had left for the island earlier. He now appeared more relaxed and less tense than she’d seen him before. It was as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and with that weight more of the final layers of military discipline and authority seemed also to have been stripped away. As more people left the mainland, so the pressure on him had seemed to lift.

  Although they still had a long way to go, getting the plane airborne had been a massively important achievement.

  ‘I don’t like that,’ he said suddenly, focusing his attention on one particular area of fence.

  ‘What?’ Emma asked, anxiously.

  ‘Bloody things down there look like they’re trying to pull the fence down.’

  ‘What?’ she said again in disbelief. Cooper handed her the binoculars and she lifted them to her face. She quickly focussed on the fence and then scanned along to her left until she came to the section that Cooper had been watching. ‘Bloody hell,’ she gasped.

  He was right. In the distance a tightly-packed group of figures had grabbed hold of the wire-mesh with bony, skeletal hands. Together they were pulling it towards them and then pushing it back the other way as if they were trying to work the posts out of the ground. Their coordination and success was haphazard and clumsy and appeared at first to have been gained more through luck than any other means.

  ‘They won’t do it, will they?’

  Cooper shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I don’t think they’ve got the strength but…’

  ‘But…?’

  ‘But there are bloody thousands of them out there.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, give them enough time…’

  Emma looked deep into the mass of bodies again. From where she stood the entire crowd seemed to be writhing and squirming constantly.

  ‘What do we do about them?’

  ‘Don’t think there’s anything we can do,’ Cooper replied, ‘except what we’re already doing. The number of bodies still following us around is going to cause us problems whatever happens. Anyway, we should be out of here by tomorrow. We’ll just have to ride our luck until then.’

  ‘We’ve been riding our luck since all of this started.’

  ‘True, so one more day’s not going to make much difference, is it? I suppose we could go down to that part of the fence, soak the bloody things in fuel and torch the lot of them if we wanted to, but what good’s that going to do? It might make us feel a bit better, and it might get rid of a few hundred of them, but will it make us any safer or help us to get out of here any quicker? And if they really are starting to think logically again, then they might see what we’re doing as an act of aggression and try and fight back.’

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ Emma asked in disbelief.

  Cooper shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Stranger things have happened recently,’ he reminded her solemnly.

  Emma passed the binoculars back to him and turned and walked back to the observation tower, suddenly anxious to get back indoors. Cooper continued to look along the fence.

  There was another small pocket of what could almost be described as controlled activity by the main entrance gate where more bodies were pushing against the barrier. He turned and walked towards the office building in search of Jackie Soames, Phil Croft, Jack Baxter or someone else who had enough about them to keep the others in order.

  They needed to keep people indoors and out of sight. They couldn’t risk being seen by the bodies and antagonising them unnecessarily. They needed to keep the crowds on the other side of the chain-link fence under control, and the only way they could do that was by keeping their distance.

  38

  Kilgore lay on a dusty sofa in a dark waiting room, closed his eyes and tried to ignore the pain. He hadn’t eaten for what felt like days. He hadn’t drunk anything for more than a day and a half. He felt so weak that he couldn’t sit upright anymor
e. He couldn’t even lift his arms. Everything felt heavy and leaden. He couldn’t bring himself to move his head and so lay facing in one direction, staring out of the windows on the opposite side of the room. The relentless physical discomfort had been hard enough to deal with, but the mental anguish he was now having to endure was in many ways much, much worse.

  Kilgore had come to the conclusion that today (or possibly tomorrow) would be his final day alive. His mouth was dry and he struggled to find enough saliva to lick his chapped lips. His head ached and all that he could hear was the sound of his own laboured, rasping breathing echoing around his facemask and the constant hum and buzz of insects which seemed, in his disorientated state, to swarm around the room like circling vultures, waiting for him to die. The end had to be close now.

  Lying there and waiting for the inevitable was, bizarrely, beginning to get easier in some ways. The first hours he’d spent in this quiet little room had been long, difficult, painful and confusing. When he’d first shut himself away in here he had still been able to believe that there might have been some slight ray of hope for him. In his tired mind he’d explored every escape route and potential outcome. He’d thought about trying to get back to the underground base he’d originally come from and had made mental plans to take one of the trucks and drive back there alone. But he didn’t know whether any of the vehicles had enough fuel and he didn’t know how he’d get the gate open and get through the bodies and… and he could come up with a multitude of reasons why every plan he considered would be impossible to follow through. He could still have gone with the others to the island, but what would have happened to him there? He could have done what Kelly Harcourt had done and enjoyed one final breath of fresh air but he knew that he had neither the physical or mental strength to be able to take the final step and remove his mask. No matter how desperate, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything like that.

  Kilgore was tired. He’d had enough. He wanted it to stop now. He wanted to fall asleep and not wake up again.