Purification

Just ahead of him the body continued to stagger away listlessly, silhouetted against the bright and low late afternoon sun. The sky above Kilgore, so clear and blue for much of the long day now ending, was beginning to darken and was tinged with hints of deep reds and purples and trailing wisps of clouds.
    Away from the horizon the moon and the first few bright stars could be seen. He followed Harcourt along the runway, past the front of the observation tower and then out towards the perimeter fence.
    Kilgore stopped. He couldn’t keep up. He’d not gone far but the effort of moving had already become too much to sustain. He put his hands on his knees and sucked in a long, slow mouthful of purified air. Another hallucination was beginning now. More powerful than any of the others he’d had, this one seemed to surround him and swallow him. It began with a noise. Starting quietly and initially seeming to be without direction, it quickly built to a deafening and strangely controlled roar, accompanied by a fierce and angry wind. Exhausted, his lifted his heavy, clouded head and saw the helicopter above him beginning a rapid descent. Wrong footed by the sudden distraction, his weak legs buckled and folded underneath him and he fell onto his backside. Shooting pains ran the entire length of his emaciated body and he winced with sudden agony. Just over ten metres from the perimeter fence he sat in the long grass and watched as the powerful machine hovered in the air above the heads of thousands of seething bodies. Then another sound from out of nowhere and a sudden, sweeping movement as the plane swooped over him before touching down and bouncing along the runway, finally coming to an undignified, lurching halt at the far end of the strip.
    Kilgore watched from his collapsed position at the edge of the airfield as people began to emerge from the observation tower. He didn’t recognise any of them anymore. They were just dark, shadowy figures now. From where he was they appeared little different to the thousands of corpses surrounding the airfield and as cold and featureless as what remained of Harcourt.
    Too tired to stay sitting up, the soldier lay on his back and stared up into the darkening sky above him. The relentless noise of the helicopter changed direction and faded away.
    Once he was sure that the plane had safely touched down, Lawrence began to bring the helicopter in to land.
    He looked down into the relentless, seething mass of diseased cadavers below as he hovered above the perimeter fence. Bloody hell, he thought, the bodies seemed more incensed and animated than he’d ever seen them before.
    Many ripped and tore at each other. Others were pushing against the fence being crushed, no doubt, by the weight of hundreds more corpses behind them. Many more still were standing their ground as best they could, looking up at him defiantly with cold, unblinking eyes which were filled with anger bordering on hatred. Forcing himself to look away and concentrate again, he flew towards the observation tower and the other buildings.
    Cooper was waiting for him by the time he’d landed and had climbed out of the helicopter. With the rotor blades still circulating slowly above him, the pilot ducked down and walked over to the other man. Together they jogged down towards the plane. Keele was sitting in the cockpit trying to recover from the flight. He’d managed to turn the plane round to face back down the runway but he hadn’t yet moved. Landing was proving to be the hardest part of flying today.
    ‘Everything go all right?’ Cooper asked as they stood and waited for Keele to move. Lawrence nodded. The airfield was suddenly silent now that the plane and helicopter were back and their engines had been switched off.
    ‘Went like clockwork,’ he replied.
    ‘And you’re both still okay for fuel?’
    ‘Just
    about.’
    ‘You’ve got enough to make another flight?’
    ‘Plenty. I should have enough for a good few crossings yet, and I think Keele’s got similar.’
    ‘So we’ll try and get another load over there first thing tomorrow morning, okay?’
    Lawrence
    sighed.
    ‘Bloody hell, mate,’ he protested, ‘give me a chance to get my breath back first, won’t you. It’s been a long day.’
    ‘Get this lot over there and you can spend the rest of your life relaxing,’ Cooper grinned.
    ‘You all right, Richard?’ a voice asked from behind the two men. They turned round to see that Jackie Soames was