Purification

exertion. He wasted precious seconds staring out towards the perimeter of the airfield.
    Already weakened by the collapse of the first, a second section of fence was now close to coming down and still more threatened to topple under the weight of the bodies surging ever forward. They were still several hundred metres away and were moving as slowly and awkwardly as ever, but already an unstoppable deluge of massive numbers of bodies was spilling onto the airfield.
    ‘Too late for that,’ Cooper screamed to Armitage as he sprinted past him and back towards the observation tower.
    ‘Keele,’ he yelled, ‘get that fucking plane back in the air.
    Get out of here now or you’ll never get it off the ground again.’
    The furthest advanced of the bodies were close to reaching the end of the runway. Cooper was right. If the pilot didn’t act quickly and get the plane airborne in the next few minutes, the runway would be swarming with corpses and take off would be impossible. His earlier nerves suddenly replaced by sheer bloody fear, Keele scrambled back into his still warm seat in the cockpit and restarted the engine. Phil Croft tried to usher people from the office building towards the plane but gave up when they surged forward in a terrified and desperate crowd. The breach in the fence had been visible from the back of the building and word of what had happened had spread quickly. People fought, jostled and pushed each other for position. Cooper tried to head off the crowd, using all his strength to limit the numbers climbing onto the plane.
    Forced to make a decision that was as selfish as it was selfless, Baxter came round behind him, pushed his way inside and pulled the door shut after him, knowing that there were already enough people on board.
    ‘Out of my fucking way,’ Jacob Flynn, a tall, obnoxious and unrefined man, screamed as the plane door closed. He threw himself at Cooper, almost knocking him to the ground. Cooper quickly regained his footing and charged back at Flynn, pushing him back towards the office building.
    ‘Get back, you stupid bastard,’ he pleaded as Flynn began to race forward again. The crowd of frightened survivors around him quickly stumbled back out of the way. ‘The rest of you get back. It’s too late.’
    Flynn stopped and looked around. Beyond the terrified faces which surrounded him he could see the dark, scuttling shapes of the dead continuing to advance towards them. He shook his head and turned and ran back to the building behind him, knocking two survivors to the ground as he pushed past them.
    Cooper banged his fists against the side of the plane and Keele began to taxi forward.
    ‘Get back inside,’ Cooper screamed again at the sea of angry and terrified faces that stared back at him, still hoping to get onto the plane. ‘Stay calm and we’ll all still get away from here. Get back inside.’
    ‘Come on,’ Croft begged tearfully, looking back over his shoulder and realising how close the first bodies were.
    He limped back towards the office building as quickly as he could move.
    A short distance away Lawrence pushed Jackie Soames into the back of the helicopter before grabbing the next three nearest survivors and bundling them into the aircraft too. He jumped back into his seat, started the engine and took off. Emma watched tearfully from the door of the observation tower. She screamed something to Armitage on the other side of the runway but her words were drowned out by the roar of the plane. She watched helplessly as it powered along the concrete strip between them and lifted into the air, it’s wheels missing the heads of the furthest advanced cadavers by little more than a metre.
    Cooper pushed the final few survivors through the door of the office building and slammed it shut before turning and running back to the observation tower.
    ‘Back upstairs,’ he yelled to Emma and Armitage as the truck driver dragged himself across the runway and towards the observation tower, swerving around the first bodies as he did. ‘Get up the fucking stairs now!’
    There were corpses all around them now. Some slamming into the sides of the office building and trying hopelessly to reach the frightened group of people trapped inside, others lurching towards the observation tower. Still more of them tripped and stumbled towards Cooper as he scrambled to close the door at the base of the tower. Two lumbering cadavers slipped inside, only to find themselves face to face with