Purification

the breathless Armitage who picked up a metal chair and swung it repeatedly at the pitiful creatures until they had been reduced to little more than a pile of rotten flesh and smashed bone. As Armitage disposed of the dead, Cooper pulled the double-doors shut and secured them. The two men dragged tables from a small ground floor room and blocked the entrance.
    At the top of the staircase Emma collided heavily with another body. Instinctively she scrambled around in the semi-darkness for something to destroy it with. She grabbed the corpse’s leg to try and prevent it from getting away. It kicked out at her with surprising strength. The light was poor but in a slender and fading shard of daylight she caught sight of its face. It was another survivor.
    ‘Don’t,’ the small, mousy woman protested. ‘Please don’t…’
    Emma relaxed and pulled the other woman to her feet.
    She recognised her as Juliet Appleby, one of the silent majority who had spent their time sat still and hidden in the observation tower for as long as they’d been there. As Cooper and Armitage rushed past them both she shoved Appleby forward. The terrified, shaking woman stumbled across the room to the window directly opposite and looked down over the devastation below. The damaged fence was obscured from view by hundreds of bodies still scrambling through the gap, advancing relentlessly towards the centre of the airfield. Like an unstoppable tidal wave they surged forward. Already there were thousands of them inside the perimeter fence and, beyond them on the other side of the now useless barrier many more followed.
    The airfield was lost.
    Kilgore lay on the ground and looked up at the sky.
    He was aware of movement all around him and sometimes on top of him.
    All of the earlier noise seemed to have stopped. The plane had gone again. The helicopter had gone.
    It was getting darker.
    Too tired to react or fight or even to take off his facemask, he lay there as the last shards of light disappeared and the bodies trampled him into the ground.

39
    ‘So what the fucking hell are we going to do now, Cooper?’ Steve Armitage demanded angrily.
    Cooper didn’t answer. He walked over to stand next to Emma and Appleby who both continued to stare out at the desperate scene outside. Tears of fear and frustration were flooding down Emma’s face.
    ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she sobbed, ‘this isn’t fair. This isn’t fucking fair. We were so close to getting out of here.’
    ‘We can still get out,’ he said quietly.
    ‘How?’ she asked. ‘How are we going to get past that lot?’
    Emma pointed out of the window and down at the ground, her tone and body language seeming to demand an answer. Cooper took a few steps further forward and peered down. From their high vantage point the apparent hopelessness of the situation was painfully clear. They could see across the wide expanse of the airfield. In the distance bodies continued to stumble and trip through the now sizeable gap in the fence, their huge numbers showing no signs of reducing. As individual corpses entered the field, many more followed from either side of where entrance had been forced. Following each other like a plague of rats, the entire crowd was slowly being channelled through the gap. In the clear but rapidly darkening sky above them the lights of the helicopter and plane could still be seen disappearing into the night.
    ‘Lawrence will be back,’ he said, turning away from the window and massaging his temples. His head was aching.
    He couldn’t think straight.
    ‘And what’s going to happen then?’ Armitage demanded. ‘Do you think those fucking things are going to stand to one side so that he can land and pick us up? For fuck’s sake, just admit it, we’ve had it.’
    For the first time Cooper wondered whether he might be right. The ever increasing crowd of bodies spilled across the land below them like ink steadily seeping across blotting paper. They were congregating around the observation tower and the collection of nearby buildings.
    He moved round so that he had a better view of the small office block where the others were. By his calculations there were between ten and fifteen survivors trapped there.
    Jesus, they were surrounded too.
    ‘How are we going to get them out of there?’ Emma asked, peering over his shoulder.
    ‘No idea,’ he grunted.
    ‘We have to get them out,’ she continued. ‘We can’t just leave them there, can we? We have