Purification

they would probably have been able to come up with twenty or thirty plausible reasons why the plane and helicopter had returned to the island so soon. Until he heard otherwise from one of the pilots or their passengers, however, Michael was going to presume the worst.
    Driving at speed, the jeep arrived at the airstrip before the plane. The helicopter was just touching down as Michael pulled on the brakes.
    ‘What’s happened?’ he demanded as the survivors began to jump down from the back of the helicopter. He didn’t recognise the first woman who emerged. She looked around the airstrip, shell-shocked, disorientated and frightened. The noise of the engine and rotor blades made it difficult for her to hear what was happening. She knew that someone was shouting at her, but she couldn’t see who and she couldn’t see where they were. ‘What’s happened?’
    Michael yelled again, grabbing hold of the woman’s shoulders and turning her round so that she faced him. He stared desperately into her pale and bewildered face.
    ‘Fence came down,’ she gasped. Her breathing was wheezy and asthmatic. Michael relaxed his grip, realising that he was frightening her. ‘Fence came down and they got in,’ she repeated. ‘Hundreds of them.’
    Michael turned and looked at Donna who was standing directly behind him.
    ‘Fucking hell,’ she cursed.
    ‘I think it was the noise we made when we landed back there,’ Richard Lawrence explained. ‘I’m sure it was. The bloody things went wild and managed to pull down part of the fence. It’s been brewing for weeks. All our bloody noise today must have pushed them over the edge.’
    ‘Did you manage to get everyone away?’ Donna asked.
    Michael closed his eyes and dropped his head, almost too afraid to listen to the pilot’s answer. He knew that there wouldn’t have been room in the plane for everyone.
    ‘We had to leave some people behind,’ he admitted quietly. ‘There just wasn’t enough room. We’d never have been able to get off the ground if we’d brought any more over with us.’
    ‘We’d always said we’d need another flight over after this one,’ Jackie Soames said, walking around the helicopter to stand with the others.
    ‘I’ll try and get back there tomorrow,’ Lawrence continued. ‘Christ knows how I’m going to land with thousands of those damn things swarming all over the place though…’
    The pilot’s voice was drowned out by the deafening noise from the plane as it swooped down behind him. His already fragile nerves shattered by the events of the last couple of hours, Keele was struggling to keep control. His descent was too steep and too fast. The plane hit the ground and bounced back up off the runway before crashing down again, finally stopping at an awkward angle in the grass almost twenty metres over the end of the tarmac strip. After a brief pause the door opened. Keele half-jumped, half-fell down and then stumbled away as his passengers poured out after him.
    ‘It was a fucking nightmare back there,’ Jack Baxter shouted over the whipping wind as he tripped along the runway towards Michael and the others. ‘Christ, we didn’t have a fucking chance. The bloody things were all over us before we knew what had happened…’
    Michael wasn’t listening. He pushed past Baxter to get closer to the plane, having to fight his way through the stream of frightened people coming the other way. More were still climbing out onto the runway - Jean Taylor, Stephen Carter, several others - but there was no sign of Emma. He stood less than a metre from the door and watched and waited. Still more people - Sheri Newton, Jo Francis - and then the flow of survivors stopped. He moved further forward and leant inside, desperate to see her. She had to be there, didn’t she? The plane was empty. Now beginning to panic he turned around again and began to run back towards the area where the frightened survivors had grouped further down the runway. Maybe he’d missed her.
    He must have done. She must have walked straight past him.
    Donna noticed Michael approaching and tugged Richard Lawrence’s arm to attract his attention.
    ‘Where the hell is she?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Emma?’
    Lawrence swallowed hard.
    ‘Sorry, mate,’ he began, ‘she’s back at the airfield. We couldn’t get everyone over here without…’
    ‘You’re going back, aren’t you?’
    ‘The plane can’t, there’s no way we can land it there now…’
    ‘But