Purification

hard to imagine the extent to which the dark scene would have changed.
    Fear, nerves and fatigue had confused Lawrence and made him lose his bearings and pass the airfield. In the uninterrupted gloom everything looked the same and it had not been until he was almost over the centre of the town of Rowley that he realised his mistake. He turned round in a wide, graceful arc and flew back on himself, eventually spotting the airfield (and the fire and smoke to the side of the observation tower) just a mile or so ahead. Like a dark, black scab on the relentlessly bleak and monochrome landscape, as he approached it the airfield already looked overrun and lost. Once again he considered turning tail and heading back to Cormansey. There were hundreds of thousands of bodies swarming constantly around the place.
    Even if Cooper, Croft and the others were still there and were still alive, what the hell could he do to help them now? How could he hope to reach them?

44
    ‘What are they doing now?’ Armitage asked. Too afraid to look himself, the burley truck driver leant against the back wall, as far away as he could get from the window without leaving the room. Cooper and Emma remained close to the glass, watching the bodies shuffling below them with mounting unease.
    The rear of the nearby office building had been burning for hours now and more than half of the building had been completely consumed by flame. The fire had attracted the attention of many of the bodies, but many more continued to drag themselves around the rest of the airfield and the other buildings. The physical weight of their immense numbers helped them to randomly gain access to the hangar, waiting room and other places through windows and doors which had been left unlocked and open. Those which strayed too close to the burning building had themselves become engulfed by flames, their remains of their tinder-dry clothing and emaciated flesh quickly igniting. The appearance and movement of the burning bodies was bizarre, unsettling and surreal. Ignorant to the heat and flame which quickly consumed and destroyed them, the corpses continued to stagger around relentlessly, colliding with other random figures and setting them alight too. The fire, although mostly confined to the other side of the remains of the office building, was growing quickly and was eating away at the rest of the structure. Any change in wind direction, thought Cooper, and they might have no choice but to get out of the observation tower and take their chances with the baying masses outside.
    ‘I can see them in at least three buildings now,’ Emma said, her voice a barely audible whisper.
    ‘Still reckon we’ll be safe here?’ Armitage snapped, looking directly at Cooper for an answer.
    ‘I never said we’d be safe,’ he replied, ‘I just said they don’t know we’re here yet. They’re going to keep sniffing round the buildings because there’s nothing else here, is there? Hopefully the fire will keep them occupied and distracted for a while.’
    ‘You think so?’ Armitage challenged.
    He shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘It
    might.’
    ‘Assuming it doesn’t, how long before they manage to get inside?’
    ‘I don’t know if they will. We blocked the door downstairs. They probably haven’t got the strength to get past it.’
    ‘We didn’t think they’d have the strength to pull the bloody fence down but they managed that, didn’t they?’
    Cooper didn’t answer, knowing that Armitage was right and sensing that the conversation was becoming increasingly pointless and predictable.
    ‘Did you block all the doors and windows downstairs?’
    Juliet Appleby asked from across the room. She had her face pressed against another smaller window and was trying to look straight down the side of the building.
    Cooper shook his head.
    ‘Just the main entrance, why?’
    ‘Because whether they’re going to manage it or not, it looks like they’re trying to get inside.’
    ‘What’s happening?’ Emma asked anxiously as she ran over to stand next to Juliet.
    ‘I can see a couple of groups of them.’
    ‘What are they doing?’
    ‘Nothing much, just pressing up against the door I think.
    It’s difficult to see much from up here.’
    Emma sighed and held her head in her hands.
    ‘They’re going to get in, aren’t they?’ she whispered.
    ‘Probably,’
    Cooper
    admitted.
    ‘But you just said…’ Armitage protested.
    ‘I said I’d blocked the door and it wasn’t going to