Purification

somewhere else to hang around?’
    ‘Because there isn’t anywhere else,’ Donna reminded him. ‘You know this, Jack. Even if there are hundreds more survivors scattered round the country, they’ll all have probably hidden themselves away like us by now. They might not be underground, but they’ll be out of sight, and they’ll all have bloody huge crowds hanging round them like we have.’
    ‘Won’t make any difference whether they’re underground or up a bloody mountain,’ Michael added.
    ‘Doesn’t matter how quiet or careful we are, they’ll eventually find us and anyone else like us.’
    ‘I know,’ Baxter mumbled dejectedly.
    ‘Did you see what kind of condition they were in today, Jack?’ Donna asked. He looked up and shook his head.
    ‘Didn’t get much chance, sorry,’ he grunted sarcastically. ‘I would have tried to get closer but the soldiers and the flame-throwers and the thousands of burning bodies kind of put me off. Next time I’ll try and…’
    ‘What I mean,’ Donna snapped, irritated by his flippancy and completely ignoring his pathetic attempt at humour, ‘is were they still as mobile as they were before?
    When we came down here they were starting to get really aggressive and unpredictable. I just wondered if you noticed whether they’d changed or got any worse or whether their bodies have decayed enough now to stop them from…’
    ‘I couldn’t tell,’ Baxter started to, his voice suddenly humourless again. ‘I couldn’t really see anything much from where I was standing, and I wasn’t about to try and get any closer to the…’
    ‘It’s difficult to say what kind of condition they’re in,’
    Cooper said, cutting across the other man before he’d finished his sentence. ‘You have to understand that we couldn’t see much more than just fire and smoke out there.
    What really concerns me though, is the fact that the guys who were left posted at the entrance were kept busy pretty much all the time that the doors were open.’
    ‘What’s your point?’ wondered Michael.
    ‘My point is that even though there was a bloody huge engine driving through the middle of them, some of them were still trying to get inside here. We’ve been saying all along that these things just react to distractions. Well that might still be true, but to my mind a personnel carrier surrounded by blokes with flame-throwers should be a damn sight more distracting than a line of soldiers standing in an open door. The bodies that came towards the base must have chosen to try and get in here.’
    ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ Baxter baulked.
    ‘No,’ Cooper replied. ‘Their flesh and bone might be getting weaker, but we’ve suspected for weeks that they’re also getting smarter, haven’t we?’
    ‘You serious?’ said Croft.
    ‘Do you really think that’s what’s happening to them?’
    asked Donna.
    Cooper shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘Don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I’m just guessing here. It might have just been coincidence or a fluke that they found themselves close to the entrance. The bodies could have been heading towards the men out in the field and then been distracted by those that were left behind to protect the base.’
    ‘You’ve got a point though,’ Baxter agreed, now completely serious, ‘You would have expected all of them to head for the personnel carrier and the soldiers in the field. But how could those things be getting smarter when they’re rotting away?’
    Several members of the group of survivors instinctively looked towards Phil Croft for an answer to their obviously unanswerable question. The fact that everyone seemed to still assume that he knew more than they did because he was medically trained never ceased to infuriate and frustrate him.
    ‘How the hell am I supposed to know?’ he snapped.
    ‘Bloody hell, I’m getting sick of this. I keep telling you, I know as much as you do.’ Annoyed and tired, Croft swung himself around in his seat and pushed open the motorhome door with his feet. ‘Mind if I smoke?’ he asked.
    ‘Carry on,’ Michael said quietly.
    ‘How many you down to now, Phil?’ Baxter wondered.
    ‘One and a half boxes,’ he replied as he lit the remains of an already half-smoked cigarette and inhaled slowly. ‘I tell you, I’m going to go out of my bloody mind if I can’t get more cigarettes.’
    ‘How long do you reckon that lot will last you?’ asked Emma.
    ‘I’ve been limiting myself to smoking half of