Purification

get through this as best you can because…’
    ‘You’ve got no fucking idea,’ Franks snapped, raising his voice to a dangerously high level. ‘For Christ’s sake, Cooper, don’t be so fucking naive. You know the kind of people that are down here. There’s only so much of this they’re going to take. There’s only so much I’m going to take…’
    ‘You don’t have a choice. Go above ground again and…’
    ‘Try telling that to this lot.’
    ‘I know how it seems, but you’ve got to…’
    ‘Remember Carlson?’ Franks’ desperate voice asked.
    ‘Keith Carlson?’ Cooper answered.
    ‘Kevin,’ Franks corrected. ‘Remember him?’
    ‘The chef, right?’
    ‘That’s
    right.’
    ‘What about him?’
    ‘They found him a couple of hours ago in his bunk.
    Stupid bloody idiot had slit his wrists.’
    ‘Christ,’ Bernard Heath sighed under his breath.
    ‘He’s not the first and he won’t be the last,’ Cooper answered quickly with a cold matter-of-factness.
    ‘I know that,’ Franks continued, ‘the problem isn’t what he’s done, it’s how to get rid of him. They can’t decide what to do with the body. People are so fucking paranoid down here that they’re talking about trying to burn it or cut it up into little fucking pieces for God’s sake. I’ve just seen blokes fighting over the corpse.’
    ‘Fighting, why?’ Cooper asked.
    ‘Because they want to make sure it’s dead,’ he replied.
    ‘Jeavons and Coleman are standing over the fucking body watching it, ready to hack it to pieces if it starts to move.’
    ‘It’s not going to move,’ Heath interrupted, his voice unintentionally condescending. ‘That would probably only going to happen if the body had been exposed to the outside air before he killed himself. I don’t think…’
    ‘I know that and you know that,’ Franks snapped angrily, ‘but you try convincing a couple of hundred soldiers who are scared out of their fucking minds and who feel like they’ve been backed into a corner. These people are trained to fight, not to do nothing. They’re talking about dumping the body outside when we go above ground again.’
    ‘Makes sense,’ Cooper said, ‘but that could be weeks.’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘Something
    planned?’
    ‘It’s starting to look that way.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Not sure, no-one’s saying much. There are a few rumours doing the rounds, that’s all.’
    ‘Such
    as…?’
    The conversation faltered momentarily. Through the observation panel Cooper watched as Franks looked over his shoulder and checked he was safe to continue talking.
    ‘I started to hear a few rumblings yesterday, and I’ve heard more today from people that I trust so it looks like there’s some truth in what they’re saying. Main problem is that we still can’t get enough air down here and it’s probably going to get worse. They cleared a couple of exhaust vents last time but they need to do more. There’s no way of unblocking them from this side ‘cause they’ll risk infecting the whole fucking base, so at best it looks like we’ll be coming up again soon to go out and get a few more of them cleared.’
    ‘If that’s at best,’ Heath asked quietly, his voice filled with uncertainty, ‘then what’s your worst case scenario?’
    Cooper glanced across at the other man, sharing his concern.
    Another pause and then Franks spoke again.
    ‘Some of the boys who went out last time,’ he explained, ‘told the bosses that they managed to get rid of hundreds of those things up there.’
    ‘They did,’ agreed Cooper. ‘Problem is there’s thousands more of them left.’
    ‘Rumour has it,’ Franks continued, ‘that they’re looking at trying to organise one massive push. Rumour has it we’re all going above ground to torch the whole fucking lot of them.’

7
    The lights came on.
    Donna jumped up from her seat as the doors of the decontamination chambers began to open.
    ‘Oh, Christ,’ she mumbled anxiously, glancing across at Emma, Clare and Heath who were stood nearby and who were also staring at the slowly opening door.
    Alerted by the sudden brightness in the hanger, most of the other survivors had already begun a furious and uncoordinated scramble across the vast cavern and over to their vehicles. As the first heavily-suited soldiers began to emerge from their sealed shelter the frightened crowd of men, women and children once again sprinted towards the police van, prison truck and motorhome.
    A