Purification

than anything else. His suit had been compromised. Panicking, he lifted his weapon and turned back around. At first the adrenaline numbed the pain and kept him fighting.
    Aware of a gap in the attacking line to his side, Ellis turned around. The wounded soldier next to him continued to fire into the swarming bodies until the infection caught him. As he emptied another round into the crowd the inside of his throat began to swell. In seconds the swellings blocked his windpipe and then began to split and bleed.
    Knowing he was dying, but not sure how or why, the soldier slowly turned on the spot, as if silently looking around for help or explanations. Frozen in position by a spontaneous nervous reaction, his finger remained on the trigger of his rifle, sending a seemingly endless torrent of bullets flying through the air. Ellis was the first to fall to the ground, shot through the neck. Another six men and women immediately around him were felled in seconds.
    Ellis saw one of them drop just metres from him.
    The sounds of battle were muffled and silenced down on the ground. Weighed down by his breathing apparatus and other equipment, Ellis managed to roll over onto his back in the mud. He looked up into the cloudy sky above his head and waited. The heavy rain clattered down on his facemask, drowning out all other noise. He was aware of sudden, frantic movement and then utter darkness.
    The last thing Ellis remembered was feeling the crowd of emaciated bodies smothering him as they crawled over him and marched on towards the base.
    ‘Listen,’ Cooper said as he stood by the transports next to Michael and Heath.
    ‘What?’ Heath stammered nervously.
    ‘Something’s
    happening.’
    The men stood in silence and listened to the sounds which echoed around them.
    ‘What?’ Heath asked again.
    ‘Can’t you hear it?’ Cooper whispered.
    ‘Hear what?’ Michael demanded, becoming increasingly uneasy.
    ‘Shh…’ he answered. ‘Just listen.’
    Michael did as Cooper said, and what the other man had implied gradually became clear. There had been a change to the sounds of battle drifting into the bunker from outside.
    Where before there had just been the constant pounding of gunfire and other explosions, now he could hear screams and shouts over the relentless clatter of fighting. Everything suddenly sounded desperately frantic and uncoordinated.
    The order and control previously demonstrated by the soldiers now seemed to be disappearing. As he watched he saw that some of the troops who had been left behind to guard the entrance to the base were edging forward, moving closer to the fight. Others were beginning to shuffle back.
    ‘Why…?’ Heath mumbled. ‘What’s happened…?’
    ‘Shit, they’ve got no idea how many bodies there could be out there, have they?’ Michael said anxiously. ‘You tried to tell them, didn’t you? Christ, there must be thousands of corpses for every soldier.’
    ‘Yes, but they’ve got guns and machines and… It’ll be all right, won’t it, Cooper?’ The uncertainty in Heath’s voice was obvious and clear. He already knew the answer to his question.
    Cooper ran the length of the hanger and up the entrance ramp until he was almost level with the guards. He peered out into the darkness. The still frequent flashes of brilliant light and flame and random explosions provided more than enough illumination to allow him to see what was happening outside. An experienced soldier, he’d seen enough ground battles to know when an army’s tactics were working and when they were not. He could see at least two areas ahead of him where the bodies were now moving between the military and the base. The creatures had somehow managed to work their way through the lines of troops. Ignorant to the restrictions of fear, pain or just about any other emotion felt by the living, the dead hordes continued to surge forward past pockets of desperate and isolated men and women who were swallowed up by the decaying masses. It was an awful, nightmarish scene which held Cooper rooted to the spot with abject fear until he was distracted by the headlamps of the personnel carrier in the near distance as it turned and began to power back towards the bunker. The headlamps jerked up and down as the driver forced the powerful vehicle over the uneven ground at speed. Bodies occasionally crisscrossed in its path and were obliterated as it raced back to safety.
    The corpses were close.
    ‘What can you see?’