Purification

food, water, weapons or anything - and it was obvious that getting hold of some supplies whilst keeping safe had to be their first priority. He had known it was going to be like this if they’d needed to leave the base at speed. He’d intended stockpiling supplies in readiness for such an eventuality. The fact that the military had provided them with meagre rations and had maintained strict control over their equipment had made it impossible for him to build up any reserves. They’d hardly had enough to live on, never mind any to save.
    In the back of the vehicle Michael stared at one of the soldiers leaning against the door. The soldier was sobbing.
    ‘What’s your name?’ he asked. The suited figure turned its head and looked at him.
    ‘Kelly Harcourt,’ she replied. Michael was surprised although he knew he shouldn’t have been. Under all the battlefield dirt and the heavy protective suit he’d assumed that the trooper was male. Although it was dark and most of her face was hidden by her cumbersome breathing apparatus, he could still see her eyes, her nose and the top part of her mouth. She looked too young to be in uniform.
    ‘And is this the first time you’d been above ground?’
    She
    nodded.
    ‘They told us what we were going to see,’ she said quietly, ‘but I never expected it to be like this. I didn’t think that…’
    He shook his head.
    ‘Believe me,’ he sighed, ‘whatever they told you, it’s worse. You haven’t seen anything yet.’
    As quickly as it had begun the exchange ended. Michael regretted sounding so negative, but how else could he be?
    His awkward attempt to make conversation with the soldier had been instinctive and natural, but when he couldn’t think of anything more positive to say he instead chose to say nothing. What could he possibly tell her that would make any difference to the hopelessness of her position? He couldn’t help her or reassure her or comfort her. He couldn’t make any promises about her safety or her health or security. He couldn’t really tell her anything and that, he decided, was the hardest and most frustrating part of all.
    Now that they were outside and unprotected again, he truly understood just how important the military base could (and should) have been. He thought about the different places where he’d spent any length of time over the last six weeks
    - the community centre back in Northwich, Penn Farm and now the base - none of them had been able to provide the shelter and protection he’d craved and expected. Nowhere had been strong enough. Filled with a sudden gut-wrenching emptiness, Michael realised that in spite of his seemingly constant efforts, he had achieved nothing since the nightmare had begun. Okay, so he was still alive and in relatively good physical condition, but he was as vulnerable, cold, anxious, tired, disorientated, unnerved and helpless now as he’d been on the very first day.
    Was this how it was always going to be?
    Progress along debris-strewn roads was slow. The landscape through which they cautiously moved was relentlessly dark and bleak with just about the only movement coming from those random bodies quick enough to react to the noise and light produced by the three vehicle convoy. Almost an hour and a half after their unplanned and uncoordinated journey had begun, the survivors skirted round the furthest edge of relatively small town and then came upon a collection of large, nondescript buildings sited just off the main road. The soldier driving the personnel carrier slowed down. Some kind of industrial estate, when they looked deeper into the shadows they were able to make out a cinema, a restaurant, a call centre, office blocks and various dilapidated factories and several other shells of buildings in various stages of construction or demolition. It appeared that the area had been in the middle of a huge regeneration project when the project managers, the architects, the backers, the bankers, the construction workers and everyone else involved in the place had died.
    Michael looked around hopefully. There didn’t seem to be too many bodies around, perhaps because of the relatively close proximity of the underground base. Thousands of corpses had been drawn to the bunker over several weeks.
    Because so many of them had ended up around the base, it stood to reason that the dead population of the surrounding areas might well have been substantially reduced. Although they may return in time, for the