Purification

few risk-filled minutes and gathered all the edible food and drink they could find from the kitchen of the restaurant next door and the concessions stand in the foyer of the cinema opposite. Mostly sweets, chocolate and tinned goods, it was better than nothing. By the time the men and women who had gone outside were safely back in the warehouse there were around twenty bodies gathered around the front of the building and half as many again clattering against the fence surrounding the loading bay, nothing like the massive numbers they were used to.
    ‘They’re not a problem when there’s only a few of them,’ Cooper explained, trying to educate Stonehouse.
    ‘Problem is that one of them will inevitably attract another and so on and so on until you’ve got hundreds to deal with.
    And there are thousands upon thousands of the fuckers out there.’
    Stonehouse sat opposite Cooper, slumped dejectedly in a chair in the area of the store where customers would previously have sat with staff and applied for credit. Baxter sat alongside them. Donna, Emma and Michael were also nearby, as were several other survivors. A short distance away the three other soldiers sat in silence on a pile of large cushions and garishly coloured beanbags which looked like they had originally been designed for use in children’s bedrooms.
    ‘So what happens next?’ Stonehouse asked. Baxter looked at him with sadness and pity, trying to imagine how the soldier must have been feeling, trapped in his uncomfortable protective suit, knowing that to take it off would almost certainly result in a quick, painful and instant death. He imagined that he himself might have been able to handle it for a few hours, maybe even a couple of days, but the four soldiers now travelling with them would have to exist like this indefinitely. He didn’t know how they’d be able to eat, drink or do anything else. Surely it would only be a matter of time before they had no option but to take off their suits. It was inevitable. Christ, whether they realised it or not (and he was pretty sure they did), they were just waiting to die.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Cooper replied, answering the soldier’s question. ‘We need to stop here for as long as it’s safe. We need to know exactly who and what we’ve got here. There are a lot of people here who need to…’
    ‘Then what?’ the soldier pressed, interrupting. He wasn’t interested in hearing about the state of mind of any of the survivors. Cooper shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘We move on I suppose.’
    ‘Where
    to?’
    ‘How the hell am I supposed to know?’ he sighed.
    ‘Bloody hell, I don’t know.’
    ‘Problem is,’ Baxter said quietly, ‘nowhere’s safe anymore. Christ, you lot with your bloody guns and your tanks and everything else couldn’t look after yourselves, could you? What hope do you think we’ve got?’
    Cooper looked up at him and slowly shook his head.
    ‘Come on, we’ve talked about this a hundred bloody times already, Jack,’ he said before turning back to face the soldier again. ‘The bodies are rotting. Although they’re more controlled than they were before, the fact is they’re still decaying.’ He turned to face Stonehouse again. ‘We reckon it’s not going to be too long before they reach the point when they’re not able to function.’
    ‘And how long do you think that’s going to be?’
    ‘Just a few more months now.’
    ‘A few more months? Fucking hell, are we supposed to sit here like this for a few months?’
    ‘You might have to. Could you last that long?’
    ‘I
    doubt
    it.’
    ‘So what are you going to do about it?’
    The soldier thought for a moment.
    ‘Doesn’t look like we’ve got any option but to try and get back to the base,’ he replied, his voice tired and slow.
    ‘Whatever happens we’re dead if we stop out here. Might as well try and get back inside if we can.’
    ‘You’ve got nothing to lose,’ Baxter said.
    ‘Seems to me we’ve lost everything already,’ the soldier snapped.

10
    By Clare’s watch it was a quarter to three.
    The warehouse was silent and cold. She lay restless on the floor on a thin mattress next to Donna. Together they’d dragged it over from the furniture department hours earlier.
    Despite being physically exhausted she couldn’t relax enough to be able to sleep. Looking around in the low light it was obvious that she wasn’t the only one struggling to get any rest. Perhaps as many as half of the others