Purification

and subdued conversations were quickly silenced as the unfamiliar figures entered the warehouse. The centre of attention, Lawrence and Chase found themselves standing in the middle of the group feeling awkward and exposed, nodding acknowledgments to the few faces they were able to make out in the half light. Chase tugged Lawrence’s arm and pulled him over to the edge of the impromptu gathering. They found themselves somewhere to sit and looked round into the many faces staring back at them.
    ‘This is Richard Lawrence and Karen Chase,’ Cooper announced as he arrived back in the room. ‘They’ve come from Bigginford, so Christ knows how they’ve ended up here.’
    ‘That’s bloody miles away,’ Jack Baxter muttered under his breath.
    ‘They’ve got a bloody helicopter,’ Phil Croft sighed, frustrated by the other man’s stupid comment.
    The air was suddenly filled with hushed expectation.
    There seemed to be so many questions to ask that no-one knew where to start. Donna cleared her throat and took up the mantle.
    ‘So do you spend all your time flying around in the middle of the night looking for survivors?’ she asked, the tone of her voice strangely abrasive and clearly lacking in trust.
    ‘Not usually,’ Chase responded, equally abrasively.
    ‘How did you know where to find us then?’
    ‘We’ve known for some time that there were probably people around here…’
    ‘So why didn’t you let us know you were about?’ Baxter interrupted.
    ‘Because we couldn’t see you,’ Lawrence answered, playing with his short greying ginger beard as he spoke.
    ‘All we could see were a few thousand bodies. We knew something had to be attracting them, but we didn’t know what.’
    ‘So where were you?’ Chase asked.
    ‘Underground,’
    Baxter
    replied.
    She
    nodded.
    ‘I flew over this area a couple of days ago and it was pretty bloody obvious that something had happened. There was a hell of a lot of smoke around but I couldn’t see what was going on. We came back again just now and saw the fighting. We thought that some of you might have got away so we spent the last couple of hours flying around trying to find you.’
    The group fell silent as they each considered the explanation they’d just heard. It sounded feasible. They didn’t have any reason not to believe what they’d been told.
    ‘Tell us about the helicopter,’ Emma asked. ‘How have you ended up with a helicopter?’
    ‘I’ve been flying for years,’ Lawrence answered. ‘It was my job. I used to fly people over towns for those “eye in the sky” traffic broadcasts on local radio. I was up there when this all kicked off…’
    ‘So what happened?’
    ‘We were in the middle of a broadcast and it got the reporter,’ he replied. The pilot’s face suddenly looked tired.
    The effort involved in talking about what had happened was considerable. ‘Beautiful girl, she was,’ he continued.
    ‘She was dead in seconds. Then I looked down and I could see the world falling apart beneath me and I never wanted to land. By the time I finally touched down everyone was dead.’
    The group’s questions, although random and perhaps individually insignificant and unimportant, all needed to be asked. And the sudden speed of the unexpected arrival and the lack of time they’d had to think about what was happening meant that the questions were asked as and when they came to mind.
    ‘So are there many of you?’ Michael asked.
    ‘Not as many as you by the look of things,’ Lawrence replied. ‘There are just over twenty of us, but we’re split at the moment.’
    ‘Split?’
    He
    nodded.

‘We’ve been based at Monkton airfield since all this started,’ he explained, ‘but we’re getting ready to move on.’
    ‘Where are you going?’
    ‘You probably know what it’s like from your own experiences, you make a damn sound out in the open these days and you find yourselves surrounded by those bloody things out there before you know what’s happening. What with the helicopter and the plane…’
    ‘You’ve got a plane too?’ Baxter interrupted, amazed.
    ‘Only a small one. Anyway, with the noise we make we’ve been surrounded by thousands of them since we first got to the airfield.’
    ‘So where are you planning to go?’ Michael asked.
    ‘Surely it’s going to be just as bad wherever you end up?’
    ‘We’ve been all over the bloody place,’ Baxter added,
    ‘and we’ve not been able to find anywhere safe enough