Purification

yet.’
    ‘We spend our time running from crisis to crisis,’ Emma sighed. ‘Never seem to get anywhere worth…’
    ‘We’ve found an island,’ Chase said, cutting across her.
    ‘An island?’ she gasped, her mind immediately filling with images of sun-drenched beaches and golden sands.
    ‘It’s just off the northeast coast,’ she continued to explain. ‘It’s cold, grey and miserable and there’s not much there but it’s a hell of a lot safer than anywhere on the mainland.’
    ‘How big is it?’ Michael asked quickly, his head beginning to spin with sudden questions. ‘What kind of facilities have you got there? Are there many buildings or do you…?’
    ‘It’s early days yet,’ Chase answered. ‘We spent a lot of time looking for the right location and we finally think we’ve found it. It’s a little place called Cormansey. It’s about a mile and a half long and a mile wide. We think there were originally about five hundred people living there. There’s one small village where most of them lived, but there are houses and cottages dotted all around the place. There’s an airstrip on the far side of the island and…’
    ‘What about bodies?’ Michael wondered, desperately trying to contain his mounting interest and to keep his sudden excitement under control. Lawrence explained.
    ‘We’re planning on getting rid of what’s left of the local population. We’re hoping to fly a few people over each day,’ he said, his voice suddenly a little more tired and slow again. ‘We’ve only been there for a couple of days.
    There are six of us there now, I flew three over yesterday morning. That’s how I came to be flying over here.’
    ‘So what’s the plan?’
    ‘We’ve sent some of our strongest people over there to start clearing the land. They’re going to work their way down the length of the island, getting rid of all the bodies they come across. Like Karen says, we think there were only about five hundred people there originally and from what we’ve seen it looks like more than half of them are still lying face down on the ground. As far as we can tell there aren’t any indigenous survivors so that just leaves us with a couple of hundred corpses to get rid of.’
    ‘Bloody hell,’ mused Baxter in awe. Like everyone else around him he was slowly beginning to come to terms with the implications of what he was hearing. Imagine being somewhere where they were free to move and where there were no bodies. Imagine being somewhere where they could make as much noise as they damn well pleased without fear of the repercussions. It sounded too good to be true. Perhaps it was.
    ‘Once we think we’ve got enough people over there we’ll start moving into the village,’ Lawrence continued.
    ‘We’re planning to clear it building by building until we’ve got rid of every last trace of them.’
    ‘What about power and water?’ the ever practical Croft asked, his mind racing. Lawrence shrugged his shoulders.
    ‘Come on,’ Donna sighed, as pessimistic as ever, ‘how do we know whether any of this is true? And even if it is, how do you know if this island of yours is going to be safe?’
    ‘They turned up here in a bloody helicopter, Donna,’
    Cooper said quietly, disproving of her attitude. ‘My guess is they’re telling the truth. Why should they lie? It might not all be as easy as they’re making it sound though…’
    ‘It’s still early days and we’ve got a lot to do,’ Lawrence said, ‘but there’s no reason why we can’t make this work.
    And who knows, in the future we may well be able to get fuel and power supplies working again.’
    The future, Michael thought to himself. Bloody hell, these two survivors who had suddenly appeared from out of nowhere were in a strong enough position that they could actually allow themselves the luxury of stopping to think about the future. Okay, so they clearly still had a lot of work ahead of them and the danger they faced was far from over, but at least they could sense an end to it. They could see the direction that the rest of their lives might possibly take. He, in comparison, didn’t know which way he was going to run or what he was going to have to face in the morning.
    The conversation continued with more previously silent survivors now finding their voices and more and more questions being asked of the new arrivals. As those questions were patiently answered the clear, sensible and rational details of the plan being