Purification

short distance ahead of them was a narrow bridge. At either end of the bridge were traffic lights which had once regulated the flow of vehicles from one side to the other but which were now as dark, lifeless and devoid of colour as the rest of the blanched world around them. The traffic lights had been necessary because the road which spanned the length of the bridge was just a single lane in width. Just over halfway along it a medium-sized truck had crashed and had somehow spun round through almost ninety degrees, leaving it wedged awkwardly between the decorative concrete walls which lined either side of the crossing. Twenty feet or so below the bridge was a wide river, its once relatively clear water now turned a stagnant dirty green-brown by the seeping pollution it carried with it away from the nearby city.
    ‘So what do we do now?’ demanded Clare. Jack looked down at the map on his lap again.
    ‘There are two more bridges,’ he answered. ‘One’s about three miles further north, the other four or five miles back the way we came.’
    ‘Shit,’ Donna cursed angrily.
    Hidden from view of the many nearby bodies by virtue of the mist, the narrowness of the bridge and the various vehicles around it, Michael ran back to the personnel carrier after having surveyed the obstruction ahead of them.
    Managing by chance to somehow find a way through, a single corpse hurled itself at him from out of nowhere, seeming to explode furiously out of the shadows without warning. Caught by surprise, he took the full force of the impact head on and could do nothing more than stand still for a moment, pushed back against the side of the transport and with the inescapable smell of dead, rotting flesh suddenly filling his lungs and causing him to gag.
    Instinctively he lifted his arms to protect himself and recoiled in disgust as he grabbed hold of the decaying cadaver. Most of its ragged clothing having long since been ripped and torn away, his fingers sliced easily through the greasy flesh which covered its foul-smelling torso. Closing up the fingers on his right hand, and wincing as dead skin flapped and the remains of putrefied organs dripped and dribbled down his arms, he held onto the creature’s suddenly exposed ribcage before pushing back against it, running forward and throwing it over the side of the bridge.
    Out of sight, the body fell for several long seconds before landing in the water below and being carried away by the strong current. Wiping his hands on a patch of wet grass at his feet and then drying them on the back of his trousers, Michael quickly scrambled back into the personnel carrier.
    ‘You okay?’ Emma asked. He nodded.
    ‘Fine,’ he answered as he made his way forward towards Cooper. ‘It looks like it’s just the truck blocking the road.
    It’s pretty well wedged in. I don’t think we’ll be able to move it by hand. You’ll have to try and push it off the side of the bridge.’
    Cooper didn’t waste time acknowledging Michael.
    Instead he accelerated slowly and began to trundle cautiously but steadily towards the blockage. The prison truck, now surrounded by somewhere between forty and fifty uncontrollable cadavers, scrambling and fighting constantly, also began to move. In the post van Donna, surrounded by a slightly smaller but no less animated or violent crowd, waited nervously for space before following close behind.
    ‘See where the corner of the bonnet is sticking out?’
    Michael asked breathlessly, leaning into the front of the personnel carrier to speak to Cooper and pointing at the crashed truck just ahead of them. ‘If you hit it there and give it a shove you should be able to push it through the wall.’ Again Cooper didn’t respond, choosing instead to concentrate on trying to work out the physics of the situation in the few short seconds remaining until they made contact. Michael seemed to be right, the truck was positioned in such a way that if he did manage to catch it properly, its back-end would be forced through the concrete balustrade and out over the edge.
    ‘What’s that?’ Jean Taylor, a middle-aged housewife asked. She was sitting next to Michael, peering over Cooper’s shoulder and out through the front of the vehicle and across the bridge.
    ‘What?’ Cooper grunted. Jean lifted her finger and pointed ahead.
    ‘Over there,’ she replied. Michael looked up and saw that there was movement on the other side of the wrecked truck. The mist was slightly