Purification

thinner on the far side of the bridge. He stared into the dull greyness. He could see bodies. There were at least ten or twenty of them. No, wait, there were many more. Perfectly timed, the wind gently blew more of the fog away, revealing for an instant a densely packed crowd of vacuous figures filling the narrow carriageway across the river. As they watched the constantly shifting mass of decaying shapes, several of the creatures near to the front of the gathering began to rip and tear at the corpses surrounding them. Crazed and incensed by the arrival of the vehicles, the bodies destroyed those that stood between them and the light and noise made by the approaching survivors.
    ‘Why are there so many of them?’ Jean asked, her voice reduced to little more than a slight and nervous whisper.
    The answer to her question, although no-one said as much, was simple. The sound that the convoy had made had travelled through the late afternoon air and had attracted the attention of just about every wandering corpse which happened to have been in the local area. The creatures on both sides of the river had been drawn to the sound and had instinctively gravitated towards it. Those on the other bank had moved towards the disturbance with the narrow bridge being their only means of crossing. The growing crowd had been channelled by the sides of the bridge. In the same way that the wreck of the truck was preventing the survivors from moving forward, so it had also stopped the bodies from getting any closer. Oblivious to the obstruction, more and more of them had, as ever, continued to relentlessly herd towards the survivors, causing a swollen bottleneck of diseased, decaying flesh to be formed.
    Cooper was aware of the bodies, but he was still concentrating on shifting the truck. Did he ram it or just push against it with slow and steady force? The machine he was driving was powerful and responsive. Rather than risk injuring his passengers by crashing into the blockage and trying to smash it out of the way, he instead elected to take the more cautious option. He increased his speed just slightly so that he had sufficient momentum and steered towards the protruding corner of the truck which Michael had pointed out. The survivors in the back of the personnel carrier lurched forward and then back in their seats as the two vehicles made contact and as metal began to grind and strain against metal.
    ‘Come on,’ Michael hissed under his breath, willing the crippled vehicle in front of them to move. It shifted back a couple of inches but then stopped when the rear driver’s-side wheel became wedged up against the kerb. Cooper accelerated again and pushed harder. No movement. He pushed harder again and then, after what felt like an endless wait, the truck finally gave way to the pressure being exerted upon it. The back wheels jumped up into the air as the twisted chassis shot back a further few inches. Another push from Cooper and then the scrape and rumble of cracking, crumbling concrete could finally be heard. Peter Guest leant over to his left and watched as a sudden torrent of dust and broken masonry tumbled down into the polluted waters below.
    ‘You’ve almost done it,’ he wittered nervously, keeping one eye on the bodies ahead. ‘Give it another push and it’ll be…’
    Tired of waiting and now more sure of his actions, Cooper accelerated with force, smashing into the front of the truck again and this time sending it flying back through the bridge wall. For a split-second it remained balanced precariously, pivoting and teetering on the edge agonisingly before tipping back, flipping over and crashing down on its roof into the river. The moment his path was clear Cooper accelerated again, now powering into the crowd of bodies with massive force, cutting them down in a torrent of blood, bone, disease and decay and obliterating them instantly.
    Suddenly able to move with relative freedom and speed again, the convoy pushed its way across the narrow bridge with ease and continued to skirt around the remains of the dead city.

17
    Passage along the roads on the other side of the river was relatively clear and trouble free. Within a couple of miles the road they had been following opened up again into a dual carriageway. Last used during what had probably been one of the busiest times of the day in terms of volume of traffic some eight weeks ago, the side of the road which led into town was clogged with the disappointingly