Purification

buggers.’
    ‘Kilgore,’ Donna seethed, incensed by the man’s selfish stupidity, ‘get yourself out of sight will you. Get back upstairs with us.’
    ‘Why? What do you mean get out of sight? There’s no-one here to see me, is there? I’m just looking at…’
    ‘We can’t afford to take these kind of risks just because you fancy having a look around. You’re putting us in danger by…’
    ‘I’m not putting anyone in danger,’ he protested. ‘I’m not doing anything.’
    ‘Just get back upstairs.’
    Donna marched out of the room and back up to the classroom. Kilgore followed, not agreeing with her but sensing that he was outnumbered and suddenly remembering what had happened to Stonehouse and his other colleague earlier. He couldn’t understand why she had such a problem with what he’d been doing. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d kept quiet and he wasn’t putting anyone in danger. He was a skilled professional.
    He’d spent years training to keep himself out of sight and under cover. He’d even had experience (albeit not that much experience) of having to survive behind enemy lines.
    He was damn sure Donna hadn’t. Bloody woman.
    Baxter sighed as he watched the soldier traipse out of the room. He followed but then stopped when something caught his eye on the ground over in the far corner of the classroom. A sudden, quick movement that was over in a second. He turned and walked back deeper into the class, peering into the darkness. He crouched down next to a display of once bright but now sun-bleached reading books.
    He could tell from the smell and debris on the floor that animals had been foraging in the building. A fox? Dogs?
    Rats perhaps? Whatever had been there, it was nothing worth worrying about.
    Baxter looked up and found himself face to face with the horrifically disfigured shell of what had once been a teacher or classroom assistant. The body (which was so badly decayed that he couldn’t tell whether it had been male or female) had laid sprawled across its desk for more than eight weeks. Whatever it was that had been scavenging in the classroom seemed to have taken much of its nourishment from the corpse. The face had been eaten away both by disease and by the sharp teeth and claws of vermin. The yellow-white skull was left partially exposed and bare. In shock and surprise he tripped and fell backwards, knocking over a cupboard full of basic percussion instruments. As triangles, drums, cymbals, maracas and other assorted instruments crashed to the floor the school was filled with sudden ugly sound. With cold sweat prickling his brow and nerves making his legs feel heavy and weak, Baxter froze to the spot and waited for the noise to end. As it finally faded away (it seemed to take forever) he turned and ran out of the room, pausing only to look back again when a body slammed angrily against the large window at the other end of the class and began beating and hammering against the glass. It seemed to be looking straight at him. He could see at least another two behind it.
    ‘You fucking idiot!’ Donna hissed at him as he dragged himself back upstairs, his heart pounding in his chest.
    ‘Have you seen what you’ve done?’
    Baxter peered down from the first floor window. There were corpses approaching from all directions.

21
    Richard Lawrence flew back towards the dark shadows of Rowley in search of the missing survivors. Bloody idiots, he thought to himself, how difficult could it have been for them to stay together and get to the airfield? This didn’t bode well for the future. These were people who, inevitably, he was going to have to rely on in time, and how could he do that when they couldn’t even get to the airfield in one piece…? If it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d already been airborne he wouldn’t even have entertained the idea of going out again tonight. They could have waited until morning. He hated flying in the dark.
    Lawrence’s journey - already unnecessary in his opinion
    - was further complicated by the number of people involved. The helicopter was designed to carry a maximum of five - the pilot and four passengers. As if the danger and risks he’d already had to take by flying out in the darkness weren’t enough, he now also faced the potential problem of trying to get back to the airfield with six on board. Through necessity he had left his earlier passengers (the people who had helped him to clear the bodies away from the entrance