Purification

talking about?’ Croft interrupted. ‘Who you on about now, Cooper?’
    Cooper took a swig of coffee.
    ‘Bloody jokers in charge of this place,’ he answered.
    ‘What have they done?’
    ‘Nothing, and that’s the fucking problem.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ asked Donna, concerned. She knew Cooper well enough to know that there had to be a reason behind his sudden ranting. He was usually much calmer and more controlled than this.
    ‘The troops won’t tell me a thing anymore,’ he explained. ‘My guess is they’ve been ordered not to. I just can’t understand their logic. What do they think they’re going to gain from keeping us in the dark? We’ve seen more of what’s happened out there than they have. You’d think they’d want to try and keep us on side, wouldn’t you?’
    ‘Sounds typical of what I’ve seen of the military so far,’
    Baxter said quietly. ‘So is that all that’s bothering you?’
    Cooper shook his head.
    ‘No,’ he sighed, ‘it’s more than that. I’ve just been talking to an old mate of mine, Jim Franks. Jim and I go back a long way and I know I can trust him. Anyway, he’s been telling me that they think they’re going to start hitting real problems soon.’
    ‘Supplies?’
    Baxter
    wondered.
    ‘No.’
    ‘What kind of problems then?’ asked Emma, immediately worried.
    ‘Big fucking problems,’ Cooper continued. ‘Nothing they weren’t expecting, but big fucking problems nonetheless.’
    ‘Such
    as…?’
    ‘You’ve got to remember that I was talking to Jim through the intercom on the front of the decontamination chamber and he was trying to keep his voice down in case anyone caught him speaking to me so I didn’t get a lot of detail. It’s the bodies. They’ve been taking readings around the base and the damn things still keep coming. Jim told me that the air filtration system’s still working but it’s really starting to struggle and the problems we’ve heard about with ventilation have really started to take hold. Seems that more than half the exhaust vents are blocked or almost blocked, just like we said they would be.’
    ‘So what are they going to do about it?’ Croft mumbled, asking the question that everyone was thinking.
    ‘There’s no way of clearing the vents from down here,’
    he explained, ‘so they’re going to have to go above ground eventually.’
    ‘But what good’s that going to do?’ Emma protested, immediately terrified at the prospect of the bunker doors being opened again. ‘Do they think they can just clear the bodies away? As soon as they move any of them hundreds more will take their place.’
    ‘I know that and you know that,’ Cooper sighed dejectedly, ‘but they don’t. This is why I can’t understand them not talking to us. The reality is that the people making the decisions down here don’t have a fucking clue how bad things are on the surface. Until you’ve seen it for yourself and you’ve been out there in the middle of it, you just can’t imagine the scale of what’s happened outside, can you?’
    ‘So how are they planning to keep the vents clear?’
    asked Donna. ‘Like Emma says, as soon as they’ve cleared them more bodies will be lining up to block them again.’
    ‘I don’t know. My guess is they’ll try and cover them or build something over the top. You’ve got to remember that this place was built not to be noticed. You’d have to look hard just to find the bloody vents ‘cause they’re not obvious. I think they’re planning to fight their way through to them and then just do whatever they need to do to block them off. They’ll try and cover the top of them or leave people out there to guard them. A trench or a wall might be enough…’
    ‘Pity the poor bastards who get sent out there to build bloody walls,’ Baxter mumbled. ‘Christ, it’s hard enough just being up there, never mind having to build a bloody wall. I tell you, you wouldn’t get me outside for anything.’
    ‘You reckon? Keep things in perspective, Jack,’ Cooper said, looking directly at the other man, ‘we’ve got a massive advantage over this lot at the moment because we can survive out in the open. So who says they’re not going to try and use us to do whatever it is that they’re planning on doing? Argue all you like, but if you’ve got a gun held at the back of your head, you’ll do whatever they bloody well want you to do.’
    ‘You really think it’s going to come to that? You think