Purification

shouted from the back of the van, keen to make sure that Donna followed the route she’d shown them in the classroom and didn’t screw up again.
    ‘Keep going the way we planned.’
    Donna did as instructed, yanking the steering wheel over and guiding the van between the parallel wrecks of a car and a burned out milk float. The van’s headlights lit up constant movement ahead of them as bodies emerged from the darkness and stumbled towards the sudden light and noise.
    ‘He’ll never see us,’ Kilgore moaned from the back.
    ‘Of course he will,’ Baxter snapped, sick of the soldier’s defeatist attitude, ‘there’s nothing else to see out here, is there?’
    Donna struggled to keep concentrating on the cluttered road ahead of her and resisted the overwhelming temptation to watch the helicopter. It seemed to be flying away from them but she couldn’t be completely sure. She just had to keep the van moving and keep hoping that Lawrence would spot them and… the van clipped the kerb, causing its passengers to be jolted and shaken in their seats momentarily. The sudden and unexpected movement forced Donna to return her full attention to navigating along the debris-littered carriageway.
    Struggling to follow the van, Lawrence took the helicopter down as low as he dared. This was, perhaps, the hardest and most dangerous part of flying at night above the dead land. Everything was black, featureless and virtually indistinguishable. He had to keep low enough to try and keep track of the vehicle below, but also stay at a sufficient height to avoid any tall buildings, electricity pylons or similar. Fly too low and he knew he probably wouldn’t see such obstacles until it was too late.
    On the ground below the van had come across an obstruction blocking the road. Nothing too serious, but the tangled wreckage of a three car crash had covered enough of the carriageway to force Donna to slow down to little more than a fraction of her preferred speed. Lawrence, noticing their difficulties, seized on the opportunity to try and make contact. He switched on the helicopter’s powerful searchlight and managed to move the concentrated beam of light around enough to gain a general appreciation of the immediate vicinity through which the van was moving. To their right were buildings. On the other side of the road, however, perhaps another half mile further ahead, he could see an expanse of open land - a park or playing fields perhaps? Lawrence eased the helicopter forward to hover above the grassland and saw that directly beneath him were football posts. An important find - he immediately knew that there should be sufficient clear space for him to set down between the two goals. A football pitch would give him more than enough room to land. He moved the searchlight to point down at the pitch in a rudimentary attempt to signal his intent to the survivors on the ground.
    ‘What’s he doing now?’ Donna asked, keeping her attention fixed on the road ahead and relying on the others to tell her what was happening above them.
    ‘He’s moved over to our left,’ Baxter replied. ‘Now he’s hovering.’
    ‘What’s he want us to do?’
    ‘How the hell am I supposed to know? I’m not a bloody psychic.’
    Baxter stared up at the helicopter hopefully. Having cleared the remains of the car crash, the van sped up again and slammed into a random body, its sudden and brutal disintegration leaving a bloody smear of grease and gore across the area of windscreen through which he was looking. The unexpected noise and movement startled him for a moment. Donna flicked on the wipers.
    ‘He’s definitely stopped moving now,’ he continued, struggling to see clearly through the smeared glass. ‘Try and get closer.’
    ‘I can only follow the bloody road,’ Donna snapped.
    ‘What do you want me to do? I can’t even see what there is for us to…’
    ‘He’s coming down,’ Baxter interrupted. His view of the helicopter was clearer now.
    ‘What?’
    ‘He’s
    landing.’
    Donna allowed herself to look up from the road for an instant. He was right, the helicopter was descending, but she couldn’t see what it was descending towards.
    ‘Stop the van,’ Harcourt shouted from the back. ‘Stop the van and we’ll find him on foot.’
    ‘Are you bloody stupid?’ Kilgore protested.
    ‘It’s a park,’ Baxter said as they passed a momentary gap in the tree-lined fence which ran along the left hand side of the road. ‘She’s