Purification

once been used as offices, waiting rooms and public lounges. Baxter was impressed. The place looked better equipped and more substantial than he’d ever dared imagine it might be. It seemed to have been an unusual cross between a small airport and a flying club and he guessed that it had probably been used for private planes, chartered flights and pilot training. He noticed the prison van and personnel carrier parked a short distance away. The presence of the other vehicles came as an enormous relief.
    The rest of the group had also made it safely to the airfield.
    A dull light was shining out from the top of the observation tower. The survivors followed Lawrence into the building, across a short open area and up two flights of steep, echoing stairs. The events of the last few hours had been physically and mentally exhausting and Baxter in particular struggled to keep moving forward. After what felt like miles of walking and an endless climb they reached the top floor of the building and entered a large room through a pair of heavy double doors. Inside the room was light and warm and was buzzing with noise and conversation, a stark contrast to the cold and enforced silence of the world outside the building. The sight of familiar faces dotted around filled the three weary survivors and two soldiers with a sudden surge of energy again.
    ‘You finally made it then,’ Cooper laughed from across the room. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
    ‘Piss off!’ replied Baxter, managing a tired grin. ‘We took a couple of wrong turns, that was all!’
    ‘Just a couple? Bloody hell, we’d almost given up on you. We’ve been here for hours!’
    Donna stood in the doorway and soaked up the atmosphere. The mass of people around her - both those she knew and the twenty or so faces she didn’t recognise -
    seemed relaxed and at ease. She too felt suddenly calmer as if the countless stresses and problems that continually plagued her had begun to be stripped away. Was it because she’d finally reached the airfield that she felt that way, or was she just relieved that Cooper and the others were safe?
    Whatever the reason, she hadn’t been in such a comfortable and welcoming environment for a long, long time. In fact, now that she stopped to think about it, she hadn’t felt free like this since the days before the disaster. For a few precious moments the overwhelming relief was such that she couldn’t move. The nightmare outside suddenly seemed a thousand miles away. She stood there, overcome and rooted to the spot, feeling full of positive but undeniably painful emotion.
    ‘You okay?’ a voice asked from beside her. It was Emma.
    ‘I’m fine,’ she answered quickly, suddenly self-conscious. ‘I’m sorry, I was just…’
    Although Donna had stopped mid-sentence, Emma already understood what she was trying to say. She too had experienced the same bewildering range of emotions when she’d first arrived at the airfield.
    ‘This is really good,’ Emma continued. ‘These people have really got themselves sorted out here.’
    ‘Looks
    that
    way…’
    ‘You won’t believe some of the things they’ve been telling us. You know, when we first saw the helicopter this morning I knew it was going to be important, but I didn’t realise just how important. None of us had time to stop and think about it, did we? Christ, these people have been up and down the whole bloody country. They’ve seen other bases like the one Cooper came from and…’
    ‘I know, I heard Lawrence talking earlier. So how come there’s so few of them then?’ Donna wondered, sitting down next to Emma.
    ‘Suppose they’ve just been taking the same approach to all this as we have,’ Emma answered, thinking on her feet.
    ‘Mike and I decided right from the start that we couldn’t afford to spend all our time looking round for other survivors. We knew we had to forget about everyone else and concentrate on getting through this ourselves. Looks like these people have spent their time doing that too.’
    ‘So how many of them are there?’
    ‘Not sure exactly. I think there are about twenty or so of them here, with another six on Cormansey.’
    ‘Cormansey?’
    ‘The
    island,
    remember?’
    Donna nodded. She was tired and her brain wasn’t functioning properly. Tonight she looked drained and weak, a shadow of her normal self. Emma noticed and passed her a drink. It was a small bottle of lemonade. The sweet liquid was warm and gassy but very