Purification

me she had to keep reminding him to watch me. Spent the whole time looking round the base and staring at the kit instead of looking at me.’
    The conversation faltered. Feeling slightly more comfortable Baxter spoke again.
    ‘So tell me, how did you end up in uniform?’
    ‘I had two older brothers in the forces. Like I said, Dad was always interested in the military so I guess I just grew up surrounded by it. Didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school and I just sort of stumbled into it. I figured what was good enough for my brothers was good enough for me too.’
    ‘Glad you did it?’
    ‘I had some good times. I knew some good people.’
    ‘You talk about it as if it’s over.’
    For the first time since he’d sat down Harcourt turned to face Baxter.
    ‘Come on, Jack,’ she sighed, ‘you know as well as I do that I haven’t got long left.’
    ‘But doesn’t this feel like it did every time you went out to fight? What I mean is,’ he began to stammer clumsily,
    ‘you knew that you were putting your life on the line every time you picked up your weapon, didn’t you?’
    She shook her head sadly.
    ‘This is different,’ she explained. ‘At least on the battlefield you had a chance. Here I’m just sitting and waiting for it to happen, and that’s what makes it so bloody hard to deal with. There’s nothing I can do about it.’
    ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…’
    ‘Forget it, it doesn’t matter.’
    Baxter regretted his ill-considered and pointless questions. He wondered whether it would be better for both of them if he just got up and walked away now. Or perhaps he owed it to her to stay and try to talk some more and repair some of the damage he was sure he was doing? The pity he suddenly felt for this young girl was overpowering and humbling. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how she must have been feeling. He’d been surrounded by people who were suffering for weeks now, but never anything like this…
    ‘If I could have my time again,’ she said quietly, ‘then I never would have signed up.’ Her voice, although muffled by her breathing apparatus, suddenly sounded tearful and full of emotion. ‘I probably would have left school and got myself a normal job like all my friends did.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked instinctively.
    ‘Because,’ she answered, ‘if I hadn’t signed up then I wouldn’t be sitting here now waiting to die. If I hadn’t signed up then I’d probably have died on the first day like I should have done. I’d have died next to my mum or my dad or my boyfriend, not on my own out here.’
    ‘You’re not on your own…’
    ‘I don’t know anyone, other than this idiot,’ she sighed, gently nudging the soldier on the ground with her foot.
    ‘Honestly, Jack, it would have been so much easier. I really don’t want it to end like this. I’d rather have just gone with the rest of them and not known anything about it…’
    ‘Who’s talking about dying?’
    ‘How can it not end that way for me? Please don’t waste your time trying to make me feel better with bullshit because there’s no point…’
    ‘You’re assuming you’re not immune. You might be able to breathe. There are almost fifty of us here who can…’
    ‘And there are millions of dead people out there who can’t,’ she interrupted. ‘I think it’s a pretty safe bet that I’m not immune, don’t you?’
    ‘But you’ve come this far, why stop and give up now?’
    ‘Because now that I have stopped I can see that there’s no point carrying on. I’m just prolonging the inevitable. It’s going to happen sooner or later.’
    ‘So why not later?’
    She shook her head again.
    ‘No, there’s nothing to hang on for. You’ll all be gone soon anyway.’
    ‘Come with us.’
    ‘Why? It might as well end here as anywhere. If you’ve got any sense then you won’t bother taking me and Kilgore over to your island. We’d be taking up precious cargo space. Might as well use it to take something that’s going to be useful to you.’
    ‘There might be somewhere on the island that we can adapt so that…’
    ‘Shut up, Jack, it’s not working. What are you going to do? There’s only one village on the island for Christ’s sake.
    I don’t even know if there’s a hospital. There won’t be anywhere for me. Are you planning to wrap a plastic bubble round a house so that we can live in a fucking oxygen tent? Thanks for your concern, but it’s not going to