Purification

stood to one side as the emaciated remains of a small child stumbled towards him. Half his height, the poor kid could only have been five or six when they’d died.
    The deterioration of the body was such that he wasn’t even sure whether it had been a boy or a girl. It continued to move closer with the familiar awkward gait and pointless intent of the dead. It fixed him with its cold, vacant eyes.
    Funny, he thought, how death had stripped away all individuality from the remains of the population. This thing looked and behaved no differently to the bodies which were twice its size and many more years older.
    Danny Talbot stepped forward and, with a sudden grunt of effort, chopped angrily at the body’s slender neck with a hand axe. It took five good, hard swipes before the head and spinal cord had been sufficiently damaged to stop the corpse from moving. It fell at Michael’s feet and he knelt down next to it.
    ‘Okay?’ asked Fry.
    Michael nodded. Holding his breath and trying hard to ignore the suffocating smell of the insect-infested body, he picked it up in gloved hands and carried it gently out of the garden and over to the roadside. He placed it down on the grass verge as they’d agreed with the others. Their job today was purely to concentrate on emptying the properties.
    Others would drive around the island again later, pick up all the bodies in the truck and transport them to a single disposal point. That was all this poor child had left now, he thought sadly as he stared into what was left of its face. No school. No adolescence. No first kiss. No leaving home. No getting a job. No successes. No failures. Nothing.
    By the time Michael had stood up again and turned round Fry and Talbot had already disappeared inside. He followed them indoors.
    ‘Anything else in here?’ he asked. The smell in the house was typically obnoxious and overpowering.
    ‘Just this one, I think,’ answered Fry. He was pointing into the living room at the body on the carpet that he’d seen from outside. Talbot could be heard upstairs checking out the bedrooms. A few seconds later and he came crashing back down, his face flushed red with the sudden effort.
    ‘Clear,’ he gasped.
    Fry grabbed hold of the bony wrists of the corpse in the living room and dragged it out into the hall. Presumably the mother of the dead child, it had been comparatively well preserved having been maintained in a dry and relatively constant environment. It left behind a dark and sticky stain of decomposition on the dust-covered carpet.
    The cold, echoing house was modest and traditional and in many ways it reminded Michael of Penn Farm. The way Fry was disposing of the cadaver was also reminiscent of the way that he and Carl Henshawe had removed the remains of the farmer Arthur Jones from the farmhouse living room several weeks earlier. The musty smell and lack of fresh air gave the building an antique, museum-like atmosphere.
    ‘You sure you’re okay?’ Fry mumbled as he came back indoors after dumping the body on the grass verge by the road. ‘You seem miles away this morning.’
    Michael was still standing in the hallway, looking around at the interior of the house.
    ‘I’m fine,’ he replied quickly. Fry had picked up on the fact that Michael seemed distant and preoccupied but, until that moment when it had been pointed out to him, he’d been oblivious to it himself. He did feel different today though, there was no denying it. As well as continuing to worry constantly about Emma and the other survivors back on the mainland, he was also having to contend with a bewildering combination of a number of other unexpected emotions. He felt a strange and unpleasant sense of anti-climax - almost disappointment - and he couldn’t initially understand why. He wondered whether it was because he was gradually becoming aware of the limitations of the island. As safe and protected a place as it would no doubt eventually prove to be, he could also see it becoming a restricted and stifling environment. Their isolation and remote location would inevitably make it difficult for them to grow and expand their small community easily. It was already obvious that Cormansey was not going to be the haven that he and the others had naively dreamed it would be. Nothing was going to be easy here, that much was for sure. Michael wondered whether it was what had happened yesterday that was making today so difficult? Was it because he’d suddenly had to face up to