Purification (22 page)

‘How’s Emma feel about it?’

‘She’s ecstatic,’ he answered sarcastically. ‘She’s really pleased.’

‘I

bet.’

‘She

understands.’

‘What happens on Cormansey is important.’

‘I

know.’

‘Do you realise how important?’

‘I think so.’

‘This could make the difference, Mike. This is the best chance we’ve had. This is the best chance we’re going to have.’

‘I know,’ he said again.

Michael stood up, brushed himself down and walked out onto the runway in front of him. He thought about what Donna had just said, and he found the sudden gravity and importance of the day strangely humbling. Until now he hadn’t stopped to think about what he was going to do in any great detail. Sure, he’d considered the practicalities of getting over to the island and he’d paid lip service to starting to build a future for the group. Outside and unprotected, however, with the cold wind biting into his face, he began to fully appreciate the enormity of the task ahead.

Michael was ready to face the bodies again.

After weeks of inaction he was ready to work hard and fight to clear the island of death and decay. He was ready to start planning and working and building and grafting to try and make something positive out of the skeletal remains of the past.

Behind him Richard Lawrence emerged from the door at the base of the observation tower and walked over to where Donna was sitting.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘Just taking in the air,’ she replied, giving him the same answer she’d given Michael minutes earlier. ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do this.’

Michael turned around when he heard the conversation.

He slowly walked back towards the others.

‘We’ll be looking to leave around midday, okay?’ said Lawrence.

‘Will we be all right with this wind?’

The

pilot

laughed.

‘This is nothing,’ he answered. ‘I’ve been up in far worse than this recently. Trust me, this is a good day for flying. A little breezy, but nothing I can’t handle.’

His apparent confidence did nothing to inspire Michael.

Much as he genuinely did still want to make the trip over to the island, he’d been quietly hoping for a delay. Although he understood why, things suddenly seemed to be happening at an uncomfortably quickening speed. He wanted to spend some time with Emma before they were separated. They’d spent just about every minute of the last eight weeks together. Now that they were going to be apart, however, every last second suddenly felt more precious.

Without saying anything else Michael turned and jogged back to the observation tower to find her.

26

The morning seemed to be over in minutes. For the first time in recent memory Michael prayed that time would slow down. Take-off was delayed by an hour but that wasn’t enough. He’d wanted longer.

The helicopter’s powerful rotor blades sliced through the air above their heads as Lawrence flew Michael, Peter Guest and another man called Danny Talbot across the dead land. The spare seat between Michael and Guest was loaded up with their belongings and supplies. What was quickly becoming a regular, almost run-of-the-mill journey for Lawrence was far more of an unsettling experience for his passengers. As well as being used to flying, the pilot had also grown accustomed to the view of the scarred and overgrown landscape from the air. For Michael, Guest and Talbot the turbulent journey was an uncomfortable education - a painful reminder of the incomprehensible scale of the tragedy which had destroyed the world around them.

For the first half of the journey Michael had been preoccupied with thoughts of Emma. He hadn’t been able to get her tearful face out of his mind for even a second. As the morning at the airfield had disappeared he’d gradually become more and more uncomfortable with the idea of leaving her behind. Now that it had finally happened and he’d left he felt hollow, empty and alone. He’d looked down from the air and had watched her until the distance between them had become too great and she’d disappeared from view. He tried to comfort himself with the thought that if everything went according to plan they could be back together in less than a week. But there was a lot of work to do before then, and these days things rarely seemed to go according to plan. Michael was already bitterly regretting not being at the airfield to look after her, even though he knew she didn’t need him there. It was like she’d said in the early hours of the morning just passed, so far they’d struggled through almost every second of the nightmare together. Being away from her now just didn’t feel right.

Forcing himself to try and clear his mind and to focus on what was ahead, not what was (temporarily) behind him, he looked across the helicopter at Peter Guest. Guest was sitting with his head resting against the window and he was staring down. Transfixed, almost unblinking, he watched the ground rush by beneath them at a furious speed.

Interested, Michael turned back and looked out of his side.

The bright sun of early morning had long gone, leaving the late-autumn sky dull, grey and filled with rain. He peered down and watched as they flew over a small town. Out of view again in seconds, the buildings which made up the town seemed unusually blurred and ill-defined. Everything seemed to be overgrown and covered in a fine layer of green. It was almost as if the buildings and roads were being swallowed up and were melting back into the land.

Below the helicopter the world seemed almost completely still. Danny Talbot - a short and acne-ridden teenager who had arrived at the airfield in the back of the prison truck - found himself instinctively looking out for survivors amongst the ruination. If I was out there on my own, he thought, when I heard the helicopter I’d go outside and I’d made damn sure they saw me. So why couldn’t he see anyone down there now? Why could he only see rotting bodies shuffling painfully across the cluttered landscape?

Was it because any survivors who heard the helicopter were too scared, too slow or too vulnerable to react? Or was it just because there were no more survivors? On this cold and uncertain day that seemed to be the most probable explanation.

‘Cormansey,’ Richard Lawrence announced just over twenty minutes later when he spotted the dark shape of the island on the misty horizon. The mainland was behind them now, and the helicopter raced out over the ocean. Michael had somehow managed to close his eyes and had been on the brink of falling asleep when the pilot’s words had made him quickly sit up again. His heart began to thump in his chest as he stared out of the window. The longer the journey had taken, the more he had become used to the isolation and protection of the helicopter. The thought that they would soon be back down at ground level in the midst of the mayhem was disconcerting. He couldn’t see much through the front of the helicopter from where he was sitting. He peered out over Lawrence’s shoulder and was just about able to make out the point in the distance where the dull greens and browns met the grey water as the island emerged from the sea.

Sitting next to Michael, Peter Guest suddenly seemed equally unsure.

‘Where is it?’ he asked, struggling to see anything through the rain-streaked window. Lawrence couldn’t hear him.

‘Not sure,’ replied Michael, still staring at the horizon. ‘I can’t see much.’

Lawrence soared over the ocean which appeared deceptively smooth and steady. With a little more confidence and freedom he took the helicopter lower and flew closer to the waves. The frothing surf was now just a few feet below them and, for the first time, the passengers were able to fully appreciate the speed at which they were travelling. The dull, dark blur on the horizon quickly grew in size and definition and in minutes they were over the island.

‘This is it then,’ mumbled Guest as he peered down at the rough landscape of Cormansey beneath them. It looked just as Michael had expected it to - cold and bleak, with grey rock alternating with lush green grassland and the occasional patches of russet-red and orange-brown vegetation. The sea seemed to be battering the island’s coastline relentlessly. Tall waves crashed down on the rocks sending huge plumes of surf and froth smashing up into the air. Below them now was the village, little more than two short roads lined with shops and houses, as yet untouched by those survivors who now inhabited this small pocket of land. Bodies lay motionless in the middle of the street where they had fallen months earlier. Although they were only over the tomb-like place for a matter of seconds, it was time enough for them to see corpses shuffling ominously through the shadows. Strange, Michael thought, that they still seemed to gravitate there.

Lawrence flew straight over the village and continued out further along the length of the island. Michael continued to stare at the land they passed over, the rich colours contrasting vividly with the dark grey-black of the late afternoon sky and the dirty blue-green ocean which surrounded it. The weather had been steadily worsening all day and a storm now looked likely. Down on the ground he could see narrow roads and gravel tracks leading to the doors of isolated small cottages and houses. Virtually every home on the island, although often in view of one or two other buildings, stood a distance apart from even its nearest neighbours. Some were so remote and exposed that they appeared to offer a degree of isolation that even Penn Farm would not have been able to provide.

‘Almost there,’ the pilot shouted to his passengers as the helicopter climbed again, rising quickly to clear a sudden elevation in the level of the otherwise fairly flat landscape.

They passed over a rocky scar which ran across almost the entire width of Cormansey from east to west. Once over the rocks the helicopter and its passengers had a clear view of the rest of the island. In the distance just ahead of them Michael could make out a short landing strip cut into a large area of relatively flat grassland. A little further ahead still and he could see more buildings. From behind a small whitewashed cottage a plume of dirty smoke rose up and climbed into the squally air.

Unperturbed by the swirling winds, Lawrence skilfully touched the helicopter down in the middle of the runway.

Neither Michael, Guest or Talbot moved at first other than to unbuckle their safety belts. The pilot, perhaps sensing their understandable unease and uncertainty, turned round to face them.

‘They’ll be here in a couple of minutes,’ he said, lowering the volume of his voice as the powerful engine slowed and died.

‘Who

will?’

asked

Guest.

‘The others,’ he explained. ‘Brigid, Harry and the rest of them.’

Michael leant against the cold and rapidly misting window to his right, wiping a section of it clear so that he could still see outside. Now that the helicopter was silent and stationary they could hear and feel the full strength of the fierce wind. It whistled through the rotor blades. They could feel the helicopter being buffeted and battered, feeling as if it was almost being shunted back along the runway. Michael had felt safer up in the air.

‘So where are these people coming from?’ Guest asked.

‘Not that it really matters I suppose. Can’t take long to get from one place to the other here.’

‘Takes fifteen minutes to drive from one end of the island to the other I think,’ Lawrence said. ‘We drove a quick circuit when we first got here to try and get the lay of the land. We stopped down at this end because of the airstrip and the hill. Figured the bodies would struggle to get over the hill so they’d mostly stay around the village at the other end…’ He stopped speaking momentarily. ‘Hang on, here they are.’

Lawrence opened the door to his side and climbed out onto the runway. Immediately being blown about by the wind, he quickly yanked the back door open to let the others out. As he stepped down onto the tarmac Michael saw that a pair of bright headlights was moving along the length of the airstrip towards them. As the vehicle approached he could see that it was a strong, modern-looking jeep. It stopped a short distance away from where the helicopter had landed. A large, stocky woman climbed out of the driver’s seat.

‘You okay, Richard?’ the woman asked. ‘Good flight over?’

‘Not bad,’ he replied. ‘How’ve things been here?’

‘Quiet,’ she answered, raising her voice slightly so that she could make herself heard over the wind. ‘Quieter than I’d expected it to be, actually.’

The woman looked at the three men standing slightly behind Lawrence. The movement of her eyes and the expression on her face prompted the pilot to quickly introduce them.

‘Brigid, this is Michael, Peter and Danny.’

The group nodded and mumbled tired and subdued acknowledgments as they struggled to stand their ground against the wind.

‘New

faces?’

‘This lot joined us yesterday,’ he explained. ‘Remember I told you about the journey we did over here a couple of days back when we saw that crowd of bodies? That was these guys. They’d been holed-up for a while in some military base or other. Had some trouble and ended up having to make a break for it…’

‘You can say that again,’ Guest interrupted.

‘…Karen and I managed to track them down.’

Michael stood next to the helicopter with his arms folded across his chest, looking around anxiously and only half-listening to the conversation. He felt uneasy. It wasn’t just the grim conditions and unfamiliar surroundings that concerned him, he felt on edge because of the fact that they were standing out in the open, exposed and defenceless.

Were there really so few bodies around here that it didn’t matter? And what had the woman meant when she’d said they’d been quieter than expected?

‘Come on,’ shouted Brigid, ‘let’s get inside.’

The survivors began to unload their bags and supplies from the back of the helicopter and threw them into the jeep as Lawrence secured the aircraft. Disorientated and slow to react, the three new arrivals squeezed uncomfortably into the back of the vehicle. Their senses suddenly overloaded with questions, emotions, random thoughts and sheer mental exhaustion, they sat in collective silence as Brigid started the jeep, turned it around and drove back down the runway.