Purification (36 page)

‘But there is no way out,’ Armitage yelled. ‘We’ve just been through this. We’re surrounded. They’re out the front and they’re round the back and…’

‘Emma’s right,’ Cooper interrupted. ‘We have to find a way out of here and we have to do it now.’

‘Go for the trucks,’ Juliet suggested.

‘I agree,’ Emma said quickly, ‘it’s the best option.

Lawrence will see us moving. If we can get to one of the trucks we can drive through the bodies until we reach somewhere where there are fewer of them. Then he can land and pick us up.’

‘Do we just make a run for it?’

‘It’s not going to be easy,’ Emma replied, looking down at the ground immediately around the base of the building.

‘I think we should try and distract them and get them away from whichever door or window we decide to use to get out. Then maybe just one of us could try to get across and bring the truck back over here.’

Cooper stood behind Emma, thinking carefully. He glanced up and looked outside and across at Lawrence. The helicopter was hovering so close that, despite the drifting smoke, the pilot’s face could clearly be seen. The distance was irrelevant. Cooper thought he might as well have been a hundred miles away for all the good it was doing them.

Lawrence looked understandably agitated. Cooper knew he wouldn’t wait indefinitely for them to make their move.

‘Good God,’ mumbled Juliet. ‘Just look at that.’

She pointed out of the window down at an area of ground which was almost directly beneath the helicopter.

‘What the hell are they doing?’ Armitage asked, crowding forward to try and get a better view.

The four survivors peered down. Lawrence had angled the searchlight below the helicopter and slightly to one side. Whilst many bodies continued to react as the survivors had expected them to, others now were beginning to behave differently. A large number of them ripped and tore at those corpses closest to them, but many others did not. Instead those bodies appeared to be visibly agitated and riled by the noise, light and wind coming from the helicopter hovering a short distance above their decaying heads. Many of them seemed almost to be cowering. It was hard to believe, but some of the bodies were trying to move away from the disturbance.

‘Fucking hell,’ mumbled Cooper.

‘This is it,’ Emma whispered secretively, ‘this is our chance. It’s like you said earlier, they’re changing. They’re finally beginning to wake up, aren’t they? Bloody hell, those things down there are starting to get worried.’

‘Worried?’ Armitage snapped nervously. ‘What the hell are you talking about, worried?’

‘They’re becoming aware of their own limitations,’ she explained. ‘Some of them are starting to realise that we’re capable of causing them a lot more damage than they can do to us. I’m sure that’s why some of them fight. They’re trying to protect themselves.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Might be,’ she said quickly. ‘Whatever the reason, the point is that this might give us more of a chance of getting past them than we thought we had.’

‘How?’ asked Juliet.

‘Use the helicopter as cover. Make as much of a disturbance as we can and try and get Lawrence’s help.

Chances are some of them will disappear and keep out of our way.’

‘Some of them?’

‘The rest will probably still go for us, same as they always do.’

A moment of quiet contemplation followed, disturbed only by the continual noise coming from the helicopter outside. Much as he hated to admit it, Armitage knew that Emma was right. Better to go out there and face five hundred of those bloody things, he thought, than a thousand.

‘We should do it,’ Juliet Appleby announced timidly.

‘Do what exactly?’ Armitage instinctively asked.

‘Shake them up then go out there and kick their bloody backsides,’ Emma answered.

‘Because if we don’t,’ Cooper reminded them, ‘then we won’t be getting into that helicopter and we’ll be stuck here. If we don’t go outside and face them now, then we’ll be facing them when they finally get in here, that’s if we haven’t burned to death already. Not much of a choice, is it?’

Dividing his concentration between piloting the helicopter, watching the survivors and watching the bodies below, Lawrence noticed that Cooper and the others had shifted their attention from looking at him to watching what was happening on the ground. He peered down through small observation panels by his feet and watched as the bodies reacted to his presence. He shifted the helicopter slightly and saw that as the disc of light coming from the searchlight moved, so more shadowy shapes stumbled out of the way as if they expected it to burn or maim them.

Having seen the behaviour of the creatures on the island change similarly, the actions of the diseased corpses surprised him less than they surprised the others trapped at the top of the observation tower. Perhaps if he dropped lower, he thought, then more bodies would move and he might be able to land and pick up the survivors. He tried briefly, but the number of corpses which stood their ground and still reacted violently was more than enough to convince him that course of action was out of the question.

But the presence of the helicopter and the fear (that seemed to be the right word to use) that it seemed to generate amongst the dead was unquestionably important. It would help. It might give the people on the ground a chance, albeit a slight one. Lawrence remembered that the bodies he’d seen acting this way on the island, although quieter and more hesitant than most, had still attacked the survivors eventually when they’d been threatened. The bodies were trying to survive and their most basic instincts drove them to fight when no alternative course of action remained.

From his position above the airfield Lawrence felt uncomfortable and helpless. He had no way of warning the others or telling them what he knew.

Several minutes of frightened inaction passed.

Having stood still and watched and waited for too long, too frightened and unsure to make her move, Emma finally decided that she had to take action. No-one else seemed ready to do it. All the talking in the world wasn’t going to get them away from the airfield and, as Cooper had already pointed out, they had nothing to lose and everything to gain from trying to get away. If they did nothing then their last chance would have gone. The prospect of a relatively safe and secure future with Michael was too great a prize to risk throwing away. She had to do something.

‘Where you going?’ Cooper shouted as she turned and pushed through the doors and began to clatter down the staircase.

‘To Cormansey,’ she shouted back. ‘What about you?’

Suddenly feeling forced into action, Juliet, Armitage and Cooper followed close behind. For all her sudden movement and intent, it was clear that Emma didn’t have a plan. They found her at the bottom of the staircase, looking around hopefully for inspiration.

‘What now?’ Juliet asked.

Through the bitter-tasting, wispy smoke which had seeped inside, Armitage noticed the light leaking in from under the front entrance to the building. A mixture of the natural first light of day and the harsh artificial illumination coming from the helicopter, he cautiously moved towards it. Clambering carefully over the tables and chairs which he and Cooper had earlier used to block the entrance, he peered out through a narrow crack between the double doors. There were still an uncomfortably large number of bodies milling around out there, but their numbers in the light from the helicopter were considerably more diffuse now. He looked up at the aircraft hanging in the air above them. Lawrence seemed to have worked out what was happening. Armitage couldn’t be completely sure, but the pilot seemed to be deliberately aiming his light towards the door.

‘I reckon we should make a run for it,’ he suggested, his sudden positive attitude meeting with surprise from the others. ‘We should do it now.’

‘We can’t risk just throwing the doors open and going out there,’ Emma protested. ‘What if we get split up? What happens when we get over to the truck? Do we just stand there and wait for you to open it up?’

‘Worse than that,’ Juliet added, ‘if we open the doors and we all go out there, then that leaves this place wide open. We’ll have no way back if anything goes wrong.’

‘We need to get the truck over here,’ Cooper said. ‘One of us needs to get over to it then get it back here to pick the rest of us up.’

The sound of the helicopter was deafening and seemed to be amplified at the bottom of the staircase by the long, thin shape of the building itself. Above the mechanical noise the occasional sound of bodies slamming against the walls, doors and windows could be heard. The longer the survivors remained silent, the louder the sound outside seemed to become. Although the helicopter seemed to be keeping some of the creatures at bay, its position next to the observation tower was also drawing more of them closer.

Armitage couldn’t stand it any longer. He was generally a quiet man who was content to sit and wait and watch rather than act, but, occasionally, the pressure of a situation proved too much and forced him to take action. It had happened before back in the city when he’d left the safety of the university complex to help collect transport for the group. It was happening again now.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said suddenly.

‘What?’ asked Cooper, surprised.

‘I said I’ll do it,’ the burley man repeated before he had chance to talk himself out of volunteering. ‘Might as well.’

‘You

sure?’

‘No.’

Cooper moved forward and looked through the narrow gap in the doors that Armitage had been looking through just a few seconds earlier. His view was limited, but he could clearly see the prison truck on the other side of the runway where it had been left. It wasn’t going to be easy to reach.

‘It’s got to be a couple of hundred metres away,’ he whispered, still looking out through the gap, ‘and there are a couple of hundred bodies in your way. Think you can make it?’

‘I can do it,’ Armitage answered. ‘Listen, with enough of those things snapping at my heels, I could run a bloody marathon!’

Cooper nodded and then started moving the tables and chairs which were blocking the doors.

‘When you get out there,’ he said as he worked, looking back over his shoulder at the other man, ‘you just put your head down and run, understand? Keep moving until you reach the truck. Don’t stop for anything.’

‘I’m not going to.’

Armitage nervously turned round to look at Emma and Juliet as Cooper continued to clear the door. Both women tried to think of something to say but, overcome with nerves and emotion, neither of them were able to speak.

‘Ready?’ Cooper asked as he dragged the last table away. Armitage turned back towards the door.

‘Ready,’

he

answered.

Cooper nodded. He took a deep, nervous breath.

‘Go for it.’

Armitage pushed the doors open and burst out into the cold morning. The light which poured down from the helicopter and saturated the immediate vicinity was momentarily blinding and the unexpected force of the wind bearing down from the aircraft threatened to knock him off his feet. The suffocating smell of burning flesh filled his lungs. For a single disorientated second he stood still and stared at the truck on the other side of the runway. His view was relatively clear and, for an instant, the distance he had to cover seemed reassuringly short. But then he glanced to his left and then to his right and saw that there were bodies all around him. Some remained cowering in the shadows, others began to quickly converge on him from all directions. The sound of the door being pulled shut behind him - barely audible over the constant noise from the helicopter above - prompted him to move.

‘Shit,’ he cursed as the nearest body reached out for him. It’s hands were bony and hard with much of the putrefied flesh having long since been worn and rotted away. Jogging slowly away from the observation tower, and trying desperately to pick up some much needed speed, Armitage grabbed the skeletal figure by the neck and swung it around, sending it flying into a group of four more ragged cadavers and knocking them down like skittles.

He looked ahead again and tried to regain his focus on the truck. Where before he’d seemed to have a clear passage, now a myriad of shuffling figures crisscrossed ahead of him. More vicious hands lashed out, one catching his cheek and tearing three long cuts from just under his left eye and down to his chin. Suddenly pumped full of adrenaline, fear and stinging pain, Armitage again forced himself to ignore the bodies all around him and keep moving forward. His mouth was dry and his heart was thumping like it was about to explode but he knew that he had to keep moving. He lowered his shoulder as two more corpses crossed his path. Charging through the pair of them he smashed one away in either direction.

Almost halfway there.

A heavy and unfit man, Armitage’s right knee was hurting badly as a result of the sudden stress he was putting his body under. He knew that he had no option but to keep running through the pain, but every time his foot hit the ground a piercing, shooting pain ran along the length of his leg from his knee to his backside. The pathways and grass under his feet had now given way to the harder tarmac surface of the runway and he knew that he had almost reached the truck. The ground was littered with the random remains of corpses which had been burnt or brought down and torn apart by others and he trod heavily on one which had fallen onto its back. His boot smashed through the rib cage and sent the rotten remains of internal organs flying in every direction. As he frantically tried to pull his foot clear he tripped and fell and in seconds bodies had swarmed all over him.

‘Fucking hell,’ Cooper yelled from the observation tower as he watched through the crack in the door. More and more bodies piled on top of the helpless truck driver, quickly burying him under a mound of constantly moving, decaying flesh.

‘Jesus,’ Emma wailed, looking out through a small window nearby and taking care not to be seen from outside.

Cooper moved to open the door.

‘Cooper, don’t…’ Juliet screamed instinctively.