Purification (7 page)

‘Shit,’ he cursed as a second ragged column of nervous soldiers appeared from the depths of the base. There seemed to be almost twice as many of them this time.

‘What’s all this about?’ asked Heath anxiously.

‘My guess,’ Cooper answered as he watched more than a hundred troops file past, ‘is that they’ve decided to try and clear them away. This is the showdown we’ve been promised.’

As they emerged from the shadows into the light of the hanger the soldiers increased their speed, breaking into a gentle jog for a few paces before accelerating and sprinting out into the semi-darkness with weapons held high, ready for battle. The light outside was deteriorating rapidly. The survivors stared anxiously into the gloom as the guards at the front entrance parted to allow the re-enforcements through.

‘This isn’t good,’ Baxter whined, feeling his stomach churn and twist with nerves. ‘This is not at all good.’

As the fighting outside increased in ferocity and volume, the small group of survivors again herded towards their transports. Michael climbed into the motorhome and found it already crowded with frightened people, each of them clutching the few personal belongings they’d managed to grab hold of in the sudden confusion. In the front seats Donna had taken his usual position behind the wheel.

Emma was sitting next to her.

‘You two okay?’ he asked, leaning into the front cabin.

‘Just great,’ Donna answered through teeth clenched together with nervous anticipation. She gripped the steering wheel tightly in readiness should they suddenly need to move. Emma looked up and flashed him a momentary smile.

‘We’re okay,’ she said quietly. ‘Are you going to…?’

‘I’m going back to the others,’ he said quickly. ‘There are enough people in here already. Listen, Donna, if anything happens you just put your foot down on the fucking accelerator and get out of here.’

‘Be careful,’ Emma pleaded. ‘Look, why can’t you stay…?’ she began to say but he had already gone.

There was clearly no more room in the motorhome -

because of its more comfortable and open design many of the survivors had gravitated towards it rather than shutting themselves away in the insides of the more secure but claustrophobic prison truck. Michael found, however, that the prison truck (with Steve Armitage ready as ever behind the wheel) was also virtually full. Cooper called him over to the police van.

‘There are only a couple in the back here,’ he said, gesturing over his shoulder towards the back of the van.

‘Just make sure that either you or I get behind the wheel if we need to make a move, okay?’

‘Okay.’

Breathless and red faced, Bernard Heath appeared from around the back of the van.

‘I’ve done a quick count of heads,’ he wheezed. ‘I think everyone’s accounted for.’

Cooper nodded and then stood and watched and waited.

Outside the base a wide swathe of land had been cleared.

The majority of the soldiers and machines had now been formed into long attacking lines, ready to sweep out across the land from the bunker entrance and destroy more of the bodies. Now that the jeeps had been positioned over all but one of the vents, the main objective of the excursion had been achieved. What was happening now was largely unplanned but still relatively well coordinated. From positions just behind the advancing troops heavy artillery fired over their heads and out into the distance, relentlessly pounding the land and cutting deep into the shadowy crowds, destroying countless scores of bodies. All around momentary bursts of brilliant yellow, orange and white light pierced the monochrome gloom and, like camera flashes, illuminated the grotesque hordes for a fraction of a second at a time. Deafening explosions shook the ground and rumbled through the early evening air. The troops moved steadily forward away from the entrance to the base.

Progress continued to be relatively quick and largely unimpeded.

The attacking line of ground troops fanned out as they moved away from the bunker, pushing the crowds back.

There remained a bloody and relatively constant gulf of several metres between the advancing soldiers and the dead. Ignorant to the danger that they faced, those creatures which had so far escaped the wrath of the military continued to move ever closer, dragging themselves over the putrefying remains of the thousands of corpses that had been destroyed before them.

‘Aim for their heads,’ a sergeant yelled as his troops unleashed another furious volley of bullets and flame into the seething mass of cadavers. Undeterred, the bodies continued to shuffle and trip forwards.

A short distance further down the military line, a soldier named Ellis stood up to his ankles in blood and rancid flesh and picked out individual corpses from the crowd up ahead.

With the skill and concentration of a highly trained marksman he managed to shut off from the mayhem and confusion all around him and aimed at each body in turn, shooting them in the head and obliterating what remained of their brains. They dropped twitching to the ground and were immediately trampled by more dark figures advancing from behind. Conditions were becoming steadily worse with smoke, flame and rain all making it impossible to see clearly through the fading light of a dull and stormy dusk.

To Ellis’ left and to his right his colleagues continued to fight alongside him, each of them destroying as many bodies as they could. But still the crazed creatures continued to advance. For every one that Ellis destroyed, ten more seemed to take its place. And beyond there remained thousands more. Out of view still more and more and more of them crawled through the darkness.

‘Fucking hell,’ the soldier to the immediate right of Ellis cursed. ‘I can’t keep up with this. Christ, how many of these fucking things are there?’

They continued to shoot and the bodies continued to advance, spilling ever forward like some dark, thick liquid.

Ellis didn’t have time to think or speak, instead he concentrated on letting bullet after bullet fly into the rotting crowd. An unexpected arc of flame burnt through the air just ahead of him, illuminating the full horror of the scene for a few heart-stopping seconds. The twisted, grotesque faces of hundreds of corpses were suddenly exposed and Ellis found himself staring at them in disgust and revulsion, praying for the light to fade and the dark to return. The nearest corpses were less than ten metres ahead.

The ragged line of soldiers, still advancing steadily, reached a slight ditch where a meandering stream had once run diagonally across the battlefield but which had, over the course of the last few weeks, become clogged and filled with a compacted layer of rotting human remains. The trooper on Ellis’ right, fighting to keep concentrating and not lose control of his frayed nerves, stumbled and slipped on the uneven ground, ending up on his hands and knees in the middle of the stagnant trench. A powerful wave of gut-wrenching nausea swept over him as he looked down into a mire of the mashed and mangled remains of decayed faces, limbs and other body parts, all instantly recognisable as such. As he pushed himself back up and tripped and stumbled further towards the approaching bodies, bile began to rise in his throat and he started to salivate. He knew that he was going to vomit, but he also knew that he had to stop himself from doing so at all costs - he couldn’t take off his facemask. He turned back to face his advancing colleagues and another searing jet of fire lit up the stormy sky above him. Less than a second later a shell dropped short of its intended target and landed just metres away, exploding instantly and showering the troops with mud, shrapnel and putrefied flesh. Knocked to the ground again, the trooper panicked and scrambled back away from the front line. He was aware of a sudden stabbing, burning pain in his back, but his sickening fear and disorientation kept him moving. Once up on his feet again he reached over his shoulder and rubbed at the part of his neck and right shoulder which hurt the most. He could feel a small, jagged shard of metal which had ripped through his suit and pierced his skin. When he brought his hand back around he saw that it was covered in blood, and it was the sight of the blood on his glove which terrified him more than anything else. His suit had been compromised. Panicking, he lifted his weapon and turned back around. At first the adrenaline numbed the pain and kept him fighting.

Aware of a gap in the attacking line to his side, Ellis turned around. The wounded soldier next to him continued to fire into the swarming bodies until the infection caught him. As he emptied another round into the crowd the inside of his throat began to swell. In seconds the swellings blocked his windpipe and then began to split and bleed.

Knowing he was dying, but not sure how or why, the soldier slowly turned on the spot, as if silently looking around for help or explanations. Frozen in position by a spontaneous nervous reaction, his finger remained on the trigger of his rifle, sending a seemingly endless torrent of bullets flying through the air. Ellis was the first to fall to the ground, shot through the neck. Another six men and women immediately around him were felled in seconds.

Ellis saw one of them drop just metres from him.

The sounds of battle were muffled and silenced down on the ground. Weighed down by his breathing apparatus and other equipment, Ellis managed to roll over onto his back in the mud. He looked up into the cloudy sky above his head and waited. The heavy rain clattered down on his facemask, drowning out all other noise. He was aware of sudden, frantic movement and then utter darkness.

The last thing Ellis remembered was feeling the crowd of emaciated bodies smothering him as they crawled over him and marched on towards the base.

‘Listen,’ Cooper said as he stood by the transports next to Michael and Heath.

‘What?’ Heath stammered nervously.

‘Something’s

happening.’

The men stood in silence and listened to the sounds which echoed around them.

‘What?’ Heath asked again.

‘Can’t you hear it?’ Cooper whispered.

‘Hear what?’ Michael demanded, becoming increasingly uneasy.

‘Shh…’ he answered. ‘Just listen.’

Michael did as Cooper said, and what the other man had implied gradually became clear. There had been a change to the sounds of battle drifting into the bunker from outside.

Where before there had just been the constant pounding of gunfire and other explosions, now he could hear screams and shouts over the relentless clatter of fighting. Everything suddenly sounded desperately frantic and uncoordinated.

The order and control previously demonstrated by the soldiers now seemed to be disappearing. As he watched he saw that some of the troops who had been left behind to guard the entrance to the base were edging forward, moving closer to the fight. Others were beginning to shuffle back.

‘Why…?’ Heath mumbled. ‘What’s happened…?’

‘Shit, they’ve got no idea how many bodies there could be out there, have they?’ Michael said anxiously. ‘You tried to tell them, didn’t you? Christ, there must be thousands of corpses for every soldier.’

‘Yes, but they’ve got guns and machines and… It’ll be all right, won’t it, Cooper?’ The uncertainty in Heath’s voice was obvious and clear. He already knew the answer to his question.

Cooper ran the length of the hanger and up the entrance ramp until he was almost level with the guards. He peered out into the darkness. The still frequent flashes of brilliant light and flame and random explosions provided more than enough illumination to allow him to see what was happening outside. An experienced soldier, he’d seen enough ground battles to know when an army’s tactics were working and when they were not. He could see at least two areas ahead of him where the bodies were now moving between the military and the base. The creatures had somehow managed to work their way through the lines of troops. Ignorant to the restrictions of fear, pain or just about any other emotion felt by the living, the dead hordes continued to surge forward past pockets of desperate and isolated men and women who were swallowed up by the decaying masses. It was an awful, nightmarish scene which held Cooper rooted to the spot with abject fear until he was distracted by the headlamps of the personnel carrier in the near distance as it turned and began to power back towards the bunker. The headlamps jerked up and down as the driver forced the powerful vehicle over the uneven ground at speed. Bodies occasionally crisscrossed in its path and were obliterated as it raced back to safety.

The corpses were close.

‘What can you see?’ Michael shouted to Cooper from the bottom of the ramp.

Cooper didn’t answer at first, continuing instead to scan the mayhem he could see outside. There seemed to be a never-ending sea of movement ahead of him. The countless bodies which had been burned and destroyed by the last military excursion seemed to have gone - trampled underfoot by yet more corpses. He turned and ran back into the base.

‘Get the engines running,’ he eventually replied in a loud but calm and authoritative voice which masked the anxious, creeping terror he felt inside.

Back out in the field a combination of friendly misfires and the random movements of the bodies had now exploited four breaks in the soldier’s defensive line.

Already at an unexpected advantage because of the dire conditions and their incalculable numbers, the cadavers continued moving forward incessantly towards the light in the distance coming from inside the bunker.
En masse
they surged through the gaps in the ranks almost unopposed.

Pockets of troops struggled to dispose both of the bodies they faced head-on and those moving through the undefended areas between them and their base. In less than fifteen minutes the balance of power on the battlefield had suddenly and unexpectedly shifted. With the coordination and order they had previously commanded now gone, the soldier’s instinctive reactions and their individual selfish desire for self-preservation caused still more gaps in their defences to appear. Now there were shadowy shapes on all sides. The troops continued to fight and to shoot and to burn and destroy as many corpses as was physically possible until a single flare was launched into the sky near to where Cowell, the officer’s aide, had been standing.