Purification

and I’m surprised we get anything. There’s going to come a point when the provisions they’ve hoarded in their storerooms run out.
    Maybe it won’t matter by then. Donna Yorke keeps talking about how it’s going to be different in a few months time.
    She says that by then the bodies will have rotted away to almost nothing and we’ll be able to live on the surface again because they’ll no longer be a threat to us. I hope she’s right. I believe her. I’ve no reason not to. We can’t stay down here forever.
    Whatever happens to us the future is far less certain for the soldiers. Every time I see any of them I can’t help thinking about what’s going to happen to them. The air might still be filled with infection six years from now, never mind in six months. And how will they know if it ever becomes clear again? Are any of them going to be brave or stupid enough to take off their suits, put their heads above ground and risk breathing in? You can’t see much behind their protective masks but every so often you catch a flash of stifled emotion in their eyes. They’re as scared as we are. They don’t trust us. Sometimes I think they hate and despise us almost as much as they do the bodies. Maybe they’re keeping us here because they want to use us? Perhaps they’re planning on forcing us to scour the surface to stock up their stores and provide them with food and water?
    I put on Michael’s thick winter coat and walk over to the nearest window to get a better view of what’s happening outside. The window is covered in condensation. I wipe it away but it’s still difficult to see what’s going on. The lights in the hanger are almost always turned down to their lowest setting. I guess they do it to conserve power. It only gets any brighter when the soldiers are about to go outside and that hasn’t happened for well over a week now. The doors have only been opened once since we’ve been down here. Two days after we arrived outside they tried to go out to clear the mess we’d made getting in. They started to open the doors but there were too many bodies. They burned the first few hundred of them with flame-throwers but there were thousands more behind.
    I can see Cooper checking over the vehicles that he and the other people from the city arrived here in. You can tell just by watching him that he used to be a soldier. Even though he has nothing to do with the rest of the military now he’s still regimented and he has a level of control and confidence that none of the others possess. I often see him exercising and sometimes, when the army are out of sight, he gets small groups of people together and tries to show them how to use the military equipment left lying around here. Most of the time no-one’s interested. Cooper checks the battered police van and prison truck at least once every day to make sure they’re still in working order. What does he think’s going to happen to them? They’re not being used and apart from him no-one else has been anywhere near them in days. I asked him about it yesterday. He told me that we can’t afford to take any chances. He told me that we have be ready to get out of here quickly if we need to.
    Much as I think Cooper is overdoing it, I keep asking Michael to make sure our vehicle will be ready when the time to leave finally arrives. And none of us are under any illusions here, we all know that the time to leave is going to come eventually. It might be today, it might be tomorrow or it might not be for six months. The only certainty we have is that we can’t stay down here indefinitely.
    Michael is stirring in bed.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ he asks, waking up and noticing that I’m not there next to him. His eyes are dark, tired and confused as he looks around for me.
    ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ I answer. ‘Couldn’t sleep, that’s all.’
    He sits up and yawns and beckons me over. I’m still cold. I get back into bed and lie down and he grabs hold of me tightly like we’ve been apart for years.
    ‘How you doing?’ he asks quietly, his face close to mine.
    ‘I’m okay,’ I answer.
    ‘Anything
    happening?’
    ‘Not really, just a delivery of supplies, that’s all. Does anything ever happen around here?’
    Still holding me tightly he kisses the side of my face.
    ‘Give it time,’ he mumbles sadly. ‘Give it time.’

2
    ‘Morning, you two,’ Bernard Heath said in his loud, educated voice as Michael and Emma walked into the largest of