"David Moody - Autumn 2 - Purification" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moody David)

know what drew it to the field, it didn’t know why it was there, it didn’t know what it wanted, it just
knew that it had to be there. Survivors. Although it didn’t know what they were, it could hear them and
feel them. They were different. Buried underground deep beneath the creature’s feet they hid in fear and
attempted to salvage some kind of life for themselves in the unnatural semi-darkness of their subterranean
base. But it was impossible for them to exist without giving their location away. The world had become a
lifeless, empty place, and the sounds made by the people underground echoed relentlessly through the
fragile silence. The heat they produced burned like a fire. In the cold, vacuous and featureless land they
attracted the corpses to them like moths round an incandescent flame.
 The disease - if that really was what had caused all of this to happen - had dealt around a third of its
victims a blow of unimaginable cruelty. All of those affected had been killed within seconds of infection.
Most corpses - the fortunate majority - remained motionless and inert and simply rotted away where they
had fallen. The remainder, however, had been sentenced to an unnaturally prolonged existence of
relentless suffering. The germ had spared a key area of these creatures’ brains. Somehow unaffected, a
spark of primordial instinct had survived the disease, leaving the bodies physically dead but still
compelled to move; lifeless but incessantly animated. And as the flesh which covered these lurching,
stumbling creatures had rotted and decayed, so the unaffected region of the brain had grown in strength
and had continued to drive them forward. As the brain slowly recovered basic senses had gradually
returned, then a degree of control. Finally something which resembled base emotion gripped the cadavers
and forced the desperate figures to keep moving. They didn’t know what they were or where they were.
They didn’t know why they existed and they didn’t know what they wanted. They had no need to eat or
drink or rest or sleep or respire. Sentenced to spend every minute of every day shuffling pointlessly
across the empty landscape, even the slightest sound or movement was enough to attract their limited but
deadly attention.
As the days had passed since their initial infection, so the behaviour of the bodies had continued to
slowly change. Apathy and emptiness began to be replaced. Restricted by their steadily worsening
physical condition, the hordes of the dead became violent and increasingly aggressive. They did not have
decision making capabilities, only the desire to try and silence their individual pain and protect
themselves. In the empty, featureless vacuum above ground they gathered en masse around every
disturbance or distraction, no matter how slight or insignificant, hoping to find release. Only time and
decay would end the torment, but the bodies had no way of knowing whether such release would ever
come.
What had begun as a few random corpses stumbling upon the underground military base by chance
had now grown to be a massive crowd of vast, almost incalculable proportions. The appearance and
movement of the creatures inevitably attracted more and more of them from the surrounding area. Now,
several days since any of the soldiers had been above ground, almost one hundred thousand bodies
fought to get nearer and nearer to the impassable bunker entrance.
The dead investment banker’s way forward was blocked by more bodies. It lifted its emaciated arms
again and then, with unexpected force, lashed out at the figure immediately in front. Soft, putrefying flesh
was ripped from bone as the decaying office-worker tore the unprotected body in front of it apart. The
sudden violence rapidly spread to the nearest cadavers on all sides and then rippled out further into the
enormous crowd before petering out again as quickly as it had begun. All across this massive,
decomposing gathering in random, isolated pockets the same thing was happening, triggered by each
body’s instinctive need to ensure its self-preservation.
Apart from the continual shuffling and fighting of the bodies and the wind blowing through the swaying
branches of nearby trees, the world around the buried base appeared motionless and frozen. Even birds
had learnt not to fly too close to the creatures because of the reaction their darting movements and
fleeting appearances invariably caused. In spite of the fact that the dead were individually weak and
clumsy, what remained of the rest of the world instinctively feared them and despised them.
Deep underground in the military base, almost three hundred survivors cowered helplessly and waited
for something - anything - to happen. Despite being physically stronger than the dead, and even though