Autumn: Purification
by David Moody
Category: Fiction

David Moody brings the AUTUMN trilogy to a stunning and brutal conclusion. The survivors from AUTUMN: THE CITY are imprisoned in an underground base, trapped between the door to the outside world and the sealed entrance to the airtight cocoon where hundreds of soldiers sit and wait. The crowd of bodies on the surface continues to grow in size, drawn there by the heat, light and noise occasionally produced by the people buried underground beneath their rotting feet. The sheer mass of shuffling figures and decaying flesh above them begins to cause problems for the military with vents and exhaust shafts becoming blocked and useless. Soldiers are sent above ground to begin clearing the bodies away. Encouraged by a relatively successful first strike which is met with little resistance from the corpses, the officers order their troops to the surface again, this time to destroy them all. Trapped in the middle of a long and bloody battle between the military and the dead, the survivors' safety is compromised and they are forced to flee the base. Exposed and vulnerable once again, the group run for their lives without aim or direction. All hope is gone, but in the rotting shadows of the past they find the key to what remains of their future...