Hollis made eye contact with her and shook his head, the movement subtle enough for Webb not to see.
“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” Lorna continued. “Doesn’t matter how hard or fast they come at you, they’re still falling apart. It’ll still take a shitload of them to cause you any problems.”
“What—a shitload like the fifty thousand or so we’ve got camped out at the bottom of the hill?” Stokes grumbled unhelpfully.
“You know what I mean.”
“But what if they get up here?” Gordon asked anxiously.
“They’re not going to get up here,” Harte answered quickly.
“Who says?” Webb snapped. Driver fully removed the paper from over his face and sat up in his seat. Gordon put down his cards. Caron moved farther into the room.
“Shut up, Webb,” Hollis said. “You’re winding everybody up. For the last time, that thing didn’t bite you, and none of them are going to get up here, okay?”
“One of them did last night.”
“What?”
“While I was out in the car,” he explained, “one of them managed to get almost all the way up here.”
“Must have just got lucky.”
“What happened to it?” wondered Ellie, looking nervously out of the window.
“I beat the shit out of it, that’s what happened,” he replied.
“So one of them managed to get over the barrier,” said Hollis. “So what? The rest of them haven’t. They’re still stuck down there.”
“At the moment,” Stokes said. Hollis looked up at the ceiling in despair.
“For crying out loud, will you please stop trying to wind everyone up? We’re safe here. Nothing’s changed.”
“You reckon?”
“Yes.”
“Hollis is right,” Lorna agreed. “We just need to keep a close watch on things. If something does happen then we’ll deal with it straightaway.”
“I’m ready,” Webb said purposefully, a mask of machismo hiding the mounting fear he was feeling. “I’ll fucking deal with them.”
“I know you will,” Lorna said quietly. “And that scares me more than the bodies do.”
11
“Pass it!” Harte screamed at Webb. Webb looked up and kicked the ball wide to Jas, who made a diving run forward and booted it at Stokes in goal. The ball hit his belly with a loud slap and bounced away. He ran toward it and kicked it back across the car park. Harte scuttled after it.
“You won’t get anything past me,” Stokes boasted.
“That’s because you fill the fucking goal,” Webb laughed.
“Cheeky bastard!”
Harte reappeared and curled the ball to Jas on the wing. Jas dummied and swerved around Webb, who ran at him at speed.
“That’s out!” Webb screamed. “You’re off the pitch. We said the line was level with the front of the van.”
“Piss off, Webb,” Jas gasped as he sprinted toward the goal. Stokes readied himself for the shot. Did he shoot high or aim low? Try and swerve it around the side or just kick it straight at him? Jas lined himself up for the shot, only for Webb to slide along the tarmac and take his legs out from under him. The ball rolled away, Webb chasing after it furiously.
“Go on, Webb,” Harte yelled. “Shoot!”
“You little bastard,” Jas seethed, running at Webb again, grabbing his shoulders and hauling him down. Webb stuck his foot out and managed to get a shot in before he fell. The ball bobbled up in front of Stokes, who ran forward and booted it away again. It soared over Harte’s head and bounced down the hill.
Jas and Webb stood face-to-face in the middle of the pitch.
“You do that to me again and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Webb jeered. “You’ll let me get past again?”
“You little shit,” he said, lunging forward and grabbing hold of Webb’s collar. Webb squirmed but couldn’t get away.
“Go on, then,” he said, still writhing. “Hit me.”
“You blokes are pathetic,” shouted Ellie, pushing a pram across the car park. “Doesn’t matter what else is happening, there’s nothing like football to bring you closer to each other, eh? Bloody pathetic.”
Jas let go of Webb and pushed him away. They continued to stare at each other for a second, both realizing the pointlessness of the argument, but neither prepared to be the one who backed down. Harte eventually broke the deadlock, pushing his way between them both to fetch the ball.
“Sort yourselves out, boys,” he shouted as he ran toward the bodies.
* * *
Sliding tackles and bad challenges were forgotten as quickly as the final score of the ill-tempered kick-around. Although it was virtually dark, the footballers and Ellie, their sole spectator, remained outside. Webb sat on the bonnet of his car, his legs dangling down between the headlights which shone out into the darkness, providing them with a little illumination. The others sat on what was left of a filthy red corduroy three-piece suit which they’d dragged out of a damp ground-floor flat several weeks earlier. Ellie was sandwiched between Harte and Jas on a sofa on one side of the car. Stokes sat slumped in an armchair without a cushion on the other.
“So what are you suggesting?” Jas asked, leaning forward so that he could see Stokes.
“Hollis reckons they’re not a problem,” he said, his teeth chattering with the cold, “but I think they are. Like someone said, you’re okay if you’re up against one of them, but we’ve got thousands down there.”
“We could move on,” Ellie suggested, bouncing her doll on her knee. “Find somewhere else.”
“No point,” Stokes said quickly. “It’s going to be the same wherever we go, isn’t it?”
“So what are you thinking?” Jas asked again. Stokes paused before answering.
“Me and Webb have been talking about this. We think we should try a little crowd control.”
“Haven’t we been here before? Didn’t you try and wipe them all out once, Webb?” She laughed sarcastically.
“Piss off,” he hissed. “The wind changed direction. It wasn’t my fault…”
“Crowd control?” Jas said, ignoring their bickering.
“We think we should just try and push them back a little bit.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“A bit of brute force and coordination. We’ll take our time. Torch the ones at the very front, then use the diggers to shunt the barrier back.”
“And you think that’ll work? Problem solved?”
“Not quite, but problem reduced, anyway.”
Jas slumped back in his seat, looked into the distance and gave serious consideration to what he’d just heard. He couldn’t see anything past the limited light which came from the car’s headlamps. Beyond their reach the rest of the world was drenched in an impenetrable shroud of never-ending darkness. Given the scale of the problem they faced at the bottom of the hill, he decided that not being able to see was probably a good thing.
“It’s a hell of a job you’re planning,” he finally said, sniffing and wiping a drip from the end of his nose. “It’s going to take time.”
“We’ve got plenty of that,” Harte said quickly. “No one’s saying it’s all got to be done by this time tomorrow, are they? Might be worth giving it a go.”
“Why now?” Jas asked. “We’ve been here for weeks and—”
“Because they’re changing, aren’t they?” Stokes interrupted. “You heard what happened when we were out there earlier.”
