Disintegration

chewing. “There’s some folk here who’ve done nothing to help. At least I’m out there.”

“Okay, okay…” Jas said.

“Look at him,” Stokes ranted, pointing accusingly at Driver. “Lazy bastard sits and reads the same bloody newspaper all day, every day. We have to force him to do anything useful.”

Driver glanced up from his paper but didn’t react.

“You’ve made your point,” Jas sighed, “now shut up.”

“And there’s Caron,” he continued, still eating and still ranting. “Can’t remember the last time she went out and did anything worthwhile. Spends all her time sitting with Anita, and she’s no good either. Christ, how much looking after does she need? Just another fucking excuse if you ask me.”

“Well, maybe I’ll be able to do more to help now,” Caron said. The others turned as she walked into the room. She looked drained, her face ashen.

“What do you mean?” Harte asked. Caron tried to answer but she couldn’t. She slumped into the nearest chair and held her head in her hands. “What do you mean?” he asked again, crouching down in front of her. “What’s happened?”

Caron cleared her throat and wiped her eyes.

“She’s dead. Anita’s dead.”

“You’re joking,” Stokes said stupidly.

“Like she’d joke about that, you fucking idiot,” Harte snapped angrily.

Hollis turned back to look out of the window, trying to absorb what he’d heard. Even when the world was so full of death, this sudden loss was almost impossible to accept. He could hear the others talking, some crying, but he kept his emotions locked tight inside. He didn’t want them to see that he was completely fucking terrified at the prospect that whatever had killed Anita might still be hanging in the air he was breathing now. The next gulp of air I swallow, he thought, might be the one that kills me. He could see the reflections of the others behind him in the glass, and he sensed that they were all thinking exactly the same thing:

I might already have it. We all might. And there’s fuck all any of us can do about it.

18

He had to get out. It was always hard being trapped inside with the others but it was worse than ever this morning. He understood why, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier. He just had to get out.

Webb walked down the hill toward the fenced-off area where he’d previously fought with the dead for sport. He didn’t feel like fighting today. He had his baseball bat with him as always, but he now carried it for protection only. As dumb and insensitive as he frequently was, in his own way Webb had taken the news of Anita’s death as badly as anyone. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, but even he’d quickly made the grim realization that what had killed her could probably kill him too. He could cope with thousands of decaying bodies, but this was something else altogether. A germ or a virus. Something invisible and undetectable which he couldn’t punch, kick, or smash into oblivion.

He’d left the others talking about the body. They were arguing about what they should do with it. None of them, him included, wanted to go anywhere near the corpse. Stokes had been saying that he thought Caron should deal with her, because she’d already spent so much time in the same flat and chances were she already had the germ inside her. Caron argued that they’d all got as much chance as each other of catching it, and that just scared everyone even more. Gordon said they needed to do something quick in case she got up again and started walking around. Harte told him to shut up and get a grip, that that was never going to happen. Gordon became hysterical, ranting about how Harte didn’t know that was the case and how they couldn’t afford to take chances. Harte threw him an ax and told him to go to her flat and chop her body into pieces. Gordon had started panicking and threatened to attack Harte before he went anywhere near Anita’s body, and … and that was when Webb had got up and walked out.

He’d been sitting cross-legged in the dust for almost fifteen minutes when he realized he hadn’t even looked up at the dead today. It said something about both his state of mind and the state of what was left of his world, that a sea of tens of thousands of reanimated cadavers no longer interested him. He picked up a stone and threw it lazily toward the featureless mass of flesh, smirking to himself when it clattered against an old car door and the resulting sound caused a sudden ripple of excitement and animation on the other side of the barrier. He threw another stone, then another, each time taking pleasure in the way he seemed to almost be controlling the corpses and making them dance to his tune. Marginally more interested, he got to his feet and walked closer, pausing to swing at a small rock with his baseball bat, using it like a golf club. The bodies trapped just in front of him were reacting angrily to his presence. They were slamming themselves against the blockade now, shuffling back as best they could, then throwing themselves forward again.

“Look at you,” he announced pointlessly. “You’re all fucking pathetic.”

Now just a couple of meters away, he looked deep into the wall of gnarled, putrefied faces which stared back. He glared at one in particular which reminded him of his older sister. It was wearing the soiled shreds of a revealing pink summer dress and the stupid fucking thing still had a fucking ribbon in its hair! For Christ’s sake, he thought, everything that corpse must have gone through and it’s still managed to keep its fucking hair tied up! That was so like his sister, the silly bitch. She’d been arrested after a fight in a club once when she’d put some poor bastard in hospital. He’d watched the police shove her in the back of their van. Stupid cow, he’d seen her checking her makeup in her reflection in the window as they’d driven her away to the cells.

When Webb thought about his sister, he began to think about everyone else who had been a part of his life before the world had been turned upside down. He swung his baseball bat and thumped it into the side of the nearest car door, the shock wave rippling back through the crowd like a pebble dropped into water. He hit the car door again, now wanting the dead to react. How many of these wretched, dumb, stinking pieces of shit were the same wretched, dumb, stinking pieces of shit that used to give him a hard time and make his life difficult? He hit the door a third time, the metallic clang ricocheting around his empty world. How many of these things gave him grief or caused him pain or—

Webb was suddenly aware of movement to his right. What the fuck?

Bodies.

There were bodies on his side of the blockade. The first one was almost upon him before Webb, stunned momentarily, was able to react. He swung the bat into its groin, sending it flying. Another one lunged. He jabbed the end of the bat into its face, knocking it back into two more. What the hell was going on here? Where were they coming from? Yet another body hurled itself forward, its arms reaching out for him. He grabbed it by the collar and dragged it over onto its back, then stamped on its emaciated face until it was still.

More of them coming. Too many.

Terrified, Webb turned and ran from a crowd of almost twenty cadavers which slowly lumbered after him. Through a momentary gap between their constantly shifting shapes he thought he saw more climbing over the barrier—but that was impossible, wasn’t it? He ran farther up the hill, the slothful dead no match for his speed, then turned back and looked again. His eyes hadn’t deceived him; the bodies were dragging themselves up and over the blockade. Helped up by the countless corpses crushed under their rotting feet over time and by the relentless pressure of others constantly pushing them forward, the damn things were managing to clamber over the cars and rubble and were heading straight for him.

“Help!” he screamed as he scrambled up the hill, not knowing if anyone could hear him. “Get out here, now!”

*   *   *

Hollis, Harte, Lorna, Jas, and Gordon were already on their way down toward the surging bodies before Webb had even made it back to the flats. They thundered past him, leaving him standing alone at the top of the slope. He stopped to spit and catch his breath before heading back down after them.

“Did you see them?” he started to say to Stokes, who pounded after the others at his usual slow pace.

“We all saw,” he answered quickly. “It’s your fault for winding them up, you fucking jerk!”

“What?” he protested. “I didn’t do anything to…”