Disintegration

been designed with double-decker passenger buses in mind.

“Bingo!” Jas said excitedly. “Look at that. Delivery!”

Hollis couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The morning was getting better by the minute. Straddled across the far end of the loading bay was a huge delivery lorry, decked out in the supermarket’s distinctive orange, yellow, and white livery. The doors at the back of it were hanging open and they could see that it was still more than three-quarters full. It looked like they might be able to get what they need without even having to risk going inside the store. Perfect.

“Going to have to stop here,” Driver announced. “Won’t get out if I go in much further.”

“Okay,” Hollis agreed, grabbing onto the nearest handhold again as the bus lurched to a sudden stop. The doors hissed open, letting in a blast of cold air from outside, accompanied by the fetid stench of dead flesh and rotten food. Sean and Webb thundered down the stairs from the top floor, weapons in hand, ready to get rid of the first few bodies which were already inching closer.

“I’ll keep those two in check,” said Jas, picking up the chain saw and squeezing out between Hollis and Harte. He ran after the others, quickly catching up with Sean. Webb was already level with the first of the advancing cadavers, wielding his baseball bat with typical blundering force, making short work of any corpses unfortunate enough to stagger within range.

“Do we try and block them off from the bus or…?” Sean started to ask, suddenly feeling incredibly nervous again, despite what he’d learned yesterday. Jas shook his head.

“Not worth it,” he replied. “We might as well just get rid of them. Makes it easier in the long run. Look, we can cut them off if we get closer to the bridge. Most of them are going to end up in the canal, so we’ll just be left with the ones that manage to get across. Dumb bastards.”

He started the chain saw and marched forward purposefully. Machete in hand, Sean followed close behind, figuring that he’d stay back and deal with those few corpses which managed to evade both Webb’s and Jas’s attacks.

Lorna, who had been quiet and subdued since leaving the hotel, quickly sprang into action. Hollis, Harte, and Amir were at the back of the lorry, discussing what to take first and how to best organize themselves.

“Come on,” she said, barging past them all and clambering up into the massive vehicle. “It won’t empty itself.”

Not waiting to hear their response, she grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on—a tray of tins of beans—and slid it across the floor toward Hollis. He picked it up and carried it over to Harte, who had returned to the steps of the bus. He took the tray from him and took it down to the end of the vehicle where he stored it carefully in the foot-well just in front of the farthest seat back.

We need to pack this stuff carefully, he thought. The better we pack it, the more we’ll get in. The more we take now, the longer before we have to come out here again.

*   *   *

It took less time than they’d expected to empty the back of the lorry and transfer its contents to the bus. Hollis mooched around in the darker corners of the loading bay, keen to check they’d taken everything of value before leaving. He shifted a pile of traffic cones, shovels and other bits of maintenance equipment, then walked over to the other side of the bay to investigate a few wooden pallets which had been stacked up against a wall. He glanced back at the bus as he worked. The others were sitting on the steps up to the rear entrance of the store, drinking, eating, and catching their breaths before they headed home.

The pallets were of little interest. Some were broken, others had just been piled up awaiting collection by the next—

A single cadaver suddenly threw itself at Hollis, grabbing hold of him and sending him tumbling over. His heart thumping, he struggled to right himself and get a grip on the rancid figure which had rushed him. Where the hell had it come from? He forced his hand up, gripped the foul-smelling creature’s neck and squeezed. His gloved fingers dug deep into its rotting flesh, ripping open its disintegrating trachea and allowing all manner of disgusting dribbles of decay to squeeze out and run down his arm. His composure quickly returning after the sudden surprise of the attack, he gradually managed to shuffle himself around and roll right over so that the corpse lay beneath him and he could use his weight advantage to the full. He stared into its revolting face—a mass of pus, dried blood, ripped skin, and an infuriatingly vacant expression which seemed to scream so what? at him—and wondered how something so pathetic and inadequate could catch him off-guard like that. Was it just the fact that he couldn’t hear properly, or was he losing his touch? His confidence wavering, he angrily grabbed a long- shanked screwdriver which he’d been carrying and plunged it into the monster’s left temple. In one side and out the other. He pulled it out again, stood up and gave the suddenly limp figure an angry kick to the gut to make sure it wouldn’t get up.

“You okay, Hollis?” Jas shouted. “Having trouble?”

“I’m fine,” he answered quickly, determined not let the others know what had just happened. He must have released the cadaver when he’d been scavenging around just now. He’d acted like a fucking amateur and he felt angry and scared. Angry because he’d been stupid and put himself at risk unnecessarily, scared because he hadn’t heard the body until it had been too late. He’d got away with it today, but the outcome could have been much worse. He’d hoped his hearing would have improved by now but, if anything, it was deteriorating. How the hell was he supposed to survive if he couldn’t hear? Hollis felt more exposed and vulnerable today than he had done when the rest of the world had first fallen dead at his feet. He wiped the gore off his screwdriver and put it back in his pocket as Jas approached.

“We’re going to head off,” he said. “You ready?”

Hollis nodded and followed him back toward the bus.

The lower floor and half of the top floor of the huge vehicle had been filled. Struggling to find a seat, Lorna wearily climbed the narrow stairs and flopped heavily into a chair right at the front, well away from everyone else. The bus began to rumble and shake as Driver started the engine, then it slowly trundled forward. She could already hear the crashing of badly packed supplies and excited laughter and conversation coming from her fellow looters standing in the aisle downstairs. By the sounds of things they’d be lucky if there was any booze left by the time they made it back to the hotel. She closed her eyes, leaned back in her seat, and tried to shut it all out for a while.

The bus turned around and powered back across the bridge over the canal. The sudden jolting movement threw her forward and she opened her eyes again. She gazed down over the dead streets of Bromwell. Even now, two months since it had first happened, it was hard to comprehend the full scale of the inexplicable devastation which surrounded her. She could see many bodies scurrying around in the shadows down below, dragging themselves around ceaselessly and tirelessly like busy worker ants but without purpose or direction. She couldn’t imagine a worse existence—condemned to haunt this dead world until such time that their physical form finally failed them. What had any of these people done to deserve this?

Half an hour earlier, Lorna had watched Webb and Sean taunting a corpse. The pathetic, maggot-ridden creature had been sliced in half by Jas’s chain saw but it had still been moving. She’d watched it pull itself along the ground, the stump of its spinal cord dragging behind, leaving a crimson snail trail on the gray paving stones. Like kids teasing a stray dog, Webb and Sean had taken turns to lie down directly in its path, taunting it and playing chicken; waiting until the last possible moment before rolling away, then tricking the corpse into crawling after them in another direction. Stupid idiots. Didn’t they care that that used to be a person? Maybe they did. Maybe it just didn’t matter anymore.

Maybe she was the one who’d got it all wrong.

38

Webb, Sean, Amir, and Harte were drunk. Their successful excursion into Bromwell, coupled with the news that the helicopter had been heard flying nearby yet again today, left them feeling temporarily invincible. They, it seemed, were fully in control. Hollis and Jas watched them from the other side of the Steelbrooke Suite. Their noise was beginning to make Hollis nervous. The rest of the group had gone to bed, but he wasn’t going anywhere until these stupid, selfish fuckers had settled down. He didn’t want to think about what they might do if they were left unsupervised and, although the hotel grounds and surrounding area were relatively corpse-free, he wasn’t prepared to take any chances. Webb and Sean seemed more volatile than usual tonight, buoyed by the events of the day.