Disintegration

“No, are you?” Webb goaded. Hollis ran at him but the younger man was too fast and sidestepped his clumsy attack.

“Come here, you little bastard,” he seethed. “I’m gonna kill you.”

“No, you’re not. You can’t even catch me!”

“Leave it out,” Lorna pleaded, running after them both. “Come on, Hollis, this is pointless. He’s just a little idiot. Not worth wasting your time on.”

“You can fuck off too,” Webb spat.

Hollis sprinted forward again and slid in the dew-soaked grass, much to Webb’s amusement. He picked himself up and glared at him, breathing hard. Lorna held him back.

“Please,” she said, “just ignore him. He’s only doing it to wind you up. Come back and help us get this finished.”

“Fucking idiot,” Hollis shouted, forgetting himself again. “Why can’t you do something useful instead of screwing around all the time?”

“You call that useful?” Webb shouted back, pointing at the sheets on the grass. “How is that useful? How’s that going to help? Who’s gonna see it?”

“What’s going on?” Jas asked. He’d emerged from the hotel when he’d first heard the raised voices. “You lot got any idea how much noise you’re making?”

“It’s okay, Jas,” Lorna told him as she tried again to pull Hollis away. “There’s no problem. It’s nothing.”

“Come on, mate,” Sean said to Webb, passing the football to him. “Let’s go. No point standing here arguing about—”

He looked up at the sky. The others immediately did the same. One by one they heard the helicopter engine approaching. Webb was the first to spot it—a small, black, spidery silhouette crawling across the off-white sky several miles north of where they were standing.

“There it is,” he said, pointing up at the aircraft, “and that’s why what you’re doing is stupid. How are they supposed to see your letters on the ground when they’re not even flying overhead? They’re fucking miles away. They’ll never see it.”

He was right and Hollis knew it.

“So what do you suggest?” he asked, sounding uncharacteristically desperate. “What else are we supposed to do? What we’re doing is better than doing nothing at all.”

“You need a fucking fire or something,” Webb answered. “A great big fucking fire in the middle of nowhere. At least then they’ll—”

“Shut up!” Jas interrupted. “Listen!”

Another engine, loud enough for them all to hear.

“There!” Lorna said excitedly. “Look at that! It’s a bloody plane.”

“Christ,” Sean said under his breath as they stood and stared at the second, much larger aircraft. “There must be loads of them. It’s a bloody mass evacuation.”

“That’s not good,” Jas warned.

“Not good?” he protested. “How can it not be good?”

“Because you might be right—and if you are, then they’re probably clearing out, aren’t they? And if they’re doing that, then they ain’t going to be flying over here many more times.”

42

“They’re a bunch of fucking wasters,” Webb cursed, finishing another can of beer—he’d lost count of how many he’d already had today—and throwing it onto the growing pile of empties in the corner of Sean’s room at the back of the hotel. “They’re going to sit in here and fucking rot, I tell you. Just fucking look at them.”

He held back a corner of the curtain, letting a little light into the otherwise dark room. They were all still out there, writing their pointless message on the grass with dirty bedsheets.

“Don’t let them get to you,” Sean said. “You just have to ignore them. I’ve had weeks of that kind of bullshit since I’ve been here. They’re always telling me you can’t do this and you can’t do that. Honestly, mate, it’s been worse than living with your bloody parents!”

“What happens if that helicopter does see us and lands? Where are we going to end up? We’ll still have them with us. Same shit, different place. Don’t know how you’ve put up with it for as long as you have, mate.”

“What else could I do?”

“You could have stood up for yourself. Could have told them how pissed off you were.”

“And what good would that have done?”

“You could have left them. I would have if I was stuck here. At least back at the flats I could get out when I wanted to.”

“But I didn’t want to go out. They told me how bad it was and how we had to keep our heads down and I believed them.”

“That was all bullshit! You saw it for yourself yesterday. It’s no fucking walk in the park out there, but we did okay, didn’t we?”

“I was scared because they were scared, I can see it now. Until yesterday I was fucking terrified of going outside, but you were right, it was an absolute fucking breeze.”

“Thing is,” Webb continued, the alcohol increasing his ire, “they don’t actually want us here. We’re just a pain in the backside to them. They wouldn’t miss us if we went.”

“So let’s go, then.”

“How?”

Sean opened the curtain fully. “See the road between here and the golf course?”

Webb nodded. “What about it?”

“Follow it back towards the front of the hotel.”

Webb did as he was instructed. He followed the curve of the road right around the outer edge of the hotel grounds. All he could see was a field on the other side of the road, empty save for a few hundred bodies staggering around aimlessly. A ragged group of them—he couldn’t see how many—appeared to be hanging around close to the hedge in an unruly mob.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“See there?” Sean said, pointing down toward the front of the hotel complex. “There’s a car parked in the road.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Martin and Howard put that car there to block a gate.”

“Into that field? So what? You thinking of going for a bloody picnic?”

Sean shook his head.

“Point is there’s another gate on the opposite side of the field. We can get out that way without moving any of their bloody trucks and buses. Go the other way at the fork in the road, take the brakes off and shift that car, and we’re out.”

“But what about the bodies? I can see plenty, but aren’t there supposed to be thousands of them ’round here?”

“Didn’t think that bothered you.”

“Doesn’t bother me,” Webb replied arrogantly, “but I’m not about to stick my bare arse out in the middle of a massive crowd of corpses unless I’ve got no choice.”

“They’re all on the golf course up there, well out of the way. Those are just the stragglers. Come on, you’ve told me you’ve dealt with bigger crowds than that before.”

Webb didn’t answer at first. He continued to stare out the window into the field that Sean had showed him. There weren’t that many bodies; even the unexplained mass clumped around the hedge wasn’t huge. Could they try running for it? Maybe that was too risky. There had to be another way of getting out.

“How did you say you got here?” he asked, a plan forming.

“Scooter,” Sean replied, “but it’s fucked. I’ve got a flat tire and hardly any fuel.”

“Can you ride a bike?”