Howard’s inexperience was showing. The other three were way down the track and yet he still remained at the mouth of the road, standing and looking at the mass of bloody limbs and shredded flesh which lay all around him, attacking incapacitated corpses which were no longer a threat. He didn’t want to go down and fight with the others but he knew that he had to. Christ, even the dog was doing more than him. He watched it jump up at yet another cadaver and sink its razor-sharp teeth into the corpse’s arm, dragging it down to the ground. He tightened his grip on his meat cleaver and began to run forward again, determined to get involved. Then he stopped. What was that? He could hear another engine. Was it the van coming back? At first he couldn’t locate the source of the swirling sound. Was it coming from the road running between the hotel and golf course, or from the road junction at the end of the track or even the field? It sounded like it was behind him … He spun around to see the bus careering around the front of the hotel with Martin at the wheel. He turned sharp left and hurtled down the track toward Howard, who ran for cover as fast as his tired, heavy legs would carry him.
“Move!” he screamed at the top of his voice to anyone who could hear him. Farther down the track Gordon looked up.
“Christ,” he mumbled, grabbing hold of Lorna by the waist and pulling her away from the corpse she was carving up with her machete. She struggled to release herself from his grip, terrified for a second that it was one of the dead who had her trapped in its decaying arms. A little farther ahead Hollis continued fighting. He hadn’t heard anything.
“Greg!” she screamed, looking around and quickly realizing what was happening. “Get out of the way!”
Howard’s dog raced back toward its owner at full pelt, carrying half an arm in her mouth. Gordon pulled Lorna behind him, dragging her back up as she tripped over a bloody, headless torso, then pushing her into the hedgerow as the bus thundered past. It missed them both by the slenderest of margins, temporarily filling the world with deafening noise and a sudden hot blast of choking exhaust fumes.
“Hollis!” she screamed again as the back of the bus filled the width of the road and he disappeared from view. She stood in the middle of the tarmac strip with Gordon and watched helplessly as the bus raced away, instantly wiping up the last few cadavers which had made it this far along the road, smashing them like flies on its windscreen. Wrestling herself free from Gordon’s well-meaning grip she ran down after it, stopping when she reached the area where Hollis had been standing.
“Hollis!” she screamed.
“Fuck me, that was close,” she heard him say from somewhere to her left. She looked around with relief and helped him up as he disentangled himself from the undergrowth. “Who the hell was that?”
“Martin, I think,” she answered.
“What does he think he’s doing?”
“Trying to block the road or get rid of the bodies,” she replied. “Or both.”
* * *
The van blasted down the other side of the track at breakneck speed. Jas looked for the sharp, almost complete 360-degree turn that he needed to take the fork in the road back up to the hotel. At this pace it was difficult to see much—the hedgerows merged to look like a single, uninterrupted border around the hotel. Wait … there it was. He could see the back of the hotel sign now, and he could also see the sign to the golf club pointing up along the stretch of road they’d just come down. He slammed his foot hard on the brake and yanked the wheel around to the right, planning to make a three-point turn in the narrow space. Now facing the hedgerow, he crunched into reverse.
“Shit,” Harte cursed, suddenly covering his head and diving over toward Jas. Jas looked up and, for the briefest of moments, was aware of the front of the bus thundering toward them.
The massive vehicle and its makeshift, blood-covered snowplow punched into the side of the van, the force of impact sending it crashing into the hedgerow and showering the road with broken glass. The bus itself continued forward, its front wheels ramming up the muddy bank at the bottom of the hedge. Harte shook his head and checked himself for injuries. Jas, who could already see that they were both unharmed, shoved him back over into his seat.
“Come on,” he said, jumping out onto the road. He rubbed his aching neck and turned back to look for Harte, who was struggling to get out, unable to open his badly buckled door. “This way,” he shouted.
Disoriented by the jolting shock and speed of the crash, Harte continued to try and get the passenger door to open for a second longer, unable to understand why he couldn’t do it. Distracted, he looked up when he saw more movement out of the corner of his eye. The front of the bus was just a couple of meters away from where he sat, forced up at an unnatural sloping angle, and someone was trying to escape from inside. It was Martin. What the hell was he doing driving the bus? And what had he done? Blood was pouring down his face and he was banging on the glass.
“Come on,” Jas yelled again, reaching back into the van and dragging Harte out onto the road. His head clearing, he picked himself up and ran around to the front of the bus. Martin was hammering frantically on the windscreen now, desperately trying to free himself.
“Keep still,” Harte shouted. “Shut up and keep still!”
Martin was panicking. He was kicking and screaming and trying to get himself out of the driver’s seat with no appreciation of how precariously balanced the bus was. Harte could see that all of the wheels on one side had been forced up the bank. Again he tried to stop Martin moving, but his words had no effect. The wiry little man finally freed himself from the seat and stood up to get out, scrambling up the steeply inclined floor. His desperate, clumsy movements were enough to upset the delicate balance of the bus and force it completely over onto its side. Jas yanked Harte back out of the way as the huge vehicle crashed down into the road. Martin was thrown across the cab, thumping his head again as he went down. This time he didn’t get up.
“Do you think he’s…” Harte began to ask.
“Probably,” Jas said, his voice cold and devoid of emotion. “Stupid bastard. What the hell was he doing?”
Harte hauled himself up the front of the box-shaped vehicle and stood on its uppermost side, the top edge of the folding door at his feet. He dropped to his knees and pushed against it, managing to force it half-open.
“Martin!” he shouted. “Martin…”
Six feet below them, Martin began to groan.
“We’ll come back for him,” Jas said as he pulled himself up. “Stupid, bloody fool.” He glanced down again at Martin’s slowly stirring body, then turned and ran along the side of the bus.
“Looks like he was trying to clear the road,” Harte said, stopping when he reached the back end of the vehicle and looking down at the track, completely awash with blood and unrecognizable heaps of fetid remains.
“Fucking idiot. All he’s done is block it.”
“Come on, he didn’t know we were coming around the corner, did he?”
“I don’t care. Fact is he’s blocked our way out. How are we supposed to shift this thing now?”
“No idea. Come on, we’ll sort it out later. We should get back to the others.”
He was about to move when he heard the distant whine of another engine. He remained where he was, completely motionless. Where was it? Who was it? It had to be Webb and Amir. Where the hell had they been?
“Helicopter,” Jas said, immediately recognizing the noise and pointing up at the aircraft he’d just spotted. His heart began to thump in his chest and his legs felt heavy with nerves.
He glanced over to his left. Two huge black columns of smoke were still rising high into the sky—surely they had to see them. Surely they’d fly over here to investigate … There was hardly any wind and the smoke was rising straight up like hundred-story-tall arrows pointing down at the hotel. He willed the helicopter to change course and fly closer.
“They’ll see it,” Harte said under his breath. “They have to…”
Jas stared unblinking at the single speck of black crawling across the white clouds. He watched it until it disappeared, praying it would bank around and come back.
Minutes passed before he stopped looking.
“That’s it, then,” he said dejectedly, his voice weak with emotion. “I don’t think they’ll be back again. We’re completely fucked now.”
