everything that had happened. Lorna, one of his passengers, had told Hollis she’d found a woman’s carcass wedged under one of the seats. The smell of the decomposing grandmother had been strong enough for her to notice long before she’d spotted her tan-suede-booted foot sticking out. He’d been driving around with her rotting in the back of the bus for days and hadn’t even noticed.
Less than forthcoming with any personal details, they had simply christened him with the unimaginative label of “Driver” because of his preapocalypse vocation. Good job they’d not adopted the same naming strategy for any of the others, Hollis thought to himself. Jas could have got away with “Security,” as could Harte with “Teacher.” Caron would probably have been quietly pleased to have been given the mantle of “Housewife,” although Gordon, the short and repressed warehouse manager, would probably have insisted they call her “Homemaker” in a pointless effort to be politically correct. He decided he would have christened Webb “Young Offender” and Stokes “Failed Store Manager and Alcoholic.” With few other distinguishing characteristics or traits, Ellie, Lorna and Anita would have all been labeled “Unemployed” and that, he decided, would have just been confusing. He didn’t like to group Lorna with the other two girls, although they were all of a similar age and background. He liked her. She had more about her than the rest of them.
“What’s the name of this place we’re looking for again?” Harte asked, leaning over the map to get a better view. Caron looked at the business phone directory in her lap and ran her finger down the page.
“Shaylors,” she answered, finally finding the right advert. “‘Wholesale cash and carry for retailers. Over twenty thousand lines including a wide range of fresh and frozen food, groceries, beers, wines, spirits, tobacco and nonfood items.’”
“Sounds perfect,” Stokes chipped in. “Maybe we should move in there. It’d be a hell of a lot easier than going out looting all the time.”
Sitting across the table, Jas shook his head. “You been down the Kingsway Road recently?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“Place was bad news before any of this started. It’s going to be a nightmare today. It’ll be crawling with corpses.”
“Isn’t everywhere?”
“Can’t we find anywhere safer to go?” Gordon piped up from his usual position by the window. “Do we really need to risk going so deep into town just to get booze and cigarettes?”
“Last time I checked you weren’t risking anything, Gord,” Stokes said. “How long’s it been since you last went out?”
“I’ve got problems with my hip, you know I have,” he answered quickly, rattling off his stock excuse. “Seriously, I’d just hold you all up and slow you down. I’ve been on the waiting list for a replacement for more than two years.”
“Well, you’re not going to get your operation now, are you, mate? You might as well get used to the pain and start pulling your weight.”
“Let it go,” Hollis sighed. He wasn’t in the mood to referee yet another slanging match. Truth be told, he didn’t want to risk being out in the open with someone as weak and useless as Gordon anyway.
“Sounds good,” Ellie said, sitting on the windowsill, cradling her doll and kicking her legs. “Get me some fags, will you? Me and Anita are down to our last couple of packs.”
“Think about your baby,” Stokes said with a smirk. Webb bit his lip and looked away, trying not to laugh.
“Where is Anita, anyway?” Jas asked, glancing around the room.
“In bed,” Ellie answered.
“In bed?” he repeated. “Bloody hell, it’s like a holiday camp here. What’s she doing in bed?”
“Says she feels sick. Says it’s something she’s eaten.”
“I reckon it’s just another one of her excuses, lazy cow,” Stokes said, for once putting into words what just about everyone else was thinking. Anita seemed to be able to find a way of getting out of doing practically anything.
The bickering continued around him, but Hollis concentrated on the map on the table, doing his best to shut out the constant, pointless noise. They’d been systematically working their way through all the large supermarkets and stores on this side of town. Once they’d cleared a store out and stripped it down to bare bones, they crossed through it on the map and moved on to the next. Their strategy had worked well so far, but the danger was increasing. Their trips outside were now taking longer and thorough planning was necessary. Problem was, he thought, with this shower of tossers the risks were dramatically increasing too. He knew he could count on Jas, Stokes (despite his obvious faults), Harte, and Lorna, but as for the rest of them …
“I said, when are we going to do it?” Stokes asked, slapping his hand down on the table when he didn’t get an answer, making Hollis jump.
“What?”
“Do we go now or leave it until later?”
“We should just get it done,” Hollis replied. “Let’s get out of here, get back, and then have a bloody good drink.”
5
Jas pushed his bike out of the front lobby of the flats and wheeled it over toward the other vehicles. Hollis acknowledged both him and Harte, who climbed onto the back of the bike to ride pillion. Next to Hollis in the larger of the group’s two vans sat Lorna, quiet and pensive and chewing her lip nervously, unaware he was staring at her. He often found himself watching her. She had a spark of energy and life about her. Even now, about to head out into the grim, dangerous and unpredictable ruin of their world, she remained remarkably positive. She was wearing a trace of makeup and had tied her hair up neatly. She did something different with her hair almost every day. It said something about her that she still took pride in her appearance. He, on the other hand, hadn’t brushed his teeth for more than a week.
The hydraulic hiss of the doors of the bus opening on the other side of the car park distracted Hollis. He watched as Driver let Stokes and Webb on board. Before disappearing inside, Webb glanced along the length of the bizarre-looking vehicle. Once just like any other double-decker bus, over the weeks the group had cannibalized and fortified it to the best of their limited abilities. Barbwire had been spooled along both sides in an attempt to make it as difficult as possible for the dead to reach the survivors inside. Sheet metal had been bolted to its otherwise flat front to form a rudimentary pointed plow, perfect for cutting through the incessant crowds which gathered around them whenever they left the relative safety and calm of the flats.
The air, so eerily quiet and still most of the time now, was suddenly filled with noise as, one by one, the engines were started. Lorna shuffled forward in her seat and peered through binoculars down into the gray sea of cadavers. Even from this distance she could see that they were already beginning to react to the rumble of the machines.
The geography of the area around the block of flats had made the ugly concrete building a surprisingly effective base. Its location, perched three-quarters of the way up a steep hill, made it difficult for the bodies to get close easily. Some of them, those less damaged or decayed than the rest, were occasionally able to drag themselves through the desolation and get closer to the survivors, but were easy pickings. Webb in particular seemed to take great pleasure in destroying them, although Jas, Harte, and Hollis were always ready to take their turn. Behind their building, a myriad of tracks and roads led through an empty, mazelike housing estate which had also been scheduled for demolition before everything had ended. Many houses were boarded up, and the group had created makeshift road blocks and barriers, leaving only the most inaccessible roads clear and making it all but impossible for even the most determined of corpses to reach them.
No one was sure how much of a difference it made anymore, but it had become standard practice to create a distraction whenever anyone left the flats. Regardless of how much control the bodies had begun to exhibit, they could still be fooled. Fire was usually the best diversion. A little heat, light and noise were usually enough to take some of the pressure off whoever it was heading out into the open.
“Ready?” Ellie yelled from Hollis’s right. He gave her a leather-gloved thumbs-up. On his signal she ran over to where Caron and Gordon were standing and started working. Hollis wiped sweat from his brow. Christ, he was hot. One of the worst things about going outside—apart from the unwanted attention of the remains of the local
