53
Webb had almost reached the clubhouse. His progress over the final few meters of the once perfectly maintained golf course had been painfully slow. The number of cadavers around him seemed to have increased as he got nearer to the building, as had the depth of the repugnant sludge through which he continued to move. The sickly sea of decay, almost a foot deep in places now, had built up over weeks. Many hundreds of corpses had gravitated here over time, and a huge number of them had been dragged down and trampled underfoot. Their remains, along with the obnoxious juices which had dripped, dribbled, and seeped down from the masses still standing, had combined to become this unholy gray mire. Webb was covered in it. The damn stuff was in his hair and his eyes. It was in his nose and he could taste it at the back of his throat. He could feel it on his skin, cold and repellent. It had soaked him, permeating through his many layers of protective clothing. He tried to convince himself that it was just mud, and when he looked too closely and saw the occasional eye, or ear or other equally distinguishable shape floating by, he forced himself to look away and concentrate on the music still playing in the distance.
What now? He tried to keep his head down as much as he could but he allowed himself to glance up momentarily and saw through the forest of tripping, sliding legs that the front of the building was now only a couple of meters ahead. The music was uncomfortably loud now, although it continued to be muffled down at ground level by the increased number of corpses swarming above and around him. They walked over him, oblivious to his presence, frequently standing right on top of him and not realizing. Damn things didn’t even know he was there.
It was impossible to see with any certainty, but the congestion around the door up ahead didn’t look as bad as he’d expected. Sure, there was a huge number of corpses congregating around the building, but a decorative low wall or fence on either side of the door seemed to be channelling many of them away. Regardless, he was going to have to get up to get inside. He paused and lay still for a moment longer, collecting his thoughts and trying to steady his nerves. He’d managed to drag his baseball bat along with him. His only option now, it seemed, was to get up, smash his way through the crowd, and then batter the door—and any corpses that got in his way—with all the strength he could muster. Hopefully the speed and surprise of his attack would be enough to confuse the cadavers for a few seconds. By the time they realized what was happening, he hoped, he might already be inside. And what after that? He wished he’d listened more closely to Martin’s explanation of the layout of the building. From what he could remember there was a back entrance which he used to get in and out. An entrance which was connected to the road and which would enable him to get back to the hotel. Back to safety and food and drink and his room and then—
Another decaying foot pressed down on the small of his back, pushing his face closer to the foul stench beneath him. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on what he was about to do, his guts churning with nausea and fear. Try and get a little closer, he decided, then just go for it.
Webb slithered through the mud and grime until the ground dropped away slightly. He’d reached the top of a gradual low slope which had remained invisible until now, disguised by the number of bodies tightly packed around the building. The slope led directly to the wide double-door into the clubhouse. Taking a final deep breath of noxious-smelling, germ-ridden air, he hauled himself back up to his feet, knocking several cadavers down into the mud as he did so. Dripping with the odious, rotten slime, he lifted his baseball bat high and swung it around his head, hacking down a wide circle of disoriented creatures. Before any others could react he ran to the door, slipping and sliding precariously down the slope. For the moment it seemed to have worked, and it was immediately apparent why: in the fading light the dead could hardly see him. Their eyesight was poor and he looked almost the same as they did, just another indistinguishable gray blur. Camouflaged by the thick, sludgy layer of mud and decomposed human remains, he now wore the same gray-green-black uniform as the rest of them and had become virtually invisible. With the bodies so tightly packed and their footing so precarious, he knew that he suddenly had an unexpected few seconds of freedom to get into the building.
Webb hammered the baseball bat down on the clubhouse door. It immediately began to splinter and crack but it held tight. He swung the bat again, bringing it right over his head and crashing down on the door. The nails sunk into the wood and he had to yank them out as he prepared to strike for a third time. He swung the bat back, ready to heave it forward again, then pulled it back over his head with all the remaining strength he could summon up. This time it hit the door with a dull thud, and he saw that a chunk of flesh had been torn off a body behind him.
He glanced back and saw that the farthest advanced cadavers were moving forward again, attracted by his sudden strong movements and the noise he was making. A large group of them were edging closer. It was impossible to see exactly how many but that didn’t matter. Many more were already following close behind. He shook the flesh off the end of the bat, heaved it back and swung it down again, this time with a loud grunt of effort and a satisfying crack as the top panel of the right-hand door gave way, leaving a large enough hole for him to be able to get his hand inside and force more of the wood away.
He could feel the first clawing fingers on his back now, then the deceptively soft impact of the first body crashing into him. Now working with a desperate, breathless speed he threw his bat down and pulled more of the wood away, enough for him to be able to shove his head and one arm through. It was virtually pitch-black inside the building and he could see nothing, but with his outstretched fingers he felt a wooden bar which had been carefully secured across the door—no doubt Martin’s typically pedantic workmanship. He anxiously yanked it out of the brackets which held it in place, then dropped it down.
Another corpse grabbed Webb’s shoulders, pulling him back. He allowed himself to be moved away for a fraction of a second, then shook himself free and ran back at the door. Despite the ground beneath his feet being greasy and covered with flesh and bone, he managed to build up enough velocity to hit the middle of the double- door with sufficient force to throw both sides of it open. Without stopping he ran into the darkness with arms outstretched, feeling his way through the shadowy building, not knowing where he was going.
Fighting with each other to get through the narrow gap, the first of hundreds of bodies followed Webb, the force of many more behind keeping them moving at a speed which almost matched his.
54
“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Harte protested, shoving a handful of food into his mouth. “You’ve never seen so many of them as there were out there today.”
Gordon shook his head and took a plate from Ginnie.
“And I don’t want to know either,” he said, sniffing at his food. “I saw more than enough, thank you. What’s this?”
“Some kind of stew,” Ginnie replied.
He poked at his food, stabbed his fork into a lump of something, then shoved it into his mouth and chewed it. Ginnie looked at his face expectantly. He nodded his appreciation and took another mouthful.
“Not bad,” he said, trying to remember when he’d last eaten warm food.
“Remember that night back at the flats when you did the cooking, Gord?” Harte asked, laughing. “Fuck me, what was it again?”
“Some vegetarian rubbish,” Lorna laughed.
“When was this?” Howard asked, struggling to see the others through the semidarkness. He sat just outside the main circle so that he could feed his dog without anyone complaining. All the others ever gave her were scraps, and after the way she’d fought today he thought she deserved more.
“We’d only been there a couple of weeks,” Lorna continued. “Most of us went out looking for food, but Gordon pulls the old dodgy-hip routine and decided we’d all be better off if he stayed behind.”
“I
“When it suits you,” Caron mumbled.
“Anyway, he said he was going to cook a meal while we were all out, trying to make up for the fact that he was too scared to go out—”
