population—was the regulation uniform they had each decided to adopt. Bike leathers, wet suits, over-trousers— anything that might protect them from the layer of germs, slime and decay which was gradually coating every square inch of the world outside.
Ellie lit a petrol-soaked rag and tossed it through the open window of a small, box-shaped silver car. A puddle of fuel on the driver’s seat and in the foot-well immediately burst into flame. Moving with sudden purpose and speed, she ran around to the back of the car and, with the other two, began to push it away from the flats. They could hear the crackle and pop of the fire taking hold inside; dirty black smoke was already beginning to belch out through the window.
“Come on,” Gordon grunted, his face flushed red with effort and his dodgy hip feeling like it was about to pop out of his pelvis. Ellie took a step back then ran and launched herself at the car, finally feeling its wheels beginning to turn and pick up some speed. Its interior now completely ablaze, it rolled down the hill with increasing velocity, running away from the three people pushing it. Breathless, she stood with her hands on her hips and watched as it raced down the slope, bobbling up into the air as it hit the curb. It juddered along a little farther, then thudded into the barrier.
“Could have done with that being a little more dramatic,” Hollis grumbled, disappointed. “It’ll have to do.”
“Should be okay,” Lorna said. She watched through the binoculars as bodies swarmed around the part of the barrier closest to the burning car. Worryingly, she was sure that one or two of them were actually trying to climb over the blockade to get closer to the flames.
“We’ll just need to make sure we—” Hollis began to say before the quarter-full fuel tank of the burning car exploded in a swollen, incandescent mushroom of flame, showering the ground with shrapnel. The sudden burst of energy caused huge numbers of diseased creatures to surge toward the epicenter of the blast. “That’s better,” he said to himself, slamming his foot down on the accelerator.
“Here we go, then,” Driver announced to his two passengers in his monotone, emotionless drawl. “Hold tight.” He instinctively checked his mirrors and even indicated before pulling out. Stokes and Webb held onto the handrail inside the bus as if they were rush-hour commuters on their way to work.
Jas paused before following on the bike. The visor on his helmet still raised, he watched the bodies swarming around the fire. Many had been drawn to the flames, some had been crushed in the confusion and others had even found themselves close enough to the heat to be set alight. Others, he noticed, had changed direction. He could see six or seven of them actually trying to move away from the burning wreck. Damn things, it was almost as if they’d realized the fire was nothing more than an unsubtle decoy. Harte tapped his shoulder.
“Come on,” he shouted, his voice muffled by his helmet. Jas flicked his visor down and powered after the bus.
6
“Almost there,” Lorna said, glancing up from the notepad and map she gripped tightly in her hand. The windscreen of the van was covered in an almost opaque film of greasy stains and dripping gore and she couldn’t see much up ahead. Hollis repeatedly tried to use the wipers but all they seemed to do was make the problem worse, smearing the foul muck from side to side in a bloody rainbow arc of insipid yellows, browns, and grays. He frantically used the screen-wash, managing to clear just enough of the glass to be able to see through. “Turn left and we’re on the Kingsway Road.”
Hollis swerved around a tight corner, then put his foot down again as the Kingsway Road stretched out in front of them. Apart from the fact it was crowded with the dead, it didn’t look anything like he remembered.
“What next?”
She looked down at her notes again like the co-pilot in a surreal, obstacle-strewn rally. Her assistance was vital. The almost never-ending waves of bodies made it virtually impossible to navigate by sight alone anymore. They were frequently packed so tightly together that it was hard to see where the road ended and the curb began.
“Keep going for half a mile, go through a set of lights, then Shaylors should be on our right.”
“Should be on our right?”
“
“Nice,” Hollis mumbled. “They’re virtually falling apart now.”
“Just wish they’d hurry up and get on with it.”
Hollis glanced into his rearview mirror but couldn’t see anything clearly.
“Are they still behind us?”
Lorna turned around in her seat and peered along the length of the empty van to look out through the rear window. She struggled to focus—the ride was increasingly uneven as they powered through and over the dead— before finally seeing the bright lights of Jas’s bike between the crisscrossing corpses. Farther back still, the bus continued to trundle sedately through the carnage. Its size and strength were such that it could move at a more pedestrian pace. It didn’t matter at what speed Driver drove, nothing was going to stop him.
* * *
Harte was transfixed by his surroundings. Everything seemed so different from when he was last here: instantly familiar and yet completely different, like looking at the world he remembered through a filter of grime. He held onto the back of the bike as Jas jolted up the curb, mounting the pavement and skillfully weaving through a gap between an overturned hot dog stand and the front of a furniture store, then leaning the bike the other way to avoid the grabbing hands of a corpse. Harte hadn’t seen as many of them this morning as he’d expected—hundreds, not thousands. His theory was that they’d gradually spread out from here like blood on tissue paper. This godforsaken place had always been busy, always heaving with too many people. He’d taught at a school just a few miles away and had always done all he could to avoid coming here. The Kingsway Road ran right through the center of some of the poorest parts of town, and the squalor and ruin here today appeared uncomfortably familiar. He could see some of the pitiful residents of this densely populated hellhole trapped behind the doors and windows of buildings as they passed. Some still moved incessantly as if they might be about to find some miracle escape route which had eluded them for the last couple of months. Others stood slumped against the windows, pointlessly pounding their fists against the dirty glass.
Less than fifty meters in front of the bike and bus, the van had slowed down. Lorna wound down her window, stuck her hand out, and pointed over to the right. Knowing that was his cue to take the lead, Jas accelerated, roaring past the van toward Shaylors. The group of survivors, although frequently argumentative, unhelpful, and volatile, were occasionally surprisingly organized. They had developed a well-rehearsed routine for times such as this. The van dropped back, leaving Jas and Harte to get closer and suss out the surrounds of the building they were planning to loot.
After dodging a small group of cadavers which had lurched perilously close, Jas drove across the wide car park at the front of the building at speed. Harte spotted a signpost marked DELIVERIES. Perfect. He pointed toward it and Jas accelerated again. A straight length of road, no more than one hundred meters long, stretched all the way along the side of the building down to a fenced-off loading bay. Jas drove into the bay, turned a tight circle, then drove back the way he’d just come and gestured for the others to follow. Another tight full turn and he disappeared again. Hollis put his foot down, then braked hard and skidded around the corner after him. A short distance behind, Webb and Stokes held on for dear life as they approached the turning in the bus. The swarming bodies suddenly seemed the least of their worries. How the hell was Driver going to get the bus around the corner and along the gap between the side of the building and the fence?
“Bloody hell, are you going to get this thing down there?” Webb asked. Driver nodded confidently, checked his mirrors, and gently swung the bus around to the right to follow the others down the track.
“We’ll be fine. They used to get trucks down here, didn’t they?”
Driver carefully shunted the massive vehicle a few feet farther forward, then hard-locked the steering wheel. He took his time. A man who’d spent his life driving according to timetables and working regulations, he wasn’t
