Aftermath

most tenuous of plans.

“All I can tell you,” Jackson said, “is that they’re all pretty much frozen solid right now. The frost last night was particularly severe. I tried digging a hole just now, and I could barely get the spade to break the surface of the soil, so those things outside shouldn’t be much more than chunks of ice. As long as we’re back before they start to thaw out, we should be fine.”

“Should be fine?” Bob said.

“Will be fine. Now, are we ready?”

There was a muted, barely audible response.

“I’m ready,” Zoe said, keen to show she was willing and to kick the others up the backside a little.

Nothing.

“Kieran’s going out there first in the digger to clear those icy bastards off the road, Driver follows with the rest of us. He’ll get us to the hotel, then it’s in and out and back again as quick as we can. No messing around. Got it?”

“You make it sound so easy,” Steve said.

“It will be easy,” Jackson replied. “Trust me.”

“Oh, we trust you, all right,” Bob said, following Zoe as she walked out of the classroom. “It’s what’s left of the rest of the world we have a problem with.”

Driver was the last to leave, his stomach knotted with nerves. He didn’t know what scared him more—the prospect of leaving the safety of the castle walls, or what he might find back at the hotel.

10

Mark Ainsworth’s fifteen minutes of fame had ended shortly before the rest of the world had died. He’d worked in a call center selling car insurance for eight years until just before last summer when a chance encounter on a busy high street had resulted in him appearing on a couple of episodes of a poorly rated, fashion-based reality TV show. Most people’s professions had been rendered redundant by the apocalypse, none more so than Mark, but with the blissful ignorance of someone who thought that a brief appearance on TV suddenly promoted him from a nobody to a somebody, he refused to shut up about it. He still put gel in his hair every morning and used copious amounts of deodorant, still checked his appearance in the mirror whenever he left the caravan. But there were no TVs now. No fashion. No advertisers. None of it mattered—not that any of it ever had. Melanie was sick of hearing about it.

“Just give it a rest, Mark,” she said, teeth chattering in the cold. “You’ve already told me.”

“I know. Pretty cool though, eh?”

“If you say so.”

“They were talking about getting me to do a few PAs at Oceania in town. Now that would have been awesome. Did you ever go to that club?”

“Yeah. It was shit.”

“You’re kidding me. Oceania? That place was the dog’s bollocks.”

“Well it was bollocks,” she said, “I’ll give you that.”

“You’re a total dick, Mark,” Will Bayliss said. “Shut up about your fucking TV and all that. You’re doing my fucking head in.”

Ainsworth finally shut up. Bayliss, several yearhis junior but with the offensive swagger of a wannabe bad boy, intimidated him. Bayliss tutted, and looked Ainsworth up and down dismissively. Paul Field, standing just behind him and doing all he could, as usual, to stay on the right side of Bayliss, shook his head and mumbled something that none of them could make out. For the first time she could remember, Melanie was actually pleased to see Jackson walking toward her.

“You lot ready with the gate?” he asked.

“We’re ready,” she said.

“Get it shut again as soon as Kieran gets the digger back inside, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. Neither Ainsworth nor Bayliss made any comment, but he was used to their disrespect. He nodded his approval at Melanie, then walked back toward the digger and gave Kieran a thumbs-up. Kieran started the engine, filling the air with noise. Jackson looked around at the others—Sue Preston, Charlie Moorehouse, Shirley Brinksford, Phil Kent—all of them standing ready, armed with clubs and axes, poised to mop up any of the corpses which managed to avoid being crushed by the digger and squirm through while the gate was open.

Shirley’s mouth was dry and her legs were heavy with nerves. She didn’t know if she could do this. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Aiden’s young face pressed up against the caravan window. He shouldn’t be watching this, she thought. He’s too young. I should go back inside and look after him, leave all this violence to the boys.

“Okay,” Jackson shouted. “Open up!”

Ainsworth and Bayliss pulled their respective ropes and the two sides of the gate slowly opened. The nearest dead were immediately visible. Here comes the flood, thought Kieran, watching nervously from his elevated position. But they didn’t move. A vast number of them had crowded up against the gate, melding together as a single gore-soaked mass, but they were completely frozen and were now stuck in position like someone had hit the pause button. The gate was fully open now, and still there was no movement. Perhaps there was a slight twitch now and then, a barely visible shudder, but that was all. The relief was palpable. Shirley dropped her ax and beckoned Kieran forward. He lowered the digger’s heavy scoop and accelerated.

From up in his seat, Kieran had a clear and uninterrupted view of the frozen dead and the world beyond the castle walls. It truly was a bizarre sight; one of the strangest things he’d ever seen (and that was saying something, given everything he’d witnessed since September). It was impossible to even begin to estimate just how many bodies had crowded onto the road leading up to the castle gate. They were unrecognizable, having long since lost virtually all semblance of individual form, packed together like this. First the decay had deformed and distorted them, grossly altering their once-standard shapes in random ways, then the constant crowding had caused more damage, and now the bitter frost had welded them together. Their limbs and torsos were largely obscured by the general mass, but countless heads remained poking up above the bulk of the frozen flesh, their features delicately highlighted and given a strange, glassy sheen by a layer of ice.

Kieran stopped before the first impact, ast unable to comprehend what now lay ahead of him. It was, by turn, terrifying and pitiful. Terrifying because even though they remained motionless and unable to attack, the dead were still here in almost incalculable numbers. And pitiful because these damn things, which had caused him and everyone else so much pain, appeared to have been rendered utterly harmless by a sudden change in the weather. It was almost as if they’d been cut off midsentence, and he found it strangely reassuring, although he also felt uneasy knowing that a thaw would inevitably give some of them back their freedom. He almost laughed out loud at one of them. It had an arm raised and its head held high as if it was an athlete sprinting for the finishing line, caught in a freeze-frame photo with all the other corpses to decide the winner. When he thought he saw it tremble slightly—whether the result of vibrations from the digger, a slight increase in temperature, gravity, intent, or something else entirely—he shoved his foot down on the accelerator pedal and drove straight into it.

Jackson got onto the bus and stood next to Driver, both of them watching as Kieran powered along the road outside the castle, quickly carving a remarkably clean groove through the motionless ranks. He couldn’t hear it, but he could imagine the noise of bits of the bodies crunching and snapping, the ice creaking, and he stared as random limbs were broken off like the dried-out branches of dead trees. He glanced across at Driver who remained looking forward, his face expressionless. He’s either focused or completely fucking terrified, Jackson thought. I can’t tell which.

When the curve of the road meant that Kieran disappeared from view, Jackson decided it was time to move. He nudged Driver sharply and he pulled away, following the almost perfect channel through the dead which the digger had left. There were steep banks of drifting decay on either side, and even as Jackson watched, he was sure he could see movement. It was subtle and slight, but it was definitely there. Some of the bodies buried deepest had been protected from the worst of the frost, and what was left of them was already starting to slowly inch back toward the area which had been cleared. He knew that if they waited long enough, the track would completely disappear. They had to get out and get back again before the corpses thawed out. The sun was beginning to climb.