Aftermath

“Hollis!” Harte said, turning around when he heard footsteps. “How are you, mate?”

“Good, thanks,” he said quietly, his voice barely audible. “Really good.”

“You had something to eat?”

“I didn’t think he was ever going to stop eating,” Lorna answered for him, tenderly squeezing his arm. “Howard’s still down there, feeding his face.”

“Where’s Caron?”

“Asleep in one of the caravans, curled up with an empty bottle of wine. Did you really need to ask?”

“And Driver?”

“On his bus, I presume.”

“The gang’s all here, eh?” He grinned.

“Well, those of us who are left alive are,” she said quietly. Hollis slowly sat down—moving like a man twice his age—and she sat next to him, checking he was okay. They’d all suffered during their imprisonment at the hotel, but Hollis had been affected more than most. He’d lost the hearing in one ear, and the associated loss of confidence had hit him hard. For a while after they’d become stranded in the besieged hotel, his behavior had become increasingly aggressive and unpredictable. Over the last couple of weeks he’d become withdrawn. Now he barely said anything to anyone, rarely even moved unless Lorna was there to help him up and drag him around. He was half the man he used to be.

The silence was getting to be too loud. “You okay, Jas?” Lorna asked, but he didn’t even bother to turn around. He hadn’t acknowledged her since she’d come up. “Much going on out there?” she asked, unperturbed.

Finally, a response.

“Nothing much,” he said. “Nothing much going on anywhere anymore.”

“Bloody hell,” Harte sighed. “Cheer up, will you.”

“Why should I?”

“Because this time yesterday we all thought our number was up. We were trapped. We were completely fucked.”

“And this place is different because…?”

Harte couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“This place couldn’t be more different.”

“And you’re sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m not. Not yet, anyway. Way I see it, it’s just out of the frying pan, into the fire.”

“You think?” Lorna said, disagreeing strongly. “It’s way better than that. Way I see it, we’re safely away from the dead. This is somewhere we can live and breathe and walk outside and…”

“As long as we stay inside the castle walls.”

“Yes, but—”

“Look, I’m not saying this place isn’t better, I just don’t think it’s as good as you’re making out.”

“It’s as good as it gets for now, I think,” Hollis mumbled, but Jas still disagreed.

“They only came out for us today because the dead had frozen,” he said, talking to the others more than Hollis. “It was a particularly harsh frost. That’s not going to happen every day. They’re still trapped like we were.”

“Yes, but we only have to worry about the dead for a few more months,” Harte said. “Six months, that’s what we’ve always said. We’re almost halfway there now. It’ll get easier.”

“I’ve been hearing that kind of bullshit since day one,” Jas interrupted, sounding increasingly angry. “I was talking to that guy Kieran when we got here. He said he cleared that road down there when Jackson and Driver went out looking for us.”

“So?”

“So by the time we got back, it was blocked again, wasn’t it? They had to get the digger back out and clear it before we could even get close to this place. And that’s on a day when the conditions are in our favor.”

“Oh just have a drink,” Harte said, offering him a bottle of spirits. “Calm the fuck down.”

Jas took a swig, winced, then passed the bottle back. Lorna watched him, concerned. Harte came over and sat down next to her in a corner of the tower. It was cold under his backside, but the strong walls shielded them from the icy wind. As uncomfortable as it was out here, they’d had enough of being trapped indoors recently. Jas remained on the opposite side to the rest of them, staring out into space.

“What are you thinking?” Lorna asked him.

“I’m thinking how fucked-up everything still is,” he replied, his voice wavering, “and how little of it I still understand. I’m asking myself why I’m stuck here in a bloody castle with you lot, when this time last year I’d have been at home with Harj and the kids and…”

His voice broke and he didn’t finish his sentence, but it didn’t matter. The point had already been made. Being here tonight felt like a hollow victory for Jas. It depressed him to think this might be as good as his life was going to get. It still hurt too much to think about his life before the apocalypse in any great detail, but now, strangely, thinking about more recent times was becoming equally painful. Standing out here tonight reminded him of the endless hours he’d spent out on the balcony back at the flats, drinking beer, looking out over the dead crowds and discussing the rigors and practicalities of daily survival with Hollis, Stokes and the others. He’d felt like the king of the world back then, like he and the rest of them were in almost total control. Christ, how things had changed. The flats were lost now, and the hotel too, and Stokes, Webb and many of the others were dead. Hollis was just a shell of a man … and as for the dead? Well, those fuckers continued to fight for all they were worth. Their decaying flesh may have been weak, but their intent was still clear.

“I was just thinking,” he said, “how it feels like we’ve been here before.”

“I’ve never been here before,” Hollis said, mishearing him. Jas ignored him and continued speaking.

“Look down there,” he said, gesturing out over the castle wall, “and what do you see? I’ll tell you—a fucking huge crowd of dead bodies. Same as we saw when we looked out of the hotel windows every bloody morning. Same as we saw when we were back at the flats.”

“But this is different.” Lorna sighed. “Can’t you see? Look at the condition they’re in, Jas. Look at the state of them.”

“Look at the state of us,” he countered. “For fuck’s sake, there’s barely any of us left. Most of us are dead. Gordon, Ginnie, Martin, Webb, Ellie, Anita, Stokes … all gone.”

“But we’re still here,” she protested. “We’ve survived.”

“So far, yes.”

“And all the other people Driver found here.”

“What, all fifteen of them? Out of a population of something like sixty million people, theres only just over twenty of us left?”

“We don’t know that. There could be hundreds more scattered all over the country.”

“Hundreds more. Doesn’t change the fact that millions have died.”

“But this place is incredible,” Harte said. “It’s safe and it’s strong. They’ve got a decent level of supplies and—”

“Spare me the bullshit,” Jas interrupted.

“It’s not bullshit.”

“It is! We’ve heard it all before, again and again. Remember the early days back at the flats? You were walking around the place like the bloody cock of the roost, telling me how perfect it was, going on about how we were going to build this barrier to keep the bodies back, and how we’d do up the flats and make them inhabitable and—”

“And that’s exactly what we did,” Lorna said.

“Up to a point,” Jas continued. “I believed it, though. We all believed it. But it didn’t last. And when we got to that fucking hotel, it was the same again. Remember the first couple of days there? How we were swanning around playing football, checking out the gym equipment, talking about draining the swimming pool and all that?”

“I know what you’re saying, Jas, but nothing that happened there was because we did anything to—”