Aftermath

some new hair product Zoe had long since forgotten about. Christ, she’d had such a laugh when she’d last been here. Trish had been such a gullible cow, she remembered. She used to believe anything anyone told her. She’d been babbling constantly about how the shampoo she used was better than the one being advertised on the hoarding, because 72 percent of women said they preferred it according to what it said on the bottle. Silly sod had always been suckered in by adverts, but she’d never have it. It’s science, she kept trying to convince them, science and statistics. You can’t argue with facts!

The billboard advert was still there—just—but it had faded quite badly. The edges had curled, and one vertical strip of paper had been torn away, half of the model’s face now missing. Got to try and forget about all that now, she told herself. It’s all gone. Zoe shook her head and tried to look anywhere but at the street she’d walked along with her friends that last Saturday afternoon. It was covered with the remains of dead people now—some of the people she’d walked alongside that day, perhaps—and some of them were still moving ever so slowly forward. Everything you remember is gone, and you’re never going to get it back again.

What was left of the population of Chadwick caused Harry little concern this morning. They were too slow and too badly decayed to pose any real threat anymore. Beyond what looked like a low hillock formed entirely of body parts—the remains of the crowd which had been drawn to the marina by the sounds of the living—he could see the road which would take them down to the edge of the water. He swerved around what was left of the corpses and continued until he was as close as he could get to where the Duchess was moored. At the sound of the approaching engine, Richard appeared on the jetty.

Harry stopped and his frightened, bewildered passengers piled out.

“Well done, mate,” Richard said, shaking Harry’s hand. He could immediately tell from Harry’s expression and his less than enthusiastic response that all was not well. “Problem?”

“This isn’t everyone,” he said. “We got in okay, got this lot loaded into the truck, then it all went shit-shaped. There was nothing I could do. They were firing at us. I had to get out.”

Richard looked anxiously along the expectant faces which had gathered on the jetty. “Michael?”

Harry shook his head. “Don’t know what happened to him. Harte too. I lost the pair of them.”

The two men stood and stared at each other in silence for a moment longer, both thinking the same thing.

“We talked about this,” Richard said. “We knew there was a chance it might happen.”

“I know that, but it doesn’t make it any easier, does it?”

“What do we do now?” Zoe asked. Harry took her arm and pointed out their boat.

“Get everything and everybody loaded up onto the Duchess.”

“What about…?” she started to ask, not bothering to finish her obvious question.

“What do you think?” Harry asked Richard. “We can’t just give up on them and ship out.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Richard said, “but we both know that’s exactly what we have to do. It’s what we agreed last night. It’s what we all agreed.”

“I know, but—”

“But nothing. We agreed.”

Harry knew he was right. “Do me a favor before we ship out, though,” he said hopefully.

“What?”

“One last flyover. Just a quick look. It’s the least we owe Emma.”

Richard thought carefully before answering.

“Okay. It’ll be dawn in a few more hours. We’ll wait until the light breaks.”

48

Over the months the castle had been completely encircled with dead flesh. The thought of having to hike back across it had filled both Michael and Harte with dread, but the reality had proved to be less of an ordeal than they’d expected, certainly no worse than what they’d just been through underneath the castle. That had actually proved to be good preparation for trudging through the ankle-deep, frost-encrusted, once-human slime outside. It was somehow easier the second time around.

They felt strangely invisible—a good thing if Jas did decide to come looking for them. In the low light of early morning, the living were hard to distinguish from the decayed remains they were walking through. And they were all still soaked with decay from their castle escape too. All they needed to do, should Jas or any of his cronies appear, was stand still and wait until they disappeared again.

Michael looked back over his shoulder at the castle they’d somehow managed to escape from, then at the ragtag group of people who were following him, picking their way through the carnage. He could tell a lot about each of them by the way they were dealing with what they were walking through tonight. Harte and Kieran ere stomping through the slime, exhausted and just desperate to get across to the other side in the shortest time possible. Howard was constantly grumbling. Seriously unfit, he spent more time looking for a dog he’d told Michael he’d lost than he did trying to get away from the remains of the dead. He placed the two women at opposite extremes. Caron was infuriating; the slowest of all, she was constantly moaning about the dirt under her nails and asking how long they had left to go, like an irritating kid stuck in the back seat of the family car. Lorna, on the other hand, was strong and unflappable and kept Caron in check. She was clearly tough, so much so that he wouldn’t have fancied his chances against her in a fistfight.

Michael caught her eye, then looked away. He turned back when he realized she’d stopped. Something had caught her attention. Her head was raised and she remained perfectly still, like an animal sniffing the air for a scent.

“Problem?” he asked.

“Don’t think so.”

“What, then?”

“See that house over there?”

Michael squinted into the dark. It took him a few seconds to spot the building she was referring to. In the predawn gloom, it was just another dark shape among many. He was soon able to make out its walls and roof. Harte was too.

“I see it,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

“Oh, there’s no problem,” she casually replied. “There’s a light on in one of the windows, that’s all.”

*   *   *

Suddenly revitalized, the group moved at speed toward the house in the distance. The nearer they got, the clearer the light in the downstairs window became.

Caron was still complaining as they approached it.

“These bloody bodies,” she said. “Are we ever going to get away from them? You said we only had to walk a mile or so and we’d be through them.”

Michael stopped and looked down at his feet, thinking about what she’d just said. “We are through them.”

“But how can we be? There are still loads of them around—look.”

She was right, there was still an unexpectedly high number of corpses nearby. More to the point, most of them were on their feet, and some were still moving—an indication that, perhaps, these creatures had never made it as far as the crowd around the castle. The ground they were now walking over was clear, and they’d long since made it through most of the sea of decay which had surrounded the castle.

“This is something else, isn’t it?” Lorna said, clearly coming to the same conclusion as Michael. “These bodies are here because of whatever’s in that house.”

She star running toward the building. Harte called for her to be careful, but she wasn’t listening. The front lawn was overgrown, and the windows were covered in thick curtains of cobwebs and dust. Before she’d made it even halfway down the garden path, the front door opened inwards.

“Hello, you,” said Hollis.