Aftermath

31

Eleven o’clock came and went. The waiting at the marina in Chadwick was interminable. As each minute passed by, the likelihood that they’d be returning to Cormansey without anyone else seemed to be increasing.

“So what happens if they don’t get here?” Donna asked, her anxiety mounting. “We can’t just leave them.”

“What else are we supposed to do?” Cooper replied. “We gave them a decent timescale with plenty of opportunity. We said we’d wait until midday and we will. If none of them are here by then, we leave.”

“Anything could have happened,” Harry said. “Absolutely anything.”

“My money’s on Jas,” Richard sighed. “He’s a troubled soul, that one. Scared to death of putting a foot outside the castle wall, he is. He’ll have been putting pressure on all of the rest of them not to leave, you mark my words. They’ll have agreed to stay there just to pacify him.”

“We’ve done what we said we would,” Cooper said. “We’ve given them more than enough time. There’s still the best part of an hour to go.”

“Like Cooper says, they’ve had plenty long enough. If they were coming, you’d have thought they’d have virtually followed you back. Maybe they just decided they didn’t want to go with us after all,” Michael suggested.

“Or someone suggested for them,” Richard said.

“Whatever the reason, it’s out of our hands now,” Cooper said. “Our priority is the people on Cormansey, and we need to get back to them with these supplies. Whether the others stay at the castle or not, they’ll be okay. One thing Jas was right about is the amount of stuff they’re going to be able to help themselves to once the dead are finished. It’s not the same back on the island. They need the stuff we’ve collected. We need it. This is about people’s lives.”

“I’ll be honest,” Richard said. “Whether we take anyone else back or not, I just want out of here now. This is a dead place. I’ve left too many bad memories here for my liking.”

* * *

Harte raced toward Chadwick, struggling to find his way into the town along mazelike roads which all looked the same. Although he’d spent more time than anyone else around theport and its surroundings, most of the time he’d been on foot and he’d never actually driven this route from the castle himself. He’d only been this way once before, and that was on the ill-fated looting expedition from which he’d failed to return. Everywhere looked depressingly featureless: a confusion of chaos, littered with debris and the remains of endless bodies. He knew he was against the clock but he’d screwed up and wasted fifteen minutes driving the wrong way before he’d realized, and that had just added to the pressure. He’d been desperately disorientated—almost completely lost—and it was only when he saw the names of a couple of nearby places he remembered hearing Jas, Kieran, and Jackson talk about that he knew he was finally heading in the right direction.

For what felt like mile after endless mile there was nothing but trees, hedges, and the occasional building on either side of the road. His speed was restricted by the appalling carnage all around, the remnants of a world untended for almost four months. Nothing was where it should be anymore. The roads themselves were becoming harder to distinguish: winding tracks covered in sludge-like decay, the curbs disappearing into the undergrowth. Exposed bones were becoming increasingly visible through the abhorrent mire, looking like the fallen branches of trees after a particularly violent storm.

After reaching the top of a hill, Harte caught a glimpse of the ocean in the distance. Twenty minutes to go, give or take, and only a few miles left to cover. The sight of the water gave him renewed hope that he’d get to the marina in time, and that he’d be able to tell Cooper and the others what had happened back at the castle. A bend in the road obscured his view momentarily, but within seconds he could see the ocean again, and this time he could see the town too. He accelerated, arms locked as he struggled to keep control down a steep incline and then, just before it disappeared below the treetops, he saw it. Perched back on top of the multistory car park was the helicopter.

Another long, straight climb and an equally long and frantic descent, and he’d finally reached a part of the road network he was sure he recognized. He’d definitely driven into Chadwick this way with Jas, Driver, and the others on that ice-cold, snow-covered morning just before he’d taken leave of them all and disappeared. Part of him wished he’d stayed where he’d been hiding in the apartment a little farther up the coast. Much as the isolation had been becoming increasingly hard to handle, staying there alone would have been infinitely easier than the brief return to Cheetham Castle he’d made yesterday. He couldn’t help thinking he was to blame for the chaos he’d left back there. If he hadn’t led the helicopter to them, they’d have been none the wiser. Maybe the people at the castle would have been okay without him. Perhaps they’d have lasted through the final days of the dead without incident as Jas had wanted. Sure, they wouldn’t have had an easy time of it, but maybe they’d have coped. They had so far—well, most of them, anyway. He thought he’d been doing the right thing, but all he’d done was put other people in danger.

The right thing for who? he asked himself as he struggled to keep the car moving at speed. Me or everyone else?

Harte swung the car around a tight corner, a little over a mile short of the very center of town now, maybe a mile and a half from the marina. His wheels skidded on a greasy sheen of frot and compacted decay, and for a heart-stopping moment the back end of the souped-up Fiesta threatened to slide out of control. Harte recovered and kept his foot down on the accelerator. And then, as he drove the wrong way around a roundabout to aim toward the marina, he saw something which made him accelerate again. He had to look twice, unsure if it was just his mind playing tricks.

It wasn’t.

The rotor blades on top of the helicopter were spinning.

He pressed down hard on the gas, gripping the steering wheel tighter as he plowed into and drove straight through two corpses. There were more bodies around here—a sure sign he was close. When he next looked up, he could see that the helicopter had taken off and was hovering above the car park roof.

Harte looked down at the road again and instinctively slammed on his brakes. One of the remaining dead had dragged itself into the middle of the tarmac. It was crawling along on its hands and knees, too weak now to stand up straight, and because of its low height he almost didn’t see it in time. He wrenched the wheel hard left, skidded around the crawling corpse, then threw the car back the other way.

Now the helicopter was definitely climbing. He could see it rising up above the rest of the buildings. A flash of light distracted him—the sun glinting off a window—and he looked down and saw another corpse in the road directly ahead. This one was upright, arms outstretched in a clichéd pose, brown rags of soiled clothing and saggy flaps of skin hanging off what was left of its emaciated frame like sticky robes. It was too late to avoid it, so he simply kept driving. The body dissolved on impact, showering the car with a gutful of wet yellow-black gore, and the foul distraction was such that Harte didn’t see a small pedestrian crossing in the middle of the road. He reacted late and hit a concrete traffic island at full speed, the impact with the front driver’s-side wheel hard enough to send the car spinning around through a complete 360-degree turn. Thrown back in his seat, his feet slipped off the pedals and the engine stalled. When he tried to start it again, it wouldn’t turn over, and the only engine noise he could still hear was that of the rapidly disappearing helicopter.

Frantically, Harte scrambled out of the car and ran, briefly glancing back to see a flat front tire, a badly damaged wing, and a flood of oil or power-steering fluid or something similar dribbling out along the road after him.

He ran through the streets as fast as he could, dividing his attention between weaving through the grotesque corpses and watching the helicopter overhead. It continued to hover above the town, and just for a second he allowed himself to believe that Richard and whoever else was up there with him might have seen him. Maybe they were going back to the castle again to see what had happened to the others? He glanced at his watch. It was past midday. His only option now was to try and get to the marina in time.

The roads along which he now sprinted were increasingly filled with dead flesh, drawn here over the last couple of days by the presence of the survivors and their activity in and around the marina. He moved so fast that they were of little threat and even lesser consequence. Some of them went to grab at him as he hurtled past, but most didn’t even realize he was there until he’d already gone. He darted down along the slope which led to the verr, still watching the helicopter as it moved out over the ocean, flying extraordinarily low now.

Harte broke right to avoid another cadaver, and ran straight into one of the still-smoldering dustbin fires which had first guided him here in the darkness a couple of nights ago. He knocked it over, sending sparks and ash spilling out over the cold ground, just managing to jump over the rolling dustbin. Up ahead now he could see the luxury cruiser where he’d first found the others. He pounded along the jetty and climbed on board but it was too late—there was no one here, just the remains of the meal he’d shared with them that night and a few more empty beer bottles. But wait, they’d never intended to leave the mainland in this vessel, he remembered. Cooper had told him they’d loaded all their supplies onto another boat elsewhere.

Back the other way.

It was hard to see much of anything through the mass of masts and the countless moored boats of various classes. He ran back toward the marina entrance, barely able to keep moving now, soaked with sweat, and then dragged himself out along another jetty. He ran out to the end of the narrow wooden decking which stretched beyond the last of the boats, and looked out over the water. He sank to his knees. Out there, rapidly disappearing toward the horizon, the helicopter gracefully drifted away. And below it on the water, a single boat.

What did he do now? He ruled out the most obvious two answers in order of impossibility: go back to the castle and try and salvage something from the chaos there, or get into a boat and try to find the island on his own. If he could just find a map and compass, then remember the name of the damn island, then teach himself to navigate, then learn how to sail a bloody boat …

Who was he kidding? Everything was completely fucked. His best option—probably the only real option remaining—was to either go back to the cruiser or the flat he’d previously occupied, lock the fucking door behind him, and never take a single step outside again.

“Harte, what the hell is going on?” a voice shouted from out of nowhere. He scrambled back to his feet, then spun around and saw Michael standing at the other end of the jetty.