Disintegration

43

Almost eleven o’clock. Gordon, Ginnie, Lorna, and Caron were still unloading and sorting supplies from the bus. They were working deliberately slow, dragging out the job to keep themselves occupied and fill their empty day.

“Was there really any point in bringing back this much pickle?” Ginnie asked, looking down her nose through half-moon glasses at the three trays of sandwich pickle Lorna had just carried inside. “Horrible stuff.”

“One day,” Lorna replied, sweating and breathless with effort, “you might be grateful for that. And like I keeping saying, love, if there was something special you wanted bringing back, you should have got off your backside and gone out there with us, shouldn’t you?”

“I’ll eat it,” Gordon said unhelpfully, ripping open the packaging, picking up a jar and studying the label. “I love this stuff. I could live on it.”

“You might have to,” she grumbled.

“Just the smell of it makes me feel sick,” Ginnie continued to complain. “Makes me want to throw up. You know, I used to have a friend who—”

“We should all be thankful for what we’ve got and for the fact we’re here at all,” Caron interrupted, still working. “It’s funny how perspectives change, isn’t it? A couple of days ago, Ginnie, you’d probably have killed to get your hands on a jar of pickle, no matter how ill it made you feel. We need to remember that we—”

She stopped talking. The others looked at her expectantly.

“Remember what?” Lorna asked.

“Shh…” she hissed. “Listen. They’re back.”

In the distance they could hear an engine. Disagreements, differences, and pointless arguments over pickle were forgotten in an instant as they all dropped what they were doing and ran across the central courtyard and through to reception. They burst out of the front door and onto the car park. Hollis and Martin were already there, scanning the skies. Amir ran toward them from the other side of the building.

“No use looking up there,” he panted. “That’s no helicopter.”

“What?” grunted Hollis. His ear was so bad that he was having trouble hearing anything.

“It’s on the ground,” he explained, “and it’s moving away from us.”

The entire group turned around as Jas came thundering out of the hotel.

“They’ve taken my bike,” he shouted. “Those little bastards have taken my bike!”

* * *

Sean weaved through the staggering corpses which hurled themselves at him from all directions. The grassy ground beneath his wheels was dry but uneven, and a deceptively steep slope away from the hotel made it even harder for him to keep control of the powerful bike. He didn’t dare do anything but aim for the gate in the farthest corner of the field and accelerate hard. Webb held on tight behind him, his arms wrapped around Sean’s waist, feeling dangerously exposed. He looked up and saw through the confusion that they were almost there. The gate was open, just as Sean said it would be. Martin had left it like that to make it as easy as possible for the dead to find their way through this field and onto the golf course. He tightened his grip on Sean as the bike powered through the opening, leaving the ground momentarily, then thumping back down onto the tarmac. Almost immediately a sharp left turn loomed. Sean dipped the bike over to such a sickening extent that Webb thought they’d never recover from the turn. He squeezed his eyes shut, held on, and waited for an impact which never came. To his amazement they were still moving.

Sean drove around in a large loop, bypassing the blocked-off road junction and eventually rejoining the route to Bromwell which they’d followed yesterday. They’d already decided on today’s destination: the bowling alley alongside the supermarket they’d looted. The journey was faster this morning; despite the fact that there were many more bodies around than had been there previously, it was far easier to steer the bike through and around the carnage than the bus. The dead had no doubt been attracted by the noise they’d made the day before, Sean decided. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. He knew how to deal with them now. They were no longer the threat he’d allowed himself to believe they were, just barely coordinated, germ-infested, vacuous bags of flesh and bone.

They raced down the main Bromwell high street, passing Amir’s dilapidated restaurant and various other insignificant sights which had been pointed out yesterday. Webb—who finally felt brave enough to lift his head and look up—actually found himself silently thanking the others for once. Their day trip out in their lumbering, beaten-up double-decker bus had cleared the way for him and Sean today. The bus had blundered through scores of bodies and had forced masses of wreckage up out of the way leaving a relatively clear, yet still bloody and treacherous path through the mayhem. Up and over the bridge which spanned the flesh-filled canal—which seemed to be full of even more unfortunate corpses than it had been before—past the front of the supermarket and they were there. Sean stopped the bike outside the glass-fronted bowling complex.

“What now?” he asked, anxiously watching a group of seven bodies which had just turned around and were moving toward them. He glanced over his shoulder and saw at least double that number were coming up from behind. Damn corpses must have dragged themselves up here to check out the supermarket after we left yesterday, he thought. He suddenly felt nervous and uneasy, but he didn’t dare let Webb see.

“Go around the back,” Webb answered, his experience of both dealing with the dead and breaking and entering again proving invaluable. “there probably won’t be as many of them there. It’ll make it easier when we leave too.”

Sean immediately did as he was instructed, swerving around the closest of the corpses and sticking a foot out to trip up the dumb creature. He turned right down the side of the building, focusing on avoiding another pocket of cadavers which had hauled themselves out from behind the building next door. They were everywhere. Surely they couldn’t all be here as a result of the noise they’d made yesterday, could they? Momentarily preoccupied with the dead, Sean jumped with surprise when Webb shook his shoulder.

“Stop!” he yelled over the noise of the engine. “Turn around. Fire door.”

Sean glanced over his shoulder, then stopped. Webb slid off the back of the bike and ran toward a dark blue fire exit halfway down the side of the redbrick building. The door was wedged open by a single skeletal arm which jutted up from the ground as if its dead owner was waiting to have a question answered. Insects gorged on its rotting fingertips, buzzing away as he yanked the door open and the arm flopped down. Sean immediately drove into the darkness, quickly abandoning the bike and running back to shove the body out of the way. Once they were both inside Webb pulled the door shut with a reassuring thump, plunging the entire building into darkness.

“Get a light on!” he screamed, immediately aware of sounds of movement somewhere near.

Sean panicked. “What light?”

“The bike! Use the fucking bike!”

Sean ran back toward the motorbike but was knocked off his feet by a corpse which, more through luck than judgment, smacked into him head-on. He recoiled at the appalling stench which immediately filled his nostrils, then tripped as the creature’s unsteady head rocked back with the impact, then fell forward again, butting him in the eye. The sudden dagger-sharp pain was intense and he collapsed, dragging the body down with him.

“You all right, mate?” Webb yelled. “Where are you?”

“I’m okay,” Sean hissed through clenched teeth, the sudden shock and pain now beginning to fade, “I’ve got it.” Lying on his back, he reached up and wrapped his gloved hand around the body’s throat, squeezing as hard as he could. He felt decaying skin and gristle give way as the pressure he exerted increased. Tighter and tighter he squeezed, putrefied flesh dribbling out through the gaps between his fingers, until the body stopped thrashing and slumped motionless on top of him. Webb managed to pick up the bike and turn on the headlamp, filling their corner of the building with light.

“Nice one!” he laughed as he watched Sean pick himself back up and kick the cadaver away to one side. “You’re starting to get the hang of this!”

Sean said nothing. He brushed himself down as he looked around, shaking his head to clear the numbness which remained from his assailant’s lucky head butt. His eyes were slowly becoming accustomed to the low light levels indoors. Some sunlight was seeping inside through the glazed front of the building, but most of the bowling alley remained disappointingly gloomy and dark. He’d hadn’t expected any different, but as they’d approached it had been hard not to remember this place as it had been when he’d last visited. He’d been here on a team building event with the design company he’d worked for on the Friday night before everyone had died. The place had been full of noise, light, and people back then. Hard to believe that everyone he’d been there with was now dead … Get a grip, he ordered himself, feeling uncomfortable, long-supressed emotions beginning to rise.

“Looks like the place was empty,” Webb shouted to him from the other side of the bowling lanes. “Can only find this one.”

Sean moved forward to get a better view. Webb was dragging the body of a female cleaner behind him by its hair. Poor cow didn’t look like she’d been any older than twenty when she’d died. The corpse’s light blue pinafore, gray T-shirt, and jeans were stained with dribbles of blood, pus, and Christ alone knew what else. Its arms and legs thrashed about furiously as Webb bumped it down three low steps toward him. A clump of scalp came away from its skull, leaving him holding just a handful of greasy hair and skin. The body tried to get up but he was having none of it.

“Sorry, darling,” Webb said as he put his arms around its emaciated waist, “your cleaning days are over.” With that he swung the corpse around, clouting its head hard against a concrete pillar, shattering its skull and showering the ground with what was left of its brain. Disinterested, he dropped it like it was an empty beer can and walked away, looking for food and other distractions.

For a moment Sean stood and stared into the dead girl’s face which, at this angle and in this light, appeared surprisingly untroubled by all that had happened to her. Poor bitch, he thought to himself sadly. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t deserve that. He glanced back over his shoulder at the carcass which had attacked him just minutes earlier, then looked down at the girl at his feet again. He nudged her chin with his boot, hard enough to make her head roll and reveal the other side of her face, a bloody mass of fetid, blistered skin and dribbles of decay. Get a grip, he said to himself again, angry that he’d allowed himself to feel something for the grotesque corpse. Can’t afford to think like that anymore. Doesn’t matter who or what any of these things used to be, they’re not human now.

* * *

The hours which followed were unexpectedly surreal. Sean continued to feel a bizarre mix of emotions—nervous, desperate, and scared one minute, elated and free the next. After collecting food and drink by smashing open vending machines—and disturbing a nest of squealing, fat, overfed rats in the process—Webb had suggested they try bowling. It didn’t last long. The electronic scoreboards remained black and unlit and when the pins and the balls disappeared over the precipice at the end of the lanes, they never returned. But, for just a few snatched moments at a time, Sean was able to close his eyes and recall how everything used to feel and sound: the reassuringly familiar rumble of the heavy balls rolling down the alley filling the vast room, followed by the clatter and bang of the pins being knocked down.

They gave up on bowling when all the balls had disappeared, neither man relishing the prospect of disappearing down into the labyrinthine bowels of the alley to retrieve them. Instead they cleared a space in the carpeted area where rows of blank-faced arcade machines stood and then, between the two of them, dragged a pool table nearer to the tall windows at the front of the building. As the sun began to sink toward the horizon, and under the vacant but watchful gaze of several hundred dead faces pressed hard against the glass, they played for as long as they were able, finally accepting that it was time to return to the hotel when the light had all but completely gone.

“We could stay here, you know,” Sean had suggested as they prepared to leave. “We don’t have to go back.”

“Nah,” Webb had quickly replied. “I want my bed and my beer. We can come back tomorrow.”

“We can go anywhere we bloody well want to tomorrow,” Sean said as he climbed onto the motorbike, already planning his next escape. He wasn’t looking forward to facing the bunch of miserable fuckers who would be waiting for them at the hotel. In many ways they worried him more than the crowds of grotesque cadavers swarming across the countryside. It didn’t matter, he decided. If they gave him any trouble he’d just turn around and leave.

What was left of the world was his for the taking.