Aftermath

47

When Harry arrived back in Chadwick, he was relieved to see the silhouette of the helicopter perched on top of the multistory car park. He drove the truck along increasingly familiar roads toward the marina. His passengers remained almost completely silent.

Zoe, sitting up front between Harry and Bob, stared in disbelief at the dead world they were traveling through, a stream of tears rolling down her cheeks. She knew Chadwick well—she’d had digs in the town since starting at university—and she could make out more than enough of it tonight to be able to appreciate the full extent of its remarkable deterioration. Being back in Chadwick hurt.

She hadn’t left the confines of the castle since the rescue of the others from the hotel near Bromwell. On that first morning when everyone else had died, she’d been stopping at the house of a friend who’d lived a couple of miles from the castle, and this was the first time she’d been back anywhere near home since her nightmare had begun. She’d been too scared to try getting back to her flat back then, and so had remained in her friend Sally’s house, with only Sally’s corpse for company. She’d tried phoning family and other friends tirelessly, but no one had answered and then the line had stopped connecting, and then her mobile signal had died. She’d stayed where she was for a while—unaware that there were other survivors so close—until she’d woken up one morning and found dead Sally standing over her. She’d thrown the body of her dead friend out of her own home and barricaded herself in for weeks until she’d heard Kieran and Jackson out looting and tracked them back to the castle.

It had been obvious from the very beginning that there would have been no point trying to get home because all that Zoe would have found would have been the bodies of her loved ones, but that didn’t stop her suddenly feeling as guilty as hell today.

Zoe remembered back to the Saturday before all of this had begun. She’d been to the gym first thing, and had then met up with Sally and Trish, a friend from uni. Sally had picked her up in her cool little red ugeot, and they’d parked in the multistory where the helicopter had landed today. The three of them had walked through town together to the marina where they’d had lunch in one of the waterfront cafés. They’d spent the whole afternoon talking about nothing—stuff so trivial and inconsequential that she couldn’t even begin to remember any of it now. Nothing had mattered back then. The biggest stresses in her life had been getting her assignments finished, turning up to lectures on time, and trying to make her overdraft last until the next installment of her student loan came in.

The truck turned a familiar corner. On the opposite side of the road to them now was a billboard advertising 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.”