Aftermath

58

The noise coming from the burning building they were moving away from was astonishing. Frequent explosions continued to ring out, making the otherwise silent town sound like a battlefield. Although it was dry today, the fierce wind continued to blow, whipping off the sea now, gusting along the streets and fanning the flames.

There were more bodies coming toward them. Despite all they’d seen over the last day, there was still a moment of instinctive, nervous hesitation whenever they were this close to any of the dead—the split-second fear of attack—but it was clear that the attention of these corpses was now completely focused elsewhere. They weren’t interested in the living any longer, probably weren’t even aware they were there. The fire in the near distance was acting like a call to the faithful and the longer it burns, Harte thought to himself, the more of them will be drawn away from the rest of town. In a bizarre way, it felt like they’d begun cleansing Chadwick.

“Look at that,” Hollis said. Harte immediately turned around, and what he saw took him by surprise. They’d reached a modern-looking office block, the front of which was almost completely made up of huge panes of glass, most of which were now filled with bodies. A huge mass of dead workers who’d been trapped in the building since September were now crowding against the glass, unable to go anywhere but still desperately trying to get closer to the distant flames. Even from here the blaze was clearly visible, burning bright against the muted colors of everything else. Harte stopped and watched them watching the fire. When another explosion echoed around the town, the dead became even more animated and began hammering against the window to get out. Like the bodies beneath the castle, these people had been sheltered from the worst of the elements by virtue of the fact they’d died indoors, and their decay appeared much less advanced than many of those left out on the streets. Harte caught his breath when one of the corpses stumbled forward and clattered against the other side of a glass door next to where he was standing. Even now his instinctive reaction was either to run or fight, and it took great effort for him to maintain control and not do either. The corpse flinched again, reacting to another flash of flame, and Harte saw that it still had a name badge clipped to the pocket of its crusted, gore-streaked shirt. Ryan Fleming: Head of Research. And like Michelle Bright—the corpse of the nurse under the castle—and Jenna Walker, the young, dead chemist whose home they’d just torched, Ryan Fleming suddenly mattered.

Apart from Kieran, the others had all continued walking. The street was filling with drifting smoke, making it increasingly difficult to differentiate between the movements of the living and the dead.

“What the hell are you dog?” Kieran asked.

“Letting them out,” Harte shouted back at him and then, without stopping to consider the consequences, he forced the door to the building open. He guided Ryan Fleming’s dishevelled shell out onto the street, still half-expecting it to turn on him and attack, but it didn’t. It simply lifted its tired, diseased head to look up at the light in the distance, then lethargically walked away in the general direction of the fire. He watched it go, and was gently pushed away to the side as more corpses followed and began to spill out of the office building, clumsily barging past him.

“What’s the point of doing that?” Kieran asked.

“Makes me feel better,” he replied with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.

In the next property along—a coffee shop—he could see more of them now, tripping over the tables and chairs where they’d drunk their last coffees, colliding with the bodies of the last people they’d seen and spoken to; the last human interactions they’d had before they’d died. Harte released them all. And in the building next to the coffee shop there were even more corpses pawing to get out. In a gym a short distance further down the street, crowds of the dead clamored around the dirty windows, stumbling over dust- and cobweb-covered exercise equipment to get closer to the light. Even though he’d seen thousands of them before, Harte continued to be distracted by their grotesque appearance. Several of them were still dressed in figure-hugging Lycra outfits. Their heavily stained exercise clothing still clung to their figures, but their shapes had altered dramatically since they’d first put on their outfits months earlier, stretching and bulging with decay. Some of them were imprisoned by the fitness machines they’d been using at the moment of death. He could see at least two of them who’d died midpress and who were now pinned down by bars and weights. Keen to catch up with the others who had now disappeared out of sight around a corner, Harte wedged the door open, then hurried after them. There were three steps down onto the street. He looked back as the dead began to stumble out after him, some of them losing their footing and falling, then being trampled by others before picking themselves up again and carrying on.

Kieran had waited for him. “Do you think they know what they’re doing?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” Harte admitted. “But like I say, it makes me feel better.”

The two men ran on. Kieran stepped to one side to let another rancid corpse crawl past. Behind them now the street was full of corpses disappearing into the ever-increasing clouds of smoke.

* * *

Michael glanced over his shoulder but he couldn’t see Kieran or Harte. No matter. They all knew where they were supposed to be heading. He recognized the street they were walking along now. Over to his right was the road which led to the baby store, and up ahead was the supermarket Donna, Richard, and Cooper had looted on their first day back on the mainland. That felt like it had been weeks ago now. He looked up into the narrow strip of sky visible between the roofs of the buildings on either side of the road as he walked, wishing he could see the helicopter, willing it here. The sky was a beautiful deep blue this morning, but it was increasingly hard to see through the clouds of smoke which were being blown in their direction.

“Where the hell did you come from?” he heard Howard say. He walked into the back of Lorna who’d stopped suddenly. Michael wafted smoke out of his eyes to see.

“Same place as you, you fucking idiot,” a voice he didn’t know replied.

“Then why don’t you fuck off back there again, Jas,” Lorna shouted angrily. Michael could see more clearly now. There were two men he didn’t recognize standing in the street directly ahead of them. One of them, Jas he presumed, was carrying a rifle. He moved forward menacingly. Caron, Howard, and Hollis moved away. The other man held back.

“Why did you do it?” Jas demanded. “You idiots, you fucked everything up.”

“We fucked everything up?” Lorna said, pushing her way to the front of the group again. “Last time I checked, you were the one causing all the grief. You were the one who tried to keep us locked up. You’re the one who killed Jackson.”

There was a hint of emotion in Jas’s face. A momentary flicker.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said, sounding marginally less aggressive. “He fell on his knife.”

“And you expect us to believe that?”

“I don’t really care what you believe. I’m not interested.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Would somebody tell me what the hell is going on?” Michael said. “Who are these jokers?”

“This is Jas,” Lorna replied, confirming his suspicions and almost having to force herself to spit out his name. “And this other useless strip of piss is Mark Ainsworth.”

Another explosion came from the direction of the burning apartment block, this time so loud and violent that Michael felt the ground shake beneath his feet.

“So where are your playmates, Jas?” Caron asked, being deliberately antagonistic. “Are you two all on your own now? Have they all abandoned you?”

She didn’t realize how close to the truth she was.

“They’ve gone, useless bastards,” Jas admitted before adding, “and it looks like they’ve taken your places on the last boat out to your precious bloody island.”

Michael reeled from what he’d just heard. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. It was bad enough that he was left stranded here, but the thought that this callous, murdering wanker’s associates—probably the same fuckers who were responsible for all the grief back at the castle earlier, putting everyone’s lives in danger made it back to Cormansey when he hadn’t was unbearable. He pushed his way through the others and lunged at Jas, taking him by surprise. He grabbed him by the collar and smacked him up against the window of a health food shop. Inside, a corpse immediately began hammering at the glass to be set free. For a moment Jas seemed more concerned by the dead body behind him than by Michael.

“Was that all your doing down at the marina?” Michael demanded. “Did you wreck all the boats?”

“So what if I did?”

Michael didn’t have a chance to speak again. Jas was too strong for him. Powerfully built and fired-up, he forced Michael back, shoved him to the ground, and aimed the rifle into his face.

“Don’t be stupid, Jas,” Lorna yelled, trying to pull him away. Michael scrambled back up onto his feet, but Jas came at him again, this time kicking his legs out from under him. He hit the ground hard, flat on his back, all the air knocked out of him. Lorna forced herself between the two men as Jas went for him a third time.

“Stop, Jas,” Ainsworth said, but his words had no effect.

“Leave him,” Lorna ordered. “You stupid bastard, Jas. He’s got a kid waiting to be born on that island. You’ve taken away his last chance of getting back there.”

“He’s better off here,” Jas replied as Ainsworth tried to pull him away. “The kid’s as good as dead, anyway.”

Michael groaned with anger and pain and stood back up. Lorna blocked him, stopping him from getting any closer.

A corpse brushed past Jas. He tried to load the rifle but his hands were shaking. Instead he swung it around and clubbed the stumbling body away.

“You all think I’m some kind of villain,” he said, trying again to load and now looking around at the frightened faces staring back at him—people he’d called friends at one time or other before now. “I’m not. I didn’t want for any of this to happen. Contrary to what you might think, I didn’t kill Jackson either, I swear…”

He stopped talking when the air was filled with another thunderous noise. For a second several of them thought it might be the helicopter returning, but it was quickly clear that this was something else entirely. Howard took a few steps back toward the main street, sidestepping several more cadavers, and saw that a billowing cloud of dust and smoke was rolling steadily toward them. The air felt hot and dry. Had part of the apartment building collapsed? It was impossible to tell, but the flames were spreading fast. Through the haze he could see more of the dead continuing to stagger forward, the farthest advanced of them catching fire long before they reached the burning apartments.

Harte and Kieran came running out of the chaos toward him. “We need to get out of here,” Harte shouted, wiping tears from his stinging eyes. “The whole bloody town’s going to go up in flames.”

He stopped speaking when he saw the expression on Howard&x2019;s face.

“Harte…” Howard started to say.

“What is it?” Harte demanded. He continued around the corner and saw Jas. Jas saw him too, and immediately raised the rifle and aimed it at him. And then Kieran appeared, and Harte was immediately forgotten. Jas directed the full force of his anger at him instead.

“You sold me out, you fucker!” he screamed, charging into Kieran and sending him flying. He aimed the rifle at him and Kieran staggered back, tripping on the curb and landing on his backside.

“You were wrong, Jas,” he said, barely able to get the words out.

“Jesus,” Lorna shouted, “is there anyone you’re not pissed off with? Doesn’t that tell you something? Like, that you might be the one who’s got this wrong?”

Jas glared at her, but was distracted as another random body collided with him. He recoiled, shoving the foul thing away. It continued to try and move toward him, trying to get to the fire in the distance, but Jas misinterpreted its actions as an attack. He forced the rifle up into the creatures gaping mouth and fired, splattering what was left of its brains over the pavement in a firework-like shower of dark brown gore. He spun around and saw another cadaver walking listlessly toward him, and fired again. This time he hit the cadaver in the right shoulder. It collapsed, but immediately tried to drag itself forward with its one remaining good arm. He clubbed the back of its head with the butt of his rifle.

“Jas, stop!” Harte shouted, but his words had no effect.

“They’re coming!” he screamed, the panic in his voice now clearly evident. The collapsing building had clearly attracted the attention of many more of the creatures, and another surge of dead flesh was now advancing toward them.

“They might be coming,” Harte said, still trying to stop him, “but they’re not coming for you, you idiot. Haven’t you worked it out yet? The dead aren’t our enemy. They’re as scared and as lost as we are.”

Jas spun around again. Another corpse, and another shot to the face. This time Ainsworth tried to stop him, grabbing the barrel of the rifle. In Jas’s panic and confusion, his trigger finger tightened and he fired. Ainsworth was blown backward. He collided with a corpse, then dropped to the ground, a bloody gaping hole in his chest.

“What the hell have you done?” Lorna demanded, standing over Ainsworth’s twitching body, barely able to comprehend what had just happened. Wisps of smoke rose from around the edges of his wound. She didn’t need to get any closer to know he was dead. She looked up and saw the others moving farther away from Jas, who was reloading the rifle with another handful of shells from his pocket. “What happened to you, Jas?”

“The last three months happened,” he replied, still looking for his next target. He aimed and fired at another cadaver, then another and another … The rest of the living scattered as he reloaded again, regrouping around the back of a garbage truc. Harte tried to call to Lorna from the truck, but she wasn’t listening. She was still crouched next to Ainsworth’s lifeless body. Jas fired at yet another cadaver.

“The last three months have fucked us all up,” she said, “but I thought you were better than this. It didn’t have to be this way. You, me, the dead … we’re all victims, you know. It’s not about us versus them or you versus me, it’s just about us all trying to survive.”

“I know that,” he said, lowering the rifle momentarily. “I know that better than anyone. I’ve been trying to tell you, you won’t survive on that island, it’s a dead end. You should stay here. You should stay here with me.”

Lorna stood up and walked over, terrified that at any moment he was going to lift his weapon and start firing again, but still feeling a need to try and talk to him. She thought he sounded desperate. She glanced back along the street, and in the distance she could see the glow of the flames. The warm wind continued to gust toward them, fanning the fire and helping it spread with remarkable speed.

“We have to go,” she said, gently putting her hand on his arm. “It’s not safe here.”

His voice cracked. “It’s not safe anywhere. Don’t go to the island, Lorna. Please don’t.”

He pushed her away, his sudden, unexpected movement taking her by surprise, and then fired another shot into the smoke. She saw a body go down, visible only when it hit the ground.

“I know you’re scared,” she said, hiding behind him now as yet more of the dead approached in greater numbers, “and I don’t pretend to understand why you did what you did, but your best chance is to come with us now and try to get to Cormansey. There’s no future for any of us here, but there might still be on the island.”

“You think?” he said, taking aim again. “You all think I killed Jackson. You know I killed Ainsworth. But I didn’t mean for any of it to happen…”

“I know that, and we can put it behind us. It might be a struggle on the island, but—”

“I’m not going,” he said abruptly. He fired once more.

“But this is madness. Come on, Jas, you’re confused. Think about Michael … he’s going to be a dad. What would you be doing if your kids were still alive? Would you have wanted them to stay here, or would you have wanted them to go to the island?”

Jas instinctively pressed his palm to his chest, feeling for the outline of his precious wallet under several layers of clothing. But then another group of bodies stumbled into view and he tried to fire again. The rifle was empty. Lorna tried to pull him away but he shrugged her off and marched toward the nearest corpse and clubbed it to the ground. Then another. Then another. And now he was surrounded. The slow trickle of bodies emerging had become an unsteady flood, more and more of them approaching all the time, attracted both by the distant flames and Jas’s bluster.

Once more Lorna tried to pull him back but he just pushed her away, desperate to destroy every last one of the foul, disease-ridden cadavers which now seemed to be converging on him. There were scores of them everywhere he looked now: some limping, some crawling, some barely moving at all. Some were still nearly recognizable as people, others were little more than gelatinous heaps of decay that were somehow still able to function. Jas felt his legs weaken. He was surrounded, more of them approaching than he could deal with alone. He glanced back over his shoulder, looking for help, but even more bodies had sealed him off, preventing him from seeing Lorna now. She could still see him—just—and was poised to run deeper into the crowd to try and drag him away when Harte grabbed her from behind and pulled her to safety behind the garbage truck.

“Leave him,” he said.

“We can’t…”

“We can. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

He stood back and she saw that Hollis was slumped on the floor, resting up against a grubby shop window. His clothes were soaked with blood. Lorna couldn’t process what she was seeing. She tried to talk, but no words came out. Caron was sitting by Hollis’s side, gently stroking his arm. She stood up and held Lorna.

“He got caught in the shooting,” she explained. “We didn’t even realize he’d been hit…”

Lorna crouched down next to Hollis. He looked up at her, his filthy face streaked with tears. There was blood on his lips.

“I know I don’t look so good these days,” he said, his voice hard to hear, “but I didn’t think Jas would mistake me for one of them.”

“Oh, Greg…” she said.

“You lot go on,” he mumbled, blood bubbling. “I’ll never make it.”

“He’s right,” Harte said. “We need to go.”

“What’s the point?” Lorna demanded, sobbing. The tears carved clean lines through the dirt and soot on her cheeks. “Let’s face it, we’re fucked.”

“Bloody hell,” Hollis said, forcing a grin. “Things must be bad if you reckon we’re fucked.”

“Just being realistic, that’s all.”

“Realistic!” Harte protested. “Christ, Lor, we’ve spent three months trying to avoid the walking dead, hiding in castles and hotels and the like, and you decide today’s the day to start talking about being realistic!”

“He’s got a point,” Kieran agreed.

“But we can’t just leave Hollis…”

“Yes, you can,” Hollis said. “Go, Lorna. Get out of here.”

“No…”

Hollis managed to lift his head slightly and looked up at Harte, who acknowledged his friend.

“Come on,” Harte said, gently picking Lorna up. She shook him off, wanting to say good-bye to Hollis, but she realized it was too late. She’d seen enough death to know there was no life left in his tired, glassy eyes.

Harte peered out around the front of the garbage truck. There were more corpses now—an incalculable number. The mass of dead bodies still trudging down the street toward the fire in the distance was undiminished, an unstoppable thick brown river of decay now. There was no sign of Jas; he’d long since been swallowed up. The bulk of the corpses seemed to be coming from the direction of the station, and the road to the car park was still relatively clear.

“What do you reckon?” Howard asked.

“Sprint for the car park,” he replied. “It’s our only option. Got to get up there and hope Richard turns up before the whole bloody town burns down.”

They grouped together, ready to move.

“Wait,” Caron said, looking around. “Where’s Michael?”