Disintegration

45

“I just can’t believe you’d be so damn stupid,” Jas ranted as Sean and Webb were frog-marched into the Steelbrooke Suite. “What the hell did you think you were doing? Are you out of your fucking minds?”

“Fuck you,” Sean mumbled, his jaw still stinging and his head spinning with pain. One of his teeth felt loose and he could taste blood in his mouth. He cowered back as Jas lunged for him again.

“Stop it!” Caron screamed, lowering her voice immediately when she realized how unintentionally loud she’d been. “For Christ’s sake, please stop. We’ve got enough to worry about now without you beating each other senseless.”

“What’s she talking about?” Sean asked, confused. “What’s happened?”

“It’s the bodies,” Gordon said unhelpfully from the table where he sat with Ginnie.

“What about them?”

“Seems they’re smarter than we’ve given them credit for,” Martin began to explain.

“What?” Webb grunted.

“The noise you lot made coming here a couple of days back started it, and when you went out for supplies yesterday it just made matters worse. What you two did today might just have been the straw which broke the camel’s back.”

“I don’t understand,” Sean said. Martin sat down in the nearest chair and held his head in his hands. Howard explained further.

“They’re coming back. There’s a load of them gathered over the road.”

“What about the music?”

“Not working anymore.”

“That’s not exactly true, it is still working,” Hollis corrected him, “but like Martin says, they’re getting wise to it. It fooled them before because they didn’t know anyone was here.”

“And now?”

“And now it’s still drawing them in from miles around. Problem is, when they get close enough and hear us moving about or arguing or driving around on stolen fucking motorbikes, they understandably get more interested in us than anything else. They’re starting to work out that the music is just a decoy and that we’re the ones actually making the noise.”

“Can’t be…” Sean said.

“Can be,” Harte quickly replied. “It’s instinctive. It’s exactly what started happening back at the flats. The more noise we made, the worse they got. A handful of them broke through our defenses, hundreds followed. They learn.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Ginnie asked, shuffling a little closer to Gordon. “Is there anything we can do?”

“What we should do now,” Martin announced, unsuccessfully attempting to exert some authority, “is exactly what we were doing in the first place before you clowns arrived. We keep our heads down, stay absolutely silent, and wait for those creatures out there to disintegrate down to nothing. If we run out of food then we go hungry. If we start to—”

“No way!” Sean yelled, his voice furious, the fuzziness in his head clearing and being replaced with anger. “No fucking way. If you think I’m sitting here in fucking silence with you lot just waiting for the bodies to rot, then you can think again. You can stick your fucking—”

“That’s exactly what you’re going to do,” Jas said, moving toward him again. Sean recoiled. “Because if you don’t I’ll break your fucking neck.”

“Is that right?” Webb goaded.

“Don’t you start. I’ll kill you now if you want me to, you little piece of shit.”

“Come on, then!” he yelled, jumping to his feet and squaring up against Jas. The others cringed, willing them both to shut up as the volume of their pointless argument continued to increase.

“Leave it, Jas,” Harte said. “He’s not worth it.”

Webb stood his ground as Jas moved forward again. Their faces almost touching, he whispered loud enough for Webb alone to hear.

“Want me to tell them about Stokes?”

Webb pushed him away and slunk back into the shadows.

“Let’s just keep things in perspective,” Lorna said. She’d been watching the discussion deteriorate with disappointment. “There’s no need to panic. They still can’t get to us. Every access point is blocked. Like Hollis says, we just need them to forget we’re over here.”

“But what about the helicopter?” Caron wondered. “And the plane? How are we supposed to attract their attention if we’re keeping our heads down? We don’t know how many more times they’re going to fly over.”

“Have they been here again?” Sean wondered.

“Twice more,” Gordon replied.

“Twice?”

“Flew over late afternoon,” he explained, “then again just about an hour later.”

“They’re clearing out, aren’t they? It’s like you said this morning, Jas, they’re evacuating.”

“I think he’s right,” Gordon said.

“Then that’s all the more reason for us not to lock ourselves down, isn’t it?” Sean nervously continued. “If we don’t let them know we’re here now then they’ll never find us. And I’m not just talking about writing love letters on the grass with bedsheets or playing music, we have to do something big that they’re going to see and we have to do it now!”

“Sean…” Martin warned. His voice was getting louder again.

“Oh, just shut up, Martin. Will you get off my case? You haven’t even—”

“Just calm down and be quiet.”

“What if I don’t want to? I know exactly what we have to do to get that helicopter or the plane to see us, and I’ll do it if none of you have got the nerve to.”

At the side of the room, unnoticed by anyone but Ginnie, Gordon stood up and cleared his throat. With great hesitancy but a definite need to act, he slowly walked forward into the middle of the argument, placing himself directly between Hollis, Martin, and Jas on one side, and Sean and Webb on the other. He looked Sean straight in the eye.

“Listen,” he began, captivating the others with his unexpected and uncharacteristically positive involvement, “you have to listen. I know you’re angry and you’re probably just as scared as I am right now, but you’ve got to listen. Please don’t do anything stupid. We’ve sat in here today and we’ve watched those things work out where we are. It’s only a fraction of them at the moment, but if the rest of them catch on and end up down here we’re going to have a real problem on our hands. I know you don’t want to stay here, but I really don’t think you’ve got any choice. None of us have.”

Sean stared deep into Gordon’s face and carefully considered his words. He knew he wasn’t overstating the threat from outside, but were they really only limited to one option? He didn’t think so. Being outside today had been such an unexpectedly uplifting experience. Could he turn his back on that freedom and everything he’d seen now? He couldn’t stand the thought of being shut away in this hellhole with these people any longer.

The silence in the room was deafening.

“Don’t know,” he said eventually. “I don’t know if I can—”

“You have to,” Caron said from the shadows to his left. Christ, he reminded her of her son at times. He was just like Matthew—so volatile and opinionated, yet vulnerable too.

“I don’t have to do anything,” he answered, glaring at her. “None of us do. You can all stay here if you want to but I think I’ll take my chances out there.”

“Just give it some time,” she pleaded.

“I’d give anything for another day like today,” he said, his voice suddenly wavering with emotion. “Do you know what I did today?” he asked, looking around at the few faces he could see. When no one answered he continued. “I lived,” he explained, tears welling up in his eyes. “For the first time in weeks I actually felt like I was alive and it didn’t matter what I did. And I come back here and everything feels wrong again, and it’s not because of the bodies out there, it’s you lot.”

“What are you talking about?” Gordon asked.

“From where I’m standing there’s no difference between the bodies on one side of the fence and the other. There’s no difference between any of you and those things out there. You’re all dead. You’re all just sitting here rotting, waiting for the end to come. I don’t really care if I’ve got one day left or fifty years. I don’t care if I don’t get through tomorrow. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my time trapped in here with us all watching each other decay.”