Disintegration

18

He had to get out. It was always hard being trapped inside with the others but it was worse than ever this morning. He understood why, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier. He just had to get out.

Webb walked down the hill toward the fenced-off area where he’d previously fought with the dead for sport. He didn’t feel like fighting today. He had his baseball bat with him as always, but he now carried it for protection only. As dumb and insensitive as he frequently was, in his own way Webb had taken the news of Anita’s death as badly as anyone. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, but even he’d quickly made the grim realization that what had killed her could probably kill him too. He could cope with thousands of decaying bodies, but this was something else altogether. A germ or a virus. Something invisible and undetectable which he couldn’t punch, kick, or smash into oblivion.

He’d left the others talking about the body. They were arguing about what they should do with it. None of them, him included, wanted to go anywhere near the corpse. Stokes had been saying that he thought Caron should deal with her, because she’d already spent so much time in the same flat and chances were she already had the germ inside her. Caron argued that they’d all got as much chance as each other of catching it, and that just scared everyone even more. Gordon said they needed to do something quick in case she got up again and started walking around. Harte told him to shut up and get a grip, that that was never going to happen. Gordon became hysterical, ranting about how Harte didn’t know that was the case and how they couldn’t afford to take chances. Harte threw him an ax and told him to go to her flat and chop her body into pieces. Gordon had started panicking and threatened to attack Harte before he went anywhere near Anita’s body, and … and that was when Webb had got up and walked out.

He’d been sitting cross-legged in the dust for almost fifteen minutes when he realized he hadn’t even looked up at the dead today. It said something about both his state of mind and the state of what was left of his world, that a sea of tens of thousands of reanimated cadavers no longer interested him. He picked up a stone and threw it lazily toward the featureless mass of flesh, smirking to himself when it clattered against an old car door and the resulting sound caused a sudden ripple of excitement and animation on the other side of the barrier. He threw another stone, then another, each time taking pleasure in the way he seemed to almost be controlling the corpses and making them dance to his tune. Marginally more interested, he got to his feet and walked closer, pausing to swing at a small rock with his baseball bat, using it like a golf club. The bodies trapped just in front of him were reacting angrily to his presence. They were slamming themselves against the blockade now, shuffling back as best they could, then throwing themselves forward again.

“Look at you,” he announced pointlessly. “You’re all fucking pathetic.”

Now just a couple of meters away, he looked deep into the wall of gnarled, putrefied faces which stared back. He glared at one in particular which reminded him of his older sister. It was wearing the soiled shreds of a revealing pink summer dress and the stupid fucking thing still had a fucking ribbon in its hair! For Christ’s sake, he thought, everything that corpse must have gone through and it’s still managed to keep its fucking hair tied up! That was so like his sister, the silly bitch. She’d been arrested after a fight in a club once when she’d put some poor bastard in hospital. He’d watched the police shove her in the back of their van. Stupid cow, he’d seen her checking her makeup in her reflection in the window as they’d driven her away to the cells.

When Webb thought about his sister, he began to think about everyone else who had been a part of his life before the world had been turned upside down. He swung his baseball bat and thumped it into the side of the nearest car door, the shock wave rippling back through the crowd like a pebble dropped into water. He hit the car door again, now wanting the dead to react. How many of these wretched, dumb, stinking pieces of shit were the same wretched, dumb, stinking pieces of shit that used to give him a hard time and make his life difficult? He hit the door a third time, the metallic clang ricocheting around his empty world. How many of these things gave him grief or caused him pain or—

Webb was suddenly aware of movement to his right. What the fuck?

Bodies.

There were bodies on his side of the blockade. The first one was almost upon him before Webb, stunned momentarily, was able to react. He swung the bat into its groin, sending it flying. Another one lunged. He jabbed the end of the bat into its face, knocking it back into two more. What the hell was going on here? Where were they coming from? Yet another body hurled itself forward, its arms reaching out for him. He grabbed it by the collar and dragged it over onto its back, then stamped on its emaciated face until it was still.

More of them coming. Too many.

Terrified, Webb turned and ran from a crowd of almost twenty cadavers which slowly lumbered after him. Through a momentary gap between their constantly shifting shapes he thought he saw more climbing over the barrier—but that was impossible, wasn’t it? He ran farther up the hill, the slothful dead no match for his speed, then turned back and looked again. His eyes hadn’t deceived him; the bodies were dragging themselves up and over the blockade. Helped up by the countless corpses crushed under their rotting feet over time and by the relentless pressure of others constantly pushing them forward, the damn things were managing to clamber over the cars and rubble and were heading straight for him.

“Help!” he screamed as he scrambled up the hill, not knowing if anyone could hear him. “Get out here, now!”

* * *

Hollis, Harte, Lorna, Jas, and Gordon were already on their way down toward the surging bodies before Webb had even made it back to the flats. They thundered past him, leaving him standing alone at the top of the slope. He stopped to spit and catch his breath before heading back down after them.

“Did you see them?” he started to say to Stokes, who pounded after the others at his usual slow pace.

“We all saw,” he answered quickly. “It’s your fault for winding them up, you fucking jerk!”

“What?” he protested. “I didn’t do anything to…”

His words were wasted; Stokes was already out of earshot. Still panting, Webb ran back down the hill. In the distance he could see that Harte and Lorna had reached the diggers.

“Just push them back,” Jas shouted. He pointed deep into the growing crowd. “They’re getting through over there. Build the wall up!”

Lorna was the first to get her digger started. She drove it across the uneven ground at full speed, heading straight for the mass of bodies which were still spilling over the top of the barrier. It didn’t look as bad from down here. When they’d first spotted the breach from their high vantage point in the flats there had seemed to be hundreds of spindly figures pouring over. The reality was their numbers were far fewer but that was academic; one corpse on the wrong side of the line was one too many. Scoop down, she thundered into the center of the crowd, forcing many of the advancing grotesques up into the air and back over the blockade. Unsighted, she collided with the very car they were managing to clamber over and the sudden shock jolted her back in her seat.

“Block it up,” Hollis shouted to Harte, gesturing at the point where the dead had managed to get over. It was hard to see clearly through the continual, frantic movement, but they appeared to be getting through by dragging themselves over the low bonnet of a small black, family-sized car. Once he was sure that Harte had heard him he returned his attention to those foul aberrations which had already crossed over, chopping and hacking at them with his machete.

Harte turned the digger around and moved away from the corpses. Behind him Lorna was now driving furiously from side to side, obliterating hordes of defenseless figures with every pass. He drove toward a pile of rubble, collected a huge shovelful, then turned back to face the barrier. It looked like they were beginning to regain control. Lorna had quickly dealt with an unquantifiable number of the dead, leaving Jas, Gordon, Webb, and Stokes to wipe up the few that had managed to get away. Hollis, unusually, was standing a little way back from the center of the chaos, the dismembered remains of a blood-soaked police officer twitching at his booted feet.

A loud warning blast on the horn and Harte powered forward. He stopped just short of the blockade—ploughing down six more cadavers on the way—lifted the digger’s articulated arm and dropped several tons of crumbling masonry onto the front of the black car. When the dust settled it immediately became apparent that he’d hit the spot perfectly. The dead were shut out again. He felt a sense of smug satisfaction when he jumped down from the cab and saw that when he’d dropped the rubble, he’d also managed to crush a handful of bodies as they’d been trying to get across. Arms and legs jutted out from the confusion at awkward angles. The head of a trapped corpse, wedged at the shoulders between the bonnet of the car and a block of concrete, watched him until he ended its unnatural existence with a well-aimed punch to the face.

“Come on, you fuckers!” Webb screamed at the top of his voice, fighting to make himself heard over the noise of Lorna’s digger and the chain saw which Jas was using. Suddenly pumped full of adrenaline again, he braced himself as yet another body hurled itself at him, its decayed face and gnarled lips almost seeming to sneer as it lurched forward. He shoved it back toward Jas, who sliced it in half with a single swipe, the whirring chain-saw blade sliding through its torso. Two more foul, dripping bodies edged toward Jas. He shoved the chain saw into the face of the nearest, angling the whirring blade away from him and down and wincing in disgust as a thick spray of blood, brain and rotten flesh soaked the ground. The other body of the pair seemed to have a little more sense, if that was at all possible. It suddenly veered off to the left, evading the next swipe of the chain saw. It turned its head back to watch Jas over its shoulder as it moved awkwardly away, then staggered straight into the path of Lorna in the digger.

“One behind you, Gordon!” Jas yelled.

Gordon spun around and waited nervously for the dishevelled remains of an elderly woman to attack. He gripped his hand ax tightly, wishing he could fight with the confidence and speed of the others. He felt hopelessly inadequate despite the obvious strength advantage he had over this particular corpse, but the monstrous thing was upon him now and he had no alternative but to take action. Go for the head, he silently repeated to himself, remembering what the others had told him. He swung the ax around and smashed it into the side of the corpse’s face, shattering its cheekbone and splitting its ear in half. He wrenched the sunken blade free, then panicked as the creature continued to stagger forward, unperturbed. He swung the ax again, this time wedging it deep into its neck. It took another stumbling step closer, then dropped to the ground in front of him, dark crimson gore slowly dribbling out of its open wounds.

As quickly and as unexpectedly as it had started, the teeming movement around the edge of the barrier wound down to a halt. The diggers and the chain saw were silenced. On the other side of the barrier the bodies continued to surge forward, ripples and aftershocks of movement still running through the huge crowd in response to the sudden carnage and noise. Satisfied that the job was done, the group began to move back toward the flats. Only Hollis remained behind. Lorna walked over to him when she noticed he wasn’t following.

“Problem?” she asked, anxiously surveying the scene, worried that he’d spotted something the rest of them had missed.

He shook his head.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“What is it?” she pressed, concerned. Hollis angrily kicked the corpse lying at his feet.

“This thing caught me off-guard,” he reluctantly admitted. “Didn’t know it was there until it got hold of me.”

“So? You sorted it out, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but…”

“But what?”

It was obvious there was something he wasn’t telling her.

“I didn’t hear it coming.”

“So what? I’m not surprised. You know, with the diggers and the chain saw and Webb’s mouth it’s no wonder you didn’t…”

He was shaking his head. She stopped talking.

“It’s not that,” he said.

“What, then?”

“Remember when we were out yesterday morning? You let that body out in the pharmacy and it went for me?”

“Yes.”

“I hit my head when I went down.”

“I know. Is that why you’re…?”

“I’ve damaged my ear,” he said, his voice suddenly unusually emotional. “I can’t hear a fucking thing on my left side, and that’s why this fucking thing nearly had me.”

He kicked the corpse at his feet again, sending its bloodied head skidding across the ground like a football, then walked away from her and began to march up the hill.