Disintegration

36

A long evening doing nothing, a relatively good night’s sleep, the most substantial breakfast they could muster from their dwindling reserves, and they were finally ready to move. Eight o’clock in the morning and Hollis, Harte, Jas, Webb, Lorna, Amir, and Sean prepared themselves to head into town. They climbed onto the battered bus as Driver started the engine. Jas watched him intently. What was the unkempt and increasingly insular man thinking? Did he feel as nervous as he himself did? Could he taste bile in his mouth and were his guts churning with nerves too? As he slumped into the nearest seat he couldn’t help wondering why he felt so damn uneasy this morning. As the doors closed and the bus began to move he put it down to the fact that the hotel had, unexpectedly, provided them with the most isolation they’d yet had from the nightmare world outside. And here they were, already on their way back out into the chaos and uncertainty again.

Driver edged his clumsy vehicle slowly along the track, past the fork in the road and back down to the junction. Howard, Gordon, and Ginnie were already waiting there. Somebody had to move the vehicles to let them through and, as that job seemed considerably safer than venturing into Bromwell, Howard and Ginnie had reluctantly volunteered. Gordon, as probably the most experienced fighter remaining at the hotel, was there to mop up those few (he hoped) random corpses which managed to slip through as the bus drove out. He stood on one side of the junction, nervously swinging an ax in one hand and a crowbar in the other. He was dressed in as much protective clothing as he’d been able to find, enough to keep him safe from the germs and any slimy slugs of decaying flesh that an encounter with the dead might throw up into the air. He stood there wearing a pair of fisherman’s waders, safety goggles, and a bright yellow construction worker’s hard hat, but he didn’t care how ridiculous he looked.

“Ready?” Ginnie shouted from behind the wheel of the coach, fighting to make herself heard over the rattle of the engine and, for once, not worrying about the volume of her voice.

Driver acknowledged her with a simple thumbs-up and stared straight ahead as the coach began to move to the side. He inched slowly forward before increasing his speed and driving out into the middle of the deserted road junction. He stopped to give Howard a chance to pull himself up into the driver’s seat of the truck which blocked the exit they planned to use. Dog in tow, he settled into the cab and immediately peered down at the mass of bodies on the other side. There were too many to count. Not the biggest crowd he’d ever seen, but too many all the same. His hands suddenly trembling with nerves, he started the engine and waited for Driver to pull the bus closer. The dead began to thump and push against the exposed side of the vehicle. The dog sat in the passenger seat and silently snarled at them, her nostrils full of the smell of rotting flesh.

The truck that Howard was driving spanned the gap between a six-foot-tall brick wall ahead and another truck just behind. As the bus began to move toward him he slowly reversed.

“Get as near as you can,” Hollis said to Driver, standing next to him at the front of the bus like a passenger waiting for the next stop. “You want to try and push as many of them back and out of the way as you can, try and stop them getting through.”

“Thanks, I’d worked that bit out for myself,” Driver grumbled. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and nudged forward as soon as there was room for him to move. Bodies began to pour through the gap, most of them immediately being dragged down beneath the bus or shoved away by the impromptu snowplow they’d bolted to its front weeks earlier. Driver accelerated, slicing through the crowd with ease. Hollis looked over his shoulder along the length of the bus. Through the small rectangular window at the back he watched as Howard immediately shunted the truck forward again, blocking the road and preventing any more cadavers from getting through.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” Harte said, relieved, standing just a little way behind Hollis and watching the rotting world rushing by through the windows on either side.

“Nowhere near as many of them as I thought there would be. Must be Martin’s music,” Hollis admitted. “Give him his due, I thought he was off his head, but maybe not.”

“Crazy bugger says he’s been playing music to them every day for more than a month,” he laughed. “Damn things are probably sick of it!”

Hollis nodded and smiled, then turned to look ahead as the first buildings of the town of Bromwell loomed on the dull horizon.

* * *

Incredibly, just three bodies had managed to drag themselves safely through the gap and into the blockaded road junction while the truck had been out of position. All of the others had been swept up and crushed by the bus. Gordon, now feeling far less confident than he had been just a few minutes earlier, stood rooted to the spot, waiting for the first of them to get close enough to attack.

“You okay, Gordon?” Ginnie shouted from the relative safety of the coach. The bodies were instinctively moving in her direction now, distracted by the noise of the engine and her voice. He wanted to stop them getting any closer. He liked Ginnie. She reminded him of someone he used to work with, and that unexpected familiarity, no matter how tenuous, was welcome. He took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Time to fight.

Running forward, he swung the ax into the side of the nearest cadaver’s neck, wedging it deep into its putrid flesh, just below its ear. The body, a stocky, awkward creature with only one arm and one eye, was overbalanced by the speed and force of the brutal strike. Gordon dragged it over onto the ground, then plunged the end of the crowbar into its exposed temple. A few seconds of twitching and kicking and it lay still. He yanked out his blood-soaked weapon, suddenly feeling like a gladiator, and turned to look for the next kill.

The body of a nurse was stumbling precariously close to the side of the coach. Gordon spun it around and, with another savage swing of the ax, ripped through the front of its throat, cutting so much weak flesh away that its head was largely unsupported but still remained attached. It flopped back on itself and dangled over its shoulders, now looking behind. Unbalanced, the corpse dropped to its knees and Gordon delivered another killer blow with the blade, this time strong enough to decapitate the corpse and send its head rolling away along the ground, eventually becoming wedged under the coach.

Howard’s dog suddenly shot past Gordon, the unexpected speed and movement catching him off guard and making his pulse race. He knew there was still another body to get rid of, but he’d lost sight of it momentarily. He spun around and saw that the dog had come to his aid. It jumped up and wrapped its teeth around the forearm of what remained of a young garage mechanic. The animal was too strong for the corpse and pulled it over. It fell flat on its face and the dog leaped away, then scurried back toward Howard—who was keeping a safe distance, skirting around the edge of the junction and avoiding the violence.

Now feeling more confident, Gordon strode over to the creature on the ground struggling to pick itself up. It managed to lock its arms and raise its head and shoulders and it looked up at him. He stared back, studying what was left of its face. It had very little hair and a gold hoop earring in its right ear. The ear itself was almost completely detached, clinging to the side of its head by nothing more than a few slender strips of flesh and cartilage. The creature managed to lift its decaying bulk a little higher, its sudden movement startling Gordon and forcing him to take a few steps back. He stopped, knowing that the pathetic lump of flesh at his feet was no longer a threat to him or anyone else. It straightened its arms again and lifted its torso. Just above the breast pocket of its blood and oil-stained overalls, the name KEVIN had been embroidered. Strange to think that Kevin had once had a life and a home and a family and friends and … and so what? Gordon finally realized that today, almost sixty days after the world had been irrevocably scarred and changed forever, Kevin and every other corpse that still walked the face of the planet no longer mattered.

He sunk the crowbar deep into its half-open right eye, shoving it into its skull and twisting it around, reducing what was left of its brain to pulp.