Disintegration

46

“How many?”

Startled, Martin spun around and saw Harte standing in the doorway of his second-floor bedroom. Hollis, who was standing next to him, hadn’t heard a thing. He turned around when he saw that Martin had been distracted, then turned back to face the window.

“Maybe as many as five hundred or so,” Martin replied. “Difficult to tell.”

“Are more still coming?”

It was difficult to make out much detail in the late-evening gloom, but there still seemed to be plenty of movement in the field across the road. The dark mass of inquisitive corpses had grown steadily through the course of the day just gone and their numbers showed no signs of slowing.

“Plenty more,” Martin answered, his voice tired and low.

“So what do we do now?” Harte asked, joining the other two at the window.

“Depends,” Hollis grunted. He could hear him now that he’d moved closer.

“On what?”

“On them, mainly,” he replied, nodding in the direction of the throng of constantly shifting figures. “It depends how responsive they are. If all they’re going to do is just stand on the other side of the fence, then there’s not much of a problem. If they decide they want to attack us then—”

“They won’t,” Martin immediately interrupted. “Why would they?”

“If they’re threatened they will,” Harte said quietly. “We’ve seen it happen loads of times.”

“But who’s going to threaten them?”

“What you see as a threat and what they do are very different things,” Hollis explained. “Take those fucking jokers out on the bike, for example. We just see a couple of idiots escaping for a while. The dead react like animals would. They see the speed and hear the noise and sense the danger.”

“Then try and attack before whatever it is can get them,” Harte continued.

“So we stay here and wait for them to rot.” Martin sighed. “Just like we were doing before you lot turned up here and screwed everything up.”

“We haven’t screwed everything up,” Hollis corrected him. “Be honest, Martin, you were starving and you wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Sean would have cracked eventually and you’d have ended up in this exact same mess. It’s not completely our fault.”

“We’ve just fucked things up a little quicker than you would have on your own,” Harte said, his attempt at humor falling flat.

“But we’ve got supplies now, and Sean’s had his moment. We can let him and Webb leave if they really want to.”

“They won’t go,” Hollis said. “They haven’t got the balls to do it. If they had they wouldn’t have come running back tonight.”

“Then we’ve got to keep them under control, Greg,” Martin added. “Stop them getting so wound up. Find a way to get them to let off steam.”

“That might be difficult,” Harte announced ominously. “We have another problem.”

“What?”

“It’s why I came looking for you two.”

“What?” Hollis demanded impatiently.

“Driver’s sick.”

“Sick? What, like—”

“Yes, sick like Anita and Ellie,” Harte said quickly, anticipating his question.

“The girls that died?” Martin asked anxiously.

“Yep,” he answered. “So I for one don’t actually fancy sitting in here for another couple of months anymore.”

“Where is he now?”

“Packed him off to bed with his paper and enough food and drink to keep him happy for a couple of days. Told him we’d keep checking on him.”

“And will you?”

“No fucking way. I might go back up there in a few days and see how he’s doing. If he’s still alive then he hasn’t got what Ellie and Anita had and we’re safe.”

“Where’s his room?”

“Luckily he’s always been an antisocial bastard. He’s up on his own on the top floor of the east wing.”

“Good,” Martin muttered.

“We’ve also got the plane and helicopter to think about,” Harte continued, subdued. “I think Jas is right, and if they are evacuating from somewhere like he says, then they’ll probably be done soon. The fact they flew over so many times today makes me think they must be close to being done now. We need to get them to see us.”

“But we can’t risk giving away our location.” Martin sighed. “We’ve already been through this. That might be all it takes to tip the bodies over the edge.”

“Well, we might just have to take that risk,” Hollis said.

“We can’t.”

“We might have to.”

“But—”

“He’s right,” Harte said. “We could torch this whole fucking place if we had to. Imagine that … there’s the distraction you need. Every single one of those fucking things outside would drag their sorry backsides straight over here. We could just walk away.”

“No, that’d be suicidal. No way.”

“I’m not suggesting we do it, but it’s an option.”

“It’s a stupid option,” Martin protested, his voice getting louder.

“Let’s wait until morning,” said Hollis. “We can’t make any decisions tonight. I think we should try and work out how the bodies are likely to react, then work out how to attract the attention of the plane, if it comes back.”

“How are we supposed to do that?”

“Isn’t this is exactly the kind of reason you’ve kept the body by the swimming pool?”

“Suppose,” Martin said, sounding more subdued.

“Well, we need to see how your corpse reacts when we get up close.”