Disintegration

49

Hollis had fallen asleep on a bench in the courtyard in the middle of the hotel. He’d only planned to sit down for a minute, but by his watch that had been a couple of hours ago. He was having trouble sleeping at night and was grateful that he’d managed to snatch some unexpected relaxation, even though it had left him feeling disoriented, nauseous and cold. He shook his head clear, sat up, and looked up into the cloud-filled sky above him. Disgruntled and uncomfortable, he got up and went inside to look for something to eat.

In many ways the long and empty hours like this were worse than the frantic, desperate times when they were running, fighting or both. At least dealing with crisis after crisis kept him feeling alive. Sean’s words yesterday evening had rattled around his head. “You’re all dead,” he’d said. Was he right? Was the gap between the living on one side and the dead on the other really narrowing as much as he’d suggested? If this is the quality of life we’ve got to look forward to, he thought sadly, then maybe he’s got a point. At least the dead can move around freely and without fear. Was it better to feel and think nothing, he wondered, than to have your head filled constantly with the kind of desperate, nightmarish thoughts which seemed to constantly plague him?

“I said, are you okay?” Lorna said, tapping his arm. She’d walked right up behind him and he hadn’t even noticed. Either he’d just been preoccupied, or his hearing was getting worse. He tried to convince himself that his thoughts had just been elsewhere, although the reality was that he could now hardly hear anything through his damaged ear. That terrified him. In a world where the slightest sound could make the difference between remaining undetected or being surrounded by corpses, how would he survive?

“I’m fine,” he replied, trying unsuccessfully to hide his depression. Lorna was getting to know him too well.

“I’m just going to steal a couple of bottles of wine and some food,” she told him, very matter-of-factly. “Come up to my room if you feel like a chat.”

“Okay,” he mumbled, watching as she turned and disappeared into the kitchens. For half a second he stupidly allowed his mind to wander. Why was she inviting him up to her room? Was it just to share a bottle, or was there more to it? He’d long looked at her and wished that he could have her, but he’d never got the impression that she felt the same way. Don’t be such a fucking idiot, he thought, angry that he’d allowed his mind to wander, you’re old enough to be her father. She’s only interested in you as a friend. That’s the only kind of positive relationship that exists now. There’s no room in this fucked-up ruin of a world for sex, love and lust and—

Car engines. Coming from outside. He could hear several of them.

Hollis immediately sprinted through to the front of the hotel, bursting through the main reception doors and running down the steps into the car park. He jumped to one side as a silver estate car careered toward him and tried to flag it down. Harte, behind the wheel, accelerated and swerved past. A blue executive saloon driven by Amir with Webb in the passenger seat beside him followed close behind, then a third car, a beaten-up, dark green family-sized hatchback driven by Sean, powered past. Where the hell were they going? Did they realize how much noise they were making? He turned around and saw Jas moving toward the van. He ran to stop him, trying desperately to get to him before he opened the driver’s door.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hollis said, slamming the door shut as Jas tried to pull it open.

“Just leave it, Hollis,” he replied, barging him out of the way.

“You’re not taking the van,” he yelled, throwing himself forward again. Jas, a good eight inches shorter but much stronger, wrapped his arms around Hollis’s waist and swung him around, throwing him down onto the gravel. Before he could pick himself up Jas had climbed into the van, locked the door and started the engine.

“Just get inside and keep out of the way,” he shouted through the half-open window.

“You fucking cowards!” Hollis screamed, hammering on the side of the vehicle as it started to move. “Why are you running? All you’re going to do is let them in here.”

“We’re not running,” Jas hollered back. “Not yet.”

He put his foot down on the accelerator and drove away from the hotel. Hollis ran a few meters after him, but it was pointless. As the van disappeared around the curve in the track he turned and sprinted back inside to warn the others.

* * *

Jas stopped at the fork in the road. The three cars traveling ahead of him were having to shunt themselves around to take the tight turning and follow the other branch of the track up past the fields and toward the golf course. He waited anxiously for them to get out of the way. Despite the length of his car Harte had already managed to complete the tight maneuver with the minimum of effort. Amir, however, was struggling. He shunted his car backward and forward, backward and forward, making inches of progress at a time. Jas tried not to think what effect the sound of his over-revving engine would have on the crowds of dead bodies gathered nearby. As he waited to move he reached into his jacket pocket and took out his wallet. He unfolded the photo of his beautiful wife and children, long dead but still a huge part of him, and kissed it. He hadn’t looked at them for a couple of days, and that made him feel guilty. But he’d thought about them, he reassured himself. He’d thought about Prisha, Seti, Annia, and their mother almost every waking hour since he’d lost them.

“Have I got this right, Harj?” he asked, looking into the last remaining image of his wife’s deep brown eyes. “Or are we just about to fuck everything up?”

Sudden movement caused him to quickly put the picture away. Amir had finally made it around the corner. Sean wasn’t far behind—a textbook three-point turn and he disappeared behind the fence. Jas put his foot down again and followed, roughly yanking the van around the tight bend, crashing into the hedge on either side, no longer concerned about the noise. The three other cars had stopped again a short distance ahead. Harte was out and was running to the car which Sean and Webb had moved yesterday to get into the field. With Webb’s help he managed to shunt it far enough out of the way to leave the gate clear. Even from his position at the back of the queue Jas could see that a huge gathering of bodies had almost immediately amassed on the other side of the gate. They pushed forward angrily, rattling the low metal barrier. Webb sprinted for cover and climbed back into the middle car with Amir as Harte flicked the latch and shoved the gate open, knocking the cadavers at the front of the group backwards. They immediately surged forward again but it didn’t matter. Back behind the wheel of his car, Harte accelerated into the field and sent them flying. Amir and Sean followed, both cars crunching through gravel then pounding over the uneven mud. Jas brought up the rear, glancing back in his mirror momentarily and watching the gate swing shut again. It wasn’t locked, but it would have to do for now. Hopefully the sudden arrival of the four vehicles in the field would be enough to distract the crowds of slothful figures. Judging by the vast numbers of them already stumbling toward him, that certainly seemed to be the case.

As they’d arranged, Harte veered off to the left, plowing into a wave of corpses and driving down the slope of the field toward the very bottom, right-hand corner, diagonally opposite to the gate they’d just entered through. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure that Jas was following. Behind him the van thumped through the sea of lethargic figures, wiping out many of them. There were hundreds of the fucking things here, many more than he’d expected and far more than had been visible from their vantage point back at the hotel. Jas accelerated again, following the curve of the blood-soaked scar Harte had left across the field.

“That’s got to be far enough,” Harte said to himself, anxiously trying to work out where he was. His brief had been to drive as far as he could across the full width and length of the field, but he hadn’t accounted for just how little he’d be able to see from behind the wheel. His driving position was low and all that he could see around him now was a relentless forest of constantly shifting corpses. Better to stop and do it here, he decided, than end up driving into the bloody hedge and killing myself.

He slammed on the brakes, skidding to a juddering halt, the rear end of the car spinning out and smashing into a handful of soggy, rag-doll-like cadavers. Jas pulled up alongside and watched him frantically scramble out of his seat. He leaned over into the back and emptied out half a can of fuel, then looked up to make sure that Jas was ready for him. He tried to shove the door open and almost immediately a mass of emaciated, clawing hands thrust back at him. Jas reversed, then accelerated forward, turning into the car and driving alongside it, scraping a layer of bodies away. In the short-lived moment of space which followed Harte threw himself out into the open, lit a match and dropped it into the back, then ran over to the van. He hauled himself up into the passenger seat just as the inside of the car was filled with a scorching whoosh of billowing flame. Job done.

“Nice one,” Jas said, turning the van away and forcing it in the opposite direction back up the incline, its engine groaning with effort. The bodies around them temporarily reduced in number, the fire in the car proving to be a more interesting distraction. Harte twisted around and hung back over his seat to watch as the ragged gray figures surged toward the light. The boot of the car—packed with several plastic canisters full of fuel—exploded, showering the dead with flames and red-hot shrapnel. The car itself flipped over on its end and landed in the middle of the hordes, crushing untold numbers of them. Despite being steadily consumed by the heat and light, those which were alight but still able to move continued to stagger around until their already weakened muscles had burned away to nothing, setting light to more of the stupid creatures they blindly stumbled into.

“Can you see the others?” Harte asked, panting with a heady mix of nerves, effort, and exhilaration.

“We’ll find them,” Jas replied, sounding less than confident. Not only were they still surrounded by a seemingly unending mass of rancid flesh, but the gradient of the hill was also proving difficult. They were driving up, but they couldn’t yet see what was happening at the top of the climb where the ground leveled out closer to the golf course.

* * *

Less than a hundred meters away but out of sight of the van, Amir and Webb were also struggling. The sheer number of bodies which had surrounded their car had completely disoriented both men. Throngs of disintegrating cadavers filled every available scrap of space, making it difficult to see in any direction and impossible to navigate. Amir kept the car moving forward, but had little idea where he was heading and was certainly not traveling at anywhere near a fast enough speed. His relative inexperience with the dead was painfully apparent. Rather than accelerate into them he frequently swerved or just ground to a halt and tried to nudge them out of the way. Webb was beginning to get desperate.

“Hit the fucking things!” he screamed. “Speed up, for Christ’s sake!”

“But I don’t know where we’re going,” Amir protested, wrenching the steering wheel hard around to the right and turning them in a tight circle, wheels skidding in decay.

“Neither do they.”

“But we might end up in the fence or too close to the gate.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter.” Webb shouted, his voice hoarse with panic and exacerbation. “We’re about to blow the bloody car up!”

“Why don’t you drive, then?” Amir suggested. Webb just glared at him.

“There!” he said suddenly, pointing over to the far left where he’d just spotted the roof of the van whipping past above the heads of the corpses. Amir slowed again, then turned around and accelerated. “Keep moving,” Webb moaned, terrified that they were about to come to a sudden stop, stranded and surrounded. They burst into a muddy track of open, gore-soaked space, a sure sign that the van or one of the other cars had been there just a few seconds earlier. Amir followed the bloody route through the crowd until it disappeared again, swallowed up by another group of lurching figures.

“Where now?”

“Let’s just do it here.”

“But the van’s not here. We can’t do it until the van’s here to pick us up.”

Webb seethed, holding onto the side of his seats as the car bounced over a particularly uneven stretch of ground and clattered into another swell of rotting flesh. “You bloody idiot, it doesn’t matter where the van is. Once we set fire to this thing they’ll see us quickly enough.”

Amir couldn’t think straight. What did he do? Did he keep driving or was Webb right? Should they just stop now? He winced as the front of the car sliced the legs out from under a ragged body, cutting it in two and sending its head and torso spinning into the windscreen directly in front of him, leaving a large crack and a slimy smear of black blood. There were more bodies than ever up ahead of them now, so many that they looked like a solid black mass, no longer recognizable as individual cadavers. Behind the corpses he could see trees rising up on either side. Webb realized what was happening before Amir could react.

“You’re gonna drive us into the fucking fence!” he screamed, covering his head.

Amir finally recognized where he was, but it was too late to do anything about it. He’d been here with Martin and the others way, way back when the nightmare had first begun. He’d spent hours out here as they’d struggled to channel the unresponsive bodies away from the hotel. There was a gap in the trees which marked the position of a break in the fence he and the others had made, and on the other side of the fence was the golf course. It was too late …

He had to make a snap decision. With so many corpses coming toward him he knew he either had to hit them at full speed or stop and turn back again. Too close to the fence now, he thought as the trees loomed up above them, only one option left. He jammed his foot down on the accelerator pedal.

“Hold on,” he said pointlessly as he struggled to keep hold of the steering wheel. The car bounced and clattered through the hole that he, Howard and Martin had hacked through the fence weeks earlier. Webb braced himself for the impact he felt sure would come at any second.

The wheels thumped back down onto the hard ground. A sudden swerve to the left, then to the right, and the car burst out of the rough and onto the fairway. Too terrified now to make any rational decisions, Amir simply kept the car moving forward as far as he could, driving head-first into the largest crowd of dead flesh that either of them had ever seen. A relentless storm of decay and dismembered body parts was thrown up into the air as the blood-soaked vehicle blasted into the lifeless masses.

“Where the hell are you going?” Webb yelled, terrified. Amir didn’t answer. He didn’t know. He no longer had any idea what he was doing. The plan that Jas and Harte had come up with was in tatters. Maybe if he could find a way of turning around they could get back.

The car veered off course as it dipped down a sudden steep incline, hidden from view by dense swarms of dead bodies. Amir tried to compensate by steering straight back up into the climb, but the angle was too sharp. He’d almost made it up onto the seventeenth green when his tires, their grooved treads already filled with mud and rotting flesh, lost all traction and began to slip and slide back down the bank again. He frantically tried to steer himself back into control but it was no good—the drop away was too severe and the car leveled off. The engine straining and screaming with effort, he managed to keep moving forward at speed for a few more meters, until the front driver’s-side wheel thumped into a low tree stump, forcing it up into the air. The battered blue car spiraled over and over and down, finally coming to rest on its crumpled roof in the middle of a stagnant stream.

* * *

Sean had spotted an opening, a way to still be able to do what he’d agreed to do for the others and then get the hell away from this godforsaken place and the fools and cowards he’d found himself trapped here with. He’d driven around haphazardly for a while, waiting for Harte and Amir to do what they had to do and taking a welcome opportunity to obliterate as many corpses as he was able. He drove in circles three-quarters of the way up the field, keeping an eye on the van up ahead as Jas tried unsuccessfully to track down Amir and Webb. The majority of the bodies in the field were still stumbling toward the burning wreck of Harte’s car, attracted to it by the ferocity of the flames which were continuing to spread through scores of tinder-dry corpses. A sizable number of other cadavers, he noticed, had somehow managed to swing the gate at the top of the field open and were beginning to work their way along the road, spreading out in both directions. He wasn’t unduly worried. The van would wipe them out on its way back to the hotel.

Through the crowd he caught sight of Jas again and decided it was time. He didn’t know what the delay had been, or why he hadn’t seen Amir’s car set alight. Whatever the reason, there was no point waiting any longer. He stopped the car just short of halfway up the field, almost parallel with Harte’s burning wreck, and gave a loud blast on the horn. Many cadavers immediately turned, shuffled toward him and began to thump their decaying fists against the windows. More important, the van also turned in his direction, smashing the lethargic creatures out of the way as it thundered along. It was almost completely covered in blood and gore. Scraps of skin and bone had wedged themselves into every available crease and crevice of its metal body. Flesh dripped off its headlamps and down the grill of its bonnet. When it was close enough that he could see Jas and Harte inside, Sean turned around and, as agreed, soaked the back of the car with fuel. The van pulled level and Harte beckoned him to move faster. He opened the sunroof and hauled himself out through it.

“What are you doing?” Jas yelled, winding down his window.

“Go,” Sean replied.

“What?”

“Just go! I’m not coming back.”

“What do you mean? Come on!”

“What do you think I mean?” he shouted. “I’m sick of that fucking hotel. I’m getting out of here.”

“Are you stupid?”

“Might be,” he answered. “Anyway, when you find Webb, tell him I’ll wait down at the road junction for an hour, then I’m going.”

“Going where?”

“Back into town.”

“You are stupid.”

“I just don’t want to go back inside,” he said, “that’s all. Now piss off so I can torch this bloody car.”

Before Jas could say anything else Sean lit a match and dropped it through the sunroof into the back of the car. As the vapors ignited he slid down onto the bonnet, then pushed himself away and sprinted into the crowd. He was out of sight almost instantly, swallowed up by the constantly swaying figures which filled the field and surged toward the light and noise.

Jas shoved the van into gear and motored away, willing the tired vehicle to move quickly through the swarming hordes. Just a few seconds later and the stockpile of fuel in the back of Sean’s dark green car behind them exploded, turning it from an ordinary vehicle to a deadly weapon in an instant.

“You going after him?” Harte asked, craning his neck to look for Sean in the carnage.

“Fuck him,” Jas grunted angrily.

“What now, then? Do we look for Amir and Webb?”

As with the first explosion, the sudden ball of smoke and flame that had just belched up into the sky was proving to be more of a distraction than the van. The dead converged on the remains of Sean’s car like a hunting pack.

“Five minutes,” Jas announced. “That’s all we can give them.” He wasn’t interested in what might have happened to Amir and Webb, he just wanted to know why they hadn’t done the job they’d been sent to do. Pair of useless fools. He cursed himself for leaving the two of them together.