Disintegration

50

“Shit,” Howard cursed as the second car exploded in the distance. Hollis didn’t hear anything but jumped up when he saw the other man’s reaction. Sensing trouble he ran back outside, leaving the others standing dumbstruck in the courtyard in the middle of the hotel. He sprinted down the steps and out into the car park to see a dark cloud of smoke belching up into the sky above the top of the tall hedgerow. A distance to the left—at least several hundred yards, he estimated—the dirty pall from the first blast continued to climb into the air.

Back in the courtyard, Caron sat down at the edge of the overgrown lawn and poured herself a large glass of wine.

“Idiots,” Martin muttered nervously. “What in Christ’s name do they think they’re doing?”

“Helping,” Lorna insisted.

“Helping? How the hell is this helping?”

“At least they’re doing something,” Gordon said from the opposite side of the courtyard.

“Doing nothing is better than something,” Martin protested. “Doing nothing is exactly what we all should be doing. All this is going to do is bring the bodies back here to us.”

“They might bring that helicopter as well,” Caron mumbled, knocking back her wine, already half-drunk.

“Just give them a chance,” said Lorna.

Martin paced up and down anxiously.

“Think about it, Martin,” Gordon continued, desperately trying to calm him and diffuse his increasing panic. “This might actually help. They’re drawn to fire. Someone said yesterday that they were getting used to the music—well, maybe this will keep them occupied for a while longer and get rid of a few hundred of them at the same time.”

“A few hundred?” he barked furiously. “A few hundred? Do you have any idea how many of them are out there? There are thousands and thousands crammed onto that bloody golf course.”

“And you’ve said yourself that they can’t get off it.”

“No I haven’t. I said we’d made it difficult for them, not impossible. The music’s kept drawing them in until now, and the fact there have been so many of them moving in the same direction has kept them penned in. If they start turning back in large numbers we’re screwed.”

“But they’re still on the other side of the road, behind two fences that they’ll never manage to get through.”

“If there are enough of them alight they could burn their way through,” Martin suggested, his logic suddenly screwed by his nervous fear.

“That’s hardly likely,” Caron grunted, sniggering into her wine glass.

“If it comes to it I’ll stand on a ladder chucking buckets of water over them,” Gordon said, irritated.

“We haven’t got enough water,” Martin immediately answered back. The conversation was becoming ridiculous.

Howard’s dog, which had been sitting at Lorna’s feet, stood and pricked up its ears.

“What’s the matter?”

The dog sniffed the air. As Lorna leaned down to stroke its head, it suddenly bolted. It ran at full speed across the courtyard, weaved through the marbled-floor reception area and jumped down the steps. Hollis spun around when he caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye, then watched as it hurtled toward the track leading away from the hotel. It stopped just short of the mouth of the road, barking. Hollis ran over and tried to shut her up. “What’s the matter with you, girl? All this noise freaking you out?”

There were bodies coming up the track. From where he was standing Hollis could see at least four, but he knew that many more would probably be following close behind. The dog hurtled forward again, jumping up at the first cadaver and knocking it flat onto its back. It stood with its front legs on the creature’s torso, pinning it down, biting and tearing at its clothing with its vicious teeth. The body on the ground—unable to understand what was happening to it—attempted clumsily to push the animal away but it was too strong and determined. Four other corpses wearily dragged themselves past the frantic melee near their feet and stumbled on regardless.

“Bodies!” Hollis yelled, immediately running back into the building to find a weapon. He met Gordon and Lorna coming the other way, already alerted by the barking of the dog.

“Many?” Lorna asked as they passed on either side of the reception desk.

“Enough,” Hollis replied, grabbing a fire ax and turning back again. He glanced up to see Howard disappearing upstairs. Fucking coward, he thought.

By the time he’d made it back into the car park Lorna was already poised to batter the closest body with a machete. The corpse—the lopsided, rancid husk of a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl—advanced toward her imperiously. Gripping the machete tight she swung it upwards and grunted with effort and satisfaction as it connected with the underside of the creature’s chin and sliced through its diseased face. A second strike and its head exploded like a watermelon, showering the ground and the other corpses nearby with blood.

Gordon sprinted forward with screwdrivers held high in either hand, all talk of dodgy hips and excuses now long forgotten. With a yell of savage, guttural rage he launched himself at the dead shell of a jogger, still dressed in full running kit. He plunged the screwdrivers into the creature’s temples, feeling them hit each other as they crossed in the middle of what was left of its brain, then yanked them free, wiping them on the back of his trousers and moving straight on to the next kill, narrowly missing Hollis, who had just swung his ax up into the groin of a hideously decayed vicar.

* * *

Howard came pounding back down the stairs, looking for the others. He struggled to catch his breath and tell them what he’d seen. Caron, Ginnie and Martin waited anxiously at the bottom of the staircase.

“It’s not that bad,” he began.

“Not that bad!” Martin pointed outside. “There are bodies out there! How can it not be that bad?”

“Shut up, Martin,” Howard gasped, leaning up against the wall. “Jas and the others have gone into the field through the gate we blocked with the car,” he continued, gesturing back over his shoulder. “They’ve left it open so they can get out again.”

“But they’re letting them through!”

“Not that many,” he answered quickly, still panting. “Believe me, there’s enough going on out in that field to keep most of them occupied. I only saw about twenty of them on the road, thirty at the most.”

“Thirty!” Martin screamed. “There are only six of us left here now!”

“It’ll be fine,” Caron assured him, the skinful of wine she’d had filling her with false confidence. She put her hand on his shoulder. He recoiled and pulled away. “Thirty is nothing,” she continued, unperturbed. “Believe me, I’ve seen Greg deal with more than that on his own before now.”

* * *

The carnage continued outside. Fighting close alongside each other Hollis, Gordon and Lorna had managed to inch slowly down the track. The ground was now littered with blood-soaked carcasses and dismembered bodies, some still twitching, and the dead were being pushed back. Hollis prayed that they could keep this progress up without being seen or heard by too many more cadavers. This number he could deal with, but he’d seen just how many more of them were amassed on the golf course less than a quarter of a mile from where they now stood fighting. It wouldn’t take much to open the floodgates and bring thousands of them trudging back here.

Howard jogged down from the hotel, meat cleaver in hand. He stopped short of the others, reached down, and pulled his dog away from the corpse it continued to attack. Although ferocious, all she was doing was savaging the creature’s innards. Its arms and legs moved regardless.

“Out of the way, girl,” he said as he pulled her back by the collar and dropped to his knees. Squeezing his eyes shut—he didn’t want to see what he was about to do—he slammed the cleaver down, cutting through the cadaver’s neck. A sudden shock jarred his arm when the edge of the blade hit the tarmac. The body on the ground immediately stopped thrashing, and he let go of the dog and scrambled back out of the way. She bounded forward again and leaped up at another corpse. Howard remained where he was, finding it strangely hard to accept that he’d just decapitated someone. Something, he forced himself to remember, not someone … something. He stood up and looked for the others.

“Greg!” he yelled, watching Hollis as he neared the bend in the track, getting closer to where the road forked. Hollis stepped back when he heard his name being called.

“What?” he shouted back, eyeing up his next victim as a corpse in a blood-encrusted shirt and tie stumbled dangerously close.

“There are only about thirty or so of them. They’re coming in through the gate.”

“What did he say?” Lorna asked, stamping on an upturned face which stared up at her from the ground with cold, sunken eyes.

“Don’t know,” Hollis grunted as he returned to the fight. “Something about a gate.”

“There’s a gate,” Gordon explained breathlessly between kills. “Ginnie showed it to me earlier. That’s how they got the cars through.”

“So if we can beat them back far enough…” Hollis began.

“Then we can get the gate blocked up again and stop them getting out,” Gordan said.

Standing at his side, Lorna cracked the skull of another cadaver with her weapon, then shoved what was left of the corpse into the hedge. She nodded to show that she’d heard him and that she understood their position, then began to swipe and hack at the dead with renewed energy and speed.

* * *

“It’s no fucking good,” Jas snapped angrily. Next to him Harte continued to scan the area, desperately looking for Amir’s car.

“Bet they’ve gone back,” Harte said. “The no-good fuckers have lost their bottle and turned back.”

With one last burst of acceleration Jas drove back up the incline and onto level ground again. For the first time since entering the field he stopped. All around them now was total carnage. An unprecedented number of bodies had been destroyed by the vehicles, the explosions, and the fire, and countless more still hauled their withered frames toward the two burning wrecks. Even now, after the initial effects of the explosions had died down, the inquisitive creatures continued to drag themselves closer to the flames and heat. All around them charred remains had been churned into the ground, mixing with the mud to form a single unidentifiable mire which covered the entire area. More bodies began to slam and hammer against the sides of the van and Jas drove away again, heading toward the gate.

“Screw them,” he said. He accelerated out onto the road and began thumping into the backs of the unsuspecting cadavers which had escaped the field and were staggering down the track.

“The gate,” Harte reminded him.

Annoyed by his oversight, Jas stopped the van, then reversed back, destroying another batch of corpses which had stumbled out into the road after them. He braked again and Harte begrudgingly jumped out, pulled the gate shut and locked it. Out in the open the acrid stench of burning cars and burning flesh stung Harte’s throat and made his eyes water. He coughed and stepped back from the barrier as more bodies crashed against it and reached out for him with numb, grabbing hands. Forget the car, he thought, not wanting to spend another second out in the open.

“That’ll do,” he said as he got back into the van, still coughing.

Jas couldn’t be bothered to respond. He needed to get back to the others and plan their next move. It was either up or out, he decided. If they couldn’t attract the attention of the helicopter pilot this time—and if everything they’d just done didn’t do it, he thought, what would?—then it would probably be time to say good-bye to this hellhole hotel and get away. His mind was made up. It was down to the rest of them to decide if they wanted to go with him.

* * *

Howard’s inexperience was showing. The other three were way down the track and yet he still remained at the mouth of the road, standing and looking at the mass of bloody limbs and shredded flesh which lay all around him, attacking incapacitated corpses which were no longer a threat. He didn’t want to go down and fight with the others but he knew that he had to. Christ, even the dog was doing more than him. He watched it jump up at yet another cadaver and sink its razor-sharp teeth into the corpse’s arm, dragging it down to the ground. He tightened his grip on his meat cleaver and began to run forward again, determined to get involved. Then he stopped. What was that? He could hear another engine. Was it the van coming back? At first he couldn’t locate the source of the swirling sound. Was it coming from the road running between the hotel and golf course, or from the road junction at the end of the track or even the field? It sounded like it was behind him … He spun around to see the bus careering around the front of the hotel with Martin at the wheel. He turned sharp left and hurtled down the track toward Howard, who ran for cover as fast as his tired, heavy legs would carry him.

“Move!” he screamed at the top of his voice to anyone who could hear him. Farther down the track Gordon looked up.

“Christ,” he mumbled, grabbing hold of Lorna by the waist and pulling her away from the corpse she was carving up with her machete. She struggled to release herself from his grip, terrified for a second that it was one of the dead who had her trapped in its decaying arms. A little farther ahead Hollis continued fighting. He hadn’t heard anything.

“Greg!” she screamed, looking around and quickly realizing what was happening. “Get out of the way!”

Howard’s dog raced back toward its owner at full pelt, carrying half an arm in her mouth. Gordon pulled Lorna behind him, dragging her back up as she tripped over a bloody, headless torso, then pushing her into the hedgerow as the bus thundered past. It missed them both by the slenderest of margins, temporarily filling the world with deafening noise and a sudden hot blast of choking exhaust fumes.

“Hollis!” she screamed again as the back of the bus filled the width of the road and he disappeared from view. She stood in the middle of the tarmac strip with Gordon and watched helplessly as the bus raced away, instantly wiping up the last few cadavers which had made it this far along the road, smashing them like flies on its windscreen. Wrestling herself free from Gordon’s well-meaning grip she ran down after it, stopping when she reached the area where Hollis had been standing.

“Hollis!” she screamed.

“Fuck me, that was close,” she heard him say from somewhere to her left. She looked around with relief and helped him up as he disentangled himself from the undergrowth. “Who the hell was that?”

“Martin, I think,” she answered.

“What does he think he’s doing?”

“Trying to block the road or get rid of the bodies,” she replied. “Or both.”

* * *

The van blasted down the other side of the track at breakneck speed. Jas looked for the sharp, almost complete 360-degree turn that he needed to take the fork in the road back up to the hotel. At this pace it was difficult to see much—the hedgerows merged to look like a single, uninterrupted border around the hotel. Wait … there it was. He could see the back of the hotel sign now, and he could also see the sign to the golf club pointing up along the stretch of road they’d just come down. He slammed his foot hard on the brake and yanked the wheel around to the right, planning to make a three-point turn in the narrow space. Now facing the hedgerow, he crunched into reverse.

“Shit,” Harte cursed, suddenly covering his head and diving over toward Jas. Jas looked up and, for the briefest of moments, was aware of the front of the bus thundering toward them.

The massive vehicle and its makeshift, blood-covered snowplow punched into the side of the van, the force of impact sending it crashing into the hedgerow and showering the road with broken glass. The bus itself continued forward, its front wheels ramming up the muddy bank at the bottom of the hedge. Harte shook his head and checked himself for injuries. Jas, who could already see that they were both unharmed, shoved him back over into his seat.

“Come on,” he said, jumping out onto the road. He rubbed his aching neck and turned back to look for Harte, who was struggling to get out, unable to open his badly buckled door. “This way,” he shouted.

Disoriented by the jolting shock and speed of the crash, Harte continued to try and get the passenger door to open for a second longer, unable to understand why he couldn’t do it. Distracted, he looked up when he saw more movement out of the corner of his eye. The front of the bus was just a couple of meters away from where he sat, forced up at an unnatural sloping angle, and someone was trying to escape from inside. It was Martin. What the hell was he doing driving the bus? And what had he done? Blood was pouring down his face and he was banging on the glass.

“Come on,” Jas yelled again, reaching back into the van and dragging Harte out onto the road. His head clearing, he picked himself up and ran around to the front of the bus. Martin was hammering frantically on the windscreen now, desperately trying to free himself.

“Keep still,” Harte shouted. “Shut up and keep still!”

Martin was panicking. He was kicking and screaming and trying to get himself out of the driver’s seat with no appreciation of how precariously balanced the bus was. Harte could see that all of the wheels on one side had been forced up the bank. Again he tried to stop Martin moving, but his words had no effect. The wiry little man finally freed himself from the seat and stood up to get out, scrambling up the steeply inclined floor. His desperate, clumsy movements were enough to upset the delicate balance of the bus and force it completely over onto its side. Jas yanked Harte back out of the way as the huge vehicle crashed down into the road. Martin was thrown across the cab, thumping his head again as he went down. This time he didn’t get up.

“Do you think he’s…” Harte began to ask.

“Probably,” Jas said, his voice cold and devoid of emotion. “Stupid bastard. What the hell was he doing?”

Harte hauled himself up the front of the box-shaped vehicle and stood on its uppermost side, the top edge of the folding door at his feet. He dropped to his knees and pushed against it, managing to force it half-open.

“Martin!” he shouted. “Martin…”

Six feet below them, Martin began to groan.

“We’ll come back for him,” Jas said as he pulled himself up. “Stupid, bloody fool.” He glanced down again at Martin’s slowly stirring body, then turned and ran along the side of the bus.

“Looks like he was trying to clear the road,” Harte said, stopping when he reached the back end of the vehicle and looking down at the track, completely awash with blood and unrecognizable heaps of fetid remains.

“Fucking idiot. All he’s done is block it.”

“Come on, he didn’t know we were coming around the corner, did he?”

“I don’t care. Fact is he’s blocked our way out. How are we supposed to shift this thing now?”

“No idea. Come on, we’ll sort it out later. We should get back to the others.”

He was about to move when he heard the distant whine of another engine. He remained where he was, completely motionless. Where was it? Who was it? It had to be Webb and Amir. Where the hell had they been?

“Helicopter,” Jas said, immediately recognizing the noise and pointing up at the aircraft he’d just spotted. His heart began to thump in his chest and his legs felt heavy with nerves. Come on, he thought, this is it.

He glanced over to his left. Two huge black columns of smoke were still rising high into the sky—surely they had to see them. Surely they’d fly over here to investigate … There was hardly any wind and the smoke was rising straight up like hundred-story-tall arrows pointing down at the hotel. He willed the helicopter to change course and fly closer.

“They’ll see it,” Harte said under his breath. “They have to…”

Jas stared unblinking at the single speck of black crawling across the white clouds. He watched it until it disappeared, praying it would bank around and come back.

Minutes passed before he stopped looking.

“That’s it, then,” he said dejectedly, his voice weak with emotion. “I don’t think they’ll be back again. We’re completely fucked now.”