Autumn: Disintegration (36 page)

I’m going to get out of here.

Webb dropped back down to his hands and knees and began to crawl.

52

Hollis and Gordon carefully lifted Martin out of the bus, hauling him up through the door.

“You stupid bugger,” Gordon cursed as he struggled with his heavy legs. Martin groaned but didn’t respond.

“He just panicked,” Hollis whispered, putting his hands under his shoulders and lifting, “That’s all. He was just trying to protect this place.”

“Just trying to protect himself, more like.”

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

They reached the end of the bus. Hollis jumped down and called Howard over to help lift Martin down. Groaning with his awkward weight, between them they lowered him to the ground. There was movement all around them as Harte, Lorna, and Ginnie cleaned the drive—scraping up what was left of the dead with shovels, then transporting it in wheelbarrows and buckets away from the hotel.

“Mind out,” Hollis said, almost backing into Harte and knocking him into a waist-high pile of fetid corpses and dismembered limbs.

“Watch what you’re doing,” Harte grumbled, realizing who they were carrying. “You going to chuck him on this pile? Stupid bastard nearly got us killed just now.”

“No, he didn’t,” Hollis said quickly. “
You
nearly got yourselves killed. You were the ones who drove into a field full of dead bodies and started blowing cars up. Nothing to do with Martin.”

“Suppose it was our fault he crashed into us as well,” Harte said.

Hollis shook his head, refusing to be drawn into yet another pointless argument. “Whatever.”

The road clear again, Harte threw down the shovel he’d been using and walked back toward the hotel. Howard, Hollis, and Gordon followed carrying Martin, who continued to moan. Ginnie and Lorna were close behind. They found Caron sitting on the steps outside the main entrance. She looked up as Harte stomped past her, then moved to the side to let the others through. It had started to rain—just a light mist—but it was refreshing and cool. Caron decided she’d rather sit out and get wet than go back indoors, no matter what dirt or germs were being washed down by the water. Lorna stopped and sat down next to her.

“You all right out here?” she asked.

“Fine.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m fine,” Caron snapped.

“Sorry,” Lorna mumbled, surprised by the strength of her reaction.

“It’s all right,” Caron replied. “Don’t want anyone fussing, that’s all.”

“That’s your job, isn’t it?” she said sarcastically.

“I’ve given all that up,” she said quietly, taking a swig from a bottle of wine. She offered it to Lorna, who took it gratefully.

“Shame,” she said, wiping her mouth. “You were good at it.”

Caron shook her head and stared out toward the edge of the hotel grounds. “I don’t think so.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because all the people I’ve tried looking after recently are dead.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, love,” Lorna whispered secretively, “pretty much everyone’s dead, and it had nothing to do with anything you did or didn’t do for them.”

Caron thought for a moment.

“Suppose,” she said, drinking more wine and shivering with cold. “Do you know what we need to do now?”

“What?”

“Absolutely bloody nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I might be drunk,” Caron blathered, “but I know what I’m talking about. The more you try these days, the less you get. Those boys went outside today and tried too hard, now we’ve lost Amir, Sean, and Webb.”

“Webb’s no great loss.”

“No, but the others were,” she replied angrily, slurring her words slightly as she became more emotional, “and we didn’t have to lose them. Now if we all just sit still, be quiet, and do nothing, we’ll be okay.”

The rain began to fall with more persistence. Lorna stood up, then reached back down and held out a hand to Caron.

“Come on,” she said, hauling her up onto her unsteady feet. Together they walked through the cold and quiet building, along the glass-fronted corridor which ran along the edge of the courtyard. She glanced up and saw Howard pounding back down the staircase at the end of the opposite wing. Gordon was following close behind.

“More trouble,” Caron said dejectedly. “It’s always trouble when people like Gordon and Howard start moving quickly.”

Lorna sighed as they walked toward the restaurant. “You don’t know that, but you’re probably right.” She braced herself for bad news but was surprised by the self-congratulatory smiles which greeted her.

“It worked,” Hollis said as she walked over to him and took a can of beer.

“What worked?”

“Jas’s little stunt outside today,” he explained. At the mention of his name Jas turned around and grinned.

“You should see it!” he enthused. “We’ve just been watching upstairs. We shifted thousands of them today, and the rest are more interested in the fires we started than anything we’re doing here.”

“Congratulations.” Lorna smiled, not exactly sure how she felt. Was it even worth reminding him of the pointless sacrifices which had been made? Perhaps it was better just to shut up and not burst his bubble.

“I don’t think we should do anything else today,” Harte said, picking up where Jas had left off. “But maybe we should think about getting out of here tomorrow or the day after that. We could take one of the trucks from the road junction.”

“Are we going to gain anything from that?” Lorna asked cautiously, remembering Caron’s earlier words.

“You can just stay here if you want to,” he snapped.

She sighed. The arguments were becoming disappointingly stale and familiar around here.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Caron announced, her drunken voice louder than intended.

“Shut up, Caron,” Jas laughed. “You’re pissed.”

“I might well be,” she replied. “but I’m not stupid.”

53

Webb had almost reached the clubhouse. His progress over the final few meters of the once perfectly maintained golf course had been painfully slow. The number of cadavers around him seemed to have increased as he got nearer to the building, as had the depth of the repugnant sludge through which he continued to move. The sickly sea of decay, almost a foot deep in places now, had built up over weeks. Many hundreds of corpses had gravitated here over time, and a huge number of them had been dragged down and trampled underfoot. Their remains, along with the obnoxious juices which had dripped, dribbled, and seeped down from the masses still standing, had combined to become this unholy gray mire. Webb was covered in it. The damn stuff was in his hair and his eyes. It was in his nose and he could taste it at the back of his throat. He could feel it on his skin, cold and repellent. It had soaked him, permeating through his many layers of protective clothing. He tried to convince himself that it was just mud, and when he looked too closely and saw the occasional eye, or ear or other equally distinguishable shape floating by, he forced himself to look away and concentrate on the music still playing in the distance.

What now? He tried to keep his head down as much as he could but he allowed himself to glance up momentarily and saw through the forest of tripping, sliding legs that the front of the building was now only a couple of meters ahead. The music was uncomfortably loud now, although it continued to be muffled down at ground level by the increased number of corpses swarming above and around him. They walked over him, oblivious to his presence, frequently standing right on top of him and not realizing. Damn things didn’t even know he was there.

It was impossible to see with any certainty, but the congestion around the door up ahead didn’t look as bad as he’d expected. Sure, there was a huge number of corpses congregating around the building, but a decorative low wall or fence on either side of the door seemed to be channelling many of them away. Regardless, he was going to have to get up to get inside. He paused and lay still for a moment longer, collecting his thoughts and trying to steady his nerves. He’d managed to drag his baseball bat along with him. His only option now, it seemed, was to get up, smash his way through the crowd, and then batter the door—and any corpses that got in his way—with all the strength he could muster. Hopefully the speed and surprise of his attack would be enough to confuse the cadavers for a few seconds. By the time they realized what was happening, he hoped, he might already be inside. And what after that? He wished he’d listened more closely to Martin’s explanation of the layout of the building. From what he could remember there was a back entrance which he used to get in and out. An entrance which was connected to the road and which would enable him to get back to the hotel. Back to safety and food and drink and his room and then—

Another decaying foot pressed down on the small of his back, pushing his face closer to the foul stench beneath him. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on what he was about to do, his guts churning with nausea and fear. Try and get a little closer, he decided, then just go for it.

Webb slithered through the mud and grime until the ground dropped away slightly. He’d reached the top of a gradual low slope which had remained invisible until now, disguised by the number of bodies tightly packed around the building. The slope led directly to the wide double-door into the clubhouse. Taking a final deep breath of noxious-smelling, germ-ridden air, he hauled himself back up to his feet, knocking several cadavers down into the mud as he did so. Dripping with the odious, rotten slime, he lifted his baseball bat high and swung it around his head, hacking down a wide circle of disoriented creatures. Before any others could react he ran to the door, slipping and sliding precariously down the slope. For the moment it seemed to have worked, and it was immediately apparent why: in the fading light the dead could hardly see him. Their eyesight was poor and he looked almost the same as they did, just another indistinguishable gray blur. Camouflaged by the thick, sludgy layer of mud and decomposed human remains, he now wore the same gray-green-black uniform as the rest of them and had become virtually invisible. With the bodies so tightly packed and their footing so precarious, he knew that he suddenly had an unexpected few seconds of freedom to get into the building.
Do it now
, he told himself, his mind racing,
before they realize
.

Webb hammered the baseball bat down on the clubhouse door. It immediately began to splinter and crack but it held tight. He swung the bat again, bringing it right over his head and crashing down on the door. The nails sunk into the wood and he had to yank them out as he prepared to strike for a third time. He swung the bat back, ready to heave it forward again, then pulled it back over his head with all the remaining strength he could summon up. This time it hit the door with a dull thud, and he saw that a chunk of flesh had been torn off a body behind him.

He glanced back and saw that the farthest advanced cadavers were moving forward again, attracted by his sudden strong movements and the noise he was making. A large group of them were edging closer. It was impossible to see exactly how many but that didn’t matter. Many more were already following close behind. He shook the flesh off the end of the bat, heaved it back and swung it down again, this time with a loud grunt of effort and a satisfying crack as the top panel of the right-hand door gave way, leaving a large enough hole for him to be able to get his hand inside and force more of the wood away.

He could feel the first clawing fingers on his back now, then the deceptively soft impact of the first body crashing into him. Now working with a desperate, breathless speed he threw his bat down and pulled more of the wood away, enough for him to be able to shove his head and one arm through. It was virtually pitch-black inside the building and he could see nothing, but with his outstretched fingers he felt a wooden bar which had been carefully secured across the door—no doubt Martin’s typically pedantic workmanship. He anxiously yanked it out of the brackets which held it in place, then dropped it down.

Another corpse grabbed Webb’s shoulders, pulling him back. He allowed himself to be moved away for a fraction of a second, then shook himself free and ran back at the door. Despite the ground beneath his feet being greasy and covered with flesh and bone, he managed to build up enough velocity to hit the middle of the double-door with sufficient force to throw both sides of it open. Without stopping he ran into the darkness with arms outstretched, feeling his way through the shadowy building, not knowing where he was going.

Fighting with each other to get through the narrow gap, the first of hundreds of bodies followed Webb, the force of many more behind keeping them moving at a speed which almost matched his.

54

“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Harte protested, shoving a handful of food into his mouth. “You’ve never seen so many of them as there were out there today.”

Gordon shook his head and took a plate from Ginnie.

“And I don’t want to know either,” he said, sniffing at his food. “I saw more than enough, thank you. What’s this?”

“Some kind of stew,” Ginnie replied.

He poked at his food, stabbed his fork into a lump of something, then shoved it into his mouth and chewed it. Ginnie looked at his face expectantly. He nodded his appreciation and took another mouthful.

“Not bad,” he said, trying to remember when he’d last eaten warm food.

“Remember that night back at the flats when you did the cooking, Gord?” Harte asked, laughing. “Fuck me, what was it again?”

“Some vegetarian rubbish,” Lorna laughed.

“When was this?” Howard asked, struggling to see the others through the semidarkness. He sat just outside the main circle so that he could feed his dog without anyone complaining. All the others ever gave her were scraps, and after the way she’d fought today he thought she deserved more.

“We’d only been there a couple of weeks,” Lorna continued. “Most of us went out looking for food, but Gordon pulls the old dodgy-hip routine and decided we’d all be better off if he stayed behind.”