Autumn: Disintegration (8 page)

A short distance away, Stokes was gingerly pushing the last body away, trying to summon up the courage to attack. Full of words but usually very little action, he couldn’t begin to match Webb’s ferocity. Webb grabbed a length of narrow gauge metal pipe which was sticking out of the rubble at his feet.

“Get out of the way!” he screamed at Stokes as he ran toward him. Stokes obediently did as he was told, leaving the last corpse standing alone, swaying unsteadily. Webb speared it with his lance, sinking the pipe so deep into its chest cavity that it burst out through the other side, its decayed innards slopping down in a puddle on the ground behind it. Unbalanced, its legs gave way. Webb made certain of the kill with a single stomp of his boot to its vacant, emotionless face.

“Did that thing bite you?” Stokes asked, standing over the bulk of the fallen garbage collector.

Webb answered only with a nervous nod of the head before running back up the hill toward the flats. Stokes followed close behind with uncharacteristic speed, sheer terror keeping his out-of-shape body moving forward.

10

“It bit me!” Webb yelled as he flew into the communal living room, his voice close to breaking. “Fucking thing bit me!”

Hollis and Gordon were playing cards. Gordon looked up from the table momentarily but then looked down again, disinterested. Driver was asleep in an armchair with his newspaper over his face. Lorna had headphones on and was listening to music. Only Ellie showed any interest.

“What bit you?” she asked as she changed her doll’s nappy.

“One of those fucking things out there!”

“What?”

“One of the bodies bit me!”

Hollis glanced up from his cards. Was Webb on something? None of them bothered taking drugs anymore, mainly because they couldn’t find any. But had he found something in the warehouse yesterday? Was he still drunk from last night? Stokes’s sudden appearance in the doorway derailed his train of thought.

“It’s true,” he gasped, red-faced and fighting for breath. “One of them bit him.”

“Did it cut you?” Ellie asked. Webb shook his head and held up his arm, using his other hand to show where he’d been bitten.

“It just grabbed hold of me and bit me here,” he explained. “It couldn’t get through my jacket.”

“So what’s the problem, then?”

“The problem is it
bit
him, you stupid bitch!” Stokes yelled. Ellie shrugged off the insult; she’d been called much worse recently. “Are they going to start trying to eat us now?”

“You’ve watched too many crap films,” she announced, putting the doll over her shoulder, then getting up and walking around the room, gently patting its back.

“Are you sure it bit you?” Hollis asked, finally putting down his hand of cards, knowing they weren’t going to get any peace until Webb had his say.

“Of course I’m sure, you fucking idiot!” he screamed, his normally cocky voice filled with genuine panic and fear. “It had its teeth wrapped around my fucking arm!”

“But did it really bite you? Are you sure you didn’t just put your arm in its mouth?”

“Are you having a laugh?” Stokes said in disbelief. “It bit him. What don’t you understand? The bloody thing bit him.”

Hollis looked at him for a moment longer, then picked up his cards again.

“It didn’t really, though, did it? Why would it? Think about it. As far as I know they don’t eat, so it wasn’t trying to take a chunk out of you because it was hungry, was it?”

“It bit me,” Webb snarled, his fear now giving way to anger.

“Put anything in their mouths and chances are they’ll bite down on it. It’s an instinctive reaction, isn’t it? Just the same as walking or—”

“It fucking bit me!”

The volume of Webb’s voice had reached such a level that everyone stopped to listen. Even Driver moved his newspaper slightly so that he could see what was happening. Jas and Caron appeared from the flat next door. Only Anita, who hadn’t yet got out of bed today, was absent.

“What’s the matter?” Caron asked, concerned. Hollis couldn’t be bothered to recap.

“Calm down,” he warned Webb, who seemed poised to erupt again.

“Calm down?” Stokes gasped having finally got his breath back. “Calm down? For Christ’s sake, man, just listen to yourself, will you? One of those things out there tried to take a chunk out of his arm and you’re telling him to calm down? Can’t you see what—”

Hollis sighed. “It was just an instinctive reaction.”

“You weren’t even there!” Stokes yelled at him.

“But like I said, they don’t eat,” he protested. “They’re not controlled enough to be able to attack like that. Like Ellie said, this isn’t some stupid horror film. You’re not going to become one of them because you’ve had contact with infected blood or anything like that.”

“How do you know?”

Hollis rolled up his sleeve to reveal a seven-inch-long zigzag cut running along his forearm from his elbow to his wrist. The cut had been deep and sore but was beginning to scab over and heal. “One of them did this to me last week.”

“How?” Jas asked from the other side of the room. “You told me you did it trying to move a car.”

Hollis shook his head. “I said it happened while I was moving a car. I got scratched, that’s all. Just a lucky hit from a body that had lost a lot of flesh on one of its hands. Caught me with a sharp edge of bone.”

“Did you clean it up?” Caron quickly asked, her motherly instincts coming to the fore again. Hollis sighed. Did she think he was stupid?

“Of course I cleaned it up. Look, this really isn’t anything like the films you used to watch or the books you read. Those things out there are just dead bodies. They’re not flesh-eating monsters. They don’t want our brains or anything like that.”

“No, but they
do
attack us and they
are
getting smarter,” Lorna said. In an instant the focus of everyone in the room switched to her. “I don’t know how or why, but they
are
getting smarter, aren’t they?”

“What’s she talking about?” Gordon asked nervously. He turned around and repeated his question directly to her. “What are you talking about?”

“If you’d actually come outside with us and done something useful you’d know exactly what I was talking about.”

“My hip…” he began, immediately making excuses.

“Fuck you and your hip,” Webb said angrily. “Fucking waster.”

Gordon looked down and shuffled his cards again. He couldn’t handle confrontation.

“Is that right?” Caron asked, her voice suddenly tight and unsure. “Are they really getting smarter?”

“Not all of them,” Harte answered, “but some seem to be.”

“And did it really bite him?”

Hollis made eye contact with her and shook his head, the movement subtle enough for Webb not to see.

“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” Lorna continued. “Doesn’t matter how hard or fast they come at you, they’re still falling apart. It’ll still take a shitload of them to cause you any problems.”

“What—a shitload like the fifty thousand or so we’ve got camped out at the bottom of the hill?” Stokes grumbled unhelpfully.

“You know what I mean.”

“But what if they get up here?” Gordon asked anxiously.

“They’re not going to get up here,” Harte answered quickly.

“Who says?” Webb snapped. Driver fully removed the paper from over his face and sat up in his seat. Gordon put down his cards. Caron moved farther into the room.

“Shut up, Webb,” Hollis said. “You’re winding everybody up. For the last time, that thing didn’t bite you, and none of them are going to get up here, okay?”

“One of them did last night.”

“What?”

“While I was out in the car,” he explained, “one of them managed to get almost all the way up here.”

“Must have just got lucky.”

“What happened to it?” wondered Ellie, looking nervously out of the window.

“I beat the shit out of it, that’s what happened,” he replied.

“So one of them managed to get over the barrier,” said Hollis. “So what? The rest of them haven’t. They’re still stuck down there.”

“At the moment,” Stokes said. Hollis looked up at the ceiling in despair.

“For crying out loud, will you please stop trying to wind everyone up? We’re safe here. Nothing’s changed.”

“You reckon?”

“Yes.”

“Hollis is right,” Lorna agreed. “We just need to keep a close watch on things. If something does happen then we’ll deal with it straightaway.”

“I’m ready,” Webb said purposefully, a mask of machismo hiding the mounting fear he was feeling. “I’ll fucking deal with them.”

“I know you will,” Lorna said quietly. “And that scares me more than the bodies do.”

11

“Pass it!” Harte screamed at Webb. Webb looked up and kicked the ball wide to Jas, who made a diving run forward and booted it at Stokes in goal. The ball hit his belly with a loud slap and bounced away. He ran toward it and kicked it back across the car park. Harte scuttled after it.

“You won’t get anything past me,” Stokes boasted.

“That’s because you fill the fucking goal,” Webb laughed.

“Cheeky bastard!”

Harte reappeared and curled the ball to Jas on the wing. Jas dummied and swerved around Webb, who ran at him at speed.

“That’s out!” Webb screamed. “You’re off the pitch. We said the line was level with the front of the van.”

“Piss off, Webb,” Jas gasped as he sprinted toward the goal. Stokes readied himself for the shot. Did he shoot high or aim low? Try and swerve it around the side or just kick it straight at him? Jas lined himself up for the shot, only for Webb to slide along the tarmac and take his legs out from under him. The ball rolled away, Webb chasing after it furiously.

“Go on, Webb,” Harte yelled. “Shoot!”

“You little bastard,” Jas seethed, running at Webb again, grabbing his shoulders and hauling him down. Webb stuck his foot out and managed to get a shot in before he fell. The ball bobbled up in front of Stokes, who ran forward and booted it away again. It soared over Harte’s head and bounced down the hill.

Jas and Webb stood face-to-face in the middle of the pitch.

“You do that to me again and I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Webb jeered. “You’ll let me get past again?”

“You little shit,” he said, lunging forward and grabbing hold of Webb’s collar. Webb squirmed but couldn’t get away.

“Go on, then,” he said, still writhing. “Hit me.”

“You blokes are pathetic,” shouted Ellie, pushing a pram across the car park. “Doesn’t matter what else is happening, there’s nothing like football to bring you closer to each other, eh? Bloody pathetic.”

Jas let go of Webb and pushed him away. They continued to stare at each other for a second, both realizing the pointlessness of the argument, but neither prepared to be the one who backed down. Harte eventually broke the deadlock, pushing his way between them both to fetch the ball.

“Sort yourselves out, boys,” he shouted as he ran toward the bodies.

*   *   *

Sliding tackles and bad challenges were forgotten as quickly as the final score of the ill-tempered kick-around. Although it was virtually dark, the footballers and Ellie, their sole spectator, remained outside. Webb sat on the bonnet of his car, his legs dangling down between the headlights which shone out into the darkness, providing them with a little illumination. The others sat on what was left of a filthy red corduroy three-piece suit which they’d dragged out of a damp ground-floor flat several weeks earlier. Ellie was sandwiched between Harte and Jas on a sofa on one side of the car. Stokes sat slumped in an armchair without a cushion on the other.

“So what are you suggesting?” Jas asked, leaning forward so that he could see Stokes.

“Hollis reckons they’re not a problem,” he said, his teeth chattering with the cold, “but I think they are. Like someone said, you’re okay if you’re up against one of them, but we’ve got thousands down there.”

“We could move on,” Ellie suggested, bouncing her doll on her knee. “Find somewhere else.”

“No point,” Stokes said quickly. “It’s going to be the same wherever we go, isn’t it?”

“So what are you thinking?” Jas asked again. Stokes paused before answering.

“Me and Webb have been talking about this. We think we should try a little crowd control.”

“Haven’t we been here before? Didn’t you try and wipe them all out once, Webb?” She laughed sarcastically.

“Piss off,” he hissed. “The wind changed direction. It wasn’t my fault…”

“Crowd control?” Jas said, ignoring their bickering.

“We think we should just try and push them back a little bit.”

“And how are we going to do that?”

“A bit of brute force and coordination. We’ll take our time. Torch the ones at the very front, then use the diggers to shunt the barrier back.”

“And you think that’ll work? Problem solved?”

“Not quite, but problem reduced, anyway.”

Jas slumped back in his seat, looked into the distance and gave serious consideration to what he’d just heard. He couldn’t see anything past the limited light which came from the car’s headlamps. Beyond their reach the rest of the world was drenched in an impenetrable shroud of never-ending darkness. Given the scale of the problem they faced at the bottom of the hill, he decided that not being able to see was probably a good thing.

“It’s a hell of a job you’re planning,” he finally said, sniffing and wiping a drip from the end of his nose. “It’s going to take time.”

“We’ve got plenty of that,” Harte said quickly. “No one’s saying it’s all got to be done by this time tomorrow, are they? Might be worth giving it a go.”

“Why now?” Jas asked. “We’ve been here for weeks and—”

“Because they’re changing, aren’t they?” Stokes interrupted. “You heard what happened when we were out there earlier.”

“One of them bit me, for fuck’s sake,” Webb interrupted energetically as if it was breaking news. Truth was, it was all he’d been talking about since it had happened.

“Look, are you sure you’re not getting this out of proportion?” Jas wondered. “Hollis said that—”