Autumn: Disintegration (11 page)

“Is that what you think?” Hollis said, shaking his head.

“’Course it is,” he answered.

“You’re really dumb at times, Webb,” he said as he lifted his chain saw and readied himself to move forward again. “It might look that way, but just watch them. More to the point, watch yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because if you look closely,” he continued, pausing to cut another body in two from its groin up to its neck, “you’ll see that some of them are actually trying to coordinate themselves and attack.”

Webb laughed out loud at Hollis’s comment, but he found himself watching the next cadaver more closely. It was slow and weak but Christ, he was right, it was moving with a very real purpose and intent. He expected it to leap straight at him aggressively, but it didn’t. Instead it watched him with dull, unblinking eyes and chose its moment, suddenly lifting its spindly arms and increasing its speed and force. Whether it had been a considered attack or not, Webb destroyed it with a dismissive thump from the baseball bat to the side of its head.

*   *   *

After hours of virtually constant fighting, it was time to stop. Lorna dropped a car diagonally across the bonnet of another she’d moved previously, plugging the last remaining gap and stemming the flow of bodies toward the survivors. Exhausted and soaked with a layer of mud, blood, and gore, Webb, Hollis and Harte quickly disposed of the last few loose cadavers before dropping their weapons. Jas cleared the area with the smaller digger, dropping larger body parts onto a smoldering pyre, then scraping the metal shovel along the ground and dumping a scoop full of once-human slurry over the other side of the wall of cars and rubble, onto the heads of the unsuspecting crowd. Job done, he switched off the engine and climbed out of the cab. Without the constant mechanical drone of the two machines the world was suddenly eerily silent, so quiet that the loudest sound remaining was the trickle of liquefied flesh dripping from the metal scoop behind him into a muddy puddle.

Webb was the first to speak. Still buzzing with excitement from the kill, he babbled breathlessly as they began to walk back up the hill.

“How many do you reckon, then?” he asked.

“What?” Hollis asked.

“How many did we get rid of? Couple of hundred?”

“Something like that,” Harte replied quietly, shaking something unpleasant from his right glove.

“Christ, I’m tired.” Jas sighed wearily.

“I could do more,” Webb continued.

“Be my guest,” Hollis said. “You carry on.”

“I could spend all day getting rid of those bloody things. There’s nothing better than wiping out a load of them when you’re pissed off and wound up.”

“Most of us seem to be pissed off and wound up all the time,” Harte said. “I’ve been like that since this all started.”

“Well, at least we’re doing something positive now. Taking a stand. Letting them know who’s in charge…”

Webb shut up when he realized that Hollis had stopped walking. He turned around to look back at him.

“Problem?” Harte asked, concerned. Hollis was gazing back down the hill toward the crowd. Thick smoke was rising from the smoldering heap of charred flesh by the diggers and drifting out over the heads of the dead.

“Look what we did today,” Webb said excitedly. “Look how many of them we got rid of.”

“That’s exactly what I was looking at,” Hollis said.

“And?” Webb pushed, sensing that the other man still had more to say.

Hollis pointed back toward the area where they’d worked. “That,” he said, “took six of us a few hours to clear.”

“So what’s your point?”

“It took us the best part of a day and a shitload of fuel and effort just to take out a hundred or so bodies. Bloody hell, there are hundreds of
thousands
of them down there—how long’s that going to take? We haven’t cleared one percent yet. We haven’t even scratched the surface.”

“You’re a miserable fucker,” Webb snarled, annoyed. “Tell me it doesn’t make you feel good when you stand down there and rip those fucking things apart.”

“I’m not denying that.”

“So what’s your problem?”

“There’s too many of them, that’s all. You’re never going to get rid of all of them, are you?”

“No one said we were trying to do that,” Harte said.

“Wiping the floor with a few dozen stiffs might make you feel like you’ve done something worthwhile,” Hollis continued, “but do me a favor and let’s not pretend it’s going to change the world. I don’t want to spend all day, every day, down there fighting. There’s got to be more to life than that.”

“Has there? Seems to me this is just about all we’ve got left.”

Hollis shook his head and carried on up the hill, leaving the others standing in silence. They stared down through the smoke at the insignificant gray scar they’d left on the landscape below.

14

Hollis and Lorna sat at the bottom of a dark staircase, their faces illuminated by the flickering light from half a dozen candles. Gordon stood in a doorway opposite, arms folded. It was late and although they were tired, no one wanted to sleep. Stokes, Harte, and Webb were standing out on the balcony at the front of one of the flats on the floor below, making plans to continue their cull at first light. Their muffled voices could be heard echoing around the large and predominantly empty building.

“I like your hair,” Hollis said unexpectedly. Lorna looked up and smiled momentarily before looking down again. She didn’t like it when he commented on her hair. She didn’t do it for anyone but herself. When Hollis paid her a compliment it made her feel like she was being chatted up by her uncle. She didn’t tell him. She didn’t want to upset him.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, hoping that would be the end of the conversation.

“You always make an effort,” he said. “You always look good.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“No reason,” he quickly backpedaled, worried he’d offended her. “I’m down to one shave a week.”

“Just because I feel like shit, doesn’t mean I have to look like shit, does it?”

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that you should…”

Nearby, Gordon looked away, embarrassed for Hollis. He was relieved when Caron appeared at the top of the staircase, carrying another candle. Taking care with her footing she slowly made her way down.

“How’s she doing?” Hollis asked, his whispered words amplified by the silence. Caron had spent the evening sitting with Anita. She shook her head and sat down.

“Not good,” she replied, her voice weary and low. “She’s worse than ever tonight.”

“What is it?” Lorna asked, knowing full well that Caron knew as little as she did. “Is she still being sick?”

“Nothing left for her to throw up,” she answered, “and she hasn’t eaten anything today. I tried to get her to take some water but she couldn’t.”

“I don’t like this,” Gordon said nervously. “It’s like a tropical disease or something. It’s come from the bodies, it must have. There are flies and maggots and germs out there and—”

“Shut up, Gord,” Hollis snapped, silencing him. “You’re not helping.”

“But it could spread. We might all end up catching it. For all we know she might—”

“I mean it. Shut up, Gord,” he warned again.

“I read something in a magazine once about outbreaks of disease after natural disasters,” Caron said, cutting across them both. “Can’t remember exactly what it said. Someone did a study after an earthquake or something like that when there were lots of bodies lying around.”

“And?” Lorna pressed.

“Didn’t pay much attention to it at the time,” she admitted. “I didn’t think I needed to. Wasn’t the kind of article I usually read.”

“Well, do you remember anything useful?”

“I think it said most germs were spread through direct contact with the bodies or through contaminated water. They weren’t airborne, I don’t think.”

“That’s just perfect,” Lorna moaned. “We’ve spent most of the day ankle deep in their shite.”

“Yeah,” Hollis said quickly, “but most of it was on the suits, and all of it got washed off, didn’t it? And we collect rainwater, don’t we. We should be okay.”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing. I doubt if any of us have caught anything.”

“How do you know? Anita has.”

“So how did she get it?” Gordon asked, clearly agitated. “She hasn’t been outside for ages. She’s been drinking the same water we have.”

“She might have had it before she got here,” Hollis replied, clutching at straws. “Maybe it takes a few weeks to show itself? Or she could have just got unlucky and eaten something that was contaminated.”

“I don’t like this,” he grumbled. “What if we catch it off her?”

“Then we’ll just have to deal with it, won’t we.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?”

“We’ll try and get her some drugs and keep her isolated. That’s all we can do for now.”

“But what if that doesn’t work?”

“For Christ’s sake, what do you expect me to do about it? Do you want me to go down to the edge of the crowd and see if any of the bodies used to be a doctor? Bloody hell, Gordon, just get a grip!”

“He does have a point, though,” Lorna said.

“I know he does,” Hollis admitted.

“We can’t just let her lie up there like this, can we?”

Hollis shook his head and stood up. He slowly paced away along the corridor, but then stopped and walked back. He stopped a short distance away where the light from the candles was just strong enough to catch the outline of his tired face.

“Maybe a couple of us should go out tomorrow and try to find her some drugs,” he suggested again. “Get some antibiotics or something. Hopefully that’ll do the trick.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Gordon shouted after him as Hollis walked away and disappeared into the darkness.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” his fading voice replied.

15

The early morning sun unexpectedly broke through the layer of dull gray cloud which smothered the land. Hollis waited in front of the flats for Lorna. Down below them, the cull had begun again. It was before seven but neither the early hour nor their tiredness after yesterday’s exertion seemed to have put a damper on Jas, Webb, Stokes, or Harte’s enthusiastic desire to try and obliterate another swathe of bodies. This morning, to his great surprise, Hollis noticed that Gordon too had found himself an ill-fitting set of bike leathers and joined the others at the edge of the crowd. Dodgy hip or no dodgy hip, he finally seemed to have overcome his pathetic fears and inhibitions and was facing the bodies head-on. Either that or he found the prospect of sitting waiting inside the flats more nerve-wracking today. Every conversation he’d overheard since waking up seemed to have been about Anita and her worsening condition.

A wash of golden sunlight dappled the heads of thousands of the writhing bodies at the foot of the hill. He wasn’t sure why, but the one-sided battle unfolding below him somehow seemed different from yesterday, more ferocious. Maybe it was nothing more than the different perspective from which he was watching the fighting. Perhaps the bodies yesterday had been just as violent and animated as these, but they’d seemed less so because he’d been dealing with them at close quarters. Maybe it was just because people like Gordon and Stokes were less experienced and less capable when it came to hand-to-hand combat? Or were the bodies more animated, ready to retaliate after yesterday’s slaughter?

“You ready?” Lorna asked, startling him. He turned around and saw that she was standing just behind him. He grunted and climbed into the grime-splattered van he usually drove. He’d spoken to Lorna again briefly late last night and they’d taken it upon themselves to go out searching for drugs. If they didn’t do it, as she’d quite rightly pointed out, no other fucker would.

“So where to?” he asked as she sat down next to him and slammed the door shut. She knew the area far better than he did.

“There are three pharmacies near here,” she replied quickly. “Head for the one at the bottom of Bail Hill first. That was a pretty big one. There should be plenty of stuff there.”

“Okay.”

“You got any idea what we’re looking for?”

“No,” he replied as he started the engine and drove toward the maze of garages, tracks and streets behind the flats. “I suggest we just get in there and empty the shelves into the back of the van. We’ll worry about what we’ve got when we get back.”

*   *   *

Hollis slammed on the brakes outside the pharmacy, leaving the van parked on the pavement, as close to the door at the far right of the front of the building as he could get.

“Five minutes,” he told her, “that’s all.”

Lorna quickly disappeared inside. He paused for a second before following, stopping just long enough to look up and down the road to see what effect their sudden unannounced arrival had had. He counted around ten creatures crawling slowly toward them from both directions. No doubt there’d be hundreds more by the time he and Lorna were finished.

Lorna was already working when he got inside, collecting bottles of medicine and packets of pills in wire shopping baskets. She was nervously sweeping entire shelves clear with her arm and doing her best to catch what she could. She’d already filled three baskets. Hollis grabbed them and ran back out to the van.

Twice as many bodies as before now, maybe more. Christ, they were going to have to be quick.

“How are we supposed to know what any of this stuff is and what it does?” Lorna shouted across the shop as he returned. “Maybe there’s a book or something we could take?”

“Doubt it,” he said, grabbing the next two baskets and heading for the door again. “They’d have had it all on computer, wouldn’t they?”

“Suppose. Might be something, though. It’s worth having a look.”

He threw the baskets into the back of the van. Many more bodies now. Getting close. Too close.

“No time,” he shouted, collecting the final baskets. “We need to get gone.”

Lorna pulled open a heavy white door next to where she’d been working which, she presumed, would lead to an office or another drugs store. Maybe she’d find some information in there which would help her to—