Autumn: Disintegration (25 page)

“Ready?” Ginnie shouted from behind the wheel of the coach, fighting to make herself heard over the rattle of the engine and, for once, not worrying about the volume of her voice.

Driver acknowledged her with a simple thumbs-up and stared straight ahead as the coach began to move to the side. He inched slowly forward before increasing his speed and driving out into the middle of the deserted road junction. He stopped to give Howard a chance to pull himself up into the driver’s seat of the truck which blocked the exit they planned to use. Dog in tow, he settled into the cab and immediately peered down at the mass of bodies on the other side. There were too many to count. Not the biggest crowd he’d ever seen, but too many all the same. His hands suddenly trembling with nerves, he started the engine and waited for Driver to pull the bus closer. The dead began to thump and push against the exposed side of the vehicle. The dog sat in the passenger seat and silently snarled at them, her nostrils full of the smell of rotting flesh.

The truck that Howard was driving spanned the gap between a six-foot-tall brick wall ahead and another truck just behind. As the bus began to move toward him he slowly reversed.

“Get as near as you can,” Hollis said to Driver, standing next to him at the front of the bus like a passenger waiting for the next stop. “You want to try and push as many of them back and out of the way as you can, try and stop them getting through.”

“Thanks, I’d worked that bit out for myself,” Driver grumbled. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and nudged forward as soon as there was room for him to move. Bodies began to pour through the gap, most of them immediately being dragged down beneath the bus or shoved away by the impromptu snowplow they’d bolted to its front weeks earlier. Driver accelerated, slicing through the crowd with ease. Hollis looked over his shoulder along the length of the bus. Through the small rectangular window at the back he watched as Howard immediately shunted the truck forward again, blocking the road and preventing any more cadavers from getting through.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad,” Harte said, relieved, standing just a little way behind Hollis and watching the rotting world rushing by through the windows on either side.

“Nowhere near as many of them as I thought there would be. Must be Martin’s music,” Hollis admitted. “Give him his due, I thought he was off his head, but maybe not.”

“Crazy bugger says he’s been playing music to them every day for more than a month,” he laughed. “Damn things are probably sick of it!”

Hollis nodded and smiled, then turned to look ahead as the first buildings of the town of Bromwell loomed on the dull horizon.

*   *   *

Incredibly, just three bodies had managed to drag themselves safely through the gap and into the blockaded road junction while the truck had been out of position. All of the others had been swept up and crushed by the bus. Gordon, now feeling far less confident than he had been just a few minutes earlier, stood rooted to the spot, waiting for the first of them to get close enough to attack.

“You okay, Gordon?” Ginnie shouted from the relative safety of the coach. The bodies were instinctively moving in her direction now, distracted by the noise of the engine and her voice. He wanted to stop them getting any closer. He liked Ginnie. She reminded him of someone he used to work with, and that unexpected familiarity, no matter how tenuous, was welcome. He took a deep breath and swallowed hard. Time to fight.

Running forward, he swung the ax into the side of the nearest cadaver’s neck, wedging it deep into its putrid flesh, just below its ear. The body, a stocky, awkward creature with only one arm and one eye, was overbalanced by the speed and force of the brutal strike. Gordon dragged it over onto the ground, then plunged the end of the crowbar into its exposed temple. A few seconds of twitching and kicking and it lay still. He yanked out his blood-soaked weapon, suddenly feeling like a gladiator, and turned to look for the next kill.

The body of a nurse was stumbling precariously close to the side of the coach. Gordon spun it around and, with another savage swing of the ax, ripped through the front of its throat, cutting so much weak flesh away that its head was largely unsupported but still remained attached. It flopped back on itself and dangled over its shoulders, now looking behind. Unbalanced, the corpse dropped to its knees and Gordon delivered another killer blow with the blade, this time strong enough to decapitate the corpse and send its head rolling away along the ground, eventually becoming wedged under the coach.

Howard’s dog suddenly shot past Gordon, the unexpected speed and movement catching him off guard and making his pulse race. He knew there was still another body to get rid of, but he’d lost sight of it momentarily. He spun around and saw that the dog had come to his aid. It jumped up and wrapped its teeth around the forearm of what remained of a young garage mechanic. The animal was too strong for the corpse and pulled it over. It fell flat on its face and the dog leaped away, then scurried back toward Howard—who was keeping a safe distance, skirting around the edge of the junction and avoiding the violence.

Now feeling more confident, Gordon strode over to the creature on the ground struggling to pick itself up. It managed to lock its arms and raise its head and shoulders and it looked up at him. He stared back, studying what was left of its face. It had very little hair and a gold hoop earring in its right ear. The ear itself was almost completely detached, clinging to the side of its head by nothing more than a few slender strips of flesh and cartilage. The creature managed to lift its decaying bulk a little higher, its sudden movement startling Gordon and forcing him to take a few steps back. He stopped, knowing that the pathetic lump of flesh at his feet was no longer a threat to him or anyone else. It straightened its arms again and lifted its torso. Just above the breast pocket of its blood and oil-stained overalls, the name
KEVIN
had been embroidered. Strange to think that Kevin had once had a life and a home and a family and friends and … and so what? Gordon finally realized that today, almost sixty days after the world had been irrevocably scarred and changed forever, Kevin and every other corpse that still walked the face of the planet no longer mattered.

He sunk the crowbar deep into its half-open right eye, shoving it into its skull and twisting it around, reducing what was left of its brain to pulp.

37

“You ever been to Bromwell before?” Amir asked Lorna and Jas as they drove deeper into the dead town. He didn’t care what their answer was or even if they didn’t answer at all. He was just trying to distract himself; trying to settle his nerves and take his mind off the hellish, almost unrecognizable world they were now traveling through.

“Doesn’t look like we missed anything,” Jas said, not in the mood for conversation.

“I think my dad brought me here once when I was little,” Lorna answered. “I wouldn’t recognize anything now, though.”

“Damn right.” Amir smiled sadly. “Bloody hell, I drove down this road to work every day for more than twelve years and I don’t recognize anything.”

“If you’re a local,” Harte said, eavesdropping from the front of the bus, “come up here and tell us where to go.”

Amir reluctantly got up and walked along the aisle, holding onto the passenger rail as the bus lurched from side to side and wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. He looked out through the dirty windscreen, trying to make sense of the carnage flashing past.

“Any suggestions?” Hollis asked.

“Give me a second,” Amir said quietly, trying to take in their surroundings and wipe a tear away from the corner of his eye. He hoped no one had noticed. He hadn’t realized how much coming home would hurt. In spite of the fact that everything looked so very different this morning, he knew exactly where they were and had done from the moment they’d set off. It was hard to concentrate and think about where to go next when everywhere he looked he saw the crumbling, dying ruins of places he used to know. They were just fading shadows now, gradually dissolving away to nothing. His whole world had been raped and ruined beyond repair.

“Well?” Harte pressed impatiently.

“Take a right here, then go straight up the high street.”

“Think we’ll be able to get through?”

“Should do. It was partially pedestrianized. There wasn’t a lot of traffic around when it all kicked off.”

“How do you know?” Hollis asked, holding on as Driver swung the bus around to the right. Amir wiped away another tear, unable to look away from the disintegrating world outside.

“Because,” he explained, his voice suddenly full of emotion, “I used to live here and work here and I was here when it happened.” The bus rumbled forward, then took a gentle turn and began heading up the high street. “And,” he continued, pointing out of the window at the row of shops and businesses on the right hand side of the road, “because until all of this happened, the Bromwell Jewel was the best place to eat for miles around here.”

“Was that where you used to work?” Harte asked.

“That was my business,” Amir answered as they passed the blue-fronted building, its unlit signage now faded and dull and its windows covered with cobwebs and dust. “That place was my life.”

What remained of the people of Bromwell were beginning to emerge from the shadows. They slowly spilled out from dark, hidden corners and dribbled through doorways, alerted by the noise. Their numbers were surprisingly low.

“Why so few?” Harte asked as a gray-suited cadaver dragged itself out in front of the bus. He winced as the powerful vehicle slammed into it, its head smacking against the bottom of the windscreen and popping open like a blood-filled balloon. “Can’t all be down to Martin’s music, can it?”

“What else could it be?” Amir wondered. “I’m sure that’s got something to do with it, but look out there. Some of them are holding back.”

He pointed farther up the street. Harte and Hollis peered ahead, but the fact that the color seemed to have been drained from everything, bodies included, made it difficult to make out detail until one of the cadavers moved. Amir was right, though, some of the creatures in the shadows were definitely keeping their distance, staying out of the way until the bus had almost reached them and they had no option but to move. Harte turned and looked out the rear window. Behind the vehicle the scene was disappointingly familiar. The main street was full of corpses all dragging themselves after them.

“What’s all that about?” Amir wondered, his eyes wide, nervous, and bewildered.

“We’ve seen it before,” Hollis replied. “They’re not as dumb as you’d think. Sometimes they keep out of the way if they think they’re in danger.”

“Seriously?”

“You just watch them,” he continued. “When they’re isolated or there are just a few of them they tend to keep out of the way. Now look behind the bus. The immediate threat’s gone so they come out into the open and follow us.”

“So is Martin making things better or worse? If they’re easier to deal with on their own, shouldn’t we be trying to keep them apart?”

“Don’t know. There’s no right answer. Even if you’re only up against one or two of them, if they can’t see a way out, they’ll fight you whatever.”

“Now where?” asked Driver. The end of the street was looming. Amir forced himself to concentrate and look ahead again. The far end of town had been redeveloped over the last eighteen months with several large buildings having been built on reclaimed wasteland the other side of a recently restored canal. There was a supermarket there, as well as the usual entertainment and fast-food outlets that always seemed to crop up together. He’d spent the last six months cursing the place, blaming it for draining the life from the town and dragging his customers away. Now he couldn’t get there fast enough.

“Keep going to the end of the road, then take the bridge over the canal. We should find something up there.”

The bus clipped the back corner of a burned-out car and sent the wreck spinning toward the buildings on their left. It crashed into the bronzed-glass frontage of a large social security office, releasing a previously trapped pocket of bodies which immediately began to pick their way through the rubble and glass, then lurched along the rubbish-strewn road. Harte walked the length of the bus, pressed his face against the back window and watched them. From all directions cadavers were now streaming out onto the main street and following the vehicle like a herd. There were still many fewer bodies than he’d expected to see, but more than enough to cause them problems.

Driver forced the bus up over the narrow bridge which separated the redevelopment from the rest of the town, the sudden jolting movement violently throwing his passengers about.

“Jesus,” Hollis cursed, gripping the handrail tighter and struggling to stay on his feet. He looked out the door and peered down into the canal with disgust. The sides of the waterway were largely open with benches and shelters scattered along the tow path. Over the weeks vast numbers of dumb, uncoordinated bodies had fallen into the cloudy water. There were so many of them around the sides of the bridge that the canal had become a dark, murky quagmire filled with flesh. Bony, barely recognizable heads, limbs, and other body parts jutted out from the greasy green-gray sludge at unnatural angles. It occurred to him that the canal might actually help them in the same way that a moat protected a medieval castle. Some of the cadavers following the bus would no doubt manage to cross the bridge by chance, but many more would join the packed masses below already wallowing in their watery graves.

There were hardly any bodies on the other side of the canal. Harte was reassured by what he saw as he returned to the front of the bus. From left to right there was a large toy store, an electrical superstore, some kind of furniture and household goods outlet, a bowling alley, and a supermarket.

“Look for the loading bay,” he suggested, hoping that their usual tactics would work. Driver was one step ahead of the game.

“Good idea,” Amir said quietly.