Autumn Disintegration Page 13

  “Jesus!” she screamed with surprise as Ellie threw herself over onto her back with a sudden, painful groan of effort. Caron immediately felt disappointed that she was still alive, and then felt massive guilt that she’d actually wished the girl dead. She wasn’t sure whether it was because she’d hoped she’d been put out of her misery, or whether it was because she didn’t want to have to do it for her.

  Ellie groaned again, half-opened her eyes and mumbled something unintelligible. Without realizing she was doing it, Caron backed away.

  “I’ll get you some water,” she whispered, her eyes filled with stinging tears. She went through into Ellie’s living room and found a half-empty plastic water bottle sitting on a windowsill. Unable to take her eyes off the girl’s bedroom door, she crushed as many pills and capsules as she could manage, added them to the water and shook the bottle. For half a second she considered drinking it herself. That was stupid. She couldn’t allow herself to think like that. She looked at the bottle in her hand and wondered whether it would actually have any effect at all. Would it just make Ellie even more ill? Caron didn’t seem to be able to look after anyone anymore—would she be any better at killing them? She’d lost her son, then Anita, and now Ellie … What kind of a mother had she turned out to be?

  Despite being high up, she could hear the others outside again, and that forced her into action. She wasn’t sure what she wanted any more but she definitely didn’t want to be left here. With nervous determination she walked purposefully into Ellie’s room, ready to get her to take the drugs. But she couldn’t do it. She found Ellie lying motionless on her back again, naked and soaked with sweat, staring up at the ceiling with wide, vacant eyes. Caron knew what she had to do, but she just couldn’t do it.

  “Ellie, sweetheart,” she said quietly, gingerly putting her hand on the girl’s cold shoulder and shaking her slightly. “Take this, it’ll make you feel better.”

  She raised the water bottle to Ellie’s chapped lips but couldn’t make her drink. In desperation she began to pour it into Ellie’s open mouth, but most of it simply ran down her cheek and onto the already drenched bedding. She didn’t even react to the temperature of the water. Caron knew she was as good as dead already.

  The easiest option—the cowardly option—was to put the bottle in her hand and leave.

  With tears running down her face, that was exactly what Caron did.

  23

  The barrier at the base of the hill had gone now, swallowed up by an unstoppable yet slow-moving tide of cold, dead flesh. Thousands of restless bodies, pushed ever forward by thousands more, had surged silently over the vehicles and rubble through the night. The stronger cadavers—those which had somehow so far avoided suffering any major physical damage—now crushed their weaker brethren beneath their rotting feet. The fetid remains of countless fallen figures had pooled and been compressed over time, allowing other corpses to trample over them and use them like an access ramp to scramble up over the blockade, following the lead of others. Whether driven by curiosity, fear, instinct, or hate it didn’t matter, they were moving ever closer to the living. And, as Hollis, Harte, and several of the others had noticed, while now compromised and able to allow bodies in, their barrier also acted like a valve, preventing those creatures inside from getting back out. Although none of them had, as yet, managed to climb the hill, it was inevitable that they would. Staying put and doing nothing was no longer an option.

  Driver folded up his tattered newspaper and shoved it into the gap behind the steering wheel of the bus. He leaned out of his cab and watched as Jas and Harte struggled to load up the last few bags and boxes. They were already out of breath, having just stowed Jas’s bike in the back of the van after he’d decided he’d be safer traveling on four wheels with the others.

  “You could get off your backside and help if you wanted to,” Harte sneered sarcastically.

  “You’ve almost done it now,” Driver mumbled.

  “Thanks for nothing,” he said as he stormed back off the bus. Harte’s bad mood was worsened not only by the panic and concern they all felt this morning, but also by the fact that they had managed to pack pretty much everything they owned into the bus and one van and there was still plenty of space to spare. They’d even decided to leave the other van behind. It was unreliable and had an oil leak, and the truth of the matter was they just didn’t need it. He suddenly felt hopelessly underprepared and ill-equipped for life away from the flats.

  Hollis was walking away from the tall gray building, his arm around Caron’s shoulder. Gordon followed close behind looking typically awkward and uncomfortable. Jas moved to one side to let the three of them onto the bus. He waited for Caron and Gordon to disappear upstairs before speaking to Hollis.

  “What happened in there?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” he replied abruptly. “Don’t want to ask. Are we ready to go?”

  “Think so.”

  “Reckon she did it?” Harte whispered.

  “Did what?”

  “Finished her off?”

  “Christ, you’re an insensitive prick,” Hollis said. “For Ellie’s sake I hope she did.”

  “I’m not insensitive,” Harte protested. “I just want to know what happened.”

  “Doesn’t matter what she—” Jas began.

  “Just leave it,” Hollis interrupted. “We need to get going. Are you ready?” he asked, looking at Driver, who nodded but didn’t answer. Hollis got off the bus and jogged over to the van where Lorna and Webb were waiting for him. He climbed in and started the engine, keen to get moving.

  “I reckon we should torch this place before we go,” Webb suggested, sitting in the back of the van behind the other two.

  “What good’s that going to do?” Lorna asked.

  “You’re a fucking pyromaniac,” Hollis said sadly, shaking his head in despair.

  “I’m not, I just think—”

  “No, you don’t,” Lorna yelled at him angrily, sounding unexpectedly furious, “and that’s the problem. You don’t think at all. You just bulldoze and bullshit your way through everything. Ellie is dying in there, and we’re leaving her behind. Isn’t that enough for you? Do you want to make sure you finish the job off by burning her to death? Christ, do you know what I—”

  “Will you both just shut up!” Hollis shouted, slamming his fist down on the steering wheel. “Bickering like a pair of fucking five-year-olds. Just shut up!”

  He swung the van around in a wide circle, then waited for Driver to line himself up behind. One last look at the dead—the farthest forward of them now beginning to creep slowly up the hill—then one last look at the towering gray block of flats, the closest thing he’d had to home since they’d all lost everything weeks ago. Strangest thing was, he felt worse about leaving this place today than he had when he’d last walked out of his house the day his world had fallen apart back in September. Staying there had never been an option. It had been full of memories of people, places, and everything else he’d lost. For a while, though, these damp and uncomfortable flats had given them all some security and a base from which they could try and rebuild their lives. All gone now. With Lorna and Webb still arguing he put his foot down and drove away.

  * * *

  Gordon pressed his face up against the glass, feeling his whole body shake with every rattling movement of the bus as it weaved through the carnage on the roads leading away from the flats. He sat on the backseat of the top floor. Caron sat opposite, her back to him, staring out the window on the other side. Harte was three seats in front, Jas another five seats ahead of him. Given the limited confines of their transport, they couldn’t have been much more spread out, not that this was unusual. Gordon used to travel by bus regularly and he considered it an unwritten rule to put as much distance as you could between yourself and any strangers. Today, however, these people kept their distance to avoid sharing their fears and concerns. A couple of days ago everything had been relatively okay. How had it all gone
so wrong so quickly? Gordon glanced over at Caron. What was she thinking? She still had a plastic bag full of pills gripped tight in her hand. Who were they for? Had she not given any to Ellie? Did she intend taking them herself? Surely things couldn’t be that bad, could they?

  Driver swerved left then right to avoid the blackened remains of a smaller bus which straddled the carriageway, dead passengers still visible inside. His own passengers were momentarily shunted up into the air as the cumbersome vehicle clattered up the curb then back down again. The sudden, jarring movement threw Gordon to the side and he banged his head against the glass. He rubbed the bump, closed his eyes, and tried to concentrate on the sound of the engine. Unexpectedly, and just for the slightest of seconds, everything felt reassuringly familiar. Just for a moment he allowed himself to believe that instead of driving away from the silent, skeletal remains of the city where he’d lived all his life, he was actually on his way home from work. He tried to convince himself that if he opened his eyes he’d see the comforting, familiar sights of his daily commute again. Any moment now the bus would slow down then stop as they joined the snaking queue of traffic escaping the city center. If he looked outside he’d see hundreds of people all making their way back home like him. Another fifteen minutes’ drive and he’d reach his stop. A ten-minute walk after that and he’d be home. What would Janice be cooking for him tonight? A piece of fish or a chop with chips? His mouth began watering at the thought of it. Christ, he hoped she hadn’t been experimenting. He hated it when she cooked what he called “exotic” dinners. He didn’t like pasta or rice or curries or anything like that, but he always forced himself to eat it. Maybe he’d have to do his usual trick and take the dog for a long walk tonight. One of those walks that involved stopping off for a burger and eating it on his way back through the park …

  Gordon opened his eyes and stared out at the dead world around him. Drained of color, raped by disease, and disintegrating almost as he watched, it bore little resemblance to the place he remembered. The bones of his fellow commuters were scattered on the ground, kicked aside by those horrific creatures which still dragged themselves through the streets. And Janice, his long-suffering wife of twenty-three years, was still suffering too—condemned to spend the rest of forever trapped in their living room behind the door he’d boarded up after she’d got up and started moving again.

  24

  The van stopped suddenly. Driver, following too close behind, slammed on his brakes to avoid crashing into the back of it.

  “What’s the matter?” Caron asked anxiously, getting up from her seat and running the length of the bus to the front where Jas was already standing at the window. They’d been on the move for less than an hour. The road they’d been following had meandered through open countryside for a time, but they’d now reached Cudsford, an unremarkable town nestled between two larger but equally uninteresting towns and the first relatively built-up area they’d come across. On balance they’d decided it was easier and quicker to drive straight through rather than skirt all the way around and add miles to their journey.

  “Doesn’t look like anything major,” Jas said, looking down onto the street below. “There’s a van blocking the road, that’s all.”

  Harte was already on his way downstairs, hand ax at the ready just in case. Jas followed, pausing only to pick up the chain saw from where he’d dumped it on an empty lower-deck seat. By the time he’d stepped out onto the narrow backstreet, Webb, Hollis and Lorna were already out and surveying the scene. A single corpse staggered from behind the crashed van, tripped in the gutter and fell at Webb’s feet. He nonchalantly smashed its skull with his spiked baseball bat.

  “Well?” Harte asked, keeping his voice low. Hollis pointed at the front of the blue liveried van which had thumped into the front of an office block, leaving its rear end jutting out into the road and blocking their way. The dead driver—who was still trying to get out from behind the wheel—slammed its decaying face up against the glass as they moved closer.

  “Problem is,” Hollis explained, ignoring the corpse’s frantic movements, “it looks like it’s wedged in.” He leaned over the front of the van and looked up. The impact had brought the low canopy of a porch crashing down onto its roof. There were visible cracks running up the face of the building and the glass in many of the first-floor windows had been smashed. “There’s a chance if we move it that we’ll bring the whole lot down.”

  “So?” Webb grunted, returning his attention to the crash.

  “So we could end up blocking the road instead of clearing it,” he replied, wishing that he wasn’t stuck out in the middle of nowhere with someone as dense as Webb.

  “I think it’ll be all right,” Harte said, carefully stepping under the canopy and looking up to try and assess the damage. “I don’t think there’s any other way of shifting—”

  A sudden movement from Lorna distracted him. She rushed across to the other side of the narrow street and grappled with a bloody figure which threw itself at her. She grabbed its scrawny neck, forcing it back against the nearest wall before cracking its skull and beating it repeatedly with the claw hammer she’d been carrying. Sometimes she scared herself with her own brutality. She looked up and saw that the damn thing wasn’t alone.

  “Get a move on,” she whispered, looking farther down the street and counting at least seven more bodies heading in their direction. “They’re coming.”

  Webb, his appetite for violence clearly undiminished despite the events of the last twenty-four hours, ran forward to head off the approaching dead, swinging the baseball bat wildly through the air. He thumped it into the face of the cadaver nearest to him, catching it perfectly, almost laughing out loud as it tripped blindly back into two more bodies like an uncoordinated drunk, knocking them both over. He ran toward them with predatory speed, determined to finish them all off before they could pick themselves back up.

  “So what do we do?” Jas asked hurriedly, seeing that even more bodies were closing in. “Move this thing, or turn around and find another way through?”

  “Driver’s never going to get the bus turned around here. He’ll have to back it out…” Hollis’s words trailed away when he heard the bus suddenly begin to move.

  Jas started the chain saw and ran back toward the huge vehicle as the farthest advanced figures at the front of an uncomfortably large crowd of corpses began to surge past it, slipping down either side. He held the chain saw at waist height and waded into them, dragging the churning blade from side to side, scything down the creatures as if they were trees being felled. The road beneath his feet, until then relatively clear save for a little rubble and broken glass, was suddenly awash with blood and gore. As he sliced the legs off yet another body that foolishly stumbled toward him, the bus accelerated. Uncharacteristically alert and decisive, Driver shunted it forward and angled it across the street, reversing back to fully block the width of the narrow throughway and prevent any more of the dead from getting closer.

  At the back of the top floor of the bus, Caron stood next to Gordon and looked down in disbelief as the entire street behind them quickly became clogged with dead flesh. She hadn’t been this close to them for weeks, probably more than a month, and she was terrified, both of their appearance and their sudden vast numbers. Physically they had deteriorated to an incredible extent and were grotesque—decaying and literally falling apart in front of her. But at the same time, they continued to move with unquestionable intent. When she’d last been this close to them they’d looked relatively untouched by disease. Now their faces were hideously scarred and mutated, barely recognizable as human. Gordon was saying something, rambling incessantly about why he should stay up here with her and how he probably would just get in the way out there, but she wasn’t listening. She hadn’t realized how strong and safe the flats had been. All that’s separating me from them now, she anxiously thought, is this bus.

  Out on the street, Harte yanked open the door of the crashed van and grappled w
ith the driver’s corpse trapped inside. It threw its withered arms at him and he battered them away with the ax, unable to get the right angle to use the weapon properly in the confined space. The smell in the van was horrific and he gagged as he struggled to grab the squirming cadaver, undo its safety belt, and drag it out onto the street. He managed to get hold of its arm, his gloved hand easily wrapping right the way around its bony, emaciated wrist, and then yanked it out into the open. Its right foot caught between the gearstick and handbrake. Harte tugged at the struggling creature desperately, pulling with enough force to rip the foot off at the ankle. Finally out, he slammed its face into the pavement, then climbed in and settled himself behind the wheel. The seat was tacky beneath him. Screwing his face up with disgust, he reached down, picked up the dismembered foot from under the pedals, and threw it out of the window.

  When Harte next looked up he saw that the number of bodies hauling themselves down the street toward them had increased massively. The bus had blocked the road one way, but the other direction was still clear and a relentless deluge of flesh was now approaching, channeled forward by the tall buildings on either side. Lorna, Webb, and Jas stood and fought, trying desperately to head them off. Jas was a couple of meters ahead of the other two, carving up as many of them as he could reach with the brutally efficient chain saw blade. Lorna and Webb worked behind him, mopping up any of the despicable figures that somehow managed to get past.

  “Get it started!” Hollis yelled, hammering on the back of the van.

  Harte turned the key in the ignition, willing the engine to fire. It groaned and whined but wouldn’t start.

  “Careful, don’t flood it!” Hollis warned.

  Harte tried again, turning the key and pumping the pedals with his feet, not knowing if that would help or make the problem worse. The engine almost caught.