Autumn Page 15

  This section of road is relatively inaccessible by foot. Nevertheless, in the absence of any other distraction, within an hour the car has been surrounded by another seventeen corpses. By next morning, Amy Steadman is just one corpse among a crowd of almost two hundred which have gravitated around the car.

  BEGINNING TO DISINTEGRATE

  Part ii

  ‘Food and drink, mate, that’s all we need,’ Harte said to Hollis who was driving the van, trying to see a way through the bodies criss-crossing the road ahead of them. In the back, Jas did what he could to keep his motorbike steady. He wished he’d been out there riding it, but the roads today were too busy. That was a fucking joke: everyone else was dead, but the roads were too busy… He’d have probably been okay, but he’d have left the van for dust. Jas didn’t want that. He didn’t want to be without these two blokes. Right now they were all he had left.

  ‘Food and drink might be all you need, Harte, but some of us want more than that,’ Hollis said. ‘We need to find a decent place to hole-up. Isn’t that right, Jas.’

  ‘Whatever,’ he mumbled, disinterested. He gazed out of the window, looking up into the sky, not down at the dead, and counted the number of lampposts they passed. It was the best way of distracting himself he’d found so far. Counting lampposts stopped him thinking about everything he’d lost. Stopped him thinking about his family.

  Two thousand, six hundred and eight… two thousand, six hundred and nine…

  The van stopped unexpectedly. ‘What’s wrong?’ Jas asked, immediately concerned, feeling his stomach knot with nerves.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Harte said. ‘Don’t you listen? Food and drink. We’re stopping here for a minute to stock up, okay?’

  Jas looked around, sussing out their location. It seemed as good as place as any. They were in the car park of one of those small, metro-style supermarkets, with only a couple of corpses for company. A low fence ran around the perimeter of the car park, just tall enough to keep out most of the dead. A crashed car blocked the entrance, and Hollis had stopped the van right across the exit.

  The three men got out. A corpse collided with the side of the van, startling them. Jas shoved it over the barrier and watched as it picked itself up and tried unsuccessfully to get over again.

  The morning was dry but cool. A brisk wind blew in from the north, bringing with it a succession of unpleasant smells, unwanted reminders of what had happened to the rest of the world: the stench of burning buildings mixed with the unmistakable odour of decay.

  ‘Quiet, isn’t it?’ Hollis said, looking around. The approach of another body from across the way startled him, its leaden feet scuffing the tarmac.

  ‘Too quiet,’ Harte agreed. ‘Don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. What I’d give for a bit of background noise, you know?’

  Jas wasn’t in the mood for standing around like this. He marched up to the supermarket door, but it didn’t open. He peered in through the glass. ‘Power’s down here.’

  ‘We knew it wouldn’t last,’ Harte said, using a crowbar to prise the two sides of the door apart. Once the gap was big enough, Jas slipped his hands inside and began to push in either direction, then used his stocky body to shove the door open further, holding it for the others. When they were all inside, he slid the gap shut again.

  The windows were tinted, making everything appear darker than it actually was. Hollis went to take a step forward but Jas pulled him back. ‘Wait.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked, his voice low.

  ‘Something’s not right here.’

  ‘Haven’t you noticed, nothing’s right anywhere anymore,’ Harte whispered.

  Jas ignored him. ‘Where are the bodies? And why’s it so clean?’

  He was right. Every building they’d so far been into was in a far worse state than this one. The rest of the world had fallen apart early on a Tuesday morning, just as the school and working days were beginning. There would surely have been someone in a shop like this, even if it was only the staff. Harte held his crowbar ready and began to slowly advance. The other two watched him work his way along the first aisle, then turn and come back along the second.

  ‘Smell the bleach?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ Hollis whispered.

  ‘Some fucker’s been cleaning up. The floor’s still wet back there.’

  ‘Then where are they?’

  All the waiting around was making Jas nervous. ‘Who gives a shit? I mean, come on… there are dead bodies walking the streets out there, and we’re getting jumpy because someone’s been mopping the floor? Fuck’s sake.’

  Harte was about to say something, to try and explain how he genuinely was unsettled by the idea there was someone left who still felt compelled to keep things clean, but Jas wasn’t waiting to listen. He snatched the crowbar from him and marched deeper into the store, hesitating in front of the double-door marked ‘staff only’ by the side of the cashier’s kiosk. He glanced back at the others, then kicked the door open and charged through.

  There was no one there.

  He found himself in the middle of a reasonably-sized storage area, stacked high with pallets and boxes. He looked around, eyes slowly adjusting to the low light level, then he heard something. It came from just behind him: a frantic scurrying. It was either a corpse or a fucking big rat and whichever it was, he needed to get rid of it fast. He spun around and when it moved again, he lunged for it.

  But it wasn’t a corpse, nor was it a rat.

  Curled up in a ball behind a pallet of family-sized packs of toilet tissue, he found a little man cowering with his hands over his head. ‘Don’t kill me…’ he whimpered. ‘I’m not one of them…’

  ‘Then who the fuck are you?’

  He slowly looked up, then straightened himself out. He took off his glasses and wiped tears from his eyes before answering. ‘I’m Gordon.’

  #

  It took a couple of hours to calm Gordon down and get themselves properly set up in the supermarket. By then the large glass windows along the front and side of the building had been completely obscured by a mass of inquisitive dead bodies. They’d been drawn there by the noise, called from the shadows by the sounds of the four men shoring up their new base. They each knew the dangers of attracting the dead but were beyond caring. The food and drink they’d got here made those risks worth taking.

  ‘We probably won’t be able to stay here that long,’ Hollis said, peering out from around the side of the storeroom door. ‘This place is too exposed.’

  ‘It’s also pretty strong and full of food, though,’ Harte reminded him.

  ‘We’ll spend the night,’ Jas said. ‘A few hours of quiet while we’re asleep and most of these fuckers should have wandered off again.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I hope.’

  Gordon peeked over the top of a plastic-wrapped mountain of baked bean and soup tins, looking like a cartoon kid in a scene from Scooby-Doo.

  ‘You going to stick with us then, Gordon?’ Harte asked him.

  ‘If I can. If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Why should we mind? The more the merrier, I say.’

  ‘There’s fuck-all merry about this,’ Jas grumbled to himself as he opened another beer.

  ‘So how did you end up here, Gordon?’ Hollis asked.

  ‘What happened, happened,’ he replied, ‘and I didn’t know where else to go. My house isn’t far from here, but my wife’s…’ He cleared his throat and composed himself. ‘My wife’s dead and I didn’t want to stay there with her. I used to call in here when I walked the dog. Seemed as good a place as any. Plenty to eat and drink. Warm enough…’

  ‘You didn’t try and find anyone else?’

  ‘I thought about it. I tried on the first day, but I gave up pretty quick. And when those things started walking around… I didn’t want to be stuck out there on my own, you know?’

  ‘We know.’

  ‘So I got rid of a couple of bodies, gave the place a
quick clean, then made myself comfortable. What about you three? Where were you when it…?’

  ‘Driving the van,’ Hollis answered. ‘I’d just got off the motorway, and thank Christ I had. I was on a bridge, waiting at a set of lights, and I watched everything below lose control where I’d just been. It was surreal, you know? One minute normal, the next, absolute bloody chaos.’

  They looked to Jas to speak next, but he didn’t. He left the room, heading towards the loading area at the back of the building. ‘What’s up with him?’ Gordon asked.

  ‘Family,’ Hollis answered quickly. ‘Doesn’t like to talk about it. Got home and found his wife and kids dead.’

  ‘Makes me glad I was young, free and single,’ Harte said, almost managing a smile. ‘I mean, all this shit is hard enough to deal with when you’ve only got yourself to worry about. Don’t think I’d have been able to handle it if I’d lost kids. It was bad enough at work.’

  Gordon looked confused. ‘At work?’

  ‘I’m a teacher,’ Harte explained. He paused and corrected himself. ‘I was a teacher. Golden Hill High School, you know it? Thank fuck lessons hadn’t started, that’s all I can say. I was trying to get to the staff room when I saw the first kid go down outside. It was Kevin Pearson. He was a little shit, but I could tell from the way he collapsed it was serious.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I went out to help him. I was one of the designated first aiders, and I was just thinking to myself that I hoped someone else was about, ’cause I didn’t fancy giving mouth to mouth to Kevin and I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was supposed to do. I was shitting myself. I got to him and saw all the blood around his mouth, and I knew it was bad. And I was thinking, why did it have to be Kevin Pearson? His dad was always up the school causing trouble, and I was panicking, thinking if I don’t do the right thing the bastard will probably either sue me or batter me…’ He stopped speaking, the memories too much momentarily. He wiped his eyes, grateful for the lack of light which kept his tears hidden. ‘I knew straightaway there was nothing I could do for Kevin. I tried phoning for an ambulance, but it just kept ringing out and ringing out. I’ve got this habit of walking around whenever I’m on the phone, and I was doing that when I realised I was walking around more bodies. There’s Iqbal. There’s Fatima. There’s Rachel from my Year Ten class. There’s the head and another one of the management team… all of them dead.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ Gordon asked, not sure if he should.

  ‘I checked every room of that bloody school. I opened every door and looked in every damn corner to try and find someone else alive. I was there for hours. Fucking hours. It got to the stage I was too scared to leave. Then I made myself go. When I realised how big and how bad this really was, I made myself walk. I only made it as far as the pub. The power was still on, so I got myself comfortable and started drinking. I’d still have been there if it hadn’t been for Hollis.’

  ‘I had the same idea,’ Hollis explained, ‘and I picked the same pub. When I saw the light on in the window, I figured I’d found myself a drinking partner. We drank a shit-load that night, didn’t we?’

  ‘Don’t remind me,’ Harte said, grimacing. ‘Still makes me feel sick just thinking about it.’

  ‘Better to be pissed than to have to face up to what was happening outside, we figured.’

  ‘Until the hangover kicked in…’

  ‘You should have seen the state of them when I turned up,’ Jas said, returning to the others.

  ‘You weren’t much better yourself,’ Harte said.

  ‘Granted.’

  The conversation faltered, each man looking back and wishing they hadn’t. The memories were too raw. And when the pain of remembering subsided, it was replaced by the fear and uncertainty of looking ahead. As horrific as each day had been, at least they were over now. But in the morning, the nightmare would start over again.

  ‘This is stupid,’ Hollis said suddenly.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Sitting around like this. We need to get ourselves sorted.’

  ‘How?’ Gordon asked. ‘What’s to sort?’

  ‘There are four of us now… who knows how many more people are out there?’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Jas asked. ‘Drive around looking for survivors?’

  ‘Maybe we should?’

  ‘We should get a fucking ice cream van,’ Harte suggested. ‘Play a fucking tune.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ Hollis said, and from the tone of his voice it was clear that he was. ‘We need to stop pissing around and get ourselves sorted out. We need to find somewhere we can base ourselves where we’ll be safe and where those fucking things outside won’t be able to get anywhere near us. Somewhere other survivors will be able to see us.’

  ‘So you want to hide and stick your arse in the air at the same time?’ Jas asked.

  ‘If that’s what it takes. We’re getting like animals in a zoo in this place. All I know is I don’t want to end my days this way. I’m not ready to give up just yet.’

  DUCK AND COVER

  Councillor Ray Cox had never asked for this level of responsibility. He worked in local government purely for the social status and financial implications, not any other reason. Overpaid and underworked, he’d sat in the shadows at the back of the council chambers for years, doing all he could not to be noticed, except when it was in his interest to be seen and heard. It was a sad indictment of the apathy of his constituents that he had been elected, then re-elected, without actually having done very much for them at all. It had been different to begin with, of course. In the early days he’d tried to make an impression, to be somebody. But the novelty of office had quickly worn off. Ray’s priorities changed and his prime concerns became lining his own pockets and claiming back as much food, entertainment and travel costs as he could. Serving the community had long been forgotten; never completely ignored, but usually conveniently overlooked and put to one side. In the space of a single devastating day, however, everything in Ray’s world was turned on its head.

  Working with the council leaders had stood Ray in good stead, both financially and on a personal level. He’d made a few very public mistakes a couple of years back, getting himself mixed up in an ill-considered and wholly inappropriate (borderline illegal) business deal. His friends in high places had seen him okay. They found him a modest little office at the far end of a particularly long corridor and gave him responsibility for the borough’s tennis courts and football pitches and various other public amenities which tended on the whole to pretty much look after themselves. They had enough of their people working around him to keep him out of trouble and to ensure he made the decisions they wanted him to. All things considered, Ray Cox was pretty happy with the way things had turned out.

  Full council meetings tended to be long, drawn out affairs which frequently degenerated into tedious, overblown debates about the most trivial of issues. He’d sat there for hour upon hour before now listening to arguments for and against the politically-correct renaming of school blackboards to chalkboards, whether pavements should be tarmacked or block-paved, and whether or not the threadbare chairs in the council chambers should be reupholstered with dark blue or light purple material. Ray switched off whilst these pointless debates raged, not even bothering to listen, often deciding his vote on the toss of a coin. He never contributed to the discussions and it was hard to hide his disinterest. He’d always felt the same about the Emergency Planning Committee too, although, of course, he’d pricked up his ears and listened intently when they’d briefed the councillors on what they should do in the event of an emergency. He’d even found a reason to go down and check out the bunker on more than one occasion, just to be sure he knew where he was going. The committee – or EPC as they were known – were the butt of many private jokes and whispers: a group of fairly senior council members whose role it was to plan how the Borough should be run if the unthinkable were ever to happen.

  Ray
had initially thought the EPC an unnecessary waste of time and money. He just couldn’t see the point of it, saying ‘we’ll all go together when we go’ whenever anyone asked him what he thought. The truth of the matter was the council did a pretty bloody poor job of running things at the best of times, so how the hell would it cope in the event of a nuclear or chemical attack or similar? And anyway, the Cold War was over, and despite the increased number of terrorist attacks around the world recently, such things never seemed likely here in Taychester. The borough was hardly of global importance. Listening to the EPC discussing the rationing of food, decontamination of the population, the disposal of mass fatalities and the like had seemed pointless and not a little surreal. If the world did come to an end, he thought, then the population would be buggered whatever happened, and no amount of council diplomacy and planning would help. Whenever he thought about the subject he couldn’t help remembering an old American public information film he’d seen again recently on TV. Duck and Cover, it was called. In the film a cartoon turtle walked happily though a cartoon forest, whistling a tune, only to have to hide away and cower safely in its shell when a nearby cartoon atomic bomb exploded. What was the point telling school children to get under their desks in the event of a nuclear strike? As far as Ray was aware very few materials had been discovered that could withstand the pressure, heat and after-effects of a thermonuclear explosion, and he was pretty sure that if such materials did exist, the wood that school desks in Taychester were made from wasn’t one of them. And even if the kids managed to survive the blast, what was the point? What would be left? Ray had always believed it would be better to be right under the first bomb. Duck and Cover was an absolute bloody joke as far as he was concerned, as was the Taychester Borough Council EPC and its underground bunker. If it ever did happen, he’d want to go quickly and painlessly. He didn’t relish the thought of being around to pick up the pieces afterwards. There’d be one hell of a mess for the council to sort out…