Autumn: Aftermath Read online

  “That it?” Richard asked, shouting to make himself heard over the helicopter noise. Harte looked up, then looked down. There was the castle: an ugly gray scar surrounded by a narrow band of green, then another dark circle of land where the remains of tens of thousands of bodies gathered ominously, still looking like they were poised to make their deadly assault. Within the castle walls he could see the off-white roofs of the six caravans and several trucks too. Smoke rose up from the remains of fires. One or two people appeared, cautiously reacting to the noise. The longer he watched, the more of them he saw coming out into the open.

  “That’s it,” he answered.

  It had only been two weeks since he’d last been at Cheetham Castle, but Harte thought it looked very different to how he’d left it. As Richard took the helicopter down, he was able to make out more detail. The number of bodies waiting around the elevated settlement seemed to have increased, but that may have been because he’d never approached from this angle before. From up here they seemed to have combined to form a single, virtually uninterrupted rotting mass—a ring of dead flesh—and that was consistent with what he’d seen elsewhere. Where there were fewer bodies, they sometimes lasted longer. When they were crammed together like this, the way they crowded and constantly jostled for position, grinding against each other, caused their fragile flesh to deteriorate much faster. Even now more of them were still moving toward the castle. They walked alone now, whereas they would have been in larger packs before, and they were painfully slow, but still they came. It beggared belief that these creatures had probably been walking aimlessly like this for weeks, maybe even months, and were only now reaching the castle. From up here they looked like stick figures, and their speed was barely visible. That they were still drawn to the living after all this time was both terrifying and remarkable.

  The road leading up to the castle entrance was full of bodies as he’d expected. There were mounds of dead flesh on either side where the corpses had previously been shoveled away, but by the looks of things no one had been outside in some time. As they drifted downward, Harte saw that there were several people on the top of the gatehouse. He couldn’t see who it was from here.

  “You ready for this?” Donna asked, sitting next to him.

  “I guess,” he replied, sounding less than convinced. He looked at the other three traveling in the helicopter with him; all of them appeared much calmer and more relaxed than he felt. Cooper was watching the ground intently, surveying the scene. They’d left Harry and Michael back at the marina to look after the boats. Michael, in particular, had also remained behind because he had more to lose than the others. Harte would gladly have traded places with either of them now. What he’d have given to be back in his seafront apartment just north of Chadwick, bored out of his brain as usual but without a damn care. You’re a fucking idiot, he said to himself. You should have stopped where you were. Suddenly the loneliness and the frequent guilt he’d struggled with intermittently over the past weeks all seemed preferable to what he was feeling now.

  Donna picked up on his obvious unease.

  “You’ll be all right,” she said. “They’ll understand why you didn’t come back.”

  “You think?”

  “Stick to your story and you’ll be okay,” Cooper agreed from the front. “You fucked up and got yourself in trouble when you torched the petrol station. You came around and they’d gone. Fifteen miles is a long way, these days. The snow stopped you getting back.”

  “Yeah, but the snow was gone a couple of days after that.”

  “Then improvise, for crying out loud. Seriously, they’re not going to care what happened. Like I said last night, you turning up in a bloody helicopter will give them plenty to think about. They’ll have more important things to ask than why you disappeared.”

  Harte said nothing. He leaned against the glass and watched the ground below come closer and the faces come into focus as Richard lowered them toward the castle courtyard.

  * * *

  “Clear the ground,” Lorna ordered, doing her best to spur some of the others into action and clear enough space for the helicopter to land. Around her, most of the others stood in dumbstruck silence, staring up into the air and watching the aircraft descend. Christ, she thought, you’d think they’d never seen a bloody helicopter before.

  She kicked over the remains of a fire from last night, sending clouds of smoke and still-warm ash up into the air, then dragged away several partially burnt lumps of wood. Between them, Bob Wilkins and Howard pushed a broken-down car out of the way, straining with effort as the noise and downwind from the helicopter rapidly increased, and cursing Bayliss, the lazy bastard who’d been promising to get it fixed and shifted for the last fortnight but who’d done nothing.

  The ground was clear. The crowd which gathered to watch the helicopter now shuffled farther and farther back as it came in to land.

  “It must be the same one that kept flying over the hotel,” Caron shouted to Lorna over the noise.

  “How could it be? What are the chances of that happening?”

  “I don’t know, but how many other helicopters have you seen since everyone died?”

  “Well if it is the same people,” she said, “then they’re a few months late.”

  “But still very welcome.”

  The helicopter seemed to pause slightly before gently dropping the last few feet down. Dust filled the air. No one moved. The engine stopped and when the noise had faded away to nothing, the expectant silence which replaced it was strangely unsettling. A man disembarked, then a woman, then the pilot. Jackson walked out to meet them. He confidently strode up to the nearest of the two men, and offered his hand.

  “I’m Jackson,” he announced, smiling broadly.

  “Cooper.”

  “Good to meet you, Cooper.”

  “This is Richard and Donna,” he said, introducing the others.

  Harte was watching from the back of the helicopter, his heart thumping. Thankfully no one seemed to have noticed him yet. He wanted to stay in here and hide but he knew that, as the only person who knew everyone, he should be the one right in the middle of the conversation, not watching from a distance like a naughty kid sitting on the stairs, eavesdropping on his parents. Oh, grow some bollocks, he ordered himself, and he jumped down and landed on the gravel, directly in Jackson’s line of vision.

  “Hello,” was all he could say. Jackson looked at him and grinned, but he couldn’t speak either.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Jas demanded, storming over.

  “You must be Jas,” Cooper said perceptively, but he was ignored.

  “We thought you were dead…” Jackson said, still struggling to take everything in.

  “Obviously not,” Jas said. Harte’s eyes flickered from face to face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not quite sure why he was apologizing. His mind was swimming—all the reasons why and excuses he’d remembered suddenly becoming confused. “I must have been too close to the petrol station when it went up. Didn’t know anything until I came around later. You’d all gone by then and I…”

  “Bollocks,” Jas said. “You’d have been burnt to a crisp.”

  “Give it a rest, Jas, it doesn’t matter,” Jackson said. “What’s done is done.” He pointed at the helicopter. “Don’t you think we have a few more important issues to discuss right now?”

  25

  “Drink?”

  Jackson ushered the new arrivals into the caravan he shared with Howard and Bob, then carried on through into one of the bedrooms. Jas, the last one in, pulled the door closed behind him, shutting everyone else out. Jackson returned carrying bottles of water, Coke, and beer. He gestured for everyone to sit. They squeezed onto a cluttered U-shaped sofa at the end of the caravan, having to move various piles of belongings out of the way to find enough space.

  “Decent setup you have here,” Richard said.

  “We shouldn’t complain,” Jackson replied, “though C
hrist alone knows we do. We’re all fortunate just to be alive. The fact we found this spot is a real bonus.”

  “Wise move, setting yourself up in a castle,” Cooper said.

  “You’re not wrong,” Jackson agreed. “Think about it logically—places like this have already been standing for hundreds of years. They’ve survived wars and who knows what else. A few thousand dead bodies was never going to be that much of a threat to them.”

  “Well, it’s thanks to Harte here that we found you,” Cooper said, deliberately involving Harte and giving him credit to try and deflect any bad feelings the others might be harboring against him.

  “I just did what anybody else would have done,” Harte said, sounding less than confident. Would everybody else really have faked their own death for an easy life? he wondered. Jackson just nodded and grinned. He looked genuinely pleased to see him.

  “So you’re all getting by here?” Cooper asked.

  “We’re doing okay,” Jas said, sitting opposite. “Things will get a lot easier when we’ve seen the last of the dead.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have long to wait,” Donna said. “From what we saw in the air just now, there’s not a lot of activity out there.”

  “Any activity is too much activity,” Jas replied, sounding surprisingly forceful. “We’ve lasted here until now without any problems. Another couple of months and maybe we’ll look at moving on.”

  “Why wait?” Cooper asked. “Seriously, from what we’ve seen since we’ve been back on the mainland, things aren’t as bad out there as you probably think.”

  “What do you mean, since you’ve been back on the mainland?” Jackson asked. “Where the hell did you come from to get here?”

  “They’re from an island,” Harte said enthusiastically, answering for the others.

  “An island?” Jackson repeated in disbelief.

  “And you haven’t heard the best of it,” Harte continued. “There are no bodies there. They cleared them all out.”

  “It’s a lot easier to do in such a small and concentrated area,” Cooper explained. “It’s nothing like the situation you’ve had here.”

  “The dead are less of a problem than they used to be,” Jackson said.

  “But they are still a problem,” Jas quickly added. “I’m sure Harte’s told you about the day he left us. Those things were frozen solid when we set out. By the time we were ready to head back, they were all over us.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Harte said. “And you forget, Jas, I’ve been out there since then. They’re becoming less and less of a threat each day.”

  “They were all over us,” Jas repeated, laboring the point. “And I for one am not going out there again until every last one of those fuckers has rolled over and given up the ghost for good.”

  “So you’ve not been out again since that day?”

  “We brought enough stuff back with us. There was no need to go out again. And if we’re sensible, we can make what we’ve got left last until the dead are finished.”

  “Seriously,” Cooper said, “you might want to reconsider your strategy. There were still bodies walking around Chadwick yesterday and today. We just walked past them. Seriously, you can outrun them now without even having to run. The threat is over.”

  “Then why don’t you go up to the gatehouse and watch them on the road and on the bridge? They’re still coming, friend, and they won’t stop until they’re physically unable to move. We’re still surrounded here. The threat is far from over.”

  Richard sensed a sudden tension in the air and changed tack to try and diffuse it.

  “Harte says you’ve got about twenty people here.”

  “That’s right,” Jackson answered. “What about you? How many of you are on this island of yours?”

  “Over fifty, including the five of us.”

  “Five of you?”

  “We left a couple of men back at the port. Apart from the lack of seats in the helicopter, we didn’t want to risk bringing Michael over here until we’d checked the place out, no offense.”

  “None taken. But why? What’s different about this Michael chap?”

  “He’s going to be a dad.”

  The caravan fell silent. Jackson, taken by surprise, wasn’t sure what to say.

  “How…?”

  “Jesus, how d’you think?” Donna mumbled.

  “I mean, was it before everyone died or…?”

  “After,” she answered. “Emma and Michael got together after it had happened.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “It’s not that incredible,” Richard said. “Women used to have kids all the time.”

  “I know that, but since the world fell apart … I don’t know what I’m trying to say. An hour ago it felt like everything was coming to an end, then you turn up here out of the blue in your bloody helicopter, telling us about your island where there are no dead bodies, and then that you’ve got a woman who’s pregnant and … and it’s like you’ve come here from another world. Truly amazing.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” Jas said.

  “Well, I would. It sounds like these folks have achieved a huge amount. There’s a lot we could learn from them.”

  “With the greatest respect,” Jas interrupted, looking at each of the new arrivals before turning toward Jackson, “we don’t have anything to learn from anyone. All this lot is doing is what we used to do, and it’s what we’ll do again once the bodies are gone and we’re out of here.”

  “No one has to learn anything from anyone,” Donna said. “You make it sound like we’re from different tribes. We might be all that’s left, and that’s the main reason we came back here with Harte. We think it makes sense for us all to group together. We think you should all come over to the island.”

  “I’m not sure…” Jas began to say before Jackson spoke over him.

  “Makes sense, providing we can all get there.”

  “We’ve got a couple of boats ready in Chadwick,” Cooper explained. “That’s one of the reasons we came back, to get some alternative transport and take the pressure off Richard here.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Just wait,” Jas said, his voice louder and more forceful this time. “You can’t make a blanket decision on behalf of all the people here, not without consulting them and not without thinking it through. There might be some who don’t want to go to an island. Not sure I do, if I’m honest. It sounds a little risky to me, a little cut off and exposed.”

  “It’s not perfect,” Cooper admitted, “but I’ve yet to find a better place. As good as this castle looks to have been for you all, I think the island is better. You’ve still not got your freedom here.”

  “Doesn’t matter if we’re surrounded by sea of dead flesh or by the ocean itself, sounds to me like we’re all still prisoners.”

  “Jas is right about one thing,” Jackson said. “I was wrong to assume. Everyone has the right to make their own choices. We’ll get everybody together and give them the options. We’re talking about decisions which will affect the rest of everybody’s lives.”

  26

  “Harte? Harte, is that you?”

  The voice caught him by surprise. He didn’t think anyone else was out here. He’d been sitting in a quiet corner where he could see the helicopter, not wanting to stray too far in case Cooper and the others upped and left without him.

  “Lorna?”

  He got up and walked over to her. It was getting dark, and he followed the noise her boots made crunching through the gravel. When he saw her he grabbed hold of her and held her tight. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed her. She led him over toward the row of caravans and sat down with him on a pile of discarded wooden pallets. In the light coming from the window of the nearest caravan, he thought she looked tired, old even. Her face appeared angular and stark in the gloom and her hair was scraped back. She looked pensive, and it was out of character from the Lorna he remembered. Previously she’d always seemed re
laxed and comfortable in herself, regardless of how bad everything else was around her.

  “I looked for you earlier,” Harte said. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she replied, sounding less than convinced. “I was working. I’m on my break right now.”

  “On your break? From what?”

  “Cooking rota.”

  “You on a cooking rota! Bloody hell, Lor!”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “I didn’t say it was. Just a surprise, that’s all.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So Jackson’s cracking the whip around here now is he?”

  “Jackson and Jas. I swear, they’re like a double act sometimes.”

  “Good cop, bad cop.”

  “Bad cop, worse cop.”

  “Well, all that might be about to change. You’ve heard about the island.”

  “I’ve heard rumblings. You don’t tend to hear much news in the kitchen, not that there’s usually any news to hear.”

  “Are things really that bad?”

  “No, I’m making it sound worse than it is. But I can see things going downhill if we’re not careful. The fewer people there are left, the more narrow-minded some of them seem to be becoming. I swear, it’s like we’ve gone back fifty years. Sexual equality and all that stuff’s a thing of the past now.”

  “It must be grim if they’ve got you cooking.”

  “Cheeky bastard. You’re right, though. Us ladies are politely excused from doing anything physical or even remotely dangerous. Most of them are happy with that because they’re old maids like Caron, Sue, and Shirley. Zoe’s a stubborn bugger who just locks herself in her caravan and refuses to come out unless it suits her…”

  “So most of the work is down to you.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “What about Melanie? She still here?”

  “Oh, she’s here all right. Dirty bitch.”

  “That’s a bit harsh.”

  “Is it? Dirty cow’s just a communal fuck-buddy. Whenever she wants anything she just flashes her tits and flutters her eyelids at one of the blokes and they cover for her.”

  “You could try that.”