Autumn: Aftermath Read online

  “I can’t. I’ve got a conscience.”

  “What are you talking about? You could come with us. You should come with us.”

  “How many times do we need to have this argument? The island is a dead end. A full stop. Going there won’t do anybody any favors.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “I know I’m right.”

  “Come on, Jas, it doesn’t have to be like this.”

  All around Jas and Jackson, the furious activity had suddenly stopped. Many of the people who wanted to leave had made it onto the bus, but several more hadn’t. They now stood a cautious distance away, unsure what to do next, too afraid to move. Driver inched the bus forward slightly, and that small movement was enough to cause panic again. The remaining would-be escapees ran toward the noisy vehicle, too many for Ainsworth and Bayliss to stop. Paul Field caught Bob Wilkins, rugby-tackling him as he tried to run past. He held him facedown in the gravel, virtually sitting on him to keep him down.

  “No one’s going anywhere,” Jas announced.

  “He’s got a gun!” Shirley Brinksford screamed as she tried to get onto the bus. Jackson looked up and saw that Kieran had appeared, brandishing the same rifle he’d shoved into his face when he’d first arrived at the castle.

  “Get them out of here!” Jackson bellowed to Driver, who immediately responded. Caron hauled Shirley up onto the bus just as the doors closed with a hiss of hydraulics. The bus juddered forward, then began to pick up speed. Driver saw that Jackson had suddenly started running toward the gate. Jas turned around and realized what was happening, but Driver managed to drive forward and position the bus directly between the two of them to give Jackson a brief but necessary advantage. Jackson reached up and lifted the heavy wooden crossbar which secured the gate from its brackets, then threw it to one side. He grabbed one of the thick ropes hanging from either side of the gate and pulled it open. A clot of dead flesh, which had been pushed up hard against the outside of the barrier by the force of many more pushing from behind, immediately freed itself and fell forward. Almost completely unrecognizable as the remains of the teenage boy it had once been, the putrescence-dripping shadow of a man took a few staggering steps before more of the foul things overtook and trampled over it. Everyone, Jas and Jackson included, was transfixed momentarily by the hideous sight. How any of these things could continue to function in such a pitiful condition was beyond anyone’s comprehension.

  Jackson was the first to move again. He jumped the decaying body lying in front of him and ran over to the other side of the gate. He’d only managed to half open it when Jas came at him again. He viciously grabbed Jackson around the waist and wrestled him away. Beside them, more of the dead spilled forward, moving together like a viscous, disease-filled sludge, a slowly spreading pool of decay.

  Driver tried to get through, but the gap ahead wasn’t wide enough. In response to the sudden movement of the bus, Kieran fired a warning shot. The recoil took Kieran by surprise—he’d only had cause to fire a couple of times previously—and he misfired and shattered the windscreen, only just missing Driver. The air was immediately filled with panicked screams. People who were even now still trying to get onto the bus hammered on the door at the same time as those trying to get off. Kieran reloaded and moved around to the other side, firing twice more at close range, each time hitting one of the bus’s massive tires, leaving the heavy vehicle listing to one side.

  Jackson freed himself from Jas’s grip and ran to try and stop Kieran firing. Jas—too fast for him—caught hold of him again before he was anywhere near. He dragged Jackson back and slammed him down into several inches of the foul-smelling, once-human slurry that continued to spread across the courtyard like an oil slick. Jackson gagged at the overpowering stench and the feel of the ice-cold muck on his skin. Winded, he spat out splashes of flesh and struggled to speak.

  “Why, Jas?” he wheezed, his voice little more than a whisper. Jas stood up and walked a few paces away. Jackson slowly picked himself up, slipping in the decay, every bone in his body aching. He managed only a few steps before dropping to his knees again. With his energy fading, he stood up straight once more and took the knife from his belt. “You have to let them make their own decisions, and you have to abide by what they decide. You can’t decide for them.”

  He ran at Jas again. His back turned, Jas heard his heavy footsteps and turned at the last possible moment. He grabbed hold of Jackson’s arm as he lunged at him, then flipped him over onto his stomach and dropped down onto his back. Jackson groaned with pain, but this time he didn’t fight back. He didn’t move.

  “You’re wrong,” Jas hissed in his ear, crouching down so no one else could hear. “You’ve got this all wrong. If we want to survive, then we’ve got to work together and we need to base ourselves here. There’s nothing to be gained from going to this bloody island. You hear me, Jackson?”

  When Jackson didn’t react, Jas grabbed his shoulder, still soaked with glistening decay, and rolled him over onto his back. He staggered away in shock. Jackson’s knife had sunk hilt-deep into his belly. Sue Preston forced her way off the now useless bus—followed by a flood of others—and ran over to help Jackson, but there was nothing she could do. He was already dead. The courtyard emptied as people ran for cover. Kieran walked forward and looked down at Jackson’s body, a flood of deep-red blood pulsing steadily from his wound.

  On the other side of the castle grounds, another engine was started. Hidden from Jas and Kieran’s view by the wrecked bus, neither of them saw the black Ford Fiesta until it skidded out into the open and accelerated toward the gate, churning up gravel.

  “Get the fucking gate shut!” Jas yelled, his voice hoarse with anger and shock. Kieran and Bayliss ran to close up the barrier. Kieran weaved around an abhorrent corpse which had just enough muscle remaining to be able to walk unsteadily. It reached out for him and he recoiled, slipping over in the greasy decay which continued to spill forward in a slow-motion flood of filth. He got up, then dived out of the way again as the Fiesta powered past, skidding through the sludge between him and Bayliss. It squeezed through the gap by the barest of margins, clipping the gate and losing the driver’s wing mirror in the process.

  Kieran picked himself up and pushed his side of the gate shut, gagging at the low wave of putrefied gunk and driftwood-like bones which rippled back as he did so. Bayliss closed the other side and between them they dropped the crossbar back into place.

  “Who the hell was that?” Jas demanded.

  “That was my car,” Melanie whined.

  “Never mind that, who was driving it?”

  “Harte,” Kieran replied.

  31

  Eleven o’clock came and went. The waiting at the marina in Chadwick was interminable. As each minute passed by, the likelihood that they’d be returning to Cormansey without anyone else seemed to be increasing.

  “So what happens if they don’t get here?” Donna asked, her anxiety mounting. “We can’t just leave them.”

  “What else are we supposed to do?” Cooper replied. “We gave them a decent timescale with plenty of opportunity. We said we’d wait until midday and we will. If none of them are here by then, we leave.”

  “Anything could have happened,” Harry said. “Absolutely anything.”

  “My money’s on Jas,” Richard sighed. “He’s a troubled soul, that one. Scared to death of putting a foot outside the castle wall, he is. He’ll have been putting pressure on all of the rest of them not to leave, you mark my words. They’ll have agreed to stay there just to pacify him.”

  “We’ve done what we said we would,” Cooper said. “We’ve given them more than enough time. There’s still the best part of an hour to go.”

  “Like Cooper says, they’ve had plenty long enough. If they were coming, you’d have thought they’d have virtually followed you back. Maybe they just decided they didn’t want to go with us after all,” Michael suggested.

  “Or someone suggested
for them,” Richard said.

  “Whatever the reason, it’s out of our hands now,” Cooper said. “Our priority is the people on Cormansey, and we need to get back to them with these supplies. Whether the others stay at the castle or not, they’ll be okay. One thing Jas was right about is the amount of stuff they’re going to be able to help themselves to once the dead are finished. It’s not the same back on the island. They need the stuff we’ve collected. We need it. This is about people’s lives.”

  “I’ll be honest,” Richard said. “Whether we take anyone else back or not, I just want out of here now. This is a dead place. I’ve left too many bad memories here for my liking.”

  * * *

  Harte raced toward Chadwick, struggling to find his way into the town along mazelike roads which all looked the same. Although he’d spent more time than anyone else around the port and its surroundings, most of the time he’d been on foot and he’d never actually driven this route from the castle himself. He’d only been this way once before, and that was on the ill-fated looting expedition from which he’d failed to return. Everywhere looked depressingly featureless: a confusion of chaos, littered with debris and the remains of endless bodies. He knew he was against the clock but he’d screwed up and wasted fifteen minutes driving the wrong way before he’d realized, and that had just added to the pressure. He’d been desperately disorientated—almost completely lost—and it was only when he saw the names of a couple of nearby places he remembered hearing Jas, Kieran, and Jackson talk about that he knew he was finally heading in the right direction.

  For what felt like mile after endless mile there was nothing but trees, hedges, and the occasional building on either side of the road. His speed was restricted by the appalling carnage all around, the remnants of a world untended for almost four months. Nothing was where it should be anymore. The roads themselves were becoming harder to distinguish: winding tracks covered in sludge-like decay, the curbs disappearing into the undergrowth. Exposed bones were becoming increasingly visible through the abhorrent mire, looking like the fallen branches of trees after a particularly violent storm.

  After reaching the top of a hill, Harte caught a glimpse of the ocean in the distance. Twenty minutes to go, give or take, and only a few miles left to cover. The sight of the water gave him renewed hope that he’d get to the marina in time, and that he’d be able to tell Cooper and the others what had happened back at the castle. A bend in the road obscured his view momentarily, but within seconds he could see the ocean again, and this time he could see the town too. He accelerated, arms locked as he struggled to keep control down a steep incline and then, just before it disappeared below the treetops, he saw it. Perched back on top of the multistory car park was the helicopter.

  Another long, straight climb and an equally long and frantic descent, and he’d finally reached a part of the road network he was sure he recognized. He’d definitely driven into Chadwick this way with Jas, Driver, and the others on that ice-cold, snow-covered morning just before he’d taken leave of them all and disappeared. Part of him wished he’d stayed where he’d been hiding in the apartment a little farther up the coast. Much as the isolation had been becoming increasingly hard to handle, staying there alone would have been infinitely easier than the brief return to Cheetham Castle he’d made yesterday. He couldn’t help thinking he was to blame for the chaos he’d left back there. If he hadn’t led the helicopter to them, they’d have been none the wiser. Maybe the people at the castle would have been okay without him. Perhaps they’d have lasted through the final days of the dead without incident as Jas had wanted. Sure, they wouldn’t have had an easy time of it, but maybe they’d have coped. They had so far—well, most of them, anyway. He thought he’d been doing the right thing, but all he’d done was put other people in danger.

  The right thing for who? he asked himself as he struggled to keep the car moving at speed. Me or everyone else?

  Harte swung the car around a tight corner, a little over a mile short of the very center of town now, maybe a mile and a half from the marina. His wheels skidded on a greasy sheen of frost and compacted decay, and for a heart-stopping moment the back end of the souped-up Fiesta threatened to slide out of control. Harte recovered and kept his foot down on the accelerator. And then, as he drove the wrong way around a roundabout to aim toward the marina, he saw something which made him accelerate again. He had to look twice, unsure if it was just his mind playing tricks.

  It wasn’t.

  The rotor blades on top of the helicopter were spinning.

  He pressed down hard on the gas, gripping the steering wheel tighter as he plowed into and drove straight through two corpses. There were more bodies around here—a sure sign he was close. When he next looked up, he could see that the helicopter had taken off and was hovering above the car park roof.

  Harte looked down at the road again and instinctively slammed on his brakes. One of the remaining dead had dragged itself into the middle of the tarmac. It was crawling along on its hands and knees, too weak now to stand up straight, and because of its low height he almost didn’t see it in time. He wrenched the wheel hard left, skidded around the crawling corpse, then threw the car back the other way.

  Now the helicopter was definitely climbing. He could see it rising up above the rest of the buildings. A flash of light distracted him—the sun glinting off a window—and he looked down and saw another corpse in the road directly ahead. This one was upright, arms outstretched in a clichéd pose, brown rags of soiled clothing and saggy flaps of skin hanging off what was left of its emaciated frame like sticky robes. It was too late to avoid it, so he simply kept driving. The body dissolved on impact, showering the car with a gutful of wet yellow-black gore, and the foul distraction was such that Harte didn’t see a small pedestrian crossing in the middle of the road. He reacted late and hit a concrete traffic island at full speed, the impact with the front driver’s-side wheel hard enough to send the car spinning around through a complete 360-degree turn. Thrown back in his seat, his feet slipped off the pedals and the engine stalled. When he tried to start it again, it wouldn’t turn over, and the only engine noise he could still hear was that of the rapidly disappearing helicopter.

  Frantically, Harte scrambled out of the car and ran, briefly glancing back to see a flat front tire, a badly damaged wing, and a flood of oil or power-steering fluid or something similar dribbling out along the road after him.

  He ran through the streets as fast as he could, dividing his attention between weaving through the grotesque corpses and watching the helicopter overhead. It continued to hover above the town, and just for a second he allowed himself to believe that Richard and whoever else was up there with him might have seen him. Maybe they were going back to the castle again to see what had happened to the others? He glanced at his watch. It was past midday. His only option now was to try and get to the marina in time.

  The roads along which he now sprinted were increasingly filled with dead flesh, drawn here over the last couple of days by the presence of the survivors and their activity in and around the marina. He moved so fast that they were of little threat and even lesser consequence. Some of them went to grab at him as he hurtled past, but most didn’t even realize he was there until he’d already gone. He darted down along the slope which led to the water, still watching the helicopter as it moved out over the ocean, flying extraordinarily low now.

  Harte broke right to avoid another cadaver, and ran straight into one of the still-smoldering dustbin fires which had first guided him here in the darkness a couple of nights ago. He knocked it over, sending sparks and ash spilling out over the cold ground, just managing to jump over the rolling dustbin. Up ahead now he could see the luxury cruiser where he’d first found the others. He pounded along the jetty and climbed on board but it was too late—there was no one here, just the remains of the meal he’d shared with them that night and a few more empty beer bottles. But wait, they’d never intended to leave the mainland in this vess
el, he remembered. Cooper had told him they’d loaded all their supplies onto another boat elsewhere.

  Back the other way.

  It was hard to see much of anything through the mass of masts and the countless moored boats of various classes. He ran back toward the marina entrance, barely able to keep moving now, soaked with sweat, and then dragged himself out along another jetty. He ran out to the end of the narrow wooden decking which stretched beyond the last of the boats, and looked out over the water. He sank to his knees. Out there, rapidly disappearing toward the horizon, the helicopter gracefully drifted away. And below it on the water, a single boat.

  What did he do now? He ruled out the most obvious two answers in order of impossibility: go back to the castle and try and salvage something from the chaos there, or get into a boat and try to find the island on his own. If he could just find a map and compass, then remember the name of the damn island, then teach himself to navigate, then learn how to sail a bloody boat …

  Who was he kidding? Everything was completely fucked. His best option—probably the only real option remaining—was to either go back to the cruiser or the flat he’d previously occupied, lock the fucking door behind him, and never take a single step outside again.

  “Harte, what the hell is going on?” a voice shouted from out of nowhere. He scrambled back to his feet, then spun around and saw Michael standing at the other end of the jetty.

  32

  “You’re bloody lucky. Another couple of minutes and we’d have been gone,” Harry said as he passed Harte a bottle of water and a towel. Harte wiped his face dry and drank thirstily, then tried to ask the first of the hundreds of questions which had flooded into his brain. He could barely speak, let alone think straight.

  “Why…?” was all he could manage.