Autumn: Aftermath Page 23

  “What is it?” Lorna asked anxiously. He shone his torch into her face.

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “You think Jas is following us?”

  “I thought I heard it too,” Kieran said. “It wasn’t behind us, it was up ahead.”

  “Just keep moving,” Michael said, squeezing through and taking the lead. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

  Kieran was about to follow when he stopped. There it was again. A definite noise.

  “Wait…” he said.

  “He’s trying it on,” Howard said. “Fucker’s brought us down here and told Jas to follow. I’m betting it’s a bloody dead end up ahead.”

  “And do you think I’d want to get myself trapped too? Get real, Howard. No, I swear, there’s something down here.”

  “I’m going back,” Caron started to moan, trying to get past Howard and get back up the slope. “We never should have come here.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Michael told her, the tone of his voice immediately silencing her. “Whatever’s down here can’t be any worse than your friends back in the castle.”

  “You reckon?” Harte mumbled.

  “It’s probably just rats or something like that,” Howard said, doing his best to find a rational explanation for the noise but causing more panic in the process. At the mention of rats Caron began to wail with fear. Lorna felt her starting to move again and she grabbed hold of her.

  “Get off me!” she screamed, trying to beat her off.

  “Leave it out, you silly cow,” Lorna cursed, pushing Caron up against the damp, cold wall and preventing her from getting out.

  “Will you two keep it down,” Michael ordered from the front. He started moving again, following the curve of the passage around until it opened out into another, much larger space. He paused in the entrance to the chamber. There were colorful displays hanging on the walls, and another dummy had been chained to the rock for its sins. Harte and Kieran stood on either side of him. Harte took another couple of steps forward, then froze.

  “Fucking hell!” he yelled. “Bodies!”

  “It’s all right,” Michael said quickly, loud enough for those behind to hear him. “It’s just another dummy.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Kieran said, grabbing his arm and turning him around. “Look.”

  Harte’s torch had picked out a single corpse which began walking toward him. Keeping the light focused on the creature’s grotesque face, he desperately searched his pockets for anything he could use as a weapon.

  “There are more of them,” Kieran said. “Oh fuck, there are loads of them.”

  Michael watched in abject terror as more and more bodies emerged into the light. Drawn like moths to the torchlight, they staggered ever closer.

  “What do we do?” Caron asked anxiously, sandwiched between Michael, Kieran and Harte on one side, Howard and Lorna on the other.

  “Go back,” Harte said, already trying to move away. “We need to get ourselves back behind one of those doors we came through.”

  “But they’re just going to keep coming,” Lorna said, stating the obvious. “Fuck this, we might as well head all the way back out and take our chances with Jas and the others.”

  The dead continued their approach. There were at least five of them now that Michael could see, maybe even more behind. He didn’t want to look, but at the same time he wished their torches were brighter. The thought of what he couldn’t see in the shadows beyond this chamber was even more frightening than what he could. How many more were there?

  The farthest forward of the corpses seemed to have locked onto him now, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as it raised its haggard face to look directly at him with mournful, sunken eyes. Someone clumsily knocked into him from behind, and he grabbed at the walls in panic, desperate to find something to hold onto. And still the corpse came …

  “Use this,” Howard said from close behind him. Michael looked around and the other man shoved a screwdriver into his hand. “Found it in the gift shop. Thought I’d bring it along just in case. Now kill the damn thing!”

  Michael still didn’t attack. It had been a long time since he’d seen one of the dead in this kind of condition: nowhere near as decayed as those outside the castle, still capable of moving with relative strength and speed … This was like those they’d cleared off the island when they’d first arrived there. But that was months ago …

  Michael knew he had no option. The rest of these pathetic shysters weren’t going to be any help. Despite his still-considerable bulk, Howard had managed to force himself away and was now cowering back in the passageway with Lorna and Caron. Lorna was hanging onto Caron’s arm. Caron was trying to drag her back toward the castle. He knew that if he wanted out of here, he’d have to take control. He gripped the screwdriver like a dagger and then, still holding the torch in his other hand so he could see what he was doing, he ran toward the approaching corpse, screaming with rage.

  The creature stopped. Michael stopped too, mid-attack, surprised by its unexpected and very definite response. It staggered back a couple of unsteady steps and raised its arm like it was trying to defend itself. The bloody thing seemed to be cowering from him.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he said as he moved forward. The corpse moved farther away, clumsily backing into the others which were hovering behind it now. “Look at this thing. This isn’t right.”

  “Who cares,” Howard yelled from a safe distance away. “Finish them! Just get rid of them.”

  Harte found his nerve and moved toward the dead, determined to do what Michael wouldn’t, but Michael shot out his arm and held him back.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Lorna said. “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  Michael wasn’t listening. He moved closer again, and this time the corpse had nowhere left to go.

  “Look at it,” he said, studying its decayed face. He ran the torchlight over it, revealing the full extent of its horrific deterioration. Its skin—the little remaining which hadn’t been eaten or rotted away—seemed to have slipped down like an ill-fitting mask, leaving heavy, sagging bags beneath its clouded eyes. He could see burrowing things moving in the holes which had been worn through its flesh. Its drooping mouth hung open, occasionally half closing as if it was chuntering something unintelligible.

  “What about it?” Harte asked.

  “Compare it to the bodies you’ve seen outside recently. How does it match up?”

  “It’s still solid,” Harte said, calmer now, creeping a little closer. “It’s still got some meat on its bones. Some of those things outside are little more than liquid now.”

  “Exactly. It’s like the one we saw trapped in that car.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kieran asked, hovering just behind him.

  “On the way to get in here tonight,” Harte explained, “we walked across the dead outside. We found a great mound of them all stacked up, and we dug down to find out why. There was a car buried underneath them, and the driver was like this one. It had been preserved, I guess.”

  “Can’t you just get rid of them?” Caron asked. Michael ignored her.

  “It looks like they all did about a month ago,” Lorna said.

  “Kieran, how long’s it been since anyone came through here?”

  “We’d been here a few weeks when Jackson first got in,” he replied, “and as far as I know no one’s been down here since. Why?”

  “Because these bodies have probably been down here since then, haven’t they.”

  “So?”

  “So Harte’s right. They’ve been preserved. Think about it, there’s probably a pretty constant temperature down here, no wind or rain … they used to keep food and stuff in cellars like this, didn’t they? These things managed to get themselves trapped. Remarkable.”

  “Just bloody well kill them,” Caron demanded again, shining her torch around into every corner she could in cas
e more of the dead were close.

  Much as she’d rather they battered this particularly foul aberration into oblivion, Lorna was beginning to appreciate the significance of Michael’s comments. She watched as he moved toward the group of bodies again, and they all tried to get out of the way, as if they knew he was going to attack. But when he stopped and didn’t advance any farther, the creature at the front seemed to visibly relax, slouching its shoulders and rocking back slightly on what was left of its heels. Michael remained a cautious half-meter away, and shone his torch directly into its wizened face once again. It didn’t react. Its wide, dark, emotionless eyes slowly moved around Michael’s face.

  “Poor thing,” Lorna said, surprising everyone.

  “What do you mean, poor thing?” Howard said, unable to believe what he was hearing. “You sound like you pity it! You know what these bastards have done, how much pain and grief they’ve caused us.”

  “Yes, but none of it was their fault, was it? They had no control over what was happening to them. Same as we didn’t.”

  “We should just get rid of them,” Howard suggested. “Finish them off and put them out of our misery.”

  The corpse seemed to react to his words. It immediately became more animated and reached out for the torch Michael was still holding. He pulled it back and stepped out of the way, concerned it was about to lash out at him, but it didn’t. It made a second clumsy grab at the torch, but it was definitely the torch it was going for, not Michael. Not sure what he was doing, and with the light from all the other torches now focused on this one particular figure, he handed it over. It tried to grip but it couldn’t and its bony hands simply slipped off the handle. The torch dropped to the ground. Michael picked it up again. The corpse’s shoulders slumped forward and it dropped its head and its hand in what Michael presumed was a bizarre approximation of frustration.

  “What’s it doing now?” Howard asked.

  “Giving up, I think,” Michael said. “Bloody hell, it’s like they’ve come full circle.”

  “Full circle? What are you talking about?”

  “Just look at it. It’s helpless. It hasn’t attacked me, and I don’t even think it wants to. What I mean is, I think it’s got more self-control than any others I’ve seen before. It doesn’t seem to want to fight anymore.”

  The creature moved, correcting its balance, and Michael flinched nervously. It tried once again to grab the torch, but it still couldn’t get a strong enough grip. Perhaps sensing the futility of its actions and the limitations of its physical shell, it instead raised its hand up to its head, almost seeming to be pointing at its skull.

  “What’s it doing now?” Lorna asked, transfixed, all thoughts of what was happening elsewhere in the castle temporarily forgotten. Michael couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He sounded stupid when he tried to give them his interpretation of the dead man’s behavior.

  “I think it wants me to kill it.”

  “You’re out of your bloody mind,” Harte said, trying to get past so that he could finish the damn thing off. Michael blocked him again.

  “I’m serious.”

  He looked at several of the other decaying faces crowding behind the first corpse. They all seemed as passive as it was. Michael remained cautious.

  “How many are here?” Howard nervously mumbled, asking an obviously unanswerable question.

  “There could be hundreds,” Kieran said. “I don’t expect Jackson stopped to shut the door behind him when he was trying to get in here. That’s if there even is a door.”

  “Well, there must be something,” Lorna said, tracking the irregular movement of another corpse with her torch, “otherwise they’d probably have filled this place, wouldn’t they?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Michael said. He began to move again, edging around the first body, doing all he could not to make direct contact with it. It watched him as well as it was able, following his movements with its entire head, not just its eyes, having long since lost anything resembling fine motor skills.

  He moved toward the far end of this chamber, and the bodies there dropped back, appearing to try and get out of his way. Beyond this room was another sloping passageway, narrow and steep. A corpse was crawling toward him on its hands and knees, its pitifully slow and awkward progress going someway to explain why so few of the dead had made it this far up into the dungeons. He continued down the slope, the rest of the group following close behind, and entered another sudden swell of space, a chamber similar to the one they’d just left. He saw that this area too was filled with the dead. They lined the edges of the large space, most of them appearing to do all they could to keep their distance from the living. One of them, Michael noticed, looked like it was sitting in a corner, and several more were lying down. Were these intentional movements, or were the bodies now so weak, their limbs so emaciated, that they were no longer physically able to support what was left of their own weight?

  “I don’t like this,” Howard moaned from close behind his shoulder. Michael too felt increasingly uneasy. The stench in here was appalling, and to all intents and purposes, they were now surrounded by the dead.

  “But if they were going to attack us, wouldn’t they have done it by now?” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as anyone else. “As long as they don’t think we’re threatening them, there’s no reason why they should go for us.”

  “It’s never stopped them before, or maybe you’ve spent too long on your bloody island and you’ve forgotten what they’re like.”

  The mention of the island made Michael stop and check himself momentarily. What the hell was he doing wasting time here? He should be back home on Cormansey with Emma, not buried underground with only a handful of idiots and several dungeons full of corpses for company.

  “This is different,” he said. “They’re different. I don’t know what your experience has been, Howard, but I’ve watched the dead steadily changing—constantly changing—since the very beginning of all of this. Their self-control has improved as their bodies have decayed. It doesn’t make a lot of sense and I can’t explain it, but that’s what’s happened. You must have seen it too.”

  “Of course we’ve seen it,” Harte said, “but why should the ones down here be any different?”

  One of the corpses lining the wall nearest to him twitched involuntarily and Harte flinched. His sudden movement caused another reaction which, in turn, caused another then another. In a matter of moments virtually an entire wall of rotting flesh had become uncomfortably animated. Michael positioned himself in front of Harte and held his arms out at either side, forming a barrier between the living and the dead. It was hard to believe, but after a few seconds the bodies in front of him seemed to become calmer again.

  “You see,” he said, “they don’t want a fight any more than you do. They’re long past that stage now.”

  “I don’t understand,” Caron said, worming her way right into the center of the group of six so that she was surrounded on all sides. She didn’t want her back to any of the dead without someone else there to cover her. “This doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “It makes perfect sense,” Michael explained. “Like I said, when your man Jackson forced his way in through here, he must have allowed this lot to get in too. The conditions here are different from outside: the air’s drier, the temperature’s steady, there’s barely any moisture, no light … They’re being preserved. What’s going on in their brains has continued at the same rate it has done since they all died, but down here their physical decay has been much, much slower.”

  “Bollocks,” Howard said. Michael ignored him. He knew he was right.

  “Watch,” he said. He’d seen more than enough corpses up close over the last few months to know beyond any shadow of a doubt that there was something very different about these. He shone his torch at the nearest few, working his way along as if he was inspecting an identity parade, moving slowly and shining the light at their chests rather than di
rectly into their faces to avoid provoking another spontaneous reaction as Harte very nearly had done a few moments earlier. One of the creatures over to his right was dressed differently from the others. It was wearing a nurse’s uniform. He had to look twice to be sure that was what it was, such was the level of discoloration caused by seepage from its body. Much of the heavily stained material had dried hard like cardboard. He carefully moved a flap of clothing out of the way, the remains of a cardigan or some kind of light jacket, he couldn’t tell which.

  The corpse had an identity badge clipped to its breast pocket. He looked into its wizened face for a moment, almost as if he was asking permission, then he unclipped the badge. He wiped away a layer of grime to reveal an inch-square picture of a woman’s face beneath. The little visible detail was reduced even further in the poor light. He squinted to try and make her out. She looked beautiful—the first preapocalypse face he’d seen in some time—and her smile took him by surprise. Hers was a face unspoiled by disease; an expression free of rot and also free from the strain of having to endure the living hell which he and the others had been trying to survive through since day one. Her short, dark hair was cut into a neat bob, her fringe tucked out of the way behind her ear. She wore a pair of angular, heavy-rimmed glasses which perfectly suited the shape of her soft, delicately square-jawed face. But it was her lips he couldn’t stop looking at. Gorgeous, full, dark red lips. The fact she was wearing makeup took him by surprise, even though it shouldn’t have. Her vivid, painted smile immediately took him back to a time now long gone, when appearances felt like they’d mattered. Emma and the rest of the women on Cormansey never wore makeup, mainly because they hardly had any, but also because there didn’t seem to be any point anymore. There was no longer any desire, let alone any need, to spend time trying to conform to society’s idea of beauty when that society lay in tatters, thirty miles or so over the ocean. Michael couldn’t take his eyes off those lips. It saddened him to think he’d probably never see Emma dressed to the nines for a night out. That was if he ever saw Emma again. He had a long way to go before he’d be anywhere near the woman he—