Disintegration a-5 Page 28

  Got to get out of here.

  “Amir,” he said again. He managed to reach across and shake Amir’s shoulder. He felt cold to the touch. Was he dead? He shook him again but still there was no reaction. What did he do now?

  Webb slowly moved his legs and found that he was able to work them around the edge of the back of the seat he’d been sitting in when they’d lost control of the car. Now able to move with a little more freedom, he stretched out and shuffled along the roof up toward the engine. The car had come to rest at a slight angle. The front of it was out of the water, propped up on the bank, while the back end was submerged. If he could smash his way through the windscreen, he’d be able to crawl out under the upturned bonnet and get out. What he’d do after that was anyone’s guess. The most prevalent of the snatched memories he had of the moments just before the crash was the incredible size of the crowd they’d managed to drive into. It was fucking huge.

  “Amir,” he whispered for a third time, “come on.” When there was still no response he reached out to touch his neck and try to find a pulse. Amir’s skin felt warm but clammy. He noticed that there was a puddle of blood on the roof below his upside-down head and he carefully turned his suspended head to face him. There was a deep gash across Amir’s forehead and, when Webb looked back, a corresponding bloody smudge in the middle of the cracked windscreen. Ironic that Amir was the one who had been strapped in, he thought. Poor bastard.

  Webb moved again and his outstretched foot kicked the fuel can which had also dropped onto the roof. Burn the car and distract the corpses, he remembered, that had been the plan. It might still work. He had no idea where he was in relation to the hotel, but anywhere on the golf course would be far enough away from the others not to matter, not that he cared about them and their plans anyway. Never mind getting that helicopter Jas had been constantly banging on about to see them, setting fire to the car would cause enough of a distraction to give him a chance to get away.

  “Oi, Amir,” he said, this time a little louder. He shook his shoulder again but still there was no response other than a sudden sickening dribble of blood where before there had been only drips. Time to move. There was nothing he could do for him. Even if he got him out of the car, he was going to have enough trouble getting himself off the golf course.

  Struggling in the confined space, Webb spun around on his back through a slow 180 degrees and kicked at the windscreen. A series of three good, strong boots to the already weakened glass was enough to shatter it and kick it through. He turned back around again, grabbing the can of fuel and his baseball bat as he moved, and then crawled out of the car.

  The appalling sight which greeted him was almost enough to send him scuttling back under cover but he forced himself to keep going. For as far as he could see ahead the stream was nothing more than a sickening stew of decay, packed solid with incalculable numbers of corpses which had fallen into the mire over time and been unable to get out again. Strangely cushioned and protected in the ditch, however, they continued to move constantly, never stopping but never getting anywhere either. The water he’d heard under the roof of the car was little more than a pathetic trickle. Filled with unidentifiable lumps and chunks and with a disgusting putrid brown-green hue, it reminded him of vomit.

  The nearest bodies were trapped, either by each other or by the upturned car, and he found that he was able to move around them with surprising freedom. Working quickly he opened the fuel can and set it down under the bonnet. He tore a strip of rag from the back of a corpse which was stuck facing away from him, soaked it with fuel and jammed it into the mouth of the can. Taking out his lighter from under several layers of clothes, he lit the rag and furiously scrambled away.

  “Webb…”

  What the fuck was that? He spun around anxiously. It sounded like Amir, but he was dead, wasn’t he? Jesus Christ, what if he was wrong? What if Amir was still alive; if he’d just passed out because of the blood? Webb could see him through the cracked windscreen. He didn’t look like he’d moved. He must have imagined the noise. Amir’s eyes were still closed and the blood was still dripping and … and the rag was still burning. Webb jumped to his feet and hauled himself up the steep bank, grabbing at random corpses and using them as leverage, stamping his feet down onto flesh and bone and whatever else he could get a grip on. He threw himself over the top of the bank, straight into a solid mass of bodies the size of which he couldn’t even begin to appreciate, and then dropped to his knees as the car behind him exploded. Like unprotected trees around a bomb blast, hundreds of cadavers were flattened in a rough circle around the epicenter. Webb found himself buried under a mass of dark figures dripping with decay.

  Keep moving.

  No time to think. Make the most of the delay before the rest of them start moving toward the blast. As he climbed back to his feet and began to trip through a quagmire of flesh and body parts several inches deep, he glanced back over his shoulder. The car, or parts of it at least, had been blown back out of the ditch. He could see twisted chunks of its blackened frame burning fiercely. If Amir wasn’t dead, he thought, then he is now.

  All around Webb, hordes of bodies were turning and advancing toward him. They staggered and stumbled unsteadily through the gruesome slime which coated the once-pristine golf course. Thousands of continually moving feet had churned the remains of countless fallen creatures with the cloying mud to cover everything with a layer of dark, sticky, foul-smelling sludge. Keep moving, he told himself, it’s the fire they’re heading for, not me. As those corpses which had made the most progress lurched nearer he instinctively dropped to his knees and began to crawl through the slurry around and between their emaciated feet, hoping that remaining low would be enough to keep them from reacting to him. Stupid things never look down, he tried to reassure himself. If they looked where they were going, there wouldn’t have been so many of them stuck in the bloody stream. He lowered his head and held onto his baseball bat as he began to move through the sea of spindly, unsteady legs which slipped and slid through the once-human soup all around him.

  Which way now?

  Time to make another decision. He couldn’t keep crawling like this indefinitely—although he continued to do so as he tried to decide what to do next. Lifting his head momentarily, he glimpsed the trunk of a large, twisted tree up ahead and to his right. He altered his course and moved toward it, intending to use it as cover as the crowd continued to gravitate toward the fire. If he stayed on the blind side of the tree they probably wouldn’t see him. In less than a minute he was there, and he cautiously raised himself up behind it, holding onto its rough bark and pulling himself back up onto his feet with gloved hands. It was surprising how much more he could see and hear now that he was upright. Down at ground level the sheer bulk of the bodies above him had blocked out much of the natural light, and they were so tightly packed that they’d acted like a canopy, muffling the rest of the world. Now that he was finally up straight again he could see over the heads of the dead. Almost all of them stooped, walking with their heads bowed as if the weight of their skulls were too much for their weakened bodies to support. He hadn’t appreciated that before, but he hadn’t been this deep in corpses and dared to stand still before now either.

  Music.

  He had to be imagining it. Could he really hear Martin’s music? He was sure he’d imagined hearing Amir’s voice just a few minutes earlier—was this just another cruel trick of his tired and increasingly confused mind? No, he could definitely hear it. His ears suddenly seemed to lock onto the frequency of the tune playing in the distance and it gradually became clear. A god-awful, screeching country and western tune was echoing around the golf course. Thank God for Martin Priest, he thought. He cautiously allowed himself to peer out around the side of the tree, quickly pulling his head back in again when a particularly grotesque figure raised its emaciated arms and lunged toward him. Christ, for a second in the confusion it looked like Stokes, but he knew that was impossible. It was just the l
ow light and his nerves playing games with him. He looked again … slowly … carefully … forcing himself to concentrate … and then he saw it. The clubhouse. A couple of hundred meters away. Reachable.

  I’m going to get out of here.

  Webb dropped back down to his hands and knees and began to crawl.

  52

  Hollis and Gordon carefully lifted Martin out of the bus, hauling him up through the door.

  “You stupid bugger,” Gordon cursed as he struggled with his heavy legs. Martin groaned but didn’t respond.

  “He just panicked,” Hollis whispered, putting his hands under his shoulders and lifting, “That’s all. He was just trying to protect this place.”

  “Just trying to protect himself, more like.”

  “Doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  They reached the end of the bus. Hollis jumped down and called Howard over to help lift Martin down. Groaning with his awkward weight, between them they lowered him to the ground. There was movement all around them as Harte, Lorna, and Ginnie cleaned the drive—scraping up what was left of the dead with shovels, then transporting it in wheelbarrows and buckets away from the hotel.

  “Mind out,” Hollis said, almost backing into Harte and knocking him into a waist-high pile of fetid corpses and dismembered limbs.

  “Watch what you’re doing,” Harte grumbled, realizing who they were carrying. “You going to chuck him on this pile? Stupid bastard nearly got us killed just now.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Hollis said quickly. “You nearly got yourselves killed. You were the ones who drove into a field full of dead bodies and started blowing cars up. Nothing to do with Martin.”

  “Suppose it was our fault he crashed into us as well,” Harte said.

  Hollis shook his head, refusing to be drawn into yet another pointless argument. “Whatever.”

  The road clear again, Harte threw down the shovel he’d been using and walked back toward the hotel. Howard, Hollis, and Gordon followed carrying Martin, who continued to moan. Ginnie and Lorna were close behind. They found Caron sitting on the steps outside the main entrance. She looked up as Harte stomped past her, then moved to the side to let the others through. It had started to rain—just a light mist—but it was refreshing and cool. Caron decided she’d rather sit out and get wet than go back indoors, no matter what dirt or germs were being washed down by the water. Lorna stopped and sat down next to her.

  “You all right out here?” she asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “I’m fine,” Caron snapped.

  “Sorry,” Lorna mumbled, surprised by the strength of her reaction.

  “It’s all right,” Caron replied. “Don’t want anyone fussing, that’s all.”

  “That’s your job, isn’t it?” she said sarcastically.

  “I’ve given all that up,” she said quietly, taking a swig from a bottle of wine. She offered it to Lorna, who took it gratefully.

  “Shame,” she said, wiping her mouth. “You were good at it.”

  Caron shook her head and stared out toward the edge of the hotel grounds. “I don’t think so.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because all the people I’ve tried looking after recently are dead.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, love,” Lorna whispered secretively, “pretty much everyone’s dead, and it had nothing to do with anything you did or didn’t do for them.”

  Caron thought for a moment.

  “Suppose,” she said, drinking more wine and shivering with cold. “Do you know what we need to do now?”

  “What?”

  “Absolutely bloody nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I might be drunk,” Caron blathered, “but I know what I’m talking about. The more you try these days, the less you get. Those boys went outside today and tried too hard, now we’ve lost Amir, Sean, and Webb.”

  “Webb’s no great loss.”

  “No, but the others were,” she replied angrily, slurring her words slightly as she became more emotional, “and we didn’t have to lose them. Now if we all just sit still, be quiet, and do nothing, we’ll be okay.”

  The rain began to fall with more persistence. Lorna stood up, then reached back down and held out a hand to Caron.

  “Come on,” she said, hauling her up onto her unsteady feet. Together they walked through the cold and quiet building, along the glass-fronted corridor which ran along the edge of the courtyard. She glanced up and saw Howard pounding back down the staircase at the end of the opposite wing. Gordon was following close behind.

  “More trouble,” Caron said dejectedly. “It’s always trouble when people like Gordon and Howard start moving quickly.”

  Lorna sighed as they walked toward the restaurant. “You don’t know that, but you’re probably right.” She braced herself for bad news but was surprised by the self-congratulatory smiles which greeted her.

  “It worked,” Hollis said as she walked over to him and took a can of beer.

  “What worked?”

  “Jas’s little stunt outside today,” he explained. At the mention of his name Jas turned around and grinned.

  “You should see it!” he enthused. “We’ve just been watching upstairs. We shifted thousands of them today, and the rest are more interested in the fires we started than anything we’re doing here.”

  “Congratulations.” Lorna smiled, not exactly sure how she felt. Was it even worth reminding him of the pointless sacrifices which had been made? Perhaps it was better just to shut up and not burst his bubble.

  “I don’t think we should do anything else today,” Harte said, picking up where Jas had left off. “But maybe we should think about getting out of here tomorrow or the day after that. We could take one of the trucks from the road junction.”

  “Are we going to gain anything from that?” Lorna asked cautiously, remembering Caron’s earlier words.

  “You can just stay here if you want to,” he snapped.

  She sighed. The arguments were becoming disappointingly stale and familiar around here.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Caron announced, her drunken voice louder than intended.

  “Shut up, Caron,” Jas laughed. “You’re pissed.”

  “I might well be,” she replied. “but I’m not stupid.”

  53

  Webb had almost reached the clubhouse. His progress over the final few meters of the once perfectly maintained golf course had been painfully slow. The number of cadavers around him seemed to have increased as he got nearer to the building, as had the depth of the repugnant sludge through which he continued to move. The sickly sea of decay, almost a foot deep in places now, had built up over weeks. Many hundreds of corpses had gravitated here over time, and a huge number of them had been dragged down and trampled underfoot. Their remains, along with the obnoxious juices which had dripped, dribbled, and seeped down from the masses still standing, had combined to become this unholy gray mire. Webb was covered in it. The damn stuff was in his hair and his eyes. It was in his nose and he could taste it at the back of his throat. He could feel it on his skin, cold and repellent. It had soaked him, permeating through his many layers of protective clothing. He tried to convince himself that it was just mud, and when he looked too closely and saw the occasional eye, or ear or other equally distinguishable shape floating by, he forced himself to look away and concentrate on the music still playing in the distance.

  What now? He tried to keep his head down as much as he could but he allowed himself to glance up momentarily and saw through the forest of tripping, sliding legs that the front of the building was now only a couple of meters ahead. The music was uncomfortably loud now, although it continued to be muffled down at ground level by the increased number of corpses swarming above and around him. They walked over him, oblivious to his presence, frequently standing right on top of him and not realizing. Damn things didn’t even know he was there.

 
It was impossible to see with any certainty, but the congestion around the door up ahead didn’t look as bad as he’d expected. Sure, there was a huge number of corpses congregating around the building, but a decorative low wall or fence on either side of the door seemed to be channelling many of them away. Regardless, he was going to have to get up to get inside. He paused and lay still for a moment longer, collecting his thoughts and trying to steady his nerves. He’d managed to drag his baseball bat along with him. His only option now, it seemed, was to get up, smash his way through the crowd, and then batter the door—and any corpses that got in his way—with all the strength he could muster. Hopefully the speed and surprise of his attack would be enough to confuse the cadavers for a few seconds. By the time they realized what was happening, he hoped, he might already be inside. And what after that? He wished he’d listened more closely to Martin’s explanation of the layout of the building. From what he could remember there was a back entrance which he used to get in and out. An entrance which was connected to the road and which would enable him to get back to the hotel. Back to safety and food and drink and his room and then—