Autumn Disintegration Read online

  “Maybe we should leave Webb here next time,” Jas suggested. “He’s going to get someone killed.”

  “He’s just a loose cannon,” said Stokes. “Don’t write him off. He just needs to learn how to keep himself under control, that’s all.”

  “I’ve seen dead bodies in the streets with more control than him,” Jas grumbled as he stomped on another empty can.

  “Don’t joke about it,” Hollis said, leaning over to one side as the second crushed can flew past his ear. “Did you see that one today?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one with the branch.”

  “What are you talking about?” Stokes asked, confused.

  “It was just after we’d filled the first van,” Hollis explained. “One of the dead came marching out through the middle of the crowd dragging half a bloody tree behind it.”

  “Must have got itself caught up,” Jas suggested, sounding only half-interested.

  “That’s what I thought,” he continued, “but I was watching it and…”

  “And what?”

  Hollis paused, not entirely sure what he was trying to say. “And I swear it was trying to pick it up and use it.”

  “Use it for what?”

  “A weapon, I guess. Maybe it was going to attack us with it.”

  “You’re worried about being attacked by a corpse carrying a branch?” Stokes said, smirking. “Christ, mate, you’re going soft. There’s thousands of them out there, and they’re all ready to gouge your bloody eyes out. I don’t think we need to lose any sleep over one that thinks it’s going to kill you with a bit of tree!”

  Christ, Hollis thought, Stokes could be a pain in the backside at times. He was an insensitive, uneducated prick.

  “You fucking idiot,” he cursed, amazed that he was having to spell out his concerns, “it’s not what it was carrying that bothers me, it’s the fact it was carrying anything at all. Have you seen any of them carry anything before now?”

  “No, but—”

  “Exactly. The last thing we want is for them to start picking stuff up and starting to—”

  “Are you sure it was carrying the branch?” Jas interrupted.

  “I was only looking at it for a few seconds,” he admitted, “and there were loads of them around us.”

  “Don’t get wound up about it, it was probably nothing. Like I said, maybe it just got caught up.”

  “Maybe, but what if—”

  “Never mind what-if,” Stokes snapped, “let’s just concentrate on what we know they’re capable of.”

  “And what’s that?” Jas asked.

  “Fuck all!” he laughed, his bellowing voice echoing around the desolate estate, bouncing off the walls of empty buildings.

  “What I think,” Webb suddenly announced from the darkness behind them, “is that we should go out there tomorrow and start burning them again. And this time we should keep at it until there’s nothing left of any of them.”

  “You’re a bloody pyromaniac, Webb. You’re the reason we had to go out there to get fuel again today,” Hollis reminded him.

  “It’s got to be worth it to get rid of a few hundred of them, though, hasn’t it?”

  “Problem is, you don’t get rid of hundreds, do you? How many was it you managed last time?”

  “Fuck off,” Webb said, helping himself to the last can of beer. “At least I’m trying to do something.”

  “Seven, wasn’t it?” Stokes laughed. “He takes two cans full of petrol right down to the edge of the crowd and he only manages to get rid of seven of them! You’ve got to try hard to be that useless!”

  “Wasn’t my fault,” he explained angrily, “the wind changed direction before I could—”

  “Funniest thing I’ve seen since all this started,” Stokes howled, “you running away from that fire with all those bodies just stood there watching you! Bloody priceless!”

  “Shut up. It wasn’t my fault. At least I stopped them getting any closer.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Hollis said quietly. “They stopped getting closer long before you started with your party tricks. It’s been days since any of them tried to get over the barrier.”

  “Why is that?” Jas asked, suddenly more serious. “Why do you think they’re holding back?”

  “They’re waiting for Webb to go back out there,” Stokes said, still laughing. “They’re waiting for you to entertain them, mate! Or maybe they want you to light another fire to keep them warm!”

  “Fuck you, Stokes.”

  Webb slumped against the wall and swigged his beer.

  “Thought you were going to show us how to keep him under control,” Hollis said quietly.

  “I am,” Stokes whispered back. “He needs putting in his place. If we tell him he did a great job getting rid of seven of them, he’ll be back out there tomorrow morning trying to do it again like he’s the fucking Terminator or something.”

  Hollis could see Stokes’s point of view, but he wasn’t convinced Stokes continually put Webb down for any reason other than to make himself feel better.

  “No one answered my question,” Jas said.

  “What question?” Stokes mumbled ignorantly.

  “Why do you think they’re holding back?”

  “Who?”

  “The bodies, you moron.”

  “Well it ain’t because of Webb!”

  Hollis stared out toward the vast crowd of corpses in the near distance. In the low light the thousands of individual figures seemed to have merged together and formed a single, unending mass of decaying flesh.

  “No way of knowing for sure, is there?” he finally admitted.

  “But what do you think?” Jas pushed. “What’s your gut feeling?”

  “That they’re either too scared to come any closer or they’re biding their time.”

  “Biding their time?” Stokes protested. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Maybe they’re waiting for us to drop our guard. Maybe they’re waiting for us to come out into the open so they can make their move and attack. They’ve got us outnumbered by more than a thousand to one.”

  “Bullshit,” Stokes said. “They’re not waiting for us.”

  “Like I said, we should just go out there in the morning and get rid of the whole fucking lot of them,” Webb shouted from the shadows. “And if we can’t get rid of them then we should just keep pushing them back until there’s at least a mile between the nearest one of them and me.”

  4

  “Where are we going?” sighed Driver. He picked a lump of dried food out of the end of his untidy month-long beard and flicked it under the table. Hollis held his head in his hands, then jabbed his finger down onto the map.

  “Kingsway Road,” he sighed. “Halfway down going towards town, just before you get to the station. Haven’t you been listening?”

  “That’s the old twenty-three route,” Driver answered, suddenly marginally more animated. “I know where you mean now.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  Hollis made momentary eye contact with Harte, who seemed to share his concerns about Driver. Christ, they didn’t even know his real name. He’d turned up at the flats in the bus he’d been driving when the infection had first struck. He’d picked up several other survivors along the way but had been disturbingly lapse and vague about everything that had happened. Lorna, one of his passengers, had told Hollis she’d found a woman’s carcass wedged under one of the seats. The smell of the decomposing grandmother had been strong enough for her to notice long before she’d spotted her tan-suede-booted foot sticking out. He’d been driving around with her rotting in the back of the bus for days and hadn’t even noticed.

  Less than forthcoming with any personal details, they had simply christened him with the unimaginative label of “Driver” because of his preapocalypse vocation. Good job they’d not adopted the same naming strategy for any of the others, Hollis thought to himself. Jas could have got away with “Security,”
as could Harte with “Teacher.” Caron would probably have been quietly pleased to have been given the mantle of “Housewife,” although Gordon, the short and repressed warehouse manager, would probably have insisted they call her “Homemaker” in a pointless effort to be politically correct. He decided he would have christened Webb “Young Offender” and Stokes “Failed Store Manager and Alcoholic.” With few other distinguishing characteristics or traits, Ellie, Lorna and Anita would have all been labeled “Unemployed” and that, he decided, would have just been confusing. He didn’t like to group Lorna with the other two girls, although they were all of a similar age and background. He liked her. She had more about her than the rest of them.

  “What’s the name of this place we’re looking for again?” Harte asked, leaning over the map to get a better view. Caron looked at the business phone directory in her lap and ran her finger down the page.

  “Shaylors,” she answered, finally finding the right advert. “‘Wholesale cash and carry for retailers. Over twenty thousand lines including a wide range of fresh and frozen food, groceries, beers, wines, spirits, tobacco and nonfood items.’”

  “Sounds perfect,” Stokes chipped in. “Maybe we should move in there. It’d be a hell of a lot easier than going out looting all the time.”

  Sitting across the table, Jas shook his head. “You been down the Kingsway Road recently?”

  “You know I haven’t.”

  “Place was bad news before any of this started. It’s going to be a nightmare today. It’ll be crawling with corpses.”

  “Isn’t everywhere?”

  “Can’t we find anywhere safer to go?” Gordon piped up from his usual position by the window. “Do we really need to risk going so deep into town just to get booze and cigarettes?”

  “Last time I checked you weren’t risking anything, Gord,” Stokes said. “How long’s it been since you last went out?”

  “I’ve got problems with my hip, you know I have,” he answered quickly, rattling off his stock excuse. “Seriously, I’d just hold you all up and slow you down. I’ve been on the waiting list for a replacement for more than two years.”

  “Well, you’re not going to get your operation now, are you, mate? You might as well get used to the pain and start pulling your weight.”

  “Let it go,” Hollis sighed. He wasn’t in the mood to referee yet another slanging match. Truth be told, he didn’t want to risk being out in the open with someone as weak and useless as Gordon anyway.

  “Sounds good,” Ellie said, sitting on the windowsill, cradling her doll and kicking her legs. “Get me some fags, will you? Me and Anita are down to our last couple of packs.”

  “Think about your baby,” Stokes said with a smirk. Webb bit his lip and looked away, trying not to laugh.

  “Where is Anita, anyway?” Jas asked, glancing around the room.

  “In bed,” Ellie answered.

  “In bed?” he repeated. “Bloody hell, it’s like a holiday camp here. What’s she doing in bed?”

  “Says she feels sick. Says it’s something she’s eaten.”

  “I reckon it’s just another one of her excuses, lazy cow,” Stokes said, for once putting into words what just about everyone else was thinking. Anita seemed to be able to find a way of getting out of doing practically anything.

  The bickering continued around him, but Hollis concentrated on the map on the table, doing his best to shut out the constant, pointless noise. They’d been systematically working their way through all the large supermarkets and stores on this side of town. Once they’d cleared a store out and stripped it down to bare bones, they crossed through it on the map and moved on to the next. Their strategy had worked well so far, but the danger was increasing. Their trips outside were now taking longer and thorough planning was necessary. Problem was, he thought, with this shower of tossers the risks were dramatically increasing too. He knew he could count on Jas, Stokes (despite his obvious faults), Harte, and Lorna, but as for the rest of them …

  “I said, when are we going to do it?” Stokes asked, slapping his hand down on the table when he didn’t get an answer, making Hollis jump.

  “What?”

  “Do we go now or leave it until later?”

  “We should just get it done,” Hollis replied. “Let’s get out of here, get back, and then have a bloody good drink.”

  5

  Jas pushed his bike out of the front lobby of the flats and wheeled it over toward the other vehicles. Hollis acknowledged both him and Harte, who climbed onto the back of the bike to ride pillion. Next to Hollis in the larger of the group’s two vans sat Lorna, quiet and pensive and chewing her lip nervously, unaware he was staring at her. He often found himself watching her. She had a spark of energy and life about her. Even now, about to head out into the grim, dangerous and unpredictable ruin of their world, she remained remarkably positive. She was wearing a trace of makeup and had tied her hair up neatly. She did something different with her hair almost every day. It said something about her that she still took pride in her appearance. He, on the other hand, hadn’t brushed his teeth for more than a week.

  The hydraulic hiss of the doors of the bus opening on the other side of the car park distracted Hollis. He watched as Driver let Stokes and Webb on board. Before disappearing inside, Webb glanced along the length of the bizarre-looking vehicle. Once just like any other double-decker bus, over the weeks the group had cannibalized and fortified it to the best of their limited abilities. Barbwire had been spooled along both sides in an attempt to make it as difficult as possible for the dead to reach the survivors inside. Sheet metal had been bolted to its otherwise flat front to form a rudimentary pointed plow, perfect for cutting through the incessant crowds which gathered around them whenever they left the relative safety and calm of the flats.

  The air, so eerily quiet and still most of the time now, was suddenly filled with noise as, one by one, the engines were started. Lorna shuffled forward in her seat and peered through binoculars down into the gray sea of cadavers. Even from this distance she could see that they were already beginning to react to the rumble of the machines.

  The geography of the area around the block of flats had made the ugly concrete building a surprisingly effective base. Its location, perched three-quarters of the way up a steep hill, made it difficult for the bodies to get close easily. Some of them, those less damaged or decayed than the rest, were occasionally able to drag themselves through the desolation and get closer to the survivors, but were easy pickings. Webb in particular seemed to take great pleasure in destroying them, although Jas, Harte, and Hollis were always ready to take their turn. Behind their building, a myriad of tracks and roads led through an empty, mazelike housing estate which had also been scheduled for demolition before everything had ended. Many houses were boarded up, and the group had created makeshift road blocks and barriers, leaving only the most inaccessible roads clear and making it all but impossible for even the most determined of corpses to reach them.

  No one was sure how much of a difference it made anymore, but it had become standard practice to create a distraction whenever anyone left the flats. Regardless of how much control the bodies had begun to exhibit, they could still be fooled. Fire was usually the best diversion. A little heat, light and noise were usually enough to take some of the pressure off whoever it was heading out into the open.

  “Ready?” Ellie yelled from Hollis’s right. He gave her a leather-gloved thumbs-up. On his signal she ran over to where Caron and Gordon were standing and started working. Hollis wiped sweat from his brow. Christ, he was hot. One of the worst things about going outside—apart from the unwanted attention of the remains of the local population—was the regulation uniform they had each decided to adopt. Bike leathers, wet suits, over-trousers—anything that might protect them from the layer of germs, slime and decay which was gradually coating every square inch of the world outside.

  Ellie lit a petrol-soaked rag and tossed it through the open window of
a small, box-shaped silver car. A puddle of fuel on the driver’s seat and in the foot-well immediately burst into flame. Moving with sudden purpose and speed, she ran around to the back of the car and, with the other two, began to push it away from the flats. They could hear the crackle and pop of the fire taking hold inside; dirty black smoke was already beginning to belch out through the window.

  “Come on,” Gordon grunted, his face flushed red with effort and his dodgy hip feeling like it was about to pop out of his pelvis. Ellie took a step back then ran and launched herself at the car, finally feeling its wheels beginning to turn and pick up some speed. Its interior now completely ablaze, it rolled down the hill with increasing velocity, running away from the three people pushing it. Breathless, she stood with her hands on her hips and watched as it raced down the slope, bobbling up into the air as it hit the curb. It juddered along a little farther, then thudded into the barrier.

  “Could have done with that being a little more dramatic,” Hollis grumbled, disappointed. “It’ll have to do.”

  “Should be okay,” Lorna said. She watched through the binoculars as bodies swarmed around the part of the barrier closest to the burning car. Worryingly, she was sure that one or two of them were actually trying to climb over the blockade to get closer to the flames.

  “We’ll just need to make sure we—” Hollis began to say before the quarter-full fuel tank of the burning car exploded in a swollen, incandescent mushroom of flame, showering the ground with shrapnel. The sudden burst of energy caused huge numbers of diseased creatures to surge toward the epicenter of the blast. “That’s better,” he said to himself, slamming his foot down on the accelerator.

  “Here we go, then,” Driver announced to his two passengers in his monotone, emotionless drawl. “Hold tight.” He instinctively checked his mirrors and even indicated before pulling out. Stokes and Webb held onto the handrail inside the bus as if they were rush-hour commuters on their way to work.

  Jas paused before following on the bike. The visor on his helmet still raised, he watched the bodies swarming around the fire. Many had been drawn to the flames, some had been crushed in the confusion and others had even found themselves close enough to the heat to be set alight. Others, he noticed, had changed direction. He could see six or seven of them actually trying to move away from the burning wreck. Damn things, it was almost as if they’d realized the fire was nothing more than an unsubtle decoy. Harte tapped his shoulder.