Autumn: Aftermath (37 page)

“Was that all your doing down at the marina?” Michael demanded. “Did you wreck all the boats?”

“So what if I did?”

Michael didn’t have a chance to speak again. Jas was too strong for him. Powerfully built and fired-up, he forced Michael back, shoved him to the ground, and aimed the rifle into his face.

“Don’t be stupid, Jas,” Lorna yelled, trying to pull him away. Michael scrambled back up onto his feet, but Jas came at him again, this time kicking his legs out from under him. He hit the ground hard, flat on his back, all the air knocked out of him. Lorna forced herself between the two men as Jas went for him a third time.

“Stop, Jas,” Ainsworth said, but his words had no effect.

“Leave him,” Lorna ordered. “You stupid bastard, Jas. He’s got a kid waiting to be born on that island. You’ve taken away his last chance of getting back there.”

“He’s better off here,” Jas replied as Ainsworth tried to pull him away. “The kid’s as good as dead, anyway.”

Michael groaned with anger and pain and stood back up. Lorna blocked him, stopping him from getting any closer.

A corpse brushed past Jas. He tried to load the rifle but his hands were shaking. Instead he swung it around and clubbed the stumbling body away.

“You all think I’m some kind of villain,” he said, trying again to load and now looking around at the frightened faces staring back at him—people he’d called friends at one time or other before now. “I’m not. I didn’t want for any of this to happen. Contrary to what you might think, I didn’t kill Jackson either, I swear…”

He stopped talking when the air was filled with another thunderous noise. For a second several of them thought it might be the helicopter returning, but it was quickly clear that this was something else entirely. Howard took a few steps back toward the main street, sidestepping several more cadavers, and saw that a billowing cloud of dust and smoke was rolling steadily toward them. The air felt hot and dry. Had part of the apartment building collapsed? It was impossible to tell, but the flames were spreading fast. Through the haze he could see more of the dead continuing to stagger forward, the farthest advanced of them catching fire long before they reached the burning apartments.

Harte and Kieran came running out of the chaos toward him. “We need to get out of here,” Harte shouted, wiping tears from his stinging eyes. “The whole bloody town’s going to go up in flames.”

He stopped speaking when he saw the expression on Howard&x2019;s face.

“Harte…” Howard started to say.

“What is it?” Harte demanded. He continued around the corner and saw Jas. Jas saw him too, and immediately raised the rifle and aimed it at him. And then Kieran appeared, and Harte was immediately forgotten. Jas directed the full force of his anger at him instead.

“You sold me out, you fucker!” he screamed, charging into Kieran and sending him flying. He aimed the rifle at him and Kieran staggered back, tripping on the curb and landing on his backside.

“You were wrong, Jas,” he said, barely able to get the words out.

“Jesus,” Lorna shouted, “is there anyone you’re not pissed off with? Doesn’t that tell you something? Like, that
you
might be the one who’s got this wrong?”

Jas glared at her, but was distracted as another random body collided with him. He recoiled, shoving the foul thing away. It continued to try and move toward him, trying to get to the fire in the distance, but Jas misinterpreted its actions as an attack. He forced the rifle up into the creatures gaping mouth and fired, splattering what was left of its brains over the pavement in a firework-like shower of dark brown gore. He spun around and saw another cadaver walking listlessly toward him, and fired again. This time he hit the cadaver in the right shoulder. It collapsed, but immediately tried to drag itself forward with its one remaining good arm. He clubbed the back of its head with the butt of his rifle.

“Jas, stop!” Harte shouted, but his words had no effect.

“They’re coming!” he screamed, the panic in his voice now clearly evident. The collapsing building had clearly attracted the attention of many more of the creatures, and another surge of dead flesh was now advancing toward them.

“They might be coming,” Harte said, still trying to stop him, “but they’re not coming for you, you idiot. Haven’t you worked it out yet? The dead aren’t our enemy. They’re as scared and as lost as we are.”

Jas spun around again. Another corpse, and another shot to the face. This time Ainsworth tried to stop him, grabbing the barrel of the rifle. In Jas’s panic and confusion, his trigger finger tightened and he fired. Ainsworth was blown backward. He collided with a corpse, then dropped to the ground, a bloody gaping hole in his chest.

“What the hell have you done?” Lorna demanded, standing over Ainsworth’s twitching body, barely able to comprehend what had just happened. Wisps of smoke rose from around the edges of his wound. She didn’t need to get any closer to know he was dead. She looked up and saw the others moving farther away from Jas, who was reloading the rifle with another handful of shells from his pocket. “What happened to you, Jas?”

“The last three months happened,” he replied, still looking for his next target. He aimed and fired at another cadaver, then another and another … The rest of the living scattered as he reloaded again, regrouping around the back of a garbage truc. Harte tried to call to Lorna from the truck, but she wasn’t listening. She was still crouched next to Ainsworth’s lifeless body. Jas fired at yet another cadaver.

“The last three months have fucked us all up,” she said, “but I thought you were better than this. It didn’t have to be this way. You, me, the dead … we’re all victims, you know. It’s not about us versus them or you versus me, it’s just about us all trying to survive.”

“I know that,” he said, lowering the rifle momentarily. “I know that better than anyone. I’ve been trying to tell you, you won’t survive on that island, it’s a dead end. You should stay here. You should stay here with me.”

Lorna stood up and walked over, terrified that at any moment he was going to lift his weapon and start firing again, but still feeling a need to try and talk to him. She thought he sounded desperate. She glanced back along the street, and in the distance she could see the glow of the flames. The warm wind continued to gust toward them, fanning the fire and helping it spread with remarkable speed.

“We have to go,” she said, gently putting her hand on his arm. “It’s not safe here.”

His voice cracked. “It’s not safe anywhere. Don’t go to the island, Lorna. Please don’t.”

He pushed her away, his sudden, unexpected movement taking her by surprise, and then fired another shot into the smoke. She saw a body go down, visible only when it hit the ground.

“I know you’re scared,” she said, hiding behind him now as yet more of the dead approached in greater numbers, “and I don’t pretend to understand why you did what you did, but your best chance is to come with us now and try to get to Cormansey. There’s no future for any of us here, but there might still be on the island.”

“You think?” he said, taking aim again. “You all think I killed Jackson. You
know
I killed Ainsworth. But I didn’t mean for any of it to happen…”

“I know that, and we can put it behind us. It might be a struggle on the island, but—”

“I’m not going,” he said abruptly. He fired once more.

“But this is madness. Come on, Jas, you’re confused. Think about Michael … he’s going to be a dad. What would you be doing if your kids were still alive? Would you have wanted them to stay here, or would you have wanted them to go to the island?”

Jas instinctively pressed his palm to his chest, feeling for the outline of his precious wallet under several layers of clothing. But then another group of bodies stumbled into view and he tried to fire again. The rifle was empty. Lorna tried to pull him away but he shrugged her off and marched toward the nearest corpse and clubbed it to the ground. Then another. Then another. And now he was surrounded. The slow trickle of bodies emerging had become an unsteady flood, more and more of them approaching all the time, attracted both by the distant flames and Jas’s bluster.

Once more Lorna tried to pull him back but he just pushed her away, desperate to destroy every last one of the foul, disease-ridden cadavers which now seemed to be converging on him. There were scores of them everywhere he looked now: some limping, some crawling, some barely moving at all. Some were still nearly recognizable as people, others were little more than gelatinous heaps of decay that were somehow still able to function. Jas felt his legs weaken. He was surrounded, more of them approaching than he could deal with alone. He glanced back over his shoulder, looking for help, but even more bodies had sealed him off, preventing him from seeing Lorna now. She could still see him—just—and was poised to run deeper into the crowd to try and drag him away when Harte grabbed her from behind and pulled her to safety behind the garbage truck.

“Leave him,” he said.

“We can’t…”

“We can. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

He stood back and she saw that Hollis was slumped on the floor, resting up against a grubby shop window. His clothes were soaked with blood. Lorna couldn’t process what she was seeing. She tried to talk, but no words came out. Caron was sitting by Hollis’s side, gently stroking his arm. She stood up and held Lorna.

“He got caught in the shooting,” she explained. “We didn’t even realize he’d been hit…”

Lorna crouched down next to Hollis. He looked up at her, his filthy face streaked with tears. There was blood on his lips.

“I know I don’t look so good these days,” he said, his voice hard to hear, “but I didn’t think Jas would mistake me for one of them.”

“Oh, Greg…” she said.

“You lot go on,” he mumbled, blood bubbling. “I’ll never make it.”

“He’s right,” Harte said. “We need to go.”

“What’s the point?” Lorna demanded, sobbing. The tears carved clean lines through the dirt and soot on her cheeks. “Let’s face it, we’re fucked.”

“Bloody hell,” Hollis said, forcing a grin. “Things must be bad if you reckon we’re fucked.”

“Just being realistic, that’s all.”

“Realistic!” Harte protested. “Christ, Lor, we’ve spent three months trying to avoid the walking dead, hiding in castles and hotels and the like, and you decide today’s the day to start talking about being
realistic
!”

“He’s got a point,” Kieran agreed.

“But we can’t just leave Hollis…”

“Yes, you can,” Hollis said. “Go, Lorna. Get out of here.”

“No…”

Hollis managed to lift his head slightly and looked up at Harte, who acknowledged his friend.

“Come on,” Harte said, gently picking Lorna up. She shook him off, wanting to say good-bye to Hollis, but she realized it was too late. She’d seen enough death to know there was no life left in his tired, glassy eyes.

Harte peered out around the front of the garbage truck. There were more corpses now—an incalculable number. The mass of dead bodies still trudging down the street toward the fire in the distance was undiminished, an unstoppable thick brown river of decay now. There was no sign of Jas; he’d long since been swallowed up. The bulk of the corpses seemed to be coming from the direction of the station, and the road to the car park was still relatively clear.

“What do you reckon?” Howard asked.

“Sprint for the car park,” he replied. “It’s our only option. Got to get up there and hope Richard turns up before the whole bloody town burns down.”

They grouped together, ready to move.

“Wait,” Caron said, looking around. “Where’s Michael?”

 

59

Michael was waiting for them at the entrance to the car park.

“Where the
hell have you been?” Kieran asked.

Michael answered with his own question. “Who’s missing?”

“Hollis is dead,” Lorna replied. “Shot.”

“And Jas?”

“He’s dead too, presumably. We lost him in all those bodies.”

Michael nodded.

“Did you have something to do with that?” Howard asked. “What did you do?”

“It wasn’t just about him, you know,” he explained. “All I did was open up the station. I saw hundreds of them trapped there when I first came to this place. Figured I should let them out before we leave.”

“
If
we leave,” Kieran said.

“I just wanted your friend Jas to get an idea of what he would really be up against if he stayed here.”

Lorna shook her head and started to climb, not sure whether she believed Michael. She took Caron’s hand and led her up the corkscrew-shaped road. What they were going to do when they reached the roof, however, she had no idea.

0em" w"0em" width="2em" align="justify">They climbed over a plum-colored Mini which had crashed into a barrier, then stopped on the third floor of five and peered down into the streets below. The town was steadily filling with fire, building after building being eaten up by the heat and light. But somehow the position didn’t look as bad from up here as it had down at ground level. The fire hadn’t made as much progress as they’d feared. Michael was relieved; they’d have a good few hours before they’d need to move again.

Howard peered over the edge and looked directly down. Closer to the entrance to the car park he could see the station which Michael had opened up. Even now there was a massive column of bodies trying to escape. They played a bizarre game of follow-the-leader as they spilled out onto the street and walked toward the red-hot devastation in the distance.

And then, just for a second, he thought he caught a glimpse of Jas, still fighting in the midst of the chaos. It was impossible to be sure from up here, such was the extent of the dead masses which filled the street outside the car park. Was it really him, or had it just been more corpses reacting to each other? It was gone again in just a few seconds.

In the distance Kieran could see the farthest advanced of the bodies burning up, and he watched them with an unexpected mix of emotions: relief, first and foremost, that the time of the dead was finally coming to an end. These were undoubtedly their final days, their final hours perhaps. He also felt an undeniable sense of achievement that he’d made it through to see this moment—that he’d survived when so many millions of others hadn’t. And, strangely, he also felt pleased that, one way or another, everyone’s suffering would soon be over—living and dead alike. He understood why Michael had done what he’d done.