Autumn: Aftermath (22 page)

“Yes, but not all of it. Christ, there’s only going to be a handful of you staying behind. And anyway, just a couple of days back you were telling us all how you were going to rape and pillage the whole country.”

“That’s in the future. Until then, we need those supplies.”

“And so do
we
!”

Jackson turned his back on Jas and shook the door but it wouldn’t open. He took a knife from his belt and started trying to force the lock.

“Go and find Kieran,” he said under his breath to Harte. “Talk some sense into him. See if you can get the other key off him.”

Before Harte could move, Jas grabbed hold of Jackson and threw him away from the gift shop entrance. Jas had a clear strength advantage, and Jackson was sent flying. He landed on the floor then got up, brushed himself down and ran at the door, trying to shoulder-charge it open. It was stronger than it looked and he simply bounced back off it, but he tried again, regardless.

“You’ll never do it, you fucking idiot,” Jas said. He was about to speak again when someone shouted behind him.

“Stop her!”

Jas spun around and saw that Lorna was helping herself to more supplies from the back of one of the trucks. She scooped up as much as she could carry and sprinted over to the bus. Following her lead, several others did the same.

For a moment longer Jackson tried to force the door. When Jas didn’t come at him again, he looked back and saw him running off toward the truck which was rapidly being emptied by Lorna and the others. Driver was standing in the middle of the courtyard, watching the chaos unfolding all around him, dumbstruck.

“Get the fucking bus started,” Jackson screamed at him as he ran past. “Let’s get out of here.”

Lorna weaved around Jas, slipping down onto one knee momentarily, just managing to hold on to everything she was carrying. She threw herself forward and scrambled up onto the bus, barely getting through the open door before Driver came storming up behind her. He clambered into his cab and started the engine, sinking into his seat with relief. He looked behind and saw that there were only a handful of people onboard. More were running over from the caravans, terrified that they were going to be left behind. Howard stumbled up the steps, his arms overloaded.

Outside, Jas positioned himself directly between the front of the bus and the gate. Charlie Moorehouse tripped while carrying two heavy cellophane-wrapped packs of bottled water, and while he was off-balance Ainsworth shoved him right over and put a boot between his shoulder blades, preventing him from getting up. Elsewhere, Zoe fought to get past Will Bayliss, who was blocking her way back to the bus. She tried to barge him out of the way but he stood his ground. She went to slap him but he was too fast. He caught her wrist and twisted her arm around so her position was reversed. He shoved her up onto the bus, empty-handed.

“You can fuck off,” he spat at her. “I’ll be glad to see the back of you.”

“Don’t do this, Jas,” Jackson said, refusing to show any anger or malice as he approached the other man, arms open but still carrying the knife he’d been using to try and force the gift shop door open. He sheathed it to show his peaceful intentions.

“Unload the supplies,” Jas said, “and I’ll let you leave.”

“You’ll let us leave!” Jackson laughed. “Come on, Jas, grow up. What do you think this is, a movie? We’ve all made our individual decisions, just like you insisted. Everyone’s had their say and made their choice, now you have to respect those choices.”

“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 sideiring 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 crossothck 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 theport 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.