Autumn: Aftermath (36 page)

While Harte shifted the cars, Michael, Kieran, and Hollis disappeared into the town and siphoned fuel from more vehicles into petrol cans and buckets, then carried them back to the flats. Lorna and Howard drenched the ground floor of the building with petrol and opened all the windows and interior doors. After working for a while, Caron sat herself down on a low stone wall on the other side of the road and watched.

When all the fuel had been used up, they were ready to start the fire. Kieran splashed fuel around the entrance to the apartments, Harte remained standing a short distance back from him, holding a Molotov cocktail, and watched.

“You done?” he asked as Kieran jogged back over to where the others were waiting. They’d all taken cover on the other side of the stone wall now, leaving him on his own.

“We’re done,” Kieran shouted.

Harte nervously held a lighter in one hand, the petrol bomb in the other. The fumes from the fuel were stinging his eyes and nose; he wasn’t sure if they were coming from the bottle or the apartments. The stench reminded him of when he’d burned down the petrol station, and the memory of the blast back then seemed to increase his nervousness tenfold.

“Get on with it,” Hollis yelled at him. He flicked the lighter before he could talk himself out of it. The petrol-soaked rag caught immediately. He threw the bottle and turned and sprinted back toward the others in a single, barely coordinated movement. Kieran grinned at him as he ran back.

“Crap shot!” he laughed. Harte dived over the wall, then scrambled back up again. He was right, it had been a bad shot—the bottle had smashed against the side of the front entrance, missing the door completely—but it didn’t matter. Theyd drenched the place in more than enough petrol and the fumes caught light almost instantly. Flames filled the air like a scorching mist, billowing left and right, then racing inside and tearing up through the apartment block. It wasn’t as dramatic as he’d been expecting, but it was enough. He stood back, arms folded, and watched with satisfaction as the fire began to take grip.

“Quite therapeutic, actually,” Howard said, and Harte thought back to those days at the flats when Webb used to spend his time beating the shit out of random corpses and calling that therapy. He knew exactly how he felt now. A little wanton destruction of property wasn’t doing anyone any harm, but Christ, it made him feel a lot better. Even if they didn’t make it off the mainland, maybe he could fill his time smashing things up to try and vent his numerous frustrations.

Less than a minute had passed, but the fire had already begun to take a substantial hold. Dancing orange-and-yellow light was visible through many of the first-floor windows, illuminating the insides of the individual flats which had, until now, remained shadow-filled and unlit. He watched through one particular window, directly ahead of him. The fire snaked in through the open doorway, then furniture toward the back of the room caught light, seeming to burst into flames spontaneously. The fire moved quickly, its pace accelerated by the copious amounts of petrol with which everything had been doused. A couple of seconds later and the curtains were alight, then flames began to lick up against the window as if they were trying to escape. Somewhere else another window shattered, exploding outward, flying glass followed by a belch of white-hot flame. And then another, then another. Within minutes a couple of the cars were alight too. They all knew it wouldn’t be long before fuel tanks caught and the raging firestorm they’d started would be burning out of control.

Several bodies were already moving toward the growing inferno. Lorna thought she was imagining it, but their speed seemed to have increased slightly. She watched as one walked right up to the apartment building, seemingly oblivious to the flames which now surrounded it. A loose rag of clothing caught light, and in an instant the whole body was consumed. It staggered on for a few more seconds, completely enveloped by fire now, before collapsing. The same thing happened to several more. Another one walked toward a part of the building where the flames were particularly ferocious. It caught light before it had even made contact with anything which was burning, the intensity of the heat enough to cause it to spontaneously combust.

“So what do we do now? Just sit here and wait?” Caron asked. She looked at the others, their faces bathed in the strangely soothing flickering orange glow.

“It’s going to get too dangerous here,” Michael said. Almost on cue, there came a series of quick, successive explosions like gunshots; aerosols or something equally flammable detonating inside. The noises seemed to spur on even more of the dead to get closer.

“So where do we go?”

“There’s only one place to go, isn’t there?” he said. “If Richard does come back for us, he’s going to head straight for the car park.”

“The car park?” Caron said, confused. Michael was about to explain but another blast stopped him from speaking. The fuel in the tank of one of the cars had exploded, sending the vehicle up onto its nose, pirouetting, then crashing back down against the side of the burning apartment block. When the noise had subsided, Michael tried to speak again. He pointed out across town.

“See that multistory car park over there? That’s where he lands, so that’s where we need to be.”

Without waiting for any of them to respond, he started walking.

58

The noise coming from the burning building they were moving away from was astonishing. Frequent explosions continued to ring out, maki
ng the otherwise silent town sound like a battlefield. Although it was dry today, the fierce wind continued to blow, whipping off the sea now, gusting along the streets and fanning the flames.

There were more bodies coming toward them. Despite all they’d seen over the last day, there was still a moment of instinctive, nervous hesitation whenever they were this close to any of the dead—the split-second fear of attack—but it was clear that the attention of these corpses was now completely focused elsewhere. They weren’t interested in the living any longer, probably weren’t even aware they were there. The fire in the near distance was acting like a call to the faithful and the longer it burns, Harte thought to himself, the more of them will be drawn away from the rest of town. In a bizarre way, it felt like they’d begun cleansing Chadwick.

“Look at that,” Hollis said. Harte immediately turned around, and what he saw took him by surprise. They’d reached a modern-looking office block, the front of which was almost completely made up of huge panes of glass, most of which were now filled with bodies. A huge mass of dead workers who’d been trapped in the building since September were now crowding against the glass, unable to go anywhere but still desperately trying to get closer to the distant flames. Even from here the blaze was clearly visible, burning bright against the muted colors of everything else. Harte stopped and watched them watching the fire. When another explosion echoed around the town, the dead became even more animated and began hammering against the window to get out. Like the bodies beneath the castle, these people had been sheltered from the worst of the elements by virtue of the fact they’d died indoors, and their decay appeared much less advanced than many of those left out on the streets. Harte caught his breath when one of the corpses stumbled forward and clattered against the other side of a glass door next to where he was standing. Even now his instinctive reaction was either to run or fight, and it took great effort for him to maintain control and not do either. The corpse flinched again, reacting to another flash of flame, and Harte saw that it still had a name badge clipped to the pocket of its crusted, gore-streaked shirt. Ryan Fleming: Head of Research. And like Michelle Bright—the corpse of the nurse under the castle—and Jenna Walker, the young, dead chemist whose home they’d just torched, Ryan Fleming suddenly mattered.

Apart from Kieran, the others had all continued walking. The street was filling with drifting smoke, making it increasingly difficult to differentiate between the movements of the living and the dead.

“What the hell are you dog?” Kieran asked.

“Letting them out,” Harte shouted back at him and then, without stopping to consider the consequences, he forced the door to the building open. He guided Ryan Fleming’s dishevelled shell out onto the street, still half-expecting it to turn on him and attack, but it didn’t. It simply lifted its tired, diseased head to look up at the light in the distance, then lethargically walked away in the general direction of the fire. He watched it go, and was gently pushed away to the side as more corpses followed and began to spill out of the office building, clumsily barging past him.

“What’s the point of doing that?” Kieran asked.

“Makes me feel better,” he replied with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.

In the next property along—a coffee shop—he could see more of them now, tripping over the tables and chairs where they’d drunk their last coffees, colliding with the bodies of the last people they’d seen and spoken to; the last human interactions they’d had before they’d died. Harte released them all. And in the building next to the coffee shop there were even more corpses pawing to get out. In a gym a short distance further down the street, crowds of the dead clamored around the dirty windows, stumbling over dust- and cobweb-covered exercise equipment to get closer to the light. Even though he’d seen thousands of them before, Harte continued to be distracted by their grotesque appearance. Several of them were still dressed in figure-hugging Lycra outfits. Their heavily stained exercise clothing still clung to their figures, but their shapes had altered dramatically since they’d first put on their outfits months earlier, stretching and bulging with decay. Some of them were imprisoned by the fitness machines they’d been using at the moment of death. He could see at least two of them who’d died midpress and who were now pinned down by bars and weights. Keen to catch up with the others who had now disappeared out of sight around a corner, Harte wedged the door open, then hurried after them. There were three steps down onto the street. He looked back as the dead began to stumble out after him, some of them losing their footing and falling, then being trampled by others before picking themselves up again and carrying on.

Kieran had waited for him. “Do you think they know what they’re doing?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” Harte admitted. “But like I say, it makes me feel better.”

The two men ran on. Kieran stepped to one side to let another rancid corpse crawl past. Behind them now the street was full of corpses disappearing into the ever-increasing clouds of smoke.

*   *   *

Michael glanced over his shoulder but he couldn’t see Kieran or Harte. No matter. They all knew where they were supposed to be heading. He recognized the street they were walking along now. Over to his right was the road which led to the baby store, and up ahead was the supermarket Donna, Richard, and Cooper had looted on their first day back on the mainland. That felt like it had been weeks ago now. He looked up into the narrow strip of sky visible between the roofs of the buildings on either side of the road as he walked, wishing he could see the helicopter, willing it here. The sky was a beautiful deep blue this morning, but it was increasingly hard to see through the clouds of smoke which were being blown in their direction.

“Where the hell did you come from?” he heard Howard say. He walked into the back of Lorna who’d stopped suddenly. Michael wafted smoke out of his eyes to see.

“Same place as you, you fucking idiot,” a voice he didn’t know replied.

“Then why don’t you fuck off back there again, Jas,” Lorna shouted angrily. Michael could see more clearly now. There were two men he didn’t recognize standing in the street directly ahead of them. One of them, Jas he presumed, was carrying a rifle. He moved forward menacingly. Caron, Howard, and Hollis moved away. The other man held back.

“Why did you do it?” Jas demanded. “You idiots, you fucked everything up.”

“
We
fucked everything up?” Lorna said, pushing her way to the front of the group again. “Last time I checked,
you
were the one causing all the grief. You were the one who tried to keep us locked up. You’re the one who killed Jackson.”

There was a hint of emotion in Jas’s face. A momentary flicker.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said, sounding marginally less aggressive. “He fell on his knife.”

“And you expect us to believe that?”

“I don’t really care what you believe. I’m not interested.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Would somebody tell me what the hell is going on?” Michael said. “Who are these jokers?”

“This is Jas,” Lorna replied, confirming his suspicions and almost having to force herself to spit out his name. “And this other useless strip of piss is Mark Ainsworth.”

Another explosion came from the direction of the burning apartment block, this time so loud and violent that Michael felt the ground shake beneath his feet.

“So where are your playmates, Jas?” Caron asked, being deliberately antagonistic. “Are you two all on your own now? Have they all abandoned you?”

She didn’t realize how close to the truth she was.

“They’ve gone, useless bastards,” Jas admitted before adding, “and it looks like they’ve taken your places on the last boat out to your precious bloody island.”

Michael reeled from what he’d just heard. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. It was bad enough that he was left stranded here, but the thought that this callous, murdering wanker’s associates—probably the same fuckers who were responsible for all the grief back at the castle earlier, putting everyone’s lives in danger made it back to Cormansey when he hadn’t was unbearable. He pushed his way through the others and lunged at Jas, taking him by surprise. He grabbed him by the collar and smacked him up against the window of a health food shop. Inside, a corpse immediately began hammering at the glass to be set free. For a moment Jas seemed more concerned by the dead body behind him than by Michael.