“Oh just have a drink,” Harte said, offering him a bottle of spirits. “Calm the fuck down.”
Jas took a swig, winced, then passed the bottle back. Lorna watched him, concerned. Harte came over and sat down next to her in a corner of the tower. It was cold under his backside, but the strong walls shielded them from the icy wind. As uncomfortable as it was out here, they’d had enough of being trapped indoors recently. Jas remained on the opposite side to the rest of them, staring out into space.
“What are you thinking?” Lorna asked him.
“I’m thinking how fucked-up everything still is,” he replied, his voice wavering, “and how little of it I still understand. I’m asking myself why I’m stuck here in a bloody castle with you lot, when this time last year I’d have been at home with Harj and the kids and…”
His voice broke and he didn’t finish his sentence, but it didn’t matter. The point had already been made. Being here tonight felt like a hollow victory for Jas. It depressed him to think this might be as good as his life was going to get. It still hurt too much to think about his life before the apocalypse in any great detail, but now, strangely, thinking about more recent times was becoming equally painful. Standing out here tonight reminded him of the endless hours he’d spent out on the balcony back at the flats, drinking beer, looking out over the dead crowds and discussing the rigors and practicalities of daily survival with Hollis, Stokes and the others. He’d felt like the king of the world back then, like he and the rest of them were in almost total control. Christ, how things had changed. The flats were lost now, and the hotel too, and Stokes, Webb and many of the others were dead. Hollis was just a shell of a man … and as for the dead? Well, those fuckers continued to fight for all they were worth. Their decaying flesh may have been weak, but their intent was still clear.
“I was just thinking,” he said, “how it feels like we’ve been here before.”
“I’ve never been here before,” Hollis said, mishearing him. Jas ignored him and continued speaking.
“Look down there,” he said, gesturing out over the castle wall, “and what do you see? I’ll tell you—a fucking huge crowd of dead bodies. Same as we saw when we looked out of the hotel windows every bloody morning. Same as we saw when we were back at the flats.”
“But this is different.” Lorna sighed. “Can’t you see? Look at the condition they’re in, Jas. Look at the state of them.”
“Look at the state of us,” he countered. “For fuck’s sake, there’s barely any of us left. Most of us are dead. Gordon, Ginnie, Martin, Webb, Ellie, Anita, Stokes … all gone.”
“But we’re still here,” she protested. “We’ve survived.”
“So far, yes.”
“And all the other people Driver found here.”
“What, all fifteen of them? Out of a population of something like sixty million people, theres only just over twenty of us left?”
“We don’t know that. There could be hundreds more scattered all over the country.”
“Hundreds more. Doesn’t change the fact that millions have died.”
“But this place is incredible,” Harte said. “It’s safe and it’s strong. They’ve got a decent level of supplies and—”
“Spare me the bullshit,” Jas interrupted.
“It’s not bullshit.”
“It is! We’ve heard it all before, again and again. Remember the early days back at the flats? You were walking around the place like the bloody cock of the roost, telling me how perfect it was, going on about how we were going to build this barrier to keep the bodies back, and how we’d do up the flats and make them inhabitable and—”
“And that’s exactly what we did,” Lorna said.
“Up to a point,” Jas continued. “I believed it, though. We all believed it. But it didn’t last. And when we got to that fucking hotel, it was the same again. Remember the first couple of days there? How we were swanning around playing football, checking out the gym equipment, talking about draining the swimming pool and all that?”
“I know what you’re saying, Jas, but nothing that happened there was because we did anything to—”
“What happened was avoidable,” he yelled, the sudden raw emotion in his voice taking everyone by surprise. He picked up the bottle again and knocked back more booze. Lorna wondered whether this was just the drink talking. Maybe a combination of alcohol and relief that they’d finally escaped the hotel.
“This place is different,” she said, risking his ire. He glared at her, but when he didn’t immediately try shouting her down, she continued. “This place is different and the bodies are much weaker now. Give it a few more months and there won’t be anything left of them but bones.”
“A few months? I don’t know if I can take a few more months of this. I don’t know if I can take another day.”
Jas knocked back the dregs at the bottom of the bottle and hurled it over the battlements. It was a few seconds before he heard it smash.
Lorna, Harte, and Hollis watched him with caution. Suddenly feeling the cold, Lorna wanted to go down. She stood up and helped Hollis to his feet. She was about to disappear down the spiral staircase when Jas turned and spoke to her again.
“You’re right, Lorna,” he said. “This place is going to be different and we will be okay here. And I’ll tell you why—it’s because I’m not going to have it any other way. I’m not letting you, Jackson, or any other fucker back me into a corner again. I’m not givinganyone control over what’s left of my life now, understand?”
Eighty-Seven Days Since Infection
13
Within the castle walls now was a community of twenty-one: fifteen men and six women. Jackson, maintaining his position of unelected leader by virtue of the fact that no one complained and no one else seemed to want the role, was keen to try and keep everyone occupied. Boredom was an enemy—it gave people the unwelcome opportunity to think about how much they’d lost and how little they’d still got. Whether it was to keep them occupied, distracted, out of trouble … the reasons were unimportant. Most people willingly took on the duties assigned to them, and completed them to the best of their abilities, despite the blatantly obvious fact that much of the work didn’t actually need to be done.
Caron was an intelligent woman, and she knew when to keep her mouth shut. This was definitely one of those times. She was less than pleased with the duties she’d been allocated, but she carried them out without complaint. Since arriving at Cheetham Castle, she’d done more cleaning than she had in the previous ten years combined. At least it was relatively warm and dry indoors, she thought. Winter had barely begun, but it felt like it had been like this forever.
Working in the museum was particularly sad. They were using parts of it as a storeroom now, and all the exhibits had been shoved into one end of the large, L-shaped space. For a while this morning she’d spent some time hidden around the corner, looking at them all. Valuable antiques now worth nothing. Beautifully restored and preserved artifacts now given less importance than food and water supplies, spare clothes and pretty much everything else. There were a number of wall-mounted displays which had been taken down and stacked against a wall. She flicked through them, avoiding doing any work for a little longer. There were paintings of the castle hundreds of years ago, newly built and full of people. Then there were pictures of the “second stage” buildings within the perimeter wall—a great hall, an armory, stables, living quarters, kitchens … all just ruins now. All those different eras and ages, the lords of the manor, the kings and the generals … all gone now. She couldn’t help but think she was living through the last chapter of this once-great place. If she had any artistic talent—and she was under no illusions because she certainly didn’t—then she’d have seriously considered painting a final frieze and hanging it on the museum wall. Twenty-one thin and frightened people. A handful of caravans. A basic smattering of supplies. An invading army of corpses waiting on the other side of the outer wall. Hardly a grand finale to the castle’s hundreds of years of history.