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.”