“Anita’s chucking up,” Jas answered. “Must’ve eaten something dodgy.”
“Something we brought back with us?”
“How am I supposed to know? Go and have a look for yourself if you’re that interested.” He sighed, grimacing. His stomach was still churning.
“No thanks,” Harte replied, gingerly peering around the edge of the door. “She’s probably just gorged herself like the rest of us. I’m not feeling too good…”
“What’s all the noise?” Webb shouted, appearing at the end of the corridor with a can of lager in one hand and three more in the other. “Jesus, what’s that smell?”
“Anita’s sick,” Harte replied. He watched Webb stop and consider his options. It didn’t take him long to decide what to do next.
“Fucking stinks in here,” he said over his shoulder as he turned and walked away.
8
Webb clattered down the stairs, spinning quickly around as he reached the bottom of each flight, desperate to get out of the drab concrete building. Having spent some time outside today he felt more confined by his gray-walled surroundings than ever, and the stench of Anita’s vomit just now had been the final straw. If he’d been able to drive he might even have risked getting into a car and disappearing for a while. Sometimes there wasn’t much to choose between spending the evening with the dead outside or the morbid, miserable fuckers inside. The last thing he wanted was to sit there and listen to their tedious conversation going around and around in circles until someone got upset or started a fight—that was inevitably what happened. He felt trapped. The whole world was empty and he was free to leave at any time, but he still felt trapped.
In the shadows of the block of flats, near to the area where they collected rainwater, Webb kept his pride and joy. To the others it was just another car but to him it was an escape. Sure, it wasn’t much of an escape given that he couldn’t drive it, but it was something. It wasn’t what he’d have chosen if he’d had more of a choice, and he knew his mates would have laughed at him if they’d seen its color and the engine size, but it was where he was able to find a little sanctuary. He climbed in, shut the door and turned the key in the ignition just far enough around so that he could switch on the stereo. A CD clicked and whirred in the player. After a few moments of silence the inside of the car was filled with the relentless thump, thump, thump of high-speed dance music so deafeningly loud that it made the windows and door panels rattle and vibrate.
Webb pushed himself back into the driver’s seat and looked out into the distance, hoping for a while that the beer and the noise would enable him to fool himself into believing this was a normal night in a normal world.
* * *
After three and a half cans of lager and more than an hour’s sleep, Webb woke up in darkness. The CD had finished and everything was silent save for a high-pitched ringing in his ears. He felt nauseous and so drank the last of his beer to make himself feel better.
He was sure he could see movement up ahead. Who was it? It was rare for any of the others to come out looking for him after dark. Struggling with the controls, he eventually managed to switch the headlamps on full-beam. Just a few meters in front of him, dragging itself forward on unresponsive feet, a single rotting body had somehow managed to break free from the crowds below and find a way over the blockade. He’d only seen a handful of them climb this far up the hill before. The repulsive creature’s movements were painfully slow, and yet it seemed to have an undeniable air of determination about it. It had altered direction and sped up slightly when he’d switched on the lights. Curious, Webb got out of the car and went around to the boot in search of a weapon. He’d stupidly left his baseball bat inside, figuring the less he took out with him, the more beer he could carry. He grabbed the short metal handle from the jack and walked over to the swaying cadaver, which was still illuminated by the light from the car. He stopped a short distance away and waited for it to haul itself closer.
“Come on, then,” he said, loud enough that the corpse reacted to his voice. The monstrosity obliged, taking another few awkward steps forward until it was little more than a meter away. Webb lifted the metal bar, ready to smash in what was left of its face.
And then it stopped.
The corpse stood face-to-face with Webb. What the hell was it doing? He’d never seen one of them stop like that before. They always kept moving, even when there was nowhere for them to go. For a few seconds he stared deep into the black, emotionless pits of its eyes. It had been male—he could tell from what was left of its clothing—and it had been of similar height and build to him when it had died. Its bottom lip was swollen and split down to its chin, revealing a gaping black hole with a few remaining yellow tombstone teeth inside which jutted out at unnatural angles. Its discolored, disfigured face was unrecognizable but who knows, he thought, maybe he’d known this person. Perhaps this was all that remained of someone he used to hang out with, or maybe it was—
The creature threw itself at Webb, abruptly ending the bizarre standoff. Clawed hands held high, it grabbed at his face. He responded with a single, well-aimed swipe of the metal bar to the side of its head, strong enough to hack it down to its knees. His second swipe did more damage, the third and fourth even more. By Webb’s fifteenth strike, little of the head remained save for a mass of bloody pulp and shattered fragments of skull and jaw. Breathless, Webb looked around anxiously, worried that more bodies might have managed to follow this one up the hill. There was nothing. Everything was clear.
9
Both Stokes and Webb were up unusually early the following morning.
“Where are you two going?” Jas asked as they began to walk down the hill away from the flats. He shielded his eyes from the early morning sun which climbed over the ruins of the dead city in the distance. He always felt nervous when they were together like this.
“Therapy,” Stokes answered, his voice sounding surprisingly cheerful. “Webb’s feeling a little tense today. Thought it might do him good to take out his frustrations on a few of our friends down below.”
He kept walking, forcing Jas to have to shout to make his next question heard.
“And what exactly is it you’re going to do?”
“Still smells indoors,” he said, being deliberately vague and holding up a plastic bag bulging with food and drink. “We thought we’d have breakfast outside this morning.”
“Nosy bastard,” Webb grumbled. Jas was still shouting after them, but they both ignored him and carried on walking down the hill.
“Ah, don’t worry about him,” Stoke said. “He’s just trying to let us know he’s in charge. Him and Hollis are like a pair of bloody mother hens. They nag me more than my old missus ever did!”
Webb smirked as he swung his baseball bat around, loosening his shoulders in preparation for the fight. Stokes glanced back over his shoulder. Jas had disappeared. Probably gone back inside to moan to the others about them, he thought.
The sweeping hill in front of them resembled a series of interconnected bomb sites. Hardly anything remained of the lowest block of flats and over time the bodies had managed to encroach on most of the uneven land where the building had originally stood. The sudden apocalypse had abruptly halted work on the second building midway through its demolition. One wing had already been completely leveled, the other reduced to a windowless, skeletal frame. The rubbish-strewn area had been enclosed by a wire-mesh fence, originally erected to keep vandals and other timewasters at bay. Two large diggers had been abandoned nearby and, once the group had worked out how to drive them, the powerful machines had proved useful in shifting tons of debris, beaten-up cars, and other wreckage to construct the ugly but effective barricade between the ruins of the first two buildings. Uneven and improvised it might have been, but it had successfully kept the ever-growing mass of corpses at bay for weeks now.