“Bloody hell,” Hollis moaned under his breath. “How the hell are we going to do this?” They were used to being hounded by huge crowds of corpses wherever they went, but this felt different. Had they just managed to spook themselves by talking about the bodies getting smarter, or were some of the creatures on the other side of the glass really demonstrating behaviors which appeared conscious and controlled? It felt like they were waiting for the two of them to come out into the open, almost as if they knew they’d have to leave sooner or later.
“Are we going to stand here waiting for Christmas, or are we going home?” Lorna asked, trying to hide her mounting unease.
“No such thing as Christmas anymore,” he replied. “Ready?”
“Think so,” she mumbled, sounding far from sure.
“Get closer to the door.”
Without questioning him she moved forward. The bodies were just inches away now, separated from her by a single sheet of glass. One of them seemed to be pushing at the door. Fortunately it was pushing the hinged side and it was never going to open, but its intent was clear.
Hollis disappeared back into the shop and picked up the bloodied fire extinguisher Lorna had used moments earlier. Still wincing with the pain behind his ear, he lifted the red metal canister above his head and threw it at the section of window farthest from the door. It thumped against the toughened glass, cracking it but not breaking through, then dropped to the ground with a sonorous thump and rolled into a display rack. Many of the bodies immediately began to shuffle nearer to the noise. Hollis picked up the extinguisher again and this time slammed it into the glass like a battering ram, doing enough damage to shatter it and causing huge, jagged shards to fall out of the metal frame. The dead immediately began to force their way inside, ignorant to the daggers of broken glass which sliced their feet.
Without stopping to look back Hollis ran over to Lorna, pulled the door open and pushed her through. She dropped the basket of medicine she’d been holding, sending packets and bottles flying. With the bulk of the crowd distracted, pouring through the broken window, they barged their way through the rest of the bodies. Hollis dropped his shoulder and waded into them as Lorna crouched down and wormed her way through, managing to scramble back into the van first.
Hollis was surprised by the dead’s dogged resistance. Most of the dumb creatures had fallen for his ploy and were still pushing and jostling to get into the shop through the smashed window. Others were standing firm—still weak, still clumsy and still uncoordinated, but undeniably more determined than they ever had been before. He struggled with a particularly aggressive cadaver with a huge black hole in its face where its right eye should have been, until Lorna grabbed hold of his collar and yanked him back into the van. Many more bodies were shuffling toward them again. They needed to go.
“What the hell are you doing?” he jabbered nervously with surprise as he fell back into his seat. He knocked another rancid figure back onto the street and slammed the door shut. It was dark inside the van. Emotionless faces were pressed up against every window.
“We need to go,” she replied, watching through a gap in the bodies as the pharmacy quickly filled with dead flesh. “We need to get out of here.”
He started the engine—the noise immediately causing the still-growing crowd to become even more animated—and drove forward, dragging several of the rotting shells beneath the wheels of the van and churning them into the ground. Lorna turned around in her seat and watched as a smaller section of the crowd marched after them lethargically.
16
A frantic, unscheduled stop at a previously forgotten and well-sheltered medical center north of the flats allowed Hollis and Lorna to collect more drugs and pick up several medical journals and reference books. They didn’t know if the information would make any difference, but just having it made them feel marginally better. Caron, who hadn’t had any medical training other than a basic first-aid course at work some twenty years ago, gratefully took everything that was offered to her and shut herself away in the flat next to Anita’s. She found descriptions of numerous conditions and diseases which Anita might have been suffering from, but next to nothing in the way of treatment advice or guidance.
Just after midday Hollis appeared in the doorway of the flat, carrying with him more drugs which he’d found rolling around in the back of the van.
“Any good?” he asked hopefully. Caron put down the text book she’d been reading and rubbed her tired eyes.
“Not really,” she admitted.
“How’s she doing?”
“No better.”
“Is she still being sick? Has she eaten anything?”
She shook her head.
“She’s not doing anything. Her temperature’s sky-high and she’s barely conscious. It’s probably for the best.”
“Have you managed to find anything that might help?”
She looked around the room at the piles of drugs surrounding her.
“I’ve got no idea what I’m looking for,” she answered honestly, “and even if I could find the name of a drug which might help, how am I supposed to know what it looks like? I wouldn’t even know if it was a pill in a packet or a medicine in a bottle. And some of this stuff is out-of-date.”
“Point taken,” Hollis said quietly as he walked across the room and stood at the window. “Do you know what I think?”
“I know what I think,” she interrupted abruptly. “I think I should just force as much of this stuff as I can down the poor cow’s throat and put her out of her bloody misery. Honestly, Greg, is it even worth her getting better?”
Hollis didn’t answer. He was staring out the window, trying to remember the last time anyone had called him by his first name. Natalie used to call him Greg, and his mom and dad, and Mark and all the others he’d lost.
“What the hell is that idiot doing now?” he said suddenly, glad of the distraction.
“Which idiot?” Caron asked, standing up and walking over to him. “There’s more than one around here.”
“Webb. Just look at the silly little bastard!”
Webb was walking precariously along the top of the uneven barrier of cars and rubble which was somehow still succeeding in keeping the dead at bay. As he walked, he emptied the contents of a fuel can over the heads of the repulsive carcasses which grabbed at his feet incessantly.
“He scares me when he starts playing with fire,” Caron admitted, her voice low.
“He scares me whenever I see him.”
As they watched, Gordon passed another can of fuel up to Webb, who immediately began tipping it out over the crowd, drenching some cadavers which had already been soaked once.
“Careful with that stuff,” Hollis muttered under his breath.
“He’ll set fire to himself if he doesn’t watch what he’s doing.”
“I’m not bothered about that, I just don’t want him to use up all our fuel. I’m the sucker who’ll end up out there fetching more.”
They watched as Webb finished emptying the second can, then jumped down to stand with the others a short distance back from the corpses. There was no denying the fact that they had worked hard again this morning—an area of land had already been reclaimed which almost matched the size of the patch they’d taken all day yesterday to recover—but their methods seemed to have become even more haphazard and less effective as time progressed. The diggers, which had previously been used to carefully move one abandoned car or lump of masonry at a time, now sat unused a short distance back. It was clear from Webb’s actions that the people remaining outside now were in the business of finding shortcuts. Safety and planning had been forgotten. It was now all about destroying the maximum number of corpses with minimum amount of effort.