The nearest bodies were trapped, either by each other or by the upturned car, and he found that he was able to move around them with surprising freedom. Working quickly he opened the fuel can and set it down under the bonnet. He tore a strip of rag from the back of a corpse which was stuck facing away from him, soaked it with fuel and jammed it into the mouth of the can. Taking out his lighter from under several layers of clothes, he lit the rag and furiously scrambled away.
“Webb…”
What the fuck was that? He spun around anxiously. It sounded like Amir, but he was dead, wasn’t he? Jesus Christ, what if he was wrong? What if Amir was still alive; if he’d just passed out because of the blood? Webb could see him through the cracked windscreen. He didn’t look like he’d moved. He must have imagined the noise. Amir’s eyes were still closed and the blood was still dripping and … and the rag was still burning. Webb jumped to his feet and hauled himself up the steep bank, grabbing at random corpses and using them as leverage, stamping his feet down onto flesh and bone and whatever else he could get a grip on. He threw himself over the top of the bank, straight into a solid mass of bodies the size of which he couldn’t even begin to appreciate, and then dropped to his knees as the car behind him exploded. Like unprotected trees around a bomb blast, hundreds of cadavers were flattened in a rough circle around the epicenter. Webb found himself buried under a mass of dark figures dripping with decay.
Keep moving.
No time to think. Make the most of the delay before the rest of them start moving toward the blast. As he climbed back to his feet and began to trip through a quagmire of flesh and body parts several inches deep, he glanced back over his shoulder. The car, or parts of it at least, had been blown back out of the ditch. He could see twisted chunks of its blackened frame burning fiercely. If Amir wasn’t dead, he thought, then he is now.
All around Webb, hordes of bodies were turning and advancing toward him. They staggered and stumbled unsteadily through the gruesome slime which coated the once-pristine golf course. Thousands of continually moving feet had churned the remains of countless fallen creatures with the cloying mud to cover everything with a layer of dark, sticky, foul-smelling sludge. Keep moving, he told himself, it’s the fire they’re heading for, not me. As those corpses which had made the most progress lurched nearer he instinctively dropped to his knees and began to crawl through the slurry around and between their emaciated feet, hoping that remaining low would be enough to keep them from reacting to him. Stupid things never look down, he tried to reassure himself. If they looked where they were going, there wouldn’t have been so many of them stuck in the bloody stream. He lowered his head and held onto his baseball bat as he began to move through the sea of spindly, unsteady legs which slipped and slid through the once-human soup all around him.
Which way now?
Time to make another decision. He couldn’t keep crawling like this indefinitely—although he continued to do so as he tried to decide what to do next. Lifting his head momentarily, he glimpsed the trunk of a large, twisted tree up ahead and to his right. He altered his course and moved toward it, intending to use it as cover as the crowd continued to gravitate toward the fire. If he stayed on the blind side of the tree they probably wouldn’t see him. In less than a minute he was there, and he cautiously raised himself up behind it, holding onto its rough bark and pulling himself back up onto his feet with gloved hands. It was surprising how much more he could see and hear now that he was upright. Down at ground level the sheer bulk of the bodies above him had blocked out much of the natural light, and they were so tightly packed that they’d acted like a canopy, muffling the rest of the world. Now that he was finally up straight again he could see over the heads of the dead. Almost all of them stooped, walking with their heads bowed as if the weight of their skulls were too much for their weakened bodies to support. He hadn’t appreciated that before, but he hadn’t been this deep in corpses and dared to stand still before now either.
Music.
He had to be imagining it. Could he really hear Martin’s music? He was sure he’d imagined hearing Amir’s voice just a few minutes earlier—was this just another cruel trick of his tired and increasingly confused mind? No, he could definitely hear it. His ears suddenly seemed to lock onto the frequency of the tune playing in the distance and it gradually became clear. A god-awful, screeching country and western tune was echoing around the golf course. Thank God for Martin Priest, he thought. He cautiously allowed himself to peer out around the side of the tree, quickly pulling his head back in again when a particularly grotesque figure raised its emaciated arms and lunged toward him. Christ, for a second in the confusion it looked like Stokes, but he knew that was impossible. It was just the low light and his nerves playing games with him. He looked again … slowly … carefully … forcing himself to concentrate … and then he saw it. The clubhouse. A couple of hundred meters away. Reachable.
I’m going to get out of here.
Webb dropped back down to his hands and knees and began to crawl.
52
Hollis and Gordon carefully lifted Martin out of the bus, hauling him up through the door.
“You stupid bugger,” Gordon cursed as he struggled with his heavy legs. Martin groaned but didn’t respond.
“He just panicked,” Hollis whispered, putting his hands under his shoulders and lifting, “That’s all. He was just trying to protect this place.”
“Just trying to protect himself, more like.”
“Doesn’t matter now, does it?”
They reached the end of the bus. Hollis jumped down and called Howard over to help lift Martin down. Groaning with his awkward weight, between them they lowered him to the ground. There was movement all around them as Harte, Lorna, and Ginnie cleaned the drive—scraping up what was left of the dead with shovels, then transporting it in wheelbarrows and buckets away from the hotel.
“Mind out,” Hollis said, almost backing into Harte and knocking him into a waist-high pile of fetid corpses and dismembered limbs.
“Watch what you’re doing,” Harte grumbled, realizing who they were carrying. “You going to chuck him on this pile? Stupid bastard nearly got us killed just now.”
“No, he didn’t,” Hollis said quickly. “You nearly got yourselves killed. You were the ones who drove into a field full of dead bodies and started blowing cars up. Nothing to do with Martin.”
“Suppose it was our fault he crashed into us as well,” Harte said.
Hollis shook his head, refusing to be drawn into yet another pointless argument. “Whatever.”
The road clear again, Harte threw down the shovel he’d been using and walked back toward the hotel. Howard, Hollis, and Gordon followed carrying Martin, who continued to moan. Ginnie and Lorna were close behind. They found Caron sitting on the steps outside the main entrance. She looked up as Harte stomped past her, then moved to the side to let the others through. It had started to rain—just a light mist—but it was refreshing and cool. Caron decided she’d rather sit out and get wet than go back indoors, no matter what dirt or germs were being washed down by the water. Lorna stopped and sat down next to her.