Aftermath

Most people’s professions had been rendered redundant by the apocalypse, none more so than Mark, but with the blissful ignorance of someone who thought that a brief appearance on TV suddenly promoted him from a nobody to a somebody , he refused to shut up about it. He still put gel in his hair every morning and used copious amounts of deodorant, still checked his appearance in the mirror whenever he left the caravan. But there were no TVs now. No fashion. No advertisers. None of it mattered—not that any of it ever had. Melanie was sick of hearing about it.
    “Just give it a rest, Mark,” she said, teeth chattering in the cold. “You’ve already told me.”
    “I know. Pretty cool though, eh?”
    “If you say so.”
    “They were talking about getting me to do a few PAs at Oceania in town. Now that would have been awesome. Did you ever go to that club?”
    “Yeah. It was shit.”
    “You’re kidding me. Oceania? That place was the dog’s bollocks.”
    “Well it was bollocks,” she said, “I’ll give you that.”
    “You’re a total dick, Mark,” Will Bayliss said. “Shut up about your fucking TV and all that. You’re doing my fucking head in.”
    Ainsworth finally shut up. Bayliss, several yearhis junior but with the offensive swagger of a wannabe bad boy, intimidated him. Bayliss tutted, and looked Ainsworth up and down dismissively. Paul Field, standing just behind him and doing all he could, as usual, to stay on the right side of Bayliss, shook his head and mumbled something that none of them could make out. For the first time she could remember, Melanie was actually pleased to see Jackson walking toward her.
    “You lot ready with the gate?” he asked.
    “We’re ready,” she said.
    “Get it shut again as soon as Kieran gets the digger back inside, okay?”
    “Okay,” she said. Neither Ainsworth nor Bayliss made any comment, but he was used to their disrespect. He nodded his approval at Melanie, then walked back toward the digger and gave Kieran a thumbs-up. Kieran started the engine, filling the air with noise. Jackson looked around at the others—Sue Preston, Charlie Moorehouse, Shirley Brinksford, Phil Kent—all of them standing ready, armed with clubs and axes, poised to mop up any of the corpses which managed to avoid being crushed by the digger and squirm through while the gate was open.
    Shirley’s mouth was dry and her legs were heavy with nerves. She didn’t know if she could do this. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Aiden’s young face pressed up against the caravan window. He shouldn’t be watching this , she thought. He’s too young. I should go back inside and look after him, leave all this violence to the boys .
    “Okay,” Jackson shouted. “Open up!”
    Ainsworth and Bayliss pulled their respective ropes and the two sides of the gate slowly opened. The nearest dead were immediately visible. Here comes the flood , thought Kieran, watching nervously from his elevated position. But they didn’t move. A vast number of them had crowded up against the gate, melding together as a single gore-soaked mass, but they were completely frozen and were now stuck in position like someone had hit the pause button. The gate was fully open now, and still there was no movement. Perhaps there was a slight twitch now and then, a barely visible shudder, but that was all. The relief was palpable. Shirley dropped her ax and beckoned Kieran forward. He lowered the digger’s heavy scoop and accelerated.
    From up in his seat, Kieran had a clear and uninterrupted view of the frozen dead and the world beyond the castle walls. It truly was a bizarre sight; one of the strangest things he’d ever seen (and that was saying something, given everything he’d witnessed since September). It was impossible to even begin to estimate just how many bodies had crowded onto the road leading up to the castle gate. They were unrecognizable, having long since lost virtually all semblance of individual form, packed together like this. First the decay had deformed and distorted them, grossly altering their once-standard shapes in random ways, then the constant crowding had caused more damage, and now the bitter frost had welded them together. Their limbs and torsos were largely obscured by the general mass, but countless heads remained poking up above the bulk of the frozen flesh, their features delicately highlighted and given a strange, glassy sheen by a layer of ice.
    Kieran stopped before the first