Aftermath

hear,” Hollis protested. “There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”
    “Spare me the bullshit,” Jas sighed. “You’re lip reading. I know it must be hard for you, but it doesn’t take an idiot to work it out. Christ, I stood right behind you last night trying to get your attention and you didn’t hear me.”
    “It’s not that bad…”
    “We all know that’s not true.”
    Howard tried to drag Hollis away, but Hollis again shook him off.
    “Come on, mate,” Howard said.
    “There’s no reason why I can’t do anything that—”
    “There’s a damn good reason why you can’t be trusted with anything like this anymore,” Jas interrupted, preempting Hollis’s protest. “Thing is, if Steve’s arm is as badly damaged as it looks, then he’s fucked if no one here can fix it. No NHS anymore, no hospitals, remember? A little slip can become a big problem these days.”
    “He’s not stupid, Jas,” Howard said, speaking up for Hollis. “He understands.”
    “Thing is, I’m not going to risk my neck because your friend here likes playing with diggers.”
    “I wasn’t playing,” Hollis tried to say but they both ignored him.
    “He was working here,” Howard said. “He was keeping this place in order because no one else ever does. If it wasn’t for Hollis slopping out, we’d all be ankle deep in shit by now.”
    “Not interested,” Jas said, making it clear the discussion was over. “He stays away from machinery, right?”
    “Who are you to say who does what? If he—”
    Their voices were becoming raised. Zoe looked up disapprovingly as Sue tried to treat Steve’s arm. Harte, who, along with several others, had come over to see what all the fuss was about, tried to position himself between Jas and Howard and defuse the tension. Jas simply turned, blocking him.
    “You keep him away from machinery,” he said again, pointing threateningly at Hollis, “or I will. Understand?”

 
     
    Ninety-Eight Days Since Infection

 
     
    17
     
    Almost an entire week of bitter frosts followed—an unseasonably early cold snap. Beyond the walls of Cheetham Castle, the dead continued their relentless slow advance, impeded only by the extreme weather. Most mornings they remained frozen solid, only to slowly defrost as the temperature climbed. By midafternoon each day, some had regained the ability to move, only to be halted by the ice again a scant few hours later when the sun disappeared below the horizon.
    The body of an eighteen-year-old boy made more progress than most by virtue of his position relative to the bulk of the rest of the dead crowds. Months ago he’d been on the verge of beginning a new chapter in his life when it had been cut short. He’d just left school, and had been less than a week away from starting his first proper job working as an office gopher for a firm of solicitors. Now he was barely even recognizable as human. He’d lost almost all of his clothing after weeks of dragging himself tirelessly around the dead world. What was left of his innards had slowly sunk down and had putrefied and escaped through the various holes which rot had eaten through his flesh. The gunk froze each night—tiny brown icicles of decay.
    And yet, despite the appalling condition of the dead boy, whenever he was able to free himself from the grip of the ice, he still continued to move toward the castle, oblivious to his gradual demise. How much, if anything, he understood of what was happening was impossible to tell, but his ceaseless fascination with the faint light and noise made by the survivors remained undiminished.
    *   *   *
     
    The general mood within the castle was unexpectedly lifted one evening when heavy snow began to fall. By next morning the ground was covered in a layer several inches deep and when the people sheltering there looked outside the castle walls, for the first time in months, everything appeared relatively normal. Where yesterday there had been hordes of intermittently incessant, partially frozen, partially animated cadavers, today there was nothing but white. Pure, clean, and unspoiled.
    From the top of the gatehouse, Lorna felt like she was looking at a greetings card picture from long ago. It made her think about Christmas, for what it was worth. Her head began to fill with carols and Christmas songs until she could think of something else to block them out and shut out the pain. It felt wrong even remembering Christmas; an unspoken taboo. The end of