Aftermath

Jas. Worse in some ways.”
    “Why? What did he say?”
    “He said he doesn’t want girls like me, Zoe, and Melanie going out and taking risks when there’s plenty of men who can go.”
    “I don’t understand,” Caron said, confused. Lorna sighed. Was she being deliberately difficult?
    “He didn’t say as much,” she explained, “but he’s talking about babies. He was on one of his ‘planning for the future’ kicks again.”
    “Dirty old bugger.”
    “For Christ’s sake, Caron, get a grip. He’s not interested in any of us in that way, he’s just trying to protect the stock .”
    “That’s disgusting.”
    “Well, that’s how it is. But I’ll tell you something: if he thinks I’m going to sit here, pick a mate from this bunch of losers, then pop out a kid or five on demand, then he’s got another think coming. Fuck that. I’ll be over the wall and out of here before any bloke can lay a bloody finger on me.”

 
     
    18
     
    The two-vehicle convoy crunched steadily through the ice and snow with an arrogant lack of speed. Kieran was up ahead, driving the digger with Jackson hanging on for the ride, while Driver followed behind, grudgingly steering the group’s largest truck through the carnage. It was a box truck with enough room for several tons of food—if they could find that much—and it had been used for furniture deliveries before Jackson had acquired it shortly after arriving at the castle. On its sides there had been pictures of a family relaxing in their homes on their newly delivered sofas. Someone—he didn’t know who—had painted over them with white emulsion a couple of weeks back, blocking out the past.
    Jas and Ainsworth sat in the cab with Driver, Harte and Bayliss in the back with the roller shutter open, watching the world around them with wide, disbelieving eyes. For Ainsworth and Bayliss, this was their first trip outside the castle walls since they’d arrived there, and the difference between what they saw today and what they remembered was stark. In some ways they found it almost impossible to comprehend.
    They were able to increase their speed slightly as they drove farther away from the castle. The hordes of bodies which had gravitated around their base over time, drawn there b the survivors’ disproportionately amplified noise, had resulted in the rest of the surrounding area being left reassuringly empty. The blanket of snow helped perpetuate the illusion. Their passage was clear, although they were forced to stop occasionally when the route of the road ahead became unclear. Then Jas would order Harte and Bayliss to jump out of the back of the truck and shovel away the ice and the frozen once-human detritus which now seemed to cover everything.
    After consulting with Kieran—a local—Jackson had decided to aim for Chadwick, a medium-sized port town and the nearest place of any substance in the immediate vicinity. Harte sat on the back of the truck, legs dangling, holding onto a securing strap fixed to the wall, and watched the dead world pass him by. He couldn’t help comparing what he saw today with the scavenging trip he’d made into Bromwell with Jas, Hollis, and the others just before their incarceration at the besieged hotel had begun. That had been the last time he’d been anywhere even remotely urban, and, once he looked past the visible devastation, what he saw as they approached Chadwick today actually began to fill him with wholly unexpected optimism. He tried to explain as much to Bayliss, who barely said anything. Instead he just sat there, his face covered with a scarf, staring into space.
    There were bodies on the way into the town. Why they were still there Harte couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess, but that didn’t matter. Like the rest of the dead he’d seen today, they were completely motionless. They stood like statues, trapped in bizarre poses. One looked as if it had been stopped midstride; another was slumped against a wall like a drunk. Some remained standing in the middle of open spaces, their lack of distinguishable colors and features almost making them look like standing stones. A clot of dead passengers were frozen in position inside a bus outside a station. They’d formed a bizarre plug of flesh at the driver’s end as if they’d all been rushing to get off when first death, then the ice had caught them.
    They skirted around the very center of town and approached the port from the south, driving up along the