Aftermath

Kieran said. “The temperature’s rising. They’re thawing out. We knew it would happen.”
    Harte stood still and listened. He was right. The bitter cold of early morning had eased and the intermittent dripping they’d heard earlier had now become a more constant noise. Water was dribbling down the fronts of buildings and running into the drains. The occasional creak and crack of thawing ice was more frequent than before, like faint gunshots ringing out from every direction. Most ominously, Harte could see slight movements from some of the otherwise still frozen, mannequin-like corpses: the twitch of a finger, a slight shuffle forward, the roll of a dead eye …
    “We should think about getting out of here,” Jackson said, hauling another box of food up onto the back of the truck.
    “Not yet,” Jas said, surprising everyone. Heߣd been quiet since they’d arrived in Chadwick. His voice now was lacking in emotion, but not intent. He wasn’t throwing out a suggestion to the rest of the group for them to think about and discuss, he was giving an order.
    “Bollocks,” Bayliss said. “Let’s go. The truck’s half full. We’ve got enough to last us weeks.”
    “The truck is half empty, and we need to get more. I’m not coming back out here again.”
    “Jas is right,” Kieran said. “Another half hour’s not going to kill us. We’re here now.”
    “We should go,” Driver said, already heading back toward the cab. “They’re thawing out. I don’t want to be here when they’re fully defrosted.”
    As if on cue, one of the cadavers nearest to Kieran managed to break its shoulder free and move a frozen arm up toward its face. It swung it up in an awkward, juddering movement like a puppet, then dropped it down again. Kieran didn’t flinch. He looked directly at Jackson and Driver, then shoved the body over. It fell backward, clipping the edge of a bench on its way down, virtually snapping its right arm completely off. He picked up Jackson’s hammer from where he’d left it leaning against the side of the truck, then thumped it down hard into the dead body’s frustratingly expressionless face.
    “Is this what you’re scared of?” he asked, looking straight at Driver, then Bayliss, demanding an answer which never came. “Get over yourselves, for fuck’s sake. I’m with Jas, we should do this right if we’re going to do it at all.”
    “Come on,” Harte said, “is it worth it? Seriously? Like Jackson said, we’ve probably got enough stuff.”
    “Probably isn’t good enough,” Jas said.
    “Bollocks,” Driver said. “I’m going.”
    He hauled himself up into his cab. Kieran walked around and stood in front of the truck.
    “Where you gonna go? Don’t fancy your chances of backing up in what’s left of the snow, and you can’t go forward.”
    He stood to one side and dangled the keys. The digger was blocking the road.
    “There are two more decent-sized stores in there we should clear out before we leave,” Jas said. “There’s another food store, and a camping and outdoor place. We clear them, then we go.”
    For a moment no one moved. Driver remained in his seat. Harte took a very definite step out of the way, as did Ainsworth and Bayliss. Jackson felt like volunteers had just been asked to step forward, and everyone else had stepped back, volunteering him by default. His choice—and it suddenly felt like it was his choice—was stark: fight with Jas and Kieran, or fight with the dead.
    The entire town was silent, save for the ice meltng and the trickling of water running down the drains.
    “Okay,” he said. “Two more stores, then we’re leaving.”
    *   *   *
     
    By the time they’d managed to crowbar their way into a frozen-food store, they could already see several more bodies moving slowly but freely outside, gravitating around the truck and the entrance to the mall. Metal creaked and glass cracked and more of the dead staggered closer as Harte forced the door. He held it open as the outrageously unsteady corpse of a store worker lurched forward. It virtually fell out into the mall, straight into the path of Jackson, who caved its face in with his sledgehammer. It dropped at his feet, slumped against the wall in an untidy sitting position, dark blood slowly seeping down over its uniform.
    More than anywhere else they’d so far been today, this particular shop was uncomfortably dark. Places like this always used to be permanently drenched in harsh white