Aftermath

the truck?
    “Get something under the wheels,” Jas yelled. Jackson appeared and began trying to get rid of the nearest corpses, smacking them around the head with his shovel, then using its blade to decapitate them if they tried to get up again. Harte followed his lead and jumped back down. There were as many as forty corpses coming toward them now, maybe more, approaching from all angles, spurred on by the increasing activity and noise. He wondered if the dead were somehow picking up on the sudden panic in the air. Was the survivors’ frantic and barely coordinated activity actually exciting them, increasing their desire to break free from the ice?
    With Jackson dealing with the nearest corpses and Kieran doing what he could with the digger, Harte concentrated on trying to clear the slush away from the road around the truck’s wheels. Some of it was compacted and he struggled to get the right angle to shift it. Jas reluctantly jumped back down onto the street, and Ainsworth followed Harte’s lead and began to clear around the front tires. Jas was panicking. For all his aggression and the authority he frequently tried to impose upon the group, it was obvious to Harte that he was losing his nerve.
    “Get that fucking digger over here,” he yelled, his voice hoarse. “We need space. There’s too many of them.”
    Kieran tried to do as h was told, but hit a piece of concrete street furniture on the pavement which had been hidden by the snow. He couldn’t get through. He tried reversing, but he was wedged in, and all the digger’s noise and stop-start movement was doing was attracting more and more of the dead. They were emerging from the shadows all around, dragging themselves around street corners and appearing from hitherto hidden places, the icy bonds which had previously held them captive seeming to weaken almost by the second.
    As fast as Jackson was getting rid of the corpses, more seemed to be arriving. Harte wondered if he was the only one who could see what was happening. All the panic and bluster was causing their situation to rapidly worsen. Even if Driver was able to get the bus moving and Kieran managed to free the digger and get out of the way, there was a real danger that the sheer mass of dead flesh now advancing toward them might be enough to block the road and prevent them moving forward. The bodies were being channelled in their direction. He glanced up at Jas fighting near the front of the vehicle—the anger and desperation in his face, the effort he was continually having to exert just to stay alive—and he was immediately reminded of the time he’d spent trapped in the hotel. And in that split second he asked himself if being at the castle was any better. Different walls, a few different faces, but the same shit and the same problems. But it had to be better than being stuck out here, didn’t it? He wasn’t sure anymore.
    He finished digging out the nearest wheel, then threw down his shovel, chucking it at a dripping corpse which seemed to have locked him in its sights, hitting it just above the pelvis and folding it in two. He checked the pockets of his thick winter jacket, patting himself up and down until he felt what he was looking for: his lighter. He grabbed hold of Ainsworth and spun him around. Ainsworth went for him, holding back at the last possible second when he realized it was Harte and not one of the dead.
    “Tell Driver to kill the engine,” Harte ordered, looking him straight in the eye. “All this noise is just making things worse. Get everyone on the truck, get out of sight, and wait until it’s clear. I’m going to draw them away.”
    “But how…?” Ainsworth started to say but Harte was already gone. He barged through the mass of corpses gravitating around the back of the truck, ducked down, and disappeared. Ainsworth did as he was told, working his way through the chaos to get close to Driver.
    *   *   *
     
    Harte pounded down the road, dodging the outstretched arms of a corpse in a crusty, blood-soaked blue hoodie, almost slipping on the ice. He picked himself up and carried on, veering over to the right and running toward a petrol station he’d spotted when they’d first arrived in Chadwick. All I need to do, he said to himself, is give them something else to focus on .
    Way behind him the two engines had been silenced, but he could still hear those fucking idiots arguing. Jas was yelling pointless instructions at the others, Jackson was