Aftermath

see the bones of the foul thing’s toes sticking out through what was left of the skin in the same way he could feel his own big toe poking through a hole in his sock. He wished the dead man would stop, because the closer he got, the more sickening detail was revealed and the more grotesque he became. His face was horrific. His nose had been eaten away, and decay and insect infestations had combined to alter the shape of his drooling mouth so it now looked like an uneven zigzag rip; a ghastly caricature of a long-gone smile. One of his eyes was completely missing, a hint of a trail of fibers and blood on his discolored cheek the only clue it had ever been there. His other eye still moved slightly, looking around but never seeming to settle on anything in particular, just doing enough to leave Harry in no doubt that the corpse knew he was there. The man’s skull was covered in bald patches where much of his hair had simply fallen away in gooey clumps. The few remaining greasy strands were glued to his pock-marked scalp.
    Harry took a step forward, but then stopped again, unnerved. He could see several more creatures in the distance now. While their appearance unsettled him, he forced himself to remember that that as foul as they were, they seemed to be mere shadows now of the vicious enemy he and the others had faced previously.
    Without warning, the dead man took another step forward and lunged at Harry, who shoved him away with a single gloved hand, surprised by its lack of strength and weight. The corpse staggered back, then slowly came forward again. Each movement took it an age. Harry stood his ground, counting the seconds before it was close enough to attack again. Christ , he thought, we don’t even have to run from these things any longer. We can walk away fast enough to escape.
    “What’s the hold up?” Cooper shouted.
    “They’re completely fucked,” he yelled back. On hearing Harry’s voice, the dead man became even more animated, desperately trying to move faster. Harry had had enough. He lifted his sword and flashed iting in front of the corpse at neck height. Its head dropped from its shoulders and hit the ground with a wet thump. The rest of the man’s diseased frame appeared about to take a final step forward, but it simply collapsed at Harry’s feet. Normally he’d have immediately charged at the other corpses still moving closer, but he didn’t bother. He was filled with a sudden newfound confidence.
    “See that?” he asked as Cooper and the others finally caught up with him.
    “Didn’t put up much of a fight, did it?” Michael said.
    “We can’t get too cocky,” Donna warned. “A couple of hundred will still cause us problems if we let them get too close.”
    “You think?” Harry asked. “I don’t reckon there’s even a couple of hundred left.”
    “You might be right, but I’m not taking any chances.”
    Cooper agreed. “Donna’s right. Don’t forget yourselves, and don’t take anything for granted.”
    He led them down toward the marina, stepping over what was left of the decapitated corpse. Their footsteps echoed eerily.
    “My dad brought me here when I was about nine,” Richard said. He was somewhat older than the others. Michael guessed he was fifty, maybe fifty-five. No one talked much about their ages anymore. It seemed irrelevant now. “He’d just lost his job,” Richard continued to reminisce. “Mum was working all the hours she could, so he brought me and my sister here for a couple of days in the summer holidays.”
    “Changed much, has it?” Donna smiled.
    “A little. The sea looks the same…”
    “… but everything else is fucked.”
    “Pretty much.”
    There were several more bodies around them now. Michael looked back and saw that a small crowd was moving in the general direction of the car park where they’d left the helicopter, no doubt still reacting to the aircraft’s noisy and unexpected arrival. As long as they didn’t make too much noise themselves, Michael realized, the dead didn’t even seem to notice them. And those that did could easily be avoided. All they had to do was sidestep them or increase their speed slightly.
    The car park was close to the town’s large, once-busy station. Recently built, it was constructed mostly of glass and metal and they could see numerous wide-open spaces inside. Harry remained standing behind a set of automatic doors which, thankfully, were as useless as every other set of automatic doors in