Aftermath

resigned to the fact he was going to have to stop beating around the bush and explain what had happened to him since leaving the hotel.
    “While Driver was on the run, he found another group, based out of a castle about fifteen miles or so from here.”
    “How many?” Michael asked.
    “Twenty-one once we’d all turned up. They’d been there from the start. The place is rough and basic, but it’s rock solid. The dead have never been able to get near enough to cause any real problems.”
    “So why would you leave a place like that and come out here on your own?” Donna asked. She glared at him, seeming to demand an answer.
    “Remember that cold snap just before Christmas? Really bloody cold, it was. Loads of snow.”
    “We remember,” Michael said, casting his mind back to the difficult conditions they too had endured a couple weeks earlier. It had been hard going on the island back then. They’d almost run out of firewood and fuel, and had resorted to cramming everyone into a couple of homes temporarily to try and conserve supplies. The difficulties they’d experienced back then were one of the main reasons they’d decided to come back to the mainland so soon.
    “I came out to this place with a truckload of blokes from the castle,” Harte continued. “Broke into a shopping center. We’d been collecting stuff for hours, but they kept trying to get more so they didn’t have to come back again. By the time we were ready to move out, the thaw had started and we were surrounded.”
    “The Minories,” Richard said.
    “What?” Cooper asked.
    “That’s it,” Harte said.
    “The Minories,” Richard repeated. “We passed it when we were looting earlier. I thought it looked like it had been done over. All the doors were buckled and the glass was smashed. It was by the station, remember?”
    “The station. You want to stay away from that place,” Harte warned.
    “And you didn’t think to say anything about this at the time?” Cooper asked Richard, ignoring Harte.
    “Didn’t see there was very much point. We were looking for food, not empty shops. And anyway, there was no way of knowing how long it had been since it was cleared out. I couldn’t tell if the damage had been done two days ago or three months. I didn’t bother saying anything because I assumed all the good stuff would already have been taken.”
    “And you also assumed no one else was around?” Donna said, surprised by Richard’s apparent belligerence.
    “They’d have heard the helicopter if they were,” he answered quickly. “Anyway,” he continued, pointing at Harte, “he turned up, didn’t he.”
    “So why are you still here?” Cooper asked, keen to get the conversation back on track.
    “Did you see the petrol station?”
    “What petrol station?”
    “Exactly. I torched a petrol station to distract the dead so that the truck could get away. Only I did the job a little too well. Blew the fuck out of the place. The size of the explosion took me by surprise, and I got caught on the wrong side of it. By the time I’d come around and managed to get back to the mall, the rest of them were long gone.”
    “Jesus,” Richard said under his breath. “So you were stuck out here?”
    “That’s about it. I found a safe place in what was left of the mall, so I stayed there for a while. Eventually I moved on.”
    “And it never crossed your mind to try and get back to the castle?” Cooper asked, sounding less than convinced.
    “It crossed my mind,” Harte answered quickly, “of course it did, but it wasn’t that easy. There was the weather for a start, then the bodies. And the distance too. You couldn’t walk it.”
    “You could have taken a car, there are plenty lying around. You could have cycled there, come to that.”
    “I didn’t want to take the risk. I figured that even if I managed to make it back to the castle, there was no guarantee they’d let me in. They probably wouldn’t even see me for a start.”
    “You could have yelled at them to open up. Surely they’d have heard you with everything else so quiet.”
    “Yeah, and so would the dead. They couldn’t get right up to the castle walls, but there were still thousands of them hanging around back there. Tens of thousands, probably. I couldn’t have fought my way through that lot on my own.”
    The conversation faltered. For a moment the only sounds were occasional creaks from the vessel and the lapping of the waves against its hull. Michael had