Aftermath

skidded out into the open and accelerated toward the gate, churning up gravel.
    “Get the fucking gate shut!” Jas yelled, his voice hoarse with anger and shock. Kieran and Bayliss ran to close up the barrier. Kieran weaved around an abhorrent corpse which had just enough muscle remaining to be able to walk unsteadily. It reached out for him and he recoiled, slipping over in the greasy decay which continued to spill forward in a slow-motion flood of filth. He got up, then dived out of the way again as the Fiesta powered past, skidding through the sludge between him and Bayliss. It squeezed through the gap by the barest of margins, clipping the gate and losing the driver’s wing mirror in the process.
    Kieran picked himself up and pushed his side of the gate shut, gagging at the low wave of putrefied gunk and driftwood-like bones which rippled back as he did so. Bayliss closed the other side and between them they dropped the crossct, Jas gck into place.
    “Who the hell was that?” Jas demanded.
    “That was my car,” Melanie whined.
    “Never mind that, who was driving it?”
    “Harte,” Kieran replied.

 
     
    31
     
    Eleven o’clock came and went. The waiting at the marina in Chadwick was interminable. As each minute passed by, the likelihood that they’d be returning to Cormansey without anyone else seemed to be increasing.
    “So what happens if they don’t get here?” Donna asked, her anxiety mounting. “We can’t just leave them.”
    “What else are we supposed to do?” Cooper replied. “We gave them a decent timescale with plenty of opportunity. We said we’d wait until midday and we will. If none of them are here by then, we leave.”
    “Anything could have happened,” Harry said. “Absolutely anything.”
    “My money’s on Jas,” Richard sighed. “He’s a troubled soul, that one. Scared to death of putting a foot outside the castle wall, he is. He’ll have been putting pressure on all of the rest of them not to leave, you mark my words. They’ll have agreed to stay there just to pacify him.”
    “We’ve done what we said we would,” Cooper said. “We’ve given them more than enough time. There’s still the best part of an hour to go.”
    “Like Cooper says, they’ve had plenty long enough. If they were coming, you’d have thought they’d have virtually followed you back. Maybe they just decided they didn’t want to go with us after all,” Michael suggested.
    “Or someone suggested for them,” Richard said.
    “Whatever the reason, it’s out of our hands now,” Cooper said. “Our priority is the people on Cormansey, and we need to get back to them with these supplies. Whether the others stay at the castle or not, they’ll be okay. One thing Jas was right about is the amount of stuff they’re going to be able to help themselves to once the dead are finished. It’s not the same back on the island. They need the stuff we’ve collected. We need it. This is about people’s lives.”
    “I’ll be honest,” Richard said. “Whether we take anyone else back or not, I just want out of here now. This is a dead place. I’ve left too many bad memories here for my liking.”
    *   *   *
     
    Harte raced toward Chadwick, struggling to find his way into the town along mazelike roads which all looked the same. Although he’d spent more time than anyone else around theport and its surroundings, most of the time he’d been on foot and he’d never actually driven this route from the castle himself. He’d only been this way once before, and that was on the ill-fated looting expedition from which he’d failed to return. Everywhere looked depressingly featureless: a confusion of chaos, littered with debris and the remains of endless bodies. He knew he was against the clock but he’d screwed up and wasted fifteen minutes driving the wrong way before he’d realized, and that had just added to the pressure. He’d been desperately disorientated—almost completely lost—and it was only when he saw the names of a couple of nearby places he remembered hearing Jas, Kieran, and Jackson talk about that he knew he was finally heading in the right direction.
    For what felt like mile after endless mile there was nothing but trees, hedges, and the occasional building on either side of the road. His speed was restricted by the appalling carnage all around, the remnants of a world untended for almost four months. Nothing was where it should be anymore. The roads themselves were