Aftermath

see of it—was unexpectedly uneven. The mulch they were going to have to walk through was filled with buried bones and other less obvious obstacles. He stopped walking as suddenly as he’d started, and tried to work out the physics of the crowd. There were shapes that were more recognizable as human up ahead, but out here on the fringes everything appeared to have been reduced to a featureless sludge. That made sense. New arrivals to the massive gathering would have been less restricted and, over time, would have crushed their weaker brethren under their feet as they’d advanced toward the castle, creating a compacted layer of dirt and gore. The situation would no doubt change as they got deeper into the decay.
    They walked in single file. Harry attempted to lead them in a relatively straight line through the unending muck, but it was next to impossible given what they were trying to walk through. Michael brought up the rear, the gruesome mire making his stomach churn. It was ankle-deep now, and there were more recognisable remains around them: a half-buried corpse still trying to crawl, another stood upright with its foot stuck, unable to get free, another lying flat on its back, spindly arms occasionally thrashing like a drowning swimmer. Teir boots snapped bones like twigs, and whenever Michael lifted a foot and looked down, he saw teeming movement where his boot had just been. The viscous sludge was alive with worms, maggots, and all manner of other creatures which gorged themselves on this proliferation of putrefying flesh. He was thankful it had hardly rained over the last few days. A couple of heavy downpours was all it would have taken to turn this place into an impassable quagmire.
    Progress was slow, their footing constantly unsteady. Obstructions had been hidden by the blanket of decay. Walls, fences, streams … everything remained invisible until they were virtually on top of them. Up ahead now was a dark, featureless mound—it looked like a glistening heap of rot—and for a time the men were unable to work out what it was or why it was there.
    “It’s a car,” Harte said. “Fuck me, look at that.”
    He took another sliding step closer, then gingerly grabbed a cadaver’s shoulder with one gloved hand. He tried to pull the corpse away, but its level of decay was severe and where he expected the whole body to move away, instead its legs remained fused. He pulled it harder still and it snapped, folding back on itself near the base of its spine. The creature’s head was now upside down, its skull almost touching the back of its heels, and as he stared into its disease-ravaged face, he thought he saw its mouth move.
    Harte moved another corpse to try and uncover more. He was right, it was definitely a car, and he pushed several bodies away to reveal almost the full width of its windshield. The make, model, even the color of the vehicle was impossible to make out such was the amount of rot piled up all over it, but he could see that the dead driver remained behind the wheel, held in position by his safety belt. Preserved by the relatively dry air inside the car, the corpse was less decayed than most others. As they watched, it lifted its head to look at them, then raised a single bony hand and slapped it against the window. Harte jumped back with surprise. To Michael’s right, another body tried to lift itself up and separate itself from the rest of the upright mass it was glued to. Even now after months of decay and all that it had been through, the creature still seemed to immediately identify Michael and the others as a threat and tried to attack.
    “Keep moving,” he said. “Try not to look and just keep moving.”
    *   *   *
     
    The gruesome, sticky sea through which they were still slipping (and frequently wading now) seemed to constantly be changing in texture and depth. Knee-deep in some places, shallow in others, every single footstep was unpredictable. They’d been walking for what felt like an eternity. Harry estimated they’d crossed almost a mile of dead-packed land, but it was virtually impossible in the low night light to see how far they still had to go. While more bodies remained upright the deeper the three men went, the constant shifting and grinding of so many of them in such close proximity for so long meant there was little more left than bone. Occasionally one still had enough muscle and nerve remaining to manage a clumsy swipe at the men as they trudged past,