Aftermath

farthest forward of the corpses seemed to have locked onto him now, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as it raised its haggard face to look directly at him with mournful, sunken eyes. Someone clumsily knocked into him from behind, and he grabbed at the walls in panic, desperate to find something to hold onto. And still the corpse came …
    “Use this,” Howard said from close behind him. Michael looked around and the other man shoved a screwdriver into his hand. “Found it in the gift shop. Thought I’d bring it along just in case. Now kill the damn thing!”
    Michael still didn’t attack. It had been a long time since he’d seen one of the dead in this kind of condition: nowhere near as decayed as those outside the castle, still capable of moving with relative strength and speed … This was like those they’d cleared off the island when they’d first arrived there. But that was months ago …
    Michael knew he had no option. The rest of these pathetic shysters weren’t going to be any help. Despite his still-considerable bulk, Howard had managed to force himself away and was now cowering back in the passageway with Lorna and Caron. Lorna was hanging onto Caron’s arm. Caron was trying to drag her back toward the castle. He knew that if he wanted out of here, he’d have to take control. He gripped the screwdriver like a dagger and then, still holding the torch in his other hand so he could see what he was doing, he ran toward the approaching corpse, screaming with rage.
    The creature stopped. Michael stopped too, mid-attack, surprised by its unexpected and very definite response. It staggered back a couple of unsteady steps and raised its arm like it was trying to defend itself. The bloody thing seemed to be cowering from him.
    “What the hell’s going on?” he said as he moved forward. The corpse moved farther away, clumsily backing into the others which were hovering behind it now. “Look at this thing. This isn’t right.”
    “Who cares,” Howard yelled from a safe distance away. “Finish them! Just get rid of them.”
    Harte found his nerve and moved toward the dead, determined to do what Michael wouldn’t, but Michael shot out his arm and held himx20k.
    “We don’t have time for this,” Lorna said. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
    Michael wasn’t listening. He moved closer again, and this time the corpse had nowhere left to go.
    “Look at it,” he said, studying its decayed face. He ran the torchlight over it, revealing the full extent of its horrific deterioration. Its skin—the little remaining which hadn’t been eaten or rotted away—seemed to have slipped down like an ill-fitting mask, leaving heavy, sagging bags beneath its clouded eyes. He could see burrowing things moving in the holes which had been worn through its flesh. Its drooping mouth hung open, occasionally half closing as if it was chuntering something unintelligible.
    “What about it?” Harte asked.
    “Compare it to the bodies you’ve seen outside recently. How does it match up?”
    “It’s still solid,” Harte said, calmer now, creeping a little closer. “It’s still got some meat on its bones. Some of those things outside are little more than liquid now.”
    “Exactly. It’s like the one we saw trapped in that car.”
    “What are you talking about?” Kieran asked, hovering just behind him.
    “On the way to get in here tonight,” Harte explained, “we walked across the dead outside. We found a great mound of them all stacked up, and we dug down to find out why. There was a car buried underneath them, and the driver was like this one. It had been preserved, I guess.”
    “Can’t you just get rid of them?” Caron asked. Michael ignored her.
    “It looks like they all did about a month ago,” Lorna said.
    “Kieran, how long’s it been since anyone came through here?”
    “We’d been here a few weeks when Jackson first got in,” he replied, “and as far as I know no one’s been down here since. Why?”
    “Because these bodies have probably been down here since then, haven’t they.”
    “So?”
    “So Harte’s right. They’ve been preserved. Think about it, there’s probably a pretty constant temperature down here, no wind or rain … they used to keep food and stuff in cellars like this, didn’t they? These things managed to get themselves trapped. Remarkable.”
    “Just bloody well kill them,” Caron demanded again, shining her torch around into