Aftermath

which.
    The corpse had an identity badge clipped to its breast pocket. He looked into its wizened face for a moment, almost as if he was asking permission, then he unclipped the badge. He wiped away a layer of grime to reveal an inch-square picture of a woman’s face beneath. The little visible detail was reduced even further in the poor light. He squinted to try and make her out. She looked beautiful—the first preapocalypse face ht tell wseen in some time—and her smile took him by surprise. Hers was a face unspoiled by disease; an expression free of rot and also free from the strain of having to endure the living hell which he and the others had been trying to survive through since day one. Her short, dark hair was cut into a neat bob, her fringe tucked out of the way behind her ear. She wore a pair of angular, heavy-rimmed glasses which perfectly suited the shape of her soft, delicately square-jawed face. But it was her lips he couldn’t stop looking at. Gorgeous, full, dark red lips. The fact she was wearing makeup took him by surprise, even though it shouldn’t have. Her vivid, painted smile immediately took him back to a time now long gone, when appearances felt like they’d mattered. Emma and the rest of the women on Cormansey never wore makeup, mainly because they hardly had any, but also because there didn’t seem to be any point anymore. There was no longer any desire, let alone any need, to spend time trying to conform to society’s idea of beauty when that society lay in tatters, thirty miles or so over the ocean. Michael couldn’t take his eyes off those lips. It saddened him to think he’d probably never see Emma dressed to the nines for a night out. That was if he ever saw Emma again. He had a long way to go before he’d be anywhere near the woman he—
    “You okay?” Harte asked, nudging him gently.
    “What? Oh, sorry,” he said, feeling both sad and embarrassed, and also annoyed with himself for getting so easily distracted. Regardless of his assumptions, just because he hadn’t been attacked so far, it didn’t mean he was completely safe. He wiped the rest of the identity badge clear and then looked up into the dead face it belonged to. After seeing what she used to look like, he almost couldn’t bare to look at what was left of this woman now. Her dry, discolored skin, patchy hair, misshapen face and unnaturally prominent bones left her looking like a grotesque caricature of the person she’d once been. A large circle of skin around her top lip had been eaten away. Despite the obvious individuality of each corpse’s decay, in some ways they all looked the same as each other now, strangely featureless. “This is Michelle Bright,” he announced.
    One of the men said something flippant and unnecessary, but the others paid him no attention because their sole focus was now the dead woman standing in front of Michael. At the mention of her name she’d reacted. She moved forward slightly, then lifted a tired arm up closer to her face. Barely able to control her awkward movements, she lightly placed what was left of one of her hands against her hollow-sounding chest. “Me,” she seemed to be saying.
    “Fuck me,” Howard said.
    “I’d rather fuck her,” Harte mumbled. Michael turned around and scowled at them both.
    “This is all well and good,” Caron said, completely sober now, “but it’s not actually getting us anywhere, is it?”
    “Depends on your perspective,” Michael said. She was about to ask him what he meant when Lorna distracted her.
    “Look at that,” she said. “Where the hell are they going?”
    They watched as a slowly moving queue of corpses traipsed away in the direcion from which the living had entered the dungeons, back toward the center of the castle.
    “They’re trying to get out, aren’t they?” Kieran said. “They’re trying to get into the castle.”
    “I think that’s exactly what they’re trying to do,” Michael agreed. “They know they can’t go the other way because it must be blocked, so they’re trying to get out the way we came in.”
    “Then we should let them,” Lorna suggested. “It’ll get them out of our way…”
    “… and give the fuckers up there something else to worry about. Good thinking.”
    “But when Jas and the others see them, they’ll go crazy,” Harte said. “They’ll probably batter hell out of them.”
    “Look at the state they’re in,” Michael said quietly, almost as if he didn’t want