Disintegration

doing was savaging the creature’s innards. Its arms and legs moved regardless.
    “Out of the way, girl,” he said as he pulled her back by the collar and dropped to his knees. Squeezing his eyes shut—he didn’t want to see what he was about to do—he slammed the cleaver down, cutting through the cadaver’s neck. A sudden shock jarred his arm when the edge of the blade hit the tarmac. The body on the ground immediately stopped thrashing, and he let go of the dog and scrambled back out of the way. She bounded forward again and leaped up at another corpse. Howard remained where he was, finding it strangely hard to accept that he’d just decapitated someone. Something, he forced himself to remember, not someone … something . He stood up and looked for the others.
    “Greg!” he yelled, watching Hollis as he neared the bend in the track, getting closer to where the road forked. Hollis stepped back when he heard his name being called.
    “What?” he shouted back, eyeing up his next victim as a corpse in a blood-encrusted shirt and tie stumbled dangerously close.
    “There are only about thirty or so of them. They’re coming in through the gate.”
    “What did he say?” Lorna asked, stamping on an upturned face which stared up at her from the ground with cold, sunken eyes.
    “Don’t know,” Hollis grunted as he returned to the fight. “Something about a gate.”
    “There’s a gate,” Gordon explained breathlessly between kills. “Ginnie showed it to me earlier. That’s how they got the cars through.”
    “So if we can beat them back far enough…” Hollis began.
    “Then we can get the gate blocked up again and stop them getting out,” Gordan said.
    Standing at his side, Lorna cracked the skull of another cadaver with her weapon, then shoved what was left of the corpse into the hedge. She nodded to show that she’d heard him and that she understood their position, then began to swipe and hack at the dead with renewed energy and speed.
    *   *   *
     
    “It’s no fucking good,” Jas snapped angrily. Next to him Harte continued to scan the area, desperately looking for Amir’s car.
    “Bet they’ve gone back,” Harte said. “The no-good fuckers have lost their bottle and turned back.”
    With one last burst of acceleration Jas drove back up the incline and onto level ground again. For the first time since entering the field he stopped. All around them now was total carnage. An unprecedented number of bodies had been destroyed by the vehicles, the explosions, and the fire, and countless more still hauled their withered frames toward the two burning wrecks. Even now, after the initial effects of the explosions had died down, the inquisitive creatures continued to drag themselves closer to the flames and heat. All around them charred remains had been churned into the ground, mixing with the mud to form a single unidentifiable mire which covered the entire area. More bodies began to slam and hammer against the sides of the van and Jas drove away again, heading toward the gate.
    “Screw them,” he said. He accelerated out onto the road and began thumping into the backs of the unsuspecting cadavers which had escaped the field and were staggering down the track.
    “The gate,” Harte reminded him.
    Annoyed by his oversight, Jas stopped the van, then reversed back, destroying another batch of corpses which had stumbled out into the road after them. He braked again and Harte begrudgingly jumped out, pulled the gate shut and locked it. Out in the open the acrid stench of burning cars and burning flesh stung Harte’s throat and made his eyes water. He coughed and stepped back from the barrier as more bodies crashed against it and reached out for him with numb, grabbing hands. Forget the car, he thought, not wanting to spend another second out in the open.
    “That’ll do,” he said as he got back into the van, still coughing.
    Jas couldn’t be bothered to respond. He needed to get back to the others and plan their next move. It was either up or out, he decided. If they couldn’t attract the attention of the helicopter pilot this time—and if everything they’d just done didn’t do it, he thought, what would?—then it would probably be time to say good-bye to this hellhole hotel and get away. His mind was made up. It was down to the rest of them to decide if they wanted to go with him.
    *   *   *
     
    Howard’s inexperience was showing. The other three were way down the track