Disintegration

wine. She offered it to Lorna, who took it gratefully.
    “Shame,” she said, wiping her mouth. “You were good at it.”
    Caron shook her head and stared out toward the edge of the hotel grounds. “I don’t think so.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “Because all the people I’ve tried looking after recently are dead.”
    “In case you haven’t noticed, love,” Lorna whispered secretively, “pretty much everyone’s dead, and it had nothing to do with anything you did or didn’t do for them.”
    Caron thought for a moment.
    “Suppose,” she said, drinking more wine and shivering with cold. “Do you know what we need to do now?”
    “What?”
    “Absolutely bloody nothing.”
    “Nothing?”
    “I might be drunk,” Caron blathered, “but I know what I’m talking about. The more you try these days, the less you get. Those boys went outside today and tried too hard, now we’ve lost Amir, Sean, and Webb.”
    “Webb’s no great loss.”
    “No, but the others were,” she replied angrily, slurring her words slightly as she became more emotional, “and we didn’t have to lose them. Now if we all just sit still, be quiet, and do nothing, we’ll be okay.”
    The rain began to fall with more persistence. Lorna stood up, then reached back down and held out a hand to Caron.
    “Come on,” she said, hauling her up onto her unsteady feet. Together they walked through the cold and quiet building, along the glass-fronted corridor which ran along the edge of the courtyard. She glanced up and saw Howard pounding back down the staircase at the end of the opposite wing. Gordon was following close behind.
    “More trouble,” Caron said dejectedly. “It’s always trouble when people like Gordon and Howard start moving quickly.”
    Lorna sighed as they walked toward the restaurant. “You don’t know that, but you’re probably right.” She braced herself for bad news but was surprised by the self-congratulatory smiles which greeted her.
    “It worked,” Hollis said as she walked over to him and took a can of beer.
    “What worked?”
    “Jas’s little stunt outside today,” he explained. At the mention of his name Jas turned around and grinned.
    “You should see it!” he enthused. “We’ve just been watching upstairs. We shifted thousands of them today, and the rest are more interested in the fires we started than anything we’re doing here.”
    “Congratulations.” Lorna smiled, not exactly sure how she felt. Was it even worth reminding him of the pointless sacrifices which had been made? Perhaps it was better just to shut up and not burst his bubble.
    “I don’t think we should do anything else today,” Harte said, picking up where Jas had left off. “But maybe we should think about getting out of here tomorrow or the day after that. We could take one of the trucks from the road junction.”
    “Are we going to gain anything from that?” Lorna asked cautiously, remembering Caron’s earlier words.
    “You can just stay here if you want to,” he snapped.
    She sighed. The arguments were becoming disappointingly stale and familiar around here.
    “I’m not going anywhere,” Caron announced, her drunken voice louder than intended.
    “Shut up, Caron,” Jas laughed. “You’re pissed.”
    “I might well be,” she replied. “but I’m not stupid.”

 
     
    53
     
    Webb had almost reached the clubhouse. His progress over the final few meters of the once perfectly maintained golf course had been painfully slow. The number of cadavers around him seemed to have increased as he got nearer to the building, as had the depth of the repugnant sludge through which he continued to move. The sickly sea of decay, almost a foot deep in places now, had built up over weeks. Many hundreds of corpses had gravitated here over time, and a huge number of them had been dragged down and trampled underfoot. Their remains, along with the obnoxious juices which had dripped, dribbled, and seeped down from the masses still standing, had combined to become this unholy gray mire. Webb was covered in it. The damn stuff was in his hair and his eyes. It was in his nose and he could taste it at the back of his throat. He could feel it on his skin, cold and repellent. It had soaked him, permeating through his many layers of protective clothing. He tried to convince himself that it was just mud, and when he looked too closely and saw the occasional eye, or ear or other equally distinguishable shape floating by, he