Disintegration

down again, this time with a loud grunt of effort and a satisfying crack as the top panel of the right-hand door gave way, leaving a large enough hole for him to be able to get his hand inside and force more of the wood away.
    He could feel the first clawing fingers on his back now, then the deceptively soft impact of the first body crashing into him. Now working with a desperate, breathless speed he threw his bat down and pulled more of the wood away, enough for him to be able to shove his head and one arm through. It was virtually pitch-black inside the building and he could see nothing, but with his outstretched fingers he felt a wooden bar which had been carefully secured across the door—no doubt Martin’s typically pedantic workmanship. He anxiously yanked it out of the brackets which held it in place, then dropped it down.
    Another corpse grabbed Webb’s shoulders, pulling him back. He allowed himself to be moved away for a fraction of a second, then shook himself free and ran back at the door. Despite the ground beneath his feet being greasy and covered with flesh and bone, he managed to build up enough velocity to hit the middle of the double-door with sufficient force to throw both sides of it open. Without stopping he ran into the darkness with arms outstretched, feeling his way through the shadowy building, not knowing where he was going.
    Fighting with each other to get through the narrow gap, the first of hundreds of bodies followed Webb, the force of many more behind keeping them moving at a speed which almost matched his.

 
     
    54
     
    “You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Harte protested, shoving a handful of food into his mouth. “You’ve never seen so many of them as there were out there today.”
    Gordon shook his head and took a plate from Ginnie.
    “And I don’t want to know either,” he said, sniffing at his food. “I saw more than enough, thank you. What’s this?”
    “Some kind of stew,” Ginnie replied.
    He poked at his food, stabbed his fork into a lump of something, then shoved it into his mouth and chewed it. Ginnie looked at his face expectantly. He nodded his appreciation and took another mouthful.
    “Not bad,” he said, trying to remember when he’d last eaten warm food.
    “Remember that night back at the flats when you did the cooking, Gord?” Harte asked, laughing. “Fuck me, what was it again?”
    “Some vegetarian rubbish,” Lorna laughed.
    “When was this?” Howard asked, struggling to see the others through the semidarkness. He sat just outside the main circle so that he could feed his dog without anyone complaining. All the others ever gave her were scraps, and after the way she’d fought today he thought she deserved more.
    “We’d only been there a couple of weeks,” Lorna continued. “Most of us went out looking for food, but Gordon pulls the old dodgy-hip routine and decided we’d all be better off if he stayed behind.”
    “I have got a dodgy hip,” he protested.
    “When it suits you,” Caron mumbled.
    “Anyway, he said he was going to cook a meal while we were all out, trying to make up for the fact that he was too scared to go out—”
    “That’s not true,” he interrupted. “Honestly, Ginnie, it didn’t happen like that. We were just—”
    “So we left him cooking dinner while we’re all outside risking our necks. Stupid bugger only went and fell asleep, then tried to convince us all that he hadn’t. Burned the whole bloody lot! You should have smelled the stench! We had to chuck those pans out. I swear, you could smell it over the bodies, it was that bad!”
    “And we made you eat it, remember?” Harte chipped in.
    “Stokes loved it,” Gordon answered back. “He wasn’t bothered. Bit of carbon never hurt anyone, he used to say.”
    “Wasn’t the food that finished him off, though, was it?” Jas said quietly. The mention of Stokes and his sudden demise brought the conversation to an abrupt halt.
    “You’re a bundle of laughs, you are.” Harte sighed, annoyed that the mood had been spoiled unnecessarily. “Why did you have to say that?”
    For an awkward moment no one spoke, choosing instead to concentrate on their food and their own thoughts. Harte was glad of the increasing darkness of the early evening. It made avoiding eye contact a simple matter. He was happy that they’d gone outside for the right reasons today, and they’d achieved far more than they’d ever expected, but he’d have