Disintegration

pickings. Webb in particular seemed to take great pleasure in destroying them, although Jas, Harte, and Hollis were always ready to take their turn. Behind their building, a myriad of tracks and roads led through an empty, mazelike housing estate which had also been scheduled for demolition before everything had ended. Many houses were boarded up, and the group had created makeshift road blocks and barriers, leaving only the most inaccessible roads clear and making it all but impossible for even the most determined of corpses to reach them.
    No one was sure how much of a difference it made anymore, but it had become standard practice to create a distraction whenever anyone left the flats. Regardless of how much control the bodies had begun to exhibit, they could still be fooled. Fire was usually the best diversion. A little heat, light and noise were usually enough to take some of the pressure off whoever it was heading out into the open.
    “Ready?” Ellie yelled from Hollis’s right. He gave her a leather-gloved thumbs-up. On his signal she ran over to where Caron and Gordon were standing and started working. Hollis wiped sweat from his brow. Christ, he was hot. One of the worst things about going outside—apart from the unwanted attention of the remains of the local population—was the regulation uniform they had each decided to adopt. Bike leathers, wet suits, over-trousers—anything that might protect them from the layer of germs, slime and decay which was gradually coating every square inch of the world outside.
    Ellie lit a petrol-soaked rag and tossed it through the open window of a small, box-shaped silver car. A puddle of fuel on the driver’s seat and in the foot-well immediately burst into flame. Moving with sudden purpose and speed, she ran around to the back of the car and, with the other two, began to push it away from the flats. They could hear the crackle and pop of the fire taking hold inside; dirty black smoke was already beginning to belch out through the window.
    “Come on,” Gordon grunted, his face flushed red with effort and his dodgy hip feeling like it was about to pop out of his pelvis. Ellie took a step back then ran and launched herself at the car, finally feeling its wheels beginning to turn and pick up some speed. Its interior now completely ablaze, it rolled down the hill with increasing velocity, running away from the three people pushing it. Breathless, she stood with her hands on her hips and watched as it raced down the slope, bobbling up into the air as it hit the curb. It juddered along a little farther, then thudded into the barrier.
    “Could have done with that being a little more dramatic,” Hollis grumbled, disappointed. “It’ll have to do.”
    “Should be okay,” Lorna said. She watched through the binoculars as bodies swarmed around the part of the barrier closest to the burning car. Worryingly, she was sure that one or two of them were actually trying to climb over the blockade to get closer to the flames.
    “We’ll just need to make sure we—” Hollis began to say before the quarter-full fuel tank of the burning car exploded in a swollen, incandescent mushroom of flame, showering the ground with shrapnel. The sudden burst of energy caused huge numbers of diseased creatures to surge toward the epicenter of the blast. “That’s better,” he said to himself, slamming his foot down on the accelerator.
    “Here we go, then,” Driver announced to his two passengers in his monotone, emotionless drawl. “Hold tight.” He instinctively checked his mirrors and even indicated before pulling out. Stokes and Webb held onto the handrail inside the bus as if they were rush-hour commuters on their way to work.
    Jas paused before following on the bike. The visor on his helmet still raised, he watched the bodies swarming around the fire. Many had been drawn to the flames, some had been crushed in the confusion and others had even found themselves close enough to the heat to be set alight. Others, he noticed, had changed direction. He could see six or seven of them actually trying to move away from the burning wreck. Damn things, it was almost as if they’d realized the fire was nothing more than an unsubtle decoy. Harte tapped his shoulder.
    “Come on,” he shouted, his voice muffled by his helmet. Jas flicked his visor down and powered after the bus.

 
     
    6
     
    “Almost there,” Lorna said, glancing up from the notepad and map she gripped tightly in her