Disintegration

hammer clean and returned to the others.
    “We ready then, ladies?” Jas asked as Stokes and Webb finally emerged from the bus. Driver remained in his cab, door closed, reading his newspaper.
    Everyone carried their weapon of choice. Hollis unsheathed a machete he’d brought with him from the van. Jas also had a machete, Webb his trusty spiked baseball bat, Harte a hand ax and Stokes, bizarrely, a garden spade.
    “Just do it,” Stokes said. “I need a drink.”
    Jas pushed the door open and waited for a second before entering the dark building. He held his breath and listened. Nothing at first … then the sound of something moving close by … sliding, shuffling footsteps. He took another step forward and heard a clatter and crash just ahead. Several bodies at least. Impossible to tell how many.
    “Anything?” Harte yelled from outside.
    “There’s something in here,” Jas replied, inching forward slowly. “Can’t see very much…”
    “Be careful, mate.”
    Sensing movement in the darkness to his right, Jas glanced up and, with a single well-aimed flash of his blade, sliced through the neck of a cadaver which had been about to attack. It fell at his feet and he stepped over it to reach a second door. He could definitely hear movement on the other side. He banged his fist against the wood and, almost immediately, felt something thump back against it in angry response. Taking another deep breath he pushed it open and shoved a body back as it immediately launched itself at him from the gloom. Ignoring the unwanted attentions of the corpse he propped the second door open with a fire extinguisher and began making as much noise as he could.
    “Come and get us,” he shouted, his voice echoing through the vast, mausoleum-like building. There was an almost instant reaction to his words. From the shadows all around cadavers began to appear, all gravitating toward him. He quickly backed out through the open door.
    “Any idea how many?” Lorna asked.
    “Nah,” he replied, “couldn’t see much.” He cleared his throat and shouted again, “Come on, you fuckers! Get a move on! Get yourselves out here!”
    The first two bodies appeared quickly, almost fighting with each other to get through the door. A dead security guard tried to push past the awkward bulk of a badly decayed but still grossly overweight female shopper. The shopper’s slobbering mass prevailed and it heaved itself forward, sending the smaller corpse crashing to the ground then trampling over it as it moved toward the survivors.
    “Fuck me,” said Stokes, “look at the size of that thing!”
    The group stood together in silence and watched the body as it waddled toward them. Its massively distended, discolored belly hung heavy over the top of a pair of brown-stained leggings, little shock waves running up through its saggy, curiously lumpy flesh with every ungainly step it took. Huge, pendulous breasts swung down like bags of grain, almost reaching its waist, a tear in its shapeless T-shirt revealing dark-veined skin like blue cheese. For a moment no one moved, everyone waiting for someone else to take the lead and dispatch the enormous cadaver. The appearance of another six bodies from the building in quick succession forced them all into action.
    “Watch yourselves,” Hollis warned as his colleagues lifted their weapons and began to attack.
    Harte was first to strike, grunting with satisfaction as he sunk the blade of his ax into the neck of the body of a teenage girl, the force of the strike knocking it to the ground. It reached up for him and he hauled it back to its feet, then yanked the ax free and swung it down again at its now lopsided head, this time managing to hit the back of its neck and almost completely cut through its spinal cord. Suddenly limp, the body slumped against him and he tossed it away as if he was throwing out a bag of rubbish. He stepped back, almost falling over the legs of the huge corpse which Stokes was now doing his best to destroy. The other man was ramming his shovel repeatedly into the creature’s grotesquely swollen stomach, slicing through its flesh and splattering its rancid guts everywhere. The damn thing continued to fight, its arms and legs thrashing.
    “Go for its head, you moron,” Harte suggested, looking around for his next kill. Stokes was too engrossed in his work to hear him.
    Lorna dragged another body into space in the middle of the tarmac, spun it around and slammed it down on its