Disintegration

faces were pressed up against every window.
    “We need to go,” she replied, watching through a gap in the bodies as the pharmacy quickly filled with dead flesh. “We need to get out of here.”
    He started the engine—the noise immediately causing the still-growing crowd to become even more animated—and drove forward, dragging several of the rotting shells beneath the wheels of the van and churning them into the ground. Lorna turned around in her seat and watched as a smaller section of the crowd marched after them lethargically.

 
     
    16
     
    A frantic, unscheduled stop at a previously forgotten and well-sheltered medical center north of the flats allowed Hollis and Lorna to collect more drugs and pick up several medical journals and reference books. They didn’t know if the information would make any difference, but just having it made them feel marginally better. Caron, who hadn’t had any medical training other than a basic first-aid course at work some twenty years ago, gratefully took everything that was offered to her and shut herself away in the flat next to Anita’s. She found descriptions of numerous conditions and diseases which Anita might have been suffering from, but next to nothing in the way of treatment advice or guidance.
    Just after midday Hollis appeared in the doorway of the flat, carrying with him more drugs which he’d found rolling around in the back of the van.
    “Any good?” he asked hopefully. Caron put down the text book she’d been reading and rubbed her tired eyes.
    “Not really,” she admitted.
    “How’s she doing?”
    “No better.”
    “Is she still being sick? Has she eaten anything?”
    She shook her head.
    “She’s not doing anything. Her temperature’s sky-high and she’s barely conscious. It’s probably for the best.”
    “Have you managed to find anything that might help?”
    She looked around the room at the piles of drugs surrounding her.
    “I’ve got no idea what I’m looking for,” she answered honestly, “and even if I could find the name of a drug which might help, how am I supposed to know what it looks like? I wouldn’t even know if it was a pill in a packet or a medicine in a bottle. And some of this stuff is out-of-date.”
    “Point taken,” Hollis said quietly as he walked across the room and stood at the window. “Do you know what I think?”
    “I know what I think,” she interrupted abruptly. “I think I should just force as much of this stuff as I can down the poor cow’s throat and put her out of her bloody misery. Honestly, Greg, is it even worth her getting better?”
    Hollis didn’t answer. He was staring out the window, trying to remember the last time anyone had called him by his first name. Natalie used to call him Greg, and his mom and dad, and Mark and all the others he’d lost.
    “What the hell is that idiot doing now?” he said suddenly, glad of the distraction.
    “Which idiot?” Caron asked, standing up and walking over to him. “There’s more than one around here.”
    “Webb. Just look at the silly little bastard!”
    Webb was walking precariously along the top of the uneven barrier of cars and rubble which was somehow still succeeding in keeping the dead at bay. As he walked, he emptied the contents of a fuel can over the heads of the repulsive carcasses which grabbed at his feet incessantly.
    “He scares me when he starts playing with fire,” Caron admitted, her voice low.
    “He scares me whenever I see him.”
    As they watched, Gordon passed another can of fuel up to Webb, who immediately began tipping it out over the crowd, drenching some cadavers which had already been soaked once.
    “Careful with that stuff,” Hollis muttered under his breath.
    “He’ll set fire to himself if he doesn’t watch what he’s doing.”
    “I’m not bothered about that, I just don’t want him to use up all our fuel. I’m the sucker who’ll end up out there fetching more.”
    They watched as Webb finished emptying the second can, then jumped down to stand with the others a short distance back from the corpses. There was no denying the fact that they had worked hard again this morning—an area of land had already been reclaimed which almost matched the size of the patch they’d taken all day yesterday to recover—but their methods seemed to have become even more haphazard and less effective as time progressed. The diggers, which had previously been used to carefully move one abandoned car or lump of