Disintegration

wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, but even he’d quickly made the grim realization that what had killed her could probably kill him too. He could cope with thousands of decaying bodies, but this was something else altogether. A germ or a virus. Something invisible and undetectable which he couldn’t punch, kick, or smash into oblivion.
    He’d left the others talking about the body. They were arguing about what they should do with it. None of them, him included, wanted to go anywhere near the corpse. Stokes had been saying that he thought Caron should deal with her, because she’d already spent so much time in the same flat and chances were she already had the germ inside her. Caron argued that they’d all got as much chance as each other of catching it, and that just scared everyone even more. Gordon said they needed to do something quick in case she got up again and started walking around. Harte told him to shut up and get a grip, that that was never going to happen. Gordon became hysterical, ranting about how Harte didn’t know that was the case and how they couldn’t afford to take chances. Harte threw him an ax and told him to go to her flat and chop her body into pieces. Gordon had started panicking and threatened to attack Harte before he went anywhere near Anita’s body, and … and that was when Webb had got up and walked out.
    He’d been sitting cross-legged in the dust for almost fifteen minutes when he realized he hadn’t even looked up at the dead today. It said something about both his state of mind and the state of what was left of his world, that a sea of tens of thousands of reanimated cadavers no longer interested him. He picked up a stone and threw it lazily toward the featureless mass of flesh, smirking to himself when it clattered against an old car door and the resulting sound caused a sudden ripple of excitement and animation on the other side of the barrier. He threw another stone, then another, each time taking pleasure in the way he seemed to almost be controlling the corpses and making them dance to his tune. Marginally more interested, he got to his feet and walked closer, pausing to swing at a small rock with his baseball bat, using it like a golf club. The bodies trapped just in front of him were reacting angrily to his presence. They were slamming themselves against the blockade now, shuffling back as best they could, then throwing themselves forward again.
    “Look at you,” he announced pointlessly. “You’re all fucking pathetic.”
    Now just a couple of meters away, he looked deep into the wall of gnarled, putrefied faces which stared back. He glared at one in particular which reminded him of his older sister. It was wearing the soiled shreds of a revealing pink summer dress and the stupid fucking thing still had a fucking ribbon in its hair! For Christ’s sake, he thought, everything that corpse must have gone through and it’s still managed to keep its fucking hair tied up! That was so like his sister, the silly bitch. She’d been arrested after a fight in a club once when she’d put some poor bastard in hospital. He’d watched the police shove her in the back of their van. Stupid cow, he’d seen her checking her makeup in her reflection in the window as they’d driven her away to the cells.
    When Webb thought about his sister, he began to think about everyone else who had been a part of his life before the world had been turned upside down. He swung his baseball bat and thumped it into the side of the nearest car door, the shock wave rippling back through the crowd like a pebble dropped into water. He hit the car door again, now wanting the dead to react. How many of these wretched, dumb, stinking pieces of shit were the same wretched, dumb, stinking pieces of shit that used to give him a hard time and make his life difficult? He hit the door a third time, the metallic clang ricocheting around his empty world. How many of these things gave him grief or caused him pain or—
    Webb was suddenly aware of movement to his right. What the fuck?
    Bodies.
    There were bodies on his side of the blockade. The first one was almost upon him before Webb, stunned momentarily, was able to react. He swung the bat into its groin, sending it flying. Another one lunged. He jabbed the end of the bat into its face, knocking it back into two more. What the hell was going on here? Where were they coming from? Yet another body hurled itself forward, its arms reaching out for him.