Disintegration

its misery.
    Concentrating on the carcass on the ground but suddenly aware of another figure approaching at speed, Webb turned into the sun and swung his baseball bat around with massive force. Stokes let out a whimper as it hit him square in the chest, the nails piercing through his skin and muscle and puncturing his lungs. He dropped to his knees, clutching his wounds.
    “What did you do that for?” he asked, stunned with surprise, only just starting to feel the pain. Webb’s legs turned to jelly as he realized what he’d done.
    “Sorry, Stokes…” he stammered pathetically. “I didn’t mean to … I didn’t know it was you … I just…”
    “It really hurts,” Stokes groaned, tears of agony running down his face. He looked at his hands and saw that they were soaked with blood. His jacket and shirt were already drenched too. “Go and get the others,” he wheezed. “Get Caron…”
    Webb crouched down next to him. What the hell was he going to do? He reached out his hand but stopped before he touched him. Stokes looked at him again, his eyes wide with hurt, then slumped heavily over onto his side. He breathed a few labored, gurgling breaths and then stopped. Everything was silent save for the corpse scrambling around in the dust just out of reach.
    “Stokes,” Webb said, getting as close to the other man’s face as he could without touching him. “Stokes, come on! Don’t die…”
    He reached out his hand again, this time forcing himself to touch Stokes’s shoulder. He shook it but there was no response. He couldn’t be dead. He just couldn’t be …
    The creature behind him managed to drag itself far enough forward to reach his boot with outstretched fingers. Webb turned and grabbed the corpse by the shoulders and threw it several meters away into the dust where it flopped back over onto its chest and began to drag itself toward him again. He didn’t even look at it, concentrating instead on Stokes. He still hadn’t moved.
    Jesus Christ , Webb thought, his panic mounting, what have I done? It was an accident. It wasn’t my fault. If the stupid idiot hadn’t crept up on me like that it never would have happened. The rest of them will understand, won’t they? They’ll know I didn’t do it on purpose …
    For a few desperate seconds longer he weighed up his limited options; turn and run or go back and face the others. Much as he wanted to quickly disappear, one look at the thousands of corpses still gathered around the flats and he knew he’d never get away in one piece. If he’d been able to drive then maybe things would have been different, but the fact of the matter was that he couldn’t. He was stuck here.
    *   *   *
     
    “What’s the matter with you?” Hollis asked as Webb burst into the communal flat. Bloody Webb, why did his heart always sink when he saw him?
    “They got him,” he gasped.
    “What are you talking about? Who got who?”
    “Stokes. They got him.”
    “Who got him?” he repeated.
    “The bodies. He’s dead.”

 
     
    21
     
    “I’m going,” Harte announced, his face pressed against the window. “They’re coming over the barrier again. Fuck this, I’m going.”
    His words were met with silence as the rest of the survivors thought about what they’d heard. Several others had reached the same decision individually, but no one had found the courage to stand up and say as much. Harte hadn’t any courage either; he was entirely motivated by fear.
    “Are you sure there’s no other option?” Caron asked. The room was dark. She couldn’t see how anyone else had reacted.
    “I’ll listen to anything anyone else has got to say,” Harte replied anxiously, “but I can’t see any other way forward. For Christ’s sake, Anita’s dead upstairs, Stokes is dead down there, Ellie’s dying and the bodies are climbing over the barrier again. You tell me if there’s any better option than getting the hell out of here.”
    Silence.
    “We could go down there in the morning and clear them out again,” Jas suggested. “I’m not going out there tonight.”
    “How many will be down there by then? I’ve seen half a dozen get over in the last couple of minutes. At that rate that’s almost a hundred an hour. There’ll be a thousand of them by the time the sun comes up.”
    Hollis got up and walked over to the window where Harte was standing. He was right—in the pale moonlight outside he could see that the corpses had found another weak point in