Disintegration

figure an angry kick to the gut to make sure it wouldn’t get up.
    “You okay, Hollis?” Jas shouted. “Having trouble?”
    “I’m fine,” he answered quickly, determined not let the others know what had just happened. He must have released the cadaver when he’d been scavenging around just now. He’d acted like a fucking amateur and he felt angry and scared. Angry because he’d been stupid and put himself at risk unnecessarily, scared because he hadn’t heard the body until it had been too late. He’d got away with it today, but the outcome could have been much worse. He’d hoped his hearing would have improved by now but, if anything, it was deteriorating. How the hell was he supposed to survive if he couldn’t hear? Hollis felt more exposed and vulnerable today than he had done when the rest of the world had first fallen dead at his feet. He wiped the gore off his screwdriver and put it back in his pocket as Jas approached.
    “We’re going to head off,” he said. “You ready?”
    Hollis nodded and followed him back toward the bus.
    The lower floor and half of the top floor of the huge vehicle had been filled. Struggling to find a seat, Lorna wearily climbed the narrow stairs and flopped heavily into a chair right at the front, well away from everyone else. The bus began to rumble and shake as Driver started the engine, then it slowly trundled forward. She could already hear the crashing of badly packed supplies and excited laughter and conversation coming from her fellow looters standing in the aisle downstairs. By the sounds of things they’d be lucky if there was any booze left by the time they made it back to the hotel. She closed her eyes, leaned back in her seat, and tried to shut it all out for a while.
    The bus turned around and powered back across the bridge over the canal. The sudden jolting movement threw her forward and she opened her eyes again. She gazed down over the dead streets of Bromwell. Even now, two months since it had first happened, it was hard to comprehend the full scale of the inexplicable devastation which surrounded her. She could see many bodies scurrying around in the shadows down below, dragging themselves around ceaselessly and tirelessly like busy worker ants but without purpose or direction. She couldn’t imagine a worse existence—condemned to haunt this dead world until such time that their physical form finally failed them. What had any of these people done to deserve this?
    Half an hour earlier, Lorna had watched Webb and Sean taunting a corpse. The pathetic, maggot-ridden creature had been sliced in half by Jas’s chain saw but it had still been moving. She’d watched it pull itself along the ground, the stump of its spinal cord dragging behind, leaving a crimson snail trail on the gray paving stones. Like kids teasing a stray dog, Webb and Sean had taken turns to lie down directly in its path, taunting it and playing chicken; waiting until the last possible moment before rolling away, then tricking the corpse into crawling after them in another direction. Stupid idiots. Didn’t they care that that used to be a person? Maybe they did. Maybe it just didn’t matter anymore.
    Maybe she was the one who’d got it all wrong.

 
     
    38
     
    Webb, Sean, Amir, and Harte were drunk. Their successful excursion into Bromwell, coupled with the news that the helicopter had been heard flying nearby yet again today, left them feeling temporarily invincible. They, it seemed, were fully in control. Hollis and Jas watched them from the other side of the Steelbrooke Suite. Their noise was beginning to make Hollis nervous. The rest of the group had gone to bed, but he wasn’t going anywhere until these stupid, selfish fuckers had settled down. He didn’t want to think about what they might do if they were left unsupervised and, although the hotel grounds and surrounding area were relatively corpse-free, he wasn’t prepared to take any chances. Webb and Sean seemed more volatile than usual tonight, buoyed by the events of the day. Sean in particular had been unexpectedly aggressive when, less than an hour ago, Hollis had suggested to him that maybe he’d had enough to drink. Rather than antagonize them, Hollis had instead decided that the best approach was to give them what they wanted. Like leaving a fire to burn itself out, he planned on making sure they had enough booze to help them lose consciousness. It was the only way he could guarantee keeping them