Disintegration

was standing. Surprised and unnerved by their unexpected ferocity, he turned back and silently ushered Martin along the road toward the clubhouse.
    *   *   *
     
    Still uneasy, Hollis relaxed slightly when they reached the enclosed passageway which led up to the back entrance of the clubhouse. Martin led him inside, moving quickly through the pitch-black ground floor and up the stairs to the balconied landing. Both of the stereos were still working and the combined noise from the music and the generators was appalling, loud enough for Hollis to almost be glad that one of his ears had stopped working. He followed Martin into the meeting room, watched his well-rehearsed refueling routine, then crossed the landing to the office. He noticed that Martin was keeping his head down, looking at the floor as much as possible.
    “What’s the matter?” he asked, concerned.
    “Nothing,” Martin replied. “Just don’t like to look at them, that’s all.”
    He replaced the stereo and moved to one side. Hollis immediately stepped forward, his inquisitiveness getting the better of him. He leaned out the window, hanging onto the frame for support.
    “Fuck me,” he said, forgetting himself. The music drowned out his words. He glanced back at Martin, who looked away from him, not wanting to share the horror of what he’d just seen. Hollis turned back to face outside.
    The sun was rising on the horizon. Incandescent yellow light was slowly seeping across the world, illuminating everything and burning away the shadow and shade. Below Hollis, stretching out for as far as he could see in every direction, stood the largest crowd of bodies he’d ever seen. Thousands of them—hundreds of thousands, even—filled every inch of the golf course. The size of the crowd was incomprehensible and terrifying. He couldn’t compare it to the gathering outside the flats—there the dead had been free to wander, but here they were restricted and confined. In an instant, however, he completely understood why Martin had reacted so badly to the little noise they’d made over the last two days. If this crowd turned on them, he realized, there’d be no escape.
    If this number of bodies get any closer to the hotel , he thought, they’ll either tear us apart or crush us. There will be no way out. No escape. And if they don’t kill us, with that many of them so close it’ll surely only be a matter of time before the germs that killed Ellie and Anita start spreading .

 
     
    40
     
    With the rest of the group still indoors, Jas slipped out and crept over to the bus, which had been abandoned right outside the hotel entrance yesterday. In the sudden euphoria which had followed their successful looting expedition, they had simply unloaded enough food and drink to get them through the night with the intention of finishing the job in the morning. It was still early and nothing had so far been done. Lethargy, hangovers, and general tiredness seemed to have affected everyone. Everyone except Jas.
    Feeling undeniably guilty and uneasy, he crept onto the bus and began to pick up boxes of food. He carried them back through the hotel, taking care not to be seen, and took them up to the middle room on the first floor of the east wing of the building: room 24 East. Hardly anyone slept over there and that room, he’d discovered, was one of the largest. The first floor felt safer than the others. He’d stopped on the glass-fronted staircase for a while and had studied the almost identical west-wing part of the building opposite and the enclosed grassy courtyard below. He knew that if anything happened and he ended up trapped in the room he’d just chosen, he’d have the security of being off the ground floor but would still be low enough to get out of a window should he need to make a sudden escape.
    His plan this morning was simple: fill the room with supplies so that they had an additional stockpile which he could get to in the event of an emergency. The others could use it with him. Well, some of them, anyway. Whatever the reason, it made sense not to store everything they’d managed to scavenge in one part of the building.
    He was getting off the bus for the seventh time when he got caught.
    “What the hell are you doing?” Webb asked, stepping out from around a corner, early morning cigarette and beer in hand. Jas jumped back with surprise. The panic on his face was clear and Webb chuckled as he swigged from his can of lager.
    “Nothing,”