Disintegration

going to attack us with it.”
    “You’re worried about being attacked by a corpse carrying a branch?” Stokes said, smirking. “Christ, mate, you’re going soft. There’s thousands of them out there, and they’re all ready to gouge your bloody eyes out. I don’t think we need to lose any sleep over one that thinks it’s going to kill you with a bit of tree!”
    Christ, Hollis thought, Stokes could be a pain in the backside at times. He was an insensitive, uneducated prick.
    “You fucking idiot,” he cursed, amazed that he was having to spell out his concerns, “it’s not what it was carrying that bothers me, it’s the fact it was carrying anything at all. Have you seen any of them carry anything before now?”
    “No, but—”
    “Exactly. The last thing we want is for them to start picking stuff up and starting to—”
    “Are you sure it was carrying the branch?” Jas interrupted.
    “I was only looking at it for a few seconds,” he admitted, “and there were loads of them around us.”
    “Don’t get wound up about it, it was probably nothing. Like I said, maybe it just got caught up.”
    “Maybe, but what if—”
    “Never mind what-if,” Stokes snapped, “let’s just concentrate on what we know they’re capable of.”
    “And what’s that?” Jas asked.
    “Fuck all!” he laughed, his bellowing voice echoing around the desolate estate, bouncing off the walls of empty buildings.
    “What I think,” Webb suddenly announced from the darkness behind them, “is that we should go out there tomorrow and start burning them again. And this time we should keep at it until there’s nothing left of any of them.”
    “You’re a bloody pyromaniac, Webb. You’re the reason we had to go out there to get fuel again today,” Hollis reminded him.
    “It’s got to be worth it to get rid of a few hundred of them, though, hasn’t it?”
    “Problem is, you don’t get rid of hundreds, do you? How many was it you managed last time?”
    “Fuck off,” Webb said, helping himself to the last can of beer. “At least I’m trying to do something.”
    “Seven, wasn’t it?” Stokes laughed. “He takes two cans full of petrol right down to the edge of the crowd and he only manages to get rid of seven of them! You’ve got to try hard to be that useless!”
    “Wasn’t my fault,” he explained angrily, “the wind changed direction before I could—”
    “Funniest thing I’ve seen since all this started,” Stokes howled, “you running away from that fire with all those bodies just stood there watching you! Bloody priceless!”
    “Shut up. It wasn’t my fault. At least I stopped them getting any closer.”
    “No, you didn’t,” Hollis said quietly. “They stopped getting closer long before you started with your party tricks. It’s been days since any of them tried to get over the barrier.”
    “Why is that?” Jas asked, suddenly more serious. “Why do you think they’re holding back?”
    “They’re waiting for Webb to go back out there,” Stokes said, still laughing. “They’re waiting for you to entertain them, mate! Or maybe they want you to light another fire to keep them warm!”
    “Fuck you, Stokes.”
    Webb slumped against the wall and swigged his beer.
    “Thought you were going to show us how to keep him under control,” Hollis said quietly.
    “I am,” Stokes whispered back. “He needs putting in his place. If we tell him he did a great job getting rid of seven of them, he’ll be back out there tomorrow morning trying to do it again like he’s the fucking Terminator or something.”
    Hollis could see Stokes’s point of view, but he wasn’t convinced Stokes continually put Webb down for any reason other than to make himself feel better.
    “No one answered my question,” Jas said.
    “What question?” Stokes mumbled ignorantly.
    “Why do you think they’re holding back?”
    “Who?”
    “The bodies, you moron.”
    “Well it ain’t because of Webb!”
    Hollis stared out toward the vast crowd of corpses in the near distance. In the low light the thousands of individual figures seemed to have merged together and formed a single, unending mass of decaying flesh.
    “No way of knowing for sure, is there?” he finally admitted.
    “But what do you think?” Jas pushed. “What’s your gut feeling?”
    “That they’re either too scared to come any closer or they’re biding their time.”
    “Biding their time?” Stokes protested. “What the hell are you