Disintegration

fill their empty day.
    “Was there really any point in bringing back this much pickle?” Ginnie asked, looking down her nose through half-moon glasses at the three trays of sandwich pickle Lorna had just carried inside. “Horrible stuff.”
    “One day,” Lorna replied, sweating and breathless with effort, “you might be grateful for that. And like I keeping saying, love, if there was something special you wanted bringing back, you should have got off your backside and gone out there with us, shouldn’t you?”
    “I’ll eat it,” Gordon said unhelpfully, ripping open the packaging, picking up a jar and studying the label. “I love this stuff. I could live on it.”
    “You might have to,” she grumbled.
    “Just the smell of it makes me feel sick,” Ginnie continued to complain. “Makes me want to throw up. You know, I used to have a friend who—”
    “We should all be thankful for what we’ve got and for the fact we’re here at all,” Caron interrupted, still working. “It’s funny how perspectives change, isn’t it? A couple of days ago, Ginnie, you’d probably have killed to get your hands on a jar of pickle, no matter how ill it made you feel. We need to remember that we—”
    She stopped talking. The others looked at her expectantly.
    “Remember what?” Lorna asked.
    “Shh…” she hissed. “Listen. They’re back.”
    In the distance they could hear an engine. Disagreements, differences, and pointless arguments over pickle were forgotten in an instant as they all dropped what they were doing and ran across the central courtyard and through to reception. They burst out of the front door and onto the car park. Hollis and Martin were already there, scanning the skies. Amir ran toward them from the other side of the building.
    “No use looking up there,” he panted. “That’s no helicopter.”
    “What?” grunted Hollis. His ear was so bad that he was having trouble hearing anything.
    “It’s on the ground,” he explained, “and it’s moving away from us.”
    The entire group turned around as Jas came thundering out of the hotel.
    “They’ve taken my bike,” he shouted. “Those little bastards have taken my bike!”
    *   *   *
     
    Sean weaved through the staggering corpses which hurled themselves at him from all directions. The grassy ground beneath his wheels was dry but uneven, and a deceptively steep slope away from the hotel made it even harder for him to keep control of the powerful bike. He didn’t dare do anything but aim for the gate in the farthest corner of the field and accelerate hard. Webb held on tight behind him, his arms wrapped around Sean’s waist, feeling dangerously exposed. He looked up and saw through the confusion that they were almost there. The gate was open, just as Sean said it would be. Martin had left it like that to make it as easy as possible for the dead to find their way through this field and onto the golf course. He tightened his grip on Sean as the bike powered through the opening, leaving the ground momentarily, then thumping back down onto the tarmac. Almost immediately a sharp left turn loomed. Sean dipped the bike over to such a sickening extent that Webb thought they’d never recover from the turn. He squeezed his eyes shut, held on, and waited for an impact which never came. To his amazement they were still moving.
    Sean drove around in a large loop, bypassing the blocked-off road junction and eventually rejoining the route to Bromwell which they’d followed yesterday. They’d already decided on today’s destination: the bowling alley alongside the supermarket they’d looted. The journey was faster this morning; despite the fact that there were many more bodies around than had been there previously, it was far easier to steer the bike through and around the carnage than the bus. The dead had no doubt been attracted by the noise they’d made the day before, Sean decided. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. He knew how to deal with them now. They were no longer the threat he’d allowed himself to believe they were, just barely coordinated, germ-infested, vacuous bags of flesh and bone.
    They raced down the main Bromwell high street, passing Amir’s dilapidated restaurant and various other insignificant sights which had been pointed out yesterday. Webb—who finally felt brave enough to lift his head and look up—actually found himself silently thanking the others for once. Their day trip out in their lumbering,