Disintegration

fucking minds?”
    “Fuck you,” Sean mumbled, his jaw still stinging and his head spinning with pain. One of his teeth felt loose and he could taste blood in his mouth. He cowered back as Jas lunged for him again.
    “Stop it!” Caron screamed, lowering her voice immediately when she realized how unintentionally loud she’d been. “For Christ’s sake, please stop. We’ve got enough to worry about now without you beating each other senseless.”
    “What’s she talking about?” Sean asked, confused. “What’s happened?”
    “It’s the bodies,” Gordon said unhelpfully from the table where he sat with Ginnie.
    “What about them?”
    “Seems they’re smarter than we’ve given them credit for,” Martin began to explain.
    “What?” Webb grunted.
    “The noise you lot made coming here a couple of days back started it, and when you went out for supplies yesterday it just made matters worse. What you two did today might just have been the straw which broke the camel’s back.”
    “I don’t understand,” Sean said. Martin sat down in the nearest chair and held his head in his hands. Howard explained further.
    “They’re coming back. There’s a load of them gathered over the road.”
    “What about the music?”
    “Not working anymore.”
    “That’s not exactly true, it is still working,” Hollis corrected him, “but like Martin says, they’re getting wise to it. It fooled them before because they didn’t know anyone was here.”
    “And now?”
    “And now it’s still drawing them in from miles around. Problem is, when they get close enough and hear us moving about or arguing or driving around on stolen fucking motorbikes, they understandably get more interested in us than anything else. They’re starting to work out that the music is just a decoy and that we’re the ones actually making the noise.”
    “Can’t be…” Sean said.
    “Can be,” Harte quickly replied. “It’s instinctive. It’s exactly what started happening back at the flats. The more noise we made, the worse they got. A handful of them broke through our defenses, hundreds followed. They learn .”
    “So what are we supposed to do?” Ginnie asked, shuffling a little closer to Gordon. “Is there anything we can do?”
    “What we should do now,” Martin announced, unsuccessfully attempting to exert some authority, “is exactly what we were doing in the first place before you clowns arrived. We keep our heads down, stay absolutely silent, and wait for those creatures out there to disintegrate down to nothing. If we run out of food then we go hungry. If we start to—”
    “No way!” Sean yelled, his voice furious, the fuzziness in his head clearing and being replaced with anger. “No fucking way. If you think I’m sitting here in fucking silence with you lot just waiting for the bodies to rot, then you can think again. You can stick your fucking—”
    “That’s exactly what you’re going to do,” Jas said, moving toward him again. Sean recoiled. “Because if you don’t I’ll break your fucking neck.”
    “Is that right?” Webb goaded.
    “Don’t you start. I’ll kill you now if you want me to, you little piece of shit.”
    “Come on, then!” he yelled, jumping to his feet and squaring up against Jas. The others cringed, willing them both to shut up as the volume of their pointless argument continued to increase.
    “Leave it, Jas,” Harte said. “He’s not worth it.”
    Webb stood his ground as Jas moved forward again. Their faces almost touching, he whispered loud enough for Webb alone to hear.
    “Want me to tell them about Stokes?”
    Webb pushed him away and slunk back into the shadows.
    “Let’s just keep things in perspective,” Lorna said. She’d been watching the discussion deteriorate with disappointment. “There’s no need to panic. They still can’t get to us. Every access point is blocked. Like Hollis says, we just need them to forget we’re over here.”
    “But what about the helicopter?” Caron wondered. “And the plane? How are we supposed to attract their attention if we’re keeping our heads down? We don’t know how many more times they’re going to fly over.”
    “Have they been here again?” Sean wondered.
    “Twice more,” Gordon replied.
    “Twice?”
    “Flew over late afternoon,” he explained, “then again just about an hour later.”
    “They’re clearing out, aren’t they? It’s like you said this morning, Jas, they’re evacuating.”
    “I