Disintegration

think he’s right,” Gordon said.
    “Then that’s all the more reason for us not to lock ourselves down, isn’t it?” Sean nervously continued. “If we don’t let them know we’re here now then they’ll never find us. And I’m not just talking about writing love letters on the grass with bedsheets or playing music, we have to do something big that they’re going to see and we have to do it now!”
    “Sean…” Martin warned. His voice was getting louder again.
    “Oh, just shut up, Martin. Will you get off my case? You haven’t even—”
    “Just calm down and be quiet.”
    “What if I don’t want to? I know exactly what we have to do to get that helicopter or the plane to see us, and I’ll do it if none of you have got the nerve to.”
    At the side of the room, unnoticed by anyone but Ginnie, Gordon stood up and cleared his throat. With great hesitancy but a definite need to act, he slowly walked forward into the middle of the argument, placing himself directly between Hollis, Martin, and Jas on one side, and Sean and Webb on the other. He looked Sean straight in the eye.
    “Listen,” he began, captivating the others with his unexpected and uncharacteristically positive involvement, “you have to listen. I know you’re angry and you’re probably just as scared as I am right now, but you’ve got to listen. Please don’t do anything stupid. We’ve sat in here today and we’ve watched those things work out where we are. It’s only a fraction of them at the moment, but if the rest of them catch on and end up down here we’re going to have a real problem on our hands. I know you don’t want to stay here, but I really don’t think you’ve got any choice. None of us have.”
    Sean stared deep into Gordon’s face and carefully considered his words. He knew he wasn’t overstating the threat from outside, but were they really only limited to one option? He didn’t think so. Being outside today had been such an unexpectedly uplifting experience. Could he turn his back on that freedom and everything he’d seen now? He couldn’t stand the thought of being shut away in this hellhole with these people any longer.
    The silence in the room was deafening.
    “Don’t know,” he said eventually. “I don’t know if I can—”
    “You have to,” Caron said from the shadows to his left. Christ, he reminded her of her son at times. He was just like Matthew—so volatile and opinionated, yet vulnerable too.
    “I don’t have to do anything,” he answered, glaring at her. “None of us do. You can all stay here if you want to but I think I’ll take my chances out there.”
    “Just give it some time,” she pleaded.
    “I’d give anything for another day like today,” he said, his voice suddenly wavering with emotion. “Do you know what I did today?” he asked, looking around at the few faces he could see. When no one answered he continued. “I lived,” he explained, tears welling up in his eyes. “For the first time in weeks I actually felt like I was alive and it didn’t matter what I did. And I come back here and everything feels wrong again, and it’s not because of the bodies out there, it’s you lot.”
    “What are you talking about?” Gordon asked.
    “From where I’m standing there’s no difference between the bodies on one side of the fence and the other. There’s no difference between any of you and those things out there. You’re all dead. You’re all just sitting here rotting, waiting for the end to come. I don’t really care if I’ve got one day left or fifty years. I don’t care if I don’t get through tomorrow. I just don’t want to spend the rest of my time trapped in here with us all watching each other decay.”

 
     
    46
     
    “How many?”
    Startled, Martin spun around and saw Harte standing in the doorway of his second-floor bedroom. Hollis, who was standing next to him, hadn’t heard a thing. He turned around when he saw that Martin had been distracted, then turned back to face the window.
    “Maybe as many as five hundred or so,” Martin replied. “Difficult to tell.”
    “Are more still coming?”
    It was difficult to make out much detail in the late-evening gloom, but there still seemed to be plenty of movement in the field across the road. The dark mass of inquisitive corpses had grown steadily through the course of the day just gone and their numbers showed no signs of slowing.
    “Plenty more,” Martin answered, his voice tired and