Autumn Disintegration

by David Moody

  “Not bad, eh?” He grinned breathlessly as he lifted his boot and stamped on the head of the firefighter on the ground. Two down.

  “Not bad at all,” Stokes agreed, enjoying the show. “Watch out, here she comes!”

  Webb spun around to see the dismembered, armless aberration shuffling closer. It had a lopsided walk and an unusually sad and melancholy expression fixed on its frozen face. Save for its almost translucent skin and myriad of prominent dark purple and blue veins, its torso appeared relatively untouched by decay and he found himself staring at its surprisingly pert, bouncing breasts as it lumbered toward him. When it got too close he rammed the rounded end of the baseball bat forward, hitting it right between the eyes and sending it sprawling back. He viciously lashed out again, the second hard shunt splitting the paper-thin skin which was stretched tight across its forehead. A third smack briefly exposed bare bone before Webb lifted the bat and hammered it down, splitting its skull and permanently stopping it from moving.

  “Too easy,” he said, wiping his brow. Without stopping he marched on toward the fourth putrid carcass. This time he used the long shaft of the bat to attack, smashing it into the monster’s right arm with a satisfying thud, then swapping hands and swinging it in the opposite direction, hitting the left side with enough force to shatter bone. The body continued to advance, not able to understand why it suddenly couldn’t use its arms. Webb allowed it to get a little closer, knowing that the worst it could do was stumble into him. He finally shoved it back away then swung the bat around again, smashing into its pelvis. He’d already done more than enough damage to completely disable it but he continued to attack. The corpse found itself on its back, unable to move and looking up at the sun. Webb landed more brutal, bone-cracking blows across its ribs and legs, taking care not to damage it above the shoulders. When it had been completely incapacitated he stepped back and stared at his handiwork. Its head still moved constantly, just as inquisitive and curious as it had been seconds earlier, unable to work out why it couldn’t get up. Rather than end its miserable existence, Webb instead decided to leave it where it lay to watch him. He liked an audience.

  Last one. He sized up his final opponent.

  “What are you waiting for?” Stokes shouted.

  “Watch this,” Webb yelled back. He ran toward the last corpse, swinging the baseball bat again and timing his strike to the head perfectly. Weak flesh tore and withered sinews snapped. Partially decapitated, the diseased creature staggered back, then collapsed on the ground, flat on its stomach but with its head still looking up.

  “Nice one,” Stokes said, throwing away his empty beer can and giving Webb a slow handclap. “Here you go, get this down you.” He threw a can over to him, then opened another for himself. Webb drank thirstily.

  “Going to do a few more,” he said between gulps.

  “Might as well,” Stokes agreed. “Nothing else to do.”

  With adrenaline from the satisfying but one-sided fight still coursing through his veins, Webb finished his can, then scrambled back out through the wire mesh. Moving with more speed and confidence now, he jumped back onto the wreck of the taxi again and unceremoniously snatched four more corpses from the edge of the heaving crowd. He rammed them back through the hole in the fence.

  “Take your time,” Stokes suggested, standing on the pile of rubble now so that he could get a better view. “Fifty points for a kill, double if you do it with one hit.”

  Webb glanced over at him and grinned as he picked up his weapon again.

  “Easy. Watch this.”

  His next victim was hunched forward like an old crone. Its physical deterioration was such that it was impossible to be sure what age it had been when it had died. Six or sixty, it didn’t matter; it only had seconds left now. Using the cadaver’s top-heavy gait to his advantage, Webb lifted the baseball bat high and brought it down hard on the back of its skull as if he was trying to hammer it into the ground. Facedown in the dust, the corpse twitched for an instant then lay still.

  “One hundred points!” Stokes announced. “Good lad!”

  Webb turned and moved toward the next shuffler, ready to repeat the maneuver and double his score. Maybe he’d knock this one’s head clean off its shoulders, he thought. A sudden flurry of movement from another body on his right caught him off guard. He spun around to defend himself but was too late and he lost his balance, tripping over a pile of broken bricks as the corpse of a boiler-suited garbage collector grabbed hold of him. Stunned by the sudden, unexpected attack he struggled to shake the creature off. He lifted his arm to push it away and watched in disbelief as the horrifically decayed monstrosity sank its few remaining yellow teeth into the leather sleeve of his jacket.

  “Jesus Christ!” Stokes shouted, jumping down from the pile of rubble and knocking his beer over. Although he usually did all that he could to avoid physical contact with the dead, he immediately grabbed the corpse and yanked it back, throwing it to the ground. Webb turned and unleashed a furious attack on the body, kicking its face repeatedly with his steel-toed boots.

  “Damn fucking thing,” he seethed. “You stupid fucking thing!”

  The bloody body on the ground stopped moving almost instantly. Webb immediately turned and dealt with the remaining two corpses which, bizarrely, actually seemed now to be trying to move away from him. He ran at the first and grabbed a handful of greasy, wiry hair. In the same movement he continued forward, slamming its face down hard into a mound of broken concrete and twisted metal. He felt none of the usual satisfaction, just fear.

  A short distance away, Stokes was gingerly pushing the last body away, trying to summon up the courage to attack. Full of words but usually very little action, he couldn’t begin to match Webb’s ferocity. Webb grabbed a length of narrow gauge metal pipe which was sticking out of the rubble at his feet.

  “Get out of the way!” he screamed at Stokes as he ran toward him. Stokes obediently did as he was told, leaving the last corpse standing alone, swaying unsteadily. Webb speared it with his lance, sinking the pipe so deep into its chest cavity that it burst out through the other side, its decayed innards slopping down in a puddle on the ground behind it. Unbalanced, its legs gave way. Webb made certain of the kill with a single stomp of his boot to its vacant, emotionless face.

  “Did that thing bite you?” Stokes asked, standing over the bulk of the fallen garbage collector.

  Webb answered only with a nervous nod of the head before running back up the hill toward the flats. Stokes followed close behind with uncharacteristic speed, sheer terror keeping his out-of-shape body moving forward.

  10

  “It bit me!” Webb yelled as he flew into the communal living room, his voice close to breaking. “Fucking thing bit me!”

  Hollis and Gordon were playing cards. Gordon looked up from the table momentarily but then looked down again, disinterested. Driver was asleep in an armchair with his newspaper over his face. Lorna had headphones on and was listening to music. Only Ellie showed any interest.

  “What bit you?” she asked as she changed her doll’s nappy.

  “One of those fucking things out there!”

  “What?”

  “One of the bodies bit me!”

  Hollis glanced up from his cards. Was Webb on something? None of them bothered taking drugs anymore, mainly because they couldn’t find any. But had he found something in the warehouse yesterday? Was he still drunk from last night? Stokes’s sudden appearance in the doorway derailed his train of thought.

  “It’s true,” he gasped, red-faced and fighting for breath. “One of them bit him.”

  “Did it cut you?” Ellie asked. Webb shook his head and held up his arm, using his other hand to show where he’d been bitten.

  “It just grabbed hold of me and bit me here,” he explained. “It couldn’t get through my jacket.”

  “So what’s the problem, then?”

  “The problem is it bit him, you stupid bitch!” Stokes yelled. Ellie
shrugged off the insult; she’d been called much worse recently. “Are they going to start trying to eat us now?”

  “You’ve watched too many crap films,” she announced, putting the doll over her shoulder, then getting up and walking around the room, gently patting its back.

  “Are you sure it bit you?” Hollis asked, finally putting down his hand of cards, knowing they weren’t going to get any peace until Webb had his say.

  “Of course I’m sure, you fucking idiot!” he screamed, his normally cocky voice filled with genuine panic and fear. “It had its teeth wrapped around my fucking arm!”

  “But did it really bite you? Are you sure you didn’t just put your arm in its mouth?”

  “Are you having a laugh?” Stokes said in disbelief. “It bit him. What don’t you understand? The bloody thing bit him.”

  Hollis looked at him for a moment longer, then picked up his cards again.

  “It didn’t really, though, did it? Why would it? Think about it. As far as I know they don’t eat, so it wasn’t trying to take a chunk out of you because it was hungry, was it?”

  “It bit me,” Webb snarled, his fear now giving way to anger.

  “Put anything in their mouths and chances are they’ll bite down on it. It’s an instinctive reaction, isn’t it? Just the same as walking or—”

  “It fucking bit me!”

  The volume of Webb’s voice had reached such a level that everyone stopped to listen. Even Driver moved his newspaper slightly so that he could see what was happening. Jas and Caron appeared from the flat next door. Only Anita, who hadn’t yet got out of bed today, was absent.

  “What’s the matter?” Caron asked, concerned. Hollis couldn’t be bothered to recap.

  “Calm down,” he warned Webb, who seemed poised to erupt again.

  “Calm down?” Stokes gasped having finally got his breath back. “Calm down? For Christ’s sake, man, just listen to yourself, will you? One of those things out there tried to take a chunk out of his arm and you’re telling him to calm down? Can’t you see what—”

  Hollis sighed. “It was just an instinctive reaction.”

  “You weren’t even there!” Stokes yelled at him.

  “But like I said, they don’t eat,” he protested. “They’re not controlled enough to be able to attack like that. Like Ellie said, this isn’t some stupid horror film. You’re not going to become one of them because you’ve had contact with infected blood or anything like that.”

  “How do you know?”

  Hollis rolled up his sleeve to reveal a seven-inch-long zigzag cut running along his forearm from his elbow to his wrist. The cut had been deep and sore but was beginning to scab over and heal. “One of them did this to me last week.”

  “How?” Jas asked from the other side of the room. “You told me you did it trying to move a car.”

  Hollis shook his head. “I said it happened while I was moving a car. I got scratched, that’s all. Just a lucky hit from a body that had lost a lot of flesh on one of its hands. Caught me with a sharp edge of bone.”

  “Did you clean it up?” Caron quickly asked, her motherly instincts coming to the fore again. Hollis sighed. Did she think he was stupid?

  “Of course I cleaned it up. Look, this really isn’t anything like the films you used to watch or the books you read. Those things out there are just dead bodies. They’re not flesh-eating monsters. They don’t want our brains or anything like that.”

  “No, but they do attack us and they are getting smarter,” Lorna said. In an instant the focus of everyone in the room switched to her. “I don’t know how or why, but they are getting smarter, aren’t they?”

  “What’s she talking about?” Gordon asked nervously. He turned around and repeated his question directly to her. “What are you talking about?”

  “If you’d actually come outside with us and done something useful you’d know exactly what I was talking about.”

  “My hip…” he began, immediately making excuses.

  “Fuck you and your hip,” Webb said angrily. “Fucking waster.”

  Gordon looked down and shuffled his cards again. He couldn’t handle confrontation.

  “Is that right?” Caron asked, her voice suddenly tight and unsure. “Are they really getting smarter?”

  “Not all of them,” Harte answered, “but some seem to be.”

  “And did it really bite him?”

  Hollis made eye contact with her and shook his head, the movement subtle enough for Webb not to see.

  “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” Lorna continued. “Doesn’t matter how hard or fast they come at you, they’re still falling apart. It’ll still take a shitload of them to cause you any problems.”

  “What—a shitload like the fifty thousand or so we’ve got camped out at the bottom of the hill?” Stokes grumbled unhelpfully.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “But what if they get up here?” Gordon asked anxiously.

  “They’re not going to get up here,” Harte answered quickly.

  “Who says?” Webb snapped. Driver fully removed the paper from over his face and sat up in his seat. Gordon put down his cards. Caron moved farther into the room.

  “Shut up, Webb,” Hollis said. “You’re winding everybody up. For the last time, that thing didn’t bite you, and none of them are going to get up here, okay?”

  “One of them did last night.”

  “What?”

  “While I was out in the car,” he explained, “one of them managed to get almost all the way up here.”

  “Must have just got lucky.”

  “What happened to it?” wondered Ellie, looking nervously out of the window.

  “I beat the shit out of it, that’s what happened,” he replied.

  “So one of them managed to get over the barrier,” said Hollis. “So what? The rest of them haven’t. They’re still stuck down there.”

  “At the moment,” Stokes said. Hollis looked up at the ceiling in despair.

  “For crying out loud, will you please stop trying to wind everyone up? We’re safe here. Nothing’s changed.”

  “You reckon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hollis is right,” Lorna agreed. “We just need to keep a close watch on things. If something does happen then we’ll deal with it straightaway.”

  “I’m ready,” Webb said purposefully, a mask of machismo hiding the mounting fear he was feeling. “I’ll fucking deal with them.”

  “I know you will,” Lorna said quietly. “And that scares me more than the bodies do.”

  11

  “Pass it!” Harte screamed at Webb. Webb looked up and kicked the ball wide to Jas, who made a diving run forward and booted it at Stokes in goal. The ball hit his belly with a loud slap and bounced away. He ran toward it and kicked it back across the car park. Harte scuttled after it.

  “You won’t get anything past me,” Stokes boasted.

  “That’s because you fill the fucking goal,” Webb laughed.

  “Cheeky bastard!”

  Harte reappeared and curled the ball to Jas on the wing. Jas dummied and swerved around Webb, who ran at him at speed.

  “That’s out!” Webb screamed. “You’re off the pitch. We said the line was level with the front of the van.”

  “Piss off, Webb,” Jas gasped as he sprinted toward the goal. Stokes readied himself for the shot. Did he shoot high or aim low? Try and swerve it around the side or just kick it straight at him? Jas lined himself up for the shot, only for Webb to slide along the tarmac and take his legs out from under him. The ball rolled away, Webb chasing after it furiously.

  “Go on, Webb,” Harte yelled. “Shoot!”

  “You little bastard,” Jas seethed, running at Webb again, grabbing his shoulders and hauling him down. Webb stuck his foot out and managed to get a shot in before he fell. The ball bobbled up in front of Stokes, who ran forward and booted it away again. It soared over Harte’s head and bounced down the h
ill.

  Jas and Webb stood face-to-face in the middle of the pitch.

  “You do that to me again and I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Webb jeered. “You’ll let me get past again?”

  “You little shit,” he said, lunging forward and grabbing hold of Webb’s collar. Webb squirmed but couldn’t get away.

  “Go on, then,” he said, still writhing. “Hit me.”

  “You blokes are pathetic,” shouted Ellie, pushing a pram across the car park. “Doesn’t matter what else is happening, there’s nothing like football to bring you closer to each other, eh? Bloody pathetic.”

  Jas let go of Webb and pushed him away. They continued to stare at each other for a second, both realizing the pointlessness of the argument, but neither prepared to be the one who backed down. Harte eventually broke the deadlock, pushing his way between them both to fetch the ball.

  “Sort yourselves out, boys,” he shouted as he ran toward the bodies.

  * * *

  Sliding tackles and bad challenges were forgotten as quickly as the final score of the ill-tempered kick-around. Although it was virtually dark, the footballers and Ellie, their sole spectator, remained outside. Webb sat on the bonnet of his car, his legs dangling down between the headlights which shone out into the darkness, providing them with a little illumination. The others sat on what was left of a filthy red corduroy three-piece suit which they’d dragged out of a damp ground-floor flat several weeks earlier. Ellie was sandwiched between Harte and Jas on a sofa on one side of the car. Stokes sat slumped in an armchair without a cushion on the other.