Disintegration

belonging to his former boss which overlooked the center of Bromwell. After disposing of his dead ex-employer and her husband, he’d found himself with a relatively safe and secure vantage point eight floors above the devastation; from there he’d sat and watched the dead. In the absence of any other distractions they wearily dragged themselves along the otherwise empty streets, almost as if they’d been looking for help or simply a shelter of some kind. It disturbed him to think that these pitiful, abhorrent creatures might have retained some thought-processing capacity, perhaps even some level of memory or a degree of self-awareness. What if they’d understood what had happened to them? Might they have been lying there in the gutters knowing what they used to be, feeling the constant, gnawing pain of their gradual decay and waiting for the end to finally come?
    Sean parked his car a short distance away from the junction that he, Martin, Howard, and Ginnie had blocked with trucks so many weeks ago. The same junction where he’d stood with Webb and practiced killing the dead. The same junction where he’d sat in a truck and waited for hours for Webb on the day he’d left the hotel, struggling with his conscience and his nerves, wondering whether he should go back to the others or take his chances on his own. He’d been so nervous and unsure back then, but his time on his own out in the open had changed him. He was ten times the man he’d been when he’d first arrived here all those months ago on his scooter in the middle of the night like a frightened school kid.
    He climbed over the bonnet of the first truck. The vehicles blocking the roads were all still in place, he noticed. That was a good sign. He slid down to the other side, crossed the junction, then forced himself through the narrowest of gaps past the front end of the coach. He began to walk toward the hotel, wondering what kind of reception he’d get when they saw him. Would they be happy to see that he was still alive, or would they turn on him because he’d walked out on them? He hoped they’d understand. He paused for a moment and listened, hoping he’d be able to hear Martin’s music. Nothing. That didn’t mean anything, he decided. After all, there was no need to try and control the dead any longer. They weren’t the problem they used to be.
    Sean jogged around the corner and immediately found himself face-to-face with the wreck of the van and, behind it, the bus which lay tipped over on one side like a beached whale. His heart sank. What had happened? Had anyone been hurt? He climbed up the front of the bus and ran along its length. The hotel was visible in the distance, wrapped in a light mist. All around it the ground was covered in a deep, partially frozen, gray slurry—the remains of thousands of cadavers. The foul mire stretched all the way from the building to the road, but that didn’t necessarily mean the people in the hotel hadn’t survived. He wanted to shout out, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Even after all this time he didn’t feel comfortable making any noise out in the open like this.
    He’d got used to dressing like a human being again. Sean lazed away his long, lonely days in the apartment wearing clothes he’d taken from the shops in Bromwell. When something got dirty, he threw it away. When he planned to spend any length of time out in the open, however, he reverted to the strong boots and over-trousers preferred by Webb, Hollis, and the others. He was thankful for the protection now as he jumped down onto the road and stepped into the partially frozen, once-human sludge. A paper mask over his mouth and nose did little to diffuse the horrendous smell, and his uncertainty increased as his feet sank into almost eighteen inches of liquid decay. He hated walking through this stuff. It was stupid, he knew, but he couldn’t help thinking there might be something lurking deep under the surface which might somehow have survived and which might be about to grab him and drag him down. A hand attached to a perfectly preserved cadaver, perhaps, buried by chance deep under the fetid remains of hundreds more. There was a thin layer of ice on the surface of the slush where it had almost completely liquefied and dirty water had puddled. Apart from the crunch of the ice and the slip, suck and slide of his boots in the mire, the rest of the world was unnaturally silent and still. He focused on getting to the