Autumn

Chapter 3

Though no one wanted to lose the light, the end of this day couldn’t come too soon. After many months of terrible days, today had been among the very worst that any of them could remember. At least the rain had stopped now, small mercies. The sky overhead was clear. It was a race to cover the final distance before the sun disappeared completely.

Noah drove this section of the motorway regularly. It was impossible to take a wrong turn, yet he felt hopelessly disorientated. It wasn’t just that he was on foot, every other aspect of his surroundings conspired to confuse him. The once-bright lights that marked out the line of the road were all unlit, and the scrambled remains of doomsday traffic meant the lanes all merged without distinction, most painted markings obscured. As a result, every metre of tarmac felt the same as the next and the last. A while back they’d passed a sign that told them the next junction was a mile away, but the distance seemed to be taking forever to cover.

On an elevated section of the motorway, Noah stopped abruptly. ‘What’s wrong?’ Sanjay asked, concerned.

‘Look at this.’

‘At what?’

‘Exactly. There’s nothing to see,’ he replied. He swept his arm across from left to right, pointing out invisible landmarks. ‘There’s Upminster. Hornchurch, too. Hard to believe that over there is Romford. There’s not a single b****y light left on anywhere. If you every want to get some perspective on what’s happened to the world, come to a place you used to know and look around. There’s nothing left out here. Nothing but us.’

‘Do we have far to go?’

He pointed along the road. Sanjay squinted. ‘See that bridge? From memory, I think that’s got to be the Warley Road. That should take us straight there.’

‘Should?’

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me?’

‘No offence, but until this morning, I didn’t even know you.’

‘I’m not working with your mate Piotr, and I’m not dead. I think it’s safe to assume we’re on the same side,’ he said, and he walked on, indignant.

‘For the record, I think he’s on the level,’ Chapman said.

‘I just don’t know who to trust anymore, you know?’

‘I do. But it’s like the man says, as long as they’re not Piotr and they have a pulse, I think we have to take our chances.’

#

Noah led the group up an embankment, over a fence, then onto the Warley Road. They were soon walking through a leafy, tree-lined area, a welcome contrast to the endless industrial brutality of Lakeside and the motorway they’d subsequently been following. Their surroundings felt worlds removed from the built-up urban chaos of central London. It was a long time since any of them had been anywhere like this.

‘It’s proper Walking Dead territory, this,’ Joanne joked. Orla just looked at her.

‘Never watched it.’

‘They were always walking down roads like this. Didn’t matter where they’d been or where they were going, they always seemed to end up on the same roads, w**d strewn with forests on either side.’

‘Yeah, and there was always zombies,’ Omar said, and he immediately wished he hadn’t, but it was okay. For once, there were no corpses around. They passed a nice-looking blue Audi that had carried on straight when the road had curved, ending up nose-first in a ditch. The driver must have been going at some speed because his neck had been snapped in the crash. His face was glued to the wheel by decay, yet his rheumy eyes swivelled to watch as the group traipsed past. Other than him, they couldn’t see a single dead body, ahead or behind.

‘Can’t see anything through the trees here,’ Vicky said, panting with effort.

‘This was always a quiet spot,’ Noah said, ‘way off the beaten track. Hopefully the dead will all be in the centre of town, not out here on the outskirts.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Sam said. ‘It might have been that way at the start, but they’ll have been spreading out since then. You saw how dark Romford and all those places were just now. If Brentwood was the same, there’d have been no reason for the dead to hang around.’

‘Christ, could you not give me a couple of minutes to enjoy the illusion of peace?’

They walked past grand, monolithic country houses, set well back from the road at the end of long, sweeping drives, drenched in shadows as if to highlight their gothic credentials. In one, the silhouette of a skittering figure could be seen moving back and forth, back and forth across a first-floor landing window. ‘That is creepy as f**k,’ Orla said under her breath.

‘Should we try one of these pads?’ Sanjay asked.

‘If there were only a few of us, maybe,’ David said. The tone of his voice left no room for negotiation. ‘Too much of a risk with seventy. Let’s stick to the plan. The fence around an army reservist base is going to be stronger than the fence around some old guy’s garden.’

‘Point taken. I’m just tired, that’s all.’

‘Not far now,’ Noah said as they approached a large restaurant, the only visible building. He hesitated, drowning in the memories of the life he’d once had here.

Remember that time you came here with the lads and Mickey got so drunk he sat down at someone else’s table and started eating some random guy’s chips? Wonder if any of the lads made it through this?

‘What now?’ David asked, bringing him back to reality.

‘There’s a country lane round here,’ Noah said. ‘We can use it as a cut-through. Shave a few minutes off the walk.’

‘I don’t see any cut-through.’

The light hadn’t so much faded tonight as it appeared to have been snuffed out. They’d been able to make out plenty of detail just a few minutes ago, but since they’d emerged from the trees, all Noah could see were shadows and the shadows of shadows.

He gestured into the dark. ‘It’s there. Probably just overgrown.’

‘You sure about this?’

‘Absolutely. If we keep going this way, we’ll end up going through a residential area. Take that lane and we’ll bypass it.’

Someone screamed.

Joanne was wearing a head-torch. She flicked it on and looked around.

Corpses!

Barely contained panic spread rapidly through the group as more of the dead lumbered towards them. They’d congregated in a bunch while Noah considered their change of direction, and their noise had attracted the unwanted attention of some of the undead from across the restaurant carpark; they had simply fallen in line behind the survivors. In the almost total darkness out here today, the living and the dead had become indistinguishable, all of them reduced to shadows.

Sam was first to react. He cracked the skull of a dead woman with a mallet he’d picked up on the motorway, caving it in like a chocolate easter egg, then lashing out several more times just to be certain. Alongside him, Joanne lunged for a stick-like ghoul that had wrapped its brittle-branch arms around Allison. She wrenched the cadaver away, wrestled it the ground, then stamped her boot on its upturned face.

Shit, but it was like herding cats now.

People were beginning to scatter, moving away from each other because the only way they could be certain they weren’t next to a cadaver was to be standing next to no one at all.

‘What the hell?’ Chapman said, exasperated. ‘Where did they all come from?’

Joanne continued to look around for the dead. ‘It’s only a handful. For f**k’s sake. Complete f*****g overreaction.’ Her anger was part-nerves, part-relief.

Sam took a torch from his rucksack and shone it around. Several more cadavers were closing in, drawn to the noise. Another minute, and there’d be more still. He shoved the torch into Noah’s hand. ‘Go. Get moving. Get to that b****y TA place and get inside. Keep this light on and keep it pointed up so that people can see it. Just don’t stop again.’

‘But I—’

‘Just f*****g do it!’

He pushed Noah towards the trees, then went back to the restaurant carpark. He climbed up onto the roof of the sole car remaining and jumped up, landing hard and denting the sun-bleached metalwork. Immediately the remaining corpses turned and began shuffling towards the noise. Once Sam was sure that the others were all following Noah, he climbed down off the car and pushed through the crowd.

He collided with a lone figure who was standing in the entrance to the country lane. What i***t had waited for him? He was about to berate them, cursing them for taking unnecessary risks, but he bit his lip when he realised it was one of the undead. The dead man swayed on unsteady feet, watching Sam watching him. ‘What the hell are you?’ Sam asked under his breath. For half a second the corpse seemed poised to attack him, but it didn’t. Distracted by something else in its periphery, it staggered away.

The behaviour of the dead man unnerved Sam. He hadn’t fallen for the distraction, like the others. Had the corpse seen through his rouse? His position near the entrance to the lane left Sam wondering if the dead man had been caught in two minds: do I react to that noise, or do I follow the crowd?

But that was impossible, wasn’t it?