“You okay?” Harte asked, nudging him gently.
“What? Oh, sorry,” he said, feeling both sad and embarrassed, and also annoyed with himself for getting so easily distracted. Regardless of his assumptions, just because he hadn’t been attacked so far, it didn’t mean he was completely safe. He wiped the rest of the identity badge clear and then looked up into the dead face it belonged to. After seeing what she used to look like, he almost couldn’t bare to look at what was left of this woman now. Her dry, discolored skin, patchy hair, misshapen face and unnaturally prominent bones left her looking like a grotesque caricature of the person she’d once been. A large circle of skin around her top lip had been eaten away. Despite the obvious individuality of each corpse’s decay, in some ways they all looked the same as each other now, strangely featureless. “This is Michelle Bright,” he announced.
One of the men said something flippant and unnecessary, but the others paid him no attention because their sole focus was now the dead woman standing in front of Michael. At the mention of her name she’d reacted. She moved forward slightly, then lifted a tired arm up closer to her face. Barely able to control her awkward movements, she lightly placed what was left of one of her hands against her hollow-sounding chest. “Me,” she seemed to be saying.
“Fuck me,” Howard said.
“I’d rather fuck her,” Harte mumbled. Michael turned around and scowled at them both.
“This is all well and good,” Caron said, completely sober now, “but it’s not actually getting us anywhere, is it?”
“Depends on your perspective,” Michael said. She was about to ask him what he meant when Lorna distracted her.
“Look at that,” she said. “Where the hell are they going?”
They watched as a slowly moving queue of corpses traipsed away in the direcion from which the living had entered the dungeons, back toward the center of the castle.
“They’re trying to get out, aren’t they?” Kieran said. “They’re trying to get into the castle.”
“I think that’s exactly what they’re trying to do,” Michael agreed. “They know they can’t go the other way because it must be blocked, so they’re trying to get out the way we came in.”
“Then we should let them,” Lorna suggested. “It’ll get them out of our way…”
“… and give the fuckers up there something else to worry about. Good thinking.”
“But when Jas and the others see them, they’ll go crazy,” Harte said. “They’ll probably batter hell out of them.”
“Look at the state they’re in,” Michael said quietly, almost as if he didn’t want the dead to hear him. “It’d probably be for the best.”
He was about to talk to Lorna again but it was too late, she was already gone. He watched her disappear back in the direction from which they’d just come, and by the sounds of things she was opening both doors they’d come through too, clearing the way back out to the gift shop. She quickly returned to the chamber where the others were waiting and snatched Caron’s torch. She took Michelle Bright’s corpse by the arm and gently led it up the slope into the other chamber. The dead girl walked slowly forward, then stopped. Lorna let go and pushed her forward again. She began to walk toward a dull patch of light in the distance where Lorna had left her torch, following an unsteady queue of other corpses which had already started to move. She left Caron’s torch on the ground too, hoping to help guide the dead along.
Following Lorna’s lead, Howard, Harte, and Kieran began to do the same, pushing lethargic bodies up toward the dull lights. They followed each other out of the caverns in a bizarre and surreal parade; a horrendously overdue funeral procession.
“Let’s get moving,” Michael said, pushing still more of the creatures away, ready to go deeper into the darkness.
“Wait,” Caron said, holding on to his arm. “What did you mean about perspective just now?”
“All those thousands of bodies outside this place,” he explained, continuing to watch the dead march. “We assumed all they wanted to do was attack.”
“That’s because they did. We all saw more than enough of that. Nasty, vicious things.”
“All I’m saying is, that might well be what they did do, but the real question is, why did they do it? Why did they constantly herd around us in massive numbers? We assumed it was because they saw us as a threat to them and they wanted us dead, but like I said, it’s all about perspective. Having seen what I’ve seen in here today, I think we might have been misreading the situation. They wanted our help, that’s why they wouldn’t leave us alone.”
“That’s preposterous,” she scoffed.
“Is it? I’m not sure. They wanted our help, but they couldn’t control themselves sufficiently to make that clear. We misread their actions as being all about anger and hate. Maybe they were just scared? I think they knew a lot more about who they were and what they’d become than we gave them credit for. I think they wanted our help, they just didn’t have any way of showing it.”
43
“What do you mean, you can’t find them?” Jas demanded. Ainsworth was standing in front of him, his face aching, his mouth dry with nerves, not knowing what else he was supposed to say.
“We’ve checked everywhere … all the caravans, all the rooms. We’ve been twice around the ruins. They’ve disappeared.”
“They can’t have. Look again.”
“But Jas, it’s pitch black, mate. We’ve blocked the gates. Let’s wait until morning. They’re probably hiding around that well Jackson was working on, or somewhere near the toilets. If we wait until the sun’s up we’ll have a better chance of—”
“Keep looking,” Jas ordered. Ainsworth just stared at him. What the fuck is wrong with you? He wanted to ask the question out loud but couldn’t. To his relief, Will Bayliss and Paul Field came running over. Hopefully they’d found something.
“Mel found a climbing rope,” Bayliss said, breathless.
“Where?”
“Hanging over the wall, over by the shit-pit.”
“So is that how they got out?”