Autumn 6 - Autumn Disintegration by David Moody

Author:David Moody
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Zombies
ISBN: 9780312570019
Publisher: Macmillan

29

Eight o’clock. Pitch black outside. Everywhere silent. The entire group sat around tables in the restaurant and ate. Howard’s dog prowled up and down, sniffing the air hungrily and grabbing at whatever scraps happened to fall her way, but the amount of waste was negligible. Those who had been living in the hotel were starving, the meager rations they’d so far survived on were nothing compared to the relative riches the others had brought with them.

“I never used to like tomatoes,” Ginnie said excitedly as she helped herself to another serving of lukewarm chopped, canned tomatoes, “but my God, this tastes good!”

Caron and Hollis exchanged glances across the table. What had these people been eating? Caron asked the question.

“Not much,” Howard replied, just visible in the candlelight at the other end of the table. “I reckon I’ve lost a couple of stone.” He lifted up his baggy sweater to reveal an equally baggy T-shirt. “Few more stones to go yet, mind,” he added, patting his wide belly.

“I don’t understand why you haven’t just gone out for supplies,” Harte said. “There’s a town just down the road, you could have been there and back in a couple of hours. And you’ve got those trucks too. If you’d filled one of them you’d have had enough to last you weeks, months even.”

“We just haven’t wanted to risk going out there,” Martin answered. “Okay, so we’ve gone hungry, but none of us are starving and we’ve been safe so far. I know what I’d rather have.”

“I’d have risked it,” Sean said from a table a short distance away where he was sitting with Webb and Jas.

“We all agreed, Sean,” Martin sighed. “There were only five of us here. We’d have been taking too much of a chance.”

“You all agreed,” he protested. “I don’t remember getting to have much of a say. You’d decided before I even knew you were having a discussion.”

“It was for the best, Sean. Come on, son, everything’s worked out okay, hasn’t it?”

Sean grunted and carried on eating. He found it a little easier to stay calm and not lose his temper now that he wasn’t so hungry. Christ, it was good to taste so many different flavors again. It was all tins and packaged convenience food, but it was more than he’d had in a long time. And beer! Although the lager made the cold night feel colder still, the numbing effect of the alcohol was worth it.

“There are more of us here now,” Amir said quietly. “Kind of changes things, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” Martin asked, thoughtfully chewing a mouthful of food.

“Of course it does. Now there’s more than twice as many of us, maybe we could risk going out?”

“We don’t need to. They’ve brought plenty of stuff with them.”

“You think?” Jas interrupted. “We brought as much with us as we could, but it’s not going to last forever. Seems to me we’ve got no choice but to go out some point.”

“You don’t understand. It’s not as easy as that.

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