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“What I don’t understand, Hammond, is why you apologize,” Jeremy said. He sat, arms folded, watching the other two toss zombie bits onto a rather shoddily-constructed pyre.
“What I don’t get is why you don’t help,” Richard grunted, flinging a pair of arms as high up as he could. Which wasn’t very high, obviously, as he only stood two feet tall to begin with.
“Manual labour,” Jeremy said, gesturing at the pile. ”I’m allergic.”
“Right,” Richard said. He grabbed a corpse under the arms. James scuttled around and hefted it awkwardly from the knees, and together they heaved it onto the others. It rolled back down halfway before hitting a jutting shin-bone and coming to a stop.
“So,” Jeremy said. He wiggled his eyebrows - the very eyebrows that just this morning Richard had called disgusting, overgrown, and horrific. He’d been covered in brackish zombie blood as he said it, so Jeremy had been hugely offended. He’d said so, at length.
“So what, you insufferably lazy man?” James asked.
“Why James,” Jeremy said, “you’re sweating. You look like someone bred a sheepdog with a red Smartie.”
The other two turned to look at him, faces nearly identical in their incredulity.
“All right, not my best,” Jeremy said.
After a long, rather pointed silence, Richard said, “I say I’m sorry because I’m sorry.”
“Makes sense,” James said. He had the broom now propped in the crook of his elbow and, in typical Captain Anal fashion, was sweeping various unsightly bits onto a dustpan and dumping them one-handed on the newly-formed Zombie Mountain.
“Thank you, James.”
“Oh yes, thank you so much, James,” Jeremy sing-songed. He heaved himself out of the deck chair and picked up the tub of diesel, splashing it on the pile. This was all it was good for, really.
Waiting until James was bent over the bits - probably arranging the limbs so that they all pointed due north, if he could figure out which direction north was - Jeremy struck a match and tossed it into a puddle of fuel.
“CLARKSON, YOU INFANTILE PILLOCK,” James bellowed over the flump of ignition and Richard’s insane laughter, “you could have set me on fire!”
Jeremy nodded piously. ”It would be for your own good, James. How you survive with that broomstick shoved up your arse-“
James flung the dustpan at him before tackling him to the ground. For a man with only an arm and a half, James fought fairly well. It was the desperation and jealousy, likely. Sadly, he was no match for Jeremy’s superior tactical brillance, height, and two-handedness.
Grabbing him about the elbows, Jeremy crowed in victory. “Never fight a man wi-” Catching sight of James’ face, he abruptly fell silent.
“Yes,” James said quietly, “I’m aware.”
He wiggled out from underneath an unresisting Jeremy and pushed himself painfully to his feet. Awkwardly, he tucked his right arm into his coat, trembling slightly as he did. Silently, he trudged back to the house, shutting the door softly behind him.
“Well, that went well, you moron,” Richard said.
He sat down next to Jeremy, and they watched the bodies burn in silence.
“It was for his own good,” Jeremy said later, when the fire had nearly burned itself out.
“I know, mate,” Richard said.
“He’d’ve been one of them, if I hadn’t,” Jeremy said.
“I know.”
“I- I couldn’t- I just-“
“Jeremy, I know. And so does he,” Richard said, bumping him with his shoulder. “Now let’s go inside and eat. I’m starved.”