A breeze wafted through an open window in the far wall, cooling the room. The smell of decay was lighter here, presumably because of the air coming in through the window. I twisted open the blinds on the other windows to give me a little more light. I had a flashlight and a healthy supply of batteries, but that didn’t mean I wanted to waste them.
Beside the open window, there were two doors. One, the rear entrance to the lodge, led directly outside. The other was a two-way door with a small round window in it, like they have in restaurants.
I peered outside. There was no walkway on this side of the building, just a grassy clearing and then a wall of trees where the camp gave way to the forest. There were four sets of muddy hiking boots lined up next to a bench.
A bolt was fixed to the top of the door, but it was unlocked. I toyed with the idea of going outside, but it was getting dark and I wanted to finish exploring the lodge while I could still see.
I turned my attention to the other door and gently pushed it open.
The kitchen beyond came with the basics—an electric stove, a fridge, and an old enamel sink. A square counter sat in the middle of the room with a very new-looking coffee maker sitting on it. Otherwise, the appliances looked old enough to have been installed when the camp first opened. A large saucepan sat on the stove, but the rest of the pots and pans, seven of them, hung from hooks attached to the ceiling above the counter.
I checked the fridge. It wasn’t running, but the inside was still cool, and there was food. Real food. Carrots, apples, a couple of bars of chocolate, and even a half-full carton of milk. I sniffed the milk and gagged. The fruit didn’t look much better. Cupboards around the walls held a few cleaning supplies and more food—canned and dried goods and yet more energy bars.
I tried the faucets. Clear water sputtered into the sink. I cupped my hands and drank a little. The water had an earthy undertaste, but otherwise, it was good. I turned off the faucets again. I had no idea how long the clean water would last, and it was a luxury I didn’t want to waste.
I went back to the lounge and stood beside the armchair with the leather jacket. It seemed that at some point in the recent past there had been at least four people in the lodge, and they’d seemingly been completely oblivious to what was happening back in the real world. I idly picked up the jacket and pressed it against my face. The smell of clean leather and a subtle hint of flowery perfume overwhelmed the lingering smell of rot for a few seconds.
There was still a chance the camp’s occupants weren’t in the lodge. Maybe they’d heard about the pandemic and gone home to their families. Even as the idea occurred to me, I knew it was wrong. They were upstairs.
The hint of blood and decay I’d smelled in the lounge grew stronger as I climbed the stairs. I looked at the photographs as I passed in an effort to delay myself. They were all pictures of the “Camp Redfern Leaders” from 1994 onward. Each photo showed two men and a woman. One of the men and the woman were different in every image, but Dominic Suter was present in all of them, steadily growing older. The last photo, John Wrigley, Mary Kelson, and Dominic Suter, was dated 2012.
I’m sure it was just my overworked imagination, but the air seemed thicker the higher I climbed. By the time I got to the balcony, it felt like I was pushing through molasses. My heart rate increased with every step. My throat was dry. I considered stopping to get a drink from my backpack, but that might have been all the opportunity my subconscious needed to send me heading down the stairs and back into the forest.
There were three doors leading off the balcony. All of them were closed, and I felt like a Monty Hall contestant trying to guess which door held the cash prize and which would earn me a goat. Or in my case, a reanimated corpse. There were no signs of life from beyond the doors. If it hadn’t been for the smell of death in the air, I could probably have convinced myself the rooms were empty.
“Hello?” I said.
Hearing my voice was strange. I hadn’t spoken anything coherent aloud for weeks. I’ve never been one for idle chatter, and parties are my personal definition of hell, but it still felt odd not talking.
When no one responded, I called again—louder this time. Still, I got no response, so I knocked on the first door. “Is anyone in there?”
Silence.
I pulled out my hunting knife and spent a few seconds checking my grip, making sure I wasn’t going to drop it should a rotting corpse leap out at me. Unable to think of any more ways to procrastinate, I swung the door open and looked inside.
The room was small and held just a single bed, a wardrobe, and a tiny dressing table with a chair in front of it. It was also a complete mess. Clothes were strewn across the floor. The bed was unmade—sheets tangled together and abandoned. One of the pillows was lying diagonally across the bed; the other was wedged into one corner of the room as though someone had thrown it there. A black bra was draped across the chair.
A pink suitcase lay open beneath the room’s solitary window. Its contents, mostly pastel T-shirts, underwear, and a pair of black jeans, looked like they were trying to escape. The tip of a white shirt poked out from between the wardrobe doors.
It was hard to tell whether the room had been ransacked by an intruder or simply belonged to someone who cared more about having fun than keeping their room tidy. Either way, there were no corpses, reanimated or otherwise.
I took a couple of steps into the room, and although I don’t really know why, I called out again. Just a quiet “Hello.”
Maybe I thought some prankster was going to come bounding out of the wardrobe at me. When that didn’t happen, I went back out to the balcony and moved on to the second room. I paused, holding the door handle and listening for signs of movement from inside for a few seconds. Then I swung the door open.
The smell of blood was stronger here, and a handful of flies buzzed fitfully about the room, but there were no bodies. Size and layout wise, the room was an identical copy of the first. Same single bed, same wardrobe, dressing table, and chair. But that was where the similarities ended. Whereas the first room had shown every sign of being the site of a remarkably localized tornado, this one was evidently home to the world’s most anal-retentive human being.
The bed was neatly made, pillows fluffed, sheets drawn tight and tucked in—hospital corners, of course. Two books were stacked neatly on the dressing table, both hardback. One was by Junot Diaz, the other David Mitchell. There were two suitcases, black and sleek-looking, standing in one corner. Accident or not, they were perfectly aligned with each other. Even the padlocks hung at the same angle. There were no shirts peering from between the wardrobe doors, no discarded underwear. In fact, there was barely any sign of occupancy at all. Take away the suitcases and the books, and you’d think the room was waiting for its guest to arrive.
This time, I didn’t bother calling out.
I’ll take door number three, Monty.
The smell hit me as soon as I opened the door. The stench of decay was so strong I had to cover my mouth and force myself not to throw up. A cluster of flies swarmed at me. They bounced across my face, and one almost flew into my eye before I waved them away.
Later, it would register that the third room was bigger, with a matching double bed and cabinets as well as the dressing table and wardrobe. But all I saw that first visit were the bodies.
There were three of them. Two, a man and a woman, were lying on the bed. Their fingers were intertwined. I recognized them from the photographs on the stairs—John Wrigley and Mary Kelson. The third body, Dominic Suter, was in a chair in front of the window, facing out toward the forest.
At first, I thought the two on the bed were uninjured. They looked almost serene, as though they might just be asleep. Empty sleeping-pill bottles on the cabinet nearby added to the illusion, but they each had a hole in their foreheads.
The wounds were perfectly round. Tracks of dried blood ran down the side of their heads and pooled on the pillows around them. A bloodied screwdriver sat on the
cabinet next to the bottles, and there was a discarded hammer on the floor. Based on the lack of decay, they hadn’t been dead long, but dozens of flies buzzed around the room and crawled over the bodies.
Dominic Suter hadn’t died as neatly. He was holding a hunting rifle, the barrel still caught on his bottom jaw. A chunk was missing from the back of his head. Bits of skull and brain were clearly visible through the ragged opening. Gore spattered the rug on the floor behind him, and the chair was streaked with dried blood. More flies crawled over Suter’s wound, and a few white maggots writhed and twisted in the cavity the bullet had left behind.
I stared at the bodies. I should have felt some emotion for them, but I didn’t. Yes, the blood and the smell and the flies repulsed me, but that was all. I felt no pity, no sadness at the senseless loss of life. Not even anger that they’d chosen the easy way out. I didn’t care that they’d taken their own lives instead of fighting to survive.
It wasn’t until the fact that there were only three bodies really sank in that I felt anything.
I tensed, the familiar ache of low-grade fear that accompanied life in a zombie-infested world intensified. I walked slowly into the room, picking my way around the gore until I could see past the bed properly. I think I was hoping to find a fourth body lying on the floor, but there was nothing there. I crouched down, trying to look beneath the bed, but the covers hung too low. A dozen horror movie scenes flashing through my head, I reached out and lifted up the covers. Nothing.
Despite how ridiculous the idea of a zombie hiding inside a piece of furniture seemed, I still felt a cold trickle of fear running down my spine as I swung open the wardrobe door. A handful of shirts hung on wooden hangers. I pushed them aside, checking the corners of the wardrobe, then closed it.
The fear eased, replaced by the weight of an unfinished puzzle. The sights and smells of the death around me faded into the background as I thought about my exploration of the lodge, searching for the hiding place I’d missed. There were a dozen places I hadn’t checked.
Flies buzzed around my face, snapping me out of my reverie. Outside, the light was fading. The room felt darker, its shadows deeper. I swatted at the flies as I turned away from the corpses and left the room.
Maybe I hadn’t checked the other two rooms properly. I rummaged around inside my backpack until I found my flashlight. Knife in one hand, the flashlight in the other, I went back into the middle room and searched it. Thoroughly this time.
When I was finally satisfied nothing lurked under the bed or in the wardrobe, I did the same with the first room. I had to move clothes and bedsheets aside and drag a pile of dirty washing from beneath the bed before I could be sure it, too, was empty, but eventually I felt comfortable it was clear.
I went back onto the balcony and looked down at the lounge. The vantage point gave me a better view of the room, and I swept the flashlight around, chasing away the shadows. The light played over the door, illuminating the dark stain on the walkway.
I let out an anguished groan. I’d left the door open. The lodge had been easily accessible, exposed, all the time I’d been checking the rooms. My brain ran through a dozen scenarios as I charged down the stairs. None of them were good.
I kicked the door closed, hard enough to rattle the frame. The door had a lock, but there was no sign of the key. I had to make do with the single bolt at the top of the door. Painfully aware of the fading light, I moved through the lounge, checking for signs of an intruder.
A noise came from the direction of the kitchen—the sound of metal clattering against metal. I adjusted the grip on my knife and moved cautiously into the dining room.
The bigger windows and open blinds provided a little more light, and I was fairly sure the room was empty. After a cursory check beneath the table, I moved toward the kitchen. As I passed the back door, I looked outside. The patch of grass certainly looked empty, but the forest beyond could have held an army of the living dead in its shadows. I slid the bolt on the back door.
In contrast to the dining room, the kitchen was almost completely dark. The pots and pans hanging from the ceiling cast eerie shadows across the walls as I swept my flashlight around the room. Most of the kitchen was visible from the doorway, and my panic eased slightly as it became clear that it was empty, too. I checked under the kitchen table and then took a few paces into the room, moving around the edge so that I could see beyond the fridge.
I saw the flash of a figure pressed up against the wall. And then the light burned the shadows away, and all that remained was an empty vegetable rack and a broom. I checked the pans hanging from the ceiling again. All seven were there, and the eighth was still sitting on top of the stove.
I made my way around the kitchen again, slower this time, looking under the table, opening the cupboards one by one. Finally satisfied the kitchen was secure, I moved back out to the dining room and did the same. I made sure the back door and the windows were locked, shone the light beneath the table, and searched the shadows until I was convinced that room was empty, too.
The lounge was next. Again, I checked the corners and beneath the table and chairs. I paused for a moment by the leather jacket. It had been moved. When I’d arrived, it was draped over the arm of one of the chairs. Now it was lying on the table. I picked it up and remembered. I’d put it there myself. Sighing, I put the jacket where it had been when I’d first arrived. The fireplace was narrow, probably too small for someone to hide in. I shone the light up into the blackness of the chimney anyway.
Then I stood in the middle of the lounge, mentally ticking off each room in turn and locking away my fear that someone had slipped into the lodge while I was upstairs. I glanced toward the balcony. The doors were still closed, but I had to stop myself from checking the rooms again. I was taking things too far. Letting my paranoia run rampant. The world might be out to get me, but the lodge was empty. Safe.
I sat down and looked through my backpack, searching for my case. It was still there. The soft leather beneath my fingertips eased my paranoia. I let out a deep breath and closed the backpack. I flicked off the flashlight and let the gloom swallow me up. There were still four cabins to explore, each one a potential home to the living or the dead, but that could wait until morning.
A faint bubble of excitement formed in my stomach. After so long trailing through the forest with no real goal and no guarantee that I’d find a safe place to sleep, let alone food or water, I’d found a sanctuary. Maybe it was even a place I could call home. The camp was small enough that I could set up a perimeter to warn me if anything wandered in from the forest. Something simple, like tin cans on a string. It wouldn’t help me against more intelligent threats, humans with a pulse, but the idea of having a bed to sleep in, running water, and a supply of food was too good to ignore.
I’d have to deal with the bodies upstairs, and soon. Even if I moved into one of the cabins, it would be foolish to leave three rotting corpses lying around. And that was assuming impaling the dead’s brain with a screwdriver was enough to prevent them from coming back to life.
And there was the matter of the fourth inhabitant of the lodge. Unless I’d miscounted, there were four sets of boots by the back door. Somewhere there was another body… or a zombie. And the diary had hinted at two other people. I tried to put the thought out of my mind. I was as sure as I could be that I was alone inside the lodge, but the idea of another zombie wandering around somewhere made me uncomfortable. They’d probably left to go and get help or wandered off into the forest, searching for prey. Maybe the man I’d seen by the river was the missing camper. Either way, I’d have to get used to the uncertainty.
I decided to spend the night on the couch. It was comfortable, and the idea of sleeping near the corpses upstairs made me uneasy. I’m not squeamish—how could I be with the shadow’s ever-present influence shaping my life? It was simply prudent to keep a safe distance away from potential threats. I put a couple of the chairs from the dining room on the staircase as an early wa
rning system and then lay down.
Even with all my precautions, I struggled to get to sleep. My mind replayed the day’s events—the zombies on the road, the man by the river, the bodies. Again and again, the images flashed through my head like a holiday slideshow. The lodge creaked and rattled as it settled around me, and I wondered if I really had checked the rooms properly. Had I missed a corner or a cupboard, or maybe a closet?
I opened the top of my backpack and made sure the leather case was still there. Even then, I couldn’t settle, only managing to snatch five or ten minutes here and there when my tumbling thoughts eased up enough to let me doze. The sky outside was already beginning to lighten before I finally calmed myself enough to fall into a real, deep sleep.
Chapter 6
Cabins in the Woods
Waking up in the lodge left me disoriented and uncertain. The shreds of a nightmare filled with a horde of ravenous corpses clung to me like morning cobwebs. The room I was in seemed utterly unfamiliar. For a few seconds, I was convinced I might actually have dreamed the pandemic. Then reality seeped into my consciousness, and it all came flooding back. Along with the realization I needed to pee.
The two sheds I’d noticed when I first arrived in the camp were outhouses. Like the rest of the buildings, they were well made, solid. Whoever had built this place had taken pride in their work. Like they’d wanted the camp to last.
The women’s outhouse had bright flowers painted on the inside of the door, the men’s a selection of clichéd, and clean, graffiti with a couple of groan-worthy knock-knock jokes thrown in for good measure. I wondered whether the shed’s creator would approve of the decorations that had been added to their legacy.
The toilets were really just a plastic seat over a hole in the ground, probably leading to a septic tank. Hand-painted signs reminded occupants not to put non-biodegradable materials into the toilet. In particular, condoms were cited as especially problematic. Next to each toilet, separated by a varnished wooden screen, was a shower. They both worked, although the water was cold.
Serial Killer Z [Book 1] Page 3