by Jacob Rayne
Paul was about to apologise when he saw the grin on the doorman’s face.
‘Glad you’re back, mate,’ Billy said. ‘Janet’s been out of her ’ead.’
Janet came out of the bathroom, a look of pure fury on her face. She slapped Paul hard enough to make his head turn. ‘Just what the hell do you think you were doing there? You could have been killed.’
‘Sorry. I couldn’t let the lad get hurt,’ he said, pointing to the ashen-faced boy in the vain hope that it would lessen his wife’s anger.
At least she was worried about me, he thought. Maybe there’s hope for us yet.
‘You sure picked a bad time to grow some balls,’ she spat.
Maybe not just yet, Paul thought with a frown.
‘What’s your name, mate?’ Billy asked the kid Paul had risked life and limb to rescue.
‘Sam,’ the kid said.
‘Glad you’re alright too, buddy,’ Billy said, crouching in front of Sam. The boy was trying not to look at the eye that dangled from Billy’s bloody eye socket. It looked like he was about to burst into tears.
Again, Paul knew the feeling.
Janet had her hands on her hips and was about to deride Paul further when the door shook in its frame.
‘The chef,’ Paul and Billy said in unison.
They saw another few people run past the window, headed for the door. Sam cried out as the door was assaulted again.
‘What do they want?’ Janet said.
‘To hurt us,’ Sam said. Tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped onto the floor.
The door shook again. Then a dozen bloody fists began to pound on the windows, sending cracks shivering down the glass.
‘That won’t last long,’ Paul said.
Janet resisted the urge to hit him again for stating the fucking obvious. She cursed his uselessness.
‘What do we do?’ Janet asked, directing her question to Billy who seemed to be a man of action, rather than a pen-pushing pussy like Paul.
‘We either fight like fuck and stand our ground,’ Billy said. ‘Or we try to run. But there’s no guarantee that anywhere will be safe.’
‘No,’ Paul said, remembering the scenes by the outhouse.
The fists continued to beat against the window. Despite the fact that the glass was badly cracked, they hoped that it would hold. Paul found himself wishing that the crazy people would just give up and go. More fists slamming the door confirmed that his hope was in vain.
‘That window won’t hold them for long,’ Billy said, scanning the room for weapons. The best he could find was another lamp like the blood-stained one that Paul held in his trembling hand. He handed it to Janet.
‘You got anything else we could use as a weapon?’ he asked Paul.
Paul’s mind was blank.
‘Come on, mate, think. Any razor blades or anything?’
‘I’m not going to bother shaving while I’m on holiday,’ Paul said. ‘Trying to get a bit of designer stubble going on.’
‘Does Rachel like you with a beard?’ Janet mocked, rolling her eyes.
‘Honey, this is not the time,’ Paul said.
‘Come on, guys, let’s get our minds on the situation at ’and,’ Billy said. ‘’Ave you got any razors, Janet?’
‘I didn’t bring any,’ Janet said. ‘I figured I’d be able to get them here.’
‘So you’re as useless as me,’ Paul gloated.
‘I’m gonna clash ya fucking heads together if ya don’t shut up,’ Billy said. He was struggling to think as it was with the cacophony of the fists and feet beating on the door and windows. He didn’t need a domestic raging around him also. He ran to the bathroom. Saw the big mirror. Winced when he saw his gruesome reflection.
‘No time for being superstitious,’ he said, wrapping his hand in the bath towel and plunging it into the mirror.
Shards of silvered glass fell into the sink. Billy carefully picked them up and carried them into the room.
‘It’s not much,’ he said. ‘But it’ll have to do.’
The window exploded into the room. Paul and Billy covered their faces. Sam cried out as flying glass raked his face. The childlike sound brought it home to Janet and Paul how young he was. He couldn’t have been older than ten. Still, Janet reckoned he’d be more use to them than Paul.
A bleeding fist came into the room, searching around like a blind head. In anger at how scared Sam looked, Janet ran forward and hit the hand with the lamp. It retreated from the room, its owner letting out a cry of rage.
More fists came in through the jagged hole in the glass. The three adults tried to get them out, Paul and Janet beating at them with the lamps, and Billy slashing at them with the pieces of broken mirror.
The hands seemed to be on the verge of retreating. The four felt a rush of relief.
Then the first man hurled himself through the glass.
The man came through headfirst, landing on Paul and knocking him to the floor. The intruder was so intent on inflicting pain on the inhabitants of the hotel room that he didn’t seem bothered by the fact that his face was torn open in a few dozen places.
Paul froze for a second, panic rendering him useless. Janet brayed the man over the back of the head with the lamp. He fell to the side, twitching a little. Paul got to his feet, muttering a hasty thank you to his estranged wife.
A woman poked her head through the window and tried to climb in. Billy grabbed her hair and pushed her head down towards the ragged edge of glass that still clung to the bottom of the window frame.
The woman screamed, but it was more in frustration than fear. She was strong, but Billy slammed a hard punch into the back of her head. She went limp for a second, just long enough for him to shove her neck onto the lethal piece of glass.
Blood sprayed out of her ravaged throat, soaking Billy and Paul. The woman flailed, trying to get away even with her final breath. Billy held her until she stopped thrashing and left her there.
Unfortunately, this meant that the crazies had something to protect them from the glass and they came in unscathed now.
Three of them were in the room before any of the panic-stricken adults could act.
One of the two men lunged at Billy, his teeth tearing holes in the Scouser’s arms.
The second man jumped over the first bed and ran towards the unprotected child on the far bed.
The female crazy went for the chest of drawers.
Billy had his hands full with the man biting his arms.
‘I’ll get the one by the door,’ Paul said.
Janet nodded and slid over the bed towards the kid and his would-be tormentor.
The sunburnt woman in the black bikini was almost done moving the drawers away from the door by the time Paul got to her. She turned fast, hissing at him.
His bowels squirmed and he felt sure a few drops of piss had rolled down his leg.
Her fist caught him in the right eye, making his vision blur. On the plus side, it seemed to temporarily stop his tic.
Janet’s target turned, spit flying from his jaws. The whites of his eyes showed among threads of dark red. He swung a hard back-hand strike, mashing her lips into her teeth. She cried out and swung the lamp at him as hard as she could. The light-bulb shattered on his forehead, sending rivulets of red running down his face.
Billy pulled his arm out of the man’s mouth, tearing off a lump of skin with it. The wound stung like a bitch, but he knew there was no time to think about it; two more people were almost through the window. He grabbed the man’s long hair and used it to slam his head into the wall, creating a skull-sized dent in the plaster.
He slammed twice more, putting further dents and crimson splashes on the wall. The man was still moving, but Billy knew he didn’t have time to finish him.
Paul’s lamp connected with the woman, but the blow glanced off her shoulder without doing any real damage. She shot forwards, her head meeting his nose in a spectacular display of blood and pain. He was stunned and struggled
to see what was going on. The attack for which he held a protective arm across his face never came.
Janet brought her knee up hard into the man’s stomach. Foul-smelling air whooshed out of him. She found picturing Paul’s secretary gave her strikes extra power. While she had him hurt, she brought the lamp down on the back of his neck, execution-style. He slumped forwards, blood spilling out of his mouth.
The sound of two more pairs of feet hitting the floor just inside the window interrupted her victory celebrations.
When Paul’s vision cleared, he realised why the woman wasn’t attacking him; she was busy moving the drawers away from the door. He cursed and ran at her, but it was too late.
Billy saw her intention at roughly the same time and he screamed in dismay as the chef tipped the chest of drawers over and shoved his way into the room.
‘We’re gonna have to leg it, mate,’ Billy said, shepherding Paul towards the bathroom. Janet and the kid were already shuffling their way towards the room.
Billy slammed his head into the girl’s face, knocking her to the floor. He ran, but her hand grabbed his ankle and pulled him down.
‘Shit,’ he cried as he hit the floor.
Paul started to run back for him, but Billy bellowed for him to get into the bathroom where Janet and Sam already waited in relative safety.
‘We’ll have to go out of the window,’ Janet told the child, trying her best to keep the panic out of her voice. He nodded, his face tear-streaked and white.
Billy kicked the girl in the face, knocking one of her teeth out. She let out a cry of rage and moved forwards. The huge, blood-drenched chef loomed over Billy. He knew he was going to die in this room if he didn’t escape before the chef reached him.
The only problem was that the girl was lying on his legs, hugging them like she’d just completed a successful rugby tackle. She wasn’t doing anything aggressive, just seemed to be holding him for the chef. Her grip was tight enough to put strain on his tendons.
He squirmed, but she had him tight. Jolting upright, he threw a punch at her, but only grazed her skull. She looked up at him, a grin etched into her features.
The chef moved forward, the sounds of his footsteps sending shivers racing down Billy’s spine.
He knew he was fucked if the chef got close enough to use his deadly blades.
Two more people lurched through the door. They waited behind the chef, like he was in charge.
Another crazy dived in through the window, concussing herself on the edge of the bed.
Billy wriggled, but his movements seemed to only tighten the girl’s hold on him.
Her teeth sunk into his bare leg, making him cry out. The chef laughed. The sound was like nails being scraped down a blackboard.
The chef dived forwards, his immense weight crushing Billy’s chest as he landed. Slaver poured from his lower lip as he took in Billy’s horrified expression. He savoured the torment on his victim’s face for a second – Billy had been terrified of knives ever since his best mate had been stabbed seven times and left for dead outside school – then brought the knife in his right hand onto Billy’s cheek. Grinning like a lunatic, he traced the blade around Billy’s face, marking a trail but not drawing blood.
Then he grabbed Billy’s loose eye with his left hand and severed the optic nerve with the knife. Billy screamed and flailed. The chef laughed, as did the others in the room. The chef again started tracing the knife around Billy’s face, this time applying a little pressure to score the flesh. While he did this, Billy heard an angry cry from one of the watching nutjobs.
Janet ran in and slammed the lamp into the chef’s head. The chef rolled to the side, clutching his face. Billy arched his back and rolled with the chef. His right hand caught the chef’s knife hand as it came up, meeting it mere inches from his face.
The girl holding Billy’s legs relinquished a little of her grip, allowing Billy to kick out at her. She grunted as his heel caught her in the throat.
The chef used his immense strength to force the knife towards Billy’s remaining eye. Janet dodged the flailing hands of one of the crazies and stomped on the chef’s head.
The blow was just hard enough to make him forget about stabbing Billy. Billy shot to his feet, aimed a kick at the chef’s head and shoved Janet towards the bathroom. He decked an old man with a wild haymaker then slammed the bathroom door behind him. The reprieve from the nightmare was only temporary – the flimsy lock wouldn’t last long.
Paul and Sam looked at them in disbelief, like they didn’t believe they had made it out of the bedroom. Billy shared their view.
The bathroom window was just large enough for the kid to make it through, but the adults were going to struggle.
‘We’re gonna have to smash it,’ Billy said.
The others turned their backs to the window while Billy wrapped a towel around his hand and punched a hole in the glass. He cleared the jagged edges from the frame, working fast because the bathroom door was already dented with a few fist-sized holes.
When the frame was clear, he hauled himself through the gap. The sunlight stung his eyes. He paused before he dropped to the floor, making sure there were no lurking lunatics, but it seemed they were all on their way into the room via the door.
Satisfied that the coast was relatively clear, Billy dropped. Sam didn’t hesitate, just climbed through and dropped into the bouncer’s arms.
Paul reasoned it was the very least he could do to insist Janet go out of the window first while he braced the door with his back. The flimsy thing shook beneath the hammering of the fists.
Janet had realised that she was stuck and she started to wail.
‘Just pull yourself through,’ Billy shouted up from beneath the window.
The door jolted in its frame again, throwing Paul forwards.
‘Come on, darling, we don’t have much time,’ Paul said.
Janet shot him a furious glare.
Paul moved off the door quickly when something sharp nicked his skin. A glance over his shoulder revealed the bloody tip of the chef’s knife poking through one of the holes in the door.
A fist crashed through the door next to the knife and a cry of rage echoed around the bathroom.
Janet wanted to move but she was trapped. Her mind was a whirlwind of terrified thoughts. Even the sight of the middle section of the door being ripped loose and a pair of blood-streaked faces peering in hungrily couldn’t shift her.
One of the hands in the hole grabbed for Paul, but he dodged back, grateful that he wasn’t wearing any loose clothing that could have been snagged.
He got into the bath and started pushing Janet through the hole. She cried out in pain and told him to get his hands off her but he knew they were both dead if she didn’t get out of the window.
He shoved as hard as he could, again lent extra power by the terror he felt. For a long few seconds he didn’t think she was going to go, then she shot out of the window like a cork out of a bottle.
He turned and saw the last remnants of the door get kicked into matchwood. Saw the grinning crazies jostling for position.
He had seen enough. He sprung onto the window sill and pulled himself through the window, feeling that he couldn’t move fast enough. A screw on the window frame scraped a hole in his leg, but then he was free.
He let out a cry of victory as he felt the sun blazing down upon him.
‘Let’s get moving,’ Billy said.
‘Where do we go?’ the kid said.
‘Try and get out of the complex,’ Paul said. ‘Hopefully it’s just our hotel that’s affected.’
They looked from side to side. Both directions looked quiet.
They didn’t have time to debate, as one of the smaller nutters was already on her way out of the window. They ran to their right, the sounds of destruction and death all around them.
THREE
Soon they came to wonder what lay in the opposite direction to which they’d ran, as there were appalling scenes wherev
er they looked.
The worst was a laughing, drooling man gripping a toddler by the legs and swinging it headfirst into the wooden wall of one of the apartment blocks.
Judging by the trails of blood and the limp way the child hung from his arms, the kid had been dead for some time.
Paul had to stop Billy going over to the man and stomping a hole in him.
‘Got a kid that age back home,’ he explained, his face a beetroot-coloured mask of rage.
They left the man to his hideous task and crept past him without being noticed.
As they turned the next corner, a screaming old man ran along the corridor, blood dripping down his neck and onto his clothes.
Paul almost went to help him, but pulled back into the shadows when Janet pointed out the grin on his face. Again he muttered a nervous thank you.
‘Next time I might let you go,’ she hissed under her breath.
The crazy old man paused as if he had heard them before turning and scanning the darkness where they hid.
Four hearts almost leapt out of their respective chests.
The old man crept towards them, squinting into the gloom. Up close they saw the gap-toothed grin, the insane look in his eyes and the way his blood-covered clothes clung to his body.
Paul tried not to move. He knew that the old man would find them if they moved or even breathed too loud. Sam had his hand over his own mouth to hide the noises of his breathing. The old man took a step forward, almost into the patch of shadow in which they hid. Paul was certain he could see them.
Billy tensed his right hand ready to swing at the old man.
After a second that seemed to last an eternity, they heard running footsteps at the other end of the corridor. The old man turned, started screaming, and sprinted after the running person.
‘Fucking hell, this is doing my heart no good,’ Billy said.
‘No, mine neither,’ Janet said.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Sam said, surprising them with the composure in his voice.
They checked around them and set off out into the corridor.
To their left, one of the apartment doors was open. They saw a young couple smearing themselves in the blood of a dismembered corpse. The coppery smell of blood drifted out of the room towards them. They all felt the urge to run, to get the horrendous assault on their senses out of the way, but they knew that the couple would hear them if they ran, so they crept past. Inch by heart-pounding inch, they crossed the doorway.