by David Moody
Another decaying foot pressed down on the small of his back, pushing his face closer to the foul stench beneath him. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on what he was about to do, his guts churning with nausea and fear. Try and get a little closer, he decided, then just go for it.
Webb slithered through the mud and grime until the ground dropped away slightly. He’d reached the top of a gradual low slope which had remained invisible until now, disguised by the number of bodies tightly packed around the building. The slope led directly to the wide double-door into the clubhouse. Taking a final deep breath of noxious-smelling, germ-ridden air, he hauled himself back up to his feet, knocking several cadavers down into the mud as he did so. Dripping with the odious, rotten slime, he lifted his baseball bat high and swung it around his head, hacking down a wide circle of disoriented creatures. Before any others could react he ran to the door, slipping and sliding precariously down the slope. For the moment it seemed to have worked, and it was immediately apparent why: in the fading light the dead could hardly see him. Their eyesight was poor and he looked almost the same as they did, just another indistinguishable gray blur. Camouflaged by the thick, sludgy layer of mud and decomposed human remains, he now wore the same gray-green-black uniform as the rest of them and had become virtually invisible. With the bodies so tightly packed and their footing so precarious, he knew that he suddenly had an unexpected few seconds of freedom to get into the building. Do it now, he told himself, his mind racing, before they realize.
Webb hammered the baseball bat down on the clubhouse door. It immediately began to splinter and crack but it held tight. He swung the bat again, bringing it right over his head and crashing down on the door. The nails sunk into the wood and he had to yank them out as he prepared to strike for a third time. He swung the bat back, ready to heave it forward again, then pulled it back over his head with all the remaining strength he could summon up. This time it hit the door with a dull thud, and he saw that a chunk of flesh had been torn off a body behind him.
He glanced back and saw that the farthest advanced cadavers were moving forward again, attracted by his sudden strong movements and the noise he was making. A large group of them were edging closer. It was impossible to see exactly how many but that didn’t matter. Many more were already following close behind. He shook the flesh off the end of the bat, heaved it back and swung it down again, this time with a loud grunt of effort and a satisfying crack as the top panel of the right-hand door gave way, leaving a large enough hole for him to be able to get his hand inside and force more of the wood away.
He could feel the first clawing fingers on his back now, then the deceptively soft impact of the first body crashing into him. Now working with a desperate, breathless speed he threw his bat down and pulled more of the wood away, enough for him to be able to shove his head and one arm through. It was virtually pitch-black inside the building and he could see nothing, but with his outstretched fingers he felt a wooden bar which had been carefully secured across the door—no doubt Martin’s typically pedantic workmanship. He anxiously yanked it out of the brackets which held it in place, then dropped it down.
Another corpse grabbed Webb’s shoulders, pulling him back. He allowed himself to be moved away for a fraction of a second, then shook himself free and ran back at the door. Despite the ground beneath his feet being greasy and covered with flesh and bone, he managed to build up enough velocity to hit the middle of the double-door with sufficient force to throw both sides of it open. Without stopping he ran into the darkness with arms outstretched, feeling his way through the shadowy building, not knowing where he was going.
Fighting with each other to get through the narrow gap, the first of hundreds of bodies followed Webb, the force of many more behind keeping them moving at a speed which almost matched his.
54
“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Harte protested, shoving a handful of food into his mouth. “You’ve never seen so many of them as there were out there today.”
Gordon shook his head and took a plate from Ginnie.
“And I don’t want to know either,” he said, sniffing at his food. “I saw more than enough, thank you. What’s this?”
“Some kind of stew,” Ginnie replied.
He poked at his food, stabbed his fork into a lump of something, then shoved it into his mouth and chewed it. Ginnie looked at his face expectantly. He nodded his appreciation and took another mouthful.
“Not bad,” he said, trying to remember when he’d last eaten warm food.
“Remember that night back at the flats when you did the cooking, Gord?” Harte asked, laughing. “Fuck me, what was it again?”
“Some vegetarian rubbish,” Lorna laughed.
“When was this?” Howard asked, struggling to see the others through the semidarkness. He sat just outside the main circle so that he could feed his dog without anyone complaining. All the others ever gave her were scraps, and after the way she’d fought today he thought she deserved more.
“We’d only been there a couple of weeks,” Lorna continued. “Most of us went out looking for food, but Gordon pulls the old dodgy-hip routine and decided we’d all be better off if he stayed behind.”
“I have got a dodgy hip,” he protested.
“When it suits you,” Caron mumbled.
“Anyway, he said he was going to cook a meal while we were all out, trying to make up for the fact that he was too scared to go out—”
“That’s not true,” he interrupted. “Honestly, Ginnie, it didn’t happen like that. We were just—”
“So we left him cooking dinner while we’re all outside risking our necks. Stupid bugger only went and fell asleep, then tried to convince us all that he hadn’t. Burned the whole bloody lot! You should have smelled the stench! We had to chuck those pans out. I swear, you could smell it over the bodies, it was that bad!”
“And we made you eat it, remember?” Harte chipped in.
“Stokes loved it,” Gordon answered back. “He wasn’t bothered. Bit of carbon never hurt anyone, he used to say.”
“Wasn’t the food that finished him off, though, was it?” Jas said quietly. The mention of Stokes and his sudden demise brought the conversation to an abrupt halt.
“You’re a bundle of laughs, you are.” Harte sighed, annoyed that the mood had been spoiled unnecessarily. “Why did you have to say that?”
For an awkward moment no one spoke, choosing instead to concentrate on their food and their own thoughts. Harte was glad of the increasing darkness of the early evening. It made avoiding eye contact a simple matter. He was happy that they’d gone outside for the right reasons today, and they’d achieved far more than they’d ever expected, but he’d have been lying if he’d said he didn’t regret what they’d done. They should have thought it through more carefully and involved the others from the start. Maybe Amir and Webb would still be alive if they’d planned things better. He didn’t feel any sympathy for Martin, who sat groaning a short distance away, his head bandaged up. Maybe they should have bandaged up his mouth too, Harte reckoned. That bloody man was becoming a liability.
Until Jas had mentioned Stokes, the mood in the hotel had been becoming more positive and upbeat than any of them could have expected. Look at what we’ve achieved, Gordon had told them all a short while earlier: hundreds, possibly even thousands of bodies destroyed, and the hotel’s defenses had unexpectedly been strengthened by Martin’s inability to safely drive the bus.
“Anybody want another drink?” Hollis asked, suddenly feeling uncomfortable and looking for a distraction.
“Get me another can please, Hollis,” Jas replied, his voice low as he thought about the helicopter and their missed opportunity today.
“And me,” Harte added.
“Wine,” Caron ordered.
“How much have you drunk today, Caron?” Lorna wondered.
“Have we got any wine left?”
“Think so, why?”
&
nbsp; “Because if there’s any left I haven’t drunk enough.”
Hollis got up and walked toward the bar, leaving the others laughing at the state the normally prim and proper Caron had allowed herself to get into. He’d only been gone a couple of seconds when the fragile silence in the rest of the hotel was interrupted by a loud crashing noise.
“What the hell was that?” Jas said suddenly, jumping up from his seat. “Was that you, Hollis?”
“Wasn’t me,” he shouted from the next room. “It was something out back.”
He put the bottle he’d just picked up back down on the bar and ran through to the kitchen. The noise seemed to have emanated from the back of the building. It wasn’t yet completely dark outside, but the interior of the hotel was filled with the typical shadow and gloom of a late winter afternoon, making it difficult to see details. He weaved around the equipment and supplies stacked up in the cluttered room, then stopped just short of the back door. There was something moving toward him. Something dragging itself along slowly. The smell of dead flesh filled the air. He picked up a carving knife from where it hung on the wall and raised it high, ready to slice the foul thing’s fucking head right off.
“Don’t…” it mumbled, breathing hard.
“Fuck me,” he shouted with surprise. “Christ almighty, it’s Webb! Quick, get some light in here.”
Harte, Gordon, and Lorna were there in seconds, Harte carrying a battery-operated lamp which he switched on, revealing the bedraggled survivor in his full bloody glory. He was covered in the gray mire through which he’d crawled, with only the occasional flash of clear skin visible through the muck. He was struggling to breathe, his legs heavy with effort. He managed a single lurching step forward then fell back against an oven, knocking a pile of pots and metal trays over, filling the room with an echoing cacophony of noise. Hollis grabbed his slime-covered arm to steady him, then led him back into the restaurant.
“Is he okay?” Ginnie asked.
Howard’s dog jumped up and began to sniff at Webb, who collapsed heavily onto the nearest chair. The dog cowered back and began to snarl. She let out a sudden bark and Howard immediately wrestled her away.
“It’s just Webb,” he said, trying to calm her down. “Just Webb…”
Webb looked at the faces gathered around him with wide, relieved eyes. He felt as if he’d had to run many times the actual distance he’d covered to get here. He never thought the time would come when he’d actually be pleased to see these people again. Even Lorna, Jas, and Hollis, whom he’d grown to hate with a vengeance, suddenly seemed like long-lost friends. Gordon passed him a bottle of water, which he drank from thirstily as the inevitable questioning began.
“What happened?” Jas asked. “We lost you.”
“Amir took a wrong turn,” he replied.
“You were supposed to drive around a field. For God’s sake, how can you take a wrong turn in a bloody empty space?” Harte immediately interrupted. Lorna nudged him to be quiet.
“He got confused by the bodies,” Webb explained. “Ended up on the golf course.”
“So why didn’t you turn back?”
“Couldn’t. Too many of them.”
“Where is Amir?”
He shook his head, and a brief moment of silence followed.
“How come you were gone for so long?” Jas asked.
“Car got stuck in a ditch,” he mumbled. “Couldn’t get Amir out. Think the crash killed him anyway. I did what you asked me to, though.”
“You blew up the car?”
He nodded.
“Where?”
“On the golf course.”
“With Amir in it?”
“He was already dead.”
“And you made sure of that,” Jas muttered under his breath. Hollis glared at him.
“Give him a break,” he said angrily. “You’re not helping.”
“Webb,” Howard asked, getting a little closer now that his dog had calmed down, “how exactly did you get back?”
Webb swigged more water and dropped the empty bottle on the floor.
“Ran,” he answered, still struggling to think straight.
“We know that,” Howard continued, his stomach suddenly twisting with nerves, “but which way did you run? Did you come back through the field and over the gate, or did you find another way through?”
Webb was shaking his head.
“No,” he replied, “came back across the golf course.”
“And how exactly did you get off the golf course and back into the grounds of the hotel?”
“Followed the music.”
“So you managed to reach the clubhouse?”
“Came through it. Broke in and got out the back way.”
Howard looked around. Had no one else realized what Webb was saying?
“What’s wrong, Howard?” Hollis asked. Howard simply shook his head, unable to answer for a second or two.
“If he came through the clubhouse…” he began to say.
The penny dropped.
“Shit,” Hollis said. He turned and ran out of the room and back through the kitchens. Lorna and Harte, who both now realized what was happening, followed close behind. Hollis was first to reach the back door. He flung it open and ran out onto the lawns behind the hotel complex.
Bodies. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of bodies were up ahead, steadily advancing through the gap in the fence that Martin had showed him days earlier. A huge, unstoppable wave of cold, dead flesh was now rolling relentlessly forward in their direction—enough decay to surround and swallow the entire hotel and everything in it and it was too late to stop it. There was no way they could hold back a crowd the size of which he’d seen out on the golf course yesterday morning.
“Oh, God,” Lorna said with her hand over her mouth. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Hollis looked at her but couldn’t answer. He couldn’t think straight. It was impossible for any of them to appreciate the scale of what was suddenly unfolding around them.
“Fuck,” Jas cursed as he rushed out into the open and pushed past the others. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where you going to go?” Hollis asked, still staring unblinking at the advancing dead.
“Anywhere,” he answered, already sprinting back indoors.
“No point running,” he shouted after him. “There’s no way out.”
“But we’ve got to do something,” Lorna pleaded, grabbing hold of his arm and dragging him back inside. “Come on!”
Hollis pulled himself free and ran a short distance farther away from the building, trying to gauge the true size of the crowd which was surging closer by the second. He was distracted by a sudden engine roar and flash of light as Jas came powering around the side of the building on his motorbike, desperately looking for an escape route. Their options were terrifyingly limited. Bodies still tripped and stumbled through the gap in the hedge, making it impossible to even consider trying to get out that way, and the crash wreckage at the front of the building had rendered the road away from the hotel useless too. He accelerated forward, driving in a wide arc as close as he dared get to the farthest advanced cadavers. They seemed to increase their speed as he approached, moving toward him to try and cut him off. These bodies showed none of the reluctance and caution that some corpses had exhibited before now. Did they now understand the huge advantage they had over the living? he wondered. They were marching forward like an unstoppable invading army. For a second he rode parallel with them as they stormed relentlessly ahead. They were hugely outnumbered—thousands of corpses for every single survivor. Jas turned and rode back toward the hotel, his muddy wheels leaving a dirty brown mark across the letter P from Hollis and Martin’s pathetic and now redundant cry for help.
“Block the door,” Harte shouted as Hollis pushed his way back inside.
“What with?” someone’s frightened voice shouted back from the shadows.
“Anything!” he screamed, and began to
drag whatever he could find in front of the door. Hollis helped him, the two of them pulling on the top of a tall freezer unit and bringing it crashing down. Its doors fell open, sending loose metal shelves and racks flying, filling the building with more noise.
“Got to block every entrance off down here,” Hollis said breathlessly, the clattering still ringing painfully in his ears.
“If we’re not getting out of here,” Harte asked, moving to one side so that Gordon and Ginnie could get past, “where are we going to go?”
“Need to stay by the supplies,” Hollis answered quickly. “Try and fortify the restaurant perhaps? Maybe the Steelbrooke Suite?”
Harte disappeared into the shadows. Hollis followed, ushering Howard and Caron out of the way. He sprinted toward the Steelbrooke Suite, pausing only to glance into the restaurant. Webb was still sitting exactly where they’d left him, staring into space. Martin sat two tables away, slumped forward with his bandaged head in his hands.
“Come on,” he yelled, “shift yourselves!”
Webb looked up but didn’t move. Jas ran back from the front of the hotel and bustled into Hollis, distracting him.
“Leave them,” he grunted, pushing his way toward the large conference room in the far corner of the building. “It’s all their fault.”
“You couldn’t find a way out, then?” Hollis shouted after him. Jas disappeared into the darkness without responding.
Inside the Steelbrooke Suite, Lorna had already begun to pile tables and chairs against the doors and glass walls to strengthen them. Ginnie and Gordon were bringing in whatever food they could find and stacking it in the corner. Howard’s dog rushed across the room at a ferocious speed, its pads and claws skidding on the parquet flooring, then she began to bark and howl furiously at the windows, pacing up and down beside the two glazed walls.