by R J Murray
Due to the season, there were a number of decorations hanging from the ceiling and attached to the walls. In the main lounge was a ten-foot-tall tree, dressed beautifully in red, green and gold ornaments. Beneath those branches was a pile of boxes wrapped in bright, shiny paper with ribbons and bows attached.
Alongside the four who had found them, there were two more couples that she had yet to meet properly. The majority of the staff and guests had left when things went to hell and while two of them had returned, bloody and bearing horrendous tales of what was happening out in the larger world, those few remaining had determined it was the safer option.
She was greeted warmly as she descended the stairs and she waved politely to Mandy and Elise. Derrick gave her a steady look before returning to his conversation with two men she’d not met. She approached slowly, hesitant of interrupting.
“No!”
The greying hair of the man who spoke was thinning on top and his narrow face and close-set eyes made it look as though he were suspicious of whoever he was looking at. He was slim with narrow shoulders and hips and long, elegant fingers that he waved in front of his face as he spoke. His voice was slightly high pitched, almost effeminate.
“The radio is working!” he insisted hotly. “There’s just no-one out there speaking. Same with the sat-phones. They work fine but there’s no response from any communications satellite.”
“So they’re still down,” the other man said.
He wore thin-rimmed spectacles that he constantly pushed up his nose when they slipped and several days stubble coated his chin. His copper coloured hair was parted on the left and appeared to have the habit of falling down over his eyes.
With a slight paunch and hunched shoulders, she guessed he likely worked in a job that kept him at a desk all day. She’d seen the same posture from others she worked with as they approached middle age and spent more time in the office and less at the gym.
“Yes,” the first said. “Whatever those silly prats did to the communications network, they did it well.”
He glanced up and caught sight of Terri, a slight frown forming on his face. She nodded politely and he sniffed as he turned away and put one hand proprietarily on the younger man's leg. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“These are Martin and Alan,” Mandy said and smirked, her red painted lips turning up at the corners as laughter filled her eyes. “Ignore Martin. He’s the jealous type.”
“Better that than a whore, dear,” the grey haired man said snidely and Mandy just laughed as Alan looked embarrassed.
“We were just discussing the phones,” Elise said in her quiet voice.
“No luck, huh?”
“Fraid not,” Alan said. “They’re down and unless someone’s actively working to get them up again, they’re down for good.”
“What about internet?”
“TV, Internet, everything,” he said. “The CB radios should work if anyone in range is listening but we’ve had no luck with them either.”
Derrick, the large man who had been driving the truck when they came to hers and Clive’s rescue, wasn’t big like Clive was. He was fat, almost grotesquely so. His thick beard was unkempt, his clothes unwashed and there was an aroma about him that was just unpleasant yet she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.
He lifted his mug of hot chocolate and watched her silently, beady eyes glittering in the early morning sunlight in a way that made her decidedly uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure what nationality he was as he hadn’t yet spoken a word in her presence. With a grunt, he set down his mug and Terri cleared her throat uncomfortably.
“So what exactly’s the plan?” she asked. “I mean, this is all kind’a new to us. Day before yesterday we were enjoying the last day of our holiday and our biggest problem was the car not working.”
“We tried to get out,” Alan said. “Back when it first started. Got as far as the motorway and it all turned to hell.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, dropping into one of the chairs in the lounge area and leaning forward to listen.
“The motorway was packed with cars,” he said with a shrug. “Which was fine but a lot of the people in them were sick.”
“It was carnage when they turned,” Martin said with a shudder. “They were like wild beasts.”
“I thought they turned slowly,” Terri said, a look of confusion crossing her face. “Jacob said they were sick for weeks and then went into a coma.”
“Seems to be different sometimes,” Mandy said. “From what I saw in town, it started nearly two months ago. People got sick slowly and passed it on to others while everyone thought it was the flu. When people started collapsing, they realised it was more than that.”
She sighed and leant back in her chair, fingers tapping a staccato beat on her leg as her eyes grew distant, mind going back to a place she didn’t really want to re-visit.
“Those first ones. They woke up… different. Hungry and angry. Some of those they bit got ill for a day or two and then succumbed themselves. When they woke up and bit someone, that time till they changed got shorter.”
“Every time,” she continued. “The person bitten needed less time to change to one of those things until now. Best we can tell, if you get infected, you have a few hours at best, sometimes it’s less than minutes.”
Terri stared at her, mouth open as she sought for something to say. It sounded like a bad horror movie and for the life of her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were playing a huge prank on her.
“I have to get home,” she said. “My family…”
“Dead, probably,” Derrick said. His voice was rough and laced with anger, his words driven home with a dispassionate care for her feelings.
“I don’t believe that,” she said and he shrugged.
“Where is your home?” Mandy asked with a tone of quiet compassion.
“England, up north,” she said. “A small town near Leeds.”
“There are no planes flying,” she nodded towards the sky through the wide windows. “In the last three weeks, we’ve seen none.”
“The channel tunnel or a ferry then,” Terri said defiantly.
“We are nearly one thousand kilometres from Calais,” Mandy said slowly. “Further, if you go around Paris, and you will need to avoid the major cities. All will be chaos there.”
“Switzerland is closer,” Martin said with a sneer. “We’ll be heading there when the snow clears in the spring. Up in the mountains, those things won’t survive.”
“And until then?” Terri challenged. “What? Stay here?”
“We have food, water from a natural spring and plenty of guns for hunting,” he said with a shrug. “We can survive the winter easily.”
“I can’t do that,” she said softly. “We need to get back. We have family, friends… lives.”
“All gone now,” Martin said dismissively.
“No. I don’t believe that. The police… soldiers, they’ll be doing something.”
“Indeed they will,” Jacob said as he strode into the room.
His hooded jacket was coated with snow that was gently melting and he carried a heavy rifle under one arm. He flashed a smile at Terri as he approached them and carefully laid his rifle down before holding his hands out towards the fire.
“What do you mean?” Martin asked. “You can’t think there’s any chance…”
“There’s always a chance, my lad,” Jacob said without looking at him.
There was something in his voice as he spoke and Terri had the sudden and distinct impression that there was no love lost between the two of them.
“But we saw what it was like,” he protested. “There was no help out there when people were turning and tearing others apart.”
“I saw a helicopter,” Jacob said softly. “In the distance but it was military.”
“How do you know?”
“I used to fly them, lad,” Jacob said, finally turning his head to look at the man.
“I know what type it was just as I know it was headed somewhere in a hurry. They are still out there, fighting back.”
“We just don’t know about it because there’s no communications,” Mandy agreed, much to the annoyance of Martin.
“So what do you propose?” Martin asked, a sneer in his voice. “What are our options?”
“We secure this place,” he said. “Settle in for the winter and when the snows clear we head out and see if anyone survived. If they manage to get communications back before then, we’ll have a better idea.”
“But I have family I need to check are safe,” Terri protested.
“And if they’re in England they have the best military in the world looking after them,” Jacob said. “Give it some time. There’s a town full of infected people far too close for my liking and they’ll be getting hungry. You don’t want to be their next meal.”
Chapter 10
Clive sniffed loudly and wiped at his nose with the back of one gloved hand. He held the rifle steady with the other, the butt pressed into his hip and the barrel pointed to the sky as he scanned the trees around them.
Jacob swore softly to himself as he finished his task and took a careful step back from the thin wire he’d strung between two trees. He watched it for a moment, before releasing his breath and nodding.
“That’s gonna hold,” he said. “Was worried there for a minute.”
“How many more?” Clive asked.
His breath misted the air every time he spoke and his fingers were numb despite his gloves. The temperature seemed to have dropped overnight and he didn’t need to glance at the grey sky above to know more snow was on its way.
“Four,” Jacob replied. He lifted his pack and slung it over his shoulder before picking up his rifle. “Four more and done, lad.”
Clive grunted sourly. He’d spent an hour arguing with Terri and she’d finally agreed that they needed to stay for a while at least. She was understandably concerned for her family and he worried over his friends, but he worried more about keeping her safe.
He followed the older man through the trees. They walked slowly, one eye on the path and one on the surrounding trees. Neither spoke as they listened for the sounds of movement.
It had been a long, tense morning. Following Jacob around through the forest that surrounded the lodge as he set traps and tripwires that would sound an alarm should the infected come near. While he did that, Clive was there to help but mainly to watch for any dangers while the other man was busy.
They stopped a short distance away from the last wire and Jacob began setting another. Strung between two trees, if anyone walked through it then something would happen. What that was, Clive didn’t know and when he’d asked, the older man had just grinned wickedly.
“Wha…” he looked around as a rustle came from the trees nearby.
He licked dry lips as he gripped the rifle tight in both hands, eyes scanning the trees for the danger he was sure was coming. His finger tightened on the trigger as the sound came again and he raised the rifle to his shoulder.
“Don’t shoot for God’s sake!” Jacob said. He watched the younger man with a grin and shook his head. “It’s a bird.”
“You sure?” he asked and grimaced as the other man gave him a hard look. “Sorry. Of course, you are.”
“Relax a bit, son,” Jacob said.
“How the hell can you say that?”
The older man shrugged as he finished what he was doing with the wire and reached for his rifle. He pushed himself to his feet and brushed the loose snow from his jeans. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Clive and he exhaled softly.
“Get to my age and you realise a few things.”
“Like what?”
“That you can’t change what’s coming. You can prepare for it, you can be as ready as you can be to face it, but you can’t stop it. So why worry?”
“Because I don’t want to get my face eaten off,” he said as Jacob chuckled and led the way between the trees.
They walked in silence a little way, the only sound the crunch of their boots on the snow and the occasional call of a bird, though they were few and far between. Jacob stopped and rested his rifle against a tree before unzipping his jeans.
“Need to drain the tank,” he muttered as he turned towards the tree and away from Clive.
“If you gotta go, you gotta go.”
“Hah! At my age, that’s truer than you know.”
Clive chuckled dutifully and waited with as much patience as he could muster. His boots were not as waterproof as he’d been promised when he bought them and with a dark smile, he realised his chance of returning them and getting a refund was long gone.
When Jacob finished and zipped back up, he retrieved his rifle and they set off again. They’d made a wide circuit of the forest around the lodge and had strung a number of traps along the way. Mostly towards the south-west as the older man had explained that was the direction any infected people were most likely to come.
The town was back that way and to get there by car, there was a winding road that rose and fell with the rumpled landscape of the mountainside. That was covered in snow aside from the wide tracks made by the truck as it had driven them in the day before.
Clive had worried that the sick people in the town would follow those tracks but Jacob had chuckled and dismissed his concerns. He was certain that there wasn’t enough intelligence left for them to follow tracks through the snow.
To the east and west were holiday cabins, ski and hunting lodges and a number of resorts. They would have food and people waiting much as Clive and the others were, but with more snow on the way and no means to contact them, it wasn’t worth the risk while they still had a stockpile of food in the lodge.
“How well do you know the others?” Clive asked as Jacob set another of his traps.
“Spoken to a few of them before,” he said. “Recognise a couple from other hunting trips. Why?”
“Just wondering. Looks like we might be stuck here a while.”
“Aye, well, true enough I guess.” He paused and sucked on his teeth as a thought occurred and added, “the two young un’s are a handful, mind.”
“Who?”
“There’s a couple of yanks. College kids who came out here to do some snowboarding. They were caught up in the mess in town and managed to make it out here. Not done much but drink and pester the girls since they got her though.”
“Great.”
“Ah, they’re not so bad. They jus…”
He trailed off, his head tilting to the side as he listened.
“What?”
“Shh,” he hissed as he raised his rifle to his shoulder.
He peered off through the trees and hunched over before setting off at a brisk walk. Clive watched him a moment and then followed, keeping low and careful not to avoid brushing the branches of the trees as he passed. Even so, he was aware of every sound he made while Jacob seemed to fly over the snow, barely making a noise.
Clive almost tripped over the other man as he rounded a tree and found him kneeling in the snow, rifle raised to his shoulder as he stared through the scope, muttering softly to himself. He watched Jacob for several seconds before raising his own borrowed rifle and looking through the sights.
There was nothing but white as far as he could see. From the edge of the treeline where they knelt, all the way down the steep mountainside, there was little but snow and rock with the occasional lone tree clinging on for dear life.
“I see them,” Jacob muttered and looked up. He reached out his hand to gently guide Clive’s rifle to the right. “There. You see em?”
“Yeah. Crap!”
He lowered the rifle, turning to look at Jacob, his face pale and worry in his eyes. The older man nodded and patted him gently on the arm then gestured for him to follow as he hurried away through the trees.
“What do we do?” Clive asked, keeping his voice low.
The older man chewed his lip as he walked,
eyes distant as he thought. He didn’t immediately answer and Clive wasn’t sure if that was because he hadn’t heard his question or didn’t have an answer. Finally, though, he spoke.
“We gather everyone together and we hide. I counted fifty of them and more were coming behind them.”
“From the town?”
“Maybe. Doesn’t matter. More than we can handle.”
“Why are they still alive! The cold should have killed them off.”
“I don’t know, son. All I can say is that if they know we’re here, they’ll come for us. Our best hope is that they pass us by.”
“Aye, well, I’m fine with…”
He cut off abruptly as the loud crack of a gunshot sounded from up ahead, then another. He looked wide-eyed at Jacob before saying, “Terri!” and setting off running towards the lodge.
In the distance, the guttural howls of the infected rose into the air.
Chapter 11
“Why is it?” Terri asked as she scrubbed at a stubborn stain on a plate. “That the world starts to end and all of a sudden, women are back doing the kitchen work while the men go out hunting and shit?”
Elise gave her a shy smile and glanced back over her shoulder to see if anyone was close enough to hear. She leaned close and said, “Mandy doesn’t have to do it.”
Terri flashed a smile and looked over at the bar where Mandy was sipping at a glass of vodka while painting her nails a dark crimson. She shook her head and laughed softly.
“Probably scared she’ll break a nail.”
The young woman smiled, though it seemed a little nervous to Terri, but then Elise seemed like a nervous sort of person to her. She flinched often when she heard a door slam and while she’d not said anything about what had happened, it was clear something had.
She went back to scrubbing the plates. It had seemed like an innocent suggestion when first mentioned. They were all stuck there together and so some semblance of order needed to be maintained. Everyone had to contribute if they wanted to survive. It had seemed like a such a good idea.