by David Moody
‘The fire escape,’ Barry answered.
‘Which is still clear, correct?’
‘As far as we know. Why, what are you thinking?’
‘Is the fire escape anywhere near the main staircase?’
‘Of course not,’ John interjected. ‘What would be the point of that? The fire escape needs to be on the other side of the building.’
‘My point exactly. The fire escape gives us a way of moving around the building that’s well away from the main staircase where we think all the bodies are.’
‘And there’s a good chance the bodies are still only on the staircase,’ Nick added, finally understanding where Paul was coming from. ‘Which means that if we’re careful we could still go out onto the landings and into the rooms.’
‘What’s the layout of a typical floor?’ Paul asked.
‘Just one U-shaped corridor,’ Barry answered. ‘Staircase in the middle, fire escape at either end I think.’
‘And when you first set yourself up here, did you clear the place out?’
‘I checked all the rooms for bodies and I took what I needed but—’
‘Did you take everything?’
‘No, I didn’t need to.’
‘So there’s your answer,’ Paul said, rocking back on his chair, almost looking down his nose at the others. ‘We go back down as far as we need to and grab what we can. Should keep us from starving to death for a few days longer. Delay the inevitable.’
‘But that’s all you’re going to do,’ Barry reminded him. ‘You’ll just be delaying what you know is going to happen anyway.’
‘He’s right, isn’t he?’ Doreen said. ‘It’s not going to change the fact that those bloody things will be up here with us in the next couple of days, is it? It’s not going to help us get away.’
‘No,’ Paul agreed, ‘it won’t. But it will give us a little time and space.’
‘To do what?’
‘To decide how we’re getting out of here and where we’re going to go.’
#
Eight thirty-five. Pitch black. Paul, Nick and Elizabeth crept down the fire escape staircase towards the lower floors of the hotel. Hunger, claustrophobia and fear had combined to deadly effect to kick-start their hastily considered, semi-improvised plan. The risks seemed to increase with every step of the descent. Paul had suggested they go all the way down then work their way back up, but they’d only made it as far as the seventeenth floor when he stopped.
‘What’s the matter?’ Elizabeth asked, immediately concerned.
‘I want to have a look.’
‘What for?’
‘What do you think?’
‘But you said…’
‘I know what I said. We know those things are on the stairs, but we don’t know for sure where else they are, do we?’
Paul moved to the door and gently pushed it open a fraction. He shone his torch out onto the landing.
‘Anything?’
‘Can’t see any movement,’ he replied, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘I’m going to have a look around.’
Without waiting for either of the others, Paul slipped out onto the landing. He switched off his torch, concerned that the light might attract unwanted attention, and then slowly moved down the hallway to the first corner. The layout, as far as he could see in the gloom, was pretty much as Barry had described: a long corridor with a right-angled right turn towards the central part of the building where, he presumed, he’d find the staircase and tens of thousands of rotting bodies. He moved closer and peered around the corner, holding his breath for fear of making any sound which might tip the balance and alert the dead to his presence. He couldn’t see anything. It was too dark.
Paul felt his way further along the wall and paused at the door to one of the hotel’s many bedrooms. Did he go inside? It would be worth having a quick look around the room before he going back to the other two waiting on the fire escape. He wanted to see the layout of a typical room so he could get a feel for what they were dealing with. How quickly would they be able to thoroughly check a room for food? What were they likely to find? Would there be a mini-bar or similar? Christ, he needed a drink, and his stomach started to growl at the thought of eating again.
Paul tried the handle. Damn thing was locked and it needed a swipe card. No surprise really. Barry had a few master cards which he’d taken from the bodies of cleaners and other staff. Elizabeth had one with her. He shoved the door again, hoping it would open. It didn’t matter. He’d go back to Elizabeth and…
Wait.
What was that?
He sensed movement up ahead. He felt something brush against his arm and he froze. He lifted his torch and switched it on. Ahead of him the whole corridor was packed with bodies, all of them oblivious to his presence until he’d started messing with the door.
‘Fucking hell,’ he mumbled as he tripped back away from the dead. Illuminated now and then by the unsteady light from his shaking torch, he saw that the corridor was filled with constantly shifting corpses which had spilled out from the staircase. Almost as one they began to move towards him. He ran back to the fire escape and hammered on the door. Elizabeth opened it slowly and he barged through, shoving her out of the way.
‘Move!’ he yelled, slamming the door shut behind him.
‘Bodies?’ she asked, already beginning to climb back up.
‘Fucking hundreds of them,’ he answered breathlessly. ‘It’s worse than we thought.’
He looked around for Nick but he’d already gone. He was way ahead of them both, on his way back to the top floor. Cowardly bastard. Paul made a mental note never to put himself in a position where he needed to rely on Nick for anything.
They pounded up the stairs, no longer concerned about the volume of noise they made, just desperate to get back to the Presidential Suite. ‘Wait a minute,’ Paul said, stopping Elizabeth in her tracks. Breathless, he shone his torch at the nearest fire door. Floor twenty-six. It was worth taking a chance to see if this floor was the same as the one ten floors below.
‘What are you doing?’ Elizabeth asked, almost too afraid to know.
‘According to John they haven’t reached this floor yet. We thought they were just filling the stairs, but there’s so bloody many of them they’re filling the entire building. We should check this level for food before we go back. We won’t have another chance.’
They slipped out through the fire door, leaving it propped open with a fire extinguisher, then moved slowly along the corridor to the first corner. Paul put his head around and shone the torch down its length.
‘Clear,’ he said, the relief in his voice obvious. ‘Stick to this end of the corridor and stay away from the stairs.’
The layout of floor twenty-six was different to floor seventeen. Here there were several large suites instead of many smaller rooms. They went into the nearest.
‘So what are we looking for?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Anything. Just make sure you split what you find into two piles. Keep one for us, then we’ll share the rest with the others.’
‘But that’s—’
‘—that’s completely fair. How many of those fuckers are here helping? If they want more they can come and get it themselves.’
He began to ransack the room.
#
A little under an hour later Elizabeth and Paul returned to the Presidential Suite, carrying with them almost the entire contents of the minibars of the suites on the floor immediately below. They’d found little in the way of any substantial food, but that didn’t matter. The others gratefully took what they were given and ate and drank quickly as Paul broke the bad news about what they’d seen on the lower levels.
‘Feels like a last supper, doesn’t it?’ Barry said quietly to no one in particular. He couldn’t see who was where. No one had lit any lamps this evening.
‘So what do we do next?’ John asked, sitting on his own a little way behind Barry. ‘We never decided. Do we just s
it here and wait for them, or do we run?’
‘Nick will run,’ Paul said, remembering how he’d left them on the fire escape. ‘You’re good at running, aren’t you Nick?’
‘Shut your fucking mouth,’ Nick said angrily, glad of the dark because he didn’t know how to react.
‘So what do we do?’ John asked again, desperate for someone to answer and give him something to cling onto.
‘Let’s just think about it logically, shall we,’ Barry suggested. ‘They’re still coming in through the front door, and they’re climbing the stairs because of the growing pressure of other corpses behind them. So what’s going to happen when they reach the top? They’re not going to turn back around and start heading for the ground floor again, are they?’
‘They’re going to keep coming,’ Paul said ominously. ‘They’ll spread out onto the landings like we saw downstairs.’
‘And even when there’s no more room on the landing up here,’ Barry continued, ‘they’ll still keep coming. Before we know it they’ll be up against our door and then, when the pressure gets too great, it’ll give and this place will be flooded.’
‘Lovely,’ Doreen mumbled.
‘So you don’t think we’ve got any chance?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘It’s like I said earlier,’ Barry replied, ‘what’s coming is coming. I think we’re all going to die, and the only choice left is how it happens. Now I don’t personally intend on being torn apart, but I also don’t like the idea of running either.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘Not sure yet. I haven’t decided.’
‘You don’t have long.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m running,’ Nick said.
‘You would,’ Paul said quickly. ‘But fair play, I’ll probably run too.’
‘What about you, Doreen?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘Too tired to run, too scared not to. We’ll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings, won’t we?’
#
Next morning. First light. John picked up his camera and walked across the landing to carry out his self-imposed daily duty and measure the progress of the dead. He walked out to the staircase and leant over the banister, then immediately pulled himself back again, no longer any need for cameras. They still had several flights of stairs left to climb, but he could now see the first few bodies. He ran back to tell the others.
‘How far?’ Elizabeth asked as he burst back into the room.
‘Not far.’
‘How long?’
‘Not long.’
‘More specific?’
‘Couple of hours.’
Doreen began to sob.
‘Shut up you silly cow,’ Nick barked at her with his usual lack of compassion. ‘All you’re going to do is bring them up here quicker with your stupid whining.’
‘So we just sit and wait?’ John asked.
‘That’s what I’m doing,’ a voice said from behind him, ‘but I’m not ready to die just yet.’ Barry emerged from his bedroom wearing a skirt and blouse, a blond wig, full make-up and his favourite high-heeled boots. He stormed into the main part of the suite with rediscovered confidence, completely at odds with the others who sat around dejectedly, each contemplating the dark decisions they would soon have to make. ‘I did a lot of thinking last night,’ he explained.
‘We can see that,’ Nick said.
‘And…?’ Paul pressed.
‘I wanted to know if I was wrong. I didn’t know if I’d been looking at everything the wrong way.’
‘And?’ Paul pressed again.
‘And, unfortunately, I think I’m right,’ he admitted. ‘In fact the more I think about it, the more I’ve come to realise our situation really is hopeless. I can’t see any obvious way out, and I’m not just talking about the hotel here, I’m talking about what’s left of our lives in general. Whatever we do, wherever we go, we’re fucked.’
‘Nice. Thanks for that.’
‘Seriously, just stop and think about it. I’m not being defeatist here, I’m just being honest. Whatever we decide to do, it’s going to be a struggle. We’re going to have to fight for absolutely everything, and that’s bloody stupid when you think there’s probably only a few people left. The world’s our oyster, but I don’t think we can have any of it. What does that say to you?’
Blank, confused looks. Silence.
‘It’s like you said,’ Elizabeth eventually mumbled. ‘We’re fucked.’
‘Exactly. There’s nothing any of us can do about it. We’re massively outnumbered and nowhere is safe. The only thing we have any control over now is what we do with the time we have left.’
‘But we don’t know how long that is,’ John protested.
‘We never have done,’ Barry argued. ‘Seems to me we can either spend our last few days and weeks hiding in the shadows out there, starving to death, running from place to place and freaking out every time someone farts…’
‘Or?’
‘Or we can stop trying so hard to survive and just let things happen naturally. Go out with a little dignity.’
‘You’re talking crap,’ Nick said.
‘Am I? Do you really think you’re supposed to survive all of this? There are some things that are bigger than us.’
‘Please don’t start talking about God and divine retribution and all that shite,’ John sighed. ‘I’ve given all of that up.’
Barry smiled and brushed away a stray wisp of long, blond hair. ‘That’s not what I’m talking about at all. What I’m saying is that whatever happened here was the twenty-first century equivalent of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.’
‘Now you’ve really lost me,’ Paul said.
‘This is our ice-age. This is our apocalypse. This is the end. We should just accept it and let nature take its course.’ Barry’s comments were met with silence. ‘Our problem is we’ve all fallen foul of the programme. We think we’re so bloody superior and we think the planet can’t go on without us. It’s part and parcel of the human condition. Truth is the world’s going to thrive without us here to keep screwing it up.’
‘The human condition?’ Nick said. ‘What the hell are you on about?’
‘I can’t think of a better way to put it. I was looking out of the window last night, watching birds flying from building to building…’
‘Fucking hell,’ Paul said, ‘he’s really lost it. I’ve long had my doubts about him but I think he’s finally lost it.’
‘I was watching the birds,’ Barry continued, ignoring him, ‘and I started thinking about the difference between us and the animals. Seems to me there’s one huge difference that doesn’t often get talked about.’ He paused to give the others opportunity to make a cheap joke or to hit him with another insult but, unusually, they didn’t. ‘The difference is we know that we’re eventually going to die and they don’t. Animals strut about the place thinking they’re going to go on forever, we spend our lives worrying about how they’re going to end. That’s what I mean when I talk about the human condition. We’re too busy thinking about death to enjoy life.’
There followed an unusually long moment of quiet contemplation and reflection which was only disturbed when John remembered the bodies on the stairs. ‘That’s all well and good,’ he said anxiously, ‘but what are you going to do now? Are you going to wait for the bodies to get in here, or are you going to kill yourself and get it over with?’
‘Neither.’
‘What then?’
‘I’m going to sit in here and relax, and what will be will be. I’m going to try and slow the bodies down, then let nature take its course.’
‘Are you high? How are you going to slow them down?’
‘Well we’ve already established that they’ll keep moving forward until they can’t go any further, so instead of letting them stop here on this floor where we are, let’s help them keep going.’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘Channel them
up onto the roof.’
‘And?’
‘And that’s it. What they do up there is their business. If they stay true to form they’ll follow each other up, one after another, until there’s no room left. Then they’ll either come back down, which I doubt, or they’ll end up pushing each other over the edge.’
‘Brilliant,’ Paul said, grinning with genuine enthusiasm. ‘That’s absolutely fucking brilliant!’
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A man in a dress was suggesting they spend their last few days on Earth sitting in a luxury hotel suite watching three week old corpses falling off the roof.
‘It’s got to be worth a go, hasn’t it?’ Barry said.
‘Okay,’ Paul agreed, surprising even himself. ‘Let’s do it.’
#
The roof of the building was accessed via a final narrow flight of steps. With the bodies continuing to make unsteady progress towards them, Paul and Barry crept up towards the door that would lead them outside.
‘It’s locked,’ Barry grunted.
‘Don’t you have the key? You’ve got keys to everywhere else.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Smash it open then.’
‘What about the noise?’ he instinctively asked. Paul looked down the staircase behind them, back into the heart of the building. Even from here he could see the constant movement of the dead.
‘Bit late to worry about that.’
With limited space to manoeuvre his coiffured bulk, Barry held onto a handrail, swung back, then crashed his shoulder against the door. It rattled in its frame but didn’t open. Another couple of attempts were equally unsuccessful.
‘Let me,’ Paul said, pushing Barry to one side. ‘You’re not wearing the right shoes for breaking and entering.’
He launched a barrage of well aimed kicks at the lock. The wood began to splinter and crack. Another few heavy blows and it flew open, allowing the two men to scramble out onto the roof. A phenomenal wind threatened to knock them off their feet.
‘Jesus,’ Paul said, having to shout to make himself heard, almost enjoying the volume of his voice. ‘Bit blustery.’
Barry didn’t answer. He was busy trying to wedge the door open. For the bodies to be able to keep moving forward, the way out onto the roof would need to remain unobstructed. Paul picked up a strip of metal lying on the asphalt and used it as a prop.