by Mark Gordon
Chapter 17
Extract from Sally’s journal:
“I’m alive. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing but it’s a start. The two days since I was attacked have been the worst of my life so I’ve decided to write things down to help me stay sane (do insane people know they’re insane, though?) I think somebody needs to record these events so it might as well be me. After all, I’ve suddenly become one of the best writers in the world (ha ha). Anyway, after I locked myself in the bathroom last night I think I might have passed out for a while. By the time I recovered, the person who tried to attack me (the second one, from Room 13) had stopped banging on my door. I felt awful. My head was pounding and I wanted to throw up, but I didn’t. I lay there without moving for about ten minutes, and listened carefully before I dared to leave the bathroom. There were no sounds from inside my hotel room, but I could hear some pretty scary stuff going on in the street – occasional muffled screams and less often the sound of breaking glass.
After a while I got brave enough to leave the bathroom and that’s when I realised my front door had not been broken in. This place turned out to be a good choice! I went out to the balcony to survey the street and what was below me was like some crazy scene by that Bosch guy who did those paintings of Hell. People were chasing each other and when a faster or stronger one caught a weak one, they would rip out their throat with their teeth then a whole gang of other ones would join in until the victim was just a pile of bones and gore. (FYI, I just read that back and it sounds like I was sitting out on that balcony watching a movie, scarfing down popcorn and having a great old time, but actually I was alternating between crying, covering my eyes and pissing my pants). Once I got the gist of what was going on down there, I didn’t need to see any more. I came back inside, lit a candle and tried to think. And this is what I thought – “You need a drink”! So (like a chip off the old block, hey mum?) I raided the minibar, drank everything I could find and passed out (again).
When I woke up the sun was streaming in through the balcony doors and everything was quiet. And guess what? I had a hangover. A Coke from the evil minibar seemed to help and I shuffled out to the balcony to see what I could see. First thing I noticed was that there were no savages roaming the streets like last night. The second thing was the bodies. If there was a bomb invented which would only blow up people and not buildings, this is what it would do. One floor below me on the street were scores of people that looked as if they’d been eaten by werewolves. Some were just skeletons. Some people were just bits of people. Crows were picking at fleshy scraps and a stray dog had his whole head inside someone’s torso and I could hear the wet slurping sounds it made as it gorged on the corpse. I ran to the bathroom and puked my guts up. Bloody hangover!
I didn’t know what to do next. I paced that little hotel room for a couple of hours and went out to the balcony occasionally to see if there were any “werewolves” about. There weren’t. Then I slept. Then I paced for another hour! I heard and saw nothing from outside. I wondered what had happened to the freak from Room 13. I was so absorbed with the mayhem last night I totally forgot that it was probably inside my building the whole time! Maybe he or she (it?) sat outside my door all night like a cat waiting for a mouse. I’m so glad I didn’t think of that last night, by the way.
By about one o’clock in the afternoon (I think! I had no way of telling the time – my phone was dead and only old people wore watches, right?) I had decided that the sickness that had put almost everyone to sleep, and then woken them up as crazed killers, had also made them nocturnal - like vampires. And that is why they weren’t on the street today. I felt that I could probably leave the hotel and try to find help if I wanted to. My analytical self knew that I wouldn’t encounter any of the creatures during the daylight, but my emotional self wouldn’t let me leave that room. So I stayed. I laid on the double bed and tried to concentrate on the “Old Man and the Sea”. I racked up eighty bucks on my bill (which I won’t be paying by the way, the service here is terrible) by eating all the snacks from the minibar. And I cried (a lot). I have to admit, though, I was pretty curious about what would happen that night when the sun went down. Would I see a repeat of last night’s chaos, and, more importantly, would I learn anything that might help me?
I thought about a lot of scary stuff too that afternoon. I am pretty realistic so I kind of knew I would never see my mother again. The fact that I could think about that so rationally made me think I was probably still in shock. The weight of being alone in the world with no family will hit me later I guess. My mother was a good person, but I was always second to her needs. My God, she used to tell me that! She looked after number one. She loved me I’m sure but … I don’t know … maybe she didn’t need me. Hey, if I’m brutally honest with myself, maybe I didn’t really need her either. I like being alone. That’s probably just as well now, cause it seems like there might only be about ten people left on the planet and I can’t see myself buddying up with those freaks from last night!
As the late afternoon turned to dusk I took up a vigil on the veranda. I wanted to see how soon these things appeared after sunset. It didn’t take long. The sun had disappeared behind the buildings across the street when the first one showed up. It was a guy, pretty tall and muscly, wearing business clothes – black trousers, white business shirt, tie hanging loosely around his neck. I looked at his feet. Sometime during the night his shoes had gone missing. He didn’t look too bothered though! I was sitting on the chair that I’d dragged from inside the room and only my eyes were peeping over the edge of the balcony. I didn’t want to be noticed, even though I felt I was pretty safe. I watched it walk out from a florist’s across the street. It had blood caked all over its’ face and his shirt was black with it. I watched it as he studied the street. I thought it was looking for something, and I was right. After a couple of minutes he spotted a second person come out of a restaurant a few doors down. Another guy. He looked like a chef from his outfit, but it was hard to tell because of all the blood and dirt on him. They looked at each other like cowboys in an old western. I think I heard one of them snarl at the other but I’m not sure. I waited for them to attack each other, but it never happened. What happened was this - a third person appeared on the street, a middle-aged woman in a nurse’s uniform. I don’t know where she came from because I was so intent on watching the other two. She didn’t have as much blood on her as the men, but I could see from the dark stain around her mouth that she had her fill last night too. She surveyed her surroundings (more like a frightened animal than a person) and then spotted the guys across the street. She froze as she stared them down. Then suddenly and simultaneously the two men went into action and sprinted straight for her, making little grunting sounds each time their feet hit the road. She tried to turn and run away but only got about five metres before the men pounced on her and killed her. Then it was feeding time. There was a lot of blood. Let’s just leave it at that.
Over the next couple of hours I got a pretty good idea of how these beasts functioned and it had certainly settled down a bit compared to previous night’s bedlam. There were fewer of them on the street for one thing (maybe some only ate every couple of days), and the violence seemed a little more deliberate (or maybe I was getting jaded). One thing that was pretty clear, though, was that the strong were dominant, the younger, quicker ones seemed to skirt around the edges and keep out of trouble and women who were of child-baring age (let’s say fifteen to forty?) were left alone to get on with their feeding, in most cases. In other words, the old, the very young and the weak became the victims of everybody else (a bit like high school ha ha). What I had witnessed over those couple of hours I knew would continue throughout the night. There was nothing more to learn.
I closed the balcony door and went to bed (no minibar tonight).
I love you mum.”