by Ryan Casey
“Which coast?” Claudia asked. In all of the commotion, she hadn’t even thought to ask where she was.
“Wow, you really were lost at sea, weren’t you? Morecambe. Morecambe Bay. Not the most scenic place in the world, but it does the trick.”
“Was it Preston you’re from, did you say?” Smith asked.
Claudia nodded. “Also not the most scenic place in the world but—”
“Home,” Mike cut in, overcutting Claudia’s words. “I know. I used to live down in Lancaster. You’re lucky you got to stay in Preston as long as you did. Lancaster was overrun within a day. Still no word on what caused this thing? No whisperings or rumours?”
This disappointed Claudia. She’d been hoping to ask the same question. “No, we—”
“That’s what Anna was finding out,” Chloë said, looking around the lobby at the decor.
“Anna?” Mike asked.
Claudia cleared her throat and nodded. “A…a woman from our old group. She—she was a doctor. She was looking into the possibility that a flu vaccine caused all this.”
Mike raised his eyebrows.
“A flu vaccine,” Smith said, fidgeting with his smudged, cheap-looking tie. “Well that’s a new one.”
Claudia paused. “How…how long have you lot been…together?”
Mike looked at Smith nervously. Karen stared at her hands, resting on the table in front of her.
“We…Some of us left another group. Others we met more recently.”
“Why did you leave the other group?” Chloë asked, growing in her annoyingly perceptive confidence. “Were they not nice people?”
Mike waited again for a few seconds. Smiled. “We had a few differences. We moved on.”
The metal door at the back of the hotel lobby opened. Claudia turned around and saw Seth standing by it. He was smiling, but not in that creepy manner he had earlier.
“Got a room sorted?” Mike asked.
“Yup,” Seth said. “Fourth floor. Room four.”
“Well,” Mike said, holding his hand out to Chloë, and then to Claudia. “Again, I’m sorry about how you wound up here. But we can’t be too careful. Now we’ve had a little chat, I think we’re all comfortable with you staying. So room four on the fourth floor is yours as long as you want it. Might have to go on a few supply runs into town every now and then, so—”
“I love supply runs,” Chloë said, her face lighting up. “I missed them on the boat.”
Mike laughed and paused. He scruffed Chloë’s greasy hair. “She really is something, isn’t she?”
Claudia smiled. You have no idea, she wanted to say.
She took hold of her daughter’s hand again. The pair of them walked over to the metal door, which Seth propped open like the most unappealing doorman in the world, and then walked towards the staircase.
“There’s showers in all the fourth floor rooms. The water’s cold, but it’s as clean as it gets.”
The thought of washing in something other than the grimy saltwater of the boat was a treat in itself, it didn’t matter how cold it might be.
“You two rest up,” Mike said as they walked past Seth and into the darkness of the stairway. “If you want to talk, I’m on the third floor in room eight.”
“And I’m on your floor, room sixteen,” Karen called.
Smith and Seth didn’t volunteer their room numbers.
“Thanks,” Claudia said. She figured she could do with some actual rest on a proper bed. Made a nice change from the floor of the boat, or more recently, the cold rocks on the beach.
The pair of them walked up the stairs to the fourth floor, hand in hand.
“What do you think?” Claudia asked her daughter. She figured her daughter could pick up on stuff that adults couldn’t. Different age, different perspective, all that.
“I like them,” Chloë said. “Not the man with the spit on his face though. Or the other. I don’t like them.”
Claudia pushed open the door to the fourth floor. “I can second that,” she said.
“Mum, what’s ‘second that’ mean…?”
Claudia didn’t answer. Her stomach tensed. Because right in front of Chloë and her room, the dead-eyed bastard called Matt was standing there, keys on the end of his finger.
He didn’t look like room service.
Claudia gripped her daughter’s hand and walked down the clean, bright corridor towards Matt. She smiled at him as well as she could. As well as anybody could smile at somebody who’d held them captive. But shit—they’d held Riley and Ted captive when they’d first got to the Chinese Restaurant back in Barton. Was this any different, really?
Claudia reached for the keys from Matt’s hand, but he snapped them away and stared at her right in her face. His eyes danced down her chest, then further down, then right back up again.
“Mike might trust you,” Matt said, slipping the key into the door and twisting it. “But I tek a bit more impressin.”
He opened the door but held his arm in front of it.
“We’ll just go inside,” Claudia said, her cheeks burning, her hand around Chloë’s sweating.
“I’m keepin an eye on you,” he whispered into Claudia’s ear as she passed. His breath was hot and sticky.
Claudia entered the room and looked back at Matt, who peered at her with bloodshot eyes.
“I’m sure you will,” she said.
She took the key from his hand and closed the door, locking and locking again, just in case.
Then, she turned around to the room, with its two double beds, view of the seafront and a large en suite bathroom, and she let out a sigh.
“Home sweet home,” she said.
She kind of believed it, too.
Chapter Two
The remaining few hours of daylight in the abandoned Draca Hotel were uneventful. Which was obviously a huge relief to Claudia.
First off, she took a shower. The water was cold—not freezing, but not warm either—and it had a metallic tang to it, but just feeling fresh water run down her skin was unbelievable. After she’d finished, she rubbed away the excess sweat and grease from her body, combed her hair, then laid back on the soft sheets of the bed closest to the window as Chloë took a shower herself.
She stared outside the window as she lay on the bed. The front promenade area of Morecambe Bay was deafeningly quiet. She couldn’t even hear any noises downstairs, not even from Mike or Karen or the others. It was amazing, how a place like this was still standing, running away on portable generators. It was good shelter for the cold winter months. Not ideal—a little central heating wouldn’t have gone amiss—but it was as close to a good shelter as they were going to get. Claudia just had to accept that.
After Chloë had showered and the pair of them had relaxed, they went back down to the lobby area—which was being used as a dining area, a games area, and a whatever else area—and they ate some more food. More beans for Claudia. More Ben & Jerry’s for Chloë. Judging by the little smile on her daughter’s face, Claudia figured Chloë could very easily settle into life around here.
After eating, the group chatted some more. Karen and Keith spoke about their families, the people they’d lost, the people that were unaccounted for. The details were irrelevant and buzzed over Claudia’s head—everybody had lost somebody. Loss had become a universal emotion all of a sudden. Even people who had grown hardened to loss couldn’t have prepared themselves for death to take a grip in the way it had.
It was when Claudia and Chloë were preparing to head on up to bed for a good night’s sleep when mention of the other group first slipped into conversation.
It was Smith who dropped the words in. He was talking with Matt about the supply run that Seth and he were on when they found Claudia and Chloë.
“Lucky we found them first,” Seth said, quiet and soft, but enough for Claudia to register that there was somebody else out there.
Direct competition.
“Who else would’ve found us?” she asked.
Seth looked at Mike. Matt’s shoulders tightened as he stared at a Monopoly board in front of him with sheer boredom in his glassy eyes.
Mike sighed. “Perhaps…perhaps another time. When you two have rested. Just as long as you know you’re safe.”
Claudia stared at Mike’s smiling, cool face, and as much as she wanted to press him for more information, she nodded.
She understood. She knew what this world was now: a world of the dead where the living fought for the best patch of land they could. She figured that Mike and his people would have had to have made some tough decisions in the past, but who hadn’t? Wasn’t the whole nature of making a tough decision another thing that these end times brought upon every survivor?
Claudia and Chloë headed up to bed. Chloë had begged for another spoonful of Ben & Jerry’s, but apparently they were going to have to go on another supply run because the battery for the freezer generator—or something mechanical like that, Claudia never really got all that stuff—was running low. But he told them not to worry. It would be handled. At least he was being up front and honest. Made a pleasant change to the way Ivan had done things back at the barracks.
Claudia and Chloë lay in their respective beds. A wind-up lamp that Karen had handed them lit up the room with a candle-light glow. Chloë was holding a bible that she’d found in the top drawer in her bedside cabinet.
“Mum, have you ever read this?” she asked, sitting back against her pillows and flicking the thin, dusty pages so they breezed into her face.
“I’ve…yeah,” Claudia said, turning further onto her side. Her eyes were getting droopy. She could sleep for days, she thought. But sleepers weren’t survivors. Another lesson she’d learned recently. “A long time ago. Back when I was at school.”
“Did you do hymns and stuff?” Chloë asked. She squinted at the small text of the Bible as if trying to get the incomprehensible words into her confused little head.
“Yeah,” Claudia said. “We did hymns. Hymns, prayers, songs. That’s because your mum here went to a church school.”
“Is Monkeys Eat Bananas a hymn?”
Claudia smiled, a little befuddled. “What…what do you mean, hun?”
Claudia closed the Bible shut and started to flick through it again, from the back this time. “It’s just the only songs we do at school are silly ones like Monkeys Eat Bananas. So I thought is that a hymn?”
Claudia laughed. It was a funny little thing, actually, this laugh. Made her feel warm inside. Reminded her of some of the daft questions and banter Chloë and her younger sister used to come out with before the world went to shit.
“No. Monkeys Eat Bananas is not a hymn. That’s because you aren’t at a church school. Barnacres can sing silly songs and get away with it.”
“Why did I not go to a church school like you?” Chloë asked.
Claudia sighed and dug her head further into her warm, soft pillow. If she squinted enough, she was back in the times before all of this sorry mess had started. Back before Pete disappeared. Back before Elizabeth lost her life. Back before Chloë lost her innocence.
Before Claudia could respond to her daughter, Chloë asked, staring at a page in the Bible, “Am I a bad person, Mum?”
Claudia’s words were frozen right there on the spot. “What you talkin’ about, Chloë?”
“Well the Bible says it’s bad to kill. And I…we’ve all killed the—the creatures. Riley killed creatures and—and you killed creatures. And me, I…well I killed Jill. She tried to bite me though. She tried so I—I had to push her away and hit her. It’s what I’d seen other people do. It’s—it’s what I—I—”
Chloë had worked herself up into a breathless state. Her eyes were drifting around the room as if her memories were floating around her head like videos, reminding her of all the things she’d seen, all the things she’d had to do.
“Hey,” Claudia said. She reached across the gap between the beds and stroked Chloë’s soft blonde hair. “You aren’t a bad person. Not one bit. Still that girl who got straight level fives in her SATs deep down. You…you’ve done stuff that you’ve had to do.”
Tears dripped down Chloë’s cheeks. “When I—what happened to—to Elizabeth. I was sad. I promise I was sad. I didn’t mean—”
“Sssh,” Claudia said. She rubbed her daughter’s shoulder now. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Chloë was clearly feeling the delayed shock of everything that had happened since the barracks. On the boat, she’d been strangely fine. But that was likely because it was a novelty. A completely unique place. Now, now they were relaxed, the thoughts and knowledge of what she’d done was catching up with her. At the end of the day, she was just a girl being forced to grow up in a world where the rules had suddenly shifted. And nobody knew what the hell the new rules were yet. Which was difficult to a species defined by—and reliant on—rules.
“Will we ever see Anna again?” Chloë asked. “And—and Riley and Pedro. Will we, Mum?”
Claudia stroked Chloë’s hair again then moved back under her bed sheets. If she wasn’t careful, she’d fall asleep mid-conversation, she was that tired. “I hope so. But they’re strong. They’re…wherever they are, they’re survivors.” Claudia didn’t really believe her own words. In her mind, the others from the boat were gone. Her and her daughter were the lucky ones. The survivors. And they’d found somewhere nice. Luck was definitely shining on their side right now.
“I hope we’ll see them at Christmas,” Chloë said, her voice drifting off into a yawn as Claudia’s eyes fluttered.
Christmas, Claudia thought. Less than two weeks away. How strange was that going to be?
“You…you get some sleep, my love,” Claudia said.
Chloë was already sleeping.
Claudia followed not long after.
The sun was beaming through the murky window when Claudia opened her eyes.
At first, her heart pounded. She felt knotting in her stomach. Chloë. The boat. The water, the darkness surrounding her. She looked around, gasping slightly.
Chloë was sat upright in her bed. She was holding the red bible and leafing through it, taking in all the words. She glanced briefly at her mum then smiled. “I’m readin’ the Bible,” she said. “It’s quite good in places.”
Claudia let out a breath of relief. She was okay. Chloë was okay. Everything was okay.
After a quick wash, the pair of them headed down to the lobby area, where Mike said there’d be some food for breakfast. They were greeted by Smith, who was tucking into some dry Sugar Puffs, and Keith, who seemed agitated about this sick woman called Shania who they hadn’t yet met.
“Mum, can I have some Sugar Puffs, too?” Chloë asked. “Ages since I had them.”
“Course,” Claudia said, holding Matt’s steely gaze. He didn’t scare her or intimidate her. He just creeped her out a bit. But that was fine, really. She’d dealt with enough creeps before the end times to be fazed by them in the new times. This place was safe.
As long as she locked her door at night.
“Going on a run into town today,” a bellowing voice said as Claudia and Chloë tucked into their cereal. It was Mike. He looked taller today for some reason. His hair was shiny. He’d even managed to get a shave in. Quite a handsome chap, all things considered. “Wondered if you wanted anything?”
“Can I come?” Chloë asked before Claudia had the chance to answer.
Mike laughed at this. “Erm, well maybe you’re better stayin’ just here little lady.” He scruffed up her hair—something she clearly didn’t like having recently just washed it. “But if there’s anything you’d—”
“There is,” Chloë said. She looked at her mum. Her pale cheeks blushed a little. “Just it’s…it’s a secret.”
Mike lowere
d down beside her and tapped at his ear lobe. “Whisper it into the ear of secrets. If it’s something you want, the ear of secrets will listen, and you’ll get it.”
Chloë stared at the side of Mike’s head with a frown on her forehead. Claudia was clearly more amused by Mike’s little joke than her daughter. “Tell him, Chlo. Don’t be rude.”
Chloë’s eyes lowered. “I…I would but. Well it really is a secret.”
Mike turned away. “Well, it’s up to your mum. But wouldn’t you rather stay here and chill? I know I would. Just a pity I—”
“Maybe them coming out isn’t such a bad idea.”
The voice came from the kitchen area to the right of one of the makeshift canteen tables to the right of the lobby where Claudia, Chloë and Mike were gathered.
It was Matt.
Mike’s smile that he’d been holding for Chloë’s amusement dropped. He looked around at Claudia and Chloë. “Excuse me a sec. Won’t be long.” He got up and walked over to Matt. The pair of them turned around, headed into the kitchen area. Looked like Mike was finally going to have a little chat to Matt once and for all.
“You need to watch what you say,” Claudia said, whispering at Chloë with accusation in her voice. “We’re guests here. Watch your manners.”
“We’re gonna have to go out some day,” Chloë said. “And it’s…it’s dangerous wherever we are so we might as well do stuff we have to do.”
“What is this big secret of yours, anyway? What’s the deal there?”
Chloe’s cheeks blushed again. Her eyes turned to the table.
“Don’t even know, do you? Just making it up so you can get out there and have a nosey—”
“Alright,” Mike said. Claudia hadn’t even noticed him re-enter the room. She certainly hadn’t expected him to be back in their presence so quickly.
Matt was beside him.
For only the third time since they’d met—the first being when he’d captured them, the second being when he’d tied them up—Matt had a genuine smile on his face.
“You can come with us if you want to. We’re only gonna go round some of the streets on the front that we know are clear. And even if the zombies do appear, we’ll be in safe territory. Easy escape route back to the hotel.”