by Russ Watts
“You smell smoke?” asked Neale.
Bashar nodded. “Yeah. I guess the stairwell is okay but some of the lower floors are on fire. Nothing to put the fires out now.”
Neale stared at the fire door to the nineteenth floor. There was a faint groan on the other side.
“What about the people? You think they’re all gone? What if some of them need help?”
Bashar squeezed his fingers around his cleaver. It had become a part of him now, like an extension of his body. “There’s no time, Neale. We can’t do anything for them now.” Bashar began to ascend the stairs. The others had already gone around the corner out of sight. “We really do need to hurry. I want to talk to my wife. I want Carrington to get us all the hell out of here. You want to go home, I know you do. Come on. Let’s go catch our ride.” Bashar saw the witch again flying outside the Shard. He could almost feel her inside his head. Did she know where they were? Could she sense their presence?
Neale pressed his hand against the fire door. “I know. I just feel bad, you know? I can’t help but think that some of the people behind these doors might not be as bad as we think. What if they just can’t get out? We might be able to save some of them, get them to the helicopter too. What if—?”
“Neale, she’s here.” Bashar blurted it out without thinking. What did it matter now anyway? “The witch. The woman who told us about Belphegor. She’s outside. I think she’s going to try to stop us getting on that helicopter.”
“Like hell she is. After what she did to Amelia I’m going to—”
Neale was suddenly thrust back down the stairwell as the door flew open. Zombies began pouring through it two at a time and Neale only just caught hold of the handrail to stop himself from falling down a whole flight of steps.
“Shit!” Neale yelled, as he stumbled backward. At least four or five zombies were already blocking his way and he rapidly thrust his knife into the eye socket of the nearest zombie.
“Neale, hurry!” Bashar shouted as he stepped back down and took on the first zombie. A woman in a black and white hotel uniform, her face mangled and her blouse ripped open reached her arms up for him. Bashar grabbed his cleaver and sliced through the woman’s slender wrists. The woman’s hands dropped to the floor, yet without missing a beat the zombie took another step up forcing Bashar back. With two bloody stumps thrust into his face, Bashar embedded the cleaver’s blade into the zombie’s skull. He yanked the cleaver free and pushed the zombie away. The woman reminded him of Nurtaj and he swallowed his sick fear down. This was too much. This couldn’t be happening, not now.
The groans of the dead rose and Bashar saw more of them filing into the stairwell, pushing Neale back down and blocking the way.
“Neale, you’ve got to—”
“Go, just go!” Neale rammed his knife into the temple of another zombie and took another step down. He looked up at Bashar, over the growing crowd of zombies. He knew there were more zombies coming up too. Soon he would be trapped. The stairwell offered little solutions, only problems. Neale looked solemnly at Bashar. “I’ll hold them off as long as I can. Just do one thing for me and kill that bitch.”
“No, wait there. Wait, Neale.” Bashar pushed at another dead woman advancing upon him and sliced through her scalp with his cleaver. She was replaced by a tall man who stepped over the dead zombie and clutched at Bashar, spurred on by the dead behind him and the swell of the crowed surged forward. Bashar was forced into retreating and Neale was barely visible below the dead.
“Bashar, just go.” Neale pushed his way through a couple of zombies, their hands groping and pulling at his clothes. He continued stabbing at them. “Get the chopper to come to me if you can. I’ll find a window. If not… then, good luck.”
Bashar swung the cleaver again and sent the dead man attacking him to hell. He was instantly replaced by another. The fire exit to the nineteenth floor was wide open now and the zombies were flooding through it, filling the stairwell with their ravaged bodies and moaning.
“Go!” Neale couldn’t force them back, couldn’t take them all on himself. The zombies were pouring into the stairwell. He nodded silently to Bashar and then turned and ran downward.
“Fuck,” Neale said under his breath. He ran with the sound of the dead at his back. He passed a couple of floors before he knew he had to stop. If he went any further he would just run right into the zombies coming up. With the zombies rapidly descending the stairs behind him Neale reached the fire door to the fifteenth floor and pulled it open. Cold air greeted him and he stepped inside, pulling the door shut.
Neale looked up and down the plain corridor. Thin grey carpet lined the floor and to his left was an open doorway. The room inside appeared to be some sort of meeting room. The chairs were set up in a horseshoe shape with a whiteboard at the end of the room covered in buzzwords. Against a smiley face, Neale noticed two words in block capitals that had been highlighted: ‘CUSTOMER SATISFACTION.’
“I guess I’ll have to file my complaint with the hotel manager later.” Neale jogged the other way to where the corridor opened out. He found himself in a kitchen area where there were a few tables in the middle of the room. There was a microwave and toaster on the sideboard with clean cups and plates stacked up neatly on the draining board. There was a clatter behind him and Neale spun around to see the fire door fly open.
“I don’t think much of your clientele.” Neale watched as the first zombie entered the corridor. A second swiftly followed, and then more. Neale looked down at the knife in his hand. It was all he had now between himself and death. He hoped that Tony and Bashar could get everyone to the helicopter. Even more than that, he hoped they had a chance to kill the witch. It was probably the only chance he had. He had seen how she controlled the dead, how she controlled the demon; Neale knew that even if they could defeat her, and thus relinquish her control over the dead, the zombies wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t simply cease to be and drop dead. Her army might fall, but the soldiers would keep fighting. Neale accepted for the first time that he probably wasn’t going to make it. Instead of feeling deflated though he felt liberated. He had nothing left to lose. And if he was going to die, then he was going to go with a bang. He would give it everything he had until there was no fight left in him. It occurred to him that if he forced all the zombies to follow him, then none would follow Bashar up to the others. He could buy them a bit more time if the dead were preoccupied with him.
Neale grabbed the nearest cup and smashed it against the wall He picked up another and threw it across the room where it smashed on the floor.
“Come on then you motherfuckers. This way!” Neale saw the first few zombies turn and stumble toward him. The narrow corridor filled up quickly, creating a long queue of zombies all shoving to get to him first. “Yeah, that’s right. Bring all your friends.” Neale smiled and grabbed the toaster. He flung it and watched as it struck the zombie at the head of the line. It bounced harmlessly off the man’s shoulder. “Make yourself at home. Free upgrades for everyone!”
Neale ran away from the zombies into an office. It was a modern open-plan layout with computer terminals in pods spread over a large part of the floor. Thin beige blinds hung limply by the windows and posters of cats over motivational quotes had been stuck to the spaces in between the pods.
‘HANG IN THERE.’
“I’ll try,” said Neale, as he cast his eyes quickly around the workspace. The office was empty. Whoever worked here had left, or perhaps no one had even made it in. As Neale ventured further inside he called out but nobody answered. If anyone had been working here this morning they were long gone. “You’re not going to get many reservations with that sort of slack attitude.”
Neale looked for clues as to where he might be able to hide, or another stairwell, but there was nothing except banks of silent telephones and blank monitors. There was nowhere to go and nowhere else to run.
As he advanced through the desks he noticed that most of the windows had been blown
out. He could smell smoke and aviation fuel, and as he got closer to the outer wall he began to see London take shape. The upper levels of the tall buildings on the horizon poked through the fog and there were white lines scratched across the night sky high above. Neale smiled when he saw the sky. The moon glowed above the rising fog but he didn’t care how cold it was. It had been a long day and the sight of the open sky was enough to give him pause to think. Today would go down in history one way or another. He was part of that. He had fought and played his own part, and nobody could take that away from him. He didn’t have a family to worry about, only himself. He had been able to coast along for too long now. Maybe what had happened had brought out the best in him? Having responsibility forced on him had made him realise perhaps he had been missing out. He had helped get Bashar, Tony and the others here. He was giving them as much time as he could and if he died in an empty office in the Shard where nobody would ever find his body, then he was damn well going to make sure he killed as many of those dead bastards as he could.
Across the fog Neale saw the demon. The tail of the black beast rose higher than Big Ben and the monster was currently trampling over Borough Market. It was moving its head from side to side, as if looking for something. Its two red eyes cut a path through the fog and Neale knew then it was real. Whatever it had been, whatever had summoned it here, was irrelevant now. It was real. The witch had finally brought it into the realm of humans, out of folklore and books, and crashing into reality with a big fucking bang. How many thousands had died to resurrect Belphegor? Neale sensed the demon was waiting to be unleashed, as if the city wasn’t enough. Perhaps the witch still had some sort of control over it. Perhaps she would never relinquish the reigns to which Belphegor was bridled. Neale turned away from the window. There was nothing more to be gained by looking at it.
“Right then,” said Neale, as he reached the edge of the room, “who’s first?”
The corridor was submerged in the zombies. Men and women filed in, their faces covered in horrible bites and cuts. Neale saw children amongst them too, but preferred not to think about what had happed to bring them here. He dragged a desk across the carpet and butted it up against another, creating a small barrier between him and them.
A roar from outside caused Neale to look out of the open window. In the swirling fog he saw the demon much closer now. The upper half of its body was above the fog, a swathe of black muscle and stretched sinews. The beast was coming directly for them. Neale shuddered as it let out another roar and its tail whipped around its head before slamming into the building before it, destroying in seconds what had been standing for a hundred years. Belphegor was levelling anything in its path, encouraged by the witch. In all its glory the demon was unlike anything he had ever seen or imagined. It looked otherworldly, its black skin shimmering in the moonlight, its almost human-like features oddly unsettling. He would’ve preferred a giant crocodile or a dinosaur to the demon.
Neale turned back to the zombies. “Looks like your boss is here. And I think he’s pissed.”
He watched as the dead began to swarm the office, banging clumsily past the desks and tripping over the wires. Their clamour for him rose as they grew closer and he swallowed nervously. There was nothing he could do about Belphegor, and there were a hundred zombies between him and the stairwell. Neale was cornered and he knew it. This would be his last fight. He didn’t know what the others could achieve, but he was fairly certain of the outcome he faced. He had killed the zombies before and he could kill again. He would kill again.
Backed literally into a corner he began to fight, plunging his knife in quick succession through as many heads as he could. The zombies swarmed into the office, their ranks swelled by the dead from the street.
Neale stabbed the first zombie, a woman in tight jeans and a navy tank top. As she fell another woman with long brown hair clawed at him and he put her down, her hazel eyes closing as she fell on top of the other woman. A large man wearing a tight T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Who ya gonna call?’ attacked him next, joined by a teenage boy at his side. Neale began ramming his knife into the dead flesh as fast as he could. A small child scuttled under the desk and grabbed his leg. Before it could sink its teeth into his leg Neale jabbed the knife down and into the boy’s soft skull. Neale felt sick as he pulled the knife out and the boy dropped dead. There were so many that the groans of the dead almost drowned out the roar of Belphegor at his back. The little boy’s body was stuck between the desks and Neale tried not to look at it as he continued to hold his position. A multitude of dead bodies began to cram into the office, their mouths yawning open, their rotten flesh and diseased bodies bringing large flies and a stench that made him want to gag.
I hope you kill the bitch, thought Neale. The dead belonged to her. This was her doing, her army. She needed stopping.
Neale climbed up onto the window ledge. The desk beneath him offered no protection but at least it had slowed down their approach. The zombies were slowly pushing the desks apart just from the sheer weight of their numbers. Neale could feel the cold wind at his back and wondered how far down it was. If he was overwhelmed he would grab onto as many as he could before he went. He remembered the couple on Shaftesbury Avenue and how the woman had fallen as the man tried to unsuccessfully defend them.
Neale looked out at the sea of bobbing heads, amazed at how many zombies had followed him in. It felt like all of London was staring at him. The Shard was surrounded and he knew he had played his last gig. Neale raised his knife and gritted his teeth.
“Good luck, Bashar.”
CHAPTER 21
The executive level of the hotel smelt awful. After entering through the fire exit Tony quickly realised there couldn’t be anyone alive. The corridor had led them to a small foyer where there were two lifts. Both doors were open and each lift was stained with crimson blood. One contained a handbag and a single shoe, whilst the other reeked of death. What at first sight had appeared to be a bundle of rags had turned out to be the remains of some unfortunate soul. In the foyer was a small welcome desk with the body of a young woman behind it, her face bludgeoned to oblivion.
“Where’s Neale?” asked Lulu, as Bashar caught up to them. She looked past him at the corridor, waiting for him to burst through the fire exit door and start cracking a joke about being able to join the mile-high club.
“He was cut off. The dead are here. All around.” Bashar hated himself, but there was nothing he could do. There was just too many. “He was forced back.”
Lulu frowned and walked away, saying nothing to Bashar. He wished she had laid into him. He would rather have suffered one of her putdowns than have silence.
“I’m sorry,” said Marama. “Really, I am. I liked him.”
“How’s Rad?” Bashar didn’t want to dwell on Neale’s fate. He could feel everyone looking at him, as if it was his fault.
“Hanging in there,” replied Marama. “Just.”
Rad was leaning up against the welcome desk with Carrington and Lissie either side of him. They all looked exhausted. Just as Bashar was about to query where Tony had gone, he came running out of a plain cream-coloured door behind the desk.
“It’s here. The chopper seems to be circling around to the left. We’ve got to find the access door to the landing pad.”
“You saw it?” Lissie looked at her husband hopefully.
Tony nodded. “There’s some sort of office back there. I could see it through the window. That’s not all I saw though. The fog is back and it’s bringing Belphegor with it. He’s close.”
“Christ,” said Lissie. She glanced at the dead body of the receptionist. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Any sign of the PM’s family” asked Bashar.
Tony turned up his nose. “No, and judging by the smell in here I don’t think we’re going to find her.”
“We should at least look,” interrupted Carrington. “It’s the least we can do for—”
“You go ahead.” Lu
lu began to march away from the foyer. “I’m going home. I’m getting on that chopper.”
“She’s right. We don’t have time to go looking for her, Carrington. Once they realise that she’s not here, that there’s nobody alive here, then they’ll be gone. That helicopter is your last chance of doing anything for this country.”
Marama and Lissie put an arm under Rad and helped him walk as they followed Lulu. Rad seemed to stumble as he walked, as if he was drunk, and Bashar could tell he didn’t have long left. Had the military got some answers? Could they help him? He hoped so as he joined Tony.
“I feel for Neale,” said Tony. “He didn’t deserve that.”
“I know,” bristled Bashar. “There was nothing I could do. The zombies just came at him so fast.”
They filed past door after door, all closed. Lulu led them on the search for an exit, until she found an open doorway. The double doors with the hotel’s insignia inscribed into the wood were wide open, and the room inside was like an airport lounge. Small tables and recliners, armchairs and a bookshelf lined with fashionable magazines were spread out around a central bar. A figure was slumped over the bar, blood dripping from its forehead. Several broken glasses adorned the bar and a half bottle of expensive whiskey was leaking brown liquid into the thick carpet. Carrington scooped it up and raised the neck of the bottle to his lips.
“Well, no point wasting it,” he said, before taking several large gulps.
It’s like Neale is still with us, thought Bashar as he watched Carrington drink.
The room had huge floor-to-ceiling windows that revealed London, or what was left of it. Lulu approached the windows and looked past her reflection to the city below. “Holy crap.”
Belphegor’s red eyes stood out like beacons, penetrating the smoke and haze. Vast amounts of the city had been trampled underneath the demon’s huge feet and the rest seemed to be burning. To the right she could see the landing pad for the helicopter. It jutted out from the hotel and the chopper was hovering right above it, lowering itself gently. Whilst the landing pad hadn’t been designed for military vehicles, it looked like they would be able to squeeze on. Lulu looked back to Belphegor. It was almost as if the beast knew. It had seen the chopper and was heading right for the Shard.