by Jack Hunt
Hotel California
You might be wondering why we chose to settle for the night in the small town of North Creek being as it was only twenty minutes away from the skinheads we’d just enraged. Let me give you two reasons: First, it was not exactly a twenty-minute journey. Sure, on an ordinary day that’s about how long it would take but since this apocalypse kicked off, getting from A to B was a painful process, and in this case, it had taken us next to four hours. That’s right. Four hours to travel what should have taken us twenty minutes. Why? Well let me see, there was a horde that had cut off the road somewhere around the hamlet of North River. Then there was the blown-out tire, and then of course we had to deal with Eli’s vomit. Yeah, no one told me that the kid suffered from a severe case of motion sickness. I thought he was joking until he threw up in the cab. Yep, travel in the new world wasn’t easy. Which brings me to the second reason we stopped for the night — hunger. By the time we arrived in North Creek, a town considered to have the fourth smallest population of all the places in the area — a whopping 443 — we had discovered that Eli’s motion sickness wasn’t exactly that. I should have figured he’d eaten through our supplies. Now I’m not sure when, or how he did it without anyone seeing him, but he pulled it off, and the strange part, he said he didn’t remember. A lie? Probably. Amnesia was the oldest trick in the book. All I remember is Jamal going ape shit when he found nothing but wrappers and empty cans. Now to be fair to Eli, we hadn’t left Long Lake with a lot of supplies as we assumed we’d gather what we needed along the way, and of course we had devoured a good portion of it already.
Anyway as I look back now whether it took four hours or twenty we should have kept going.
Copperfield Inn Resort was a picturesque place that at one time probably catered to tourists riding the train from Saratoga up to North Creek; those looking for a break from the noise of city living, and the odd couple hoping to infuse their relationship with a spot of romance. Five minutes from Gore Mountain and the whitewater rafting excitement of the Hudson River, the Inn was located on Main Street among a wide selection of stores. North Creek itself was situated just off 28. In fact if you blinked or didn’t have a reason to go there, you could have easily driven right past the town without even knowing it existed. Maybe that was why we chose it.
By the time we pulled in front of the one-story white clapboard structure that looked more like a church than a hotel, the sun was waning behind the trees, our stomachs grumbled and both vehicles were running on fumes. Daniels, Nick, Ryland and I swept the perimeter before entering through the double doors that had been torn off the hinges.
To avoid attracting every dead sucker in town, we armed ourselves with blades and planned on doing some slicing and dicing if required. There were multiple vehicles outside, some with their doors ajar, most had blood on them. It didn’t matter what town we entered; the sight was always the same — death. Unless a body had been feasted upon or a person’s legs had been consumed, the dead were out there roaming for their next meal.
I gazed up at the place wondering what horrors lurked inside.
Now you’d think with a hotel that had thirty-one rooms, a fitness center, sauna, spa and two restaurants — Trappers Tavern and Lorenzo’s Mediterranean — folks in this town would have homed in on it and stripped the place bare or used it as some central safe zone for the community. Nope. That sucker was empty. Not a soul in sight — at least not the living kind. Everyone else remained outside just in case we had to make a swift getaway. I was beginning to get used to my pulse beating rapidly. Who needed coffee when a Z coming at your face provided plenty of jolt in your day?
I’d entered the tavern and was checking out the impressive selection of wine in what reminded me of a cigar humidor room. Glass doors encased hundreds of bottles. Spanish. French, Italian, Californian and Argentinian. I couldn’t believe my luck. Nearly all the stores we’d come across had been ransacked and looted in Long Lake and Tupper but not this place. Maybe it was because the town was in the middle of nowhere, maybe it was because the population was less than five hundred or maybe people didn’t think of sticking around. Either way, it made sense, you see, desperate individuals would have focused on grocery stores, pharmacies and their neighbors’ homes long before they would have thought about stepping inside a hotel. To most, hotels represented a place to sleep, not a vast storage facility containing fine wines, and good food. And yet that’s exactly what this place was. A gold mine. I tossed around a bottle of expensive French wine. I reached over to a thick wooden counter and grabbed up a corkscrew and stabbed the cork, giving it a firm twist and pull. It popped, and I took a swig. Oh, my God. My taste buds exploded. I wiped my hand over my lips and a smile danced on my face as I stepped back at the sight. Now this was the upside to a country in chaos. I continued to dig out a few more bottles, oblivious to the shuffling of feet heading my way. I’m not sure why I didn’t hear him. Perhaps it was the hum of the generator that was still going, or the hooting and hollering coming from Jamal after Nick discovered a freezer loaded with rib eye, T-Bone and prime rib steaks. All I know is it scared the shit out of me when he tripped over the chair I’d put in the way to alert me to the presence of anything creeping up on me. Yeah, admit it, you thought I was going to be caught off-guard. Not this guy. I’d seen enough horror movies to realize that you shouldn’t go off and have sex in the forest, be the one who volunteers to check the fuse box alone or go by the name Ty, who I might add always seems to be the first person to get killed.
The Z crashed, and I dropped the bottle of wine. The glass shattered and red liquid spread out like blood as I stumbled back reaching for my blade. There before me was the monstrosity. He was like a beached whale trying to get up off the floor. The chef had to be nearly two hundred and fifty pounds. He was still wearing his white chef uniform, okay; it wasn’t exactly white anymore but there were a few patches that made it clear what his position had been in life. I lunged forward before he clawed his way over and stuck that big knife deep into his ear canal, then staggered back, gazing at the bloody mess. With every encounter, unless pressed for time, I would wonder how they were infected. It was easy to see with him. A large chunk of his sinewy arm had been torn out, probably by one of his waiters. I imagined him reaching for a ticket, and a frenzied attack that ended with a dining room full of people going ballistic on each other.
Ryland didn’t have much luck himself. After stepping over the mess, I made my way down to the fitness center to find him pounding the crap out of some Barbie and Ken fitness freaks who were popping more veins than a steroid muscle freak. He caved in the guy’s skull with a forty-five pound dumbbell and had kept the female at bay by restraining her with resistance bands to a multi-gym.
“Yeah, I think he’s dead, dude.”
He lifted his eyes at me and backed away, panting hard. He bent over and put both hands on his knees to try calm down. “Here I am, doing a few reps after sweeping the room and these two come barreling in ready to take a chunk out of my ass. That guy was a barbarian. The strongest Z I’ve ever come across.”
“Why didn’t you just shoot them?”
“Now you tell me?” He shook his head. “I thought we were trying to be stealthy?”
“Yeah but not at the cost of losing our lives.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I’ll bear that in mind the next time I have a workout session.”
I gave him a hand up and we went over to the female Z who was thrashing around. Her milky white eyes bore into us, her mouth spewed black goo, and she had this rancid smell like she’d been running for a year without a shower.
“How the hell did you pull that off?” I asked referring to the bands.
“With great difficulty. Not bad, eh?” he said leaning against the fitness equipment and leaning in, stopping inches from her face. “Give us a kiss, love!” he said, before laughing. “Pity, really she had one hell of a body on her. Oh well.” He sighed before sinking his knife into her forehead. He wiped the
blade on her outfit before pointing to the outside. “You want to see something real sick?”
“I just did.”
“No, way better than this.”
“I’d prefer not.”
He didn’t listen but led me outside to where the full-size pool was. Now you know how swimming pools get that real funky look when they aren’t cleaned out? Well, add eight people who decided to chew down on each other and the aqua color of the pool had been turned into a dark red mess that resembled what looked like afterbirth — and the smell, well that was even worse. I placed a hand over my nose and observed those that were still alive bobbing around in the shallow end, moaning and gnashing their teeth. It was a grisly sight. One glance at the blood on the door on the way out, the stained towels on the pool chairs, and a trail of blood entering the pool, and I could imagine what had taken place. Sunbathing, trying to catch a few rays before returning to their room for some afternoon sex and then a nice dinner in the evening only to get blindsided by an infected pool boy bringing that margarita.
“Pretty insane, eh?” He wandered over and stabbed one in the head. “Don’t worry, they can’t get out of here, at least I don’t think they can.”
I turned and headed back inside. Ryland caught up with me, slamming the door behind us. “Hey wait up. So we gonna stay here the night?”
“If the rooms are clear, seems so. Nick wants a little one-on-one time with Brooke and we still need to get more gas before we can head out.”
He pulled on my arm. “I was meaning to talk to you but not in front of everyone.”
“What is it?”
“Finn. You trust him?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Uh maybe because he was one of those bald-headed freaks back there.”
I turned and continued towards the rooms on the first floor. “Was, is the word, Ryland. You saw the way he dealt with that Simon fella.”
“But still, are we going to take him with us?”
I turned in the hallway. “Why are you asking me?”
“Because you’ve had a say in every single hitchhiker we’ve picked up since Long Lake.”
I scoffed and entered room 3. Daniels was at the far end of the hall going through rooms 31 to 20, while Nick was dealing with 20 to 10. Ryland and I were meant to handle the rest but the amenities distracted us a little. As the door inched open, I could smell the same foul odor that was associated with those who’d suffered a horrible death. The light was flickering in the bathroom. I kept a tight grip on the machete and was trying my best to enter slowly when Ryland opened his mouth and continued droning on about how Finn gave him the creeps, and…
I turned to tell him to keep it down when a dead man lurched forward from around the wall that concealed two beds.
Ryland lunged forward looking like he was about to stab me in the face, I ducked to one side just in time for him to slice across the face of a nasty-looking Z. Unfortunately he didn’t inflict enough damage to kill it, only to knock it off balance. It latched on to me on the way down. I felt a hand on my jacket collar, then fell back. Ryland charged in bringing his boot down hard and crushing its face before it had a chance to nibble at my neck. I gagged at the smell and hauled myself up with a hand from Ryland.
He made a gesture with his fingers to his own eyes. “You gotta have eyes in the back of your head, mate,” he said brushing past me to explore the rest of the suite.
I brushed myself off. “Or someone who doesn’t distract me.”
He wasn’t paying any attention. The next words out of his mouth were, “Oohh, mini bar!”
As he started filling his pockets with mini bottles of alcohol, I approached the second double bed where the sheet was moving.I pulled back the bloody sheets to find a horrific sight. I stood there staring at a mother who had curled herself around her little boy. Both were dead and partially eaten by what I assumed was the guy whose noggin was now crushed. I put them out of their misery by jamming the tip of the machete through her eye, then taking the head off the kid. As I stood there, Ryland was oblivious. He was crouched down, and all that could be heard was the clinking of bottles.
“Jack Daniel’s, Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey, Absolut Vodka… chocolate bars, oh, nice, my favorite, Stella Artois.” He turned, holding it up while I wiped off the blade. Even after seeing what I’d just had to do, he wasn’t moved by it. “Which one do you want?”
I shook my head in disbelief.
But that’s what life was like now. We were killing more of these things by the hour. And what once shocked us, now became ordinary, mundane even.
I walked past him and without looking said, “Keep them. There is a room full of wine that’s where I’ll be heading this evening.” I wasn’t kidding either. Since the outbreak we had gone from zero to sixty without taking a break. I didn’t consider the five days inside that hospital a vacation. Recovery was a bitch and I could still feel pain in my shoulder every second of the day.
“Are you serious? You’ve been holding out on me all this time?”
As I came out of the room, farther down the hallway, Nick was holding a gun to a stranger’s head.
Chef De Jour
I thought I’d killed the chef, apparently not. Like I said, there were two restaurants in this place. The guy sniffling on the floor and begging for his life was the chef from Lorenzo’s. An upscale fine dining alternative that catered to those looking for something Mediterranean or Italian.
“I swear I’m telling the truth.”
His head was down, his palms high and his eyes were squeezed tight expecting a round to drill through his skull any second now.
“Nick. What’s going on?”
I hurried down the hallway, Ryland not far behind.
“I caught this guy about to knock me out with a bat.”
“I thought you were one of them. I’m sorry. I got nervous.”
Nick snorted. “How many other Zs have you seen carrying a knife?”
“How many what?”
“Zs.” He gave a confused look so Nick clarified. “Crawlers, biters, walking dead, skin-eaters, monsters? Have you had your head under a rock for the past week?’
“No, I know what you’re on about. I just hadn’t heard anyone refer to them like that.”
Daniels came out of a room and made his way down to find out what all the commotion was about. We’d assumed the place was empty because the lobby was clear, as were both restaurants and most of the guest rooms, however, we hadn’t checked the two-story Townhouse Suite which was the hotel’s top-of-the-line offering.
“Why are you here?” Daniels asked.
“Because my apartment building was overrun with those things.”
“Where have you been staying?”
“In the Townhouse Suite.” He made a gesture behind him. “I figured no one else was here so why not treat myself, right?”
“You a local in town?”
“Yeah but I work here in Lorenzo’s. I’m the chef.”
“Oh man, why didn’t you say so?” Ryland said in his thick British accent. “Up you get, mate. Nick, put the gun down.”
“Ryland?”
He shrugged. “He’s a chef. We’re hungry. Do the math.” Then he frowned. “Or is…” He shook his head. “My point is, he knows how to cook far better than those honeys out there.”
“Excuse me?” Brooke asked coming down the hallway with Alexa and the others.
“I meant…”
“I know what you meant. Believe me. If any cooking is being done around here, it’s being done by you,” Alexa said, backing up Brooke. I stifled a laugh.
The guy screwed up his face. “Who are you all?”
“I’d like to say the cavalry, but nope, just folks trying to survive,” I replied.
“What’s your name?” Daniels asked him.
“Julius Ramon.”
“Well Julius, is there anyone here?”
“Only my family.”
“Your family?”
&n
bsp; “Two kids, a wife, they’re in the suite.”
Daniels backed up a little and studied him. “Julius, how come you’ve been staying here but didn’t cover that front door? Or take care of the threats in the building?”
“I figured instead of trying to keep them out, I’d just leave two doors open. They go in one and out the other. We generally don’t venture over to the other side of the building unless it’s getting a few supplies from the kitchen.”
“And the doors?”
“I did that.”
“You tore the doors off?”
“Yeah, I removed them from their hinges, took some blood from the dead and smeared it over the outside of the building. I figured if anyone was left in town they would avoid the place if they saw a few… Zs?” he said casting a glance at Nick who gave a nod. “Yeah, that’s why I put a couple near the front desk, you know, ward off anyone else might come in.”
I admit it was kind of smart. Most folks would batten down the hatches, lock themselves away so that neither the living nor the dead could get at them, but he’d done the complete opposite. Opened it up, made it look like the place was overrun and in doing so had prevented others from entering. Which also explained why the wine room hadn’t been looted.
“Can I get up off my knees now?” Julius asked, his eyes darting from Nick to Daniels. “I’m sorry about the bat. Really. I didn’t know.”
“You can get up,” Nick said taking a few steps back and putting his gun away.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. We all looked each other and smiled.
“Famished,” Daniels replied.
Eli burped, a last reminder of where our supplies went. Julius beckoned us on, he wanted us to meet his family. I could tell he was nervous and probably inviting us simply to butter us up, just in case we had plans to kill him. Ryland and I and a few others continued through the rooms just to be sure that all the dead were dead before we joined them. Although Julius was confident in his little setup, we weren’t. Nick had Jamal back up one of the trucks to the front of the building so that no Zs could get in. All the rest of the doors in the place were closed. I’d admired Julius idea of giving Zs a through road but that came with a higher risk and that wasn’t one we were willing to take.