Disintegration

54

“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Harte protested, shoving a handful of food into his mouth. “You’ve never seen so many of them as there were out there today.”

Gordon shook his head and took a plate from Ginnie.

“And I don’t want to know either,” he said, sniffing at his food. “I saw more than enough, thank you. What’s this?”

“Some kind of stew,” Ginnie replied.

He poked at his food, stabbed his fork into a lump of something, then shoved it into his mouth and chewed it. Ginnie looked at his face expectantly. He nodded his appreciation and took another mouthful.

“Not bad,” he said, trying to remember when he’d last eaten warm food.

“Remember that night back at the flats when you did the cooking, Gord?” Harte asked, laughing. “Fuck me, what was it again?”

“Some vegetarian rubbish,” Lorna laughed.

“When was this?” Howard asked, struggling to see the others through the semidarkness. He sat just outside the main circle so that he could feed his dog without anyone complaining. All the others ever gave her were scraps, and after the way she’d fought today he thought she deserved more.

“We’d only been there a couple of weeks,” Lorna continued. “Most of us went out looking for food, but Gordon pulls the old dodgy-hip routine and decided we’d all be better off if he stayed behind.”

“I have got a dodgy hip,” he protested.

“When it suits you,” Caron mumbled.

“Anyway, he said he was going to cook a meal while we were all out, trying to make up for the fact that he was too scared to go out—”

“That’s not true,” he interrupted. “Honestly, Ginnie, it didn’t happen like that. We were just—”

“So we left him cooking dinner while we’re all outside risking our necks. Stupid bugger only went and fell asleep, then tried to convince us all that he hadn’t. Burned the whole bloody lot! You should have smelled the stench! We had to chuck those pans out. I swear, you could smell it over the bodies, it was that bad!”

“And we made you eat it, remember?” Harte chipped in.

“Stokes loved it,” Gordon answered back. “He wasn’t bothered. Bit of carbon never hurt anyone, he used to say.”

“Wasn’t the food that finished him off, though, was it?” Jas said quietly. The mention of Stokes and his sudden demise brought the conversation to an abrupt halt.

“You’re a bundle of laughs, you are.” Harte sighed, annoyed that the mood had been spoiled unnecessarily. “Why did you have to say that?”

For an awkward moment no one spoke, choosing instead to concentrate on their food and their own thoughts. Harte was glad of the increasing darkness of the early evening. It made avoiding eye contact a simple matter. He was happy that they’d gone outside for the right reasons today, and they’d achieved far more than they’d ever expected, but he’d have been lying if he’d said he didn’t regret what they’d done. They should have thought it through more carefully and involved the others from the start. Maybe Amir and Webb would still be alive if they’d planned things better. He didn’t feel any sympathy for Martin, who sat groaning a short distance away, his head bandaged up. Maybe they should have bandaged up his mouth too, Harte reckoned. That bloody man was becoming a liability.

Until Jas had mentioned Stokes, the mood in the hotel had been becoming more positive and upbeat than any of them could have expected. Look at what we’ve achieved, Gordon had told them all a short while earlier: hundreds, possibly even thousands of bodies destroyed, and the hotel’s defenses had unexpectedly been strengthened by Martin’s inability to safely drive the bus.

“Anybody want another drink?” Hollis asked, suddenly feeling uncomfortable and looking for a distraction.

“Get me another can please, Hollis,” Jas replied, his voice low as he thought about the helicopter and their missed opportunity today.

“And me,” Harte added.

“Wine,” Caron ordered.

“How much have you drunk today, Caron?” Lorna wondered.

“Have we got any wine left?”

“Think so, why?”

“Because if there’s any left I haven’t drunk enough.”

Hollis got up and walked toward the bar, leaving the others laughing at the state the normally prim and proper Caron had allowed herself to get into. He’d only been gone a couple of seconds when the fragile silence in the rest of the hotel was interrupted by a loud crashing noise.

“What the hell was that?” Jas said suddenly, jumping up from his seat. “Was that you, Hollis?”

“Wasn’t me,” he shouted from the next room. “It was something out back.”

He put the bottle he’d just picked up back down on the bar and ran through to the kitchen. The noise seemed to have emanated from the back of the building. It wasn’t yet completely dark outside, but the interior of the hotel was filled with the typical shadow and gloom of a late winter afternoon, making it difficult to see details. He weaved around the equipment and supplies stacked up in the cluttered room, then stopped just short of the back door. There was something moving toward him. Something dragging itself along slowly. The smell of dead flesh filled the air. He picked up a carving knife from where it hung on the wall and raised it high, ready to slice the foul thing’s fucking head right off.

“Don’t…” it mumbled, breathing hard.

“Fuck me,” he shouted with surprise. “Christ almighty, it’s Webb! Quick, get some light in here.”

Harte, Gordon, and Lorna were there in seconds, Harte carrying a battery-operated lamp which he switched on, revealing the bedraggled survivor in his full bloody glory. He was covered in the gray mire through which he’d crawled, with only the occasional flash of clear skin visible through the muck. He was struggling to breathe, his legs heavy with effort. He managed a single lurching step forward then fell back against an oven, knocking a pile of pots and metal trays over, filling the room with an echoing cacophony of noise. Hollis grabbed his slime-covered arm to steady him, then led him back into the restaurant.

“Is he okay?” Ginnie asked.

Howard’s dog jumped up and began to sniff at Webb, who collapsed heavily onto the nearest chair. The dog cowered back and began to snarl. She let out a sudden bark and Howard immediately wrestled her away.

“It’s just Webb,” he said, trying to calm her down. “Just Webb…”

Webb looked at the faces gathered around him with wide, relieved eyes. He felt as if he’d had to run many times the actual distance he’d covered to get here. He never thought the time would come when he’d actually be pleased to see these people again. Even Lorna, Jas, and Hollis, whom he’d grown to hate with a vengeance, suddenly seemed like long-lost friends. Gordon passed him a bottle of water, which he drank from thirstily as the inevitable questioning began.

“What happened?” Jas asked. “We lost you.”

“Amir took a wrong turn,” he replied.

“You were supposed to drive around a field. For God’s sake, how can you take a wrong turn in a bloody empty space?” Harte immediately interrupted. Lorna nudged him to be quiet.

“He got confused by the bodies,” Webb explained. “Ended up on the golf course.”

“So why didn’t you turn back?”

“Couldn’t. Too many of them.”

“Where is Amir?”

He shook his head, and a brief moment of silence followed.

“How come you were gone for so long?” Jas asked.

“Car got stuck in a ditch,” he mumbled. “Couldn’t get Amir out. Think the crash killed him anyway. I did what you asked me to, though.”

“You blew up the car?”

He nodded.

“Where?”

“On the golf course.”

“With Amir in it?”

“He was already dead.”

“And you made sure of that,” Jas muttered under his breath. Hollis glared at him.

“Give him a break,” he said angrily. “You’re not helping.”

“Webb,” Howard asked, getting a little closer now that his dog had calmed down, “how exactly did you get back?”

Webb swigged more water and dropped the empty bottle on the floor.

“Ran,” he answered, still struggling to think straight.

“We know that,” Howard continued, his stomach suddenly twisting with nerves, “but which way did you run? Did you come back through the field and over the gate, or did you find another way through?”

Webb was shaking his head.

“No,” he replied, “came back across the golf course.”

“And how exactly did you get off the golf course and back into the grounds of the hotel?”

“Followed the music.”

“So you managed to reach the clubhouse?”

“Came through it. Broke in and got out the back way.”

Howard looked around. Had no one else realized what Webb was saying?

“What’s wrong, Howard?” Hollis asked. Howard simply shook his head, unable to answer for a second or two.

“If he came through the clubhouse…” he began to say.

The penny dropped.

“Shit,” Hollis said. He turned and ran out of the room and back through the kitchens. Lorna and Harte, who both now realized what was happening, followed close behind. Hollis was first to reach the back door. He flung it open and ran out onto the lawns behind the hotel complex.

Bodies. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of bodies were up ahead, steadily advancing through the gap in the fence that Martin had showed him days earlier. A huge, unstoppable wave of cold, dead flesh was now rolling relentlessly forward in their direction—enough decay to surround and swallow the entire hotel and everything in it and it was too late to stop it. There was no way they could hold back a crowd the size of which he’d seen out on the golf course yesterday morning.

“Oh, God,” Lorna said with her hand over her mouth. “What the hell are we going to do?”

Hollis looked at her but couldn’t answer. He couldn’t think straight. It was impossible for any of them to appreciate the scale of what was suddenly unfolding around them.

“Fuck,” Jas cursed as he rushed out into the open and pushed past the others. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Where you going to go?” Hollis asked, still staring unblinking at the advancing dead.

“Anywhere,” he answered, already sprinting back indoors.

“No point running,” he shouted after him. “There’s no way out.”

“But we’ve got to do something,” Lorna pleaded, grabbing hold of his arm and dragging him back inside. “Come on!”

Hollis pulled himself free and ran a short distance farther away from the building, trying to gauge the true size of the crowd which was surging closer by the second. He was distracted by a sudden engine roar and flash of light as Jas came powering around the side of the building on his motorbike, desperately looking for an escape route. Their options were terrifyingly limited. Bodies still tripped and stumbled through the gap in the hedge, making it impossible to even consider trying to get out that way, and the crash wreckage at the front of the building had rendered the road away from the hotel useless too. He accelerated forward, driving in a wide arc as close as he dared get to the farthest advanced cadavers. They seemed to increase their speed as he approached, moving toward him to try and cut him off. These bodies showed none of the reluctance and caution that some corpses had exhibited before now. Did they now understand the huge advantage they had over the living? he wondered. They were marching forward like an unstoppable invading army. For a second he rode parallel with them as they stormed relentlessly ahead. They were hugely outnumbered—thousands of corpses for every single survivor. Jas turned and rode back toward the hotel, his muddy wheels leaving a dirty brown mark across the letter P from Hollis and Martin’s pathetic and now redundant cry for help.

“Block the door,” Harte shouted as Hollis pushed his way back inside.

“What with?” someone’s frightened voice shouted back from the shadows.

“Anything!” he screamed, and began to drag whatever he could find in front of the door. Hollis helped him, the two of them pulling on the top of a tall freezer unit and bringing it crashing down. Its doors fell open, sending loose metal shelves and racks flying, filling the building with more noise.

“Got to block every entrance off down here,” Hollis said breathlessly, the clattering still ringing painfully in his ears.

“If we’re not getting out of here,” Harte asked, moving to one side so that Gordon and Ginnie could get past, “where are we going to go?”

“Need to stay by the supplies,” Hollis answered quickly. “Try and fortify the restaurant perhaps? Maybe the Steelbrooke Suite?”

Harte disappeared into the shadows. Hollis followed, ushering Howard and Caron out of the way. He sprinted toward the Steelbrooke Suite, pausing only to glance into the restaurant. Webb was still sitting exactly where they’d left him, staring into space. Martin sat two tables away, slumped forward with his bandaged head in his hands.

“Come on,” he yelled, “shift yourselves!”

Webb looked up but didn’t move. Jas ran back from the front of the hotel and bustled into Hollis, distracting him.

“Leave them,” he grunted, pushing his way toward the large conference room in the far corner of the building. “It’s all their fault.”

“You couldn’t find a way out, then?” Hollis shouted after him. Jas disappeared into the darkness without responding.

Inside the Steelbrooke Suite, Lorna had already begun to pile tables and chairs against the doors and glass walls to strengthen them. Ginnie and Gordon were bringing in whatever food they could find and stacking it in the corner. Howard’s dog rushed across the room at a ferocious speed, its pads and claws skidding on the parquet flooring, then she began to bark and howl furiously at the windows, pacing up and down beside the two glazed walls.

Hollis looked up just in time to see the first corpses slamming against the glass. They smashed against the tall windows, hammering at them with their fists, trying desperately to beat their way inside. In a matter of a few seconds what looked like hundreds of them had appeared across the full width of the back wall, spreading out in either direction, blocking out the little light which remained and dramatically reducing the already limited visibility in the room. Then, when the size of the crowd was enough to cover almost every square inch of glass, the bodies began to spill down the side of the building, moving slowly but with unstoppable intent and determination. Like a partially coagulated liquid they poured themselves around the outside of the hotel.

“We can’t stay here,” Gordon shouted.

“We can’t get out of here!” Jas screamed, already on his way back to the other end of the building. “Get the front secured. Now!”

Everyone in the Steelbrooke Suite stopped what they were doing and ran through to the other end of the building. Some took the east corridor, others the west. Harte, who could outrun just about all of them, cut straight across the courtyard, throwing the glass doors open and barging through. He arrived in reception and found Jas struggling to push the wooden desk across the floor toward the door. He shoulder-charged the other end of the huge piece of furniture and it began to move, juddering awkwardly across the floor tiles.

“Get anything you can find to help block it up,” Gordon ordered as he added his weight to the push behind the desk. Ginnie, Lorna, and Howard did as he said, disappearing into anterooms and store cupboards and bringing out everything and anything they could find to help seal the entrance. Another coordinated shove of the desk and it slammed up against the door, completely blocking it. The three men had just moved out of the way when Hollis dragged a tall-backed leather sofa up onto its end and pushed it over so that it dropped down against the desk at an angle, wedging it hard against the door frame.

“Shut that bloody dog up!” Ginnie screamed. Howard’s dog was standing in the middle of reception, barking furiously at the glass. He reached down for her collar and tried to pull her away, but she stood her ground and refused to move, eyes fixed forward. He looked up and saw that the bodies had advanced all the way along the side of the hotel and had now begun to spread across the front. Through the gaps between upturned pieces of furniture he could see them moving continually, steadily surrounding the entire building. The steps leading up to the main entrance held them back temporarily until the weight of flesh still surging forward forced the leading cadavers to climb. Howard let go of the dog and helped barricade the doors with whatever he could lay his hands on. Rotting faces stared back at him through the glass and the bodies slammed their bony hands against the window continually. For a moment he thought he saw one of them grab the handle and try to pull the door open.

“Is that gonna hold them?” Harte asked, wiping sweat from his eyes.

“Going to have to, isn’t it?” Lorna answered. Her voice echoed around the now almost pitch-black reception area. As well as shutting out the final shards of fading light, the haphazard blockade had changed the acoustics of the room, muffling the sounds outside and amplifying the noise indoors. “What now?”

Gordon and Hollis moved closer.

“Where will we be safest?” Gordon wondered.

“Right in the middle of the building?” Lorna suggested. “Either that or we should head up?”

“There’s no way out if we go up,” Harte said ominously.

“Don’t think we have a lot of choice.”

“We need to get out of sight,” Hollis said. “A room big enough for all of us where they won’t see us.”

“We could try—” Harte began to say before being interrupted by a horrific scream from the other end of the hotel. It was Caron. He froze with terror, not wanting to know what she’d found. Around him others began to run toward the source of the sound. Even from a distance he could hear what was happening.

“They’re inside,” Caron cried, running down the west-wing corridor.

“How?” Hollis demanded.

“Swimming pool,” Jas said, his voice full of desperation and disappointment. “Fucking things must have got in through the doors into the pool.”

“Then block the bloody corridor off!” Gordon yelled, pushing past Caron and hurtling toward the pool and gym.

It was too late. By the time he’d got there the creatures were already swarming out into the open, steadily filling the marble-floored area in front of the restaurant, bar, and the Steelbrooke Suite. The dead moved with renewed speed, their progress helped by the pressure of others moving up through the narrow corridor behind them, forcing them forward. Within seconds their numbers were such that they burst through the doors into the courtyard and began to spill down the glass-fronted corridors on either side. In places the decorative glazing began to crack and give way under the pressure. The noise of the shattering glass seemed to excite the dead still further as they spread through the building.

“Up!” Jas shouted, loud enough for all of them to hear. “First floor, middle room. Trust me!”

With no other option, Lorna, Ginnie, and Howard began to climb the staircase at the reception end of the west-wing corridor. Caron and Gordon ran back down the hallway toward them, glancing back over their shoulders at the steadily advancing tide of corpses which washed after them. Hollis shoved them up the staircase, then turned to face Harte and Jas.

“What about Webb and Martin?” he asked, the nearest bodies now less than thirty meters away.

“Fuck them,” Jas immediately replied. “We left them in the restaurant. With a bit of luck they’ll have managed to block the door before they got in.”

“All of this is Webb’s fault,” Harte seethed. “He doesn’t deserve to survive.”

“What about Driver?” Hollis demanded, the nearest bodies now close enough for them to be able to see the horrific detail in their dead faces. “We can’t just leave him, can we?”

“He’s probably dead already,” Jas snapped. “Now come on, get upstairs.”

Hollis didn’t move, struggling with his conscience.

“Which room was he in?”

Harte was struggling too.

“East wing, top floor,” he replied. “Can’t remember which number…”

“Leave him,” Jas said again, grabbing both men’s arms and trying to drag them up.

“Oh, fuck it,” Harte snapped, squirming free from Jas’s grip and running down to reception, then back across and up the corridor on the other side.

“What the hell are you doing?” Hollis gasped as he disappeared down. Jas shoved him again and they began to climb the stairs, stopping on the first landing where they could still just about see down to reception and over to the staircase on the other side of the building.

“Fucking idiot,” Jas cursed. “Waste of fucking time.”

* * *

Harte threw himself up the staircase at the end of the east wing, tripping on the final step in the dark and stumbling into the wall. He picked himself up and, ignoring the pain, ran along the top-floor corridor, opening every door he passed, still unable to remember where he’d left Driver and equally unsure as to why he’d bothered coming back for him. It was a stupid, spur-of-the-moment mistake but it was too late now. This was it. He’d found it. Room 39. He recognized a patch of torn wallpaper and a scratch just to the left of the door. He grabbed the handle, pulled it open and burst inside.

“Come on,” he gasped, fighting for air. “We need to get out before…”

The room was empty. It was definitely the right one—there were trays of food and empty bottles of water and the bedding was dirty—but no Driver. Stunned, for a few dangerous moments Harte almost forgot the mayhem which was engulfing the rest of the hotel. He looked in the bathroom, under the bed, in the wardrobe … Driver wasn’t there. Where the hell had he gone?

The sound of more glass shattering elsewhere brought Harte crashing back to reality. He raced back along the corridor and down the staircase again. Down below he could see the courtyard, rammed full of corpses, with still more trying to force their way in. They were at the bottom of the staircase too, and they were beginning to climb. With no other option he closed his eyes and accelerated, wincing with disgust as he crashed into the first cadavers. Shoulder down, he kept moving, battering his way through the surging crowd until he reached the reception area. A momentary respite and he was deep among the dead again, head down, this time racing toward the foot of the stairs leading up to the rooms on the west wing. Soaked with gore and gagging with the horrific, overpowering stench of decay, he began to force his way up, step by step. A hand grabbed his shoulder. Fired full of adrenaline, he clenched his fist and pulled it back to strike.

“Don’t hit me, you fucking idiot,” Jas cursed as he pulled him up by the scruff of his neck. “No good?”

“Not there,” he wheezed breathlessly as they climbed to the first floor. Hollis and Lorna were standing on the landing waiting for them.

“What do you mean, not there?” Lorna demanded.

“He’s cleared out,” Harte answered. “Clever bastard’s pulled a fast one on us. I bet there was never anything wrong with him.”

“Clever bugger,” Hollis muttered. “Had more brains than we gave him credit for. Just because someone’s not talking all the time, doesn’t mean they’re not thinking.”

He peered down the staircase. The bodies were climbing.

“What now?” Harte asked.

“Block it up,” Jas replied. “Gordon and Howard are already doing the stairs at the other end. Just get what you can out of the bedrooms and throw it down. Those fuckers will never be able to get up here.”