Autumn: Disintegration (20 page)

“But how do you get—”

“We manage. We don’t need to go outside or make any noise or do anything that might risk what we’ve got here,” Martin said, sounding both aggressive and defensive at the same time.

“We do have one other resident,” Howard said cryptically. “I think we should tell them about her, Martin. We don’t want them stumbling into her in the dark, do we?”

Hollis felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Come this way,” Martin said, his voice a little calmer. “I’ll introduce you to the Swimmer.”

27

Hollis and Harte followed Martin deeper into the hotel complex. Howard’s dog walked alongside them, constantly sniffing at the air.

“You’ve got the pool, a gym, and a small sauna room down here,” Martin explained. “None of it’s any use without power, I’m afraid. We hardly ever come up here, actually, only to see her.”

“I don’t like the sound of this,” Harte admitted, his voice low. His head was rapidly filling with all kinds of unsavory thoughts: necrophilia, torture, some other kind of weird perversion he hadn’t even thought of … He had no idea what they were about to find going on in the dark and shadowy depths of the hotel.

“The dog usually follows when anyone comes down here,” Martin continued. “She thinks she’s protecting us—not that we need it, of course.” He stopped walking as the cream-walled, windowless corridor began to curve away to the right. The smell here was noticeably worse—a noxious combination of stagnant water and dead flesh—and the light levels were uncomfortably low. He beckoned them farther forward and then gestured toward a narrow rectangular window set in the wall. He peered cautiously through the glass.

“What’s going on?” Hollis demanded, his nerves getting the better of him. Martin scowled and lifted his finger to his lips. The dog padded forward, clearly agitated. They could see what Howard meant now—the animal was pacing up and down below the window, snarling but not making a noise. “Does that mean there’s a body in there?”

On Martin’s instruction he stepped up to the glass and looked into a dark office, illuminated only by a few slender beams of light trickling through a grime-covered skylight. Something was moving in the farthest corner of the untidy room. He couldn’t make it out at first, but when it shifted again he saw that it was a corpse. In the low light its appearance was muted and indistinct: female, perhaps a little shorter than he was, short blond hair, wearing only a swimming costume discolored through weeks of putrefaction. He was distracted when Harte shoved him to one side so he could look in. The sudden movement seemed to agitate the corpse, which lunged forward and threw itself at the glass with surprising speed and aggression, slamming against the window and leaving a smeared, face-shaped stain. It took a few stumbling steps backward, then stopped and stood swaying on its unsteady feet, staring at Harte with dull black eyes.

“She likes you!” Hollis smirked, watching with equal amounts fascination and disgust as the cadaver stumbled back into the shadows. He felt a surprising sadness, perhaps even pity for the abhorrent creature. Who had it once been? Why had she been at the hotel? On holiday or business? Had she been here alone or were the bodies of her family nearby? He found it strange that he was suddenly asking himself so many questions about this one particular carcass when he’d seen thousands upon thousands of them before and not given a damn. Had he come across this poor bitch outside he probably wouldn’t have wasted another thought on her—he’d have gone straight for her head with whatever weapon he’d had and he’d have beaten her until she stopped moving. Maybe it was because she was isolated and trapped here that he felt different? Perhaps it was because he could watch her without fear of attack?

As she moved away he noticed that she had a tattoo on her right shoulder blade, just visible next to the strap of her swimming costume. Her skin had an unnatural, mottled blue-green tone, but he could just make out the faded outline of Winnie the Pooh. He hadn’t expected that. Seeing the tattoo increased the strength of his confusing feelings. It reminded him that the lump of dead flesh in front of him had once been a living, breathing human being like him with friends, family, likes, dislikes, passions, and vices. Now look at it …

“She was a guest here,” Martin said quietly, gently forcing his way between the other two men. “I saw her the day before it all happened. Good-looking girl, she was.”

“So how did you get her in there?” Harte asked.

“I didn’t,” he replied. “She got herself trapped. The changing rooms are on the other side of this office. Poor cow must have been getting ready to swim when it killed her. She must have been bloody terrified and dragged herself in here looking for help. Probably the last thing she did.”

Hollis and Harte continued to stare at the pitiful creature in the shadows. Her movements were slow but appeared definite and considered. She was more coordinated than many of the bodies they’d come across previously. There had been others which had exhibited a similar level of control—some even more so—but they’d never had the opportunity to study any of them at such close quarters and without fear of attack.

“So why is she here?” wondered Harte. “Why haven’t you got rid of her? Have you got a thing for dead women in swimming costumes?”

Martin ignored his cheap jibe.

“She’s protected in here. She’s useful.”

“Useful? How exactly?”

“She’s like a human barometer.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know what a barometer is, don’t you?”

“’Course I do,” Harte said quickly, offended, “but what’s a dead body got to do with the weather?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Martin explained. “It’s not about the weather, it’s about their behavior.”

“You can study them without going outside.” Hollis said, beginning to understand. “You can see what they’re doing without getting too close.”

“Exactly.”

“But what would you want to study them for?” Harte grunted ignorantly. “You’re never going to find a cure, or a reason why it happened, or—”

“No, nothing like that,” Martin interrupted, shaking his head and beginning to lose his patience. “That girl in there is protected from the elements. She’s still decaying, but there’s nothing in there to speed up the decay like wind or rain. That means—”

“—that she’s probably stronger and in better condition than most of the corpses outside,” Hollis said.

“Maybe not stronger, but she’s certainly in better physical shape than most of them.”

“So what you’ve got in there is the worst-case scenario?”

“Something like that. By watching her and how she reacts, we can get an idea of how the rest of them are going to respond next time we have to head out from here. We can see what they’re going to start doing even before they’ve started doing it!”

“So what have you learnt?” Harte asked, still not taking his eyes off the corpse.

“That they’re becoming more violent and they’re starting to make decisions.”

“Is that all? We could have told you that.”

“And they think we’re a threat.”

“And?”

“And we’re not going outside again until we absolutely have to. We’re going to make our supplies last and sit this thing out.”

28

Gordon, Webb, and Caron, along with Ginnie, Sean, and Amir, began to unload food from the back of the bus. With six uncoordinated people trying to get in and out through the bus and hotel doors, frequent bottlenecks formed. After working hard (by his low standards) for almost half an hour, Webb took advantage of one such brief and unexpected delay to disappear for a smoke, stopping only to grab a four-pack of beer from a cardboard box he’d been keeping a very close eye on. Sean noticed him leaving and followed him around the side of the building, out of view of the others. He found Webb sitting on a low wall, opening a can of beer and lighting a cigarette.

“Fuck me,” he cursed as Sean suddenly appeared. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry, mate,” Sean said apologetically.

“Thought you were one of the others come to find out why I’m skiving.”

Sean shook his head. “Nah, I just felt like having a break and it looked like you’d had the same idea.”

“Smoke?”

“No thanks. I’ll have a beer, though.”

Webb threw a can over to him.

“Cheers,” he said, swigging on his drink. It was the first beer Sean had had for a couple of weeks since they’d run out. God, it tasted damn good.

“So how have things been here?” Webb asked.

“Boring,” Sean replied.

“Boring?” Webb repeated, surprised. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! It’s the end of the fucking world! There are millions of dead bodies out there trying to rip us apart—how can it be boring?”

“Do you see any bodies here?” Sean said, knocking back more beer and sitting down next to Webb.

“Fair point, but you must have had to deal with some of them? Christ, we’ve been surrounded by thousands of the fucking things for weeks.”

“I got here before they really started to turn,” he explained. “We’ve seen Martin’s pet corpse and how she’s changed, and we’ve seen others fighting from the window, but we’ve just stayed put.”

“For nearly two months?”

“Something like that.”

Webb couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Next to him, Sean shivered with cold. He was dressed in a thin hooded fleece, T-shirt, jeans, and trainers. Webb, in comparison, was still wearing his heavy boots and blood-soaked biker trousers. He looked like he’d been fighting the dead for weeks on end without a moment’s rest. Sean looked like he’d just got home from college.

“Don’t know how you’ve done it, mate. I’d have gone out of my fucking mind.”

“It’s not the bodies that get to me,” Sean quickly said, glad to finally have a chance to say what he thought, “it’s that lot in there. They’re so fucking cautious. It’s sit here, do this, don’t make a noise, keep your head down … I’m fucking sick of it.”

“Can’t you just walk?”

“What?”

“Can’t you just get out of here for a bit? I did it when we were back at the flats. I either used to sit in the car or find a few bodies to beat up.”

“You went looking for them?”

“Sometimes. It was pretty easy where we were. I’d get ahold of a few of them and batter the fuckers until there was nothing left but a pile of blood and bones.”

“Don’t know if I could do that.”

“Don’t be so fucking soft! Of course you could. It’s not difficult. Bloody things are dead. As long as you don’t do anything stupid you’ll be fine.”

“But they killed one of your people, didn’t they? I heard someone say the bodies killed a man.”

Webb took another swig of beer and looked out toward the horizon, avoiding eye contact.

“That’s right,” he answered, not wanting to say anything else about Stokes’s death but feeling obliged to keep talking to cover his tracks. “I was with him when it happened, poor bastard.”

“So is that why you’re here?”

“Suppose. That and the germs.”

“Germs?”

“Couple of the girls got sick and died. We got away before anyone else got ill.”

“Shit, I didn’t realize.”

“And you’re telling me you’re bored?”

Sean looked down at his feet, feeling suddenly foolish and naïve. He couldn’t deny his frustration, nor how the increasingly intense and relentless claustrophobia was getting to him. He’d risk putting his neck on the line just to get away for a while. Christ, what he’d have given to have seen some of the action Webb had described.

“They sit around at night and play cards, for fuck’s sake,” he moaned. “I tell you, it’s like being on a day trip to the end of the world with your fucking grandparents!”

“What about when you go out for supplies?”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you? We don’t. They
won’t
.”

“What d’you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? You’ve already heard Martin—he goes mental if you even mention it.”

“So how long’s it been since you last left here?”

“I haven’t. Got here less than a week after it started and I haven’t been anywhere since. I’m going out of my fucking mind.”

“So just go!”

Sean didn’t say anything for a few moments. He drank more of his beer, got up, walked away, and then stopped and turned back to face Webb.

“I can’t,” he reluctantly admitted.

“Why? Scared of what the folks will say?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“I tell you, mate, the whole fucking world is out there for the taking. If all you’re gonna do is sit here and moan about it, you might as well roll over and end it right now.”

29

Eight o’clock. Pitch black outside. Everywhere silent. The entire group sat around tables in the restaurant and ate. Howard’s dog prowled up and down, sniffing the air hungrily and grabbing at whatever scraps happened to fall her way, but the amount of waste was negligible. Those who had been living in the hotel were starving, the meager rations they’d so far survived on were nothing compared to the relative riches the others had brought with them.

“I never used to like tomatoes,” Ginnie said excitedly as she helped herself to another serving of lukewarm chopped, canned tomatoes, “but my God, this tastes good!”

Caron and Hollis exchanged glances across the table. What had these people been eating? Caron asked the question.

“Not much,” Howard replied, just visible in the candlelight at the other end of the table. “I reckon I’ve lost a couple of stone.” He lifted up his baggy sweater to reveal an equally baggy T-shirt. “Few more stones to go yet, mind,” he added, patting his wide belly.

“I don’t understand why you haven’t just gone out for supplies,” Harte said. “There’s a town just down the road, you could have been there and back in a couple of hours. And you’ve got those trucks too. If you’d filled one of them you’d have had enough to last you weeks, months even.”

“We just haven’t wanted to risk going out there,” Martin answered. “Okay, so we’ve gone hungry, but none of us are starving and we’ve been safe so far. I know what I’d rather have.”