Autumn: Disintegration (21 page)

“I’d have risked it,” Sean said from a table a short distance away where he was sitting with Webb and Jas.

“We all agreed, Sean,” Martin sighed. “There were only five of us here. We’d have been taking too much of a chance.”

“
You
all agreed,” he protested. “I don’t remember getting to have much of a say. You’d decided before I even knew you were having a discussion.”

“It was for the best, Sean. Come on, son, everything’s worked out okay, hasn’t it?”

Sean grunted and carried on eating. He found it a little easier to stay calm and not lose his temper now that he wasn’t so hungry. Christ, it was good to taste so many different flavors again. It was all tins and packaged convenience food, but it was more than he’d had in a long time. And beer! Although the lager made the cold night feel colder still, the numbing effect of the alcohol was worth it.

“There are more of us here now,” Amir said quietly. “Kind of changes things, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” Martin asked, thoughtfully chewing a mouthful of food.

“Of course it does. Now there’s more than twice as many of us, maybe we could risk going out?”

“We don’t need to. They’ve brought plenty of stuff with them.”

“You think?” Jas interrupted. “We brought as much with us as we could, but it’s not going to last forever. Seems to me we’ve got no choice but to go out some point.”

“You don’t understand. It’s not as easy as that.”

“I do understand. I understand perfectly well. I understand that if we’re all going to stay here then we’re going to need a lot more food than we’ve got at present, and I also understand the bodies a lot better than you do too. We’ve dealt with thousands of them at a time.”

“But it’s not as black and white as you’re making it sound,” Martin protested. “Our safety relies on them not knowing we’re here. If you go out there and start throwing your weight around, you’ll attract their attention and before you know it—”

“I think we’re talking about one trip outside, two at the most. Surely that’s not going to have too much of an effect if you keep playing your music to them?”

“They’re starting to work things out,” Hollis warned. “You can’t just assume that—”

“There’s no need to go outside,” Martin repeated, his voice tense but still low. “We just need to show some self-control. A little discipline. Make the food that we’ve already got here last—”

“One trip out and one busload of supplies will make all the difference.” Jas sighed wearily, already growing tired of the conversation. At the mention of his bus Driver stirred in the corner. Jas glanced across at him. Bloody waster was fast asleep with his paper over his face, backside on one chair, feet up on another. He’d barely even eaten anything.

“Jas is right,” Harte agreed. “The risks are small but the potential rewards are huge. We could set ourselves up here for months.”

“Oh, so we’re definitely staying, are we?” Lorna asked, disgruntled. She’d been following the conversation with disinterest. After spending the best part of two months trapped with most of these men she’d begun to find their relentless arguments and indecision incredibly tiring, and the men they’d found here seemed no better. Put more than two men in a room together and make a suggestion, she’d long ago discovered, and they’ll spend hours debating the most obvious points before finally deciding you were right all along and claiming they’d had the idea in the first place. She’d grown tired of the way they seemed to feel obliged to take charge then blunder their way through every situation trying to convince themselves, and everyone else, that they knew what they were doing. “Not that I have a problem with staying here,” she explained. “It just would have been nice to have been consulted, that’s all.”

“No one’s decided anything,” Hollis said.

“You see?” Sean interrupted angrily. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. They’re doing to her exactly what you do to me all the time. You think you always know what’s best and I can’t stand it.”

“Keep the noise down, Sean,” Martin warned, cringing at the volume of his voice.

“No one’s decided anything,” Hollis repeated.

“I have,” Caron said quietly. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think I’ll be staying here.” The faces in the room all turned to look in her direction. “I don’t mind going without much food until those things outside have disappeared. I’d rather starve and be safe, and if we’re away from the bodies then there’s less chance of anyone else catching whatever it was that killed Ellie and Anita. We’ve got space here and I can have my own room with four strong walls and windows which aren’t smashed and—”

“Ellie and Anita?” Ginnie asked.

“They caught some kind of germ from the bodies,” Hollis explained dismissively.

“All the more reason to stay inside,” Martin quickly interjected.

“Are you sure it was from the bodies?” Ginnie wondered anxiously. “There’s no chance you could have brought it here with you? The last thing we need is—”

“They caught it from the bodies,” Hollis said firmly. “They must have. And if there are fewer bodies here, then there’s little chance of anyone catching anything.”

“Caron’s right,” Gordon agreed, yawning. “We’ll struggle to find anywhere better than this. And the fact that you’ve kept the bodies at bay is an added bonus. The safety’s got to be worth a little discomfort.”

“You’re just too scared to go outside, Gord,” Webb said. “It’s got nothing to do with the bodies or how much food there is.”

“We’ll keep watching the Swimmer,” Martin said. “If she looks like she’s going to start causing problems then we’ll know it’s time to change our plans.”

“The bodies are falling apart. They’re going to become less of a problem, not more,” Ginnie said, helping herself to more food.

“Don’t count on it,” Harte started to say before being interrupted.

“One of them bit me,” Webb said, suddenly animated, “and they killed Stokes.”

“Christ, change the bloody record, will you?” Hollis sighed.

“Well, I’m staying put,” Caron said again, standing her ground admirably. “You can all go back outside if you want to. I’ve got a suitcase full of books, a comfortable bed, and all the time in the world.”

“What you’ve done here is incredible, and I think we’d be stupid not to stay,” Hollis agreed, “but I also think we need to get out and get supplies. It’s like Jas said—one properly coordinated trip out there and we could set ourselves up for weeks, maybe even months. Just think about it, safety
and
comfort.”

“But it’s taken weeks to get the bodies away from here,” Howard protested. “You’re just going to bring them straight back again.”

“Sure, we’ll excite a few hundred of them, but once we’re back we’ll batten down the hatches and sit and wait for them to disappear. Martin can keep playing his music to them and within a couple of days no one will be any the wiser.”

“Makes sense. I’m in,” Amir volunteered, surprising the other residents of the hotel.

“And me,” Sean agreed quickly before anyone else had a chance to speak.

30

Martin stood outside at the back of the kitchens, sheltering from the wind behind an overflowing waste bin, and tucked his trousers into his socks. He pulled on a hat, zipped up his warmest coat and dragged his bike out of the passageway where he stored it. The world was reassuringly dull and gloomy and he was pleased. He liked it like that. It was early morning and no one else had yet emerged from the individual bedrooms they’d claimed as their own late last night. His breath condensed in icy clouds around his face as he straddled the bike and listened and waited. There it was. Thank God for that, he could still just about hear it in the distance. He always found it easier to do this when the music was still playing. His heart thumping in his chest and his mouth dry with nerves, he began to pedal away from the hotel.

He’d ridden this route so many times now that he’d carved a muddy furrow across the once well-tended gardens and lawns at the back of the main building, right the way over to the boundary fence. Slowing down as he reached the edge of the estate, he edged his front wheel forward through the gap he’d made, looked up and down the empty road on the other side, then pushed through and began pedaling again. It was easier now that the ground beneath his wheels was solid and even. He could move quickly and with much less effort here and he felt relatively safe, shielded from the rest of the world and the risk of attack by the thick, virtually impenetrable hedgerows on either side of the road. He could occasionally see them moving on the golf course through the gaps between the branches and leaves—those stupid, staggering, aimless creatures—but he remained invisible to them. They’d blocked both ends of the road with cars belonging to dead hotel guests and nothing was going to get through.

He could clearly hear the music now, a beautiful, lilting tune carried gently on the air, underscored by the steady belching
thump-thump-thump
of a generator. Only one of the stereos was still playing. The fuel must have already run out in the generator powering the other machine, he decided. Good job he’d got access to plenty more from the various vehicles abandoned locally. He and Howard had built up a store close to the back of the clubhouse. Enough, he hoped, for several trips a day for a few more weeks at least.
I have to keep the music playing
, he told himself as he filled two fuel cans.
It’s vital
.

Up ahead, Martin could now see the turning in the track which led to the back of the clubhouse. His heart started to race again. Christ, he hated being this close to the dead. He didn’t want to look at them, didn’t want to give them eye contact for even a split second, and yet at the same time he had to keep watching. He had to stay alert and on guard, although he didn’t know what he’d do if he found himself face to face with any of them. Clearing the hotel of stiff, mannequin-like bodies before they’d got up and started moving again had been one thing, but dealing with the obnoxious creatures they had subsequently become was a different matter altogether.

Originally a tradesman’s entrance into the clubhouse for those who couldn’t afford to walk through the front door, this sheltered way, fenced off and hidden from the rest of the building, had previously allowed deliveries to be made and refuse to be collected without the overprivileged club members being disturbed by the staff. Today it allowed Martin to get inside without being seen—and how he loved walking through the clubhouse once he was there. For too long this place had been the exclusive retreat of the overpaid and underworked, and he felt a deep, smug satisfaction knowing that he’d survived when the golf club members, no matter how rich they’d been, had almost certainly all died. A man who loved the outdoors and who couldn’t understand why so many acres of beautiful land had been reserved for a select few to traipse around hitting little balls into holes, he used to hate golfers with almost as much venom as he now hated the dead.

Martin stood at the bottom of the staircase and listened to the stirring classical music blasting out from the floor above. The illumination downstairs was negligible, all of the windows having been blocked up and the doors shut and barred to prevent the corpses from catching sight of him whenever he was there. More important, it stopped him from having to look at them. He knew they were out there. Hundreds of them, probably thousands, their rotting faces pressed hard against the sides of the building, hammering continually on the walls with leaden, unresponsive hands.

He took a deep breath and quickly climbed the mud-splattered but luxuriously carpeted stairs, carrying the cans of fuel and passing the expensively framed portraits of numerous dead golf captains as he jogged along the landing toward the meeting room where he’d set up the first stereo. It was cold and damp in the large rectangular room, all of the windows having been propped wide open to spread the noise and fumes as far as possible. Working quickly, he refuelled the still-warm generator and fired it up again, drawing comfort from the volume of its constant chugging noise. Once power had been restored he moved over to the stereo which he’d left on a table just far enough inside to be sheltered from the wind and rain. With cold hands he restarted the disc, checked the volume was at maximum and switched it to repeat.

Martin stepped back as the music began to blare out from the stereo, the volume cranked to such a deafening level that the speakers rattled and the sound crackled with distortion. It didn’t matter; as long as it was loud enough to attract the dead and keep them here he didn’t care what it sounded like. For a moment longer he stopped and listened to the music—the first track of a country music compilation CD he used to listen to in his car. Sean had joked that his taste in music would probably drive the dead away rather than draw them closer. Cheeky little bastard.

Moving faster now, he ran across the landing to the administration office where he’d left the second stereo sitting on a windowsill. He repeated his well-rehearsed refuelling operation and leaned back against the wall once the music began to play again, feeling protected by the screeching, jarring, cacophony of noise which now filled the entire building. On their own each CD was, in his humble opinion, a masterpiece. Played together and accompanied by the generator noise, however, they sounded ear-splittingly awful.

Should he look?

Some days it was easy, other days he didn’t want to do it. He wasn’t sure today. He had been feeling a little more confident since the others had arrived yesterday, but at the same time their spontaneity, bravado, and noise made him feel uneasy and unsure. At least if he looked outside today he’d have an idea of the size of the crowd that had gathered on the golf course. He hadn’t wanted to look for a week or so, maybe longer. In fact he couldn’t remember when he’d last done it. Most days he preferred to try and convince himself that all he’d see out there would be the well-tended greens and freshly mown, rolling fairways. Maybe he should just have a quick look this morning …

*   *   *