Autumn Disintegration Read online

  “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 …

  * * *

  “Been far?” Hollis asked Martin as he wheeled his bike back through the kitchens.

  “Jesus Christ!” the older man gasped, holding onto a stainless steel worktop for support, “You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing down here at this time of morning?”

  “More to the point,” Hollis said, standing up and walking closer so that he didn’t have to shout, “what are you doing out on a bloody bicycle at this hour?”

  “I told you yesterday,” he replied, his composure returning. “Playing music. First refuelling trip of the day.”

  “Many of them about out there?”

  “Enough. Didn’t hang around to do a head count. Can’t stand the sight of them.”

  “You and me both. So is it working?”

  “Seems to be. I guess the fact that there aren’t any here indicates that it is.”

  “Fair point. Good plan, actually.”

  “I think so.”

  “You’ve managed to channel them away and keep them at a distance.”

  “Keeping them at a distance is just about the best we can do, I think. There are too many to try doing anything else.”

  “Try telling that to Webb.”

  “What?”

  “Bit of a loose cannon, is our Webb. Where we’ve just come from we had crowds right around the front of the building. He seemed to think he had to get rid of them all, or at least enough to be able to push them back.”

  “That’s never going to work, is it?”

  “Suppose not. I thought it might for a while. Most of us got involved when he first suggested it, but it was obvious pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to happen. It would have taken us years.”

  “All you’re doing is winding them up. You’re just showing them where you are and inviting them to come pay you a visit.”

  “Like I said, try telling Webb.”

  “Your friend’s not very bright, is he?”

  “He’s not very bright and he’s definitely not my friend,” Hollis said, looking around at the empty racks and shelves. “I’ll tell you something, though, Martin, at the risk of sounding like a broken record: we do need to get out of here and get supplies. We’re going to sit here and starve if we don’t.”

  Martin’s heart sank. Not again, he thought. Since the others had arrived yesterday, and after the conversation they’d had last night, he’d thought about little else. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he knew that Hollis was right. For the sake of a few hours out in the open they could improve their situation here dramatically. The thought of having to survive on the pitiful scraps they had left in the hotel stores was depressing. Last night they’d eaten something resembling a proper meal. Sure, none of it was fresh and it had been thrown together, but it was the best food he’d had for weeks. He’d felt re-energized afterward and some company, a few glasses of wine, and a long-overdue cigarette had, for a while, made him feel almost human again.

  “You’re right,” he begrudgingly admitted.

  31

  Caron sat on the end of her bed and held her head in her hands. She was exhausted. It didn’t make sense: the most comfortable bed she’d had in almost two months, the safest surroundings, fresh faces, no crowds of dead bodies, and yet she still hadn’t been able to sleep. Truth was she couldn’t clear her head enough to switch off, not even for a few precious minutes. Every time she closed her eyes she pictured Ellie, Anita, her son Matthew, or any of the others she’d let down recently.

  Caron’s room was the first on the second floor of the west wing. Its corner position afforded her an impressive and expansive view to the front and side of the hotel. She stood up and walked to the window, keen to benefit from the limited heat of the sun which had just begun to peek out through a layer of heavy cloud. The carpet felt unexpectedly warm and soft under her feet. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been able to walk around barefoot. The view outside was clear and uninterrupted and allowed her to see for miles back in the direction from which they’d arrived yesterday. She couldn’t see anything recognizable, just hills and fields and open space. She tried to look even farther into the distance, right out toward the horizon. Somewhere out there, she remembered sadly, was the dilapidated building they’d left behind and, inside it, the sick girl they’d abandoned. Sure, she knew that Ellie had been dying and there was nothing more she could have done to help her, but had she really deserved to be left alone like that? Had she even been alone? Had those godforsaken monstrosities which tirelessly dragged themselves along the streets somehow managed to force their way even farther up the hill and into the building? Had they found her and torn her limb from limb, ripping her to pieces as they had done Stokes? Even worse, what if she’d recovered from her illness? Imagine that, finally coming out of her feverish malaise and finding herself alone with no way of following the others or even knowing in which direction they’d gone. Whatever had happened to Ellie—and she hoped for her sake that she’d died a quick and relatively painless death—Caron felt like shit.

  She turned away from the window and entered the small bathroom on the other side of the room. She switched the light on instinctively, despite knowing full well that the electricity had been off for weeks. She flicked the switch down again, feeling unnecessarily foolish and angry, and shoved the door open as wide as it would go, hoping that the sunlight would stretch far enough across the room to reach the bathroom. The sink and the mirror above it were partially illuminated by daylight. She wiped the dust-covered glass clean with an equally dusty towel which had been left draped over the edge of the bath by a long-since-dead housekeeper, then stared at her own reflection. Christ, she looked old this morning. Perhaps it was the light and shadow? Maybe it was the fact that she no longer used the creams and lotions and makeup that she’d treated her skin with for years? Maybe it was just because her life had become a relentless and unbearable nightmare that she looked so bad? Whatever the reason, she dumped the towel angrily in the sink and went back and laid down on the bed.

  Caron’s stomach was knotted tight with nerves. She’d last felt like this a couple of years back when she’d discovered that her husband had been sleeping with Sue Richards, the receptionist from the doctor’s surgery. It hadn’t been his deceit or lies which had hurt her—in fact, their sex life had already deteriorated to such an extent that it was something of a relief that he’d found himself an alternative channel to vent his pent-up sexual frustrations. Instead, Caron had struggled with keeping the secret and maintaining a façade. She’d found it almost impossible to carry the weight of the pretense when both she and Bob had decided it would be better for all concerned—particularly Matthew—if they just pretended his little indiscretion (actually numerous little indiscretions) hadn’t happened at all. She’d hated sleeping in the same bed as him when she despised him, hated him touching her when he made her skin crawl, hated forcing herself to speak civilly to him when all she wanted to do was scream in his face and tell him to fuck off and die. Strange that she should feel so similar today. As she buried her face in her pillow she decided it was because, like her dead husband Bob, all these other people wanted her to pretend to be someone she wasn’t. They all thought she was capable of things which, in reality, she couldn’t do. Ellie and Anita thought she’d help t
hem. Matthew thought she’d always look after him …

  So this is it, she thought to herself, rolling over again and looking up at the ceiling. This is your best chance—your last chance—to make something of what’s left. Do you take it, or is it time to give up and admit defeat?

  It was a difficult decision. Her instinct was to continue to fight and try to survive, but her brain was saying something else entirely. Was there any point in fighting if there was no longer anything worth surviving for? If the events of the last few days were anything to go by then probably not. But here, out in the middle of nowhere in this unexpected oasis of corpse-free space and silence, there was the slightest chance that things might actually prove to be different. Yesterday evening Ginnie had alluded to her finally having someone to help her in the kitchen “looking after the boys.” Caron had balked at the idea, telling her she was sick of playing mother hen all the time. And that, she decided, was the decision she would ultimately have to make: did she try and survive to make things easier for everyone else, or for herself? Without thinking, on the bedside table she’d arranged a symbolic representation of her ultimate choice. On one side was a bottle of cognac and a trashy romance novel, on the other the bag of pills she’d brought with her from the flats, enough to kill a horse.

  Tired, irritated, and unable to relax or even get comfortable, Caron got up again and walked back over to the window. She could see people outside now. There was Howard Reece walking his dog across the overgrown lawns on the far side of the car park. She could also see Harte and Jas peering in through the windows at the swimming pool and poolside gym, then pulling open an outside door and disappearing inside. It certainly looked as if the others were going to give their new surroundings a chance.

  I’ll do the same, she decided. I’ll give it a couple of days and see how things are going. If it looks like everything’s going to work out, I’ll keep drinking the booze and reading the books. If I wind up just facing the same old problems, then maybe I’ll have to think again.