Autumn: Aftermath Page 7

  “Bloody hell,” she said to no one in particular.

  “Trouble?” Steve asked anxiously.

  “You could say that.”

  The other ladder appeared next to her, and Bob climbed up. “Fuck me,” he said when he was alongside her.

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  From this high vantage point, the hotel and much of the surrounding area were clearly visible. For as far as they could see in every direction around the building, the ground was covered in bodies. Like on the other side of the road, many of the dead had been crushed, but many more remained standing, a frozen forest of decay. Zoe looked back toward the bus on the road at the bottom of the hill. Sunlight reflected off the windscreen and she couldn’t see Driver. She, like everyone else, had questioned his actions in abandoning his colleagues and getting away from this place by himself. Standing at the top of the ladder, however, soaking up the scale of what had happened here, what he’d done seemed eminently sensible. Even now, frozen, crushed, and wedged together as they all were, the immeasurable mass of dead flesh up ahead was large enough to make Zoe question what the hell they were doing here. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what terror the people who’d been left behind here must have felt seeing this foul, germ-filled, unstoppable tidal wave of rot rolling toward them. Given the option, she had to admit she’d probably have done the same thing Driver did.

  “See anything?” Steve yelled, casually kicking at a single hand which jutted up from the decay covering the road and which had begun to twitch as if trying to form a fist. Both Zoe and Bob were so overcome by the scale of what they could see that neither replied at first. Zoe had to force herself to divert her gaze from the slowly defrosting mass of corpses and start looking at the hotel instead. She scanned the building from right to left, catching her breath when she thought she saw people at a ground floor window. It was just more damn corpses, their faces shoved up hard against the glass by the force of countless others which had crowded into the same rooms behind them and pushed them forward.

  “This is hopeless,” she shouted down. “No one could have survived this.”

  “It’s full of bodies,” Bob added.

  “What, the grounds or the hotel itself?” Jackson asked.

  “Both,” Bob replied. “The ground floor is definitely.”

  “Well, keep looking. It might be like when you capsize a boat.”

  “What are you on about?” Bob scowled, looking down at Jackson.

  “You know how the air gets trapped and you can survive as long as you keep your head up at the top?”

  “Yeah,” Bob said, “but you haven’t seen this place. There’s no air here, only death.”

  “Wait!” Zoe yelled. “Look!”

  She pointed at the hotel. Bob squinted to try and shut out the brightness and see what she’d seen.

  “What?”

  She paused momentarily, not sure herself now. But then she saw it again—movement on the first floor. And it was definite, controlled movement too. There were faces at the windows in two adjacent rooms.

  “Bloody hell,” she gasped, looking at Bob then down at Steve and Jackson. “We’ve found them.”

  * * *

  The sudden euphoria at finding the survivors was quickly replaced by now familiar feelings of nervousness and unease. Getting the people out of the hotel took an uncomfortably long length of time, and with every extra minute that passed, so the dead around the building became increasingly animated.

  Zoe had lifted Bob’s ladder over the hedge and managed to drop it down the other side while keeping hold of the top rung. The two ladders interlocked at the top, forming an apex which, with a little careful negotiation, they could get over and climb down to the other side. Once they’d made it over, Zoe, Bob, and Steve waded through the semi-human mire with disgust. It was much deeper inside the perimeter fence of the hotel where the space was restricted. Thousands of bodies had managed to get in, yet none of them had got back out through the narrow gap. The decay ranged between ankle- and knee-deep, and their every footstep crunched ice and bone into the ground. Some corpses were still upright, standing like the dead stumps of trees after a forest fire, but most had simply collapsed over time and now lay on the ground in various stages of deterioration. Withered hands seemed to be constantly reaching up at them from the sea of fetid muck, fingers dripping with putrescence. And as they slowly thawed, so the appalling stench steadily worsened. Zoe gagged. Bob dry-heaved. It was only the desperate faces looking down and shouting at them from the first-floor windows which kept them moving forward. Zoe counted at least five people. How many more were there?

  Bob tried to find a way to get inside the overrun building, but they quickly realized that that was impossible. Apart from the fact the entire ground floor appeared to be full to overflowing with rot, the comparative temperature inside the hotel had kept what remained of the dead in there marginally more animated than those outside, exposed to the elements. When they’d realized what he was trying to do, one of the trapped women had yelled down and explained that they’d also blocked the staircases to prevent the corpses from getting any closer. And as well as preventing the dead from getting up, their blockades also prevented them from getting down.

  Zoe struggled to stay focused. Whenever she stood still for any length of time, those of the dead able to move began to gravitate toward her. Their speed was barely noticeable at first, but when she realized what was happening, it became hard to concentrate on anything else. They were like giant slugs; glistening with slime, moving almost undetectably slowly. You could try and ignore them if you wanted, but if you became distracted for any length of time, when you turned back they’d be right at you, poised to attack. It reminded Zoe of that game she’d played as a kid in the school playground. She could almost hear the dead shouting at her: “What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?”

  She fought her way over to stand directly beneath a first-floor window which one of the trapped men had opened. After talking to him for a couple of minutes, trying to work out the easiest way of getting them down, she stepped back, looked around, and saw that at least seven corpses were closing in on her, painfully slowly. Regardless of their lack of speed, she was grateful when Bob returned to watch her back.

  Working together and trying to speed up as the sun climbed and the temperature increased, an escape route was quickly improvised. A number of mattresses were thrown down from the first floor and piled under one of the windows, both shielding the survivors from the dead below and creating a thick enough landing mat that they could risk jumping. And one by one, they threw themselves out. The drop was obviously of little concern in comparison to the prospect of remaining trapped in the morguelike hotel for even a minute longer. Their desperation to get away was clear. Three men and two women jumped down without hesitation. There was a momentary delay as a final man—potbellied but bedraggled and obviously starved—tried to coerce a dog to jump down. Bob yelled at him to “Just leave the fucking mutt” as he wrestled with a dripping corpse which had now completely shaken off its icy bonds and tried to attack. It was only when the dog’s owner gave up and jumped from the window first that the hound almost immediately followed.

  * * *

  Questions and explanations were initially the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. For a blissful few minutes, all that mattered to the people who had escaped the hotel was that, somehow, they were finally free. It felt unreal. Maybe it was? Their interminable incarceration had, until an hour or so ago, seemed set to continue until they’d each breathed their last. But now it was over.

  Having managed to get back over the fence using the two ladders, they regrouped at the gate, then walked down the steep slope to the road. They moved quickly to avoid the dead which staggered and crawled toward them. Driver couldn’t see anything from inside the bus, but the door was open and he could hear voices approaching.

  “There’s one thing I don’t get,” he heard a woman’s voice say. Was that Caron? “How did yo
u find us? This place is so isolated…”

  “Got a mate of yours with us,” he heard Jackson explain. “Go easy on him, though. The delay’s not his fault. We couldn’t risk coming back out to look for you until now.”

  Driver got off the bus, but he didn’t go any farther. He was too nervous, and instead he waited for the others to come into view. They soon appeared, but the relentlessly bright sun made it difficult to see who was who. He tried to count heads, then stopped when he saw Harte. Their eyes met, and he felt his legs weaken with nerves. There was a brief and unexpected delay. Was it disbelief? Or maybe it was because they didn’t recognize him. None of them had ever seen Driver clean-shaven before.

  “Driver?” Harte said, his uncertainty clear. His tone was impossible to read. “Driver, you sly old bastard, is that you?”

  “I’m sorry, Harte,” Driver began to say, not knowing whether he should move farther forward or turn and run the other way. “I thought it was for the best. If I’d stuck with you lot, we’d have all been buggered…”

  He braced himself as Harte moved closer, then relaxed as the man unexpectedly threw his arms around him and squeezed.

  “Thanks, man,” Harte said, almost in tears.

  Driver looked up at the others who were approaching. There were more of them—more of his friends. He saw Hollis, Lorna, and Caron. And there was Howard Reece and that bloody dog of his. And there was Jas … Christ, he looked traumatized. He was barely interacting with any of the others.

  Another corpse lying at the roadside managed to raise itself up by Jackson’s feet. He booted it in what was left of its face.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said, and ushered the others onto the bus. Howard brought up the rear, carrying his dog.

  “What about…?” Driver started to ask. Howard shook his head, preempting his question.

  “This is it, mate,” he said. “This is all of us.”

  “But what about Webb and Gordon? Martin? The others…”

  “We lost Amir and Sean out here,” he explained, “and Webb and Martin bought it when the bodies got in.” His voice became low and monotone, almost like it was an effort to remember. “Gordon and Ginnie just didn’t want to keep going. We found them in their room one morning, a couple of weeks back, dead in bed together. Nicked a load of drugs from Caron, they had. I’d been starting to think they might have been the sensible ones.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? Bloody hell, what have you got to be sorry about?”

  “Just seemed like the right thing to say.”

  “Believe me, you’ve got no need to be sorry, mate. This time yesterday I was close to giving up. You’ve done us all a favor.”

  12

  Laura led Hollis up the spiral stairs of the gatehouse to where she’d left Harte and Jas earlier. They still hadn’t moved. Both men were standing at the top of the tower, backs to each other, looking out over the battlements. It was getting dark, but she could see that Harte was looking down into the courtyard directly below. Jas’s focus was clearly elsewhere.

  “Hollis!” Harte said, turning around when he heard footsteps. “How are you, mate?”

  “Good, thanks,” he said quietly, his voice barely audible. “Really good.”

  “You had something to eat?”

  “I didn’t think he was ever going to stop eating,” Lorna answered for him, tenderly squeezing his arm. “Howard’s still down there, feeding his face.”

  “Where’s Caron?”

  “Asleep in one of the caravans, curled up with an empty bottle of wine. Did you really need to ask?”

  “And Driver?”

  “On his bus, I presume.”

  “The gang’s all here, eh?” He grinned.

  “Well, those of us who are left alive are,” she said quietly. Hollis slowly sat down—moving like a man twice his age—and she sat next to him, checking he was okay. They’d all suffered during their imprisonment at the hotel, but Hollis had been affected more than most. He’d lost the hearing in one ear, and the associated loss of confidence had hit him hard. For a while after they’d become stranded in the besieged hotel, his behavior had become increasingly aggressive and unpredictable. Over the last couple of weeks he’d become withdrawn. Now he barely said anything to anyone, rarely even moved unless Lorna was there to help him up and drag him around. He was half the man he used to be.

  The silence was getting to be too loud. “You okay, Jas?” Lorna asked, but he didn’t even bother to turn around. He hadn’t acknowledged her since she’d come up. “Much going on out there?” she asked, unperturbed.

  Finally, a response.

  “Nothing much,” he said. “Nothing much going on anywhere anymore.”

  “Bloody hell,” Harte sighed. “Cheer up, will you.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because this time yesterday we all thought our number was up. We were trapped. We were completely fucked.”

  “And this place is different because…?”

  Harte couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “This place couldn’t be more different.”

  “And you’re sure about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m not. Not yet, anyway. Way I see it, it’s just out of the frying pan, into the fire.”

  “You think?” Lorna said, disagreeing strongly. “It’s way better than that. Way I see it, we’re safely away from the dead. This is somewhere we can live and breathe and walk outside and…”

  “As long as we stay inside the castle walls.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Look, I’m not saying this place isn’t better, I just don’t think it’s as good as you’re making out.”

  “It’s as good as it gets for now, I think,” Hollis mumbled, but Jas still disagreed.

  “They only came out for us today because the dead had frozen,” he said, talking to the others more than Hollis. “It was a particularly harsh frost. That’s not going to happen every day. They’re still trapped like we were.”

  “Yes, but we only have to worry about the dead for a few more months,” Harte said. “Six months, that’s what we’ve always said. We’re almost halfway there now. It’ll get easier.”

  “I’ve been hearing that kind of bullshit since day one,” Jas interrupted, sounding increasingly angry. “I was talking to that guy Kieran when we got here. He said he cleared that road down there when Jackson and Driver went out looking for us.”

  “So?”

  “So by the time we got back, it was blocked again, wasn’t it? They had to get the digger back out and clear it before we could even get close to this place. And that’s on a day when the conditions are in our favor.”

  “Oh just have a drink,” Harte said, offering him a bottle of spirits. “Calm the fuck down.”

  Jas took a swig, winced, then passed the bottle back. Lorna watched him, concerned. Harte came over and sat down next to her in a corner of the tower. It was cold under his backside, but the strong walls shielded them from the icy wind. As uncomfortable as it was out here, they’d had enough of being trapped indoors recently. Jas remained on the opposite side to the rest of them, staring out into space.

  “What are you thinking?” Lorna asked him.

  “I’m thinking how fucked-up everything still is,” he replied, his voice wavering, “and how little of it I still understand. I’m asking myself why I’m stuck here in a bloody castle with you lot, when this time last year I’d have been at home with Harj and the kids and…”

  His voice broke and he didn’t finish his sentence, but it didn’t matter. The point had already been made. Being here tonight felt like a hollow victory for Jas. It depressed him to think this might be as good as his life was going to get. It still hurt too much to think about his life before the apocalypse in any great detail, but now, strangely, thinking about more recent times was becoming equally painful. Standing out here tonight reminded him of the endless hours he’d spent out on the balcony back
at the flats, drinking beer, looking out over the dead crowds and discussing the rigors and practicalities of daily survival with Hollis, Stokes and the others. He’d felt like the king of the world back then, like he and the rest of them were in almost total control. Christ, how things had changed. The flats were lost now, and the hotel too, and Stokes, Webb and many of the others were dead. Hollis was just a shell of a man … and as for the dead? Well, those fuckers continued to fight for all they were worth. Their decaying flesh may have been weak, but their intent was still clear.

  “I was just thinking,” he said, “how it feels like we’ve been here before.”

  “I’ve never been here before,” Hollis said, mishearing him. Jas ignored him and continued speaking.

  “Look down there,” he said, gesturing out over the castle wall, “and what do you see? I’ll tell you—a fucking huge crowd of dead bodies. Same as we saw when we looked out of the hotel windows every bloody morning. Same as we saw when we were back at the flats.”

  “But this is different.” Lorna sighed. “Can’t you see? Look at the condition they’re in, Jas. Look at the state of them.”

  “Look at the state of us,” he countered. “For fuck’s sake, there’s barely any of us left. Most of us are dead. Gordon, Ginnie, Martin, Webb, Ellie, Anita, Stokes … all gone.”

  “But we’re still here,” she protested. “We’ve survived.”

  “So far, yes.”

  “And all the other people Driver found here.”

  “What, all fifteen of them? Out of a population of something like sixty million people, there’s only just over twenty of us left?”

  “We don’t know that. There could be hundreds more scattered all over the country.”

  “Hundreds more. Doesn’t change the fact that millions have died.”

  “But this place is incredible,” Harte said. “It’s safe and it’s strong. They’ve got a decent level of supplies and—”

  “Spare me the bullshit,” Jas interrupted.