Autumn: Disintegration (27 page)

“Thing is, Greg,” he whispered, “I know you’ve managed to stay alive by doing things your way, and that’s worked for you. Christ, the very fact that we’re both standing here now is proof that we’ve all succeeded.”

“What are you trying to say?”

Martin thought carefully for a moment, choosing his words and finally beginning to calm down.

“What I’m saying,” he began, “is that our methods of survival have to be adapted to our surroundings. Where you were before, it suited you to make a bloody huge noise and to fight and destroy them.”

“And what about here?”

“Here things are different,” he immediately replied.

“How?”

“We’re relying on the fact that they don’t know where we are.”

Rather than explain further Martin began to climb the stairs and beckoned Hollis to follow. He sprinted up each flight until he’d reached the top floor. Halfway down the corridor was room West 37—his room. He opened the door and went inside. Hollis walked with him into his remarkably clean, comfortable, and well-ordered living space. Martin stood at the window which overlooked the car park and the countryside below. Hollis moved closer. He couldn’t see anything but the usual never-ending blackness.

“What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?” he asked.

“Down there,” Martin replied, opening the window slightly and pointing. The air outside was cold. Hollis shivered as a blustery gust hit his face.

“What?” he asked again.

“Look down there on the other side of the road. What can you see?”

Hollis stared, his eyes slowly becoming used to the outside gloom. He could see the thick, protective hedgerow which enclosed the hotel grounds and the gap where the narrow road ran around its perimeter. Beyond that was the hedge on the other side of the road which bordered the golf course and surrounding fields. There was some movement in the field immediately opposite. Corpses. He couldn’t see how many.

“There are a few bodies. Nothing out of the ordinary. Why?”

“Because that
is
out of the ordinary.”

Hollis leaned forward again. He could see the tops of as many as fifteen, maybe twenty bobbing heads moving in the field on the other side of the road. He couldn’t see what the problem was. A noise from downstairs—a sudden torrent of drunken, shouted abuse from Harte—distracted him. It affected the bodies too. As soon as they heard it they shuffled closer to the hedge.

“But there are still only a handful of them,” Hollis protested. “They’ll probably be gone in the morning.” He was tired and cold and was beginning to get annoyed with Martin.

“You’re not listening to me.” Martin sighed. He shut the window and sat down on the corner of his bed.

“I
am
listening, I just don’t see what the problem is.”

“Christ, Greg, I thought you’d understand.”

“Sorry…” he mumbled, shrugging his shoulders, not actually sure what he was apologizing for.

“You might be used to having that many bodies around. You might be used to having hundreds more, thousands even. We’re not.”

“But we can sort them out. They’re not a concern, believe me.”

“Thing is,” Martin continued, “we did have that many here to start with, but we dealt with them. We distracted them and we fooled them. We tricked them into moving away with the music and we lit a couple of fires on the golf course, then we locked ourselves down and kept quiet and out of sight. From what I’ve heard, you did the opposite. You just carried on like nothing had happened.”

“Well, not quite, but—”

“You did! As far as I can tell from what you’ve said, you kept going out to get your food and your fuel and your booze and whatever else you wanted.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I’m not criticizing what you’ve done.”

“You sound like you are.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m just saying that in your situation back where you were based, that approach worked. You can’t do that here. You can’t keep going outside and you can’t keep making the kind of noise that those bloody drunks downstairs have been making all evening.”

Hollis was struggling to understand.

“I still don’t know why you’re getting so upset—”

“I’m not upset,” Martin protested. “I’m concerned.”

“What about? Come on, spell it out for me. What is it that’s bothering you tonight? We knew we were going to attract a few of them.”

“I understood that, but I’ve been watching the bodies out there for a couple of hours now, Greg. Their behavior is changing. We’ve had them this close before, but they’ve always disappeared by now. Those things out there tonight aren’t going anywhere. The music’s still playing and there’s still a big enough crowd to keep them on the golf course, but it doesn’t seem to be working like it usually does. Christ, man, they’re moving in the opposite direction!”

Hollis looked out again, carefully considering the frightened man’s words.

“What about the helicopter?” he asked. “It flew over again today, didn’t it?”

“Yes. What about it?”

“We need to do something to make them see us.”

“Is this relevant?”

“I think so. How are we going to attract their attention without attracting the bodies too?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking about marking a message on the lawns or something like that.”

“Might work. Some kind of beacon would be better, though. They won’t see your message unless they fly right over us and happen to be looking down.”

“I know…”

“The point I’m trying to make is that we’re going to have to risk making our presence known at some point. And we can deal with the dead, Martin. We’ve done it before. Bloody hell, Webb alone has torched hundreds of them.”

“He might well have, but there are thousands more waiting out there.”

“Waiting?”

“Yes, waiting. Waiting to find out where we are. Driving around in bloody trucks and buses, lighting beacons and making a bloody noise like you lot have done today is just going to bring them straight back to us. You’re going to start a chain reaction. Once a few of them know where we are, the whole bloody lot will follow.”

39

At first light, at Martin’s request, Hollis walked with him up to the clubhouse where he set the music playing. It was the first time in weeks that Martin had walked rather than cycled along the track which ran around the western edge of the hotel grounds. Without his bike he felt as if he’d traveled much farther than usual, and the perceived increase in distance made him feel even more vulnerable and exposed. If he hadn’t had Hollis with him he doubted he’d have dared make the trip on foot. Keen to gain a better appreciation of their location, Hollis had insisted they initially continue down the narrow lane to get closer to the bodies they’d seen last night.

Martin pointed through a gap in the hedge to help Hollis get his bearings. He glanced back over the wall of tall laurel bushes behind him at the hotel. He could just about see Martin’s room on the top floor, the angle indicating that they were roughly level with the area they’d observed last night. Crouching down, he peered through the mass of tangled branches in front of him. On the other side of the hedgerow was a large, open field.

“Is this still the golf course?” he asked, his whispered voice barely audible. “Couldn’t really see last night.”

Martin shook his head.

“No, this field’s part of a farm. The golf course starts another couple of hundred yards further up the road.”

Hollis could see numerous bodies staggering around. There appeared to be at least as many as there had been previously, maybe even a few more. His view was limited and he looked for another gap.

“I’ve never seen this many here before,” Martin hissed. “There’s only ever been a handful here at a time, and they’ve always been moving towards the music, not away from it.”

Hollis continued to watch the dead. Although some were clearly still trying to move toward the source of the distant sound, others were definitely traveling in the opposite direction. Some remained standing in the same place, constantly shuffling but never straying more than a few meters away at a time. He could only assume they were gravitating toward the hotel or at least toward the remains of the crowd which had been gathered in this area last night. Whatever the reason, their actions seemed to add weight to Martin’s earlier argument. Hollis wondered whether he had really underestimated the effect of their arrival and the noise of the bus—and the drunks—yesterday. More to the point, maybe he’d underestimated the steadily increasing levels of intelligence and control which the dead seemed to be exhibiting here.

“There still aren’t that many,” he mumbled, taking care to keep his voice low but struggling to find the right volume because of the constant pain and muffled sound in his damaged ear. He shifted position again, not able to see as much as he wanted. “A few more hours of silence and I’m sure they’ll disappear. It’s not been that long. Once we explain to the others what’s happening they’ll—”

He stopped speaking immediately as a corpse rushed toward him. It crashed into the other side of the hedgerow and tried to stretch its gnarled hand out through the tangled undergrowth. He tripped back in surprise, and then moved closer again when the initial shock had faded.

“What is it?” Martin asked anxiously, keeping a safe distance.

“Got a lively one, that’s all,” Hollis replied. He looked into the dead monster’s face through a gap in the branches, satisfied that it couldn’t reach him. He couldn’t tell if it had been male or female. Its skin was heavily pockmarked and decayed and its top lip had been torn away, exposing its yellowed teeth. A large flap of skin hung down from the side of its head, covering its ear. Its eyes, however, although dark and unfocused, appeared relatively undamaged. Hollis realized that the damn thing was staring straight at him. Its sight may well have been limited, but the creature in the field was watching his every move. It suddenly threw itself into the hedge again, reaching out as far as it could. He watched in disgust as savage thorns and branches stripped rotting flesh from its bones. Two now; another corpse, alerted by the sudden movements of the first, rushed forward also. Then another, then another. Within seconds at least five of the decaying monsters were clamoring at the hedge close to where Hollis was standing. Surprised and unnerved by their unexpected ferocity, he turned back and silently ushered Martin along the road toward the clubhouse.

*   *   *

Still uneasy, Hollis relaxed slightly when they reached the enclosed passageway which led up to the back entrance of the clubhouse. Martin led him inside, moving quickly through the pitch-black ground floor and up the stairs to the balconied landing. Both of the stereos were still working and the combined noise from the music and the generators was appalling, loud enough for Hollis to almost be glad that one of his ears had stopped working. He followed Martin into the meeting room, watched his well-rehearsed refueling routine, then crossed the landing to the office. He noticed that Martin was keeping his head down, looking at the floor as much as possible.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, concerned.

“Nothing,” Martin replied. “Just don’t like to look at them, that’s all.”

He replaced the stereo and moved to one side. Hollis immediately stepped forward, his inquisitiveness getting the better of him. He leaned out the window, hanging onto the frame for support.

“Fuck me,” he said, forgetting himself. The music drowned out his words. He glanced back at Martin, who looked away from him, not wanting to share the horror of what he’d just seen. Hollis turned back to face outside.

The sun was rising on the horizon. Incandescent yellow light was slowly seeping across the world, illuminating everything and burning away the shadow and shade. Below Hollis, stretching out for as far as he could see in every direction, stood the largest crowd of bodies he’d ever seen. Thousands of them—hundreds of thousands, even—filled every inch of the golf course. The size of the crowd was incomprehensible and terrifying. He couldn’t compare it to the gathering outside the flats—there the dead had been free to wander, but here they were restricted and confined. In an instant, however, he completely understood why Martin had reacted so badly to the little noise they’d made over the last two days. If this crowd turned on them, he realized, there’d be no escape.

If this number of bodies get any closer to the hotel
, he thought,
they’ll either tear us apart or crush us. There will be no way out. No escape. And if they don’t kill us, with that many of them so close it’ll surely only be a matter of time before the germs that killed Ellie and Anita start spreading
.

40

With the rest of the group still indoors, Jas slipped out and crept over to the bus, which had been abandoned right outside the hotel entrance yesterday. In the sudden euphoria which had followed their successful looting expedition, they had simply unloaded enough food and drink to get them through the night with the intention of finishing the job in the morning. It was still early and nothing had so far been done. Lethargy, hangovers, and general tiredness seemed to have affected everyone. Everyone except Jas.

Feeling undeniably guilty and uneasy, he crept onto the bus and began to pick up boxes of food. He carried them back through the hotel, taking care not to be seen, and took them up to the middle room on the first floor of the east wing of the building: room 24 East. Hardly anyone slept over there and that room, he’d discovered, was one of the largest. The first floor felt safer than the others. He’d stopped on the glass-fronted staircase for a while and had studied the almost identical west-wing part of the building opposite and the enclosed grassy courtyard below. He knew that if anything happened and he ended up trapped in the room he’d just chosen, he’d have the security of being off the ground floor but would still be low enough to get out of a window should he need to make a sudden escape.

His plan this morning was simple: fill the room with supplies so that they had an additional stockpile which he could get to in the event of an emergency. The others could use it with him. Well, some of them, anyway. Whatever the reason, it made sense not to store everything they’d managed to scavenge in one part of the building.