Britain's End Page 23

  Glass crunched underfoot as Kim stepped over the threshold, and into the hotel.

  “How can you tell no one lives here now?” Mirabelle asked, but guessed the answer immediately. “Oh, because they’d have heard the shipwreck.”

  “Possibly not,” Bran said. “But they’d have lights. Fires, at least, and I can’t smell smoke.”

  “Keep talking,” Kim said, sending her torch into the corners of the reception area. “No, seriously. Let’s let the undead know we’re here, too.”

  “You sure?” Mirabelle asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

  “We’ve got about ten minutes to decide whether to bring everyone up here,” Kim said. “We don’t have time to search the entire place.”

  “I’d say this looks manageable,” Bran said. “We can secure those doors with that furniture. Outside, we can push those lorries up against the main entrance.”

  “The wall ringing the property only looks ornamental,” Kim said, crossing to the reception desk. Behind it was a door. “And, like you said, there’s got to be at least one other way in and out.”

  “We’ll build our own barricade with tables and chairs, beds and mattresses,” Bran said.

  Kim tapped her machete against the wood. There was no sound from beyond the door. She tried the handle. “Locked.” She shone her light over the mounds of paper on the staff-side of the reception desk. There were a few pens, too, and a solitary, empty tin can with a fork still inside. Someone had stayed here after the outbreak, and had written something, but there wasn’t time to read it. Not now, not yet.

  “Get ready.” She slammed the machete between the lock and frame, pushed, heaved, and hoped the blade wouldn’t break. The wood surrounding the lock splintered, and the door swung inwards. Kim stepped back, raising her blade, but there was no danger inside.

  “Bags,” she said, shining her light into the narrow room. “Suitcases. Lots of them.” She picked one up. “It’s full.” She opened the zip. “Clothes and personal items.” She put the bag down.

  “They were waiting,” Mirabelle said, leafing through the pages on the desk. “Waiting for someone, or waiting to leave. Not sure which. I wonder when this was.”

  “How much time do we have?” Kim asked.

  “None,” Bran said. “Even if we leave now, we won’t be back on the beach before our hour is up.”

  “We’ll do one quick sweep of the ground floor, then,” Kim said. “If we can manage that in ten minutes, we’ll send for everyone else.”

  There were two corridors leading from reception area. They picked the one that was signposted to the restaurant. The corridor narrowed as they passed the stairwell. The door was closed, but not chained.

  “No time to look upstairs,” Bran said. “You watch the left, Kim. Mirabelle, keep your eyes front and back. I’ve got the right.”

  “A meeting room. Empty,” Kim said, trying the first door. A table had been upturned against the window. A mixture of broken furniture added weight to the clumsy barricade.

  “Empty,” Bran echoed from the other side of the hallway.

  The next door led to another small meeting room, identical to the first, right down to the upturned table blocking the window. She moved on to the next door. When she pushed, something pushed back.

  “Zombie,” she said. She raised her boot and slammed it into the door. There was a thump as the rubber sole hit wood, a louder thud as the door hit decaying flesh, and then a clatter as the creature staggered back into the room. She’d knocked it over, she thought. She was wrong.

  Kim shoulder-barged the door, knocking it open, and found the zombie was still on its feet, its arms outstretched, its mouth, gaping open. Momentum kept her moving forward, right into its grasping hands. They clawed around her arms, trapping them in an inhuman grip. She couldn’t raise her machete, let alone swing it, so brought her knee up instead. Necrotic sinew gave under the pressure, but the zombie’s arms tightened around hers. There was a ferocious yell from behind her, and then a machete sprouted from the top of the creature’s head. It fell lifeless to the floor.

  “Are you okay?” Mirabelle asked.

  “You see? Don’t rush in,” Kim said as Mirabelle tugged her machete free.

  “Next room,” Bran said.

  “Next room,” Kim agreed, shining the light around the zombie’s… it hadn’t been a cell, or a tomb. It was just another meeting room with a table against the window.

  There were two more meeting rooms, then a double-locked door that, according to the signs, led to a children’s supervised-play area, with a note under that instructing parents to collect the key from reception. Beyond that was the restaurant.

  “Someone was here after the outbreak, and for some time,” Kim said, shining the light around the interior. Again, the windows were barricaded.

  “The fire escape is unlocked,” Bran said. “Looks like they fled hurriedly, their meal half-finished.”

  “The kitchen’s empty. Empty of zombies, I mean,” Kim said. She let the door swing closed.

  “Whoever they were, they left hurriedly,” Bran said. “Except for the front door, the windows are barricaded so half our job’s done. I’d say this will do.”

  “Then go back to the beach,” Kim said. “Mirabelle and I will check the rest of the hotel. Bran, do you… do you know what to do? How to get people up here safely? I mean, honestly, I don’t.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Bran said. “I’ll send a small group to secure this location, then a larger one to secure the route, Meanwhile, I’ll get everyone else ready to move.”

  “Good,” Kim said, gratefully feeling the weight shift from her shoulders.

  “Remember where the exits are,” Bran said. “If all else fails, barricade yourselves in one of the empty meeting rooms and wait. Reinforcements will be here in half an hour.” Bran ran over to the fire escape, and left.

  “They really did leave in a hurry, didn’t they?” Mirabelle said.

  The meals were half eaten, but it was impossible to tell what the last meal had been.

  “I tell you what’s interesting,” Kim said. “Those tables, there, were pushed together, but these ones weren’t.” She did a quick count of the plates. “There were twelve sitting at that long table, eighteen at that one, but then these six tables were occupied by smaller groups of between two and four.”

  Mirabelle picked up a wine bottle. “Half empty.”

  “Let’s see what’s in the kitchen,” Kim said, “then we’ll check out the rooms on the other side of the reception area. There’ll be a laundry, I suppose.”

  “That would have been outsourced,” Mirabelle said.

  “It would?”

  “I worked in a hotel,” Mirabelle said.

  “I thought you were a hacker.”

  “I was an ethical hacker,” Mirabelle said. “Coding, basically. I worked in hotels when I was at uni.”

  “Ah. Ready?” Kim pushed at the kitchen door. It was just as empty as before.

  “They must have cooked their meal on that two-ring burner,” Mirabelle said. It had been placed on the stainless counter, the gas cylinder on the floor below it. Whatever the Irish survivors’ last meal had been, a line of black mould now ringed the top of the overly large saucepan balanced on the heating element.

  “Pots and pans, but we want food,” Kim said. “Where would they keep it?” Her light fell on the pair of doors, four-feet apart, at the rear of the room. “From that handle, I’d say that’s the walk-in freezer. The other must be the storeroom.”

  “There’ll be nothing edible in the freezer,” Mirabelle said. As she crossed the kitchen towards it, her arm brushed against a row of frying pans. They clattered against one another. Behind the freezer’s door, desiccated fingers scraped against the thick metal. Then came a bang, a thud.

  Kim shone her beam on the freezer’s heavy handle. “Leave it,” she said.

  “That might be people.”

  “Speak if you can!” Kim called, and got a
nother thump and scrape in reply. “I don’t think so. If I’m wrong, another half hour won’t make a difference.” She shifted the beam to the other door. The handle was smaller, far less sturdy than the freezer, but she couldn’t be certain the sound was coming solely from the walk-in freezer. “We’ll leave that room until there’s more of us, too.”

  “Does it change the plan?” Mirabelle asked.

  “No,” Kim said. “Those rooms can’t be large, and there’s fourteen hundred of us.” As she turned around, her light fell on Mirabelle’s crudely bandaged arm.

  Mirabelle followed the light. “Probably less,” she said.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Kim said.

  “Maybe,” Mirabelle said. “Maybe not. What was the name of that guy who was bitten when you were in Brazely Abbey? The one Bill sat up with all night?”

  Not for the first time, Kim silently cursed that Bill ever wrote that journal, and doubly-cursed that he’d not burned it the moment they reached Anglesey.

  “Chris,” Mirabelle said. “That was his name. The farmer who was with Barrett’s people.”

  “Don’t dwell on it,” Kim said. She headed through the door, out of the dining room, and back into the corridor. “You know what I wonder,” she added, settling on the first topic she could think of which might distract Mirabelle. “I wonder why they fled so hurriedly. The bottle of wine suggests they weren’t eating breakfast. So what happened that meant they would flee at night?”

  “The zombie in the freezer,” Mirabelle said. “And the other one that was in the meeting room. They’re not the answer, but it’s another piece of the puzzle.”

  The rest of the puzzle found them as they reached the stairwell. When they were ten feet from the door, there was a clattering thump. The door flew open, knocked ajar by a putrescent palm absent of fingers. The half-hand banged against the floor as the zombie rolled to its side. The creature thumped to the floor as Kim hacked her machete down on its exposed scalp.

  Barely before she’d withdrawn her blade, there was a clatter from above. A second creature fell down the stairs. Wearing trainers and leggings, it was dressed for a run not for a battle, and looked more recently turned than the first zombie. Mirabelle thrust her machete at its skull. The blade slid across skin, slicing tufts of dirty-blonde hair from it scalp. As the zombie tried to stand, it pressed its hands against the corpse lying in the doorway. They sank into the rotten flesh, up to its wrists. Mirabelle swung again, this time cracking open its skull.

  “They’re upstairs,” Mirabelle said.

  “Injured, infected, taken upstairs for care. Must be,” Kim said tersely. She clipped the gory machete back onto her belt, and drew her pistol. “Watch the corridor, be ready to run.”

  The undead had fallen in front of the door, preventing it from closing. Kim stepped over the corpses, aiming gun and torch up the dark stairwell. She was tempted to shout. She was tempted to shoot. She was saved by having to do either when a figure in camouflage staggered down the steps. It managed to reach the landing while keeping on its feet, but as it saw the light, it threw itself forward. Its foot missed the step and its fall almost became a leap. Kim fired while it was in the air. Her bullet missed by inches that might as well have been a mile. She stepped aside. The zombie landed hard, its jaw slamming into the second-from-bottom step. There was a crack of bone drowned by the retort as she put a bullet into the back of its skull.

  “The clothing, army surplus, I think,” she said, shifting gun and light back up to the landing. There was no time to say anything else as there were two more zombies on the stairwell, and the sound of far more coming from above. She fired at the pink-haired zombie on the left. The bullet slammed into its forehead, and the wig flew off. She shifted aim as the other staggered down the steps. It managed two stairs before it slipped, fell, and slid face first almost down to the bottom. Mirabelle darted forward, swinging her machete, and Kim shifted her focus back to the landing, firing a shot as another zombie appeared.

  There was no time for words, barely time for breath as one, then two, then four more undead pushed their way down the stairwell. She shot and Mirabelle hacked. One-by-one, the zombies died. In the moment, it seemed to last an eternity, but less than a minute later, the stairwell was silent once more.

  “I think we’re okay,” Kim said. “I think that’s it.”

  “I can hear something,” Mirabelle said. She stepped back out into the corridor. “But I think it’s from the kitchens.”

  “I hope so,” Kim said. “I’m not sure…”

  “What?”

  “No, it’s that zombie, the one in trainers and leggings. It… I mean, she dressed for a run, like you would a year ago.”

  “Maybe she was out for a run when the outbreak happened,” Mirabelle said.

  “Except I thought she didn’t look as recently turned as the others,” Kim said. “I don’t know. It’s just that it’s… well, I guess it’s that I haven’t seen anyone dressed like that in so long.”

  “I saw someone like that last month,” Mirabelle said.

  “On Anglesey, you mean?” Kim asked. “Of course you do. Really, though?”

  “Sure. Going for a run is what people did when the world was normal, and that’s what they wanted Anglesey to be; as close to their old-world normal as they could make it.”

  Kim shone the light on the corpse in the camouflage. On second glance it looked more like a uniform than army-surplus. “Maybe we’ll find the answer in those papers left behind the reception desk. We’ll look at them once we know we’re safe. Okay, what’s next? Where’s the danger going to come from?”

  “Anywhere,” Mirabelle said. “Everywhere?”

  “Appear decisive, especially when you’re not,” Kim said. “That was something Grandpa Jack said. It was advice he’d given to officers in Vietnam. He wasn’t my actual grandfather, he was this old guy in Oregon.”

  “When you did your year-abroad?”

  And again, Kim silently cursed Bill for writing his journal. “That’s it,” she said. “We’ll have to go room-to-room upstairs, but not until there’s more of us here. A couple of tables from a meeting room will secure the door to the stairwell for now.”

  After five minutes, they had a crude barricade that would slow the undead, though it probably wouldn’t stop them. As Kim and Mirabelle headed back into the reception area to find something sturdier, they heard footsteps, then voices. Rahinder and a squad of twenty ran into the hotel. Some were armed with crossbows, two with rifles, and a few with machetes, but most were carrying an odd assortment of tools salvaged from the wreck.

  “Good to see you,” Kim said. “Where’s Bran?”

  “On the beach,” Rahinder said. “He’s organising everyone else. Donnie’s watching the coastal road.”

  “Okay, good. On first glance, this hotel will do for tonight,” Kim said. “There are some zombies locked in the walk-in freezer in the kitchen, and there were more upstairs. We didn’t go up, but killed them as they tumbled down the stairs. I think some survivors took refuge here a few months ago. Maybe during the summer. Some of them were infected, brought back here, and taken upstairs to recover. They turned. You can guess the rest. As I say, we’ve not been upstairs, and we’ve not checked down there yet, either.” She pointed at the other corridor leading from the reception area. “There are probably more undead upstairs, and maybe some downstairs. In fact, I’d suggest you assume there could be zombies absolutely anywhere.”

  “A mantra I tell myself any time I’m on the mainland,” Rahinder said. “What do you want us to do?”

  For a moment, Kim was at a loss. Be decisive, she told herself. “You four,” she pointed at random, “Stay here, guard the doors. You two, watch that corridor. The rest, come with me.” She led them to the stairwell. “You three,” she said, again pointing at random, “watch and listen. Shout if any more come down the stairs, or if you hear any sound from above.”

  She led Mirabelle, Rahinder, and the others bac
k into the kitchens, drew her machete, and pointed it at the freezer. “They’re in there,” she said, “but save the bullets. We’ll need them later. Ready?” She pulled the freezer door open.

  As lights shone inside, a zombie fell out. Dressed in jeans tucked into boots, t-shirt, but no jacket, its skin was tinged an odd shade of green. Before it could stand, a trio of crossbow bolts slammed into it. One hit the zombie’s neck, one its shoulder, and one slammed into and almost entirely through its stomach. Collectively, they pinned the creature to the floor. Kim shone the light into the freezer, but there were no more undead inside. There was a rattling rasp from the zombie, then a ripping of flesh as it tore itself free of the bolts. Rahinder fired his crossbow, and his bolt slammed through its skull.

  “Can you re-use those bolts?” Kim asked.

  “Once they’ve been cleaned and sharpened,” Rahinder said.

  Kim made a mental note to, in future, say hold your fire, not save the bullets. “That other door, then. It has to be the non-refrigerated food-store. It doesn’t sound like anything is in there. Mirabelle, can you open it?”

  Kim took a position in front, preventing anyone from wasting any more precious ammunition. “Now,” she said.

  Mirabelle opened the door. The room beyond was empty, at least of the undead.

  “That’s food!” Mirabelle said. The storeroom was half full, but only half of that were bulk-supplies. There were cans of supermarket-brand fruit, and small jars of coffee, and others of honey and homemade jam that had to have come from nearby homes. There was a catering-tub of powdered tomato soup that surely hadn’t been given to the hotel’s guests. Kim raised the tub. It was half full.

  “Leave it here for now,” Kim said. “We need to search the rest of the hotel, clear it of the undead. Then… Do you think that gas ring will still work?”

  Rahinder checked the fuel canister. “Yes.”

  “So, we can cook up some soup,” Kim said. Except that tin wouldn’t feed more than fifty people. “Or some stew or something.” Except that they would need water, too. And that thought brought thirst with it. Her mouth was suddenly dry. “It’s raining, isn’t it?”