`Brilliant,' Jones grinned. `Absolutely fucking brilliant!'
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Was the man in a dress really suggesting they spend their last few days sitting in a luxury hotel suite watching three week old bodies push each other off the roof?
`It's worth a go, isn't it?' Bushell smiled.
`Okay,' Jones said, surprising even himself, `let's do it.'
The roof of the building was accessed from a narrow staircase which led off an unremarkable looking doorway at the top of the main stairs. With the bodies continuing to make unsteady progress towards them, Jones and Bushell crept up towards the hatch that would lead them outside.
`It's locked,' Bushell grunted as he tried to push the door open.
`Don't you have the key? You've got keys to everywhere else.'
`Sorry.'
`Smash it open then.'
`What about the noise?'
Jones looked down the staircase, back into the heart of the building. Even from this distance he could see indistinct, shuffling movement.
`Bit late to worry about that,' he mumbled.
With limited space to manoeuvre his bulk, Bushell swung himself back and then crashed his shoulder against the door. It rattled in its frame but didn't open. Another couple of attempts were equally unsuccessful.
`Let me,' Jones said, pushing the other man to the side. He launched a barrage of well aimed kicks at the lock. The wood began to splinter and crack. Another few kicks and it flew open.
The two men climbed out onto the roof. A phenomenal wind threatened to blow them off their feet. `Jesus,' Jones said, having to shout to make himself heard, `bit blustery, isn't it.'
Bushell didn't answer. He was already busying himself with trying to pull the door off its hinges. For the bodies to be able to keep moving forward the doorway would need to remain clear. The only way to make sure that happened was to remove the door completely. Jones picked up a discarded strip of metal from the roof and, using it as a jemmy, began to prise at the hinges. A couple of minutes of grunting and groaning and the wood splintered and gave way.
`That's it,' Bushell said, dragging the now redundant door away and dropping it on the asphalt. `Let's get back.'
The two men clattered back down the staircase towards the Presidential Suite. Jones stopped at the top of the staircase and peered down at the bodies moving towards him. Was it his imagination, or had they begun to move slightly quicker than they had been? He tried to think logically as he watched the distance between the living and the dead rapidly evaporate. Previously the bodies had been driven by the pressure of others pushing them from behind. So what had changed now? The answer was simple. The corpses furthest up the stairs now knew that there were survivors above. Rather than wait to be pushed forward, those at the front of the queue were now moving under their own steam. The distance between them was disappearing rapidly. Jones stood on the landing and watched the nearest of the rotting figures awkwardly climbing towards the top floor of the hotel. Bushell stood next to him.
`They're getting faster,' Jones said quietly, not quite believing what he was seeing. `I think we need to...' He stopped speaking when one of the bodies looked up at him. Was he imagining it? No, now Bushell had seen it too. The creatures were looking at them...
`Move,' Bushell said simply. The other man didn't argue.
`Done it?' Proctor asked hopefully as they burst back through the main doors.
Bushell nodded.
`Done it.'
`Now what?'
`We might have a problem...' he began to say.
`What's the matter?' Doreen asked, concerned.
Jones still stood by the open doors, looking back down the corridor and occasionally turning round and glancing over his shoulder at the others. He was about to try and tell them what they'd seen when the first bodies appeared on the landing. Elizabeth covered her mouth in horror and stifled a terrified scream. Proctor scrambled away from the open door.
`Fucking hell...' gasped Wilcox.
`They saw us,' Jones mumbled pathetically. `There was nothing we could do.'
More bodies appeared and began their typically slow, dragging walk towards the survivors. Frozen to the spot with shock and disbelief Jones stood and watched them. No-one else moved. And then Doreen spoke.
`Did you open the door to the roof?' she asked. Bushell nodded.
`Yes, I don't know why they're not...?'
Doreen sighed.
`It's bloody obvious why they're coming down here and not going up there, they followed you, you pair of bloody idiots.'
`Shut the door,' Proctor pleaded from somewhere deep in the suite. `Please, shut the door.'
`So is that it?' Doreen asked. `All that noise and all that effort and that's it? That's all you're going to do?'
Bushell tried to mumble a response but he couldn't coordinate his brain and mouth to make it happen.
`What else can we do?' Jones hissed under his breath, taking a step back as the nearest cadaver took another lumbering step forward. `We're completely screwed.'
`If that's true,' Doreen hissed back, `then I'm not about to sit here, lovely as it is, and let those things have their way with me. I'm an old woman with standards. I've still got my pride.'
More interested in the relentless approach of the dead than the prattling of a nervous old woman, no-one paid her any attention. Infuriated by the lack of response from the others, Doreen took it upon herself to take action.
`Bloody useless, the lot of you,' she grumbled. `Get back in there, close the door and enjoy your little party or whatever it is you decide to do...'
Doreen was tired. She'd really had enough. Wiser and more shrewd than they gave her credit for, she'd listened to everything that Bushell had said and she'd agreed with him completely. Death was inevitable, and she didn't have the energy or the desire to go on running. She pushed her way past Jones and slammed the door of the Presidential Suite in his face. With a complete lack of nerves she walked towards the bodies and pushed past them. Although their numbers were imposing, they were weak and clumsy. They swung their rotting fists at her and tried to grab at her with slow and gnarled, talon-like hands but she was as wiry and thin as they were and she slipped past them, weaving between them with the sudden grace and subtlety of a woman with chronic back pain which was ten percent physical and ninety percent attention seeking bullshit. She pushed her way deeper into the throng until she had reached the stairs. She then looked up and saw the short flight of steps which led to the roof. Without stopping to think she gave a loud whistle and then threw herself up the last few steps and out onto the asphalt. Distracted by Doreen's sudden speed, noise and movement, several of the bodies turned away from the door to the Presidential Suite and followed her.
Bloody hell it was cold. Doreen wrapped her thin cardigan tightly around her and braced herself against the wind. Now what did she do? She hadn't quite thought this through. She knew what she was doing, but now that she was standing unprotected on the roof the consequences of her actions really began to hit home. This was it. No more running or hiding or sleeping on the floor. No more fear or confusion or disorientation. Time for a rest. A long overdue and well deserved rest.
Doreen walked towards the edge of the roof and looked down. Bloody hell, she thought, it was higher than she'd expected. That was probably a good thing, she decided. Although she was only a few feet higher up there than she'd been in the suite just below, the difference was stark. Perhaps it was because the protection of glass and concrete had gone. Perhaps it was because now there was nothing between her and the rest of the world.
The first few bodies staggered out onto the roof.
This is it then, she thought, time to do it. She'd been toying with the idea of suicide for few days, a few weeks if she was honest, but she'd always clung onto the slim hope that things would get better. Suicide had always seemed like the coward's way out before today, but after listening to what Bushell had said earlier she'd
