Jones, terrified and pumped full of adrenaline, ran, pausing only to stare in disbelief at the main staircase of the hotel which was a solid column of slowly moving flesh.
Without direction he skipped and weaved through the lifeless corpses that still dragged themselves around the rubble-strewn ruin and then burst out onto the street. The bodies were fewer out there, but he knew they would be upon him soon. Not knowing where he was going or why, he ran.
`Bastard,' Wilcox moaned as bodies began to slam against the other side of the fire escape door. `That bloody stupid bastard, he's let them know where we are.'
The three remaining survivors stood together at the foot of the staircase in stunned silence. What the hell did they do now? Elizabeth thought about Bushell, twenty-eight floors above them, and the sense of his actions became painfully clear. It was no longer about surviving, it was about choosing where to die. Still tearful, she opened the door and barged past the six bodies that were now clawing against the other side. In panic Proctor ran after her.
Wilcox froze. He couldn't do it. He couldn't bring himself to go out there. He knew as well as the others that what was going to happen to him was inevitable, but he didn't have the mental strength to keep going like they did.
As the fire door had swung shut, one of the bodies had become trapped, leaving it half-open. More of the sickly cadavers gravitated towards the exit and clambered over the trapped corpse. Wilcox watched as the first few of them moved closer. What did he do now? Still breathless from the sudden descent, he began to climb back upstairs.
This is bloody stupid, he thought to himself as he climbed. His body wanted to slow down but the panic and claustrophobic fear he felt kept him moving forward at an uncomfortable speed. He was soaked with sweat and his legs felt like lead but it didn't matter. He'd left those fucking things at the bottom of the stairs for dust.
It was more than half an hour later when he reached the fire escape door on the twenty-eighth floor. He pushed through it eagerly, keen to find Bushell and... and the suite was full of bodies. He looked up, terrified, and saw that the main door was down. The cadavers had noticed his sudden and unexpected arrival too. They surged towards him and knocked him off his feet. As their sharp, bony fingers dug into his flesh he lay on the ground and looked at the open fire escape door through which he'd just emerged. If he really tried, he thought, he might be able to crawl through it and give himself a little more time.
What's the fucking point, Wilcox thought as warm blood began to gush and pour from gaping wounds that the dead had torn open. Bushell was right. Just give up, lie back and wait for it to be over.
Elizabeth wasn't aware that Proctor had followed her until she heard him shouting for her to slow down. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw him dragging himself after her. She wasn't interested. She didn't want to be with anyone else now, certainly not him. She kept moving, if anything increasing her speed. Not knowing the city particularly well she didn't have a clue where she was going. She'd wanted to head out of the centre but, instead, had inadvertently found herself running through the main shopping area. The bodies there were still dense in number and tightly packed but she moved with sufficient speed and control to work her way around them and through them.
Needing to stop and rest she turned left into a dark alleyway. She stopped running for a moment and rested with her hands on her knees, sucking in as much precious oxygen as she could. No bodies had followed her yet. If she could get out of sight quickly she knew she might have an opportunity to properly catch her breath and decide what to do next. There was a door halfway down the alley. She looked in through a small, dusty window but couldn't immediately see any movement. She pulled the door open and slipped inside, too tired to care what she found on the other side.
Bloody hell, she thought as she climbed a narrow, white marble staircase. Of all the doors in all the alleys, she seemed to have chosen the staff entrance to Lacey's department store. Christ, she'd never been able to afford to shop there although she'd always wanted to. It was one of those places that made you feel dirty and unworthy if you walked in without a purse full of gold and platinum charge cards and credit cards. Today, of course, it was a cold, dark, skeletal shadow of its former self but what the hell, it was still Laceys.
Barry Bushell's words continued to play heavily on Elizabeth's mind as she crept further up the stairs and deeper into the building. How right he'd been. She couldn't think of anywhere she'd be completely safe and, even if she could, she had no way of getting there now. She continued to climb, stopping when she reached the jewellery department on the third floor. There were no bodies around that she could see. Always a sucker for gold and stones, she found herself drawn to the cobweb-covered display cabinets. They were still filled with beautiful pieces that, a month ago, would have been worth a fortune. Today they were worth nothing. But hell, she could dream, couldn't she? Dreaming was just about all she had left...
Elizabeth finally had her shopping trip around Laceys. She worked her way through the building floor by floor, avoiding the occasional corpse and staring in wonder at all the things she'd never been able to afford. When she reached the ladies clothing department she changed out of her dirty clothes and dressed in the most expensive outfit she could find. She climbed to the very top floor and sat on a leather sofa she'd never have been able to afford in a hundred years. She drank wine, ate chocolate and swallowed enough headache tablets to kill an elephant.
Paul Jones had also decided to take his own life.
He stopped running and hid in the shadows of a newsagents until the effect of his sudden appearance and disappearance had faded away and the bodies had lost interest. He lay on the floor behind the counter and read the last ever editions of half a dozen newspapers until the sun had disappeared and the light had faded away. All of the headlines that had once seemed so important and relevant now seemed puerile and insignificant.
Walking slowly through the shadows now without fear or concern, Jones made his way along the dark city streets to a construction site. With a rucksack full of booze on his back, he climbed to the very top of the tallest crane he could find which stood in the middle of the foundations of an office building that would never be completed. Protected by the height and enjoying a view which was even more impressive than the view from the hotel's Presidential Suite, he drank and slept.
In the morning, when the sun finally came up, he looked back across town at the hotel he'd left behind and watched the occasional stupid body fall from the roof. He laughed out loud without fear of retribution.
Paul Jones had decided to take his own life, but not yet. He'd do it when there were no other options left. Once Proctor had lost sight of Elizabeth he'd stopped running. He'd slowed his pace to match that of the dead and, for a time, had been able to walk among them undetected. I can do this, he thought, I can outwit them. I can move around them and between them and I can do this. Bushell was wrong. They were all wrong. I don't have to run and I don't have to give up. It's not over...
For almost a day he managed to survive, but his foolish confidence proved to be his undoing. It took only a single sneeze. One sneeze in the middle of a vast crowd of bodies and his position was revealed. And Proctor, being a cowardly man, tried to run. Instead of standing his ground and continuing to mimic the actions of the bodies all around him, the stupid man tried to run. Deep in the middle of several hundred rancid, rotting cadavers, however, he didn't stand a chance. They ripped him to pieces before he had chance to scream for help.
Wouldn't have mattered. No-one would have come.
Barry Bushell lasted for several more days. The hotel suite was overrun with bodies but, as far as he could tell, they didn't know that he was still in the bedroom. He remained quiet and still. Without food, water and exercise, however, he quickly became weak.
Bushell died a relatively happy man. He'd rather not have died, of course, but he'd managed somehow to retain the control he'd so desperately wanted - the control that death had stripped from the millions of bodies condemned to drag themselves along the streets outside until they were no longer able to move.
Dressed in a silk negligee and lying in a comfortable (if slightly soiled) bed, he died peacefully in his sleep at the end of a good book.
DAY TWENTY-THREE
AMY STEADMAN Part vi It is now more than three weeks since infection. Amy Steadman's body has been moving away from the site of its death constantly for more than two weeks. It is now little more than a rotten and featureless shadow of what it once was. The face, once fresh, clear and attractive, is now skeletal and heavily decayed. Its skin is discoloured and waxy. Its once bright eyes are dull, dark and dry. Because of its physical limitations the creature moves slowly and forcefully. Movements which had previously been random and uncoordinated, however, now ominously have an underlying purpose and determination.
