arms, beckoning them toward him. He began to jog away, occasionally looking back over his shoulder to make sure they were following. Behind them the driver of the coach parked it back into its original position across the width of the road, then got out and climbed onto a bicycle which had been hurriedly dumped in the tall hedgerow. He pedaled furiously after the bus and the van.
“Where the hell are we going now?” Jas asked, standing at the front of the bus next to Driver’s cab, swaying as they moved along the twisting track. Tall, impenetrable, leafy hedgerows lined either side of the road, preventing them from seeing anything other than what was immediately ahead and behind them.
“The Bromwell Hotel,” Gordon answered, standing at his shoulder, holding onto the handrail as the bus lurched from side to side. “I thought it looked familiar.”
“How do you know that?”
As they reached a fork in the road, Gordon pointed toward a purple sign set into the tall hedge just ahead of them. Ornate white writing proudly proclaimed the name of the hotel they were approaching and an arrow directed them to the right. The person they’d been following had already jogged away in that direction.
“I came here a few Christmases ago for an office party,” Gordon answered, his voice suddenly sounding flat and unenthusiastic as he remembered the occasion. “Bloody terrible night, it was. I didn’t recognize the place today. I mean, I thought we might be close, but not this close…”
“So what’s it like, this hotel?” Jas wondered, glancing back at him. Gordon shrugged his shoulders.
“Okay I suppose. Decent enough place. The facilities were good but the food was vile. It was all that horrible nouvelle cuisine stuff—a little pile of this, a dribble of that … Didn’t fill me up. I had to stop for a kebab on the way home. You want turkey and all the trimmings at Christmas, don’t you, not a few scraps of meat and a bloody vegetable puree.”
“Fuck me,” Harte gasped, ignoring him and pushing past to get a better view. “Look at the state of it. Fucking brilliant!”
The bus, followed closely by the van, slowly drove around the final bend in the road. The hedgerow on their right gradually tapered in height and then disappeared altogether, revealing a large car park and, beyond that, an open expanse of grass. Ahead of them now was the hotel itself. A fairly modern, off-white building, in comparison to the grim concrete surroundings they had left this morning it was an unexpected paradise. There was space to move around outside. The windows all had glass which hadn’t been smashed. The grounds appeared clear of all rubble and dead flesh. This place was an oasis of normality.
“Jesus, this is fantastic,” Gordon said, all memories of his disastrous office party now long forgotten. “How many people do you think are here?”
“Don’t know,” Jas replied, grinning. “Thinking about it though, there must be a fair few of them, at least. There’s plenty of space and the way they’d got the entrance hidden back there was genius. I think we’ve landed on our feet here, lads!”
The lone runner, who had just about managed to keep ahead of the vehicles, finally slowed when he reached the steps at the front of the hotel. He bent over double with his hands on his knees and breathed in deeply, the effort of the sudden sprint obviously taking its toll. He looked up as the bus and van both stopped and quickly emptied. Jas and Harte walked over to him but neither could immediately think of what to say. These people were the first new survivors they’d seen for weeks, months even. Gordon broke the uncomfortable stalemate.
“I’m Gordon,” he announced, moving toward the other man with his hand outstretched. He wiped his hand on his trousers before reciprocating.
“Amir,” he replied quietly, standing up straight and shaking. “Where did you all come from? Was it your helicopter?”
“Helicopter?” Hollis asked, confused. “What helicopter?”
“Christ,” Harte said, “this gets better by the minute.”
“We’ve heard it a few times now,” Amir explained, “a couple of times earlier this week and again this morning. We’ve been trying to attract their attention. I just assumed they’d seen us and you were with them.”
“We don’t know anything about a helicopter,” Jas interrupted. “Christ, we didn’t even know about you until we nearly drove into your truck back there. Bloody hell, that must mean there are even more people left alive.”
“Well, they might not have found you, but we have,” Hollis said. The man riding the bike finally caught up. He jumped off, letting the bike clatter over onto its side, then walked purposefully forward and shook Hollis by the hand.
“I’m Martin Priest,” he said, not letting go of Hollis’s hand, still shaking furiously.
“Greg Hollis.”
“It’s good to meet you Greg. It’s good to meet all of you. It really is so good.” He brushed a wisp of unkempt hair from his narrow, bearded face and then took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sweater. Martin was short, thin, and sweating profusely. His clothing was ragged and dirty with long gray socks pulled up to his knees. Harte smirked at his bizarre dress-sense, then looked down at his own wardrobe: a curious miss-match of bike leathers, skiwear, and other, more typical garments. There seemed to be something about the end of the world, he silently decided, that made everyone dress like complete fucking idiots.
Lorna stood a short distance from the others and looked around, eyes wide with a combination of surprise, tiredness, and relief. The hotel complex looked safe and welcoming, its faux-Mediterranean appearance out of place and yet somehow still reassuring and familiar. The car park was virtually empty with just a handful of vehicles parked here and there. Harte had noticed that too.
“This couldn’t have been the most popular of hotels, judging by how many cars are over there.”
“More than half the rooms were occupied when it happened,” Martin said. “There were more cars than this.”
“So what have you done with them all?”
“We used them to block the roads and entrances. They’ve been useful.”
“How come everything’s so…” she began to ask before losing herself in her question.
“Clear?” suggested Martin.
“Empty?” added Amir.
“Quiet?” said Gordon.
“No, it’s more than that…”
“What have you done with all the fucking bodies?” Webb grunted, successfully putting Lorna’s feelings into words with surprising perception and his trademark lack of tact. “You got rid of them all?”
“Couldn’t do that,” Martin answered. “I don’t know what it’s like where you’ve come from, but there are far too many of them around here for that.”
“So where are they?” Lorna asked.
“The grounds of the hotel are enclosed,” he explained. “We blocked up the entrances like you saw back there, then tricked them into going elsewhere.”
“Martin used to work here,” Amir added.
“Believe me, I know every inch of these grounds. Before all this happened I was chief groundsman and —”
“What do you mean, ‘tricked them’?” Hollis asked, cutting across him.
“Well, they’re not the brightest of sparks, are they? It doesn’t take much to distract them.”
“So what did you do?” he pressed, intrigued.
“Did you see the fork in the road just now? The road runs right the way around the western edge of the grounds,” he explained, gesturing with his arm. “Over there and to the north is a golf course, a full eighteen holes’ worth of empty space. We’ve blocked the other end of the road to stop them getting through and made a few gaps in the fence around the golf course to let them onto the greens.”
“And how’s that helped?” Gordon wondered.
“You know what those golfers are like,” he explained.
“Were like,” Gordon corrected.
“More money than sense, half of them,” he continued. “They built themselves a lovely clubhouse. Beautiful place, it is. Huge. There’s a track leads from the road right around to the kitchens at the back of the building.”
“Get to the fucking point,” Webb grumbled impatiently.
“The point is we can get inside the building and they can’t.”
“Still don’t understand how that makes any difference,” Lorna grumbled, obviously unimpressed.
