“That’s not true,” he interrupted. “Honestly, Ginnie, it didn’t happen like that. We were just—”
“So we left him cooking dinner while we’re all outside risking our necks. Stupid bugger only went and fell asleep, then tried to convince us all that he hadn’t. Burned the whole bloody lot! You should have smelled the stench! We had to chuck those pans out. I swear, you could smell it over the bodies, it was that bad!”
“And we made you eat it, remember?” Harte chipped in.
“Stokes loved it,” Gordon answered back. “He wasn’t bothered. Bit of carbon never hurt anyone, he used to say.”
“Wasn’t the food that finished him off, though, was it?” Jas said quietly. The mention of Stokes and his sudden demise brought the conversation to an abrupt halt.
“You’re a bundle of laughs, you are.” Harte sighed, annoyed that the mood had been spoiled unnecessarily. “Why did you have to say that?”
For an awkward moment no one spoke, choosing instead to concentrate on their food and their own thoughts. Harte was glad of the increasing darkness of the early evening. It made avoiding eye contact a simple matter. He was happy that they’d gone outside for the right reasons today, and they’d achieved far more than they’d ever expected, but he’d have been lying if he’d said he didn’t regret what they’d done. They should have thought it through more carefully and involved the others from the start. Maybe Amir and Webb would still be alive if they’d planned things better. He didn’t feel any sympathy for Martin, who sat groaning a short distance away, his head bandaged up. Maybe they should have bandaged up his mouth too, Harte reckoned. That bloody man was becoming a liability.
Until Jas had mentioned Stokes, the mood in the hotel had been becoming more positive and upbeat than any of them could have expected. Look at what we’ve achieved, Gordon had told them all a short while earlier: hundreds, possibly even thousands of bodies destroyed, and the hotel’s defenses had unexpectedly been strengthened by Martin’s inability to safely drive the bus.
“Anybody want another drink?” Hollis asked, suddenly feeling uncomfortable and looking for a distraction.
“Get me another can please, Hollis,” Jas replied, his voice low as he thought about the helicopter and their missed opportunity today.
“And me,” Harte added.
“Wine,” Caron ordered.
“How much have you drunk today, Caron?” Lorna wondered.
“Have we got any wine left?”
“Think so, why?”
“Because if there’s any left I haven’t drunk enough.”
Hollis got up and walked toward the bar, leaving the others laughing at the state the normally prim and proper Caron had allowed herself to get into. He’d only been gone a couple of seconds when the fragile silence in the rest of the hotel was interrupted by a loud crashing noise.
“What the hell was that?” Jas said suddenly, jumping up from his seat. “Was that you, Hollis?”
“Wasn’t me,” he shouted from the next room. “It was something out back.”
He put the bottle he’d just picked up back down on the bar and ran through to the kitchen. The noise seemed to have emanated from the back of the building. It wasn’t yet completely dark outside, but the interior of the hotel was filled with the typical shadow and gloom of a late winter afternoon, making it difficult to see details. He weaved around the equipment and supplies stacked up in the cluttered room, then stopped just short of the back door. There was something moving toward him. Something dragging itself along slowly. The smell of dead flesh filled the air. He picked up a carving knife from where it hung on the wall and raised it high, ready to slice the foul thing’s fucking head right off.
“Don’t…” it mumbled, breathing hard.
“Fuck me,” he shouted with surprise. “Christ almighty, it’s Webb! Quick, get some light in here.”
Harte, Gordon, and Lorna were there in seconds, Harte carrying a battery-operated lamp which he switched on, revealing the bedraggled survivor in his full bloody glory. He was covered in the gray mire through which he’d crawled, with only the occasional flash of clear skin visible through the muck. He was struggling to breathe, his legs heavy with effort. He managed a single lurching step forward then fell back against an oven, knocking a pile of pots and metal trays over, filling the room with an echoing cacophony of noise. Hollis grabbed his slime-covered arm to steady him, then led him back into the restaurant.
“Is he okay?” Ginnie asked.
Howard’s dog jumped up and began to sniff at Webb, who collapsed heavily onto the nearest chair. The dog cowered back and began to snarl. She let out a sudden bark and Howard immediately wrestled her away.
“It’s just Webb,” he said, trying to calm her down. “Just Webb…”
Webb looked at the faces gathered around him with wide, relieved eyes. He felt as if he’d had to run many times the actual distance he’d covered to get here. He never thought the time would come when he’d actually be pleased to see these people again. Even Lorna, Jas, and Hollis, whom he’d grown to hate with a vengeance, suddenly seemed like long-lost friends. Gordon passed him a bottle of water, which he drank from thirstily as the inevitable questioning began.
“What happened?” Jas asked. “We lost you.”
“Amir took a wrong turn,” he replied.
“You were supposed to drive around a field. For God’s sake, how can you take a wrong turn in a bloody empty space?” Harte immediately interrupted. Lorna nudged him to be quiet.
“He got confused by the bodies,” Webb explained. “Ended up on the golf course.”
“So why didn’t you turn back?”
“Couldn’t. Too many of them.”
“Where is Amir?”
He shook his head, and a brief moment of silence followed.
“How come you were gone for so long?” Jas asked.
“Car got stuck in a ditch,” he mumbled. “Couldn’t get Amir out. Think the crash killed him anyway. I did what you asked me to, though.”
“You blew up the car?”
He nodded.
“Where?”
“On the golf course.”
“With Amir in it?”
“He was already dead.”
“And you made sure of that,” Jas muttered under his breath. Hollis glared at him.
“Give him a break,” he said angrily. “You’re not helping.”
“Webb,” Howard asked, getting a little closer now that his dog had calmed down, “how exactly did you get back?”
Webb swigged more water and dropped the empty bottle on the floor.
“Ran,” he answered, still struggling to think straight.
“We know that,” Howard continued, his stomach suddenly twisting with nerves, “but which way did you run? Did you come back through the field and over the gate, or did you find another way through?”
Webb was shaking his head.
“No,” he replied, “came back across the golf course.”
“And how exactly did you get off the golf course and back into the grounds of the hotel?”
“Followed the music.”
“So you managed to reach the clubhouse?”
“Came through it. Broke in and got out the back way.”
Howard looked around. Had no one else realized what Webb was saying?
“What’s wrong, Howard?” Hollis asked. Howard simply shook his head, unable to answer for a second or two.
“If he came through the clubhouse…” he began to say.
The penny dropped.
