“Shit,” Hollis said. He turned and ran out of the room and back through the kitchens. Lorna and Harte, who both now realized what was happening, followed close behind. Hollis was first to reach the back door. He flung it open and ran out onto the lawns behind the hotel complex.
Bodies. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of bodies were up ahead, steadily advancing through the gap in the fence that Martin had showed him days earlier. A huge, unstoppable wave of cold, dead flesh was now rolling relentlessly forward in their direction—enough decay to surround and swallow the entire hotel and everything in it and it was too late to stop it. There was no way they could hold back a crowd the size of which he’d seen out on the golf course yesterday morning.
“Oh, God,” Lorna said with her hand over her mouth. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Hollis looked at her but couldn’t answer. He couldn’t think straight. It was impossible for any of them to appreciate the scale of what was suddenly unfolding around them.
“Fuck,” Jas cursed as he rushed out into the open and pushed past the others. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where you going to go?” Hollis asked, still staring unblinking at the advancing dead.
“Anywhere,” he answered, already sprinting back indoors.
“No point running,” he shouted after him. “There’s no way out.”
“But we’ve got to do something,” Lorna pleaded, grabbing hold of his arm and dragging him back inside. “Come on!”
Hollis pulled himself free and ran a short distance farther away from the building, trying to gauge the true size of the crowd which was surging closer by the second. He was distracted by a sudden engine roar and flash of light as Jas came powering around the side of the building on his motorbike, desperately looking for an escape route. Their options were terrifyingly limited. Bodies still tripped and stumbled through the gap in the hedge, making it impossible to even consider trying to get out that way, and the crash wreckage at the front of the building had rendered the road away from the hotel useless too. He accelerated forward, driving in a wide arc as close as he dared get to the farthest advanced cadavers. They seemed to increase their speed as he approached, moving toward him to try and cut him off. These bodies showed none of the reluctance and caution that some corpses had exhibited before now. Did they now understand the huge advantage they had over the living? he wondered. They were marching forward like an unstoppable invading army. For a second he rode parallel with them as they stormed relentlessly ahead. They were hugely outnumbered—thousands of corpses for every single survivor. Jas turned and rode back toward the hotel, his muddy wheels leaving a dirty brown mark across the letter P from Hollis and Martin’s pathetic and now redundant cry for help.
“Block the door,” Harte shouted as Hollis pushed his way back inside.
“What with?” someone’s frightened voice shouted back from the shadows.
“Anything!” he screamed, and began to drag whatever he could find in front of the door. Hollis helped him, the two of them pulling on the top of a tall freezer unit and bringing it crashing down. Its doors fell open, sending loose metal shelves and racks flying, filling the building with more noise.
“Got to block every entrance off down here,” Hollis said breathlessly, the clattering still ringing painfully in his ears.
“If we’re not getting out of here,” Harte asked, moving to one side so that Gordon and Ginnie could get past, “where are we going to go?”
“Need to stay by the supplies,” Hollis answered quickly. “Try and fortify the restaurant perhaps? Maybe the Steelbrooke Suite?”
Harte disappeared into the shadows. Hollis followed, ushering Howard and Caron out of the way. He sprinted toward the Steelbrooke Suite, pausing only to glance into the restaurant. Webb was still sitting exactly where they’d left him, staring into space. Martin sat two tables away, slumped forward with his bandaged head in his hands.
“Come on,” he yelled, “shift yourselves!”
Webb looked up but didn’t move. Jas ran back from the front of the hotel and bustled into Hollis, distracting him.
“Leave them,” he grunted, pushing his way toward the large conference room in the far corner of the building. “It’s all their fault.”
“You couldn’t find a way out, then?” Hollis shouted after him. Jas disappeared into the darkness without responding.
Inside the Steelbrooke Suite, Lorna had already begun to pile tables and chairs against the doors and glass walls to strengthen them. Ginnie and Gordon were bringing in whatever food they could find and stacking it in the corner. Howard’s dog rushed across the room at a ferocious speed, its pads and claws skidding on the parquet flooring, then she began to bark and howl furiously at the windows, pacing up and down beside the two glazed walls.
Hollis looked up just in time to see the first corpses slamming against the glass. They smashed against the tall windows, hammering at them with their fists, trying desperately to beat their way inside. In a matter of a few seconds what looked like hundreds of them had appeared across the full width of the back wall, spreading out in either direction, blocking out the little light which remained and dramatically reducing the already limited visibility in the room. Then, when the size of the crowd was enough to cover almost every square inch of glass, the bodies began to spill down the side of the building, moving slowly but with unstoppable intent and determination. Like a partially coagulated liquid they poured themselves around the outside of the hotel.
“We can’t stay here,” Gordon shouted.
“We can’t get out of here!” Jas screamed, already on his way back to the other end of the building. “Get the front secured. Now!”
Everyone in the Steelbrooke Suite stopped what they were doing and ran through to the other end of the building. Some took the east corridor, others the west. Harte, who could outrun just about all of them, cut straight across the courtyard, throwing the glass doors open and barging through. He arrived in reception and found Jas struggling to push the wooden desk across the floor toward the door. He shoulder-charged the other end of the huge piece of furniture and it began to move, juddering awkwardly across the floor tiles.
“Get anything you can find to help block it up,” Gordon ordered as he added his weight to the push behind the desk. Ginnie, Lorna, and Howard did as he said, disappearing into anterooms and store cupboards and bringing out everything and anything they could find to help seal the entrance. Another coordinated shove of the desk and it slammed up against the door, completely blocking it. The three men had just moved out of the way when Hollis dragged a tall-backed leather sofa up onto its end and pushed it over so that it dropped down against the desk at an angle, wedging it hard against the door frame.
“Shut that bloody dog up!” Ginnie screamed. Howard’s dog was standing in the middle of reception, barking furiously at the glass. He reached down for her collar and tried to pull her away, but she stood her ground and refused to move, eyes fixed forward. He looked up and saw that the bodies had advanced all the way along the side of the hotel and had now begun to spread across the front. Through the gaps between upturned pieces of furniture he could see them moving continually, steadily surrounding the entire building. The steps leading up to the main entrance held them back temporarily until the weight of flesh still surging forward forced the leading cadavers to climb. Howard let go of the dog and helped barricade the doors with whatever he could lay his hands on. Rotting faces stared back at him through the glass and the bodies slammed their bony hands against the window continually. For a moment he thought he saw one of them grab the handle and try to pull the door open.
“Is that gonna hold them?” Harte asked, wiping sweat from his eyes.
“Going to have to, isn’t it?” Lorna answered. Her voice echoed around the now almost pitch-black reception area. As well as shutting out the final shards of fading light, the haphazard blockade had changed the acoustics of the room, muffling the sounds outside and amplifying the noise indoors. “What now?”
Gordon and Hollis moved closer.
“Where will we be safest?” Gordon wondered.
“Right in the middle of the building?” Lorna suggested. “Either that or we should head up?”
“There’s no way out if we go up,” Harte said ominously.
“Don’t think we have a lot of choice.”
“We need to get out of sight,” Hollis said. “A room big enough for all of us where they won’t see us.”
“We could try—” Harte began to say before being interrupted by a horrific scream from the other end of the
