Last Hope, Book One: Onslaught (18 page)

I didn’t like relying on the others for illumination, but didn’t fancy holding a flashlight in my mouth either. What if I felt like screaming?

“Are we ready?” Andy asked as he slotted the key into the lock.

He received three silent nods.

Carl positioned himself to cover the doorway once it was opened. Although no one said as much, Budd was sure they each feared encountering another of the fast-movers. Considering this, he was pleased the doctor had assumed temporary custody of his rucksack.

It was one less thing to slow me down…

“Now,” Carl instructed.

Andy turned the key, pulled down the handle and flung open the left-hand door. The light from both his and Chris’s torches shot into the darkness, jumping around from corner to corner. Apart from the small plinth that the maître d’ had used for his reservation book, the room was empty.

Carl entered first, his path illuminated by Andy, who stayed close behind him. Budd and Chris followed them into the green, emergency-light, tinged gloom.

Opposite from the long line of closed elevator doors, the cars scattered on different floors beneath them, were two doors. From earlier in the night, Budd knew that the furthest one was the cloakroom, which was where the staff had stored his Stetson and pack. What was behind the first door, the one that Carl and Andy gravitated towards despite the fact that the sound of feet shuffling on carpet and several groans came from beyond it, he was not sure.

“The cloakroom is the other door, right? As we’re gonna lock this place up, do we need to clear this room?” Budd asked as Andy flicked through his large key hoop.

The maintenance man didn’t stop his search.

“Maybe Budd’s got a point,” Chris added. “We shouldn’t push our luck.”

“I don’t want any of those things on this floor,” Carl said, ending the discussion. The easy way he held his axe stopped Budd from saying more on the subject; Carl was not a person he wanted to fall out with.

“This is t’one,” Andy said, pushing the key into the lock and turning it. The mechanism clicked out of place.

“Ready?” Andy asked.

“Do it,” Carl instructed.

Andy opened the door and flashed his light into the darkness. The shaft of light crossed with Chris’ as the beams danced around the room. Almost together, the lights caught a male, mauve-suited hotel worker as he stumbled around on the far side of the room. The worker-zombie’s arms were outstretched and he batted his hands at the light as if it was a swarm of insects. He let out a long, haunting moan.

While Chris kept his flashlight focused on their first discovery, Andy used his light to explore more of the darkness. Budd’s eyes followed the roving light around the small office. There were two desks, both of which had a computer screen, keyboard, several telephones and a cluttering of loose papers on their tops. At the far end of the room was another door, this one slightly ajar.

Beyond it, nothing could be seen.

“I’ll deal with him,” Carl said and he walked into the room, bee-lining for the zombie that was still trapped inside Chris’s light.

One after the other, the three men followed behind him, giving the big man just enough room to dispatch the mauve-suited zombie, but not risking him getting too far away.

Carl raised his axe and brought it down onto the top of the zombie’s head. The hotel worker sunk to his knees, his hands reaching up as he tried to yank the blade from his skull. Steadily, the resistance slipped away and the corpse collapsed to the ground, dragging Carl’s axe down with it.

The big man leant over, trying to free the blade from the vice-like grip of the bone, his concentration consumed with the task. Both Andy and Chris aimed their lights at the grim scene, illuminating Carl’s struggle as best they could.

The inner door crashed open.

A fast-moving beast shot through the doorframe and charged into the group before they had time to react.

They could only panic.

Carl let go of his axe shaft, abandoning the useless weapon, but he did so instinctively, without thought, and his strong body, filled with tension from trying to free the blade, shot backwards against Andy.

The two men crumpled to the carpeted floor.

Budd just watched.

His heart thundered inside his chest, his mind seeking to overcome his shock. The beast crossed the room in the blink of an eye, leaping over Andy and Carl to land on its feet with its arms outstretched.

Chris dropped his flashlight as he turned to run, but not before Budd recognized the new beast as the maître d’. His black waistcoat was no longer fastened, his bow tie was missing and the top button of his white shirt was undone. At the back of his mind, Budd wondered if there was any part of the person still trapped inside the beast, almost curious as to whether the feral eyes would show any recognition.

But I wasn’t gonna hang around and find out…

Taking his cue from Chris, Budd strove to escape. He spun a hundred-and-eighty-degrees, grateful that the two doors leading back to the restaurant were still open, as they allowed some of the grey light into the murk of the elevator reception hall. He heard the beast groan behind him, and then a fearful cry from Chris.

The cry changed to a whimper and Budd realized that his accomplice had been caught.

Better him than me…

The knowledge made no difference; Budd started to take off regardless.

A hand wrapped around his trailing leg. Then there was another.

“Help me,” Chris begged from the floor.

Budd tried to kick away Chris’s hold, but his momentum, coupled with the weight of the axe in his hands and his unsteadiness in the dark all combined to make him lose his balance and tumble forwards. He shouted as he fell, releasing the axe as he raced to the shadow-covered floor, hoping to break his fall with his hands.

He never got the chance.

His head hit the narrow edge of the open door, striking it from his forehead to his ear with all the power his short run and fall had mustered.

Before he’d even realized what had happened, he was unconscious.

I’ve been knocked out a lot, more often than I like to think ’bout—sometimes I wonder if my accident proneness as a kid hindered me in any way, but I guess that’s another story—but this was a particularly unpleasant experience.

There are, I’m pretty sure, two very different ways of being sent into bye-bye land. The first isn’t too bad, like walking into a post or banging your head on something that’s a lot lower than you thought. This kind of thing ain’t too bad. At least you know—as you’re slipping away and your vision goes black—that it’ll all be okay when you eventually come to. The second type, like a car crash, explosion or any other situation that will keep a paramedic’s hands out of your jockies, is much worse. You never really know if you’ll wake up again.

Ever.

Try and have a guess what category being tripped up in a room with a zombie that’s tryin’ to eat you falls under…

The nothingness gave way to something.

There was warmth on the top of Budd’s right hand. The feeling seemed strange and out of place in cold emptiness of his mind, but the ability to process thoughts, to think and to question what the sensation could actually be was still far out of his grasp. All he could do was revel in the warmth’s pleasantness. Gradually, he realized that there was noise around him, voices perhaps, but the sounds faded away again.

After an amount of time that he could not quantify, as likely hours as it was seconds, the emptiness once more gave way to tangible feelings. The warmth was now on his face, his cheek.

With a mighty effort, he opened his eyes.

There was light, grey, dull light, and a shape not far away. His vision focused a little, the blur clarifying to reveal Juliette’s face, her brown eyes wide, her teeth showing as her lips curled upwards in a smile.

“
Monsieur
Ashby,” he thought he heard her say. The words had sounded eerie and dreamlike, perhaps nothing more than a memory.

His heavy eyes closed again, his will to keep them open overcome by lethargy.

More time passed and his unclear thoughts drifted away.

When his eyes re-opened, this time without a struggle, he blinked away the weariness from his vision and found that Juliette was still with him. “
Monsieur
Ashby,” she said. “You are awake.”

“Hey, sweetheart,” Budd tried to say, but the words caught in his throat and he had to repeat himself. Suddenly, the memory of Chris pulling him to the floor returned to the forefront of his mind. “What happened?”

“You are okay,” Juliette answered.

“The others?”

Juliette paused, her smile faded. “I think Carl is hurt. The rest are fine.”

Budd moved his eyes from Juliette’s face to examine their surroundings. He was lying down on a carpeted floor, his body beneath a blanket and his head propped up on a makeshift pillow. It was his rucksack.

He raised his head to look around. All he saw were grey wall panels and dull, second-hand light splashed across the ceiling above him. There was no window, no view of the outside world. He unknowingly furrowed his brow, which sent pain shooting deep into his head. His Stetson was gone, replaced with a bandage.

“The doctor gave you something to help you sleep. It is evening outside. Nearly night, I should say.”

“Where’s my hat?” Budd asked.

Juliette reached over and collected the Stetson from the top of a desk.

Budd realized they were in the restaurant offices, where they’d found the medicine cabinet. Much had happened during his forced slumber.

“Here you go,” Juliette said, handing Budd the brown Stetson.

He pulled the hat carefully over his bandage, causing himself to wince with pain. There were dark stains of blood inside its curved rim.

“Perhaps you should not wear it yet.”

“I don’t want to lose it. Where’re the others?”

“Everyone is on this floor. Andy and some of the men spent the afternoon securing it. We are safe here now.”

Budd didn’t make a verbal response, but his face expressed his doubts.

“Well,” Juliette conceded, “as safe as we can be, I think.”

“You’re safe, sweetheart,” Budd said. “It’s my nightmare, remember?”

“I think you would have woken up by now.”

“You’re such a pessimist.”

Juliette let out a small laugh. “I was scared for you,
Monsieur
Ashby. I am glad you are okay.”

“I was scared for me too, baby. Come on, let’s find out what’s going on.”

“Hey, dude,” Sam called out as Budd entered the restaurant. The Californian pointed up to his head. “We got, like, matching bandages. Cool, huh?”

“It’s an exclusive club. Maybe we could have a secret handshake,” Budd said with a chuckle.

“I’m pleased to see you’re up an’ about again,” Andy said once Budd and Juliette had walked over to where the maintenance man was sitting with Father McGee, Sam and Frank. They were around a circular table in the raised bar section and were drinking coffee from small white mugs. “Pour yourselves a cup and take a seat,” Andy continued. “We couldn’t find any sugar.”

Juliette walked over to the counter and picked up two mugs while Budd gathered a couple more chairs. They sat down and Juliette poured a cup of black coffee from a pot in the center of the table. Budd took a sip, enjoying both the fresh aroma and the heat of the liquid.

“How’s your head?” Andy asked after Budd had placed his mug back on the glass-topped table.

“Sore. What happened?”

“After t’fast-mover got Chris, Carl an’ I had a chance to react. He dragged it off and I killed it with my hammer.”

“‘Fast-mover?’”

“That’s what we’ve started calling the quick ones, dude.”

There you have it, folks. The apocalypse dictionary continues. We now have zombies, and fast-movers…

“Juliette said Carl got hurt.”

“He got bitten when he struggled with it. He lost t’little finger on his right hand. T’thing bit it clean off, but he’ll survive. He’s with his girlfriend at t’moment. She’s not so well.”

“Very sick,” Father McGee pitched in. He wiped at some coffee that had dampened his beard. “Very sick indeed. We must pray for her.”

“The doctor can pull her through, I’m sure,” Frank said. He looked down at his heavily bandaged left wrist, which was resting in a sling. “He thinks it’s just a really bad sprain, maybe a small fracture. He’s given me painkillers. It still hurts, but I’m okay, I guess,” the young man said when he caught Budd looking at the injury.