“Wow,” he said simply, shaking his head with disbelief when he saw the size of the crowd gathered in reception.
“This is Howard Reece,” Martin said, introducing him. Howard shuffled forward.
“Good to see you all,” he wheezed, relaxing and letting go of the dog again. It walked over to Lorna and began to sniff at her dirty, bloodstained trouser legs and boots. She leaned down and stroked its head.
“Beautiful dog,” she said, ruffling its short fur. “What’s its name?”
“I just call it Dog,” Howard replied.
“Original,” Jas said.
“She doesn’t care. I never wanted her. Bloody thing just attached herself to me when all this started,” he explained, “and now I can’t get rid of her.”
“She’s good to have around,” Martin continued. “She’s got a good nose on her. She sniffs out the dead for us.”
“What?”
“They freak her out, send her wild.”
“They freak us all out,” Harte mumbled.
“But she catches their scent earlier than we do. She lets us know when they’re close.”
“But what about her barking? Isn’t it a risk having her around?”
“She’s not stupid,” Howard said as the dog padded back over to him and sat down at his feet. “She had a couple of close calls early on when they first started to react to us. She knows not to make any noise but she lets you know when they’re near. You can see it in her face and the way she moves.”
“Bullshit,” Webb said. The dog just looked at him.
“So where’s everyone else?” Jas asked, keen to get back to more important issues.
“In the restaurant,” Amir answered. “Follow me.”
He led the group across the reception area and into a corridor directly opposite the one from which Howard and his dog had just appeared. In silence they walked along a wall full of windows which looked out onto an enclosed courtyard—half-paved, half-lawn. Hollis noticed a sign on the wall at the foot of a glass-fronted staircase which pointed to WEST WING - ROOMS 1–42. He assumed that the similar-looking part of the complex on the directly opposite side of the courtyard—an identical staircase at either end, three floors, many equally-spaced windows—was the east wing, and that it almost certainly had a comparable number of rooms to the west. He looked up at the mass of rectangular windows he could see from ground level.
Christ, he thought, more than eighty rooms. If just a quarter of them are occupied then we’ve more than doubled our number. He remembered the disorientation, desperation, and cold fear he’d felt on the day everyone had died, and how much easier everything had felt when he’d finally found other survivors. The more people I’m with, he’d long since decided, the easier the ride should be. The potential of using the hotel as a long-term base was immediately apparent, as it surely had been for everyone else who had ended up here. It was strong, safe, secure, and a damn sight more comfortable than the flats where he’d spent almost all of his time since the infection had first struck. Proper beds, space to move around freely, kitchens, and no bodies …
“Swimming pool,” Jas said, grinning as they passed another sign on the wall.
“Out of action,” Martin immediately told him. “I’ll show you around properly later.”
“All this space,” Caron mused, looking across the courtyard at the three-story block of bedrooms, trying to decide where she wanted her room to be. Now this was more like it. She’d become used to living her life surrounded by waste and rubbish. The interior of the hotel, however, appeared relatively well-kept. Sure it was dusty and everything smelled stale, and it might have only been a two-star hotel when she was used to three at least, preferably four, but the floors were clean and the rooms she’d so far seen were tidy and, if she really was condemned to spend the rest of her days suffering and scavenging with these people, at least it looked like she’d now be able to separate herself from them from time to time. Imagine that—the luxury of being able to close and lock the door behind her and shut everyone else out. She was sick of trying (and failing) to look after people and clean up for them and sort out their pointless, petty squabbles. Maybe now she could just stop and spend her time looking after herself.
At the end of the corridor a sudden sharp-right turn led the group along the farthest and shortest edge of the rectangular courtyard, parallel with the reception area they’d originally entered. They passed an empty meeting room and a bar. The rows of half-full optics behind the wooden counter caught the attention of several of the new arrivals. Webb attempted to make a quick detour but was jostled back on course by Harte. They followed Amir through a set of swinging double doors into a restaurant. Two people—a middle-aged woman and a tall, thin, and much younger man—immediately got up from where they’d been sitting slouched around a table playing cards and walked toward them.
“Ginnie and Sean,” Amir announced. Harte acknowledged them with a nod and looked hopefully around the large, empty room.
“Where are the others?” he asked.
“There are no others,” Martin replied. “Just the five of us.”
“And a dog,” Webb added unhelpfully.
“That’s all?” Jas said, surprised. “Just five?”
“Yes,” he answered. “I was working here when it happened and Howard found me a couple of days later. We found Ginnie and Amir when we were out looking for supplies, and Sean found us when he heard us driving around.”
“So that’s it?”
Martin appeared perplexed. “You sound disappointed.”
“I am,” he admitted. “This place is great. I thought there’d be loads of people here.”
“Well, we haven’t exactly been broadcasting the fact that we are here very loudly. We don’t want those things out there to start dragging themselves back over to us.”
“But what about when you go out? Have you not looked for anyone else?”
“We don’t go out,” he answered abruptly. “It’s too dangerous. We’ll go back out there when the time’s right.”
“You need food, though.”
“We’ve got enough.”
“But how do you get—”
“We manage. We don’t need to go outside or make any noise or do anything that might risk what we’ve got here,” Martin said, sounding both aggressive and defensive at the same time.
“We do have one other resident,” Howard said cryptically. “I think we should tell them about her, Martin. We don’t want them stumbling into her in the dark, do we?”
Hollis felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
“Come this way,” Martin said, his voice a little calmer. “I’ll introduce you to the Swimmer.”
27
Hollis and Harte followed Martin deeper into the hotel complex. Howard’s dog walked alongside them, constantly sniffing at the air.
“You’ve got the pool, a gym, and a small sauna room down here,” Martin explained. “None of it’s any use without power, I’m afraid. We hardly ever come up here, actually, only to see her.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Harte admitted, his voice low. His head was rapidly filling with all kinds of unsavory thoughts: necrophilia, torture, some other kind of weird perversion he hadn’t even thought of … He had no idea what they were about to find going on in the dark and shadowy depths of the hotel.
“The dog usually follows when anyone comes down here,” Martin continued. “She thinks she’s protecting us—not that we need it, of course.” He stopped walking as the cream-walled, windowless corridor began to curve away to the right. The smell here was noticeably worse—a noxious combination of stagnant water and dead flesh—and the light levels were uncomfortably low. He beckoned them farther forward and then gestured toward a narrow rectangular window set in the wall. He peered cautiously through the glass.