“What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?” he asked.
“Down there,” Martin replied, opening the window slightly and pointing. The air outside was cold. Hollis shivered as a blustery gust hit his face.
“What?” he asked again.
“Look down there on the other side of the road. What can you see?”
Hollis stared, his eyes slowly becoming used to the outside gloom. He could see the thick, protective hedgerow which enclosed the hotel grounds and the gap where the narrow road ran around its perimeter. Beyond that was the hedge on the other side of the road which bordered the golf course and surrounding fields. There was some movement in the field immediately opposite. Corpses. He couldn’t see how many.
“There are a few bodies. Nothing out of the ordinary. Why?”
“Because that is out of the ordinary.”
Hollis leaned forward again. He could see the tops of as many as fifteen, maybe twenty bobbing heads moving in the field on the other side of the road. He couldn’t see what the problem was. A noise from downstairs—a sudden torrent of drunken, shouted abuse from Harte—distracted him. It affected the bodies too. As soon as they heard it they shuffled closer to the hedge.
“But there are still only a handful of them,” Hollis protested. “They’ll probably be gone in the morning.” He was tired and cold and was beginning to get annoyed with Martin.
“You’re not listening to me.” Martin sighed. He shut the window and sat down on the corner of his bed.
“I am listening, I just don’t see what the problem is.”
“Christ, Greg, I thought you’d understand.”
“Sorry…” he mumbled, shrugging his shoulders, not actually sure what he was apologizing for.
“You might be used to having that many bodies around. You might be used to having hundreds more, thousands even. We’re not.”
“But we can sort them out. They’re not a concern, believe me.”
“Thing is,” Martin continued, “we did have that many here to start with, but we dealt with them. We distracted them and we fooled them. We tricked them into moving away with the music and we lit a couple of fires on the golf course, then we locked ourselves down and kept quiet and out of sight. From what I’ve heard, you did the opposite. You just carried on like nothing had happened.”
“Well, not quite, but—”
“You did! As far as I can tell from what you’ve said, you kept going out to get your food and your fuel and your booze and whatever else you wanted.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“I’m not criticizing what you’ve done.”
“You sound like you are.”
“Well, I’m not. I’m just saying that in your situation back where you were based, that approach worked. You can’t do that here. You can’t keep going outside and you can’t keep making the kind of noise that those bloody drunks downstairs have been making all evening.”
Hollis was struggling to understand.
“I still don’t know why you’re getting so upset—”
“I’m not upset,” Martin protested. “I’m concerned.”
“What about? Come on, spell it out for me. What is it that’s bothering you tonight? We knew we were going to attract a few of them.”
“I understood that, but I’ve been watching the bodies out there for a couple of hours now, Greg. Their behavior is changing. We’ve had them this close before, but they’ve always disappeared by now. Those things out there tonight aren’t going anywhere. The music’s still playing and there’s still a big enough crowd to keep them on the golf course, but it doesn’t seem to be working like it usually does. Christ, man, they’re moving in the opposite direction!”
Hollis looked out again, carefully considering the frightened man’s words.
“What about the helicopter?” he asked. “It flew over again today, didn’t it?”
“Yes. What about it?”
“We need to do something to make them see us.”
“Is this relevant?”
“I think so. How are we going to attract their attention without attracting the bodies too?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking about marking a message on the lawns or something like that.”
“Might work. Some kind of beacon would be better, though. They won’t see your message unless they fly right over us and happen to be looking down.”
“I know…”
“The point I’m trying to make is that we’re going to have to risk making our presence known at some point. And we can deal with the dead, Martin. We’ve done it before. Bloody hell, Webb alone has torched hundreds of them.”
“He might well have, but there are thousands more waiting out there.”
“Waiting?”
“Yes, waiting. Waiting to find out where we are. Driving around in bloody trucks and buses, lighting beacons and making a bloody noise like you lot have done today is just going to bring them straight back to us. You’re going to start a chain reaction. Once a few of them know where we are, the whole bloody lot will follow.”
39
At first light, at Martin’s request, Hollis walked with him up to the clubhouse where he set the music playing. It was the first time in weeks that Martin had walked rather than cycled along the track which ran around the western edge of the hotel grounds. Without his bike he felt as if he’d traveled much farther than usual, and the perceived increase in distance made him feel even more vulnerable and exposed. If he hadn’t had Hollis with him he doubted he’d have dared make the trip on foot. Keen to gain a better appreciation of their location, Hollis had insisted they initially continue down the narrow lane to get closer to the bodies they’d seen last night.
Martin pointed through a gap in the hedge to help Hollis get his bearings. He glanced back over the wall of tall laurel bushes behind him at the hotel. He could just about see Martin’s room on the top floor, the angle indicating that they were roughly level with the area they’d observed last night. Crouching down, he peered through the mass of tangled branches in front of him. On the other side of the hedgerow was a large, open field.
“Is this still the golf course?” he asked, his whispered voice barely audible. “Couldn’t really see last night.”
Martin shook his head.
“No, this field’s part of a farm. The golf course starts another couple of hundred yards further up the road.”
Hollis could see numerous bodies staggering around. There appeared to be at least as many as there had been previously, maybe even a few more. His view was limited and he looked for another gap.
“I’ve never seen this many here before,” Martin hissed. “There’s only ever been a handful here at a time, and they’ve always been moving towards the music, not away from it.”
Hollis continued to watch the dead. Although some were clearly still trying to move toward the source of the distant sound, others were definitely traveling in the opposite direction. Some remained standing in the same place, constantly shuffling but never straying more than a few meters away at a time. He could only assume they were gravitating toward the hotel or at least toward the remains of the crowd which had been gathered in this area last night. Whatever the reason, their actions seemed to add weight to Martin’s earlier argument. Hollis wondered whether he had really underestimated the effect of their arrival and the noise of the bus—and the drunks—yesterday. More to the point, maybe he’d underestimated the steadily increasing levels of intelligence and control which the dead seemed to be exhibiting here.