“They won’t,” Martin immediately interrupted. “Why would they?”
“If they’re threatened they will,” Harte said quietly. “We’ve seen it happen loads of times.”
“But who’s going to threaten them?”
“What you see as a threat and what they do are very different things,” Hollis explained. “Take those fucking jokers out on the bike, for example. We just see a couple of idiots escaping for a while. The dead react like animals would. They see the speed and hear the noise and sense the danger.”
“Then try and attack before whatever it is can get them,” Harte continued.
“So we stay here and wait for them to rot.” Martin sighed. “Just like we were doing before you lot turned up here and screwed everything up.”
“We haven’t screwed everything up,” Hollis corrected him. “Be honest, Martin, you were starving and you wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Sean would have cracked eventually and you’d have ended up in this exact same mess. It’s not completely our fault.”
“We’ve just fucked things up a little quicker than you would have on your own,” Harte said, his attempt at humor falling flat.
“But we’ve got supplies now, and Sean’s had his moment. We can let him and Webb leave if they really want to.”
“They won’t go,” Hollis said. “They haven’t got the balls to do it. If they had they wouldn’t have come running back tonight.”
“Then we’ve got to keep them under control, Greg,” Martin added. “Stop them getting so wound up. Find a way to get them to let off steam.”
“That might be difficult,” Harte announced ominously. “We have another problem.”
“What?”
“It’s why I came looking for you two.”
“What?” Hollis demanded impatiently.
“Driver’s sick.”
“Sick? What, like—”
“Yes, sick like Anita and Ellie,” Harte said quickly, anticipating his question.
“The girls that died?” Martin asked anxiously.
“Yep,” he answered. “So I for one don’t actually fancy sitting in here for another couple of months anymore.”
“Where is he now?”
“Packed him off to bed with his paper and enough food and drink to keep him happy for a couple of days. Told him we’d keep checking on him.”
“And will you?”
“No fucking way. I might go back up there in a few days and see how he’s doing. If he’s still alive then he hasn’t got what Ellie and Anita had and we’re safe.”
“Where’s his room?”
“Luckily he’s always been an antisocial bastard. He’s up on his own on the top floor of the east wing.”
“Good,” Martin muttered.
“We’ve also got the plane and helicopter to think about,” Harte continued, subdued. “I think Jas is right, and if they are evacuating from somewhere like he says, then they’ll probably be done soon. The fact they flew over so many times today makes me think they must be close to being done now. We need to get them to see us.”
“But we can’t risk giving away our location.” Martin sighed. “We’ve already been through this. That might be all it takes to tip the bodies over the edge.”
“Well, we might just have to take that risk,” Hollis said.
“We can’t.”
“We might have to.”
“But—”
“He’s right,” Harte said. “We could torch this whole fucking place if we had to. Imagine that … there’s the distraction you need. Every single one of those fucking things outside would drag their sorry backsides straight over here. We could just walk away.”
“No, that’d be suicidal. No way.”
“I’m not suggesting we do it, but it’s an option.”
“It’s a stupid option,” Martin protested, his voice getting louder.
“Let’s wait until morning,” said Hollis. “We can’t make any decisions tonight. I think we should try and work out how the bodies are likely to react, then work out how to attract the attention of the plane, if it comes back.”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
“Isn’t this is exactly the kind of reason you’ve kept the body by the swimming pool?”
“Suppose,” Martin said, sounding more subdued.
“Well, we need to see how your corpse reacts when we get up close.”
47
The morning came too soon. Hollis’s stomach grumbled with pangs of hunger but he was too nervous to even think about eating. He waited for Martin at the end of the corridor which led to the swimming pool. Lorna, Harte, Howard, and Gordon waited with him.
“You okay?” Lorna asked, picking up on his obvious unease. He nodded but didn’t answer. He didn’t want to talk. Others didn’t seem to want to shut up.
“Remind me what we’re supposed to be doing again,” Gordon mumbled nervously.
“Stop being such a fucking drip,” Harte said. “You know exactly what we’re doing.”
He was right, Gordon understood completely, but like the rest of them he didn’t relish the prospect of being face-to-face with one of the dead, even if they did outnumber it six (and a dog) to one. He wished there was an alternative, but none of them had managed to come up with a safer way of being able to properly gauge the strength of the creature’s reactions. It had seemed like a sensible idea when they’d talked about it late last night. Now they were actually here, however, they were all having serious doubts.
Martin appeared from the direction of the Steelbrooke Suite. He tried to hold back, but the others made it abundantly clear that he should go first.
“She’s your baby,” Howard whispered.
The group walked down the curved corridor, stopping just before the window into the office. Martin peered in but it was difficult to see anything through the layer of grease and rotten flesh which had been smeared across the glass. After having spent so much time hiding in the shadows, the increased amount of staining on the window indicated that the behavior of the corpse had indeed changed. Had it been looking for them? Howard’s dog stood beneath the window looking up, her sharp white teeth bared in a silent, sneering growl.
“So how are we going to do this?” Howard asked. He jumped back as the corpse’s rot-eaten face appeared at the window. Its dulled eyes looked around at the six people who stared back at it. Perhaps sensing it was outnumbered, it took a few awkward, uncoordinated steps back into the darkness.
“There’s not enough room here,” Martin answered. “We should get her out onto the side of the pool.”
After a few seconds of nervous inactivity, Lorna pushed past the others and followed the corridor around to the entrance to the pool. She shoved the heavy door open, wincing with disgust when the smell of the stagnant water hit her. The air was icy cold and a sudden smacking, clattering noise made her catch her breath. A door on the other side of the pool was blowing open in the strong wind, then slowly closing again when the breeze died down. She hadn’t actually been in here before, she’d just glanced in from outside. It would have been lovely, she thought sadly to herself, just the kind of place she could have imagined spending her pre-Armageddon time if she’d ever been able to afford to stay in a place like this. On one side of the pool were the various items of gym equipment which she’d heard Jas and Harte talking about previously, and over in the far corner a scattering of wooden deck chairs and sun-loungers, all draped with a shroud-like layer of dust and cobwebs. The large, open windows and the glass ceiling, had they not all been covered with dust and dark, moss-green stains, would normally have allowed the whole area to flood with sunlight. Her daydreams were interrupted by the noise of Hollis yanking open the changing room door. He disappeared into the darkness momentarily to prop open the door to the office, giving the corpse a clear passage out to the pool.