* * *
Questions and explanations were initially the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. For a blissful few minutes, all that mattered to the people who had escaped the hotel was that, somehow, they were finally free. It felt unreal. Maybe it was? Their interminable incarceration had, until an hour or so ago, seemed set to continue until they’d each breathed their last. But now it was over.
Having managed to get back over the fence using the two ladders, they regrouped at the gate, then walked down the steep slope to the road. They moved quickly to avoid the dead which staggered and crawled toward them. Driver couldn’t see anything from inside the bus, but the door was open and he could hear voices approaching.
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” he heard a woman’s voice say. Was that Caron? “How did you find us? This place is so isolated…”
“Got a mate of yours with us,” he heard Jackson explain. “Go easy on him, though. The delay’s not his fault. We couldn’t risk coming back out to look for you until now.”
Driver got off the bus, but he didn’t go any farther. He was too nervous, and instead he waited for the others to come into view. They soon appeared, but the relentlessly bright sun made it difficult to see who was who. He tried to count heads, then stopped when he saw Harte. Their eyes met, and he felt his legs weaken with nerves. There was a brief and unexpected delay. Was it disbelief? Or maybe it was because they didn’t recognize him. None of them had ever seen Driver clean-shaven before.
“Driver?” Harte said, his uncertainty clear. His tone was impossible to read. “Driver, you sly old bastard, is that you?”
“I’m sorry, Harte,” Driver began to say, not knowing whether he should move farther forward or turn and run the other way. “I thought it was for the best. If I’d stuck with you lot, we’d have all been buggered…”
He braced himself as Harte moved closer, then relaxed as the man unexpectedly threw his arms around him and squeezed.
“Thanks, man,” Harte said, almost in tears.
Driver looked up at the others who were approaching. There were more of them—more of his friends. He saw Hollis, Lorna, and Caron. And there was Howard Reece and that bloody dog of his. And there was Jas … Christ, he looked traumatized. He was barely interacting with any of the others.
Another corpse lying at the roadside managed to raise itself up by Jackson’s feet. He booted it in what was left of its face.
“We need to get out of here,” he said, and ushered the others onto the bus. Howard brought up the rear, carrying his dog.
“What about…?” Driver started to ask. Howard shook his head, preempting his question.
“This is it, mate,” he said. “This is all of us.”
“But what about Webb and Gordon? Martin? The others…”
“We lost Amir and Sean out here,” he explained, “and Webb and Martin bought it when the bodies got in.” His voice became low and monotone, almost like it was an effort to remember. “Gordon and Ginnie just didn’t want to keep going. We found them in their room one morning, a couple of weeks back, dead in bed together. Nicked a load of drugs from Caron, they had. I’d been starting to think they might have been the sensible ones.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Bloody hell, what have you got to be sorry about?”
“Just seemed like the right thing to say.”
“Believe me, you’ve got no need to be sorry, mate. This time yesterday I was close to giving up. You’ve done us all a favor.”
12
Laura led Hollis up the spiral stairs of the gatehouse to where she’d left Harte and Jas earlier. They still hadn’t moved. Both men were standing at the top of the tower, backs to each other, looking out over the battlements. It was getting dark, but she could see that Harte was looking down into the courtyard directly below. Jas’s focus was clearly elsewhere.
“Hollis!” Harte said, turning around when he heard footsteps. “How are you, mate?”
“Good, thanks,” he said quietly, his voice barely audible. “Really good.”
“You had something to eat?”
“I didn’t think he was ever going to stop eating,” Lorna answered for him, tenderly squeezing his arm. “Howard’s still down there, feeding his face.”
“Where’s Caron?”
“Asleep in one of the caravans, curled up with an empty bottle of wine. Did you really need to ask?”
“And Driver?”
“On his bus, I presume.”
“The gang’s all here, eh?” He grinned.
“Well, those of us who are left alive are,” she said quietly. Hollis slowly sat down—moving like a man twice his age—and she sat next to him, checking he was okay. They’d all suffered during their imprisonment at the hotel, but Hollis had been affected more than most. He’d lost the hearing in one ear, and the associated loss of confidence had hit him hard. For a while after they’d become stranded in the besieged hotel, his behavior had become increasingly aggressive and unpredictable. Over the last couple of weeks he’d become withdrawn. Now he barely said anything to anyone, rarely even moved unless Lorna was there to help him up and drag him around. He was half the man he used to be.
The silence was getting to be too loud. “You okay, Jas?” Lorna asked, but he didn’t even bother to turn around. He hadn’t acknowledged her since she’d come up. “Much going on out there?” she asked, unperturbed.
Finally, a response.
“Nothing much,” he said. “Nothing much going on anywhere anymore.”
“Bloody hell,” Harte sighed. “Cheer up, will you.”
“Why should I?”
“Because this time yesterday we all thought our number was up. We were trapped. We were completely fucked.”
“And this place is different because…?”
Harte couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“This place couldn’t be more different.”
“And you’re sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not. Not yet, anyway. Way I see it, it’s just out of the frying pan, into the fire.”
“You think?” Lorna said, disagreeing strongly. “It’s way better than that. Way I see it, we’re safely away from the dead. This is somewhere we can live and breathe and walk outside and…”
“As long as we stay inside the castle walls.”
“Yes, but—”
“Look, I’m not saying this place isn’t better, I just don’t think it’s as good as you’re making out.”
“It’s as good as it gets for now, I think,” Hollis mumbled, but Jas still disagreed.
“They only came out for us today because the dead had frozen,” he said, talking to the others more than Hollis. “It was a particularly harsh frost. That’s not going to happen every day. They’re still trapped like we were.”
“Yes, but we only have to worry about the dead for a few more months,” Harte said. “Six months, that’s what we’ve always said. We’re almost halfway there now. It’ll get easier.”
“I’ve been hearing that kind of bullshit since day one,” Jas interrupted, sounding increasingly angry. “I was talking to that guy Kieran when we got here. He said he cleared that road down there when Jackson and Driver went out looking for us.”
“So?”
“So by the time we got back, it was blocked again, wasn’t it? They had to get the digger back out and clear it before we could even get close to this place. And that’s on a day when the conditions are in our favor.”