`Come on, Barry,' Proctor said quietly.
`I'm not running,' he replied. `I've had enough.'
Sensing that there was nothing they could do to persuade him otherwise, the four remaining survivors pushed their way through the fire escape door and began their dark descent down towards the ground floor of the hotel.
It was suddenly quiet. Save for the thumping noise coming from the mass of decomposing bodies on the other side of the main door, Bushell's hotel suite was suddenly quiet and empty. More to the point, it was his again. His and his alone. Just how he'd wanted it.
Tearful (he knew he didn't have long) he walked around the vast suite dejectedly, collecting together his things. He salvaged everything that he could from the little that was left and packed it all against the wall of the master bedroom. A sudden sound distracted him. More noise from outside. He peered through the spy-hole to see that the corridor outside was now a solid mass of flesh. It wouldn't be long before they broke through. He wiped a tear away from the corner of his eye (still taking care not to smudge his make-up) and then took one last, long and very definitely final look around the suite which had been his home for the last few weeks of his life. Ignoring the increasing noise coming from the door he took a moment to walk around and look out of each of the windows in turn, staring at the remains of the city where he'd lived and remembering everything and everyone that had gone and been left behind. The memories were harder to deal with than the thought of what was to come. It still surprised him how much it hurt to remember all that he had lost. Thinking about the little he had left to lose didn't seem to matter. He'd collected everything he'd needed. With the door rattling and shaking in its frame, he slipped quietly into the master bedroom and closed the door behind him. Once inside he shoved the bed across the entrance to the room and wedged it into position with other furniture and belongings. If he'd had a hammer and nails, he thought, he would have nailed it shut. The bedroom door wouldn't be opening again.
Barry Bushell, with tears streaming down his cheeks, selected another outfit from his wardrobe and got changed. Finally presentable, he lay down on the bed and picked up a book. With his hands shaking so badly that he could hardly read, he lay there and waited.
`Keep moving,' Elizabeth yelled, slamming her hands into the middle of Wilcox's back and sending him tripping further down the last few stairs to the ground floor.
`Watch it!' he protested, grabbing hold of the handrail to try and stop himself from falling. He looked back up the stairs. Proctor and Jones had stopped a short way back.
`What now?' Proctor asked. They'd finally reached the bottom of the staircase. It was a pointless question. They didn't have a choice. Wilcox cautiously edged closer to the door and teased it slightly open before, equally carefully, closing it again.
`Well?' Elizabeth asked hopefully.
`Not as bad as it could have been,' he replied.
`Bodies?'
`Hundreds, but I was expecting more. We'll probably make it through if we're fast and we keep moving.'
`Fucking hell,' Jones grunted, `and I was going to walk.'
He shoved past Wilcox and peered around the side of the door. Back inside, he leant against the wall and composed himself.
`This is it then,' he quietly announced.
`Is it?'
`It's goodbye.'
`What?'
`We'll stand more of a chance if we split up.'
`You think so?'
Jones shrugged his shoulders.
`Maybe,' he grunted. He took a deep breath, opened the door again and slid out into what was left of the hotel reception. It was light outside and surprisingly bright after the enclosed gloom of the fire escape. The air, although still heavy with the noxious smells of death and decay, was somehow fresher. Several of the nearest bodies noticed his sudden emergence from the doorway and immediately turned and began walking towards him. Jones, terrified and pumped full of adrenaline, ran, pausing only to stare in disbelief at the main staircase of the hotel which was a solid column of slowly moving flesh.
Without direction he skipped and weaved through the lifeless corpses that still dragged themselves around the rubble-strewn ruin and then burst out onto the street. The bodies were fewer out there, but he knew they would be upon him soon. Not knowing where he was going or why, he ran.
`Bastard,' Wilcox moaned as bodies began to slam against the other side of the fire escape door. `That bloody stupid bastard, he's let them know where we are.'
The three remaining survivors stood together at the foot of the staircase in stunned silence. What the hell did they do now? Elizabeth thought about Bushell, twenty-eight floors above them, and the sense of his actions became painfully clear. It was no longer about surviving, it was about choosing where to die. Still tearful, she opened the door and barged past the six bodies that were now clawing against the other side. In panic Proctor ran after her.
Wilcox froze. He couldn't do it. He couldn't bring himself to go out there. He knew as well as the others that what was going to happen to him was inevitable, but he didn't have the mental strength to keep going like they did.
As the fire door had swung shut, one of the bodies had become trapped, leaving it half-open. More of the sickly cadavers gravitated towards the exit and clambered over the trapped corpse. Wilcox watched as the first few of them moved closer. What did he do now? Still breathless from the sudden descent, he began to climb back upstairs.
This is bloody stupid, he thought to himself as he climbed. His body wanted to slow down but the panic and claustrophobic fear he felt kept him moving forward at an uncomfortable speed. He was soaked with sweat and his legs felt like lead but it didn't matter. He'd left those fucking things at the bottom of the stairs for dust.
It was more than half an hour later when he reached the fire escape door on the twenty-eighth floor. He pushed through it eagerly, keen to find Bushell and... and the suite was full of bodies. He looked up, terrified, and saw that the main door was down. The cadavers had noticed his sudden and unexpected arrival too. They surged towards him and knocked him off his feet. As their sharp, bony fingers dug into his flesh he lay on the ground and looked at the open fire escape door through which he'd just emerged. If he really tried, he thought, he might be able to crawl through it and give himself a little more time.
What's the fucking point, Wilcox thought as warm blood began to gush and pour from gaping wounds that the dead had torn open. Bushell was right. Just give up, lie back and wait for it to be over.
Elizabeth wasn't aware that Proctor had followed her until she heard him shouting for her to slow down. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw him dragging himself after her. She wasn't interested. She didn't want to be with anyone else now, certainly not him. She kept moving, if anything increasing her speed. Not knowing the city particularly well she didn't have a clue where she was going. She'd wanted to head out of the centre but, instead, had inadvertently found herself running through the main shopping area. The bodies there were still dense in number and tightly packed but she moved with sufficient speed and control to work her way around them and through them.
Needing to stop and rest she turned left into a dark alleyway. She stopped running for a moment and rested with her hands on her knees, sucking in as much precious oxygen as she could. No bodies had followed her yet. If she could get out of sight quickly she knew she might have an opportunity to properly catch her breath and decide what to do next. There was a door halfway down the alley. She looked in through a small, dusty window but couldn't immediately see any movement. She pulled the door open and slipped inside, too tired to care what she found on the other side.