Ferine Apocalypse (Book 1): Collapse

by Leonard, John F.

  “We need to get off this road, no fucking way we’ll survive that. If they see us we’re fucking toast.”

  Pearcey spoke in a flat tone, slumped in the front seat surveying the scene in front of them, vague disbelief on his face.

  She glanced round at the others.

  Julian wore a slack-jawed look of dismay. A little boy who wanted it all to stop. Caroline thought he might cry.

  Sault’s eyes were again twinkling with that cold amusement. As if some dangerous practical joke had spiralled out of control and he was waiting to see her reaction.

  Adalia just looked scared and confused. Asking Caroline with her eyes what they should do. Perhaps asking herself why she’d gotten into this woman’s car in the first place. Maybe so she could get off a street that would kill her, then narrowly escape an office that had become a death trap. After that, be transported to this unlikely vantage point for a sneak preview of hell on earth?

  Caroline dragged her gaze away from Adalia and back to the road in front of them.

  There would be a way out. Every problem had a solution.

  She didn’t want to try and reverse, back through that tortured metal maze, all the time waiting for those monsters to materialise around them. The flyover to her right was completely gridlocked by vehicles.

  There had to be another option.

  The broiling mass in the distance was sickly hypnotic. The sheer number of them. Things that, not so long ago, were people. Just normal people like her good old, not so boyish boyfriend, and like the lady who cleaned his house. Or the staff at the office. From this lofty perspective, the horror of it took on a new dimension. That seething motion, seen from this vantage point, spoke of a world that was changed so fundamentally as to be beyond her imagination.

  Caroline closed her eyes and turned her head before reopening them.

  Diverted her gaze from the spectacle. Tried to clear enough space in her mind to think.

  Twenty feet ahead of where they’d paused, there was a right turn across the dual carriageway.

  She vaguely recalled that it fed into a maze of country roads ...but before that she thought there was a hotel. Something modern, a Premier Inn or a Travelodge, something like that. In the gathering gloom she couldn’t confirm that by sight, couldn’t make out the hotel, but she was convinced that it must be there. Now didn’t seem the appropriate time to sit and ponder it.

  She muttered her thoughts to her companions and, not even listening to any of the replies, slowly drove to the turning, hoping that those things down there hadn’t spotted them and grateful that the road here seemed clear.

  And as they followed the slope downwards, there it was.

  The Hillstop Hotel. A single story structure on their right that was more haphazardly extended supermarket than hotel. A profusion of chipped lego pieces on a green board.

  Dark and deserted in the dimming light.

  She stopped again, the road in front of them seeming to narrow to nothing, the merest hint of a tree shrouded lane that twisted out of sight. The entrance to the hotel grounds on her right.

  “I think that lane eventually ends up somewhere close to where you described,” she said over her shoulder to Julian.

  “Don’t know the exact route but I’m pretty sure there’s a way that comes out somewhere near your destination.”

  Her foot hovered over the accelerator, a nervous twitch waiting to happen. It was dark enough for headlights but she was even more scared to do that now. Lights would make them more visible, might draw unwanted attention.

  “What do you want to do? Go for this Black Hills complex ...or hide at the hotel.”

  Neither option struck Caroline as attractive.

  She was sweating, she could feel the slickness under her arms and on her body. Fear sweat, she thought distractedly. Perspiration squeezed out of hers pores by terror. The thought of entering some dark unknown building made her heart beat faster. No doubt it would add a little more moisture to her armpits as well. The thought of driving on, down dark country lanes, possibly infested with predatory killers, in search of an obscure objective, made her fearful enough to scream. Oh, and don’t forget, it was on the say-so of people she’d met a few hours ago. Admittedly the circumstances were extenuating and admittedly both of those people seemed decent, but she didn’t know them. She didn’t know Pearcey or Julian in any recognisable, traditional way. Maybe traditional was gone. When the world was collapsing around your ears, maybe you got to know people quickly or not at all.

  “We need the daylight to travel.”

  Pearcey’s voice was tired and dull. Certain and implacable.

  “I know we’re close but if we try for it tonight, I’ve got a hunch it’ll end in tears.”

  Fucking bucket loads of tears, was what Pearcey wanted to say but he held his tongue. They were spooked anyway, they didn’t need him to make it worse.

  “Go for the hotel,” Sault said.

  He’d kept silent as they’d pushed and scraped their way through the earlier mass of jammed traffic. Had refrained from offering any advice. Caroline had been grateful for his silence then, before she’d looked at him and seen the detached enjoyment in his eyes. The sight of that had cured her of any inclination toward gratitude. There was something about Sault that engendered a mix of emotions in her, but gratitude wasn’t one of them.

  “Whatever Carlton says ...the hotel,” Julian murmured.

  Adalia just nodded bleakly.

  Caroline rolled them gently up to the front of the hotel. There was a long covered walkway extending from the entrance, like a commercial car port stuck on the front doors of a hypermarket. She didn’t expect some uniformed smiler would be taking her keys and parking the car this evening. If they were greeted, she suspected the uniform might not be pristine and the smile might have too many teeth.

  In the gloom, she’d thought there were split bags of rubbish scattered under the walkway.

  As they drew closer, she realised her mistake.

  It wasn’t torn plastic bags spilling their contents across the asphalt.

  It was the remains of people. Carcasses, possibly two, ripped so savagely that it was difficult to identify their humanity until you saw the flies flitting about the congealing blood, the chewed hand wedged under the bottom of the bin, and the crushed skull on the grass behind it.

  They’d driven past corpses, plenty of them, but for the most part that was fleeting. Easy to glance and look somewhere else, divert your attention, subconsciously unfocus your eyes so the detail wasn’t right there in your face. Here, even in the gathering gloom, it was up close and unavoidable.

  “Cut across the grass and park by the doors.” Pearcey murmured. His voice was dispassionate.

  It might have been exhaustion or anticipation of what lay ahead. Or it might simply be that he was a cold-hearted bastard. Caroline didn’t know him well enough to judge.

  She parked a few feet from the double doors. One was cracked, a diagonal fault that ran from the top right corner. Beside her she felt more than saw Pearcey lever himself upright.

  “Julian and I will check it out. You wait here and watch. If we sign it’s okay, follow us to the door and we’ll go from there. Come on Julian, let’s go get ‘em.”

  Pearcey glanced at Caroline as he climbed out and then leaned on the door, cold air bleeding into the interior.

  “Wait for us ...but if this turns bad ...give us as long as you can ...go without us if you have to.”

  She couldn’t think of any reply, just nodded.

  As Julian exited from the back, she watched the pair meet in front of the vehicle and approach the hotel doors, Pearcey seeming to lean on Julian, heads close, talking.

  Outside the confines of Range Rover, the wind was blowing. For Caroline, it as the loneliest sound in the world.

  <><><>

  Pearcey had asked Julian to come with him because he needed someone to lean on. Not lean on in the metaphorical sense, he needed someone to lean on physi
cally.

  He felt like the bad end of a wet weekend.

  Feeling like shit and plodding on wasn’t a new experience for him, but this was a tough one. Plenty of times in the old days he’d been fucked up and kept going. No excuse not to, he’d had all the training to be able to do it. Been hurt. Been tortured. Felt colder than was bearable, felt hotter than was possible.

  Still kept going. He’d been trained, but above that, he had an innate unwillingness to give in.

  He’d been younger then.

  He was older now.

  Or perhaps just old. That was life, he supposed. Time rolled on and you got wiser if you were lucky and slower whether you were lucky or not. It didn’t mean he was finished. The car crash had scrambled his brain and messed up his old body and whatever bounce-back he’d had in the past was missing. He wasn’t about to give in, but lord, he’d had his fill of this shit.

  As they neared the doors, the fear began to loom larger than the pain and fatigue.

  He’d been trained to deal with the fear as well. There was nothing innate about that. Not being scared was as dumb as dirt as far as Pearcey was concerned. Over the years, every now and then, he’d come across somebody who genuinely wasn’t scared of things. Not scared of anything. Things that any half-idiot had every right to be scared of. Things that were meant to scare you because God had conjured up plenty of dumb-dirt enticements to keep the idiot population under control. Most of those people, the honestly fearless people that he’d encountered, had ended up dead. In his experience, a healthy dose of fear was essential if you wanted to keep breathing.

  He had the gun in his hand although it would be a last resort, he didn’t want to use it. There were potentially thousands of those things within earshot. The noise of a gunshot might bring down who-knew-what on them. An avalanche of claws and teeth that would bury them more surely than any amount of snow.

  Pearcey noticed his companion was holding the knife he’d given him outside the office when it looked like their game was up. Julian looked like a virgin holding her boyfriend’s old man for the first time. It was new and it was exciting, but boy oh boy, it was kinda scary as well. Not sure what it might do, and maybe she was gripping it too hard.

  “Jules, give me the knife. I’m gonna go with that first if things turn shitty. If I start banging away with the gun, the shitty is only going to get shittier still. We really don’t want any more shit than we already have.”

  Julian passed it to him and managed to look even more white-faced and dejected than when he’d gotten out of the car.

  “Don’t worry Jules. You’re the back up here, my partner. Let me take the lead, just follow my directions ... don’t fuck up too bad ...and we’ll be good.”

  “Carlton, I wished you wouldn’t call me Jules. It’s ...demeaning. If I’m going to ...die next to you, the very least you could do is use my proper name.”

  “Julie-baby, it’s a term of endearment.”

  The conversation paused then.

  They’d arrived at the main doors and the dim foyer that stretched beyond them. One of the doors was cracked, a softly serpentine split that ran the length of the dark glass. Pearcey prayed that it had happened on the way out, rather than when something was getting in. As he inspected the lock, his prayers were partially answered. The doors were open, which at least offered him the prospect that whatever had been inside had already left

  <><><>

  Pearcey and Julian cleared the group’s entry to the Hillstop Hotel, not the entire building but enough for them all to go in and set up camp. A few minutes after disappearing inside, Julian returned to the Range Rover, slipping thinly through the growing gloom, and led them past the cracked door, into a huge restaurant, and then into the kitchens behind. The restaurant sat off to one side of the foyer and featured a vast wall that was largely constructed of glass. They all felt disturbingly vulnerable as they traversed that space, casting concerned glances into the encroaching darkness outside.

  Defenceless, open to view and open to attack.

  The kitchens were windowless and large. A comforting claustrophobia filled with a profusion of stainless steel and cold tile.

  Enclosed and invisible.

  They set about quietly exploring.

  Securing what they could. Finding keys, locking down the immediate area, barricading what they couldn’t lock.

  Adalia wandered off alone. Pearcey and Julian were talking, entwined in whatever they’d done together.

  Caroline was radiating stress, a hot engine about to overheat.

  And Adalia didn’t want to be near Sault. There was a sense of inappropriate enjoyment about him that unnerved her.

  She discovered a corridor with several doorways, closely spaced along a dark and narrow passageway. The corridor terminated in a fire exit, one of those doors with a dull silver bar that could only be opened from inside.

  Adalia swept her torch along the space.

  Five doors.

  Considered going back and asking one of the others to accompany her.

  Who, honey-girl? The white woman who nearly broke on the road? Maybe one of the two new boys, pinky and limping perky? Maybe the one who smiles when he shouldn’t be smiling and doesn’t say much? You’re on your own, even when you’re with other people.

  She went to the first door and forced herself to turn the tarnished metal handle. Gently pushed the door back and let it run its gentle course. Trepidation in her step and fear in her heart. It was empty, the room spartan but clean. Habitable, if you just needed somewhere to lay your head. No decoration and a mouldy smell. Basic and small.

  Windowless.

  Maybe staff accommodation for night-workers. Immigrant workers?

  Perfect in a lot of ways for their current situation.

  She went down the corridor, inspecting each room in turn.

  The next three rooms were the same as the first. Essentially bare except the basics, empty of ornament, clean and somehow uninviting.

  Four down and one to go.

  The fifth room wasn’t the charm. Not at all. And it wasn’t bare and clean.

  It had been stupid doing this alone but what choice was there? The hotel was large and they needed to make it safe. The big guy with the gun, Pearcey, seemed to know what needed doing but he was limited for actually doing any of it. Walking wounded and banged up. The guy with him, Julian, was attached at his hip and pretty much blanked anyway.

  That left the three of them.

  Caroline wasn’t going to explore anything and Sault was a no-go.

  So Adalia went solo. She’d wandered down here on instinct and bravado. Curiosity and inexperience weaving the lethal charm that had intrigued cats of all ages well before Adalia’s baby legs took her weight.

  She smelled the difference as soon as she cracked open the fifth door. The difference between the first four doors and this last one. She should have smelled it sooner, it was a thickly slow wind wafting down the oddly thin corridor. That smell was mixed with mould and lack of sun, but it had an identity all of its own once it was isolated, concentrated. Once you got close enough. It was earth and metal and something just so ...essentially human. That age-old curiosity imbued enchantment of youth made Adalia open the fifth door and shine a shaky light.

  None of them would sleep here tonight.

  That was what flashed across her mind.

  The body was on a single bed and the blood was everywhere. Squelching under her feet.

  Spattered up the walls. Drying on the linen and on the plastic chair. Probably on the back of the door, she hadn’t looked and never would.

  It was a woman.

  Probably young, not much older than her. Whatever colour skin that might once have been there was fading like an old photograph. Adalia wanted to look away, back out of the room and close the door.

  And be sick.

  But she swallowed the bile bubbling at the back of her throat and forced herself to take in the details. Something awful had happened here b
ut it wasn’t the work of the monsters that roamed the streets now. This had been done by a still human hand. The girl was naked, her body covered in slashes and cuts, not bites and rips. Sharp steel cuts, a metric pattern, not organic irregularity. Her neck sliced so wide that Adalia imagined she could see the glint of bone within the wound. Sharp steel and a sick mind had inflicted those wounds, not savage teeth fuelled by animal hunger.

  After what seemed an eternity, she closed the door and bumped back up the thin corridor, retreated to the kitchens.

  In a shrill yet subdued voice, informed the others of the proximity of beds and the sickening scene behind the fifth door.

  Pearcey limped off to see for himself and returned a short time later. Slumped down on the floor next to her and verified her earlier thoughts.

  Dead girl. Murdered.

  Normal murder. Everyday horror.

  Sliced up by some sick fucker murdered. Not death at the claw of a mutated monster. Murdered by an ordinary human monster.

  They sat in stunned silence until Sault rose and announced that he was going to inspect the scene. Caroline and Julian shook their heads, neither of them wanted to see what Adalia and Pearcey had described.

  When Sault returned, Pearcey suggested that they post a guard while they slept. Two hour stints split between the five of them. He would have suggested it anyway in the circumstances. In light of what had taken place in that fifth bedroom it was beyond debate. It didn’t look like whoever had perpetrated the grisly act had stayed around but they couldn’t be sure. The hotel was big and they’d only checked and locked down the immediate area. Anyone, or anything, could be lurking in the further reaches of the buildings. They’d found keys, who was to say that somebody else didn’t also possess them?

  Adalia was dazed, felt as though she was being pushed closer and closer to some irrevocable edge. A long way from her humble home and her dead mom. A long way from Kalvin and the dirtiness. Hard to imagine she’d miss the Isherwood wildlife and hard to imagine how she’d function without her mother.

  She wondered where they’d sleep here. This little band of survivors. She couldn’t face laying her head in one of those rooms. Not knowing that a few feet away, down that dismal corridor, there was the dismal dead girl, her nearly severed head forever resting on a sticky-sweet pillow, life blood spread out around her like so much spilled paint.