There was a pained, creaking moan from above and without warning the whole front of the lobby area caved in and fell forwards. As it tumbled inwards, Charlie could see that the weight of several of the creatures had brought the burning door crashing down. They fell on top of the broken panels and the flames leaped from creature to creature then ran along the carpet so that in seconds the whole reception area was ablaze. Despite the heat and smoke, more of the creatures staggered through the door, seeking out their prey.
Charlie glanced at the stairs, started to move before stopping with a lurch. The fire that had spread so quickly from the doorway had created a wall of flame that separated one half of the room from the other.
With growing dread, Charlie realized that he was on one side of the flames and Poppy, Hanna and Jordan were on the other. And there was no way for them to get back up the stairs.
One of the creatures stumbled across the lobby, its hair alight, clawed fingers stretching out of the flames. A green ski jacket covered its upper body, the material spitting and crackling, and for a moment Charlie experienced a jarring flicker of recognition. It took another step forwards, and Hanna let out a huge roar of rage and fear as she smashed at it with her hockey stick. On the third hit it sank to the ground and lay still.
She spotted Charlie and shouted across at him, struggling to be heard above the roar of the flames. “Go! Back up to the others! We’ll meet you! Go!”
Charlie stared at her despairingly but there was no time to argue. As he watched, two more flaming figures staggered into the lobby. Their clothes were burning, their skin melting like wax, their hungry howls and cries twisting into agonized screams.
Hanna’s plan, it seemed, was working almost too well.
Somebody called his name from above and Charlie swore loudly and thumped back up the stairs. Smoke was everywhere and by the time he reached the first floor his eyes were streaming, his breath coming in pained gasps.
Nico waited there, his eyes frantic. “Where’s Jordan? Where’re the others?”
Charlie nodded to his right. “Downstairs. They’re cut off. There’s dozen of those things, trying to get in, trying to get to us. And the whole lobby’s on fire. We need to move!”
Charlie glanced down the stairs one last time, then started to run, along the first-floor corridor, past the empty dorms. A fog of smoke had started to gather near the low ceiling, and Charlie was finding it harder and harder to breathe. He glanced behind him, checked that Nico and the others were there, then scrambled down the stairs at the other end of the corridor, taking them two at a time.
The stairs brought him out at the rear of the building, where a green fire-exit sign showed the way out. There was a door on Charlie’s left, boarded up, with a padlock holding it shut on the inside. A terrible symphony of noises came from near the front of the building: shouts, wails, the ravenous roar of flames.
Charlie closed his eyes and tried not to imagine what was going on there. He fished around in his pocket, found the key Hanna had given him earlier and thrust it into the padlock, opening the latch then easing the door open.
Outside, the night was quiet and crisp, layers of snow glistening in the moonlight.
Nico’s face appeared next to Charlie’s, the bobbles on his orange beanie bouncing around manically atop his head. Behind him, Leandra, Ellie and Tara huddled by the doorway.
Ellie pushed past Nico. “We need to run! Why aren’t we running?”
Charlie glanced at the corridor behind them. Smoke billowed from the direction of the lobby, but there was no sign of Hanna and the others.
“We need to wait. I said I’d wait for Hanna.”
Leandra dug her fingers into his arm. He resisted the urge to shrug her off. “But she’s not here, and those things … if we don’t move, they’ll find us, won’t they?”
Nico stepped towards the doorway, tears glistening in his eyes. “Please. We need to go. Please. We don’t know where we’re going. If you don’t start moving, we’re all going to die.”
Charlie stared at Nico for a moment, his mind torn. Days before, none of the others had even spoke to him. And now they were looking to him for their safety.
Nothing made sense any more.
Charlie shook his head in a mixture of exasperation, fear and exhaustion, and set out into the night.
Chapter Thirty
Nico was right next to Ellie when the dark, spider-like shape dropped from the rooftop above them and slammed her to the ground.
There hadn’t been a time in the past few days when Nico hadn’t been scared, and he felt almost exhausted from fear, sick with it. Back home, he spent his evenings battling virtual demons and monsters, but without a controller in his hand and the safety of a screen separating them, the concept was utterly terrifying.
He had barely been able to keep himself moving as they sprinted away from the burning hostel, sure that any moment he’d feel the slash of talons on his back or hear the shriek of a hideous pursuer. But as the crackle of the flames receded in the distance, he had begun to feel a tiny glimmer of hope.
And then one of the grisly creatures had fallen straight into the middle of the group.
Nico’s legs tangled up, sending him face first into the snow. He pushed himself up, spat out an icy mouthful and frantically scuttled backwards on his hands and knees, away from their attacker. Glancing to his left, he could see Tara huddled against a wall, eyes screwed closed as if trying to wish herself far away.
The creature rose to its feet, something like a smile on its wide, fanged slit of a mouth. Maybe it was Nico’s imagination, but in the moonlight the creature’s eyes seemed to shine with glee. It had black, jutting hair, and a ragged bandage ran around its head, across one eye, dirty brown marks staining the gauze.
It opened its mouth as if to let loose a roar of triumph. Before it could get the sound out, the end of Charlie’s crowbar smashed it across the brow.
Their assailant’s head snapped back and it staggered drunkenly. A thin line of blood ran down from its raven hair, trickling on to the snow. Its limbs writhed around as it stumbled, the claws at the end of its bloated fingers slashing blindly. Leandra cried out and fell backwards. Charlie ducked this way and that, as if he were a boxer, trying to thrust his crowbar at their attacker a second time.
Nico’s back hit the alleyway wall just as Charlie found an opening. The metal bar thundered straight down on to the top of the creature’s head. Its legs folded under the blow, the top of its skull caving in. A glut of blood spattered across the snow.
“Come on, we need to move, if the others have heard—”
Charlie’s words choked as his eyes fell upon Leandra.
She sat deadly still a few feet from Nico, a widening pool of blood colouring the snow around her. Where the creature’s talons had ripped out Leandra’s throat, a crimson slick pulsed out in steady throbs and ran down the front of her orange puffer jacket.
She couldn’t speak, but her eyes said it all. They were wide with terror and disbelief, and Nico watched as the light in the pupils trickled away. Nobody uttered a sound as Leandra crumpled next to her killer. Wide-eyed, Charlie stepped over the creature’s body and tried to pull Leandra to her feet.
Ellie staggered up and put her hand on his shoulder. Her words were gentle, soft. “She’s gone Charlie. She’s dead. We have to leave her here.”
Charlie’s lips parted, but no words came out. He looked at Leandra’s motionless form then glanced back at Ellie. “Dead?”
Ellie nodded slowly.
Charlie wiped his eyes numbly and let Leandra sink back down on to the snow.
There were more noises, cries and shouts, growing closer. Nico looked back the way they had come and only just fought the urge to run blindly into the darkness beyond. He turned towards Charlie, desperate now, his voice breaking as he pleaded. “We need to go. We can’t help her, Charlie. Please!”
Charlie took a last look at Leandra’s serene face, and turned back to the group, won
dering if any of them would live to see the dawn.
Chapter Thirty-one
“What is this place? Is he dead?”
Someone gasped and Nico took a cautious step away from the figure slumped in the chair.
Charlie ignored Nico’s question and tried the handle on the heavy wooden cellar door. In the dim light, he could just make out a series of stone steps leading downwards. He took a torch out of his pocket and shone it into the space below. It revealed two wooden racks against a stone wall, a mattress on the other side of the cellar.
He turned back to the others. “That’s the old man we told you about. And yeah, he’s dead. If he wasn’t, he’d be down there, hiding from those things.”
Tara took a step closer to the chair and stuck up her nose. “I can’t stay here. I can’t stay next to him.”
Charlie glanced towards the huge bay window and closed his eyes while he tried to calm himself. They were moments from being discovered, Hanna and the others were missing, most likely dead, but Tara’s focus was still squarely on herself.
Once he had himself sufficiently under control as to not bellow at her, he turned in Tara’s direction. “You don’t have to. There’s a wine cellar down there and this door locks from the inside. If you’re quiet and lucky, you’ll be safe.”
Nico stared at him. “Why do you keep saying you? Why not we?”
“I need to go back out. I need to hide our tracks, or make some more. Our footsteps lead right here. I don’t know how clever those things are, but if they’ve got half a brain they could probably track us down in minutes.”
Ellie shook her head. “Seriously? You’re going to go back out there? With those things running around?”
Charlie passed his torch to Nico. “You think I want to? You really think I want to go out there and risk my neck for all of you? But how safe do you think we’ll be if they work out we’re here? And how long do you think that door will hold them?”
Nobody spoke. Nico took a hesitant look at Charlie, then cautiously made his way down into the darkness, Tara behind him.
Ellie paused, looked at the front door then grabbed Charlie’s arm. “You can’t do this on your own. I’m coming with you.”
Charlie felt a flicker of gratitude at her words, and he pushed the door shut behind Tara. He waited for the sound of the latch clicking into place before they left the chalet.
Outside, the sky of the village was lit by an orange glow that illuminated the mountains all around, sparks and smoke dancing up joyfully into the air. Charlie glanced around, but there was still no sign of Hanna and the others.
He watched the sepia light flicker on the snow for a moment, then nodded at Ellie and led her away into the night.
Chapter Thirty-two
Charlie and Ellie made it back to the chalet just as the heavens started to lighten, both of them exhausted and scared. They had spent most of the night hiding in the shadows, trying to cover the tracks they had made on the way to the old man’s home, scrambling almost blindly through the dark as they made false trails.
As the night had slipped towards dawn, they had made their way as close to the hostel as they dared, sheltering in a doorway that gave them a clear view of the carnage. The derelict building had burned and raged, the upper floors collapsing in on themselves like dominoes, the dull rumble echoing away into the night. There had been no sign of Hanna, Poppy or Jordan. Every now and then, amidst the smoke, quick figures darted near the flames, searching, hunting. When one of the shapes had glanced in their direction, Ellie swore in fright, and for a heartbeat Charlie thought they had been discovered.
Finally they had slipped back to the old man’s chalet, locked the door and made a nest of cushions and blankets next to the huge bay window. A pale light had just started to shimmer along the edge of the mountains, tracing the edges of the land far away.
Wolfgang’s body still sat there in the chair in the middle of the lounge, slowly decomposing, but neither of them had the strength to care. While Ellie closed her eyes on an old sofa, Charlie huddled and shivered under a prickly blanket, and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
The creak of the cellar door dragged Charlie from vague dreams, Hanna’s face never far away. A moment later Tara and Nico crept into the dining room, grumbling about aches and pains and the cold, their breath fogging about them as they spoke. For a moment Charlie wanted nothing more than to keep his eyes closed, to avoid having to re-emerge into this nightmare world where death was seconds away and strangers relied on him to keep them alive.
But he knew he would only be delaying the inevitable.
Nobody remarked on the body that sat in the middle of the room, its horror now a strange shared normality. The four of them ate a breakfast of cheese and milk from remnants left in the old man’s fridge, then Charlie rose wearily to his feet.
“I need to go. I need to check the hostel for the others. I need to make sure.”
Nico nodded, his eyes drifting to the still figure that slumped in the chair like a drunkard. “I don’t want to stay here. I’ll come with you.”
The girls nodded their assent, but Tara stopped them at the front door. “You’re sure? You’re sure those things won’t—”
Charlie gave an exhausted nod. “They don’t come out in the day. I think we’re pretty sure of that now.”
“Vampires,” whispered Nico to no one in particular. This time none of them bothered to argue with him.
They emerged from the chalet into the grey light of day, eyes blinking from smoke and long hours shut in the dark.
They were silent as they stumbled into the morning air, but Charlie was sure they’d all noticed that the snow had started to fall again, the wind slowly rising in a whistling accompaniment. Dawn had brought a clear, pale sky the colour of steel, but minute by minute more clouds slipped in from the west.
Nobody shut the front door, the thin wood left to slam against the frame in the breeze.
Before he realized where he was, Charlie’s footsteps took them past the spot where they had been attacked the night before. Blood stained the snow, faintly masked now by fresh powder. But both Leandra’s body and that of her attacker were gone.
Nico stood and stared at the spot. His mumbled words echoed away down the deserted alleyway. “What if there’s just us four left now?”
He started crying, pressing a shaking hand over his mouth to quieten the sobs.
Charlie turned away and they set off to the hostel. As they crept closer, the smell of smoke became more and more pungent, until the air was heavy with it. A low mist lingered in the village streets, the growing wind doing little to banish it. Navigating the gloom, they rounded the corner to what was left of the derelict hostel.
It was a while before any of them spoke, each lost in their own thoughts, mesmerized by the wreckage beyond.
The whole front of the hostel was now a charred, fuming pile of logs and beams, the rest of the building stripped away so that there was little more left than a blackened, twisted carcass. The snow had started to fall more heavily now, and from the skeletal debris came the hiss and fizz of flakes as they found their way down on to the smouldering ruins.
Charlie took a deep breath and started towards the ashes.
“Where are you going?” asked Tara.
Charlie ignored the question and made his way over to where the front of the building had stood only hours before. The drifts around his feet melted away as he got nearer to the hostel, and fragments of wood and glass and twisted metal littered the ground.
His dread only grew as he stepped over the remains of the boarded-up front door that had caved in the night before. A charred, bony hand poked out from underneath the burnt planks. Charlie peered down, then moved away when he saw the long talons that protruded from the ends of the fingers.
There were more bodies in the ruins of the lobby, a pitiful litter of charred bones, fragments of clothing and ragged bandages. He peered at one skull, split like a melon with a wide, leering grin, t
he teeth long and serrated. Charlie’s mind replayed the sounds of the night before, the screams and the cries and roaring flames, and he couldn’t help but think of the moment he had last seen Hanna, staring back at him amidst the growing inferno.
A crunch from the entrance made him spin round. Nico was there, his face almost sapped of colour, his eyes wide and fraught. Ellie and Tara huddled behind, their eyes flicking left and right.
“Was Hanna ever right,” Nico whispered. “Those things burn.”
From above them, the stripped corpse of the upper floors creaked and groaned, and a lazy rain of melted snow descended on the ashen ruin.
Charlie’s heart jerked as his eyes spotted something in the snow. He crept over, swore, and then kneeled down next to a charred, blackened body.
“What is it?”
Charlie didn’t reply to Nico’s words. Instead, he reached down into the rubble, drawing out a long, thin, curved piece of metal from where it lay partly hidden.
Hanna’s hockey stick.
“Oh no,” whispered Nico, moving closer and looking down at the body. “Is that…?”
Charlie stared at the grisly find. The skin and hair and clothes had burned away, so that all remained was a collection of bones and ash, a skull atop them like the point of an exclamation mark. He reached out and touched the jawline.
Tara’s whispered words drifted amidst the fog. “It’s her, isn’t it? It’s Hanna.”
Charlie glanced up at Nico. His voice started to break as he spoke. “We can’t leave her here. We need to get a spade, bury her. We need to—”
A noise from the doorway made everyone jerk and turn. Tara yelped like a dog and leaped behind what was left of the charred desk.
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