Last Hope, Book One: Onslaught (16 page)

On the wall was a large white clock, but the black hands did not move. The time displayed was three minutes after one. When the disaster had struck, Budd was sure that the tidying up from the night’s meals had already finished; the kitchen was too immaculately laid out for anything else to be true.

It was also too sparsely populated.

Budd counted five of the walking cadavers in the kitchen; each one dressed in the traditional whites of a chef, except that they lacked their tall hats. Turning slowly, the zombies began to meander towards the freight elevator, but there was plenty of time to deal with each one separately.

Best of all, Budd saw that none of them were moving with any speed.

Following Andy, Budd headed to the left, skirting around the outside of the kitchen as they aimed for the most isolated of the former chefs. The zombie, his arms outstretched and his mouth open, lumbered forward to confront them.

Andy clambered onto the left-hand countertop, keeping the hammer in his right hand, nearest to the aisle. Budd realized what the hotel worker was planning and stopped. He lowered the axe to the ground and waved his other arm, trying to attract the monster’s attention.

The ploy worked; the chef-zombie staggered towards him.

Andy smashed his hammer into the top of the thing’s head, embedding the weapon up to its shaft. When the deadly tool was retracted, if left a perfectly round hole behind. The chef-zombie crashed to the floor at Budd’s feet, still writhing on instinct, his ability to think, to act of his own desire destroyed.

Bit by bit, the body became still.

With a relieved smile, Andy jumped down from the worktop.

Budd stepped over the corpse, being careful to keep his boots away from the oozing blood. He looked around the kitchen to find that two of the other zombies were already down. One had fallen to Carl’s axe, while James and Chris had dispatched the other. The pair, working together, had killed it with a combination of a smaller fire-axe and a heavy, powder-type fire extinguisher. Budd watched as the two of them confronted a second chef-zombie, amused by the way Chris filled the zombie’s face with the spray of fine powder, stopping its advance and almost toppling it over, before James dealt it a blow with his single-handed axe.

The honeymooner had to chop down on the zombie several times before it was dead. Each swing sent an arc of blood into the air, which splattered the cupboards and worktops, and even splashed drops across one of the skylights.

The last zombie died under a thunderous strike from Carl’s axe, which was perfectly timed and administered, despite the weight of the weapon.

I’m not weak—but that guy was much stronger. I got the axe up in the air and let gravity help with the rest. Carl wielded it like most people would a stick.

I bet he worked out…

“Now then,” Andy said, “those offices over there should be locked up for t’night. An’ they should be empty.”

Hesitantly, James walked to the door Andy had pointed to, which was on the opposite side of the kitchen to the elevator. It was a large, metal-framed glass door that enclosed a series of offices. The young man scanned his eyes through the glass and tried the handle. It wouldn’t turn. “Yeah, it’s locked,” he said, “and it looks empty.”

“We’ll check for sure later. But we’ll clear t’restaurant first.”

“Where do those go?” Chris asked, pointing to two sets of metallic elevator doors that entered in the corner of the kitchen, further along to the left from where the freight elevator was positioned. There were no lights on the panels above them.

“Lifts for t’staff an’ as a backup for t’one we used. They’re not on t’emergency power circuit, though,” Andy said. He gave the doors a cursory look as he headed for the restaurant.

Budd let his eyes follow the direction Andy was moving. All along one edge of the kitchen was a stainless steel hotplate that had glass covers at its front and back. It was here that the prepared food was kept warm until the waiters delivered it to the tables. Ten feet beyond the counter was a long wall with thirty spring-loaded doors that could open in either direction. They led to the restaurant and could not be locked, but they did have small porthole windows at head height.

“I came up here earlier,” Budd said, lifting his Stetson and running his hand through his hair, wiping the sweat from his brow. “You know, back when these people were just dead, before they started getting up and walkin’ around. There were a lot of them.”

Which meant—and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize this—that there would be a lot of them now. And, to be honest, I didn’t really want to tussle with them. Except, I guess, for that damned snooty maître d’…

The five men found a gap in the plate-warming counter, convening in the space between it and the doors. Andy shrugged his shoulders. “We can’t leave t’hotel, not in t’fog,” he said, pausing as James and Chris nodded their agreement to his statement, “an’ this floor has t’most available sources of food an’ light, as well as being easiest to defend. We just need to clear it first.”

Carl bent down and peered through the porthole of the nearest door. “Let’s do this,” he said, raising his axe so that it was ready to use.

He pushed the door open with his foot and jumped through the space.

Budd hesitated at the door, allowing the others to pass in front of him. The short delay at entering the Skyview Restaurant gave him some time to think once he was inside. The rest of his small band were fanning out across the room, spreading away from each other with every step, although Budd could see that Chris, with his fire extinguisher, was reluctant to separate too far as his improvised weapon was no use on its own. Budd hurried after him, the two of them arcing to the left, ultimately heading for the bar. He was grateful for the company; the restaurant was as heavily populated as he’d remembered.

It was hard enough for me not to run away. And I’m sure, if my legs could’ve thought of somewhere else to go, that I’d have had no chance at stoppin’ them. There were waiters and waitresses everywhere, except, of course, that isn’t how they saw themselves.

No, they weren’t really waiters at all. Not anymore. They were nothing so humble.

Now, they were Table Managers.

God bless political correctness…

Dressed in their black pants and waistcoats, white shirts and black bowties, the shambolic horde of living dead stumbled, groaned and knocked into tables and chairs, their arms outstretched and their mouths biting air as they turned to face the restaurant’s new arrivals. They were spread out across the warren of passageways between the tables, each one aiming for one member of the group or another. Budd counted seven moving directly for either Chris or himself and, looking around, he was sure they had got off lightly.

Carl, the first into the room and the furthest across it, had at least twice that number lurching towards him. The first to arrive was dispatched with a single blow from the big man’s axe, which sent the near-decapitated body crashing into a table to land in a heap of flailing limbs, broken wood, cutlery, a white table cloth, and a vase of flowers. Budd watched as the big man prepared another blow for a second zombie, this one a waitress, her mottled flesh on show beneath the hem of her black skirt.

Before the strike was made, Budd heard Chris’s fire extinguisher burst into life, and he focused on his own task. He stepped around Chris, avoiding the funneled blast of white powder, closing in on the thing trapped within its fog-like discharge. While the waiter-zombie tried in vain to push the powder away from its face, Budd leveled his axe for a horizontal blow, swinging it with all his might.

He found his target.

The zombie’s head, its mouth still open, parted from the neck and the body slumped down to its knees before toppling backwards, a fountain of blood gushing from the catastrophic wound.

“The batter’s on fire,” Budd said with a forced smirk.

I was glad the severed head rolled out of sight…

“Just keep it up,” Chris replied, turning to his left and firing off another prolonged spray of powder at the next waiter to approach them. For a second time, Budd dispatched the walking corpse, this time sinking the blade deep into the top of its head. It was a struggle to pry the weapon from the broken skull and the sucking brain-mass within.

“Be fucking careful with that. We’re in trouble without it.”

Budd cocked his Stetson and grinned. “And, today, trouble has taken on a whole new meaning.”

The next zombie stuttering towards them was still a good distance off, Budd guessed nearly ten seconds away, but he and Chris remained where they were, waiting for the thing to reach them. In the intervening time, Budd glanced around.

He was relieved to see that Andy, Carl and James were still standing, still fighting; unlike Budd and Chris, they were not content to wait for the action to come to them, instead roaming between the tables, seeking out each confrontation.

Already, half of the floor space was clear, perhaps a quarter of the waiter-zombies. Budd guessed he would probably only have to kill a few more of the things before the battle was over.

“I’m glad the all-action heroes are on our side,” Chris said as he brought the nozzle of his fire extinguisher up again. The nearest zombie was still a few yards away.

Budd suddenly retched with fear. The bile burned the back of his throat as it rose from his stomach. “Over there,” he yelled, as loud as he could.

The others turned to look at him, but the warning was too late.

One of the zombies on the far side of the restaurant had started to run, and was heading straight for James.

The waiter-beast pumped its arms, snarling and snapping its teeth. It launched itself through the air and crashed into James, who collapsed back onto a table beneath his attacker.

Andy and Carl abandoned what they were doing and rushed across the areas they’d cleared. They wove through the network of tables and chairs, desperate to help their fallen comrade.

His screams filled the restaurant, echoing beneath the room’s glass ceiling.

“Come on,” Budd instructed, waving for Chris to follow him. He jogged back around the outskirts of the room, passing the double doors from the entrance hall that housed the elevator bank, aiming to meet with the others.

At the back of my mind, I also planned how I’d retreat to the kitchen if events turned bad.

They didn’t look good…

The fast-moving zombie extricated its body from where it had landed on James. He was one of the male waiters, of average height and build, with short dark hair and a clean-shaven face. He jumped back to his feet with blood all around his mouth, dripping down his chin.

His lower jaw moved up and down.

He was chewing.

Andy stopped ten paces away. The beast raised his hands, holding them like claws. Blood dripped from his fingertips. He let out a hiss.

Sprawled out across the broken two-seater table behind the beast, James was still.

Carl reached Andy and halted by his side, his axe ready to swing.

The waiter-beast let out another snarl and then charged towards them, seemingly oblivious to the weapons it faced.

Budd was so caught up in the scene that he almost stopped, knowing that the outcome of the battle would shape his next move: either continue to clear the room, or flee back to the freight elevator.

Without hesitation, the waiter-beast rushed on, throwing himself against Andy and avoiding his hammer blow simply by coming on too quickly for the maintenance man to react. Andy crashed backwards under the force of the collision, the waiter-beast on top of him, snapping his teeth viciously.

Budd prepared to flee.

With Chris alongside him, the pair edged towards the swing-doors, but Carl sprung into action and kicked the beast in his side, toppling him from his position above Andy and sending him reeling to the ground.

As the waiter-beast started to rise up again, his white teeth shining bright from inside the bloody frame of his face, Carl unleashed a mighty blow that cut deep into the side of his head, splitting the jaw all the way to the ear. The waiter fell to the ground, wriggling around until Carl landed a second strike on the top of his head.

Finally, the fast-moving thing was still.

Carl leaned over and gave Andy a hand to his feet. The maintenance man offered his thanks as he retrieved his fallen hammer.

Budd looked at the remaining host of zombie waiters, all of which were the slower, unsteady type.

Slow or not: there were still a lot of them. Much more than I had the stomach for. The time had come to be someplace else…

Budd put his hand on Chris’s shoulder, gesturing over to James’s unmoving body. “You help the others,” he said, “and I’ll go fetch the doc.”