Chapter 2
They came upon the front entrance. A big glass window had been smashed. Blood covered the shards. A couple laid in a tangled embrace nearby, hair pulled, blood across each of their faces. Scooter walked past them and moved toward the broken window. His feet crackled on the glass.
"I think it's okay," he said, stopping to listen.
"I don't hear anything either," Marianne agreed.
Julie stared into the opening. "Are you sure?"
"I think it's okay," Scooter repeated. He stepped in through the window.
His eyes searched all around the main foyer. He could see a few more bodies lying on the ground. One was spread across the reception desk.
"It smells really bad," Julie said. She stepped behind him and looked over his shoulder. "I mea
n
reall
y
bad."
Scooter couldn't disagree. Yet he took another step further. "How about we head down there first?" He pointed toward a hallway.
"I don't know if that's a good idea."
"It'll be fine."
They made their way toward the hallway and stopped once they reached it.
"Is that fresh?" Julie asked. Blood soaked the carpet.
"I think so," Scooter replied.
"Shouldn't it have dried?"
"Maybe it just happened."
He regretted speaking as soon as he uttered the words. Julie's eyes opened wide. She clutched her knife tighter.
"Or it might be that it takes longer for blood to dry in here," Marianne offered as another explanation. It didn't seem to make Julie feel any better.
Scooter stepped onto the carpet. As he did the blood sucked at his boots. He shivered at the sound.
"Come on," he said. "Let's not think about it."
He led them down the hallway.
Not far into it, he came upon a body. The back of its skull had been ripped open. Brain matter dripped out of the wound. Unlike the blood, this was a lot harder to ignore.
He shivered again. Julie whimpered.
They kept going.
Scooter tried opening a few doors as they made their way, but most of them were locked.
"We should've grabbed some keys from the reception," Marianne said.
"You're right," Scooter admitted. He looked back down the hallway and decided against it. "Let's keep checking for now. We can get the keys later."
They continued.
It was Julie that first noticed the open door. She pointed to it, but made no motion of going forward. She waited for Scooter to lead the way. He held his axe up in front of him and stuck his head inside.
There wasn't much to see from where he was standing. It was obvious that the room had been wrecked. There was a television that had been knocked down from its table. A chair had been overturned. But he couldn't see anything else in the room.
"Stay here," he said.
"What? Why? Where are you going?" Julie's voice spouted out the questions quickly.
"I'm going to check it out."
"You're going in?"
"Uh-huh."
"On your own?"
"It'll be okay. Just stay here."
Julie turned and stood closer to Marianne. "Don't be long," she told him.
As he walked into the room, his heart began to race. He made his way down a small corridor, passing a small bathroom on his left. He couldn't see any signs of a struggle in it, though that didn't seem to matter. He knew that he was about to see something soon.
He took a step further. And another.
He kept expecting someone to burst around the corner and grab him. No one did.
Then he came to the end of the corridor and saw into the room.
"Shit," he said.
On the bed was a young woman. She was completely naked, her body was badly bruised. There were deep tears in her face. Thick red lines, caused by fingernails. There was no one else in the room.
"Scooter," Julie called. "Are you okay? What do you see?"
He glanced over his shoulder. "It's…nothing."
"Nothing?"
"It's…no, it's nothing." He turned to leave. He didn't want Julie seeing this. She was frightened enough by all that they had come across already. This wasn't going to help.
"Nothing? Tell me, what is it?"
Julie didn't wait for a reply. She walked into the room and headed straight for him. Marianne followed.
Scooter raised his hand to tell them to stop, but he hadn't acted fast enough. They got to him before he could move.
"What it it?" Julie asked again.
Scooter didn't need answer. Julie's mouth dropped open at the sight of the woman. Marianne looked disturbed as well.
"She's…she's…" Julie hurried out of the room. He could hear her retching.
Scooter and Marianne went to see if she was okay.
After a minute or so, she said that she was. She also apologized. "It's just that she looked around my age. She even had the same hair as me."
Scooter hadn't noticed that at the time, but they did both have long brown hair.
"What should we do now?" he asked. Even he was starting to second-guess their decision to search around. It didn't look like they were going to find much other than death.
"We should go back and get the keys," Marianne said. "Those rooms should be empty."
Of cours
e
, Scooter thought
.
He should have realized that before.
"Are you okay with that?" he asked Julie.
Julie nodded. Though barely.
"Come on, we'll just take a quick look," Scooter added. "We shouldn't keep everyone out there much longer."
Chapter 3
John and Alice were sitting on a curb when they returned. Emily's head was resting in the old woman's lap. Buster was at her side. They looked more than relieved at their return.
"Any luck?" John asked.
Scooter helped the old man get to his feet. "We found a few rooms at the end of the hall."
"A few rooms? Don't we only need one?"
"Well, we were thinking…"
"Scooter wants to stay on his own," Julie blurted out, unhappy with that decision.
John looked at him, questioningly.
"It's not that," Scooter explained. "We talked about it and agreed that it would be a good idea if we split into different rooms so we wouldn't have to cram into one bed."
"You and Marianne agreed," Julie corrected him. "I still think it's a crazy idea."
Scooter ignored her. "You and Alice can have a room to yourselves. Julie, Marianne and Emily can share one too. I know Emily likes being near Buster. It'll help her get a good sleep. I think it'll be good for you too, Julie."
"But that doesn't mean you need to be on your own." Julie turned to the others for support.
"Look," Scooter continued before anyone could give it to her, "the four of us with a dog in one room would be too much. We wouldn't get a good rest. We'd have to share a bed. Or one of us would have to sleep on the floor. It doesn't make any sense when we have these empty rooms."
"But…"
"It'll be okay. I really don't mind staying on my own."
"Are you sure?" John asked.
"Yeah." The truth was that Scoote
r
wante
d
to stay on his own. He had had a lot of different thoughts floating through his head over the past little while and he needed to try to make sense of it all. He couldn't do that with everyone around. "I'll be fine. Besides, the rooms are all close together. If there's any trouble, we'll have no trouble getting to each other."
"Do you think there'll be trouble?" Alice asked. She had gotten to her feet and was standing beside them.
"No," Scooter said. "We haven't seen any of those creatures around. We're pretty sure that it's going to be safe."
Marianne nodded in agreement. Even Julie had to admit that no matter how worried she was they hadn't seen any of thos
e
thing
s
.
"The thing is that we don't think we should stay here longer than one night," Scooter added.
John looked puzzled again. "A night? Why? I thought that you said it was safe."
"It is. But there's a lot of damage in there. A lot of death." He stopped short of giving a description. They would see it soon enough.
"Should we keep moving on?"
"No, it'll be good for us to get some rest. I know tha
tI
'm tired." Everyone knew that Scooter was trying to make it easier for John. Though the old man had been doing a good job of keeping up, things were beginning to wear on him. "I think w
e
al
l
are."
John decided not to argue. H
e
wa
s
tried. He couldn't pretend otherwise. "If you think it's a good idea."
"We all do." Scooter turned to Marianne and Julie. They agreed with him once more.
"Then let's go in."
Scooter picked up Emily and walked her to the front of the building. But before he entered, he told her to close her eyes. He didn't want her seeing more than she had to.
"Is it that bad in there?" John asked.
"It's bad enough."
They went in through the shattered window.
Chapter 4
At one of the rooms, Scooter handed John a key card.
"This works?" John asked.
"I think the locks are battery powered," Scooter offered in way of an explanation.
The old man put the key into the slot and heard a beep followed by a click. He pushed the door open. "At least it doesn't smell as much in here," he said, walking into the room.
Everyone followed him into it.
The room was clean. The sheets fresh. Two towels were neatly folded at the bottom of the bed. There were a couple of chocolates on the pillows.
John sat on the bed. It felt nice to be able to take a break like this
.
Saf
e
. "The doors look strong too," he added
.
Maybe not as strong as his door at home, but good enough.
"Yeah," Scooter agreed. "Nothing's getting through them."
"What about through here?" Alice asked. She was standing in front of a window.
"It's pretty strong too. Just make sure to keep it closed."
"It'd be nice to air out the room for a bit," John argued.
"You want me to open it?" Alice turned to her husband.
"Just for a bit," he said.
"For a bit," Alice reiterated. A slight breeze pushed the curtain as she opened it. Then she sat on the bed as well. "Now what?"
"We look for food," Scooter replied.
Julie turned to him, worry across her face once more. "We will? Why don't we just stay here? We can find food tomorrow. When we leave."
Scooter shook his head. "No, we've gotta get something now."
John moved to get up, but Scooter motioned for him not to bother. "I should help," the old man said.
"You can help by staying here and taking care of Alice, Emily and Buster."
"An
d
m
e
," Julie added. "I don't think that I can see any more of these bodies."
"That's fine. All of you can rest here. I'll go look on my own."
"No," Marianne said. "I'll go with you."
Scooter turned to look at the woman. He was still surprised by the courage she had shown. Not once had she been frightened by the bodies they had come across. The knife was still in her hand.
"All right, come with me." He turned back to the others. "We won't be long."
"Be careful," Julie warned him.
"We will."
Scooter and Marianne left the room, quietly closing the door behind them.
Chapter 5
As soon as Scooter closed the door, he turned to Marianne.
"Everything okay?" she asked.
No
,
it wasn't
,
he thought. He was starting to have second thoughts.
He kept his eyes on Marianne's, but he continued to think of her bright yellow shirt, the purse that she usually had strapped over her shoulder, the big sunglasses she wore outside. And though she wasn't old enough to be his mother, he figured that she was close enough.
What was he doing?
"It's fine," he decided. "Where should we start?"
"There might be a restaurant around here somewhere."
"Did you see one?" Aside from the lobby and reception desk - and the bodies that were scattered around it - he couldn't remember seeing anything that looked like it held any food.
"No," she admitted.
They walked back toward the lobby. They both figured that there might be a sign pointing to where the restaurant would be
.
If there was one
.
Maybe even be a map of some kind.
Once there, Marianne stopped and pointed. On the wall, it read
:
Restaurant, Pool, Exercise Roo
m
. An arrow pointed down another hallway.
"Looks like you were right," he said. He had a brief thought of what the pool must look like - bodies floating in bloodied water - and told himself not to check if they came across it first.
Side by side, they made their way toward the restaurant.
This part of the hotel wasn't much different than the other. Dead bodies. A couple of them in hotel uniforms. Holes in the walls. Over-turned tables. Blood.
"At least there are no creatures," Marianne said.
Scooter was thinking the same thing.
When they got to the restaurant, they saw that its doors were shut. There were also no windows to look through, so they had no idea of what waited for them on the other side.
Scooter raised his finger to his mouth, telling Marianne to be quiet. He placed his ear to the door and listened.
"Anything?" Marianne whispered.
"No." He kept his ear pressed to the wood for a little longer. "I think it's clear."
Marianne squeezed the handle of her knife and held it out in front of her. "I'm ready when you are."
Scooter readied his axe. "Let's do this." He pulled at the door.
As it swung open, a stench worse than they any other he had smelled before greeted them. Scooter winced. Marianne pulled back. The door closed shut.
"Fuck," Scooter said. "That's not good."
"So what should we do?"
"Fuck," he said again
.
They had come this far. Why not go the whole way
?
"I guess we've gotta try it again."
"Okay."
"You can wait out here, if you want."
"Why?"
"Do you really want to see what's in there?"
Marianne gave him a look from the corner of her eyes. "D
o
yo
u
?"
Of course, he didn't want to
.
"All right," he said. "I get it."
He placed his hand back on the door knob and took a deep breath. He nodded to Marianne, then pulled. The smell hit them again as they rushed inside.
Luckily, the restaurant was brightly lit. It meant they wouldn't have to strain to see anything. They could easily find what they were looking for and get out. Of course, it also meant that they could see all of the horrible things that had happened in there, but there was nothing they could do about that.
Scooter and Marianne searched.
They came upon several dead bodies. Blood spread across the walls, covered the tablecloths. People had forks and knives sticking out of faces and chests. Plates had been smashed. Food scattered.
Scooter only paused when he came upon a young girl. She was lying spread across the floor, her long blonde hair fanned out beneath her. A bottle had been jammed into the side of her neck and her blood had poured out of it like a funnel. It had pooled around her.
Fuck.
He turned away from the young girl and continued his search.