Blog of the Dead (Book 1): Sophie (16 page)

There’s a freshwater stream that runs through the hotel grounds, so we’re sorted for water and fish. Luckily it’s been quite mild so there are even crayfish about. We have to take care when we’re out in the hotel grounds, though, because they’re not totally secure. I’ve had to brain a couple of zombies since we’ve been here.

Cathy keeps chickens, too. Fresh eggs – woohoo!

Shelby and Wade are friendly but quiet. Not so much quiet by nature, I believe, but subdued by whatever they’ve been through before arriving here. I haven’t got to know much about them yet. When they’re not helping with the chores around the hotel, they both have their noses planted deep inside books, choosing to lose themselves in worlds without zombies.

Cathy’s got a great library in the hotel lounge, so we’ve all started to read a lot to fill the endless hours. There are bookshelves that go right up to the ceiling, and any part of the walls not covered by bookshelves is panelled in dark wood. It’s really cosy. The whole hotel has an ancient country manner/gentlemen’s’ club vibe that I like. I prefer to sit in one of the old high backed green leather chairs by the huge open fire in the lounge. It’s usually roaring away in the evenings. I’m reading Bret Easton Ellis’s
American Psycho
. It’s Cathy’s favourite book, so I thought I’d give it a go. Sam’s reading
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
!!! Sicko!

Me and Sam are in separate rooms. At first we only shared his room because I had nowhere else to go while Zombie-Richard was in my room. But I felt safe with him. I wanted to stay, and I was secretly glad when Polly left to share with Leanne. I got used to him next to me once we started sharing the bed. Warm and secure. After we fucked, well, we had that whole disagreement over Wales, and we never got round to sorting that out. There’s a distance between us that isn’t going to get sorted out in public. We need to be alone, but even then, it’s something that to bring it up is to admit that there is so much more between us. That’ll open up a can of zombies. I’m not sure I’m even making any sense.

When we all got assigned rooms in the hotel our first night here, neither me nor Sam protested about being given separate rooms. I was scared he wouldn’t want to share, I guess, and scared of looking stupid. It wasn’t until I was alone that I felt the pang of regret and wished I’d said, ‘Actually, I want to sleep with him’.

But do I? Do I? Fuck. Yes I think I do. Damn, how do I get back into that sleazy boy’s bed?

January 5
1.50pm Day 53
We’re all bored. It’s been five days since we arrived, and not much has happened. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to Cathy for putting us up here, but we’re all used to fighting for our lives, and being in a constant state of fear every second of every day. Yeah, there’s the occasional zombie breach here. But, well, I don’t really know what to do with myself a lot of the time. The most action Liam’s axe has had recently is chopping firewood to store in an outhouse at the back of the hotel. I can see it in us all – me, Sam, Keith, Liam and Kay at any rate – we should be glad we’re relatively safe, but we’re restless.

We miss the hunt.

Not every moment here has been boring. Getting to know new people is good, but when you have a lot of spare hours, it takes a lot to fill them. Cathy’s teaching me how to fish. I suck at it. But Sam’s really good at it, Keith too.

And, then, this morning I was sitting in my usual position by the fire in the lounge, reading a book (finished
American Psycho
– not really sure what I made of it – and now reading
Great Expectations
. Hard going) when Polly appeared in front of me. I lowered Dickens and stared at her suspiciously.‘Yeah?’ I asked.

Polly sat down on the floor in front of me, like I was Grandpa about to tell her a story. She sat with her legs crossed. I leaned forwards in my chair and gave her a ‘come on then’ look, tilting my head slightly and raising my eyebrows.

‘Sophie … what do you think happens to you when you die?’ Huh! Didn’t expect that. Not an insult or a swear-word to be heard.

I really don’t know what happens when we die. I watched a documentary by Dr Brian Cox once and, I’ll probably totally get my facts wrong now because I totally don’t have a scientific brain, but all the elements in the universe are made inside stars and during the intense energy produced when a star dies in a supernova. Planets form when gravity squishes together clouds of stardust found in nebulas. Humans, trees, animals, rocks, we’re all made from the elements created by stars. Me, I’m just one little speck of stardust in a vast universe. So, I reckon we just melt back into the universe, well, our bodies at least.

I didn’t say any of that to Polly, though, as she sat, cross legged, looking up at me expectantly. I knew where this was coming from – Leanne. ‘I think we go to a better place,’ I said.

‘But if you become a zombie and can’t die properly, does that affect what happens to you? Can your soul still move on to a better place?’

‘Um …’

Sam, who’d been watching this from the chair opposite me, from over the top of his book, now placed his book on a coffee table and, in a swift and sexy movement, sat down on the floor beside Polly. ‘Polly,’ he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. ‘Leanne’s soul is free and it lives on, right?’

‘Do you really think so?’ asked Polly, her voice childlike.

‘Yeah. I totally believe that. She’s with you now. You just have to feel her.’

‘But she’s a zombie. She needs to be put to rest. She might be stuck …’

‘Polls, her body might be walking about out there, but she’s not in it any more, right? Her body’s just an empty shell. It’s not her any more,’ said Sam.

Polly burst into tears and thrust her head onto Sam’s chest, while Kay sprang out of her chair and came over to kneel beside Polly, rubbing Polly’s shoulder. ‘Let it all out,’ she said as she rubbed.

Sam stroked Polly’s hair and whispered soothing words to her, while everyone else looked at Polly with concern from where they sat. Well, almost everyone. I caught Cathy looking not at Polly but at Sam from a sofa in the middle of the lounge, her expression less concern and sympathy, but more … anger, hurt?

5.50pm Day 53
I surprised myself earlier, when Sam comforted Polly. Jealousy knocked me sideways. I hated the way he held her and stroked her hair, and I wanted him to be doing that to me. I envied Polly’s pain.

I’m not the jealous type. My last boyfriend, Lewis, we went out for about a year. It ended a few months before I left Guildford for uni – we outgrew each other. But, my point is, when we first met, he was always talking about his friend Kerry – Kerry this and Kerry that. They’d spend time together when I wasn’t there. I didn’t feel jealous at all. My friends used to say, ‘Doesn’t that drive you crazy?’ and I’d be like, ‘No. I trust him. It’s when he stops talking about Kerry that I have to worry.’

And I did trust him. I don’t believe that anyone owns anyone else. We’re all free. It’s just down to the decisions we make – to be faithful or not to be faithful, that is the question – and I’d rather trust that the someone I’m with will make the right decision. I found out, about two months into our relationship, that Kerry was a lesbian. Who knew?

I know why I felt jealous today. It’s not that I can’t handle sharing Sam, or seeing him doing kind things like comforting hysterical girls. It’s that, right now, he’s not mine to share.

January 6
5.15pm Day 54
The subject of today … where the fuck is Wade? He’s totally disappeared. The last anyone saw of him was around 11am today. We were in the lounge drinking tea and eating a cake that Cathy had been saving for a special occasion. ‘We’ve made it to another Friday morning,’ she said when Liam asked her what the occasion was.

Wade had barely finished his tea when Cathy asked him if he’d go and get some more firewood from the outhouse. The fire was getting low. But, to be honest, it wasn’t that cold and I didn’t really think we needed it. Not my hotel. Cathy went off to the kitchen to start cleaning up the tea things, while the rest of us, bar Polly who was in her room, stayed in or around the lounge. No one’s seen Wade since. And no one saw or heard a thing.

It’s only natural to assume the worst these days. A few of us went to have a look for him at the outhouse and through the grounds but … nothing. Not even any fresh blood or sign of a struggle.

So much death. My sadness can only manifest itself now in a depressed numbness. Nothing left.

Shelby’s feeling it worse. Though neither of them spoke much about themselves, I had learned that they weren’t together,
together
, but they’d teamed up right from the beginning, when they escaped a bus full of zombies somewhere in Hythe. They’d hidden out in a church with some others for a while, until it got busted into by zombies. Shelby, Wade and two others survived. Only Shelby and Wade made it here.

I feel for her. She’s pale and quiet right now, and listening to a Taylor Swift CD on the stereo in the bar.

Wade might well turn up … Eternal optimist, that’s me.

January 7
1.30pm Day 55
Wade never turned up, and even the eternal optimist in me knows he’s not going to. All anyone can do these days is get over it and carry on surviving.

Last night, over dinner in the main restaurant (we’ve put a few tables together to make one big dining table for us all), I raised the subject of moving on to Wales. I’m so fucking bored here.

‘I’m up for moving on,’ said Liam.

‘Count me in,’ said Keith.

‘But we’re the safest we’ve been for ages,’ said Kay.

‘You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,’ said Cathy. ‘I’m enjoying the company.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘And thanks, but it’s what we’ve been planning and –’

‘Plans can change, Sophie,’ said Sam.

I shot him a look. Aggghhhh! It was Sam wanting to go to Wales that drove us apart. Now he doesn’t want to go? ‘You want to stay here?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

I ground my teeth together, feeling my cheeks flush. Seething. Smouldering. Fuming. I pretended he hadn’t said anything. ‘Cathy, the cars outside in the car park, do you have keys for them?’ I asked.

‘I don’t, no. The cars belonged to the guests that were staying here before they … I suppose it’s possible the keys could still be in their rooms. I’ll check.’

‘We can always hot-wire,’ said Liam. ‘I got the skills …’

‘And you wouldn’t mind us taking a couple of cars?’ I asked Cathy.

‘No. Not at all. They’re not mine anyway. I’ll see if I can find you some keys later. No rush though. You’ll stay another day or two, eh?’

I looked at Sam, but he didn’t say anything.

January 8
10.20am Day 56
Late last night I saw Sam in the lobby. He was by himself, so I thought,
Now or never
, and made my way over to him to talk about this whole distance/what-the-fuck-is-going-on-between-us thing. Only, when I got there, I couldn’t find the words. So, instead, I asked him why he doesn’t want to go to Wales now.

‘I’m not so sure I can face going back out there,’ he said, green eyes covered by a floppy, overgrown fringe. ‘How come you want to go?’

‘It’s stagnant here. I think my mind’ll rot like a zombie if we stay. I need to find out if there’s anyone else alive out there, if –’

‘Sorry to interrupt.’ I turned to see Cathy behind me holding a huge tray with cups and a couple of what I thought were coffee pots on it. I hadn’t even heard her arrive.

‘I’ve made some cocoa, if you two are interested,’ she continued.

Cathy headed off towards the lounge. I looked at Sam, but he just looked down at his Converse.

‘You coming?’ I said and I headed off to the lounge.

10.45am Day 56
We’ve just realised that Keith is missing. We thought he was having a lie in when he didn’t come down for breakfast, but he’s not in his room. He’s not anywhere. No one’s seen him since last night, just before he went up to bed.

January 9
10am Day 57
Wade, then Keith. Keith’s bed had been slept in Saturday night, but then the trail goes cold. Where the fuck did he go? Why would he have gone out by himself in the middle of the night? It doesn’t make sense.

If you ask me, there’s something not quite right about Cathy. There are nine cars parked in the guest car park. That’s at least eighteen guests (my guess, based on the fact that no one comes to a romantic country hotel like this by themselves) that were here at the time of the first zombie attacks. So, where are they all? This place is secure-ish, right? So, again, I ask: Where the fuck are they?

1.10pm Day 57
Me over lunch – ‘Cathy, what happened to all the guests that were staying here?’

‘What?’

‘When the zombies first attacked, what happened here?’

Cathy gave a little half smile, looked pained, cast her eyes down to her half eaten plate of fried egg and beans, pushed the beans around the plate with her knife for a moment, sighed, put down her knife and fork and looked at me. ‘It happened so fast,’ she said. ‘The chambermaid must’ve let herself in to clean one of the rooms but, instead, got attacked by the zombies inside. A guest had been complaining of having flu the day before. He must have turned into a zombie in the night, killed his wife, and now the pair of them were loose in the hotel. They killed the chambermaid, and then the three of them worked their way through the other guests. It was lunch time, you see, so most of the guests were in the dining room.

‘Some of the staff managed to flee, but only me and two other guests survived the attack. It was terrible.’ Cathy shook her head and looked down to her plate once more.

‘But, with all that death and carnage, what happened to the zombies?’ I asked.

‘Me and the other two guests either killed them with whatever makeshift weapons we could lay our hands on, or drove them out of the hotel. Some just wandered off by themselves.’