The Devil's Graveyard (48 page)

‘Pardon me?’

Sanchez had been hoping that Powell might be able to show them a way out. After all, it could only be a matter of time before the zombies below stopped ripping limbs off the screaming audience members and started climbing their way up to the stage. There were already a few of them in the orchestra pit tearing the musicians to pieces. Instruments were squeaking and honking as band members tried in vain to fight back. The tuba player, in particular, was honking for all he was worth in the hope of keeping the creatures at bay with the deep bass blare from his giant instrument.

For once, everyone else looked more terrified than Sanchez, with two exceptions. Elvis remained the epitome of cool, as always, and Jacko too seemed completely unfazed by what was happening. While waiting for one of the two to offer a suggestion about how they should escape, Sanchez heard the cacophony of zombies and their victims suddenly drowned out by music. And this time it wasn’t the tuba. Blaring out through the speakers around the auditorium was the Paul McCartney CD that the deejay had played earlier. The screaming audience below were being drowned out by McCartney and a chorus of burping frogs singing ‘We All Stand Together’. Fuckin’ run in terror together, more likely, thought Sanchez. If ever there was a sign indicating what he should do, this was it.

‘That’s it. I’m gettin’ the fuck outta here!’ he declared, hoping desperately that someone else would agree, and then take the lead.

‘Just hold on one second,’ Elvis snapped back. He walked up to Powell and stopped in front of him. ‘So, how do we get outta this shit, huh?’ he asked, prodding the other man in the chest.

‘I… I’m not sure,’ Powell stammered. ‘I think… I guess the safest place to be is up here on stage. Maybe they won’t come up here.’

Elvis looked unimpressed, his mouth twisting into a sneer the King himself would have admired. ‘Yeah? An’ what was it you said to me earlier?’ he asked.

‘What? I don’t know. Now’s hardly the time for this.’

‘You said I don’t deserve to be on this stage.’

‘Big deal. Get over it, already.’

‘I have. But you know what?’

‘What?’

‘Now
you
don’t deserve to be on this stage.’ He leaned back, and then with all his strength drove his right fist into the shocked face of Nigel Powell. It connected with full fury right on the end of its target’s nose. There was a sickening crunch and a spray of blood as the impact of the blow knocked the show’s deviser and chief judge off his feet. It sent him flying back off the edge of the stage into the orchestra pit below. He landed in the middle of a melee of zombies and half-eaten musicians, torn-off limbs and ripped-out entrails. The expression on his face was one of the purest terror. Never had an orange-skinned man looked so pale.

The zombies allowed him one agonized scream before he vanished beneath a pack of them, to be eagerly devoured. They seemed to know who he was. In the dim recesses of their rotting brains, they knew that this man had tricked many of them into selling their own souls to the Devil in exchange for what they had thought would be money and fame. The rest were hapless audience members from past shows who had become zombies through being killed by them. He was finally getting his comeuppance. From a horde of undead creatures who despised him.

Elvis turned back to face Sanchez and the few remaining survivors. The stage was still free of zombies, but that would surely change. Soon.

‘Yo, Johnson!’ Elvis yelled at Jacko. ‘Get us the fuck outta here!’

The Blues Man grinned at him. ‘Sure thing. Be a pleasure. Follow me.’

Nina Forina, Candy Perez and Lucinda Brown had long since left the stage, trying to make a break for it with a few of the security guards. Occasionally, shots punctuated the din as the guards tried to fight their way through the frenzied ghouls. Sanchez could have followed them, but he reckoned that sticking with Elvis and Jacko had to be a better option. The Blues Man led the way off the side of the stage, from where they had all watched the results in what seemed like an earlier life. Sanchez and the others followed on behind. The tubby bar owner cunningly weaselled his way in right behind Jacko and just in front of Elvis, clearly the safest place to be. Janis Joplin was behind Elvis, desperately clinging on to his hand. Emily was behind her, and finally, bringing up the rear, came Freddie Mercury. The only person left behind on the stage was Julius. His corpse was still lying on the boards where it had fallen, blood oozing from the fatal head wound.

As Sanchez followed Jacko down the stairs to the corridor that led to the lobby, he saw one of the undead creatures charging towards them. It stopped at the foot of the steps, blocking their path to the corridor. Half of its face had rotted away, making it hard to tell what it had looked like when alive. It was a face that had probably once belonged to a young man who had wanted nothing more than to be a famous and successful singer. Now it was a decomposing mask of evil, bereft of a soul, twisted with its desperate desire to feed on human flesh. Judging from its tattered, rotting clothes, it had once been the owner of a smart suit not unlike Jacko’s. But where his suit was clean and well pressed, the zombie’s was torn and filthy, covered in mould and dirt and blood.

The hideous creature stood stock still in front of Jacko and the two of them eyeballed each other for a moment. The zombie seemed to recognize him; indeed, it seemed not to want to bite chunks out of him. It was, however, quick to turn its ruined gaze on the very edible midriff Sanchez kept barely concealed beneath his red Hawaiian shirt.

Repelled yet faintly fascinated, Sanchez watched on, trembling at the stand-off that had developed. Eventually, Jacko raised a hand to the zombie and shook his head. ‘These folks are with me. Let ’em be.’

There was an awkward few seconds during which the zombie snarled at him, apparently considering what he had said. All that could be heard were the dwindling screams of the remaining audience members and incessant burping of frogs on the Paul McCartney track. But, eventually the zombie stopped snarling at them, turned its back and ran off down the corridor towards the rear of the hotel.

That’s a result
, thought Sanchez.

Jacko led the way into the corridor and beckoned the others to follow him towards the lobby. Sanchez peered around the corner into the corridor and immediately noticed that it was fairly packed with blood-crazed zombies in the process of attacking any audience members, security guards, judges and singers who had tried to escape. The putrid stink of the zombies mingled with the coppery smell of fresh blood in a scent that no one was likely to bottle as Charnel No.5 any time soon.

‘Look,’ yelled Sanchez. ‘There’s Little Richard.’

‘Nah, that’s Jimi Hendrix,’ said Elvis.

They were both right. Sanchez looked on in horror at what was happening. Over by the opposite wall, Richard, the diminutive Jimi Hendrix impersonator, was being eaten alive, legs first, by a pair of zombies. He was still alive and screaming in agony. Elvis was quick to shove his buddy in the back and out into the hall.

‘C’mon, fatso,’ he muttered. ‘We ain’t got all fuckin’ day!’

‘The fuckers’re eatin’ him alive!’ Sanchez couldn’t stop himself from staring at the dreadful sight.

‘Fuck him,’ said Elvis, heartlessly. ‘He ain’t nothin’ but the starter. You’ll be the goddam main course, if you don’t get your fat ass outta here!’

Sanchez took the hint. He hurried along the corridor behind Jacko, staying as close to him as possible and thanking his lucky stars that the guy had some sort of influence over the zombies. There were around twenty of the mutant creatures in the corridor ahead of them, lined out along both walls. They were respecting Jacko’s order to stay back, but they were also visibly itching to reach out and take a grab at anyone who stepped away from the group. The King followed on behind him, waving his fists at anything that looked like it might dare to lunge at Sanchez. Janis Joplin kept a tight hold on the back of Elvis’s gold jacket, meanwhile shouting all kinds of obscenities at the watching zombies.

At the rear, Emily and Freddie Mercury were the most vulnerable. Emily’s stupid bright red shoes weren’t made for running. The heel on the left shoe broke loose as she hurried along, one hand clutching the back of Janis’s dress. Freddie was constantly knocking into her from behind and it was his stepping on her feet that had caused her shoe to break.

Emily found it hard to focus on moving ahead, knowing that a zombie might lunge at her from behind or the side at any time. The creatures were all willing to back off when Jacko – or Robert Johnson, she supposed she should call him – ushered them away, but by the time the end of the line of fleeing singers reached them the memory of his warning had fled their raddled brains. As the escapees approached the glass doors – one shattered by Angus’s bullet – into the reception area, one of the deformed figures made a lunge for Freddie Mercury. Emily, trying to concentrate on not looking at the zombies, kept her eyes fixed on the glass doors and a glimpse of the exit. She didn’t notice initially when one particularly large zombie grabbed Freddie from behind and smothered his mouth with its thick bony hand. But she heard his muffled cries for help.

She turned and stared in horror as the hideous, semi-naked giant began to drag Freddie back down the corridor. He was frantically kicking his feet in his desperate attempts to escape, but his plight was spotted by a few other zombies, which immediately leapt upon him. With Paul McCartney’s ‘Frog Chorus’ almost drowning out the loathsome noises they made, the zombies began devouring him bloody mouthful by mouthful as the largest of them carried him back towards the stairs that led to the stage area.

Up ahead, Sanchez could see that the exit was within reach. He looked back to check that Elvis was still behind him. He was. Survival was looking like a possibility. Relieved that the zombies now all seemed to be behind them, he shouted over the frogs’ din to Elvis. ‘’Least the hotel ain’t plummeted into the depths of Hell like Gabriel said it would!’

‘Don’t tempt fate!’ Elvis yelled back above the din.

But the tubby bar owner’s gift for tempting fate had not deserted him. Within a second of Elvis’s warning, Sanchez saw a large crack appear in the floor of the corridor behind them, accompanied by a drawn-out creaking noise. It was only an inch or two wide and probably not very deep, but it was racing towards them from its starting spot about fifty feet behind them, tearing the carpet apart. The floor was breaking open like a hatching egg. Zombies dived away from it, jumping towards the walls.

At the back of the line of would-be escapers, Emily saw it too. Slabs of plaster from the walls and ceiling were coming loose, too. The corridor was beginning to shake like some mad fairground ride. Emily looked back one last time and saw Freddie Mercury’s feet vanishing down a side corridor towards the stage in the hands of a group of zombies. She didn’t know which was more horrifying, the fact that Freddie was being eaten alive, or that the floor was about to split in two.

Undoubtedly this was as terrified as she had ever been, and she was now cursing herself for not having followed the Bourbon Kid’s advice. She couldn’t help but wonder what had become of him. He was one of those guys who seemed to know no fear, who always fought everything head on. Just the kind of man she needed right now. She hoped desperately that she would spot him somewhere, amidst the havoc.

Unfortunately for Emily, bringing up the rear with Freddie now gone left her as the most vulnerable. Being at the end of the line meant that a number of flesh-hungry zombies were eyeing her up. At least there were no longer quite as many of them to contend with. A bunch of them had dashed off to the stage area with the screaming Freddie Mercury, while the sight of the floor splitting in two had scared off several of the others.

A second, extremely loud creaking noise drowned out the singing frogs. This time it wasn’t just the floor splitting in two. The entire corridor tipped over to one side, causing everyone to slide over with it and crash against the side wall. All five of the surviving escapees stumbled and lost hold of each other. Emily suffered worst. Her right shoe came off, and since the other had a broken heel, she flicked that off too. Her plain white ankle socks offered no grip whatsoever on the weirdly tilted floor. She lost her footing completely and toppled over on to the large crack in the floor, which was now almost four inches across. And it was slowly widening.