Annaliese shrugged. She didn’t know where this was going. “How is that connected to what is happening now?”
“Because they were the first to turn…nasty – for want of a better word. I checked on them throughout the evening, of course – asking if they needed assistance or even just some Paracetamol – but they were barely responsive. By about 1AM they looked like they were on death’s door. One of them even had a nosebleed. The last thing I decided, before everything turned upside down, was to ask Stephen and Antoine to help the sick guests up to their rooms. They were bringing down the mood of the other guests.”
Annaliese knew the two bus boys Shawcross was referring to. Antoine was a student from French Guyana and had an interest in animals. He had come and spoken with Annaliese many times. A gentle boy. Stephen was a typical English teenager, earning a bit of pocket money while he decided on what he really wanted to do with the rest of his life.
“Where are Stephen and Antoine now?” she asked.
“The sick guests attacked them. They…they just sprung to life like wild animals and took the poor boys down to the ground.”
Annaliese remembered the man who had attacked her outside and nodded. Wild animals was as good a description as any.
“They tore out poor Stephen’s throat before he even knew what was happening. I have no idea what I will tell his family.”
Annaliese turned around and examined the barricaded doors at the front of the kitchen – the oak panels shook with each blow of a fist behind them – and then she glanced at Bradley. The young veterinary assistant was barely conscious, but at least his hand had finally stopped bleeding.
“They just…attacked?” she said. “But that makes no sense.”
“Must be a virus or something,” somebody muttered. “I bet terrorists did it. Like that attack on the Cruise Ship last week.”
“Or it could be some new kind of drug,” added another. “Like that bath salts thing in America.”
“Next thing we knew,” Shawcross continued, ignoring the various conspiracy theories that had begun to bandy themselves around the room, “half the guests were injured and bleeding. Or dead. Thirty guests ripped to pieces in minutes.”
Annaliese placed a hand over her mouth. She could hardly believe what she was hearing.
“That’s not the worst part,” Shawcross added. “Those that were left of us eventually managed to get the sick guests under control. We grabbed a hold of them and locked them in the wine cellar beneath the bar. Some of us got bitten or scratched in the process, but together we managed to succeed. We thought we were safe, that the whole thing was over….” He wiped the back of his hand against his clammy forehead and ran his fingers through his damp ginger hair. “I put through a call to emergency services and those of us left standing set about trying to help those who were not.” He looked at Bradley and shook his head. “We have to deal with him right now, before it’s too late.”
Annaliese put her hand out to keep him in place. “Nobody is doing anything until I understand what it is you’re all afraid of.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Shawcross almost shouted in her face. “He’s going to become one of them.”
She stood up straight and grabbed a glass from beside the sink. She filled it to the top with water and then swigged it down in one gulp. She shook her head and stared down at the floor. It was only then that she noticed all the dried blood on the kitchen tiles.
“What the hell happened in here?”
Shawcross let out a long breath that seemed to lower his gangly height by a full two inches. He was acting nothing like the organised and confident man she was used to.
“Follow me,” he said to her. “The rest of you stay here. Be vigilant. Find something to tie Bradley up.”
Annaliese followed the man to the back of the kitchen. He led her to an industrial chiller and placed a hand on its long aluminium handle.
“You ready for this?” he asked her.