“Should we try heading out through a different door?” he asked her. “They could still be right outside where we came in.”
Annaliese thought about it. “To be honest, I don’t think we’re going to be safe coming out of any door. At least we know what to expect by heading out of this one. There’s the one that attacked us right outside and then I know there’s at least one more – a guy with a busted ankle.”
Mike hefted the shovel up and held it in front of him. “Okay, I’m ready when you are.”
“Just remember,” said Annaliese. “Don’t let them bite you.”
“Hey, I stopped getting hickeys at fifteen. Not about to start again now.”
Annaliese stepped up to the doorway and grasped the handle. She held the steel pole tightly in her right hand, reassured by its balanced weight. Shawcross and the others were stood several meters back, hushed in anticipation.
“Here goes,” she said, then eased open the door, peering outside carefully. Once she felt safe enough, she opened it wider and stepped through.
In just the last fifteen minutes, dawn had turned fully into day. The autumn sunshine painted everything with shades of orange and the moist green grass of the park’s numerous embankments seemed to glisten and sparkle. To her right, multi-coloured macaws had awoken in an aviary.
“It looks all clear,” said Mike, stepping out ahead of her and looking around. “Wonder where he went?”
“He’ll be around here somewhere. Stay alert. We need to get to the house.”
Annaliese took cover behind the concrete chameleon statue and checked up ahead. Past the trees of the lawn, Ripley Hall was silent. Its doors remained open and its lights were still on, but all was quiet.
“Come on,” she said, ushering Mike to follow.
They kept low and raced towards the lawn, cutting a path through the sycamore trees. The man that had attacked Bradley, and the woman he had killed, were still lying in the grass. Annaliese barely even noticed them now – they were just another part of the landscaping.
Garden gnomes from Hell.
Through the open doorway up ahead, Ripley Hall’s foyer was now overly-lit, what with the sun now fully risen and reflecting off the tiles. It made it hard to see anything inside in detail.
Mike moved up beside her. “What do you see?” he whispered.
“Nothing. I think it’s safe. I’m going to head up and close the doors.”
“I’ll watch your back.”
Annaliese gripped her steel pole tightly and made her way forward. She listened out intently as she took each step, ready for the first sign of danger. As she got closer, the odour of blood wafted over her. The stench of rot and open gut-wounds had taken over the building. She was grateful she didn’t have to go inside.
She placed a foot onto the front steps of the house and put herself in the open doorway. She could hear the infected milling about in the depths of the building, but the foyer seemed empty.
They must all be upstairs where I led them.
Good.
She reached forward for the door handle. She imagined a spark of electricity as she wrapped her hand around it, but there was none. She had the handle in her grasp and now all she had to do was close the door.
“Look out,” Mike shouted.
Annaliese stumbled backwards off the steps as a woman lurched out of the foyer and collapsed on top of her. It was the maid. The one she had tied up with the keyboard at the reception desk. Now the keyboard swung from the woman’s neck, banging against her hip like a weird purse. The cord wrapped around her neck was frayed from where it had snapped free of the desk.
Annaliese forced herself to stay calm. The maid was no longer erratic and wild; she was slow and clumsy. The cord around her neck had throttled the life out of her and now she had become one of the stumbling dead. Her flesh was grey and mottled, just like the hanging businessman that Shawcross had shown her in the kitchen pantry.
She shrugged loose of the maid’s uncoordinated grasp and stepped backwards.