Desolate The Complete Trilogy

Eight



It didn’t take long for everyone to agree on Howard’s closed resort theory. They explored most of the main floor and it was one of the few places any of them had seen lately where there were no bodies and no stench of decay. Other than the construction mess walled off by a layer of plastic, the building was clean and orderly.

They decided to stay at least one night so Dave could rest and heal from his wounds. The guest room locks were battery powered, but without activating a card with the front desk computer, the stack of plastic room keys was useless. Tre found a master key after digging through the drawers and they suddenly had their pick of 187 guest rooms.

They helped Dave into a room close to the lobby. Soo cleaned and dressed his wounds the best she could before letting him go to sleep. It was still early in the day so the others explored the rest of the hotel.

The first thing Howard did was scrounge up a hammer and nails to properly seal up the makeshift door they had used to enter the building. After double-checking that the rest of the ground floor doors were locked, they all felt more secure. The smoke from the charred mess of burned-out van had died down, and despite what Dave had said earlier Howard was glad it was no longer broadcasting their position.

The resort had one main kitchen serving three restaurants. The food in the massive walk-in fridge was either spoiled or close to it, so that didn’t do much good. Although the freezer was useless due to the country’s dead power grid, the food in there fared much better. A lot of the larger items, like frozen poultry, weren’t entirely thawed, and smaller items that had were still cool to the touch. They would be able to cook a lot of it for at least a few days before things started to turn.

The freezer was merely icing on the cake because the pantry is what really saved them. Shelves of canned and nonperishable food lined the walls and could keep them fed for months, if needed. As long as they could find fresh water to drink and come up with a decent method for cooking, they were set for a while.

Howard and Tre searched the basement with flashlights, finding the hotel’s laundry facilities and storerooms. Taking up almost half the building was a massive room containing the water boilers and HVAC system. At the far end of the room were two large machines.

“No way,” Howard said.

“What?” Tre pointed his flashlight beam to where Howard was looking.

“Is it just me or do those look like generators?”

“Just you. I don’t know no-ting ’bout what no generator looks like.”

“I’m no expert either but that big GEN-E-ROCK logo on the side is a pretty big clue.”

They went closer and looked them over. Each was the size of a large refrigerator turned on its side. An exhaust pipe connected to both machines ran up the side of the wall and up into the ceiling. A large fuel tank sat between them. Howard opened the access panel and studied the control panel, which he was relieved to find was surprisingly simple. Two levers, one marked “Auto-Engage” and the other “Manual,” were both set in the off position. Howard flipped the manual lever and pressed the red button marked “Ignition.” They jumped as the generators roared to life and filled the room with the noise of running motors. The light fixtures overhead flickered and turned on.

Ann entered the room, a surprised expression on her face. “Holy crap. Let there be light!” she shouted over the noise.

Soo and Emily followed.

Howard couldn’t believe it. These massive generators had to have been designed to keep the whole building running in the event of a hurricane or something. Lucky for them, maintenance must have shut them down when the hotel closed for renovations. Otherwise they would have kicked in automatically when the power to the building went down. He checked the fuel tank, which read full. It was big, but he had no idea how long it would last so he powered down the generators, sending them back into darkness.

“We can use this, but only if we need to. I have no idea if that’s enough fuel for a couple of days or if it could last us a lot longer. I don’t want to chance it.”

“A two-bedroom suite but no air conditioning? I want my money back,” said Soo.

“No TV either,” Ann chuckled. “No phone. No Facebook.” Her smile slowly faded. “No nothing.”

They stood there for a moment in the darkness, a single flashlight beam illuminating the room. Soo put her arm around Ann.

Emily tugged on the bottom of Howard’s shorts and looked up at him. “What’s Facebook?”