Disintegration

didn’t recognize the place today. I mean, I thought we might be close, but not this close…”
    “So what’s it like, this hotel?” Jas wondered, glancing back at him. Gordon shrugged his shoulders.
    “Okay I suppose. Decent enough place. The facilities were good but the food was vile. It was all that horrible nouvelle cuisine stuff—a little pile of this, a dribble of that … Didn’t fill me up. I had to stop for a kebab on the way home. You want turkey and all the trimmings at Christmas, don’t you, not a few scraps of meat and a bloody vegetable puree.”
    “Fuck me,” Harte gasped, ignoring him and pushing past to get a better view. “Look at the state of it. Fucking brilliant!”
    The bus, followed closely by the van, slowly drove around the final bend in the road. The hedgerow on their right gradually tapered in height and then disappeared altogether, revealing a large car park and, beyond that, an open expanse of grass. Ahead of them now was the hotel itself. A fairly modern, off-white building, in comparison to the grim concrete surroundings they had left this morning it was an unexpected paradise. There was space to move around outside. The windows all had glass which hadn’t been smashed. The grounds appeared clear of all rubble and dead flesh. This place was an oasis of normality.
    “Jesus, this is fantastic,” Gordon said, all memories of his disastrous office party now long forgotten. “How many people do you think are here?”
    “Don’t know,” Jas replied, grinning. “Thinking about it though, there must be a fair few of them, at least. There’s plenty of space and the way they’d got the entrance hidden back there was genius. I think we’ve landed on our feet here, lads!”
    The lone runner, who had just about managed to keep ahead of the vehicles, finally slowed when he reached the steps at the front of the hotel. He bent over double with his hands on his knees and breathed in deeply, the effort of the sudden sprint obviously taking its toll. He looked up as the bus and van both stopped and quickly emptied. Jas and Harte walked over to him but neither could immediately think of what to say. These people were the first new survivors they’d seen for weeks, months even. Gordon broke the uncomfortable stalemate.
    “I’m Gordon,” he announced, moving toward the other man with his hand outstretched. He wiped his hand on his trousers before reciprocating.
    “Amir,” he replied quietly, standing up straight and shaking. “Where did you all come from? Was it your helicopter?”
    “Helicopter?” Hollis asked, confused. “What helicopter?”
    “Christ,” Harte said, “this gets better by the minute.”
    “We’ve heard it a few times now,” Amir explained, “a couple of times earlier this week and again this morning. We’ve been trying to attract their attention. I just assumed they’d seen us and you were with them.”
    “We don’t know anything about a helicopter,” Jas interrupted. “Christ, we didn’t even know about you until we nearly drove into your truck back there. Bloody hell, that must mean there are even more people left alive.”
    “Well, they might not have found you, but we have,” Hollis said. The man riding the bike finally caught up. He jumped off, letting the bike clatter over onto its side, then walked purposefully forward and shook Hollis by the hand.
    “I’m Martin Priest,” he said, not letting go of Hollis’s hand, still shaking furiously.
    “Greg Hollis.”
    “It’s good to meet you Greg. It’s good to meet all of you. It really is so good.” He brushed a wisp of unkempt hair from his narrow, bearded face and then took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sweater. Martin was short, thin, and sweating profusely. His clothing was ragged and dirty with long gray socks pulled up to his knees. Harte smirked at his bizarre dress-sense, then looked down at his own wardrobe: a curious miss-match of bike leathers, skiwear, and other, more typical garments. There seemed to be something about the end of the world, he silently decided, that made everyone dress like complete fucking idiots.
    Lorna stood a short distance from the others and looked around, eyes wide with a combination of surprise, tiredness, and relief. The hotel complex looked safe and welcoming, its faux-Mediterranean appearance out of place and yet somehow still reassuring and familiar. The car park was virtually empty with just a handful of vehicles parked here and