The Quiet Apocalypse Read online

  Weird, I thought. Why would all the other electrically operated devices be working except the entrance/exit doors?

  I remembered the lift in the games room hadn’t worked either. Perhaps they were just the victim of a lack of maintenance.

  I tried inserting my fingers into the small rubber sealed gap between the two doors but they were too tightly sealed. I didn’t fancy smashing the glass to get outside as the thought occurred to me that they might provide a vital barrier in future should I need to keep myself within the grounds of the hotel. For now I resolved to leave them shut and locate some sort of crowbar or jimmying device to wedge them open.

  As a matter of course I checked behind the reception desk to see if there was an open or release button for the doors, but nothing presented itself.

  I scouted around further for a maintenance closet in which some fastidious janitor may have kept his tools, but again there was nothing but a door marked left luggage, and when I found the key for that behind the desk it revealed nothing but an empty room with floor to ceiling shelves meant for supporting the luggage that the hotel guests needed to store upon arrival if their rooms were not yet ready.

  The two beers had made me feel good, slightly drunk but still perfectly compus and I found myself slipping into that median world between intoxication and sobriety. It was a familiar feeling, and one I tried to avoid when on my own as it always made me reminiscent, almost nostalgic. I found myself curiously devoid of emotions in this instance, and figured I deserved another beer.

  Heading back out into the main square I skirted round the refectory and headed up to the level above where I had encountered the café and games room. The café was still lit, and I was somewhat relieved to see that the Slush Puppie machine was still inactive after I had pulled out the plug. Something told me if that had started up again of its own accord I would have freaked out and seriously started to doubt the legitimacy of my isolation. Rounding the bar I poured myself another large beer and went outside to the terrazza. I sat on one of the plastic yellow chairs at the plastic yellow tables and inhaled the night air. I wondered what time it was. I’ve never been very good at determining the time of day or night by looking at the position of the sun or the moon, and my geographical awareness of compass points is pretty poor too.

  Noticing the ashtray on the table I remembered I had a pack of Luckies and fished them out. I lit one and inhaled a lungful of blue smoke, took a mouthful of beer and felt strangely content.

  If this is my lot then it could be a damn sight worse.

  I suppose hell is being trapped in one’s most uncomfortable and unfamiliar environment for eternity. It is therefore relative; hell for one man could mean heaven for another.

  I discounted the possibility that I could be in hell. For a start, I’m not religious and have never believed in its existence anyway, but being a solitary person by nature being alone has never really bothered me. Nor has the sunshine. And I am partial to a beer or two. So how could this possibly be hell?

  I had finished my third beer and went inside to pour a fourth. I had a good buzz on by this stage, augmented by smoking, and the idea of a midnight dip was appealing. I hadn’t washed since my arrival, and a good dunk in the pool felt just the ticket. When I had splashed the water over me at the poolside I had done so without thinking about the possibility of the water being contaminated, but it seemed as clear and clean as if it had been dredged that morning.

  In my beer buzz I had forgotten all about trying to get out of the complex with the availability of free beer literally on tap. With my beer I went out the pool edge and procrastinated.

  Should I start exploring now?

  Firstly I had to locate a tool to jimmy the glass doors open, then even if I did get outside the complex it was the middle of the night and I was getting pretty drunk. I decided I would put it off until morning, and resolved to get myself in gear the following day to seek out some answers as to what the hell had happened to me and why I was here.

  All this thinking on top of the beer and I was becoming tired, almost lethargic. I reasoned it was because of a combination of stress, a significant fall and a blackout, and that my body was actually under a deal of strain. Not to mention the head injury, although that by now had healed over well and wasn’t causing me much discomfort.

  I stood and stared into the water, the reflections of the palm trees shimmering on its surface, amplified by the bright lights of the reception area and restaurant. It had a mesmerising effect, and I almost drifted off to sleep standing up. That sparked me into action, and taking a deep breath I launched myself head first into the pool, still carrying my beer, almost without thinking.

  The coldness beneath the surface seemed to prick my whole body with thousands of tiny needles, but almost instantly I adjusted to the change in temperature and felt as alive as I ever had. I surfaced and a huge laugh burst from my chest. I felt euphoric, free and awake for the first time in this place, and the water seemed to wash away any sense of foreboding I had up to that point.

  I dove under again and propelled myself the whole width of the pool underwater, noticing that the silence beneath was even greater than that above the surface. The only sound was my own heart pumping in my chest and the blood rushing to my ears.

  After my swim I felt invigorated, but still exhausted. I swallowed another small beer in the café and played a couple of games solo on the pool table in the games area. I tried the computer again in the corner for signs of connectivity, restarting and rebooting it, but again nothing.

  The beer took its effect and I decided to head back to my room. I took the back route past the pool outside reception and through a maze of small pathways, all lit and maintained pristinely with small cacti bordering them. The whole place had an air of extreme seclusion. I couldn’t quite get over the silence. Apart from my own actions I hadn’t heard a single other noise bar the wind, not even a cat’s meow or a dog’s bark, not even a cricket singing in the bushes.

  Something terrible must have happened here, I thought. Something that I survived.

  That gave me a renewed sense of resolve and instead of locating my room I realised that because I held the master key I could simply sleep wherever I wanted. I could sense dawn was breaking as I threaded up through a row of apartments and located another staircase. Caution prompted me to take a second floor apartment subconsciously, and at the top I took a random left right left until I stood in front of Room 314. It seemed as good as any.

  I let myself in and turned on the lights. The room was empty. In the fridge there were two identical bottles of chilled water, so I opened one and headed to the bedroom off the main living area. The bed had been perfectly made up and the sheets were clean and soft. I climbed in and was asleep almost immediately. I didn’t even bother to lock the door.

  83%

  After a breakfast of bread, grapefruit and baked beans I began my hunt for the janitor’s closet. The Sun Royal complex was made up of two distinct sections within two outer rings of apartments. The outer ring bordered the main road at the eastern end and scrubland was on all of the other three sides. The scrubland was fenced off by a wire mesh fence, 10 feet high all the way around to prevent ingress of animals I suppose, and apart from a section at the south east corner at which only a six foot solid wall separated the apartments from the main road the whole complex was pretty secure.

  The inner ring of apartments all fronted onto the pool areas, with a pool in each section separated by the café and games room on the top level and the restaurant on the bottom level.

  I figured any maintenance area would be kept well out of sight of the paying guests and I was right. It was located behind the restaurant and accessed by the spiral staircase in the games room which I had encountered on my first evening but had thought led to nothing.

  The numbers this morning flashed 83% when I awoke in Room 314. I had only had a couple of hours sleep as the sun was still in its ascent when I emerged but I felt fully refreshed, if a lit
tle hung over. Instead of skirting around the pool to get to the restaurant for breakfast I simply plunged into it and swam to the other side, then hurled myself out dripping and straight into the refectory. I considered pouring a sangria but resisted and a couple of cups of superb coffee got me in the mood for the search.

  As I descended the staircase I noticed that this was definitely the most neglected area of the hotel. Dust was strewn on top of piles of chairs, and there were various unopened boxes casually piled in corners which meant this was not an area for casual habitation.

  The maintenance closet was built in under the stairs, and the door had very helpfully been left unlocked and indeed wide open. Rooting through a pile of oily rags I found some very useful tools, a powerful torch, and, bingo, a crowbar. I uncovered a heavy duty workman’s belt with various pockets and pouches for holding them in. I put it on and stuffed into the pockets a pretty serious looking foldable knife (a little blunt but serviceable), a chisel and a can of oil.

  With my new found equipment I headed back up the stairs and out of the games room back to reception.

  The sun was blazing and I paused for a moment to take stock of my options over a cup of ice cold sangria from the tap in the café bar. It steeled my nerves and I realised I was actually getting pretty apprehensive about leaving the hotel compound. However unknown my situation was, at least I was seemingly safe and well stocked within. Leaving was almost admitting to myself that something was wrong, and I was having trouble doing that. I felt giddy, a bit shaky, but having the crowbar galvanised me and I felt more equipped to deal with an exploration now I had some kind of weapon at least. I sank another sangria and that helped even more.

  Back in reception I stood in front of the glass double entrance doors and took a deep breath. I didn’t wish to smash them open since they may offer some sort of protection, however feeble, should I need to make a rapid retreat back inside the hotel. Try as I did I couldn’t find the resolve to go to work and actually start prizing the doors open. I must have stood there for a good few minutes, just starting at the doors and wondering what was going to happen if I stepped outside the grounds of the hotel.

  Eventually I summoned the balls to step up and insert the crowbar in the rubber joint that separated the two heavy glass doors.

  They came apart quite easily; they must have been on some sort of ball bearings because once I opened a gap big enough to slip my fingers in the doors slid apart with only a small amount of effort on my part. Steeling myself I took my first tentative steps outside of the hotel.

  I don’t know whether it was my overdeveloped senses playing up but the air seemed thicker on the street; impossible of course as it was exactly the same air as I had been breathing inside.

  There was a heady scent to it, like all the plants on the island had decided to exhale at the same time, a cloying scent of aloe vera and tarmac and hotness. It was pleasant, but a little foreboding at the same time.

  Unsurprisingly the street was deserted. It was long and straight, probably half a mile long, and the hotel was bang in the middle so looking both left and right I wasn’t presented with any concrete ideas about which way to turn.

  Directly opposite the entrance to the hotel was a collection of whitewashed apartments, but then nothing but open scrubland for what I guessed was about two or three miles until the skyline was broken by a range of mountains, brown and resolute in the morning sun. Due east of those in the direction of north I could assume a coastline, so I turned right towards the sea not really knowing what I was looking for but instinctively heading towards water instead of inland.

  The pavement was made up of oblong white ceramic tiles to minimise heat absorption, but my bare feet were still getting pretty warm in the sun. I was still wearing only my beach shorts and now my tool belt. I walked slowly, listening for sounds and desperately trying to detect movement both in front of me and in my peripheral vision, half-hopeful and half-terrified in case I actually spied something.

  A few hundred yards on there was another set of apartments within a block, all whitewashed and almost identical to those in the THB Sun Royal. This was Sun Park, billed as a ‘Summer’s village for the over 50s.’ The front doors were glass as well, and I squinted through. The reception area was as dead as I expected. Not a single movement within. I pried at the doors with my crowbar and again the doors came apart easily. I stepped inside and instantly the air was cooler. There was no glass pyramid making up the roof of this entrance area and the sun had no way of penetrating. The reception desk stood unmanned. I tried the computer in the corner but was presented with nothing but a blank screen with various Excel spreadsheets and no internet connectivity. The panoramic doors to the rest of the resort were shut tight and I felt absolutely no need to start exploring this hotel so simply turned and exited back onto what I now knew to be Calle Janubio from the street sign up ahead.

  Why I felt a twinge of disappointment at the emptiness of Sun Park I don’t know. It was hardly as if I expected gaggle of mature, white-teethed pensioners sauntering by the poolside nursing cocktails and discussing politics, but that was what the poster board at the entrance advertised and I felt slightly short-changed that it hadn’t delivered.

  I smoked a Lucky Strike as I walked, savouring the taste of the tobacco in the late morning heat. There were rows of cars parked all the way down Calle Janubio, all empty, and I tried random doors to see if any were open. A few were, but there seemed little use in getting in them as there were no keys in sight. I wondered if any would start if there were.

  I realised I was woefully unprepared for the end of the world. I didn’t even know how to hotwire a car. They may have been sat there for years, unused and roasting in the heat of the sun, day in, day out. I wondered how long it took for fuel to go stale and lose the properties of combustion. I remembered a lawnmower I used to have which I had tried to start up after a year or so of being stuck in my garage, which only finally got going after I emptied the tank of the stale fuel and put a gallon of fresh petrol in. If I could perhaps get one of these cars to start it would give an indication that they hadn’t been unused for that long. Now wasn’t the time though.

  I came to the end of Calle Janubio and to a crossroads which intersected with Avenue Papagayo. Opposite me stood two imposing hotels, the Princess Yaiza on one side and a much less impressive brown concrete construction called the Hotel Hesperia on the other. I was able to see the sea now, crystal blue and hazy in the heat, lying between the two constructions. I crossed Papagayo and walked through the car park of the Hesperia. The silence was total; the only sound was a slight breeze rustling the leaves of the palm trees that formed the border around the hotel grounds.

  Something led me up to the entrance of the hotel. The double doors were wide open, and the breeze had blown an ice cream wrapper inside where it was caught in a rotational spin at the mercy of a through-draught. There must have been another door open inside somewhere to have been creating it.

  The reception area was darker and cooler again than the over 50s village. A small fountain gurgled in the corner and I knelt beside it, splashing my face with the tepid water that collected inside. The walls were adorned with juttings-out of black volcanic rock in an attempt to break the monotony of the concrete. Someone had clearly had the idea to make the whole reception appear like some kind of underground bunker, probably trying to make the most of the drabness, but the rocks only looked like growths and put me in mind of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.

  I passed through to the dining area. Again, there was a buffet laid out, stainless steel trays of meatballs and pasta, a soup terrine, huge unwobbling mounds of blancmange and bowls of fresh fruit and yet more pickled chilies. All untouched, all seemingly only a few days old. The meatballs were cold but there was a gas heater under the soup. I managed to locate some matches behind the counter and lit the burner. The smell of bottled gas permeated in my nostrils for a split second before the flame ignited and started to heat the terrine. I waited five
or six minutes just staring at the flame while it worked, then the soup started bubbling and the aroma of mushrooms and cream filled the room. I grabbed a bread roll, only slightly stale, and dunked it in the soup. It was delicious.

  Suddenly I wept. I don’t know where the tears came from or what they signified, but I stood on the empty canteen with the soup boiling and salty drops running down my face. What was happening to me? My whole world had been snatched from me, my family, my house, my job, and here I was, alone on the island of Lanzarote, eating week old soup and balling my eyes out.

  And that’s when I heard the phone ringing.

  ---

  My first thought was I must have been imagining it. I stopped breathing as if I had been thumped in the chest with a whacker plate. It was definitely there, the shrill double burst of the ringer, followed by a second’s silence, then repeated. It was clearly audible even over the bubbling soup. Instinctively I jolted into action, dropping my bread roll and darting towards the canteen exit in the direction of the sound. The sound got louder and more shrill as I reached the reception area but I couldn’t at first locate it. I had to stand stock still for a precious second before I could accurately pinpoint its origin. It seemed to be coming from through a door behind the reception desk, similar to the one at my hotel. I leapt over the desk and into the back room, where I saw a desk littered with paper and in the corner the phone itself, a red light blinking in time to the rings. My hands were shaking so badly I struggled to grab the receiver but I managed to get it out of its cradle and up to my ear.

  At first I couldn’t make anything out. There seemed to be some kind of bleeping in the background, and a low voice but not talking direct into the mouthpiece, it was a background conversation of some sort. It was a female voice, an adult voice, but it was talking so quietly I couldn’t make anything out.

  Then somebody spoke direct into the earpiece. It was crystal clear, the only human voice I had heard in days. A child’s voice, maybe four or five years old, lilting and incredibly beautiful. I only made out one word before I fainted clean away.