'Ready?' whispered Purna, wrapping her hand round the door handle.

With his stained shirt, makeshift sling and pasty, hollow-eyed appearance, Logan looked anything but ready. However, he raised his chair leg gamely. 'Bring it on.'

Purna yanked the door open with one hand and thrust her chair leg forward with the other. The first flight of stairs was empty, and there were no obvious sounds of activity from below.

'So far so good,' she said.

They crept down the stairs and Purna peered around the curve of the banister at the bottom. 'Clear,' she whispered.

The third flight was similarly clear, and so was the fourth. Their rooms had been on the ninth floor, which meant that with two flights to each floor, they had eighteen flights to descend in all.

'Quiet,' Sam said when they were halfway down the fifth flight.

Purna halted. 'What have you heard?'

'No, I mean it's quiet. I thought there'd be more ... shit goin' down, y'know?'

'It's 4:30 a.m.,' Purna said. 'Most people are probably still asleep.'

Sam considered. 'You think we should warn them?'

She shrugged. 'We can't warn everyone. Besides, what would we say?'

'We could ... I dunno. Tell them to stay in their rooms.'

'For how long? They've got no food in there, and I'm pretty sure room service is no longer an option. Besides, people would start asking us questions, wanting to know what's going on and if we told them, how many would believe us?'

'Fuck,' muttered Sam, as the full implications of what they were faced with occurred to him.

'It's a dog-eat-dog world,' said Logan. 'Every man for himself.'

'That so?' said Sam heavily.

'You better believe it,' Logan replied. 'Anyway, what are you the caring, sharing gangsta? I thought you rapper dudes didn't give a shit?'

Sam gave him a disgusted look. 'Don't listen to a whole lotta rap, do you?'

'I'm more of a Springsteen man myself.'

Sam rolled his eyes. 'Rap is all about giving a shit. That's why we're full of such righteous anger all the time.'

Logan nodded seriously. 'So "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch". That some kind of social comment, is it?'

Sam sighed. 'That song's gonna haunt me the rest of my life.'

'Don't take it to heart,' said Logan. 'If the zombie apocalypse is really going down, then the rest of your life will likely be over before you know it.'

'Can't quite put my finger on why,' said Sam, 'but that thought don't give me a whole lotta comfort.'

They crept down the next two flights in silence. They had almost reached the fire door that would have led them out on to floor six when Logan halted. 'Shit.'

'What is it?' said Purna, her body tensing.

'Aw, man,' said Logan.

'What is it?'

'I left my pills in my room.'

'Your what?'

'My pills. My drugs. I forgot all about them, what with being attacked and all.' He considered a moment. 'Maybe I should go back.'

'What? You crazy?' said Sam.

Logan looked stubborn. 'I need my pills.'

'What you need them for? You got some kind of condition?'

'Yes, I've got a condition,' snapped Logan. 'It's called needing my fucking pills!'

Purna stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. 'We'll get you some more pills,' she said reasonably.

'Oh, you really think it'll be that fucking easy?'

'To get painkillers and antidepressants? Maybe.'

He looked astonished. 'How did you-'

'I'm good at reading people,' she said crisply. 'Now shall we go?'

The words were barely out of her mouth when the door to floor six flew open and a woman in a white, blood-spattered nightgown appeared. Purna, Sam and Logan reacted instinctively, each of them raising their weapons and dropping into a defensive stance. Seeing them, the woman jerked to a halt, her face etched with terror and shock. Then, with a screech, something flew at the woman from behind, hitting her back with such force that she slipped on the blood pooling beneath her bare feet and went down in a graceless flurry of limbs.

At first Sam thought the thing that had attacked her was some kind of monkey. Weirdly it reminded him of the Tasmanian Devil in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. That fucker had moved in a blur, like a living tornado. This thing was similarly ferocious, tearing at the woman's back and neck with claws and teeth as she lay half in, half out of the open doorway. The woman was screeching horribly; she sounded more like a tortured animal than a human being. The creature was tearing chunks of flesh off her, just stripping them from her and stuffing them into its mouth. There was blood everywhere, spraying and flying in all directions. It was only when Purna stepped forward that the creature raised its head to look at them and Sam was shocked to see, through its thick mask of blood, that it was a little girl.

She was four, maybe five, and she had a long, stringy lump of chewed skin and meat dangling from between her clenched teeth. She might once have been cute, but now she looked savage, demonic. Her pyjamas and her blonde hair were clotted with chunks of shredded flesh and skin. Sam saw that even now the girl's fingers were buried deep in the bowl of pulped, bloody meat that the woman's back had become. In fact, the girl had ripped so many layers from the woman's back that she had exposed the white, blood-smeared nubs of her vertebrae.

Sam took all of this on board in one, maybe two seconds. Then Purna swung her chair leg with both hands and smashed the girl across the face with it. There was a crunch and the girl's face seemed to cave in. As she fell backwards into the carpeted hotel corridor, limbs flailing like a giant white spider that had lost half its legs, Sam saw with a kind of dreamy horror that beneath the coating of blood and gore she was wearing My Little Pony pyjamas.

Without hesitation, Purna followed up her attack, jumping over the woman and battering the girl around the head again and again with the chair leg, not giving her time to recover. Despite the ferocity of the attack, the girl's body twitched and heaved and scrabbled, as if she was not only trying to raise herself but also trying to fight back. Grimly Purna kept whacking the girl's head until her skull was nothing but an un recognizable pulp and her body was still. By the time she stood back, panting and sweating, she was spattered with blood from head to toe, and the chair leg was coated with a viscous gruel of blood, flesh, bone, hair and slick, porridgey gobbets of brain matter.

Sam glanced at Logan, who was shaking, white-faced. Catching his eye, Logan muttered, 'Man, that was intense.'

Stepping over the still-twitching, keening body of the woman, grimacing at the gore squelching beneath his size eleven Reeboks, Sam walked up to Purna and put his arm round her shoulder. She flinched slightly but didn't resist.

'Hey,' he said, 'you OK?'

She looked at him. Her eyes were over-bright, her face a little too composed. 'Fine,' she said.

'You don't have to be,' he told her. 'I'm not sure I am.'

Purna clenched her jaw and looked almost callously down at the sprawled, now-pathetic body of the little girl. 'Then I guess you'd better learn to be. This is something we're all going to have to get used to.'

Shrugging off his arm, she turned and marched back to the woman, who was gasping and juddering now, her eyes wide with trauma, her breath coming in wheezy, panicked gasps.

Squatting beside her, Purna said, 'We can't leave her like this. Either she'll turn or more of those things will get her.'

'You think we should take her with us?' asked Sam, frowning.

Purna shook her head. 'She's beyond help and she'd only slow us down. We need to put her out of her misery.'

Sam blinked. 'You serious?'

'No, I'm joking,' she snapped. 'There's nothing better than a good laugh to lighten a serious situation.'

Sam raised his hands. 'OK, OK. Sorry.' Turning his head and lowering his voice, he said, 'So ... how we gonna do it?'

'We haven't got time to debate or draw straws,' Purna said. Then, putting her gore-covered chair leg aside, she reached out and took the woman's head almost tenderly in her hands. Leaning over her, she murmured, 'It's OK, don't worry.' Then, with a practised twist, she broke the woman's neck.

'Jesus,' muttered Sam.

Standing out on the landing between staircases, Logan looked as if he was trying not to throw up. 'Where did you learn to do that?' he asked in a faint voice.

'Girl Guides,' replied Purna. She picked up the chair leg and without another word stepped back over the body of the woman and started down the next flight of stairs.

Logan scurried after her, Sam bringing up the rear.

'You think that'll be enough?' Logan said. 'Breaking her neck, I mean?'

Purna halted briefly to glare at him. 'You wanna go back and hack her head off? If so, be my guest.'

Logan tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. 'That's OK. I'll pass.'

They descended the next few flights in silence, Sam all too aware of the stink of blood and raw meat coming off Purna's clothes. He was aware too that Purna was still at the head of the group, and therefore would be in the front line if any more action went down. Pushing past Logan, he caught up with Purna a couple of steps ahead of him.

'First to the bar buys the drinks,' Logan called.

Sam glanced back at him. 'Just thought I'd take pole position, if that's OK with you? Figured Purna here had done her share of zombie-bashing for now.' He looked askance at Purna. 'That fine with you?'

Purna was looking straight ahead, face set, jaw clenched. When she caught Sam's eye her features softened slightly. 'Sure,' she said. 'My arm is pretty tired.'

Sam gave a nod and stepped in front of her. They were descending the stairs below the landing to floor three when he halted, holding up a hand.

'What is it?' Purna asked.

'This time I do hear something,' Sam said. 'Listen.'

They all stood still and listened. From a flight or two below them came a shuffling, snorting sound.

Immediately Logan was reminded of a football camp his mom and dad had sent him on when he'd been twelve or thirteen. One night he and a couple of guys had gone camping up in the hills and had been awoken in the early hours by a bear snuffling around their tent, looking for food. Logan had been shit-scared, but like the other guys he'd scrambled out of the tent and run at the bear, yelling and waving his arms. The bear, which it turned out had been only a cub, had taken fright, turned tail and fled. Logan and his friends had stayed awake the rest of the night in a state of nervous excitement. Next day, back down at the camp, they had bragged to the rest of the guys about how they had faced down a full-grown grizzly and survived.

Logan knew that the thing below them now was not a bear, and nor would it run if they yelled at it. For the first time he wondered how much of a survivor he truly was, and how far he would have to push himself, both mentally and physically, in order to get through the coming ordeal. Could he bash the brains out of a little kid or snap the neck of a fatally injured woman like Purna had just done? True, he didn't give much of a shit about anyone but himself, but that didn't automatically mean that he'd be prepared to do anything to save his own skin. He usually liked to leave the dirty jobs to other people, to operate under the radar, so to speak. However, he had a feeling that wouldn't be an option from now on. Like he'd told Sam, it was a dog-eat-dog world now; kill or be killed.

All the same, there was nothing to be gained in inviting trouble, or rushing headlong into it. Sidling up to Purna, he whispered, 'Maybe if we stay quiet, that thing, whatever it is, will go away.'

Purna, still spattered with the girl's blood, shook her head. 'I don't think so. It's coming towards us.'

Sam turned and glanced briefly at her. 'Maybe it can smell all that shit on you.'

'Let's head back upstairs then,' said Logan. 'We can go through the door and wait in the corridor. Maybe it'll lose the scent.'

'I'm not going backwards,' said Purna. 'If we keep hiding from those things we'll never get anywhere.'

'Amen to that,' said Sam, and hefted his multi-pronged coat-hanger weapon. 'Let's do this.'

Leading the way, he descended towards the sounds of movement, step by careful step. Reaching the curve of the banister, he whispered, 'Y'all ready?'

Purna nodded. Logan tried to think of something scathing and witty to say, but both his mind and his mouth were dry.

Sam braced himself, then swung around the corner on to the next flight, Purna shadowing him. A second or two behind them, the first thing Logan saw was a hulking figure eight or nine steps below. For a split-second he thought it was a bear a bear dressed in human clothes.

The figure looked up and Logan saw that it was only a man after all. It was even a man he recognized, one he had seen already this evening. It was one of the two security guys who had turned up with the cute Chinese girl after they had been attacked by the woman in the rest room. Beneath his buzz cut, the man's pudgy, round face was smeared with blood and clots of matter. He resembled a giant baby after a particularly grotesque meal.

The mess down the front of his padded black jacket made it look as though he had had a bucket of animal guts thrown at him. He looked too as if he was wearing red gloves, albeit ones that were liquefying. In his fat right fist he was clutching a lump of raw meat that looked as though it might have been torn from a thigh or even a buttock. As soon as he saw Sam, Purna and Logan standing above him, however, he lost interest in the meat, which slithered from his hand and hit the floor with a wet splat, and lurched towards them, snarling.

It was only once he got closer that Logan realized that under its coating of gore the collar of the man's jacket was shredded and a sizeable chunk of meat was missing from the left side of his neck. Indeed, the entire left side of the man's head looked as though it had been savaged; his ear was gone completely and many of the stringy muscles and tendons beneath what would normally have been his cheek could clearly be seen. Additionally the missing flesh had revealed the teeth in the left side of his jaw, which gave the impression he was bestowing them with a wide, lopsided grin.

'Come on then, you big motherfucker,' Sam said, waiting for the dead man to get close enough. When he did, Sam lunged forward, jabbing his home-made weapon into the zombie's face.

With the first thrust, one of the splayed metal spines entered the creature's eye and punctured it. There was a faint pop, and the eyeball tore like a soft-boiled egg, releasing a gluey colourless substance that ran down the zombie's cheek and mingled with the blood around its mouth.

Despite this, Sam's attack didn't even slow the creature down. Seemingly oblivious to pain, it roared not in agony but in rage and hunger and kept on coming, blood-stained fingers reaching out.

Sam thrust again, a knight with a splintered metal lance, and this time most of the spines went into the zombie's mouth. They punctured its tongue and gums, scraped against its teeth, even skewered its top lip and tore a little of it away.

Yet still the zombie advanced, its sheer bulk and momentum driving it forward. Sam's weapon at first bent beneath its weight and then began to snap, metal spines remaining in the zombie's flesh, jutting from its cheeks, lips and gums like strange piercings.

Sam yelled in panic and anger as the zombie's fat fingers closed around the sleeves of his jacket. It bore down on him, growling, its breath reeking sourly of blood, its torn mouth opening and closing as it snapped at him. Pushed backwards, Sam stumbled and fell, the steps of the staircase jarring the breath out of him, digging painfully into his back. He tried to bring his arms up to defend himself, but they were pinned to his sides, his weapon useless in his hand. Frantically, craning his head back to stop the zombie from tearing his face off with its teeth, he brought up his knee, ramming it into the creature's fat belly. It was relentless, however, crushing him like a human steamroller. In desperation he lowered his head and thrust his upper body forward, head-butting the zombie in the face. He heard a satisfying crunch as its nose broke, but the only result was that his head and face was showered with rank, hot zombie blood.

Suddenly the zombie's head snapped to Sam's left as something smashed into the side of it. Sam felt the creature's weight shift, its left hand tearing loose from his jacket, enabling him to move his right arm. Gripping his weapon tightly, he managed to work it free, then rammed it into the side of the zombie's throat, where much of the flesh had already been torn away. The spines, some of them now either bent or foreshortened from having snapped off under the creature's weight, passed easily through the ravaged meat, sliding forward until they scraped against bone. Unsure whether the bone was the zombie's spine or the underside of its jaw, Sam withdrew the weapon then thrust it forward again, stabbing it back and forth in quick, short jabs. The spines peppered the exposed meat of the creature's neck like wave after wave of buckshot, severing tendons and threads of gristle.

Meanwhile Purna moved into Sam's peripheral vision on his right-hand side, clearly trying to find room and space to once again slam the splintered end of the chair leg into the side of the zombie's head. Sam tried to aid her by withdrawing his weapon, his right hand now as slick with blood as the zombie's own, and ramming it directly upwards into the creature's throat, between its jaw and its Adam's apple. Skewered on the end of the weapon, its torn neck stretched, the creature gave a gurgling snarl and tried to work itself loose. However, instinctively seeking its prey, it pushed downwards instead of pulling up, and so succeeded only in driving the metal spines in deeper. They slid up through the bottom of the creature's mouth, harpooning the underside of its blackening tongue and causing congealed blood to burst from the wounds and spurt out from between its lips.

Seizing her chance, Purna slammed the end of the chair leg into the side of the zombie's head again, and then again. After the fourth blow there was a gristly tearing sound, and like a hinged lid, the zombie's head toppled over to one side, twisting Sam's weapon from his hand with such force that it drew a strip of skin from his palm. The head swung down grotesquely in front of the zombie's chest like a bowling ball in a stocking, held in place by nothing more than a few stubborn ropes of stretched skin and tendon. It swung, in fact, into Sam's face, the prickly buzz cut scraping across his cheek, causing him to cry out in revulsion. Convulsively the zombie's hands began to open and close, enabling Sam to free his left arm, and then, with Purna's help, to scramble out from under the creature's dead weight. Battered and bruised, and drenched stickily in the zombie's foul blood, he watched numbly until the creature's almost decapitated body ceased twitching and became motionless.

'Thanks,' he muttered finally, glancing at Purna.

She gave a brisk, brief nod. 'Don't mention it.'