September 17th, 2010
Day 24 since the outbreak, early morning.
"So, who are these people we will see now that have Hector?" Paul asks Elena as they leave the condo and walk armed along the hallway on the same floor as per Elena's information. The wedding group survivors are piled between the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel in another section. She also commented on another group of four guests that she didn't see too much but were piled on the second floor. They looked like part of a gang, making them dangerous.
Paul took more importance to the gang in his heart than the wedding group. Already filing a room visit in his schedule to them, not intending to let them be alive if they are from a gang.
"They are the survivors of the wedding event back then in the ballroom. A man called Oscar who was the groom, his brother Andres, Ilene the mother of the bride, and several other wedding guests. Oscar is the one who leads them." Elena tells the group as they make their way along the next section, still needing to cross this one to get where the wedding group was.
Paul, walking in front as a meat shield to the group, kills the walkers along the way with the machete. There were at least a dozen walkers acting as a barrier between the two extreme sections of the hotel.
As they were to cross to the next section, it was barricaded with furniture piled up to block the passage from people and walkers.
"It seems they are careful enough to block the section from possible leaks and people." Strands comments seeing the furniture.
"We need to remove it," Madison says as she sees it.
"The moment we start making noise they will hear us," Andrea comments.
"Yeah, they will know we are coming or maybe they know already, we don't have a choice anyway. Move a little farther so I can drop some of this stuff into the hallway here." Paul says to them as he removes a big part of the furniture when they move and then pushes through the leftovers, making forcibly a way through them.
As they expected, when Paul cleaned the passage on the other side, they were waiting for them, the people from the wedding group, a little more than a dozen people.
"Stop, right where you are." A man yells armed with a pistol, aiming at Paul.
But behind Paul, it was all his group pointing their guns at them, and in the wedding group, there weren't more guns than the pistol. The others had wrenches, knives, pipes, and other melee weapons to use.
"Friend, if I were you, I would lower the gun. You are in a complicated position with fewer guns," Paul says smiling at him, as he rests his hands at his sides, not inciting him. He was sure he would not try to do any stupid things unless he wanted to be riddled with his group's gunfire.
"What do you want?" The man now asks a little more subdued.
"Are you Oscar?" Paul asks him, a little smile on his lips at his change.
"I'm not." The man says slowly.
"I'm Oscar. What do you want, 'friend'." Another man who was beside the other speaks now. He had a wrench in his hand.
"We want Hector, Elena's nephew. She is with us now," Paul says slowly and clearly to them.
"Give me the keys, and I give you Hector," Oscar says looking at him and then at Elena.
"No, my friend. I know you have him because you want the keys to this place. So you don't intend to leave the hotel, we either." Paul says while looking at Oscar and his group. "So, give us Hector as goodwill, and then let's have a chat about your group's future and ours here in this hotel."
"Release Hector. There's work to be done; we need each other to do it." Madison says to Oscar not wanting to lose time here in this meaningless dispute when they still need to take care of the walkers inside.
Oscar looked at Paul and his group who were armed with big guns, differently from them who were with things not worth it in a possible confrontation with them, and sighed.
"Let Hector go," Oscar says to a man who had Hector tied.
The man cuts Hector's ropes, releasing him free. Hector quickly starts walking to his aunt Elena's side.
"What now?" Oscar asks him.
"Now, we chat," Paul says as he removes his AK from his body, leaving it to Chris who takes it. Madison and Strand also come along with him after they left their guns to the others who stayed in the hallway while they left to chat with them.
"Let them in," Oscar says to his brother and friends after seeing how they disarmed themselves without them asking for it. He knew they couldn't demand anything from the other group having so many guns with them.
After a moment, Paul, Madison, Strand, Oscar, and a man who Paul thought was Andres, the brother of the groom, and a woman that should be Ilene, the bride's mother, enter the room to talk.
"What's your plan?" Madison asks Oscar when they get comfortable inside.
"Ration what we have, scavenge for what we don't," Oscar says while looking at the three of them and standing before them.
"Do you have family somewhere else?" Madison inquires as she looks at him.
"My family was here when it started," Oscar says neutrally. "Some left, but the border was closed. We were trapped."
"What do you want? You already got the despicable nephew of that vile woman," the woman sitting on the couch says to Madison, not being emotionally well.
"We want your help; we need it," Madison says, looking at them and deaf to what was said about Hector and Elena.
"We have nothing to offer," Oscar sighs as he hears Ilene.
"You do," Madison says. "There's an opportunity here for all of us if you intend to stay like us."
"It's an empty hotel," Oscar says with doubt in his voice. "What we have, we'll run out of it at some point. Here, there's nothing."
"You haven't been beyond these walls," Madison explains. "You haven't seen the danger out there. This place has everything."
"You can harvest water, grow food, secure the place, and be with no problem from the outside. But for that, we first have to clear the dead in the resort grounds and the hotel." Madison continued.
Oscar, Ilene, and Andres look between each other at Madison's proposal.
"We can make this place a home," Madison pushes further as she sees them tempted by the idea.
Oscar looks at Ilene and sighs, then says to Madison, "If we help you, that woman cannot stay."
"Elena did what she thought was right at the moment. She regrets it," Madison says firmly, not accepting their demand.
"She killed my daughter. That monster doesn't deserve to live," Ilene says with a broken voice and tears in her eyes. "I want her dead like my daughter, my husband."
"Woman, how can you ask her to be responsible for something she didn't do? Your daughter's fate was sealed when your husband died from a heart attack and became a walker, who then bit her," Paul says to Ilene as if she wanted to look for comfort and put the blame on what happened with the wrong person.
Ilene is in tears and heartbroken as she hears him.
"The sickness. The sickness killed her. That took your daughter," Madison tries to be more sensible with the woman than her son. "We've lost loved ones, too. But we can stop that by making this place secure so we can start over—both of our families."
Ilene can't take any more and leaves for the balcony after taking a glass of water. On her way out, she cries with little whimpers.
Oscar sighs again, he's sighed too many times this early morning. "She still trapped us with her nephew inside that place. It was the same as letting us die in there."
"You're right," Paul says at first, then he tries to reason with him. "but there's no wrong or right to look at. It was a tragedy. Elena regrets doing that. She did what she thought was right, helping not to spread the disease, which was useless, but looking from your side, she was a despicable woman by letting you all in there, and it's normal if you loathe her. But what she did also saved indirectly you and the rest of your group that are still alive. Look at the hotel. How many guests are still alive in this place? It was at full capacity she said at the time, now there is only you and some group piled on the second floor she said."
Oscar looks at his brother Andres, who also looks at him. They knew deep inside that it was the case.
"We have mutual interests," Madison moves closer to Oscar. "The next group that finds this place, and be sure that others will find this place. They could be cruel. We've seen that."
"They're not gonna ask for your help. They won't try to reason. They're not gonna talk. They're gonna take and they'll kill," Madison explains to them, loud and clear, what could happen to them. "We've seen that, too. So we're gonna clear out the dead people and we're blocking the gates, and we're gonna do it alone. But it'd be a hell of a lot easier if you'd help us."
Oscar and Andres are thoughtful, with worried looks on them.
Seeing them like that, Paul gives them the little push they need. "I can clean this place alone, with no help from anyone. It would be a bother to remove all the bodies after. But if I do all that work, why should I let you all enjoy your stay in this place? We have the guns and numbers to do what my mother is trying to make you understand could happen with any group out there. My mother is still a little soft and is asking you to join us. Now that you can."
"Alright, we are with you people. We will help to clear this place, so we can have a place to be in peace." Oscar says, relaxing after making the decision.
"What help would you need from us?" Andres asks.
Strand and Madison looked at each other after hearing the pair of brothers, both with a little smile.
"You are Andres, right?" Paul asks him, with a raised eyebrow.
"Yes, Oscar is my brother." Andres nods in confirmation.
"Okay, good. I will start clearing the walkers - that is the dead people that still move - from the stairwells and the first floor. Then, I'll pull them away from the place, without them, we'll be able to move around," Paul explains to the brothers. "Then we will start looking around for two people from our group who may be hiding somewhere around the first floor or around the resort grounds. We will start from the spa."
"After that, the only thing we would need urgently is your help in removing the bodies scattered around the place." Paul finishes, looking at them.
"We can help with that. Are you sure you don't need our help in dealing with them?" Andres asks, skeptical.
"Yes, only look for our people and move the bodies," Paul affirms.
"Good," Oscar says with a relaxed smile. "I will convey our conversation and decision to our friends."
"That's great, we will tell you when to move. I will go shortly after leaving here to clean them," Paul says to the brothers as he was leaving the room with his mother and Strand.
After they moved to their group, they talked about what happened inside the condo.
"Are you alright, Victor?" Madison asks him with concern.
"I'm fine," Strand says, being thoughtful.
"Your quiet isn't fine." Madison insists on knowing what is wrong with him.
"You negotiated well. You didn't need any assistance." Strand smiles.
"Not with the mother," Madison says, not sure about the woman.
"No, not with the mother. Her grief is driving her." Strand says solemnly.
"At least the brothers decided to join us, and with them, so are the rest too. We can make this work. We can make a home," Madison says with a smile, but her expression falls as she sees Strand's face. "Victor, what's wrong with you?"
Strand sighs with a sad face. "I had a home until the moment I shot Thomas and buried him there. I'll help you secure this place, but it's not home."
"Well, this is our temporary place of stay. You can think of it as your holiday house," Paul says to him with a smile.
Strand sighs. "It will need to do."
"Don't be depressed and smile. Think about the future. Don't you say to Ofelia that, 'the past makes people sick'?" Claire says with a smile to him.
"You women know exactly when to put salt into a wound." Strands comments.
"Alright, I will go and start moving the walkers from this place, liberating the hotel and his surroundings," Paul says as he walks away into the stairwells of this section they were in.
The stairwells in this section were more clean than the other with fewer walkers inside them. Paul descended, killing the few that were in there until he stopped for a moment on the stairs as he saw the sign indicating the second floor.
Thinking for a moment, he moved onto the floor, pulling the AK from his back into his hands while chambering a round. He was intending to kill everyone on the floor, not intending to let anyone from the gang live.
As he moved, the floor had a couple of walkers that seemed they were from other places that roamed here, because the doors of the condos were left open with one or two walkers inside a couple of the rooms. He checked every room as he killed the walkers while moving, looking for signs of people, but he didn't hear anyone, just the walkers that were around the place. After a while, he checked all of the second floor in every section and didn't find anyone.
With a couple of doubts, imagining things in his mind, he moved into the stairwells of the section where they were staying all the time. As he opened the door into them, the walkers poured into the hallways and he killed them all as he descended while the ones upstairs also moved downstairs, following his presence.
Paul walked between the walkers, killing them quickly as if he were harvesting wheat. He left the corpses of the walkers where they were standing, making the work for later a tedious one for the people who would move them.
When he descended into the lobby while opening a path of carnage, he grabbed a post from the queue barrier to make noise as he hit the walkers. Then he went hitting with it around things while yelling for them. The walkers followed him in tandem as he left the building. He kept herding all the walkers, making noise, while new ones kept adding to the train as the walkers made a more concentrated noise as they followed him out of the resort grounds.
Paul herded the train of walkers a couple of blocks away from the resort, across the highway, and more inside Rosarito city and farther away from the beach. He left them locked inside a big field that was fenced around with a chain-link fence. Then he came back running to the hotel and closed the entrance gates to the resort. He reinforced them with cars that were on the highway.
Once done, he moved into the lobby and saw that Oscar's group and his were already on the first floor moving the corpses.
"I'm back. What's the news?" Paul asks as he stops in front of his mother and his sisters.
"We found Daniel and Ofelia. They were taking shelter inside the spa," Madison says as she takes her son's hand. "It was the gang that was on the second floor. They left when the walkers started swarming the hotel. They took Daniel and Ofelia by surprise from the back. They didn't have the chance to finish them luckily because of the walkers being upon them. They took the truck and ran away."
"Son of a bitches!" Paul cursed. "Before moving the walkers while descending the stairs, I stopped on the second floor intending to kill them. But there was nobody on all the floor. The rooms were open with a few walkers roaming around that I killed while looking for them."
"Seeing no one, I concluded they left the place at some point. I thought it could be a possibility that they took the truck," Paul sighed. "How is Daniel and Ofelia?"
"They are fine. Daniel took a blow in the head from the back but Ofelia was fast enough to save herself and her father. They are resting for now in a condo," Madison says as she looks at her son. "What happened with the walkers out here?"
"I was able to herd them a little far away, past the highway, into a fenced big field. They should be locked there with no problem unless someone does something. I believe," Paul says as he embraces his mother's waist before not long descending his hand resting it on her ass as he massages it.
"Luckily nothing happened on the way," Claire says as she kisses his lips and rests on his other free arm.
"Yes, now we need to work cleaning this place of all the bodies you left to spread around the hotel. And those still locked in their rooms, except those on the second floors of the three sections you cleaned and the hallways we cleaned," Alicia says while kissing his lips and resting against his chest.
"That sounds like a bother to do," Paul says as he kisses again Alicia's lips while squeezing his mother and Claire's ass in his hands. "I also closed the entrance to the resort grounds. We should later also barricade around the place better."
"I don't want to interrupt your lovely moment with your girls, but probably we should start cleaning the floors now, to try to at least clean the first three floors by this night, at least," Strand says as he is with Elena, Hector, Oscar, and Andres.
The last three were weirdly looking at Paul, his mother, and sisters as they were making out with Paul as he was being handsy with the ass of Madison and Claire as they embraced him. Sharing a man who was their son or brother depending on the girl.
"Alright." Paul sighs as he releases his mother and sister before giving them a final hard squeeze in their ass, making them excited with it.
A while later on the third floor.
The people separated into different groups to do different things. Madison left with some to make pyres on the beach to burn the bodies. Oscar and Andres with others left to another section on the third floor to clean the dead. While Paul was with Alicia, Claire, Andrea, Amy, Hector, and Strand cleaning the big section.
Paul was with Alicia and Hector cleaning rooms in one of the extremes. While Claire, Andrea, Amy, and Strand were cleaning the other to cover more ground faster.
"They can't open doors. We could just leave them," Hector says as they were about to open a condo to kill the walkers inside. They were banging against the door and he had to open it.
"We leave one and if it gets free, we start over again," Alicia says while looking at him firmly. While thinking inside that Hector was too scared to do it. "We've got to clean sweep this."
"Come on, open it. Don't think too much. The walkers are slow as fuck. You walk faster than them, you can avoid their grasp easily," Paul encouraged him.
Hector sighed and grimaced with closed eyes as he prepared to put the key card in the door.
"You got this?" Paul asks Alicia while he grabs a luggage cart with his hand that has a few corpses already on it to move them for disposal on the pyre on the beach.
Alicia nodded to him as she prepared.
"Do it," Paul says to Hector.
Hector quickly opens the doors and even faster moves away as the walker gets released from the room. The walker doesn't get to put even a foot in the hallway that Alicia grabs the walker that was a woman by the neck pushing her against the hallway wall, and puts a knife in her head, killing it.
"Damn, feisty," Paul smiles at his twin. She had done a nicely done work.
Alicia smiled at that.
"You are tough," Hector comments to Alicia while grabbing the body and putting it over the others in the cart as Paul only looks.
"Alicia is self-reliant, she always was a good woman," Paul answered, proud of his twin and woman.
"Let's keep cleaning. It will be nightfall before we end at this rhythm," Alicia says to them both. But her smile gets bigger and smugly at Paul's comment.
Half an hour later on the beach as they moved both carts closer to the pyre to dispose of the bodies in it.
"How are we doing?" Paul asks his mother as she cuts the thatch off the umbrellas that are on the beach to use in the pyre.
"They are working hard. They want this to work the same as we do," Madison says with a little smile as she removes the sweat from her forehead.
"They follow your lead," Alicia says honestly to her mother.
Paul and his family move to clean their hands in the water after they drop the bodies in the pyre.
"That's one floor out of seventeen, out of three buildings," Alicia comments as she washes her hands in the sea. "I mean, at this rate, it's gonna take us at least a week, even with Oscar's group's help."
"If it only was to kill them it would be faster, with Paul moving around killing them, but we need also to move them out," Claire says while she dries her hands with a cloth.
"Yes, we need to get inside the rooms to search them carefully also, so that there is no problem with them. Taking more time," Andrea too comments after cleaning her hands as she sees around the clean beach free of walkers after they killed them all.
"We don't have a week or more. We can't do all this and have some asshole take it from us," Madison says a little angry at the thought of it happening.
Paul was looking at the strong sea waves ripping against the shore and saw the sign on the pier that warned "Danger, Riptides."
"Well, we can herd them from the hotel as I did with those that were on the resort grounds, but now to drop them into the sea," Paul smiles as he says to them while pointing at the sign.
"Nice, doing that, we don't have to go room by room or floor by floor. And we don't have to put them down at all," Alicia smiles.
"Let's do it."