Last Hope, Book One: Onslaught by Drew Brown

were a shade darker than they’d been when he’d viewed them from the balcony. He stepped through the doorway, still holding Juliette’s hand.
    Together they stood in silence, their eyes exploring the scene before them.
    In the aisles between the tables were the waiters, their fallen bodies littering the floor all across the room. Some had been pushing trolleys full of fresh cutlery, while others had utensils for sanitizing the surfaces, all of which were now unattended. A few of the bodies had fallen onto tables or chairs and knocked them over, and others had collapsed into one another to rest in small mounds on the floor. Whatever the case, Budd could see that no one moved inside the restaurant.
    “Are they dead?” Juliette asked, her soft voice a whisper.
     
    The corpses in the elevator were one thing, but this... this was something else. My nightmares have always been bad, but this was a cut above the norm. I’m sure I can remember reading somewhere that peanuts give you bad dreams. Maybe I’d eaten too many…
     
    “I don’t know,” Budd answered. His mind raced as he cast his gaze around the vast restaurant. He saw no diners, only hotel employees. Whatever had caused the waiters to drop, to die, had taken place after the restaurant had closed. He thought back to when he had first woken up; his wristwatch had stopped at 1:00 am. He looked for a clock, searching for a way to tell the time.
    “Do you have a watch?” he asked Juliette.
    “No, Monsieur Ashby.”
    “Come on,” he instructed, cautiously walking deeper into the restaurant. He knelt beside the body of a young waitress. She was on her front, a pile of menus clutched in one hand.
    Budd took hold of her left wrist and slid up the white shirtsleeve. Her skin was cold and unpleasant to touch; nevertheless, he found what he wanted.
    A chrome-colored watch.
    He looked at the glass face.
    The timepiece had stopped several seconds after one o’clock. It was close enough to give weight to his theory. “Back in your suite, my watch stopped working at 1:00 am,” he said, and then raised the young waitress’s wrist to show Juliette the watch. “Whatever’s happened, I think it took place then.”
    “She is dead?”
    “As a dodo.”
    “If this happened when you say, why has no one come?” Juliette pondered, looking up at the grey sky around the building. “It is already morning. Where are the authorities?”
    “You saw the city from the balcony, buttercup. This isn’t only happening here.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know what I mean. I just hope they didn’t all have the soup.”
    “I want to leave this place,” Juliette said. She brought her hands up and rubbed her arms.
    Budd figured it was more for comfort than warmth. “Pronto,” he said.
     
     
15
    Budd pulled Stephen Doring’s body back into the elevator and the doors closed with their usual chime. He pressed the lowest button on the control panel and the elevator started to descend.
    After a few seconds, another light on the control panel lit up.
    It was the twentieth floor.
    “ Monsieur Ashby?”
    “I see it.”
    “Someone has called for the lift.”
    “That’s what it looks like, sweet cheeks.”
    The number on the small screen that displayed which floor they were passing decreased quickly. The twentieth did not seem that far away.
     
    I wasn’t sure whether or not to be pleased. After all, the unscheduled stop meant that there was someone else wandering the hotel corridors. But did I really want to meet them? And what would they think of us riding around in an elevator with two dead bodies? I didn’t want to make new friends, I just wanted to get down to the reception and get outside…
     
    Budd stepped in front of Juliette as the elevator stopped.
    The bell rung out and the doors opened.
    There was no one there. The carpet outside the door was empty, but Budd knew they were not alone.
    In the distance, a man was screaming.
    It was a cry of pain, of