‘OK,’ said Sam. ‘So let’s say we buy this. How do we get to you?’
‘You have to go further inland,’ said White. ‘Deeper into the jungle. Keep following the road that runs closest to the river and eventually you’ll come to a village. Once you’re there, ask for a man called Mowen. He has a boat and knows the waterways of Banoi like the back of his hand. He can bring you across to the prison. He knows how to negotiate the minefield.’
‘Hang on,’ said Logan. ‘What minefield?’
‘The sea between Banoi and the prison is laid with mines. But Mowen knows the way through. You can trust him.’
‘And what if we need to contact you at any point?’ said Purna.
White hesitated, then said, ‘I’ll text you a secure number you can reach me on. If you manage to get a signal, that is.’
Purna looked at Sam and raised her eyebrows, as if silently asking him what he thought. Sam’s answering expression seemed to say:
Sounds OK, I guess
.
‘So?’ White asked. ‘Will you come?’
Purna licked her lips.
‘We’ll think about it,’ she said eventually.
‘I
USED
TO think shooting zombies would be fun, but this is fucking grim, man.’
‘You want to swap places, let me take over for a while?’ asked Sam.
Logan looked tempted, but he shook his head. ‘Guess not. You’ve done your bit for now. Never thought I’d end up saying this, but I reckon I gotta take my share of the responsibility.’
After leaving Sinamoi some provisions and a couple of guns, Sam, Purna, Xian Mei, Logan and Jin had thanked the lifeguard for all he had done for them and said their goodbyes. Initially Logan had tried to persuade Sinamoi to come along too, but he had elected to stay behind. Quietly Xian Mei had asked Jin if she wanted to stay with him, but the girl had shaken her head.
‘I thought you might prefer to be close to your father,’ Xian Mei said.
‘What’s the point?’ replied Jin bluntly. ‘He’s dead.’
Xian Mei had been shocked at the finality of Jin’s words. ‘You can’t know that for certain.’
‘The world is cruel,’ Jin said, her face expressionless. ‘There’s no longer any hope for any of us.’
Xian Mei had been troubled by how much the younger girl’s outlook had changed by her new-found nihilism. When they had first encountered her she had been compassionate, hopeful, eager to help people, but in the space of a few hours her faith and optimism had been shattered, her world torn apart.
‘Maybe this man, Ryder White, will help us find an antidote,’ Xian Mei reassured her. ‘Maybe then we can help your father.’
‘Papa will be gone by then,’ Jin said. ‘This virus is without mercy.’
To get to the road that would take them into the jungle, they had had to pass again through the resort area, which meant negotiating at least part of the highly populated main street. Purna had hoped they would be able to do what they had almost done last time – crawl through undetected. However, it was not to be. Either the infected were able to retain recent memories or Sam, Purna and the rest had simply been unlucky enough on this occasion to have been instantly spotted.
Whatever the reason, as soon as the van nosed into view at the intersection leading on to the high street, the infected began to turn, almost in unison, in their direction.
‘Fuck!’ said Logan, who was witnessing the infected en masse for the first time. ‘I see our problem’s gotten a whole lot bigger since last night.’
‘We’re going to have to shoot our way through this time,’ said Purna, ‘otherwise we’ll be swamped. Logan, Xian Mei, you ready?’
They nodded, each raising their assault rifle, as Purna pressed the buttons set into the driver’s door that automatically lowered the two front windows. As soon as there was enough of a gap, Logan and Xian Mei poked the barrels of their rifles through and started firing.
The automatic weapons cut a swathe through the zombies closing in on both sides. Chunks of bloody flesh and bone and shredded clothing filled the air like grotesque confetti as the first wave of the marauding dead went down and were casually trampled by the ravenous hordes behind them.
Purna, meanwhile, floored the accelerator, surging forward, using the vehicle as a battering ram. Zombies were thrown aside or knocked to the ground and crushed beneath the wheels. A few of them made it on to the van’s hood and one – a lanky teenage boy with long greasy hair and a face full of acne – managed to scramble up on to the roof. He stayed there for a full minute or more, before a particularly violent jolt sent him spinning off into the crowd like a stage diver at a rock concert.
Eventually, however, they were through the worst of it, and Purna was able to take her foot off the accelerator. The windows and bodywork of the van were splattered with already-congealing blood. Logan and Xian Mei drew in their weapons and Purna closed the windows.
Sam, sitting on a stack of boxes in the back, noticed that Logan was shaking a little.
‘You OK, man?’ he asked quietly.
Logan nodded. ‘Just adrenalin. I’ll be fine in a minute.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Jesus, I have never seen anything like that before. That was totally …’
‘Insane?’ Sam suggested.
‘Insane,’ agreed Logan.
As they left the resort area behind, the road narrowed and the lush tropical vegetation that covered eighty per cent of the island began to press in on both sides. Dazzling birds of paradise gossiped in the treetops, and at one point they rounded a corner and startled a group of macaque monkeys, who were relaxing on the dusty road like fans soaking up the sun at a music festival.
As civilization became ever more distant, a silence settled over them – partly self-reflection, partly weariness, partly a sense of delayed shock at the abruptness with which the world had irrevocably changed. In the back of the van, sitting among their accumulated booty of weapons and provisions, Sam closed his eyes, all at once overcome by a great rolling wave of lethargy. Soothed by the rumbling of the engine, he felt his thoughts breaking up, the harsh images of the past few hours softening and receding. Blackness rose to meet him and he slipped gratefully beneath its surface.
It seemed no time at all before someone was prodding him awake.
‘Huh?’ he said, uncertain for a moment where he was. ‘Wass happenin’?’
‘I think we’re here,’ said Xian Mei, her voice hushed as if in reverence.
‘Already?’ muttered Sam.
‘You been out for two hours, man,’ said Logan. ‘Regular Sleeping Beauty.’
Sam rubbed vigorously at his face with both hands to wake himself up and stretched to relieve the stiffness in his back. Turning his head to peer between the front seats and out through the windscreen, he saw that the jungle had been cut right back on both sides of the road, and the wide and dusty clearing was flanked by a haphazard collection of houses. Most of the houses were stout, wood-framed, one-storey buildings, though a number had been erected on stilt-like timber pilings, either for reasons of status or as a preventative measure against the intrusion of snakes and poisonous insects. The walls were insulated with dried packed mud, which was pale grey, almost white in colour, and the roofs were thatched with thick sheaves of grass baked yellow and dry by the sun.
Untethered goats and wild fowl wandered nonchalantly among children and adults performing a variety of tasks in the open air. Sam saw women weaving or grinding corn or washing clothes. He saw men mending or making various household implements; one even tinkering with an ancient rattletrap of a motorcycle. As they drove past, nearly everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look at them. Most of the people were wearing a rag-tag collection of western clothes that looked as though they had been donated by some charity or other. However, a few – mainly women – wore flowing, brightly coloured garments, which they had clearly either made themselves or bought locally.
The overall impression was of a people on the cusp of modern society, a community with one foot in the technological age and one still firmly planted in ancient tribal traditions.
‘So how do we find this Mowen guy?’ asked Logan.
‘I suggest we ask someone,’ Purna replied.
‘Why don’t we try here?’ said Xian Mei, pointing at a building coming up on their left.
It was a ramshackle wooden homestead with steps leading up to a long canopied porch. It reminded Sam of some of the houses built way out on the bayou back home, houses reputed to be populated by voodoo priests and priestesses, and surrounded by constantly dripping trees which loomed from ’gator-infested swamplands. This particular building, however, had a sun-bleached sign that simply read
STORE
dangling on rusty chains from its wooden canopy. Another sign – this one metal and screwed to the door – was emblazoned with the proud boast WE
SELL
COCA-COLA
.
Purna shrugged and pulled up next to a pale blue flatbed truck that looked as if it might have been new back in the 1950s. The five of them climbed out, stretching and groaning, still uncomfortably aware that they were being candidly and silently assessed by the local population, but trying to ignore it.
Logan sidled up to Sam. ‘Hey, man, ever feel like a virgin at a rapist convention?’
‘Hush up,’ Sam hissed, glancing anxiously across at Jin.
Realizing what he had said, Logan clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘Sorry, man, I forgot,’ he mumbled.
They trooped up the steps into the store, Purna in the lead. Though he knew it wouldn’t have exactly made a great impression, Sam felt a little nervous about leaving their weapons in the van.
The interior of the store was surprisingly well stocked. There were tinned goods, boxes of over-ripe fruit, various dried meats beneath a sheet of trans parent plastic to keep the flies off, and an upright drinks cooler, which did indeed contain cans of Coca-Cola, as well as Sprite, 7-Up and lemon Fanta. There was even a creaky old paperback spinner stuffed with dog-eared books that looked as though they had been transported here from the 1970s. Flipping through it briefly, Logan recognized authors his parents used to read – Harold Robbins, Nevil Shute – as well as a novel
he
had read in high school (possibly the
only
novel he had read in high school),
The Wolfen
by Whitley Strieber.
Standing behind the counter was a gangly old black man with a halo of white hair and a thick fuzzy beard. His arms were so thin that they made his work-calloused hands look huge. He watched them warily, saying nothing. Purna smiled and walked up to him.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You speak English?’
The old man simply stared at her.
‘We’re looking for someone,’ said Xian Mei. ‘A man called Mowen. You know him?’
The old man frowned a little.
‘Mo-wen,’ repeated Logan, drawing out the name, emphasizing each syllable. He held up his hands and grinned. ‘It’s OK. We’re friendly.’
‘Don’t do that, man,’ muttered Sam. ‘Makes you look even more of a psycho than you already do.’
To their surprise, Jin suddenly stepped forward and spoke a few words to the old man in a language they didn’t understand. The old man responded with a few words of his own, then turned and stuck his head around a ratty blue curtain covering an opening at the back of the counter.
He shouted a word that sounded like, ‘Afreela.’
‘What’s he doing?’ said Logan.
His question was answered a moment later by the appearance of a boy of twelve or thirteen. The family resemblance was obvious. The boy was as gangly as the old man and the bone structure of his face gave him the same pinched nose, hollow cheeks and strong jaw. The boy tensed as soon as he saw the new arrivals, his eyes becoming wide and wary. The old man spoke a few rapid words to him, one of which was ‘Mowen’. The boy gave a brief nod, sidled cautiously around the counter, then darted out of the shop, as if he expected to be challenged or pursued.
Jin spoke a few more words to the old man and he grunted in response.
‘What did you say?’ asked Purna.
‘I told him we’d wait outside.’
‘Tell him we’re not here to cause trouble,’ said Purna.
‘I already did. I don’t think he believes me.’
Logan bought sodas and they stood in the shade of the front porch, drinking them while they waited for the boy to return with Mowen.
‘Why are they all fucking staring at us?’ Logan said nervously, glancing up at the large number of local people who were still sitting or standing around nearby, watching the newcomers with a kind of deadpan curiosity.
‘Have you
seen
what we look like?’ said Sam. ‘Have you
seen
what the van looks like?’
Logan frowned and stared round at Sam and the others, then at their mode of transport, as if seeing them all with fresh eyes. He realized that to someone who had no idea what had been going down, the crumpled, dented, blood-covered van and their equally gore-stained appearance must have been a pretty alarming sight. The five of them and their trusty vehicle looked as if they had just emerged from a medieval battlefield.
‘See what you mean,’ said Logan, and then nodded at Sam, a twinkle in his eye. ‘You’re talking about that dumb bandanna, right?’
Not for the first time Sam showed him the finger. Logan laughed.
It was twenty minutes before the boy returned with a tall, rangy black man in his early thirties. The boy jabbered a few words to the man and then cast a fearful look in their direction, before skirting round them in a big circle and scuttling back into the shop.
‘Hey, kid,’ Logan called after him, ‘we ain’t gonna hurt you. We’re not as bad as we … aw, what’s the use?’
‘He think you cursed,’ said the man who had accompanied the kid, his voice heavily accented. ‘They
all
think you cursed.’ The man’s eyes were hidden behind mirror shades, and his head was a mass of black dreadlocks that cascaded over his shoulders. He wore boots, combat pants and a sleeveless T-shirt, and carried a rifle on a strap over his shoulder.
‘But you don’t?’ Purna said.