‘Zombies my ass,’ rumbled Sam B. ‘This is bullshit.’
‘Please, ladies and gentlemen,’ appealed the voice once more. ‘Zombies is such an … an emotive word. Not to say …’
‘Cheesy?’ suggested Purna.
‘I was about to say “inaccurate”,’ said the voice.
‘So what would
you
call them?’ Sam asked.
‘We prefer to think of them as the “reanimated dead”.’
‘Same difference,’ said Logan.
‘He’s right,’ said Purna. ‘It’s just a question of semantics.’
‘Yeah, what she said,’ muttered Sam.
‘Please be quiet, everyone,’ Xian Mei piped up suddenly. ‘I want to hear what the man says.’
‘Thank you, Miss Mei,’ said the caller. ‘Now, in order to make it safely off the island you will need to head inland. To prevent the spread of infection, the airport has been locked down and the main harbour is being patrolled by offshore gunboats. Those trying to escape by sea are being ordered to turn back. Any vessels that don’t comply are simply blown out of the water. All conventional exit routes have therefore been closed off while the authorities try to come up with a solution to the problem.’
‘That’s barbaric,’ said Purna.
‘It’s necessary,’ replied the caller. ‘Would you rather this became a worldwide pandemic?’
‘Of course not. But what about the forty per cent of people on the island who
aren’t
affected?’
‘That number is dropping all the time – and rapidly.’
‘It’s still a lot of people. So what are they? Collateral damage?’
‘We’re doing our best in a difficult situation,’ said the voice tightly. ‘We’re trying to help you now, aren’t we?’
‘Yeah, and why you doin’ that?’ said Sam. ‘Why just the four of us? How come we’re so special? And who the hell are you anyway?’
‘Someone will be waiting for you downstairs,’ said the voice, ignoring Sam’s questions. ‘He will help you. But you need to go now. The situation is worsening all the time. And you need to arm yourselves.’
‘With what?’ asked Sam.
‘With whatever you can find.’
‘HE’S
GONE
.’
Having stuck her head warily out the door, Purna stepped into the corridor, brandishing a splintered chair leg. The walls and carpet were still covered in drying blood and foam from earlier, but the bellhop who had attacked them was nowhere to be seen.
‘How many times did you hit him?’ asked Logan, emerging from the room with a leg from the same chair.
‘Enough to put any regular guy in the emergency ward,’ she said.
Logan pulled a face. ‘You think these freaks abide by the normal zombie rules?’
‘Well, I dunno,’ she said, frowning. ‘I guess that all depends on what the “normal zombie rules” are?’
‘You know – destroy the brain, chop the head off … all that shit.’
Purna looked at him in disbelief. ‘I really hope we don’t get into a situation where we have to find out.’
She tapped lightly on the neighbouring door. ‘Sam, it’s us.’
Immediately it opened and Sam appeared.
‘Hey, I’m loving your weapon,’ Logan said drily.
Sam was holding what appeared to be a giant modified egg-whisk. He looked both proud of it and faintly embarrassed at the same time. ‘Made it by twisting together all the coat hangers in my wardrobe,’ he explained, ‘then straightening out the ends. Figure if those fuckers come for me I’ll stab their fucking eyes out.’
‘Plus it can double as a back scratcher,’ Logan said.
Sam scowled at him, then glanced at his makeshift sling. ‘So you got bitten, huh?’
‘Yes, and I know what you’re thinking,’ said Logan. ‘If I get even the teeniest desire to chow down on your brains I’ll let you know.’
Purna was already moving stealthily down the corridor, warily eyeing each door. ‘What do you reckon?’ she asked. ‘Stairs or lift?’
‘If the lift’s empty we should be able to get all the way down to the ground floor in it,’ said Logan.
‘Fuck that,’ said Sam. ‘If the door opens and reception is full of those fuckers we’ll be like sardines in a can.’
‘More like meatballs,’ said Logan, and looked at Purna. ‘Talking of which, I think you’ve given me a hernia.’
Sam raised his eyebrows. Purna pursed her lips and shook her head. ‘It’s not what you think.’
By mutual consent they bypassed the lift and halted outside the heavy fire door, above which a perspex sign read: IN
CASE
OF
EMERGENCY
USE
STAIRS
.
‘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?’