“So where the hell are we anyhow?” I asked.
Tony laughed. “Gentlemen, you are on the tiny, volcanic island of Saint Miep.”
“Where the hell is that?” Smith asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Well, you got Jamaica to the north, Haiti to the east and Columbia to the south.”
Mohawk produced a laminated map of the Caribbean from beneath the bar counter. He placed it on the surface and dabbed his finger on a small oval shaped island. It looked as though we were in the middle of nowhere.
“Saint Miep is a former Dutch territory,” Mohawk said. “There is supposed to be a curse on the island. The Spanish came here first, then the French, then the British and then the Dutch. Nobody wanted or had the will to keep hold of it. The reefs on the south side of the island were impassable and the terrain on land was too rough. Many battles were fought on the soil of Saint Miep before the Dutch took it on as an agricultural project in 1898.”
“That would explain a lot,” Smith said, studying the map.
“Didn’t you have any way of navigating through the Caribbean?” Mohawk asked, his faced screwed up in disbelief. “I mean who crosses the Atlantic without any way of knowing where the hell you are going?”
I had to admit, it did sound a foolhardy plan at best but at the time we were so pumped up with escaping from the Russians, anything would have sounded like a good idea.
Smith stared long and hard at Mohawk. “So what’s yours and laughing boy over there’s angle?” Smith nodded to Shaved Head to our right.
Cockney Tony answered. “Those two are what remains of our road crew and security detail. They were part of the deal with Bart Van Dalen’s record company. There were nine of them to start with. The others all got munched when we tried to get to the port.”
“You’ve been here all this time since the whole thing started?” I asked.
“Yup,” Tony chirped. “And it’s boring as hell stuck in this gaff day in, day out.” He half turned and nodded at the sofa. “Those two just get stoned all day, every day. The place is stacked full of every perceivable drug you can think of and these two Dutch pricks ‘aint exactly a barrel of laughs neither.”
Smith leaned back in his stool. “What’s the deal with the castle? Who the hell is up there?”
Cockney Tony placed his beer glass on the counter and his face turned serious. He glanced between Smith and I then shook his head.
“You don’t want to know who’s up there, mate. Believe me you don’t.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Smith downed the remainder of his beer and put the glass down on the countertop. “I’m sorry, Tony but we got to know who is in that castle and how we can get in there to stop them. Our friends are stuck out there at sea on that damn reef and we have to find some way of getting them off that ship and onto the island.”
Tony ducked his head. “Okay, saying you manage to get all those people off the ship. Where are they going to go? We haven’t got the room or provisions to take them in here.”
“No, but that castle looks pretty secure,” Smith said.
Tony shook his head. “Listen, Smudger, oh, mind if I call you Smudger? It’s a nickname, like. Smudger Smith, you know?”
Smith shook his head. “Knock yourself out.”
“Smudger, those blokes who are in the castle ‘aint to be messed with. They turned up one day during the time the island was getting overrun. There were people fleeing from the holiday village that you came through. People on vacation or the homeowners who’d retired here to the island. Those people were trying to get away from the infected in the village by running away down the track. This gang of rough looking goons turned up in two armored trucks and just ran all these people down. Bodies and claret all over the gaff, Smudger. The ones that weren’t already dead were soon picked off by the infected. They were all crippled and mangled and fucked up, mate. I know, I saw it happen. We’d just got back from our unsuccessful attempt to get to the port. We watched it all from upstairs. Those roughnecks drove straight up to the castle, which used to be a kind of tourist attraction. They shut the doors and that was it.”
I glanced at Smith. “That would explain the crippled zombies on the roadway.” I turned my attention back to Tony. “You haven’t seen the guys since?” I asked.
Tony flashed me an incredulous glare. “Oh, yeah we’ve seen them again all right. They drove back into the village a few times and took a few survivors, women and young girls mostly. They popped all the rest of them, blokes and old men. Just put them down like mad dogs right there in the street. They’ve been out a few times since, driving around in their trucks and coming back with some materials from the villages around here. I assume they go to the port town of La Bahia Soleado to loot more supplies. We haven’t seen them in a while but we don’t go up top much no more. They’ll probably come a day when they bust right on through the front gates and either pop us in the head or feed us to the infected. But until then…” Tony handed his empty glass to Mohawk for another refill.
“How many guys do you think are up there, Tony?” Smith asked.
Cockney Tony shrugged. “I dunno, thirty, maybe fifty. They all got this mad look in their eyes and they’re all dirty but they look like dead hard geezers. Know what I mean?”
How much weaponry have you got around the place?” Smith asked. “I saw the Dutch version of
Laurel and Hardy
had a nice couple of H & K handguns.”
“We’ve got a few rifles and a few more shooters and a shit load of ammo for them. Like I said, Van Dalen was a bit paranoid and liked his shooters. But we’re a techno rock band, fellahs. We ‘aint an army and we only use the guns to shoot the infected. And those two pie-eyed pillocks on the sofa aren’t ever straight headed enough to shoot anything. They’d end up killing themselves if we gave them a gun.”
“Do I detect you don’t get along too well with your former band mates?” I asked.
Tony made a strange croaking noise. “Nah, it’s not that we don’t get on but I kicked the drugs a while back and they didn’t. I thought if we’re going to survive this thing, whatever the fuck it is, then we’re going to have to keep our minds on red alert, you know?”
I nodded. I sympathized with Tony. “Obviously they thought different?”
Tony raised his eyebrows. “You could say that.”
“So, these roughnecks, any clue where they came from?” Smith asked.
Tony shook his head. “My guess is they came off a ship from the port. It was a time when the whole world was shitting itself when the disease kicked in big time. Everybody was heading in different directions, and most of them were the wrong ones. Nowhere was safe but everybody thought there must be somewhere where they could hole up. This place here was no different.”
“I figure if we could get rid of those guys in the castle and land our colleagues on the island, we could stand a chance of making the place a safe zone,” Smith said. “But we need your help, Tony.”
Tony kind of wobbled his head and reached for the pack of smokes. “Listen, fellahs, I can give you a couple of shooters and as much ammo as you need but then you’re on your own. And I wish you luck against those mad bastards, gentlemen. I honestly mean that. But they’ll shoot you dead once you’re in the line of sight of that castle, I’m telling you.”
Smith leaned forward on his stool. “Tony, how much longer do you think you’ll last in this place? How long will it be until you run out of supplies, a year, maybe two? And then what? That’s presuming those guys in the castle wont figure out you’re holed up inside here and shoot the place up.”
Mohawk banged his handgun onto the countertop with a metallic thud. “I’ll help you, Smith.”
Shaved Head stepped forward from the shadows. “Count me in, also,” he said with a stern nod.
Smith flashed me a glance. “That’s great, thanks guys. Now what about you Tony? Are you in?”
Tony raised his finger and opened his mouth as if he were about to speak but let his pose hold for a few seconds.
“I’m off to the bog,” he finally said. Tony stood and shuffled to a swing door to the right side of the bar that I hadn’t noticed before.
Mohawk leaned his elbows on the counter top and moved his head towards us. He took a quick glance to the sofa behind us to check the two stoners weren’t listening. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the other two band members were now indulging themselves in a
shoot ‘em up
game on the projector screen.
“You have to keep persuading him,” he whispered. “He will agree in the end. I know Tony is very unhappy stuck down in this cellar all the time.”
“Where do you sleep?” I asked. You have bedrooms down here?”
Mohawk or Lowie as we now knew he was called, smiled for the first time since we’d met. He revealed a row of brilliant white teeth, intermingled with a few gold ones. “We don’t get a lot of sleep around here. Those guys are too high most of the time.” He flicked his head towards where Tony had gone. “There are some booths with bedrooms back there, as well as shower rooms. Van Dalen used them when he and his colleagues brought in some Columbian whores for their weekend drug fuelled orgies.”
“Sounds like a blast,” Smith said. “Hope you’ve washed the sheets since they were last here.”
Lowie looked a little taken aback for a second, then broke out into a wide smile. “Of course,” he said. “We also have a laundry room down here.”
“Looks like you have everything you need,” I said.
Lowie’s face became serious again. “Everything but piece of mind, my friend. Those guys up at the castle will eventually find us here, I know it. We have been lucky so far but our luck will eventually run out. We have to try and make a stand before they hit us.”
“How long have you been stuck down here?” I asked.
Lowie shrugged. “We go out sometimes but not very often.” He glanced upward and had a brief conversation with Shaved Head in Dutch.
“Freek thinks we have been down here for over two years,” he confirmed.
“Jesus, has it really been more than two years since this thing started?” I gasped, shocked at how long we’d been living this nomadic lifestyle.
Shaved Head nodded. “I keep a rough record of the date. I think it is May 13
th
, but I’m not certain.”
Smith screwed up his face before he spoke. “Why do they call you freak? Do you do something abnormally freaky?”
Shaved Head laughed and shook his head. “It is my name, Freek Alferdinck.” He spelled it out for us.
Smith laughed. “That’s some fucking name, man. I’ll drink to that.” He raised his beer glass and motioned towards Freek Alferdinck. I preferred to call him Shaved Head, it was slightly easier to pronounce.
Smith seemed at ease with our new acquaintances and the beer and banter was flowing freely. I didn’t wholly trust these guys and was expecting a setback to arise before they’d allow us to leave the cellar.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“You said something earlier about a curse on the island, Lowie,” Smith said. “Care to tell me a little about that?”
Lowie refilled our glasses and I was already feeling a little lightheaded. At least my ankle wasn’t hurting as much. Maybe the alcohol was numbing the pain.
Mohawk/Lowie grinned, showing more of those gold teeth. He looked as though he relished recounting the tale of the cursed island.
“We used to go to
La Bahia Soleado, the port town for a drink and a little nightlife action. It was a rough kind of lawless place, even before the undead rose but it was good to get away from the boredom here, while the so called band went through their rehearsals, playing endless beats that blasted out day and night.” He flicked his eyes to the ceiling for effect.
“Anyhow, while we were on a particularly heavy night out in a dingy bar, we got talking to a few of the locals who owned a fishing vessel and made their living trawling around the island.”
“All very interesting but what about the curse, Lowie?” Smith asked impatiently.
Lowie looked slightly offended. “Okay, I was just getting to that bit. The fishermen told us that when the Spanish came here and built the castle they called it ‘
El
Punto Sin Esperanza
,’
The Point Of No Hope
. Many ships perished on the reefs. They saw the castle from out at sea and tried to head for land before wrecking on the reefs. As the story goes, in 1721, one ship packed full of mostly French traders from Haiti headed for the coast after seeing the castle on the hilltop. Of course, they hit the reef and began sinking. The Spanish soldiers watched from the castle turrets as the ship went down.” Lowie lowered the tone of his voice for effect and I could imagine the tale being told in dingy bar rooms all over the Caribbean.
“Later on, the Spanish went down to the shoreline when they saw cargo from the ship being washed up on the beach below. They took all the merchandise that was worth anything but among the cargo they found a few survivors washed up on the sand. Those that were alive, the Spanish took back to the castle. One of the survivors was a
Mambo,
also known as a female voodoo priest. The Spanish took her back to the castle along with the goods they had looted.” Lowie stopped talking to light a cigarette.