Dead Island

muttered the words of response, before lapsing into silence. The witch doctor looked out over the throng for a moment, his face grim. Then suddenly he grinned and cried, ‘Let the feasting begin!’

The people cheered and turned as one, jostling for position in an effort to gain a good view of the ritual slaughter. The four men who had been herding the group of zombi tucked their whips into thick animal-hide belts around their waists and produced gleaming machetes, which they brandished in the air in acknowledgement of the crowd’s cheers. Then, with the practised skill of butchers or executioners, they stepped forward and began hacking at the zombi, severing their heads quickly and neatly from their shoulders. The people laughed as the zombi fell and the slaughterers’ faces and arms and chests were spattered with stinking black-red blood. The heads were collected up and passed through the crowd, to be placed in a row at the witch doctor’s feet. He nodded in approval as each head was propped on its dribbling stump of a neck before him. Finally sixteen heads were lined up, their eyes glazed and white, their slack mouths hanging open.

Now a child was pushed forward from the throng, a small boy of four or five years old. The people muttered encouragement as he walked shyly up to the witch doctor, carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle in his outstretched arms. The witch doctor thanked him solemnly and carefully unfolded the layers of cloth. Nestling within was a curved knife with symbols etched into the handle. The witch doctor took the knife and held it up. The people cheered.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, the witch doctor picked up the first of the zombi heads and propped it between his knees. He then rammed the knife into the zombi’s temple, just above its eyes, and began to hack and saw at the dead meat and the bone beneath, cutting around the top of the skull. It took several minutes of vigorous work before he was finally able to lift the skull-cap aside. When he did, exposing the grey-black putrefying brain within, the villagers went into raptures.

Grinning, the witch doctor dug his long fingers into the zombi’s head and scooped out a porridge-like gobbet of brain matter. He held it out towards a little boy, who was still standing in front of him, wide-eyed with wonder. The boy looked at him uncertainly, but the witch doctor smiled and nodded. Encouraged by whispers from his mother, the child stepped forward, opened his mouth and sucked the glistening lump of brain from the witch doctor’s fingers.

A sigh of contentment ran through the crowd. ‘Eat!’ the witch doctor cried and dug his fingers into the zombi’s head once more. As the villagers queued up for their share of the feast, he offered another portion of this most sacred of delicacies to the second recipient.

‘Eat!’ he cried. ‘Eat! Eat!’ When the first head was empty he reached for the second.

Behind him, in the tomb, drowned by the excited clamour of the feast, the muffled screams of the girl went ignored.

Chapter 1. IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

‘HEY, YOU! GET

me another of these, will ya?’

The guy with the short dark mohawk, both of his arms sleeved in tribal tattoos, leaned so far out of his seat that he almost tumbled into the aisle as he tried to grab the attention of the passing flight attendant. He reached out, and instead of grabbing her attention he accidentally grabbed her blue-skirted bottom as she bent over to talk to an elderly passenger who couldn’t get his headphones to work.

‘Whoa, sorry,’ sniggered mohawk guy, hauling himself back into his seat and holding up his hands innocently as the stewardess glared at him. ‘Didn’t mean to do that. Truly. Nice ass, though.’

Having dealt with the elderly passenger, the stewardess turned back to mohawk guy. ‘Is there something you need, sir?’ she asked flintily.

Immediately the guy’s smirk faded and his expression grew stony. ‘There are many things I need, sweetheart,’ he said, ‘and one of them is for you to remember who the paying fucking customers are here.’

Smiling sweetly, the stewardess said, ‘Oh, I do, sir. I remember that at all times.’

‘Yeah? Well maybe you should remember to leave your shitty attitude at home too.’

Still smiling, the stewardess said, ‘And maybe you should remember to keep your hands to yourself, sir. In this job molestation is still a crime, regardless of who’s paying.’

‘Hey, it was an accident, right?’ mohawk guy said, loud enough to turn heads. ‘I lost my balance.’

‘In that case I accept your apology,’ said the stewardess.

Mohawk guy scowled. ‘I ain’t apologizing to you. I got nothing to apologize

for

.’

The passenger sitting next to him was a young, muscle-bound black man with a sculpted, neatly trimmed beard. He was dressed in baggy jeans, a skinny black T-shirt and a red bandanna. Although he had given all the indications of being asleep, he now opened his eyes and removed the headphones from his ears.

‘Why don’t you stop giving the nice lady a hard time?’ he rumbled.

Mohawk guy turned to look at him, sticking his jaw out pugnaciously. ‘Who the hell asked you?’

‘Nobody asked me,’ said the black man. ‘I’m jus’ sayin’.’

‘Yeah, well, butt out, brother. This has got nothing to do with you.’

The black man grinned, displaying a gold-plated upper canine among a mouthful of clearly expensive dental work. ‘“Brother”? Is that some kinda racial slur?’ he enquired.

Mohawk guy rolled his eyes. ‘What is this? Character assassination week? First she accuses me of being a sexual deviant, now you accuse me of being a damn racist.’

‘I didn’t accuse you of sexual deviancy, sir,’ the stewardess said.

‘Molestation, you said. Pretty much amounts to the same thing.’

‘Well, you

did

grab the lady’s butt,’ said the black man.

‘I was trying to attract her attention is all,’ mohawk guy protested. ‘All I wanted was a damn drink.’

‘How about I get you a drink and we say no more about it?’ suggested the stewardess. She eyed the array of miniature scotch bottles on the passenger’s fold-down table, all of them empty. ‘Same again, sir?’

Mohawk guy hesitated. For a moment he looked as though he wanted to prolong the argument. Then finally he nodded. ‘Yeah, sure. And take these empties away, will ya?’

‘Certainly, sir,’ said the stewardess politely.

When she had gone, mohawk guy turned to the black man, who was eyeing him as if he was a weird and particularly repellent form of pondlife. ‘What?’ he said.

The black man shook his head slowly and deliberately. ‘Nothin’. Nothin’ at all.’

He reached for his headphones again, but before he could put them on mohawk guy said, ‘Hey, don’t I know you?’

The black man winced slightly. ‘Probably not.’

‘Yeah, sure I do. You’re that rapper. Sam something.’

‘Sam B,’ the black man conceded with a sigh.

‘Sam B! That’s right! You had that song, didn’t you? Back in the nineties. What was it now? “Voodoo Hoodoo”?’

‘“Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch,”’ Sam corrected him.

Mohawk guy gave a gurgle of laughter. ‘That’s the one! Jeez, I loved that song when I was at school.’ He paused, his eyes — the whites pink from the alcohol — narrowed shrewdly. ‘So what happened to you, man?’

‘Nothin’ happened to me,’ replied Sam. ‘I’m right here.’

Mohawk guy laughed, as if he had made a joke. ‘Sure you are. But how come you didn’t do no more music after that one song?’

Sam closed his eyes briefly. He had answered this question so many times that he had grown to dread being asked it.

‘I was young,’ he said. ‘Young and stupid. At nineteen I thought I knew it all. Took me a long time to realize I