She leaned forward in her seat, pointing upwards. The others leaned forward too. At the top of the windscreen, rising above the trees beyond the gates, they could just make out a dark spire topped by a crucifix standing out starkly against the pale dawn sky.
‘A few hundred metres,’ Purna repeated heavily. Beyond the gates were gravel walkways divided by occasional flights of wooden steps. On a regular Sunday, worshippers ascending the hill would no doubt feel they were plodding towards heaven, but right now it looked like nothing more than a potentially lethal obstacle course. ‘Isn’t there an access road we can use? What about deliveries?’
Jin shook her head. ‘Anything the church needs is carried up from here. They’ve always managed before now.’
‘Before now they didn’t have the undead to contend with,’ Purna remarked.
Sam unclipped his seatbelt. ‘Come on, let’s get this thing done.’
Because Purna had handled one before, and because the other three felt secretly guilty at involving her in a situation of potential and unnecessary danger, it was decided that the Australian girl would carry the shotgun. Sam and Xian Mei had a flare pistol and a machete each, and after a couple of minutes of heated debate, Jin was persuaded to carry a crowbar to — if need be — ‘defend herself with’.
Despite the presence of dozens of sun-bleached grave markers straggling uphill and leaning every which way, the route up to Moresby church was more like a tropical garden than a typical graveyard. In fact, there were several routes to choose from, each one winding through clumps of palm trees and thick vegetation. The sun had burst over the horizon now and was creeping steadily higher in the sky, the insects and birds launching gustily into their dawn chorus as the day grew brighter and hotter. Purna looked around warily, remarking that everyone should be extra vigilant, as the sound of insects, birds and bells would almost certainly be enough to mask the approach of the infected. She had barely finished speaking when a zombie erupted out of the bushes about eight metres ahead of them, blocking their path.
It was a big, heavily tattooed guy with facial piercings and green hair. He was slathered in blood, some of it fresh, especially around his mouth, but much of it black and stiff on his white Kurt Cobain T-shirt and ripped jeans. Jin screamed as he ran at them, snarling like a particularly ferocious guard dog. Almost un hurriedly, Purna raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger, the blast hitting him square in the jaw and all but tearing his face away.
He went down so heavily that Sam fancied he felt the ground shake beneath his feet.
‘This is
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Sam conceded reluctantly. He turned, and was shocked to see three more of the infected break cover behind them, emerging from the bushes and trees flanking the gate. There was a middle-aged man and woman — they might even have been husband and wife — dressed in the loud shirts and shorts of the typical western holidaymaker, and a younger, bearded man wearing khaki shorts, whose naked upper torso was covered in bite-marks.
The trio of zombies ran at them, their faces bestial. The woman stumbled and fell, but picked herself up immediately, her chubby knees scuffed and bloodied. Purna raised the shotgun again and took out the bearded guy who was drawing ahead of the older man, but succeeded only in wounding him. Quickly assessing their odds, knowing that she wouldn’t have time to reload before the zombies were on them, she gestured towards the church and shouted, ‘Run!’
Although he didn’t like turning his back on the snarling trio behind them, Sam knew that — for now at least — discretion was the better part of valour. Even so, he deliberately dropped to the back of the group, urging Xian Mei and especially Jin ahead of him. Fortunately he and his companions were younger and fitter than the animated cadavers chasing them and they quickly drew away from their pursuers. The only dangers with moving so quickly, of course, was that they were more prone to losing their footing and they didn’t have time to assess their surroundings or the terrain ahead of them.
This drawback almost proved Purna’s undoing when another of the infected leaped from the clump of bushes she was running past and hit her side on, knocking her over. The shotgun flew from her hands as she fell, the zombie on top of her, its hands and teeth already trying to tear at her body. It was a teenage boy, a ghetto kid, his clothes frayed and threadbare, almost colourless from having been washed too many times. As he and Purna hit the ground, the impact knocked them apart, but the boy was up quickly and flying at her again.
Taken by surprise and momentarily stunned, Purna could only flail at him, yelling in anger and pain as he bit into the side of her arm. Sam ran forward to help her, already raising his machete, but it was Jin and Xian Mei, ahead of him, who reached Purna first. Acting instinctively, Jin raised the crowbar she was carrying and brought it down on the boy’s back. Although it barely injured him, it was enough, at least, to distract him for a moment. His head snapped up and round, his face a screeching mask of white eyes and bared, blood-slicked teeth. Pushing Jin unceremoniously out of the way, Xian Mei sprang forward and decapitated him with one sweeping blow of the machete.
As the head flew into the bushes, the boy’s body crumpled, his hands grotesquely clenching and unclenching. Hearing snarls and heavy breathing behind him, Sam whirled round. The delay had enabled the middle-aged couple and the wounded man to catch up with them. Sam raised the flare pistol and fired it directly into the middle-aged man’s twisted, bespectacled face. His head flared like a struck match, his hair igniting. As he staggered to one side, Sam jumped forward and finished him off with the machete.
Xian Mei, meanwhile, was dealing with the bearded man. Leaping with athletic grace, she shot out her foot in a high kick which connected with his solar plexus. He stumbled backwards, his left arm hanging uselessly where Purna had almost severed it at the shoulder with the shotgun blast, and collided with the woman, both of them going down like skittles. Instantly Xian Mei and Sam ran forward, bloodied machetes raised, and hacked into their skulls, destroying their brains.
As abruptly as the violence had begun it was over, leaving them with nothing but the shocking aftermath of battle. Sam and Xian Mei stood side by side for a moment, panting and spattered with blood, while behind them Purna clambered gingerly to her feet and limped across to pick up the shotgun she had dropped. As she deftly reloaded despite her bitten hand, Jin, standing alone, dropped the crowbar with a clatter and began to shake and sob. Closing the cartridge chamber of the gun with a click, Purna moved forward and put her arm round Jin’s thin shoulders.
‘Hey,’ she said gently, ‘you did good. You saved my life.’
Jin looked at the carnage around her. ‘That was … horrible,’ she whispered.
Purna nodded. ‘Yes it was. But it’s all over now and they’re at peace.’
Suddenly Sam raised his head. ‘Hey, listen up everyone.’
Despite the constant clang of bells, they heard a rustling and grunting, coming from somewhere in the undergrowth, moving in their direction. It was not close to them, but not too far away either.
‘Let’s move,’ said Purna. ‘But keep alert. Eyes and ears everywhere.’
They moved swiftly uphill, Xian Mei in the lead, Purna limping along with the shotgun and Jin, who was still shaking, just in front of Sam. Closer to the church the vegetation died back a little and they were able to see the building, perched on the side of the hill and overlooking the city below, in all its glory.
In truth, however, despite its imposing location the building itself was not in the best shape. The roof was missing tiles, and many of the interlocking wooden planks that comprised its walls had either warped or rotted. In some places the damage was so bad it had been patched up with tin or corrugated iron, which itself had now gone rusty. Looking at the dilapidated building, it struck Sam that it didn’t seem very defendable. If enough zombies made a concerted effort to get in, they would — he was sure of it.
As they moved across the open patch of scrubby ground towards the sun-scoured but stout-looking main doors of the church, another of the infected crawled out from behind a tombstone and began dragging itself along the ground towards them. This one was an overweight man in his forties wearing a soiled and ripped policeman’s uniform. Half of his face had been torn away and his right leg was a ragged, bleeding stump. Jin put a hand over her mouth and looked away as Xian Mei strode determinedly forward. Standing over the crawling zombie, but taking care not to come within range of its frantically grasping hands, she said, ‘Sorry.’ Then she raised her machete and ruthlessly brought it down.
The others waited for her to rejoin them before walking up to the church. Purna bashed on the door with the barrel of the shotgun. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. ‘You in there!’
‘We came to see if you needed help!’ called Xian Mei.
They waited less than ten seconds and then one of the two doors creaked slowly open. Purna stepped back,
