‘You want to find out whether our immunity can help your wife?’ said Purna.
‘Restore her, yes.’
‘How you gonna do that?’ asked Sam. ‘You ain’t gonna experiment on us, are you?’
White laughed. ‘Of course not. We have fairly modest medical facilities here, but enough resources to at least analyse your blood.’
‘You’re hoping to develop an antidote?’ said Purna.
White sighed once again. ‘It’s a long shot, admittedly, but … yes.’
There was silence for a moment as they all thought through what White had told them. Eventually Purna said, ‘But doesn’t the virus kill before it reanimates? That’s what you told us.’
‘That’s true, yes.’
‘So … not wishing to be blunt, but doesn’t that mean your wife’s already dead? That even if you manage to cure her of the virus she still won’t survive?’
‘I’m hoping not,’ said White. ‘The virus in my wife’s blood was identified at an early stage of its gestation. At the moment we’re managing to slow down its progression rate with drugs. But obviously time is running out. I realize I’m clutching at straws here, but the quicker you can get to the prison the better chance Dana has of surviving.’
‘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:
‘So?’ White asked. ‘Will you come?’
Purna licked her lips.
‘We’ll think about it,’ she said eventually.
Chapter 13. INTO THE TREES
‘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.
