Dead Island

stepped backwards out of the blood, the soles of his boots making a sticky squelching sound as he did so. From what seemed like the bowels of the earth, Yerema’s voice called out, ‘What’s happening up there?’

Sam tried to reply, but for a second his voice wouldn’t come. It was Purna who answered, ‘We’re all OK.’

‘What about the infected?’ asked Yerema.

Purna hesitated, as if searching for some way of describing what had happened without making it sound as ugly and brutal as it had been. Finally, however, she simply said, ‘They’re dead. We got them all.’

‘So I’m the last then,’ said Yerema, a hint of disbelief creeping into her voice. ‘The last of the Kuruni.’

For the next few minutes the four of them occupied themselves with the grim task of dragging aside the sprawled and mangled bodies blocking the doorway. No one spoke, and by the time they were done their hands were gloved in red and their clothes were once again stained and stinking with zombie blood.

Though Yerema was grateful to be rescued and hugged each of them in turn, she was not jubilant, recognizing that theirs was a hollow victory.

‘So what happened?’ asked Purna.

Yerema shook her head. ‘It was one of the guards. A Kuruni child was sick, having seizures, so he opened the cage. Either he hadn’t been fully informed about the virus or he simply didn’t appreciate how dangerous it was. Anyway, he was attacked and the infected got free. I guess the other guards must have been reluctant to use their guns at first — they probably thought the infected would respond to threats. By the time they realized their mistake, it would have been too late.’

‘But you were smart enough to lock yourself in one of the cages,’ said Xian Mei.

To their surprise Yerema shook her head. ‘I didn’t lock myself in,’ she said. ‘Dr West locked me in earlier.’

‘West?’ exclaimed Logan. ‘Why?’

‘He wanted to use me as a guinea pig, give me a shot of the vaccine he had developed to see how it affected the dormant virus in my system. But I didn’t want him to. I thought it was too dangerous. He’d admitted earlier that if he didn’t get it right the vaccine could have the opposite effect and kick-start the virus into fighting back. He tried to inject me by force, but I knocked the hypodermic out of his hand and stamped on it. So he dragged me down to the cells and locked me in, telling me that once he’d prepared another hypodermic he’d be back. But a few minutes later the guard arrived to feed the prisoners and made the mistake of opening the cage, and that’s when everything started to go wrong. The infected got out and killed everyone and then they came back for me. I didn’t know what had happened to West until now. Despite everything, I was kind of hoping he’d managed to get away.’

‘So he did develop a working vaccine before he died?’ said Purna.

‘That’s what he told me. But I don’t know how safe or effective it was. I know he hadn’t properly tested it.’

‘Even so, it’s the best we’ve got,’ said Purna, looking around the laboratory. There was plenty of equipment still intact on the work surfaces, but nothing that jumped out at her, nothing obvious.

‘So where is it?’ she asked.

Yerema shook her head. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘We’ve got to find it,’ said Purna firmly. ‘We can’t leave until we do.’

Chapter 20. ENEMY MINE

‘GO TO THE left.’

Xian Mei relayed the instruction to Mowen as the hand-held mine detector, not much bigger than a TV remote control, began to beep insistently. The detector consisted of a mostly black display screen, which depicted Mowen’s boat as a slowly moving white dot. Whenever they got close to one of the hidden underwater mines surrounding the prison island, a flashing red dot would appear, accompanied by a high-pitched beep. The closer they were to the mine, the more frantic both the flashing and the beeping would become. Mowen had told them that he sometimes ran errands for the prison governor and had been given the device to enable him to move safely through the waters between Banoi and the smaller island a couple of miles offshore. He didn’t elaborate on the nature of the errands, and no one asked.

Because they had to be almost on top of a mine before the detector picked up its signal, progress through the water was slow. For a while it seemed that the black island jutting from the sea, dominated by its forbidding grey tower like the domain of an evil sorcerer in a fairy story, wasn’t getting any closer. Not that Sam, for one, minded at all. Despite their destination, he was just glad to be heading away from Banoi and to be breathing fresh air untainted by the stench of corruption. It was a glorious day, the eggshell-blue of the sky reflected in the deeper blue of the calm and glittering ocean. Odd to think that, like Banoi itself, the sea’s beauty concealed such deadly danger lurking beneath its surface.

Inevitably, however, they did eventually draw closer to the island, the jagged black rocks that fringed the shoreline like the beckoning claws of some vast leviathan. The island itself, which rose to a plateau on which the prison was built, appeared to swell from the ocean. As Mowen slowly and skilfully steered his boat through the rocks towards a small inlet, Purna dialled Ryder White’s number.

‘We’re here,’ she said when her call was answered. ‘How do we get in?’

Reception was poor, a mass of white noise through which White’s voice could barely be heard. ‘Climb over elec … fence. I’ll cut off … tricity supply for an hour once you’re up on the plateau … give you chance to—’

A prolonged burst of static drowned out his next words. Purna winced and held the phone away from her ear. ‘I’m losing you, White,’ she shouted. ‘What did you say?’

For a moment there was simply more white noise, then it died away a little and Purna heard White’s voice, faint and distorted, rising up through it again.

‘… make for Sector Seven. I repeat, Sector Seven. But be care … fected everywhere.’

‘Got it,’ said Purna. ‘See you soon.’

She rang off and told the others what White had said. They drifted into shore and Mowen cut the engine. Before them, clear water lapped gently at a stony, sloping beach. Beyond that rose a gentle cliff face, levelling out to the plateau perhaps thirty metres above. Ringing the plateau was a four-metre-tall security fence topped with metal spikes. Signs at five-metre intervals depicted a skull beneath a zig-zagging lightning bolt, white on red. Though the fence was high above them, they could hear it humming faintly, and through it they could just make out vague dark shapes wandering aimlessly about — the infected with nothing to attack.

Purna sighed. Her life seemed to have boiled down to little more than a succession of obstacles, and here were more of them. She looked at her fellow survivors — a patched-up, motley bunch of strangers, who in the past couple of days had been through hell, both collectively and individually, and who had been forced to mould themselves into a ruthless fighting unit in order to stay alive. She fervently hoped that their ordeal was now, finally, coming to an end, that soon they would be able to return to their old lives and (as much as they were able) put this terrible episode behind them. However, in her heart of hearts she suspected that the outcome would not be quite as simple and straight forward as that, and that even if everything did eventually work out, there were still battles ahead to be fought and won.

They disembarked, each of them carrying a weapon and a backpack of provisions. She, Sam, Logan and Xian Mei still had the assault rifles they had liberated from the police station and in whose use they had become reasonably proficient over the past couple of days. The younger girls, Jin and Yerema, each carried Smith and Wesson semi-automatic pistols. Since her terrible ordeal in the police station, Jin had abandoned her pacifist principles and seemed to have accepted that the only way she would survive was to arm herself and be prepared to fight. Although Purna was glad the girl’s attitude had changed, she wouldn’t have wished the cause of it on her worst enemy, and even now she kept going over and over the episode in her mind, wishing she had made better decisions.

Once they were ashore, Mowen raised a hand in farewell. ‘I go now.’

Logan stepped forward and shook the trader’s hand. ‘Take it easy, man,’ he said. ‘Thanks for