Mark Morris: Dead Island

Charon laughed even harder. ‘I’ve never heard such nonsense.’

‘It’s all true,’ Logan called. ‘He told us so himself. We all heard it, right everyone?’

They all nodded.

‘He’s been stringing you along, Colonel,’ Sam shouted. ‘Every step of the way. He and the people he works for want to use the virus as a weapon. They only wanted a vaccine so they could control it.’

White gaped at them, clearly not sure what to believe. Apparently unruffled, Charon said, ‘Of course they’re going to say that, Colonel. But we both know it’s not true, don’t we? It’s just a pathetic attempt to divide and conquer. But it’s not going to work, is it? We’re both stronger, more intelligent than that.’

‘Look at your wife, Colonel,’ Purna shouted. ‘Look at what Charon did to her.’

White looked down at his wife, bemused and indecisive, his capable and efficient demeanour of a few minutes before having crumbled completely. ‘You did this?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ snapped Charon, exasperated. ‘They’re just—’

And that was when Sam hit him.

Taking advantage of Charon’s momentary distraction, Sam threw himself sideways, his hands still cuffed in front of him. His 190 pounds of almost solid muscle smashed into the skinnier man’s midriff and knocked him off his feet. Both men landed in a heap, Charon on his back, Sam crashing down on the ground next to him and taking the full impact on his shoulder. Although Charon kept a grip on his gun, the vial of vaccine flew from his hand and hit the ground about five metres away. Despite being made of glass, it didn’t break, but instead rolled along the tower’s flat concrete roof. Furiously Charon kicked out at Sam, then brought his gun hand round and smashed him in the side of the head. Sam, who had been struggling to rise, groaned and slumped back down, dazed. Charon jumped to his feet, teeth bared in a feral snarl.

While Sam and Charon had been scrabbling on the ground, Jin, acting largely on impulse, had broken away from the captive group and sprinted towards the rolling vial. Dropping to her knees, she leaned forward and awkwardly snatched it up in one of her cuffed hands, scrambled back to her feet and ran towards the Colonel and his wife. She had a vague notion that the vaccine would be better off in White’s hands than in Charon’s, that under the army’s jurisdiction it would be put to good use, rather than simply being sold, along with the virus itself, to the highest bidder. She had covered around two-thirds of the distance, and was no more than ten metres away from the still uncertain-looking Colonel, when Charon shot her.

There was no warning. The skinny man merely raised his gun and fired. There were cries of horror from the captive group as blood erupted from the ragged wound that appeared in Jin’s back. Arms outstretched, she was thrown forward, as if hit with a sledgehammer, and crashed down on to her face. Her body convulsed for a moment and then relaxed as the life went out of her.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Xian Mei’s face was etched with shock, her mouth open in disbelief. Purna’s eyes burned with anger. Logan spun round to face Charon, his face blazing red.

‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ he yelled. ‘You killed her! You fucking killed her, you murdering fuck!’

With vicious intent, Charon swung the gun round, aiming it at Logan’s face. ‘I’ll shoot you too if you don’t shut your mouth.’

Still somewhat dazed, Sam struggled up into a sitting position and spat out a mouthful of blood. Looking numbly at Jin’s motionless body, he said in a low voice, ‘First chance I get, I swear I’m gonna fucking kill you .’

‘Is that so?’ sneered Charon. ‘In that case, I’d better make sure you don’t get that chance, hadn’t I?’ Then he swung away from Sam and pointed his gun at a fresh target. ‘Get back, Colonel,’ he warned.

While everyone had been reacting to Jin’s death, White had moved forward and plucked the vial from the girl’s lifeless hand. He held it up in front of him now, looking at it with something like wonder. Ignoring Charon’s warning, he turned and walked back to his wife.

‘Colonel, I mean it!’ Charon snapped.

Almost casually White glanced round, raised his gun and fired. The bullet went high, but they all threw themselves to the ground, Charon included. By the time they lifted their heads, White had re-holstered his gun and was pulling the stopper from the vial.

‘Colonel, don’t!’ Charon cried, an edge of panic in his voice. With his weapon held high he began to run across the thirty metres of open space between them.

White was tipping the contents of the vial towards his wife’s mouth when Charon fired. Fearful that shooting White would cause him to drop the vial and spill its contents, Charon aimed his bullet deliberately over the Colonel’s head. He hoped the threat alone would be enough to make him freeze, perhaps even to bring him to his senses.

‘The next bullet won’t miss!’ Charon promised, his voice raw. ‘Give me back the vial now or I’ll kill you and your wife.’

But White wasn’t listening. Driven by an obsessive desire to save the woman he loved, the Colonel was now lost in his own world, deaf both to threats and reason. Charon could only watch, appalled, as White poured the entire contents of the vial into his wife’s snarling snapping mouth.

‘ No! ’ Charon roared. ‘What have you done?’

Enraged, he raised his gun and squeezed the trigger, again and again and again.

White twitched and bucked, blood spurting from him as bullets ripped into his body. He crashed against his wife’s gurney and slid to the floor. Coldly Charon swung the gun round, aimed it at the Colonel’s wife and pulled the trigger. It clicked empty. Swearing, Charon rooted for extra ammunition in the pocket of his overalls.

Reduced for the moment to mere spectators, Purna, Sam and the others watched from thirty metres away. Sam felt a savage satisfaction in seeing Charon’s carefully laid plans going up in smoke, but he couldn’t help wondering how the loss of the vaccine would affect not only his and his friends’ long-term prospects, but also those of the rest of the world, should the virus spread beyond the island.

All at once Logan called, ‘Hey, check out Mrs White.’

‘What’s happening to her?’ muttered Yerema.

‘Must be the vaccine,’ said Sam.

Still strapped to the gurney, the Colonel’s wife was shaking violently, as if she was having some kind of seizure. The gurney itself was rattling, in danger of tipping over. And then Mrs White began to change. Her body seemed to swell, to bulk out with strange mis-shapen growths. They erupted all over her, her clothes ripping as her limbs and torso expanded. It was almost like watching a violent chemical reaction, thought Sam, or maybe an accelerated film of chronic steroid abuse. The infected woman screeched in either rage or agony as her face also began to dilate and distort. Within seconds she had enlarged to twice, maybe three times her normal size, and had become so grossly malformed that she was barely recognizable as human.

‘Shit,’ said Logan in awe as the hideous creature thrashed from side to side, snapping the gurney’s thick leather constraints like cotton thread. ‘She’s become a fucking über zombie.’

What once had been the Colonel’s wife bellowed again and clambered to its feet, pulverizing the gurney into twisted metal and sweeping it aside with a single blow from its massive arm.

Charon, meanwhile, had succeeded in reloading his gun and was backing away in disbelief, looking up at the creature as it rose to its full height. It stood, swaying for a moment, like a gnarled, ancient tree made not of bark and sap, but of compacted, hideously swollen lumps of dead flesh.