Mark Morris - Dead Island

‘No, I’m good, thanks.’

She turned away, as if dismissing him. Logan felt that red mist prickling at the edges of his vision again.

‘Why do you do that?’ he snapped.

She glanced at him, puzzled. ‘Do what?’

‘Turn away like … like I’m a piece of shit on your shoe?’ He knew that analogy didn’t quite make sense, but he felt as though he’d made his point.

She looked exasperated rather than defensive. ‘I don’t. It’s your imagination.’

‘Fuck that,’ he said. ‘You think you’re so fucking superior to everyone.’

‘I really don’t.’

‘Yeah you do. You’re doing it now. Treating me like I’m some … some bum pestering you for a dollar.’

‘You’re drunk,’ she said. ‘I think you should go and lie down.’

‘Yeah? Well, why don’t you come and lie down with me?’ He reached out to grab her wrist.

Before his hand could make contact, Purna somehow managed to step both to one side and closer to him. Her right knee came up swiftly, crushing his balls. Despite the dulling effects of alcohol, the pain was so unbelievable that for a moment Logan felt sure he’d been ripped in two. As he doubled over, she grabbed his arm and twisted it up behind his back. He howled in agony.

She leaned in close to him and murmured in his ear. ‘I really think you should take my advice, Logan. Go back to your room, drink lots of water, then sleep it off. You’ll thank me in the morning.’

He tried to twist out of her grip, but that only caused fresh pain to shoot up his arm. Pain so acute that he felt on the verge of passing out. ‘Let go of me,’ he wailed.

‘Only if you promise to do as I say.’

Black sparks were dancing in front of his eyes now and the sweat on his body was turning clammy.

‘Promise me,’ she repeated.

Thoroughly humiliated, his balls and arm hurting almost beyond endurance, Logan gasped, ‘I promise.’

Immediately he felt his arm released. He staggered forward and fell on his knees.

All the shit he had been through over the past few years suddenly seemed to rush in on him, to coalesce in that moment. He felt utterly wretched, more wretched even than he had felt alone in his hospital bed with his busted-up knee, the painkillers wearing off, and the knowledge that an innocent girl was dead because of him.

Without looking back, he began to crawl away. He felt like a maggot, something to be reviled and crushed. It was only when a wave of nausea rushed through him that he felt compelled to rise to his feet. He spotted a sign for the restrooms and staggered towards it, the hand that Purna had twisted behind his back hanging limply, the other cupping his throbbing balls.

He passed beneath an arch into a short corridor, where a pair of doors faced each other on opposite walls. Choosing the left one at random, he all but fell against it. It opened and he stumbled into the rest room, vomit already boiling up through his oesophagus. The pain and the alcohol and the need to puke had diminished his senses, the music now no more than a mushy throb in his ears, his eyesight narrowing to tunnel vision. Ahead of him he spotted a sink, the silvery gleam of a mirror above it. Somehow he forced his feet into a rickety, lopsided run. He had barely gripped the edge of the sink when his head lurched forward and what felt like gallons of stinking liquid ejected itself from his system.

The liquid burned as it rose up through his stomach and throat. The fumes from the regurgitated alcohol were like a toxic irritant, making his eyes water, his nose run. He puked so violently that it spattered back off the porcelain walls of the sink, peppering his face and hands and shirt. The shirt was pale blue with little white palm trees on it. He had only bought it that week and was wearing it for the first time.

Slowly he raised his head and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked ghastly, his skin like old dough, his eyes peering from deep hollows. He looked just like his grandpa Buck had done in the last stages of his battle with liver cancer. Leaning forward to prop himself against the sink, he tentatively released his grip so he could turn on the cold tap.

After scooping several handfuls of water over his face and into his mouth, Logan felt a little better. A little, but not much. He had now reached the point where all he craved was a soft bed and sweet oblivion. Hoping enough strength had returned to his legs to support his body, he pushed himself upright and stepped back. As he did so, the reflection in the mirror showed him more of the room, and he was surprised to discover he was not alone.

There were two women on the floor by the toilet cubicles. One was lying on her back, and the other was on her knees, leaning over her. Logan guessed they must have been here the whole time, but he had been so preoccupied he hadn’t even noticed them. He turned now and looked at the women properly; he couldn’t see either of their faces. The one who was kneeling had her back to him, and was leaning forward at such an angle that she was obscuring the face of the other.

It took him a moment to realize the kneeling woman looked familiar. She was petite and slender, with glossy, black, shoulder-length hair. She was wearing the white blouse and knee-length red skirt of a Palm Hotel receptionist. Unless he was mistaken, this was the cute Chinese girl who had checked him in.

‘You OK?’ he asked.

The girl turned her head, her raven-black hair swishing like a curtain. It was the cute Chinese girl, and she looked worried.

Not questioning the fact that Logan was in the ladies’, she said, ‘I think this woman’s having some kind of seizure.’

Logan stepped forward and saw the other woman’s face. ‘Whoa,’ he said.

The other woman looked … weird. Her eyes were glazed and white, the pupils having shrunk to little more than pinpricks. Her teeth were clenched and she was frothing at the mouth like a rabies victim. Moreover she had begun to snort and growl like an animal, her head thrashing from side to side. Even as Logan watched, her body was seized by a series of shuddering convulsions, her hands becoming rigid, fingers curling into claws.

He was about to say something when, without warning, the woman snarled and sat up. The cute Chinese girl was still looking over her shoulder at Logan and so was slow to respond. Before Logan could shout a warning, the woman lunged at the Chinese girl, grabbed her arm and bit her hand. The Chinese girl screamed and pulled away, but not before the woman had done some damage. Logan was shocked to see blood mixed with froth dribbling from the woman’s mouth, and a crescent of teeth-marks on the fleshy pad of the Chinese girl’s hand. He thought again of rabies, of infection. As the woman sprang to her feet, suddenly lithe as a monkey, he made for the door.

The Chinese girl was right behind him. Logan wrenched open the door and they scrambled out together. He had barely got the door shut when the crazy woman hurled herself against the other side of it. Logan clung to the handle as she screeched and battered at the door, trying to yank it open. He wondered whether he ought to let go and make a run for it. There were so many people in the room that she would probably attack someone else.

‘We ought to try and help her,’ the Chinese girl shouted above the thud of the music.

‘Are you kidding?’ Logan yelled back. ‘Unless you’ve got a tranquillizer gun she’d rip our fucking faces off.’ He noticed blood dripping from the Chinese girl’s hand and shrank back from it. ‘You should get that looked at. It might be infectious.’

The girl looked around. ‘I’ll do it in a minute. Wait here.’

‘Where are you going?’ Logan shouted as she moved away.

‘To get help,’ she said and slipped into the crowd. On the other side of the door, the barrage of blows from the screeching woman continued. Logan clung desperately to the door handle and wondered if this was finally it, his divine punishment not only for killing Drew Peters but also for getting away with it. If you could call the loss of both his career and his reputation ‘getting away with it’, and, personally, Logan didn’t think you could; he felt he had already suffered more than enough. He’d heard all that Old Testament stuff about God being vengeful and full of wrath, but sending some crazed, psychotic bitch after him to make his life even more crap than it already was was just fucking overkill.