Mark Morris - Dead Island

He decided that if the Chinese girl wasn’t back within a minute he’d let go of the handle and take his chances. If the psychotic bitch jumped him and ripped his head off, at least she’d be putting him out of his misery. He started to count, but had barely reached twenty when the Chinese girl came running back with two hefty security guys in tow. The security guys looked dubious and a little amused — they wore expressions which clearly conveyed that whatever the girl had told them, they believed she was exaggerating.

‘She’s in here,’ Logan said. ‘Be careful, she’s crazy.’

The security guys lumbered forward. Both Chinese, like the rest of the staff here, they were built like Sumo wrestlers and sported identical buzz cuts.

‘Move away from the door please, sir,’ one of them said confidently.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘Just do it, sir,’ said the other security guy. ‘We’ll take it from here.’

‘Well, if that’s what you want …’ Logan said, and let go of the handle.

He didn’t hang around to see what happened next. The instant he let go, he turned and ran for the exit. It might have been his imagination, but over the pounding beat of Sam’s signature tune, ‘Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch’, Logan thought he heard screams. But he didn’t look back until he was safely in his room with the door closed and locked behind him.

‘ HELP MEEEE! ’

It was almost 4 a.m. when Purna awoke to screams.

Alert in an instant, she jumped out of bed and ran lightly across to the double doors leading on to the balcony. The screams had come from outside, she was sure of it. In her job it paid to be attuned to her surroundings even when asleep. She turned the key in the lock and stepped on to the balcony in her bare feet.

From here she could see the swimming pool below, its inset lighting creating strange ripples and reflections. Beyond the environs of the resort, away to her right, was the lower end of the main street. Purna was just in time to see a woman, running, being chased by … what? In the quick glimpse she caught of it before both the woman and her pursuer disappeared around the edge of a building, Purna thought the figure looked and moved like an ape — an ape wearing dishevelled and possibly blood-stained clothes.

The woman screamed again, her voice echoing back along the otherwise deserted main street. Purna knew she couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. Stepping back inside the room, she ran across to the phone beside her bed and lifted the receiver. She had already pressed ‘1’ for Reception when she realized the line was dead. What the hell? Exasperated, she replaced the receiver in its cradle.

Training and experience had taught her to remain clear-headed, unflustered. She dressed quickly, pulling jeans and a light zip-up jacket on over the shorts and vest top she wore as pyjamas. She put trainers on over white sports socks, her fingers deft as they tied the laces. Grabbing her room key from the dressing table, she crossed the room, opened the door and stepped into the corridor.

Despite the time, the corridor was not deserted. At its far end was the bellhop who had brought her luggage up earlier. He was a young, polite Chinese guy in a grey uniform, but there was clearly something wrong with him. In fact, he looked as though he had been in a fight or had an accident. There was a lot of blood down the front of his uniform and on his face.

He was moving strangely too, tottering like a drunk, his body hunched over and his hands twisted into arthritic claws. Purna noticed that it was not only his face and clothes, but also his fingers that were smeared with blood and clots of matter, as if he had been tearing up raw meat.

Purna licked her lips, torn between offering help and treating him with caution. Though her instincts were generally good, she was finding it hard to decide whether the bellhop was acting like a victim or an aggressor. If the latter, then he was clearly confused — perhaps he was drunk or high on drugs? As a cop, Purna had dealt with domestic incidents involving horrific violence, only for the attacker to be utterly bewildered by his or her actions afterwards.

In the end, thinking of the distressed woman in the street, and knowing she would have to approach the bellhop to get to both the lift and the stairs, she stepped forward and said, ‘Are you OK?’

The bellhop’s head snapped up, and for the first time Purna got a look at his eyes. They were almost white, the pupils the size of pinpricks. The bellhop opened his mouth and snarled, something red and lumpy sliding from between his lips and spattering to the floor, then he started towards her in a shambling run.

He was parallel with the lift and Purna was adopting a defensive stance to meet him when the door beside her opened. A rumpled-looking Logan stepped out, having clearly crashed out on his bed fully dressed, and looked at her sleepily.

‘What’s all the fucking—’

‘ Look out! ’ yelled Purna.

Before Logan could respond, the bellhop was on him like a wild animal. The Chinese boy leaped on his back and frenziedly began to bite at his shoulder and neck, tearing at his flesh with his teeth. Taken by surprise, Logan staggered and almost fell, then began to scream and thrash about, his arms flailing in an effort to dislodge his attacker. Within seconds the shoulder of his pale blue shirt was soaked in blood.

Moving forward, Purna grabbed Logan’s flailing arms and, displaying both strength and composure, clamped them to his sides. Then she slammed Logan backwards as hard as she could, so that the bellhop’s body was crushed between the ex-football star and the wall. She heard a satisfying clonk as the bellhop’s head impacted with the wall and a crunch that she hoped was a couple of his ribs giving way. Before the bellhop could recover, she yanked Logan forward again and shoved him aside, out of harm’s way. The bellhop slid down the wall and landed in a heap on the blood-spattered carpet, like an insect whacked with a newspaper.

He should have been dazed enough to have had the fight knocked out of him, but almost immediately he scrambled to his feet. Springing across the corridor, Purna grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall, brandishing it in such a way that showed she clearly meant business.

‘Stay down or I’ll bash your fucking brains out,’ she warned.

The bellhop ignored her. Whatever he had taken, it had clearly made him think he was invincible. He seemed not even to notice the extinguisher as he sprang upright and leaped at her, clawed hands extended.

With an almost balletic fluidity, Purna stepped back and then thrust forward with the fire extinguisher. The base of it smacked into the centre of the bellhop’s face, smashing his nose and knocking him backwards. The blow would have been enough to incapacitate a normal man, but after tottering back a few steps he lurched upright once more. Seemingly impervious to pain, he snarled at Purna through a thick, red mask of blood and hurled himself towards her in a fresh attack.

Purna stepped to her right and swung the fire extinguisher into the side of his head. As he staggered into the wall, she followed this up with two more blows — another directly into the centre of his face, pulverizing his nose still further, and the other a sideswipe across his forehead, the sound of impact like a coconut hitting a brick wall.

No matter how many uppers the guy had been taking, this latest trio of blows should have been more than enough to render him unconscious, if not put him into a coma. However, like a puppet jerking back into life, he rose to his feet again almost immediately, blood drooling from his shattered face like molasses from a cracked pot.