Dead Island

Chapter 17. CAGED ANIMALS

‘HEY, YOU’RE BACK! So how’d it go?’

Logan jumped up from his bunk as Sam walked in to the tiny room they were sharing at the research centre. Sam groaned, shrugged off his backpack and dumped it in the corner along with his gun.

‘Don’t ask,’ he said, staggering over to his own bunk and collapsing on to it.

‘Already did,’ said Logan. ‘So come on. Spill the beans.’

Sam’s legs were humming with tiredness. He thought that if he closed his eyes he might sleep for a week. ‘Well, we got the sample,’ he muttered. ‘Purna’s giving it to West now. That’s the good news.’

‘Which means there’s bad,’ said Logan.

‘Uh,’ Sam grunted.

‘“Uh”? What does “uh” mean? I know you’ve walked a million miles today, but if you don’t tell me I’ll just keep on asking till it drives you insane.’

Sam groaned again and shuffled halfway upright, folding his pillow to prop up his head. ‘That witch doctor guy’s dead,’ he said.

‘Shit! No way, man! What happened?’

‘Purna shot him.’

Logan blinked. ‘Oh-K. Any particular reason? He look at her funny or somethin’?’

Briefly Sam told Logan what had happened up at the burial site. When he had finished Logan asked, ‘So who is this Yerema chick?’

‘She was the witch doctor’s daughter, if you can believe it,’ said Sam. ‘Her daddy was the one who sealed her in there.’

‘Sounds like a hell of a family argument. She tell you why?’

‘Some. Seems she decided she wanted to see the world and get an education, even though her daddy wanted her to stay home, become a wife and mother, follow the traditions, all that shit. They argued about it — a lot, I guess — till finally she just upped and left.’

‘Ran away?’

‘I guess so. Anyway, she told us that at first she thought she’d never be able to go back home, that if she did her daddy’s vengeance would be terrible. But then once she’d been among “civilized” people for a while, and had seen how reasonable they could be — how they listened to you, and how sometimes, if you put over your argument well enough, you could get them to change their mind — she started to think that maybe her own people weren’t as rigid and primitive as she’d thought, that maybe she could get her daddy to see her point of view, after all.’

‘I’m guessing that was a big mistake,’ said Logan.

Sam nodded. ‘Not only did her daddy not listen to her, but he tried to drive the evil out of her by getting some of the guys in the village to torture and ritually rape her.’

‘Jesus,’ Logan said. ‘That’s fucking sick.’

Still nodding, Sam said, ‘And the thing was, it looks like that’s how all this shit started in the first place.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The guys who raped Yerema? They got ill and died. But not only that — they came back. They were resurrected as the walking dead. Yerema said at first that her daddy saw this as a sign of forgiveness from the gods. He thought the gods were telling him the guys had been made immortal, and that they’d sent back their bodies so the rest of the village could eat their brains and become immortal too. So a whole lot of brain-eating went on, and a whole lot of people died and came back. Thing was, the Ope family and their close relatives didn’t get sick. They contracted the virus, but it didn’t change them; they just lived with it. Yerema’s daddy thought this was because the gods had cursed them due to Yerema’s running away an’ all. So to appease them he offered her up as a sacrifice. He locked her in the tomb and left her there to die.’

‘And then the plague began to spread all over the island,’ said Logan.

‘Pretty much. The Kuruni kept themselves to themselves most of the time, but they had occasional contact with the outside world. It must have started with a trader or something; maybe even one of the security guards here picked it up when the Kuruni came to call and took it back into the city with him.’

‘Shit,’ Logan said. ‘Guess the girl must be feeling pretty bad knowing she’s the cause of all this.’

Sam’s brow wrinkled in a frown. ‘It ain’t her fault.’

‘I know that,’ Logan said. ‘I just meant, if she hadn’t come back to the village …’ His voice tailed off and he smirked. ‘Hey, you got the hots for her or something?’

‘Give me a break,’ Sam muttered. ‘She’s just a sweet kid is all. She don’t deserve all the shit she’s had to put up with.’

‘Guess none of us do,’ said Logan.

‘Yeah, well, some of us create our own problems.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Sam’s frown faded and he waved a hand, as if to dismiss his own comment. ‘Nothing, man. I’m just tired. I was thinkin’ of me more’n you. All this shit, it’s made me realize how much we blame other people for our own fuck-ups. If I ever get out of this I’m really gonna straighten my life out, y’know?’

Logan nodded. ‘You and me both, man.’

There was silence between them for a moment, then Sam said, ‘So what’s been going down here?’

Logan shrugged. ‘Nothin’ much. West’s been analysing blood samples.’

‘What about the people we rescued? They OK?’

‘Not really.’ Logan grimaced. ‘West had to lock them up.’

Sam sat upright with a jolt. ‘Why’d he do that?’

Logan hesitated, then said, ‘Come see for yourself.’

Although Sam really didn’t want to get vertical again, he followed Logan through the base until they came to the laboratory. West was there, talking to Purna.

‘Where’s Yerema?’ asked Sam.

Purna turned to look at him. She looked drawn, but she was holding it together pretty well. ‘She’s resting.’

‘OK if I show Sam the patients?’ asked Logan.

West waved a hand in a vaguely affirmative gesture. If anything, he looked more worn out than Purna did. ‘No problem. But be careful.’

There was a second door on the far side of the laboratory, which until now had always remained closed. Logan punched a code into a keypad on the wall beside the door and the door opened. He led Sam down a short flight of steps and then along a dingy corridor to another door. This one too he opened by punching a number into a keypad.

‘Heavy security,’ said Sam.

‘Yeah, except for the fact that the walls in this place are paper thin,’ said Logan, rapping on the wall next to the door and producing a hollow sound that gave the impression it was constructed of nothing more substantial than thick cardboard.

Beyond the second door was a wider corridor, the left wall occupied by four cages, the bars of which stretched from floor to ceiling. Inside the cages was the handful of Kuruni people who had survived the massacre in their village. Although some were worse than others, they all looked in a pretty bad way. Curled up on mattresses on the floor, or slumped listlessly against the far wall, they were sweaty and feverish and hollow-eyed, some tossing and turning and muttering deliriously in their sleep, one or two even tensing and shuddering as if their bodies were being wracked by a series of small seizures.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ asked Sam, though he was pretty sure he knew.

‘They’re displaying symptoms of the virus,’ said Logan. ‘It happened not long after they got here. Considering how contagious it is, and what eventually happens to the infected, it was thought it’d be safer to lock them up.’

Sam hated the thought of locking innocent people up like animals, but he nodded. ‘Can’t nothin’ be done for them?’

‘What can be done is being done. West’s given them drugs to try to slow the infection down. If he develops a vaccine before it takes too much of a hold —’ he gave a small, ironic whoop — ‘party time.’

‘What about West?’ asked Sam. ‘What’s to stop him getting infected?’

Logan shrugged. ‘Nothin’, I guess. But maybe that’s the best incentive he can have for developing a vaccine.’

Sam put his hands on the bars of the cage and leaned forward. He felt a wriggle of despair go through him. ‘Shit, I thought these guys were survivors. I thought they were immune.’

‘West says the virus is mutating all the time, constantly changing to find a way in under people’s defences.’

‘You make it sound like it’s alive. Like it thinks,’ said Sam.

‘Maybe it does.’

‘Bullshit!’ Sam’s response was unequivocal, but there was anxiety, even a hint of fear, in his eyes. ‘If this thing’s mutating all the time, what’s to stop it eventually finding a way in under our defences?’ he said.

Logan didn’t answer immediately. Eventually he admitted, ‘Beats me. But you gotta remember there’s one big difference between us and them.’ He nodded at the Kuruni.

‘Which is?’ asked Sam.

‘They been chowing down on zombie brains for the last fuck knows how long. Closest I’ve got to that was the burger I ate in the airport motel the night before we flew out here.’

Sam and Logan retraced their steps back to the laboratory. When they got there, Purna turned to them and said, ‘Dr West and I have been talking, and he says it’s going to be at least twelve hours, but probably more like twenty-four, before he’ll know whether it’s possible to develop a vaccine. Therefore to save time I think we should head back to Mowen’s village, pick up Jin and Xian Mei, and come back here in the morning. Then if Dr West does have a vaccine for us by then, we can head straight over to the prison island to meet White.’

‘OK with me,’ shrugged Logan.

‘Me too,’ said Sam with a sigh. ‘So you spoken to White about this?’

Purna nodded, smiling a little as she said, ‘I am nothing if not efficient. It was a terrible line, but I got the impression that White’s wife was in a really bad way. By the time we get there it might already be too late.’

‘Nothing we can do about that,’ said Logan. ‘We’re all going as fast as we can. Can’t hurry genius, eh, doc?’

West smiled faintly.

‘So when you wanna go?’ asked Sam.

‘Well, Mowen says he’s ready any time, so I suggest we grab a bite to eat and then head off. No time like the present, eh?’ said Purna.

‘Nope,’ sighed Sam heavily. ‘No time like the present.’