"I USED TO think shooting zombies would be fun, but this is fucking grim, man."
"You want to swap places, let me take over for a while?" asked Sam.
Logan looked tempted, but he shook his head. "Guess not. You've done your bit for now. Never thought I'd end up saying this, but I reckon I gotta take my share of the responsibility."
After leaving Sinamoi some provisions and a couple of guns, Sam, Purna, Xian Mei, Logan, and Jin had thanked the lifeguard for all he had done for them and said their goodbyes. Initially, Logan had tried to persuade Sinamoi to come along too, but he had elected to stay behind. Quietly, Xian Mei had asked Jin if she wanted to stay with him, but the girl had shaken her head.
"I thought you might prefer to be close to your father," Xian Mei said.
"What's the point?" replied Jin bluntly. "He's dead."
Xian Mei had been shocked at the finality of Jin's words. "You can't know that for certain."
"The world is cruel," Jin said, her face expressionless. "There's no longer any hope for any of us."
Xian Mei had been troubled by how much the younger girl's outlook had changed by her new-found nihilism. When they had first encountered her, she had been compassionate, hopeful, eager to help people, but in the space of a few hours, her faith and optimism had been shattered, her world torn apart.
"Maybe this man, Ryder White, will help us find an antidote," Xian Mei reassured her. "Maybe then we can help your father."
"Papa will be gone by then," Jin said. "This virus is without mercy."
To get to the road that would take them into the jungle, they had had to pass again through the resort area, which meant negotiating at least part of the highly populated main street. Purna had hoped they would be able to do what they had almost done last time – crawl through undetected. However, it was not to be. Either the infected were able to retain recent memories or Sam, Purna, and the rest had simply been unlucky enough on this occasion to have been instantly spotted.
Whatever the reason, as soon as the van nosed into view at the intersection leading on to the high street, the infected began to turn, almost in unison, in their direction.
"Fuck!" said Logan, who was witnessing the infected en masse for the first time. "I see our problem's gotten a whole lot bigger since last night."
"We're going to have to shoot our way through this time," said Purna, "otherwise we'll be swamped. Logan, Xian Mei, you ready?"
They nodded, each raising their assault rifle, as Purna pressed the buttons set into the driver's door that automatically lowered the two front windows. As soon as there was enough of a gap, Logan and Xian Mei poked the barrels of their rifles through and started firing.
The automatic weapons cut a swathe through the zombies closing in on both sides. Chunks of bloody flesh and bone and shredded clothing filled the air like grotesque confetti as the first wave of the marauding dead went down and were casually trampled by the ravenous hordes behind them.
Purna, meanwhile, floored the accelerator, surging forward, using the vehicle as a battering ram. Zombies were thrown aside or knocked to the ground and crushed beneath the wheels. A few of them made it on to the van's hood, and one – a lanky teenage boy with long greasy hair and a face full of acne – managed to scramble up on to the roof. He stayed there for a full minute or more, before a particularly violent jolt sent him spinning off into the crowd like a stage diver at a rock concert.
Eventually, however, they were through the worst of it, and Purna was able to take her foot off the accelerator. The windows and bodywork of the van were splattered with already-congealing blood. Logan and Xian Mei drew in their weapons, and Purna closed the windows.
Sam, sitting on a stack of boxes in the back, noticed that Logan was shaking a little.
"You OK, man?" he asked quietly.
Logan nodded. "Just adrenaline. I'll be fine in a minute." He took a deep breath. "Jesus, I have never seen anything like that before. That was totally…"
"Insane?" Sam suggested.
"Insane," agreed Logan.